Tag: Video Games

Anthem, Part 1 – Rocks and Shoals

.Reading time 11 minutes.

Everyone has had a lot to say about this game since that very first E3 tease all the way back in 2014 and before we really get started let’s take a second to revisit that.

Bioware teases brand new IP at E3 2014.

It may sound a little mean but, I always find it funny when we get these produced pieces set to hopeful music about the grand future waiting for us just around the corner. That being said regardless of how many times I see them from developers I love they never cease to get me excited for what’s coming. Bioware has had something of a rough few years what with Mass Effect: Andromeda being an unmitigated disaster and Star Wars: The Old Republic being… a long story. EA, the publisher for Bioware’s games, has not been free of controversy either over the last handful of years. Their most notable, but far from only, debacle being Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and the famous “…sense of pride and accomplishment…” quote. You really have to marvel at a PR statement that is so bad to be that soundly rebuffed by an entire demographic let alone the specific community it was targeting.

Three years, a lot of bumps and roadblocks later brings us to E3 2017 and the official trailer and gameplay reveal of Bioware’s new IP, Anthem.

E3 2017 reveal.

Mmph, that dialogue. Never ceases to remind me of the face creasing power of a mouthful of Warheads but without the reward of actually having candy. That aside it was hard to not instantly be pulled in by the impressive visuals, gameplay, and hints at a fully realized sci-fi world from Bioware. There is little point in lying about the fact that I was hooked immediately in spite of the deluge of cautionary, “Yeah, but it’s EA.” cries from every corner. EA and Bioware’s latest string of foibles was still fresh on everyone’s mind and there was no getting around that. Things were relatively quiet through 2017 with little details trickling out here or there but 2018 was an entirely different story. Bioware went on the offensive with a steady run of live-streamed content for transparency with a rightly skeptical community.

As I watched the live-streams and read the myriad coverage of the game’s progression towards release I was constantly surprised by the number of comments calling it bland, boring or generic looking. I could see some arguments being made in reference to the lack of story information since without it all you have is the game mechanics themselves to hold your interest. People need to know their reason for suiting up and flying around your world blowing up bizarre creatures. The Matrix wasn’t sold to people on its revolutionary slow-motion technique alone but rather the story which was bolstered by the cinematography.

Even granted that we had heard some intriguing tidbits that had me engrossed.

The anthem of creation?

Shaper storms?

Fort Tarsis being one of the last bastions of humanity?

What made the world this way? What world are we even on?

New IPs while often a very dangerous proposition for even established studios have the benefit of being wholly unknown, a new frontier to explore and learn about. For me, Anthem had painted the perfect picture to draw me in with just enough information to get me asking questions but not enough to answer them.

On the mechanical side, the game is very familiar having been compared to everything from the very top-of-mind Destiny, who dropped all pretense on the matter, all the way to Diablo. Even if you’re playing these games for the story ultimately you’re still playing them for the loot because it is an inescapable part of their gameplay and progression.

All this being said, why am I here today talking about Anthem? This past weekend I was able to play in the VIP Demo/Beta and I’d like to chat about that experience. Especially given that there is an open demo weekend coming up where everyone, including folks without pre-orders, will be able to try out the game.

We may as well get the obvious stuff out of the way; the technical problems. The demo was a bit of a mess as Friday started out with the servers being largely unavailable to players because of a somewhat humorous design error. In an effort to make sure people could get in without manually having to retry over and over the game was accidentally designed to DDoS itself. Understandably most folks didn’t find this very funny as they had paid by way of pre-orders to have access to the game over the weekend. Eventually, they got it figured out but this was only the first in a series of issues the game would encounter. To make a long list short we’ll do it like this –

  • Stuttering/Lagging/Rubberbanding during play.
  • Infinite Load – Loading progress would stop at 95% and never progress. Seemed to be linked to folks using WiFi.
  • Second Javelin unlocks at level 12 – Many players once achieving level 12 were unable to unlock their second Javelin. The game also seemed to have trouble accurately tracking XP gains and levels in general.
  • Item stat errors both visually and mechanically.
  • Graphical errors along with enemies spawning and despawning randomly even while engaged in combat.
  • Immobile NPCs where their AIs seemed to be bugged.
  • “Connection Error” dialogue box would pop up frequently during play and could only be dismissed by clicking. This would interrupt your control inputs so you would simply stop moving and acting. The error didn’t actually disconnect you from the game.
  • Console players, by and large, being unable to log in and even play for huge chunks of time over the weekend. Partially caused by issues trying to link their Origin and console accounts for access to the demo.

I’m sure there are more I’m forgetting but those were the ones that either happened to me, people I was playing with or were simply the most prominent over the weekend. In the wake of this, I have seen lots of conjecture about the readiness of the game and how much can Bioware really fix in the weeks leading up to release. Not entirely an unreasonable point but it is important to remember that this was a six-week-old build of the game. I’m not offering this as a way to excuse the problems during the demo but simply to point out how much work has undoubtedly been done in those six weeks. Not to mention will be done in the four until release. All things being equal I would have preferred a demo with no problems or just fewer but we’ve all collectively done enough of these that this shouldn’t be too shocking.

A summary of the demo weekend from Bioware’s Head of Live Service, Chad Robertson.

Going from controlled closed alphas to even a pseudo-public demo will cause a lot of unexpected issues to crop up which is just an unfortunate reality. This statement certainly won’t quell the “I canceled my pre-order!” crowd nor should it, that is their recourse for a rocky demo. It isn’t money lost for the consumer because they got the experience they paid for, one that told them their money would be best spent elsewhere. It saddens me to see a product like Anthem, with so much potential, take it in the teeth like that on a demo but that is the risk they take.

For me, personally, the demo rocky as it was had the complete opposite effect on me. Call me a sucker or a shill but I’ve tried to never judge games too harshly based on demos, betas or alphas. Developers take huge risks in letting us see games early and in potentially broken states. They count on players keeping an open mind and sometimes seeing the potential in what they are trying to do rather than the current reality.

Even four weeks out, one troubled demo weekend down and one more rapidly approaching I still can’t help but see the potential in Anthem.

Thanks for reading part one and I’ll be back with part two tomorrow. Until then have a great day and happy gaming.

  • Anthony

The First Friday

.Reading time 19 minutes.

I want to take a little time today and talk about what stood out to me over the course of last year. 2018 by any measure in the game industry was packed to the gills with products worthy of your time. As such it can be hard for any person with limited free time and budget to pick the winners. Some years you may as well run it as a random drawing because of the sheer amount of options.

For me this was 2018 in a nutshell.

Favorite Title of 2018

Wait, you mean like just one? What idiot came up with that?

Oh right, this is my blog. Lets try that again.

Favorites of 2018

We’ll dispense with the choices that should surprise no one at all. 

God of War, Spider-Man, and Red Dead Redemption II are the titles that you’ll find on pretty much every list out there, including mine. This is for good reason as all three were stunning examples of games done right and while I, and many other people, can find nitpicky reasons to tear them down a peg. Why bother? I’m not a stranger to or wholly against nitpicky analysis of things for fun but in this case it feels to me like just searching for an excuse to not give something it’s full kudos.

These games were great, plain and simple. They are more than worth the time and money to experience if their type of game is your thing and to be honest, even if it isn’t I think they could win you over in the end.

That being said, what other games did I love in 2018?

Developed by Motion Twin

My relationship with the RogueLike/RogueLite genre of games has always been a bit contentious. I want to like them a lot more than I oftentimes do however Dead Cells seemed immune to my fickle ways.

Thinking on it I haven’t been able to nail down precisely why and have come to the conclusion that the game in its entirety is the reason. Tight, responsive controls with engaging, fast paced combat underscored by a darkly atmospheric soundtrack leaves little room for disappointment. On top of that the variety of gameplay styles supported by the available weapons, perks, upgrades and items give the built in replayability even more variety. All of this is tied together in a vibrant art and animation style that you can’t help but admire.

Even with the time I put in prior to the full release I still can’t say that I have completed Dead Cells. However in rare fashion for me with these types of games the tug remains to go back and dive back in.

Developed by Fatshark

Warhammer as a franchise carries with it a seriously incredible amount of history regardless of whether you are talking about the Fantasy or 40k iterations. Whole YouTube channels, wiki resources and books have been dedicated over the years to cataloging and making sense of it all for people new to the lore. Vermintide II along with being a heart-pounding action game of running battles and skin-of-your-teeth survival scenarios is packed with tidbits of this lore. There is something that is fabulously appealing to me about media that is, rightly, confident enough in its story and setting to eschew the need for extended exposition to explain how and why a thing is happening.

Vermintide II thrusts you and your three companions, be they AI or fleshbags, into various save-the-day scenarios in which there is no time when you are not on the verge of being overrun. In the brief moments of respite that you have you can heal up and seek out items to either assist you in combat or increase the difficulty for additional rewards.

Each of the five classes in the game are embodied by one of five characters–

  • Sienna Fuegonasus – Battle Wizard
  • Markus Kruber – Mercenary
  • Kerillian – Waystalker
  • Victor Saltzpyre – Witch Hunter Captain

and my personal favorite –

  • Bardin Goreksson – Ranger Veteran

Truth be told all five are a blast to play for different reasons and each one has several different subclasses each with their own flavor of play for you to further augment.

At the end of the day you could water down Vermintide II to its core loop of completing (grinding) missions for rewards and better gear as you could with many games. Ultimately though it does a great disservice to the voice acting, writing, music and aesthetic design that build the tense and exciting environments in which you fight through. No matter how many times I’ve battled through a level the adrenaline rush of surviving a big fight or barely making it through to a portal with all grimoires in hand has never dulled. After that breath of relief you’re always ready to go again and test yourself against the skaven hordes or hulking armored chaos warriors.

Just writing this makes me want to reinstall it and start playing again. The question is who else I can drag down with me in the process.

Developed by Harebrained Studios

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a fatal weakness for giant robots piloted by puny humans. It’s the ultimate overcompensation and I still don’t care, forget your dually-axelled truck-nut adorned Ford Super Duty and give me a Cataphract CTF-1X loaded for bear. Give me the ridiculous weapons of Macross or the imposing frames of Gundam or Evangelion.

Do you have any idea how jealous I am that people on the bullet train in Japan get to see this?

Credit to The National

Battletech really scratched the itch I had for a turn-based strategy game and since playing it has thoroughly reignited my passion for the genre and also reminded me of the pain of things like X-Com. That may sound bad but it really isn’t, X-Com is as much a game you can love as it is one that makes you want to pull your hair out. Battletech excels in the more granular aspects of the RTS where things like Starcraft prefer to gloss over. The specific loadout, pilot and strategic placement of a mech in a given moment can drastically alter the course of a battle. Environmental concerns like cover, rivers, mountains, trees all add more complications to how you choose to approach a situation.

Outside of just the combat the granularity carries over into the campaign mode of the game where your existence is dependent on more than just clicking Next Mission. As a mercenary commander you’ve got to figure out the most effective way to pay the bills that keep you and your cadre alive and effective on missions. The outcomes of the missions you take on are not the binary victory of defeat you may be used to instead you have the option of retreating and earning a Bad or Good Faith Withdrawal. If you succeed in killing one enemy and completing a single objective before your retreat you’ll still receive partial payment for the attempt. This allows the player an opportunity to look at a tough fight and decide if financially its worth it to try and win or do what they can and get out before it goes south.

On the technical side the environments, animations and unit textures were all beautifully done using Unity. Whether you are zoomed out for a wide overview of the battlefield or zoomed in over the shoulder of a mech the game is stunning. Sound and music I thoroughly enjoyed although admittedly I’m a sucker for this particular mixture of synth rock, soaring orchestral pieces and the occasional chorus.

It’s not a perfect title but if you’ve been craving a solid futuristic wargame then this should be right up your alley.

Developed by 11 Bit Studios

I’m actually going to start this off by recommending a different game developed by the same studio called This War of Mine. It’s almost the micro version of the macro-style of Frostpunk. Where This War of Mine makes you care for each individual, Frostpunk aims to force you to look at the bigger picture and ultimately see those in your charge as resources. Like any other resources in this game they must be spent for the good of what little is left of humanity and it’s survival.

You know the situation is dire when the games Law system allows you to do everything from instituting Child Labor to potentially using the dead as fertilizer to increase the efficiency of your hothouses to stave off famine in your city. Suffice it to say that in this frozen hellscape there are tough choices to be made and they’ll fall squarely on your shoulders as the architect of this new civilization.

While the overall feel is an RTS where the enemy is nature, both human and otherwise, the gameplay is almost that of a Roguelike. You will most likely fail quite a lot and while you cannot carry over resources to your new game you can take your knowledge with you. Over time you’ll refine your strategy to ensure a society that is as stable as you can possibly manage for as long as you can manage against the cold and misery.

In this vein there is an honorable mention that came out about a month after Frostpunk called Surviving Mars. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to play it but if you like your survival city builders with a decidedly more sci-fi twist there is, of course, a game for that.

Developed by Wizards of the Coast

It’s been a long and honestly rocky road getting to the release, or open beta rather, of Magic the Gathering Arena but as a long time player I am so thankful we have finally arrived. With all due respect to Stainless Games and the hard work they put into the Duels of the Planeswalkers series of games. Even with respect to WoTC themselves with Magic Online and Magic Duels, Arena is what the game has been destined to be for some time now.

That being said it isn’t perfect as right now it basically only supports the Standard format which is comprised of the four most recent sets of cards to be released. If you’re a fan of eternal formats which allow far more card variety or things like Legacy or Vintage then this still isn’t quite the game for you. For now however Arena has shown, as much to WoTC as their customers, that they are capable of designing a game that actually looks and plays like it was made within the last five years.

If you are someone who knows of MTG and has been wary of trying out the physical version because it can seem intimidating then Arena is the perfect entry point. It is free-to-play and comes with a sleek New Player Experience to walk you through the basics of the game before letting you poke around for yourself. While there is some ongoing debate about the economy of the game I do think your average casual player can find enjoyment earning the free starter decks and building their collection. Gold rewards come fairly quickly with the completion of daily and weekly goals and Gems, the paid currency, are largely unneeded unless you want to participate in competitive or draft events. Players also have the opportunity to earn Wildcards which can be turned into any card of the equivalent rarity i.e. common, uncommon, rare, mythic. These wildcards are generally found as random rewards in packs that you open either by purchasing them or earning them through quest milestones each week.

Overall Arena shows great potential to grow beyond what it is now and WoTC seems determined to get this one right for the long run which is excellent news for players. It means that they are willing to listen to feedback and adjust as they go to ensure that when the game “releases” as the full non-beta version. So far this has lead to several community driven decisions to improve quality of life and player rewards since the open beta started last September. WoTC has also set its sights of positioning Arena as an e-sport platform for MTG which again shows a level of dedication to the success of this product that had been sorely lacking from offerings like Magic Duels.

With the longevity seemingly guaranteed for the foreseeable future I think it is as good a time as any for people who have been on the fence about giving the game a try to jump in and see what all the fuss is about.

Where did the time go?

Well heck, that ended up being much longer than I anticipated when I started this, not to mention I took longer to gather my thoughts. It also ended up being entirely about video games and not much else which is sort of disappointing given that there were quite a few other things I found last year to enjoy. I think I want to do a second part of this which I will hopefully have time to work on over the weekend but I also want to get back to my regular articles so perhaps we’ll pick this up next Friday.

We’ll see how the weekend goes. I’m not sure what days I’ll be posting on from week to week but for now two per feels about the right pace so I’ll start there.

Hopefully you enjoyed this and it wasn’t too rambly as I didn’t take the usual amount of time to write it, throw it out and then write it three or four more times. I promise I’ll try to not do that too often going forward.

I hope you’ve had a wonderful first week to the New Year and if you’re so inclined why don’t you let me know what games you enjoyed last year and why, I’d love to know.

For now thanks for reading and I’ll see you soon.

  • Anthony

The Friday Wrap Party

.Reading time 11 minutes.

Happy Friday folks! Let’s do a little rundown shall we?

There seems to be a new consensus about the No Man’s Sky: Next update that say it finally delivers the game that was promised two years ago. Watching the trailer I can’t say that much looks very different to me except for the very conspicuous presence of players together on the same planet with the ability to see one another. I know it’s a little disingenuous because of the overall tech involved in the game but, hooray! Welcome to gaming… 20 years ago? Even more actually but twenty is a nice round number that sounds strong when you place some emphasis on it. 20. See?

The trailer still starts off by reiterating that everything in the game is created with procedural tech, which is cool, but overall has never really managed to be a good selling point. It sounds really nice and like it will do wonders for any game that uses it but almost universally it ends up being a disappointment instead of a standout feature. I do think that procedural systems will be absolutely integral as games continue to grow and push boundaries but for right now its just not ready to be the face of a game. Outside of, I think, the underwater stuff, multiplayer and, freighter ships it looks a lot like a redux of their E3 trailer from so long ago.

To be up front, at the top of the third paragraph, I haven’t played No Man’s Sky and I don’t think I plan to so anything said here is strictly an outsiders opinion. I don’t think anything I have to say is particularly controversial or something that requires me to have actually played the game but certainly let me know if it is, or does, or did. Tense is hard. Anyways, I find myself in a weird situation with regards to the comments I made in previous posts, like last Friday, about companies like Ubisoft sticking with their games after rocky releases. Yet reading about how far No Man’s Sky has come I don’t feel the same level of forgiveness for Hello Games and even after ruminating on it for a week I’m not exactly sure why. The best guess I have is that I absolutely could not stand the way they handled the backlash to their release “issues”. I put that in sarcasm quotes because one of the biggest knocks was the shocking realization that multiplayer was not a thing in any sense of the word. Something that is far worse than a bug or mechanical failure but an outright misrepresentation of their end product coming to light. The reaction to these issues started with Sean Murray exclaiming how “Amazing” the community was for achieving the purported nigh impossible task due to the sheer size of the game within a week of release. Despite calls for clarification on why the players couldn’t see each other or why the functionality was missing Hello Games essentially shut down on the PR front and retreated to their offices to work on the game. An admirable goal all things considered but with little or no attempt to take responsibility for the state of the game at release or address statements made prior to release. Leaving fans and gaming media to debate among themselves and dissect interviews given about whether or not certain features had actually been promised.

For my money if your fans are even engaged in that debate then you as the developer have done something wrong, either by intentionally or unintentionally misrepresenting your product or outright lying about what you could deliver. None of those options are good and barring a complete group psychosis on the part of your fans and the media they probably didn’t hallucinate those expectations. All said and done I’m happy that the fans of the game finally have a mostly complete product that they can play and enjoy as they more than deserve it for sticking with them this long. I do hope that Hello Games and Sean Murray specifically learned some lessons with No Man’s Sky which will result in their next game being one that I will want to buy. I love this genre of game and desperately wanted to want to play this one right up until the shit hit the fan and that is coming from someone who was assuming the game wouldn’t deliver what was promised up front.

Now, onwards!

In the wake of it’s absolutely crushing success the game, God of War 4 is getting it’s very own novelization written by none other than… the game directors father! On the level of pure synergy this is just so cool however if he doesn’t dedicate the book to some version of “Boy” a great opportunity will have been missed. I haven’t played the game yet but I look forward to checking this out in hopes that they’ll take this opportunity to expand even further on the lore behind Kratos in this new setting. Instead of just regurgitating a step by step re-telling of what the player experienced in their playthrough.

In the wake of still getting my ass handed to me by likes of Hollow Knight and Dead Cells I don’t think I really need a new 2-D platformer to play but if I did it might look something like Salt and Sanctuary. There is just something truly endearing about that paper doll style animation that I really like, even when the overall aesthetic of the game oozes nightmare fuel.

I am a huge, huge fan of Magic: The Gathering and by default this means that Richard Garfield is high up on my People-I-Love list which means that his latest game called Keyforge: Call of the Archons piques my interest. The only problem is that for every game released which isn’t Magic: The Gathering I never get past the stage of having my interest piqued. It’s not that these games don’t look good or aren’t good in practice it’s just that they all inevitably end up being stacked against objectively the best TCG to ever exist. I know the argument people will make is that I must judge each game on it’s own merits but it’s hard to not use games I already like as a reference point. Keyforge is touted in it’s description as–

From the imagination of legendary game designer Richard Garfield comes a game unlike anything the world has ever seen—a game where every deck is as unique as the person who wields it and no two battles will ever be the same.

Unfortunately MTG already does these things and because of it’s long history it almost inevitably does them better than anyone else. The sheer longevity of the game makes it infinitely more varied and unique than anything new both in builds and matchups.

In fact, in just the first set of KeyForge, Call of the Archons, there are more than 104,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible decks!

That is a huuuuuuge number and something really impressive to put on your box except just take a moment to google how many possible MTG deck combinations there are and you get results like this. I’m far and away the worst choice of someone to come to if you need math equations interpreted but I think the argument ends with MTG’s number is probably more ridiculous.

At any rate, all of this is in service of me saying that at some point I should really buckle down and give one of these new TCG’s a try because chances are there are some new and fun mechanics out there that I would enjoy. This includes the upcoming card game from Valve called Artifact because it is also a game Richard Garfield collaborated on and because I’m an inveterate Valve lover in spite of my attempts to be objective. I haven’t played DOTA 2 in quite a while but the lore and art seem to me to be prime candidates for the beginnings of a TCG, digital or otherwise.

What cool things have you seen recently and think I should also see? Leave a comment!

Apologies for this wrap up being a bit rambly but I’ll cut it off there and wish everyone a nice, relaxing weekend filled to the brim with your favorite activities and I will see you next week!

  • Non-Washable