This week has and continues to be surprisingly busy for me, which hasn’t left me a ton of time to play the games I’ve wanted to. Alongside that, I’ve been neck deep in preparing and running my D&D campaign, which requires an alarming amount of time and dedication. I genuinely don’t know how people could balance that workload along with leading a normal, pre-pandemic life. But anyway, let’s recap the week.
First and foremost, Baldur’s Gate III was released into early access which was both exciting and extremely disappointing. While the game shows incredible promise, but in its current state it just isn’t the solo D&D experience I’m looking for. It did make me excited about a CRPG for the first time in my life. I suspected at one point that Baldur’s Gate III might be the game to do that, but I’m glad to see that “prophecy” fulfilled. I have no doubt that with time many, if not all of my issues with the game will be addressed in some way, but right now I’m taking it easy and letting the game marinate.
Aside from that, I tried out some demos from the Steam Game Festival over the weekend, and while some of them were okay, nothing really blew me away. That is with the exception of a game called SuchArt!. SuchArt! puts you in the position of one of the only, if not the only remaining human artist alive, which I think is because the robots that rule this universe are incapable of making good art or something. Robots will send you requests for art pieces that you need to fulfill to the best of your abilities.
What I really enjoy about SuchArt! is how despite its goofy premise, the tools at your disposal to make the art are surprisingly robust. There are several types of brushes, canvases, stencils and other art adjacent tools that may or may not actually be used in art such as hair dryers and Nerf guns that fire paint. It’s extremely goofy, but also very therapeutic and calming to play.
Outside of those two, I’ve played some more NBA 2K21. I enjoy it. It’s fine.
And yeah, it’s just been a lot of D&D prep work on top of all of that. We’re running the latest adventure module, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, which is okay. I’m not a supremely experienced DM by any means, but there are some things in the book, and specifically more that’s missing from the book, that make the whole story feel disjointed and bolted together. There’s been a lot of tweaking I’ve had to do in order to make the story feel cohesive, which might just be a thing that DM’s have to do with these bigger campaigns, but I’m just uncovering that.
Oh, also, I voted. You should vote too. Oh, and wear a fucking mask.
Before I dive into the bulk of this article, it should be mentioned that no video game could ever truly capture the Dungeons & Dragons experience solely because there are static limitations to any video game. You can account for a lot of things as a game designer and try to cater to dozens of styles of play, but no game could adapt to the wild and imaginative things that players regularly ask of their DM’s quite like a living, breathing person present. Yet in spite of all of that Baldur’s Gate III already shows incredible promise when it comes to representing D&D and is a game I’m genuinely enjoying.
Don’t get me wrong, Baldur’s Gate III is a technical mess at the moment but I know what I signed up for when I decided to buy a game that’s in early access. I’m not going to harp on the performance of the game too much, but if you’re curious about what I mean by a “technical mess,” I can summarize that really quickly.
In its current, fresh into early access condition, Baldur’s Gate III runs inconsistently, usually fluctuating anywhere between running at 20 fps to 144 fps on my machine. Lip syncing for the new “cinematic” conversations is basically non-existent, and graphical glitches from T-posing, duplicating NPC’s you’re actively talking to, and ragdolls going wild are common occurrences. That kind of stuff is all bound to be smoothed over during the course of their early access period, so I’m not worried about that.
With that said, there are some things I would very much like to see fixed, changed and improved that pertain more to how the Dungeons & Dragons rules are translated into a video game. While this article isn’t a comprehensive list by any means, it does represent the things that I have personally noticed. I really love D&D, but I wouldn’t consider myself an expert in its mechanics or lore, so this is truly just representative of how I enjoy playing Dungeons & Dragons.
SHOW ME THE NUMBERS
In D&D you have a core set of skills like strength or wisdom, that as you pour stat points into them you’re granted a higher modifier. A modifier is the number you add to your roll or in some cases subtract from it, representing…well your skill at a particular ability. For instance, a rogue is going to be pretty good at sneaking around, picking pockets and doing cool flips, so their dexterity score and thus, modifier are going to be higher. Without just explaining the rules of D&D anymore than I already have, the rogue would have a couple of numbers they can add to a D20 roll in order to clear the difficulty class (DC) that represents how hard what they’re attempting is.
A DC of 7?
Baldur’s Gate III does this as well, but oddly enough reverses it. Instead of you adding numbers to a roll to clear a DC, all of your stats and bonuses subtract from the DC. It may not sound like a big deal, but after years of playing D&D it’s an incredibly jarring change. I suspect that the reason for this change is to make it simpler for new players with little to no experience with D&D to comprehend what’s going on. It’s obfuscating the math as not to confuse people and just have them focus on the dice roll itself, but that should definitely be something I can toggle on and off. As a player and a DM, I want to see those numbers.
Also, it just feels better to roll higher numbers than it is to roll low ones.
CHECKS, PLEASE
Considering that there isn’t really a DM in Baldur’s Gate III outside of a narrator who pops in regularly to make you feel like everything you’re doing is wrong, there isn’t much of a way to just perform random skill checks as far as I can tell. In D&D, if I find myself in an ancient library as a barbarian, I’m going to just sit back and contemplate how flammable these “books” as you call them, actually are. Yet if I’m a big brainy wizard, I’m going to be rolling arcana and history checks like they’re going out of style.
Half of the fun of playing D&D is being able to uncover clues or lore about the world through performing well timed checks. Being able to do a perception check when I enter a room or run a nature check on a potentially poisonous berry are just a sliver of ways that players get to feel powerful and useful as their characters.
There isn’t really any of that going on in Baldur’s Gate III however. The way that certain skill checks are handled is kind of bizarre and a little too passive for my liking. The only active checks I can perform are in dialogue situations, where I pick the line of dialogue that allows me to roll an insight or deception check. I understand this limitation in conversations because the alternative would be an colossal feat of programming. Allowing me to just roll whatever check I want in any and all conversations seems akin to asking Larian Studios to work on Baldur’s Gate III till the end of time.
But outside of conversations and combat, it’s just weird to me how pushed into the background a lot of these checks are. Almost every skill check that occurs while exploring is transformed into a passive check. I assume the game is rolling a dice in the background, but it’s still incredibly weird that I have no say over what check I’m rolling and when. I wouldn’t mind if there was some sort of “active DM” situation that would prompt me to roll a stealth check when I wander into a bad situation unwittingly. And if I do succeed on a passive perception check it would be nice to know what it is I noticed, because virtual Ari might see it, but flesh Ari does not.
While I’m bellyaching about the checks in Baldur’s Gate III, I wouldn’t mind if the game slowed itself down entirely to act like a DM. If there’s a trap I’ve wandered into, stop the game and bring up a menu that says, “hey, you fucked up and didn’t check for traps cause we don’t let you just do that, and now you’ve gotta roll dexterity saving throws for these party members. Good luck!” That’s the kind of D&D stuff I’m looking for from Baldur’s Gate III.
I think I just want Baldur’s Gate III to capture the feeling of sitting down to play D&D more than I want it to capture the world and lore. Sure those things are important to me, but when I ask for more transparency in dice rolls and checks, it’s because I’m trying to get that rush of playing D&D out of Baldur’s Gate III first and foremost.
PARTY PLAY
This one is genuinely confusing to me, because it’s such an important part of the communal experience of D&D that its absence from the game is beyond odd. In D&D, your character cannot and should not be a skeleton key that can just do everything. Your characters are supposed to be flawed and fallible, which is why adventures travel in parties. The wizard may be a really smart magic-man, but he needs the fighter and her strength to defend him cause he’ll just get squished like a bug.
In its very early access state, Baldur’s Gate III seems to miss that mark by a wide margin. At the moment, my party has a cleric, fighter, rogue and a warlock, all with different skills and proficiencies that should work fairly well together. In combat, different skills and abilities work wonderfully together. Having the rogue shoot an oil barrel causing its contents to create a puddle under my enemies, followed by my warlock igniting said oil was a satisfying example of synergy, but outside of combat that isn’t really the case.
What isn’t in Baldur’s Gate III is an easy way to compare the skills and proficiencies of your characters without having to dig through a menu. So when I’m trying to break down a door or disarm a trap, I have to make an assumption on the fly of who to send to tackle said obstacle. Giving me a prompt or tool tip that just says like, “lock picking check” and then an ordered list of who in my party has the highest relevant skill for it would be nice.
But the most infuriating example of this is in situations where you have to talk to people. Baldur’s Gate III doesn’t do a great job of incorporating the rest of your party into your conversations. Sure, their lifeless husks will loom in the background unblinking while a man tells you the sad story about his brother or whatever, but they won’t help you in any way. For instance, if my character had a super low charisma score, I’d have to live with that every single time I entered into a conversation with someone. I wouldn’t be able to let the smooth talking bard (who isn’t in the game yet) do their thing and schmooze people over, no, instead Gronk the dwarf with a brain injury is going to ruminate on the income disparities that run rampant throughout the city of Waterdeep. That’ll fucking go well.
All I’m saying is, the adventuring party relies on one another for their talents and abilities, and I feel like Baldur’s Gate III doesn’t deliver on that in certain aspects of their game to varying degrees.
WAIT, I WANT TO GO BACK
There are times in D&D where a player might have a plan in their mind that they try to enact, only to find out that mechanically it wouldn’t be possible. That’s the good thing about having a cool DM, they’ll let you know that your harebrained scheme isn’t going to work or they might even work with you to make that nonsense happen. What’s even cooler is when a DM let’s you rewrite your turn upon finding out that said nonsense isn’t going to work.
Baldur’s Gate III is not a cool DM and is a bit of an asshole when it comes to you being able to fix your mistakes. Now I’m not asking for Baldur’s Gate III to allow me to just try out spells on enemies till I get the result I like or anything, but I don’t think it would be a big deal if it let me undo my movement if I haven’t taken an action yet. With the camera and path-finding in Baldur’s Gate III being what it is, which is to say it’s bad, being able to undo your movement in your turn would be extremely helpful.
Too often I’ll find that I’ve wasted my movement, taken an opportunity attack, and ended up in prime position to be blasted by 3 wizards and an archer. All of this could be fixed with a simple “undo” button. To be entirely fair though, that button may exist somewhere, but lord knows I haven’t found it yet.
STOP, NO, WAIT, GO THERE
I never thought an isometrically oriented game could have so many camera and movement control issues, but here we are. It’s borderline maddening how many times I’ll try clicking on something that I can clearly see, only for my character to interpret “go there” as, “climb that mountain behind you.”
Part of this frustration has to do with the camera, which might function exactly like it did in Larian’s previous titles, but I couldn’t say for sure. But in Baldur’s Gate III, the camera does this cut away trick to reveal the area in front of and around you while dissolving any trees or natural coverings that would normally obscure you to account for whatever angle you’re viewing the action from. Think of how The Sims does it, where those things are still there, but you need to rotate the camera to see them again.
What Baldur’s Gate III does which has resulted in my great frustration, is allowing me to click on things that I can’t see. There was an instance where there was a natural stone archway that formed out of the side of mountain that had a road running underneath it. I made the mistake of stopping too close to the archway I suppose, which resulted in me trying to click further up the road to progress forward, but the cursor actually clicked the top of the archway that was dissolved away by the camera. I couldn’t see the thing I just clicked on, but my party tried to climb that archway with gusto.
Luckily for me though, there wasn’t an actively burning fire on the way up the mountain or else my party would have just charged right in there without any sort of self-preservation in mind. For instance, during the tutorial you find yourself in an area where fire is happening all around you and you need to kind of just walk past it. There’s a pretty large path to follow, but your characters only know of the most efficient route to get to where you clicked, which is barreling straight through regardless of what’s in their way.
The amount of accidental fire damage I’ve take in Baldur’s Gate III already is alarming, and I really hope the path-finding gets better cause I’ve already wiped my entire party because instead of running around the combat encounter, they walked right into and stopped in a puddle of grease putting them in prime roasting position. It was a nice present for my enemies I suppose.
WHERE IS IT?
Look, I don’t have a ton of experience with games like Baldur’s Gate III so I’m sure that a cluttered inventory and unorganized hotbar are just expected at this point, but the way in which Baldur’s Gate III “organizes” your spells is truly abysmal. For those who don’t know, casting spells in D&D is a bit of a process that involves making sure you have the spell slots available, picking a level, and then casting the spell and rolling its damage. If that didn’t make any sense to you, that’s fine, just know that Baldur’s Gate III makes finding your spells a chore.
Instead of giving me a list of spells I could cast and then asking me what level spell slot I want to burn on it, they just give you an icon for each spell at each level. Wanna cast magic missile at level 2? Well you gotta scroll through the hotbar to find the magic missile icon with a little roman numeral 2 on it. It’s painfully unintuitive at the moment, but I suspect it’s a remnant of trying to shove the D&D mechanics into Divinity: Original Sin II‘s engine.
Your spells are also just kind shoved into the hotbar all willy-nilly, something I think you can reorganize, but it crams everything your character can do into it with no organization. For instance, I have a fighter in my party who can perform strikes that can cause the fear condition in an enemy. I recently leveled her up in a way where she’s received some spells she can use as well. Instead of separating those skills into folders that are marked as “fighter abilities” or “cantrips,” it’s just all kind tossed in there for you to click through along with the myriad of spell scrolls you pick up, making combat kind of a slog when it’s the turn of a magic user.
In the same vein, the initiative tracker is absolute garbage and needs to be changed entirely. There are times where it’s supposed to be my turn, but then someone else just gets to cut in front of me for some reason. I’ve even had instances where a character I’m controlling will get two turns in one round. It’s bizarre.
AM I THE ONLY ONE PLAYING BY THE RULES?
I don’t want to be that guy or anything, but it sure does feel a bit like the enemies in Baldur’s Gate III are just kind of freestyling it when it comes to their abilities. I noticed this very early on when there’s a goblin attack you find yourself in the middle of. I’ve played enough Dungeons & Dragons to know the goblin stats pretty damn well, so I took notice when the goblin took more than 7 HP worth of damage and still lived.
Goblin – D&D Beyond
It’s a really weird an unwelcome choice to tinker around with the stats of enemies when you’ve got literal books worth of reference material to pull from. I understand the need to alter things to make them work in a video game, but this one seemed completely unnecessary. Now I can’t use the Monster Manual as my own personal strategy guide.
I’VE PLAYED THIS GAME BEFORE
If there is one thing to me that is more damming about Baldur’s Gate III than anything else I’ve already mentioned, it’s that this game feels awfully similar to another Larian Studios game, Divinity: Original Sin II. I didn’t play very much Divinity: Original Sin II, but I sure as hell played enough to recognize it when juxtaposed with what’s supposed to be a game recreating the D&D mechanics. Aside from both games having a ton of visual similarity, there are two mechanics that I’ve personally seen that made me feel like I was playing a version of Divinity that was cosplaying as D&D.
First and foremost has to be the movement and map structure. I know it’s way more dynamic and interesting if you can have free access to just about anywhere on the map during a combat encounter, but for a game trying to present the rules of D&D accurately, there should be some sort of grid-based movement. In D&D, each grid block is supposed to represent 5 feet, which is important to know and be aware of considering how many things are tied to your precise position.
I hate this stupid hat, but it gives me +1 to dex saves
For example, I tried to set up this choke-point in a hallway that would effectively be a gauntlet of blades for the enemies trying to escape and alert their buddies. I managed to get 3 of my party members in what I assumed was stabbing range, but these enemies just found this sliver of daylight and plowed throw untouched like they were Barry Sanders or something. It’s things like this that make me yearn for some grid that confined movement or even an arrow I can point that’ll alert me about what I’m getting myself into if I move somewhere.
The other Divinity-esque thing I’ve seen is how much Baldur’s Gate III incorporates environmental effects and hazards into its gameplay. At first, the ability to knock over a bucket of water onto an enemy and light them up with a lighting bolt for extra damage seems awesome, but then you might find a pathway obscured by some fire and have to make the choice of burning a spell slot on it or not. These choices certainly come up in standard D&D play, but the frequency at which these hazards present themselves are a little too much for my tastes.
Like I said, I haven’t played a lot of Divinity: Original Sin II, but from my understanding you have less resource intensive ways of dealing with things like that than you do in D&D.
ROLL THEM BONES
Okay this one is really just me being ridiculous, but I stand by the fact that it should be more fun to roll the dice than it actually is. Clicking a big die and watching the numbers change is fine and all, but what if there was like a physics driven dice I could roll? That would be a lot of fun for me, a simpleton who is easily amused by physics in video games. It would also make it feel more like I was playing D&D proper.
Despite all of my bellyaching about some of the mechanics in Baldur’s Gate III, I’m really enjoying it for what it is. It’s very early and I’m sure I’m not saying anything the developers haven’t already heard, but as someone who plays Dungeons & Dragons regularly these were just some of the things that stood out to me. I haven’t dipped into the multiplayer just yet due to reports of it being busted, but I look forward to giving that a shot once a few patches hit.
I know worrying about certain mechanics that are present in this current version of Baldur’s Gate III is premature at best, and I’m sure Larian Studios will make great strides over the course of their period of early access. It’s going to be a long time before Baldur’s Gate III fully releases, and by then I’m sure I’ll barely be able to recognize it as the same thing I’m playing now.
Ultimately, I might be looking for something that Baldur’s Gate III cannot or isn’t attempting to deliver on. I want that feeling of playing Dungeons & Dragons more than anything else. It’s a big ask for sure, but I feel like this is the closest I’ve come to getting to play a single player D&D game in the rule set that I know. I might take a break from Baldur’s Gate III until some more patches and fixes get implemented, but I can assure I’ll be reading the patch notes that come with every update just to see if it’s the right time to dive back in.
Maybe you’ve heard already, but the latest craze sweeping the internet comes in the form of an indie game that was released almost 2 years ago. It’s called Among Us and it’s a fun little party game about… well it’s about lying. It’s a game about subterfuge and social engineering that forces you and your friends to figure who is the saboteur aboard a spaceship while the others perform menial tasks to maintain the ship. It’s fun and all, but it’s also kind of grim when you realize that to win the game you have to be a good liar.
I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade here or anything because I’m almost certain I’m overthinking this whole thing, but I don’t know that I want to prove to my friends that I’m really good at lying to them. Like, nobody wins in that scenario right? I don’t want anyone to come away from a session of playing with me and think, “boy, Ari sure is a great liar.” But hey, like I said I’m certain I’m overthinking the hell out of this thing.
The big thing that really got to me while playing Among Us was just how tense it can get. There were moments where I genuinely felt uncomfortable as the imposter, both because I felt bad for lying and getting away with it, as well as the fact that I literally had no idea what I was doing.
Among Us – InnerSloth
When you die or get “spaced” in Among Us, you get to be a ghost that haunts the ship and can still sabotage some stuff in the process. What you can sabotage and why I don’t know, but I definitely kept draining the oxygen almost immediately as the round began when I was deceased. What happened next was I got to watch a parade of players march to the life support systems, disable it, then call a meeting in which they all accused each other fervently. I had way more fun being this invisible agent of chaos than I did just straight up wandering the map and playing mindless mini-games to restore power or whatever.
I don’t know that I’d ever pick Among Us as my “go-to” multiplayer game, but it’s certainly a fun way to kill an hour or so with friends. Although within my first hour of playing the game I had to bail out of the session thanks to a massive headache that I can only attribute to the tension the game imparted on me. Regardless of my ability to handle said tension, I certainly applaud Among Us for being able to provide an experience capable of physically incapacitating me. So that’s fun.
When I finally gave in to all of the peer pressure I felt from the deluge of praise people were hurling at Hades and begrudgingly bought it, I felt this immediate wave of buyer’s remorse wash over me. After playing a little of it however, I can honestly say that it’s one of the most fun action games I’ve played this year. I can also confidently say that I won’t be seeing it through to the end because I’m bad at it.
Hades is a rogue-like action game and the latest release from Supergiant Games, makers of such classic indie titles like Bastion and Transistor. With previous titles like those, Hades had some big expectations around it and a lot of hype that seemed to dull between its release into early access at the end of 2018 and now. That’s at least how I perceived it considering I never really heard much about the game until its official release a few days ago, so I might be entirely incorrect on that front. I know people have a lot of strong feelings about Supergiant’s past games, but I truly think Hades might be the best game the company has released up to this point.
That might come as a surprise to anyone who frequents the site and knows my disdain towards the rogue-like genre as a whole, but that’s how good this damn game is. I won’t lie and say that my feelings toward the genre have changed in any meaningful way, but I am enjoying Hades in spite of the fact that it’s a rogue-like. Hades does some interesting things in weaving the story around the concept of you dying and returning only for you to perish once more. Characters acknowledge these cycles and play off of it in some pretty neat ways that I won’t spoil for anyone who hasn’t played it.
It also helps that the game looks incredible and is just oozing with style on all fronts. The character design is incredible, with NPC’s and enemies alike all rendered in a gorgeous art style that’s even better to watch in motion, Hades has its visual presentation locked in. Even the way menus and title cards explode into frame are exquisitely done, letting it be known that every part of the visuals of Hades were crafted with the highest level of care and attention. Also the soundtrack is rad as hell and you should listen to some of those tracks.
Despite the quality of the writing and the brilliance in presentation, Hades biggest strength is in the quality of its gameplay. It’s honestly been the main factor that’s kept me wanting to keep coming back to Hades. I’ve only gained access to the second weapon thus far, a bow and arrow, but that alone made the game feel completely new and fresh thanks to how it works and the power-ups you can get for it.
Every weapon has a standard and heavy attack that can be augmented by various upgrades you can find throughout the levels, adding higher critical chances, replenishing health, making certain attacks better against armor and a lot of other standard upgrade stuff. But when Hades hits you with an upgrade that allows you to shoot lighting bolts that chain between enemies as you use your dash, that’s when the true fun begins.
From run to run you’re collecting all sorts of different flotsam and jetsam that you can use to trade in for upgrades, items, weapons and some other things that I still don’t fully understand just yet because of early into Hades I am. But unlike a lot of other rogue-like games, Hades doesn’t seem like it’s obscuring information from you. Every power-up and ability increase that I’ve been presented with has very clearly explained what it’s going to do, which I appreciate very much. I’ve always hated when games try to be overly secretive and obfuscate simple item descriptions to seem more mysterious or enigmatic. I don’t have the time or patience to learn about the origins of this health potion, I just need it to keep all of my blood inside of me.
I haven’t seen too much of the game considering I’m still very early on in it, but I’ve heard it only continues to get more and more buck-wild as you progress. I look forward to potentially seeing some of this stuff, but I can’t shake the feeling that no matter how strong every other aspect of the game is, I still won’t be able to shake the fact that it’s still a rogue-like. It sucks because I like just about everything else about Hades except the genre it’s in. Actually, I don’t love when enemies off-screen manage to hurl themselves at you with a speed that’s borderline impossible to dodge, but I’m sure I’ll “crack that nut” soon enough.
I’m genuinely glad that I decided to give in to the heaping helping of praise that people have been dumping on Hades, but I do wish it was more of a standard action game that I could progress through normally. I suppose the way the story is handled in its current form wouldn’t work as well in a genre where constantly dying isn’t a thing, but there is a “god mode” setting I want to try out that allegedly let’s you play it without having to worry as much about dying that seems right up my alley.
I don’t think Hades is going to change your mind about rogue-likes as a genre if you’re like me and just don’t click with them, but it might make you a believer for a little while. But if rogue-likes actually are your thing, then Hades seems like one of the best ones that’s been released in a while.
I think my brain might be busted in a major way because all I can think about is wanting to buy games that I know I’m not going to be into, and in some cases on a platform I know I don’t play that often. I feel stupid because I literally have to have an internal argument with myself every time I see someone praise Hades or Spelunky 2. The problem is that I know exactly how this ends, and it involves me just throwing about $50 into the garbage.
I’ve gone over my distaste for the rogue-like genre of games in the past and for a while it was easy for me to look at something like The Binding of Isaac and think, “Not only is this game visually unsettling, but I can just tell that playing it won’t be a great experience for me.” But here I am staring right at Hades and Spelunky 2, and I’m actively feeling my resolve start to falter.
Hades – Supergiant Games
Just look at Hades and tell me that it doesn’t at least look visually appealing. Every screenshot and clip I see of the damn game makes me load up the store page for it and hover my cursor delicately over the “gimme the cash” button. But it isn’t just a delight for the eyes apparently, because people are raving about every aspect of Hades to the extent where I think the mechanics, visuals and story might be able to outweigh my dislike of its run-based nature. Hell, Dead Cells was a rogue-like and I fucking loved the time I spent with it.
What’s really fucking with me is the desire to buy it on my Nintendo Switch, a console I play so little that whenever I do decide to check on my Animal Crossing town, I have to wipe the dust off of the screen first. So why in the world am I looking into buying Hades on a console I don’t really play that much? My running theory is that Hades is the perfect kind of game for the Switch, and apparently I’m planning on doing some gaming on the go in the midst of this pandemic or something. It’s stupid and I’m pretty sure I’ve talked myself out of buying it on the Switch.
Spelunky 2 – Mossmouth
The other game I’ve been contending with is Spelunky 2, a sequel to a game I actively didn’t enjoy but everyone on the internet apparently is wild for. Spelunky as a series are some of the only games where I feel like a genuine weirdo for not enjoying, and while I can’t make specific criticisms about a game i played back in 2008, I just remember hating its overly ambiguous approach to items and objectives as well as its cumbersome controls.
By all accounts, Spelunky 2 is just more Spelunky with fluid dynamics involved, a combination that a lot of people are really enjoying. Maybe with 12 years of wisdom and experience under my belt since the last release I can finally appreciate Spelunky for its true brilliance. Maybe Hades will make me a believer in the rogue-like genre. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll waste my money on two games I’ll play just a handful of times.
UPDATE: I have bought both games. Somebody please help me.
Welcome to another fantastic edition of this blog where I sometimes talk about video games. Boy howdy are there a ton of video games I want to talk about this week, I’m basically swimming in rewarding gameplay experiences that I’m eager to discuss. It’s hard to convey sarcasm through a written piece, but that was all a big fib. I did a lie. No, this week has mostly been about me reading a book, hearing about how people are enjoying games I know aren’t for me, and watching the slow and steady erosion of our democracy continue unabated. So hell yeah, video game blog time!
Honestly it’s been a week of just reading through the latest Dungeons & Dragons module, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, and preparing to run that for my group. You can read more about what that process has been like in September’s Master of Disaster feature on “prepping,” but to quickly summarize, it’s been a lot of work and a lot of fun. It’s consuming most of my time these days but I’m enjoying the process of it all.
Rime of the Frostmaiden – Wizard’s of the Coast (Image Published on IGN)
Otherwise I’m just kind of watching people lose their collective minds over the release of Hades and Spelunky 2, two rouge-like games that I know aren’t for me. But seeing all of this praise being dumped on these games is making me feel like I owe it to myself to at least give them a shot. I’m really in a holding pattern until next week when Baldur’s Gate III enters early access and the desire to play other games will leave my body.
Oh, and there’s that clusterfuck of a “pre-order” situation that Sony and Microsoft both waded into unwittingly that’s been interesting to watch. For those who don’t know what happened, both Sony and Microsoft had some pretty rough pre-order snafus, with people even ordering the wrong Xbox in some cases. It was bad, and even though I literally just wrote about my wanting both Sony and Microsoft to delay their consoles, I still keep trying to get a PS5 anyway. Like, there’s barely anything to play on launch day as is, but I just want the new shiny thing! I can’t buy a 3000 series graphics card because I’d literally have to upgrade everything else in my computer to accommodate it so I want the funny looking PlayStation instead!
But hey, all of that is small potatoes when stacked up against the deluge of bullshit that’s currently going on in the world. So do yourselves a favor, check your voter registration and make sure you vote on November 3rd. Seriously, it’s fucking grim out there and it’s getting worse every day.
One of the most interesting, fun and tedious parts about being a Dungeon Master is preparing from session to session, but even more of a challenge is preparing a new campaign entirely. My group and I are currently wrapping up our “one-shot” of The Sunless Citadel, a pretty decent Dungeons & Dragons adventure, and are gearing up for our next big campaign. As luck would have it, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden released just as we were finishing up, so we decided that it would be our next adventure. Being that this is my first time prepping a full campaign, I figured I do it as meticulously as possible. Here’s what’s happened.
Considering I’ve always had some difficulty with absorbing the things I read, I had to approach preparing for Rime of the Frostmaiden from an overly redundant and thorough angle. I can’t just read something once or twice and commit it to memory. My brain just never worked like that so I had to bust out old my note-taking methods from my school days in order to properly tackle this behemoth of a book. What that meant was that I had to essentially read the book paragraph by paragraph, rewriting everything I was reading into a notebook.
The notes themselves, while useful, aren’t really why I’m doing all of this extra busy work. The problem I have is that I need to rewrite something to commit it to memory. I don’t think that’s too uncommon, but it definitely adds a lot more time and effort to whatever it is I’m trying to absorb. But I wanted to be as meticulous as possible, and luckily the book is actually really interesting which has fueled me to continue with this overly redundant way of learning.
Rime of the Frostmaiden – Wizards of the Coast
Both my notebook and the module itself have tiny little bookmark tabs everywhere that denote all of the important information I might need at a moments notice. I do it in a way that is more granular than the format of the book itself can account for allowing me to quickly access anything from notable characters, town lore, quests, items, hazards and more. On top of that, my notes also point me to whichever page in the book I need to get to, so I’m covering all of my bases to make sure I am never more than a few pages away from relevant information my players might need.
But I don’t want to paint all of this as an exercise in futility or anything, because I’m genuinely enjoying the book on its own. The story in Rime of the Frostmaiden is interesting and captivating as written, and all of my efforts in documenting it are just so I can provide my players with the best campaign I can muster. I get to enjoy the book as is, but my players are relying on me to deliver them an exciting and cohesive story to go along with the actual game itself. If I don’t nail this thing then they might have a pretty lackluster impression of the module, and that would be upsetting on a lot of levels.
Other things that I’ve done in preparation outside of just reading the book has involved making generic encounter maps for the frozen wasteland of Icewind Dale, along with listening to well over a hundred instrumental pieces of music and “soundscapes,” and categorizing them into several different playlists that I can quickly switch between. Is the place they arrived in a happy town? Well I’ll play the happy town songs for them. Is this battle an intense and dramatic one? Got it covered.
Page 2 of my Character Creation Syllabus
I even went as far as to make a 4-page syllabus of just about everything they need to know in order to create characters for this campaign. When I say that out loud it sounds truly insane, but they genuinely appreciated me doing that. When I’m head down on preparing for campaign, the thought that I might be more “into it” than my players always creeps into my mind, but their reaction to getting a literal syllabus was overwhelmingly encouraging.
All of the little seemingly superfluous things I’ve done in preparation I do because I know that it’s worth it. I can describe a battle in the middle of the frozen wasteland just fine, but having a generic snow-covered battle map I can toss up for them will help give them a sense of place and another opportunity to tangibly interact with their characters. Picking out hundreds of music tracks and categorizing them by their “emotional weight” seems ridiculous, but music is so damn important to setting the tone and atmosphere that I find it’s necessary to a successful campaign.
Maybe this article is just going to be met with other Dungeon Masters feeling like I’ve just described what they all do all the time, but to me I feel like I’m really putting in the extra effort to make this campaign a success. Like I said, this is my first time truly preparing for something this large and intricate, and I don’t want to mess it up. Luckily my players seem just as excited for this new campaign as I am, so I don’t think my efforts will go unnoticed.
I’m almost certain this has been covered by other folks before, but as we creep closer to its release I find myself feeling worse and worse about Super Mario 3D All-Stars as a whole. You’d think that a package containing one of the best video games of all time would be a more exciting proposition, but there are so many little upsetting nuggets of information that keep cropping up that have effectively killed any enthusiasm I had for the collection.
For those who aren’t aware, Super Mario 3D All-Stars is an homage to the original Super Mario All-Stars on the Super Nintendo that contained the likes of Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels, and Super Mario Bros. 3. It was an incredible package that is still held in high regards today as one of the best deals in games. Super Mario 3D All-Stars does not seem like it will be anywhere near as revered as its predecessor.
Super Mario 64 (the best game in the package.) – Nintendo
The first issue comes down to the game selection itself. Super Mario 3D All-Stars contains Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy all for the “reasonable” price of $60. The exclusion of Super Mario Galaxy 2 is suspect to say the least, especially when you realize that one of the three games in this collection is a big ol’ stinker. That’s right folks, we’ve entered the portion of the blog where I dunk on Super Mario Sunshine.
Super Mario Sunshine is a game that doesn’t feel good to play, has some of the worst levels in Mario history in it, and steals the focus away from Mario and his cool jumps in favor of using a dumb water-gun jet-pack thing. It also inverted the camera controls on both the y and x axes which is an insane thing to do as is, but they took it a step further and disallowed the ability to un-invert it at all. You either had to reprogram your brain to play this bad video game, or do the smart thing and stop playing it altogether. Super Mario Sunshine is a bad game and shouldn’t be considered an “all-star” of anything.
Super Mario Galaxy – Nintendo
But aside from suspect game choices, there isn’t any real work being done to these games. Both Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Sunshine are now presented in a modern 16:9 aspect ratio, but Super Mario 64 isn’t for some reason. None of the games are getting graphically retouched or injected with new content or accessibility features beyond the ability to mitigate some of the motion controls in Super Mario Galaxy. It just seems like a mediocre package meant to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Mario.
But the scummiest and grossest thing that Nintendo is doing with Super Mario 3D All-Stars is making it a limited release, both physically and digitally. I get limited physical releases, especially in this day and age where more and more of us are just buying things digitally, but to put an end date on when I can purchase this package digitally is wild. For reference, from the time it goes on sale at the end of this week you’ll have until the end of March 2021 to snag this overpriced collection of mostly good games.
Super Mario Galaxy – Nintendo
At first the decision just seems like that classic “Nintendo is out of touch” thing, but the more you think about it the more your mind starts to craft these conspiracy theories and underhanded schemes that you could totally see Nintendo doing. My take on the situation is that Nintendo is trying to create a false scarcity for these revered games to boost their sales over the holiday season in lieu of having a big marquee game release. The artificial scarcity makes both physical and digital versions of the package seem like must have collector pieces, while also bolstering their fiscal 1st quarter earnings by guaranteeing that the sales can only hit during a specific period of time. Totally unrelated piece of information, the first fiscal quarter always ends on March 31st, just around the time when Super Mario 3D All-Stars will no longer be available for purchase.
But after you look at the blatant attempt to boost profits in a time period where a marquee game would normally come out, it’s important to remember that Nintendo has another incentive to cut off sales of Super Mario 3D All-Stars. There’s a reality in which Nintendo breaks the collection up and allows you to buy each game individually for a slightly inflated price. The collection itself feels like your chance to get the “best value” price before they break it up into 25 or 30 dollar chunks. But if I’m honest, it is Nintendo and they’ll probably try to make you pay full price for an untouched version of Super Mario 64.
Super Mario Sunshine (a bad game) – Nintendo
Super Mario 3D All-Stars would be a no-brainer for me if it was graphically retouched, or also offered the 3DS remake of Super Mario 64 on it. To me, I thought the bare minimum would be to just make these games run in 16:9, but Super Mario 3D All-Stars even falls short of that by only providing that “upgrade” to two-thirds of the games included. I think that Super Mario 3D All-Stars is bad package that Nintendo is trying coerce its fans into buying it by telling them it’s a limited time offer. The worst part however is that it’s totally going to work and Nintendo will make a boat load of money off of it. Or maybe the inclusion of Super Mario Sunshine is the worst part of this entire package? Who can say?
It’s rare when something that’s so clearly playing off of your nostalgia actually delivers and makes good on all of those memories you have of a game instead of just reminding you how flawed your brain is. It turns out that the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series was phenomenal and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 brings everything you loved about the series into the modern era extremely successfully.
From the start you’re immediately struck with the first wave of nostalgia in the form of a compilation of skate footage starring the characters of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, set to Guerrilla Radio by Rage Against the Machine. I also enjoy that none of the footage was reused from old games, and instead it’s just modern footage of new and aged skaters doing sick tricks. It’s one of the first examples of this game knowing exactly what it is and who it’s for.
When you get to the main menu you can choose between playing the first or second Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, along with a third option for online and free skate which I admittedly have not engaged with yet. There’s a pretty decent character and board creator that you unlock more options for by completing in-game challenges across both games, as well as a park creator that I also have not touched yet. The challenges can get pretty wild too, asking you to make specific combos over certain gaps and such, but luckily Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 allows you to track specific challenges if you like.
But that’s all ancillary stuff we’re talking about, the real magic is in the gameplay. As far as I can tell, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 feels just like I remember those originals feeling. It’s fast and snappy and borderline infuriating when you over rotate and fall on your ass, just like I remember. Even better is Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2‘s decision to include various accessibility options that allow you to toggle certain game features on and off along with certain cheats like unlimited special meter an perfect grind balance.
For example, I don’t believe the revert was in the first Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, but it is when you use the default gameplay options. If you really want that first Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater experience though, you can change the feature set to what was available in that first release. I don’t know why anyone would do that but the option exists if you want to have less fun.
The weird thing about talking about the mechanics of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 is that if you’ve played those original games, you know how this one plays too. It’s the game you remember except prettier. It retains all the good and bad about those first two games, including the one or two bad levels you had to slog through to get back to the fun ones, but I genuinely forgot how much I hated some of these levels until I was confronted with them once more.
Aside from the game itself, I think the most pleasant surprise for me was just revisiting the soundtrack once more. It’s weird to return to the place where a lot of your music tastes were cultivated nearly over two decades ago, but in a good way. I can’t remember what song played in the main menu in the original, but Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 immediately starts playing Superman by Goldfinger because they know exactly who their audience is and what song jumps to mind when they think of that first game.
There’s always the worry that you’re remembering a game being way more fun and memorable than it actually was, but Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 validates all of that nostalgia by delivering a truly fantastic remake of a those classic games. It’s also hilarious to me that they aged up all of the skaters from the original game allowing us to finally see a man in his mid fifties do a 900 off a rooftop only to get hit by a car that’s whipping around corners at breakneck speeds, and I think we could all use a little more of that in 2020.
As of writing this, Microsoft finally saw fit to confirm what might be the worst kept secret in the gaming industry, in announcing the existence of the Xbox Series S, the all digital and budget model of their next console. I could talk about how odd and wildly different from the upcoming Series X it looks, but instead I’d like to add to the cacophony of voices asking, “Should these boxes just be delayed?”
Honestly, I think they should be for a multitude of reasons. First, it’s 2020 and things are a fucking mess with a lot of folks (myself included) out of a job and unable to justify buying a $500+ video game machine. Things are tough out there with people not only possibly being unable to afford the thing, but supply chains being what they currently are might make for a difficult production and distribution pipeline. It’s like if Rolex was trying to pitch me on their newest line of expensive watches where normally I’d say “no thank you,” but trying to sell it to me in this economy is just fucking wild.
Xbox Series X – Microsoft
But maybe you’re Captain Moneybags, sitting upon your throne of gold coins and job offers with plenty of disposable income to throw around. First of all, how about throwing some of that cash my way, and secondly, what are you gonna play on these boxes anyway? Launch lineups are generally pretty forgettable, but this time around it’s downright miserable.
Sony has Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales coming day and date with the PS5, but that’s kind of it. Without a doubt both Microsoft and Sony will get some sports games, some sort of dancing game and an Assassin’s Creed, but that doesn’t seem worth the price of admission to me. Sure I’ll play Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and the Spider-Man game, but the first one I’ll be able to play on my PC or PS4, while the latter is more of an expansion pack that’s built on the same bones as its predecessor. That’s not a dig against these games but there’s nothing that’s jumped out and made me eager to buy a new console.
Playstation 5 & friends – Sony
Then you look at Microsoft who basically just has third party stuff coming out with nothing else to show especially after Halo Infinite got delayed into next year. Like the PS5, they’ll get some sports games, some Ubisoft titles and the next Call of Duty, but they’ve got even less going on than Sony does. Sure they have Game Pass which will allow users to play a variety of stuff, but you can already play those games right now on your current generation of Xbox or a PC.
Maybe by the end of the month both companies will announce some super amazing games that I just have got to play on day one, but as of now there’s like one thing I want to play that’s exclusive in Spider-Man and that’s it. Personally, I wouldn’t mind a cool March release for these bad boys, or even just a full year delay. But it’s expensive to just store product in a warehouse for a year, and it’s unwise to do that with what will be rapidly aging technology. A delay could see a drop in price and a better lineup though, which is something I’m into but these companies certainly will not be.
The Bonus World 