Sulphur on 18/11/2022 at 13:59

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Can someone tell me what's so rebel about the galaxy? Is it trying to fight back against a fascist supermassive black hole, or does it think that Oreos are better than Tim Tams? Does it stalk around wearing a red jacket threaded with nebulae and crusted with stardust while it levels a simmering glare at the authorities? Is it like the David Bowie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9l23zncj08) song, just a hot tramp, or what?

Sulphur on 21/11/2022 at 05:25

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So, thanks to game pass goading me to play and finish games, I have played and finished some games.

Somerville: from ex-Playdead member Dino Patti, written and directed by Chris Olsen, a fella who has a background in animation. It's immediately obvious that the game looks very stylish, all cinematic camera dollying and attention to scene composition, with the near greyscale palette allowing for pops of colour when alien shit happens for contrast. It's a good-looking game. Everything else, though? Eugh.

First things first, it's a pretty terrible PC game. There are no options for vsync, or to lock the framerate, and the graphics options are limited to a few quality settings. So yes, it will melt your GPU by default because it'll be running at 250 frames per second or whatever. Until, that is, you hit the bits that are poorly optimised, and the frame rate tanks for no discernible reason. Yes, it's Unity; no, it's not Unity's fault. Also, the SMAA solution is awful, with every scene breaking up into a forest of jaggies. It helps that the aesthetic is angular low-poly to begin with, at least.

Secondly, it's just a pretty average game, bordering on below average. There's not much of a story - it's War of the Worlds with a gangly fuckwad protagonist trying to get back to his wife and kid (and dog, maybe) after an alien invasion separates them. That's it. Now, that's not usually important, because Inside was able to communicate a lot of context through worldbuilding, showing you how twisted the kid's reality was and deepening both the mystery and the horror of the place. Somerville, being set in our world, lacks all of that. It has the usual scarred landscapes and ruins we've all seen before, pocked with weird alien goop you need to manipulate from time to time, which is the extent of its flavour. Immediately, you can see I'm committing the same mistake most other people are, which is comparing this to Inside. This is incorrect, because though this game looks like it's related to Inside, it's actually hearkening back to Another World in terms of what it does, and what it wants to do. Unfortunately, unlike Another World, which used opaqueness as a mechanic for much of its frustration and mystery, Somerville is fairly harmless: you get a bunch of trial and error action sequences, some atmospheric trudging, and some very uninspired puzzling.

Which brings us to the gameplay: said gangly numbnut, your protagonist, is a grown-ass man who can't run unless a sequence requires him to, can't climb most things because the puzzles need to allow him to, can't fight, and can't speak, because if he did it'd probably just be some version of neurotic mumbling to himself. He gets an alien power or two to help with the puzzling, but other than that is incapable of doing just about anything else including - and this is unforgivable - petting his goddamned dog. He also snags on various bits of scenery because this is actually a 2.5D game with very narrow 0.5 dimension space blocking and geometry that's perfectly calibrated to get in your way every single fucking time. Also, it's buggy, and there were two or three instances where instead of just doing the next thing, he flailed in the air or just got locked in place in a scene, which I assumed was part of the game (a big sign that your design must be pretty poor) until nothing happened next.

All of these annoyances from performance to bugs, combined with the average to below average stuff in the gameplay department just made me glad this ended when it did, which was about 3.5 hours plus a few extra minutes to unlock the endings. And the endings are brilliantly under-telegraphed to the player, with the ostensible 'best' ending locked behind a ridiculous sequence of pure guesswork that's a metaphor for communication.

In the end, meaningful this game ain't. 4 War of the World tripods/10 - I could have just watched a brainless movie instead in less time than it took to play this.

A Plague Tale: Requiem: Actually, I don't have a lot to say here. The reason for that is because this is an excellent sequel that takes the best parts of Innocence and builds them out into an incredible, fantastic journey. I mentioned previously that it dipped into some amount of dolorous excess, but after that part it reined that shit in to manageable levels and just kept knocking out beautiful visuals, fantastic set pieces, a compelling story, and open-ended playspaces with multiple options to deal with threats. I loved it to bits, and while the story and gameplay could be described as lacking in a few areas (the combat is still very stiff) if I was being churlish, it's just a very heartfelt game, with Charlotte McBurney* anchoring most of the experience through her performance of Amicia with all the fraught, perilous, and heartbreaking things that happen to her.

Also, there's parts in this game that you could transplant to Scorn and they wouldn't feel out of place. Squick.

10 rat oceans/10, and an easy contender for one of 2022's best games.

EDIT: oh yeah, forgot to mention, special props must be given to Olivier Deriviere for the soundtrack. It's always on point and providing emotional subtext for anything that's going on, and he brings in the whole repertoire from choir to solo cello to thundering percussion to delicate plucked acoustics, and it's all tender, eerie, terrifying, or beautiful, as needed. He was always fantastic right from the first time I heard his stuff in Remember Me, but he's become a force to be reckoned with, on par with Jesper Kyd in my estimate.


*For the English VO. I didn't see a need to switch to French, because Innocence's English cast and direction was already solid enough.

Sulphur on 21/11/2022 at 06:18

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Thanks! I loved the island, because it's very reminiscent of actual islands I've been to in the past (minus the, uh, stuff). Also, it's a well-earned change of pace that I enjoyed, given what came before it.

Malf on 21/11/2022 at 10:18

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I'm currently dipping in and out of Obsidian's latest, Pentiment (while also playing Deadfire on the side).
Pentiment is absolutely gorgeous to look at, but man, is it taking a while to get going.
Effectively, it's an Obsidian game, but with the action stripped out, so that you're just playing one of their conversation trees. It's basically a visual novel, but without the anime stylings and deeper conversations.
It's very charming, and there's lots of "This will be remembered" stuff going on, but it hasn't really grabbed me yet (although to be fair, I am going through an extended gaming funk at the moment).
There's also a lot religious and social concepts to get your head around, although these are explained very well in the margins (despite clicking on some underlined words occasionally not triggering said description). In that respect, I'm finding it to be very much akin to when I read Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, where I had to first get my head around several complex social aspects of 19th century Russian society before I could really enjoy the story. Indeed, as Pentiment focuses on a murder too (although I haven't got that far yet), and there's a heavy religious aspect to it, I wouldn't be surprised if The Brothers Karamazov directly influenced it.

But apart from that and another playthrough of Deadfire, Guild Wars 2 still gets played on a daily basis, and is still very fun (currently enjoying playing a Norn core Thief with Celestial gear).
GW2 does a lot of stuff that many open world games do, but across a MUCH larger area while other people are running around too, and it means it's got one of the best open worlds in gaming. You're rarely at a loss for things to do.
If you like your Assassin's Creed or Horizon Games, I'd recommend giving GW2 a go, especially as it's now free to play on Steam.

And Streets of Rogue is my current Steam Deck game of choice, where I'm currently trying to complete a basic (no mutators) gang member run. I finally completed a basic Gorilla run recently, and had a funny ending where no-one came to dance because there weren't enough people left alive, which the game acknowledged.
I seriously cannot wait for the second game. If it's even half as good as the first, it'll be my game of the year.

henke on 23/11/2022 at 10:59

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Ah sorry. Totally forgot about this till just now. Yeah I think I rejected your first friend request because I didnt recognize the name. Sent a new request. :)