Another week has passed. How time flies.
I can't really expect to not get new games to my backlog. It's usually 1-2 new ones per week, so if I want to get the counts down a meager 3 reviews per week just won't do. Still, it's better than none I suppose, and the numbers have gone down, even if only just a bit.
Me covering a recent and popular game here? What is this? Still, I played quite many Teamfight Tactics games over the past few days, and I figured there's no excuse as to why it wouldn't qualify.
Teamfight Tactics (or TFT for short) is a separate game in the League of Legends universe and client, probably created due to the huge popularity of the Dota 2 Auto Chess mod. (Which, as I hear, isn't original either, but based off of some already existing but not so well known game.)
It's not a very complicated game. It's an 8-player FFA that happens in 1v1 rounds until the last person is alive. Between each round you get some money and a selection of 5 champions with increasing prices as the rounds go on. You buy some of those champions, deploy them on the battlefield, try to gather 3-of-a-kind duplicates to combine and power them up, and try to get various numbers of role duplicates that also give bonuses. Refresh your pool of 5 for a small sum if you don't get what you like, or spend to level up yourself to deploy more champions. There also exist combinable items from minion rounds and some champion draft rounds. Otherwise, each round you're pit against another player, and your champions battle it out to the death without any further input from you.
Honestly, it's simple but fun and fast enough. I have just two main problems with it.
For one, it just doesn't have enough depth. You don't have a lot of choices to make, and you're eventually going to settle into some technique(s), even if the choice of technique is influenced by what champions you're given and, if you manage to track that, what your opponents are building. Very fine details aside, it stops being a game of skill, but rather just repeating the same few sets and combinations of motions.
Secondly, and everyone complains about this, the RNG is too much. Sure, some is necessary to keep the game fun through unpredictability and forcing to adapt, and if you're given overall hundreds of champions as choices each game, it somewhat balances out that you're lucky on some rolls, unlucky on others. However, the minion rounds that are the main income of items, which play a huge role in your performance, also drop a random amount of items. While, sure, it's fair in that everyone has the same odds, it's completely possible that you will get either double or half the amount someone else does, which either spells out very good odds of winning, or your near-certain loss. If you're playing to win, you might as well quit if the first minion rounds do not bless you with enough items, to save time. Much like playing with a missing teammate, your odds are grim, and while the game might still last a while, it's hardly fun.
Still, the game is supposedly in beta, probably rushed out to get a slice of the hot pie, and hopefully more improvements are incoming in the following weeks and months. For now, I'm already tired of it, for the two reasons mentioned above. However, it's free and fun while you don't know it very well yet, so I'd give it a "why not" recommendation. Play it for a few hours and see what all the fuss is about so you could talk along the next time someone inevitably brings up one of these kinds of games.
It must have yet again been the boatloads of positive reviews that caused me to try a 4€ game where all female characters have breasts the size of their heads. It wasn't as bad as it could have been though. The Vagrant was in fact not some sort of weird pseudo-porn game, but a reasonably good RPG... for its price point, that is.
The entire thing lasts for <10 hours, and I feel like whoever made this set out to make a game, fill some checkboxes, and call it a day. Like, sure, we have varying equipment, upgrading, decent combat, a skill tree, some cooking + potion buff system, an interconnected map, a story, etc., but it all feels pretty "meh" at best, rather bad at worst. I couldn't really highlight anything good about the game, and I find it lacks polish. To name some examples:
So, yeah, there's definitely loads of better RPGs (and metroidvanias, if you think it looks more like one) out there. I could only maybe suggest it if your time isn't worth much and the price calls to you. Me, I care about my time, less so for my money, and it's not worth the former.
No recommendation.
I have mixed feelings about Dead In Vinland. It's a management survival game about a family who ends up on an island, forced to start living from scratch, all while dealing with a tyrant to whom they have to pay tribute. It's supposedly an improvement over their previous "Dead In" game of a similar nature, but neither have glowing reviews overall. Personally, I think it does a lot of things right, but just fails to hit a sweet spot to really make it enjoyable.
I think Dead In Vinland nails the survival aspect well. Survival isn't just something you do on the side, but concretely the main focus. Every day is a struggle to keep everyone fed and alive while also putting a little effort on the side to progressing to earn back the initial supplies and keeping up with the ever-increasing tribute. It's definitely not too easy, and while I wouldn't say it's too difficult either, the constant promise of loss looming above you doesn't really make you feel good about the experience. Maybe you're not supposed to. Maybe you're supposed to feel the same despair your characters do, and the game accomplishes that well, but I don't find it enjoyable.
I think the main aspect contributing to my displeasure was the positive feedback loop (not so positive at all, despite the name), where if my characters got tired, injured, hungry, etc., then they lost performance and/or had to take some time off to recover, which in turn gave less resources, and less progress, furthering the doom that perhaps caused this in the first place. I will praise the balance, that this feedback loop did not spiral into actually losing nor the game becoming a walk in the park, but despite constantly improving, getting new people, and supposedly becoming better, I never felt like things started looking up. Progression wasn't satisfying.
The other aspect was the micromanagement being a bit too extensive. Too much time spent looking at statuses and numbers, telling characters what to do, and too little gameplay in the sense of stuff happening.
Overall, opposite to the story the game seemingly followed, I started Dead In Vinland with a good amount of hope in the first hours. There was a promise of building a great village, finding new people, and overthrowing the tyrant of the island. However, as I got closer to that goal in the game, my hope in reality disappeared. Seeing my efforts not make a difference to my well-being made me lose hope until I eventually gave up. Which was a shame, because I was looking forward to seeing how the story would unfold.
I can't really recommend this, as I didn't have the fortitude to see it through to the end. However, it's not a bad game, and I had a solid 8+ hours of fun with it. Perhaps you'll like it if the survival aspect is really up your alley, and you don't think the frustration of the constant impending doom will get to you, but I have my doubts.
Moving took a lot of my time and caused me to fall behind in progress a bit again.
I started playing Dead in Vinland. It's a game, not quite sure what I think about it yet - not super good nor bad.
Continuing the fight against the dreaded third hundred of the backlog. Most of the week went on Path of Exile, some on board games with friends which I don't write about. Net positive progress though, so all's good.
Armed with Wings seems to be a rather old Flash game series. I have not played any of those games before and I didn't really look into it much, but this Rearmed version is apparently a sort of remake, not a sequel. It's a level-based hack-and-slash game with some platforming involved.
I didn't think much of the platforming part. Considering the game doesn't really have jumping, the platforming puzzles were somewhat limited or specific in nature. It's not too important, however, as most of the game's focus was on combat. Now, the combat looks neat, and seems to have a good amount of depth, but I have no idea how it works. The attack patterns of my character, and in which cases I manage to get a hit in, in which cases the enemy just blocks it, seem rather arbitrary. I mean, I'm sure there's a logical system in there, but it's not explained whatsoever. And, honestly, I can't play like that. The game isn't easy enough to button mash through it, which is in itself a good thing, but if I am not given the knowledge on how not button mashing is better, it's not very useful. Sure, I could figure out the system eventually, but it's rather painful until then, and considering the depth of it, would probably take a while.
More minor grievances include the combat feeling a bit stiff for a game with such a heavy focus on it, your lovely bird not having any use in combat, and that I'm just not a fan of the level-based system. Perhaps I'm spoiled on metroidvanias with a nice world to run through.
Overall, I got rather quickly frustrated at not understanding the combat and why stuff worked sometimes but failed in a seemingly identical situation some other time. I also didn't see any elements of it which particularly captivated me, so unless you think you can figure out that combat and hope to discover a better game beyond that point, I wouldn't recommend it.
Well well, how did an RTS manage to slip into my backlog? Said slippery RTS is Tooth and Tail, and I honestly didn't give it too long of a try before tossing it aside.
I really didn't see much anything in Tooth and Tail. On one hand, it's a pretty generic RTS with building troops with rather common abilities, and not too many of them at that. On the other, it's heavily dumbed down in the name of accessibility or something - mainly that you can't really micromanage your units, which is kind of the whole point of RTS games. See, the way movement works here is that your "cursor" is a rather slow moving unit with health that has to lead the charge, and upon arriving at a place, can summon other units to that place. It just seems like making your very cursor vulnerable to attack and death is a pretty bad idea. Worse still, fighting on two fronts isn't really a thing.
But are there any redeeming qualities to this game? Honestly, no, none that I saw. There's just flat out better RTS games out there, and if you want to play with basically just one unit, go play another game genre. I can't recommend this game.
Well, I've finished my studies. I successfully defended my bachelor's thesis last week. All that's left is the graduation ceremony, but for all practical purposes, I've finished university.
As far as other stuff goes, the summer heat is getting to me somewhat. I'm feeling quite lethargic from the near-30 degree weather in an apartment without any air conditioning (or ventilation) - it reduces my appetite and my motivation to do anything. Feels a bit like a certain state of mind I'd rather avoid.
But that's just excuses not to play more games. And who wants to make excuses for something wonderful like that. I'm going to be trying Path of Exile again after multiple years next week. Overall, the old log increased again last week, but that's how it goes if I don't complete anything.
I got something done after all. At this seemingly temporary pace, only 2-3 more years to go.
I'll get my last summer vacation starting middle of next week, save for any time I decide to be unemployed for an extended period of time in the future. I really can't tell if I'll have more or less free time after I get a job, but I'm sure life will at least be a bit different.
Ah, but who am I rambling to? Have a look at numbers going down.
