Prior to this month, I think the only soccer game I've ever played is World Cup Soccer on NES. And that was because it was a Kunio-kun game. I've never been interested in soccer. I don't know anything about soccer. I don't understand the rules outside of "kick the ball into the net." And yet, these FIFA games get such critical praise. So I went and grabbed a super cheap copy of FIFA 18 and figured, what the heck?
Here's my ultimate history of soccer as a sport... I know that in Karate Kid, Daniel shows Elizabeth Shue how to bounce a ball on her knee. I know that Pele is a guy that was good at soccer. I know that Will Ferrell starred in Kicking & Screaming. I know that my friend Mike coaches his kid's soccer team and he said that the other dads take it super seriously. None of that helps me here. But I have played a ton of Rocket League over the past few years, so I know that soccer is kind of like Rocket League but with people instead of cars. Maybe there's hope for me. So I started playing FIFA 18 about a week ago. It's been a really tough week as it happens. Not to get into it all but we had to put our cat down - 13 years old - and it was really unexpected. So things have been super sad around our house. So it's kind of strange that my down time has been consumed by a video game about a sport that I know and care very little about. But here's what's made it fun for me... You can start a career as your favorite pro striker. But I don't know any. Or you can make a character, but I have no fantasies about being a great soccer player. But y'know who does like soccer? My brother-in-law, James. Now this is super funny to me, but not anyone else reading this because you don't know James. But yeah, I'm playing FIFA 18 as my brother-in-law, which is hilarious to me. One time a couple of years ago, me, my wife, my sister, and James went up to New York and I was telling James about the movie Red Sparrow. On the bus ride home he decided to watch Red Sparrow on his cell phone, and I looked over, and he's switching between Red Sparrow and the World Cup and my mind was blown. I remember thinking, "what is wrong with this guy? Jennifer Lawrence is on his screen and he's looking at soccer scores?" Oh, the other thing you need to know is that James loves bagels. One time, we helped my mom move and she got bagels for us all, and I watched James eat three bagels that morning. It was nuts. But the weird thing was, he wouldn't touch the Asiago bagels. Nope. This dude only likes plain bagels. It's like... how does that work? You're into something, but only the most basic form of it? James is hilarious. And so here begins the tale of Jimmy Bagels. He graduated from college - oh, yeah, we went to college together in real life, and I think I did a lot of things to embarrass him in college. He could tell you stories that make me come off as a real jerk, but I'm the one writing. Anyway, in FIFA 18, Jimmy Bagels graduated from college and then instead of going to law school he was drafted by the New England Revolution. So far things are going well. I played through the pre-season as Bagels and it was the easiest difficulty since I'm so new at this. It was way too easy, so I kicked up to Amateur for the start of the season. A few games in, I think it's probably still too easy. I'm winning by blow-outs and there's no real challenge. But again, I'm still learning the ropes. The weird thing is I did something I'd never expect myself to do - I googled the rules of soccer so I'd know why I kept getting offsides violations. So now I know how that works. And yeah, weirdly I'm having a really good time with this game. It's solid. And it's genuinely exciting when Bagels gets a goal. I'm weirded out by the fact that I'm enjoying soccer as it's maybe the only major sport I've never cared about. I've learned that if you kick the ball towards the net, and an opponent knocks it into the net, it doesn't count as a goal for you. Lame. Jimmy Bagels needs to put up some numbers. Those would count in Rocket League! No matter. It seems that Blackburn Rovers have signed a one year loan contract to have young Jimmy Bagels come play across the pond. And while they're a minor, they still expect way more out of him than the Revolution ever did. There's more pressure, but it's making things more exciting. It's strange to me. I've never cared about soccer. And yet, this game has me fairly hooked. If nothing else, I can point to FIFA 18 as the game that made me finally understand the appeal of soccer, and dare I say - even enjoy it.
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The original Destiny was one of the main reasons I bought an Xbox One. There was something about that game - a certain Phantasy Star Online-ness that made me just KNOW that I'd love the game. And I was right. At a time Destiny was what I'd dubbed my "snow game." That is, the sort of game that I'd fire up if I had an unplanned day off due to a snow storm or some other unforeseen event and could dwindle away the hours guilt-free. Destiny WAS my snow game. But now Destiny 2 has come along and basically improved upon everything. It's got to now be about as perfect as a game like this could be. It's just now November as I write this, and I feel rather confident that Destiny 2 will remain my so-called GOTY.
Destiny 2 is so good in fact, that I'm not really ready for it to end. I'm about three-quarters through the story, but I've intentionally slowed down my progress. I'm in no real rush to see the credits roll. Instead, I'm happy to come back to the game between other games. Maybe that means playing some still unresolved side-missions; maybe it means hitting up public events; or maybe it just means roaming around aimlessly shooting aliens in the friggin' face. Whatever. It doesn't matter. I just love the world, the atmosphere and the guns. Speaking of side-missions, it's a testament to how fantastic this game is that I'm playing all the side-missions. In any other similar game, I'd simply rush toward the ending, hitting up nothing but story quests. But Destiny 2 is far too compelling for me. I feel the need to clear out any little marked piece of map. Basically, I want Destiny 2 to just keep on going. Sort of like how I feel about Skyrim - there are some games that I want to know are just continually there for me, even if that means putting off "finishing" them for as long as I can. There's just something about this world. It's totally the kind of sci-fi that I fall for. But it's also everything together: the character designs, the environments, the music... it's actually kind of hard to explain what makes a game like Destiny 2 so great. I guess I could say it's "everything," but that's pretty vague. And what I really mean is that it's a bunch of teeny tiny things. Maybe it's better to say that everything is just right. This comes down to the physics of a jump, or the ease in which you might switch to your third weapon slot - say a sniper rifle - and zoom in and make a headshot killing a witch while effortlessly swapping back to your main rifle and taking out another enemy in the foreground. This may sound so pedestrian in a 2017 shooter, but I tell you that when done as smoothly as this, it's like ballet. When a game "just works" this well, it makes everything so gratifying. Switching weapons feels good; firing them and recoiling feels good; movement feels good. And then there's the loot. Oh dear goodness, the loot! Not since Diablo III have I been so compelled to pick up every last item I could get my grubby mits on. And really, the loot is an area where I think that Destiny 2 has far surpassed Phantasy Star Online for me. I'd be remiss to not mention the multiplayer here. It is so easy - and perfectly possible - to treat Destiny 2 as a single-player game. Which is to say that you can totally ignore other players. You can choose to not join a clan. You can pretend your buddy list doesn't exist if you really need to. But the way it weaves in multiplayer is brilliant. Other players are just around, and they feel totally organically part of the world the same way an NPC would. I've had plenty of times where a bunch of randos meet up and take down a public event and then head their own ways. Other times I've joined clan-mates for some difficult section, and then also head our own ways while staying in the same group. In this way we remain in the same persistent world while only crossing paths sporadically. It just feels awesome. Y'know what? Maybe that's my thesis. Maybe that's all I really need to say about Destiny 2: it just feels awesome. I raved about the original Life Is Strange. Though it wasn't without its flaws, overall Dontnod created a fantastic modern adventure game. It was sort of like the stuff that Telltale had done, but felt very grounded, even when delving into superpowers and so on. The world of Arcadia Bay felt very real, and very special to me. So I felt I owed it to myself to play the prequel, Life Is Strange: Before The Storm.
Now I must say, part of the charm of the original game was that I really liked the character of Max. And though I grew to like Chloe as well, I'd rather be playing as Max. Of course, the Chloe I knew was pretty different from the Chloe in this game. And thus, that might be the perfect hook for me. This is pretty much the story of Chloe's downward spiral. It feels neat to go back to Arcadia Bay, though. I remembered Chloe's house quite well. I remembered the school. It's like diving into the next season of a TV show that you really like. It's a cool feeling. The time period is cool to me, too. This game takes place in 2010, which in 2023 feels like a lifetime ago. It doesn't seem like a long time ago in numbers, but it's weird that I'd be feeling so nostalgic for 2010. The music, the fashion. It's funny to me to think back and remember that whatever wi-fi we had in our little apartment was a little device with three little antennae. It seems quaint in retrospect. The opening scene of the game sets the stage well enough. Chloe has snuck out in the night to see a band play at an underground bar. Having played the original game, I already know that this is after her father's death, and while Max is away and incommunicado. Chloe is meant to be wayward. Getting into the bar involves getting past the bouncer. And it's here that we discover her "power." Unlike Max who can slow down time, Chloe's shtick is basically using snark to get through conversations. It's a bit like the insult-fights in Monkey Island games. It's also less interesting than Max's power. But the scene is cool enough. There's a band performance, and the reintroduction of Frank (the drug-dealer from the original game who's mostly a scumbag but seems protective of Chloe, nevertheless). There's also a run-in with some local punks, and we get to see how Chloe and Rachel start hanging out, which sets up a lot of the unseen drama from the original game. EPISODE I: AWAKE It's cool to be back in Chloe's house. I feel like I know it well from that first game. Glancing at her journal right away we're greeted with a deep-cut mention of Blade Runner that I loved. I mean, it was an important movie in the first game, so I'm glad they kept with that theme. But also, I love Blade Runner so much myself. And Pris is awesome. So there's that. There is one thing that makes a prequel to a narrative-driven game difficult. See, I already know what's supposed to happen after this game. I already know how Chloe is supposed to act. So in some ways, it feels like I'm being pushed in that direction. Like, Chloe hates David. So even though I have a choice to be nice to him, it makes it feel like I'm going against the established story by doing so. But I guess that's a minor complaint. The storytelling in this episode is pretty great, though. There's just a good grounded vibe to the whole thing. The first really wow moment for me was the D&D game. There's a part where you can choose to play a game of Dungeons & Dragons with two other classmates. Instantly, it turned into this whole little game within a game. And I kind of loved it. Like, I felt like I was playing along to a real campaign - as brief as it was. After running into Rachel again, the story takes a turn. Chloe and Rachel skip school together and hop on a train. This whole section is great. It's really banal. Just Chloe and Rachel talking, getting to know each other. But it's almost visual novel territory yet works well. Then things spin out of control. Rachel sees her dad cheating on her mom. The two of you steal some wine, get drunk, get in a huge fight at a junkyard... Rachel storms off and Chloe has a devastating breakdown upon seeing the same car in the junkyard that her dad died in. It's pretty heavy gut-punch stuff. After a brief Twin Peaks-ish dream section, Chloe and Rachel reunite and make up. There's an admission of romantic feelings and then things really ramp up as Rachel burns a picture of her dad, causing a forest fire. In the Pacific Northwest. It's a pretty explosive way to end the episode, but it doesn't really go over my head that the fire is a pretty obvious tangible symbol of Rachel's rage. Fire walk with me. ... Episode 2 starts with Chloe getting expelled. It's a weird scene because it seems to give you every chance to get out of it, and I tried like hell, but she still got expelled. This scene really made me question how much control the player truly has over the story. And then, that was kind of it for me. It's weird. I finished up Episode 1 just as I started summer vacation. My wife, daughter and I went someplace every day - swimming and a zoo and an aquarium and a cat cafe. I figured at night I'd plow right through the remaining episodes. And yet, I just lost all motivation. I don't know if I was just too tired from the heat or whatever. But I just wasn't so captured by the story that I wanted to proceed. Before The Storm has some grounded writing and some excellent voice acting. But it's also a weirdly subdued step back from the first game. This sequel keeps the same tone and writing style and all, but the big difference is the whole Butterfly Effect. To me, that first game was elevated by the time-shifting mechanic. And without that here, Before The Storm feels like a slightly less interesting game. Or rather, it's still an interesting game but feels more like a story. If anything, it feels like an Americanized visual novel rather than a "game" with game-like mechanics. I compared the original Life Is Strange to a cross between Veronica Mars and Donnie Darko. Before The Storm feels more like just a teen drama. And there's nothing wrong with that. We've binged and loved everything from Dawson's Creek to One Tree Hill and The OC and anything similar you can think of. It's just, it's not what I thought I was signing up for with this game. I expected more of the original game. And this feels like a bait-and-switch to me. It's not bad. I didn't have any real complaints about it. It just wasn't enough for me. By the end of the first episode of the original game some crazy stuff had already happened. Here, we ended on finding out a parent was cheating and a student getting expelled. I guess it almost felt too banal to me. Maybe I was expecting too much, but I don't want to be anything other than what I've been trying to be lately. Over the past few years Firaxis has managed to do the unthinkable. First they rebooted a beloved strategy series with a deep cult following and managed to make it great. I mean against all odds they were able to breathe fresh life into X-COM (now just XCOM) and turn it into something that was easy to play on a console. And it was good. Really, really good. So good in fact that there's maybe an argument to be made that if we put nostalgia aside, these new games may very well be better than the original X-COM series. As much as I loved Terror From The Deep as a kid, I'd personally rather play the new games now than go back to the old. But this isn't the unthinkable thing that I'm talking about that Firaxis did. I'm talking about the fact that they've now made two full games and two full expansions in this new series - and while the first game, 2012's Enemy Unknown was excellent - they've somehow managed to make each new entry even better than the last. While Enemy Unknown came out feeling fresh and confident and well... perfect at the time, it now feels quaint to my memory having spent many hours with each subsequent release. XCOM's first major expansion was Enemy Within which added things like mech-suits and telepathic abilities for soldiers. The "Within" part of the title sort of alludes to the fact that you get to mess around with the alien tech in this one. Enemy Within wasn't just a fresh coat of paint, it was some drastically new colors. But the core of XCOM remained the same. When XCOM 2 finally hit in 2016 it was a really big deal for me. It was easily one of my most anticipated games in a very long time. And it managed to do everything better than the first game(s). Well, everything other than loading screens. And once again I felt like the game had been perfected. How could they possibly improve upon this? But War Of The Chosen is incredible. I can tell you this with total confidence given that a horrible crash actually deleted my Ironman save file thirteen hours into the campaign and y'know what I did? I just started right back over again. Losing thirteen hours of progress would have probably killed my interest in any other game, but in War Of The Chosen... eh, whatever. Perhaps the biggest addition to this iteration are the titular Chosen. These are three aliens who will spend their time hunting you on the map. They can randomly appear (one at a time) in various missions and totally ruin your day. Each one has specific powers and downfalls. It's totally interesting stuff. Anyway, as part of the new campaign you'll want to turn the tables and hunt each down yourself, thus saving you a much bigger blowout later in the game. I will say that once I had killed the three Chosen the game started to feel slightly less novel as a lot of the later mandatory missions basically made me feel like I was playing through the vanilla XCOM 2 again. But I'm probably just nitpicking since there's so much new content here. For instance there's The Lost which is a swarm of alien zombie things. There's also new classes to align with for your own troops. Oh and there are soldier bonds that add even more depth to leveling up your team. Basically anything you can think of from base facilities to weapons to enemies and so on - everything has gotten a fairly major upgrade here. So yeah, this is now the fourth time that I'm citing an XCOM game as the new perfect example of such a thing. I look forward to calling XCOM 3 a perfect game. I've never been a golfer in real life. Mini-golf? Sure. But real golf just requires way too much practice and long days for my taste. When I was in high school my dad decided we should join the local country club. It was short lived. Me and my dad and my friend Garrett all played a few rounds and none of us were very good. The long uphill battle of gaining skill seemed apparent. Though that country club did have a pretty nice pool and a decent turkey club. I remember that much.
But golf video games? Well, I like golf video games. I always have. It all started with some DOS game in the early 90s. I honestly can't seem to pin it down, and my memory just isn't good enough. All I know is that you could play Pebble Beach, which makes me think it was probably one of the Links games. All I know is that it was this early DOS game which taught me the basics of video golf, and I really enjoyed it. You aimed your shot, took account of the wind, chose your club and it was all about physics. It's no secret that I really love turn based games. When you add in the sort of strategy that comes with golf, well it's kind of a zen-like experience for me. I've played plenty of other golf games over the years. When I was a kid, I really enjoyed Lee Travino's Fighting Golf, which was an SNK game on NES. I also liked NES Open Golf as well as the aptly titled Golf on Game Boy. There were Mario Golf games as well. But it wasn't until 2009 or so that I picked up Pangya: Fantasy Golf on PSP and got completely hooked. That's a true sleeper game right there, and if hard pressed, I'd say it's at the upper part of my top ten PSP games of all time. I picked up other golf games of that generation (namely, the We Love Golf games that Capcom put out), but none came close to Pangya. All of that has changed now that I've played Everybody's Golf. This is of course the latest entry in the Hot Shots Golf series, now donning its original Japanese title. And it takes everything I love about golf games - be it cartoony arcade style games or straight up sims - and condenses it into a perfect game. Yes, I think when it comes to arcade style golf games, Everybody's Golf will officially be my new go to. Everything just oozes cute here. There's tons of charm. You make your little character and get rewarded with new fashion unlocks. So I made a little anime redhead. And yeah, I make her as cute as possible. In many ways, it has that gacha feel with the constant unlocks. But luckily, it doesn't feel like it's making you spend money like a mobile game. Instead, you just play well and unlock new fun things. I'm currently cruising around in a Final Fantasy themed golf cart for instance. Of course everything is an RPG now. So there's constant upgrading of stats and equipment. But it feels good. It feels like playing well means progress. There's a hub world, which is kind of pointless, especially years later as the servers are now down. There's even rivals to take down. There's a sumo guy who swings like he's Happy Gilmore. Again, the game is full of charm. But the gameplay itself is super relaxing. The classic three-click golf swings? I love them. The incredible ambience of the nature sounds and the club hitting the ball? Love it. The bright green grass and the bright blue sky? Yes, please. Before long, running through a tournament feels like a zen-like zone out for me. And of course the gameplay is the most important part of a game like this. I can safely say that it holds the insanely addictive "just one more round before bed" thing up. Everybody's Golf is the sort of game that will take up space on my hard drive for a long time. The kind of game I'll play a few rounds of between other games for months or years to come. Madden NFL 17 was the first Madden I had played since 08. So you'd think I wouldn't really need a new Madden game already, right? Well there were a lot of selling points for 18. The most superficial was that they put Brady on the cover. I'm a Pats fan. It's tough for me to not buy a Madden game that has a Patriots player on the cover. But there was more than just that, like the fact that Madden 18 would be the first game in the series to actually feature a single player story mode. And then there's the fact that the game would utilize the new Frostbite engine meaning it was the first game in the series to actually be properly "next gen."
The first thing I did once Madden 18 was finished installing was to fire up this new story mode. Entitled "Long Shot," this could easily be called Football: The Telltale Series. That should just about tell you whether or not you'll care for it. Y'know it's mostly a choose-your-own-adventure game with some quick time events and mini-games thrown in for good measure. I liked it a lot actually. For the most part it felt better written than I had anticipated. Long Shot tells the story of a draft hopeful, Devon Wade. But what makes it a pleasant surprise is that it isn't just a simple rise from high school ball on up, but rather tells a twisting tale that touches upon death and fear and redemption. It goes to some odd places at times such as reality television and even a military base. But the story does have a lot of heart and I commend it for that. Unfortunately Long Shot is rather brief. I believe I finished it in just three hours. But a story mode is just icing on the cake, right? Nobody's buying a Madden game for a story mode. So how does the base game play? Well... it's excellent. I mean even in comparing the game to last year's iteration - which should feel like just a continuation - Madden 18 is amazing. The new Frostbite engine really is incredible. And this kind of jump can always go two ways: either the devs aren't ready to make the transition and we get an undercooked game, or they are and we get something this great. Everything here is exceptional. The visuals are top notch, whether we're talking about players' likenesses or single blades of grass on the field. Even the way the players move between plays is insane to watch. It goes a long way to selling realism when there's a scuffle between two players after a hard hit. And the commentary is just mind-blowing. I raved about this with last year's game as well, but it's impressive just how on-point a lot of what they say really is. They're not just talking about the current game, but also the previous game; the whole season leading up to it really. After playing through Long Shot I started up my season proper. I'm a believer in letting things happen the way they happen. So sadly I was starting the season without Edelman. The AI here is commendable. Early on I had to be reminded that if you're careless, a ball will be intercepted. There's a tendency to start to feel cocky and treat the game too arcade-like. The AI is more than happy to remind you that this is a sim first and foremost. In my own season I watched carelessness turn to tragedy as more and more of my starting lineup went out for injury. Gronk and Amendola happened early on. Then eventually Brady. Hogan would follow, and so on. So let's just say that even making it into the playoffs as a wild card was impressive this year. But sadly I couldn't hang on to the win. And so now my season is officially over. Madden 18 proudly wears the "if it's in the game, it's in the game" motto on its sleeve. I'm not talking about playbooks or cheerleaders here. I'm talking about the drama. An hour-long game can easily cycle through celebration and agony. There's a flow to these games: four-act plays with plots and tension and lessons to be learned. I've spent nearly thirty hours with the game and I'm still contemplating advancing the calendar and starting up my next season, because it kills me to walk away from the game without even seeing the Super Bowl. This is also the first Madden game I've actually bothered playing online. I've convinced a friend of mine to pick it up and we've been playing some games against each other which has been great. But then there's this My Ultimate Team stuff which involves playing games online competitively and sort of drafting a unique team to do so. It's interesting and really just more playtime I can eek out of this game. All in all, it feels like money well spent. I keep a Google Doc with a list of upcoming games of interest each year. And on that Doc, I've had Dragon Quest XI listed for quite some time. It seemed like one of the "big ones" for 2019. I guess because it was a new Dragon Quest game that was coming to console rather than just 3DS.
Generally speaking, if I'm already interested in a game, I don't bother with a demo. I tend to want to just wait for the full release. But this time was different. See, Dragon Quest XI's demo is estimated to be around ten hours long. And here's the thing: I'm not actually a huge Dragon Quest fan. I played the original game a ton as a kid, but only dabbled with II and III on GBC later. I played V on DS but lost interest after eleven or so hours. And VIII - often considered the best in the series - I tried starting twice over the years and lost interest very quickly. So here's the thing; as generous as a ten hour demo is, it's totally possible that that's all I'll need for this game. I have to admit up front that I'm a much bigger fan of the Final Fantasy series. You can argue that the Dragon Quest games are 'better' games with 'better' stories, but I don't know. Something about the varying quality of Final Fantasy has always just struck me as more interesting and unique. The other big thing I need to admit is this: I don't care for the art in most Dragon Quest games. The way the characters look? Not for me. It's that same artist that made Dragon Ball Z right? Yeah. I'm not into that look. At all. Which says nothing about how the game plays, but just saying. Anyway, I've played maybe 40 mins of the game so far and I'm mixed on it so far. The world is really pretty. The slimes are super cute. Unfortunately, the 2D mode is absent from the demo so that kills that for me. But it seems... alright. A little too talky right now, which is making it really slow to get going. Essentially, it's been walking in a straight line through some caves and fighting two or three slimes at a time. Fairly boring. And the leveling is slow. I'm sure it picks up as there are fans out there who I know that have gushed about the PS4 release and put in over a hundred hours. So we'll see. ... For some reason I decided to fire up that Dragon Quest XI demo again. And y'know what? I'm glad I did. I'm about two hours in now and it's actually picked up quite a bit and is a way better game than my first impression gave it. Granted, I went in with low-ish expectations and only had played about thirty minutes. But still. What I found interesting was this - there's the usual trope of "you're the Luminary" and you need to go talk to a king or whatever. You know the old cliche in RPG's of how you're the "chosen hero" or whatever? But when you get to the king he's like "no! Dude! The Luminary is a bad omen! You gotta die!" I'm paraphrasing. But I don't know, turning that trope on its head seems interesting. Setting up tactics and letting the battles play out makes grinding feel brisk. I'm level 5 now. And I've got a second party member, Erik. So yeah. I'm enjoying it more now. I think I'm gonna do some grinding for new gear for a bit. I might even do some side quests to make this demo last. Apparently the demo is about ten hours or so, and we'll see how much fun I can get out of it without paying $60. ... After spending some more time with this demo, I have to say that Dragon Quest XI is so good that it's actually making me retroactively like the Dragon Quest series even more as a whole. The more I think about it, yes I was more into Final Fantasy on NES than I was Dragon Warrior... but Dragon Warrior has enough nostalgia for me that I rebought the game three times - on GBC, and later Android, and again on the Switch eShop. And while playing Dragon Quest V and Final Fantasy IV on DS back-to-back was borderline stupid, I had a lot of fun with Dragon Quest V - and I'll always remember that game as something I played in waiting rooms while bringing my wife to doctor's appointments when we were expecting our daughter. Yes, the more I play Dragon Quest XI, the more I'm thinking about the series as a whole. The more I want to look into the rest of what I've missed. There's something about this game sort of being the perfect Dragon Quest game that's made me appreciate the series. And that's a good thing. Even the art style. For years I've talked about how I don't care for the art. I'm not a fan of Dragon Ball Z, so I've always been turned off by the look of the Dragon Quest games and Chrono Trigger and so on. But all of a sudden, it's like it makes sense here. The Dragon Quest games are a very manga take on the very western Dungeons & Dragons tropes. All the sudden that makes these monsters and heroes look more charming to me with that in mind. I'm still a bigger fan of Final Fantasy as a whole. But part of what draws me to that series is that it's kind of a mess. There's some baffling decisions and some truly bad games and that can make for interesting exploration. Will this be a good Final Fantasy or a bad one? Dragon Quest on the other hand, I mean Dragon Quest XI is a SLOW burn for sure, but the writing is insanely good. The pacing is quite obviously intentional. I'm really glad I've given this game another chance. It seems like the kind of game I could play 'forever.' Like Breath Of The Wild, it's the sort of game I might play in thirty minute spurts for months. Or I might binge several hours during a storm. Or I might drop it for months and then come back to it fully invigorated. I think this might be the most perfect Dragon Quest entry - even for someone who's played a few of them in the past but took them for granted. ... Okay, so Dragon Quest XI is turning out to be one of my favorite modern JRPG's in a long time. I think the last one I got this into was Octopath Traveler, but that felt like more of a throwback. This is like a truly modern take, and versus a lot of the stuff I've played such as recent Final Fantasy entries or Shining Resonance Refrain, This game blows that stuff out of the water. The world is huge - along the lines of Breath Of The Wild. Probably even bigger. And yet things are thrown at you at such a pace that everything feels just right. I was three hours in when the crafting mechanic was introduced. At first I rolled my eyes. I hate crafting in games. And yet... It's so good that I actually spend time trying to perfect the stuff I was crafting. They've streamlined everything here. Don't have enough found-crap to craft what you want to craft? No problem! Just pay for the ingredients. Thank you, Square Enix. Thank you. And even the tropey stuff is well thought out. We got back to Cobblestone, our hero' s hometown and everything looked normal except nobody remembers me. Guess what? It's a fever dream. The village was burned to the ground in our absence and we're talking to ghosts. All of this was revealed with trippy VHS artifacting. It was awesome. I love this game. I love that it reminds you what you last did when you fire it up so you don't forget where you were in the story. I love that you can find in-menu what your goals are for each quest. I love battling. I love the gigantic world. I love the freedom. I love that I'm four hours into a demo and that's not even half. A physical copy of the game is on my wishlist now. I'll be happy to pick up a copy once the demo has run its course. ... Well, I finished the demo which is kind of a bummer. It took me under six hours to get through the demo, although I didn't do any side quests. As it stands, Dragon Quest XI is one of the best RPG's I've played in a long time. And I look forward to delving back in once I pick up a retail copy. ... Nearly ten months after playing through the big demo, I've just now fired up Dragon Quest XI's actual physical copy which has been sitting on my shelf for a while. I don't know, something about the Thanksgiving holiday made me feel like playing some quality dungeony, dragony RPG. I was worried that I'd forget what was going on from when last I played, but thank goodness there's a little recap when you fire up a save. Soon enough I was transported to an area in which I was in a 2D world. And then I went off on a quest that was... OMG... I recognized where I was. I was in a village from the original Dragon Quest. Absolutely stunningly brilliant, this game. After that I met a prince and pretended I was him to win a horse race and impress his parents and the village, and then we set off to kill some big mythical creature that he was too scared of. In the few hours I played last night, I was immediately reminded just why I loved the demo so much. And man, really this few hours even raised the bar on that demo. This game is incredible. Easily my favorite Dragon Quest game (though I haven't played all the mainline games yet admittedly). But wow. This isn't just a really good Dragon Quest game, it's one of the finest, most well crafted JRPG's I've ever played. This game feels like a defining RPG of the generation. ... I've been playing Dragon QuestXI all week while I've been on Christmas vacation. It's become a before bed routine to bang out some progress. I've seen mermaids and demons trapped in paintings and ice witches and you name it. This game does an incredible job of throwing a million things at you all while keeping the pace brisk. I'm not sure how close I am to the end of the main campaign. I've seen the great tree fall if that's any indication. But I have so many superlatives to lob at Dragon Quest XI already. It's one of the best Dragon Quest games I've ever played; one of the best JRPG's I've ever played; one of the best of this generation; etc, etc etc. It's crazy to me how ubiquitous Fortnite is with gaming these days. Like when I was a kid if you said you played video games, you pretty much just meant NES. Or you might have used "Nintendo" as another word for "video games" as a whole. About a decade ago it seemed like Minecraft was the game that every kid played. But for the past few years it's been Fortnite. To the point that the game is pretty much a platform within itself. It doesn't really matter if you play it on console or PC or phone or whatever. You can play the game, or you can go watch a DJ set or whatever. It's weird.
I can also remember when Fortnite (full title; just vanilla Fortnite) first came out as a stand-alone retail game that nobody paid any attention to. And then I can remember when Fortnite: Battle Royale launched as a free mode of the full game that was there to rival Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. Honestly, in my mind, this Battle Royale would do "okay," as PUBG was the hotness, but this game was free. But I didn't really think it'd last. I thought it'd be something people played for a year or so until the next new fad came along. But who even remembers PUBG now? And yet, who can even escape Fortnite? Somewhere along the way vanilla Fortnite was forgotten, and Fortnite Battle Royale dropped its subtitle and became like... the biggest game in the world. Me? I've never been into it. I tried it once with my friend Mike and his two kids. They were all super into it. So I thought I'd play along. But what happened was I hopped into a game with them, and his kids yelled at me for fifteen minutes. They yelled at me for not knowing which gun to use; for not knowing where to go; for not knowing what to do. It wasn't a great learning experience for me, so I wrote it off. Another time, I thought I might look into the game again on my own, and I crap you not - I logged in to find that the entirety of Fortnite had been sucked into a black hole. The servers were down and a whole new 2.0 edition of the game was soon to come along. The intrigue passed, and I still didn't bother to play it. Anyway, here I am attempting once again to visit this game and figure out what it is exactly that makes kids love it so much. I think a lot of it has to do with the social aspect, so I'm at a loss there. While kids might enjoy hopping into this game to give them "something to do" while they virtually hang out and chat, that's not anything I'm interested in. But I don't really know what I'm doing. I have zero interest in crafting stuff in this game, so I guess I'm approaching it from the very straight forward last-man-standing kind of thing. This is just going to be The Hunger Games for me. So with limited time, I jumped into a game. I parachuted into an empty building, found a rifle and then set off into the world. I climbed a tall mountain where I found a... chair? I legit just hung out there alone for a good five minutes or so. I could hear gunfire and I could see the player count go down. I just walked around the mountain top, looking for anyone who might try to come on up. I was told that only 50 players were left, and weirdly this did actually "feel good." Then the storm circle shrunk, so I headed down the mountain. I found a small shack, and a sniper started firing at me from the east. I knew I couldn't hit him, so I had to hide on the west side of the shack. Then bullets flew at me from the west. I turned to see someone across a small lake firing at me with a rifle. So we danced a bit and fired back and forth. And then I went down. At any rate, I finished at like #38 or something. That's not really good. I mean, that's like 62%, which is a failing grade. I still didn't really "get" this game. Oddly, I found that matches tend to ping-pong between boring and stressful. But I was still curious. I mean, I'm a lifelong gamer, and this is the biggest game on the planet. So I'd like to at least say I gave it a fair shake and could tell you why it's not for me. Alright, and then I think I got the allure of the game. Literally my fourth time ever jumping into a match, I got a victory royale. I can't even tell you how stressed out I was by the end of the game, but it was an awesome feeling to win it. And I mean, I really don't even know what I'm doing a lot of the time. But I'm having fun just kind of experimenting. That first win involved me flying around in a helicopter, which I didn't even know was a thing until I stumbled upon it. And now that I've gotten a bit more comfortable, and played a few more matches, I'm not even feeling stressed out playing this. I'm just having a pretty good time. I've also found that my preferred way of playing is by filling in a squad. Doing this just makes more sense in my brain because of my love for team based competitive games. And after I switched over to squads, I got two more wins which was awesome. The last win had just six players left at the end. Me and my teammates were camped out around a big rig, which was maybe a bad spot. To our right was a house in the distance. I used the sniper rifle to zoom in and could see two dudes on a roof building something. I sniped one, but the others ran off. Suddenly my teammate was gone. I have no idea who hit him. The storm started closing in, so I kept zooming in with the sniper rifle and could see two players running toward our direction in the distance through the storm. I hit one hard. He went down. His teammate tried to carry him, so I hit him. Then the storm came in tighter, and I'm pushed into the center, barely hanging on to the edge of a cliff. That's when a bullet zips by my head from below. So I jump down, switch to a machine gun in mid-air, land right next to the dude - and I can feel it. This moment, we're the last two and this is it. Maybe it was beginner's luck, but I managed to hit him before he could hit me. And it felt awesome. I honestly didn't think that I'd be one of those guys that plays Fortnite all the time. But I got it then. I got why people are so into this game. And I can now say that I at least enjoy it. It'll probably be one of those games that I keep installed forever, and play random matches once in a while when I'm not sure what else to play. Good stuff. It only took me like three years or whatever to figure that out. I hate to say that I'm hooked on Fortnite. But I truly am. I've had to remind myself that I'm a grown-up, and don't care about cosmetic things in games, so there's no reason to buy the Darkfire bundle through Best Buy for $30 just to make my character look cool. But yeah, I could now totally see why this game is such a phenomenon. Each match I played wass like its own little mini story I could tell. Each Victory Royale I got was so sweet. Each time I wound up in second place is crushing and rewarding at the same time. Probably my biggest revelation was switching over to Squad Fill. There's something I really prefer about playing cooperatively. And when you end up with good teammates, it makes such a difference. A squad that sticks together, works together, shares loot, watches each other's backs... It's a recipe for success. Good game, this one. But I didn't need to tell anybody that. It's been a gigantic hit for years. I'm just now figuring out why. I've been a fan of Telltale for a while now. Not a rabid fan that HAS to play everything they make - but a fan. And certainly they've made some great strides in bringing comic books to life over the years. I was far more interested in what was going on in The Walking Dead games than in the TV show for instance. And The Wolf Among Us made me realize that I had totally overlooked the Fable comics. But with these games I was smart and I waited until the season was done and I could play the "full" game over the course of a week. I've since recognized that this is the way I have to do it. I tried playing Batman last year as each episode came out, but found it less compelling in this way.
As excited as I was for a Guardians Of The Galaxy game, I knew I had to wait until the full series was done before I started playing it. And I was super excited. The two Guardians movies are among my absolute favorites in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ironically I went into the first film knowing almost nothing of the characters and being turned off by the kids-movie vibe I was getting from talking racoons and trees, but at least I had the good sense to trust James Gunn. Since then I've seen both movies multiple times. I've read some of the comics (I quite enjoyed the "Grounded" storyline that Bendis was doing before leaving Marvel). And I've totally lost my shit when the Guardians were officially revealed in the Infinity War trailer. EPISODE I My first impression of GOTG is good. I mean don't get me wrong... at this point the Telltale engine is looking a little long in the tooth. Many Telltale games were already looking a little dated even by Xbox 360 standards. But whatever. I'm not playing an adventure game like this for the graphics. And I mean, that kind-of-sort-of cell shaded look works pretty well for the tone of a comic book adaptation anyway. Speaking of which, this mostly does feel like a comic book adaptation. Sure the movies have been what got Guardians into the mainstream, but Telltale's take isn't totally based on the movies. Star Lord definitely talks LIKE Chris Pratt and Rocket totally talks like Bradley Cooper. But on the other end of the spectrum you've got Gamora who doesn't sport her hair down like Zoe Saldana and instead seems much more modeled on her comic book counterpart. This is cool, though. While there's definitely a bunch of feel-good 70's and 80's pop and rock on the soundtrack to make it FEEL like one of the movies, there's a definite respect for the original comics, which I appreciate. Story-wise, not a ton of stuff happens in the first episode. I'm not saying that in a bad way, but it's basically a setup to acquaint you with the characters and systems. It's the same old QTE's and brief hunting for hotspots style gameplay mixed in with conversation trees. I honestly don't mind the QTE's but I'd prefer if "failing" one actually took the story in a different direction more often than just asking you to TRY AGAIN. Y'know? Think of the QTE's in the same way as the conversation trees. That'd work better in my mind. And those little hunting for hotspot puzzles? Get rid of all of those and I'd be fine. But see, these complaints are minimal. Because the story is so good. The story is why I play Telltale games. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SPOILERS THEN STOP READING NOW BECAUSE I'M GOING TO TOTALLY TALK ABOUT SPOILERS RIGHT NOW... So pretty early on in the episode the Guardians kill Thanos. Now, if there's anything I know about comic books it's that dead characters don't stay dead. So whatever. But it's still an interesting conceit to start the story with. Like, remember that Gamora is still Thanos' daughter for better or worse. The episode also ends with Star Lord getting murdered and brought back to life... and also somehow seeing a vision of (maybe) his mother back on Earth again. Let's just say that there's a lot going on in the story even if there's not much to the gameplay. And I'm fine with that right now. I know exactly what I'm getting into with a game like this, so I'm content. EPISODE II Things are progressing here and the story gets even heavier. Yondu makes an appearance which is cool. This take on Yondu is pretty clearly based on the one in the movies. Oh and more importantly Nebula is now in the story, and that gets complicated as you might expect. Gamora and Nebula never got along, so the death of Thanos is certainly not going to help things. But what really killed me in this episode was a flashback concerning Rocket. Ugh. So you have to play through a section that has Rocket remembering the experiments that were done on him. And that's pretty rough. But way WAY worse are his memories of Lyla, a lady-friend who he clearly loved and was also being experimented on. Their exchanges are sweet and as you may guess, Lyla does not have a happy ending in the lab. It's a pretty heart-wrenching scene, but one that serves a purpose: it actually does add something to Rocket's character here. Maybe it gives you more of an understanding of his gruffness or inability to get close to the other Guardians. Either way, it made me feel like a total asshole since I had chosen to stick with the plan to track down Nebula that Gamora wanted me to do instead of helping out Rocket like I had promised. Having to go through this section of the game knowing that I had bailed on him just made me feel like shit as I tried to hold back some tears. EPISODE III I forgot to mention how much I like the little "Next Time On..." things at the end of each episode. Instead of actually showing things that are coming up, these are little Real World-style video confessional journals of each character. They're just little snippets such as Gamora saying "...but what came next was even worse..." that will allude to SOMETHING. They're neat. Some good stuff happened in this episode. For one thing we got to meet Mantis. And even better, I managed to get Gamora and Nebula on good terms. This felt good. But then some bad stuff happened. Some really bad stuff. See, I had to make a huge choice. There's this device that can raise people from the dead and I had to decide to either destroy it (smart) or power it up (not smart). I went with the Not Smart option. Now in the defense of my own intelligence, I 100% new this was a not-smart thing to do as I was doing it, but I just felt so bad for Rocket because of the flashback from last episode. I really had good intentions here. But yeah. Shit hit the fan. And I'm pretty sure that Gamora's all set with me now. EPISODE IV As easy as it is to point out that Telltale's engine for these adventure games can make characters look like they're in an early 360 title, I've got to say that a lot of the space stuff is really pretty looking here. Kind of a big deal to get the galaxy looking nice in a game with Galaxy in the title, eh? Anyway the fourth episode is basically all about making me - the player - feel like garbage. This time around we get a flashback to see Drax and his daughter. It's obviously touching stuff, but of all the flashbacks in this game so far, nothing has made me as sad as Rocket's. But it's really this episode that it's hit me just how much this game is about sadness. But not in a bad way. I mean... maybe "sadness" is the wrong word. It's about the things that we all go through - the losses or what have you - that are left unspoken, but shape us into who we are. In a weird way a game about aliens and racoons and trees is a game about the human psyche. Rocket can be a total dick. And even after knowing why he's such an emotionally unavailable dick, I can still think that he's being a total dick. But I also understand a bit better WHY he's an emotionally unavailable dick. Y'know? As the episode went on, things got worse. Much worse. The death of (SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!) Nebula was really rough. It was also touching because at that point she and Gamora had mended their relationship - thanks to me. But Nebula's death was really the beginning of the end. It lead to a landslide of bad feelings. By the end of the episode Drax had sacrificed himself for us. It was bittersweet. I genuinely felt like I did the right thing by not stopping him. It's exactly what he wanted to do. He was a warrior. He felt he had a purpose. He seemed happy. But it left the rest of the Guardians damaged. I had spend all these hours trying to help Gamora and make her happy, and she walked away from the team after Drax's death. Mantis and Groot would follow. So here we are. Just Star Lord and Rocket: The Guardians Of The Galaxy. EPISODE V Well the stakes didn't really stay too high for too long. I have to say though, "death" in this game certainly feels like a true comic book. Which is to say that almost immediately after starting this episode both Mantis and Groot had a change of heart and came back to the Guardians. And then we found out that Drax wasn't dead. And that helped convince Gamora to come back. So the implosion of the team didn't really last all that long. But at the same time I knew the whole time that this episode was leading up to one big decision. Actually, I knew that pretty much the whole game. When a game is ABOUT family and loss, and there's a device that can bring back the dead, the big decision is obvious. And when it came time to finally make that decision, I had to pause the game and think about it for a bit. The first two options were fairly easy for me dismiss. Bringing back Drax's family didn't seem like a great idea because much of the dialogue that I'd had with Drax had involved him pushing through his grief and feeling satisfied with his role in his new family (The Guardians). It just seemed to me like his story had reached a fitting conclusion. Though the story of the game (and movies) heavily makes you aware of the pain that Peter felt - and still feels - for the loss of his mother, bringing her back just felt like the wrong choice to me. I mean, wouldn't it be weird for her to come back to life and now have to adjust to like... living in space? And having a superhero son? I don't know. Seemed like a weird ending to me. The real decision for me - the one that was actually difficult to make - was whether I should bring back Rocket's girlfriend, Lyla or if I should bring back Nebula. I spent the whole game feeling like I owed it to Rocket to fix things for him. But ultimately when the decision had to be made I realized something. Star Lord is the leader of the Guardians and as such he must do what's best for the team. The same way that bringing his own mother back would do nothing for the Guardians as a whole, I had to realize that Nebula was the right choice. It wasn't FOR Gamora. It was for the Guardians. It meant that we'd have another member. Hopefully I'll see her in the next game. The whole walking simulator genre never really grabbed me. I remember dabbling with Dear Esther and Gone Home and neither held my attention very long. I get why the genre is well regarded, but overall, they never did much for me. I suppose Layers Of Fear could be considered a walking sim, although it also overlaps with horror so maybe that's why I played through that one. I don't know.
As I write this in early 2024, my family is an interesting spot. We moved into a new apartment a few weeks ago. Our house is currently on the market. Our goal is to buy a new house in the town that we've returned to, but alas we have to wait until our house sells and a new one pops up. It's a whole process. But we're happy to finally be back in the town that we always wanted to live in. And we're embracing a new minimalist way of living, since there's three of us and cat crammed into an apartment versus a large house. The reason I bring this up is because the minimalist living has also caused me to go about my gaming in a different way. I'm trying very hard not to spend money on games. It occurs to me that my Playstation Plus subscription gives me access to so many well regarded games that I've never looked into. So I've been going through Metacritic and looking for big hitters that I overlooked and that I don't need to pay extra money to try. Thus, I'm now playing What Remains Of Edith Finch. It's a fairly interesting setup for a game. You play as Edith, a seventeen year old whose mom just died and you're searching through the family home that you've become the beneficiary of. The Finch's are an apparently rich and very eccentric family. And also a family full of tragedy. Basically, the goal of the game is to navigate the Winchester-style home, in search of journals and mementos that would fill in the back story of all of the death and misery that this family has left behind. By the way, major spoilers follow. So you've been warned... MOLLY Molly died when she was ten years old. She left a journal entry behind describing the night that she went to bed with no dinner for punishment. She ends up eating anything edible in her room, and one of those things are some kind of berries that are part of a holiday decoration. I can only imagine that they were poisonous because she goes on to describe a dream that you play out that feels more like a hallucination. She starts out climbing through her bedroom window and becoming a cat, and then an owl, and then a shark and then a monster. The whole thing is surreal to such a crazy extent. But I can't help but feel shaken that it was the dying brain-swells of a child in distress. This game is starting out both absurd and sad. CALVIN Calvin's part is brief but bleak. He's a young boy with a broken leg, swinging on a swing. He ignores his mother's cry for dinner time to swing higher and higher, ultimately launching himself off of the nearby cliff and into the ocean. It's hard to discern if it was that whole thing where young people think that they're invincible, or if this kid actually had suicidal tendencies. BARBARA This is probably the best part of the game. It's probably the chapter that makes this game worth playing. It's inventive and memorable, especially to someone who grew up on slasher films. Barbara was a child actor who appeared in horror movies for two years and then faded into obscurity. Later in her life, her home was invaded and she was brutally murdered. The whole flashback plays out in the form of a comic book presented as an episode of Tales From The Crypt. Oh, and somehow they got the licensing to use the Halloween film score for this chapter. I mean, it's just really a perfect vibe. Creepy and cliched and b-movie shlock. Thumbs up. WALTER Walter witnessed Barbara's death while hiding under a bed. He was a child and lost his mind. And so he lived under the house in a cave for thirty years. The family just pretended he was gone. Every day he listened to tremors from above and ate canned foods. Finally, he decided to break free and get out and see the sun. He emerged on train tracks and stood there staring at the sun. He didn't even see the train that hit him. SAM Sam's story was quick but weird. He took his daughter hunting and caused her to shoot a dear. While trying to snap a picture of their trophy, the dear bucked and knocked him off a cliff. Are you starting to feel like the Finch family is seriously cursed? Me too. GREGORY As a father, I found this chapter really disturbing. You play as Gregory, who is one year old. He's in a bathtub. He's playing with toys. And he drowns while his parents are fighting in the other room. Nothing explicit is shown. Everything is just kind of inferred. And yet it's a total WTF moment. MILTON Milton was an artist, and so his death is flashbacked via a flipbook he made. It's a cool gimmick, especially given the haptic feedback of the Dualsense controller. But it was kind of an anti-climactic scene. I mean, they even just say he "disappeared." So I don't really even know what happened to him. LEWIS This is the most abstract chapter in the game. Lewis had a drug problem, we know that. I liked his "Wonderland Turbo" console which looks like a cross between a PC-Engine and a Playstation. But the chapter... you control him cutting off fish heads at a canary. The right analog stick controls the fish heads. The left stick controls the RPG that is happening in his head. It's really surreal. And it ends with him beheaded in the fantasy world. I don't even know what really happened. Did he die because he like fell asleep at his canary station and beheaded himself? Did he kill himself? Did he overdose? It's very opaque. But it's interesting. I should note that I've decided not to look any of this stuff up. I'm sure somebody's cracked all of the meaning here. But I don't care. This game is like watching a David Lynch movie. Maybe there's an obvious meaning but I don't want to know what it is. I want to just feel and experience the game and take away whatever meaning I take away. EDITH The final chapter is young, pregnant Edith. She's been collecting this story to keep track in a journal to share with her unborn child. And then you wrap up the game by playing as said child exiting her womb. And then you find out that she died, presumably during child birth. So Edith was not the final Finch, but her child was. This was an interesting game, no doubt. Better than most walking sims I've played. One of the few I've finished. I reckon it has low replay value, and I feel like I didn't love it. But I liked it and found it unique and it hit upon multiple feelings for me. It also respected my time, clocking it in at two or three hours which was plenty. I don't think it's for everybody, and I don't even think it was worth all the hype it received. But it was pretty good and I'm happy to have played it without buying it thanks to Playstation Plus. So fine. |
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