#gud @ maps Real Pro Hours )

[itsbenedict]

I didn’t post about everything I played this year, so here’s my opinions on the stuff I played that I didn’t make a rec post for:

Raging Loop 

Raging Loop is one of them twisty meta Zero Escape-y branching-path visual novels where an ensemble cast is trapped in a mysterious circumstance where people are dying gruesomely, and you have to find out what’s happening and stop it by looping a bunch. 

I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it, because... it tries to have its cake and eat it too with the supernatural elements. Clearly magic is real and has important impacts on the scenario, but then other parts are trickery you’re supposed to see through, and it’s entirely uninterested in cluing you in to how that trickery was accomplished. Not exactly a fair play mystery, in that regard- you have to kind of just be along for the ride, rather than try to figure it out.

That said, it’s a good ride- pretty strong character writing, and the central conceit of the Werewolf/Mafia-style murder scenario creates really interesting drama. It’s more concerned with making itself feel clever than letting the player feel clever, but it’s still well-paced and gripping and has a pretty decent resolution.

Detective Grimoire

I recommended Tangle Tower, the sequel, pretty strongly- and this one, while obviously a little rougher around the edges with the art and mechanics (the suspicion tracker system is a total dud; I didn’t even realize it existed until I realized I was missing an achievement for using it), it’s still pretty darn good. Really fun character designs and animations, fully-voiced, and a solid whodunit backing it all. Plus- while the two are more or less self-contained, the continuity threads with Tangle Tower raised some really interesting questions.

Contradiction - the all-video murder mystery

This one was pretty fun, largely on the strength of the actors. The main mechanic of interrogating people on evidence and using their own statements against each other was some good stuff, too. Definitely had that Phoenix Wright quality to the deductions, and Jenks is a really fun character. (Had a few points where progression was just linked to standing in a certain previously-abandoned area of the map where a clue was suddenly there for no reason, there- good thing it had a hint system.)

As a mystery, it could use a little work- most of what you end up finding out is sequel bait (for a sequel that never actually came together, unfortunately), and the actual whodunit is just sort of hiding in the cracks of all that. And... cornering the culprit just sort of happens out of nowhere once you’ve got your hands on the right piece of evidence, without much fanfare. You’re following up on leads like usual, you find a little lie in someone’s testimony, and then- oh, shit, they’re just confessing everything! Unlike all the previous times you questioned them and they were super evasive like everyone else! And then the game is over. 

All in all, it’s pretty meaty and entertaining and I’d recommend it, but unfortunately the creators have moved on to other things, so there’s not going to be any follow-up on the stuff it left unresolved.

Ikenfell

Ikenfell is a tightly-designed RPG about kids at a magic school, with Paper Mario-style action command mechanics and a battle system that makes a big deal out of careful positioning and movement, which was really enjoyable. The difficulty’s a little high (I recommend always always always speccing into max damage because killing things before they kill you is worth more than any amount of defense, speed doesn’t work, and healing is cheap), but I found it really satisfying.

There’s... something... off? About... I don’t know how to put it, it’s... doing that “yes, everyone is queer and mentally ill, deal with it” thing, which, sure, okay. But for a lot of them it’s such a background thing, like... half the playable cast is unambiguously nonbinary, but like... I don’t know if it’s trying to make some statement on how there are no rules to being NB and you can 100% perform a particular binary gender presentation but still count, or if they wrote the whole story and then changed the pronouns of some of the characters for Representation Points, or what. Probably the former? I dunno, it just feels weird. Maybe I’m just not woke enough to Get It.

(unrelatedly: why the heck is the official art they use everywhere so... off-model? none of them look like they do in-game- they look like the creator commissioned someone to draw a group shot with one reference image each and didn’t tell them anything about the characters. how much you wanna bet they commissioned a friend and it came out wrong but they were too polite to say “sorry, no, this is wrong, can you do it over?”)

Trails of Cold Steel IV

Hoo boy. It’s... not great, and it’s not great in a pretty predictable way for an even-numbered entry in the Trails series. It happens every time- first there’s a game in a new engine with new characters and a new world to explore, and it’s really nice and does interesting things... and then it ends on a cliffhanger, and then there’s a sequel game in the same engine with the same characters and the same world, reusing as many assets as possible. Also the League Of Generically Evil Anime Supervillains is there causing trouble for reasons they refuse to explain, and the plot is a storm of magicbabble and macguffin-chasing that makes little to no sense. 

Cold Steel IV is that for Cold Steel III, full stop. Welcome back to all the same places you visited last game, except this time there’s some stupid magic apocalypse happening (not that it stops you from taking the time to do random sidequests constantly, of course). The whole “oh, the evil curse mind controls people and that’s why they do stupid bullshit that’s in no one’s interest” plot point is leaned on super hard, and it’s just a big yawn the whole way through.

It’s still really fun, though, because the battle system remains really well-designed. (The same battle system that was just as fun in Cold Steel III, mind you, but it hasn’t gotten old.) And- though they’re struggling to square it with the dumb mind control apocalypse plot, the NPC dialogue continues to make the world feel believable and lived-in. They don’t slack on the parts that make Trails good- it’s just the parts that make Trails bad are making themselves more evident than ever.

did finally get to date Towa though so that’s a win

One Step From Eden

OSFE is... uh. It’s fucking hard is what it is. It’s sort of a deckbuilding roguelike, and there’s this combat that takes place on a grid, and- wait, it’s like Mega Man Battle Network, it’s exactly like Mega Man Battle Network. Man, I forgot about that, but the mechanical influence is extremely obvious. It’s MMBN meets Slay the Spire.

Except it’s super duper hard as hell, because unlike MMBN you can’t pause and swap out chips or anything- everything is just always happening so much, all at once, everywhere, and you have no recourse but to git gud and learn all the enemy patterns and the behavior of your own spells and develop the twitch reflexes necessary to not fucking die from all the shit that’s on the screen always.

(What’s the story? Uhhhh, there was some kind of magic apocalypse, and some anime girls are trying to reach a city for some reason that doesn’t really get explained ever. The game doesn’t really care to build its world at all- it’s all mechanics plus a little token character dialogue that doesn’t say much.)

The point is it’s really frickin’ hard but I am an epic pro gamer and I got ALL THE ACHIEVEMENTS, MOTHERFUCKER. If you’ve played it, I expect you to be really god damn impressed with me, okay???

A Short Hike

This one was really relaxing! It’s a platformer where you explore an Animal Crossing-y island of cartoon animal people, collecting mobility upgrades- but like, mainly it’s about straight chillin’. The flight controls are fun and there’s lots of little secrets to find and it’s just a nice time that doesn’t drag on too long. Not too much to say about this one.

Pokémon Sword

Ehhhhh.

I’m not here for the hot takes about how Dexit is good actually. Development hell happened, they had to make cuts for time, I get it. It’s disappointing and makes the game a little bit worse, but it’s not the end of the world.

Apart from that... perfectly serviceable? The Wild Area could’ve used a little more technical polish (as could most things in the game, really) but was a step in the right direction, giving the player a wider array of early-game team-building options than ever before. No HMs is good. Story and characters were kind of nothing, but that’s par for the course. “At least this time they’re not shoehorning in some kind of stupid evil-team-wants-legendary-pokemon-to-destroy-the-world apocalypse plot”, I thought to myself before they managed to shoehorn one in at the last minute with zero buildup- but, hey, beats wasting half the game on it.

It’s nothing special and it’s missing a lot of polish, but its problems are mainly due to being rushed, and presumably next gen they’ll be able to reuse a lot of the models and animations (maybe even improve the animations so they’re not so boring??? a man can dream) and make something interesting. SwSh seem like they were testing the waters for something else, and not taking too many chances in the meantime. 

(yo why would you sell all these cosmetic items and then turn them all off during gym battles, though) 

Hades

Hades is- oh, who am I kidding? Everyone knows Hades, it’s the game of the year, greatest thing since sliced bread, Supergiant are heroes, yada yada yada. I’ve played almost 300 hours of it and I’ve completed everything except all the Resources Director levels (currently a Sigma Wraith), it’s extremely fun and you don’t need me to tell you that.

Petal Crash

It was that thing the Paranatural creator helped on? It’s, uh. It’s a block-sliding puzzle game thing, sort of in a Puyo Puyo vein. It has fun character designs and some good dialogue, like you’d expect from Zack’s involvement, but it didn’t really leave an impression otherwise (besides how got dang infuriating some of its Turn Trial puzzles can be.) The story is... kinda heartwarming, kinda didactic, kinda childish, not especially deep or interesting. Hard for it to be, when it’s told through little bits of fluffy character dialogue that exist to set up a puzzle battle as quickly as possible. Not super recommended unless you really really like block-sliding puzzles.

Hollow Knight

Man, why’d I sleep on this for so long? It’s a metroidvania platformer with heavy Dark Souls inspiration, in terms of tone and difficulty and death mechanics and environmental storytelling. And it’s... apart from all that, just really good as a game, with tight controls and juicy movement and great animation. Progression is linked as much to mastery as it is to upgrades collected- I found myself in lategame areas facing down things that would’ve killed me ten times over at the start- not because I had the best gear, but because I’d learned the game’s language and understood how to move in ways that wouldn’t get me killed.

(Usually. Sometimes I’d walk into a room and sit on a bench and suddenly there’d be a boss fight and I’d get slaughtered. Ain’t that just the way it goes?)

Anyway, on top of all that it’s just charming as hell, with a really unique and well-realized world full of little bug people. I love how, like, your character is clearly some kind of eldritch abomination, but it’s small and cute and so everyone (besides enemies that attack you on sight because they’re possessed by some kinda evil mold) is like “awww, who’s this little guy? want some help, little guy?”

(except Zote, who is just an ass hole. i love him.)

[darkot]

You know what’s something that I think about a lot? That if there was a zombie apocalypse, artists would be the first ones left behind.

You’ve got doctors who can treat wounds and keep you healthy. You’ve got police officers and hunters who can defend you and get you food. There are mechanics who can keep your vehicles running. Fishermen can bring fish to the table. Farmers can grow crops.

What the fuck is an artist going to be able to contribute in a zombie apocalypse?

The Walking Dead put it nicely. “Art isn’t about survival. It’s transcendence. Being more than animals. Rising above.” That really stuck with me. While you can interpret many things from that quote, one thing that I derived from it is that, art is only useful in a peaceful society. In this age we live in, art serves to educate and entertain. It gives us reprieve from the mundanity of daily, modern life. It paves the way for more profound thought--for societal change. But when there is a lack of society, what place is there for it? Who will value that skill, and the life of the person in possession of it, over somebody who knows how to scavenge, shoot, or heal? You could argue that an academic artist could act the part of an architect. They could oversee the construction of buildings to keep people safe. But even then, they would not be valued until the re-establishment of society began.

An artists’ vision today helps the blind see and the numb feel. They help shape a more civilized civilization, by lessening our ignorance, so that the world produces less bad people.

An artists’ vision in this hypothetical zombie world would help rebuild society. They could create plans for houses and cities to keep us safe, and keep the bad people (and zombies) out.

In both scenarios, artists help defend us from monsters. The difference being that one monster wants you to hate and hurt, while the other monster wants to eat your face.

It can be argued that artists are simultaneously the most valuable and most easily disposable members of society. The world needs them. But they are the first to be sacrificed.

...

So, that’s a little insight into the weird shit my introverted brain thinks of.

I have been thinking too much lately though, as I always do. As much as I try to work on getting out of my own head, I somehow only end up digging deeper and deeper into it.

Er.. I should probably clarify that all that zombie apocalypse stuff isn’t what I’ve been thinking so deeply on. I mean yes, I thought about it, but that’s not what is really on my mind primarily.

I just.. I’m having trouble moving forward. it’s frightening. I have no trouble admitting that I’m terrified of what’s to come, because the further I go ahead, the more responsibility I take.

I’ve spent all these years hurting and healing.. Now that I’m fully recovered, I’m at a loss as to how to proceed. I’m having trouble believing in myself, and that’s holding me back from becoming who I need to become.

I have a test coming up and.. I don’t know. I’m paralyzed with fear, for some reason. Subconsciously, I’m playing out how it’s going to go over and over, and.. I just can’t have faith in myself to do well. Which is weird, because I’ve only gotten graded at above 90% for all of my assignments in this course. I know the material, so I’m fairly certain that this is just about not wanting things to change as I move on from where I’m at now.

Ughh.. fell asleep halfway through writing this.

Anyways, Overwatch season 3 ended yesterday. I ended the season at 3070, with a season high of 3348. I completed my original goal of making it to diamond near the beginning of the season, where I started off in platinum. However, my goal shifted to getting to master when I saw the very real possibility of that happening. I made it more than halfway there--accumulating 348/500 of the points necessary to rank up. But alas, t’was not meant to be this season. I’m okay with that now, upon reflection, and once I realized that I met my original goal. However, along the way it was extremely frustrating. Just in the past week, I ran into a troll on my team who just kept throwing themselves off the map the entire game, a blatant aimbotter on the other team, and had internet issues that d/c’d me from two games. Between all of those things, I lost about 200 SR (I was already down to 3100-ish at this point. I started climbing again, but these were the last nails in the coffin marked “you are not getting master this season.”)

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this. Well, that may go without saying, since I do a lot of thinking about everything. But.. I don’t know. Overwatch is an amazing game. I love it to death. It is by far the best FPS that I have ever played. However, I can’t help but feel like I’m developing a useless skill here. More useless than art in a zombie apocalypse.

I had made a silent vow to myself that I was going to slow down on playing the game once I hit diamond, but I didn’t follow through with that. I really want to make it to master. I honestly believe that I play at a master level, when going back and analyzing my game play, and I’ve shown definite potential to climb to that rank in this season. 

As much as I enjoy playing this game, the grind is a real bitch. It’s got me thinking about what really matters, and as much as I’d like this achievement.. in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t do me any good. I told myself that I’d NEVER get into professional gaming (not that this is professional gaming, but it’s getting into that far more serious realm), because the time commitment is too large for the amount of earnings, and it is too repetitive of a thing for me to stay interested in it. I’d have to constantly sink hundreds upon hundreds of hours into a game “gittin’ gud” at it, in order to keep my skills sharp and better than my competition. If there is any game I’d be willing to do that for, it is Overwatch (or maybe Smash Bros.), because of its immense depth and variety of characters. But even with Overwatch, I would get bored of that so insanely quickly. I’ve played less than 100 hours this season, and I got burnt out at a point or two. 

To put things in perspective, who are the real “losers” in this situation? The pros, who get to play this game all day and be the best, but only make a moderate amount? Or the devs who don’t get to play their own game very much, and aren’t the best at it, but make infinitely more money? A pro can say to a dev that he’s better at the game than him, but the dev can say to the pro that he can’t hear him from the third floor of his mansion.

That’s more or less how I’m looking at things at this point. I could lifelessly devote all of my time to this game and become one of the best players of it. I could have that achievement of saying that I’m in the top 10,000 players in the Americas. But, my time would be much better spent honing a skill for my career. I could make a game of my own and be further off than if I made it to the top of the leaderboards in this game.

I’m still going to play it because of how much I enjoy it. But I don’t think I’ll continue to take it quite as seriously. I had started connecting part of my self worth onto wether I made it to master or not. I wanted to prove to myself that I could get there if I really tried. I have more important things to take care of, though. 

An artist that I follow made a post on here of them hitting master, and saying that they were glad that they could put down this, as they put it, “time vampire.” And it’s true. That would essentially be what I’d do if I made it there. I’d have gotten that achievement under my belt, and wouldn’t devote nearly as much of my time to the game after that. If I get to master next season playing semi-casually, then cool. If not, that’s fine too. I’ve already made it to the highest rank that I can get to, where I can’t fall out of it. I'll always be diamond, but I could lose my master title very easily. Just takes one bad game after making it there to lose it, and a few more to get you far enough away from it that you really have to fight for it again.

At the very least, master or not, I have absolutely ZERO intention of trying to reach grandmaster. Fuck. That. As much as I think I’d enjoy that level of play, where everyone is coordinated and knows what they’re doing, the grind to get there would literally drive me insane (plus, I don’t think my own gameplay is at a grandmaster level to be honest). If I ever go back on that and start making my way to GM, I want someone to take a screenshot of this, print it out, roll the paper up, and slap me in the face with it.

There’s more to talk about. I started playing Fire Emblem: Heroes the other day. Watched Stranger Things finally. The Dragons of Ashfall release comes out for AQ3D tomorrow. But, I don’t feel like typing all of that up right now. Maybe tomorrow.

I’m really not sure what to do right now, though. It’s 3:30am. I guess I’ll try going back to sleep, but since I woke up not too long ago, I don’t know if I’ll be able to?

OH GOD, WHAT IF I CAN NEVER SLEEP AGAIN!?

Guess we’ll find out, haha.