(I've been doing little updates on mondays on twitter, just a little summary of what I've been putting out. Figure I should maybe start posting it here too in case maybe it can catch someone's attention?)
PAX East is the one near me. It’s also the only major games conference I’ve been to. 2020 is my third year attending, and this year I took more pictures than any year before. Mainly to remind myself of things I wanted to keep an eye on after I left, but also to give me some photos to fill an article such as this, highlighting some of the more interesting and exciting games I saw.
Main attractions
Stuff that was on my radar going in.
Dangerous Driving 2
Because of my own weird brain, Dangerous Driving 2 is the game I came to the show most interested to see. As a die-hard Burnout 3 fan, I’ve been excited to watch 3 Fields Entertainment’s progression towards making that scale and style of game again. And with DD one it felt like they had just about reached that, and I was ready to be content, but then they come out and say “hey our booth is open and we’re showing DD2!” and my ears definitely perked up.
Each 3FE game has been building on top of the previous, and DD2 is no different. The focus this time is taking DD1 and setting it in an interconnected open world. And after getting hands on, I can tell you it sure does feel like I remember DD1 feeling, which I’ll take as good news. The demo was locked down to a single race, so none of the open world aspects felt present, and most of what I know about it is from the developers telling me.
I think it’s pretty well known that 3FE is a small team, but I didn’t realize until listening to the devs that the core of the team is just 2 people? No matter how long you’ve been making games, that’s a team size that really defines the kind of scale and scope of game you can wind up with. But also it says something about the level of passion going into these projects. You build half a whole ass game, and yeah you’re so excited to get the game out to people you don’t hold it back just to make a menu that sings and dances like a one made by a team that is dedicated only to crafting a fancy UI.
I was already a fan, but seeing their attitude and hustle has taken me from curious about DD2 up to can’t wait for it. Plus they only got switch dev kits in January and already have the engine running on it, which is impressive on its own, but also means the game will be on that one console that everyone is gaga over. Until then, I’ve been given the hot tip straight from the dev that the real trick to DD1 is to go slowly along the tracks and read all the signs to get the secret canon of the DD story.
Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon
Announced when the show floor opened, Pocket Dungeon is a (semi-rhythm based?) puzzle match rouge-like. You’re in a Tetris-like bucket, enemies and items are falling in from the top, and if identical objects or enemies are all in a group touching, interacting or dealing damage to one in the group affects all in the group, which is where the real combo puzzle element comes from. Each level lasts until the dungeon exit door and key falls into the matrix, and then you move onto the next level that has its own set of unique enemies and hazards.
This was actually the only game on the floor I stood in line to play. Puzzle games are already a must for me, but I am especially fond of the character-action puzzle hybrid games (Super Puzzle Platformer Deluxe, Treasure Stack, Super Star Path, and Wario’s Woods all jump to mind). This one really brought the rouge-like elements to bare tho, with random shops and weapons and level progressions. Honestly if it weren’t for the Play In A Matrix constraint, my closest comparison might be a lighter Crypt of the Necrodancer. Which is still a great comparison to get!
Unexpected attractions
I didn’t know about them before seeing them on the floor, but for some reason they stuck with me most.
Together in Battle
There was something about TiB’s graphic design that made me assume it was going to be something super generic. Maybe I’m just sick of the Colosseum sweat tone. But it was clearly a tactics game, so I gave it the chance.
It is a tactics game, the demo making it seem like it will be mostly area battle but with some kind of story, but the real trick is that it’s also a procedural VN of sorts? During the day you hire fighters, and direct those fighters in battles that have just enough positioning, ranges, stats, and team comp to make really interesting combat puzzles. At night, the units in your roster mingle with each other and form bonds and have real meet cute moments? Sometimes they’ll start singing about how much they love diamonds? They start having opinions about the other members, and you have to take that into consideration when forming fighting squads? This section is all automatic and sort of algorithmically generated, but it’s still real cute to watch them start building their own stories and give you things to think about them more than just what their ice-resistance stat is like.
It’s a tactics game with dorks, who you watch go on dork dates in between having unexpectedly descent tactics battles. And that’s worth keeping an eye on. (but also one of the things you do in a battle is gather up the item sacks from fallen units, BUT I DON’T THINK THAT ALLOWS THEM TO JUST PUT A “Sacks Grabbed” STAT ON THE MATCH RESULT SCREEN.)
The Forgettable Dungeon
I’m not really sure why this one has left such an impression on me. A Zelda 1-like with rougelike elements mapped onto it, and presented in voxels. Maybe there’s a part of me that would really like Rouge but just really can’t stand how actual Rouge looks or plays. Maybe I’m that much of a sucker for a good cloud of exploding voxels, or maybe a top down sword-swinging adventure calls to my subconscious. Maybe I just really like the gamble mechanic of not knowing what a potion does until you drink it or throw it at someone. But this game has all that and it co-op, so I’ll be keeping an eye on it.
Actually, that was maybe the most wild thing about it. The game was being shown with 4 player local co-op, and that’s great, but chatting with the dev they mentioned, “It’s also 4 player online...well technically 16 online, because the engine supported that many connections and I decided to just leave it enabled.” and I love that spirit of “it wasn’t intentional, but it was crazy so we kept it,” that I feel like I haven’t seen since the exploding rickshaws in Saint’s Row 3.
VR block
I own a VR set, so I must stay abreast of new VR games.
Takelings House Party
Not the first game I’ve seen that sets a group of couch co-op players against a single VR player, but using the Borrowers vs. Humans theme gives a certain amount of whimsy that is definitely needed to counteract just how malicious the game asks the VR player to be. “Stick them in the toaster so their partners will have to come out of hiding and race to unplug it before they burn to death” is an interesting player interaction, but also maybe a bit too horrifying? I dunno, curious to see what other hazard interactions they think up. Maybe they can lean more slapstick than grizzly.
Smush TV
Hey, remember when Tetris was really reaching for new game modes, and they came up with that thing where there’s a little dude at the bottom of the well and you’re trying to drop pieces so they make a staircase for him to climb out of the top? Well someone decided that was an idea prime for adaptation into an asymmetric versus experience. A screen based player is trying to drop pieces to crush the VR player, while the VR player is using a bow-and-arrow-based translocator to jump around and make their way up and out of the well. As someone who has worked on an asymmetric 2-players-only game that didn’t have a VR component, that’s a really hard game to make the kind of fun that will really draw people in. But it was one of the most novel concepts I saw on the floor, so have to give them credit for that.
SpaceTeam VR
Mother Fucking SpaceTeam VR!!!
If you haven’t played SpaceTeam, go do it. It’s a free phone app with local wi-fi multiplayer where each player has an inscrutable bank of buttons and switches and dials, and also a display that will give you instructions to call out to whichever player has the applicable settings to change. It’s a hell of a time.
So for VR they’ve done the thing that every VR multiplayer experience that wants to stand a chance does, and made it cross play with screen and even phone players. I don’t know if VR is going to add anything particularly new or unique to the SpaceTeam experience, but I’ll take any excuse to cheerlead for SpaceTeam and have something new to do in VR.
Last year I got pretty hard into a mobile game. This is something that normally doesn't happen, but this was Gundam Battle: Gunpla Warfare, which is in the genre of Toy Giant Robot games, which loyal followers will know [I have had a history with.] In fact, the only reason I really fell out of that game was because there came a point that the game would crash every time I tried to load into an action level. It didn't stop me from logging in for daily rolls for a few months after that point.
Since I hadn't fallen hard for a phone game before that, it was my introduction to some mobile game concepts, and one feature in particular was auto battle. That game's auto battle turned a given level into a conversion machine that turns stamina meter directly into drops and exp. It worked on the principle that you had proven that you could complete the level with satisfactory ease, so it didn't even bother to load the level and just went directly from pre-mission to mission complete screen. And you could just keep mashing that button and spend you entire stamina meter in less than 5 minutes. It was nice, it was beautiful, it was so efficent, and I think it has spoiled me.
This experience is what set the scene for everything that Arknights has made me realize. The first real opinion I had about Arknights is how unbareable it was to have to watch the entire level play through for the auto battle.
I don't know why they've done their auto battle the way they have. There's something interesting in the idea that the replays could be unreliable, and I've seen it both come up and say REPLAY UNSTABLE - COULD GO WRONG as well as seen it stay completely normal until the very last moment when an enemy just wandered thru where it never had before for no explicable reason. It's...interesting? But not good. "And as an added bonus, sometimes the 'automatic don't-worry-about-it' function is sometimes it just fucks up!" Like, I feel like if I did that it would be because there was a bug I couldn't work out, and so I "fixed" it by narativizing it a little bit. But even if it wasn't an intentional feature, then what was the original reason to force the level to be watch and not just assume successful completion?
While the decisions made here confuse me, it wasn't the source of the distain I found myself experincing. It wasn't until I was grinding a level for dorm room decoration drops that it realy crystalized for me.
"Huh," I say out loud to myself, laying in bed, "Tower Defense as a whole sure are reverse autoscrollers, aren't they?"
I'm not a speed runner, so I don't consider autoscrollers the bane of my existance or anything, but seeing levels finished quicker and quicker is a nice metric for how my skills at the game are improving. In an autoscroller, that feedback of "less time spent here" is removed. So even if autoscrollers don't inherently drive you nuts, they are also inherently never going to give you that measure of pride for how much you've improved in your time with the game.
So TD's are autoscrollers, and autoscrollers don't make you feel like you've improved. But as is usual with my specific bad brain, after I figured out what I didn't like about it, I kept thinking about it.
There's an argument that I should like TD's on some level, because you can look at them as puzzles of where and when to layout your towers. And I love me some puzzle games. Give me a Tetris Attack puzzle mode any day of the week.
["perfect move" puzzle modes][zachtronics games machine building puzzles][machine iteration puzzles, each puzzle in a single new problem your machine has to deal with, without losing it's ability to handle all previous puzzles][The big point being - you see if your machine handles each next problem, not 10 problems in a row that you don't learn about until you fail to it][and that's where it turns into Persona 3 realizations, if you're not playing with a walkthru, you don't know what you've failed to spec for until you've reached it with the wrong spec. But then when you do play with a walkthu, why is it even structured as challenges, just make each path successful you just have to pick between paths, and not pick paths and also maybe fail it and waste your time and opportunities.][fuck games]
I'm someone who's still not sick of open world racing. I'm still happy race side events exist in GTA, Watch_Dogs, and other open world games, and I'll even return to Midnight Club now and then. (Although ironically, Burnout Paradise is not my favorite Burnout game.) The Crew was on my radar from its announcement, but with the only gimmick being "the hugest open world map yet" I wasn't especially eager to jump into it.
Cut to mid September, when Ubisoft began giving The Crew away for free for a limited time through uPlay. I already had uPlay on my PC for Trackmania Turbo purposes, and so there were no barriers to entry left. I was in.
---
Detroit, The Midwest:
The story is minimal, but I like it.
After being framed and jailed for his brother's murder, Fast & furious AU Gordon Freeman is approached by a detective who says "I'm trying to go after the guy who framed you. Would you-"
"I'M IN." he says, slamming his handcuffed fists on the table, itching to get his revenge-murder on.
And from there you're let loose onto the streets of Detroit. There's early story missions that lead you towards St. Louis, but in a game world that vast Skyrim instincts take over, and I almost instantly dick off away from the story and head for a place I would recognize - New York.
Humble beginnings.
New York, The East Coast:
One of the bullet-pointed mechanics of the game is the Skill Challenges that litter the highways. On paper it's a good way to break up the monotony of driving between missions, but the first time a Skill course diverges from the path towards your objective, you're sick of them. That happens quick.
So it was bittersweet when I got far enough out of Detroit that skills became locked off. And once I finally reached New York, it was clear that just about everything to do is locked behind player level progression. This wide open world is functionally entirely empty unless you experience it in the line the designers have laid out. There's nothing inherently wrong with linearity, but it's so directly contrary to the promise of the game's main gimmick. It was infuriatingly disappointing.
But I was able to do what one does in any game based on a real world location: pick a place you're familiar with and compare the game world to the real world. For me, that's the Queens side of the East River by Roosevelt Island. And sure enough, zoom in on New York, and there's Long Island, there's Manhattan, and there's Roosevelt Island! I was able to find a spot that I more or less knew as home.
It feels like a really well crafted shoebox diorama. In my reference spot, I was able to look around and say, "yep, this is about what you would see if you were here in real life." And then you look up and say, "Oh, yeah, and there's what would be right over there, too!" But while "here" and "there" are accurate, the distances are all compressed to surreal effect. It feels right until you notice how there's only 6 blocks between Times Square and "Battery Park" at the southern tip of Manhattan. It's nostalgic and unnerving at the same time, in a way I really dig.
Even though all the missions were locked off to me, there was one thing to do: spiral out from New York to search the East Coast for /hidden car parts/. However, after a couple tedious hours spent combing from D.C. to Maine, I was met with more disappointment. I wouldn't able to redeem the fruits of my labor until I had unlocked the New York headquarters, which is tied to story progression. blocked again. But at least I had gotten an achievement for driving around New York for a while specifically at night. That felt good.
With shoulders slumped, I headed back to Detroit, ready to chain myself to the critical path.
If this were accurate, this is about where my childhood home would be.
Detroit, The Midwest, again:
The trip back was painless, thanks to fast travel that allows one to zip to any spot where you've been. It seems like another system that isn't in line with the ethos of "we made the whole US!" gimmick, and more over totally subverts the public transit / airport & train station system in the game. But restrictions on it more would've felt like a punishment for my exploration instincts, so I took it as a kindness.
I begrudgingly followed the story as it took its sweet time making its way to New York.
New York, The East Coast, again:
With the space already exhaustively explored, nothing stopped me from zipping directly from mission to mission, and doing absolutely no driving or exploration outside of the races. Honestly, if it hadn't been for the momentum that let me keep through missions, this is around when I would've dropped out of the game. But I was so close to finally getting that hidden car I worked so hard for, so I kept going.
This time New York welcomed me with new cars. The Nissan I had started with was fitted for off-road missions, and I picked up a Ford Fiesta that felt better on the streets. While I was at it, I took a look to see what I could get with my horde of uPlay points (Trackmania Turbo continues to pay off). Turns out, a sweet Dodge Viper which I was still too low level to properly use anywhere. But I plenty high enough in level to put a sweeeeeet Raving Rabbids sticker on it.
After zipping around through all the East Coast story missions, I finally had to put wheels back down on the road for the long haul down to Miami.
Tuner cars with big dumb off-road parts was actually a selling point for me.
Florida, The South:
Unlike the East Coast, I hadn't gone south at all yet, so I couldn't fast travel. And the distance to Miami was further than it was from Detroit to New York. I got into my newest ride, and settled in.
I set out from New York at night. I watched the sun rise. I drove through a rainstorm that darkened the sky and found glistening wet roads on the other side. When the road widened and the traffic lightened up, the drift physics finally clicked in my head. While the cars had felt unimpressively slidey at the outset, now with the right shaped roads and the right amount of power behind my wheels, sliding sideways around corners came comfortably. The road mirrored the sky, and I experienced a minor zen.
When I arrive I check the map of the area around me. I had driven right through the Florida Everglades. My brain connects a new piece of context to an episode of Dexter's Laboratory I had seen long ago. Also the Gulf of Mexico is there. That's the Florida I remember.
This is probably the best time I had in this game.
Vegas, The Mountain States:
The fly-over states. The drive-through states. There's nothing out there but rocks and shrubs. It's clear by just how little of there is besides the road as you drive from Miami all the way to Vegas. It's not New York to LA, but this is where you cross the country.
What welcomes me is a surprise. Each region has a character who is your main voice on the radio for that leg of the story, and each one is introduces with a but of a cutscene. What stands out about this Vegas cutscene is that it actually has nothing car related in it at all. It's just our Main Character, sitting in a diner, late at night, waiting to meet someone who could be friend or foe. Anxiously stirring a cup of coffee, which is the entire meal. A gaze that subtly follow the legs of a woman who walks past, a welcome moment of distraction from the situation. This is a game that doesn't need people. It's about the drive and the speed and the experience points to level up the cars. And yet, for seemingly no reason, there is this moment that succeed at making these non-characters feel human. I was just really caught off guard by it this deep into the game. And just as abruptly as it arrived, it passed.
Okay, cars make a cameo.
Dallas, The South:
The Mountain States introduces Raid vehicles, a 4th kit of equipment. But it's also the middle section of the game, so they try to mix it up with the other kits we've seen in the game so far. That's fine. What isn't fine is that each kit levels up separately. I haven't used my earlier kits for a while, so they are under powered for the current missions. To get them up to fighting weight, I actually have to head back east, where there are level appropriate skills I can replay for upgrades.
They put grinding in this racing game. I'm incredulous. What was formerly was just disappointment with the implementation of skills suddenly becomes low tier disgust.
So I go east, in a contempt fueled fugue state. I grind the skills. While I'm at it, I begin looking for hidden car parts again. I'm just criss-crossing these barren planes, not even beholden to the roads anymore thanks to the raid kit. Untethered from the world I've known so far.
What pulls me back is a sharp contrast - a grey block rising straight out of the ground in an otherwise flat and barren brown landscape. A city, isolated and unexpected. I had stumbled upon civilization. The curiosity brought me back. I checked my map after a long time being dismissive of it - Dallas. I was in Dallas. I don't know how I got there, but that's where I wound up.
By now I had done enough grinding, so I returned west for more story missions.
It's just...right there.
Northern Snow Lands, The Mountain States:
The story leads me north, towards nothing in particular. Slowly snow can be seen building up on the scenery, until we're engulfed by the feeling of isolation brought by the fog of a blizzard in the middle of the night. The hedge maze from the end of The Shining, but having never exited the station wagon from the initial scene.
It forces me to reflect. The last memorable setting was the sunny beaches and damp swamps of Florida, so disconnected from the scene I currently find myself in. The changes have been subtle, all places unified by roads under your wheels, but these mountains finally push past the tolerance of awareness, and force you to realize just how varied all the locales you've visited to far have been. Even the numbing nothingness on the way to Vegas was unique onto itself.
A story mission guides me down a massive ski jump. Fun setpeice, but a ham-handed and ultimately unnecessary attempt at making this a memorable leg of the journey.
Where did the world go?
Los Angeles, The West Coast:
From very early on, the West Coast had been marked as the end of the journey. An finish line to track your progress by. I had started to consider it back in the Snow Lands, but now with the finish line in sight the realization of just how far I've come sets in.
More missions. One drops me off rolling down Hollywood Boulevard. I've never been to the real Los Angeles, but I get a vivid flashback to Los Santos. Vinewood Boulevard. Next to where my first apartment in GTA Online was. It shouldn't be surprising, as they're based on the same real world location, but one virtual location being evocative without being identical to another was still striking.
Also there are the obligatory chases through the LA storm drains. They are perfect for it, so I'm not complaining.
Familiar to a place I've still never been.
Seattle, The West Coast:
One last diversion north before the finale. If the diorama version of Seattle is as accurate as its been for the other cities, I think I would actually like to travel here. It's a dense enough city, and the sky is never not grey. That's what I look for in a locale.
I wouldn't mind calling this home.
San Diego, The West Coast:
The story reaches its climax. You come back down south, cross the Golden Gate Bridge, and enter the finale.
So far the last mission of each region has been a "boss fight" of sorts, with multiple sections, mixed objectives, and even vehicle swaps. It's a little bit of escalation that goes just far enough. The final mission of the game is also one of these, but it doesn't do anything to go bigger than any of the "boss fights" so far. The clear path would be to make it the coast to coast race situation that popped into everyone's head from the initial trailer reveal, but it's also understandable how you couldn't make that the finale, as that is a much bigger investment than you can ask of most players.
It almost feels like they even got the feeling that finishing this game at all was a big as for most players. The final mission doesn't reach for anything grander than middle game moments, and the final cutscene is reused intro footage. It's low-effort in a game where cutsenes are barely extant to begin with.
The ending was disappointing. But I knew it was going to be. That's not why I stuck around. I wanted to go to all the places. I wanted to see what was in-between the places. I wanted to get lost. It wasn't about the destination, it really was about the journey.
(But any kind of fanfare at all for finishing that journey really would've gone a long way.)
The final approach.
---
The Future, Beyond The Story:
The story is over. There's PVP stuff, but I have no intention of doing that. Certainly not in a game with grind. There are small towns on the map the story didn't take me through, but without any personal connection to them, I feel no urge to go visit them. I could try to get and upgrade all the cars, but it's a small selection to begin with none of my goto car game cars. The expansion Wild Run has been pushed in my face this whole time, but nothing in it looks as motivating as unfinished side missions I already have.
But before I delete it and put this chapter completely behind me, I do feel compelled to do that coast to coast diorama road trip at least once. But it requires some decisions and planning: Just a s straight drive? Do a loop or a zig zag? Have some sort of self imposed scoring system? Find a friend willing to come along? Try to make a video out of it? Which would make it most fun, and how much time am I going to have to set aside for it?
Right now the leading idea is to mimic the route from Crusin' USA, and compare the virtual coast-to-coast experiences. Hopefully I can will that to come to pass. And hopefully soon, as I would do well to have that hard drive space back soon.
A bit late, but I figured I should write a bit of GOTY stuff.
I try to make Top 5's based on personal experience more than anything else. Mainly because a lot of the time we don't get around to playing games until years after their release, but temporal limitations wouldn't be a fair reason to punish games that are worthy of praise. So just keep that in mind. It's intentional that there are games on my list not from this year.
So. Personal Top 5 game list, not necessarily from this year, and in no particular order:
5. Super Smash Brothers for Nintendo 3DS and WiiU
Realizing this game made my list was honestly caught me by surprise. I've played a substantial amount of every Smash Bros., and never even really had a great affinity for it until Brawl. I can't even really say this one grabbed me any more than Brawl did (I'd even say less, actually, because Smash Run / Smash Tour aren't reasonable replacements for Subspace Emissary to me). The part that made it so outstanding is how much it grabbed everyone around me.
Smash has been a staple of gatherings with friends, at least since Melee. Yet it was always a game that all but the 1 or 2 most into it people would get burned out on it on after only a few matches, if they would pick up a controller at all. For as dedicated and concrete as the Smash community was and is, there was always a clear gorge between those who were into the game and those who didn't care for it at all. And that's not even getting into the fervor within the community itself over whether each game has merits and flaws or if everything that's not Melee should be burned to the ground.
This is what has made Sm4sh stand out to me. That impossible divide feels like it has all but closed up. Those same people who wouldn't even care to try playing in previous games are comfortable picking up a controller and are more than likely even going to actually have fun. I never dug deep enough to have anything more than an awareness of... Wavedashing? L-Canceling? Shine Sparking? Tripping? Curly-Mustasche'ing? Whatever those civil war-causing mechanical minutiae are, so I can't say how those may have been changed in this iteration that has made it more welcoming to casual players. But it's obvious that this was one of their design goals if from nothing else but the initial online choice of For Fun or For Glory. And strangely, the other place it's clear to me is when you look at 8 player mode and all the controller options. It's so brainlessly simple to setup games with 6 people, 2 Amiibo, GCN controllers, Wiimotes, Pro Controllers, and even 3DS's. Everyone is in, everyone is comfortable, the burnout is all but gone. It's at the point where we don't even need to bring other games to gatherings anymore. It's that bump from "a game everyone either loves or loathes" to "a game that everyone at least likes" that landed it on this list.
Let me lay out the best argument I have for Amiibo. The Amiibo I have for Sm4sh are basically all the characters that were considered for but wound up not being my main. So I wound up with 6 of them. I think of them as my backup. More specifically, I think of it as an alternate universe version of the Squads game mode from Call of Duty Ghosts. Load up the 8 player mode, split it into two teams, each team is lead by a human player and a team of three Amiibo. Is that any more enticing? Maybe not. But it feels better. It's knowing that I've worked with these AI's to train them up to fighting capacity. I've spent hours with them, and have watched them go from a confused punching bag to an infuriating rival. It's a feeling that reminds me of the first time I played Pokemon, growing my team and taking on the world. But this time, instead of standing behind my Charizard and having it eat shitty birds for hours, I'm standing across from it and screaming "SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT!" My computer buddy and I get stronger by beating the shit out of each other. This is why I love my computer friends.
4. Rocket League
Sm4sh made the list because of the kind of splash it made when playing games with people in person. A case where their joy fed my joy. This is not the norm. I'm not a big people person. I would rather play through mediocre campaigns and AI matches, or simply not play at all, than go out and find new people to play games with. Pub matches are a special kind of hell. This is key to the rest of my list. These are all games that were so good, I willingly sought out online matches with randos just so I could play more. Rocket League is that good.
The brilliance of Rocket League is in how it combines elements of simplicity and complexity. Saying it's soccer with car is actually saying too much, since is never comes close to that level of rules complexity. There's nothing that will get you penalized, so you just do whatever you can to get the ball in the net. Such a simple goal wouldn't be particularly engaging on its own, which is why they set it inside the bed of chaos that is a 3D physics sandbox. If this were some kind of traditional soccer game, it would also have some abstract concept of ball control. "this player has the ball," and will continue to just sort of have it until they decide to shoot it away or it's taken from them. Rocket League battle-cars have no such analog. The only way you relate to the ball is to be in it's way at a very specific place and time, and bash into it with fingers cross that it'll actually go at least somewhat in the direction you wanted. It's a soccer game in the same way that Toribash is a fighting game.
Even in the controls themselves there's a decided balance between intent and chaos. Putting double jump into your game is a major step on the path towards control above simulation. Any for of air control is a method for making sure the player can still continue to have agency, even at an unnatural point such as suspended in mid-air. It's one of the considerations for a game's feel, whether you would call it tight, sloppy, or stiff. There's a range of how strong this sense can be in a game, and "multi directional air-juke" puts Rocket League pretty high up. But for as well tuned as the controls feel, they still made the decision to put players in cars. This is a limitation on movement. You can't strafe, boost only works in one direction, and if you land on your roof you have right yourself before you can do anything else. Keep going in the same direction and eventually you wind up somewhere around the control wall of Steel Battalion. But Rocket League takes it just far enough that, with the extra movement ability they give you, pulling off the moves you want is always feels just-out-of-reach-yet-not-impossible.
Soccer is probably the wrong comparison. Really it's a lot more like car billiards. Except there's up to 8 players, and everyone takes their turns all at the same time, tripping over each other. But whether you play it as a chaos-box fun-time or as a 1-on-1 test of who is better at doing this simple feat through complex mean, Rocket League is guaranteed source of edge-of-the-seat excitement. In fact, just like with Sm4sh, far more people got into the game than I expected. Plus it's got a pretty good selection of cosmetic items for playing dress-up with your car, and that gives any game a ton of points in my book.
3. Duck Game
I first learned of and got my hands on Duck Game at PAX East early in the year, and ever since that brief introduction it was a game I was super excited to own a copy of. In many ways it's just another entry in the local-4-player-minimal-competitive-party-game genre (you know, Samurai Gunn, Towerfall, Lethal League, and, oh, I dunno, Sportsball?), but It was one moment in particular that cemented the game in my mind as a must-have:
One level starts off with the 4 players sectioned off to the corners of the map, with a sword and set of armor for each of them. In the middle of the map is an inconspicuous magnet gun. The magnet gun isn't a weapon that deals damage, but instead has a number of other uses. Most relavent to this case, it is able to pick up a pieces of platemail armor, even if a player happens wearing it at the time. At the time, none of the players had any idea that this interaction existed, so everyone had decked themselves out with the presented armor, and as soon as someone picked up the magnet gun by accident, all hell broke loose. It was a glorious moment of "WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON? THAT'S A THING THAT CAN HAPPEN???"
That's what's so mind blowing about Duck Game. Yeah it's a multiplayer 2D deathmatch, but all the pieces in it interact with each other in far more ways than you would expect. At points it feels like Spelunky levels of Domino Rally chain-reactions. Here, let me give you another example:
A player is dumping rounds with a minigun. Stray shots pierce a nearby barrel and it begins to leak oil. The minigun has been firing for so long that it overheats and jams, refusing to fire any more until it has a chance to cool off. Rather than wait, the player chooses to throw the gun down and go look for another weapon. Now the cool part: The minigun lands in the pool of leaking oil, and the overheated barrel ignites the oil into a huge raging fire. Then even more chaos breaks out depending on what players or items are unfortunate enough to be within the area that is now nothing but flames.
It sounds like chaos, and it is. But it's a tractable chaos. Every piece of that chain is visible before it starts, and if you know about the available interactions there are steps you can take to have an ounce of control over it. Plus there are certain spots where there's an extra level of control fidelity that can be taken advantage of. When you hold a grenade, the fire button don't throw it, but simply pulls the pin. This is because there is a button dedicated to picking up / throwing weapons already. Not only does this lead to a lot of suicides the first time someone picks up a grenade, but also a few more interesting tricks to pull. If you can catch them in the window between pulling the pin and throwing it, and bonk them with a heavy enough object, you can make them drop the live grenade at their feet instead of chucking it elsewhere. Or you could even throw a dud grenade as a feint if you wanted. Maybe not the most useful of moves, but that the game is specific enough to allow that sort of trick is the impressive part to me.
Plus there's a button dedicated to quacking. Hold the button and your mouth stays open. Quacking has no function, but you can do it incessantly, and even in certain menus. And for some reason, there's nothing quite as hilarious as the last remaining player quacking a split second before the screen fades out into the level transition. It's the other side of the game. Even though most of it is, much like Rocket League, about gaining skill in controlling an otherwise chaotic space, it also knows it's just a silly crazy thing. It's called duck game. There are "weapons" that are just musical instruments that don't do damage, they just let players jam together. There's a cake tileset. Games have a post-game wrapup hosted by John Mallard. It doesn't take itself seriously, and I think the players get the message that they shouldn't either. Like I said, a major theme of this list is games good enough to brave playing with randos, and randos in Duck Game were never really that bad. Yeah, some will just stomp you outright and they know that's where their skills are at, but even they will hold their fire for a second to jam on some drums mid match.
2. Grand Theft Auto Online
Speaking of rando horror stories, Grand Theft Auto Online is the sort of nightmare hellscape you would expect out of an online world filled with GTA fans. And yet, I've put more time into player infested Los Santos than into the entire story of offline GTA5 proper. It feels bizarre, and saying it out loud seems to paint a picture of a virtual masochist. It's hard to argue, but I wouldn't be this deep in if there weren't something overwhelmingly satisfying in it, right? (...Right?)
I mentioned above with Rocket League that a game gets points with me for letting you play dressup, but that's an understatement. I'm an absolute sucker for it. And GTAO not only has it in spades, but adds a sense of ownership to it all. As I stand on the balcony of my home in the hills, soaking in my cherished view of the lit up skyline of the sprawling city below, I'm happy to know that I've got a closet full of my favorite outfits bought piece by piece from stores across the city, a garage full of cars each customized for a specific job and mood, and even a second apartment down in the city closer to where all the action goes down. Everything I have is my favorite picks out of tons more options of each from across the city. And not only do I have these, but I earned these.
Okay, when first jumping into the game, the activities available aren't ones anyone really cares about. MP deathmatches and races and CTF type stuff. (I'm still a fan of open world racing, but I know everyone else is burned out on it by now. Hah.) But even before you open them for yourself you can jump into to PvE missing hosted by other players. It's some vague story-like stuff, it's the almost raid-style complex and challenging heists, and most importantly it's all interesting setups for exciting action sequences. Hijack a tanker barreling down the highway. Stealth your way into a facility to take out security systems. Steal a VTOL prototype right off of an aircraft carrier and use more jet fighters to escort it back to your hideout. It's the co-op version of SP style missions that everyone was hoping for!
But even outside of the scripted missions, there's a possibility for wackyness that keeps me just wandering around the city. Yes, you're guaranteed to run into players who just have the most expensive armored cars and guns and are just going around razing any players that come into range. But amazingly enough, there are maybe more players who are the opposite of that. Pull up next to someone on the street and start honking, and they very well might just jump in your car ready for whatever ride you're gonna give them. Impromptu kind-spirited bumper car matches. Sitting in a park sharing and eating snacks together. Go to the airport and grab some planes and see who has the bigger balls when it comes to flying under bridges. Or even just Doing donuts on the beach, dumping rounds into the air, and having a good hearty laugh when someone inevitably winds up flipping their car right into the ocean. To me it evokes the aimless, meandering play of kids on a summer's day, which is both unexpected as hell and pretty enchanting.
I think what makes this world work - what gives satisfaction to earning possessions and encourages peaceful unguided play - is a certain set of rules and systems regarding repercussions put in play by the developers. A car truly becomes yours when you purchase insurance for it, because once it's insured it will be replaced. And the replacement will be paid for by whoever was responsible for it's destruction. And not only will the jerk who blew up your car be forced to replace it, but then they're marked with a rising mental state, so other players know he's a jerk. If their mental state gets high enough, they will even have a bounty placed on them, so they are punished by being made a target. Or, if a player is so mad they don't want to wait that long, there are systems in place for them to set a bounty themselves, or even take other actions like hiring muggers, assassins, bodyguards, or bribing police for a window of indulgence to take care of matters themselves. It's a mix of systems in place that doesn't prevent non-stop chaos, but works to police it to a reasonable level with the help of the other players.
A system to keep players responsible and maybe a little respectful is something I don't think anyone expected to exist, or else "GTA Online" wouldn't immediately get the gut response "What!? No! Why would anyone!?" But what it does is cut down on the nightmare, and gives people the chance to enjoy being in and building up some ownership over the masterfully crafted space that is Los Santos. That's really what it all adds up to: Los Santos is just a place that I enjoy being in.
1. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
I'm not a guy who gets angered easily. But the moment when I hit the second / final credit scroll in MGSV is in the top 3 most red-faced, stuttering, wake up cursing in the middle of the night infuriating moments of my year. Maybe I felt this anger stronger than other people because Quiet's Goodbye was the very final mission I did, and there was no more uncharacteristic of a mission to send the game off on. An unavoidable firefight, that you inexplicably get locked into such that it takes away the menu option to return to base. I don't remember how, but I did eventually escape that which was designed to be inescapable, which was actually the more feasible option considering that I had went in with the loadout I used for the rest of the game: Sneaking suit, tranq pistol, and D-Dog only. Going back decked out with armor and rockets made completing the mission possible, but then
So for anyone who is looking for new podcasts, we just released the first episode of No Credit Continue, a review podcast talking about the freeware and free-to-play games that are worth checking out. But while I'm at it, I'll just post the whole thing up here (reposted from the Oleetku tumblr, which you should check out if you're curious about the other stuff I'm working on).
Everyone gets busy around the Studio. So after the normal day is over, Nick and Ryan sit down to catch up with each other inside of the magic circle known as Late Nite.
Nick has always been enchanted by the antics of has-been-superhero hosted late night talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Like he’s kinda obsesed with it and everything it touched. Now he is inflicting it sharing it with co-host Jo, as well as everyone listening, by watching an episode every week and then recording a short discussion about it.
No Credit Continue is your podcast source for freeware and free-to-play games. Tune in to hear Nick and Andrew talk about all the amazing games you could be playing right now!
Long time listeners to the Oleetku Studios Podcast need not fear! You are already subscribed to all of these new shows! Everything we put out will be collected into one feed, so you don’t have to worry about subscribing to multiple feeds to keep up to date on our shows. New episodes every Sunday!
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