I have long sought to develop a metric to determine whether or not a video game was “worth it” other than the extremely subjective “it felt worth it” scale. A lot of proposed scales use things like “dollars per hour” using the average hours to completion for the game. Other metrics try to tie it to replayability or how many times per week you play the game. One metric proposed by Brian David Gilbert when he still worked for Polygon involved creating his own units and figuring out what was the best game of the year because it had the highest score after being run through his incredibly complex equation. All of these are certainly useful metrics to some people or at least funny to try applying, but I am beginning to think that it might be impossible to actually come up with a true metric for if a game was worth the price in cases where it isn’t clear one way or the other.
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Musings of a Valheim Architect.
My main Valheim-playing associate, the same person who hosts our server when it is running, and I built a nice castle on the side of a mountain. It sits right at the edge of where the “Meadows” biome meets the “Mountain” biome, so we had to do a lot of work to keep it properly heated and safe from the various nefarious beasties of the mountain tops. There are a few exposed areas, but all intentionally so. One is the top portion of half the structure, set up as a landing with decorative crenellations looking over the approach up the side of the mountain to the castle’s main door. Much of the view is obstructed by trees or the rising slope of the mountain behind us, but it is a comfortable place to stand and greet anyone who might approach.
Continue readingWatching The Hype Train Pass Me By (Except for Kirby Games, Apparently)
I am not a great follower of video game news. I find hype of all sorts odious when it is manufactured to create a buzz for something that does not yet exist in the hands of the audience, and that seems to be almost the entirety of video game marketing these days. As a result, I’ve grown accustomed to finding out about the release of games I’ve been anticipating in the last week or two before their release. Most of my friends even know not to include me in their hype events or discussions unless there’s something concrete for us to discuss like a release date, an actual gameplay trailer, or a demo. I’ve made my peace with living on my back foot like this, to finding out about games sometimes long after they’ve released, and I feel now that it isn’t a bad way to live.
Continue readingThe Power of Infrastructure!
One of the things I enjoy most about Valheim is the simple truth that infrastructure is the key to the development of society. It might be a wild thing to say about a video game marketed as a viking-esque survival game with combat and a space program, but it’s a simple truth about any world that has location-specific resources. Infrastructure exists on some level in most survival and collection games, but it is usually fairly basic or a natural part of exploration. For instance, most infrastructure in a game like Minecraft is limited to base building, marking places you’ve explored, and creating access points to resource nodes. While a lot of this changes around in larger scale multiplayer scenarios, valheim is so far the only survival game I’ve ever played where creating infrastructure is not required but is incredibly beneficial.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 8
I’ve pretty much hit my mental, emotional, and physical limit this week, so I’m going to set aside all the thoughts and plans I had for complicated, introspective, or interesting blog posts and just really dig into some Legend of Zelda stuff. Specifically, mounts.
Continue readingThe Witcher 3: Wild Amount Of Murder
I’ve begun playing Witcher 3 and, despite knowing quite a bit about the series and the general premise of the games, I was not prepared for just how horrific most of the monsters would look. I don’t think they’re unduly horrible, since most of them seem to be made of the ordinary curses of a dark fantasy world or the rampant death that seems to infest the world of the game, but I really wasn’t expecting the horrible gaping maw of a noonwraith to appear before me so early in the game. A game I play primarily at night, I might add.
Continue readingFalling Asleep To Fallout 4
I have returned to playing Fallout 4. One of my friends reinvested himself in the franchise and, after we had a lengthy talk about it one day, I found myself wishing to return to the world. I’ve played it before, even doing a fun punching-only build with a character who looked like Superman/Clark Kent, but I’ve never beaten the game. Like Skyrim, there’s just so much to do that I never quite get around to chasing down the main quests. Or most of the major side-quests. I don’t think I even reached the point of the game where you have to pick a final faction. I have, however, always enjoyed the game and it’s low-stakes combat on a moderate or lower difficulty makes it a perfect game to doze off to.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 7
Once more, the events of my life have conspired to leave me emotionall drained, exhausted, and on the downswing of my depression wave (and I was doing so well over the last few days!), so let’s return to the one topic that will ALWAYS cheer me up: The Legend of Zelda. In Breath of the Wild, I’ve been doing a Master Mode play-through. The plan originally was to find all the koroks, do every quest, and absolutely 100% the shit out of the game this time. Just go all-in. Unfortunately, since this is my 5th full-play through (not counting two I started but never finished), I’m finding myself having a difficult time staying engaged.
Continue readingTrauma, Video Games, and Acessibility
I took a whole day off. A whole-ass day. I did some laundry, because I need clean clothes for after my day off, but I didn’t fold the shirts (which is what always seems like the most difficult part of doing laundry until I start folding them). I didn’t do any writing. I didn’t check my blog. I didn’t go on social media. I didn’t even spend time trying to get people to play online games with me. I just sat on my couch, caught up on The Adventure Zone, and played Ghost of Tsushima. The Iki Island expansion stuff is interesting, but it did make the game a bit more troubling for me since it takes all of the horrible, traumatic moments of this game about trauma, death, and the question of what is permissible in war, and has started playing them all out again.
Continue readingI Played Among Us And Killed More People By Stirring Up Trouble Than With The Kill Button
One of the most-fun nights I have had in the pandemic was the night my friends and I got (briefly) into Among Us. Now, I’m really bad at being the killer since I get a little too wrapped up in it and caught up in trying to be sneaky but also still kill people. But I am AMAZING at being the honorary third (or second) killer. I don’t care about winning most multiplayer games, instead deriving satisfaction from playing a game with my friends, so I just stirred as much shit as I could.
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