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Reaper of Souls's plot isn't as terrible as the core game's - after all, what could be? - but it's still fairly dumb. I mean, I know we're talking about somewhat-trashy gothic power fantasy here, but at least the events of Diablo II felt consistent within the established world. Seven evils, Horadric staff, no one cared about Izual; pretty straightforward stuff.
Reaper of Souls turns the main game's "black soulstone" into a deus ex machina, more than once! The reaper Malthael's relationship with the angelic pantheon is just as groan-worthy as the "nephalem" garbage-lore. And the ending is so terse and anti-climactic, it's like it was picked out of a hat.
But hey, there's no Leah, so ... yeah, not as terrible as before.
My previous concerns about the trivial campaign difficulty were not abated by Act V. The final boss did succeed in making me pay attention to my health bar; but I still didn't die, nor did my companion. (Again, this was in the "Hard" difficulty.) And he dropped loot for above our current level! So I'd definitely call the game's definition of difficulty pretty suspect.
I know the whole point of Diablo is to continue climbing the loot ladder, and I've heard that the current game's Nephalem Rifts and Adventure Mode features are way better than previous iterations' Nightmare and Hell mode bullshit. But the early rungs of this ladder are unsatisfying and overlong. I'm not going to keep climbing on the gamble that it will eventually become fun.
Escape the Game's fourth-wall-breaking self-awareness isn't great, but not as bad as someothers I've played. And the gameplay is rote at first, but quickly adds a grappling-hook power that makes the game feel fast, and interesting.
And then it's over. In ten minutes.
This free game is over two years old, and I guess it was supposed to serve as a demo for a fuller release? But the "Episode 1" DLC still has a release date of "2017 Q1" -- and the creator seems to have abandoned this idea in favor of an ARG that will lead up to a sequel... maybe.
It feels like most of my list has been shifting from "releasing this year" to "releasing next year," over the past several years.
A.N.N.E. looked like a cute, little game on Kickstarter in May of 2013. The campaign page still estimates delivery in March of 2014. Their December 31st update says "2018 will be the year."
Chasm, like A.N.N.E., looked like a fun little Kickstarter in May of 2013. Campaign page says estimated delivery in May of 2014. Their current estimate is "TBD."
I rarely spend time on Early Access games, but CrossCode had a good demo and hooked me ... in November of 2015. Their last release-date estimate, from May of last year, targeted Early 2018.
Factorio similarly wowed me with its pre-release demo. That was in November of 2014. Their roadmap looks like it's close to completion, but there doesn't seem to be a formal release date estimate.
I liked the look and description of Timespinner in their Kickstarter campaign. That was in August of 2014. As of September: "For awhile now I've said that I hope to release in 2017 and it's looking like that's less likely to happen."
Game development is hard; it is known. And scheduling things is also pretty hard. Even the industry's heavy-hitters screw this pooch with some frequency. But ... come on, really guys?
It feels weird to praise Yooka-Laylee for anything, but at least those industry vets knew how to schedule themselves; they only had 2 years from Kickstarter (May, 2015) to release (April, 2017). And to be fair, Bloodstained and Indivisible aren't doing all that bad, either -- projects which are similarly staffed by game development veterans.
I hope that these Kickstarter indies, and anyone looking to follow in their footsteps, have come to understand the precarious position of years-long hype periods. Games like Chasm and Timespinner looked fresh and exciting when they were announced, but now their community interest is all but gone. Factorio's mechanics were brilliant, when it was new; now its competitors have had years to copy and iterate on its ideas. Several of these games have even had to change their targeted platforms, the Wii U having come and gone.
And if a game in development for three, four, or even five years is even slightly underwhelming, well... may Gunpei have mercy on the developers' Twitter accounts.
For my part, these release-date fails (especially A.N.N.E. and Chasm) have taught me to be much, much more discerning about what I crowdfund. Which, for the sake of nascent developers and their ideas, is kind of a shame.
Silicon Zeroes started out pretty simple, as I saw in the demo; and these humble beginnings had me looking forward to more complex algorithmic puzzles in the later game.
Unfortunately, the later puzzles tend to feel more like riddles: solving an otherwise-straightforward problem without using a crucial component, or in a time limit that requires otherwise-counterproductive pipelining. It's even worse than TIS-100, whose limitations were at least consistent within the world of the game; in Silicon Zeroes, a component will be given to you in one puzzle, then taken away in another.
One particularly frustrating aspect of the game's mechanics is how it treats floating or undefined values. In digital electronics, an undefined voltage level is never useful; but in many of Silicon Zeroes' puzzles, an undefined input gets used as a behavioral switch, effectively disabling a component's output. And this mechanic is a critical part of many puzzles' solutions.
This interacts especially poorly with the game's timing system. Clock ticks and component-specific "mTick" delays appear to be meant as a simulation of actual CPU pipelining; and while you'd imagine that specific parts of the pipeline would be active or inactive based on preceding input, the game doesn't really offer those conditional tools, except as a side-effect of undefined input.
It feels janky. And weird.
I don't want to overplay my frustrations with the game, because I did have some fun with it, especially in the early and simple puzzles. It just felt like, as the puzzles became more complicated, their ambitions outstripped the game's mechanical capabilities.
The dull story didn't help, either. (I'd recommend the first season of Halt and Catch Fire, instead.)
Silicon Zeroes is somewhat short, unless you want to do the extra post-campaign puzzles -- which I didn't. Longer than Human Resource Machine, if not by much. By the time I saw the "ending" cinematic, I was very ready to stop playing, despite how many more puzzles I have left.
Better than: Prelogate Not as good as: Human Resource Machine, Opus Magnum Instead of outshining Opus Magnum: Silicon Zeroes ended up reminding me that Zachtronics, even at its worst, is still pretty good.
Well, the ending is pretty terrible. Opus Magnum's story is generally awkward - the first chapter is stiff and wooden, then the remaining four are just meandering - but nowhere moreso than in the final story scene, in which the villain (who hadn't even been clearly identified, up to this point) claims to have outsmarted you, threatens to kill you, and then offers for you to join him, only to finally discover that he was talking to a mannequin! And the fates of the protagonists are left to your imagination.
Of course, I don't play these games for the story; I play them for the logical coordination challenge. And in that respect, Opus Magnum never really changed my first impression of it -- of being overall simpler and less satisfying than SpaceChem. Like Shenzhen I/O, it feels like Opus Magnum has focused too much on style, and not enough on substance.
And as with Shenzhen, I'm just not interested enough to keep going into the extra post-campaign puzzles.
As an aside, while Zachtronics games tend to have a pretty close connection to real computer programming principles, I couldn't help but get hung up on how Opus Magnum combines runtime instructions - the movement of arms and elements - with resource contention; much of my debugging time was just trying to stop things from colliding. This multiplexing of instructions and resource access doesn't closely resemble a conventional programming language... but it does closely resemble some intentionally-frustrating toy languages like Brainfuck.
Better than: Sethian Not as good as: Human Resource Machine, or any of the other Zachtronics puzzlers. I think I really would rather: have replayed SpaceChem instead.
Just in time for the remaster announcement, I've finally unearthed Dark Souls from my backlog. And although I've already given up, it wasn't for the reasons I'd expected!
What I expected was for the game to put me off with punishing, relentless difficulty. And aside from some awkward controls, I'd say that the difficulty ... actually feels right, in a way. The enemy respawn mechanics, the inherent danger of even "easy" enemies, and the gamble of using consumable items, all feel like they work cohesively in the service of the game's design.
Dark Souls makes it clear, early on, that your goal isn't necessarily to fight the undead for experience points; your goal is to get to the next bonfire, dealing with the intermediate obstacles however you can.
Combat is necessarily a part of this, and while it is challenging and strict, I wouldn't call it merciless. You just have to accept that death is part of the game. Enemies will surprise you by appearing from around a corner, or with a long weapon reach, or with devastating damage. You gonna die.
But it makes sense when you look at the game like VVVVVV -- the space between two checkpoints (bonfires) is essentially a discrete unit of challenge, to be tried and retried until you can finally get it right. Then, you move on to the next one.
Granted, that space between bonfires can be pretty large. And that's where some of my disinterest in Dark Souls comes from.
There's no in-game map, and levels are designed in a deliberately confusing, somewhat-labyrinthine way. So part of the challenge of getting to the next bonfire is finding it; and the process of navigation will necessarily entail surprise enemy encounters, in which you're likely to die and get sent back to the last one.
I might have more tolerance for that if the levels were aesthetically fascinating, or if there was some ambient storytelling going on while I wandered around, but it never seemed like I was going anywhere particularly interesting. So what I got out of the game - the sensations I was left with - were feelings of being lost, of not knowing where I was supposed to go, and of probably being about to die.
What put me off of Dark Souls wasn't really a feeling of futility, but a feeling of aimlessness.
I can certainly understand why Dark Souls receives the praise that it does: its mechanics work together, really, really well. The catch is that forward momentum relies on you being interested in its bleak, desolate world. (Or just being super-hyped about the combat, I guess.)
I'll definitely be giving the sequel a try, to see if that changes the balance in a way I find interesting.
Diablo IIIhas changed since 2014. It's not just me! On a lark, I searched for "what happened to diablo 3" and found this Reddit thread:
I one-shot everything. So I bump the difficulty up, not much seems to change. [...]
I ended up starting a new game on the highest possible difficulty (Inferno 1 I think it's called) but it's still easy as hell [...]
Right now the (base) game feels like a joke basically... What happened?
Game starts when you hit level 70 [...] Blizzard has done a lot to streamline the level 1-70 grind, as much of the remaining playerbase is uninterested in redoing that section each time a new Season starts.
So, pretty similar with what happened to World of Warcraft. (Which Blizzard then tried to fix in Cataclysm, and I think a few other times?)
And it's true. On the "Hard" difficulty, my partner and I cleaved through acts 1-4. My monk carved a path through enemies like a hot bullet through melted butter. Bosses fell in seconds, frequently skipping entire phases of the encounter. The enemy abilities I remember being genuinely afraid of - Arcane Enchanted lasers, Molten fire-traps, Frozen stunlocks - have become so insignificant, compared to my health and recovery stats, that I stopped making any effort to avoid them.
The first four acts are trivialized by these balance changes. Which, when combined with the trite story and insipid characters, leaves the whole campaign feeling unfulfilling and empty.
To put it more poignantly: replaying the game from the beginning is pointless. I'm surprised there isn't a WoW-like option to just buy your way up to level 70. Or, even more reasonably, to just skip it. Why is this content even here?
Has this same ethos bled into Act V? We'll find out, but... I'm not getting my hopes up.
Better than: ... man, I don't even know. Not as good as: "Loot 2.0", or even the game at launch. Really stretching: the lower bounds of "Meh" on this one.
Every time Ōkami HD misread my restoration circle as a wind-swoosh, or the camera went nuts as I was trying to land a tricky jump ...
... Issun was always there to soften the blow. It's hard to stay mad at Ōkami, because it's just so gosh-darned charming.
By the end of my 30-35 hour journey, I'd had my fill of Ōkami's awkwardly-paced story and inconvenient-to-navigate world map. So there are plenty of otherwise-promising sidequests I've left unfinished. I could accuse Ōkami's running length of overstaying its welcome, if just barely so.
And, yeah. The drawing isn't very precise. The combat isn't that satisfying. The minigames can be downright infuriating. The upgrade system isn't very meaningful. The storytelling is frequently stilted. Orochi was rehashed too many times.
But unlike Wind Waker HD (and that barren Great Sea), revisiting Ōkami hasn't really changed my opinion of it. Its strengths remain strong.
Ōkami isn't perfect, but its character and (now, high-definition) aesthetics feel timeless in a way that rivals Nintendo's own stable. If it keeps being remade, I wonder if it might even become more legendary than that green-capped elf kid.
... that aside, it's a hefty picross game. At 240 regular picture puzzles, and 184 more puzzles that form the larger "mosaics," it easily has more pre-baked puzzles than any picross game I've played before.
In terms of puzzle size, it falls a bit short of Paint it Back's 40x30 figure -- maxing out at 35 tiles wide. (The majority of its puzzles seem to be around 20x20 or so.) And like many of its contemporaries, I'd bet that it could go bigger if only it had figured out a good "zoom" mechanic; i.e., puzzle size appears restricted mainly by the screen resolution.
It hurts a tiny bit that Pepper's Puzzles is Windows-only; I really would have liked to churn out some pictures on the couch, with my Powerbook.
Pepper has some cool things going for her: the time trials are a neat (though short-lived) feature, and a puzzle creator plus Steam Workshop integration is something I've previously referred to as "pretty dope." ... but it still feels slightly inferior, to me, largely because of its maximum puzzle bounds.
As impressed as I was by how many puzzles Pepper threw at me, only one or two of its puzzles ever felt individually challenging (like Paint it Back's did). And as neat as its new features are, they didn't have much of an impact on my gameplay experience (compared with Picrozelda's number-grouping mechanic).
So I wouldn't call it a bar-raising picross package. But, if you want an absolute fuckload of puzzles, Pepper's got you covered.
But enough boring talk about numbers; let's see the boring numbers!
That's 78 games for 2017, up from 45 in 2016. Not too bad! Although there is the statistical caveat that 2017 included record-setting counts of both game demos, and replays of games I'd played before -- at 10 (12.8%) and 18 (23.1%), respectively.
The highlight of those was definitely Borderlands 2 and its DLCs, which have held up pretty well (for the most part; more on this later). Ōkami's new HD update (still in-progress) has been quite pleasant, too -- it has the same flaws as the original, but with beauty and lightheartedness that really make up for them. And Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was a joy to revisit; its storytelling is still fun and riveting, more than a decade later.
In contrast, the remasters of BioShock 2 and especially Infinite weren't nearly as good the second time 'round. I think because their plots and environments relied heavily on the "wow" factor of seeing them for the first time; absent that, there isn't much memorable substance.
Similarly, revisiting Diablo III (still in-progress) and the remasters of Darksiders and Majora's Mask reminded me more of what those games lack, than what they had originally gotten right. Time hasn't been friendly to Majora, in particular.
Let's look at more numbers! Counting up IGDB metadata on "game type" e.g. expansions and downloadable content:
Last year I played a record high number of DLCs, at 15 (19.2%) -- the majority (9 of them) thanks to Borderlands 2. Past replaying the main four story packs, this was my first time with the five "Headhunter" DLCs, which were, uh, mixed. Wattle Gobbler was a fun excuse to revisit Mr. Torgue, and Son of Crawmerax was very pretty, but the rest felt generally janky and missable.
Three more DLCs came from Phoenix Wright: one real one with a fun story, and two that were absolutelyasinine. I'm going to be much more wary of Capcom's DLC menu, next time.
And the other three DLCs were also replays, via BioShock. It wasn't quite so obvious back in 2011, but the ending of Minerva's Den really does feel like a seminal step toward today's "Walking Simulator" genre (which makes sense, since its developers went on to create Gone Home). As for bothepisodes of Burial at Sea... like BioShock Infinite itself, stripped of its first-time "wow" moments, it just wasn't very impactful.
More numbers: what platforms did I play on? Actually -- since I know PC dominates every year; what other platforms did I play on?
I made a pretty big dent in my 3DS backlog, too -- one more to go, maybe two if someone talks me into playing Samus Returns.
My PS4 activity has certainly declined, ... since there was only one new Uncharted game last year. But I'm not done with it yet, at least not until I can try out Horizon and The Last Guardian.
The Switch is a new entry, via Super Mario Odyssey. Other than a probable replay of Zelda, it's hard to guess how much activity this might see in the future. (Metroid, please?)
Now for something I haven't really tracked before: how much did I actually like what I played?
Well, the Awesome count is on the low side - at 6 (7.7%) - with Breath of the Wild being the standout of the year. But plenty of Goods, at 26 (33.3%). That's, uh... that's good. 👍
Those Good games ended up including a lot of memorable, if imperfect, experiences:
Rebel Galaxy captured a sense of freedom that can only come from truckin' around space,
Oxenfree told a thrilling virtual-campfire sci-fi story,
Pitfall Planet really charmed my co-op partner and I, and we barely killed each other at all!,
Child of Light reminded me just how fun turn-based RPGs can be,
and as above, Ōkami HD is more gorgeous than ever.
While I still rated them positively, I'm let down by last year's trajectory for Zachtronics games. Infinifactory was great, ... up until the last few levels became way too much. And both Shenzhen I/O and Opus Magnum (still in-progress) - while fun - felt like steps backwards.
There was plenty of Meh to go around in 2017, which isn't generally worth mentioning -- but Ori and the Blind Forest was definitely a disappointment. Chalk another one up to excessive internet fervor.
Oh yeah, and Yooka-Laylee happened. Just a shame, that one.
So, that was 2017. What's on the docket for 2018? Well, it doesn't look like there's a whole hell of a lot "upcoming," other than some Kickstarter games that always seem at least a year away.
