July 30

Thoughts on God of War

Third-person hack’n slashes are not a comfort game genre for me, the mechanics are ofte a bit too execution heavy for my taste and they are seldom varied enough. That said, I’ve enjoyed just about every God of War game that has been released. I think I’ve finished each one except for God of War 3, there aren’t many long running game series I’ve been that loyal to. They’ve often delivered extremely satisfying combat and amazing scenes were you battle gigantic monsters and beings.

I was interested in this game from when it was released, because of the connection to norse mythology. There are some great stories to take inspiration from and I also liked the prospect of the dynamic between Kratos and his son. When the game released I have fond memories of all the “Boy!” memes that flooded the internet and I heard great things about the game. Still, as it often goes, I have not had time to play it until now. I decided to make it this years summer vacation game and it has been a mixed bag with some really nice highs and some dissapointments with some decent gameplay inbetween.

First thing that struck me as curious was that the game had suprisingly little emphasis on combat. All the God of War games that I can remember had a very heavy focus on combat and felt more like arcade games. This was much more of an action/adventure game with quite large doses of exploration, narrative and puzzles. If I would have to guess I would say that I spent maybe 25% of the game time actually fighting? Most of the time I was running around exploring the world.

Second thing that stuck out was how well written the characters were. The narrative was the number one reason for me to want to play the game through. I loved the dynamic between Kratos and his son Atreus, how their relationship constantly shifted and how it affected how Atreus would act in combat. Truly a wonderful story of a single parent trying to raise their child after a tragedy. At the beginning Atreus is really unsure of himself and is extremely respectful towards his father, but as they discover the world together, meet new people and defeat new challenges, his demeanor change with time.

I had some difficulties getting into the combat. At the beginning I died quite a few times so I decided to lower the difficulty level one step, playing on normal. After the first hurdles and when you could start using equipment and skills to optimize your strategy I got comfortable with it. I did get tiresome after while though, when you’ve seen the same combination of enemy a few too many times it becomes more of a chore to push through than something actually enjoyable. I think I would’ve wanted the games main story to end slightly sooner, maybe removing one of the dungeons or making some of them shorter. At the end I was only in it for the story.

The progression system was pretty cool. You have a lot to play around with. Experience to buy skills and upgrade your special moves, silver to buy equipment that give you stat boosts and enhancements that you can slot into equipment. It felt like an interesting enough system that you got rewarded enough for interacting with it. Although I had a hard time figuring out excactly what the stat increases were worth too me.

The boss fights were probably the most dissapointing part of the game. I was expecting to face off against some of the greats in the Norse pantheon but I didn’t feel like that fantasy was fullfilled. There are some really epic fights, especially one against a dragon, but they did not have the proper narrative weight that is often associated with taking down gods in God of War. Most bosses were variants of each other and there were few that were memorable at all. You handle them pretty similiar to how you handled normal enemies. As I mentioned before, would’ve liked a somewhat shorter games with less content repetition and a more balanced expectation from the game for what I would be facing.

Continuing on a similar thought, hitting stuff as Kratos feels kinda awkward. Sometimes he is super duper strong, and sometimes his hits feels very mediocre. Just bashing a monster and getting no visual reaction from it other than small *thuds*, health bar decreasing and a small visual effect. Often not enough of selling the fantasy of you being a super strong god that is killing random undead. Combat feels best when performing gory finishes or when battling really squishy enemies so that you would clear a small army with relative ease. That felt more appropriate to how Kratos should be able to perform.

Last thing to note: Exploration. The exploration gameplay was really excellent. There were a lot of variation on things to look out for in the environment. When looking around for secrets or bonus content, there were always something to find. I’m not a completionist player so I didn’t do too much of the extra content, but the world felt very big because of it. I especially liked the treasure maps, which gave you a written hint and a stylised screenshot of a location where you would find your treasures, and also the rune chests, which were chests with three runes attached to it that you needed to find in connection to the chest and deactivate them to open it.

So to sum it up: Great characters, great exploration gameplay, decent combat but with somewhat dissapointing bosses. Noteworthy is that I might’ve missed something big since I didn’t do much of the optional content, but I never force myself to do stuff like that when I feel done with the game.

February 8

Thoughts on Mass Effect: Andromeda

I loved the first Mass Effect game. Probably one of my favourite space opera stories. The plot has as a nice dramatic development that feels natural and not too over the top. The characters are almost universally memorable. You even remember the bad ones because they stick out so much from all the awsome character design.

Mass Effect: Andromeda has maintained very little of those aspects. The characters are dull and not memorable at all, the directing and acting is sub-par and the animations are attrocious. Bioware clearly had some development issues during the making of this game.

At first I was pretty intrigued by the gameplay, the setting and the story. The gameplay is pretty similar to other mass effect game but I particularily liked the different progression systems in the game. You have a LOT of choices in developing your playstyle, which can be awesome if the combat design can support it. Unfortunately in most fights I felt that it didn’t really matter what tactic or strategy I used, I didn’t feel like one was better than the other. Probably had the wrong difficulty setting, but still I didn’t feel invested enough with the game to switch that around (the power of the backlog gives tough competition).

I really like the setting with a bunch of space travellers that are among the first to explore a new galaxy. The intro sets up a pretty solid premise and I was into it even if I didn’t enjoy the characters, acting or directing. I kept hoping for it to get better, but didn’t feel that my persistence got rewarded.

After putting something like five hours into it I decided to cut my losses and go ahead and continue over to a new game. Maybe I’ll get back to this at a later time to hype myself for the remakes of the original trilogy.

February 3

Thoughts on Torment: Tides of Numenera

This is another one where I’m late to the party. I started my run something like two years ago but I only just recently decided to play it through. Either something else got inbetween or I hit a point which I didn’t find interesting enough and stopped playing. This time I had my mind set on finishing it and I made it all the way.

There are so much to unpack with this game. There are so many weird places, characters and philosophical conundrums presented in this game so I really don’t know where to start when trying to describe it. Also worthy of note is that playing half the game first and then playing the second half two years later affects the overall experience and the ability to get some sort of satisfying conclusion on what the game was about.

At its core it’s an isometric RPG with turn-based combat. Comparetively to other games of its genre, its pretty combat light if you don’t actively go out looking for a fight. I almost always play brawler characters on my first run if is an option in a game, but even then I felt like combat was a pretty fringe part of the experience. Combat is most often implemented for the sake of coming up with interesting incremental power-ups for your character.

All the mechanics are focus around an effort system where you have three different statistics with each character: Might, Speed and Intellect. Each challenge that you come across will test one of these statistics. The base chance to success is based on your skills in the subject but you can boost your chances by spending points of the appropriate statistic. It’s a really neat flexible system that was very easy to learn. I felt a bit too powerful at the end and could manage to get 100% success rate on any test I tried, but I guess it’s fine that you feel like a god at the end of an RPG.

Another feature that I thought was really smart was the Cyphers. A cypher is basically a powerful useable item that can only be used a couple of times. Each one has a unique effect and most of them are used in battle. When it comes to limited consumable items in any type of game I always refer to something I call the “Megaelixir problem”. What that entails is basically that if you hand a player a very powerful item that they can only use once, they will not use it at all (the reference of course taken from the Final Fantasy-series). Torment has solved this in a very smart way with cyphers. You can only carry a set amount of cyphers on each character, if you carry more than you are allowed you get something called “cypher sickness” which makes your base chance less for each test. This makes you want to spend your cyphers to make room for new ones since otherwise you get a debuff. This is much different from a normal inventory system as it creates a much more interesting choice for the player. It might be okay to have only one cypher over the limit since I want to save them for a special occassion, but having two will severly impeed my abilities so if I pick up another one I will have to use my, at the time, most useful one. I really liked the minigame of keeping that balance.

The story is really interesting but I had a hard time following until the very end, and when I got to the end it had been such a long time since I experienced certain story beats so I had forgotten most of them. This made me miss a bunch of reference that was made to things I had done earlier in the game. I think my long hiatus really damaged my experience in this regard. I think this is really a game that demands your focus if you want to get the most out of it.

You play as an incarnation of a god. This god is knows as the Changing god, and throughout the game you get to experience fates of other incarnations. This lets you learn about multiple different worlds and places, many that really doesn’t affect the main story, but they all carry a lesson or some sort of moral. Some of them reconnect in the main story, but it was really hard to keep track of all the names, places, timelines and concepts. There were some time travel shenanigans, where something you did in one of the other incarnations past lives affected your current situation, but not too many. Lots of interesting concepts are explored though, it must’ve been as much a headache as it was an exciting adventure to write it.

Always a good sign is that I kinda want to start over immediately and play through a new run and make some new choices, and this time playing it straight through without a long break inbetween. Unfortunately there are too many interesting games to play so I’m not sure that I will have time to do so. Torment: Tides of Numenera is definately on my “good games” list though, aworthy spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment.

January 21

Thoughts on Street Fighter V

I’ve been playing SFV since it became available in early access/beta. I’ve always loved the Street Fighter series but SFV is probably my favourite one to play. Now, even though nothing has been announced, it feels like we’re closing in on moving on to the next game soon.

There are still some characters that’s been announced that has not yet been released and development have probably been delayed because of Covid-19, so there should be at least a year left for Street Fighter V.

My biggest flaw when it comes to fighting games have always been execution. The timing, reflexes and dexterity you need to perform the most optimal combos in Third Strike and SFIV truly baffles and astonishes me. Big respect to the top players who can perform such feats constantly. Street Fighter V is by far the most user friendly Street Fighter in that department, being more forgiving with timing and not including any extremely tight button links.

That is the reason I like playing the game, because I feel like I can perform most stuff that I see a pro perform. I’ve also come to understand that a simplified system is one reason many dislike the game because it allegedly lowers the roof for how good you can become. I don’t neccesarily agree with that statement since removing some of the execution puts greater weight on strategy, tactics and mind games. Taking the game closer to a chess match mentality.

Finding a main character is always super tough. There are too many fun characters to play and I want a character that both appeal to me aesthetically and mechanicly. I started out using Birdie when the game was new, a slow moving grappler with good buttons and dirty tricks and now I’m playing Ed, a well-rounded character with a punk kid attitude. I’ve tried to migrate to characters I would prefer to play, like Sagat, but when playing more serious matches it never really works out well because of my poor reactions and executions. The good thing about Ed is that he has a lot of one-button special attacks, which mitigates some of the reaction requirements.

Fighting games really is at its best when you have a community to play in. I have my own little fighting game family at work, and it makes it so much more rewarding and fun to put some times into the games. We’ve also been playing in a “swedes only” tournament that’s been arranged during this fall. An online tournament of course because, there was plans of doing a offline finally but that was canceled because of increased restrictions from Covid. Meeting new local players is also a great motivator to continue playing.

I have no ambitions of ever becoming good enough to compete in any high level matches, but every victory feels good. Fighting games is chess on speed where every player has their own set of pieces, so it keeps me interested in the same way that card games do.

Street Fighter will probably always be my favourite fighting game series but I hope that Capcom shapes up when it comes to the tech side of development. The loading times are horrible and the netcode is so-so, there is a lot of room for improvement there. Hopefully it will all be better in the next installation down the line.

January 17

Thoughts on Card Hunter on Steam

Card Hunter is a name that I turned my head for. It has “card” in its title, it’s gonna be something for me right? I remember playing this a couple of years ago on another platform. Might’ve been on my Android phone? Not sure. Anyhow, this time I re-discovered it on Steam and decided to give it another go

First of all, it’s an amazing concept for a game! In some ways I really wish that I came up with it; concept-wise it’s right up my alley. A digital card game with several layers of tactical gameplay on top of it, framed as an old fashioned RPG campaign where you move around old-school paper miniatures. How can you resist that?

The art style is simple but reall neat. It really captures the feeling of old school board gaming in the 90s, it speaks to me. The cards themselves could’ve been slightly more interesting, but they get the job done. At least they look different enough from each other so that you can tell what it is from a glance, even on a pretty small screen. Hard o make an interface that works for small screens.

The game is free to play download and play but make use of in-game purchases for those who wants a slight edge or some extra content. I’m usually not a big fan of in-game purchases, but when the game gives you a full experience without needing to pay anything and not getting in your face about it either, you have to kinda respect it. There are bundles you can buy that almost represents a “buy the game”-button since it gives you most of the things you can spend in game money currency on. I was close to purchasing it multiple times but didn’t think I will would spend enough time on the game to warrant it.

You can play either Campaign, were you complete various adventures battling menageries of monsters, or you can play head-to-head multiplayer versus other players or the AI. The characters are always max level when you play multiplayer, to even the playing field. Besides that, any equipment you earn in either mode could be used in either. You get access to two different parties of three adventurers, one for Campaign and one for Multiplayer.

I mostly enjoyed the game as a soft single-player campaing experience. It’s a cozy game and can be real challenging. The card draw aspect gives it some variance as well.

Deckbuilding is done by equipment. Each piece of equipment gives your character a pack of cards. You have three characters that each have their own deck to draw from. It’s a cool variant on deckbuilding and something we also thought on when making SteamWorld Quest, but it’s very hard to get a good overview using that method. Very quickly it feels like you have little or no idea what equipment gives what since you continously unlocks new equipment slots, thus making your deck larger.

I gave the game a good five hours or so before I decided I was done. I was level 10 at that point and had completed something like half of the campaign or slightly more. Well spent time with lots of ideas and inspiration gained.

Just now read in the forums that the development torch has been passed from Blue Manchhu to The Knights of Unity. When researching The Knights of Unity I found that they also were a big contributor to Disco Elysium, a game I wrote about a few weeks ago. It’s a small game dev world. Judging from Disco Elysium I would think that the game is in good hands to develop further.

For a game to be released in 2013 and still going strong is really impressive, and the fact that it’s still in development is even more impressive. Not many games can say the same.

January 4

Thoughts on RPGmaker MV

I’m at it again. RPGmaker keeps drawing me back, it’s just so damn cozy to fiddle with when you got the time for it. During the winter holidays I’ve been working on a two year old project that haven’t been touched for a long time. The game features a “could’ve been” scenario for my RP groups long going Dungeons & Dragons adventure.

I’ve been dabbling with RPGmaker since the earliest versions and it was one of the first softwares I used to make digital games as a teenager. It’s a real treat to just sit and tinker with whatever you like with no clear goal or ambition other than you do it because you want to. Totally relaxing!

Hopefully I can post a playable version for download once I’ve cleaned it up some, but it’s filled with in-jokes that I’m not sure would fit a larger audience. I haven’t even let my play group test it yet, but that is just a few hours work away from happening.

I haven’t tried the new RPGmaker MZ, I’m still working with MV. From what I’ve read in the community, there isn’t much reason to upgrade. It’s hard to keep up with all the software updates. It feels like every other day one of the tools I’m using releases a new version.

RPG Maker MV | RPG Maker | Make Your Own Video Games!
December 27

Thoughts on Disco Elysium

The Hangover movie as a base, spice it up with some Fallout vibes and sprinkle on an eceptional character expression/progression system. Where do I sign up? I had some high expectations on Disco Elysium and it still manage to deliver a solid 10/10 experience.

Right of the bat the game hits you with some quality witty dialogue. Loved it from the first second on hearing the crass voice from the reptilian brain. You wake up in a banged up hotel room, celarly you have a substance abuse problem and you also seem to have amnesia. Although I do not enjoy the “main character has amnesia for the viewer to easier relate”-cliché, Disco Elysium really does it all the way. It revives fond memories of playing Planescape Torment, another favourite of mine.

The characters all have clear weaknesses which make them feel very human. Every time you meet a new NPC your presented with their absolute worst traits. So it takes a while before you can properly assess the characters and their motivations which make the game very thrilling.

There is basically no combat at all, it’s all dialogue. I often yearn for more gameplay driven systems when I play an RPG, and combat lends itself well to create gameplay, but somehow Disco Elysium have find simple skill test mechanics throughout the game that you can play around. There are both active and passive skill tests. Active tests are dialogue choices where you see the difficulty of the test, some of these are one time chance and som you can try multiple times. Passive tests happen constantly and they affect what sort of information you get access to as you are talking to NPC.

The internal dialogue that is the result of the passive checks truly is the greatest USP this game has. Depending on what you’re good at, you are given different pieces of advice or information. These are meant to represent the main protagonists inner wants and primal driving forces. Very interesting take on internal struggles, needs and wants. I was so inspired I think I came up with three different concepts of projects I wanted to work with, based on this type of presentation.

You play a cop in a pretty classic murder story with the classic twists and turns. I was thouroughly engaged across the entire game. If I would have to complain about something it was that my ending was slightly underwhelming. There were many things I was not content with, but maybe thats what ZA/UM wants me to feel?

They really succeeded in creating a game where it *feels* like your choices matter. After I had finished the game, I immediately wanted to start a new run and test out new routs with a different set of stats. The game is also short enough, and I mean that in the best way, where you feel like you can spare the time to replay it once more.

December 20

Thoughts on Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

I’ve recently been in something of a Star Wars phase, watching Mandalorian and also playing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. It has really gotten me invested in the universe. The two are somewhat close to each other in the timeline as well, so you could draw some parallells. Mandalorian is set after the original trilogy and Fallen Order is set after the prequel trilogy.

Fallen Order presents a great gameplay experience. Taking much inspiration from soulsborne games in their combat design and level design, while still doing it’s own thing. I can imagine it being similar to Sekiro? But unfortunately I haven’t had time to play that yet.

The combat is centered on parrries, dodges and timed strikes. There are a pretty large variety of enemies that presents new challenges, for example ranged units where you bounce back their projectiles, enemies that block your attacks and large monsters and robots that can’t be stunned in the same manner as their smaller counterparts. I don’t think there was one battle in the entire game that I didn’t enjoy. You had so much room for creativity and playfullness, really nice execution.

For me, the game fails with the characters. The characters have very bland personalities, especially the main character, and several uninspired backstories that doesn’t really carry the weight that the game is trying to put on them. The overall plot is good enough, and a nice setting for a Star Wars adventure, but with such a bland cast I just can’t feel properly engaged. The character with the most personality is probably the sidekick droid that the main character carries with him.

That said, the game was a wild ride and it was great fun to explore all the planets. The game has a metroidvania-like exploration gameplay; when the player discovers new gadgets and force powers you get access to new locations and secrets. Not a unique selling point by any means, but combined with the beautiful planets and the cool force powers, it feels fresh.

Overall, this is one of the best Star Wars games ever made so big kudos to Respawn Entertainment. They really know how to make quality stuff. I don’t really want a sequel, but I wouldn’t mind playing something like this again.

SPOILER ALERT BELOW!

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

The ending was superb. Introducing non other than Darth Vader as the final final boss of the game. I loved it! The description after scanning him was something like “Only way to survive is to escape”. Even though that character has almost been exploited to oblivion, the presentation of him and the small hints throughout the game made the reveal super satisfying. He is perfect as a final boss!

December 12

Thoughts on Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

I was thouroughly entertained by Machine Games previous Wolfenstein: The New Order and was pretty psyched when this one came out. It took me a while to get to it because of a backlog with no end in sight, but I finally managed to pick it up and play it. Always a small sense of pride when it’s been developed in Sweden and that I know people who has been involved.

I’ve always found it hard to distinguish shooters between each other. There are very seldom a memorable unique gameplay experience to be had, other than that it “felt” good when you played it. Instead, games with gun-centric gameplay tends to lean heavily on cinematic experiences to give them that extra edge. For me, it feels a bit backwards somehow that the most important part of a shooter often boils down to the story and plot.

In that regard, The New Colossus does a bunch of really neat things. It’s a great mix of highs and lows, serious topics and not so serious topics. The characters are overall great and there is a vast diversity among the cast. The story and the individual character arcs take some really unexpected turns and I often found myself rushing through the gameplay areas just to get to the next story beat.

The gameplay is what you would expect, no more, no less. It’s a decent first person shooter with some stealth and some minor puzzle solving. There are some secrets, but I never found them rewarding enough to search for. I felt like I played on a pretty good difficulty level, died quite a few times, but had no problems overall. Can’t say that I needed to change my strategy much, played pretty much the same way through the entire game, alternating between two different weapons.

There are some achievement based power level progression which I in theory is pretty neat. I like when games try to base experience systems on what the player does, rather then to generalise it. More times than not though, it’s not very engaging to interact with. Even though there were achivements like “kill people with headshots” or “kill people by burning” them, I only spent maybe the first hour or so actually caring about that. I felt like it managed itself without me needing to do much. I also didn’t feel like it affected my gameplay much, except maybe for the crouch speed you got awarded for stealth kills.

One type of “secret items” that I though was really neat was the Star Cards. The Star Cards were, as I understood them, pictures of people from the development team with their real names or a nickname printed on them. I even recognized some people! I really like when games try and show off the developers more.

Overall, this game was a great experience because of the cinematic bits. It was really worth to play through and it hade quite a few memorable scenes and characters. The game really went all the way with all the themes it presented and was raw and honest about them.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus - Press Kit

I also have come to really appreciate games that focus solely on a single player experience and not at all on multiplayer. There are too many games out there that focus only on multiplayer so it’s almost impossible to compete anyway.

November 21

Website is back up

This site has been down for so long. The site got hacked a couple of years ago so I couldn’t access it. Now, with the help of my amazing SO, the site is back up again and I’m slowly working towards making it more presentable and fun.