🚀 go-pugleaf

Do you Usenet? I Usenet; I Usenet on a daily basis.  I sometimes even
Usenet in public. Look, now I am even restarting our monthly thread in
order to encourage others to Usenet. Yes, I have verbified Usenet.
Because the holidays are over and I need /something/ entertaining to
keep me going through the dark and dreary winter days, and what am I
going to do if I can't verbify or Usenet?

Oh wait, right, playing computer games; I can do that too. Let's talk
about computer games instead. You all know the drill, I won't bother
going into the usual spiel. To the games!


--------------------
Short and Sweet
--------------------
* Lost Eden (replay)
* Warhammer End Times Vermintide (new)
* Star Wars The Old Republic (new)
* Abzu (new)


TL; DR 
----------

* Lost Eden (replay)
To understand "Lost Eden", you need to understand its origins. In
1984, David Lynch completed the unenviable task of translating Frank
Herbert's sci-fi opus to the silver screen. Although critically
panned, it became something of a cult classic. In 1992, Cryo
Interactive - under the aegis of Virgin Games - released a game that
owed as much to the movie as the original novel. The game - simply
entitled Dune - was an odd mixture of adventure and strategy, but is
probably better remembered - especially its later CD-ROM release - as
being one of the earliest true multimedia experiences, with speech and
video prominent parts of the game. Although only a moderate success,
it was enough to keep the franchise alive until Westwood games took
over the license and created Dune II, which set the template for all
modern real-time strategy games and is far better remembered.

Meanwhile, Cryo Interactive, having lost the Dune license, decided to
create a game based on their own intellectual property, a strange
pre-historic world where dinosaurs and humans co-existed. It was,
essentially, a clone of the original Dune albeit one where they
doubled-down on the multimedia aspects that won them so much praise.
Thus was born "Lost Eden".

Unfortunately, their efforts were largely for naught. While "Lost
Eden's" production values still hold up well - if you take into
account that there has been twenty years of technological advancement
- this isn't enough to save the game. Yes, the computer-generated
backgrounds, CGI animations and techno soundtrack are still appealing,
the gameplay itself is completely lacking. The adventure-game
sequences are totally linear, with "puzzles" that are little more than
knowing to click the right thing in the right order (albeit with very
little clues ever given as to what that order actually /is/).
Nominally there is a strategy element as you strive to build up your
armies to beat off the ravaging "Tyran" hordes, but this too is
extremely superficial. It is entirely comprised of stumbling upon your
allies by randomly clicking on a map and giving them the necessary
items - also found by randomly clicking on the map - required for them
to build citadels and armies strong enough to withstand the barbarian
onslaught. Actual battles are all fought off-screen. The story is
equally poor, with forgettable characters and goals and a dull deus-ex
machina conclusion. 

"Lost Eden" is an interesting historical footnote and its visuals and
music still have some appeal, but none even when it was new this was
not enough to carry the game, much less two decades on.


* Warhammer End Times Vermintide (new)
It's obvious that the developers of Vermintide were big fans of the
Left4Dead franchise; while it would be unfair to call Vermintide
merely a re-skin of that co-op classic, it bears the influence of
Valve's game quite proudly and it is nearly impossible to review - or
play - without making comparisons. Like Left4Dead, Vermintide is a
four-player co-op shooter and many of its rat-men monsters bear a
close correspondence to the varied forms of Valve's zombies. But
Vermintide plays with this formula, adding a Team Fortress-like
class-system, some light role-playing elements and a stronger
campaign, all of which - on the surface - seems like some great
additions. And - generally - they are; fans of the Left4Dead series
will find a lot to like. Nonetheless, all this added extra chaff does
take away from some of the addictive simplicity of the older title. 

The worst offender were the maps, which are significantly larger than
Left4Dead's levels but received far less iterative testing, as
evidenced by the number of times I found myself inadvertently
backtracking thanks to poor presentation of which direction I was
supposed to head next. It didn't help that so much of the levels
looked alike, an issue not assisted in the least by the gloomy grey
graphics. The sheer size of the levels was problematic too; my
interest waned long before the I got to the end of each map, and the
lack of save-points meant that a total-party-kill required us to
traverse the entire tedious map from the start. On the other hand, I
did enjoy that the maps all had unique goals to them beyond merely
surviving to the end.

Nor was I particularly warm to the class system, mostly because there
wasn't enough difference between the classes. Yes, the Witch-Hunter
was mainly a ranged-class that relied on his flintlocks, the Dwarf a
melee tank, or the Bright Wizard a finicky glass cannon prone to
overheating, but in actual gameplay all the classes were all focused
on killing; there were no support classes, or healers or stealth
classes. The RPG elements - mostly consisting of weapon unlocks as you
level up - seemed mostly added as an excuse to make the players
grind-up, extending the length of a game which had a dubiously small
number of maps to begin with. 

I mostly played in single-player and the AI was satisfactory, if
lacking in the character and uniqueness that made Left4Dead's heroes
so memorable. I did make a few excursions online and found the
gameplay largely the same. While the community seemed largely
friendly, Vermintide is more forgiving of soloing heroes, which
reduced the need for co-operative play and a lot of the time the other
players just seemed to run off and do their own thing. The game felt
lonelier for that.

Vermintide is an acceptable clone of Left4Dead, but it lacks the
polish of its obvious inspiration. The developers seemed to believe
that "more" equaled "better" as evidenced by how they tossed in new
gameplay elements almost wily-nily, but in doing so ruined the careful
balance introduced in Valve's game. The end result was a rather
shallow and unmemorable title and while Left4Dead had retained a
position on my hard-drive for close to 8 years, I've no regret
uninstalling Vermintide after a single month.


* Abzu (new)
Apparently "Abzu" (which is Sumerian for "Ocean of Wisdom") was
developed in part by the art-director behind the PS3-exclusive
"Journey", which I played a few years back. Both games share a
similarity in style and tone, but where Abzu fails is in its gameplay
and character.

Abzu has you take on the role of a nameless and faceless diver (as
opposed to Journey's nameless and faceless wanderer) as s/he/it
traverses the wilderness and ancient ruins of beneath the sea after
some unmentioned apocalypse (Journey was similar, except its environ
was the desert). Both games lacked any conventional storytelling,
relying only on un-translated pictograms scribbled on the walls of the
aforementioned ruins, leaving it to the player to decide what it all
meant at the end. Environmental effects - fish and currents in Abzu,
wind and sand in Journey - are major components of the game, although
both are more about the, well, journey than any struggle against
monsters or puzzles. But there the similarities end.

Abzu lacks in direction and character. In Journey, it immediately
becomes evident what your goal is; there's a giant mountain in front
of you and it is clear that the point of the game is to reach the top
of this peak and - by doing so - discover something of the history of
the world. There's no such driving force in Abzu; you eventually
stumble across some giant doors and game-logic dictates that's you are
probably expected to open them (because that's what you do in games)
but there is little pushing you forward beyond that. Similarly, your
diver avatar emits none of the same charm - evidenced through its
animation and sounds - as the robed wanderer of Journey, resulting in
far less attachment to the character. Simply stated, I was given no
reason to care whether or not my avatar succeeded at its goal, which
made it hard to keep playing the game to the end.

The developers obviously hoped that the wonder of the environment
would replace this lack, and admittedly the giant schools of fish were
impressive... but only briefly. There's only so long that you can
watch virtual fish swarm around before the excitement dims; for me, it
took about ten minutes. The variety of fish might have been more
impressive except for the fact that most fish look like other fish,
and the few exceptions - the blue whales, the ichthyosaurus - just
didn't offer enough in the way of interaction to keep up the required
level of interest.

The end result was another fairly dull "walking sim" that once again
hoped that its environment could make up for its lack of story or
gameplay. Once again, it could not. It's a game that - beyond its
momentary and initial moment of colorful wonder - was a dull and
purposeless trek through an unimaginative world.


* Star Wars The Old Republic (new)
So I hereby name Star Wars The Old Republic the best MMORPG I've ever
played. 

Which, grandiose as it sounds is nonetheless damning it with faint
praise, because in the end SW:TOR is still an MMORPG, and I've yet to
find one that's ever been worth the price of admission (well, maybe
the late and lamented Ultima Online, and only because it was so novel
at the time). Of course, I also say this as somebody who is far more
interested in a strong single-player game than somebody who has much
interest in a multiplayer game, which is a facet most MMORPGs sadly
lack. SW:TOR, however, has a surprisingly strong single-player
component... for an MMORPG. 

I played the game as freeloading non-paying customer and spent a good
chunk of the month doing so. The free-to-play game has three campaigns
for each of its eight different characters (although there is some
overlap between the 24-total campaigns, this is still a huge amount of
content. While the game obviously pushed its premium features, it was
never so onerous to be annoying, or even a requirement; I played and
completed the whole first campaign without paying a dime or ever
feeling that coughing up the cash would significantly change my
experience. For a free-to-play game, that's not only unheard of,
that's amazingly generous. 

The back-story was suitably developed and overwrought - it is Star
Wars, after all - and the questline was sufficiently full even in
comparison to a "proper" single-player CRPG. The various quests and
missions were well-integrated into the storyline; it never resorted to
anything so cliche as "kill 10 monsters to advance" missions common to
other MMORPGs. Nonetheless, all the missions still ultimately relied
on monster killing to advance the plot; while some of the missions
featured dialog choices at the end to sway the karma meter one way or
the other, none of the quests could be solved by puzzle-solving,
dialogue or stealth. It was a non-stop slaughter from one side of the
galaxy to the other. Fortunately, the combat itself was flashy enough
to distract from this deficiency, although - like other MMORPGs - too
focused on the mechanical aspects that resulted in a screen covered
with quickbars. I did found that the colorful combat effects too often
made me lose track of my mouse-cursor; a serious flaw in a game that
required me to constantly click the enemy to ensure my character keeps
attacking.

Although the game lacks in traditional methods of grind, it does find
another way of artificially padding out the game's length: it couples
its huge maps with an extremely slow movement rate. 95% of my time was
spent walking slowly from one quest point to the next, something not
helped by the tremendous number of monsters scattered across the level
(the game does have quick travel points, but they are too far apart to
make much difference) . Traversing the levels was tedious and boring.
Had the game cut its maps down to 1/4 the size I would have enjoyed
the experience far more.

The game also featured guilds, crafting, strongholds and all the usual
MMORPG nonsense. These are all available to F2P players, although the
best parts of those features are reserved to paying customers. The
only one I found marginally interesting were the "Space Missions",
which were an extremely simplistic space-shooter that nonetheless
offered a fun alternative to the usual on-foot questing; alas,
non-paying customers like myself were limited to only three battles
per week. It still wasn't enough to make me want to shell out any
cash. Actually, none of the premium features seemed worth the price of
admission; none of them really added or improved the core gameplay,
they just made them slightly less annoying.

Still, I did stay with the game for a full month, even though it was
sometimes only by sheer strength of will that I returned. That's more
time than I ever spent with World of Warcraft, or Guild Wars, or D&D
Online, or Conan, or Elder Scrolls or any of the other MMORPGs. That
might be partly due to the fact that it was a Star Wars game, but as
much because it was the most single-player friendly MMORPG I've
played, so kudos to Bioware for their effort. It still isn't enough to
make me want to keep playing, much less pay for the damn thing.

--------------------

And that's my gameplay list for this month. So, aside from Usenetting,
what's been occupying your time? That is to say - 

What Have You Been Playing... IN JANUARY 2017?