This week was just killing time with more Deep Rock Galactic.
But I did pick up Teardown again. I’ve always had a fondness for voxel based games. And, Teardown is just beautiful, the gameplay is simple, but I just love the feedback with the lights and sounds. Sometimes you just need to be given a sledgehammer and just be told ‘break that’. So aside from playing property damage: the game, I’ve just been busy with work.
How’s everyone else this week?
Steve Shives posted a video the other day about how more recent Star Trek properties are more willing to show flaws and failures; imperfections in the characters and institutions featured in the stories. But also, prominently; how they almost always “take it back” in the end. “Fall short of committing.” “Pull the rug out.” Most especially regarding Starfleet, which is the ultimate authority and representative of *all* humans and allied species and cultures in most Star Trek media. Shives pointed out three examples from the Picard series, Strange New Worlds, and most recently the first series of Starfleet Academy. The Picard example can to an extent be laid next to the blender the whole idea was run through at some point, and Strange New Worlds; being very episodic in nature, I would be willing to not take overly seriously because what’s true in one episode isn’t necessarily true in the next. (I want to be clear, this is based on taking things at face value and REFUSING to look even slightly deeper…my opinion changes once that is done.) But the Starfleet Academy example is very clear and unapologetic, as that series IS built on an overarching narrative with specific actions and a named and repeatedly featured villain. But in the end, despite creating an obvious and understandable story arc, the writers choose essentially to have the protagonist of the backstory NOT LEARN anything, or change because of events even though that is repeatedly shown throughout the series, but defend their decisions which they have regretted for two decades with “hey, everybody makes mistakes. You have to understand the context, blah blah blah.” I mean, it’s a choice; but the story naturally supported a different conclusion. It was sitting right there. The whole series was based on the idea. And I’m not gonna tell you about it because spoilers.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Some Thoughts on Star Trek Lore”
Not long ago every game had an ill conceived, tacked on multiplayer mode that everyone ignored. Like, who the hell played the Last of Us’s multiplayer? I did. I was forced to if I wanted to get the platinum. But it was a needless waste of time and money for the devs for a middling game mode with a very short half life. The multiplayer modes never needed to be included. Nobody wanted them. Thankfully that has mostly gone away. A relative of the tacked on multiplayer mode has persisted however: the minigame.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Minigames And Their Modern Applications”
I haven’t done much this week. I’ve been too busy to play much Terraria, so instead I’m playing Deep Rock Galactic. Not much going on there, just playing solo and collecting stuff from this current season.
What’s everyone else doing this week?
I recently picked up and started playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I’ve been really enjoying it so far. It’s the French-est thing I’ve ever seen or experienced, which is novel to me. Like, it’s aggressively French. The Eiffel Tower, mimes, French curse words, berets… Add some sexually aggressive men and some wine and you’d basically be in Paris. The visuals are beautiful. The combat system is the most engaging turn-based system I’ve played since The Legend of Dragoon. The story, at least from what I’ve seen so far, is incredibly interesting. I do find myself a bit frustrated every time I pick up the controller, however.
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m no expert navigator. I use my GPS to get around pretty much everywhere outside of the few places I frequent in my area. I disassociate and pretend to pay attention to directions that are given to me like they aren’t basically in a foreign language. I do my best to learn routes and landmarks and I get by okay. However in video games I typically don’t have that problem. Typically if there’s a free roam element to games there is an accompanying mini map or map screen that allows you to set waypoints to follow. It has become so ubiquitous that I now rarely even think about it. I just press the menu button, find my destination, and go. So when I’m playing this fun new game which has themes of adventure and exploration, I feel a little frustrated when I roam around areas and get completely lost.
All that Expedition 33 gives you for navigation is a compass. You are told a general direction to head and sent off to figure it out. In the overworld you’re given a map to look at, albeit rather devoid of details. Why is this a problem? I like to complete games. It’s my thing. It’s hard to complete an open world game when you can get easily turned around and have very little idea of which paths that you’ve already explored. Worse than that, though, is that I feel punished for checking out cool features in levels. If I spend a bit of time looking at something neat I can end up turned around entirely. I’m almost lucky in that regard, though.
I’m convinced my wife would circle her own ass until she collapsed into a black hole if the GPS satellites all went offline one day. She’s an intelligent, talented, wonderful woman, but she couldn’t navigate her way down a one way street. Take a person like her and plop her into a game like this and it would turn her off of it immediately. A lack of a navigation system almost becomes an accessibility feature at that point. And honestly I think we have hit a point where a proper map system should be expected in modern game design, like the mostly homogenized twin joystick control system for FPSs on console. It’s outdated to expect people to memorize your maps when you can make it 1000 times easier on them to give them the ability to navigate in your game world when it’s larger than a certain size. I’ve dealt with the days of mapping levels and worlds by drawing on paper in real life. I don’t want to go back to it.
I’m still enjoying Expedition 33, but I’d like it a hell of a lot more if I didn’t get lost every few minutes while I try to fully explore the levels. I enjoy the game and despite it’s flaws and peculiarities that come with being a smaller game company. It feels a lot like a game made by an ex-Ubisoft team because it is. And Ubisoft isn’t exactly known for perfection. I’ll enjoy what I have. I’ll just be a whiny baby about it until I finish the game off and nobody can stop me.
Not much this week, just taking our time with Terraria.
We’ve been hanging out post Plantera, waiting for the Angler to give us the materials for the shellphone. I think my favorite feature in this version is the banner menu, going on a mining trip and not having banners fill my precious inventory space. Also happy April fools day I forgot about it so I don’t have anything silly lined up so, how’s everyone else this week?
Haydee is a 2016 Metroidvania-style third-person shooter that centers exploration and platforming…and survival. Many people would consider those descriptions somewhat redundant to “Metroidvania-style” but I think it’s important to point out survival was an aspect of almost all video games of the Metroid and Castevania era, and an important distinction for those games and the “genre” as a whole is that later exploration opens up areas seen but not available early in the game. Survival in Haydee is much more like early Resident Evil games: you have to avoid getting hit and conserve your ammo, medpacks, and saves. On top of that, your inventory is small and non-specialized and save points are rare. And just as you have to have a typewriter ribbon available in Resident Evil to operate a save point, Haydee must have a diskette…a separate inventory item. Over the past decade two sequels have been released to increasingly positive ratings. But I suspect most people don’t notice the game until they see the cover art:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Play It For The Articles: Haydee”
