Game EXP: The Outer Worlds (NS)

 

The Outer Worlds
Release Date: October 25, 2019 - March 7, 2023
Systems: PlayStation 4/5, Windows, Xbox One/S/X, Nintendo Switch
Publisher: Private Division
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Ported By: Virtuous
Time Spent: ~68 Hours

First and foremost, the Nintendo Switch port of The Outer Worlds is not a pretty game.  The colors feel like they are muted and muddied, often with elements that are supposed to be integrated to some extent, like hair on a head, and feel like completely separate elements.  It's not a great-looking game and if you're someone who will only play games at higher than low graphical settings and are in the market for the PS5 Pro, then you'll probably want to look elsewhere both in terms of video game ports and at a different article altogether.  For the most part, the game ran at a steady I don't know how many frames per second, probably around the high twenties and maxing out at 30 and there might be a couple dips down to the high-mid 10s although there were never any sub-10 drops.  

That aside, I loved The Outer Worlds for what it felt like to me.  A Fallout-type game on a wide variety of science fiction worlds with an amazing set of characters as your crew, some with amazingly fleshed-out and endearing backstories and character side quests.  This makes sense since it was Obsidian Entertainment that developed Fallout: New Vegas, so there's plenty of character-building, world-building, humor, and severed body parts all over this game.  They very easily could have gone down the Firefly cookie-cutter route and at times it does feel similar with characters fulfilling certain archetypes like Parvati/Kaylee being the down-home mechanic from a backwater town, Vicar Max/Shepherd Book being the former preacher, Nyoka/Jayne being the muscle, Ellie/Simon is the ship's medic, and a couple of others who are all worth mentioning, but we'll do so later.  The point is, while some of the characters have similar foundations to those in Firefly, there don't seem to be any copycats and are each their own person.  There are specific quests for each crew member and if you have two with you out on missions, they will have conversations amongst themselves revealing both personal background and information about your current mission.  And it's not just generic banter either, but specifically directed at the other crew member.  It makes the game and world feel lived in and more real than random phrases from them only when you do specific actions; but there are those too, like when you trigger a crew member to perform a special attack.

Now that we're halfway through the article, The Outer Worlds is a first-person story-driven looter-shooter RPG with zero romanceable characters (because apparently, that's a big sticking point for a contingent of the gaming public).  You play as a person rescued out of a cryogenic pod tucked away on a spaceship previously thought lost 70 years after it set out from Earth to help colonize a new star system.  Your character is revived wherein you build them in typical TTRPG fashion by placing points into various stats (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Perception, etc) while also choosing a profession in your former life that can give minor stat bonuses (I was a "Cashier, Sub-Grade, Non-Supervisory" which bestowed upon me a +1 to Perception).  It was the closest I could find to "Accountant" or "Bookkeeper."  The whole process felt very tongue-in-cheek and I never felt that I needed to research everything in order to min/max my character build.

Without getting too into the weeds about the story, because there's a lot in terms of the main quest, the side quests, the crew quests, and the corporatization of the world-building that I wouldn't be able to cover very well, I'll just say that it's very much a right place at the right time while taking out The Man kind of story.  After you create your character, you're instructed to meet a contact on a planet, only to have your escape pod crush your contact on impact and then you take over his identity (which becomes an optional running gag throughout the game) and his ship named The Unreliable.  You talk in cities, kill bandits and wild animals outside of cities, then go back to cities to pawn all of your crap.  Rinse, repeat.  All while engaging in various quests.  It's that kind of game and I loved it because a lot of the writing, both in terms of character dialogue and item descriptions felt both genuine and hilarious.

I was nervous about this being a first-person shooter on the Switch since my experience with the finer movements in the 2016 DOOM felt less than optimized for controller controls, and my first couple of combat encounters seemed to lean into that fear, but by the time I left that first planet, I was very comfortable with how the game operated.  I took a sniper rifle approach to most situations as I would usually carry three ranged weapons and a melee weapon, so I could also have a close-quarter shotgun, a specialized handgun, or a machine gun, to go with a giant two-handed hammer.  There was a fair amount of customization as well for each of your weapons as well as your armor and helmet.  There was a hint of having a selection of different outfitted weapons depending on the situation and what you were fighting, but by halfway through the game, most of the time I would use the weapon that dealt the highest amount of damage.

One interesting mechanic was the ability to slow down time for a short period, referred to as Tactical Time Dilation.  This was explained in-game, "Due to complications stemming from being revived after an extended hibernation, your brain processes time differently."  This ability would slowly recharge over time so you couldn't just spam it during gun fights, although there were perks that would allow it to recharge faster and/or give you a small percentage chance to refill your TTD meter after a kill.  Healing was an interesting mechanic and one that I didn't fully grasp until late in the game.  Here you had an inhaler that you could mix different compounds to not only heal but also offer buffs depending on the combination of items used.  I pretty much just used whatever items I had on hand and relied on the game to pick for me if I ran out of one item or another.  The last mechanic that ended up being optional and that I never used was conditional on how you played the game.  If you receive too much electrical damage, you might develop an electrical weakness that makes you more susceptible to electrical damage, but you do get to choose any perk from your list that you haven't already taken.  The first one I got was from taking damage too often after jumping from heights that were too high.  I can understand why this mechanic exists, but the fact that it's optional kind of makes this potential character-building mechanic make the execution of this seem rather futile.  Maybe it existed in a forced form that you couldn't opt-out from early on in development but as more and more flaws were introduced, maybe it became such a hindrance that your character could be one-shotted by anything?  I also felt that a generic "1 Perk" didn't feel like a great reward for having my movement speed permanently lowered by 30%.

The Outer Worlds was a wonderful game.  It was an ugly game.  It was a hilarious game.  It was a beautiful game.  It was a game that made me want to have companions with me (it helped that they couldn't die but were only incapacitated until after all of the enemies in a combat encounter were killed).  When I found out that the DLC was only playable before you go into the final mission, I was a little sad because I did not feel like starting up a brand new character just to play through a couple of extra missions.  But I do have the game through the Epic Game Store so I might revisit this world again either on my laptop (or a future one, let's be real) or on the Steam Deck.  I was very excited when I heard that a sequel is still currently in development* and I hope that it involves all new characters as the main characters, maybe with a cameo here and there.  I could live with that.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Stories You Tell

*The narration in that trailer is another great example of the writing in the game.

P.S.  It video game me:

Game EXP: Frontiers Reach - Part 2 (VSD)

 [Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Frontiers Reach 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.]

Frontiers Reach
Release Date: March 1, 2023
Systems: Windows, Linux, Steam OS
Publisher: Blind Alien Productions
Developer: Blind Alien Productions
Time Spent: 7h 20m

Welcome back to Part 2 of our review for Frontiers Reach from Blind Alien Productions.  Part 1 was published on Monday, March 11th, and covered the initial installation and playing of the game while running the tutorial mission on the Steam Deck.  My next handful of attempts were all the "Instant Action" option because the tutorial mission was becoming frustrating with the game freezing either after crashing too many times, or somehow failing and then being stuck in the hangar.  I had tried to "Load Pilot" and create a "New Pilot" with nothing productive happening with either. I could proceed through the New Pilot creation but I couldn't enter a name, even when manually pulling up the keyboard (Steam Button + X), so it was "Instant Action" for me.

Compared to what I later played in the story mode, there were no customization options in Instant Action, which was fine as I just wanted to play something more than the tutorial.  Here you are thrown into an automatically outfitted ship with a predetermined weapons loadout which, from what I could tell every time, was a generic and non-descript mission with only "Good Luck" as your guide.  I quickly learned that the majority of the time I would be flying around haphazardly until I found something with a green target box around it, flew towards it, and then missiles and gunned my way until I ended up crashing enough times that the game eventually "froze" when I was in the hangar.  And I mean "froze" in the same way the game was still running, there was background animation and audio, but I could not press pause to exit to the main menu and the game didn't automatically take me back to the main menu; except for one session where it did end the mission and took me back to the main menu but I don't know what I could have done and I could not repeat it on subsequent playthroughs.  These green-boxed target missions I would later be almost identical to the opening story mission where you shoot at and destroy stationary land-based targets while on a planet; I specify planet because except for one Instant Mission on Monday, March 11th, every mission I have attempted have all been planet based, but more on that later.

After playing a handful of Instant Action missions, crashing both in terms of my ships and the game, I finally discovered the gear icon in the upper left of the screen and was able to change the screen resolution to 1280 x 720 @ 60Hz which finally allowed me to see the entire screen on the menus.  I also lowered the General Quality from Ultra down to Medium, lowered the Shadow rendering down to Low, lowered the Cloud Quality slider by about a quarter, and turned the texture distance to about 60%, but left the terrain texture close to 90%.  These combinations of changes drastically increased my frame rate from bottoming out between 1-8 fps down to a more reasonable 20-30 fps with frequent drops down to 12, but still very much playable; although there were times when the frame rate dropped to 0 for a second or two, thankfully that never led to any crashes; None of the videos or screenshots show the performance settings overlay that you can turn on/off on the Steam Deck.

So now while the graphical settings allowed for smoother gameplay, I still was unable to figure out how or why the game was freezing after crashing three times with the ship just sitting on the launch pad in the hangar.  It didn't also help that after I was able to finally create a pilot profile (apparently the "hitbox," for lack of a better term, to click and enter your name is wonderfully small), I found that I was horrible at the starting mission that is supposed to familiarize you beyond what is in the tutorial.  I was also less interested in the story where you attack a planet-based pirate outpost and just try to hit small green boxes with even smaller text in a not-at-all-easy-to-read green font as you blast by.  Only after hours of attempts over several days did I finally make it past the "attack the pirates" and had two ships left to try and fly through a cave where I crashed twice while trying to enter the said cave; video from last Saturday; yes, I know there's no audio.

So now we have three options in terms of playing Frontiers Reach.  The most interesting for me and engaging is the tutorial.  The combination of a story that directly involves you and your family along with primarily airborne antagonists which I find a lot easier to engage with on planet-based missions meant that I was having more fun and eventually longer play sessions where I could go without crashing for 20+ minutes.  The problem with the tutorial was that I was frequently failing somehow because my video game space Dad would say "I'm sorry," but I could never figure out why.  I thought it was related to failing to protect the rover that was transporting my space Mom and space Brother, but I cannot confirm that is what was happening.  And the fact that it was always happening right after the second not-mother ship was landing made it feel scripted, but in a poor way.  And this was confirmed by the developer, that the mission just ends there.

The second option was to play the actual first story mission, but due to the overall difficulty in trying to aim at small targets with inaccurate-feeling munitions (and missiles that wouldn't target, possibly because they're not air to land missiles, which I might have to look into now that I think about it) and frequent crashes (both the ship and the game) left me feeling frustrated and less engaged.  I get the idea of wanting to attack pirates to keep your community safe, but I didn't feel like there was any reason behind this specific attack.  There was no investment like the tutorial, or if there is, it doesn't happen until after you're supposed to fly through a cave with a very narrow opening.  And then there's the petty/lazy side of me that is annoyed that you have to go through the opening dialogue between your character and the First Mate every time you restart.  It just felt like more work that I didn't want to deal with after failing.

The last option is Instant Action, which on some level is nice to have a randomized level, there might even be more randomization as you unlock more ships than the two that you start off with, but this felt like there was even less connection to anything going on.  You launch from the hangar without any direction or clue on what you are supposed to be doing.  The mission status on your HUD simply says "Good Luck" (I hear ROB 64's voice in my head every time).  I know I sound contradictory when I praise the lack of story to just get you in the air to fight off some bad guys while also saying that there doesn't feel like there's enough here to maintain interest especially since all of the missions felt like they were modeled after the first mission, aka, destroy these targets on a stationary platform on a planet.

And then Monday night happened and I played a mission in space and not one relegated to the planet side, a lot of the game has clicked with me.  The controls feel more natural while navigating in three dimensions without worrying about gravity or the ground.  There were still the same issues I had above, that I didn't know what I was supposed to be looking for beyond a green target, and even then, I think the game might've glitched because I flew around an asteroid space station for nearly eight minutes while looking for whatever my red arrow target indicator was pointing me towards.  But I did engage with two separate pairs of enemy ships which was somewhat fun even if at times it was difficult to find what I was supposed to be targeting.

So that's where we are with Frontiers Reach.  The most engaging part of the game ends in such an abrupt way that I feel that I've failed.  The main mission feels overly difficult, and the play now option lacks direction and oftentimes feels like a reskin of the main mission.  I feel that I can tell what it is that Blind Alien Productions is going for in terms of what they want Frontiers Reach to be.  The design of the ships looks like you're flying some combination of planes  Vietnam-era Air Force hangar from the future, and there is what feels like an insane attention to detail even if I know I'm missing a lot of it because realistic (albeit retro-futuristic) flights sims are not my go-to choice and I'm playing on a 7-inch 1280p touchscreen.  There is also a fair amount of world-building told through the text of the loading screens and in conversations with other crew members in the Galley that I am interested in, which I know I haven't touched on, but that gets lost in everything I've said above.  The developer feels like they take player feedback well having made various changes to the game since its first early release and launch including adding a first-person cockpit view and tweaking level/mission elements to make them more intuitive.  I might jump back in every so often to see what has changed with the game, but right now, I just don't feel as engaged with any of my options to play on a regular basis.  I want to like this game more than I do, and while that makes me a little sad, it's a hopeful kind of sad.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
You Know I Am A Gambling Man

Game EXP: Frontiers Reach - Part 1 (VSD)

  [Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Frontiers Reach 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.]

Frontiers Reach
Release Date: March 1, 2023
Systems: Windows, Linux, Steam OS
Publisher: Blind Alien Productions
Developer: Blind Alien Productions
Time Spent: 5h 18m

Before we get to the actual gameplay of Frontiers Reach, let's delve a bit into the process of getting the game to play on the Steam Deck.  But before we even get there, we have to acknowledge that developer Blind Alien Productions (Soliloquis) has stated on the Steam discussion pages that when playing Frontiers Reach in Linux, users should beware.  Not being entirely knowledgeable about all that is entailed in Linux, some of what Soliloquis mentioned went over my head, but the takeaway from what they were saying was that playing on the Steam Deck was not going to be as stable as playing on a higher-end PC. 

That was another thing, that Frontiers Reach is hardware intensive.  Soliloquis goes into various descriptions about advised hardware in the discussion pages, again, some of which I didn't fully understand.  I took all of this to mean that I shouldn't even try running in on my laptop out of fear of starting a low-level chemical fire.  So the Steam Deck it was.  At first.  And only for a short moment.

Come with me on this journey.

Once I booted up the game, the first thing that stuck out to me was that the "Escape to Skip" text on the opening story was cropped.  Then the opening menu was cropped too, and while I should have noticed the gear icon in the upper left corner of the screen, I missed it and just read about needing to have Nvidia Physx installed.  I then found that while I could move the cursor around on the screen, I couldn't select anything with either the A button or the RT, or really any other button.  I should also note that there was no video playing on the video screen, which I didn't notice this time around because I didn't know any different.  So after shutting down the game via the Steam menu, I tried again with the same result.  I then went into the compatibility settings and selected "Proton Experimental" having had good luck with it in the past.  Now, the game booted up the same as before, the screens were still cropped, but I was able to click around to actually start playing.  Sort of.  I should note that in the actual levels, from what I could tell, the screen was at the correct resolution, so I figured I could live with a cropped menu screen for the time being.

When I clicked "New Pilot" it would bring up a menu to create a character, and I could select from several character background traits, but I could not actually name my character since wherever I clicked would not bring up the Steam keyboard and even when I brought it up manually, nothing happened when I typed.  So I tried "Play Tutorial" which only made sense.  Here you start out as the kid of a farmer about to make a crop dusting run as your Dad goes over a preflight safety check, which works somewhat well as a quick rundown on the the cockpit if you're in cockpit mode.  Then the settlement you live in is attacked and you're sent out to defend the surrounding area.  And then flight controls became an issue from that point until the present day.  Yes, the Y-axis is properly inverted (unless you're looking around in the cockpit with the right joystick, then its regular up is up, down is down).

What I found to be a coordination problem for me was that while down was up and up was down (as it should be for camera controls, especially in flight sims, but that's just personal preference), but left/right made the plane roll in their respective directions.  I've played several flight sims in the Ace-Combat franchise where there is a "simplified flight controls" option that allows for easier turning of the plane and there is automatic roll/pitch/yaw handling by the game unless you hold down a button for immediate use.  What I found difficult about this configuration was that to turn the plane to the left, you need to roll the plane almost 90 degrees and then pull up, all while flying around the mid-high subsonic range.  This made making small adjustments to the plane while trying to focus on stationary targets exceedingly difficult.  Part of me feels like a jerk complaining about this because it does make sense that that is what a plane would need to do to perform a turn, but because this is a video game, albeit a flight-sim, I was not prepared for this steep of a learning curve on just the tutorial mission.  This early on, after only a few minutes, I got the impression that this was a game that was developed by and for people who either already have a Thrustmaster HOTAS set-up or someone who could afford one as an accessory.

Thankfully in the tutorial though, your primary focus is on moving targets, other enemy aircraft, although there are flak guns that no one mentions or apparently wants you to concern yourself with even though after respawning, my ship had about 20% of its armor diminished by the time I took off after being peppered by enemy gunfire from all directions.  Maybe this was my all fault because I didn't take out enough of the enemy fighters so they all converged on me when they saw a helpless ship wheel out of the hanger.  Maybe it's just a Souls-like penalty for dying and respawning with less health until I learned to git gud.  Whatever the reason, it felt realistic, but also unfair and I was not a fan.

Lastly, after my final time crashing and respawning in the hangar, there was an announcement that stated in more eloquent and lore-appropriate terminology, that I had failed the mission.  I then sat with the ship still inside the hanger waiting for a "Try Again" or "You Died" or "You Failed" screen, but nothing.  The game was still running, the ship was still sitting in the hangar and I could rotate the camera enough to see structures burning off in the distance.  I tried pausing to bring up any kind of a menu, but nothing happened.  Not quite a freeze, and not quite a game crash, but something in between that required me to force exit the game by opening the Steam menu and closing the game.  This became a running theme for all but one time I played which we will cover in Part 2 on Friday.

So my first foray into Frontiers Reach while as plagued as it was by crashes, freezes, and unfamiliar controls, I still had high hopes for the rest of the game.  Not going into the game expecting everything to run as smoothly as one that's optimized for the Steam Deck definitely helped to curb my enthusiasm throughout and not be disappointed or discouraged.  Okay, maybe a little discouraged, but still hopeful for what we will be bringing you on Friday.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Right After Misbehaving

P.S.  On a side note, I did map the "H" key to the L4 back button on the Steam Deck to remove the HUD, which I ended up doing a lot more when I played the main missions and the "Instant Action" option.

First Impressions: Signalis (NS)

Signalis

Systems: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One & Series S/X, and Windows

Release Dates: October 27, 2022

Publisher: Humble Games

Developer: Rose-engine Games

I heard a bit about Signalis from Dr. Potts a while back and so in June, when I saw the game on sale in Nintendo's eShop and not hearing anything about shortcuts and downgrades taken with the Switch version, I thought this would be my preferred platform, although Steam Deck was a close second.

What I love about Signalis is that it feels like a very pure survival horror game.  There is a lot of confusion as to what is going on story-wise, but it feels the same way that Amnesia: The Dark Descent felt, that by the end of the game, everything was going to make sense; or at least nearly everything.  Like the original Resident Evil playing as Chris, there is an emphasis on inventory management, often coming across items that you cannot pick up because your inventory is full so you would need to either run back to the storage box (which functions the same here in that all storage boxes magically contain your items no matter where you access the storage box) or decide to use a consumable to make room.  Ammunition is also in short supply with enemies not dropping additional rounds, which makes every single shot count, but thankfully there is an optional ability to stomp your enemies for the final kill otherwise they pop right back up and you have to shoot them another one to three times (on average anyway).

Being a survival horror game, I knew that this was going to be an enjoyable stressful experience.  I tend to like my survival horror games in this vein as I don't want to be stressed out the entire time either because of game mechanics, difficulty, or any combination thereof.  In the Resident Evil remake from 2002 when the devs first introduced the Crimson Heads, the zombies that would reanimate as more aggressive and faster versions of their previous form, it offered a new take on zombies in this genre.  Signalis does something different with the enemies that you kill.  After a predetermined amount of time, they will come back to life which means you either have to kill them all over again, using up more ammo, or run around them on your way through the next door; and thankfully they haven't figured out how to open doors.  However, unlike the Resident Evil remake, these risen enemies do not stay dead after you kill them a second time.

From what I read online, they continue to come back as a way to prod the player to keep moving and to prevent them from staying in one area too long.  That's all well and good if you know what you're doing and what you're looking for, but if you're someone like me who tends to overthink puzzles (just ask The Kid on a recent conundrum I found myself in Icewind Dale dealing with a suit of armor and some priests of Ilmater) which leads me back-and-forth across the map multiple times for longer than what might normally be prescribed.  Now, I know that I'm not that far into the game, maybe the third or fourth new area (the one with the flooded bathroom that you drop down from) so there might be an additional consumable item you can use to permanently put down the enemies so they don't come back, and I have gotten pretty good at avoiding enemies altogether so I am not really killing every enemy; and I don't think that there is enough ammo in the game to actually do that.

All of this is to say, that I am really enjoying Signalis although I am finding it more stressful than usual because I know for certain that I am going to run out of time and the enemies I killed are going to come back before I figure out how to earn/gain/find all of the keys I need to open the door to find out whatever is beyond that foyer-to-the-boardroom-looking-room.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Bring Corruption to All that You Touch

Game EXP: >observer_ & Curious Cases (NS)

This is our second article in this month-long series that combines different games from different developers/publishers that are not directly related to each other.  I decided to group these two games together simply because they are both first-person mysteries where you sometimes have to solve puzzles.  That was really it.  Although >observer_ is a bit more on the psychological horror side and a much better game than Curious Cases, even if it was more confusing.

>observer_
Systems: Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Linux, macOS, Nintendo Switch
Original Release Date: August 17, 2017
Publisher: Aspyr
Developer: Bloober Team
Play Time: xx

[The Reason:  I had most of the article for >observer_ written back in November 2021, which was still long after I had played and finished the game.  There is a lot to >observer_ and I could not decide if I wanted/needed to write two articles talking about the game or leave it in one longer article.  The game itself was hard to write about because it starts off with a cop investigating a run-of-the-mill disturbance while also dealing with the disappearance of his son, and turns into a massive mystery involving a massive corporation and AI sentience (I should really finish Neuromancer).  Even now, it is still difficult to write.]

>observer_ is a strange game in a lot of ways that are hard to explain.  The story takes place in Krakow, Poland, in the year 2048.  The setting could be described as cyberpunk because most of the events take place in a tenement building where technology has reached a point where our main character, Detective Daniel Lazarski, is able to switch at will between different visual settings through the use of ocular implants and is able to jack/splice into the brains/memory banks of people to help him solve crimes.  The people do not even have to be alive as at one point Detective Lazarski jacks into a severed head.

The fastest most efficient, and likely least helpful way to describe this game is as follows.

This is how the game started:

These are the general rooms in the tenement:

This is how the game ended:

The game was a mix of sleuthing skills such as talking to people in the tenement building, albeit through video call panels on their doors, evidence searching of rooms through various filters from ocular implants, and sequences where you would "jack" yourself into the digital brains of various people (all scripted, in that you could not just find any person and have the option to hack into their brain).  As the game progressed, the question of when Detective Lazarski's dive into people ended and when reality returned a bit of a question.  These sequences were a mix of walking simulator and stealth sequences similar to games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent where being caught just means you have to start from the previous checkpoint.

I am very glad that I played through >observer_ even if I had a lot of criticisms about the UI, several of the game mechanics, and the confusing aspects of the story, or feeling that I was able to progress the story without fully understanding what was going on.  For instance, the written text on the Switch screen in handheld mode was very small, obviously not optimized for a 6.2-inch screen.  Game mechanics-wise, there were several doors that required a combination to unlock that I was never able to figure out simply because I thought I would get back to them before progressing the story, but never did.  Part of this was due to not either knowing or forgetting about a journal/log system that the game kept track of and only remembered about in the last quarter of the game.

I am actually curious about >observer_: System Redux, a revamp of the original game, and I believe the only available version on Steam, as I feel like I might be able to understand a bit more the game and the overall narrative on a second playthrough, which I know I could just as well do with my existing Switch copy.

<o>

Curious Cases

Systems: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Windows, Nintendo Switch

Original Release Date: April 4, 2019

Publisher: OnSkull Games

Developer: OnSkull Games

My Play Time: ~3 Hours

[The Reason: I think I just never came back to writing about Curious Cases because I got pulled into other articles.  But I was also not as impressed with this game for reasons that will become clear and I did not feel like sitting down to write an article full of criticisms].

I picked up Curious Cases because it advertised itself as a longer-form series of escape rooms, rather than their stand-alone series, Escape First which Conklederp and I played through mid-pandemic.  Curious Cases was supposed to be a series of escape rooms with a single storyline running through them all, and while it was that, I found that for me at least, the game was not as executed as well as advertised.

For the most part, the puzzles were closer to what we would expect to find in in-person escape rooms, although there was still a video game puzzle-solving state of mind we found ourselves in since we were playing a video game (and having played through the atrocious "Keep of Lost Souls" from Escape First 3).  The problem was after we solved the first of the three chapters and the next day tried to then start the second chapter.  When we attempted to start Chapter 2, all I could find was the option to start the game, which brought us to Chapter 1 instead.  Because a lot of escape room puzzles are about finding an object that leads you to another object which leads you to information, sometimes out in the open, to unlock a lock, already knowing a code does not require all of the steps of the puzzle to be completed. Because we already had that knowledge, we did not have to "play" through the entire first chapter again as you normally would, so we spent a few minutes re-solving a few puzzles which took us to the start of Chapter 2.  The same thing happened when we came back to Chapter 3 since I could not find any menu option to save the game, although, by the third time, we had remembered what the final solution was so we just had to enter that information without having to do anything else.

The locations themselves were all well-designed and looked fine as far as graphics and frame rate were concerned.  There might have been instances of objects clipping through the environment, but nothing to the point that the stage became broken and unplayable.  I do recall that the last puzzle in the final chapter required a bit of guesswork on our part, but in the way that the answer could be determined based on the interpretation, as opposed to a solution such as 1+3=4.  The end as far as the story goes felt a little obtuse and vague, although it was nice to be startled in a very unexpected way.  I think it is safe to say that while Conklederp and I did have fun solving the puzzles in each chapter, not having the ability to save the game and being forced to go through previously played-through chapter(s) felt more like an inconvenience.

If you were to go ahead and play Curious Cases, at least on the Switch, I would recommend either playing it through in one sitting or not turning off the Switch between chapters so that you do not have to go through each previously played chapter.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Everything Will Be Permitted

Game EXP: Metroid Fusion (Wii U)

Metroid Fusion

Systems: Game Boy Advance, Wii U

Original Release Date: November 17, 2002

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo R&D 1

Play Time: 6h 37m / 14h 47m

I played Metroid Fusion on the Wii U using the Virtual Console version of the game, which is essentially the same game with all of the same mechanics, but the VC allows the player to create a single save-state that can be reloaded.  I mention this because I did reload save-states somewhat frequently although I did have some self-imposed rules that I frequently adhered to.  I also remapped the shoulder L/R buttons to the ZL/ZR triggers as my index fingers fell there more naturally on the Wii U's gamepad than the shoulder buttons; as well as making Y for attack and B for jump.  So for purists, I did not beat Metroid Fusion and for those who do not care, I did beat Metroid Fusion in 6 hours and 37ish minutes in-game time.  The 14 hours and 47 minutes is the amount of time the Wii U timed me as having played the game, so I spent nearly half of the game playing previously loaded save-states (more on that below).  Interesting to say the least.

Let us just jump to the conclusion.  I really liked this game.  Loved?  I might need to replay it or feel that I could replay it to feel that I love the game.   I am a little sad that I listened to whatever the negative reaction was that was so prevalent in my mind that convinced me not to buy the game when it came out in 2002. I also recall seeing promotional images of Ridley and apparently thought that because this iteration looked more cartoonist than previously depicted, that the game was designed for a younger audience.  And honestly, the only negative aspect that stuck with me before I started playing was that the story railroaded you into a linear game, devoid of exploration.  This critique throws me a bit.  The game takes place on a space station as opposed to a planet, so you are locked into one location, but you are also locked into a single planet in the previous games.  And the space station has six different biome-areas, so you are not exploring a space station environment the entire game.  The railroading in the story comes in because you are directed by the station's computer system to explore, repair, and investigate different areas of the space station.  But, you do not always have to listen to the computer either and there is a fair amount of backtracking to access previously closed-off areas as you unlock new abilities and access to previously locked doors.  I honestly did not mind how you were directed to different areas to a certain extent as it took a lot of the pressure of having to remember where to go once you unlocked a new ability and I still felt that there was plenty to be explored; although there still was a bit of that.

Story-wise, I enjoyed what was presented here.  The prologue I thought felt a little forced in that it could have been exciting to be playing a Metroid game that took a hard left turn, from playing a beefed up Samus to playing her with none of her equipment, similar to Metroid Prime, giving you a taste of your souped-up abilities as well as added fear for what you will be going up against.  The prologue starts out with Samus giving some general backstory from the Metroid series, then coming into the present with her being part of a scientific expedition on the Metroid home planet of SR388 when she was attacked by an unknown parasite.  Samus ends up crashing her ship during the mission due to the parasite taking over her central nervous system, is rescued and after some time, is administered a vaccine created from a Metroid culture (it was discovered that Metroids had been natural predators of the X-Parasite).  Post recovery, she goes to the scientific research station in orbit over SR388 where their samples from the initial expedition were taken where an explosion had just occurred.  As you progress through the game, more and more information comes to light regarding the X-Parasite, Metroids, and pulls even more influence from the Alien series that inspired the games in the first place.  There were a fair amount of callbacks and homages to previous Metroid games that felt pretty organic and not forced in the way that the entire Pirates of the Caribbean sequels felt.  

Jumping ahead a bit in the story, but because we are talking about the story here, this is where I am going to bring this up.  During the game, there were cutscenes with Samus talking/thinking to herself, and some of these monologues were about a member of the Federation that she had worked with in the past, a guy named Adam.  The way that Adam was first brought up seemed a little out of the blue, mainly because this was the first time I had heard of this character.  I thought maybe a flashback to this character was going to happen in the game, but that never occurred.  Then I thought that maybe it was a character in Metroid: Other M, but that game was released in 2010 so this was likely Adam's first occurrence in the game, but apparently was a significant person in Samus' life.  As you progress through the story, you do find out more about Adam, but for most of the game, I felt like I was missing out on information from a previous game, although this was not the case.

As for the gameplay, it did feel very much like the sequel to Super Metroid, all the way down to the wall-jump which was never featured like it was in Super Metroid and I still sucked at it; although I did manage to pull off a sequence of three or four consecutive wall-jumps to get an early Missile Upgrade.  One of the biggest Metroid-type mechanics that changed in this game was how you open doors.  You still shoot doors to open them, but in previous games that required either the standard arm cannon or a series of missiles (usually five I think) or a single Super Missile, the doors in this game were locked behind security access.  As you progressed through the game, you were granted access to increasing levels of security clearance, allowing you to open more and more doors.  Thankfully the game would mark on your map when there was a security door that you could not open so that once you gained that level of security clearance, you could return to an area and do some more exploring.  I do wish that you could have accessed the maps for different areas of the station regardless of where you were.  So for instance, once you gained Lock 3 access, you could look at the different maps for the station to find out where Lock 3 doors were and head there, without having to travel to each area independently.  Really it is just a complaint about time.

Speaking of time, as mentioned above, I did use the save-state and respawn feature as part of the Virtual Console, but I did not spam this mechanism.  Most of the time.  I had a few rules that I more-or-less abided by.  

1. I can create a save-state if I have to turn the system off and I am not near an in-game save spot.
2. I can create/load a save-state right outside a boss's lair, as long as getting to the boss is not a significant trudge and part of the boss battle experience.
1. For the battle against the fight against the spider boss Yakuza, but only after I died the first time.  More on that below.
3. I can create a save-state if there is a countdown timer immediately following a boss fight.

That was pretty much it.  But I did break the last rule during the battle against Yakuza.  That battle, in particular, was a pain in the ass; actually, from Yakuza onwards, the boss battles seemed out-of-sync with the difficulty of the rest of the game.  For the Yakuza battle, after dying the first time and making my way back to the boss's lair (because I did not realize I was going into a boss battle), I did spam the respawn feature.  This boss battle was brutal in that Yakuza would pick Samus up and continually deal damage to her and then body slam her doing more damage; I just discovered that you could wiggle your way out of its grip by just moving left/right on the control pad. . .oops.  I think I could survive, at most, four direct attacks before dying.  So what I ended up doing was I created a save-state upon being picked up the first time and reloaded from that point every time I died.  Once Yakuza took on its second form, I created a new save-state and would reload that one upon dying.  I finally created a third and final save-state when it reached the Core-X form.

For the penultimate boss battle in the game, I majorly broke this rule as I created multiple save-states as the fight progressed.  There was the first stage which required you to hit the boss around 10 times with a fully charged plasma/wave beam before it takes on its second form.  During this battle, I found that the boss would seemingly learn what you were trying to do, for example, I would hang out in a nook and shoot it when it jumped to get at you, and instead, it would hang out on the ground and take shots at you since its own ranged attack could pass through walls.  So I would load the game up outside the boss chamber, and once I had managed to damage the boss a few times without taking damage, I created a new save-state.  Then I would inevitably die a few times, reloading again and again, before finding a new tactic that worked for a couple of shots, then I would create a new save-state.  I would say that I would die no fewer than five times before finding out a new way to attack the boss.  The second stage of the boss's form I figured out purely by accident as I was on an elevated platform trying to stay away from it as I only had 32 hp left and found out that I could take pop shots at it as it was jumping at me.  The third form took on the familiar Core-X form but the attacks/counter attacks did take some time to figure out.

Lastly, I want to briefly touch on the music.  It was definitely not as interesting as either Metroid or Super Metroid.  There were no tracks as catchy as the Brinstar theme or the Norfair theme, but this game never felt as heroic in its exploration as those games.  To me, Metroid Fusion was not about exploration and possibly for the first time in the series, had some very real horror elements to it.  There are a number of sections in the game where Samus is actively hunted and all you can do is run away knowing that if you were to face your attacker you would be killed.  There were (at least) two sections when your hunter would appear on the same screen, but there was a wall separating you and them, an I did not move, out of fear that if I made a sound, that would attract attention and I could be killed.  I do not know if that was actually a possibility, but the fact that that was how I felt is a major kudos to Nintendo R&D1 for getting me to react that way.  The atmosphere in Metroid Fusion is one of frequent dread (eh!?) and worrying about what could be around the next corner and the music does a great job of representing that terror too.  One of the downsides of a lot of games that focus somewhat on fear and terror is that apart from a title theme, the in-game music tends to be subdued, more focused on adding to that feeling of fear than one of creating memorable melodies.

I very much enjoyed Metroid Fusion and it still makes me sad that there was a 19-year gap between the mainline Metroid games of Fusion and Metroid Dread, but I will be happy to be able to play Dread so close to having played and finished Fusion.  The last thing that somewhat surprised me, was that I had only a 56% item collection rate.  This could explain my trouble with some of the bosses, that I just did not collect enough Energy Tanks (I finished the game with, I think, 11?).  I know that there were breakable blocks that could only be broken by the Screw Attack that I did not go back for as there was a story-event that sounded urgent, but only urgent in the way that you are told that it was urgent, ie "You need to do this Samus."  So I could have diverged from what the computer system was telling me, and oftentimes I did to explore on my own, but towards the end of the game, and after picking up the Screw Attack, I mainly followed the story.  So maybe I will go back and see if I can pick up more items, or maybe I will go back through and see if I can actually be the game just to please the purists.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

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