Saturday Morning Gaming: On Fighting For Your Purpose
I’ve been playing Hades and it’s absolutely amazing. I’d say “run, don’t walk” to get a copy of the game and just start playing it. It’s a 2D isometric game that has you, the son of Hades Himself, trying to escape from Hades (the place). You’re going to die a lot and upgrade yourself by inches and soon you’ll be a freight train rolling through monsters that used to kill you 20 deaths ago. It deserves screen shots, discussions of the umpteen kinds of currency used to buy the umpteen kinds of upgrades, and discussions of mortality. I don’t have time to write that. I’ll get started during the week for this one for next time.
In the absence of the discussion that I know I ought to have, I’ll just point out that the Epic Games Store has The Fall for free. We talked about The Fall briefly back in 2014 and, lemme tell ya, it was an *AMAZING* game back in 2014. A puzzle game with a lot of dialog.
In The Fall, you are an AI running a specialized suit for your pilot. The game begins with a fall from a great height (“I know writers who use subtext and they’re all cowards“) and, after a pretty rough landing, you wake and run a quick diagnostics… you’ve got some damage. You don’t know how your pilot is doing. He (or she, I guess) is not responding and it is your job to repair yourself enough to run diagnostics and figure out how your non-responsive pilot is doing. Dead? Unconscious? You don’t know and it is your purpose to help your pilot complete his or her purpose.
So the game is about repairing yourself. You’re going to need the following MacGuffins and, lucky you, they happen to be scattered around the (mostly abandoned, mostly hollowed out) world in which you now find yourself. Go, find the MacGuffins. Find out about your pilot. Fulfill your purpose.
This was one of the best stories I played back in 2014. The puzzles were challenging intellectually but didn’t require twitch reflexes (some of the combat was gratuitous… the game would have been better off without it or with the combat as a short cutscene instead), the characters with whom you interacted were exceptionally interesting (and, 7 years later, I very much remember the tests in the house that I needed to pass in order to become a domestic robot and the conversations I had with the Administrator still haunt me. The developer made a lot of Nietzsche references which means that the reviewers who reviewed it at the time kept making Nietzsche allusions and, while that might be a hair over the top, the game explored a lot of philosophical concepts such as self-knowledge, death, and utilitarianism in service to a singular overall purpose. This is a game that you will be chewing on for a few days after you beat it.
If you find yourself wishing you had a pretty good, interesting story-based game to play but were a little short on cash? You should get The Fall (for free!) from the Epic Store.
If you have $25 burning a hole in your pocket, get Hades. It’s worth every penny and I’ll have a full review of it come next Saturday.
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is “Hello Nietzsche” by vivoandando and is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
I got Hades, and I was playing pretty regularly for a while. Unfortunately, I got distracted. I need to get back to it. However, Monster Hunter: Rise comes out this week, so I doubt it will happen anytime soon.
Right now, I have been playing a lot of Dark Souls, slowly making my way through. That progress will probably grind to a halt now (see above). I also got Stellaris with a few expansions from a Humble Bundle, which I have also been playing when I have a good chunk of time to burn. Like all good strategy games, it’s not a good idea to load it up if I only have a few minutes to kill. I’m still pretty early into it, but I will have more free time after this week, so I should be able to really dig in.
I got the free copy of The Fall, though I know nothing about it. I am intrigued now, so it will also go into the queue.Report
Gameplaywise? Not particularly notable. You’ve seen this game a thousand times. The puzzles? Fun. Interesting. The story? CHEWY.
Seriously chewy.Report
Fair warning, a big update to Stellaris is coming on April 15th, so some of the things you’re learning about the economic system will change in just under a month.Report
I had heard that, is there somewhere that they summarize what the changes are going to be?Report
They won’t do full patch notes until the week before, but go to this page on the wiki:
https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Developer_diaries
And look for dev diaries 1, 2 and 3 in the section headed “Patch 3.0 (Dick)”. It’s visible from the top so it’s easy to find.Report
Yeah, I saw that coming. I’ll probably keep playing for now, since I am learning the basics, and I will just start a fresh game when the update comes.
Also, this post got me back into Hades. Still stuck in Elysium, but on my last play I made it to the level’s boss before dying.Report
Hades is a spectacular game, I strongly recommend it.Report
Still playing Oxygen Not Included. I learn something in the nature of, “Why haven’t I been building that particular thing like this all along?!” every time I start a new colony.
Today’s “game,” however, consists of writing scripts to manage the reorganization of my mp3 library. Things are going swimmingly, but thank the Users that I followed my own advice and backed everything up before I started live-firing the script!Report
Just finished Outer Worlds, including both DLCs, full playtime at 60 hours. I think I completed everything, although they have no completion meter or anything, so I don’t know. And…it was still kinda thin.
I was immensely happy to see the traditional ‘RPG ending narrative summary of how you left everything and what the future holds’ at the end. Once again, The Outer World manages to take the best concepts of every single RPG and use them.
They also took the Mass Effect ‘Different allies you helped show up in different places during the last push to the end’, slightly spoiled by the fact that a) I was going as disguised so didn’t really need combat help, and b) the ending combat there was not particularly hard anyway, like, I certainly didn’t need help clearing out those ten different mooks.
There was a somewhat difficult boss fight at the very very end. And I say ‘somewhat difficult’ as in…not actually difficult. I actually went and _used_ some of the buffs I’d been saving the entire game, and did a tiny but of strategy, and…that was it.
I was playing as Normal, if I play it again, I’m ramping the difficulty all the way up, because I had so little difficulties with the combat. And…I actually often suck at RPG combat, so…this game is turned way down, for ‘normal’ at least
The last DLC was kinda fun being framed as a murder mystery. Although it suffered for…well, no spoilers, but let’s just say that figuring out whodunnit doesn’t matter, at all, because when you accuse someone (anyone, right or wrong), that is what trips the next part of the plot, and you immediately learn the truth. I spent a few hours wandering around assuming I could find something to _confirm_ I was right, and eventually just shrugged and moved forward…and I was, but I didn’t even get any XP or real acknowledgment for getting it right, because, bam, PLOT STUFF.
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But, ultimately…yeah. The game is just sorta there. Not exciting, and some of the stuff that seemed simple, in retrospect, seems _too_ simple. Like, you just end up pumping money into tinkering with armor.
Oh, and for some really weird reason…as a completionist, I’m used to getting…way way up in the levels. And there are skill checks way up there. I was running around at endgame and there are skill checks for 150 points in things (That’s the max) and I’m frowning and looking my skill list that doesn’t have _anything_ over 80, and most things at 60, except for the stuff I didn’t put any points in like melee, and I’m wondering how the hell I could have 150 points in _anything_…I mean, I could, if I randomly focused on just a few things, yes, but…no. Companions do greatly bump the skills up, but there are a few they don’t, and trying to make sure you have the right one is really annoying.
And yes, the weird thing was, I felt seriously overleveled for the _enemies_, and I think I actually was at the level cap! *checks internet*. The starting level cap was at 30, the first DLC added three, and I can’t find what the second one did, but I’m at 36 so I guess it added three also. So yeah, level cap. And I’m sitting here with _maybe_ a third of the skill points.Report