THE HIGHS
Samuel Roberts: Batman returnsArkham Knight returns to PC
at the end of October, a mere four months after its original release date! To be fair, post-interim patch it’s running reasonably well on PC, although getting a consistent 60fps at 1080p with my 780 on high settings seems out of the question. It’s going to be interesting to see how it reviews with a few months passing since the console version—I think some reviewers were too forgiving towards the dreadful Batmobile stealth sections, for example, which threatened to ruin large chunks of the game and made this overall a less well-structured experience than City or Asylum was.
Where it makes up for that is sidequest design, which is mostly excellent, and the experience of being Batman in an open world that looks this good. I’m particularly excited about getting into the DLC, which has so far not been released on PC at all—driving the Tumbler from the Nolan films around that city is going to feel amazing.
Tom Senior: Meta criticPrepare your chin for stroking, because the latest release from The Stanley Parable's Davey Wreden is the chin-strokiest game of the week, month, and perhaps year. In
The Beginner’s Guide Wreden's cheery narration guides you through a series of prototype games created by an invented designer called "Coda". The prototypes are primitive, but Wreden's explanations give meaning to the recurring motifs that keep popping throughout Coda's body of work.
It's a primarily a character study, but it's also a game about the power of criticism. The critic, Wreden in this case, curates Coda's work for you, giving meaning to Coda's odd use of lamp posts and door puzzles, and spinning an otherwise impenetrable series of Source experiments into something rich and emotionally affecting. Is it the meaning that Coda intended? Considering the fact that Coda is Wreden's creation, how does it scan as an autobiographical work about the loneliness of the creative process?
Hmmm!
Chris Livingston: The game in the floodLast week
I griped a bit about The Flame in the Flood, a stylish survival roguelite in Early Access that ultimately felt too difficult. The issue I had wasn't that the world was a perilous place, but that the peril didn't seem to care if I'd only been in the world for just a few seconds. I found that the moment I started my journey I was already facing dangers, mostly wolves, that I'd simply not been given the chance to prepare for.
It appears others felt the same way, and developer The Molasses Flood was listening to their players. They
issued a patch that, among other things, keeps wolves from spawning at the first few locations the player visits. I played a game post-patch, and I think it's greatly improved the experience. There are still plenty of risks and dangers, but now you can at least spend a little time preparing and exploring before being shredded by wolves. I even lived long enough to die of sepsis! Hooray! The Flame in the Flood was so unforgiving before the patch that I consider that a genuine improvement, and it's always great to see developers listening to their playerbase and considering changes based on the feedback they receive.
Tyler Wilde: Building gamesPeople are making cool stuff, in and out of games. Last month we showed you a
Portal-themed bedroom, and this week we got a look at a Canadian man’s
very own Vault-Tec door. Even more impressive, someone is
recreating Pokemon Red in Minecraft. I boggle at the process, but I’m sure it makes sense to Minecraft experts.
I have no grand thoughts about any of this, just that it’s great how creative and motivated gamers can be. We even beat
Dark Souls via Twitch chat, which is probably the most productive thing to ever happen in Twitch chat.
Andy Kelly: The joy of carballI’m late to the party here, but whatever. Cool people turn up to parties late, then drink all your beer. I pre-ordered Valve’s new Steam controller and got a free copy of
Rocket League, so I thought I’d give it a go. I don’t have much interest in cars or football, so I didn’t think I’d be into a game featuring both. But I was a damn fool to think that, ‘cause I’m already hooked, and I plan to spend this weekend playing the heck out of it.
Since finishing
Else Heart.Break() and Metal Gear Solid V—two big, lengthy open-world games—I’ve been looking for a palate cleanser, and I think this is it. It’s refreshing to have a game I can just dip into for a short period of time. The games I love, which are mainly RPGs and open-world games, are such incredible time-sinks that every time I sit down to play them, I know I need to be there for at least an hour. But Rocket League seems like something I can just stick on whenever I have a spare moment for instant, immediate fun.
James Davenport: PewDieHi, world!
Last night, Stephen Colbert interviewed PewDiePie on The Late Show and didn’t condescend. The unfortunate expectation when anyone outside the influence of video games talks about video games is that they’re going to mistreat the subject with septuagenarian lawnchair bleating, i.e., These video game kids need to get outside (but off my lawn), dagnabit!
Instead, Colbert poked fun at the absurdity of both sides and the gap in understanding, but without tossing moral weight one way or the other. Instead of dwelling on moot points,
PewDiePie taught Colbert some Swedish swear words. The interview as a whole wasn’t revelatory or particularly funny, but it sure was a relief to see Let’s Play culture respected instead of lampooned in the spotlight
THE LOWS
Tom Senior: A crafty diversionFor ages the Assassin’s Creed games have expanded laterally. Each iteration adds an extra layer of game to distract us from the familiar parkour systems and dodgy combat. Sometimes the distractions are great, like the high seas piracy of Black Flag. Sometimes you get a flaccid tower defense minigame. Last year Unity added loads of armour with RPG stats. Now Syndicate is adding
detailed crafting systems. Is this what Assassin’s Creed fans are asking for? Are these new systems fun, or are they bloat that helps the latest entry differentiate itself from the last, giving the series the illusion of evolution where there is none?
It’s hardly the designers’ fault. If Ubi have to push out an Assassin’s Creed game every year, sometimes two. Their environments are gorgeous, the stories enjoyably silly, but I yearn for the AC that pushes the series on to greater heights. It doesn’t feel like Syndicate will be the one to do it.
James Davenport: Mod huntThe Witcher 3 might be
one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played. After spending 60 or so hours with it, I was ready to be done, but CD Projekt is still plugging away on exciting expansions for the game. With the imminent release of Hearts of Stone, which I think
should be pretty cool, I reinstalled The Witcher 3 on my PC and, as I do when returning to games after a long absence, I looked to the modding community for ways to spruce up my comeback. My search was somewhat disheartening. While modders are undoubtedly doing what they can, the majority are UI tweaks and a few subtle FX mods.
I’m not sure what I expected, given that
CD Projekt scaled back on mod support from the release of the robust REDkit for The Witcher 2. Skyrim might have ruined me, forever elevating my expectations for mod support in open world games, and PC games in general. Returning to Skyrim year after year is welcomed with a font of new surprises, from small script tweaks to total conversions. As it stands in The Witcher 3, mod support is severely limited. So long as CD Projekt supports the game as it has been, it’ll be harder to complain, but four years from now, which PC games will be remembered more fondly? Incredible but unchanging experiences or those that give players the reins?
Samuel Roberts: No campaign for SiegeFor those who once considered the campaign to be part of the appeal behind the Rainbow Six series, I imagine the (unsurprising) news that Siege
won’t have a major single-player element outside of bots will be kind of disappointing.
I saw this coming, to be honest—and I’m personally fine with it, since Siege has clearly positioned itself as a competitive shooter from day one, but it does make me wonder if the days of a significant single-player element in multiplayer-focused games are numbered. There’s also the matter of price to consider. The assumption is that you always want to play online, which may or may not be correct—and do you think Siege will be worth paying $60/£50 for with just the multiplayer element? CS: GO is just $15/£12, after all.
Chris Livingston: Going Viral
My elderly German neighbor came over the other day to ask (well, demand) that I help her with a virus on her laptop. She was on the phone with tech support, and said she couldn't understand his accent, which I found ironic considering I often couldn't understand hers. I went into her house where I found her laptop shrieking, in a computerized voice, "YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED! YOUR DATA IS AT RISK! DO NOT USE THIS COMPUTER UNTIL THE VIRUS HAS BEEN REMOVED!" over and over again.
I shut it off and the tech support guy began walking me through the steps to restart it in safe mode and allow him remote access so he could remove the virus. I was following his instructions when a tiny bell went off in my head. I put him on hold, and asked my neighbor who exactly it was I was talking to. "Tech support," she said. I asked where she'd gotten their number. "On the screen," she told me. Yeah. The window that had popped up telling her that she had a virus had also given her a tech support number to call to fix the virus. How considerate!
I asked the man a bunch of questions about his tech support firm, and how his number had gotten on her screen when she'd never used their service or heard of his firm. I politely listened to his ridiculous replies, then informed him that he was a piece of human garbage for preying on the elderly, and hung up. Then I spent a good forty minutes explaining to my neighbor what a scam is, what malware is, and how if it was a real tech support number she would have been on hold for eleven hours before getting help. She seemed to eventually understand, and her nephew (well, let's hope he's her nephew and not a scammer wearing a nephew disguise) has taken the laptop away to be cleansed with fire.
Tyler Wilde: What did I ever do to video games?Undertale hurt my feelings. I don’t mean that it made me sad because the story is sad, I mean that I felt manipulated and then judged for something I never wanted to do. Undertale is a big meanie.
As always, someone has to do a low that’s actually a high, so here it is. Between Undertale and The Beginner’s Guide this week, I’ve had some great, upsetting experiences I’m not used to having in games. Undertale breaks the fourth wall, ignoring game conventions with a wink, but for more than just to freak me out Metal Gear style. It made me feel bad. The Beginner’s Guide, meanwhile, has no fourth wall to act as a barrier between me and its anxiety and depression.
And then along came a freaking
game about a lost dog. The last time I cried was watching Toy Story 3 in 2010 and I’m not about to break this streak, video games.
Andy Kelly: It’s good to talkAfter over a year away, I’ve returned to
Guild Wars 2. I find it to be a weirdly peaceful game, and running around completing heart quests is super relaxing. I don’t bother with PVP or dungeons: I’m all about the PVE. Of all the MMOs I’ve played, GW2 feels the most social. When a world event triggers, it’s cool to see everyone in the area run towards it, working together to complete the objective. But outside of those moments, people just keep to themselves.
I’ve always hated this in MMOs. You’re running around doing quests, and you bump into another player. You say hello, and you get nothing back. They’re lost in their own little worlds, playing it like it’s a single-player RPG. I always try and interact with people in MMOs, and I’ve met some nice people, but mostly everyone’s just really anti-social. Why don’t people wanna talk? Do I smell? Oh well. I’ll keep trying anyway. If you see a giant white cat running around in Guild Wars 2 trying and failing to talk to people, come say hello. I’ve got fangs, but I don’t bite.
