fub | Entries tagged with games

So I came back from a work trip to London with a COVID infection. Luckily, none of my colleagues got infected. So I’ve had a miserable 1.5 weeks — I’ve started work again, but I am still tired and need to carefully manage my energy budget. But as people are winding down for the Christmas holidays, there’s little urgent business anyway.

As I was spending my days vegging out on the couch, Palia wasand the released to the Switch. Playing low-stakes, self-paced ‘cozy’ cooperative MMORPG seems like a good low-energy activity, so I downloaded it and started playing.

Palia is free to play, so I was a bit apprehensive on how the gameplay loops would be monetized, but it turns out that this is not a problem. As usual, crafting or growing crops takes time, but there is no way to speed things up by spending money — so there is no constant nudging to spend money. As far as I can see, you’d only spend money for cosmetics. I like that, because it means that you can play unhindered.

It has all the hallmarks of a ‘cozy’ crafting game: growing crops, mining, hunting, gathering and fishing. All the materials can then be used to create other things. Building your house and decorating it is a big part of the game, and at a certain point you can start cooking. Cooking is essential, because eating food will give you ‘focus’ that will increase your skills faster with use. There are recipes gated behind levels of skills, which will give you access to new possibilities.

The NPCs are fun, and you interact with them regularly: they give you context on the world and the history, but also sell you tools, materials and recipes. They are not static either: rather than being at a station, waiting for a player to interact with them, they move around the maps to go about their business. That could have meant you’d have to chase them around the map if you want to talk to them, but the cool thing is that the location of the NPCs is marked on the map. You can select the NPC and they’ll show up on your radar, making it easy to locate them. I wish more games had that.

There is a plot, and there are ‘dungeons’ that unlock as you progress through the game. Some of these are fun Zelda-like dungeons with puzzles and platforming, but some of them are… not so fun. It’s a bit hit or miss there.

And while you can click on items when you’re playing with a mouse on PC, on a console with a controller, you have to angle the screen just right to interact with some things. That can be frustrating. Another thing where the game lacks polish is when you’re crafting: sometimes the recipes are not shown completely, and you have to exit the crafting menu and re-activate it to get the correct information. This seems like a very basic thing to get wrong, to me. And when you’re hunting the wildlife, they will flee when you get too close or shoot them once. And this is incredibly janky: the beasts will basically teleport around. This is another area where the game seriously lacks polish.

If you don’t take the game too seriously, it’s a fun diversion. But if you are looking for something to spend your hardcore gaming time in, it’s lacking in polish and will frustrate you.

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.

Current Mood: sick

There was a time when I had a machine for PC gaming set up — underpowered for the most demanding, graphics-intensive games, but perfect for older or less demanding games. But those machines have since fallen by the wayside (sometimes being repurposed for other things) so there had not been any PC gaming in our house for quite some time. The Switch served all of our gaming needs, but there was something nagging in the back of my head: games tend to be cheaper (at least over time) on PC, whereas Switch games keep their high price for a long time. And I already have quite a bit of a backlog in my Steam and Gog libraries… But I was not about to make the investment to get a gaming PC all set up again.

So when the Steam Deck was announced, I was a bit interested. The concept is neat: a mini computer in a “Switch-like” form factor, running Linux and using WINE to emulate a PC. I think Baldur’s Gate 3 turned out to be the system seller for me — people kept asking me if I had played it, and a friend wanted to play it multi-player with me. It turns out that BG3 is 100% compatible with the Steam Deck as well. And in September there was a deal with 10% discount on the cheapest model, so I took the plunge. For less cost than a current-gen video card, I could have a whole machine dedicated to PC gaming again.

I got the cheapest version, with a 64GB internal SSD drive, as some research provided evidence than the more expensive models did not provide anything that could not be added or upgraded to the cheaper version at less cost. And I am not disappointed at all!

As for accessories, I got a few things. The first thing was a dock — as the Steam Deck is a computer and it is charged through a USB-C port, you can use USB-C docks with it — just make sure it has a charging pass-through. I decided on the JSAUX 5-in-1 docking station since that had enough USB ports. Using the dock, I have hooked the deck to one of my monitors, and I’ve connected it to my USB hub, so I can play on a larger screen and using a keyboard & mouse.

I also got an anti-glare screen protector from JSAUX, which works really well — the screen on the cheaper models is quite reflective, and this protector takes care of that. The kit comes with two screen protectors and a ‘guide’ that snaps onto the deck to ensure a correct positioning. I got it on perfectly in one try.

As for the controller, I have used a spare Switch Pro controller that we had lying around (from that one time we took the Switch with us on vacation but forgot the controller so we bought a new one…) It works perfectly, but the two pairs of buttons (B and A, X and Y) are reversed in position. But there is even an option to switch those around, so I can retain the muscle memory I have developed after playing on the Switch for so long! The only thing that’s kinda weird is that the blue LED on the controller is kept on, but that’s something I can live with.

I got another, very cheap USB-C hub with just power pass-through and HDMI so I can hook the deck up to the TV, for when I want to do some couch gaming. And for storage I got a very fast microSD card of 512GB.

I am very pleased with the resulting system. It’s amazing how smooth the system plays Baldur’s Gate 3, and many other games. Of course, there is an emulation layer involved, so not all games work well, but Valve is actively testing and resolving issues. The Steam website also gives information on whether any given game is suited for playing on the deck. I now have a very capable solution for PC gaming for a fraction of the cost.

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.

Current Mood: pleased

In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, you have a power that lets you combine all kinds of devices into contraptions of your own design. There are things to fly, ride and things that emit flames or beams; as well as things that home in on your enemies. These can be combines to make any kind of “mecha” that dispatches even the largest of enemies with ease. There is a whole cottage industry on YouTube that shows the most fantastic, useful or useless contraptions that can be made in the game.

Sometimes there is a sentiment that making the most powerful contraptions and killing the hardest enemies with ease is somehow “cheating”. But it’s not — it’s really clever game design! I don’t think the designers have thought of every combination of elements, so I’m sure there have been some builds that were, indeed, not something they thought up. But it doesn’t matter, because you’re still only using the mechanics in the game.

Instead, the building mechanic has a very clever side-effect of making you feel like you “outsmarted” the game, while staying firmly within the possibilities provided by the mechanic.

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.

Current Mood: amused

My birthday gift from Klik’s mother was The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I had pre-ordered it, and she reimbursed me for it. It came out on May 12th, a week after my birthday. As it happened, Klik was away on a trip with her mother when the game came out. The trailers had me very excited to play, so I had made the necessary preparations! I had cooked in advance for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so I had meals in the fridge that I could just shove into the microwave.

Friday the game arrived, and after work I started in on it. I didn’t continue too late.

But Saturday, I started around 9 AM. I broke half an hour for lunch, and around 6 PM I thought: “Oh, better get something to eat…” so I broke another half an hour for dinner. But after that, it was straight back into the game! Late that evening, Klik called, and she started with: “Oh, it’s late, are you already in bed?” just as I was about to enter another shrine…

Since then, the obsession has faded a bit, but I’m still playing it a lot. And Klik, who is even a bigger Zelda fan than I am, has started as well. Our play styles are very different, so we get to see a different side of the game through that.

Of course, the biggest innovation of the game is that you can build your own constructs and use them in the game. They play an especially large role in the shrines, but you can also use them “in the field”. That is a lot of fun, but I find myself using it not that often. If I have to go somewhere, I prefer to just walk or climb, the “good old-fashioned way”, because it lets me experience the game world in a much more direct way. I get to see all the little nooks and crannies, get to pick up cooking ingredients along the way and in general just take it slow. I do enjoy seeing the weird constructs in game clips on YouTube, but I do not really feel the need to try and build something as grandiose.

I also dislike the Depths, which is essentially the whole map in one big underground cavern. It is dark (until you activate that area’s ‘lightroot’) and the enemies do ‘gloom damage’ from which you can’t recover by just eating, so it’s extra challenging. When I started out there, I got the same feeling as I got from Dark Soul’s Tomb of the Giants, which is not a good thing — when I got to that area in Dark Souls, I just bounced off the game and never finished it. Luckily, in Tears of the Kingdom, there are items you can use to shed some light on your path, and they’re quite easy to find, so it’s not that big of a problem once you’re prepared. (Yes, I know there are light-giving items in Dark Souls too, but those are not the same as Brightbloom seeds: you’re still mostly bumbling around in the dark.)

Just like its predecessor, Breath of the Wild, this will take us a few hundred hours to fully appreciate. And maybe multiple playthroughs as well.

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.

Current Mood: excited

When I saw that there was a mobile game coming out for Ni No Kuni (“Cross Worlds”), I was very excited. I have had so much fun with the two games, especially the second. The world-building, the visuals (Studio Ghibli was involved in the first game, and the visual style was kept) and the gameplay all made them stand-outs for me.

Yesterday was the launch, and while I didn’t have that much time to dive into it, I really liked what I saw when I started it up. There is an actual story line, and NPCs and almost everything is voiced. So much content, and it’s amazing to think that it is basically an MMORPG on a phone.

It is an action RPG, and that means that part of the screen is given over to the touch controls, which takes away the haptic feedback one relies on when pressing buttons on a controller. And since the screen is small, there is less ‘real estate’ to put things like quest markers and mini-maps on, and the battles can get quite hectic with visual effects, especially if there are multiple players battling.

The way the designers ‘solved’ this is to automate nearly everything. If you activate a quest, your PC will automatically walk to their destination. When you start a battle, your PC will keep fighting for as long as there are enemies and automatically use their skills when they are available.

This means that the game, essentially, plays itself. Gone is the exploration, checking every nook and cranny of the map to see what you find. Gone is the skill needed for the battles. This morning I did the five daily Swift Solutions quests by merely activating them one by one, and the game did all the work: it went where it needed to go, it battled the monsters it needed to battle. All I had to do was to accept the rewards and activate the next quest.

It looks gorgeous, and I really want to like it, but there’s just too little ‘game’ for me to get excited for.

I made a fresh-faced Witch to play with, but I think this is as far as she’ll you. Unfortunately.

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.

Current Mood: disappointed

I have finished^(*) Octopath Traveler, which is just as well, because I had gotten kind of obsessed with it. Every battle is a puzzle, and especially the boss battles (of which there are 32 in the character chapters and some additional ones in dungeons) require the right combination of abilities, equipment and tactics. Of course, there are battles against random monsters on the overland map and in dungeons, but once you have cracked their puzzle (so to speak) they don’t really offer a challenge anymore. And since I am bad at playing games, I had to walk back and forth a bit to gather the right characters and equipment for some boss battles, so in the end I was a bit overlevelled.

(*): I have completed all the chapters of all eight characters. I did not finish (or even enter!) some of the dungeons, nor did I take up the special end-game dungeon (to which some of the chapters make a masterful allusion!) but for now I will declare the game done.

Of course, being me, I considered how a game like Octopath Traveler would work out as a tabletop RPG. There is an official TRPG out, but that is in Japanese. One could easily add the Boost mechanic to a combat-heavy game like D&D. Personally, if I was interested in that, I would also fiddle with the rules for damage resistances and vulnerabilities to add the shields mechanic.

And for sure, the main part of the game is the combat, like in so many computer RPGs. But what made me care about the outcome, are the character stories and the NPCs they meet and the overall story arc of this group of characters. And I was thinking: what would it take to replicate that same ‘feel’ in a tabletop RPG? It could be a real cool Ryuutama campaign with some mature players who all signed up for being the star of the show for one episode, and then be a supporting character for all the other characters’ episodes. A pre-planned campaign wouldn’t work — it never does, because it takes away agency from the players — but you could prepare the next chapter based on the actions of the group and their preferences. What you could plan ahead is the continent/area where the stories would play out, but which parts of which stories would be placed where, would be up to the flow of the game. I was also struck by how some of the character jobs directly map onto the jobs available in Ryuutama: nobles, healers, merchants…

Instead of that, I have assembled a group to play Blades in the Dark with. A few years back, I was part of a BitD campaign that lasted quite a long time. I spoke a friend who had fallen off my radar for a bit. He is the GM of a campaign me and Klik both play in, but we haven’t played for about six months now. This is due to how busy he is, but he does have the bandwidth to play in a game. BitD is an interesting setting — when I described it to him, he immediately pointed to the Arcane series on Netflix, which is what reminded me strongly of Blades too. And it has a lot of player input and improv, so it doesn’t really require a lot of prep for the GM. I’m confident in my ability to wing it. I have assembled an interesting mix of players, and we’re having our ‘session zero’ next week. I’m looking forward to it.

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.