As far as I know, there has never been a game like ActRaiser since ActRaiser was released 34 years ago. Yes, there's ActRaiser: Renaissance, but from what I understand, the city-building sim portion adds a tower-defense element as opposed to strictly city-building and a little angel destroying monster nests; I haven't played it yet.
For "Birth of the People," I will always have engrained in my memory, beating the first boss in Fillmore, then being taken to the first temple, and after the first two people are lightninged into existence, the music 0:11 happens and it genuinely sounds like a dynamically scripted moment where the music and the animation line up perfectly. Apart from that, the rest of the song is gold in that despite only being 40 seconds long, you end up listening to it for literal hours as you build and destroy cities and civilizations for the entire game. The only time the overworld theme changes is in Kasandora when the people there discover "music" as a way to celebrate and remember the life of the wanderer who died in the desert, and then again in Bloodpool towards the late game when the people start fighting amongst themselves; we'll have to cover "Sasegemono" at a later date.
I love this music. I love this game. I love this introduction to Yuzo Koshiro.
I haven't delved too deeply here about the not-new edition of Dungeons & Dragons core rule books that are rolling out this year, but I do have some thoughts, and probably not the ones you're thinking about.
First off, no, I don't have a problem or issue with the concept of Wizards of the Coast releasing an updated 5th Edition rule book. Even if they decided to go to a 6th Edition, I wouldn't really have an issue. They've done it before and I've still played the game from AD&D through to the present. Yes, I know that there are other TTRPGs out there with Pathfinder probably being the most accessible in transitioning away from WotC.
But my resistance to moving away from the current edition, or really away from the primary focus of modules since 3rd Edition has been that I really love the world of Faerûn in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. My introduction to D&D was a mishmash of campaign settings as we played whatever modules Dellanos already had access to. We did play one Dragonlance quest where Dellanos said that there wasn't going to be as much combat and all I really recall was talking a lot and traveling back and forth between a village and a castle. And probably something about a dragon. Then after I became the defacto DM and we played through two quests that I wrote myself that didn't take place in any specific campaign setting, I dragged Dr. Potts and Dellanos into Ravenloft, which is where we stayed until we all went off to college at separate times.
Then sometime in 2000 (I think?), Dellanos or. . . I don't have a name for him. . . so let's call him GMan (no he doesn't work for any branch of the government) lent me a copy of all six of the CDs for Baldur's Gate. That was my real introduction to the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Then I got into Baldur's Gate II. Then Neverwinter Nights and I was all in on that world and setting, bearing in mind that I had only read a couple of old D&D novels or short story collections that predated anything by Douglas Niles or R.A. Salvatore. I knew about Drizz't and Elminster, but only because they had cameos in Baldur's Gate. After having read 24 novels in the Forgotten Realms setting, I am even more invested than when 5th Edition rolled out, being the setting for the majority of their modules.
Now with the new core rule books, they've changed the setting to that of Greyhawk Adventures, although keep in mind that I haven't read the new Player's Handbook so I don't know the extent that this setting is cemented into every fiber of the book. That threw me for a bit of a loop. From what I've understood from the last handful releases (Monsters of the Multiverse, Quests from the Infinite Staircase, and Vecna: Eve of Ruin), but not knowing how Eve of Ruin concludes, I guess there could be the case that Greyhawk Adventures is now the primary setting. I was initially really excited when I saw that the characters from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon were featured in some of the key artwork, even with Venger gracing the cover of the Dungeon Masters Guide.
But I just really like The Forgotten Realms.
And this is where other TTRPG settings come in. I know I could play Pathfinder or Blades in the Dark, and enjoy those worlds, but I still feel invested in the Forgotten Realms. I don't know. I know my brain is big enough to understand and enjoy more than one fictional fantasy setting. I like the world of The Witcher (is it just "The Continent"?) and Middle Earth, and Willow, and Westeros, and I can enjoy those stories without feeling conflicted. But if I were to sit down and actually partake in NaNoWriMo, it would be a quest in the Forgotten Realms setting.
Maybe that's in part where all of this is leading? Again, I don't know. Maybe it's also in part to justify to my midbrain that I don't need three new core rulebooks with really cool new art and a conglomeration of 5th Edition material in a new campaign setting*.
*Again, not having read through any of the books, I don't really know how much emphasis there is on Greyhawk Adventures being the new campaign setting over Forgotten Realms.
[Disclaimer: I received a review key for She Could Fly: Documentary Escape Game through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
[Trigger Warning: She Could Fly: Documentary Escape Game is an exploration point-and-click game that uses the She Could Fly comic as a vessel to discuss Obsessive Compuslive Disorder in its many facets. The game is played in first-person with a voice-over narrator with visual interpretations and physical practices of OCD, written and verbal descriptions and experiences of OCD behavior including intrusive thoughts. The game is broken up into five chapters (referred to as loops) where the first section is spent finding pieces of a comic page followed by documentary-style interviews about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.]
As someone who does not have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, I thought that a video game that explores OCD would be an interesting and novel approach to both a video game as a way and as a learning tool for everyone who sees OCD as that thing people do over and over when they're nervous. As someone who doesn't have OCD, I'm not about to claim that the depiction here is an accurate representation as I've gathered that OCD manifests differently for different people. What I can comment on is She Could Fly: Documentary Escape Game as a video game, which we will do as we go through each chapter.
Loop 1:
This opening chapter/loop is a pretty conducive example of how the game works, although, from what I could tell, the posters on the walls do not in and of themselves change, so you don't need to click on them every time in the hopes of finding something different. What I didn't show in any of these videos, is that each of the posters does contain an out-of-game link to the comic artist's webpage for that particular comic. I wouldn't recommend it on your first playthrough because it literally takes you out of the game, but on a follow-up, it might be nice to look up artists and comics that look interesting.
By the time I'm writing this, I will have played through the game at least two times for various reasons. When I first started though, I thought that the controls were a bit weird. I greatly appreciated that there was the option to invert either axis, but the looking around mechanic isn't my favorite. Here you have to click the left mouse button (or the right trigger on the Steam Deck) and hold that while you drag the mouse to look around. Looking left and right also took some getting used to as I initially couldn't figure out if having the x-axis felt more natural than having it inverted or not, but it's something you'd have to figure out for yourself.
Once you complete the comics page, then you watch a series of documentary-style videos that answer various questions about OCD, with people who are experts from experience answering the questions. This series of videos legitimately felt like something I would watch as part of a training video for my job (I work in the social services industry, so we have 2-3 online trainings each month). I don't mean that to sound as a negative, it's just what it reminded me of.
Loop 2:
So the narrator, Tiger Orchid, let's talk about her for a moment. At first, she comes across as a streamer who is also playing this game with you, breaking the fourth wall of sorts and referring to "Chat" as if she were playing on Twitch. By the end of the first Loop, and even here during the second Loop, that idea that she's playing too is disrupted a bit, especially when you sit in the comfy chair because she says that she can't follow you when you go there. I read in one of the Steam reviews that someone who said that they have OCD and found her narration distracting and was asking if there was a way to turn off Tiger Orchid's voice, and that got me thinking again about narration in video games. I find that it works here for the entirety of the game, and we'll come back to it a bit more during Loop 5.
I can understand the voice being a little distracting since it is very reactionary. Nearly any time you do anything, Tiger Orchid reacts. This doesn't really allow the player to think on their own especially when trying to either solve a puzzle or to figure out on their own what a particular item could be used for. This makes figuring out the solution more of a one-sided collaborative effort, which I was initially not really excited about, but I kinda got used to it. I also realized by the time I finished Loop 2, that the subtitle of "Escape Game" did not necessarily mean "Escape Room," and once I got that comparison out of my head, it was a little easier to take the game for what it was and not what I had been expecting it to be.
I will add that the final task here, wiping the negative self-thoughts off the door got to me a bit. Wiping off phrases like "Broken" and "I'm a bad person" hit me harder as the voice in my head was narrating the scene as "I am not broken," and "I am not a bad person," being the intended message. I dunno, it just came out of nowhere as I heard my own voice reaffirm that "No, I'm not a bad father."
Loop 3:
First off, I apologize for letting the smoke alarm go off for as long as it did. I didn't pick up the lightswitch cue from the previous Loop, being a stereotypical action someone with OCD might perform to get rid of something that was causing them anxiety. I was still thinking of this more like an escape room video game with documentaries about the OCD experience that you unlocked after solving a few low-grade puzzles.
I don't know what it was about the Simon game that kept drawing me to it, even though I knew that it couldn't be used the first two times I played with it. I think I was using it like the comfy chair, as something to do to think about what I needed to do next. And I just liked the tones that it made. Then later, when you found the bottom portion of the poster, I didn't realize that you needed to first put it back together for the pattern to work, again, like an escape room where you can solve a puzzle once you have the information, but I understand the mechanics behind locking being able to solve the puzzle in the background and requiring you to physically put the pieces back together first; or maybe you don't?
Regarding the Pink Elephant Paradox, I was unfamiliar with this exact term, but I do know about "The Game" (sorry, I lost again), which is similar to their end game. Maybe. I'm likely missing some additional symbolism with how the pink elephant is represented in each of the loops and until this loop and the accompanying videos, I had interpreted this as like the White Elephant, but just, pink.
And yeah, I missed that first video on the first page, but in my own defense, I think I interpreted that one circle as there for emphasis and existed in the comic.
Loop 4:
[Trigger Warning: During this loop, the first page of the comic contains written graphic depictions of intrusive thoughts, including descriptions of suicide and self-harm, sexual violence, domestic violence, and necrophilia. This scene lasts from 03:41-04:18].
This is the second video I recorded for Loop 4. The first, being my first time playing Loop 4 took me 18 minutes 59 seconds whereas this video was only 12 minutes and 52 seconds. I had to rerecord this since I had audio issues in the second half that made any dialogue almost unintelligible to understand and was distracting to listen to even with the subtitles. This time around, I knew where to go and what to do although I tried to create the feeling that I was still exploring in a similar fashion to how I would normally play. On my first playthrough, it took me two attempts to get all of the puzzle pieces in the Ele Quest/Pac-Man game. I was a little disappointed that there weren't any other available interactions with any of the other arcade cabinets, but that's just me wanting to have a little more to do instead of a focused level without any fluff.
By this point in the game, I rarely felt the need to visit the comfy chair since I never felt that the puzzles were difficult to solve. I know that there's the achievement to view everything that the chair has to say, but that will likely have to be its own run since it's the only achievement I have left to earn/collect.
Loop 5:
Compared to the previous loops, I actually became annoyed with Tiger Orchid's narration and trying to direct me where to go and what to do. If you're reading this and haven't watched the entirety of Loop 5, then I recommend stop reading and finish watching. I'll continue below:
---
Welcome back.
So yeah, Tiger Orchid. I feel that her misdirection, trying to distract the player in a way that doesn't make a lot of sense, like going to bed or staying in the flat instead of solving the puzzle is a lot more over-the-top than in previous loops where she was either agreeing with and up playing Hana's self-negativity or disparaging anything positive from Ash. On my first playthrough, I went straight for the phone booth before realizing that I couldn't do anything there. This time around, I humored Tiger Orchid's misdirection about the phone booth and looked everywhere else before returning to the phone booth, this time with all three letters which automatically filled in the alternate helpline number. My first time, I only had two letters so I had the number as 3 - X - 1. I tried both numbers, the listed number and 3 - 2 - 1 before finding the third letter and the game stopped your progression and said that the number is not a valid number.
After acquiring all of the pieces of the comic page, watching the first video, and hearing Dr. Blake Stobie mention that rituals associated with reducing anxiety for people with OCD are comparable to fake friends. These fake friends tell you that by performing these rituals you can now be comfortable and safe, but only because you performed these repetitive rituals. That was when, for me, as dense as I can sometimes be, knew that Tiger Orchid had been that self-negative voice in the player's head, and was likely playing as Hana.
I'll be honest, at the end of the game, I'm not sure I follow the symbolism, if any, about feeding peanuts to the pink elephant. Does it mean something more that you the player is actively thinking about the pink elephant and not trying to ignore it? I'm sure that there's something there, but I'm just not able to connect the dots as it feels like they're constantly fading before I can see the whole picture. But once the elephant is satiated and stomps the comfy chair into oblivion, there's the trap door that the comfy chair was obscuring (although not totally as its outline is there from the very beginning). Again, I'm sure that there's symbolism with the trapdoor being the exit out of the game and that it was obscured by the comfy chair the whole time, but I personally never felt that the comfy chair was there to prevent Hana from finding a way to manage her OCD or to hide from it, but as a way to meditate while reflecting on "a happy place." Maybe that's just me being naive or stereotyping. I don't know.
But then I loved the end, as Hana tells her inner voice of Tiger Orchid that she will from then on only be a whisper, that the voice will always be with her, but that her own voice will be the louder one she hears from now on.
I really enjoyed She Could Fly: Documentary Escape Game once I got beyond the slightly strange control scheme, the fact that most of the puzzles in the game functioned less like the escape room game that I was expecting and more like a game of 3D point-and-click hide-and-seek with items. It's like an interactive documentary that you have to play for five minutes to unlock 10 minutes of a documentary. And that's perfectly fine because I feel that I've come away with a better understanding of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder beyond someone who washes their hands or stands nervous in a corner and flicks the light switch. It's not for everyone, but neither is Call of Duty or FIFA 20XX. I do wish that there was more about the game that incorporated the She Could Fly comic apart from one or two pages. Maybe I'll just have to check it out from our library.
For a while there, as in probably about the first 10 hours, I was afraid I was bouncing off of Triangle Strategy and I really wasn't sure why. Until that is I discovered not the encampment, which I had been using sparingly since it was introduced, but really hunkered down in the encampment and began to enjoy grinding. In classic JRPG fashion, there are multiple leveling mechanics for each player on your roster. You have their base weapon to upgrade using gold and consumable items. You have active and passive skills they can learn which all cost gold and consumable items. Only recently did I start to focus on leveling as much as I could between main story battles whereas before I would tinker around a little, and do a few mental battles to level up my roster at least until everyone was at or around the recommended minimum level that the game suggested. I would buy a few consumable items for battles and maybe an accessory if there was enough gold left over, but I was never swimming in gold.
All of that to say, that I have been hearing "Of Wars and Wares" pretty significantly over the last five hours of gameplay. I spend time agonizing over whom I should use the Silver on to level up a weapon rank, or who to use a Medal of Bravery on to promote their class to increase base stats and learn new skills? There's a lot riding on picking the right/best/favored upgrade, especially when they use consumable items like fiber or timber which seem to be in lower supply than iron or stone.
So I've been listening to "Of Wars and Wares" a lot in the background and I admit I have fallen asleep to this song while trying to parse which skill or ability to upgrade, only to head back into another mental battle for more gold and hopefully some more fiber.
Over the course of our current summer, or at least what we commonly refer to as summer (June through October), I've read a handful of books. Most of those books I read while Conklederp and I were out galavanting around the fjords, and the majority of most of that was actually done while we were in various airports. But the locations don't actually matter. I just wanted to share a couple of the books that I've read these last two-and-a-half months.
Azure Bonds by Kate Novak & Jeff Grubb
Published October 1988 by TSR, Inc.
This book took me a while to get into and I can't quite explain why. I liked the character of Alias and how her character started out one way and took a hard left turn when both the reader and character are given important background information on her that literally explains her spotty amnesia. It makes you question whether the information she's given is from a reliable source, but at the same time explains a lot of the interactions she's had up until that point. I also thought that that would be a great way to start a campaign, by having all of the PCs start out with the HP of a level 5 character, but the skillset of a level 2 character and at certain story beats, they might regain some of their memories and remember some of their lost abilities. I don't know, I haven't worked it out yet, and I should probably read The Curse of the Azure Bonds module first to see how it was done when the module was made from the book, and also play the game.
Don't get me started on Clyde Caldwell's artistic direction that he took Alias' armor. I don't think her armor was ever described as having a gaping hole down her sternum while showing an ample amount of side boob. It might've talked about her chain shirt and leather breaches, but at least her equipment is all there and she's got the tattoo right there on her forearm. I do have the next book in this series, The Wyvern's Spur, but that story takes place in 1358 DR and I need/want to read Ed Greenwood's Spellfire trilogy first since they all take place in 1357 DR (more on my hypocrisy later).
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Published June 2012 by Macmillan Publishers
I watched the first three episodes of the Netflix series back in April while I was donating platelets and wanted something that I hadn't seen before that could just play for the 2.5+ hours I was going to have both my arms simultaneously hooked up to a machine. I remember liking the trailer when the show was first announced and really liked the world and characters, so I figured I'd read the book as it became available when we were in the airport in Amsterdam. The show seemed to follow the events in the book fairly closely, or at least the story for Alina Starkov and Mal and the Grisha. Everything having to do with the B story, with Kaz, Inej, and Jesper was absent from the story, which makes me think that all of that must be either in the follow-up book, Seige and Storm, or one of the other books that apparently populate the GrishaVerse.
I was telling Conklederp, that at least through the third episode, the show does a good job of adapting the book, although there are several scenes that I felt were handled a lot better than in the book. There were some scenes that were extended that helped to build characters, but that could be additional material from later books, or something that the screenwriters came up with on their own. And I guess I could be upset in the future after reading Seige and Storm, but until then, I really liked this first book. I liked the magic system and how there is the encroaching industrialization of war with guns threatening to overthrow the usage of magic in the world. It'll be interesting to see where the rest of the story goes.
No Country for Old Menby Cormac McCarthy
Published July 2005 by Alfred A. Knopf
I decided to read this immediately after finishing Shadow and Bone because Conklederp and I watched the Coen Brothers movie one of the nights we were on the cruise. I was actually pretty surprised at how closely the movie followed everything in the book up until a point. There were a couple of times I felt the book was a little difficult to read, not because Cormac McCarthy doesn't use quotation marks or specifically says who is talking with "Lewellyn said" or "said Chigurh" but because, for the first couple of chapters, I felt like I wasn't getting anything new from reading the book. Yeah, Sherrif Bell's monologues were longer than they were in the movie, and there was more back-and-forth between Lewellyn and Carla Jean, which was always entertaining, but nothing that felt like I was getting a deeper glimpse into anyone's lives. I was surprised to later find out that Carla Jean was only 19 in the book and that she and Lewellyn had been together since she was 16 when he had recently gotten back from Vietnam. I liked that there was a bit more with the Mexican drug cartels having a slightly larger part in the book, which made me feel that Lewellyn was more trapped and cornered than he was in the movie.
I had previously read The Road some years back, and I did listen to the audiobook for Blood Meridian: or The Evening Redness in the West and this book just made me want to read more Cormac McCarthy; and it also made me want to read more Joyce Carol Oates. Increasing the book queue is never a bad thing.
The Road to Neverwinter by Jaleigh Johnson
Published February 2023 by Random House Worlds
I'm not sure how I feel about this book. Yes, it takes place so much later than 1357 DR, what with the Time of Troubles, the Sundering, the Spellplage, the Second Sundering, and everything that happens during 5th Edition, but there weren't any other books that were immediately available to check out that were on my waiting list, so I figured why not see what was in Chris Pine, sorry, Edgin Darvis' past that wasn't already covered in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. What I find strange, is that Jaleigh Johnson has done a great job in making the in-book characters sound a lot like their in-movie characters. Book Edgin does sound a lot like Chris Pine's delivery when he quips with other characters. Holga does sound a lot like Michelle Rodriguez's cadence and meter for that character. The story though, I'm not sure. It doesn't really feel like this story is taking place in Faerûn in the Forgotten Realms setting. Sure the Sword Coast and Neverwinter get name-dropped here and there, but it doesn't feel like the Faerûn that I've gotten to know over the last 24 novels.
Granted I am only 20% of the way through the book so it's only been Edgin, Holga, a nine-year-old (I think) Kira post the scene where she's given the necklace of invisibility, and just recently Forge Fitzwilliam. I am finishing up this particular story, because the narrative is told from the perspective of Edgin telling Kira bedtime stories of his past adventures as a framing device, where a raiding party of Gnolls attacks their village; which is something that they couldn't've done in the movie without costing another couple million in special and practical effects. Maybe things will get better after Simon joins the group and the flow improves?
Right now I'm hoping that there is more tension built up between Kira and Edgin to help justify her treating Forge Fitzwilliam as more of a father figure for the two years that he and Holga were imprisoned at Revel's End. Anyway, that's a criticism for another time/article.
So that's what I've been reading for the last couple of months and I just thought I'd share with y'all, because why else is this website in existence?
I haven't played Tales of Phantasia, but I did play through almost half of Tales of Symphonia back in 2005-2006 (you know, 18 years ago) and I appreciate action RPG music which the Tales series is known for (or at least I think it is). This track takes on a certain bounciness, considering it plays during miniboss-style battles against Spirits before they lend you their power (or at least that's what I've come to understand from watching a couple of longplays). And from what I recall of Tales of Symphonia, this style of music is very fitting for the Tales franchise. It helps to keep the energy flowing and the player engaged as there's not really a section during the entire song that slows down to let the player catch their breath.
Maybe it's me, but I find this track somewhat reminiscent of something from the Mega Man X series. Regardless, I really enjoy this song and feel that I'd eventually like to get back into the Tales series.
There's been a lot said about Fallout 4 in the nine years since it was first released. A lot of what I can half-recall seems meme-related. Stuff about Preston Garvey accosting you with another sob tail of settlers in need of help. Stuff about settlement management. Stuff about the game being broken in all of the best/worst ways that is common to Bethesda releases. Stuff about someone being a replicant or not. Stuff about the Ghouls not being disgusting enough. Stuff about power armor. Stuff about it not being Fallout: New Vegas. But in the wake of the Fallout series on Amazon, I too jumped into the waters of Fallout 4 and after 47.2 hours, I just wanted to jot down a couple of thoughts I've had since I entered the Wasteland of Boston, Massachusetts.
My three biggest gripes with Fallout 4 are the settlements, the crafting, and the power armor. I'm going to be going over these as if you already know what I'm talking about when it comes to Preston Garvey's Minutemen, how crafting (generally) works in video games, and what power armor is, although I'll probably go a bit deeper in depth on power armor in regards to this and previous Fallout games because that's where my issue lies.
I get it, as far as a game mechanic goes. You liberate or help a group of people and they form a settlement. Or as is often the case that I've come across, is that a pre-existing group of people already living their lives in shacks/houses with a garden. Still, after you complete a story mission for them. They decided to join the Minutemen (or allow themselves to be under the protection of the Minutemen), and then they become a row in your spreadsheet of settlements that you now have to manage. It honestly reminds me of Fallout Shelter, and how you have to keep track of your vault dwellers' happiness levels, and manage the energy to food to water output while also making sure that everyone is armed and that defensive capabilities are in place. I only recently had a notification pop up telling me that the settlement in Hangman's Alley was under attack, and this was while I was in Sanctuary Hills. My general reaction was, "Tough shit." Because that's a couple of hours run in-game (to say nothing about it being a 6.5-hour walk in the real world) and even if I were to fast-travel, I don't think it would be instantaneous. The point is, I'm not a fan of this level of micromanagement in this type of game. In Fallout Shelter, sure, because there it would make sense.
My second issue is crafting. Now, I don't know how crafting specifically is introduced in the base game before any DLC is added on, but with the GOTY version that comes packaged with every little bit of DLC, you know how to build everything imaginable for whatever reason. I don't know if that's normal, or if it's something to do with the DLC being active, but seeing how much stuff you can build is a little overwhelming. Maybe it was a "people got upset when Dogmeat died so we made Dogmeat unkillable" mindset and Bethesda just decided to give players access to build a fucking windmill out of plane parts. It would make more sense to have the player learn how to build different items by finding/earning blueprints so they're not inundated with a clunky menu to build anything they can out of scrap. And let's throw a cherry on the top of this just for the sake of it. The building and placing items mechanic feels more suited toward mouse/keyboard controls, especially when it comes to the logic gates. Like maybe if the whole game was you playing an omniscient being whose sole purpose was to construct settlements, that would be its own game, but in this type of first/third-person perspective, it just feels like too much.
Lastly is the power armor. In all of the previous Fallout games I've played, power armor has typically been a late-stage suit of armor that you work toward. From rags to leather, to metal, to combat/military grade armor and eventually to power armor. It's always felt like something that you earn as you make your way through the game and are in the last quarter before finishing the main questline. And I love that! I love the progression of starting out with a mix of random bits of gear that doesn't match and eventually ending up with gold-tier legendary weapons and armor. In Fallout 4, they give you your own suit (I mean, you do have to retrieve it from the roof of a building) that you then use to promptly take out a wave of bandits followed by a marauding deathclaw. Or in my case, just stand at the top of a hole in the street and unload on the deathclaw anytime it comes into view because it fell down a sodding hole. Sure, this scripted battle was supposed to make you feel like a badass in your new badass armor, and while my experience was the exact opposite, it still felt like this shouldn't've been a thing this early on in the game. And then I find out that power armors require a fusion core (which does make sense, yes), but in order to counteract giving players power armor this early in the game, the fusion core batteries drain out while you're using the power armor.
I genuinely wonder if the meeting went something like this:
Executive: Where are we on the power armor? When does it come into the game?
Developer: We have the Sole Survivor coming upon it during "Tour of Duty" in the Brotherhood of Steel questline.
E: So you don't get to use power armor before that?
D: I mean we've introduced it, but you're supposed to run away because you wouldn't normally survive the encounter against someone in power armor that early on.
E: We were thinking that it'd be cool to get the power armor earlier, so your Sole Supervisor could use it earlier in the game.
D: I mean, we could do something like that, maybe at the beginning of the Brotherhood of Steel quest, sometime after the Sole Survivor arrives in Boston.
E: That was on page........
D: Um... that's page 62.
E: Yeah, we were thinking having it be part of ummm, what's it called. . . Oh, heh heh. "When Freedom Calls."
D: "When Freedom Calls?" When you help Princeton? But that's still in Act One. That early?
E: Why not? Think how much fun it'd be to have power armor that early. People love power armor.
D: But that would imbalance the rest of the game. There wouldn't be any reason for the Sole Survivor to not wear the power armor.
E: Yeah, do that.
D: I mean, I guess we could have some kind of time limit to the power armor, maybe so that it has to recharge or...
E: Mmm hmm, yeah.
D: ...maybe a durability mechanic so that it needs to be repaired...
E: Better! It consume resources!
D: ...but the player base isn't going to like how...
E: We like where this is going. We'll let you workshop this while we're out to lunch. Oh, and change Princeston's name. This isn't New Jersey.
D:.. huh?
That's my theory.
There are a handful of other aspects of the game I'm not overly fond of and at this point, I think it would take a lot for me to fall in line with the game's way of thinking. Things like there being too many different types of ammo, all of the different types of materials needed to craft every little thing and upgrade. I'm annoyed that there isn't a button to specifically bring up the map, rather than having to bring up the Pip-Boy and scroll through menus to get to the map. I don't like that the majority of the buildings and houses are boarded up and inaccessible. How else am I supposed to raid kitchens to find oil to build up the turrets?
Obviously, I've been enjoying the game though as I've put in just over 47 hours. I like the act of exploring, seeing how people have inhabited this take on the Fallout world, and leveling up (albeit somewhat slowly it feels like, but that's probably my own fault for doing more side quests as I come across them as opposed to the main quest). I'm also very curious as to the reason for why your child is taken from the cryo chamber, so you could say I'm somewhat invested in the main story line. But only just. I personally don't mind the skill tree and I like the visual aesthetic which is essentially just a brightly lit Fallout: Shelter. I don't see myself quitting anytime soon unless there's some kind of game-breaking bug related to the Next Gen Update and the Steam Deck that hasn't surfaced yet.
So until then, I'll keep enjoying the Commonwealth Wasteland while politely ignoring the cries of help from my settlements that are a five-hour walk away.
Just to note, for the most part, I've held to my "don't want to fast travel" MO, although I did recently break it after acquiring a suite of power armor from somewhere on the eastern edge of the map and I wanted to make it back to Sanctuary Hills where I had safely stashed all my found fusion power cores. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make it back before the power ran out, and I guessed that the game might be more forgiving towards power consumption. And less likely to get distracted by map markers.
Yes, I am 100% hoarding most/any power armor I come across. I know of two shells that I need to go back and pick up if they're still there. At the moment, there are four suits just hanging around Sanctuary Hills minding their own business.
I've recently been playing a lot of F-ZERO X on the Nintendo Switch Online N64 App (I don't know what to rightly call it) because I somehow got The Squire interested in watching me barrel down a futuristic track at 1,400 kph (bloody hell). Surprisingly, "Crazy Call at Cry" is only used in the two Port Town tracks, Port Town in the Jack Cup, and Port Town 2 in the Joker Cup, which hits on two different levels. For one, it kinda makes the song that much more special that it's used sparingly, but second, it's a little sad that it's only used twice out of 24 tracks.
The song itself, is really awesome, if a little odd. For the first 12 seconds, there isn't a whole lot that stands out about this song. There's a drum intro with distorted guitars sounding like a revving engine. But then at 13 seconds, we get a few chords from a MIDI keyboard/choir which is where I think this song stands our from most of the other tracks. It's a short section, lasting only six seconds as then the guitars come in with the melody that takes us through the end of the song until it repeats at about the minute mark.
It's a relatively short song, but it's one that I love hearing on the first Port Town stage as the final race in the Jack Cup. It's just a great way to close out the first cup in an F-Zero circuit.
I'll be upfront. I was a little disappointed in Journey. I don't know if it was because I played Sky: Children of Light a few years back and didn't vibe with the online connectivity and the minimalist approach to multiplayer games, but once you start running around with another character in Journey, I began to feel self-conscious and less interested. The feeling of exploring a new world was taken away and replaced with a sense of urgency to get to the end of the stage because that's what the other character felt like it was prompting me to do. The first half of the game was brilliant, beautiful, and magical. The second half. . . I don't know, it just wasn't.
And I think a lot of that feeling harkened back to how I felt playing Sky: Children of Light when I realized that it was an online multiplayer game at its core. This is because about halfway through (I'm not 100% sure actually), Journey turned into an online two-player game. Without any kind of warning whatsoever. Just like Sky: Children of Light, it felt weird and awkward to all of a sudden have another player there, unbidden, running around in the same world, working towards the same goal.
One of my self-conscious-related hangups is that I felt that Journey was about exploration, to a certain extent. In the first area, you are running around an expansive desert landscape with a mountain of light off in the distance. Before you, are glyphs/glowing runes that once collected, make your red scarf a little bit longer (is this a health or stamina bar?) The rest of these glowing runes in the first area are a bit out of the way, implying that you're supposed to explore off the somewhat beaten path before completing an area. There are also ruins scattered about that contain bas-reliefs that didn't do anything discernable apart from the game indicating that I located them, so that was something else to look out for.
Jump ahead to the halfway point (again, just guessing here) and now there is another character with me. This other character looks a lot like my character, albeit their scarf is longer and we both seem to be going in the same direction. I first thought that this was a computer-controlled character since there was the white-robed figure in the vision/dreams between levels and the flying carpet-type creatures that felt very animalistic, so it wasn't like there hadn't been any indication that I was the only character in existence. Then, like in Sky: Children of Light, this other character started moving in a way that felt like it was being controlled by another human, and not by a computer mind. That's when the self-consciousness began to set in.
I fully recognize that this is a me problem and not looking too closely at the game before starting. I had wanted the game to be as much of a surprise as could be when starting a 12-year-old game that has garnered so much praise. Before starting, all I knew was that Austin Wintory had written an amazing soundtrack, that the praise for visuals was well deserved, and that you played as a red-cloaked character running through the desert toward the beaconed peak of a distant mountain. I honestly don't know how I would have felt had I read the Reception section on the Wikipedia article and seen all of the comments about playing with strangers being a highlight.
I think my next playthrough, because I'd be surprised if I didn't play this game again, I will turn off the WiFi so I can experience the game as a single-player game. I know that this is not how thatgamecompany intended the game to be played, but that's how I had internalized this game before I started and while playing the first couple of opening areas. Playing through this experience as a solo experience I think will better allow me to focus on the visuals and environmental storytelling, rather than feeling compelled to move forward because that's what the other player is expecting me to do. Sure I could just ignore the other player, but then I feel that that wouldn't be fair to the other player. I feel that I have to disagree wholeheartedly (I don't know what that says about me) with Mr. Donlan of Eurogamer's sentiment that, "The truly brilliant move [...] was to leave a space at the very centre of the design that only a stranger can fill."
Can cops just stop killing people who are in their own houses after having called the police because there was a suspected intruder? How power-hungry and/or insecure do you have to be to feel threatened after waiting around for minutes when a woman in a nightgown says "I rebuke you in the name of Jesus" to shoot her in the face!? Cops untrained in mental health intervention, even if the initial call is not mental health related, should never put themselves in a situation where they can claim Qualified Immunity because "this exact scenario has never happened before." Or even cops breaking into other people's apartments and killing the person when the cop is in the one who is in the wrong location. Yes, that's six years ago, but oh well, it still pisses me off.
I'm sure that there are better ways of transitioning, which I am legally obligated to point out until the day I can do it flawlessly.
I recently tried out the new built-in Recorder function on the Steam Deck and in one instance, it worked great! I pressed the Steam button plus the A button and the recording started (after enabling the recording function in the settings) and when I exited the game, the recording stopped. The recording is stored on the hard drive of the Steam Deck and, at least on the Steam app on the Steam Deck, and it is stored with all of the other screenshots taken using the Steam app. Where I ran into a problem, how do I do anything with this video? I recorded under 30 minutes of gameplay for an upcoming article and accompanying YouTube videos; the file is 1.6 GB in size. Steam tells me that I cannot send the video to my phone because it is too large as 100 Mb is the maximum file size. I have the option to send it to my laptop, but again, Steam tells me that the file size is too large. So what do I do? I've searched for a solution, both on the Googs and on the Steam Deck Recording Beta forums and Support forums, but I haven't found my specific issue, which I would find hard to believe is the first time this has ever happened. What I do find amusing is that there is a lot of focus and wording about "clips" as if people who're using the recording function are only interested in 30-second clips and not full-on walkthroughs lasting hours. I guess I'll just have to open Desktop Mode and track the file there, then upload it to DropBox? My other solution is to use the same screen recording function through the Steam desktop app and then upload them to my laptop, which I've now done four times for an article coming later this month for She Could Fly: Documentary Escape Game.
As for other games, I talked a bit about some that I finished while yachting around Norway, but for those of y'all who don't want to click back, I'll just list them here along with a few other titles:
Started
Layers of Fear 2
She Could Fly: Documentary Escape Game
Finished
BAISU
Bright Lights of Svetlov
The Outer Worlds
Journey
Continued Playing
Kingdoms of Amalur: The ReReckoning
The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening (Remake)
Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line
Triangle Strategy
Animal Crossing
Fallout 4
Whispering Lane
Bit.Trip Presents: Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien
Bit.Trip Runner
Gave Up On
Seed of Life
Demos I Need to Write About
Bonefield
Enotria
Hannah
Haunted Bloodlines
Judero
Reason Unfound
What the Car?
Alright, now that we're done with lists, let's just say goodbye for now and that I'll (likely) have an article up for Journey on Monday and maybe a First Impressions for Fallout 4 (after having already played for 42.9 hours) on Friday. I've got some ideas for the rest of the month. Kind of. Maybe?
