An Unedited Rant Medley About The Games I've Been Playing
BattleTech
Randomness absolutely ruins this game for me. I guess Front
Mission 3 will continue to be my platonic ideal of a game that actually makes
you feel empowered fighting using giant robots instead of like they’re worse,
more fragile and finicky versions of tanks.
I wanted to love this game so badly. I gave it far more
chances and time than I ordinarily would have. But even on the lowest
difficulty I constantly found myself getting bad luck and shitstomped by
enemies. No matter how carefully I tried to edge forward on maps, I still kept
getting surprised and overwhelmed. The enemy always outnumbers you, and
depending on RNG this can either mean 8 to 4 or 20 to 4.
It feels like actually running your own mercenary company in
the far future, including all the unfun
business meetings and personnel issues and operating budgets nobody should want
to have to do.
Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: your IP is not
popular enough for people to want to play what sounds like a soft reboot minus
the The that usually accompanies these.
BallxPit
This is the sort of game where the first dozen or so hours
are constant fun and progress being made, but you start to realize most of the
characters you’re unlocking aren’t fun to play as because of their downsides,
and you have to level them up from scratch instead of them being the same level
as your current characters. Depending on the level, the character(s) you
choose, and the luck you get with power-ups, your runs will either be a
cakewalk or a miserable slog that ends in failure, which is not player agency
and skill but rather gambling.
The town building aspect? Well, it’s not nearly as deep and fun
as it wants you to think it is. Shooting workers to bounce around and collect
resources is fine, but having to finish building structures by also bouncing
them off? That’s not a fun and meaningful mechanic, it just feels like dull busywork.
There’s still a lot for me to unlock in this game yet after almost
36 hours I’m not sure I care anymore. This game is a classic example of one
that a decade ago would’ve been a mobile game that purposefully slows your
progress to get you to spend money; instead it’s just a game that starts to
feel like a checklist or homework because it takes so much time to make any real
progress.
Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: why invoke
ballpits if your game gets boring far quicker than ballpits do?
Vampire Survivors
Just go play this game if you haven’t already. There’s a
reason it’s so beloved and so addictive. Every couple play sessions I kept
unlocking new aspects and mechanics, and the drip feed of unlocks and new
weapons/items is pitch perfect.
I’ve also been playing quite a bit of co-op with my wife, and
that’s a lot of fun, too. You trade off on level up’s, but you occasionally can
choose to give both of you a random weapon upgrade.
This game could’ve been used for evil. Designed by a former
casino slot machine designer, this could’ve been an addictive and predatory
mobile game. Instead it’s all the fun of the first few hours with a mobile game
before you hit the wall, but it’s that feeling throughout your time playing it.
I kept telling myself, as I tried the other games I’m
talking about in this post, that I was finally done with Vampire Survivors, I
was getting bored of the gameplay loop and I was seeing the game when I closed
my eyes, yet I kept coming back to it. It’s like cigarettes that don’t kill
you.
Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: ummm is this a
reference to how you never fight vampires, so they’re the survivors, or am I
surviving vampires by never fighting them?
XCom 2
I’m so glad I only paid $5 for this on a Steam sale, because
that’s exactly how much fun I got out of it.
I loved the first modern XCom from like 2011(?). There was a
younger version of me that could put up with, even enjoy, the constant
stressful decision making and feeling like the underdog constantly. The RNG didn’t
even bug me that much.
But playing the sequel, I couldn’t shake the feeling, “oh, I’ve
done this before, it just looks shinier now.”
I lost my will to continue during one of the terror missions
where you have to rescue civilians. I do get that these missions are supposed
to be stressful and a big difficulty spike—but even playing on the easiest
difficulty, I could not get through them for the life of me. I either was too
reckless in trying to protect the civilians and got my soldiers killed, or I
didn’t rush enough and lost too many civilians for the “rewards” after the
mission to be worth it.
I say this as someone who loves Dark Souls: intentionally
making a game difficult is not always fun. I would love to play a XCom game
where I feel like I can play well and in a way where I don’t have to constantly
feel like there’s no objectively best option to choose, that in getting one
cool weapon or soldier I am losing the opportunity for something equally cool
at the same time.
Also, fuck RNG. You need to sculpt RNG in games like this so
if my soldier is shooting at an alien monstrosity construct nega beast from
five fucking feet away they can’t miss. A 90% hit rating should actually feel
like it will hit 9 times out of 10, instead of 3 times out of 10.
Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: XCom? More like hex
dumb. Yeah that’s the best I could do.
Divinity Original Sin 2
The opening of a game, ideally, should grab you and within
an hour show you something fun or cool or interesting that hooks you. This game
feels like actually playing a tabletop RPG with friends, and while that may interest
a lot of you out there, I would rather just do that in real life instead of
with a clunky, slow moving isometric RPG with way too many status effects and a
glacial, unexciting combat system. I don’t even dislike turn based RPGs, it’s
not that, it’s something about this game and the way it’s presented.
I ended up initiating a fight because some lizard cocksucker
insulted me, and then all hell broke loose. I somehow got killed but at the same
time triggered the next story event and ended up getting trapped inside the
ship because I couldn’t figure out who had the key to open the door to let me
outside.
Here’s hoping Baldur’s Gate 3 is better. Baldur’s Gate 1 had
a more compelling opening stretch….
Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: the only thing
original about this game is how fast I stopped playing it.
Into The Breach
Oh, look, another turn based strategy game where you control
giant robots but you feel disempowered and are always a step behind the enemies
in terms of numbers and lethality.
I know a lot of people love this game but it’s not for me. If
it was being honest, it would describe itself as a puzzle game more than a turn
based strategy game. I always felt like if I was making the exact perfect moves
and actions each turn, I was being punished. At that point I’ll just watch
someone else play it.
Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: I’m putting Into
The Breach, Out Of My Reach.
Skyrim
I am proud to say I’ve only bought this game twice: back on
release for the PS3, and on PC this past Fall.
Much like the first time, I put a lot of playtime into it
but got nowhere near finishing it other than a couple major sidequests and a
couple dozen shorter ones. I killed giants and dragons, I bought a house, and I
saved my game and killed everyone in towns a few times.
What else can you say about this game? It both does and
doesn’t hold up, because that’s every important/popular Bethesda release.
Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: Yes I know
technically it should have The Elder Scrolls but the series name and the item itself
both suck and are the least interesting parts.
Shadowrun Returns
I apparently bought this game and played about two hours of
it. I remember nothing about this experience. I was probably crossfaded, which
leads me to believe it’s not a very fun or interesting game because normally I
am more forgiving in that state. I think I did one or two fights and they were clunky
and boring looking.
In the era of dynamic looking turn based RPGs like Persona 5
and Fire Emblem: Three Houses, there is no excuse for a game to look this
boring during fights. It’s literally as visually engaging as the very first
Fallout, a game that gets a pass because it’s otherwise a masterpiece, and it
came out in 1997. Actually Final Fantasy VII came out then, didn’t it, and that
had cool looking attacks and a dynamic camera…
Bonus bitchy response to the game’s title: no thanks, you
can go back to being gone.
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