Monthly Archives: March 2020

Gut Check – Goblin Sword

This installment of Gut Check is going to be fairly short because the game we’re talking about is fairly slight. Despite its initial release on iOS devices back in 2014, Goblin Sword, like many games, has found a new home on the Nintendo Switch. Aside from having one of the more generic titles for a game ever, it’s just an uninspired albeit competent experience.

You play as this blue haired knight who has to go through these small slices of levels, obliterating all the enemies you can and finding as many collectibles as you can. A simple enough pitch that never seems to get shaken up in any meaningful way aside from the occasional boss fight.

There isn’t much to say about the moment to moment gameplay, because it’s all just average and serviceable. None of it is particularly challenging or difficult, usually feeling more tedious than anything. You jump, slash, and mush your face into every wall you can in hopes of finding a secret chest or something.

The only interesting part about Goblin Sword is how the swords themselves work. Through either buying them with the in-game currency, or finding them in secret chests, the swords all have 3 stats indicating power, speed, and range, along with a magic spell. Spells can be anything from fireballs, to floating murder orbs, to just screen clearing nonsense. These are all activated through finding magic orbs in levels that allow you to cast these spells when you attack. You can use the spells 3 or 4 times before you need to find another magic orb in a jar or after a vanquished enemy drops them.

But that’s basically the most exciting or interesting part of Goblin Sword. Everything else is steeped in repetitious tedium that eventually will drive you to stop playing entirely. Even the “secrets” in the levels are copy-pasted, requiring you to find 3 blue gems, and two treasure chests. Chests can hide either money, swords, or useless souvenirs that go on display in your house, a place you have literally no reason to visit.

The only other thing worth mentioning is the in-game shop you can visit to spend your hard earned money. You can either buy new swords with better stats, trinkets that give you an extra effect like more health or magic drops, or armor, which as far as I can tell have no actual protecting qualities, they’re purely cosmetic. What sucks is the fact that you’re never told what the magic spell is imbued on a sword, leaving you in a position where your sword does great work as a sword, but has a lame and useless spell attached to it.

All things considered though, Goblin Sword isn’t a bad game, it’s just not that interesting or worth your time. It’s completely average in every way which is fine because the price of entry is low, sitting at 5 bucks. If you really have 5 dollars burning a hole in your pocket, and you’re looking for a generic platforming video game that isn’t going to challenge you that much, you could do worse than Goblin Sword.

Blog: Exit the Apple Arcade – 03/04/20

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Last year I, like many others, took advantage of the free trial of Apple Arcade and played a lot of what was offered and enjoyed my time with it for the most part. Earlier this year however, I cancelled the service without much deliberation.

For those who aren’t aware, Apple Arcade is a curated list of games you get access to for only five dollars a month. It’s a really good deal if you manage to find a few games worth sticking with. That’s what I failed to do and why I ended up ditching the service only a few months later.

While I was really impressed with the service (and still kind of am), I found that there were two major sticking points for me that led to this cancellation.

The first was the games themselves. A lot of the games that people liked on the service ended up being either card based games, strategy games, or puzzle games, all of which are perfect fits for a phone game. But two out three of those genres don’t really do anything for me, and the games I did stick with eventually wore out their welcome.

Take Grindstone for instance. Grindstone is a highly popular and perhaps the standout from the launch lineup of the service, but I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone who actually completed it. Grindstone got notoriously difficult and required a lot of (ironically) grinding to survive some of the later levels, to the point where I stopped playing it.

Then there are games like Oceanhorn 2 that are interesting games, but on a platform I don’t want to play them on. Sure I can tether a controller to my phone, but it still doesn’t change the fact that I have to hunch over my phone to play this massive adventure game. It’s worth mentioning that I’m sure people using and iPad or an Apple TV are having a different experience with these games, but for someone using exclusively a phone, it isn’t a great way to engage with these games.

The other big issue with the service ended up being the release of new games. In the weeks after launch, you could get 4 to 5 new games a week on the service. Not all of them were things I enjoyed, but there were occasionally one or two I stuck with. As time went on the addition of new games slowed down to the point where you might get one new game a week, and usually it was something that I didn’t want to play on a phone, or just in general.

It’s unreasonable to expect a constant trickle of quality games tailored to my tastes to come out every week, but eventually the offerings just stopped appealing to me enough for me to question why I had the service anymore. I had stopped playing the games I already had downloaded and didn’t really feel the desire to download more.

I still think Apple Arcade is a great deal if the games on the service are things you’re interested in, but I just don’t think a lot of the games Apple promotes on the service are great fits for a phone. I also find myself playing less and less phone games these days in general, making the concept of paying five bucks a month for them a big ask. Maybe one day there will be a game that makes me come back, but till then I’m fine leaving Apple Arcade behind.

Taking Chances with Baldur’s Gate III

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For those of your who aren’t aware, for the past year or two, I’ve been running various Dungeons & Dragons campaigns for my friends. I’ve more or less chronicled this in our Master of Disaster feature on this site which for obvious reasons, I recommend you check out. Yet despite my love of playing Dungeons & Dragons, I’ve never been able to garner any modicum of enthusiasm for video games that try to capture the tabletop feeling.

This disconnect and lack of enthusiasm on my part has been perplexing to my friends to say the very least. How could someone who is literally the DM (Dungeon Master) of our campaigns not enjoy these mechanics in a video game? It’s been difficult for me to articulate over the years, but I think I finally understand it. But for me to explain it properly, you need a little context about me and how I absorb information.

At a young age, it became very evident, very quickly, that I wasn’t a traditional learner, often needing to read something several times over, or do some hands on learning if applicable. To this day I have a difficult time reading something and comprehending it on the first go, often needing to reread it 4 or 5 times before I can fully internalize the actual meaning of the text. As silly as it sounds, I’ve just never been great with reading comprehension making every online course I’ve ever taken in my life a tremendous chore.

I think it’s because of that mental hurdle that I tend to zone out in text-filled, management-heavy, and turn-based games. My experience with these kinds of games usually goes the same way every time, with me eager to hop into the action, only to be buried in menus and skill trees that I can’t comprehend on my first encounter with them. Even though I know that I’m only seeing a fraction of what’s to come, it still feels like I’m being thrown in the deep end.

What I like about playing D&D as opposed to something like Divinity: Original Sin II is the fact that someone is shepherding me through it. There’s a DM who isn’t only painting a word picture for me, but is there to answer any mechanical questions I might have. It’s that hands-on approach that works for me from an educational standpoint that’s also present here.

I’ve even run into this while running my own D&D campaign. When I started out, I bought a D&D module that I would run for my players. Yet after being asked enough lore questions that I had no answer to, I decided to blow up the world and start fresh with a campaign and lore of my own. It was a lot more work, but so much more personally engaging and rewarding.

There’s also the matter of my own level of patience and tolerance for a game, but I’ve covered that before.

All of these things are factors in why I bounce off of and usually avoid these types of games. But we haven’t even talked about the gameplay portion of them yet. Even if I manage to find a suitable on ramp for me to get somewhat into the game, I still have to contend with the game itself.

It usually isn’t the turn-based part that turns me off as much as it is the “tactics” portion that bounces me off of a game. I’m just terrible at setting up plans and executing on them, whether it’s positioning, item and spell management, or whatever, I suck at it. Usually I’ll formulate a plan I think is great, try to execute it, and watch it fail miserably. Instead of doing what normal people might do and say, “oh, I should try a different approach,” my stupid-ass jumps over any rational thought and straight into a pit of self-loathing and dejection. It’s the same way I feel about the Dark Souls games, where I don’t feel emboldened to do better, I just feel like I could be playing a game I have a better time with.

And if I really wanted to split hairs (which is about to happen), I’d say that I think the tutorial levels of these games are usually the most excruciating parts. Take Divinity: Original Sin II for example. You start on a boat that promptly gets attacked by bugs and a tentacle monster, which sounds way cooler than it actually is. Then you wash up on an island where you eventually find your first village where I assume more of the game takes place. Despite trying to power through it on three separate occasions, I have yet to be able to get through what I found to be an incredibly dull part of the game.

When asked why I don’t like these kinds of games, I usually answer with something dismissive like, “cause they’re boring” or something, but what that really means is everything I’ve written thus far. But I agree with my friends when they say that I should enjoy these kinds of games. I want to enjoy these games.

But I’m not ready to write off the genre just yet. A little game called Baldur’s Gate III was recently shown off, and after reading about it more, I think this one might be the last one of these I try. After everything I’ve written up until now, you might be wondering why I would attempt this, ostensibly throwing $60 dollars into a virtual garbage can, but there are a couple of factors that are intriguing me with Baldur’s Gate III already.

First and foremost, it a Dungeons & Dragons based games, meaning I know a lot of these mechanics and have varying degrees of familiarity with them. That alleviates a lot of the mechanical obtuseness that I might have trouble with in other games. Like, I know what plenty of D&D spells, items and attacks are, so that won’t be such a steep learning curve. Having to learn both the mechanics of a game as well as their made up lore makes me feel like I have to learn two games simultaneously, which usually goes about as well as you might imagine.

On top of that, I’m really digging the presentation when it comes to dialogue options, opting for more of a Dragon Age or Mass Effect styled approach instead of a text box that pops up on the screen. It’s a small thing, but it adds a slight cinematic flair that I think goes a long way.

Despite my better judgement and spotty history with these kinds of games, I’m cautiously optimistic and dare I say, excited for Baldur’s Gate III. At the very least, I’m going to keep my eye on it and certainly give it a shot when it enters early access later this year.