September Thoughts

West of Dead

I’m stretching it a bit to say I finished West of Dead. I did beat the final boss, but then he told me that he was bound by three souls and I hadn’t really beaten him blah blah blah. I’ll dabble here and there, but I’m not committing too much more time to it. Personally, I think it would have been a better move to polish out the mechanics and craft both a more engaging gameplay loop as well as more handcrafted combat encounters rather than rely on the willingness of players to commit to runs of procedurally generated content… but of course I’d say that. As it is, I’m really not sure why this was a roguelike. There’s pretty much no interesting power gains (ooh, big decisions like health or damage or alternate damage oh my), the guns are fairly samey, the abilities and charms do little to break it up. The slow pace of unlocks only adds to this sense of inertia, of being stuck. At least there’s ludonarrative harmony there, I suppose, but creating an array of unsatisfying tools and progression metrics to reflect a story about purgatory isn’t quite what we’d call a success. I can think of so many items in Risk of Rain, cards in Ziggurat, guns in Enter the Gungeon, and I’m not even really a roguelike player. But at least powerups in those game mean something, changing either the way you thought or behaved. This game is competent aesthetically. It’s fun enough to run through once or twice. But it’s a bland roguelike and I don’t really care to see much more of it.

 

Sidenote: who the hell are Upstream Arcade? They’re based in the UK and they’re ex-Lionhead, sure, decent credentials and nice to know. But this is only their second game, and it features Ron Perlman. Their upcoming Web of Wyrd will star Lance Reddick as Hellboy. It’s not the most prestigious license and he wasn’t a stranger to voicework, but the talent and license are still gets. Seems a little odd to me, almost that the studio could be investing resources in bringing eyeballs to their work at the expense of the work itself. Ah well.

 

The Unhewn Throne

I’m almost done with this trilogy, just half of The Last Mortal Bond to go. It’s the strongest of the three fantasy trilogies I’ve read of late, more compelling than Nicholls’ Orcs by far, and despite the rapid escalation from book to book, it’s ultimately a more satisfyingly complex read than The Books of the North. I still love Croaker and the Black Company, though. The whole trilogy, from its primary protagonists to the means of power to the design of the world, runs on emotion. The supercompetence of the Csestriim, the emptiness of the vaniate, the releases of gods, the power of Balendin, the hot-headedness and failures of self-restraint on the part of Valyn and Adare… There’s more to the world too, more to the fantastical elements than rage and love and hate. Giant birds, blind monsters, ancient rulers. Occasionally the world feels a little small, a little too well-linked, that a story you thought was fleshing out the world was merely there to introduce a concept or character before they appear. But these are cleverly done, and the threading of multiple character journeys together allows these concepts to be foreshadowed via one character, only to prove most relevant to another. It’s great.

 

Sniper Elite 5

I liked it. Not much to say on it really. The whole series is a combination of things I like and I don’t, some mechanics and aesthetics that I want more of and some I want less. I don’t have any fondness for the World War 2 setting (and I’ve never held as much interest in that conflict as contemporary society seems to), but this is my favourite version of it. It’s solid. It’s workmanlike. But it’s a real, honest to goodness attempt at a flexible stealth game with a straightforward campaign featuring a range of interesting, well-differentiated levels – released in 2022! You can critique this. You can diminish it. But it gave me something I hadn’t had since Sniper Elite 4, and I can’t think of a real tactical espionage action military stealth shooter I’ve played since Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. The Metro series doesn’t count. I’ve probably missed something, and I don’t expect the Sniper Elite series to ever really compete with the fathers of the genre. Part of that is aesthetic, superficial to the gameplay loop. Fairburne does his best, but he’s no Solid Snake or even a Sam Fisher. The progression mechanics are so minimal one can almost forgive them. A resounding success within a local maximum. All hail a newfound titan of the AA space.

 

I also think the gruesome slo-mo is a little excessive too, and its funny that it’s now contrasted with the non-lethal options (and corresponding XP bonuses for the unbloodied path).

 

Pillars of Eternity

Feels like I’ve stalled out on this one. Still not much going on in the plot, I’ve taken a stupid approach gameplay wise, and the loadtimes are starting to drag. I’d still like to soldier through the violent path I’ve chosen with my current build, but I think it would be better to return one day without going for the “Super Murderer” trophy. I won’t be a barbarian either. Ciphers and druids seem interesting, maybe I’ll try to avoid combat and then explore the battle system when fights do arise. Sorry, Mr Sawyer. I wish I was having more fun in your world than I have been lately.

 

Killadelphia

Finally got through the last few chapters of the deluxe edition, which would have been something like issues seven through twelve (and of course “the pulse-pounding werewolf tie-in story ELYSIUM GARDENS”. It was fine. I don’t like the premise, not really. It feels irreverent to the dead, not in a disrespectful way, but its use of historical figures comes across tacky nonetheless. The combination of nudity and monstrosity ended up in the same zone. Nothing bad about it, not really, just not one for me. Ah well.