🚀 go-pugleaf

Well, it's been a busy month for me, although you wouldn't be able to
tell it by my playlist. Although I only played three games this month
- not the fewest I've ever played, but far below average - one of
those games hogged so much of my time that it's a wonder I found any
time to play any other games. Plus the addition of some fun new
computer hardware and, oh yeah, real life and I'm amazed I managed to
squeeze everything into one month.

Anyway, it's the end of the month (well, slightly past but as I said,
I've been busy) and we all know what that means. I tell you guys what
games I have been playing, you guys tell us all what you have been
playing. Maybe we share our thoughts on those games too, or maybe not;
it's all good. Anyway, let's get right into things.

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Short and Sweet
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* Fallout 4 (new)
* Lego Star Wars - The Complete Saga (replay)
* Minecraft (replay)

TL; DR 
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* Fallout 4 (new)
If pressed to give a final opinion on Fallout 4, I would probably
respond by saying that - while it has excellent production values - it
was a game I ultimately did not enjoy playing very much. But this
statement is very much at odds with my reported play-time on Steam: I
invested over 100 hours into the game. It's an unusual discrepancy
that I have struggled to understand myself.

Certainly Fallout 4 is not without is merits. Its large open world is
beautifully detailed and Bethesda has well-utilized the updated
Creation (nee Gamebryo) engine to crank out their best renderings yet.
The texture detail in some areas is simply stunning. The game-world is
far more open than Bethesda's earlier titles; while you still
encounter a load-screen when entering the larger dungeons, many
smaller areas that once would have been separate maps are now part of
the overland map, giving the whole game a much more cohesive feel. The
map is stuffed full of things to discover, and - like all Bethesda's
games - the biggest thrill is walking across the world and discovering
a new area to explore. Like a jackdaw to a shiny object, I was
constantly distracted by the lure of some new dungeon or ruin to
discover, and rare was it that I'd cross the wastelands on some quest
without numerous detours because some new "unexplored area" icon
appeared on my mini-map. 

Unfortunately, this was the only real joy I received while playing the
game. The individual quests - always a weak point of Bethesda's games
- I found uninteresting, with particular disdain for the main quest.
The procedurally generated "Radiant" quests were exceptionally poor,
especially when they were auto-assigned ("Rescue the town from
imminent attack" and saddled with a time-limit; the latter was an
egregious sin as it took me away from the freeform wandering that was
game's strength. The game's new mechanic - the base-building - was
encumbered by tedium, limited options and fiddly controls and after
establishing a few homes for my braindead followers I largely ignored
it. Many of the older mechanics - unfulfilling combat, dry dialogue
options, uninspired AI, and cumbersome crafting - still suffered from
rough spots that have haunted Bethesda's games since the start.
Individually these issues didn't harm the game too much, but the
continued lack of improvement in this area was disheartening

I think that if I had to put my finger on Fallout 4's biggest problem,
it would be that it was such an unadventurous sequel; except for the
addition of the base-building, it added very little new to the
franchise.  Most disappointingly, it took absolutely no chances with
the setting. In many ways the game felt little more than a re-skin of
Fallout 3, both in terms of gameplay and setting. Once again I took
the role of a bad-ass (albeit easily diverted) vault-dweller facing
off against the same bunch of mutants and wasteland factions. Oddly
enough, the increased level - while pleasant to look at - made the
game actually that much less immersive, since its increased realism
only brought into contrast many of the inconsistencies of the game's
world (like, if the war was over 200 years ago then why are there
still-fresh corpses from the war all over?).

It was the lure of discovery that kept me playing as long as I did,
but the payout was rarely worth the effort. Like an addict, I kept
scouring the wastes - adding tens of hours to my overall play-time -
in hopes of finding some redeeming and exciting set-piece but instead
was reward with an unending sense of ennui. When I finally did come to
the end of the main quest, I found I had little desire to keep playing
beyond that point. This is a distinct divergence from my experience
with other Bethesda titles, where I would happily play and re-play the
game; with Fallout 4, I was happy to have finally come to a concluding
moment so that I could abandon it without guilt or worry I might be
missing something.  I'd seen enough to realize that even were I to
play another hundred hours I still wouldn't discover anything that
would make that investment worthwhile.



* Lego Star Wars - The Complete Saga (replay)
"The Complete Saga" includes Legofied retellings of the first six Star
Wars movies; I played through the first trilogy and considered that
sufficient. 

The most interesting part of the game for me was seeing how far the
developers have come; these early games feel primitive both in
presentation and gameplay when compared to their later adventures.
They are extremely repetitive, with only a few set-pieces that offer
any differentiation from the platforming in combat introduced at the
very start. Geared towards a younger crowd, neither the combat nor
puzzles were especially engaging. It was only the appeal of the source
material that kept me playing as long as I did.

I don't regret the time I spent on this game, but it's best played in
short sessions and even after only a few short hours, I've gotten my
fill already.


* Minecraft (replay)
Minecraft is one of those games that has more or less established a
permanent foothold on my hard-drive, but it's recently not been a game
I've played with for any length of time. In part this was because -
after having 
played and built in its endless realms for hundreds of hours - I had
sort of burnt out on the game, but equally because technical issues
kept me from even starting the program. Well, whether it was the
installation of a new video-card, new drivers, or reinstallation of
Java or the game program, the latter problem unexpectedly solved
itself and now - after a two year absence - I've plunged myself back
into the game once more.

The joy of the game for me was never its survival mode or its
multiplayer component, but rather the game's "creative mode" where I
could build to my heart's desire. My particular fetish was always for
reasonably realistic fantasy/medieval structures, many of which I
would then share with the Minecraft community. I find little more
pleasing than to meticulously build and detail a structure, working
around the shortcomings of the Minecraft toolset. It's a pleasure that
I expect will keep me occupied for many weeks to come.

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See? Only three games. I feel so ashamed. I'll try to play more games
next month, honest.

Anyway, that's me. What about you? 

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