Random thoughts from my explorations into Open Worlds.
Writing about this game is surprisingly difficult. It’s an MMO – yes. It is seemingly one of the most played MMOs right now and – with the World of Warcraft exodus of players to the world of Eorzea – in […]
That I played Outriders at all was a pure coincidence. An intuitive decision, against my dread of Loot-shooters like Boderlands and Destiny 2. But my friend Alex convinced me to play the demo and the experience was indeed convincingly awesome enough to buy the game at full price.
So after adding some more hours in Wasteland, I have to admit, that the leap back to a more ‘older’ style of game & play is a challenge. And not a small one at that. Most of all, I am so used to what a modern AAA or AA game already provides a player to ‘smoothen’ things up. Too often, I have a hard time twisting my brain around to understand what is expected from me in Wasteland. Slowly and steady I start to better manage and read the game, but sometimes I am still amazed, what depth the game is offering.
Wasteland, released in 1988 for the Apple II, C64 and DOS-PC, was seen as a successor in spirit for the well received Bard’s Tale series, both produced by Interplay Productions; a studio run by Brian Fargo. And interesting enough, Wasteland has been categorized at its time as an Adventure game (I always thought about it as a cRPG) and even made it to IGNs Top 25 PC games of all time, praising it “one of the best RPGs ever [to] grace the PC” and ranked at place 24th. Well, what an interesting game to start this journey!
So, finally this strange year has come to an end.
And naturally, this makes you reflect about what has happened so far, what I have achieved and what not, what I would like to do, or what I would like to stop doing.
And so here it is – my second part of my report on what I have played this summer. Once more I have to report on quite a number of stalled / incompleted games.
After the glory that has been Assassin’s Creed: Origins and Star Wars: Fallen Order I thought that finally a momentum started building up. After enjoying and completing both games, I would now(!) be ready and on fire – a Streak-of-Completion with my next selected games, and my Pile of Shame would finally start melting like snow on a first spring day.
And so it is done. I completed Star Wars – Fallen Order. To my own surprise, even one day later, a very satisfying feeling lingers all within me. “Actually it was really good!” – or so I think. But wait … no … not all was good. Darkness looms within me. Anger. Disappointment.
Besides the recent longer posts, there are also other games I played in between; some of these I did complete, but more I did not. So for this Interim Report on the first half of 2020, I would like to […]
And so, I completed Assassin’s Creed: Origins. My first Assassin’s Creed game and also the game that brought me at the brink of a long depression on playing video games 18 months ago. The game, no … UbiSoft’s open world formula … had drained me then, grinded me through, and spit me out … exhausted. I lost all will to play anything for almost two months. Remarkable, as no other game has achieved that before.