Perfected: Outriders. When less is more and in the end not enough.

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.

That I played Outriders at all was a pure coincidence. An intuitive decision, against my dread of Loot-shooters like Borderlands 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 on release day 1.

Or maybe this was just a desperate decision, in a situation when there is just so much work and other obligations to care for, and no time for gaming without a bad conscience at all. Maybe I just craved to have at least sometimes one of those relaxing co-op experiences at night, to let my mind drift somewhere else, escape to an alien world, when everything else is closing in at night.

And so I did – to my own surprise – 100% complete a game, I did not want to play at all. But how come and maybe even more to the point: The hell, why? And why Outriders?

Let‘s start at the beginning and the beginning is, as so many beginnings are … a tutorial with your good ol’ trusty action-hero intro-narrative: „Good morning unfrozen one and welcome to planet Enoch. This is your new world, these are the interesting people you would want to talk to. This is the guy, who will fuck up everything early on and these are the guys who will die early on. This is the signal, that is a strange signal, and look! This is an anomalous storm that is an anomaly. This is when you will be back in your cryo-pod almost dead until some other guys wake you up some decades later.“

„Good morning welcome (again) to Enoch! This is how the new world has gone to shit and these are the people that pulled the flush – here is mankind doing what mankind can do best – killing each other.“

“Mkay, and what about me?” – “Well, how about you find your way around by starting with the killing too.”

But wait. There is more to tell, and it is worth telling. The game pronounces itself free from any Games-as-a-Service mechanics, cash shops, and an endless grind for progress bars across seasons (Spoiler: Yes, but no – it just redefines the context of ‚endless‘). Honestly, this really makes the game a better place to be, because you know there will be a point in time, where you will reach the end of the story. So offering less is indeed providing more of a game experience here. Also, I can freely change the looks from my character as well as my truck from the start and any time later in the game. That I have to mention such a thing at all, is actually ridiculous.

The world of Enoch is often hell, but often also heavenly beautiful. Yes, in-game graphics here.

The main reason for me to stick with the game and also complete it was mainly the good delivered story. And your milage may vary here, on what a good delivered story really is. Being the child from the 80ies and 90ies that I am, the story itself was plain and uninspired and very linear, which was also fine. Remarkably, the density of awesome cool-action-hero-lines-delivered-per-minute was at such a high and enjoyable level – I really found that amazing and funny. Not often, that I spontanously giggle or laugh when playing a game anyway…

So, we start our journey and become stronger by killing and looting. There is no other option. We travel through several biomes and we discover all the freak people, which includes ourselves now called Altered, that make the world the garbage place it has become. The story is delivered through a lot of fully voiced and fancy cutscenes and many many codex entries. Since Dragon Age: Origins I have not experienced many games, who integrated codex entries as a natural and interesting base knowledge- or storyline. From the ones I remember right now and have played: Anthem and Cyberpunk 2077 were terribly uninspired, Mass Effect ok‘ish and Assassin‘s Creed Origins painfully uninteresting and useless.

But Outriders manages to capture interest and also extends entries, when you have more information. Sometimes it is a bit too much to read, but this information almost always helps to close knowledge gaps and provide a richer saturation of what is going on and why people behave like they behave or have become what they have become. This is by far not the best way of story-telling, but well enough delivered to keep me reading and the settings and their pacing were dense enough to look for more.

All dialogues are voiced and voice acting is not always the best, but sticking to my B-action movie anchor from before, fine enough; these movies back then hardly had good actors anyway. The main characters‘ male and female voice was best delivered through the image of a very vocal, and definately not silent, tough-as-titanium protagonist. When she had to shout, curse, and was stressed out, it was pure gold. I really loved Mylène Dinh-Robic voice acting reaching top-tier in scenes, when shit hit the fan and she was just so incredibly pissed and angry about all of it. The more relaxed the situation, the less convincing her voice acting has been though.

Cutscenes are all made with in-game graphics and often are great to watch.

So while killing, cursing and delivering edgy lines in edgy and bloody situations, the story picks up and continously invites you, including all side quests, to proceed and move further and further. Two times we thought we were almost done, but the story continued. Later in the story, the maps become more standardized though, with opponent-types also repeating themselves. The action remains convincing enough and you too often feel like an unstoppable god, as long as you keep up with your gear; alternatively moderating the world tier would be an option, which we did not do.

We moved further up the escalation and story line with our troupe of misfits in a truck with free customization options to follow traces of what this signal and the anomaly is. Like in Apokalypse Now, we move further and further into the deepest and darkest recesses of mankind and explore, what we humans are capable of. Beside the action, there is quite something to be told in those codex entries and seen in the final areas of the game; if you care to stop and read, listen, and look around. If not, you can also just kill everything until the credits roll, and meet us back in the camp, where we can start the endgame of Outriders, which is called – Expeditions.

Freaky freaks.

When I read Expeditions, I expect progress. When I interpret the meaning of the word Expedition, I interpret progress. As we reached expedition level 15, there was no progress anymore. Not in any direction. And this turns an, until then, quite enjoyable grind for power completely upside down. When we ran expeditions in gold times, you have a 25% chance of receiving a legendary item. No problem, when nothing drops once, or twice, but the third time in a row this is destroying any motivation to move on. What drops out of the pod is also completely random, which makes loot targeting (like via a loot-table) impossible, and there are quite a lot of legendaries to choose from. So we ran and ran expeditions, got nothing at all, sometimes one, rarely two, and almost never three legendaries. Unfortunately, the legendaries alone are just not viable enough for running a build or a sort-of-a-build. Tier 3 Mods are just so powerful compared to lower tiers, that it makes no sense to stick with violetts – you need those legendaries.

This is when it happenend and everything collapsed. We tried for several weeks, all in all around 25 hours playing expeditions, and always gave it another shot, but all with the same frustrating outcome: Trashing the loot we got. Time after time. In addition, I have also chosen the probably most gear dependent class of all, the Devestator, who in combination has substantial problems with burst damage; an early viable built is a bleed built, so stuff takes time. The lack of usable items just became more and more dramatic, and even by changing to other build archetypes, the situation did not improve much: Damage in Devestator builds mainly scales-up and is unleashed when you have those crucial Tier 3 mods on your weapon or your armor. And yes, these mods are found on legendaries. This turned into a waste of time.

I stopped playing. Alex stopped playing. We both moved on and we did not complete Eye of the Storm (the final challange), which is a pity. We really enjoyed playing Outriders though and we were really engaged in the world and story building, so this decision is a reluctant one. In the end, we completed the achievments though, which was a satisfying finale at that.

Time played: 72h | 100% completed.

Outriders is an awesome power fantasy, with an engaging story and freaky characters in an interesting world. The meta-game allows for a lot of builds, but to be viable in endgame legendaries are too important for overall progression into the final challenge.

Let’s see what new content is coming up, and maybe there will be changes later or some redesign of loot works what will be coming up.

But for now Enoch is 100% completely at peace. And my mind with it.

The Incompletionist

Completed: Star Wars – Fallen Order: Return of the Trivial.

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.

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.

Or maybe I am just too happy to finally complete a game after meandering around for two months. In a quick retrospect, the journey through the game world has been the true reward here, and the whole game experience was just awesome. Well, until it ended.

But let’s start the long tour though, without too many spoilers. Or even better: Let’s start in a decade, far far away …

I have always been a big fan of Star Wars since I have watched – totally unprepared – Episode IV with my brother and a friend on an unremarkable Sunday afternoon on VHS. I was around 12 – I think – and this movie has changed my perspective on what is ‘cool’ dramatically. Since then, I have been always eager to go and watch every new movies and got disappointed seven times in a row in the decades to come; well, with one exception.

Since the latest trilogy and origin stories it became rather obvious that Disney has no clue on how to find and set stories or invent characters within the Skywalker timeline, that create a feeling of meaningfulness. Solo was boring and VII-IX a catastrophe, with only Rogue One remaining a shining beacon. The Mandalorian has good vibes and angles, but has still to show, where all this is going. The season final was – again – a complete nonsense.

With Star Wars computer games I never really warmed up as much, as they have been mainly “side or fan-fictional stories” that were rather awkward for my taste. It felt that George Lucas just sold the license to whoever credibly wanted to do something with it. Besides Lucasfilm’s classics X-Wing, Tie-Fighter and X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter, I have only played Dark Forces, Knights of the Old Republic 2 (both not completed) and Star Wars – Old Republic. With the disaster that has been the release of Battlefront 2 (I don’t like shooters), no notable story-driven game has been released to the world that is Star Wars.

And then Star Wars – Fallen Order was here, with a new character – Cal Kestis – and a more dark and gritty setting between Episode III and IV than Rebels. A Jedi in the hiding, being revealed and chased by Inquisitors, banding with a crew of losers, unclear how and why they showed up at the exact perfect moment during his flight, who then follow another lonesome looser Jedi Sage paperchase circling around an ancient alien race called Zeffo through the galaxy. All to save some unknown younglings, who are soon to be killed by the Empires’ ruthless Inquisitors, who in turn are actually pretty cool.

The Second Sister – A cool antagonist and stylish Inquisitor

At first I struggled with the premise and wondered about more or less everything that was story related. But the longer I played, the more I opened up to the characters and the world around me. The backstories of Cere Junda and Greez Dritus are believable in regards to Star Wars side characters and have some nice and soft twists and turns. Also the voice-cast helps tremendously here and is very convincing and supporting the characters with an extra edge. The cutscenes are almost always very good, including the transitions from game to cutscene and back, contributing to a very dense, believable atmosphere and immersion delivered through plain awesome graphics.

What really kept me going though was the focus on the main story, dialogues and the world and less collecting crap, trash and completing meaningless chores for some lazy bystander. Sure, you collect database entries and story-supporting Echos, but mostly all of them can be found while following the main path; or when you are backtracked later and revisit the planet. I did not mind the backtracking too much, as you can anyway choose if you want to follow the path from before or just follow straight your current story quest. It is basically just cosmetics you collect anyway. And I did collect … boy, did I collect.

Bogano – My most visited planet

Fighting is great, switching on your lightsaber is awesome, animations are smooth and you can see that they put a lot of details into Cal Kestis’ animations. Jumping, swinging, running along walls, double jump – you really start feeling like a Jedi sooner or later. Also, the combat difficulty is rather challenging: I started out on Jedi Master (one above normal) but reverted back to Jedi Knight (normal), as I put more emphasis on exploration, than on fighting. Both would have been too straining on my time currently, so I choose the ‘easier’ path. The fights were enjoyable on this level, nothing too difficult with a bit of concentration and timing; and still, fights do still feel really epic.

I spent 32 hours and had no feeling of boredom or “why do I have to do this”. The main reason here is simply the reduction of open world uselessness that is so popular right now in current game design. I mean, even swimming and diving stuff up was enjoyable! I even thought about a 100% completion somewhen in the middle of everything, but refrained from these extra hours I would have to spend.

Star Wars and story? – I know, right?

Still, a dark spot remains. Like this one tree on Dagobah, a place of frustration, exhaustion and failure. Because, with all this greatness I am still angry with the game after it ended, or better: how the game concluded. I will not spoiler here, but it makes me questions the whole point of the game, the characters and the whole storyline. There are endings to games and there are endings. The first could be god-tier endings like in Nier:Automata and there could be endings like in Star Wars – Fallen Order. Honestly, it made me re-evaluate everything after the final scene with a capital letter “Oh, RLY?” and until now this still bothers me.

I assume that the reason for this choice of an end to such a well balanced game links back into the core problem of everything within the Skywalker timeline right now: In the end it’s all meaningless.

And this is so terribly undeserved.

If you want to be a Jedi – play this game.
If you want to experience a souls-like fighting experience – play this game on Jedi Grand Master.
If you want an immersive atmosphere and planets – play this game.
If you want game character banter with some chuckles – play this game.
If you want to experience epic fights and true Star Wars action scenes – play this game!
If you want a true Star Wars story – play this game, cause like in all other movies called Star Wars, the end sucks.

The Incompletionist

Interim 2020: Sorting my Pile of Shame.

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 briefly mention and reflect on my experiences in:

  • Tower of Time (completed)
  • Assassin’s Creed (stalled)
  • Warhammer 40k – Mechanicus (incompleted)
  • Elex (incompleted)
  • Quantum Break (completed)

Tower of Time (completed)

Tower of Time – Graphics and levels are really beautiful

This games is a mixture of a bit of Baldur’s Gate, Divinity Original Sin, and… well anything Infinity Engine’ish.

Story-wise the game is set in a dying world with a plague ravaging inhabitants and several races quarreling and struggling. A tower is discovered, but upside down stuck in the ground, and while you as the main character sit on its’ crystal throne, you send and follow your characters down to the bottom (which is the top) of the tower. And as the throne empoweres you tremendously, you are also capable to sway the mood of decisions in the party.

The game itself is beautiful and has some stunning scenery, characters are believable but behave sometimes erratic / unpredictable according to the choice mechanics in the game. Fights are on a good / challenging difficulty level with an interrupt / slow-down function to adjust your actions and movements during battle.

What really dragged me though was the more classic “tower level” design, which felt a bit like in Eye of the Beholder: You know there are twelve levels, so you slowly move forward to the end, level by level. So of course, every level has its own biome and specialities – some cooler, some colder. Strangely the tower levels become tremendously huge, the more you proceed downwards (which is upwards). It’s a magic tower – I get it! – but sometime it felt more like dragging everything out for more playtime.

The game overall is actually too long and becomes rather repetitive, but leaves a good taste after the final credits rolled. I sometimes really had to motivate myself to proceed further though …

Time played: 43h | Achievements: 56%

Assassin’s Creed

Looking for the fun part in just another Assassin’s Creed game

Well, after my first tilt with Assassin’s Creed Origins I thought a smaller AC game would do the trick and started at the beginning of everything.

I was so wrong.

As soon as the game hinted me to collect 100(!) rags (or flags?) per region, my motivation dwindled and quickly stopped. Why would you ask something like that from anybody? And yes, I get it – I don’t have to do it – but they are glowing everywhere and they need to be picked up and … …

I quickly uninstalled the game and my hopes for ever completing an AC game … ever! Nevertheless my return to AC:Origins was tremendously enjoyful and so I will probably also return to this one and do a very quick run through, just for the story.

No flags for this Assassin.

Time played: 5h

Warhammer 40k – Mechanicus

My screenshots are so unremarkable – please take a look at this wallpaper instead

This one came from my random selection process and I was actually really hyped to play it – something turn-based, something strategic, something… different!

But oh! … was that different.

There are some realms of lore I simply find no footing in. One is the Elder Scrolls and the other is Warhammer. This is not because both are boring or uninteresting, no – the opposite! They are just so lore-heavy, that I have the feeling I would never ever understand what the heck is going on and be able to follow the flow of history and relevance of events and characters.

So I tried to watch some videos (thanks Vitali!) but it just became more and more complicated. I could not even grasp the necessary vocabulary to understand what these people are talking about.

So I started and played some hours; the combat was quite ok, the progression too, but the overall feel, relevance or impact of what was happening here was completely lost to me. So I remained very disconnected to whatever I did there and never found an angle for moving forward. Also this constant bubbling tech-mumbo-jumbo became really annoying, so I quit.

Sorry Inquisitors, you will have to win this one without me.

Time played: 8h | Achievements: 17%

Elex

Being bossed around and being an asshole in Elex

My first step into one of Pirania Bytes’ games and I thought I was prepared through reading and listening to reviews and impressions, but I was not.

You are some dude on a planet, which obviously seems to be a very harsh world, because round about everybody I ever met behaved like an asshole. And I mean everybody, including me, the main character. Strong words everywhere, strong choices as a reply, a quite unfamiliar progression of finding out what the heck you should actually do right now, a quirky UI that keeps you unnecessarily busy and a very strange overall storytelling, including side-quests. I understand, that this game focuses on a more open-worldish-emergent-story-telling approach, but it is just not my take of fun to get beaten up by everybody and everything in this game and by try & error find the right direction to move forward. I recognize the effort for exploration though, but I was more running away from everything than actually exploring.

I later read, that they tried to write the dialogues like they are delivered in a classic table-RPG session. Meaning amateurs trying to be tough, or play a character-type you are not familiar with or gamemasters trying to impose various social actors. And yes, everything made so much sense afterwards, and the voice actors (especially in German) really tried to pull this of like amateurs. Well, I hope they were. With many smiles I remembered from my own table-RPGs, how we played it out and voiced our characters.

All the above is then combined with very clunky movement and combat mechanics, which I never became really used to or comfortable with. Positioning towards the opponent was so difficult (or random?) that I often missed my target by some meters and was then attacked into my back and died – again.

I am definately too soft for a game by Pirania Byte. Elex just chewed me up and spit me out, nothing to gain for me here. Let’s move on.

Time played: 11h | Achievements: 12%

Quantum Break

Quantum Breaks’ cinematics and cutscenes are great.

After finishing Assassin’s Creed: Origins I wanted to play something with a tight story and not another 80+ hour game. So I found Quantum Break in my library and went straight in without much preparation.

The game has very nice graphics and is structured into episodes with real live acting in between (around 15-20 minutes). So you meet quite some known actors in a real and digital version and this was a very refreshing and needed change of pace after 100 hours running through Egypts’ dunes.

The story itself was quite good, not great, not average. Sometimes engaging, and more often running around picking up trash other people left around. At least the ‘trash’ was contributing a lot for delivering the story and it makes a lot of sense to read all this and watch all the videos and diary entries. Acting is really good and you can see that they are all professionals.

Gameplay mechanics are quite average though. The movement is clunky, jumping feels like 2008 and levels are very linear; at least this I did not mind much. What I did not like were the combat mechanics as these were very difiicult to control and target, so I turned off some auto-aiming in the settings to not become too annoyed. The skills are quite cool and when you manage to connect a flow, it feels really impactful and powerful.

Final bossfight was a catastrophe and I was terribly annoyed by the mechanics. I mean … how? why? I felt like a chicken running around all the time.

Overall quite nice game and a good recovery from AC:Origins’ rather sandy story progression.

Time played: 14h | Achievements: 78%

Perfected: Assassin’s Creed: Origins – Confronting Demons.

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.

He smiled. Exhausted, but relieved. It has been a long journey. Traveling to nearby villages around Siwa has always been his duty as a Medjay, but this journey was far longer than he had anticipated it. A journey because of revenge. Of loss. Of justice. And for love. Bayek stared into the fire – the night was closing in.

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.

So while I sit here, typing, I wonder. What was different in the second take? Why did I restart the game again, investing another 90 hours into a game that literally broke me?

Bayek shifted, moving his aching legs from under his body closer to the fire. It was cold. He felt a chill approaching, creeping up his spine. Just a cold night? No. He stared into the fire, and as so often in the past weeks the flames answered. Faces, screaming – all the people he had killed, when he laid a bloody path through all of Egypt. He was the bringer of doom, and of justice. A shadow in the night. He killed. He killed them all. And he felt nothing, nothing at all.

The game invites you to kill. Killing is your only option and means to act in the game and the solution to every problem. And so I killed soldiers when they passed riding by without provocation, I assassinated them aimlessly for no reason in the streets of Alexandria, I shot arrows across 60 meters in their heads. I used large crossbows to mow them down. I hammered them and bashed their heads to goo in the hot desert sand. I finished them off, by ramming my sword into their spine, when they were down on their knees.
I killed them in their sleep. I burned them in their sleep. I carried oil vases into their tents while they slept and burned them alive. I whistled for them, they came, and I killed them. Almost 5.000 kills in a game where I am the ‘good’ guy; that is more than half my villages’ inhabitants. And I am not even counting the fauna of Egypt, that has been reduced to leather and other materials I needed for crafting and updating my gear.

Looking for trash … uhm … treasure.

Because of all of this, the rhythm and story of the game feels strange. Bayek is on a path of revenge, but revenge is constantly pushed back for countless hours, while you do other useless crap. This crap is almost always about killing or sometimes searching for treasure. Well, the ‘searching’ part is actually done by Senu, my eagle. Anyhow, treasure is almost always found immediately.

This gameplay formula seems to be one of those drawbacks in all “open world” games. And still, I wonder what “open world” means here. My conception of an open world game is a completely different one. In Assassin’s Creed: Origins there is no emergent story telling at all. Sometimes you find a tomb through exploration, but too often you have to go back in the same tomb again, because of a sidequest you got from a village later. This feels just like bad pacing.

Naturally, all this crap activities are nicely represented by an expecting question mark on your map; and there are more than 400 question marks on the map, just sayin’. And as I am terribly prone to such completionist-tactics, I checked them all out. Not one, or two or some. Yes, all of them. I did all of the questionmarks, and forts and all the rest. I completed not only the game via the story and the two DLCs; nope – really all of it. All achievements – 100%. I should be proud – Or shouldn’t I?

The faces in the fire started to look more and more the same, the more often he saw them. ‘Strange’, he thought. ‘I never did look too close at the Roman or Ptolemean soldiers I killed. Or the bandits for that matter. Thinking back, they really all looked strangely the same somehow.’ He drank some water. ‘Whatever. They deserved it. The Hidden Ones will remain. And Khemu … we will see each other again. In the field of reeds…’

Thinking about the main story I was sometimes impressed and sometimes strangely detached. As described above the pacing is quite off, as are the cuts at the end of the in-game cinematics. But it got better at the end of the MSQ, when I also followed the story more closely, with the aim to – finally – finish it.

Curse of the Pharaos story and characters are really good.

The story of the DLCs is quite alright in the Hidden Ones, and really good in the Curse of the Pharaos. The production quality on the latter is exceptionally high, so I can only recommend to play this one.

Bayek’s voice actor Abubakar Salim is great. All the other voice actors are good too, but he clearly stands out. He put a lot of effort and emotions into Bayek and I always enjoyed the snarky remarks, his annoyance in the sidequests, the anger, when he confronted his sons’ – Khemus’ – killers. In the end he carried the game through and placed a believable character into an immersive and realistic ancient Egypt.

One of the stronger emotional scenes in the game.

Speaking of Egypt, the world of Assassin’s Creed: Origins is the main actor of this game and just amazing, The light, the mood, the atmosphere – so beautiful. I enjoyed walking around, riding through the desert alone, scaling the highest mountains, exploring the pyramids and boarding a small boat to cross the Nile under a setting sun. The details that found their way into the game are staggering and beautifully crafted. Nothing really feels to look the same. I have not experienced something in that detail ever before, and even now, some days after I uninstalled the game, I long for all those beautiful places in Egypt.

‘I wonder what Amunet is doing… Nah, she will be fine. She has always been fine.’ Bayek shifted again to remove the unease of their departure at the shore. His horse stirred somewhere in the back. Senu was not seen for some hours. All was quiet and all was at rest. He continued to stare into the fire. His muscles ached from everything he had to endure, his fingers hurt from all the walls and towers he had to climb.

The game offers you so much to do. So. Much. To. Do. You can race in the Hippodrome, you can fight in the arena, there will be ship battles and riddles in tombs and what not. It is all in the game, and nothing is really good. The Hippodrome is easy to win as soon as you know how it works, the arena is just fighting in a more enclosed space, the ship battles work in and follow the same pattern over and over. All of it is visually amazing, but lacks depth in gameplay.

I played on hard difficulty and hardly found any challenge. Sure, some bosses were more tricky than others, especially in the Curse of the Pharao DLC, but I more often struggled with the awkward button layout, than with a challenging encounter.

Entering the arena.

What annoyed me most were bosses that where just difficult because they were completely erratic and had no ‘mechanic’ at all. They just randomly pulled all their tricks without preparation or charge times. That is not what I understand as a challenging encounter. Code Vein was really great in this regard, as you would have to learn and understand and then execute perfectly. Nothing of this is expected from you in Origins.

When you are spotted while ‘on the job’ and more and more soldiers close in on your position, you are almost always overwhelmed and die a shameful death. Early in the game I sneaked into forts and tried to be stealthy. The longer I played the more aggressive my playstyle has become. Often I just charged into a soldiers’ camp with my horse, sword raised. I circled and killed them from my horse, shot them from my horse and trampled them down – with my horse. Oh, someone managed to call reinforcements? Yes, thank you! Let them come! I killed them too in the same manner. Only then would I get down from my horse and loot the camp.

The fire started to burn down and Bayek felt the exhaustion. ‘Rest, yes… some days rest in Memphis should be fine. And I wonder, what Diocles is doing.’ He closed his eyes again and listened in. ‘Diocles… sounds Greek. Well, maybe one day I should travel to Greece… .’

The exhaustion fades and I would have to lie, if I had not considered to motivate myself on starting the Odyssey that is the next game. But I am anxious of another burn-out. Scared of feeling the emptiness again and falling into another blank state of gaming. But I long for the shallow rhythm of another Assassin’s Creed game and I always liked the Greek mythology the most.

Well, maybe I really should explore Layla’s story more…

Assassin’s Creed: Origins is nothing for the faint hearted. It is a long game that drags you into a spiral of useless activities, which are beautiful to look at but not really challenging to do.

The first time I played, I quit the game full of rage and depression. My ‘mistake’ was to expect too much from the game. A good story? – Not in there. Challenging boss fights? – No, sir. A reason to explore those question marks? – None, but thank you for taking a look.

In my second attempt, I was just looking for a game to lift my tired mind somewhere else. A beautifully and realistically crafted ancient world. An atmospheric, lively, and immersive environment, that feels hand crafted in so many hidden spots and places. With this mindest, I looked for total completion, no matter if this is meaningful or not.

This is, where Origins shines, where it playes all its cards and deals you a complete set of total fullfillment. A great place to hide.

Farewell Egypt, I will miss you.

The Incompletionist

Completed: Code Vein – A good Game.

With – a bit of pride – I finally completed Code Vein in 43h (with 76% achievements). I am not saying I have – beaten – the game. Simply, because it was surprisingly easy to get through, and beside some choke points, with a lot of dirty cursing on my side, it was a quite pleasant ride. Mainly, because you are not alone on this journey and you can have a partner with you. Seemingly, this made a big difference.

With – a bit of pride – I finally completed Code Vein in 43h (with 76% achievements). I am not saying I have – beaten – the game. Simply, because it was surprisingly easy to get through, and beside some choke points, with a lot of dirty cursing on my side, it was a quite pleasant ride. Mainly, because you are not alone on this journey and you can have a partner with you. Seemingly, this made a big difference.

In addition, this has also been my first ‘Souls-like’ game. I never had the ‘guts’ to invest time in any Souls-game, because I was never sure if I can bring up the concentration and most of all the patience to try and try and try. As my main playtime in the day is almost entirely in the evening/night, this was not my imagination of how I would like to enjoy my free time after a full day of work.

As of writing this, I am not planning on exploring the end-level content or another New Game+. I am actually a bit tired of it and am not motivated to re-run the whole game again.

Overview

So in brief, what is Code Vein.

You are a memory-lost Vampire sort of Revenant who is in a city-area encapsulated with Red Mist that makes it impossible to escape. The city has been ravaged after a battle against the Queen and these Vampires have been created from humans via a parasite to fight the Queen (and the Lost, Revenants who succumb to frenzy) as they now conveniently always ‘resurrect’ and do not die, at the cost of their memories. You soon meet Louis, who looks like an Anime interpretation of Louis right out of Interview with a the Vampire, and his harem of she-vampires and his best bro Yakumo. Later you add even more she-vampires and another bro and move forward in the story and across biomes & places, arriving some-when at the final battle wondering how you got there, what the heck is actually going on here and why it’s already over.

Still interested? Well, this sums up a crazy story of a lot of JRPGs, but as every connoisseur knows what they are in for when it comes to the story-telling (Huh?), tropes (there is an Onzen(!) in the main hub) and framing in this genre – this is great. And well me … enjoyed the ride a lot. Out of many reasons mentioned above and below.

Spoiler: The combat mechanics only play a minor part in it.

Story

The story as outlined above and the connected game mechanics are terribly confusing at first. There are Blood Codes (classes), Blood Veils (shrouds to wear that look like rugs), Vestiges (spiked things containing Blood Codes), and Gifts (skills) embedded in the overall background story, that were awfully hard to grasp and understand. Also there is the Queen (who?) and Silva (important guy you never meet) and Blood Beads (for everybody to survive) and Mistles (to resurrect and save) that are all relevant to understand the setting and overall framing of the story. This took me quite a while to separate and grasp what is what and what this all is about and the heck these people are talking about…!

The moment you learned the vocabulary and better understand the who is who and what is what, the more the game opens up to you and the better you can enjoy the variety, how the game delivers its’ story. And there is one really awesome part of unlocking new Blood Codes and this is done by restoring Vestiges (and? did you check above?).

This unlock is done via a very cool remote dream-like scene, in which you relive the lost memories of their owners. You can walk around in a gloomy, often destroyed, corridor drifting in darkness mid-air and observing the scenes played out for you. You can never really see the characters in detail, they all look like figures burned to ash, similar to mummies from Pompey. And as in memories; you know what has happened, but cannot remember the exact details.

Exploring the memories was one of the highlights for me.

For me, this was the best part of the game, because the developers took a lot of effort to deliver the emotions, drama, violence, decisions and anxiety of all protagonists. I always play JRPGs with Japanese voice on and here the voice actors were doing an awesome job. It makes you to want to know more about this characters’ story line and it always concludes and leaves you with unanswered questions in your head. To get more information, you have to talk with the others about what is going on, and only then, slowly, the full story becomes more and more complete.

The cut-scenes are also mostly great and rarely cringy, me as the silent hero standing around gloomily; clearly sayin’: “Let others do the talkin’. I am here for the looks. And the fightin’ afterwards!” But there is action, there is drama, there is love and there is atonement. Great.

Cut-scenes full of love and cheesy quotes. Perfect.

So why do you complain about the story then?
Well, as so often in JRPGs, the path is awesome, the goal is disappointing. There is some story kind of twist around three quarters in, but I felt rather ok’ish with that and it did not play out well in the end. There were many promises made at the beginning, that did culminate well towards the final boss fight and ending. I expected disappointment out of experience with other Japanese games, but I was still… quite disappointed in the end. Mainly because of the great story details in the memories and the cut-scenes.

The combat

There is not much to say about combat other than that it just works. You will need some time to adjust and learn the tricks, dodges and damage windows of bosses, but it just works. There is some quirkiness once in a while when it becomes hectic, I cannot place my finger on, but overall it’s all fine. Again, this is my first souls-like game – so I am happy and will not complain.

Heading towards this areas’ endboss.

What is also great are the different weapons and animations. I mainly played with the Two-handed Sword (for life!) and a halberd later for more damage and speed, and both play distinctively different, but somehow same’ish. Fine for me. Also, admittedly, I did not care much for the stats at all. Dexterity D+? Strength B+? I had no clue what this is for and I never had any nerve to learn more about it. I made my way to Fextralifes’ Wiki, searched for some builds and said: “Great. Thank you very much!

Completionism

What I really enjoyed in Code Vein was, that there was hardly any extra-crap to collect. There is some exploring to be done (but not too much), some hidden stuff to be found (but not too much), some boxes to open (but not too many), some extra dungeons to be cleared (but not too difficult) and some gear to be exchanged from the NPCs with materials that drop anyway. What a pleasant relief! What an experience, when developers are not wasting my time and artificially extend my playtime for nothing.

I still did some extras here and there and checked for some achievements to be done while I am around. But there was nothing that made me collect hundreds of flags or whatever garbage someone left behind and me coming along and treating it as treasure. What. A. Relief.

This was also one of the reasons I did not tire out too much during playing Code Vein. The areas are large and complex, but again: not too much. Each area can easily be done in around 1 – 2.5 hours, depending on how much you want to explore and listen to others talk. Great packaging and pacing, and this helped me a lot to smoothly complete the game.

I do. I really do have… very sharp eyes.

I am done with the game for some days now, but already my thoughts were circling around doing some more stuff here and there and maybe even do a New Game+. I uninstalled the game though, so I am not really sure if I will go back anytime soon. But, I guess, this is anyway already the perfect post-game experience.

Code Vein is doing so much right and leaves not much to complain about, if you know what you are up to. Even until completion, it leaves this lingering taste of: Yes I would yearn to play some more again, but I know this ‘more’ is probably too much.

Like Vampire Louis, who enjoyed a nice drink of blood, after reading a poem to his victim.

Perfect.

The Incompletionist

Completed: Middle-Earth: The Shadow (of an endless) War

This is another difficult one. Difficult, because I loved the first game (Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor) and I tried to love this one too. But, it simply did not work out for us this time. And I think this game explains in its overall experience, what is wrong with monetarization and ‘open-world’ish’ game design in general.

This is another difficult one. Difficult, because I loved the first game (Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor) and I tried to love this one too. But, it simply did not work out for us this time. And I think this game explains in its overall experience, what is wrong with monetarization and ‘open-world’ish’ game design in general.

Overview

I have played for 71h, with 65% achievements; I completed the main story and the Blade of Galadriel DLC; I started the Desolation of Mordor DLC, but stalled early after approx. 2h, because I was just too burned out from all of this.

Also, I played this game after the big update that removed the loot boxes and currency (deployed on July 17th, 2018), so I won’t comment at all on this. The mechanics are anyway still in the game and give a rough overview on how this should have played out.

Gameplay

The game itself has several Acts, that separate the game, also mechanic-wise. After the very story-driven introduction and the fall of Minas Ithil (Act 1), the game opens up and you are tasked with conquering different regions in Mordor (Act 2), in order to challenge the Dark Lord (Act 3). After the big confrontation, the game continues and follows a more jRPG’ish style of endgame, where you can grind further and increase your might and engage in various increasingly difficult challenges to ‘keep the region under control’ until Frodo comes along.

In retrospect I enjoyed Act 1 the most. There was good story progress, and the sense of dread and pressure, that will befall Minas Ithil, Tolkien afficionados (like me) know anyway that the city will fall and called Minas Morgul later, is interesting and Monolith really tried to fit a nice story into these events. But then comes Act 2 and … oh my… the game looses focus and most of all … all the fun that was Act 1 and even my good memories of the first game passed into a depressing reminiscent fog of ‘But… but… why?!‘.

So you capture these regions, you do your main story quest, side quest, and collect a lot of crap that needs to be found. More or less the same as Rise of the Tomb Raider did, and how they turned the game into an orientation less scavenger hunt.

So in the end my circle of grind went like this:

  • Track down Orcs on your map.
  • Ambush and turn these orc captains into your army.
  • Collect garbage.
  • Upgrade your weapons with stupid tasks.
  • Ambush and turn more orc captains into your army.
  • Oh! There is some shiny garbage, let’s collect this quickly!
  • Move to Online Vendettas and kill more orcs, and get this stupid currency to ‘buy’ more orcs.
  • Train your orcs.
  • Let them challenge the fortress captains to weaken the fortress.
  • Rinse & repeat the above 4-5 times, depending on the fortress.
  • Damn, there is still some garbage out there to collect.
  • Attack the fortress.
  • Do that again for the four other regions.
  • Oh hey look: a fifth region! What? Celebrimbor notes, this region is not necessary to capture? What does he know! (Yes I captured even the fifth one… not sure why I did that…)

I don’t know. I was so bored after completing the second region and when I went to the next, I almost quit the game. I really had to force myself through to the end of Act 2. I wanted to see the end of the story so.. so much, hence I endured – a lot!

Grinding at the walls of these fortresses.

Who in his or her sane mind, would rely so much on their gameplay to sustain this long boringly repeating grind – four times!!?? The reason why I liked the first game so much was its snappiness: two regions and a nicely told and very straightforward main & side stories with limited amounts of what to collect and upgrade for. Perfect: First game 33h, second 72h.

So what happened is, that I turned into a berserk and just killed everyone and everything along. I charged right into groups on my Graug, all weapons and skills blazing, hacked the orc captain down and turned him. Oh, they sounded the alarm? All right… let’s take it on! Then on to the next, and next and next. And still it took me so … so … so(!) much time!

But, when I reached the end of Act 2 and returned to Minas Mogul to start the grand finale, the game – finally – got better due to much more stay focus and guidance. Only to then again stall in a quick end boss battle (bit like in the first game) and strange finale of a story (which is not the end of course). Actually similar to myself, loosing my breath along the grind, the game lost its breath to the end and came up with this strangely unfinished – and not really Tolkien-lore fitting (surprise!) – end story twist. But that was neither expected by me nor dreaded. It was fine, for what it was. And, still a tiny bit of cool!

Cast of Characters

Like in the first, there is a set of characters following you along. Below a quick overview on the main & side story characters:

  • Talion is still a great main character. Good story and reasoning. And I love Troy Baker’s voice.
  • Idril comes across as strangely artificial and I felt very detached from her motivations and sorrow. Too much idealism for the world she was growing up in. This just did not fit.
  • Shelob is so much out of lore, that I really had trouble to actually accept her. Somehow a Yennefer’ish character with a strange and inconclusive agenda. Very poorly delivered with some fan-service along those … legs.
  • I never could connect to Baranor. Maybe also a reason, why I did not finish his DLC, because I could not care less about him. He is just there and most of his scenes are just annoying. Another idealist, which makes not much sense, considering his story background (explained in the DLC).
  • Elthariel is very well delivered, also out of lore, but for her I can get over it. The DLC featuring her is actually really awesome. And Laura Bailey is a great voice actress. I did not like her cape / hood which seemed difficult to place on the character model. It felt off most of the time. Also her alternate skins are just not good enough to select.
  • The Orcs are all awesome. The variety of them is really fun and they all have their mostly unique lines. The Fate system is pretty decent. Lots of chuckling done and lots of hateful emotions felt on my side.
  • Ratbag and Brûz are really funny too. I enjoyed all of their ‘screen time’.

Overall though, I did not care much about these characters, compared to the first game. In the first, all of them were actually really nicely placed and introduced. Even Gollum. Not much worked out in the second part with these characters. Not even Gollum. Shallow, no depth, too much misplaced idealism, and just not much convincing(!) reason for being there and doing things or doing stuff for them.

Elthariel and her story DLC showed the more powerful aspects of the game.

So, what remains is the feeling, that I just invested too much time into this. Neither the story finale nor the DLCs would convince me to actively recommend this game to anybody. The online sieges and vendettas are uninteresting and, as artifacts of the removed loot box mechanics, useless to do.

If they would just shortened Act 2 by one region, stayed a bit more to the main and side stories and removed half of the – often uninteresting – lore objects, Mordor would be a way better place to spend time. And honestly I am quite sad, that another game (after Rise of the Tomb Raider) was over-ambitiously ruined for the wrong reasons. If something is not fun, even high production values obviously won’t change that.

And the endgame grind to the top? One quick thought spent, I really thought: Yes let’s go! Then, another thought spent … ok, but what for!? I do not see much fun anymore in yet another round of fortress captures and orc-captain turning. I had plenty of them already; thank you very much.

A lot of wasted potential and a complete useless mid-game grind, ruined this game for me. Only with exceptional high-strains of – do not give up – I made it through, because I just wanted to see the finale.

And OK, I now have seen it.

I can confidently report, that even for a big fiery eye on a tower, there is nothing interesting to see. Move on. Please … just move on.

The Incompletionist

(In)Completed Battletech

When Battletech was announced via Kickstarter, and released in April 2018, I was rather hyped and (of course) pre-ordered the game in its Deluxe Edition; Harebrained Schemes should get all the money they deserve!

When starting the game on release day, I thought – damn, I cannot remember anything! Yes, there were these five houses, but who were they? What about the Battlemechs and their different weaponry? What was that with heat management? I felt so disconnected to the world of Battletech, and so… I immediatly stopped playing.

But why should I actually remember anything about Battletech; how comes?

Well, when I was young, like teenage-young, I bought the Battletech books, when they were released by Heyne end of 80′ and beginning of 90′. I also bought the board game then, which was rather tricky to play, and my brother and I never really managed to get into it, despite our already intense roleplaying. I thought I still remeber the lore and world pretty well after all these decades, but of course nothing remained.

So, obviously, I forgot about the Battletech (computer) game again and put it on my pile, but it passively bothered me so much for a year, that I thought: Ok. In order to get back into the game lore, I will start reading the books again, so I can connect better with the whole story and get a better feel for the combat and systematics, characters and overall drama in the Battletech universe.

And damn, did that pay off!

I have already read five books, and am currently in the sixth, and really enjoy them so much! They are rough, full of cheap adjectives, plastered with tropes from the 80′ and very much targeted at male teenagers. Nevertheless, the time-travel back into my teenage days with these books is still so awesome, that I do not bother much at all. Almost thirty years later, 180 books have been published in the Battletech universe, but I will for sure not read them all and better stick to the glorious beginnings.

Back to the game. So, after I have read the first three books (Gray Death Trilogy) the game made so much fun again and my kids also started to become very interested and engaged in backseat playing together with me, discussing loadouts, and reading together through the games’ story. We breezed through the game in around 60 hours.

In all honesty: I am normally not that super-hyped on round based strategy games, but after playing Shadowrun Returns (also by Harebrained Schemes), I at least knew what to expect from their turn-based system. Battletech is expanding on this rather rough combat system, and delivers a very enjoyable, 20 minutes bite-sized experience, of missions, which are sometimes really difficult to complete, without your pilots waking up in hospital (or dying). I played on standard settings, and often even did not modify my Mechs that much, simply because I did not care and it was not necessary. The standard tour, so to say. And again in all honesty: The game is out-of-the-box not really motivating me to continue after the main story ended (main story is rather nice btw!). After the credits rolled, you have your heavy mechs with upgraded weapons and blast through almost all opponents without thinking too much about strategy.

After purchasing the season pass, flashpoints were added in their first DLC (Paradox-style), and they increased and updated lots of mechanics and further added nice lore-based additions. For example we played a Flashpoint circling around Liao’s new Raven-class mech (also mentioned in the books), which was greatly delivered and told, also limiting my mech lance to max 55 tons and challenging us a lot – really nice and motivating!

Up to today, my kids are still asking me to play Battletech again, and I still have to admit, that I almost always respond: “Sure, let’s play a mission!” We have tons of fun playing together, especially when my boys can identify all Battlemechs and know all about their weaponry way better than I do!

Thinking back at my own teenage days and my involvement with the Battletech universe, I will definatly continue to play – especially and only – together with my kids – hopefully passing the torch of Battletech excitement to them.

And that … would be really awesome.

Completed the main story, but started to enjoy the game only after re-entering the lore and reading the books. This makes the game so much better – you may even trust me on this!

Incompleted in a way, that I will continue to play the game with my kids, and we look forward to the last DLC this fall.

The Incompletionist