I mentioned in my last entry that I’ve had a busier than usual few months at work, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been playing any games. As we come up on the end of March, I feel like I can give a decent look back at my first quarter and the games that captured my interest and those that fell flat.
Crackdown 3 and Anthem are games that I can start to describe in very similar ways, even if my experience with each has been quite different. Neither game to me is “bad,” but both seem to lack imagination and fall short of expectations. This is where they differ: I’ve still had a ton of fun playing Crackdown 3 and appreciating it for what it is, and my time doing that with Anthem has come to an early end. Crackdown 3 has spent years in development purgatory and doesn’t feel like it takes any steps forward from the cult hit that spawned the series accidentally thanks to the inclusion of a Halo 3 beta code in the original Crackdown’s box. But I still enjoy shooting ridiculous guns, jumping halfway up skyscrapers, and using cars as thrown weapons instead of as a means of transportation. The story can best be described as “present,” and this has become the rare game I can play while I also listen to a podcast because I truly don’t care about anything happening in the world beyond the chaos I’m creating. Crackdown 3: Not all that great, maybe a little disappointing, and probably still headed for a spot on my Top 10 Games of 2019 list.
Anthem, on the other hand, took this pitch: A loot-based shooter where you’re also in an Iron Man suit” and made it…boring. There’s none of the Bioware story charm or feeling behind this game, even as someone who was invested in the fairly rote story until I just gave up on the game entirely. Flying in your Iron Man suit…sorry, “Javelin,” feels great but is severely limited by an overheat mechanic. Key, crucial combat mechanics aren’t tutorialized ANYWHERE in the game itself, nor are they even really mentioned outside the game’s incredibly detailed codex. The hub world of Fort Tarsis, which isn’t a social space where you can interact with other players, feels dead and empty. What really killed the game for me was the loot implementation. Loot barely seems to matter, drops at frustrating low rates, and seemingly along a predetermined rarity path. This means there’s no hope of grabbing a piece of gear or weapon of a significantly higher trier than you already have, so it’s a long, slow treadmill to get to anything interesting. Finally, you can’t use your new gear until you return to Fort Tarsis; you simply pick up a color-coded something mid mission and find out at the end mission screen what it was. You’re then several long load screens from seeing if it’s something you’d want to use…and it probably isn’t. There’s a world where this game goes through the same cycle that other loot shooters like Destiny and The Division went through where initial disappointment was course corrected. I’m not holding my breath, and I’m not sure I’ll be interested in hoping back in even if it does become better.
Anthem was, in fact, so disappointing to me that I felt I had to try to find something else to scratch that loot shooter itch. I downloaded Warframe for the PS4 after seeing Mike Mahardy of Gamespot play it with the Giant Bomb crew, and it’s got a lot of potential for me. Missions are bite-sized enough I can play for 20 minutes or tear through a ton of them, but I’m having a more difficult time wrapping my head around the upgrade path and loop with this than I do with other loot-based games. I’m still very, very early so I’m hoping some of that is tutorialized better, and I know the community around the game is pretty good about welcoming new players and explaining the game’s quirks.
I also got a code for The Division 2. After my last post’s pretty definitve statement of “Fuck The Division 2,” I did not expect myself to be playing it. I’ve played for maybe 12 hours, and I will say the progression and how you improve your character via loot drops is exactly what I want in a game this style. Guns show damage, RPM, and mag size. Armor pieces show how much protection they offer and if they’re part of an armor “set” that confers additional bonuses, and both weapons and armor can have individual, randomized perks like “15% bonus damage against elite enemies” or “250 bonus armor.” The game itself plays well, even if I do find it incredibly difficult in spots for a solo player, easily surrounded and overrun by bulletsponge enemies. And the political message remains vaguely fascistic, trying so hard not to say anything that it’s muddled in what it does present so much to be utterly meaningless. I’m not ready to give up yet, mainly due to the loot treadmill.
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention that there’s a strong, strong, STRONG hint from Gearbox Software that they’ll be announcing something Borderlands related, likely Borderlands 3, this coming weekend at PAX East during their panel on Thursday, March 28th. I don’t know what I want out of a Borderlands 3, but I want to see what they’ve come up with for Borderlands 3 and I will be playing on Day 1.
The good news is there are games out there besides new games! And there are some new games I’m enjoying too, but I’ve got a few older or ongoing titles that have kept me busy the past few months.
Hearthstone has been a staple in my gaming diet, but it had started to get stale recently. The metagame has been dominated by decks I didn’t enjoy playing myself or playing against, so I would just grind out my 5 ranked wins for the month to earn the month’s new card back, then do my daily quests 2-3 times a week to stockpile gold. That seems to be a good call, as the new expansion coming soon is also going to see major changes to the metagame. While we know cards from prior expansions would be rotating out, Blizzard chose to make a selection of cards “Hall of Fame” cards before their scheduled rotation, meaning they can no longer be played in the standard format. The major early removals are two cards known as Genn and Baku, which reward you specifically for building a deck with only odd- or even-costed cards and including the appropriate one of this pair. The cards themselves weren’t that great, but so dominated the metagame that playing anything besides an “Odd Paladin,” “Odd Hunter,” or “Even Shaman” style deck just seemed like a waste of time. This change plus the coming new expansion has me eager to see what Hearthstone has in store.
I’ve also been fortunate to have another outlet for my Collectible Card Game itch, as Magic: The Gathering Arena has filled a similar role to Hearthstone. I’m by no means a great player, but the daily quest system gives me incentive to hop in every day or every other day, play a few games, and quit before I get tilted or the game becomes too stale. They also released an expansion set recently that’s been fun to play with, even if I do find myself gravitating back to more traditional, basic decks.
But let’s talk about older games. Sure, Magic has been around since the mid-90s, but Arena is still in beta. I have a sizeable backlog of old school and old school-style Western Computer Role Playing Games, or CRPGs. The truly old school among these are titles like Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter Nights - games that used the Dungeons and Dragons ruleset translated into a video game to allow for exploration, combat, and epic stories. There’s been a bit of renaissance in these style of games since Pillars of Eternity was part of the great Kickstarter video game boom to bring back older styles of games and was published in March of 2015. Since then, we’ve had a Pillars of Eternity sequel, Divinity: Original Sin and Divinity: Original Sin II, Torment: Tides of Numenera, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker just to name 5 games that all live in the same space. I decided to give the “original” modern reboot of these games a shot and started Pillars of Eternity for a third time. I genuinely enjoy it, and in a week I’ve made it about as far as I ever had before despite needing to relearn some lessons I had learned on previous attempted playthroughs. Example 1: the Young Bear you can find in a cave near the beginning of the game when you’re alone will still be there after you’ve recruited at least two more party members. If you insist on fighting it along, you’ll never get to the part where you recruit more party members. I’m playing PoE on PC, as these games were made and meant to be played on PC, but I’ve heard good things about the console adaptations of them as well. I picked up Divinity: Original Sin II for the PS4, but am hesitant to try playing two of these games at one time. For one, I have a hard enough time finishing games at it. Secondly, I’m worried the rule sets will be juuuuuust different enough I’ll make a dumb mistake in one game while thinking about how spells or attacks or stealth or some mechanic works in the other game that I’ll lose a chunk of progress and be very frustrated.
Also, it’s not like I don’t have a few console games still holding my attention. Resident Evil 2 on PS4 looks and feels great, but I find I need to be in a specific mood to play it so it’s slow going for me. Ace Combat 7 is a really pretty arcade fighter pilot game I’d love to play more of but I literally cannot get past the second mission, so I fear it may not be for me as much as I want it to be. I’ve also been bitten by the Apex Legends bug, and find myself losing 3-4 matches per session but having fun doing it - mostly.
And finally, the reason I felt the need to get this written and posted tonight, on March 24: MLB The Show returns with MLB The Show 19 launching tomorrow at 9 pm PST, just in time for the start of the real baseball season. Cover boy Bryce Harper is no longer part of my Nats, and I actually do wish him well in Philly, as long as his World Series win comes after the Nationals break their slump. I’ve spent the last few days getting caught up on how MLB 19 has changed from MLB 18 and I don’t think I could be more excited. For reference, my Sony PS4 Year in Review statistics, which I can no longer find to reference directly, had me listed as playing over 500 hours of MLB 18. That may account for some time where I left the game paused for 10-15 minutes at a time, but it’s not a huge stretch. I really liked 2018, and despite some vocal complaints from the community, had a ton of fun with it. The changes they’ve previewed for 2019 all look like they address issues from last year ranging from serious competitive balance issues to minor Quality of Life enhancements.
I expect to play a LOT of this game, starting tomorrow night, is the gist of that paragraph. I hope I can find time for other titles.