Gaming Roundup

So I wrapped up Fallout 4 a little while back; it had a good run, I explored a fair bit of the world, travelled with several companions and dug into their back stories, looted plentiful quantities of kitchen utensils… My interest was starting to wane a little, so I made a conscious effort to crack on with the main plot before burning out. As per my last post, by the time I started the last run of missions I was fully togged up with heavily upgraded power armour, a Gatling laser and all the buffs I could click on, so most of the fighting was a bit of a formality.

The various factions vying for control of The Commonwealth are interesting. There’s no clear “villain”, each is motivated by what they perceive to be the greater good, though that often has rather unpleasant consequences for others along the way. Ideally I would’ve liked to broker some sort of diplomatic solution between everyone in a sort of Rimmer-without-anger way, hitting them with a major leaflet campaign if they didn’t co-operate or perhaps a brief Lister-without-fear Bazookoid rampage if anyone objected to living together in peace. In the end, though, you have to pick a side, putting you in conflict with at least one other. As with New Vegas I wasn’t completely satisfied with how everything turned out, but all in all a thoroughly enjoyable addition to the series.

Next off the pile was XCOM 2. I adored the original UFO: Enemy Unknown back in the day (more than 20 years ago now, good grief) and made a bit of headway in the 2012 XCOM reboot, but it didn’t grab me in the same way, I never got around to finishing it. XCOM 2 got very positive reviews, though, so I thought I’d give it a go. Like Fallout 4 it generally keeps the fundamentals of the previous game and adds a few new shiny features, one of the most immediately obvious being much improved customisation options for your soldiers. At least half the fun in XCOM games is naming your squad for friends, colleagues, celebrities, politicians or the like; at one point Earth’s most valiant freedom fighters included Richard Ayoade, Ada Lovelace, Reginald Maudling and Sara Martins, though poor Reg went for a Burton when aliens attacked HQ.

As a turn-based game with outcomes decided by virtual dice there are shades of Blood Bowl to XCOM 2. It’s not quite so dependent on chance (for the full Blood Bowl experience you’d need to roll a d6 when reloading a weapon and on a 1 you’d drop it, or shoot yourself in the foot or something), but luck plays a slightly larger role than I really like in games. That can be offset to an extent by saving and reloading; not something I do habitually, but every now and again when the dice really take the piss I’m not averse to rewinding time. You can even give yourself an in-universe excuse, if you like, by claiming your squad leader is Tom Cruise from Edge of Tomorrow (aka Saving Private Groundhog).

I probably didn’t follow an optimum research path for upgrades, so found the difficulty curve a bit inconsistent; early missions seemed about spot on, but after a while I was coming up against heavily armoured aliens who my troops had trouble dealing with, setting up a vicious cycle of scraping through a mission with dead or injured troops, so needing to send rookies out on a subsequent mission who in turn had even more trouble with the aliens. Struggling through that phase and researching improved weapons and armour, things got much easier in the later phase of the game, and missions didn’t hinge so much on the success or failure of one or two actions. The final mission dragged on a bit but I did see it through to completion, more than I managed with its predecessor.

Between battles with aliens, there was also the open beta of The Division. Melmoth suggested giving it a look so we had a bit of a wander around the desolated streets of New York, and rather fun it was too (at least as fun as plague-ravaged cities get). There were flashes of the late not-particularly-lamented Hellgate: London, hints of the crouching-behind-low-walls multiplayer mode of Mass Effect 3 and touches of APB (fun cosmetic customisation options, if not quite up to APB’s full editing suite, but thankfully rather more to do). Perhaps the closest parallel was Defiance, and in our very limited experience of The Division it was just as easy to quickly group up and fast travel to the same location for team-up type action, a rather positive sign. I’m not sure about its longevity, but with nothing else really grabbing me game-wise at the moment I’ll probably grab it at release for a bit of shootin’ n’ lootin’.

All the world's an RPG

I’ve been having a splendid old time in Fallout 4 for the past month, the first game that’s grabbed me for multi-hour sessions for a while. I haven’t finished it yet (no spoilers!), but I do find my attitude and play style evolve somewhat over the course of an RPG; with apologies to a certain obscure playwright:

All the world’s an RPG and all the men and women merely NPCs, and the player in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

At first, the infant, mewling and puking, grateful even for a rusty pistol or a single shotgun shell, picking clean the ruins of every tin can and plastic fork.

Then, the innocent, faced with new people, talking even to generic townsperson, exploring every branch of the dialogue tree, listening to every reply.

And then the lover, taking care to select only the actions that your companion Likes, whether hacking terminals, helping the Minutemen, or necking every bottle of vodka you find.

Then a soldier, furnished now with weapons and armour, though not so fine to ignore fallen opponents who yield useful ammunition and occasional upgrades, willing to use an occasional Stimpack or jolt of Psycho in a fierce fight.

And then the justice, quick now to judge, with subtitles turned on to skip through conversation faster; place the square upon the map, quick now, the reasons matter not as long as there’s XP at the end of it.

The sixth age shifts into the lean and slippered Powered Armour pantaloon, and the side quests fall by the wayside, careful tending of each settlement no longer a concern, loot an encumbrance; “A silver watch with mere emeralds? Pshaw, I stoop only for gold and diamonds.”

Last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, a final rush through the final story missions popping Stimpacks like Tic Tacs, sans caution, sans pause, sans everything to oblivion… until the DLC hits.