Viking Strike 03

Oh no, he's doing it again.

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Max Payne (Finished)

Hardcore Gaming 101 recently did a podcast episode on Max Payne, which reminded me that I had a half finished save file on my Xbox. So I’ve gone back and finished a game that I wasn’t particularly enjoying already. Final take? It’s just okay. It’s interesting to go back to pre-San Andreas “mature” games that go out of their way to avoid using A Cuss Word, but the only verbs you are given are “shoot”, “blow up”, and “shoot slowly”. America is an odd place. The overall broody, conspiratorial tone of the thing hits me as more dopey than anything else at present. Not sure why they felt it was necessary to include blood trail platforming dream sequences between levels, outside of the need to make proper eurojank. Also, the Auto HDR setting on current Xboxes make those sequences (and several others throughout the game) almost impossible to navigate. Game be dark. You should probably play this on PC as well, as lining up slow-mo headshots with an analog stick isn’t as effective as with a mouse.

Avowed (Continuing, off to Thirdborn)

Game keeps ticking over. The farther I get, the more I feel the strengths and weaknesses of choices that went into Avowed’s design. I would love to know how Obsidian felt when BG3 released and featured a prominent vaguebooking omniscient being inside the protagonist’s head. As we start mucking around in the third major world zone, I’m becoming a little weary of the “no straight lines” approach to worldbuilding that they’ve done here. Granted, a game like Skyrim also intends players to walk *around* terrain features and obstacles to get to points on the map, but you can also “skyrim” your way over mountains with pig-headed persistence. Avowed asks you to find your way to distant points, and expects you to discover the path there on your own. Sometimes that’s “stumble upon some light platforming”. Sometimes it’s “there’s a hidden switch that requires some electric magic”. The maps *look* large, but like New Vegas it’s mostly about nodes and vectors. Which makes some sense, as there’s a lot more happening in a haunted abandoned shrine or a burning city than there is at the crest of a mountain ridge. But one half of my doubles Avowed team wants to scale the mountain ridges, and the game saying NO to that instinct is unappreciated.

Voxelgram (Started, has become a visual stim while listening to assigned podcasts for school)

Picross 3D is one of the best games ever made. Picross 3D: Round 2 ain’t no slouch either. In retrospect I’m amazed more clones of these games haven’t appeared, but Voxelgram is the one I have on hand. It’s 3D Picross. Like, it’s virtually impossible to fuck this up. I’ve been working through this while listening to audio materials as assigned by various instructors at my school. If I was still in my former commute-heavy life I’d probably weigh purchasing a Steam Deck just to have access to this game (more like this type of game) on the go. The game also has Steam Workshop support, and surprise surprise every Picross 3D puzzle is already up in there.

Persona 3 Reload (Started, walked away early)

God, I don’t even remember the first time I played Persona 3. I was loosely aware of this game in high school? I’ve talked a little bit on and around this site about how my JRPG history moved from Phantasy Star II as a child, Paper Mario as a middle schooler, Final Fantasy VI in high school and then I was down with the genre in general. P3 turned heads when it was a new game for being novel-ish in its setting, themes, and the whole guns-to-heads plot device-ness of it all. Over the years I have owned and sold FES, touched Portable a few times, and now I’ve played the first hour or two of Reload via Game Pass. And wouldn’t you know it, the same goddamn Junpei voice lines are here and it kicked me right out. I think loving 3D recreations of Gekkoukan High and Tatsumi Port Island are a cool thing, and understand that there are some more fundamental changes to the game that reveal themselves later. But I’m old, and the idea of making movement in this world any more tedious than, say, moving a cursor onto parts of a 2D drawing, just doesn’t appeal to me at all. So I’m going to be a P3P guy. This lovingly Ordained PSP 3000 of mine is ready to go.

I’ve also decided to forego RetroAchievements on Portable. That site and service is very cool, and I played hundreds of games over the years without it. There’s no reason at all why I couldn’t run PSP stuff on my phone, but what if there’s no WiFi or service in a spot? What if I hate goddamn virtual buttons? What if I like the kitsch of taking out a Game Boy Pocket on an airplane in 2025? And in any event, there’s already plenty of avenues for accumulating pretend points on a website only the sickest amongst us are using. Speaking of…

Shining in the Darkness (Started, through the Cave of Strength)

I get shit from certain Deep Listens crew members for being a Sega pervert. Despite this reputation, the truth is I’ve not finished nearly enough games on Sega platforms over my lifespan to count for much. That’s gonna change this year, and thanks to RetroAchievements there will be Very Real and Cool proof.

I’m kicking off this effort with Shining in the Darkness, a game that I’ve owned in different collections of Mega Drive games for years and years. It’s way too simple! This would work as a gentle introduction to first person dungeon crawling concepts, and has some charming early 90s anime energy to go around. But I’m finding the gameplay to be trivial beyond the mapmaking component. We’re talking anything but magic spells doing either 1 damage or missing entirely. I haven’t updated my protag’s armour in hours, either.

The economy of Shining in the Darkness is its own weird issue, because there’s also not a lot to buy. So you wind up carrying around thousands of gold with nowhere to bank or spend it, and on the off chance you die half of that gold disappears. Coupled with no ability to compare equipment in shops with equipped gear, so there’s no way of knowing if the 10,000 gold armour piece is better or worse than what you’re already wearing, and the game winds up requiring save scumming to optimise purchases or (egads!) using online guides. Guides which incidentally have pre-made maps as well, but using those would strip out a fair chunk of the actual game.

Also, the RA achievement set is from 2018 and leaves a lot to be desired.

What I’m saying is this “beat Sega games” plan is off to a great start.

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Fun fact: There won't be a NamCompendium rewind-ish post this week, or a Viking Strike next week. I've family business. Enjoy video games, duders.