adrift

Weird West – Definitive Edition / Citizen Sleeper / Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

2024/10/31 in gaming. Leave a Comment

Unusual combination of games perhaps, but I played all of them back to back. All are winners.

WW really surprised me, I didn’t know much about it, I somehow expected it to be similar to XCOM maybe, I think Hard West might be to blame for putting that idea into my head. It’s not like that at all though. I used a controller and it’s direct control of one character is real-time action. I can’t even really compare it to a lot of other games, none of the myriad of gameplay systems in this game are new by themselves, but their amount and combination is unusual and really rare. It all fits together really well and it hooked me till the end. The game has stealth and outright action – WW isn’t at all like some games that might technically offer gunplay, but are really supposed to be played stealthy. Here both modes work well and are equally valid. Both styles can be mixed or committed to, depending on the player’s taste/whim.

The game starts with Jane Bell, a bounty hunter whose family farm is attacked and she has to dig up her guns again and go after the gang to rescue what’s left of her family. I really thought this was going to be the whole game, but I was so wrong – at some point the playable character just switches to someone else. It becomes obvious that they started with Jane Bell because her character and story still feels the most familiar within such a genre, but it isn’t called Weird West for nothing, in this setting there are witches, magic and all kinds of crazy stuff. So the further the game goes along, the deeper it explores all that. The world is really big and there is a lot of stuff to explore and discover. They know how to keep the player busy. I’m not even sure I went everywhere, although I really tried.

The longer I played the more cool stuff I discovered/noticed. Water barrels fill up again during the rain, if there’s a huge gunfight in a town, returning to that town later has additional graves in the cemetery for all the people that got killed. Most of them have names and can be dug up, for loot (that wasn’t collected right away). They really tried to do something here and the amount of such ideas and functioning gameplay tweaks make the game feel really special and memorable.

I can’t tell how much of a difference all the reactive gameplay elements really make, but it sure feels like a lot. Each character gets a summary of all the actions the player took during their time with them. I especially enjoyed hiring my own previous characters back into my posse. They retain all their unique skills, that were unlocked while controlling them AND they still get backup from the “friends for life” they made during their respective stories, little helps out more during the fights, than putting upgrade points in having a strong posse. For once party members are actually really helpful in a fight and aren’t useless in combat encounters, like scripted companions are in so many other games.

I got a “good” ending I felt was almost “optimal” so paradoxically I’m less inclined to play it again, having so few regrets. I never played WW before this Definitive Edition, so I have no idea what’s different. The Weird West is a cool setting in any case and I really hope this game isn’t the last entry in this genre.

Citizen Sleeper

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the game before playing it, it just sounded interesting while I was browsing through gog and bought it. I also didn’t know a second game was coming out relatively soon, what was probably the reason for the sale of the first one.

CS is about a robot that has been imprinted with the “ghost” of a real person (although it’s unclear if further alterations to this personality matrix have been made) and the body really belongs to some corp, so in order to stay in control, the body is built to break down unless some drug is injected regularly. This CS is stranded on some run down, remote space station and now has to find a way to get those regular injections while also staying ahead of the corp that might be hunting them. Obviously a super cool sci-fi setting with tons of potential, this game manages to utilize really well.

The characters are more than appropriate and don’t feel cliché at all, there are tons of adventures and side adventures to be found, I was never bored and really didn’t want to miss anything. There are several instances when the CS is offered a way to escape the space station, but I always said no and stayed on instead. :D Once more I really liked the “ultimate” ending I got this way. I haven’t played the demo yet that they released for the second game, I’m not sure if I shouldn’t just wait for the full game instead. The game was overall another nice surprise for me and I’m really glad I played it.

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

In so many ways this is really Baldur’s Gate II built with current tech and I’m truly surprised there seems to be so little buzz around this. Somehow this seems wrong, when Baldur’s Gate 3 was at the top of every feed for months. But there can be only one I guess. In any case, it’s a really solid RPG and it’s filled with a surprising amount of quality of life improvements, even in comparison to newer such RPGs like Pillars of Eternity. A feature I really like (I think this was already in the first Pathfinder game) is each item doesn’t just display its immediate properties, but also describes where the player picked it up. This is so cool and helpful, when a thousand different items land in the inventory during the course of the entire game.

There is so much content in this, I don’t think anyone could ever really see all of it. A major feature are the mythic paths, that will further define the player character and there are like 10 of those and they have an impact on almost all interactions and options throughout the entire game. It’s really crazy to think about.

It’s as complex with companions, since lots of them can be killed (not just during combat but during quests and because of decisions the player made) and they too can shape which options are available. I killed a character relatively early in the game and she could have been around for the whole game and probably even would have become a romance option. Then there are choices where it doesn’t even seem possible to have both of them in the party. Some characters I didn’t even encounter. I sometimes saw during decisions that there was another character I could have picked up. I never even found out during the game where that might have been.

Each companion doesn’t just have a personal quest, but it’s actually more like their own storyline, that usually lasts for most of the chapters of the game itself. One of those optional companion quests features the probably biggest/longest dungeon of the game. It’s stuffed with riddles and it’s a nightmare I’ll never forget. :D

Unlike Disco Elysium or Pillars of Eternity II, WotR is not completely voice acted, but the voice acting that IS in the game is really good. I just mentioned it, because I’m always slightly confused when there’s sometimes VA and sometimes not. I guess the most important parts are recorded and this is how this is announced then, even if maybe unintentionally.

The ending slides were super long and very elaborate (apparently I let some ghost escape somewhere which I had forgotten almost everything about :D), so of course I liked the game. Because that’s 90% of what I need. It isn’t actually, I do hate it however, when games just fade to black, especially if one just finished a 100+ hour campaign. Everyone hates that, right?

The only bigger thing that slightly annoyed me, is the strategic map that allows the player to move armies around, the paths have to be found first (ahhh) in order to reach targets that might already be on the map and it can be a pain, since it might be necessary to go to every point on the map, until the needed option shows up. It’s completely random and it’s not possible to guess, the option might show up in the very last place and the movement is slow to make sure this sucks. Once the map is finally explored this goes away of course, but until then, oh man…

So yeah, everyone who’s into long RPGs should totally play this. Maybe I’m mistaken and this actually is a crazy huge hit and everyone already played it. Could be a coincidence that I never saw anyone talk about this anywhere. I also played the first one and this second entry feels more polished and the gameplay seems more smooth somehow. Good for them. And the player, actually.

Okay enough typing, currently watching Steins;Gate and I don’t wanna miss anything important. :P

After watching the season 2 finale, I started reading the comics, because why wait ages for season 3 if the story is already available. The comic really surprised me, for one I didn’t know how old it was (it does have a lot of interesting concepts already, for something that started releasing in January 2003!), or when its original run started – but even more so, because the story so far is almost identical.

I can’t really think of many such examples. Usually showrunners tend to think that they just know better and change things around (needlessly), even if a show then ends up being worse than the source material was (I didn’t even finish watching Netflix Witcher, I think I made it close to the end of Season… 2?). In case of Invincible however, I’d even go so far, that their minor changes even end up being improvements. Characters like Debbie (really like her a lot on the show) get the same treatment as the rest of the cast, meaning they are fleshed out and fully realized. They still might have less screentime as Invincible, for obvious reasons, but outside of that, their characters are as multi-faceted as anyone on the show. That’s really great. It even helps the show overall, since it’s just interesting to see how the lives of normal people work, in this world filled with actual superheroes. It’s nice to be allowed to ponder, who has really done more good here, when Amber is seen working at a homeless shelter while Invincible punches someone in the face. The comic actually raises similar questions as well (but essentially limits it to Atom Eve’s realization that she can help more people in better ways by NOT being a superhero), but this way it’s actually more fully realized, more multi-layered, on the show.

Right now I’m on issue #113, I think and that alone is quite impressive. I feel quite confident now, that I’m actually going to make it all the way through, I don’t want to stop and can’t wait to find out what’s going to happen next. All good signs.

There is so much stuff happening in the comic, that (right now) I can’t imagine the show is going to last long enough, to cover all of that. It seems popular/successful right now, but sustaining this for so long is obviously unlikely. The first 2 seasons of the show are roughly the first #33 issues in the comic – that’s when “new” things, so far unseen on the show, start happening.

I’ll probably add something when I hit the final issue, which is, of course, #144. Although there are still some tangents available, some of which I have already read as well. Namely the Atom Eve and Rexplode comics that take place before Invincible #1. At at least the Atom Eve origin story has been made a special episode on the show already. Here too, both versions are very good.

Reading the comics also reveals neat little anecdotes, like Kirkman considering restarting the Invincible series after issue #8 with Atom Eve as the main character, to find out if this would lead to more sales. But apparently the sales picked up before he decided to do that.

PS: It’s also fascinating how no actual human reads anything that’s on this site (not that I would hold it against anyone, skipping this). The web is so dead, if it’s not on an app users can swipe through, it won’t be seen. I had a placeholder here before putting the actual text in, and “someone” already liked the empty post. Only fully automated garbage is still “active” here.

fallout

2024/04/29 in serialized. Leave a Comment

I found it really interesting, how everything on this show looked exactly like it did in the game and yet, maybe for the first time, it still didn’t feel like this “member this” meme. That’s just how the weapons, they use in this world, look. That’s great! I would have been good with just Lucy as a/the main character, but they probably made the right call, to have 3 main characters give their respective vantage points. Allows for more storytelling and grabs more viewers, in case someone wouldn’t like a specific character. I liked all of them, however.

This time, for some magic reason, I didn’t see any long rants about the show being released all at once, instead of the classic weekly basis. Clearly Fallout was successful and people did talk about it, despite it being released all at once. Maybe a show just has to be GOOD and that’s all there is to it. I’d still be interested in why they made this change, Amazon went to weekly years ago (at least for their “bigger” shows like The Boys), there must be a reason why they didn’t do it this time. Really glad they already renewed it.

random links (70)

2024/03/11 in links. Leave a Comment

Warner Bros. is removing Adult Swim Games from console stores and Steam

Warner Bros. is now erasing games as it plans to delist Adult Swim-published titles

One Nintendo lawsuit has brought down two of the most popular emulators out there

Who is qualified to make a world? In search of the magic of maps

Dungeon Crawlers

New optical disc has room for 1,000 copies of Baldur’s Gate 3

Broken Sword: Reforged – Collector’s Edition on Kickstarter

Deck Nine Games lays off 20 percent of staff

Ex-ZA/UM writers allege studio has become a ‘cold, careless company’

Update: Disco Elysium developer ZA/UM confirms layoffs

20 Video Game Presidents Ranked by How Much I’d Rather Vote for Them in 2024

X-Wing Is Video Gaming’s Greek Fire

10 facts you didn’t know about the Star Wars: X-Wing series

BioShock creator Ken Levine finally explains Judas “narrative Lego” concept

https://12ft.io

Rain Man at 30: damaging stereotype or ‘the best thing that happened to autism’?

Fallout

2024/03/08 in videos. Leave a Comment

I finished Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

2024/02/20 in gaming. Leave a Comment

This game was a lot of fun for what it was. Probably the closest to Freelancer since Freelancer, if I may say so (to my knowledge, of course). All the ships handle really well and it’s fun to play. The main character is a woman who looks eerily reminiscent of Jan-Michael Vincent and the game has radio stations and a soundtrack like GTA games. That was clearly a really good choice and helped the game a lot.

The story was really weird and seemed to end at a point, that could have been a chapter 1. Little to nothing was resolved and calling it open ended is still putting it mildly. There are even some minor choices, but some of them don’t seem to have any effect on the game. I read somewhere, they were tracked in case DLC would be made at some point (no such DLC was made).

What ended up being more exciting/interesting than the official main story, was buying a run down space station and building it up again. It even ends up offering ship types, that aren’t available anywhere else in the game. Clearly this should have been the main event and the game should have been build around that idea.

After finishing the story and finishing the space station, I stopped playing the game – random missions are generated at stations in perpetuity, but they’ll only lead to the same combat I had experienced dozens of times already and things have to end somewhere.

It’s always hard to say from the outside, but it does feel as if this might have become a major classic in this genre, if they would have had the budget for it. The gameplay loop is really solid, flying the ships is great. Rockets hitting you is extreme, everything shakes, the glass (?) of the cockpit can have cracks and the player character will sometimes move her hands around (panic, shock etc.), as one might when the ship might be close to blowing up – another really good idea. There is distortion and everything looks really good. All the sounds are solid. Again, there’s really not much missing that could have made it an unforgettable cult classic. A lot of it is already here. I’m really glad I played this, they don’t make that kind of game anymore. I mean, not in great numbers anyway.

Oh yeah, Sharky never became a buddy of mine, so I didn’t get that achievement. I actually looked that one up and she should have been available, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t at her home base nor anywhere else. Super weird. Just mentioning this because I wasted some time trying to find her, when it was apparently impossible to do so.

Also, the ship that’s somehow presented as the best one in the game, really isn’t IMHO (it should speak volumes that it’s the very ship she’s already flying, when she’s crashing in the intro – so why should anyone be so eager to get back to that specific model?!?). The most expensive ship has a “light” hull and that means you pretty much blow up the second the shields are down – and that is going to happen since many fights are relatively long (some are almost like fights of attrition), because pirates have ample reinforcements incoming all the time, the ability to last throughout long encounters is imperative. Even just flying to a mission has hostile ships lying in wait again and again.

It’s possible to mount the most guns on that ship, but what good does that, if the ship can’t take any hits? I usually flew the freighter with he heavy hull and it even allows 4 gun turrets. Even if one prefers to fly a fast(er) fighter, the Foxbat is still a better choice, because the hull for that one is at least still “medium”. Makes all the difference. Otherwise one will be thrown back to the last checkpoint a lot. The game autosaves at certain points and that’s it. Nothing manual.

Finally, everyone should at least check out the intro. It definitely made me play this.

RAH-66 Comanche: The F-35 of Helicopters

2024/02/16 in videos. Leave a Comment

https://youtu.be/UehyDM8jlbc?si=01GqWmHxalqJ7hve

0 hourly views on average

2023/12/31 in define this. Leave a Comment

I see 2023 has been another resounding success for this blog. 😂😂😂

PS: Damn, this post would have sufficed to get to 1 post a month. Ah well, now I have a “major” entry about BG3 too. 😛

PPS: Would be kinda funny if I just deleted the BG3 entry now. 😁

I finished BG3

2023/12/31 in gaming. 1 Comment

MONTHS ago, when it came out. But I really hate it when I don’t even publish at least one post a month, because then this month is missing from the archive links on the right side. So I sort of have to crank out SOMETHING. In any case, I think at this point everything should have been said about this game numerous times so I can just skip repeating most elements. I’ll exclusively focus on things I noticed in the game and haven’t seen discussed anywhere else (although they probably were discussed too SOMEWHERE). It’s not like I keep track of that. Or do a search or ANYTHING really.

Back when I played it (of course one of the countless patches could have changed it since then), BG3 had a level cap. Of 12. Now I really wouldn’t claim that I did everything in this game, because I’m sure I haven’t. I didn’t ignore quests really, but I also didn’t try my hardest to find everything. But despite me not playing every quest in the game, I seriously reached max level ~50 hours before the game was done. I always thought this was a sign of… somewhat less than perfect balancing (that’s why I threw in the remark with the patches, I’d almost expect them to iterate on that), when players could reach max level with so much game left. Quests should just give less XP then etc…

I mean thankfully the game has more qualities and motivating factors than just leveling up, I’m not saying that, but it’s just weird and frustrating that your character is just done and can’t learn anything new anymore with a significant part of the adventure still ahead.

That kind of brings me right to the ending. BG3 seemed so elaborate in many parts and I’m a sucker for long elaborate endings, especially when it comes to games I’ve spent so much time in. The ending I got felt almost abrupt to me. Some of the characters barely gave more than an “k bye” before leaving forever. That’s weird after everything they went through (I played and finished all sidequests for all the companions). There was one brief scene/conversation with the romance option and then it was go ending credits go and that was the game. Of course I’ve definitely seen much worse endings, but it still felt like a little bit of a letdown, after playing this for ~150 hours.

While playing this, I caught myself numerous times thinking, that I’m happy about this game’s success, because it gives me hope there might be more (or any) D&D games in the future (as opposed to NONE). I’m first and foremost into this setting, I like and know all the places, people and whatnot and I missed it all. It’s so strange that it took “them” 20 years to do another game like this.

While I’m not one of the Larian fans, I still can only applaud this developer for just selling people a game and not have any micro-transaction bullshit or DLC insanity going on. Just buy this game once and then go play it. This mentality really isn’t something one can take for granted with major titles like this. So yeah, this game is in this weird space where its success is good for any RPG fan, because it might embolden devs with similar philosophies and could “inspire” others to do similar stuff. They were also smart doing EA the way they did. I bet CDP wishes they would have done the same with Cyberpunk and thus sidestepped so much needless drama.

btw: Why did they name it Baldur’s Gate 3 when the previous game was named Baldur’s Gate II? A subtle hint that this is from a different dev and maybe doesn’t have all that much to do with the previous games? It can’t be coincidence, right?