Robearth

I don’t often buy games at their release. I have too much to play already so I can’t often motivate myself to do so.

I especially do not pre-purchase games. Since I have so much to play already, it often feel like throwing money in the lake. It’s better for me to wait and see what sort of reception the game gets before I deem if it is worth spending time on or not.

And I’ve just about never bought a game’s season pass before the game was released. I want to know if I like the game before I commit to DLC.

…BUT contradicting all I stated above, I pre-purchased Midnight Suns: Super Special Legend edition (or whatever it was called!) that included the game, the season pass for the first four DLC and some other random cosmetic goodies. On paper the game just fits my profile too perfectly; it’s like the developer looked at my play history and decided that they wanted to make me a game. I’ve been playing Midnight Suns a lot lately and I’m having tons of fun. The game have some pacing issues, confusing difficulty, several bugs (including crashy ones) and a lot of awkward diagloue; but it is still freaking fantastic. I forgive it all when the game lets me be best buddies with Peter Parker aka Spider-man aka my childhood hero.

A gourmet table for the Marvel Comics afficionado. The references to characters, events and stories from the Marvel universe go far and wide. As a long time fan of that world, it is such a pleasure to be able to befriend some of it’s biggest characters and help them overcome their problems. You also get to know lesser known characters like Nico from the Runaways, Magik the queen of Limbo and Robbie Reyes, the lesser known Ghost Rider.

Even if the lore and the characters are fantastic, it is in the tactics gameplay where the game shines most. At times it even feels like other stuff is getting in your way when all you want to do is bust some Hydra skulls with your best buddy Spider-man. Tactics gameplay is centered around card mechanics where you bring three characters to a mission, each of them with a set of cards that you setup when you prepare your loadout. Each of these character decks are shuffled together as one pile that you draw from (pretty much how we did it in SteamWorld Quest 😉 ). Each character has their own health and offense, and of course when a character goes down you can’t use their cards anymore.

Except for the cards it is also important to position your heroes and make use of the environment. There are a number of different actions you can perform on each battlefield that you make use of by spending “Heroic Points” (which is the same resource you use to play cards). These actions can be stuff like jumping of platforms to strike down on enemies, throw boxes at them or hit explosive barrels. At their core a battlefield is just an open field, but thanks to the different environment actions and some other minor differences, they feel different enough for the game to never go completely stale.

There is a lot I really like about Midnight Suns, not only because I’m a huge Marvel geek and a big fan of card games. The game has a lot of interesting stuff going on. There are a bunch of systems that all feed into each other. You can explore the area around The Abbey (basically your home base in a pocket dimension away from the bad guys), this gives you ingredients that lets you craft items and resources as well as reward you with special cards for the main character. You can befriend the different heroes, this gives you small stat bonuses and also improved co-op attack during missions. Each mission awards you with new cards and there is a constant stream of new characters, so you’re never out of toys to play with. Even though the systems can sometimes be a bit chore-like, most of the time they present meaningful choices that impact other aspects of the game.

Another thing I really like is that you unlock difficulty levels as you progress. You unlock new ones quickly, you just have to finish a couple of missions in a difficulty level to unlock the next one. This naturally and quite smoothly gets you to your optimal difficulty. Each increase in difficulty also gives som extra cosmetic resources and bonus experience points for your heroes, which is a nice bonus to not make it feel as bad when you decide to pick it up a notch.

The only gripes I really have is that even though the dialogue for each individual hero you meet is well written, some of the interactions with your character “The Hunter” can become quite awkward and often the social encounters or the exploration gameplay feels like chores to get to the real gameplay, the missions.

I also feel like the difficulty can be a bit uneven at times. As mentioned before there is a difficulty setting but the enemies also scale with your levels. The problem is that even though your character have high stats, they may not have the cards to back it up, so some levels end up being ridiculously easy while others spike, depending on what loadout you have available.

That said, I’m really looking forward to DLC. The first one has just been announced and apparently it is Deadpool who is joining the crew. It’s gonna be great to go through his dialogue, see his cards and play through his missions. Maybe I’ll write another piece about this game down the line.

I tried to support the people in Ukraine through a few different organisations, but one of the more “fun” ways to support is the bundles that have become a staple on itch when humanity needs assistance. It is amazing to see the indie game community come together to spread help and awareness while also delivering an overwhelmingly large numer of colorful games.

As with the previous bundle I’ve started to try as many games as I can muster and I decided to write a little bit about each one I’ve tried. Disclaimer that my thoughts might be a bit harsh, since there are so many games I had a rule that I would not continue to play a game if it somehow lost me from it’s grasp (be it because of bugs or gameplay). I only played for close to 10 minutes on certain games which is too little time to make a nuanced report. That said, I have the greatest respect for anyone who puts their game out there and manage to find an audience, hats of to you, but these are my raw experiences playing through the first few games in the bundle.

Evergate

Developed by Stone Lantern Games and published by PQube.

Link

I thought the art style was pretty neat for this one, especially the particle effects. They were colorful, playful and pulled me into the game. Unfortunately the main character and esp. it’s animations were a bit lackluster and didn’t really follow up on the first impression.

Having played my fair share of platformers before, it’s a really hard sell for me and the game is gonna have to present me with something really tasty to hook me. Evergate is a puzzle platformer with a sort of sling shot mechanic where you fire the main character through objects to gain a movement boost. It was a bit hard to understand at first but I got a lot of time to figure it out and the game had a nice step by step tutorial.

After the tutorial I went into some sort of portal that took me to China from 300 years ago if I understood the UI correctly. I thought: “Cool, maybe I get to play through a historic event or something considering I’m some sort of death god that travels to earth for the first time.” Unfortunately I was majorly dissapointed when I was introduced to a very classic puzzle game setup playing through room after room of small action puzzle challenges. I got tired of it after two rooms and turned the game off. Did not at all understand the connection between the gameplay and the narrative.

SkateBIRD

Developed and published by Glass Bottom Games.

Link

I was a bit hype for this one. This was one of few games on the vast list that I’d heard about before and really wanted to try out. Also my partner is a big fan of birds so we’ve played a lot of Wingspan (board game by Elizaberth Hargrave) and this felt like it tried to evoke the same emotions through it’s art. I was also a big fan of the Tony Hawk skater games when I was younger, although it was probably 20 years ago I played it last.

The main menu and especially character creation screen is absolutely brilliant! Immediately I got all giddy and tried out plenty of different looks for my little skater bird. There were a lot of options and every bird I made ended up super cute!

The gameplay was a mix of self-expression and mission based, mostly the early missions required me to understand one of the different tricks I could perform with the skateboard. It was a pretty nice learning curve, starting out not being able too do much before falling but steadily becoming more proficient in controlling the board.

I could probably continued playing for an hour or so? But turned off the game after around 30 min feeling quite done after that time. This type of game is not really my jam anymore.

Fuzz Dungeon

Developed and published by Jeremy Couillard.

Link

This game was a crazy ride. Really felt like I was looking into another persons mind with a bunch of references, imagery and sequences that I had no idea of what to make of.

Unfortunately I had some troubles with the game getting stuck and me having to restart. That combined with the fact that I didn’t vibe particularily well with the amount of weirdness I was presented with, resulted in a very short gameplay session. I felt like this game had needed some sort of additional context for me so that I would have a driving force to get through it. One thing it had above the other two above in this list though, I had no idea in which direction this game was headed.

From Software have really been on a streak, continuing to release critically aclaimed games. I haven’t even gotten around to play Sekiro yet but when I heard the impressions from reviewers with Elden Ring I felt I wanted to join the hype train at launch. I was not dissapointed, the game is probably one of the best I’ve played. You get nauseus about the amount of content is packed into the game.

I’ve banked around 70 hours into the game by now and it’s time to write something about it. I’ve hit some kind of rough patch when it comes to playing the game. I haven’t really touched the game for a week and last time I ended my session I had just lost a bunch of runes after dying a few times in one of the infamous Hero’s Graves dungeons which contains the worst enemies in the game.

In the end of the day though, I love Elden Ring. It really lived up to the hype. It’s as close to perfect you could get within reasonable boundaries with a huge game like that. From Software have learned their lessons from previous titles and really sharpened their loops, mechanics and progression systems to something that feels really good. Elden Ring borrows HEAVILY from previous Soulsborne games (Sekiro included) and the novelty it takes on from Breath of the Wild. A pitch that would sound ridicolous but that makes so much sense when you see the results.

First Hour

The “first” first impression was that Elden Ring has used most about everything from previous games. Fonts, UI, animations, game systems, etc. So much that during the secret tutorial I was sort of dissapointed, I was a bit worried that it might “just” be another souls game, but my frown was soon to be turned upside down. From Software have basically invited their own genre, so why fix what isn’t broken? As soon as I got out onto the open world though and secured my horsie, my mind got blown over and over again.

Huge Open World

Exploring the world is so much fun. There is so much content that it hurts my poor brain looking at it all. A lot of hidden goodies to find, plenty of amazing vistas to look at and packs of mysterious characters to be intrigued by. The horse-goat-thing is really what makes it joyful, before I had found it and had to travel by foot and sneak around everything to not get killed, it was instead really scary out there. That makes it so much more intense when you go into dungeons, since you can’t bring your horse down you have to rely on good old shield and rolls to keep out of danger

Combat, any way you want it

Combat is excellent as always. What really makes this game glow is all the options and all the ways you can break the game. I like that the game is a little broken and that there are plenty of OP strategies you can find. It lets you make the game easy if you want to and make the research for yourself. This kind of game is also nearly impossible to balance properly, so certain strategies are bound to be more powerful than others. That said, I’m not at all playing multiplayer so the PvP scene might be completely whack, bu that doesn’t concern me.

Characters and Quests

The characters you encounter are as mysterious as ever and the quest lines need to be googled to be followed with precision. This is the only case where I allow myself to google help in the game, everything else I must explore for myself or discuss with someone else live, but the non-player characters’ storylines are bloody impossible to follow sometimes. It’s basically Where’s Waldo again and again in one of the largets game worlds ever in this genre. They often leave close to none clue of where they will show up next. That said, when you actually manage to figure something out, you feel very smart. That feeling of pure satisfaction when you succeed with something is what makes the souls game so great overall and it is true for its questlines as well.

To be continued

I have more to write about this of course, but this will have to do for now to at least get something on the board. Hopefully I won’t let four weeks pass until next post. Ciao!

Think what you want about Riot games as a company, they are quite controversial these times, but they have some solid developers in their midst. Growing up I was a Dota-boy and I transitioned to LoL as early as Beta version. I played it a lot with my brother and some of my friends. Made a lot of new friends in the game. Played it with my students when I became a teacher. Needless to say, the game and especially the characters holds a special place in my heart.

The last six months I’ve started playing Legends of Runeterra a lot; Riot’s card game set in the same world. I played it quite a bit at release as well but I fell off because of other interesting games that popped up. Now I’m really hooked, much thanks to me buying a new phone where you can actually play games. Since digital card games these days are so well adapted to mobile screens it works just as well to play on the phone as it does on the PC.

Rather than talk about how the game works I thought I’d focus in on the stuff that I really like about it.

First: The Champions

Each deck can have up to six champions. You can have fewer if you want to but generally the champions are pretty powerful units so you want them in the deck. You can have a maximum of three copies of each champion in the deck(as with any other card). Champions have a level up condition, when leveled up the champion will switch to a more powerful form which will often speed up the game considerably if not dealt with quickly. The champion often have an effect that helps them on their way toward their level up. Conditions are things like seeing units die, dealing damage, targeting enemies or seeing specific keywords on allies. Champions are often the build around cards for each set. Each champion comes with a set of cards that are designed to use with them, but many champions have overlapping effects where you can double down on a specific strategy or creating interesting combinations.

Second: The Attack Token

To win in LoR you have to lower your opponent’s crystal’s health to zero, the most straightforward way to do this is to attack. This is by no means a unique rulest for card games, what is unique is the way the attack order works. Who gets to attack is determined by an attack token. The attack token starts with a player chosen at random and is then passed back and forth between the players as they pass turns. Since you can attack at anytime during a turn as long as you have the token, this creates a very interesting choice: Do you “open attack” or do you “develop”? The one who has the attack token always takes the first action, so an open attack is simply to attack as the first thing you do on a turn. This often means that you aren’t attacking with at much as you could have, if you have any units in your hand, but it also means that the opponent can’t develop any more blockers than what they have. The other option is to spend your mana to develop more attackers and then attack. Which of these options is the correct one is often not trivial to figure out as it depends on match up, what cards you think your opponent have and what the current health total is.

Third: Spell mana

Often the more simple feature contributes the most to elevating certain games from being mediocre to being great. Spell mana is such a feature. Starting from zero, at the start of each turn you gain one extra maximum mana and then refill. Any excess mana that you don’t spend are lost to you, except if you have available spell mana slots. There are three spell mana slots and you can use them to bank mana for future turns, but you can only use that mana to cast spells. There are three types of cards in LoR: units, spells and landmarks (these were added in one of the expansions). Units and Landmarks stick on the board and have lasting power where spells often have an immediate effect, often a more supportive one. This makes it so that there is a merit to saving some of your mana but only makes it available for certain plays.

Fourth: Passing the turn

In LoR you take turns doing one action each during a round. Passing the turn might seem like a mundane thing at first, but it’s actually quite a brilliant chicken race mechanic. You often don’t want to be the first one to commit to something big, as if you don’t have any available mana left your opponent knows that you can’t deal with anything they play. This makes for a fun dare game were if you have the most developed board state you can dare your opponent to act first or spend their mana.

Finishing thoughts

Apart from those four points, LoR is just a well made game with tons of good voice acting, interactions between the characters on the cards, cool mechanics and right now a really fun meta. They also have expeditions (a form of drafting) and a single-player mode. They also have an extremely generous economy. I haven’t paid anything and I can still make any deck I want. Only reason I would want to spend money on it would be to support the developer, which is something I really should do I just haven’t decided what I would want to buy. There are some cosmetic items that are pretty cool but nothing has fully caught my eye to warrant a purchase.

Well, that’s a few thoughts. Might make another post later about it.

I never thought that I would play Fortnite.

I thought of Fortnite as something that young people, youtubers and other influencers play. Not even from a proffesional angle, to analyse one of the most succesful games in history, did I think that I would ever play Fortnite.

Then it happened.

It was after we had been to visit family in northern sweden. We have a nephew that is old enough now that he and his friends have started more mature games, like Fortnite. He had carefully asked me a few times if I wanted to try and play Fortnite with him (we had played other games together before) but I had kinda blown it off as something that I really didn’t have time to learn as properly as I would’ve wanted.

But then, at that visit, he told me that this season was the SPIDER-MAN season! As I explained in my earlier post, I freaking love spider-man, dude, so this was a powerful catalyser to start me in my Fortnite journey. I agreed to play with him and try it out one time, another draw being that I wanted to try it out on the PS5.

I was hooked after the first match (which we won, and then went on a ten game win streak. Just spittin’ facts y’all).

The game had so much more to offer than I first would’ve thought. The map itself almost fell like a small MMORPG with a bunch of tasks and events that you could take on while the actual battle royal is happening around you. The first few hours I treated it pretty much like any other Battle Royale shooter as I’ve played quite a lot of Apex legends, but the game continously evolved as my nephew presented new features. Tents, cars, hens and of course, constructing.

The building part of Fortnite is was makes it really stick out from other shooters. I feel like it’s such an unlikely feature to add to a game like this and it really gives off the vibes that this isn’t the intended form for this game. Seeing more experienced players use constructing buildings in tandem with firing guns. And there is really a great deal of strategy and tactics in using the building aspect, it creating ways to hide, disrupt enemy fire, isolate targets, etc. I’m not sure I’m particularily fond of it, but I respect the mechanic for what it brings to the table.

And then there are the skins. Holy moly, there are so many skins and it feels like a new one shows up in the shop everyday. I mean I have pretty good impulse control when it comes to most things so I only had my sights set on the Spider-man costume, but it’s hard not to get mesmerized by the sheer volume of skins, emotes, music tracks and weapons. Actually that feeling sums out the game pretty much, “a game with a mesmerizing volume of content”.

There is always more, it never stops since Epic is doing a fine job of keeping the game fresh. Mechanics, items and stage hazards are added or removed continously. Each season often brings entirely new areas and NPCs. This season for exampel introduced web shooters which let’s you swing by shooting strings of webbing, like Spider-men. This allows for unprecedented movement capabilities and is new for this season. Each season also brings new storylines with new quests (although both the storylines and the quests are often quite simple).

And beside everything else, Fortnite is still a fine shooter you can play with your friends where each match can be played within an accepted time frame.

Even though I’ve acheived what I set out to do and got enough levels to earn myself the Spider-man skin I might still continue to play the game some more, but not like I have been. This game has eaten up a lot of my spare time lately, but I don’t regret it because it’s been fun and I’m glad I tried it.