Early 2020 Playlog

While I've been concentrating most of my leisure time on televised dramas, reading, and painting and playing 40K, I have found a limited amount of time for video gaming, as well.

I wanted to try out Juno's Darkest Hour, mainly because I have a daughter named Juno, and it looked kid-friendly enough that she might like it. In the end, she did sit and play it for a while, but it was a little too difficult to enjoy, even for me. It is basically an action platformer like you would see in the old days on the GameBoy, and I single that platform out for its monochrome looks and zoomed-in, large character sprite aesthetics and the unforgiving game design of that era.

Dicey Dungeons is a game I was looking forward to trying out, but I'm really certain its lived up to what I thought it could be. Effectively, it's Slay the Spire but with dice mechanics. It's a good concept and structure, for sure. I probably just need to play more to really define it and set it apart from that game in my mind.

I played a little more of Inquisitor - Martyr, and yeah, it's fine. I'll come back to it later.

I also got deeper than ever into Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon, and now that I've got a handle on many of the Imperial Guard and Space Marines units from playing tabletop 40K, I'm getting more out of playing it. I'm to the point now where I have Titans to devestate the Orks with. It's fun, for a very simplistic game with next to no animation and very little in the way of production values whatsoever.

I picked up Kingdom Come: Deliverance for free the other day courtesy of the Epic store. Along with a couple of board game adaptations. I want to check those out soon.

Holiday 2019 Gaming

I flitted back and forth between a bunch of games over the recent few weeks. Here's some accounting for that time.

Slay the Spire - I finally got a win as the Defect, which means I now have wins with two of three classes. I'll be working on the final one, next.

Skyrim - Something prompted me to return to this game once again. I just started going down the journal checklist of quests, and ended up becoming a werewolf, somewhat unexpectedly. I'm not sure what's next.

Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr - First off, this is a badly titled game. The franchise name: title format is understandable, but the subtitle they've given it is unforgivable. They should have left it off. The Martyr, to begin with, is the name of a derelict ship, and not something your Inquisitor becomes, or anything like that. The game seems OK, if a little slow-paced. It's doing the Diablo thing, but I'm not certain it is going to commit. So far, it's been a bunch of 10-15 minute missions in discrete maps on the derelict ship.

Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon - The turn-based, hex-based strategic wargame. I got nearly to the end of a mission but lost by running afoul of the turn limit. Blast! I think I'll try it again with the stock army loadout rather than the one I cobbled together out of incompetence.

Assassin's Creed Syndicate - I finished the main storyline. I also bought all the DLC, which I will force myself to give a good go before moving on to AC: Origins.

Destiny 2 - I really just don't think this is the game for me. I don't know why I keep loading it up and tooling around the town without playing at all. I think I need to just ignore it until and unless it gets much more solo-friendly. Or until it has some interesting fiction, which I guess will never happen at this point.

Fairly Light Februrary

Video gaming has been thin around my house lately. My daughters have probably spent more time playing Just Dance 2019, Mario Kart, and Smash Bros. on Switch, and Minecraft on PC, than I have playing altogether. I've spent a lot of time on painting and playing and reading about Warhammer, but that's another subject.

I have played some of a Warhammer 40,000 video game, though. I've continued through the Armageddon campaign, finding the game more comprehensible the more I have become familiar with the units of the Imperial Guard over the past couple of months. I have actually gotten to the point in the campaign where the Space Marines have decided to show up and help fight off the Orks. I'm excited to test out some of their units in the next missions.

I have also revisited the old favorite, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. I am running a long-term game club for the game through the GameBytes Show discord and podcast. I plan to complete the series this way. At the moment, I'm halfway through Chapter 4 of the first game. I'm playing on an easier difficulty this time through, and it's keeping it nice and light and enjoyable, since I'm mainly along for the story anyway.

Z week came up for the backlog blitz, and I went with Zeno Clash II. I may have to skip Z next rotation, having used both Zeno Clash games, now. The second seems like more of the original, but refined. The graphics seem better, if still in that very strange and very original fantasy style that I kind of hate and kind of appreciate at the same time. Otherwise, its still first-person brawling. There are probably improvements and added mechanics, but I didn't play enough of the first game to really be able to say.

Breaking from Eorzea, to the Old West

I finished up the main story quests of FFXIV: A Realm Reborn. I had a pretty good time doing so, as well. However, I have decided to pause my sub to the game for a while. I don't like the mental pressure I feel to get the most from a game subscription, at least not while I have hundreds of games on the backlog, still. And many of those that I do actually want to play.

To that end, I have begun Red Dead Redemption, only about 8 years too late to be a part of the conversation, by my recollection. I'm impressed so far, even knowing the game's reputation as the greatest game of the last console generation. One thing that has struck me about it so far is the feeling of being in a vast open world, especially in contrast to FFXIV, which feels very theme-park-shrunken-kingdom. I'm not so sure about the voice acting. Some of it is really good, like the marshall in Armadillo. Some is pretty shaky, though, like Bonnie or John Marston, the player character himself. I had a pretty good time with a longer mission last night involving a firefight through a canyon as a part of a small posse. I also like that you can hunt wildlife and gather herbs and such. There's also just something nice about being in big sky country, shooting bandits and carrying on in that manner. I think I'm going to stick with it. I'm curious to see how the plot develops.

Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon is deceptively quick and easy to play and to jump in and out of, for a turn-based hex-based tactical war game.

And of course, I continue to play Spelunky each day, hoping to gradually get better at the game and to be able to finish it, and push beyond even that.

Making the Aliens Pay in the Near Future and the Far

For my next backlog removal task, I was due for a game with a title beginning with an X. As it happened, I also had XCOM 2 installed on my PC and ready to go, following a long period earlier in the year in which I was engrossed in the previous game and its expansion.

XCOM 2, thus far, seems like a smart evolution of the first game, featuring a lot of the same systems and mechanics as Enemy Unknown, with some new twists and additions, as well. The theme of the game this time out is guerilla-like resistance to an entrenched and oppresive alien regime, and a lot of the machanics flow logically out from that. This time, most missions begin with your squad in a concealed state, and you are able to move around and get into position before springing your ambush on the unsuspecting Advent soldiers. The game also hits the ground running in terms of difficulty, being much harder right off the bat. It seems to almost be picking up from where the first previous game left off. I'm doing well so far, a handful of missions in.

I have also picked up my campaign of Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon. Returning to the game, I am more interested in figuring out how all the myriad tanks and infantry units differ from one another, and in making it to some of the missions where Space Marines and Titans come into play.

I keep playing Spelunky in futile hopes that I am getting better at the game, and may one day be able to finish Olmec at least, if not make it through hell to the extra hard part.

I'm also chipping away at the final parts of FFXIV: A Realm Reborn. I went to play a little last night, but it was down for patch day, so no dice. I need to find some better gear to get my item level up so that I can go into the next story dungeon duty. Quests in this game are called duties.

Is this Ninja Theory?

I was in the mood to try something new last night, so I grabbed my copy of the early PS3 game Heavenly Sword, the first prominent character action game from Ninja Theory, who have gone on to make some well regarded games in the genre since. To be honest, I expected more to like here. It seems pretty derivative of God of War in some ways, and perhaps just emblematic of where games were back in 2007 in others. I can see glimmers of what the developer would come to be known for here, but there's not enough to make me interested in playing through the whole game, especially after a taste of the awful Sixaxis use on display in the game's "aftertouch" system. That can be turned off, thankfully, but then you're still left with a game with a bad frame rate and a ridiculously dressed lingerie model heroine (and her whole village who sleep in full battle regalia out in the cold, snowy open on flagstones with no fires or blankets, weirdly), with a story I am not invested in. Everything this game attempts has been done better in the decade since, if not previously, so though it seems cold and dispassionate, the calculus in my head points to it being a waste of my leisure time to continue playing Heavenly Sword when there are so many other more interesting things to spend it with.

Among those more interesting things are Spelunky, and Mark of the Ninja, both of which I have dipped into this week. They're both good to have on hand for quick fixes of action, I think. Mark of the Ninja seems to have some encouragement of returning to past levels to find secrets and things, as well has having a new game+ mode, I noticed. I'll play some more of that one, for sure.

I'm also continuing to delve into Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon. I'm starting to get more familiar with its mechanics and workings, which I have stated before are just enough to make for a good tactical wargame without being to overwhelming. I like it. I've done around a third of the campaign scenarios at this point, I believe.

Blasting in the New Year

I caught a bit of the DICE bug over the weekend, and decided to crack into both Battlefield 1 and Star Wars: Battlefront for the first times. I had some good fun with both of them, the only real sour note was when a player on the other team logged on with unsavory ideological messages conveyed in his player emblem.

I was impressed with the graphics of both games; the Frostbite engine is really something. Both games were fun and had a good feel to what I played. I get the impression that Battlefront may be a little more casual and arcade game-like, and Battlefield 1 a little more geared toward the classic hardcore shooter. I'd like to play more of both, but it's hard to say whether I'll put too much time into them. It would probably behoove me to get Battlefront II, instead, so maybe I'll lean toward Battlefield 1 more if I do want to play a game like this.

I played a little Rocket League, as well. That game is as smooth and fun as ever. It's really smartly designed and presented. Again, I should play more of this.

Mark of the Ninja is another new one for me. I chose this one to knock off of the backlog both because I was kind of feeling like a 2D action game and because it starts with M. It's much less the platformer I was kind of craving and much more of a hardcore stealth game pulled off nearly flawlessly in two dimensions. It's a joy to play. Everything feels crisp and intentional, and there's very little room to fumble your actions in the control scheme. The levels branch nicely and offer alternate pathways through the spaces, which is impressive for 2D environments. It's like Klei wanted to bring over all the best parts of immersive sim stealth into 2D, and it really works. I played a solid 2 hours in my first session.

I also finally got around to trying out Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon. It's a hex-based, turn-based war game, as I anticipated, but not quite so hardcore and forbidding as I had thought it might be. It's maybe not even much more complex than Battle of Tallarn; indeed it lacks the import that game puts on unit facing on the battlefield. I'm not sure it is more complex at all, come to think of it. It offers more units, sure, and they're upgradable, but I'm not sure there is that much more to it. And it doesn't quite raise the production values bar as high as I'd like above Tallarn, either. It is better presented, to be sure, but not that much better presented.

Regardless, I'm having a good time with it, and the campaign seems pretty long and involved, with a lot of scenarios. I'm definitely going to keep playing this one, and I'm sure I'll have more impressions as I delve further in.