Category: Video Games

After finishing Expedition 33, I started Cyberpunk 2077 (because it’s in the Game Catalog on PlayStation Plus) and it seems fine. I’ll get back to it eventually because cyberpunk (with a small c) is cool and this particular instance has some fun vibes. However, this post is about a bunch of games I was looking forward to all coming out around the same time. One of them, I purchased and am playing. The others, I played demos or betas and might purchase, depending on… I don’t know.

First, the one I actually bought and am playing is Borderlands 4. I’m maybe like a third of the way through it so far, and… [drum roll]
… it’s fine. So far, I would put it as better than 3 (most people seem to not have liked 3 all that much, but I enjoyed it), but not as good as 2. Some parts of it are incredibly annoying (like the various “carry quests” that require toting around an item that uses a hand, so you can’t aim down sights or grapple or various other movements you’re very used to, or, to me, things like waves of enemies spawning in pretty much every time you go anywhere, but I’m aware it’s a shooter game with weird guns so enemies popping up everywhere to kill with your weird guns is kind of the point) but most of it ranges from “kind of entertaining” to “pretty fun.”

The story is kind of dumb, but it’s Borderlands, and “kind of dumb” is basically what the franchise is all about. Because it’s doing the “open world” thing, the enemies and missions scale to your level, so you don’t really get to experience the “look how powerful you are now” bit because the enemies constantly get a little tankier or hit harder, which definitely takes away a lot of the allure, but also helps keep the random waves of fodder that pop up everywhere from being boring. It does keep them from being ignorable, too, though, which is a pain when you’re actually trying to go somewhere.

It’s enjoyable enough. I’ll finish it in time.

The next one to talk about is Battlefield 6. I have not purchased this one, but I did play an open beta, and I had a pretty good time. I’m part of an online community that used to play (among other things) a lot of Battlefield 4, and this pretty quickly brought back a lot of those vibes. I also have some “real-life friends” (wow, that’s weird to type) who play and they’re trying to get me into it, and… maybe. The game does have a single-player campaign, but I’m not terribly interested in it, and while the multiplayer isn’t bad and doesn’t really require any sort of grinding, I also don’t really see myself playing it all that much, and so I’m not sure that I want to spend 70 dollars on it. Maybe if it goes on sale or someone gives me a gift card or something. (Or my next trip to a casino is a win, but not a big enough win to do something like buy a new coat or furniture. Like maybe winning a hundred bucks on slots or something?)

And the third one is sort of a sleeper hit to me, and that it’s a game that I’m not “supposed to” like, but I played the most recent tech demo and had a pretty good time. That game is Arc Raiders – an “extraction shooter” (in quotes because there are gaming bloggers and vloggers commenting that it’s not really an extraction shooter) which is a… genre? game mode? style? whatever… that I don’t really like. Or at least, I don’t like the idea of. I’ve never played Tarkov (god it looks so sweaty and toxic) but I was kind of looking forward to Marathon before the whole art fiasco and Riloe on YouTube has me intrigued about the game Beautiful Light (which doesn’t release for another year), so I’m not entirely against the idea of a “get in, get thing, and get out” game.

Arc Raiders is very stylish. The sound and environments are very nice, and while it has the “stakes” of an extraction shooter (if you get killed, you lose whatever you were carrying), you can get a free loadout to jump in whenever, and unless you’re really going hard, most of the “loot” you get is gonna be junk like batteries and other scrap. Your best gear is going to be stuff you assemble in your base, and if you lose it, you’ll probably be able to build more. From what I’ve seen so far, the community is pretty chill, too, and yelling “hey, friendly!” on proximity chat seems to mostly get people to chill. The enemies (the PvE enemies, that is, not the other players) are really neat, too. They’re mostly things like aerial drones with realistic physics and stuff so you can send them careening off or crashing by disabling one rotor on a quadcopter. I’m thinking I’m going to buy this one, but mainly because it’s only $40, and I think I can get at least that much entertainment out of it.

And that’s just shooter games. Europa Universalis V just released, and I kind of want to play that a bunch, too. I like(d) Stellaris and Victoria 3 is/was pretty interesting, too. I might just be getting hooked by YouTubers who are able to be entertaining while playing it.

And that’s not even including the huge games that I’m not interested in, like Silksong, or… I don’t know, whatever else people are playing right now. (I was going to say Call of Duty, but I checked and the newest one isn’t out yet.)

So yeah, find your self a game or two. It’ll be fine.

Ok, here’s the post about E33. I finished (at least, the story and rolled credits) this last weekend, so here’s the deal.

First of all, if I had to sum it up in one word, that word would probably be “beautiful.” The environments are varied and gorgeous, the characters are wonderfully depicted, and the music is absolutely perfect. (Although I’m told that if you know French, the soundtrack spoils the rest of the game while you play it. I can’t confirm that, because I don’t know French.)

The story is wonderfully told (although I won’t spoil any of it here, because you either won’t get it, are still planning to play the game and don’t want to know yet, or already know) and every beat perfectly pulls you along to the next segment. I had been mildly spoiled on parts of it, but they still hit because of the way certain segments are delivered.

HOWEVER

As your characters level up, they gain stats, but the vast majority of their stats come from their equipped “Pictos”, various trinkets you find that boost one or two stats and give the character an extra ability to go with it. Then, after having a Picto equipped for four battles, you earn the “Lumina” that lets you have the ability even without the Picto equipped. You pay for “Lumina” with “Colors of Lumina” (actually, you pay with “Lumina Points” that you earn by spending Colors of Lumina, but I’m condensing somewhat) and each character gets their own pool of Lumina.

You also find new weapons for your characters, and you find higher level weapons as you go, but you can also use “Chroma Catalysts” to increase the levels of weapons. The higher you’re trying to make the level, the more catalysts you need, and above certain level cutoffs, you need not just more, but an entirely different kind. (There are Chroma Catalysts (that only work up to level 3), then Polished Chroma Catalysts (that work up to level 9), Resplendent Chroma Catalysts (that work up to level 19), and Grandiose Chroma Catalysts (that work up to level 32). There are also Perfect Chroma Catalysts that you use specifically to go from 32 to 33, but you (I guess) only encounter those in the like post-post-game (or maybe in New Game+), since I got my weapons up to like level 23 (which is separate from the character levels which were just under 70) and that was plenty.)

Then there are skill points! To be fair, any game with any sort of character progression has skill points and skill trees, so that’s whatever, but it’s not just like you spend your points and then you have skills. I mean, you can and do, but then you can only have 6 skills equipped, so you end up switching skills around as you unlock more, and then switching Pictos around because each character can only equip 3 at a time, all trying to make sure to synergize your weapon with your skills and Pictos and the enemies’ weaknesses… sometimes, it’s a bit much.

And the combat is turn-based. That’s not really a knock against it, because JRPGs have turn-based combat and everyone loves those. (I mean, I don’t, but maybe I do? I really liked Super Mario RPG, but I never played any Final Fantasy games or Chrono Trigger.) I do know one person that doesn’t want to play E33 because of turn-based combat. I think that person should just get over it, but I get it. There’s only so much time to play games, so you gotta stick to the ones you think are fun.

And this one was fun. It was gorgeous and transcendently scored. You really do feel powerful as you progress, and I legitimately felt emotions during some of the cutscenes. Trying to decide how to spec your characters is a bit of a chore, but eventually, it just becomes a big pile of options you don’t want/need and then a handful that speak to you. It’s kind of a pain, but it also means you can play however you want. There’s an incredibly high difficulty ceiling, but everything on the main path is pretty manageable.

It’s beautiful, enthralling, emotional, tedious, aggravating, challenging, fun… It’s fine…

…and it’s probably game of the year.