If you own an Xbox One, I think you should just get an Xbox Series S. Plain and simple. It just such a low financial barrier.

I was skeptical going into this console generation – I have just built a PC, I'm trying to budget, and honestly there isn’t a compelling case for either the Xbox Series S/X or the PS5. But then the Xbox Series S price got announced at $300 USD/$380 CAD (actually ~$20 less than the direct USD conversion)...

In Canada that adds up to $430 CAD after taxes. I was able to sell my console for $225, and all of my discs for $150 pretty easily. Despite having a big game collection, roughly half of my games are now on Game Pass, a quarter I know I’ll never play, and the remaining quarter I can repurchase during a sale for like $50. So, at $375 return I was looking at $60 for the new console. What an unreal deal! For someone with a 1080p TV I don’t really feel that the Series S was a compromise in any way aside from making my disks obsolete, and for a next generation console… Why wouldn’t I buy it for like 50% of the cost of a new AAA game.

Something I keep hearing is that the Xbox doesn’t offer a lot to someone with a gaming PC, but for my use case I don’t agree. There are some games I just would rather play in front of my TV, Game Pass for Xbox is still an incredible service, and I often use my Xbox to watch media including videos on a USB. Perhaps it wouldn’t make sense to upgrade my console from the Xbox One for $630 CAD, but the $380 cost really makes the unexciting new generation and redundancies of having a PC and Xbox less relevant. And for such a low barrier to entry it’s increasingly easy to convince friends who are on the fence to pick on up and play on Xbox. I understand I’ll end up with a PS5 eventually for the exclusives, but for the single player stuff that Sony tends to offer I am more than happy to wait for a few years.

Any issues with the Xbox Series S that you foresee, or reasons why you'll choose the X over the S?

Adventure games are bad. I’ve played a few of the classics now – Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and I feel like they really haven’t aged well. They should be interactive movies. Fun writing, quirky jokes, games totally defined by their tone, humour, and imagery. The interactivity is where they fall apart for me. The solutions to the puzzles are just so obscure! A modern game like Resident Evil 7 has item puzzles as a core mechanic, much like old adventure games. But unlike RE7s old school counterparts the puzzles do a far better job of presenting logical solutions using contextual clues and the environment hints. In Monkey Island you need random objects at random times for random objectives. It feels like a real crapshoot figuring out what to do, a crapshoot that often ends in frustration.

But do old-school adventure games still have a place? As it turns out they do. As I played through the Monkey Island Remaster, I used the tip system extensively. The first time you ask for a hint, it gives you a vague piece of guidance. The second time you ask for a hint, it just tells you what type of item to find. And the third time the game just tells you what and where the item is. With this system in place I was able to figure things out quickly and the moment I got frustrated I could just get the solutions and continue progressing. With this system Monkey Island really did become a beautifully illustrated comedic picture book. From one scene and joke to the next with no challenge at all, and more importantly no frustration at all. And paired with a cold glass of beer was exactly what I needed in this weird isolated time. I’m not sure that old adventure games have a place as gameplay experiences in 2020, but I think as just brainless romps filled with puns they still can be enjoyable experiences.

And damn, the Monkey Island soundtrack just slaps so hard – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fj5pIpjS14&t=225s&ab_channel=Stan%27sPreviouslyOwnedSoundtracks

What do y'all think?

Deleted.

Single player games serve two primary purposes to me. They provide a fun, relaxing experience that I consume for enjoyment. For example, something like Mario Odyssey distills this essence, a game that strives to achieve no more than to provide a joyous space to explore. Games also provide me with opportunities to learn, experience and challenge myself. This can come in many forms, such as the explicit social and ethical conundrums that a game like Paper’s Please presents, to more nuanced human issues in RPGs like the Witcher. I also think that an opportunity to learn and challenge the player can come from the atmosphere of the game, not just the content. A game that seeks to make the player feel a certain way – the isolation and claustrophobia of Bioshock, the emptiness of the desert in Assassin’s Creed Origins.

The interplay between these 2 components of games is a source of struggle for me as a player. I want experiences that mentally challenge me, but when the atmosphere begins to detract from the fun of the game, or make it actively stressful, it can become hard to play. A game that failed in this regard for me was Resident Evil 7. I know it might seem like a stupid example because it is clearly designed to be scary, but the tension was just too much for me. I wanted to learn the story and explore the house, but each time the game gave me a chance to take a break or quit it was all too easy to do so, and even more difficult to relaunch.

The game I really want to talk about today is Dishonored 2. Aside from the incredible creative freedom the game gives you in your approach to gameplay (Arkane is second to none in this regard), the great accomplishment of Dishonored 2 is the balance the game manages to find. The game gives you an impenetrable world to explore. With sheer fortresses, sharp edges, guards at every turn, the world strikes both fear and awe in the player as you investigate a dense police state. It is an intimidating place both from a gameplay perspective and a mental one. There are few moments of levity and joy to be found, and the depressing, grim tone is omnipresent in your interactions and exploration. I found it to be a challenging world to explore, as it is tiring and stressful experiencing such an oppressive world from the viewpoint of a silent assassin. More than a few times I had to pause to take a deep breath during my time with the game.

Despite all this, I think Dishonored 2 mitigates the oppressive atmosphere very successfully. Travel to a new assassination destination occurs on a boat. On this boat you wake up, write in your journal, speak to the crew, and have a few moments to collect yourself between expeditions. I really feel there is a lot of value in having a safe space within the world that the player can exist in and interact with without the fear of death and without a gameplay challenge to deal with. These pockets exist in the levels too, such as an elevator here, or a small closet there, and this break in the tension helps make the game easier to pick up each session. Another factor is the difficulty – Dishonored 2 is an easy game. While it is nice to have to think about how to approach a situation, the stakes for failure are relatively low, and you can usually fight or run from anything challenging. While the feeling of isolation and scale can feel intimidating, the gameplay usually did not. While maintaining some sense of importance for gameplay decisions with the chaos and detection systems but providing many lanes of escape, I think the difficulty level made the game far less stressful to play. Finally, I think the environmental design plays an important role. Having a diverse colour palette, bright levels and varied non-hostile NPC populations made the game visually appealing even though the context that the environment existed in was far more hostile.

Usually I bounce of games that I find stressful. But I did not bounce off of Dishonored 2. At times I found it mentally challenging to play and the experience wasn’t always “fun” (often due to oppression in the world and feeling it gave me)… But ultimately, I think that the oppressive atmosphere is what challenged me as a player, provided the most interesting experience and elevated it from being merely a good immersive sim.

It’s no secret that video games reward time in a way most hobbies do not – the more you play the more interesting content one gets to see, the more immersed one becomes in the setting of a game, the better one gets at it, and the mechanics become more intricate and interesting. But I find, especially during school/study, it becomes increasingly hard to both play games and to enjoy them. I go through phases of what I want to play – for a week I feel like a competitive shooter, other weeks I feel like an RPG, and this too can be an obstacle in terms of my capacity to enjoy games. What do I play? How can I stick with a over an extended period of time? It’s hard to have a hobby that demands time like games do, but I think it is important to find time to enjoy and maintain hobbies.

How do you pick a game? I’ve talked to my friends about this a lot, and it seems like a common experience is opening up Steam or the Xbox dash, seeing the massive list of games, and just closing it all down to watch Netflix. It can be overwhelming. When I was younger (or in summers) I just play whatever I want because I know I can get to everything. When time becomes a precious resource, it feels too overwhelming to choose. I’ve circumvented this by just playing. I don’t try to think too much about it. I was bored this week and had a minute, so I just randomly booted up State of Decay 2 because I was feeling a zombie game. Just make the call quickly. I’ve found that this really does help me to move past the indecision.

In my current situation revisiting games after weeks, or even months, is a necessity. This is frustrating on a number of levels. Not only is it overwhelming to jump back in to a story if you don’t recall it perfectly, but learning controls again is a killer. Honestly, I don’t have a good solution for this one. I always open the quest log and try to read as much as I can, hoping that I can recall past events and play sessions. I google the controls and mess around for a bit until I remember them. But its hard. It’s frustrating to be bad at a game, and it does diminish the value of narratives to not remember the small details and the nuance. Gaming indecision is very real, especially when the constant nagging thought of “will I ever be able to finish this game” is on my mind, but I’ve just tried to get way less cerebral with how I treat games – there isn’t an obligation to beat stuff, or play certain games. Just have fun.

I’ve come to realize that I need to be happier with small sessions. I can’t beat the entire mission in one sitting or finish an entire quest chain. This drove me away from many games for a long time, and it took me playing World of Warcraft again to realize that this was a me issue, not a games issue. MMOs set tiny, granular goals for you to reach, which makes them fun in long sessions or in very short ones. I began trying to do this for myself in all games. What am I going to do today – perhaps just walk over to the next city where the quest is, or do a small mission, or play one match. Setting small, contained goals allowed me to enjoy my play sessions more and not think about how I don’t have the time I want to play through larger portions of games.

Finally, I think delegating specific times to play games was really helpful. It always feels like there is more I can be doing for school, study, work… The only way I found myself playing games was if I scheduled myself time each day. From 9-11 I can do whatever I want. This is a good tactic for all hobbies, not just games. If you don’t delegate the time, relaxing can cause guilt and stress. So I try to be conscious of maintaining times each week to read, play games or relax.

@aiomon/@libraryloadtime on twitter.

If you read my blog from last Christmas, you’ll recall that I loved Assassin’s Creed Origins. I’ve always been a huge fan of Greek history, and I remember loving the setting in the old Sierra city builder Zeus: Master of Olympus. So of course, I am playing Odyssey. While I am enjoying the game, I tend to feel the game is too bloated. The mountain of relatively uninteresting systems layered onto the Origins formula certainly does drag the average quality of the content down. That said still think it is a good game. ANYWAY, I am writing today not to talk about the intricacies of the game, or to review it as a whole, but to discuss one thing specifically: exploration mode.

When I was reading pre-release coverage and reviews of the game, they all made a note of the exploration mode. The mode, which can be toggled on/off, removes the on-screen quest markers for most quests. The UI instead displays directions that the player has learned from the quest giver and other NPCs, things such as “the house is west of Athens, and in a valley”. When one finds the location detailed, Icaros (the bird that serves as a flying Battlefield-esque spotter), will reveal the quest location with a marker. Andy Kelly of PC Gamer said “…exploration mode that’s really made me fall in love with this thing—and reignited my passion for open world games in general. Because it’s reminded me of how joyful exploration can be when you aren’t switching your brain off and following yet another flashing quest marker.” This sentiment is something I saw echoed in many reviews and forum posts. And I just don’t get it at all.

I started the game in exploration mode. As soon as I read the directional hints, I followed the same routine each time – open the map, find the exclamation point on map closest to the region detailed in the hints, select it, and walk. Nine times out of ten the location I sought was already marked on the map as a point of interest, but not illuminated as the quest location. This is literally all exploration mode added for me… I got to spend 45 seconds in the map every time I wanted to do a quest and I never felt challenged. I never felt like I was discovering areas that I otherwise wouldn’t have if I had just beelined directly towards a quest marker at the location. I mean I was literally doing it anyway, but instead of a golden square, it was my personal waypoint. When I finally turned exploration mode off, the game felt the exact same. Aside from the marker appearing (which effectively saved me a few seconds in the menus), the game was identical. While one could argue the persistent UI marker would break immersion, this isn’t a game that supports immersive play anyway; it’s a Ubisoft game at heart, with massive checklists to complete and countless outposts to formulaically capture. More than anything, this half-baked attempt to incorporate some organic discovery into a game that isn’t about exploration of the landscape just felt disrespectful of my time. It didn’t add value, didn’t impart a new or interesting experience, and added time with no added challenge. It felt much like the rest of the game does, and this is to say a Greek Origins clone with the content padded out to increase the playtime. While I’m certainly not mad the mode is included, I am truly confused about why it received such universal praise.

Aidan (@aiomon)

I should have gotten into medicine. By all accounts I am an ideal candidate on paper: social, strong resume, good grades and MCAT. I applied to 5 schools. I interviewed at 4. I got waitlisted at 2. I did not receive an offer of admission. I’m not complaining, trying to argue that I should have gotten in given my interview performance. I’m just trying to say that things don’t always come easily, even if you prepare well for them. Sometimes small mistakes, moments of surprise and seemingly insignificant mistakes can add up. The crushing defeat as years of work feels meaningless is difficult to deal with. The lifestyle and mindset of a failed applicant is foreign, daunting and scary. What do I do? Do I still have a chance? How should I feel? How should I react? These are all things I want to talk about over the next few months.

I am going to write more.. Over the next few weeks, months, I am going to write about the process of application, failure and working towards Medical School.

Aidan

www.libraryloadtime.wordpress.com

I was probably 8 years old when my friend John put Medal of Honor: Frontline into the GameCube in his basement with me. We had just “borrowed” it from his older sister and figured it would be a welcomed break from the Mario Kart we’d been playing all day. I still remember storming the beach at Normandy for the first time. My experience with FPS was basically relegated to my cousin’s house, or friend’s basement until Modern Warfare came out. Some of my friends, at the age of 11, were finally old enough to finally get shooters for themselves.

I bring this up because I feel like I’ve heard ubiquitous boredom for the World War 2 setting amongst gaming critics and twitter alike. Something I hear almost every time the setting of Battlefield V or Call of Duty WW2 are discussed is a collective sigh as everyone says that there are dozens of WW2 shooters already, and that the cliché scenes of Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan have been played out extensively in games. And while this might be true, has there really been all that many modern WW2 shooters lately? The last WW2 Call of Duty prior to the 2017 release was in 2008. That’s 10 years ago. Battlefield 1943 came out nearly a decade ago. Brothers in Arms doesn’t really exist anymore, and even Medal of Honor took a break from the WW2 setting for the 5 years before its presumably final release. So where are all the WW2 games? Aside from niche shooters such as Red Orchestra, there really haven’t been all that many until now.

The idea that the D-Day invasion has been played out in games isn’t necessarily wrong. I can imagine that all games set in the era open with such a scene. But to me the setting is nostalgic and relatively unexplored. There aren’t all that many modern World War 2 games, and for me and most of my peers (I am 22) the WW2 games predated our ability to buy and play FPS. I grew up on Modern Combat games - Modern Warfare, Bad Company. But at the same time media like Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers were part of my upbringing. I want to visit these settings in modern games. And I think that the notion that the setting has been played out and can no longer be interesting is rooted in a fatigue that an audience slightly younger than the average games writer does not have.

What do you think about the WW2 setting in games?

Aidan (@aiomon)

Ubisoft is the McDonalds of developers. All of their games are good, but never exciting. Occasionally they have a very good offering (Assassins Creed: Origins), but at the end of the day most of their products are very similar. This is generally fine, but I want something more out of them. I did not get something more with this press conference. But I did get to see a ton of games that I’ll probably enjoy playing, so I guess that’ll do.

Hold on just a second… As I typed that first little bit up, I realized that this show started with Beyond Good and Evil 2. THIS is what I wanted. I didn’t play the 1^st game, but boy do I want to play this. The trailer, which featured a massive space ship and a cast of detailed, zany characters was immediately entrancing. It was weird but not stupid, and the sense of expansiveness it invoked was genuinely powerful. Many discussions about outer space that I was a part of throughout the physics classes of my undergraduate degree evoked a very specific feeling – a twitchy anxiety because the sense of scale is truly impossible to comprehend. Very rarely do I see settings in games or movies that can evoke even a fraction of that feeling, but this trailer did just that. This narrative RPG (with coop possibilities) is something that I cannot wait to see more of, and the setting and aesthetic were extremely impressive to me.

I continue to be impressed by Ubisoft’s support of their existing titles. Rainbow Six: Siege, For Honor and Mario and Rabids all had significant stage time, and the new content they are introducing seems relevant and interesting. I really find it fascinating that two games that did poorly (at least in terms of perception) when released (in Siege and For Honor) seem to have dedicated, active communities. Super cool to see that Ubi’s outstanding support can raise games up to being far better than they have any right to be.

Skull and Bones looks beautiful. The ships look dingy and menacing, and the pirates themselves all have a distinct character to them. The customization of the ship’s sails, wheel and other facets was genuinely appealing to me. Being able to have a ship that is truly my own is enticing, and really makes you wonder “What were the Sea of Thieves devs doing?” I hated the ship combat in the Assassins Creed series, so I was skeptical about what it would fell like here. Ship combat generally feels unresponsive, sluggish and boring compared to faster paced shooters, and while perhaps it’s me, not them, it’s not something that I’m looking for out of games. Fortunately, Skull and Bones looked snappier, the targeting reticles moved quickly and there seemed to be a wide array of attacks. Hopefully I get my own ship, so I don’t need to rally 3 other friends just to set sail. Speaking of rallying friends, the Division 2 certainly looks like more of the Division! As Destiny, The Division, Ghost Recon and many more have all come out in rapid succession, my interest in playing coop loot shooters is basically zero. That said, there is something attractive about the Division 2 that makes me care more than I should. Perhaps it’s just the beautiful environments?

While Ubi talked about tons of other stuff (Star Link, Trials, Crew 2) it’s about time I just say it – ASSASSINS CREED ODYSSEY IS GONNA BE AMAZING. Origins is a very good game. The setting felt rich and fresh, the combat was decent, and the gameplay loop was addictive and enjoyable. Also had some of the best writing in the series. Odyssey appears to be very similar to Origins, but now has more RPG elements including dialogue options. This is exactly what I want from a new AC game. Greece is an iconic setting for the series to move to, and if Odyssey is literally just Greek Origins with dialogue choices, I will play and love it. It was so vibrant and colourful too, a delight to look at.

Ubisoft put on a fun show with musicals performances, stupid banter, a motorcycle and lots of games. And it was good.

Aidan(@aiomon)

www.libraryloadtime.wordpress.com

Both the publishing arm and developments studios of Bethesda have had sound track records in recent memory. Churning out plenty of critically acclaimed games, it is unsurprising that most of their press conferences stuck to their roots. Wait… What?! You’re telling me the new Fallout is an always online survival game? Pardon me, B.J. Blaskowitz isn’t the playable character in the new Wolfenstein? Prey is getting a rogue-like mode?

I don’t generally enjoy single player FPS campaigns. I find them stressful and repetitive. I did, however, like Rage 1. It was manageable enough that I never got stressed, and damn did the guns feel good. Open world garbage aside, it was a good shooter. Rage 2 has a very different tone, but if it retains any of the gun mechanics, I’ll definitely be looking to give it a try. The combat arenas showcased in the press conference reminded me of Doom (2016), but the guns looked to shoot much as in a Call of Duty. The action was fast paced and exciting, and the environments looked varied. The textures looked a little bland and drab, but it’s hard to tell if they will look that way in game (being on stream and all). It’s cool to see a forgotten franchise get a second chance, and I really hope this game is good. The Bethesda first person franchises continued to surprise with a Doom (2016) sequel set on a hellish earth, a procedurally generated rogue-like mode for Prey and a Wolfenstein game featuring B.J. Blazkowicz’s twin daughters. While I didn’t play Doom or Wolfenstein, people seem to love those games, so I have no doubt that they were on the list at some point... But I am surprised to see both so soon, especially as the Wolfenstein games feel like critical darlings but poor performers. I feel like there is a piece missing here. Perhaps Wolfenstein is a smaller game, the Far Cry: Blood Dragon of the franchise.

It was a small part of the show, but apparently Elder Scrolls: Legends is getting a full visual overhaul. This is absolutely massive for that game. I want to talk more about this in a later post, but the mechanics and card design of ESL are top notch, and when the game came out it was my favourite online CCG. An increasingly overwhelming storefront and barely functional interface really hurt the game, and I think that an improved form of ESL could do VERY well, and be very good. The complexity, skill and good design are there, but almost everything around the edges is falling apart. I also want to write more about MMOs in the near future but let me say this now – Elder Scrolls Online is the best MMO right now, and you should play it. Especially since it’s on Game Pass now. And it’s getting a consistent stream of very high-quality content.

Fallout 76 is the game I never wanted. It is a game that I could hear almost anything about and still not touch. I hate survival games. They seem so disrespectful of the players time. Too complicated to zone out and watch a movie, but simple enough to be boring, they demand that players do insane amounts of work to progress. They feel like MMOs without the addictive * beep * as you level up. I just have no interest in them, and with plenty of them coming out (including the recent State of Decay 2), I feel like Fallout 76 would have to do a lot for me to care. I go to BGS games for the story, the writing. It’s frustrating to me as a Bethesda fan to get this out of a franchise I adore. Todd Howard is a great presenter, and perhaps I’ll come around on 76, but with the next BGS project being considered a “next generation” title, and Elder Scrolls 6 coming after that, it seems as though the game I want from BGS is far away indeed. But the game did look good and was presented in a fun way at the show. So maybe I’m just being a downer.

Whatever, at least I can play Skyrim on my fridge.

Aidan (@aiomon)

www.libraryloadtime.wordpress.com