July Update: There's Only One?! (Patreon)

Hey team!

A Single Video

So right after saying "maybe a video every week is too ambitious, let's treat two a month as the floor" I went and released only one video in July: the (recently-retitled) adventure games about jesus. There's no grand reason for this: there's the same mild burnout of living through ~3 apocalypses at once, the same wrestling with slightly higher ambitions with some videos, the same occasional scrapping of scripts that aren't as interesting as I thought they'd be. No single one of these has been more pronounced recently, but they seem to have converged into a less productive month.

I'm not suuuuuper sweating it? No one but me is expecting more than the one video per month the Patreon promises, and I'm still happy with what I'm putting out. The nagging voice that says "always be maximum productive" is there, but possible to ignore.

Anyway, got some good stuff in the works! I've paused the semiotics of "cuck" video to work on a small collab with RagnarRox which will be up on his channel sometime in the next couple months. Hoping to get that done this weekend, then I'm back on my usual bullshit.

AAA

So after many months of using my Sick Gaming PC to play indie games that hadn't come out/played like crap on Mac, I've finally started, uh... playing AAA games? Which is a thing? I hadn't done? Since around 2002?

Like, occasionally, upon getting a new computer, I could play games from 6 years ago that had finally gotten Mac ports, i.e. Portal, years after all the best reveals had been spoiled by The Discourse. But, for the most part, expensive, high-polish releases have just... not been part of my life since high school. And, even then, my access was limited by what my parents were willing to buy and what would run on my still-somewhat-mediocre PC. But I was able to play Half Life and Deus Ex and Grim Fandango if I could ignore the cutscenes stuttering!

But here are some quick-takes on the cool stuff that's come out in the last few years that I am finally getting to:

Doom 2016: Mostly agree with Errant Signal's take that the gameplay is very fun but also kinda samey. Was also disappointed that the player character's anarchic disregard for the seriousness of the plot became less pronounced as the story continued.  And, after Dusk and Project Warlock, Doom's ostensibly-frenetic arena fights honestly felt a little slow. On the flipside, I'd forgotten how compelling a plot can be when revealed piecemeal! Getting bits and pieces of The Doomslayer's lore from audiologs and codex entries made what was, in retrospect, a very simple story feel alive and intriguing. (Also found it easier to take the plot seriously when the game made it clear I didn't have to.) And I will face God and walk backwards into Hell if the music there is this good.

Bulletstorm: I'm the heretic who thinks Painkiller is not actually that good? I played it a couple months ago - bless you, Sick Gaming PC - and it was... fine, I guess? So I didn't go into Bulletstorm with the sense of pedigree everyone else did. And I know I'm being Your Dad right now and saying something everyone complained about 15 years ago, but the big spectacle sequences just kinda feel like pointing a reticule around a cutscene? Like, am I playing Rebel Assault? Whatever. The game is at least colorful, many of the weapons are really creative, and the various ways you can link the weapons, the leash, the kick, and the environment together are pretty fun! Just feels like the game is so terrified of you getting bored that it never lets you properly sit and explore its broad and enjoyable possibility space, constantly pulling you into some gimmick sequence or refocusing on the fairly execrable story with its exhausting sense of "humor." I kinda want some indie dev to take all the good ideas contained herein, cut out all the chaff, and make something fun and distilled.

Titanfall 2: Titanfall 2 has a somewhat similar problem as Bulletstorm in that it has pretty fun mechanics but mixes things up so frequently you never really feel like you get good at any of them. But it outshines Bulletstorm in several key areas: the mechanics are just more in-the-moment fun, the aesthetics are just plain prettier, and the story is genuinely good. I still wish it was less of an amusement park ride pulling you towards the next thing and would let me really dig into its various weapons and mechanics, though I guess that's what the multiplayer is for. But there were some real shining moments in this one.

Prey: This is the one I'm currently playing, and, hoo boy, I am in love with Prey. The only immersive sim I've sunk more than an hour into before is Deus Ex, which I've always more respected than loved, so Prey is benefiting from me not just falling for the game but being the conduit by which I fall for an entire genre. And I could talk about the story, the themes, the creative gameplay, the worldbuilding, the writing - which are all great - but, honestly, what's won me over is just the feeling of being in a place. After a bunch of shooters where environments are really just backdrops for action, meant to be pretty but not dwelt upon, Prey's sense of being somewhere, of Talos I as a space with people and stories and history, and of myself as an embodied individual, full of fiddly little mechanics to make things just a little more real, is what's getting me. Everyone says it falls off in the final third, which I'm not looking forward to, but I got the deluxe edition so hopefully I will enjoy Mooncrash when and if I need to wash a disappointing finale out of my mouth.

That's all the big name stuff so far! I've got Control, Wolfenstein: The New Order, and Jedi Fallen Order lined up for after Prey, and Sekiro and Nier: Automata down the line. If there are any other standout AAA things from the last 5ish years you think I should sink my teeth into, post them in comments!

-I