Author Archives: Azuriel
In/Out of Commission
Kiddo got sick at daycare. Which got us sick. And then kiddo stayed sick enough that we’ve had to keep him from daycare six days and counting. So, that’s been my week.
P.S. Norovirus is no joke.
P.P.S. Seriously, hand sanitizer doesn’t kill it.
Children of Morta, Finished
As I wrap up Children of Morta, I can reflect that it has consistently demonstrated excellent game design. That is the case even when I don’t necessary enjoy the gameplay of some of the characters. For example, Kevin is a rogue-ish character that uses daggers with ever-increasing attack speed and has a lot of dodging ability. Those two elements are at odds with each other, especially when you encounter enemies who don’t get “stunlocked” by his attacks. That said, some people might like the challenge of that back-and-forth playstyle, and there are some levels in which that fast attack will stunlock every relevant enemy.
The one area in which the game stumbles a bit though? The final boss fight.
I’m not going to go into the details of the fight, just the setup. Which is… spawn in, get three random items, fight boss. None of the boss fights leading up to this point have been so straight-forward. Which is nice on the one hand, because it avoids the frustration of going through three floors of monsters only to die and have to re-clear. On the other hand, it obsoletes nearly a half-dozen or so upgrade paths that you may have spent money on AND prevents you from potentially getting some nice single-run buffs.
This could technically be good roundabout design, insofar as it encourages you to farm gold and XP in other dungeons so you can purchase those last few upgrades to damage (etc) you might have skimped out on. If you are great with reflexes and pattern recognition, go beat the final boss; everyone else can make the fight progressively easier by farming.
Given how many other games completely change all the rules for the final boss fight, I’m inclined to give Children of Morta a pass on this one. I have died a few times already without making much progress through the phases, so I am a tad salty about the change-up. And given how close to the end I am, the thought of farming isn’t exactly appealing. But this final bit is the capstone of a very enjoyable game otherwise, so yeah, I will play along.
[Fake Edit]: I ended up beating the game last night.
Impressions: Children of Morta
After completing the “meaty” Outer Worlds, I decided I wanted to play something lighter via the Xbox Game Pass. The first thing that caught my eye was Children of Morta. And somehow, I have been playing it in longer sessions than I ever did with Outer Worlds.
Fundamentally, Children of Morta (CoM) is an indie Diablo-esque roguelite. Well, that might be over-selling it a bit much. Perhaps an isometric Rogue Legacy? You basically run around procedurally-generated levels and kill monsters, leveling up and collecting gold you use to purchase upgrades for the entire Bergson family. There are no permanent equipment drops or anything, just random relics and runes and other temporary, just-this-run type of augmentations.
Having said that, there are a lot of design decisions that enhance and smooth the gameplay loops.
For one thing, death is not permanent. This is not Rogue Legacy where you end up having totally new family members taking over. While you do lose the progress you made in the dungeon itself, the dungeon is only 3 stages long (with a boss fight). The gold you collect is permanent and accumulates, which means that even several brief failures might allow you to purchase an upgrade or two to HP, Damage, or any of the other characteristics.
That less-harsh roguelite theme continues in other areas as well. For example, you can collect a separate, temporary currency during runs that allow you to purchase various (single-run) Relics and such from a merchant, if he happens to spawn. Or you can use this same currency to open chests that contain mostly gold. I can easily imagine “clever” designers making the player choose between using gold for permanent, generic upgrades versus spending gold in-dungeon for temporary buffs to potentially get an edge against an upcoming boss. Luckily, that is not case here.
Another welcome design is how the story sort of moves forward regardless of success or failure. During any particular run, there can be a bonus room with a snippet of lore or a short quest that otherwise results in a cutscene back outside the dungeon. While there are limits to how far the story will go before a particular boss dies, it was incredibly welcome to know that a particularly embarrassing run would not result in a total walk of shame.
I have not completed the game yet, but I have unlocked all the playable characters and am working on the second area of three known ones. Each of the characters plays very different than the others, but a few are more unbalanced than others. Oh, but did I mention that as you level up specific characters they automatically unlock bonuses that apply to the whole family? This design element ensures that you spend time changing up your play style instead of sticking with just one person all the way to the end. Well, that and the fact that Fatigue can build up the longer you play just one character. But the former design element softens the blow of the latter.
Overall, I am very much enjoying the experience.
The Outer Hype, part 2
When I started playing The Outer Worlds back in December, I was not impressed. Having just completed the game yesterday, I can report that the game did not particularly redeem itself.
To be clear, the game may have been rigged from the start, so to speak. This was Obsidian, makers of Fallout: New Vegas! With a brand new IP! Like some kind of Mass Effect x Fallout space western! Except it wasn’t. At all. Like not even remotely close.
Was that Obsidian’s fault? Probably not, but they suffer the consequences of the hype just the same.
Regardless, the game did not improve. I was playing on Hard difficulty and the combat was just a mess from start to finish. Companion AI is tough to get right in any game, but here they are glorified abilities that you press once per combat, as they typically die immediately after they use them. Exploration was pointless, rewarding trash consumables or weapon mods you never have need of using. The whole Tinker/Upgrade system for level-based gear starts out as a promising way of keeping unique weapons (etc) relevant, but the escalating cost of doing so spirals out of control. When it’s easier and cheaper to just buy guns from a vending machine rather than try to upgrade the super-special gear you spent time exploring/questing for, you know things have fallen off the rails.
Quest-wise, things did not improve either. If you treat the game overall as a comedy, things might play out better from a tone perspective. And indeed there is some witty dialog to be had. Aside from that though, there was precisely one moment towards the end of the game in which I was surprised at the visual impact of a particular decision. Arguably though, it was surprising precisely because nothing else was ever taken seriously.
Overall… well, I was going to suggest to give this game a pass, but I myself played it for a whole dollar via the Game Pass, so… do what you want. If you get past the first planet and aren’t feeling it though, don’t feel bad about moving on. It’s not going to scratch a Fallout itch, a Mass Effect itch, a BioShock itch, or any itch beyond a bizarre one for BBB Unreal engine comedy games.
And if you have one of those, you might want to see a dermatologist instead.
Made for PC
Word on the streets is that PS4-exclusive Horizon: Zero Dawn is coming to PC this year.
Will it release for $9.99 or less, as it was priced this recent holiday season? Probably not. Will it be just a slap-dash port locked at 30 fps or some nonsense? Possibly. But the big deal here is that Sony is taking its first steps towards releasing first-party games on another system. As someone who was prepared to buy a PS4 just to play 3-4 games, this is good news to me.
It does make you think about the future though. Nintendo is pretty much the last reasonable hold-out when it comes to the console wars, always coming up with some proprietary zaniness for their hardware and making everyone pay full MSRP because they can. The Apple of the console world, if you will.
Indeed, everyone originally thought that this console-to-PC shift was a natural result of consoles basically more and more becoming little PCs with custom cases. But in the final analysis, it is probably more due to the mobile market drinking everyone’s milkshake than anything else. Mobile gaming was 45% of the entire gaming market in 2019. While that doesn’t necessarily mean that less money was spent in the console world, it does mean that the opportunity cost for keeping your bestselling titles silo’d away is higher. I mean, it was always there, with the hope being that it pushed some hardware sales along the way.
Honestly though? These days I am thinking mighty long and hard on whether a $300+ console is going to be a better purchase than a $300 phone. The latter is something I use for hours every single day, even when I don’t find the time to boot up the PC, much less a third gaming device.
Plate Spinning
You’d be forgiven for wondering whether my resolution to “continue to be a passably responsible gaming dad” meant not posting anything in 2020. Luckily, that is only partially the case.
I don’t actually know how other people do it. My wife and I both work, which means that gaming time is typically limited to when she and the baby go to sleep. But said gaming time is really “do everything else time,” so in practice, it’s like 30 minutes. What can you meaningfully play in that amount of time?
The kicker is work changes. I used to have some downtime in which I could write posts. Now that I’m in an interim position, that’s out the window. It’s been out the window for a while, but not all the plates had stopped spinning. Now that they are slowing down, well… I should probably learn how to spin them, yeah?
I’m kidding – I’m amazing at everything I do. It’s the choosing to do things that needs some work. So I’m going to do that.
And maybe shorter posts? We’ll see.
End of Year: 2019 Edition
Another end of year, another end of year post.
This has been a rather busy year on the personal front, what with the birth of my son and all. Our little family unit has settled into a reasonable routine that affords me exactly two hours to play videogames each day. And do chores. And any other house projects. So, basically, about 40 minutes of gaming at most. Have I mentioned that I can’t wait for this little guy to grow up into a proper Player 2?
We did this on purpose, for the record. Anyway.
The gaming goals from last year:
- Seriously, dude, play some of those PS3 games [Nope]
- Clear at least one story path from SWTOR [Never got off the first planet]
- Finish up the PoF story content in GW2 [Got distracted doing Season 3 stuff]
- Clean up Steam library by removing titles not likely to play [Yes!]
- Be a (passably) responsible gaming dad [Absolutely]
I talked about Guild Wars 2 last year for a while, and I find it interesting that it remains a topic at the end of this year. Here lately, I have even taken to logging in for two minutes just to click on the calendar rewards and then log off to play something else. Story progress has stopped for me, but I did spend a few weeks (loosely) transitioning my Necromancer into a Reaper, e.g. greatsword elite spec. We’ll see if it remains a topic into 2020 though, or if I abandon it like ArenaNet.
Zero progress on ye olde PS3. It has successfully prevented me from purchasing a PS4 though, so that’s nice. What’s also interesting is that some of best games I played on it back in the day are coming to PC again. For example, Journey. It’s an Epic Store exclusive, but it’s there. I’m sorely tempted to buy it again, actually.
The SWTOR thing was a rather passing fancy. I think I logged in twice. It’s still installed.
Cleaning up my Steam library is actually something I have committed to and have continued to this day. Things are a bit weird with subscription services like the Game Pass, but in 2019 I have played:
- TERA
- Quantum Break
- Terraria
- Empyrion
- 7 Days to Die
- RUINER
- Path of Exile
- Surviving Mars
- Tooth and Tail
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance
- Hyper Light Drifter
- Heat Signature
- Slay the Spire
- Final Fantasy XV
- Oxygen Not Included
- Streets of Rogue
- Graveyard Keeper
- Moonlighter
- Fallout 76
- Outer Worlds
- Divinity: Original Sin 2
- No Man’s Sky
- ARK
- Warhammer: Vermintide 2
- Cultist Simulator
- Tangledeep
- Prey
- Sundered: Eldritch Edition
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
- Ryse: Son of Rome
- Skulls of the Shogun
- Mini Metro
- Starbound
- Dishonored
- Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor
- Staxel
- Far Cry Primal
- Hearthstone
- Hotline Miami 2
- Guild Wars 2
That’s about 40 games I spent at least an hour or two playing through the year. Of those, it’s been 7 Days to Die, Oxygen Not Included, and Slay the Spire that I have played the longest. Which is amusing to me because I typically balk at playing games like Civilization wherein there’s no “point.” Perhaps I just don’t like the Civ series as much as I did way back in the day.
Looking towards 2020… wow… 2020, eh? Who’d have thought we’d make it?
Anyway, I definitely see 2020 as the year of the subscription gaming service. We have gone from having an embarrassing Steam backlog to an embarrassment of riches between the Game Pass, Origin Premier, and Uplay+. Nevermind Humble Choice, which similarly delivers just short of a dozen games each month.
Beyond that, there are a number of high-profile releases I’m looking forward to playing. Final Fantasy 7 Remake (March). Cyberpunk 2077 (April). Last of Us 2 (May). Then you have the PC release of Death Stranding and Borderlands 3 (cough), general release of Dying Light 2, and the mythical Wastelanders expansion to Fallout 76. I used to worry about getting caught paying full MSRP for games I really want on Day 1, but how many will be covered under some subscription or another? Well, other than the PS4 exclusives. Which probably means I need a PS4…
On the MMO front, the Shadowlands expansion will be coming out for WoW in 2020 sometime. As before, I do have a passing interest in playing WoW with each new expansion, if only to see how many different variants of the wheel they can re-invent. I just wish they would not start with the square one every time.
Speaking of terrible MMO design, there is supposedly a major patch for Final Fantasy XIV coming out that will finally address the chore that constitutes the first 50 hours of “story” in that game. I am not sure whether they will pull a Cataclysm or just give the story-skip potion to everyone for free, but I’m looking forward to it. If for no other reason than to quell all the people exclaiming that it has “the best MMO story” as if the steaming pile of shit you had to slog through to get there doesn’t bring down the average. Could you tell me why I had to sit in a DPS dungeon queue for 50 minutes to get some cheese for a Main Story Quest again? … that’s what I thought.
I suppose I should make some goals here, huh? Let’s go with…
- Play PS3 games so I feel less guilty about buying a PS4 for two games
- Otherwise play the games you want to play when you want to play them
- Stop playing the games you don’t want to play anymore
- Continue being a (passably) responsible gaming dad
Alright, 2020. Let’s roll.
1st World Problems
We desperately need a consolidated list of the games available via subscription services.
As mentioned on Monday, the Epic Store has a $10 coupon available on games that cost more than $14.99. Having already bought Outward, I browsed the entire Epic catalog (219 games) for games that would qualify that I was also interested in. Next game up was Vampyr. I had been enjoying Rohan’s posts on the game and thought I should get in on the action. But I had a vague sense of unease. Where had I seen that before…?
Well then
Yep, Vampyr is included in the Xbox PC Game Pass. Which means I was about to purchase the game for $7 when I could technically play it for “free.” Oh, and it’s also on Origin Premier… which would give you access to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, that new game that just game out. It was thus with a bit of trepidation that I ended up confirming that Outward was not in any game subscription list. But how could I be so sure for other games?
I thought I already purged my Steam wishlist, for example, but Astroneer is still on there (Game Pass). So was Pyre (Origin Premier). They Are Billions (Origin Premier). I even paused my Humble Monthly Choice bundle for December, because one of the headlining games – Shadow of the Tomb Raider – was technically a part of Game Pass already. Granted, it is console-only and not PC, but it’s really all about the principle at this point.
This is my future now. Checking IsThereAnyDeal used to put me at ease, but these days if I don’t already own the game from an Epic Store/Twitch Prime/Humble Bundle, then I could still play for next to nothing via subscription. It used to be that vague senses of “ownership” would drive me to care about purchasing over “renting,” but those sentiments have long since withered away.
What Competition Looks Like
After nearly a year, we’re starting* to see what actual competition looks like.
A bargain at… the same price?
Outward has been on my (Steam) wishlist for a while, despite the lukewarm reviews. During this Winter sale period, it is the same price both in Steam and the Epic Store. In a tie, victory goes to Steam. However, the Epic Store is currently running a promotion where you get a $10 coupon applied to the first game you buy that costs $14.99 or more.
Ergo, Outward on the Epic Store costs $5.99 and thus was bought there.
First blood. I hope it’s worth it.
This is indeed the first time I have spent money in the Epic Store, despite technically owning 28 games there. I suppose this means I will have to turn in my Steam fanboy card, eh?
…if only I had one. The only brand I’m loyal to is Consumer Surplus. After a year of dicking around with pernicious exclusivity deals, Epic finally came around. As I said in that post:
As a reminder, none of this exclusivity bullshit is necessary. Epic could simply undercut the Steam price by 5% forever AND grant developers a larger percentage of the cut, and I would buy all my games in the Epic store. I do some ridiculous shit to save $1-$2 after all.
In this case I saved $10, which is absurd, comparatively. And it appears that each time you redeem this coupon, you get another one. There does not appear to be a limit either.
The real difficulty at this point is determining what other games are out there that I would possibly want to buy. It’s a bit hard remembering because the Epic Store still doesn’t have a wishlist feature in a gaming storefront in 2019. No, seriously:
Wishlist
We’re working to bring Wishlist to the store. You’ll be able to wishlist any offer on the store and you’ll be notified of sales or promotions for that offer. This has been previously listed as work-in-progress development, but is requiring more work than originally planned. We’ll keep you up to date as we move the Wishlist feature along.
That “minor” detail aside, most everything else comes down to bigger titles that don’t have deep (enough) discounts in my mind. For example, Borderlands 3. After the coupon, I could pick that up for $28.99. But… is that really a deal at this point? Having already waited this long, I may as well wait some more. Same issue with Control, which has gotten some good word-of-mouth. By the time I get time to play these games, the Spring Sale will have sprung and the price will likely be less. Plus, you know, this Epic coupon is valid until May for some reason. Time to hurry up and wait.
* I’m vaguely aware that the Epic store might have already had a similar $10 coupon deal back in the Summer.
Rent to Never Own
Feb 13
Posted by Azuriel
It has been a long time coming, but I have fully surrendered into post-ownership mindset.
The transition is largely semantic. Nobody “owns” a Steam game in their library and never have – just a non-transferable, revocable license… unless you lucked out and live in a sane country that allows resellable digital goods. Nevertheless, a game library was a thing that had value and meaning, you know? It was exciting seeing Steam sales and bargain hunting so you could accumulate stuff.
At least that is what it felt like.
The final, frictionless step was seeing Final Fantasy XV appearing on the Xbox Game Pass. I was already a bit crestfallen seeing how Kingdom Come: Deliverance was on the Epic Store free-game docket, but FF15 just flipped the metaphysical lights off. It’s not that I felt like a chump for spending $12 on the Humble Bundle that included Kingdom Come or, well, however the hell I acquired FF15. It just became increasingly obvious that I don’t need to do anything anymore. Games just happen.
I beat The Outer Worlds on the Game Pass, and I will never play that game again. I also beat Children of Morta, and I will never play that game again either. I just started on Metro: Exodus, and it’s possible I don’t even bother getting through the tutorial. Why force myself to? The game cost nothing other than download time. Compare that to Outward, the first game I purchased in the Epic Store, and how getting my $5.99 refund request denied made me very salty (bought during the Winter sale and first played much later than 14 day limit).
It’s rote to say Netflix obliterated any desire of mine to own physical movie DVDs. And not even really all that accurate – it was Netflix and Hulu and HBO Go and Disney+ that obliterated all desire. Your favorite movie might have fallen off one service, but likely landed on another. Or perhaps the sheer number of choices, which would keep you busier than any free time you had available, simply made the concept of “favorite” meaningless. Who is rewatching movies anyway?
I will, of course, still be purchasing games on occasion. Probably. Final Fantasy 7 Remake isn’t going to just show up Day 1 on PS+ or wherever. Probably. But what I’m getting at is that if my Steam library just up and vanished – which is entirely possible, and unable to be appealed – I don’t know if I would be mad. Or even really notice. The last time I played something on Steam was December 8th. And damn near everything I would play is already on the Game Pass.
Posted in Commentary, Philosophy
5 Comments
Tags: Final Fantasy, Library, Ownership, Steam, Xbox Game Pass