Yes, I still play video games, dear readers. School and work have eaten into my free time, and suddenly it’s like I’m a busy adult who has to be responsible for once in my life. But if browsing internet forums has taught me anything, it’s that no one actually wants to hear your personal life story. Instead how about we talk about a game that everyone has already talked to death because it’s hot and relevant? That’s right: Might and Magic VIII. What do you mean I talked about it already in the thing I wrote more than a month ago? Oh, ok. Well, I beat that again. And I’ve still been playing a lot of Age of Wonders III, which is my go-to time wasting game and still super fun. They even released an expansion with Halflings in it! Halflings are annoying as shit to fight against because they can avoid damage if their morale is high enough, but that goes the other way around too. Wait, what were we talking about? The internet is terrible and is on fire? I'm only a few incidents away from just calling it quits for a while? No, let's not talk about that.
Wasteland 2
If I had to guess, I’m about halfway through Wasteland 2, a game that came out almost a month ago and the first thing I backed on Kickstarter. As opposed to Divinity: Original Sin, which seemed to draw some mainstream attention from people who wouldn’t normally play 50+ hour RPGs, Wasteland seems to have only obtained buzz from the usual RPG circles of jaded old men, elitists, and me. To be fair, this is because Divinity is a prettier, more dynamic and straight up better game than Wasteland and I wish my save didn’t disappear when my computer exploded. It’d be nice if I didn’t have to play 20-30 hours to get back to the point I was at.
Once you get that rather unfortunate comparison out of the way, (if you have $40 and only want to play one lengthy, classically-inspired CRPG, play Divinity) I think Wasteland 2 is pretty good! It’s not a modernization of the classical RPGs of yore so much as it is one of the RPGs of yore that just so happens to have some modernization in its mechanics. Skills that would be redundant in another game are separate here (each weapon has its own skill, lockpicking and safecracking are different, there is an “Alarm Disarm” skill which is solely for the disarming of alarms.) It’s the jack-of-all-trades RPG. If it was a character, it’d be the Red Mage or the Fighter/Mage/Thief (still my favorite dumb thing from 2nd ed AD&D) of the party. The combat is decent but not as tactically varied as it pretends to be (the solution is likely to be found hiding in cover or using overwatch like it was The XCOM). The writing is good, but it’s not like there are a ton of memorable characters, the game going for breadth rather than depth in its coverage. Finally the actual skill mechanics consist of clicking on a skill icon, then clicking on an object and hoping the percentage is high enough to succeed (or you can do what I do and save scum like a mo-fo). Unlike Fallout 1 and 2 (this game’s primary influence, though it’s not not a direct copy by any means), most of those skills are actually useful, though some are more useful than others (listen, for as funny as the concept of Toaster Repair actually is, you can relax easily knowing you can go the entire game without it). It does everything well, but isn’t exemplary in any one category.
What sets it apart then? Either its willingness to shut you out of entire swaths of content based on the choices you make or the part where every quest seems to have multiple solutions. In practice, that means you should really just give every member of your party at least 8 intelligence so they can get 4 skill points/level. Skills are set-up in such a way as to heavily encourage specialization, so if you want to approach a situation however you want, you should think about doing that. The game jacks up its skill requirements rather quickly but you should be able to cover stuff between your created characters and NPC hirelings. The actual world of Wasteland obviously shares a few similarities with Fallout, given the part where it was Fallout’s spiritual predecessor, but it’s a tad more serious while also still being weird and goofy (like the part where one questline involves you dealing with a bunch of monks who worship a Titan-class ICBM and are more than willing to blow themselves up if threatened), but not in the weird and goofy way that Fallout 2 was with its (now hilariously dated) pop culture references everywhere. I think it stands on its own quite well, and I appreciate that it’s the apocalypse of the present (or, at least of the mid-90s) rather than the apocalypse of the Retro-Future. There is a quest where you need to find a CDi. That is all.
Between those two defining aspects, I could see Wasteland 2 having a lot of replay value. InExile succeeded at their goal of making a game like those old games, even if it doesn’t quite blow my mind. Unfortunately for me, I sort of need to finish the game once before I can think about playing it again. also only around halfway done at the 30 hour mark, assuming I don’t have much of Arizona left before going on to California. This game is long, yo. While it’s well-made, it’s not much of a looker, nor does it have the most thrilling moment-to-moment gameplay. That is probably why I felt comfortable playing other stuff instead of railroading this when it came out, but that’s really par for the course in my case. I will finish it eventually (maybe even write a formal review), but I won’t make any sort of concrete promises as to when. Legend of Grimrock 2 came out this week and Civ: Beyond Earth comes out next week (and Dragon Age comes out in November). If pressed, I might be willing to put this on the shelf for a bit, because while I certainly like Wasteland 2, it hasn’t given me one of those “OH SNAP THIS GAME IS AWESOME” feelings the same way that Divinity did.
Also, I legitimately want to play Lightning Returns at some point. Not even joking. I played the first 30 minutes, said “This combat seems legitimately neat!” and then was reminded that I still haven’t finished XIII-2. One step at a time.
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, a relevant game that all the kids are into.
It’s good to know that this computer still has some life in it. I was actually worried SoM wouldn’t be able to run and I’d have to like… buy the Xbox One version to play it on my roommate’s console. That means I can continue to sandbag my purchase of a current-generation video game console (and by that I mean a Playstation 4 because Bloodborne) and continue to consider purchasing a Wii U so I can bring the one at my parents’ house down to school with me and therefore take advantage of the literal dozen of games I’d like to play on that system more often than just holiday breaks, like Bayonetta 2! And Xenoblade! And Donkey Kong Country! And Smash Bros! And Ogre Battle 64! And maybe a Zelda game at some point!
So then, what do I think of Shadow of Mordor? I think that it’s a pleasant surprise and a great game in a release season not promising many of them. But, is it that good? As good as what some of the reviews have said? Eh. Maybe? It's not particularly unique on a raw mechanical level, with its Assassin’s Creed traversal, Batman combat and Lord of the Rings setting. But it also has the decidedly unique Nemesis system that future games are going to try to emulate, as well they should. It’s what defines and elevates Shadow of Mordor above its contemporaries. Though, even without that, in terms of mechanical competency and complexity I think it's a level above Assassin's Creed, like, a straight up better game with none of the baggage that the AC series carries from installment to installment. The concept of personalized, dynamic AI foes makes what would be a decent game great. Sure, you could be reductive and say “it’s just different pre-fight dialogue”, but it succeeds beyond that, I think.
Unfortunately, I don't think the Nemesis system was ever fully effective for me. I know how to play video games. I'm pretty good at not-dying and I'm pretty good at the Batman combat. Did I die in Shadow of Mordor? Yes, quite a few times! (that's a notch against AC and its hilariously easy combat). Did I die against the same captain over and over again and develop a personal loathing for him? Not really, no. Chances are, anyone who killed me either ended up branded or dead soon enough. Still, even with my maybe less-ideal play session, there was plenty of crazy dynamicism going on between Orc captains, and when the core gameplay is as fun and solid as it is I was more than willing to continue spending time in that world. True, by the end I was feeling some open-world fatigue, and I may or may not finish the last handful of side missions I have left, but the underlying systems are so strong that a certain amount of repetition didn’t phase me. Oh sure, the stealth is super lenient and by the end you are a whirling engine of destruction, but I haven’t had as good a power fantasy experience since Saints Row IV.
It's also perhaps one of the more blatant misuses of the license after Guardians of Middle Earth. I'm no Tolkien snob, but the way that story ends is almost as grave-rolling as the part at the end of The Third Age where you fight the giant eye of Sauron. Not necessarily the biggest knock against it (if I wanted a good story I'd read a book), but also Video Games. Talion is really boring, side characters are introduced and then quickly dropped, Gollum is there for no good reason. It could almost not be a Lord of the Rings game if it didn’t want to, but it serves as a decent enough backdrop for the game and its systems. Also money. Fine with me, I guess. I hope this game does well. It’s certainly going to be up high-ish on my Game of the Year list, though that is partially because this hasn’t been a great year for big-budget AAA video games.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to the homework I should’ve been doing instead of writing this blog thing.
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