2022 in gaming
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There's so much to talk about with Elden Ring. There's the giant open world, which is at times breathtaking and awe-inducing but also at times rote and formulaic (you know you're going to find a tunnel with miners, catacombs with some undead enemies, caves with various wildlife, etc), but by the time the magic is starting to wear off, the game kicks into high gear and barrels through to the endgame.
It works incredibly well - the lore revelations and boss encounters, and "legacy dungeons" (what I understand to mean a Dark Souls-ass level, basically) happen with increased frequency toward the end, and it feels like the big payoff after spending over a 100 hours roaming the open world, adventuring and piecing together the lore of the Lands Between in an almost archeological manner, as you do in these FromSoft games - reading item descriptions, listening to cryptic NPC dialogue and trying to keep track of what different quests you're on at the moment, since the game doesn't track anything for you.
I kept notes on what characters wanted me to do for them, or any hints they provided as to where they might be headed, and it always felt rewarding seeking them out and finding them. On the flipside, it felt really bad when I accidentally progressed something too far, making other questlines completely inaccessible.
I've heard it mentioned elsewhere that this game, length-wise, is almost like a whole Dark Souls-trilogy in 1 game, and I'm inclined to agree. The Dark Souls-games usually take me between 30-50 hours to complete, and the timer was at 122 hours by the time the final credits rolled, and it is quite telling how captivated I am by this world when the thing I've been doing in the days after completing is diving deep into the lore and trying to learn more about everything I didn't pick up on, or things I simply didn't find.
I've said a lot of words about this game, but the long and short of it is that this is a game I'm going to remember for a long time.
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I was not at all prepared for how this game would grab me. I fired it up on GamePass in the evening, thinking I would try it out for like an hour or so and instead wound up sitting glued to the screen until 3 AM.
This text heavy visual novel-style of RPG is not really my jam traditionally, but I might have to go and check out Disco Elysium after playing through this, seeing as there have been quite a few comparisons between the two.
When I sensed the endgame approaching I desperately wanted the game to not be over. Luckily, even after completing all the major storylines the first chapter of the free DLC had been released, so I got to play through that as well to extend my session with this game. Will check back in October for the second chapter, without a doubt.
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There is so much to love about this game. Speedrunning at its core has never appealed much to me, but I guess it's quite a bit similar to something like a Super Meat Boy or Trials HD kind of thing where you're running the same level repeatedly until you eventually nail that one run.
All of the gameplay elements come together really nicely in a really high-paced package that just makes you feel like a badass when you pull some of these combos off. The one thing I could do without is the less-than-ideal writing.
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The first 20 or so hours of this game were like crack to me, I just couldn't stop playing to fill out that ever-expanding checklist of things to do to unlock more game mechanics, more weapons, more characters and more levels to do what is essentially some twin-stick shooting but with only one stick.
The gameplay of your weapons automatically firing off as you walk around felt kind of like a tower defense game, except you are the towers with all the weapons you're carrying around. Levelling up and getting stronger to the point of being a "whirlwhind of death" as I've seen it described is a very satisfying feeling.
When you reach the point of not being afraid of not completing a run, but instead patiently waiting to upgrade your character with a sense of inevitable victory the game kind of lost a bit of its charm, and it felt kind of like going through the motions of doing more and more runs just to keep unlocking things, but it kept me playing for about 35 hours before I felt like I had gotten my fill.
There have been two DLC-packs released that I've not checked out, maybe I'll play those in the future if I get the itch.
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I was consistently struck by how good this game looks. While the gameplay was pretty simple all the way through, it was still a joy to see the sceneries and story unfold, though it did lose a bit of steam towards the end I felt.
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While on its surface very simple, it has that certain something that has kept me coming back and wanting to just play even when I'm done with all my daily and weekly quests and progress has halted until I wait for those things to refresh. I did get very into Hearthstone when that first launched, and seeing the next project from Ben Brode et al be a good one definitely makes me happy.
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I've never been a die-hard fan of point & click adventure games, but somehow throughout the last few years I've ended up playing quite a few of them. The reasons most of them have for sticking are usually a combination of a story that's compelling enough to want to see through and puzzles that feel satisfying to solve.
Having said that, the plot in the previous Monkey Island games (of which I've played all) didn't really stick out in my memory at all. I could remember some vague things, like the characters and their broad characterizations, but as far as the events of the previous games go, it's all blank. And maybe that's ok.
The story this game tries to tell had me feeling kind of bummed out at the end of it, but after reflecting on it for some time I've come to appreciate just a tiny bit more.
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Due to the nature of the type of game this is, it lives and dies by the quality of the writing and the story it's telling. While it mostly worked for me, my interest for both the characters and the plot tapered off somewhere after the midway point.
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