I’m not sure I’ve thought or said the same pronuncian more than a couple times in a row since I started playing this game. I didn’t even think much about it until I actually booted the game up on my Switch 2, an act that already had me thinking deeply about the game and it’s place in my life since I decided to buy a digital copy of the game. Typically, I eschew digital-only ownership because that’s a thorny proposition in this day and age of increasingly leasing products rather than actually owning them in order for companies to extorot more money from customers who just want to enjoy the things they’ve bought. I almost didn’t get the game at all for this reason, but there’s an inevitability to all of this stuff that I can’t really ignore, so I went ahead and bought it. In my mind, it’s better to buy the digital copy of the game than a physical cartridge pretending to be a “physical” copy of the game when actually it’s just the license required to allow you to play the digital copy of the game you had to download anyway. Better to be able to just play the game rather than need to swap cartridges around, if I can’t actually hold the entire thing in my hand. That way I can swap between two games without needing to get up or pick through my collection of cartridges. And, you know, not have to deal with the license relay bullshit involved in the game key cartridge if I ever, say, download the game onto a storage device in my Switch 2 that just so happens to never be in my system when it connects to the internet.
Continue readingVideo Game Chores
Giving Arknights Endfield A Second Chance
I did actually uninstall Arknights Endfield last week after writing my post about it. I was determined not to keep playing it because I really wasn’t having fun. All of the fun bits were gated behind plot progress and it was just so dull and poorly written that I wasn’t able to enjoy any of it. One of my friends started playing it, though, and started having a fun time with it. Curious, I talked to them about my experience and asked how they coped with the problems I identified. Turns out the secret to enjoying the game was skipping most of the cutscenes and dialogue moments AND turning all of the voice acting to a language I didn’t understand (Japanese). Now, I don’t feel compelled to engage with the plot any more than I’m interested in, I don’t feel as trapped behind slow-talking characters as I once did, and I can actually focus on the parts of the game I anticipated enjoying and a few of the surprisingly fun parts of the game that I didn’t expect to enjoy. There’s been more than a few of those, to be honest, but it took more plot than I liked to get to them, and some of them are now so expansive an activity that I’m struggling to engage with them, even if they are kind of fun. This game is definitely one meant to take up most of your time, to engage all of your play hours, and I can see how the daily grind and routine of the game could make a compelling case to give it just that. Unfortunately for this game–and very fortunately for me–I just don’t get any kind of joy or pleasure from this kind of gameplay loop or loot boxes, so all I need to worry about hooking me is the constant rewards for doing daily acitivities. I’m not exactly a sucker for daily accomplishments and rewards, but they are something I enjoy enough that I am willing to consider picking them over something that feels a bit more long-term rewarding.
Continue readingThe One Resource Management Game I Can’t Seem To Enjoy
I tried another gacha game. I’ve got friends who are really into some of them (the ones that are pretty high-qaulity, generally speaking), so when one showed up that included one of my favorite things ever (factory building and resource management), I figured it was finally time. Plus, I needed something else to play on my Tuesday nights that didn’t require much of an emotional or mental committment. Arknights: Endfield seemed like the perfect thing, especially after watching Let’s Game It Out’s video about it. After all, LGIO is what got me into Satisfactory, perhaps my favorite entry in the resource management and factory building genre and second only to minecraft in terms of survival/crafting games, and he made it look so fun! So of course I tried it out. Unfortunately, it hasn’t really lived up to my expectations and has even fallen further and further from them as I’ve played. Even without getting the the gacha side of things, honestly. There’s enough free stuff there that I don’t feel tempted to pay money for anything and the whole “gambling on loot boxes or random draws for heroes” thing never really appealed to me. I get absolutely nothing out of the process other than more piles of junk I need to sort through or turn into one of a couple dozen currencies. The game’s menus feel labyranthine, I frequently can’t find what I’m looking for unless I click through every single menu option and even then I’m not guarranteed to find it. For exmaple, I kept accidentally opening a menu that showed my resources in to production numbers back before I could actually automate anything and now that I’ve got a bunch of stuff automated, I can’t find that menu for the life of me. It’s so much clutter! There’s so many menus, sub-menus, limited-use currencies, weirdly expiring items, and on and on and on. It never ends.
Continue reading