Video Gaming

This Week’s Theme isn’t Evolving at all!

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In keeping with this week’s unofficial theme, let’s talk about Evolve! Matthew Colville worked for Turtle Rock Studios as a writer on the creative team that designed the world and many of the core aspects of what would eventually become the asymmetrical multiplayer game, Evolve. The world was incredibly interesting and the core concept was novel, so pre-release reactions to the game were very positive. It even sold well when it came out, but it was plagued by a variety of problems that ultimately lead to its demise and the shut-down of its servers a couple of years after release.

The basic plot of the game is that you and your allies are a squad of monster killers that are occasionally called in to protect an at-risk Human colony on a new planet. The planet in question, Shear, seemed like a great place at first, but the colonies were eventually attacked by native inhabitants that showed the ability to quickly evolve in response to whatever defenses the Humans mounted. In each mission, you and your three human allies are tasked with taking out the monster. The monster, another human player, is tasked with killing all of the hunters or completing an objective (destroy a particular part of a facility or something like that). It is possible to play with fewer than 5 human players as you can set up a game with one to four AI players, but the main mode of play is online with a group of humans.

In concept, the game was a lot of fun. The battles were interesting and, though every game I played ended with the hunters winning, it was still a lot of fun to play the monster since there aren’t many games out there that have a similar style. It can be really fun to basically play hide-and-go-seek with a bunch of people online. It can also be incredibly frustrating if they always, unerringly hunt you down before you have a chance to even get established. Or if they seem to always find you as you find a hidey-hole in which to begin the annoyingly slow process of “evolving” so that you’re forced to give up your progress and flee only for it to happen again the next time you think you’re safe. Or if you wind up playing two dozen matches in row as the monster since none of your friends play the game and solo-queuing seems to always mean getting stuck as the monster.

There were a lot of problems once you got past the novelty of the game. You needed a bunch of dumb, negligent players on the hunter side of things for the monster to win and I don’t think I ever won as the monster and won maybe half of the matches I played as a hunter because my fellow hunters seemed to be incapable of working together or rudimentary communication. My hunter teams would almost always start to fall apart as soon as we started losing. Everyone ran off in their own direction, certain they alone knew what to do, and got picked off by the monster who was able to easily take us down when we separated. In short, it was every problem you’ve ever faced with online multiplayer compounded by a higher-than-average frequency of one-sided fights.

All that is without mentioning the various exploits and bugs that showed up every few weeks. The developers didn’t update very frequently (which we eventually learned wasn’t the fault of the developers but the publishing company who wouldn’t put out updates more than once every few months), so a lot of exploits and broken gear/abilities/etc stayed around long enough to make it difficult to play against.

Most of the problems could have been fixed with enough software patches and a better response from the PR team of the publisher, but they seemed very uninterested in trying to please their customers once the game had achieved commercial success. I’m sure there’s most to it than a simple money grab from the studio that published the game, but that’s what it felt like at the time and it is ultimately why I stopped playing the game.

Looking into it now, after I discovered that Matthew Colville was a part of the creation of this game and did some research since the way I felt everything played out didn’t seem to jive with the way he acted in his videos and various online accounts, I’ve learned a lot. Originally, the game team was put together to create an alien world and that’s what they did. Incredible art, different modes of evolution, how species adapt to their environment, and so much more came out of their first years of work. It wasn’t until about two years of this research and development had passed that they learned the game was going to take the form we got: asymmetrical shooter. If it had been an exploration game or a team shooter against only computers, that would have been another thing entirely. I would have loved the shit out of the game if it hadn’t been so heavily dependent on the only PvP multiplayer.

It was nice to learn that the game they poured their hearts into wasn’t the game we got. I can only imagine how disappointed the team was when they learned what all their research and work was going to turn into. From some of Matthew Colville’s posts on the matter, it sounds like they didn’t get much of a choice in the matter since no one at the publisher believed that an exploration or PvE game would sell enough to pay for the development and distribution costs. I’m pretty sure a lot of people who have bought that and the studio would be swimming in all the money they got from it if they’d actually delivered the game the writers and artists had spent two years creating. It would have been like what No Man’s Sky could have been if it hadn’t been hyped so idiotically when it was still clearly far from complete.

Honestly, as the game slowly winds its way to complete shutdown (the servers are being turned off for good in september), I’ve gone back to play it a couple of times. It still isn’t the game I would like it to have been and I’ve spent more time waiting for a match than actually playing it, but I can see the game the development studio wanted to make in the background. Knowing what it could have been makes it a little more fun to play since I’m more focused on that than the outcome of the matches, but it leaves me sad once the match is over because I feel like I’m missing out on what would have been an amazing opportunity.

Until September of 2018, the game is free to play for anyone who downloads it. If you want a glimpse into what is an amazing world and what could have been a game to remember a few decades on, download it and play a few matches, even if it’s just with a bunch of bots. You might be frustrated, but you won’t be disappointed.

Video Games in the Workplace

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Because I work at a super cool place, one of my team’s side projects was to design and build an arcade cabinet shaped like one of the products my company is famous for. Once it was ready, we started using it to work out some of the kinks in the system we had set up to act as the software for our cabinet. It was a desktop computer and a large TV, so it was nothing complicated, but the version of windows was leftover from a computer two company operating system upgrades ago and the computer itself was something basically built out of salvaged parts the company was throwing away. Needless to say, it did not work very well. We had it mostly working for a while, aside from an occasional crash, but someone tried to fix that and it wound up getting bricked.

For a short period of time, though, the entire team competed at Galaga. Mortal Kombat was popular, but almost everyone played Galaga at some point or another. Or at least we tried to get everyone to play it. Whether or not they actually did it has yet to be determined because, after a few weeks, a couple of front-runners emerged.

Galaga isn’t a terribly complicated game. The levels always happen the same way, the mechanics work the same from game to game, and it is possible to win by simply memorizing the game’s patterns. If you know where everything is going to be and how long it will take your bullets to get there, you can easily get your score super high. If you know the trick to get two ships and are confident in your ability to kill everything before it can kill you, it gets even easier to get up there. Unfortunately, new levels kind of kill your ability to remember your way into victory, so your high score tends to increase slowly unless you’ve got amazing instincts. Sure, all the levels are different, but the patterns are similar enough that you shouldn’t be caught entirely unaware.

Myself and two coworkers competed for the top spots. One, Competitive, of them took it very seriously, and the other, Infrequent, only occasionally played. Competitive liked to get me to take turns with him, since our scores were close and we’d trade top spot every week. Infrequent would have been the clear leader if he’d played consistently since he almost doubled our scores the first time he played and then set the leaderboard solidly in the six-digit range. It took me a week to figure out how to get my score that high, but I eventually got there. A week later, Competitive did as well. Infrequent stopped playing at that point, so it was mostly just me and Competitive taking turns.

I have nothing against a healthy rivalry, but it was getting frustrating. Competitive wanted to play every day and he’d just walk up behind me, grab me by the shoulders, and say “How about some Galaga?” or brag about the fact that he held the high score. It got to the point where I didn’t even want to play anymore, despite the game’s comforting repetition and engaging simplicity. Galaga is a lot of fun and I can see why people loved arcade games, now more than ever, but it wasn’t worth the amount of disruption Competitive brought to my daily life, especially when he started wanting to play twice a day.

The entire dynamic felt weird to me. Both Infrequent and Competitive had played Galaga when it first came out. Competitive seemed to just enjoy having someone to play against while Infrequent seemed like he was disappointed in his stellar performance. The first time I played it was in a combo arcade at a pizza place, while my family waited for a seat. I was six or seven, I think. The next time I played it was at work last year. I pick up games quickly, especially ones that rely on repetitive mechanics, and I’m stubborn enough to put in the time it takes to get decent at something. If I’d kept at it, I’m certain I’d have gotten quite good at it.

These days, no one plays. The computer that once held the games was bricked and now the arcade cabinet sits cold and empty. Competitive stays in his office and I need no longer worried about being accosted by a man looking to feed his competitive spirit. I kind of miss it, though. The game wasn’t amazing and the controls kind of sucked, but it was simple, it was fun, and it was a puzzle just waiting for me to figure it out. I hope we get the cabinet fixed again soon. I’d like to get my high scores back.

Return to Celeste Mountain

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One of my go-to unwinding games has been Celeste. I really enjoyed playing through it the first time and, while I can’t recapture the catharsis I felt as I watched Madeline work through her problems for the first time, I still spend some time reflecting on how they still apply to my life as I try to get the additional collectibles or set a personal speed record for a level. That’s why I always start from the beginning of the level and, unless I’m doing a speed run, explore the entirety of each level, including talking to everyone again.

This game has plenty of collectibles and even additional levels if you get certain collectibles. These tapes are called B-sides, and you can find one hidden in every level you play through. The rooms they’re in are usually hidden in some way, requiring you to make a split-second decision to alter your course, thoroughly explore all your options, or to notice that a wall isn’t really a wall but a hidden entrance. Each room has a puzzle involving timing your jumps from one set of blocks to another as they switch which set can be interacted with. They’re not terribly challenging once you figure out your path, but they’re not easy, either. That being said, I found it a lot easier to find the B-sides on almost every level than some of the other collectibles.

The hardest things for me to find where the Crystal Hearts. There’s one hidden in every level, though the ones in the B-sides aren’t really hidden so much as the goal of the level, and I found maybe two of them during my first play-through. When I went back and spent more time meticulously combing through the levels, I found three more. I’ve still got two more to find on the traditional levels and then a bunch of B-sides to complete. The Crystal Hearts are used to unlock the last level of the game, The Core, and I only just got enough of the hearts to start exploring The Core, so I’m looking forward to dedicating the time to getting through that level. I’ve already spent half an hour exploring it and finding almost nothing. I got through the first puzzling bit, but it feels like I haven’t gotten that far yet.

The last collectibles are the Strawberries scattered through all but one of the main levels. Like all of these collectibles, they have almost no impact on the main game since only the Crystal Hearts actually unlock anything, but they give you a reason to start exploring and a reason to keep exploring even after you’ve cleared the level. They’re often quick to get and encourage you to do more than just get through the level. Usually, you can find the Strawberries in hard-to-reach, out-of-the-way places that require you to change how you’re getting through the screen in order to collect them. Unlock the Crystal Hearts and B-sides that just require contact to collect, the trick to the Strawberries is that you have to stand on solid ground after collecting them in order for them to stay collected. If you die before then but after getting the Strawberry, it just pops back to its original place.

Thankfully, you don’t actually need to complete the level again in order to accumulate the collectibles you’ve gathered while re-doing a level. If you want to leave after getting that last Strawberry instead of making your way through the entire level, you still get the Strawberry (and your additional deaths), added to your record for that level. While the death total is interesting to see and compare to other parts of the climb, deaths are definitely not something you want to collect. I haven’t found any kind of negative impact resulting from having a bunch of deaths recorded and I’ve reached four figures in the deaths department, so I expect that I’d have encountered it by now if it existed.

I really enjoy replaying the levels. Sure, I’m only racing against my own timer at this point, but the game is really easy to pick up and put down as my time allows. The whole system is super portable and easy to use for short periods of time, but most of the games I have do not work that well in short periods. If I’m playing for only five minutes, I’ve only just finished loading into my Breath of the Wild file. Or I’ve gotten to the first checkpoint on one of the later levels in Celeste. I really can’t emphasize how great the portability of the Switch is and it feels like Celeste was specifically made for the accessibility and ease of use this platform provides. I can save and resume even in the middle of levels without needing to worry about getting sent back to the nearest checkpoint.

A month and a half after I first finished the game, I’ve gotta recommend it again. The levels are fun, there’s so many reasons to keep playing after you’ve beaten the game, the themes are mature, and the plot actually has something difficult to say. If you read, play or watch nothing else I’ve reviewed, you need to play this.

Dad of War: The Classic Road Trip

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While I never heard the classic line, “Are we there yet,” I did hear almost every single other variation of that thought while taking turns playing through the new God of War game with my roommates. My first experience with a road trip reference was when the game had just finished the opening sequence, as Kratos, the player character, and his son, Atreus, set out from their home. After a hunting trip and a brutal fight between Kratos and the game’s main villain, Kratos and Atreus head out to sprinkle Faye’s, Kratos’ wife and Atreus’ mother, ashes on the highest peak in all the realms of Norse mythology. Barely even a minute’s walk from their cabin, Atreus asks how much further it is until they get there. Classic.

Despite the fact that this game is the latest in a sequence of God of War games characterized by brutal, bloody fights that Kratos hacks his way through, this one takes a much more nuanced tone, in both combat and plot. There are still moments where you must brutalize a swarm of enemies before you can move on, but the swarms are smaller and the combat is focused much more on combos, abilities, and defensive style fighting, such as parries and dodges. Kratos is still every bit the badass he was in the other games, but one of the major themes of this game is Kratos attempting to control the rage that once defined him. He no longer uses the Chaos Blades he is known for, instead wielding the Leviathan Ax that previously belonged to his wife. It is clear that, as part of his move from Greece to the undisclosed parts of the Norse realm, he set aside much of his past in order to build a new life. This is a main part of the story, so saying anything further would be a spoiler. Instead, I’m going to end by saying that you really get an in-depth look into the character of Kratos, the god of war who tried to leave his past behind but now must come to terms with it as it begins to impact his present.

Since Kratos’ entire past is kept a secret beyond such details as the fact that he wasn’t born anywhere near where the game takes place, his son has very little idea of who his father is. Early dialogue and cutscenes show that Kratos clearly loves his son, but keeps him at arm’s length and is not terribly supportive or affectionate with Atreus. When Atreus is upset about his mother’s passing, Kratos does little to comfort him. After Atreus kills his first human, Kratos gives him the direct but not terribly helpful advice to “close your heart to it.” Atreus is a young boy and Kratos is entirely unsure of how to interact with him. Given Kratos’ past–the death of his first wife and son is what set him on the path to eventually become the god of war he is today–it makes a certain amount of sense that he would have trouble connecting with Atreus, at least in a way that Atreus desires given that he is not being raised in the Spartan culture that Kratos was. The very first extended gameplay you get beyond a few action cutscenes and walking bits is Kratos taking Atreus on a hunt for the first time. He starts it out by asking if Atreus was taught to hunt, making it clear he hasn’t been very involved in Atreus’ upbringing.

At the same time, it is made very clear that Kratos loves Atreus dearly, even if he has difficulty showing it. He tries to reach out to his son, to comfort him, but hesitates. He hides the scars on his arms from the world by keeping them wrapped in bandages, so it makes sense that he’d be afraid to touch his son for fear of hurting him since that’s all he’s used his hands for since his first family died. The first time he gives into his once-defining rage is when the main villain has gotten Kratos stuck in a crevice and says that he’s going to go check out what Kratos is hiding in his cabin. The villain doesn’t know it, but Atreus is hiding beneath the floorboards of the house and Kratos absolutely loses it when the villain inadvertently threatens his son. You see it again and again, and he even says it as you walk around the world in the later parts of the game. He would do whatever it took to keep Atreus alive. Throughout the game, as they walk around and go on adventures together, it becomes clear just how much Kratos loves his son and, as they start to get to know each other, how close they will become as they learn to understand each other. This was my favorite part of the game, watching a father and son bond as they traveled for a common purpose.

Speaking of their common purpose, the game sets up the classic God of War arc. It does an excellent job of re-framing the Norse mythology is a way that lends itself well toward the “kill all the gods” pattern of the past God of War games. The Norse gods are, for the most part, depicted as unrepentant assholes who keep stepping on the other races as they do whatever pleases them. Some of them are pretty messed up by their upbringing, like the villain, but most of them are simply jerks. While the game is focused around Kratos and Atreus being hunted down by the main villain for reasons that aren’t made clear until the end–and even then it’s all supposition on the part of Kratos and Atreus–the story makes it clear that there is much more to come. There’s even a secret ending that hints at what the sequel will hold. If the sequels are all as good as this one, I eagerly await them.

If you want a good RPG with a lot of fun fights, excellent character development, a fun plot, and a gorgeous world full of a variety of activities, I definitely suggest picking up God of War. The kicker is that the game was only released on the PS4, so you also need access to one of those. I don’t know that the game is worth buying a PS4, but I think it’s a good enough reason to upgrade to a PS4 if you need a new blu-ray or DVD player as well.

Overwatch Strategy: A Primer

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While the individual maps and various play modes make it difficult to have a general discussion about strategy in Overwatch, there is a common element to most of the normal and competitive game types. Throughout the match, each team is going to attempt to kill everyone on the opposite team. While each team has their own objectives (defend this location, conquer that location, guide a payload, stall a payload, hold on to this location for a certain amount of time), the opposing team stands in the way of achieving those objectives. The best way to get your opponents out of your way in this game, at least in the most basic terms, is to kill them or hurt them so much that they run away.

Beyond the basic terms, strategy splits into two useful levels: professional and amateur. If you really want to nitpick, there are a few more, such as “amateurs who imitate the pros,” “people who have no idea what they’re doing,” and “people who get super salty and play like there’s a berserker mode that makes them harder to kill.” I’m going to stick to pro and amateur for now because there really isn’t a lot of actual strategy that goes into playing those three levels.

Amateur strategy is probably the simplest to discuss because it relies on the same basic principles that professional strategy does, but leans on them almost entirely instead of using them as a trunk from which they can then branch out. In an amateur team fight, your tanks are going to be at the front of the line, the DPS will either be with them or trying to out-maneuver your opponents, your supports should be near the tanks to help keep them alive, and your defense characters should be either pushing the enemy tanks around or preventing your tanks from being pushed around. While it is entirely possibly to play out a team fight without much strategy, relying on the skill of the players as they clash in a giant muddle, it will quickly turn into a horrible grind where either everyone dies or one team just gets completely wiped out.

Because of the variety off characters that people use in the amateur scene, there isn’t really a strict guideline of how to play each level. There are particular strategies that work more often than not, but the deciding factor is often the skill of the individual players. As a result, a good strategy for an amateur match tends to be focused around playing to the strengths of your particular character. DPS should focus on their specialized type of damage (ranged accuracy, flanking, or pure numbers). Tanks should focus on taking or preventing damage using shields, picking out solo targets in mid-range, or living for a really long time despite taking tons of damage. Supports should heal, peal enemies off of tanks, and control the area around where their own team is located. Defense characters often wind up playing to the one of the strengths I’ve already listed, since most of their job consists of either teaming up with the tanks or taking down enemy tanks.

If everyone plays to their strengths and works as a team, then there’s no reason they shouldn’t win unless the other team is just better than they are. If they can communicate well, it is possible for them to play into some of the basic strategies successfully. Without the consistent skill of the pro or high-tier scenes, they aren’t as reliable as just playing well. Dive-composition is relatively easy to do, since it is just a very mobile way of playing and consists of playing characters to their strengths. The “standard” composition of two tanks, two DPS, and two healers is hard to go wrong with. The old “triple-tank” composition doesn’t work as well as it used to, but it has its niches. It requires consistent skill and good communication to pull off, though, so it rarely gets used in the amateur scene.

In the professional scene, at least right now, the overwhelming majority of matches use the dive composition with some slight variation in the second DPS and second healer depending on how the team plans to play after the moment of first contact. Usually a DPS and a tank from Team A will dive in, trying to take out the supports of Team B, and the tanks of Team B will fall back to counter the dive. At that point, if the diving components of Team A are still alive, which they usually are, the other DPS, tank, and one of the supports from Team A will start attacking the back of the tanks of Team B. If Team A’s dive works, then at least one of the supports for team B is dead, the tanks of Team B have taken heavy damage, and Team A is an advantageous position for achieving their objective.

There is some variety that happens in matches, given that a daring shift to a different strategy can upset the balance of a match and start the ball rolling for the team that changed things up. Since the level of skill is relatively level, the deciding factor is often what maneuvers each team tries and when they try them. Good timing and shot-calling is often what decides a match. Individual players can still tip the balance, but generally not in as decisive a manner as they can for amateur matches.

All that being said, there is one style of play that can completely shift everything. Though the basic strategy is the same, putting one of the DPS players on the Widowmaker character can shift the entire game. While having a single-shot, high-damage character means a big grind fight can turn against you, being able to quickly take characters from the opposing team out of the battle means that your team can commit more strongly without as much fear of being countered. Taking out an enemy support instantly means your team can focus on the one other support when you dive and quickly wrap up a fight that would have otherwise been drawn out and slow. Taking out their DPS means you have some room to breathe and take a few risks that would otherwise be way too dangerous to consider.

One of the biggest differences between amateur and pro matches is the way partial teams commit to fights. In a pro match, if they have time and are missing a character due to a snipe kill from a Widowmaker or because someone got trapped and killed quickly, they will simply wait until the full team is there before trying again. If a defending team is getting routed, they will often retreat, give the attacking team their objective, and gather to try to take out the attacking team in a quick counter attack. In amateur matches, generally players stick around until they are killed. This can work out, sometimes, because not all players are skilled enough to quickly kill their opponents in an uneven team fight, but it generally does not because the skill disparity required for this to work out is very high.

Pro players are much more cautious. They tend to back out more readily, take fewer unnecessary risks, and wait for their team before acting unless they’re specifically playing a character who is supposed to act alone. In amateur play, you often see tanks trying to go it alone when they very much should not be. A tank without any DPS or support will die super quickly unless they somehow manage to catch the entire enemy team unaware. Which can, of course, happen. Amateur matches are super inconsistent and anything cam happen in them. A lot of players, myself included, take stupid risks because we know that no one will expect it and the surprise itself is something that can be exploited. One of my best plays as a tank was when I snuck around the side, flanked the enemy team with a charging attack, and got the entire team focused on killing me (which they did), so the rest of my team could close the gap and murder them. I got one kill to make sure it was an even fight and my team would up winning because they knew what I was doing and I managed to shake up the enemy team. I wouldn’t recommend trying it yourself because it was more luck than good shot-calling that made it work out.

One of the most exciting parts of playing and watching Overwatch is that changing the composition of your team and using the element of surprise can tip a match decidedly in your favor. While there is a basic strategy used in almost all competitive matches, one change to the balance of a key hero or the introduction of a new hero can cause the old strategy to no longer work. I am excited to see how professional play evolves once they start incorporating the newest hero, a support character whose skills seem designed to counter the standard dive composition that all professional teams use.

Vermintide 2 is (Sometimes) a Delightful Mess

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As often happens with my friends, one of us found a new multiplayer game and subsequently convinced the rest of us to buy it. My roommate watched some of the promotional videos for Vermintide 2 and decided that he was going to buy it. One evening of play later, he was telling my and our other roommate that we should get it, even going so far as to offer to loan our other roommate (who is slightly more broke than either of us) the money to buy it. Not convinced by his ringing endorsement (he has a tendency to get very excited about things at first, no matter what they are), I decided to sit down and watch him play through a few matches.

It seemed fun enough, while I watched him. Vermintide 2 is a sort of fantasy remake of Left 4 Dead with an extra character and advancement options for your characters as you leveled them up. The gameplay looked solid, the levels looked fun, and all of the people he got matched with online seemed to have a basic amount of decorum so that the voice chat wasn’t completely horrible. After a while, I decided to buy it. It was only $30 and I needed a multiplayer game other than Overwatch since I’ve been getting kind of burned out on it.

Once I bought it and started downloading, I ran into the first hurdle. Part of downloading the game on Steam is automatically downloading the Test Server version of the game. It is at least the same size as the full game but it doesn’t tell you while you’re picking your download location that you’re downloading two things. You just get notified that the download will take up approximately 65GB of space and that it will take X hours based on your internet. Once you make peace with giving up that much space for this game and pick a location, the download screen on steam lists two separate items. While it is relatively easy to stop the download of the test server client and prevent it from trying to install every time you open Steam (right-click it in your library and pick the uninstall option), it is still super annoying that it starts it by default. If you’re like my roommates, just starting the download and walking away, you won’t even know you’re wasting 30+ GB of space for a version of the game you’re never going to use.

After the download was done, I loaded up the game, started playing, and ran into the second hurdle, one which I continuously run into. At the end of a mission, my game has crashed all but two times. First it plays really terribly synth music as the mission-end stat screen displays itself and then it eventually just shuts down, notifying me that an error report has been sent to the developer. As of today, nothing I’ve tried to fix the problem (based on message board posts and comments from the developer on Steam) has worked. Almost every mission I play ends with the game crashing and me loading up the game again for the next mission.

Aside from that, the game really is a lot of fun. The characters are excellent, each with their own voice and general style of combat. Within the characters, the carious class options and abilities are different enough that each feels different and refreshing. All together, it allows you to create a party that can fit almost any mission type using the same four characters every time. The weapon varieties are fun and easy to understand, so you’re never left wondering what is the difference between two types of bow or two types of polearms. Probably the best part is that, even with the class variation and unlockable abilities, the individual skill of the player counts for a lot. Sure, being higher leveled is a huge advantage in terms of damage output and survivability, but no amount of gear of levels is going to save you on even the beginner missions if you’re terrible at the game.

The plot is rather forgettable (you gotta destroy some kind of hoard of vermin?) and the world is basically a giant crater you spend your time wandering through, but the strength of the game lies in your group’s ability to just murder hundreds of rat creatures as you make your way from point A to point B. All of the fun is in running through these relatively quick missions, killing tons of enemies, and seeing if you can get cool loot for picking up handicaps throughout the level (things that fill your health restoration slot or that lower your total HP significantly).

While that is tons of fun to do, I find myself struggling to enjoy spending time playing the game since I have to restart it every mission and wait for the horrible, screechy synth music to stop (I’m not joking when I call it music. It has a rhythm and a beat to it that I could really get into if it wasn’t make entirely of metallic screeches and feedback noise). If I can figure out what is wrong or the developers patch the game so it no longer crashes all the time, I could really get into it. Until then, I’m mostly going to save it for when I get frustrated with Overwatch or we want to play with my roommate who doesn’t really play Overwatch anymore.

Ultimately, I can’t really recommend buying it right now because of how often it crashes, but I’d put it on your wishlist and wait for the recent reviews to pick up before actually buying it.

The Dumbest Part of Breath of the Wild

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I’ve been putting off doing the last piece of DLC for Breath of the Wild for a few months now. I wanted to do it in my Hard Mode play-through, since that’s the one I plan to eventually 100% complete and I wanted to have all of the shrines and inventory expansions done before then so I could just saunter my way through the DLC. Having finally done all of that, and having finally sauntered through the DLC aside from a rather long hiccup on a spike-focused shrine on the plateau, I kinda wish I hadn’t.

The extra memories the second major DLC added were wonderful. I loved learning more about each of the champions and seeing different sides of them. I enjoyed reading their journals and talking to people who revered them. Even the most annoying, asshole of a champion, Revali (an egotistical, grandiose Rito who wanted nothing to do with Link and who was convinced he could save the world on his own) was redeemed once I got to know him a little more. His behavior and bravado made sense and his frustration with Link became clear.

The shrines were a ton of fun, aside from the aforementioned spike shrine. I died more times in that shrine than I did during the rest of the game put together. Being reduced to a quarter of a heart and then forced to run through a maze full of spikes that kill you if you so much as miss-step even once. There were a few weird moments where Link did the Assassin’s Creed style of pathing: he refused to just go straight and instead followed a different game mechanic to do some weird jump off to the side and away from where you’re going in such a way that you cannot recover without basically starting over again. There was a thing I should have been able to just climb up that Link not only failed to climb up five times in a row, but ran along it in such a way that he immediately fell to his death. It was frustrating.

The final boss and the new dungeon were a ton of fun, even if the final boss was annoying on account of its weird mechanics. I managed anyway, because I had an inventory full of weapons and I just kept throwing them at it. My roommate, who had already completed the DLC on his file, gave me a bunch of shit for opting to take the simple, inelegant solution for beating the boss but I was ready to just be done and discover what my reward way.

It was a fucking motorcycle. And not even an amazing motorcycle. Sure, it’s pretty fast, but it turns super slowly, bounces all over the place, loses momentum randomly, and generally sucks as a way to get around a large area. If horses aren’t available, it is definitely faster than walking, but neither horses nor Link’s legs randomly glitch when encountering certain terrain features like mild bumps or stairs. Furthermore, you have to fuel the motorcycle by getting off of it, grabbing a bunch of junk from your inventory, and then placing it into the motorcycle’s tank. Sure, I’ve got enough junk to keep it full no matter how much I use it, but it is rather annoying to need to stop the motorcycle and refuel it seeing as I might be using it to run from a monster or chase down a star fragment.

Honestly, I’m rather frustrated that the reward for all of the shrines and extra content from the DLC was this motorcycle. I doubt I’ll ever use it and now the joy of further information about the champions has been permanently tainted. I would still recommend playing through the DLC to learn about the champions, but make sure to rein in your expectations and don’t expect much for finishing the DLC.

Time’s Wasting, Let’s Get Pokemon Going

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I have a complicated relationship withe Pokemon Go. If you look back in the recesses of my original posts (I’ll link it here so you don’t have to), you can find me writing about how cool the game was and how excited I was to play it. Since then, my excitement has cooled. Initially it was because it was nearly impossible to find Pokemon in the wild (which was the reason most of my friends stopped playing), but there was no way to directly interact with your friends until they added raid battles. Gyms were a nightmare because connectivity problems kept coming up and it was a pain in the ass to train up a gym so it would be strong enough to survive everyone trying to take it down. Even the eventual fix to gyms, which makes turning them around and maintaining them a lot easier, was less than ideal because it puts a big limit on the number of in-game currency you can get without buying it.

My current apartment not having close proximity to anything (there’s one stop within half a mile’s walking and everything else requires crossing the highway) and I don’t earn much money with the gym access I’ve got, so I’m constantly running out of items. I don’t really have the space in my weekly schedule to spend three hours to drive somewhere with a bunch of stops, walk around for an hour, drive home, and then have to charge my phone. There are so many things I’d rather be doing with that time than spending it trying to maintain the high level of participation the game requires when you don’t have easy access to the in-game resources.

Playing it now doesn’t take much time. I hit the local pokestop on my way to work or I hit the one at work while I’m getting lunch. I can sometimes get a gym each day (for my fifty coin daily maximum) if I spend fifteen minutes after work stopping at one of the ones near my workplace. I open the app a couple of times a day and whenever I take walks, spending the mental energy on Pokemon Go when I would otherwise be letting my mind idly wander. It doesn’t cost me any time aside from gyms, but it does cost me energy. There’s a certain amount of mental effort that goes into remember to do my daily tasks, remember which Pokemon I don’t need for evolving something (to avoid wasting my precious Pokeballs), and planning out the extra commute time I’d need to stop for a gym or pokestop.

For almost two years, I’ve unfailingly spent that energy every day. Even during the last few months when I’ve exhausted myself to the point of pretty much crashing as soon as I’m done with my responsibilities each day, I still spend energy on Pokemon Go. Now, as I’m taking a look at my life and trying to decide what is really worth energy as I try to find a healthier balance, I’m really questioning if it is worth it. And Pokemon Go isn’t the only thing on the chopping block. One of my favorite no-energy time-wasters is Imgur and that generally doesn’t do anything for me but help time pass quickly. There are games I play online with my friends that I don’t really enjoy but I play anyway because I’ve got people to play alongside. My life is full of things like this, things I once enjoyed but only continue to do because of habits and because they help me pass through the hours of my worst days.

The thing is, I have a lot of other stuff to help me do that. Ever since I ran out of that stuff in college and had to deal with a horrible night where I had nothing to do but think and stare out the window, I’ve made sure that I’ve got at least forty hours of mindless entertainment. I’ve got whole TV shows I bought on DVD that I’ve only watched long enough to know I’d enjoy. I’ve got a pile of emergency books and every Pokemon game ever created (I enjoy the “standard” version Pokemon games way more than the mobile game). Yet I still play Pokemon Go every day. I still have half a dozen boring games installed on my computer. I still have all the social media and time-wasting apps on my phone so I can disappear from the world for hours at a time.

As I spring-clean my life, I think it’s time I got rid of that stuff. I took this week off of work, and even off of blog writing (this was written ahead of time), so I could rest and try to see my life through clear eyes. Part of that is going to be ridding myself of all the things I’ve collected to insulate myself from having to pay attention to my life when my life wasn’t something I wanted to pay attention to. Things are better now, even if I still struggle, and I don’t want to feel like I’m wasting my time anymore. I don’t know if I’ll uninstall Pokemon Go because my girlfriend still plays it frequently and it is good to have things you can do together, but I think I’m going to take it off my home screen.

Talking to Strangers on the Internet

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When I was growing up and first got to use the internet, one of the biggest rules I was given was that I could not talk to strangers on the internet. Around that time, tales of child abductions, predators, and catfishing had started to gain prominence, so my parents’ concern makes sense. It made sense back then, too, because I wasn’t supposed to talk to real-life strangers, so why should I be able to talk to internet strangers?

The funny thing is, now there are entire platforms for talking to strangers. Randomly-paired video and/or text chat, Twitter, Imgur, Reddit, Facebook… Pretty much everywhere you can go to on the internet, it will have an endless stream of strangers you can talk to. Sometimes, you even wind up making friends. One of my closest friends in my freshman year of college was someone who was a friend of a friend of a friend, that I’d maybe seen in person once. In the entire time we talked and were close friends, we met in person once, when I was back from college for winter break and we wanted to be able to stop making jokes about either one of us being a fat old man in a fake mustache.

Hell, even most video games pair you with strangers these days and all the team-based ones require some degree of communication, even if you only ever use emotes/macros to ask for healing or to show off your character’s mighty muscles. Up until a couple of weeks ago, when I started getting more involved on Twitter, most of my interaction with strangers came from playing Overwatch. I’d queue up for a match by myself or with a friend and we’d get stuck on a team with random strangers. For the most part, communication with them stay in the realm of healing requests and indications that we need to group up.

Sometimes, though, people start using text chat. Sometimes, people even use the team-wide voice chat. While myself and the friend I usually queue up with don’t generally join the team voice chat unless the team asks us to, there have been a few times when we have and it went well. One time, we did so well with two other groups of two that we all teamed up to make a group of six and went on to win another four matches. Another time, one guy spent the whole match whining into the team chat about how no one was playing well or helping him and it created such a thoroughly toxic atmosphere that no one would work together.

Most of the time, it’s just normal chatter. People talk about what they’re going to do, call out enemy positions and maneuvers, we coordinate our movements, and trying to work together for a common goal before moving on and never talking to each other again. I’ve had mostly neutral experiences with team voice chat, but the negative ones stand out so much that I generally try to avoid it if I can.

Text chat has been the opposite. There have been a few negative experiences, including one lately that made the match so negative that people on my team started throwing the match, resulting in an embarrassing overtime loss to a team we should have beaten easily. For the most part, though, people are friendly and at least neutral if not positive. If you play as a part of a group, there’s a high chance of playing with other groups and sticking with them for a while, across several matches. As that happens, people start friendly conversations, congratulate each other on good places, and all report/shout-down the one asshole trying to ruin everyone’s good time. Then you inevitably wind up fighting against a long-time ally and tears are shed on both sides as you ruthlessly exploit your experiences with each other to try to beat each other.

Good times.

I always kind of marvel at the casual nature of human connection via video games. You can meet someone new, bond over your shared enjoyment of a game, and then part ways without ever expecting to meet or talk again. If you do, that’s great! If not, then you’ve lost nothing. Or have you? It is so easy to connect over the internet, but we’re still so guarded with most of our personal information. Games all use usernames, most social media allows the restriction of personal information so only friends can see it, and most people who know anything about internet/identity safety recommend keeping most personal information completely private.

This attitude (which is still entirely sensible because the people who want to exploit personal information are ruthless and entirely too common) keeps us from connecting with friendly strangers. We don’t even share our names. We keep ourselves hidden behind the masks of our characters and our usernames. We connect with people, make friends, and them go our separate ways. It always makes me kind of sad when it happens, even if I’m not really willing to be the one to try to break the pattern. For the most part, anyway. I use my real name here, and on my Twitter. Those aren’t terribly brave, though, since most people also do that.

 

Platformers Never Fall Flat

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As you might have guessed from yesterday’s review, I’m a fan of platformers. When they’re well-made, they can be some of the most rewarding single-player games out there, in my opinion. They provide the opportunity to tell wonderful stories through the visuals and the interactions between characters in the game without getting bogged down by complex levels or difficult controls. For some platformers, the whole point of the game is the controls, telling a passive story as you move through levels expanding your ability to explore as you go. There’s so much variety out there that I can’t cover them all.

While most of my favorite games are not platformers, it is easy to say that it is my favorite genre of game. Ever since I played Math Blaster as a kid, I have enjoyed working my way through levels by solving simple puzzles and jumping from one bit of safe ground to another. The various Super Mario Bros games, most of the Game Boy games I enjoyed that aren’t Pokemon, tons of great indie games now, and so many easter eggs in bigger-budget games.

Platformers have been in the news a bit more than usual lately. With the advent of Super Mario Maker and games like Cuphead, platformers are getting a lot of attention as a result of their often higher-than-average difficulty. In a lot of games the difficulty is adjustable, making the enemies tougher or weaker, or by giving you more or less information for solving the puzzles. Platformers, though, don’t always have adjustable difficulty. Celeste, for example, did not. There are levels you can unlock, though, that are basically more difficult versions of each level.

For a lot of platformers, the difficulty is set by the precision with which you must control your character. There are Mario Maker levels that require you to pretty much get your timing and movement down to the pixel in order to succeed.  Cuphead is notorious for difficult fights due to the shifting nature of the boss battles, which require you to constantly stay on your toes. Celeste requires you to repeat the puzzles until you succeed, trying to navigate around barriers and use the various game rules and moves to figure out how to move through the stage. This includes adding in a few false-leads that require you to fully consider your actions before you take them. Even replaying levels doesn’t necessarily make them easier because knowing what you need to do doesn’t mean you’ll actually be able to do it. I ran into that a lot. I’d get 90% of the way through a screen, die, and then struggle to get past the 50% mark all over again.

I really enjoy platformers because of this. I get frustrated, sure, but it feels super rewarding to be able to zip through a screen by nailing every move perfectly. I’m not terribly discouraged by failure, so it is easy for me to sit there and attempt to pull of the same sequence of moves for five or more minutes if I encounter a particularly difficult puzzle. My main problem with most platformers is that they’re often on the computer and I don’t really enjoy playing them on the computer. Getting Celeste for the Switch instead of my PC was the best decision I made in the last month. Being able to pick it up for only five minutes and then being able to put it down without worrying about accidentally closing the game is invaluable. I own a bunch of PC platformers that I’d probably re-buy in an instant if they made a version for the Switch.

I’m no platformer god. I’m persistent and I learn by doing, which means I tend to think better by making split-second decisions without too much time to analyze. This gives me an advantage because that’s what platformers, especially ones based on momentum, need most of the time. Only a few times has Celeste given me the opportunity to look ahead so I can determine what I need to do and it is the only platformer I’ve ever played that lets me do that. I enjoy the challenge of momentum-based games, even if I often flub the ending of individual challenges because I continuously forget to watch where I land instead of the difficult bit I’ve just navigated. I’m pretty sure this habit of mine accounts for at least half of my deaths in Celeste.