Monthly Archives: October 2019

Blog: Visit The Outer Worlds – 10/30/19

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Happy almost Halloween everyone.  I don’t have anything spooky to talk about, just video games.  Specifically The Outer Worlds, a game that I have no business enjoying, but still am.

The Outer Worlds is the latest Obsidian release, reminiscent of games like Fallout and oddly enough, Mass Effect.  The Outer Worlds sets you on a planet-hopping adventure around the galaxy in order to save colonists who are stuck in perpetual cryo-sleep, on a ship floating through space.

The other important thing to note about the world of The Outer Worlds, is that everything is controlled by corporations… but more overtly than we’re used to.  You quickly find out that the ship full of passengers you’re trying to save, has basically been shelved by a corporate entity and marketed as a mysterious disappearance to garner sympathy.  Or at least that’s what I took away from it.

Playing The Outer Worlds involves you doing the standard running around, exploring the world, and helping people so they’ll help you.  You know, the basic RPG stuff.  If you’ve played a Fallout game in the last decade, you know how The Outer Worlds plays.  Skill trees, companions, perks, dialogue trees, it’s all there and it’s all well realized.

Now, I’m pretty confident I’ve gone on record by saying that I don’t really enjoy The Elder Scrolls that much, and enjoy the Fallout series even less.  I’ve found them to be clunky, aimless, unappealing and broken to varying degrees.  But weirdly enough, I’m having a phenomenal time with The Outer Worlds despite how it treads on this well-worn ground that I’ve grown to dislike over the years.

Maybe it’s because everything in The Outer Worlds is more appealing to me than any of the games it pulls its inspiration from.  The story is engaging in its own right, but the added layers of a corporate run dystopia backdrop and some stellar writing makes it all click into place for me.  Almost every character I’ve met so far, from companion to random quest giver, has been interesting in their own way.  I also really enjoy how instead of being thrown into a massive open world, you travel to different planets and explore those zones individually.

The Outer Worlds is mechanically sound as well.  The guns feel good to fire, the companion abilities are fun to deploy, and I’ve built out my character in such a way that I can basically talk my way out of everything.  Even better, I don’t have to engage with the systems I don’t want to.  For instance, you can eat food and consumables to gain temporary buffs, and I have never once done that and have had no issues with the game.

I know that none of the things I’ve praised are new developments in the game space.  But The Outer Worlds does them in a more mechanically sound and accessible way than the other games of its ilk, and that’s kept me engaged from moment to moment in a way games like Fallout failed to.

The Outer Worlds is a game I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I am.  Maybe it’s the setting, or the gameplay, or the lack of glitches and bugs that are really keeping me invested, but I find myself wanting to keep coming back to it.

I’ve heard it isn’t a long game either, which is great news for me considering I didn’t want a game that was going to take 40-50 hours to beat.  Any complaints I have about The Outer Worlds are relegated to things like, texture pop-in and the occasional frame rate hiccup.   There are some locations in the game that have that Fallout grime on it that I’m not a fan of.  You know, where everything is covered in trash and people have shit smeared on their faces?  But it’s more tolerable here.  All I’m saying is that in either of those games, you think someone would grab a fucking broom and clean some of the shit off the floor.

Anyway, The Outer Worlds is great and you should play it.  I’m playing it on the PC through Xbox Game Pass, but it’s available on the consoles and through the Epic Games Store as well.

 

The Master of Disaster: Campaigning on the Side – 06

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Due to various scheduling conflicts in the past month, my group and I haven’t been able to play much Dungeons & Dragons.  I’m not unreasonable, I know that real life obligations come up and take priority in just about every situation.  Normally in our small group of 3 players and myself, I’m able to treat these sessions as opportunities for the characters who are presently there to embark on some of their own personal quests and flesh out their backstories.  But earlier this month when one of our players was out, I decided to try out a different role playing game with my group; A game I think they ultimately enjoyed more.

With a man down, I created a quick one-shot campaign in a game called Monster of the Week.  Monster of the Week differs pretty drastically from D&D in some key ways, particularly in limiting the amount of things that the players and myself have to manage.

Really quickly, let’s breeze through the basics of Monster of the Week.  First, the GM never rolls any dice, and the players only roll 2 six sided dice to determine everything.  Secondly, everyone knows what success and failure look like because the numbers they roll have predetermined outcomes.  For example, rolling a 7 to 9 for anything is considered a mixed success.  A mixed success usually means that the players do what they want, but at a price.  Sometimes that price is unwanted attention, a glitch in a magic spell, or damage, but it’s never an unknown outcome because the players get to choose which one of these complications I hoist upon them.

So with all of that in mind, I set my players off into a contemporary setting with the pretext that they were private investigators hired by the city to assist in finding a missing child.  One of our characters was a spell-slinging wizard, while the other was a man who had to quell the dark monster inside him by eating everything he could all the time.  They also decided they wanted to parade around town via unicycle and penny-farthing bicycle which was a nice touch.

What I really liked about Monster of the Week is how it’s a more role-playing focused game as opposed to a combat focused one.  It encourages players to talk to NPCs and garner good relationships with them instead of trying to intimidate and fight their way through every situation because everyone is pretty squishy.  And due to said squishy-ness along with the fact that this story took place in a modern town with laws and law enforcement, it made the players feel more grounded in the world and raised the stakes a little bit.

What I think my players enjoyed the most however, was the fact that everything is out in the open and easy to understand.  They know that when they roll a 6 or below, that’s a failure, but they get an experience point.  They know what questions they can ask me as the GM when they roll to investigate a mystery because they have a list to choose from.  None of the mechanics are obscured from the players, they know the moves they can make and the consequences of each of them.

All things considered, I really enjoyed playing Monster of the Week and it was well received by everyone involved.  I think we’re all looking forward to returning to it as soon as possible, or at least I know that I am.

Blog: A Mild Year – 10/23/19

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Since starting The Bonus World, I’ve always tried to get some sort of end of the year wrap up article together for game of the year season.  Usually by this time in the year I can start constructing some loose amalgamation of a top ten list.  2019 happens to be the first year in a while where I’m having a tough time building that list.

That isn’t to say that the games I’ve played in 2019 have been disappointing or bad, I just found that a lot of what came out this year didn’t really resonate with me.  Things like Kingdom Hearts III and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice were received positively, but once again, not my kind of games.  Then we also had some real clunkers like Crackdown 3 and Anthem release early in the year and fade away into obscurity.

I think a lot of it has to do with developers gearing up for the next round of consoles along with the fact that early next year we’re going to be blitzed with some big titles like Doom Eternal, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Dying Light 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 to name a few.  2019 just feels like the gap year between the bombastic 2018 we had with Marvel’s Spider-Man and Red Dead Redemption II to cherry pick some of my favorites, and the swan-song, end of the generation year of 2020.

Like I said, I don’t think it was a bad year for video games, but when compared to last year and what’s coming up next year, it’s definitely lacking something.  But hey, the year isn’t over yet, so I could eat my words on this.  We’ve got The Outer Worlds and Call of Duty Modern Warfare dropping this Friday (10/26), and games like Luigi’s Mansion 3, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Pokemon, Death Stranding and of course, Shenmue III in the very near future, and any of those games could be great.

But let’s be real here, I’m probably just gonna play Red Dead Redemption II on the PC obsessively and let the other games just slide into the background.

Early Impressions: Pine

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After only a few hours with Pine, I came to appreciate its ambitious mechanics and intriguing story, but ultimately found it lifeless and repetitive.  It’s unfortunate considering there are a lot of interesting ideas at play in Pine, but I just found that they weren’t fleshed out enough and resulted in a lot of meandering and fetch-quests.

From the outside looking in, Pine is an incredibly charming and colorful, third-person action game that gives off vibes of various Legend of Zelda games.  You play as a boy who grew up in an isolated village atop a mountain, which goes about as well as you might think.  The mountain collapses, and you plummet down into the unknown land below only to discover that it’s inhabited by various groups of anthropomorphic animals with their own societies and villages.

What Pine tries to do is make you play with these various settlements by maintaining your reputation with these factions in order to accomplish your goal of resettling your tribe somewhere else.  Sadly, it sounds more interesting than it actually is.  When you walk into a town, there are two points of interest that basically dictate everything about the faction and their attitudes.  First are these signs that indicate how this settlement feels about every other tribe out there through a simple color scale: Green is good, white is neutral, and red is bad.  It’s said that you could play these tribes against each other and watch them wage war with each other, but I haven’t gotten far enough to see that in action.

The second, and possibly most confusing thing you find by these settlements are things called “donation boxes.”  As the name would imply, you can leave gifts for the settlement that you’re by to increase your standing with them.  Maybe I haven’t gotten far enough to really see these in action, but a donation box seems to be the way you pay for your heinous crimes.  Have you killed too many of a certain tribe or stolen their crops and resources?  Just look at what kind of flowers and rocks they like, and dump enough in there until your bounty is paid. I feel like this box undermines the whole concept of having consequences for aligning with a certain faction, but maybe that changes as you get deeper into the game.

Another bit of strangeness comes from how desolate Pine‘s world feels.  You’ll see a member of a tribe roaming around, picking up acorns and pine cones occasionally, but aside from that, I think I’ve only seen two types of wild animals. One was a predator, and the other was a mix between an elephant and a deer, and that was it.

“Empty” is kind of the one word summary of my time with Pine when I think about it.  I find myself just going from one quest marker to the next, picking up crafting materials along the way, and never really being pushed to check out a distant landmark or curious rock formation.

What also hampers exploration is the stamina mechanic.  In Pine, your stamina is always ticking down; Whether you’re fighting, holding your shield, running, jumping or walking, your stamina is being drained.  This singular mechanic was probably more responsible for my lack of eagerness to explore than anything else.

I really hope some big change is on the horizon because as of right now, everything I’ve done has been some form of fetch quest that has me gathering enough wood or hay to craft something.  Every quest has just been me ticking off a checklist in an effort to unlock a bigger checklist.  For instance, I recently got to a point where I was tasked with stealing tokens from members of each tribe.  That was after I had to collect ingredients for a potion, and after I had to find a watchtower and pick up the materials in it.

Pine isn’t a bad game, and I don’t want to give off that impression.  I think the combat has a good feel to it, the world is stylized in a bright and colorful, almost cartoon-like fashion, and the faction control element is really interesting.  But all of it feels very shallow at the moment.  Maybe I’m on the cusp of the training wheels coming off the whole game, or maybe it never gets there.  The only way I’ll find out is through playing more of it, and quite frankly, that’s the hardest part.

This article is based off of the Steam version of Pine, but it is also available on the Nintendo Switch.

Blog: The Ole’ Double Dip – 10/16/19

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You know what’s fucked up?  The fact that Red Dead Redemption 2 was recently given the PC release date of November 12th, and somehow it has once again become my most anticipated game of the year.

I played the absolute hell out of Red Dead Redemption 2 on my PS4, uncovering everything I could, doing every side quest I could find and just lounging around in that world for as long as I possibly could.  I spent dozens and dozens of hours just yeehawing and giddyup-ing, and now I’m gonna do it all again.

It’s even worse knowing that a few days after Red Dead Redemption 2 drops on PC, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order comes out.  This game, my game of the year for 2018, is coming back to monopolize my time for the second year in a row, and I’m going to embrace it like a chump.

This might be a different conversation if I was more excited about some of the upcoming games for the remainder of the year, but I’ve found that I haven’t really been wowed by too many games this year.  But I suppose I’ll get into that in a different blog.

Part of me thinks, “fuck it, I can enjoy what I want to enjoy,” whereas the other half is saying, “you can literally see your copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 on the shelf next to you, you idiot.”

Now, Rockstar has successfully reached into my wallet several times before with the various releases of Grand Theft Auto V, a game that I own 3 times, so you’d think I wouldn’t fall for this shit again.  But here I am, like a putz, getting my credit card out and buying a game I own, once more.

I look forward to Red Dead Redemption 2 on the PC, and I can’t wait for the eventual third release of it in 2020 when the new consoles hit store shelves.  That’s when responsible and restrained Ari is going to show up and wag his finger disapprovingly I bet.

But man, it’s gonna look so good on PC you guys, those horse balls are really gonna be a floppin’ around.

 

Blog: More Apple Arcade – 10/09/19

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Apple Arcade has been out for a few weeks now, and I’ve gotta say that I’ve really been enjoying my time with the service and its offerings.  You can check out my initial impressions of the service here, but right now let’s look at some of the other stuff I’ve been playing.

DOWN IN BERMUDA

Down in Bermuda is a cute little puzzle game about a pilot who crash landed on a mysterious island.  You’re basically helping him get home by solving a series of puzzles and collecting various knickknacks that allow you to advance to the next island.

Each island is basically its own diorama that you’ll be rotating around to find different objects to tap on and collect.  The puzzles aren’t particularly hard or challenging, but the main obstacle is just hunting around for stuff you can interact with.

It isn’t the most robust game out there, and at the moment there are only 3 levels in the game.  But it had enough charm and style to keep me playing for the hour or two it took me to beat the included levels.  The level select screen also indicates that more levels would be added soon, so I’ve got that to look forward to.

PATTERNED

Following in the puzzle game genre is Patterned.  In Patterned, you’re presented with several pictures comprised of, you guessed it, patterns that you need to reconstruct.  Each level starts with showing you the completed version of the image, then sucking all the color out of it, leaving a black and white representation of the pattern.

You have a bunch of puzzle pieces that you need to drag into the appropriate location on the pattern, where it will lock into place and regain its color.  It’s very simple and remarkably fun.

It isn’t without its flaws though.  Some of the patterns are so difficult to parse that you just end up dragging pieces all over the screen until it clicks into place.  Even more infuriating is the play space.  While the pattern fills the entire screen, you can only place pieces on about half of that.  Considering it’s a repeating pattern, it shouldn’t make much of a difference.  But when I can see exactly where a piece goes and can’t place it there because it’s not in the half of the screen I’m allowed to interact with, it can be pretty annoying.

That said, I did complete every level currently in the game because I have no self control.

PILGRIMS

I think Pilgrims is an adventure game, but I can’t be sure.  Sure it has all the trappings of an adventure game in terms of me collecting objects and using them on literally anything I can see, but it lacks that narrative drive of an adventure game.

Let me back up.  In Pilgrims, you play as a mustached man who wants to charter a boat down the river.  In order to do that however, he needs to get the captains bird back.  But before that he has to help literally everyone else in the land by doing things like, cooking them a hot meal, or kidnapping a priest you got drunk, or even making the princess realize that she totally can have a loving relationship with a dragon.

It’s all card based, but that’s more of a presentation element than a mechanical one.  You have cards for your various party members and items all of which can be combined at will.  For instance, I had an old lady and a burly man in my party alongside the card for a sword.  When I had the old lady use it, she couldn’t even lift it in an attempt to be threatening, whereas the burly man had no problem threatening people with a sword.

According to the description on the Apple Arcade page for this game, it’s suggested that you don’t play to beat the game, but rather just play around with it.  That means seeing what all the combinations of items and characters can do I suppose.  It’s a good approach when it comes to Pilgrims for sure, but I don’t know that I want to play it again just to see all the animations I missed out on.

I like Pilgrims a bunch, but I’m glad I played it on Apple Arcade as opposed to purchasing it on Steam for the $4.99 it’s listed at.  It isn’t a bad experience at all, just not one that I would’ve played unless it was on Apple Arcade.

THE ENCHANTED WORLD

I can’t really speak to where The Enchanted World goes because I admittedly haven’t played a lot of it.  But based on my limited time with the game, I’m cautiously optimistic about where it goes.

In The Enchanted World you play as a little witch with the power to move the earth, and hopefully more as time goes on, because as of right now it’s just an aesthetically pleasing slide puzzle game.  Which in all fairness, hasn’t been too difficult up to the point I’m at, but I have minimal tolerance for slide puzzles, and I could easily see myself deleting this game in a fit of rage.

That said, you tap and slide pieces of the ground around in an effort to make a path for your little witch to walk through and reach the next part of the level.  Presumably, there will be another slide puzzle there, but I sure hope something else pops up soon.

And that’s it really.  I beat Sayonara Wild Hearts which I wont get into here, but as time goes on, I continue to be happy with Apple Arcade as a service.  There aren’t really any bad games on the service, just ones that I know aren’t in my wheelhouse.

Blog: Goose Crimes – 10/02/19

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Let’s skip the formalities and usual preamble so I can just get to the part where I say that Untitled Goose Game is incredible and I love it.  There are plenty of games that allow me to save the universe and whatnot, but very few allow me to just be an agent of chaos in the same way Untitled Goose Game does.

In Untitled Goose Game, you play as a horrible goose who is trying to make their way through a small town for reasons that only a goose can comprehend.  To do this, you’ll have to utilize every ounce of goose cunning you have to piss-off people enough to open an exit for you to the next area.  You’re given a list of shitty things to do, like dragging a rake into a lake, dropping a bucket on someones head, and quite literally traumatizing a child.

Untitled Goose Game is mostly a stealth game in the sense that you’ll need to steal a lot of stuff from people, and they aren’t super cool with that.  So you cause some distractions and wait till they’re not looking to grab their stuff and drop it in a river.  Untitled Goose Game embraces the, “if it isn’t nailed down,” attitude by allowing you to wedge basically anything in your menacing beak.

As a goose, you can flap your wings, lower your head, grab stuff in your mouth, and of course, honk at people.  Having this limited tool set allows for you to master controlling this winged honking beast, to better accomplish your dark deeds.  It almost feels a bit like QWOP in its control scheme, but it’s never with the intention of hindering you or artificially making things more difficult.  It strikes a good balance between limiting your actions, and overwhelming you with abilities.

Untitled Goose Game isn’t a particularly difficult or long game, taking me about 2 hours to get through my first play-through and accomplish most, if not all of my goals.  But once you complete the game, you unlock new lists of challenges that are way harder than most of the things you’ve done up to that point.

I would love more levels with more interaction opportunities as DLC or something, but as it is, Untitled Goose Game is still an incredible experience that’s truly been one of the funniest and fun games I’ve played all year.  I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone looking for a fun, yet low stakes game to play.