Gamescom

As the games industry continues to desiccate, Gamescom has become the go-to event for the industry (the “Games Awards” is really the go-to online consumer event, and maybe various PAX are the go-to in-person consumer events). Last night they had their broadcast opening helmed by Jeff Keighley, the Ryan Seacrest of the gaming world.

I don’t know if the games industry knows what to do with itself any more, or if Gamescom just happens at a weird point in the year, but this opening was extremely lackluster for me. The event took on the air of “younger sibling to the Games Awards”: it was all trailers and a few talking-head segues interspersed with Jeff trying to look personable while blasting through content, and this broadcast’s sidekick Eefje “Sjokz” Depoortere (say it five times fast) got saddled with the unenviable job of cracking jokes to the kind of crowd that makes it a point not to laugh.

One segment which stood out to me — and which I see as a symptom of a greater illness in the industry that I can’t quite articulate right now — was something said by Max Spielberg (FuzzyBot Studios) during the presentation of the game Lynked: Banner of the Spark, which he described as a “co-op action hack ‘n slash with a bit of roguelike town building elements…[a] cozy yet highly kinetic action game”. I swear he hit every single tag you’d see across all titles on Steam right now. Is this how games are built these days? It feels like he walked in to the office one day with a checklist of buzzwords that had to be translated into gameplay features, and they built the game based on that. The game itself didn’t look any more coherent, which just makes me more steadfast in my appraisal.

Sadly, every game seemed like a zombie shooter horror game, a Souls-like, some kind of anime-centric game, or a team-based shooter. Of course, the Big Wags were Civ 7, which is the same game they’ve been making since Civ 1, just prettier, and the return of Peter “couldn’t even get a word out before people were slagging him online” Molyneaux showing off his new god-game Masters of Albion. Dune: Awakening had a block of time for themselves and the gameplay looked cool in the way cultivated sizzle-reels look cool, but this is going to be too much of a group-focused affair despite the boilerplate reassurances from FuckCom FunCom that sure, you can play solo, so I’m giving everyone permission that if you ever see me playing it, you are legally allowed to slap me.

Throughout all of this, the only highlights for me were the Indiana Jones trailer, and the announcement of Secret Level. I love the Uncharted series, and since Uncharted pays homage to Indy, it only makes sense that Indy returns the favor. I read an article at Ars Technica which talked with the developers about how they put aside their usual focus on gunplay and focused on all of the non-shooting parts first and foremost, and that really spoke to me. Secret Level, on the other hand, is an answer to “what if the people who make the most awesome game cut-scenes got to make actual stories about those games?” which is something that I think we have all been clamoring for throughout the years.

Guild Wars 2: Janthir Wilds

Guild Wars 2 is without a doubt one of my top 3 favorite MMOs of all time. It’s flexible and mostly uncomplicated, and the visuals hold up to this day. It’s one of the only games that I own that I always buy expansions for, so the latest, Janthir Wilds, is no exception. I jumped in yesterday when the expansion launched — as someone online put it, with no down-time to do so — and the starting zone was packed. It was next to impossible to see NPC targets to talk to so I just inserted myself into any crowd I saw and spammed “F” until I got the ball rolling.

I won’t go into any spoilers, but the opening of this expansion is not doing it for me, to the point where it’s jeopardizing my will to press on. Once in Janthir, the game sets us on a course of mindless busy-work as we get to know the Kodan, the bear-people who we are there to court. While I appreciate the focus on “soft power” narrative, it’s feels like ANet is front-loading us with features that they have created throughout the past few expansions like mount gets (which was simple), new weapon skills, and mastery tracks. Aside from the free mount, I don’t give a rats ass about the new spear weapon, and am very salty about having to spend what few mastery points I’ve already earned to learn it before I can continue the story. Now I’m stuck in the Kodan village, forced to participate in “someone at ANet’s favorite mechanics” to earn the mastery XP I need to be able to spend my measly 2 points on a new weapon skill I am not remotely interested in. The only way I can stomach this right now is if I can find a way out of the village to go beat up local beasts in the hope of getting XP, but because of the way I’ve been playing GW2 over the years I feel that I am woefully under-geared for this point in the story, as it takes me forever to beat down enemies in the world.

Star Citizen Holding Pattern

I’ve jumped into the test servers for the 3.24 patch a few times now, and I’d like to jump into the game and play more, but this is a case where, being a test server, the progress isn’t going to “keep” and I’m going to have to do everything all over again on live. This is a problematic feeling because A) I should get in there, test, and report, and B) the entire purpose of Star Citizen right now is to repeat activities until the next patch, where some/much/most/all progress is wiped and we’re forced to begin again. I’ve played with the new inventory kiosks, worked with the freight elevators, and have done a few of the new cargo hauling missions. Everything seems “off” in their own special ways and while CIG is addressing some concerns raised by players, I don’t think we’re going to get a sea-change in any of them before the patch is pushed to the public servers. I’ve been around this block enough times that I’m used to it, but I’ve been around this block enough times that I’m starting to slide off the game sooner due to the glacial pace of “making things right” with every feature that seems perpetually stuck in “tier-0” status. I believe that CIG will get things sorted someday, but I also believe the Sun will implode someday, too.

MyDU

I have uninstalled this and removed all Dockerized traces of it from my computer. It’s a complete dumpster fire.