I’m a busy guy during school. Well, maybe it’s more correct to say that I have no patience during school. I find it hard to justify sitting down for dozens of hours to beat one game during the semester, instead opting to use games as a procrastination technique. This usually results in me playing a ton of multiplayer shooters, competitive games or MMOs, games that I can hop in an out of casually. Honestly, I haven’t really beaten a game for two years. This is the first Christmas break where I haven’t had a lot to do: grad school applications were in, I have no job… So I decided to play as much of the massive backlog I have accrued as I could. Below are my thoughts on a few of games I binged over the break.

NHL 2017

Aside from Age of Empires 2, Rise of Nations and Runescape, the game that stands out most from my early childhood is NHL 2002. I remember there were 3 buttons…. Pass, shoot and hit. I fell off NHL games as soon as I stopped watching hockey, and certainly never even glanced their way when I stopped playing hockey. After getting into eSports during my time at high school and University, I decided revisit the world of hockey spectating. I didn’t really get why people would watch sports until eSports helped me understand the importance of just being arbitrarily invested in a team, the ebb and flow of a season and how to generally enjoy spectating competition. After following the NHL for a few months, I thought I’d give NHL17 a shot with EA Access.

At first I was super put off by NHL. It was vastly more complicated than I really wanted to deal with. I lost my first game 7-0... But the second I scored my first goal, I knew NHL was a special game. NHL 2017 is the perfect level of sim for me: while it isn’t frustrating and unintuitive, it feels like you have enough agency over the puck that you are responsible for every deke, shot and pass. You need to work for the goals, and scoring is intensely satisfying. Also a fantastic game to play with friends!! When my roommates goal got disallowed because of some 100% bullshit ruling, and I follow it up with a fast goal, it was both hilarious and exciting. While the feature set might be bad (I honestly have no idea, I exclusively play season/quick games), I am really enjoying my time with NHL and I fully intend to keep playing it in the new year. Also of note, EA Access is a fantastic service for Xbox/PC users - $30 a year for dozens of newish good games?!

Gears of War 4

It has been years since I have played a shooter campaign. I generally find them too stressful and formulaic to enjoy. Gears does a great thing that helped alleviate the stress for me - after the combat encounters end, your squad announces the fight is done, allowing you to rest stress free for a hot second before proceeding to the next firefight. This small pacing decision allowed me to enjoy the game a lot more. The breaks in the action let me focus on each encounter, take in the detailed environment and enjoy the funny, well written quips from my squad in a way that most shooter designs are not conducive to. The shooting is fun, the encounters are well tuned and varied, and the big set-piece moments are exciting, grand and beautiful. While the campaign dragged out towards the end, it ends strong and was definitely worth the 9 hours I spent beating it.

The real surprise here was the multiplayer. I’ve always heard how oppressive the shotgun is in Gears, enabling rapid rolling and instant kill duels. And while this is often true, the multiplayer was way more appealing than I would have ever expected. I only played social matchmaking, and I think the generally lower skill of the players certainly helped me enjoy the multiplayer more than I thought I would. The shotgun felt good, but not broken given the inefficient play at this low level, and all of the guns felt viable and fun to shoot. The game modes are standard, but with interesting twists: deathmatch gives a certain number of respawns, while king of the hill features a constantly moving hill. Guardian gives unlimited respawns until the powerful squad leader is killed, which begins a permadeath state for each team (akin to Counter Strike). The shooting feels good, the modes are fun, and it is way more accessible than I ever would have expected. The microtransactions are certainly VERY stupid, but never seep into the gameplay. Strongly recommend this game, a fantastic package, and my favourite Gears to date.

ReCore: Definitive Edition

ReCore is such a strange game. The game feels amazing: it controls well, the fighting is fast, challenging and fun, the platforming feels fair and responsive, and levels are varied and well designed. It also has a generally interesting story, which is often hidden in collectable audio logs and codex entries, an minor quibble that never really bothered me that much. It is then a great shame that the overall experience is hurt by strange design decisions, bad performance and poor pacing. The most disappointing part of ReCore is that levels are locked behind requirements for cores, objects that you obtain in the game world. Levels and areas often stop you from entering altogether, demanding a certain amount of cores before you progress. And these aren’t inconsequential breaks in the pacing… Around 8 hours in I had 16 cores total, and the next story mission required 30. That’s nearly DOUBLE just to get to the next main story mission. This totally arbitrary content gating might have been alright if the open world felt like dynamic and exciting, but it doesn’t. I never enjoyed traversing the world, and backtracking with more tools to see the exact same respawning enemies was frustrating and boring. The problems with ReCore are so much more frustrating because the craft and skill of the design team of ReCore are evident, making the bad progression, technical and graphical inconsistencies and boring open world all the worse.

Note, if you’re playing this game now, the definitive edition DOES improve a lot of problems from the original release. Load times are not good, but not 3 minutes long either. The latest content added in this patch is among the better parts of the game – shame it’s locked behind ludicrous core and level requirements!

Assassin’s Creed: Origins

I haven’t played an Assassin’s Creed game since AC2. When it came out, I was young, and I loved it – freedom to climb anywhere, brutal assassinations, organic crowds of people. As I got older and came to realize what was at the core of the gameplay, I grew disinterested in the franchise. Origins drew me in with the setting. The deserts of Egypt, massive monuments, and what looked to be a living, breathing world. It has not let me down so far.

Honestly, I was actually surprised that Origins feels as much like old AC as it does. Sneaking is effortless, climbing requires no skill, and assassinations are instant and effective. But the world around it feels dramatically better than previous entries. NPC behavior changes when you complete quests, the world shows change that manifests itself in the environment. Even fetch quests have moving, satisfying stories. When you do a quest objective before getting the quest, Bayek (the player character) jokes about how he has already done the work and people react dynamically to your behavior. And there is FINALLY a relevant story justification for you doing mundane chores for people, with you being the only super-cop left in Egypt. I’ve been impressed by the design at every turn, and while the combat is simple and unexciting, the world, characters, writing and atmosphere certainly are not.

Aiomon

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