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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Over the past month or so, I played and finished the infamous, and infamously dense, Japanese visual novel Umineko: When Seagulls Cry. It's too early to call, but this might be one of my favourite stories I've ever experienced; it is also very very difficult to recommend.
Part of that is the Outer Wilds effect. I read Umineko with no spoilers, knowing nothing about its premise except that it was a very long, very interesting mystery story, and that its themes were somewhat similar to Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out movie (this is the recommendation that finally got me to pick it up). This description occludes enough of the game's premise to be essentially wrong, but I wouldn't have had it any other way: a huge part of the joy of the game is not only the twists and turns of its central mystery, but the way its premise explodes and unravels over its monstrous runtime, until by the end, the story is barely recognizable. Thus to talk about Umineko's themes, its story, and its ideas is, to some extent, to deprive a future reader of the joy of experiencing all the wild twists and turns for themselves. I will talk a little bit about those things below, but before then, allow me to give the best, most spoiler-free recommendation of this story that I can.
Umineko is a visual novel that is absolutely full of tropey otaku bullshit. Our main perspective character, multiple times in the very first chapter, attempts to grope his teenage cousin and their family maid; this is played for a joke both times; that's some of the least of the gross stuff that happens in this novel. It's also terribly paced, and the prose and dialogue are often embarrassingly clunky. However it also features some of the best character writing I've ever seen: depictions of trauma, abuse, neurodivergence, and gendered violence that were so realistic, so grounded, and so well handled, that I spent cumulatively several hours of this story crying so hard it made my chest hurt. If the pacing is awful, every scene is nonetheless absolutely essential; more than any story I've read, author Ryukushi07 seemed to read my mind as I theorized about the game's many puzzles and questions, so that the protagonists and I were incredibly in sync, and he often came to realizations, or came up with theories, at nearly the exact moment I did. Finally the game's exploration of its fascinating themes — themes which it would be a spoiler to even list out — is so comprehensive and complete that I doubt I will be able to get anything new out of the many, many works of art that attempt to tread similar ground going forward. If you can stomach the weebery (which does, ultimately, all have a point), and if you're used to reading stories with very little player interaction (like, you know, books) and if you're a fan of the mystery genre, Umineko is, in my opinion, an absolute must-read. Even if it takes you 100+ hours. I would just recommend looking up mods for the game, so that you can use better sprites and get the QoL features that aren't available in the Steam version.
Umineko Spoilers
In all honesty, this thing is still sinking in, and I don't really have a good handle on my thoughts on it yet. Might not, until I do a second read-through, or maybe watch someone else play it. Some scattered thoughts, though:
I was absolutely shocked that the writer had the balls to, in a visual novel released in the 2000s, make the main female character, who has multiple romantic relationships with other cast members, a trans woman, and to only reveal this fact 7/8ths of the way into the novel, and to make her experience with her gender, her identity, and even her reproductive trauma, so essential the story. But Sayo isn't alone among the female cast in being an extraordinarily well-written character with tons of hidden depth: in fact all the women are portrayed with similar care, are all both terribly broken and totally sympathetic. While it does have some problems on that front (some of which probably stem from the game's refusal to moralize at any point) Umineko might be the most feminist story I've ever read; certainly it's the most feminist story I've read to be written by a man. The relationships between Ange and Eva, and between Rosa and Maria, reminded me of my own childhood, and my own relationships with my family, in the best and worst ways. This level of depth is achieved by replaying the murder mystery over and over, of course, and focusing on different characters each time; it wouldn't be possible in a traditional mystery film or novel — still, that every character (except a couple of the men: Krauss, Ghoda, George) is so well developed, and so essential both narratively and thematically, is an astonishing feat.
I really loved all the metaficitional elements of the story, and the way that, much like the base fiction layer, these elements challenged the player to decide whether they were really magical or were simply metaphors for some more grounded, authorial truth. The seemingly half-dozen layers of narrative frames reminded me of House of Leaves — in terms of how difficult it was at certain points to keep track of everything — but really their function is more Brechtian; almost explicitly so, as there are multiple scenes in a theatre, and a witch of theatregoing, who invite other characters to observe the events of the story and consider not just what's happening but what it represents.
I didn't really like any of the magical battles until chs. 6 and 7; those later chapters I felt were paced much better, and the magical battles were easier to interpret as extensions of the world's rules, whereas the fights in the first half of the story tended to really drag and often were much harder to parse. Now that I know the logic of how the battles work, I wonder whether my opinion on this would change on reread.
I also didn't like the bits in chapter 5 where the game's writer Ryukushi essentially turned to camera and said, "hey! here are the rules of this world! here's how to interpret certain scenes! trust me, I do have a plan, this isn't random bullshit, it's all solvable." I was already operating under the assumption that it was, Ryukushi, and I trusted you and your storytelling, so when you told me "you have to love and trust the author and not stop thinking or else the story won't mean anything," it just felt condescending and desperate, especially since chapter 5 was in my experience, the worst chapter in the game, and it used the rules in an inconsistent and confusing way (to be fair there was a justification for it, but the novel almost filtered me here. No amount of "well but it was supposed to be a confusing and jarring experience" will suddenly make me switch over to enjoying it, especially when the pacing is how it is).
In general there's a lot, including the solutions to many of the game's locked room mysteries, that's left ambiguous. I like this from a thematic perspective, but not from a plot perspective; I'd have liked to have the solutions for at least eps. 1-4 laid out in a more clear way, though I understand why Ryukushi chose not to (for what its worth, I respect this decision a lot less considering he flip-flopped and explained everything in the manga adaptation). Still, it's weird how a lot of the really fantastic character and thematic work here is subtextual, but then dialogues scenes will have their subtext aggressively over-explained, as with the comical scene in chapter 1 where it's repeated several times in narration that "THEREFORE, MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, [X CHARACTER] NEEDED A LOT OF MONEY, RIGHT NOW" after that information had already been conveyed through some very elegant and engaging dialogue. In some respects this story definitely needs to trust the reader more; I understand that it was originally released serially, and so a lot of the scenes of being obvious were probably built as explicit responses to the Japanese 2channers trying to "solve" the game as it came out.
Overall, Umineko is one of those experiences that has instantly rendered all of my WIP drafts worthless, because of the huge impact it's had on the way I think about writing in genereal and some of the themes I aim to explore in specific. Plus, the music, is, like, some of the best I've ever heard in a game. God. I'm still kind of in a recovery period, writing this now having finished the VN over a day ago, just not really capable of thinking about much of anything, reading or playing much of anything. What an experience. I suspect that this past month of my life will, from here on out, be "the Umineko month."
As a palette cleanser, I chased with the indie game Unpacking, which is a classic cozy game about emptying boxes and organizing your room as you move from your childhood home, to your college dorm, to your first apartment and so on. It's a pleasant, short experience, without any real challenge, which is just what I need right about now. I think what I'd heard about the game in the past is that it's about breaking up with your shitty boyfriend, which frankly kinda scared me off of it, but actually it's more about growing up, and it turns out to be more of a queer game in the end, which was a pleasant surprise. And, to be honest, this kind of cleaning and organizing stuff is very relaxing to me in real life. I kind of like these games that invent fictional chores for you to do because I don't always have enough chores in my real life — especially since for the past couple weeks most of the ladies I live with have been away on various trips.
I'm still playing Outer Worlds. For me it is almost like Fallout 3 in space and much nicer graphics. I like the setting, I like how different the game is - it is all about kinda slavery, owning of people and treting them like resources - I hate that and it's great to play and stand against this system. But you can also choose to go with it, not just against it.
The game can be played in variohs ways, it seems I went speech/lockpick/hack way, as even when I have to fight here and there, I can exploit dialogues, consoles and take things from containers, often times from those someone else owns wink. But it seems it can be played weapons first as well.
The downsides of the game are the weapons, probably. Or lack-there-of, I might say. There are a few weapons to choose from and they just get dropped as "next gen" when you level up with the same models and the same behaviour. There are quite a lot unique ones though - unique effects that you can't get normally. The good thing is you can upgrade your favorite weapon as you level up (for hefty price), so it stays relevant throughout the game. There are also really hnique weapons that look unique and have really weird effects - devs went out of town with those.
The same applies for armor.
What is unique about this game is the world and characters amd setting. Apart from that it is RPG as Fallout 3 is, but I'd say this one is a but deeper and has more conversations and deeper quests, even though not that many probably.
I got to point of no return, then finished first DLC, going through second one and then I will go for the finish. I reckon I'm 60 hours in with another 10 before me.
I'm playing Okami HD for the PS3, using the RPCS3 emulator on mac, it woks flawlessly and I find it way more comfortable to use than having to turn a Play Station to play it.
I'm in awe of how beautiful the art of this game is, the many mechanics and interactions with the NPCs completely worth the game of the year award even if it was the least commercially successful winner of a game of the year award.
Finally finished Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure (Steam). This is a JRPG, the fifth entry in the long-running, all-connected, like 13-games series. Took me almost 100hrs over the last six months (took lots of long breaks). I didn't go full completionist, but I had a guide and was playing in the direction. Which definitely took up a lot of time. The last dungeon alone took me several hours.
Which means I've started a replay of the next entry, Trails of Cold Steel. Played it on my Vita back in the day, but I want to play them in proper story-order. Technically, "Azure" and the game before it take place roughly at the same time as "Cold Steel" 1 and 2, just different locations in the world, but the events that happen in either arc are often related and even sometimes outright references. Sometimes characters from one game and location show up in other games. So here's looking at another probably 100hr playthrough. Maybe I'll finish it early next year.
I think this might be my new favorite series, displacing Final Fantasy. The story, the world, the lore are just expansive in a way that Final Fantasy isn't. All the mainline FFs are separate games from each, after all (Maybe FFXI and XIV as long-running MMOs are as big). But in the Legend of Heroes "Trails" series? It's all one gigantic, continent spanning, multi-year, story of political intrigue, war, and unlikely heroes. And it's not afraid to get into some darker topics (aside from war) that one would find in a "real" world." Classism, Drugs, human trafficking, human experimentation, child abuse and prostitution, etc. The game is full of bright colors and anime characters, but it's a gritty, messy, fucked-up world, just like ours. And I appreciate when games acknowledge that.
I've finished High on Life. Having gone through the whole game, I'd say I enjoyed the stupid humor and relentless fourth wall breaking more often than not ("I see you have over 90 hours in Rocket League, you must really love autosports," a boss said at some point, paraphrasing. "Spooky right? I'm doing a Psycho Mantis. I love Metal Gear. Speaking of which, a shame what Konami did to Kojima.") I even watched the entire crappy 90s horror movie they bundled with the game. The platforming was fine, but way too easy for me! I was a little disappointed that essentially no new levels were introduced after I wrote my first impressions; instead, you revisit the same levels multiple times for multiple bounties, with extra areas getting added but not great variety. The combat could also have used more variety, or maybe that's just my dislike of FPS finally surfacing.
We also reached the end of Big Walk (we did not 100% the game yet; we need 12 more noses, which thanks to some careful planning are all in a contiguous region in the east and southeast, so we're hoping to get through it quickly). In general it has been a lot of fun. I'd say peak chaos was doing the extremely distant four telescope puzzle with only two walkie talkies, but we're good enough at the game that even the purple noses haven't been too time consuming. The final section of the game, which I will not spoil, was fantastic! Everyone should go through it, what a genius game design idea.
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I wanted so much to play Destiny 2 on my Steam Deck that I made a headless desktop with spare parts, just to stream it to the Deck.
So it runs flawlessly, all's good, except that the steam input mapping is completely broken. Actually I'm not sure if it's buggy of it's a side-effect of some over-zealous anti-cheat feature, but the fact is that I cannot enable the gyro and rebind back buttons. Actually it looks like only the first customization is applied, and all subsequent changes are rolled back to their default values. And it's pissing me off so much that I'll probably uninstall it.
It also doesn't help that I'm playing through the Lightfall campaign, with its giant, ugly, and desperately empty retro-futuristic city that absolutely makes no sense. What a disappointment after The Witch Queen.
In other, better, news I've been giving a more solid try to Eternal Strands.
It's a mix of Breath of the Wild, Monster Hunter, and Shadow of the Colossus, with the expedition loop of a diluted extraction-shooter. Each expedition can be focused on gathering materials, finishing a quest, or just chilling while trying to find lore elements or crafting recipes. I like this loop, I can just play for 20 minutes and definitely make some progress. The combat is a bit hard to manage, as you need to juggle between several spells, your bow, your shield+sword, and a two-hands weapon. Playing with KBM make that easier. Back at your camp you can chat with your super-friendly-and/or-overly-anxious teammates and spend resources to improve the various crafting stations. So far so good, it's the kind of game I expected and I'm enjoying it. Thank you @xavdid for the recommendation :)
Steam Deck note: don't. The game is demanding, and while it's not graphically impressive, it's pretty enough and deserves to be played with a decent framerate.