Category Archives: archived features

Curiosity isn’t Enough

I’ve often talked about upcoming games by expressing my interest and curiosity in them, as if I was some sort of scientist or detective trying to deduce something. While I’ve played a lot of games that fell in that bucket, there are some that I just never got around to and probably never will. So here are a few games that I’ve been curious about for a while that I’ll probably never play.

PRAEY FOR THE GODS

There are few games that have ever come close to capturing the scale and drama involved in fighting a boss that Shadow of the Colossus did back in 2005, and once more in 2018 with its remake on PlayStation 4. With its core conceit being, “go kill that gigantic monster” and nothing else, it set out to do one thing and nailed it spectacularly.

Praey for the Gods is a game that was Kickstarted back in 2016 that raised upwards of $500,000 on the promise of being a spiritual successor to Shadow of the Colossus. I have no way of proving this, but I suspect the actual remake of Shadow of the Colossus killed a lot of the momentum for Praey for the Gods, but that might just be me projecting.

I don’t know why I never gave it a shot, but I suspect my personal motivations were undercut by the actual remake of Shadow of the Colossus. Also, I believe there are some survival mechanics in the game that turned me off on a product that I was already lukewarm on. It’s a shame, cause it looks like a cool game, but I’ll probably never play it.

BLACKSAD: UNDER THE SKIN

Blacksad: Under the Skin is an adventure game that whether it aims to or doesn’t, reminds me a lot of the tone and style of The Wolf Among Us, a game which I love. In a world filled with anthropomorphic animals, with you taking up the role of Blacksad, a gruff detective kitty who has a gun. Something I didn’t know but suspected to be the case, is that Blacksad is an existing character in graphic novels and comics dating back to the year 2000.

I’ll be completely honest, I still want to play this game. But it’s just a little out of my price range and never seems to dip down far enough for me to take the plunge. I’m curious about it, but not that curious.

GREEDFALL

For a game that got hyped up pretty heavily before it released, it sure did fizzle out quickly. Greedfall is an action RPG that leaned hard into the colonialism aesthetic, boasting muskets and tricorner hats along with a bunch of monsters to fight. It looked a lot like a Dragon Age game, another series that I don’t really have much familiarity with.

I wanted to play this game because I felt like I was missing a good meaty RPG in my life. One of my good friends had bought in hard to the hype and was my basically my informant on this game. His reaction was tepid at best, and I don’t think he ever played more than a few hours of the game. That was troubling because if he, a person notorious for loving these kinds of games didn’t like it, what chance did I have?

Ultimately, thanks to media coverage and word of mouth, I backed away from Greedfall, and even if it suddenly appeared in my Steam library I doubt I’d ever even boot it up.

It’s still infinitely confounding how someone could go from super interested and excited for a game, to not even knowing if they’d play it even if it were given to them. Even if you put money and time aside, something changed from then till now. In most cases, I still actively enjoy these genres and will continue to seek out these kinds of experiences in the future, but when something has been sitting on the shelf for so long, you learn to live without it.

I Hate Bunny Day

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UPDATE: Since writing this article, a patch was released for Animal Crossing: New Horizons that turned down the spawn rate on all Bunny Day eggs. This article is representative of the six days of the event before the patch was rolled out.

Like most of the world, I’m dedicating a lot of time to the recently released Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a game which I absolutely adore. The simple pleasure of just building and maintaining my own island has been, among other things, therapeutic. That is until April 1st rolled around and every Animal Crossing: New Horizons player got pranked at the same time by a giant asshole dressed up like a bunny, making it the worst April Fools joke of all time.

If you don’t know, Animal Crossing: New Horizons introduced their first seasonal event that is some vague celebration of Easter, focusing more on the eggs and less on the whole Jesus thing. It’s supposed to be a light and happy event to shake up the routines of a standard day in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, tasking players with collecting various eggs to make Bunny Day themed furniture.

It was supposed to be cute and happy, but it very quickly went from charming to annoying and then to frustrating. So how could something designed to be so lighthearted become so despised by many Animal Crossing: New Horizons players? Well there are a few reasons.

Firstly, the entire event runs from April 1st to April 12th. That’s twelve whole days of the bullshit that I’m going to explain a little later in this article. Twelve days of having to deal with this event whether you want to participate or not. It’s maddening.

The second and possibly biggest reason has to do with one of the core mechanical changes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, crafting. In New Horizons a focus has been put on crafting furniture and tools through the use of raw materials that you find throughout the world. Chop a tree for would, hit a rock for iron and so on and so forth. The problem is that while you could whack a tree reliably for three pieces of wood, now there’s a high chance that at least one of them will actually be an egg. How an egg was hidden inside the bark of a tree, I’ll never know.

But it isn’t just some minor inconvenience, as everything that you would do in Animal Crossing: New Horizons now has a fucking egg attached to it. Mining for iron? Egg. Chopping wood? Egg. Going fishing? Oh that wasn’t actually a fish, somehow you caught yet another fucking egg. These little bastards are everywhere, and even though you can just sell them or give them to villagers, they still waste your time and resources.

This leads to my third issue with Bunny Day. Even though I’m actively not participating, I’m still wasting my time getting bamboozled by what looks like fish in the water, but are actually sentient, swimming eggs. I’ll go to dig up what should be a fossil, and instead it’ll be a special subterranean egg. Not only does it waste my time, but it wears on my tools. My fishing rod will break because I wasted it’s good fishing energy on a stupid egg, which leads to me having to march over to a tree to get wood (and more eggs), head to a crafting table to make another fishing rod, and then head back to do this stupid cycle over again.

You can’t even escape from this shit because the being behind this holiday, Zipper, who is most definitely a man in a bunny suit and not a bunny, is a criminal. Single-handedly, this monster managed to not only pollute my oceans, ground and skies with his shitty eggs, but did it on every island I might visit. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons there’s a mechanic that allows you to fly to a procedurally generated island to mine for resources and possibly catch exotic bugs or fish. But somehow this fugitive of the law in a bunny costume, filthed up every island I might find a temporary escape in.

For those keeping score at home, this holiday was forced upon me, even if I don’t participate in it I have to suffer through its dumb mechanics, and it’s a colossal waste of time and resources that I cannot escape from and must endure. Bunny Day sucks shit and it goes on too long. I don’t want your heinous egg-themed furniture, I don’t care about any of it, I just want it to go away.

Lastly, it’s wild to me that only 11 days into Animal Crossing: New Horizons being out publicly, with people still settling into their rhythms and routines in the game, this event has basically thrown a wrench into any plans they had. I’m still actively developing my island, and when I get 7 eggs that are worth a few pennies each versus 7 fish that would fetch a far better price, I’m being actively thwarted in my attempts to make a kick-ass island.

I really love Animal Crossing: New Horizons and check in on it several times a day. It’s been the bright spot in what’s been a pretty dreary time in all of our lives, which is why it sucks even more that a stupid event that was made to be fun and happy is actively draining my enjoyment and desire to pop in from time to time. I can’t wait until this event is over and I can go back to not seeing 8 balloons with eggs in them floating around my island like a bunch of derelict satellites and space trash. Till then, fuck Bunny Day.

Walkabout in Walking Simulator

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As someone who hasn’t played nor has no intention to play Death Stranding, it’s been fascinating to experience what essentially is a gigantic parody of it. If you haven’t seen it, there’s currently a free game on Steam called Walking Simulator that’s basically one giant joke at Hideo Kojima’s expense. It’s shallow, it’s stupid, and it isn’t fun, but it made me laugh and that’s gotta count for something.

With that being said, I’d like to take you on a journey. Walk with with me through the frozen tundra of Walking Simulator.

We start with a quote, as all good video games do. This is a powerful metaphor for sure, but in Walking Simulator, it’s a little more literal.

Welcome to Antarctica. You’re first task, go deliver fuel and definitely don’t get distracted and accidentally spawn a bunch of enemies. That would be tragic.

Dang.

Not a problem though. Those fools can’t run and I totally can. Time to take my Jenga tower of boxes on a trek through this frozen wasteland.

There are two very important things to know about Walking Simulator. The first is that random packages and enemies will spawn around you if you’re moving slow enough. You’re gonna wanna pick as many of these up as possible.

The second is that I don’t think there’s a limit to how much stuff you can carry.

The people in this building are gonna be so impressed with my very good package tower.

This custodian is not impressed by my objectively good tower, nor are they phased by the cold weather at all. They should send this guy out there instead of me.

After dropping off my very important packages, not only did I get more, but I got the chance to buy energy drinks. I tried one and I’m pleased to report that they give you superhuman running powers for a limited time.

Is it cool if I take this? I’m just gonna take this.

This is so much better than running.

This bad boy is a little squirrelly on the controls front, but I can handle it.

Ah shoot.

Stuck the landing though. Pretty sweet if I do say so myself.

Yo, it’s Greg with Postmates. You want me to leave this outside or what?

Not gonna lie, this is simultaneously the coolest and lamest office I’ve ever seen.

But hey, any office where I can get a jet-pack is worth visiting, if you ask me.

Oh this mountain doesn’t stand a chance now that I have this drone strapped to my back.

He’s doing it!

Fuck.

Ouch.

Dammit. I just want to get to the top of this horrible mountain.

Hell yeah baby, it’s happening!

Good enough.

I really should have listened to this. I really, REALLY should have. It didn’t get better and they tried to warn me about it.

I’m too far in though, I need to see this stupid game through.

Really wish I could use my jet-pack while riding this snowmobile and turn myself into the worst plane that’s ever existed.

If the snowmobile controls this terribly, I can only imagine how poorly the truck I’m going to pickup is going to be.

More cargo. Love it, love it. Absolutely loving how the cargo is also definitely tied down and won’t become an issue while I’m driving nearly 4000 Walking Simulator miles.

This isn’t me being fancy with the camera. This is me spinning in circles while going 60 miles per hour in the snow.

God dammit.

Can you guys not? I’m trying to pick up the things I dropped.

I could have sworn I had two of these in the truck.

Turns out, these containers just explode. Good thing two of them are strapped to my back inside the truck.

Another flawless delivery in the books. Now to… go back to where I started? Okay…

Buddy, really? I don’t even have anything except this terrible truck. And no, even though I called it terrible, you can’t have it.

I wonder what they’re gonna have me do next.

Trucks can survive a couple of barrel rolls, right?

Oh… you just want me to do the first mission again, huh? I think I’m gonna follow the advice you gave me a while ago and just not play this thing anymore.

Walking Simulator isn’t a game of substance in any way, shape or form. It purely exists as a method to dunk on the tepidly received Death Stranding that came out last year, and by that metric, it succeeds. As someone who hasn’t played Death Stranding, I can confirm that this is exactly what it’s like.

In all honesty though, Walking Simulator is genuinely not worth your time, even at the low price of zero dollars. I’m kind of angry with myself for playing it for the hour I did, but I got a couple of laughs out of it so I guess I can’t be too upset.

If you like Death Stranding, good for you. If you don’t, that’s fine too. I’m not here to cast judgements on your gaming preferences at all. But there’s one last thing that I do want to show you that might just be the scariest and most sinister part of this whole silly game.

They’re going to put out more content for this ridiculous game.

What are the odds that this game goes from a complete parody, to a more full fledged product that people actually end up enjoying? Like, I could definitely see the joke going so far that it wraps around to being something sincere. Part of me thinks that with a little more polish and slightly more to do, Walking Simulator could be fun in a weird way. Then there’s the other part of me that hopes I never have to boot this game up ever again.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is Doing its Best

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You probably already know if Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the kind of game you would be into, but for me it’s been a crucial part of my social distancing coping mechanism. I absolutely adore the game and could write an entire piece gushing about it. However, I feel kind of bad for Animal Crossing: New Horizons because it’s been thrust into a position I can’t imagine it was ever intended to be in.

For context, Animal Crossing as a series has always been about playing in increments and slowly developing your town over time. It’s consistently positioned itself as something you check in with maybe once or twice a day before moving onto whatever else you had going on in your life. Obviously the world has been a bit different recently, granting people an excess of time to spend with a game that cannot sustain that.

Consider articles like this one, where people are stuck between completing objectives that would normally take an hour or two without much of an issue. Were this a normal world we lived in, people might not be able to simply obliterate all their goals in one sitting, more akin the way Animal Crossing: New Horizons probably planned for.

Now we have people, myself included, blitzing through every goal that would usually take a few days under normal circumstances, left without much else to do in the game. Sure you can catch fish and bugs, collect materials, craft stuff and sell things, but when you’re desperate for anything to do, these objectives might seem a little more thin than they normally would.

This is in no way the fault of Animal Crossing: New Horizons though. The world went and flipped upside down and now we’re all here just struggling to hang on, often escaping into video games to pass the time. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was not built to deal with these kinds of sustained, long-term game sessions, but it’s doing its best despite that. There’s just enough to do and check in with in the game that I can check in with it for an hour or two, several times a day without feeling too bored.

I ultimately love Animal Crossing: New Horizons and will continue to play it for the foreseeable future, but I can easily see a scenario in which people burn out on it because they’re playing it ad nauseam. I’ve already seen people complaining about the lack of storage options, or the long wait times for certain amenities to be built, or even with the pace of unlocking new items and crafting recipes, which are all valid concerns if this were a game that you were meant to play in long sessions. But that isn’t Animal Crossing, and while it’s still holding up for me, it’s important to realize that you should pace yourself with Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and not expect the same things you would from another game.

The Steam Game Festival

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If you haven’t heard of The Steam Game Festival before, don’t worry, cause you’re not alone. This is apparently the second time that Valve has orchestrated the event, but the first time that I’ve been aware of it.

For the uninitiated, The Steam Game Festival is a weekend long event spanning from March 18th to the 23rd in which you are able to download and play around 40 demos for upcoming indie games. From puzzlers to adventure games, rouge-likes and RPGs, there’s genuinely something for everyone on display. I went ahead and downloaded a few titles and wanted to highlight them here.

EMBR

Embr puts you in the shoes of a firefighter who has to do the typical firefighter things. Spray water, save people, loot their houses, it’s all represented in the game. You start off by picking a mission from your cellphone. Each mission in the demo had a threshold of civilians you needed to save, with optional objectives that boiled down to just saving all the people in the level, and stealing wads of cash in the burning house.

It’s all represented in this cartoony style in an attempt to detract from the actual horror that is being in a burning building. In my short time with the game, I found myself having to deal with not only fire, but live electric wires that don’t play well with water, and the harsh lesson that is what a back-draft is.

To my surprise, I actually had a very good time with Embr and would definitely play it again if I had the opportunity. It’s got some multiplayer functionality which seems like it’ll be almost necessary at some point considering the levels I played were big and dense enough to become slightly overwhelming as a solo firefighter.

HEAVENLY BODIES

Heavenly Bodies is one of those, “it’s hilarious to watch, frustrating to play,” kind of games that people love to stream. You are an astronaut floating through this derelict space station or space craft, it wasn’t super clear, and you have to complete objectives in this zero gravity environment. It sounds simple enough, but the controls and perspective work against you just enough to make it incredibly frustrating.

Each arm is controlled by an analog stick, with each trigger enabling you to grab onto things. You have to use these in tandem to propel yourself around the vacuum of space in order to get things done. It’s hectic and unwieldy, but I bet it would be a blast with other people involved.

I didn’t manage to get far in the demo considering there’s a ten minute time limit in place. Ten minutes in which I managed to open a door and definitely give my character a concussion or three from how many things I slammed them into. Heavenly Bodies seems like it would be fun, but only if you have a high tolerance for failure, and you have some friends with you who aren’t too precious about winning.

RAJI: AN ANCIENT EPIC

Raji: An Ancient Epic is an isometric action game akin to Lara Croft and The Guardian of Light in that you’ll be doing a lot of platforming, puzzle solving, and enemy killing. Leaning heavily into Hindu mythology, Raji: An Ancient Epic has you running around as a young girl named Raji who is on a quest to find her brother. Throughout her journey, she discovers an ancient power in her that makes her really good at killing demons.

In the short demo I played, I found combat to be fun albeit a little muddy in places, with hits not landing with enough impact along with not having much in the way of variety with your moves. To be fair though, Raji has a ton of contextual combat moves ranging from holding her spear out while she spins around a column to running up a wall, flipping off of it and stabbing into the ground for a nice area of attack effect. The problem was that the opportunities for these moves were limited in the few combat arenas I saw, as well as don’t reliably work. There were times when I’d manage to run up the wall, but getting the attack to happen after that was a little hit or miss.

But like all of the games on this list, it’s a demo and I can’t judge it too harshly. I really enjoyed Raji: An Ancient Epic as a whole, with the glaring exception being that somehow it reset my resolution mid game, and wouldn’t allow me to reset it because I physically could not click the “apply” button in the settings menu. Aside from that though, I’m kind of sold on Raji: An Ancient Epic.

GOING UNDER

Going Under is a beautifully crafted, fast and frantic rouge-like action game that tasks you with going through room after room of goblins dressed like tech bros. Using your fists and literally anything that isn’t nailed down, you punch, stab and smash your way to victory… I assume. I didn’t get very far in it because it’s surprisingly difficult despite its pleasing cartoon aesthetic.

In Going Under I maintained this feeling of being severely under powered in comparison to the many tech goblins I faced. Even one-on-one, these enemies are dangerous and can easily overwhelm you if you aren’t careful. At times I felt like the game might have been cheating a bit, specifically when 4 goblins would run up to me and simultaneously beat the shit out of me, but I bet that feeling dissipates with time.

I like just about everything going on in Going Under with the sole exception that I do not enjoy rogue-like games. If you’re into these kinds of experiences than you should absolutely keep an eye on Going Under, but the very structure of the game doesn’t appeal to me personally.

There’s plenty more to try during The Steam Game Festival, but these were some of the ones that I managed to play that stood out to me. I think events like these should ultimately replace the need for ordinary people to go to conventions. At least this way they can actually play games without having to wait 3 hours on a line.

A World Without E3

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Industry behemoth and perpetual looming shadow, E3, just received what I consider to be the death bell of the entire show as we know it due to rising concerns over COVID-19. While first and foremost I’d like to say that the cancellation of this event is small potatoes compared to the reality of this viral situation and how it’s impacting the lives of others. But with that said, I’d like to talk about why I believe that E3 as we know it is done for.

I don’t think I have to explain what E3 is to this particular audience, so I’m just going to power through under that assumption. What you may not be aware of is the dire situation E3 was in before this coronavirus became a genuine concern.

What you might have missed were the various blunders that E3 has had over the past few years. From things like big exhibitors like Sony and EA pulling out, to the awful “reworking” of the show, to their long time show runner quitting because they didn’t like the direction of the conference, and especially the part where they leaked the personal information of a bunch of media personnel, E3 has had some severe missteps to say the least.

This is on top of the growing conversations around the relevance of E3 and if it’s as necessary and essential as it once seemed. People have long questioned why other companies don’t just go the way of Nintendo and play a prerecorded video that can announce products and generate the same amount of hype without worrying it will get buried under the deluge of other video game news.

But going to E3 isn’t just about announcing new products; It’s also a venue for developers to have pitch meetings with publishers and suppliers. At its core and beneath the flashiness of the show, it’s still a business driven affair where “behind closed doors” meetings happen that are very important for a lot of smaller developers.

This year however, E3 is officially cancelled which feels like the final nail in the coffin to me and not only because of the waning interest from exhibitors and attendees alike, or the pressure from big companies to revamp the show entirely to maintain relevance. This is going to be the first year that every company gets to see the exact impact of E3 on their business. They’ll be able to get concrete numbers on how a game shown on an E3 stage performed versus a game shown off on a stream. My suspicion is that companies will see their cost–benefit analysis, realize that E3 is a money pit where their announcements get immediately buried, and one by one pull out of the show until all that’s left on the show floor are energy drink manufacturers you’ve never heard of.

For the first time since its inception, this perceived necessary show will not be running, leaving companies to figure out how to move forward. With the advent of the internet and streaming video being what it is, these companies have the opportunity to reach out directly to consumers without shelling out thousands for booth space, travel and accommodations.

As much as I enjoy watching the various streams that come out of E3, it can be utterly exhausting even as someone on the periphery of the industry. While I would still love to see an hour long press conference about all the cool Xbox games coming out, I wouldn’t mind not having to worry about what’s coming up immediately after it.

I feel that the absence of E3 this year will be the light bulb that collectively goes off when publishers, media, and attendees realize that there are far easier, less expensive and time consuming ways to engage with all this information. I don’t want to see E3 go away and I hope that I’m wrong in all of this, but I just don’t see a path forward for this already struggling conference. Maybe we get a 2021 E3 that reignites the fire, maybe in 2021 we see an even more desperate E3 that’s desperately trying to find a purpose, or maybe we just don’t see one at all. I would love to be wrong on this, but it’s too early to tell either way.

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp is Still Kinda Lame

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Counter to the excitement and positivity surrounding the upcoming Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the latest publicly available game, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp launched as, and still remains a letdown. That isn’t to say there aren’t good aspects or fun to be had in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, but as a game, it lacks a lot.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp launched for mobile devices in late 2017 to a pretty positive reception, albeit with a lot of folks taking umbrage with some of the monetization decisions, a criticism Nintendo apparently heard, but I guess they ultimately ignored. It’s a shame too considering an Animal Crossing game on your cellphone sounds like an awesome idea.

Look at this powerful mustache!

From a conceptual standpoint, I was initially let down by the idea of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp not being a more faithful Animal Crossing game. That initial reaction eventually gave way to apathy after I actually was able to play the game itself. When you look at Animal Crossing as a series, the games were doing things that a lot of early free-to-play mobile games were doing, in a time where smartphones weren’t really a thing. They basically did everything Farmville did, way before that was even a thing. It was essentially one of the earliest idle or incremental games that I can think of.

As time wore on and sequels came out, more and more was added to each iteration that allowed for longer play sessions, and reasons to come back multiple times a day. This all seemed perfect and primed for a smartphone adaptation, something I welcomed. Then I actually got to play the game.

When Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp was initially released, I devoured it. From decorating my campsite, to shaking trees and catching fish, I was all about the Animal Crossing life. But that initial spark of excitement eventually started to fade once I realized that despite Animal Crossing as a series heavily relies on repetition, it felt a lot grosser and less interesting in Pocket Camp.

Somehow it’s all both over and underwhelming.

The Animal Crossing games were nice because even after you shook all of your trees, participated in the fishing contest, and stabbed all of the rocks with a shovel, you could still wander around the town and see what your villagers were up to. To call it dynamic would be generous, but it was infinitely more engaging than the loop of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp quadruples down on the checklist nature of the series by literally making you do the same things over and over again, with almost no variation. There are a handful of locations you can go to, some have fruit to pick, one has bugs to net, and two have fish to catch. Each of these locations has one animal, and one random villager that may or not be an actual friend of yours. You’d have to tap on the region and traipse your way over to these animals and talk to them three times, because they want 3 things. Every day, you can have about 4 interactions with these animals, 3 by giving them stuff that could literally be right next to them, and one by just spouting nonsense at each other.

“I’ll use my telekinesis to play this guitar!”

I get that the DNA of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is inherently derived from Animal Crossing proper, but Pocket Camp just boils it all down in the most checklist-y way possible. They even have a pelican who will just deliver all of the crap people want directly to them so you can avoid having to actually go to them. I use this feature all the time, because I’m at a point where I just want to be finished.

There’s also the abundance of crap and garbage that fills up your inventory that seems to all be crafting materials, but sometimes it’s just a coat that people keep giving you. Preserves, lumber, ore, cotton and more, are all materials villagers might give you in reward for bringing them a seashell. It’s nice, because you get to build stuff, but the stuff you build is so lifeless and boring in most cases.

Don’t get me wrong, I like having a bunch of musical instruments, pizza boxes and convertibles strewn about my campsite as if I was having a garage sale, but you can’t do anything with them. You can poke them, rearrange them, and watch villagers stand near them. Sometimes, specifically in the case of a halfpipe you can build, you might be lucky enough to see a skateboarding eagle, but that’s kind of it.

Wow… thanks…

Now, that lack of interaction complaint isn’t exclusive to Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. All of the Animal Crossing games have struggled with interactivity, but with something like Animal Crossing: New Leaf, they did flesh that out a bit. I specifically recall being able to play mini-games on the Nintendo consoles I could build which was shallow, but a nice diversion nonetheless.

Look, it may sound like I’m just frustrated and lashing out at Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, but the honest truth is that I’m still playing it regardless. Yes it’s boring and shallow, yes it’s repetitive as hell, and yes the economics of the game are absolutely fucked, but it’s still got that Animal Crossing charm I love. The artwork is delightful and fun, the characters are (mostly) adorable, and core Animal Crossing loop is still intact, but it just ends up feeling like an imitation of itself in some regards.

I don’t hate Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp at all, but I do think it’s deeply flawed and should have been way better. I took a long break from the game, but came back very recently thanks to the upcoming sequel. Pocket Camp scratches that itch, but in that way where you itch your arm, and then another part of your arm starts to itch and so on and so forth. My only hope is that Animal Crossing: New Horizons doesn’t have some hook into Pocket Camp that makes me have to play both simultaneously… dammit.

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.

WoW, What am I Still Doing?

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You might have noticed a significant uptick in World of Warcraft based content on this website. Aside from that being a sentence I never thought I’d have to say, here we are with yet another entry in the chronicle of my WoW experience. Last time I checked in, I was significantly overwhelmed by creating a high level character and was coaxed into starting a new one at first level. So how did that go?

Going in with my extremely limited knowledge about World of Warcraft and its bevy of classes, I wanted to go with something simple and straight forward. Naturally I gravitated towards making a panda character who also uses a sword and shield primarily. I think it’s called the warrior class, but I could be wrong. After a short customization period, LargeDouglas was born. I initially wanted to go with ‘Bigger Douglas’ or something to that effect, but apparently the cowards at Blizzard weren’t ready for my radical new ways of doing things.

Very quickly, my two friends appeared in my world with their own ludicrously named pandas who I think were a mage and a monk. We ventured forth through the tutorial world of the panda-folk, an Asian inspired, pagoda-heavy region with a lot of questionable names and accents on display.

Compared to diving in at level 110, level one was significantly more manageable and easier to keep track of. I had time to get used to abilities and how to navigate some of the menus instead of it went last time, where I was essentially drowning in menus. I will say though, even at this rate, there was still a lot going on from level to level, which I imagine is a result of accelerating the leveling path over the past 50 years this game has been running.

I’m proud to say that in this excursion I only died once, and it was because I didn’t pay attention to an NPC who very specifically told me not to go into this windy room until the wind subsided. My negligence may have led to my demise, but in my defense, my friend who has played this game for years also died this way as well. Actually I believe he died twice there if memory serves.

By this point you’re probably wondering if I actually enjoyed myself or not. If I’m being honest, I really wasn’t blown away or won over by this fresh start. It was a better experience than my last dive into the World of Warcraft pool, but it’s still World of Warcraft when all is said and done. Meaning that regardless of which way I try to play it, it’s still a game that does nothing for me.

Sometimes I had to kill 10 monkeys, or kill 10 rats and collect their parts for whatever grim needs the quest giver had. Sometimes, when things got really exciting, I had to pick up driftwood or fireworks. It’s even more disappointing considering I had thought for years that the jokes that people made about collecting 20 boar pelts had to have been a relic of the early days of World of Warcraft. Surely over the years they would have removed as much of that tedium as possible? Nope, from what I experienced, about half or more of the quests I embarked on involved me killing a bunch of stuff and collecting enough of their parts to progress.

I get that every quest can’t be this life-changing experience that’s going to revolutionize how I perceive quests, but they really front load the game with as much tedious nonsense as possible. I might be being a little to myopic in my description of World of Warcraft, but it’s just super hard to get enthusiastic about this game.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. There were a couple of moments where I genuinely sat back and thought something I’d experienced was pretty cool. It seems utterly useless, but the panda-folk can balance on these vertical beams and bounce around on them and fight other people on them which is an objectively cool, martial arts thing to do.

Also, the world design, especially in the land of the panda-pals, was really pleasant. From the pagodas, to the rivers and caves, this starting area was a joy to be in and meander around. Also, I think it’s all on a big turtles back or something? Which once again, is objectively cool.

Ultimately, I still don’t like World of Warcraft. It has its moments where it can charm you, but no amount of that can make me ignore the core conceits of its mechanics. At this point, I’m not playing it because I want to play the game, I’m playing it because I get to talk to my friends. On that front, World of Warcraft succeeded, but I can’t imagine paying $15 a month for the ability to talk to them.

Difficulty & Patience

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As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found myself sinking back into more familiar gaming experiences, opting for what essentially is my comfort food over being adventurous in a sense. I still like getting my hands on a new release and seeing what there is to offer, but more often than not I find myself bouncing off a game the second I hit the tiniest of obstacles. I often would attribute that to just not wanting to bash my head against a difficulty wall in games, but these days I think I’m just more impatient than anything.

When talking about difficulty in games, a lot of people point directly to the Dark Souls series. Those games are very much too difficult for me, but they also do this thing where they try to emotionally crush you and mentally exhaust you. My extremely limited experience with Dark Souls involves me starting out, killing maybe 2 or 3 skeleton men, getting to the boss, dying, then having to do that all again just to make a few more feet of progress. Now, my lack of skill definitely plays into that, but before the frustration of dying repeatedly can make me quit, the extreme tedium of running through the level again and fighting the same dudes gets me first.

There is something to be said about the joy that comes with memorizing the patterns and placements of enemies, and finally executing that perfect run that gets you to the next checkpoint. I get that. But for me, it’s less a feeling of triumph and more a feeling of relief. Then I’m confronted with the reality that this loop I’m describing, is the entire loop of these games, and that just isn’t enough for me.

It isn’t just games like Dark Souls that revel in their difficulties that repel me, it can be any game that doesn’t manage to hook me that can make me tap out early. It’s part of why I created the Gut Check feature on this site, because while I try every game I can, there are very few that actually keep me playing. And that isn’t because they’re too difficult, it’s because I don’t have the time or patience anymore to dedicate to a game that isn’t immediately wowing me.

There are people that will say that certain games get better after a few hours, but why would I waste my time struggling through something I’m not having fun with, in the hopes of eventually having fun. Games and I have turned a corner in recent years, where I want them to engage and entertain me with a minimal amount of effort or exertion on my part. It’s selfish, it’s lazy, and I don’t care. In my free time, when I want to just have fun, I don’t want to have to work for it.

It’s why tactics and in-depth RPGs and I, don’t get along well. There’s a lot of time to invest and in some cases, it feels like you’re learning a new language. For instance, I really wanted to try Disco Elysium last year, but seeing it in action reminded me just how much of an investment of time and mental energy that would be. Time and mental energy I just don’t have.

I like a mechanics deep and story rich game as much as anybody does, but I just feel as if my patience is waning with a lot of games. It leads to this internal conversation where I have to ask myself if I really have the energy to play this game about mental illness, or coping with loss, or just with a lot of reading, or do I just want to turn my brain off and play more NBA 2K20? And honestly, I usually just opt to turn my brain off and play hoops instead.