Looks like I forgot to share October’s games, so here are both months at once. Whoops!
October
I finished Immortality (Sam Barlow / Half Mermaid Productions), and it’s phenomenal. To learn how to play the game, the player really just has to dive in and discover how to play the game. The mechanics of pulling up videos, scrubbing them (playing, fast-forwarding, and rewinding), and then zooming in on objects or people in scenes allows for an impressive amount of discovery and exploration of this multi-layered and powerful narrative.
Marissa Marcel was an up-and-coming actor, who starred in three films — none of which ever aired. The game presents itself as a retrospective, allowing the the player to delve into clips from these films along with behind the scenes footage to discover her story. In the end, it’s so much deeper than the surface story, revealing a fascinating perspectives on how artists strive for a kind of immortality through their craft.
I don’t want to say much more here, because it will lead directly into spoilers, but I love the way the discovery aspects of the game allow the player to piece together the narrative in their own way. It provides a space that allows the player to shape the narrative in their own way, especially as there are some clips they may never discover. As a result, each experience is truly unique, and its fascinating how this game is able to achieve that using live action video.
I’ve finished God of War (Sony’s Santa Monica Studio) after about two years away (more or less, since I would pop in for an hour or two during that time before getting distracted again). I was able to get up to speed on the controls rather quickly, and I’m not having a blast with the game and am getting close to the ending.
God of War features some excellent blending of story and gameplay. One particular example is how it has been difficult to face ice creatures in the game, because his axe was also made of ice. Later, when Kratos makes the momentous decision to face his past and dig up the Blades of Chaos (his weapons from the previous games, which I haven’t even played), I got chills. Suddenly, the combat against the ice creatures shifted and the fights against them became … so satisfying.
The story wraps up in such an emotionally satisfying way — and now I’m so curious about what happens in the next game after all that is revealed. I’ll probably jump into the sequel Ragnarök sometime soon.
I’m about 30 hours into Act 3 of Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios), and I love exploring the city of Balur’s Gate. It’s full of interesting side characters and quests, and my goal of focusing on the main storyline has entirely gone out the window.
However, I’m getting frustrated with the level of difficulty involved in many of these later battles — many of destroy my party multiple times before I can finally beat them. Sometimes this can make victory all the more satisfying, but it’s making the game take so much longer, and I’m finding myself more frustrated than anything else.
This is especially true when it goes in combination with the increased number of glitches that I’ve been encountering. They don’t happen all the time, but in certain sections of the game or in certain battles. During the “poltergeist” quest, the game would freeze every time I attempted to swap between characters. And during two different battles, an NPC would freeze in “decision making mode” just as I was about to finish the conflict, which forced me to start the difficult battle all over again. It’s enough of a paint that I was seriously considering just quitting the game entirely.
And yet, I would like to complete the storyline. So, I’m going to go ahead and take another break from the game. Later, I’ll come back, drop the difficulty down to an easier mode, and will attempt to complete the story.
November
The Outer Worlds 2 (Obsidian Entertainment) has been an absolute delight, consuming large swaths of my time (including a couple of ten hour days of play). Set in a different system of the galaxy than the first game, the player is a an Earth Directorate agent, who end up trapped in an escape pod after their team is betrayed on a mission. Ten years later, the only surviving member of the team manages save you, and you are faced with the task of tracking down the traitor who kicked off the series of catastrophes in the first place.
As much as I enjoyed the first Outer Worlds, the sequel resonates with me so much more. And I think that’s in part due to the core of the story having personal stakes. The traitor matters; they cost the player their team and lost them ten years of their life. It feels so much more narratively relevant (as opposed to being pulled into a situation without context by some kind of mad-seeming scientist to save the world). Having a former team member there also anchors that connection.
I also just really love the companions this time around. Niles is so interesting, especially seeing him go from a hopeful, eager kid to a traumatized survivor finding his hope again. Marisol is fascinating as an aging spy in hiding, bringing a sense of grounded wisdom and a desire to do better than her past. And Inez, Aza, Tristan, and Val are also fun and interesting characters to bop about on worlds with (though I do I wish I overheard more conversations between the characters as we were roaming).
The factions in this game are also fascinating. Of course, the corporations are present in the form of Auntie’s Choice, bringing their sense of “pull yourself up by your metaphorical bootstraps” commercialism and exploitation. But then there’s also the Protectorate (an authoritarian regime that relies on mind-control), the Order of the Ascendant (a science-focused society that believes the future can be mathematically deduced), The Glorious Dawn (a cult that worships space rifts), and Sub Rosa (black market traders). They each have uniquely interesting points of view, and it’s been fascinating to explore how they have shaped these worlds, especially if you’re trying to keep the peace as much as possible (like me).
Another interesting element is how you build out your character in the game, because if you fail to level up certain skills, it can lock you out of certain looting (such as needing Engineering to open broken doors) or dialog options. It’s also possible to acquire negative traits in the game, which are suggested based on how you’re playing the game. Eat tons of food to heal? Get offered the “Gluttony” trait. Sneak around using crouch a lot? You have the chance to get “Bad Knees” trait.
One of the early negative traits I picked up was “Jack of All Trades” in response to me spreading out my skill points a bit. The trait requires the player to spread their skill points out by only allowing them to choose from the lowest ranked skills (except for the traits with zero points). As a result, I couldn’t just dump points to level up a specific skill, which created some frustration points when I’m blocked by certain skill checks. I wouldn’t recommend this negative trait for a first-time play, but I decided to just roll with my choices and continued to enjoy the experience.
From a quality of life perspective, I only had a few quibbles. One of the bigger things is that I wish I could swap companions out on the fly, since certain factions don’t like certain companions and sometimes you need to have certain companions on hand to complete their character quests. It would be nice to be able to tell them, “Hey, head back to the ship, and send so-and-so out here.”
Overall, the quests are fun — with a good variety of requiring stealth, combat, and/or just negotiation (depending on how you want to approach them). One of my favorites is a small moment in “Forbidden Secrets of the Undisputed Claim,” which was really impactful because I had coincidentally watched “The Company We Keep” episode of Secret Level before playing. Although such a small moment in the game, it just gave me so many feels.
At this point I’m close to the ending (I hope), so I should be wrapping up the game soon.
Messenger by Vicente Lucendo and Michael Sungaila is a lovely browser game about exploring a tiny round world and delivering messages. You’re essentially dropped into this tiny city and giving the task of delivering messages to different inhabitants, giving you small insights into their worlds. It’s beautifully animated with sweet music, and a character creator lets you swap out your clothing style. As you wander, you also see other players running about delivering messages — all of us just doing our thing together.
“For Gregg” by Leon Barillaro is a text adventure about a manager who is about to be replaced with an AI system. As the player reviews the employee files, the bot becomes confused by the fact of employee Gregg’s death and frustratingly attempts grief counseling. The game is a powerful portrayal of how AI fails to understand humanity in the slightest.
If you’d also like to know about the books and movies that I enjoyed recently, you can check out my Culture Consumption posts for October and November.
