New Digs
I've moved! Again! This time, it's back to New England (boo!) but in a new state entirely (New Hampshire). The motto here is "Live Free or Die" but I always think of it as "Live, Freeze, then Die". Because it's cold. And I arrived in the middle of a historically bad snow storm.
New Digs
I've moved! Again! And no, that's not a copy and paste error! My current employer decided that one cross-country move in a year wasn't enough so they decided to relocate me to the greater Seattle area. There's good and there's bad with that but if I'm honest, I was good with one move. As a result of spending roughly half the year moving, there wasn't nearly enough gaming
Well, Crap
No one actually likes the formalities. On to gaming!
Broken Age (Act 1, 2014): ***
I backed this on kickstarter and only got to finishing it this year. Broken Age is a lot of what I like to see out of games but glaring in its omissions. Style and charm it has in spades. Substance and depth it lacks. I suppose I can let the latter go since that's not the kind of game it is but I was reminded of this rant about adventure games more than a handful of times.
While I didn't have any legitimate "throw the controller" moments, I did get stuck at one point last year and didn't get back to the game until March while trying to free up space on my games drive by completing games I hadn't yet finished. First world problems, yo. There is some legitimately good writing in this game, however, and (also, unsurprisingly considering the roll call) some legitimately good voice acting. I'll also award a star for the soundtrack which was both exceptional and seemingly an exception in this day and age.
I haven't yet played Act 2 and I'm not even sure if I own it but it's on my list of things to do soonishly. Maybe in 2016? Check back in a year and find out!
If you've read stuff here you know I'm an unabashed fan of Total Annihilation. Planetary Annihilation was supposed to be the same thing turned up to 11 which is why I gave them quite a lot of kickstarter money. While they got a lot of the bits right it unfortunately doesn't come together well at all. I wanted to like this one--I really did--but no.
There is way too much micro which is completely against what it's supposed to be. Planets are too small, moving units between orbital positions is way too hard especially when your opponent is entrenched, and if you slip up in your defensive strategy even a tiny bit or heaven forbid don't have the tech available, it's more than likely you'll get hit by a showstopper like a nuke or an orbital laser or god knows what that you cannot recover from. Even on the easiest setting ("normal", no less) it is almost impossible to beat any faction leader showdowns in Galactic War mode. The other encounters are comparatively a breeze.
I gave up after a sickening number of hours trying to figure it all out. This game needs two of three things and I don't especially care which: 1) put in an easy mode so I can learn, 2) put in a tutorial so it's not a learning cliff anymore, 3) put in a "no extra planets mode" with extra large planets so I can avoid the worst part of your game. We are more than well taken care of when we want a RTSes that emphasizes APM (real time tactical more than real time strategy, really, but no one seems to know the difference anymore). A spiritual successor to Total Annihilation should not be one of them.
Spell Force: Breath of Winter (2004): ***
I like the SpellForce series which is why I was happy to see that the expansions were finally all available in the US and on Steam. This is a game that I've now bought twice, the first time in no small part because there was a pretty girl on the box. I'm not without my vices, I suppose. I thought I'd written about my fun in Spell Force up in here somewhere but I can't seem to find any evidence mostly because I can't be bothered to look.
It might have been because I'd just played Planetary Annihilation but the game seemed very primitive. I suppose that's to be expected given that the original was released more than a decade ago. Whether it was the English SKU for the US market that didn't get enough love or it being forced out before it was ready, there were parts of the game that were poorly executed. Difficulty was all over the map so even though I ended up doing many Ridiculous Feats of Farming(TM) through a lot of my playthrough, parts of it were stupidly hard. I don't think it was quite as good as the original SpellForce but that's not uncommon for expansions.
I'd intended to play the last piece which is why I got the trilogy on Steam to begin with, but it didn't work out that way.
Caribbean! (2015): ***
I really struggled with the rating on this one. On the one hand I got all the tall-shippy goodness that I've so missed from Ancient Art of War At Sea. On the other hand, the are parts of the game that are very, very unpolished mostly because it wasn't done (playable beta, basically). If nothing else, it's a Mount & Blade engine game so I can, and did, mod the shit out of it. For a good couple months
Around the time that I was de-dustifying this post near the middle of December, I was somewhat surprised to learn that the full game was released as Blood & Gold: Caribbean! which is in fact entirely too many punctational characters for any game name. I forgive this fact because I was granted a Steam key since I'd bought the early access version.
Wildstar (2014): *****
Wildstar went free to play
Despite the fact that they did their damndest to kill it, despite the fact that I have no one to really play with, despite the fact that it's a game that probably doesn't have a future, and despite the fact that I have very few remaining in-game goals, I find myself playing just about every day and I still love it. The combat loop is exceptional and I'm on record as having said that killing mobs never stopped being fun which is still true. When the eulogies start rolling when NCSoft finally pulls the plug, remember that you heard it here first: Wildstar was a gem of a game that was fantastic in spite of itself. (Also: I totally nailed on the free to play thing.)
I think it's run it course and I've been free for a few days now due to the next and last item in my list. That's what addicts say, right? "I can quit whenever I want!"
Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014): **
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| Evelyn Trevelyan, warrior noble. Her eyes are very blue. Are they too blue? Is that a thing? |
While the world is a lot more cohesive than in DA2 I feel that it is a heck of a lot less well polished as a game as opposed to as a screenshot engine for which it is more than adequate. The interface is terrifically clunky which led me to miss out on some important stuff early on and there's a lot of tedium just doing normal things. The maps are too large and I spent what seemed like an eternity moving back and forth over the same points over and over (and over) again even for what should be easy and rewarding things like talking to my crew. When you can turn what should be the best part of the game into tedium, you know there's problems. Then we get to the length--it's a huge game easily spanning 80 hours (I was nearer 100 though I understand you can do it in under 20) and at many points I just wanted it to end so I could get on to other stuff. This is probably how I will remember DA:I--"The Dragon Age Game Which Was Too Tedious."
I was going to say some stuff about good writing and Bioware and blah blah blah but no, not this time. I found the writing to be, on the whole, very average. Any other game from just about any other studio, I'd probably list this as a high point. For a game with what I have to believe was a nine figure budget (the intertoobs are failing me on this one) from a studio that used to be known for fantabulous writing, no. People far smarter than I have said some stuff worth reading. I may follow suit and do a bigger write up. I figure I might as well since I spent all that time with it.
So There You Have It
That was my 2015 in a nutshell. Now, pardon me for a moment while I prep next year's post.
