Let’s Start Looking At: Overwatch

As a general rule, I’m not big on online multiplayer games. I’ve enjoyed a few, like Tribes 2, and Unreal Tournament 2004, but the majority involve either grinding or are slightly altered versions of Call of Duty or Battlefield. Every once in a while something comes along that’s a bit different, but few online multiplayer games have managed to hold my attention like Overwatch has.

This is a Let's Start Looking At rather than a full Let's Look At. I haven't made it to Competitive Play yet and I'd rather not give you wonderful readers and incomplete piece, so just hang on for the full thing.

See, last article started with a white Overwatch logo. This one has a black Overwatch logo. PROGRESS IS BEING MADE.

Firstly, Overwatch has an actual story! None of it is presented in game, but there are a few comics, some very well made animations, and other background floating around the internet. On a fictionalized Earth, 30 years in the future, humanity invents artificially intelligent building robots called omnics to ensure global economic equality and build more omnics. Eventually the omnics rebel against humanity, creating combat models. The UN establishes Overwatch, a global collection of soldiers, scientists, and others to keep the peace across the globe. However, allegations and failed missions sour the public’s opinion and the UN disbands the group and makes any Overwatch activity illegal, but Overwatch reforms when a second omnic crisis threatens.

Ah yes, the classic "you saved all of our lives but there's collateral damage sometimes so we'll hate you forever" trope.

But, none of that matters. You fight on teams with your enemies and allies alike, and the missions are basically variations on “hold this point.”

The UI design here is nice and simple, so you can focus on the shooty-shooty-bang-bang-time-travel action. 

Multiplayer shooters can have all the bells and whistles that they want, but everything will fall apart without sturdy basic mechanics. In Overwatch, all of the different characters have unique weapons that all feel punchy and solid. Each character has their own speed and movement abilities, and you have the option to fight against training robots to test out each of the characters. The interface is simple to understand, and warnings let you know if your team lacks a healer or if you’ve got low overall damage. You will enter an objective-less skirmish mode while you search for an online game.

There are currently 22 heroes divided into four classes (six Offence, six Defense, five Tank, and five Support). Each hero has their own weapon and abilities that fit them into their class. Genji (Offence), the cyber ninja, climbs up walls, deflects incoming projectiles, and deals an extreme amount of close quarters damage. Widowmaker (defense), the kind-of-dead French assassin, sets up a poison gas trap, slingshots around the map, and reveals all enemy locations for a short time.

Figuring out which characters you groove with is definitely part of the fun here. Experiment all you want in Quickplay, but stick to what you're good at in competitive.

Mei is indeed a cruel and powerful god. Beware her smiley-wrath.

The sheer amount of variation in each class means every match can be played in totally unique way. Of course, that all depends on the players. While it’s easy to pick up any of the characters and play based on their class alone, they all have untapped depths in the hands of a talented player. For instance, I’ve seen some Mei’s use their ice wall ability to launch enemies in the air to make them easier sniping targets.

Maps are distinct, but uniform from a design standpoint. Each map corresponds to a game mode (some can host multiple kinds of game) and contains one main thoroughfare and several side paths, so you can ambush enemies, pick them off with sniper spots, or flank your teammates. For instance, Route 66 is an escort mission where one team must escort a slowly moving payload to the end of the map the other team must halt the payload until time runs out. There are several choke points for the defense team to use, as well as side paths for the offence team to get around behind the defense team.

I really like how games are swinging away from the Quake brown hues to lots of cartoon-y color. Despite all the colors, you rarely lose track of your enemies or you allies in these maps, so props to the visual design of the characters and stages.

Welcome to 90% of PotG. 

One of the most fun parts of Overwatch is one of the most problematic aspects of the game. After every match, one player is awarded Play of the Game, with a little intro screen (multiple unlockable varieties for each character) and a replay of said amazing play. On the surface it’s an awesome way for somebody to show off a little. 90% of the PotG you’ll see are going to be offence plays; Genjis unleashing their Dragonblade on 5 clustered enemies, Tracer using her exploding time bomb to take out all the enemy players defending the payload, etc. If you play a support character and you get a PotG, you know one of two things: either your team is terrible, or you’re really good. The game weights kills much higher than good support or tanking, so many players choose offence heroes, even when their team becomes crazy unbalanced. However, players can give kudos for the top performing players of offence, defense, support, tanking, and a few others and players will often give 5 out of 12 possible kudos to the best support character, but the game itself seems to focus on offence. The Overwatch devs have stated that they’re looking at this issue, so this issue might be resolved soon.

Worth Playing?

Yes.

If you like Arena Shooters, online multiplayer, colorful characters, or just like fun games, you should play Overwatch. It’s has a huge player base right now, new heroes are definitely coming, and it seems like it can only go up from here, barring a crazy patch change that makes Mei even more annoying.

By reading this you have been cursed by the PotG ghost! Share this article 500 times or you’ll never get Play of the Game again! Hurry!

Don’t forget to follow TheMagnusKit on Facebook and Twitter for more Overwatch complaining and general tomfoolery.

Let's Start Looking At: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

If you’ve read anything on this site, you know that I rag on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim a lot. I’m certainly not the first person to say that it’s got the whole “wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle” issue and I’m sure I won’t be the last. Given Skyrim’s massive success you could be forgiven for thinking that all open world RPGs are going to feature the same lack of depth (Fallout 4 didn’t help), but creators are always going to strive for something more.The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the example of that supreme effort; a polished and deep titan of a game. I’ve put around 23 hours into the game and only completed about 8% of it, making this a first impressions rather than a final verdict.

This dude is a little too handsome. I am uncomfortable with his rugged charm. Somebody save me.

In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you play as Geralt, a genetically modified monster hunter for hire known as a Witcher. Geralt, having regained his lost memory from the first two games, is attempting to track down Yennefer of Vengerberg. Yennefer, Geralt’s former lover and powerful sorceress, sent him a message about wanting to meet again after all these years. It turns out that she is working for the Emperor of Nilfgaard and attempting to locate his daughter, Cirilla, whom Geralt helped train as a Witcher.

Last time Geralt saw Ciri, she was a kid. Now she's being chased by a mystic and powerful league of war omens. *sniff*, they grow up so fast.

Ciri, as Geralt calls her, is being pursued by the Wild Hunt for some unknown reason. 23 hours in, and that’s all I know, but it’s an interesting enough mystery to keep you hanging on. Don’t worry if all of these words look like nonsense; The Witcher 3 does a great job catching you up on the story and lore. I played the first game almost to the end but not very much of the second game.

The Witcher 3 has a leveling up system similar to a lot of RPGs, with four branches of skills to upgrade: combat, signs, alchemy, and general skills. You can experience by defeating monsters and completing quests. With the recent Blood and Wine expansion, you can acquire over 100 points to invest, but the combat tree alone takes 91 to fully upgrade. Specialization becomes necessary very quickly, which increases the replay value and gives you a new experience each time.

You only have twelve skill slots, so you must build Geralt carefully. The other four slots can hold mutagens, which are collected from downed monsters. They can increase attack power, sign intensity, or health.

The Witcher series has always had engaging combat, and the third (and final) game is no exception. Geralt carries two swords, one steel and one sliver. The steel sword is used for all human enemies as well as non-magical beasts and the silver sword for magical monster opponents.  You have two kinds of melee attacks, heavy and light. You can block attacks or parry them with the right timing, dealing some extra damage. You have a dodge and a roll you can use to evade attacks as well as crossbow to knocking certain flying enemies out of the sky.

You can also perform various finishers on stunned opponents.

If you can hit an enemy’s back you can deal critical damage, but they can do the same to you. Your exact attack movements change depending on the distance you are from your intended target, which can take some getting used to. Geralt’s movements feel weighty and your swings have enough momentum that you can feel the consequences of making a particular attack choice. Combat feels very grounded, but never slow.

While this is pre-rendered footage, it's pretty representative of what combat feels like.

Besides your normal melee attacks, Geralt can also use five signs. The signs are sort of like magic shortcuts, taught to Witchers as a less powerful one-handed substitute for the more powerful magic that mages wield. Geralt can use Aard, Yrden, Igni, Quen, and Axii. Aard knocks enemies back with a telekinetic wave, Yrden creates a magical trap on the ground to slow or paralyze enemies, Igni sends out a wave of heat to set enemies aflame, Quen creates a temporary shield that lets Geralt absorb some damage without losing health, and Axii allows Geralt to stun an enemy temporarily and influence other characters in conversation.

Here we see Geralt slowing down a group of enemies with Yrden, then knocking them down with Aard.

Upgrading the signs increase their usefulness even more. Igni, for example, has a chance to reduce your enemies armor and Axii can be used more effectively in conversation. The varied uses of the signs make you feel like they’re an integral part of the combat and world, rather than just another way to dispose of enemies.  

The last third of the tripod that makes up The Witcher 3’s combat is potion and weapon/armor crafting. The crafting in Witcher 3 is expansive to say the least. There are a simply ridiculous number of materials, schematics, recipes, and diagrams to collect. Each potion you consume adds to your toxicity. Consume too many, and Geralt will lose health continuously until the toxicity depletes. There’s also a new kind of potion, called a Decoction, which you can only make after you have killed a certain kind of monster. The Decoctions last for around 20 minutes at a time and give Geralt a much more powerful effect, like increased damage resistance every time Geralt is hit in battle.

Each non decoction potion usually has about 3 uses per meditation period. You'll find a huge amount of crafting materials just from bouncing around the world, so don't sweat finding them. 

In a change from The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings and The Witcher, you only need to brew potions once. After you’ve brewed a potion it will be refilled automatically during mediation, provided you have the alcoholic base necessary. Given the massive quantity of alcoholic base around the game world, you shouldn’t ever really run out. For non-alchemical diagrams, you can visit a crafter who will build armor, weapons, ammunition, and more for Geralt, provided you have the materials and coin to spare.

The most impressive part of The Witcher 3 is its quests. The tight focus of the main quest keeps the whole thing grounded and sidesteps many of the usual fantasy tropes nicely. The main quest is nice, but the sidequests are what steals the show. There are few mainstream games that have as much polish in their main story as The Witcher 3 puts into its sidequests. The game throws a number of scavenger hunts your way; quests to find special weapons and armor scattered about the world. I think this an interesting way to keep gear from getting dull. As you level up, you’re constantly looking forward to being able to undertake higher level quests, scavenger hunts, and Witcher contracts.

Jenny O the Woods, one of the earlier Witcher contracts has it all. A spurned heart, death, lords abusing their power, and a healthy amount of detective work from our favorite Witcher.

Even the smallest, shortest sidequest has a story, choices, and even multiple objectives. My favorite sidequest so far involves running into some peasants in a ruined structure. They claim that their Allgod is displeased with their offerings and has cursed their village. You can offer to intervene on their behalf and speak to this “Allgod”. You quickly discover that their Allgod is in fact a satyr-like creature living under the ruined structure, hidden from the peasants. One hundred years ago, this sylvan “revealed” himself to the peasants by accident through an accident with a fireplace, and has been watching over their village in exchange for healthy food and drink offerings since.

You'll have to forgive his manners; he doesn't get out much.

You can kill the sylvan, try to reason with him to accept the village’s meagre offerings (as it’s all they can give during this time of war), or even persuade him to leave the villagers alone entirely. Each of these choices has a separate outcome and makes you feel more involved with the world. The choices can be difficult because there’s often no clear “right” or “moral” choice; Geralt lives in a world as morally complex as our own. The whole quest takes maybe five minutes to complete, but the amount of polish and detail shines through.

Exploration comes along with any open world game, and The Witcher 3 is no different. As you walk through the areas in the game you can find monster nests, guarded treasure, bandit camps, and more. I really like the Abandoned Sites, which are areas infested with monsters that fill up with villagers once you clear out the unwanted guests. It shows your impact on the world in a tangible way that also plays nicely into the story; normal people can’t deal with monsters, but a Witcher can.

So many places to go, so many monsters to kill.

The bandit camps can get a little tiring, as they usually don’t have anything that valuable and the bandit’s mediocre weapons and armor just weigh you down. The same can be said for guarded treasure, but that’s usually a bit more profitable. Thankfully there’s no pressure to complete any number of these things, so if you’d rather focus on questing there’s nothing stopping you.

Last but not least, I’ve got to talk about Gwent. Gwent is a card-based minigame in The Witcher 3 and the most addictive card game since Magic: The Gathering. There are four kinds of decks, each with several options for leader cards, a number of “regular” cards, and up to ten “special” cards. Your deck must have at least 22 regular cards to play. You draw ten cards and that’s all you get for that match, unless you play cards which allow you to draw more cards. Each regular card has a certain strength and the person with the higher strength at the end of a round wins. You play regular cards in the close, mid-range, and long range combat slots. Some of the special cards affect units in certain slots, while others are more like spell cards in Magic. A round ends when both players “pass”. By passing, you elect to stop putting down any more cards until your opponent passes. You and your opponent both start the match with two crystals, one of which breaks when you lose a round.

Most early matches don't look like this, but you can have a huge amount of strength in the later matches of the game.

There are about 200 Gwent cards in the base game and a series of major quests that revolve around Gwent tournaments. Gwent is crazy addicting. I’m super excited whenever I find a new village because it means there’s a bunch of people I can challenge to Gwent and win/buy cards from. It’s a great way to stop thinking about monsters for a few minutes, though it is a bit thematically confusing. Why are Geralt’s friends portrayed as cards in this game? How does every peasant shopkeeper have enough money to build a deck? Each card costs anywhere from 20 gold up, meaning a minimum of 440 gold to buy a full deck. Another odd thing is that you can only win ten gold pieces per round; why can’t I bet more? But these are all little things; you can't take away the fun from Gwent.

Where are you going!? We just met! I JUST WANTED TO BE FRIENDS.

With a game like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the only complaints you’re going to find are little things, but they can add up. A number of times during play, I’ve seen enemies clip through the ground, or go flying once I’ve killed them. I’ve seen enemies repeatedly open and close doors rather than come out to fight me which is hilarious, if a bit annoying sometimes.  The menu system is not as intuitive as it could be, though it’s been improved since version 1.0 of the game. There are times when it’s hard to figure out what you can dismantle for crafting parts, or when to stop dismantling, i.e. wolf pelt into cured leather, cured leather into leather scraps, leather scraps into leather straps, etc. You can “pin” a diagram or alchemy recipe, so the necessary items are highlighted in merchant’s inventories, but it would be nice if you could pin multiple recipes rather than just one. There are three kinds of currency in The Witcher 3, though you can only use one. When you find Orens or Florens you have to wait until you find the person who can exchange them for Crowns, which is annoying if logical lore-wise. Lastly, sometimes when fighting in the forest, the trees can get in front of the camera, which can cause you to get hit more than you’d like.

Worth Playing?

Yes.

At the end of the day The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is something really special. It will set that bar for all future open world RPGs, in terms of its depth and size. There are some nitpicks you can throw in there, but it’s a stunning package all together. The amount of polish and work put into the smallest detail will really impress you and maybe cause you to look at other games differently.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Let’s Look At. If not, that’s cool. I’m busy playing Gwent anyway. Speaking of which, wanna play Gwent?

Don’t forget to follow TheMagnusKit on Facebook and Twitter! I met a guy who said he’d give me an ultra-rare card if I got enough followers.

Let’s Start Looking At: Dark Souls III

Ah, Dark Souls. You’re always there for me. Sometimes you get tired of beating games or winning at anything and Dark Souls III is here to slap you around a bit, just like you wanted. Dark Souls is the 5th game in the series, despite the III attached to the name. DSIII introduces a number of new mechanics and revisits some older ones. I’ve put around twelve hours into DSIII and I’ve got some thoughts, so let’s jump right in.

Woof. Could you get a little darker, Dark Souls III? I think I can still feel something like hope and love.

DSIII has a plot as barebones as the rest of the games in the series. We’re questing through “Lothric” this time around, trying to find and bring back the Lords of Cinder to sit on their thrones, for some reason. Do we even care at this point? It’s all suitably epic and morose and makes me realize how awesome of a word cinder is. The game starts with you literally crawling your way out of the earth, which I appreciate. How many games let you play as a zombie? You move through the introductory area and find yourself at the Firelink Shrine, which is appropriately sad, confusing, and useful.

The Shrine is well designed, which is good given the amount of time you need to spend here. You can see the five Thrones of the Lords of Cinder. Not quite sure what they did or why the thrones are here, but hey, let's find out.

The Fire Keeper who lives there is your only method of leveling up, ala Dark Souls II. Andre, the blacksmith from Dark Souls is in the shrine as well, available from the get go. This sets the tone for the rest of the game. Bits and pieces are taken from DS1 and DSII and changed around a bit to make something that’s starting to feel very similar. After some exploration, you’ll be off to the High Wall of Lothric to start your quest in earnest.

The combat is DSIII is definitely the fastest of the three Dark Souls games, which is a nice change. Faster combat allows for a more enjoyable aggressive playstyle and a more nuanced defensive playstyle; it’s hard to turtle up behind a shield when five enemies are hitting you at once. The parry and riposte mechanics are back to their Dark Souls 1 style, which I personally appreciate. The faster combat means it’s a little harder to riposte than it used to be, but still very much an option.

Bows are usually niche use weapons, but I think I'll try for a bow only run at some point.

There’s a wide variety of weapons to use, from daggers to whips to halberds, all of which are viable for the whole game. In a twist on Dark Souls II’s power stance, each weapon now has a “skill”, which usually involve a new way to move or attack. The rapier, for instance, let’s you jump back and then stab and enemy from afar, or deliver multiple piercing attacks in quick succession. I really like the weapon skills and, though I’ll miss power stance, this mode adds a new dimension to combat that keeps the formula fresh.

Your character will glow around the edges when Embered, which is a really cool effect.

Parallel to combat, the “hollowing” system has is similar to the one in Dark Souls II.  You can use “embers” to become human again, restore your health, and open yourself up to multiplayer content. Unlike DS1, you can use embers anywhere, which is a good mechanic that the designers kept from DSII.

DSIII came out fairly recently, so there’s still a lot of multiplayer activity. I put down my summon sign and got summoned within five minutes every time. I’ve only been invaded twice, but I tend not to ember up until I’m right about to fight the boss. The online play is way smoother than DS1; it’s actually possible to parry other people online.

You can summon more people this time around, which is pretty cool. You can also totally mess with invaders, as seen here.

I haven’t done a lot of exploration into the covenant system in DSIII, so I can’t speak to that, but I’ve definitely seen some new covenants that I haven’t heard of before. I’ve seen some kind of purple echoes that are attached to certain messages, which is very interesting.

The enemy design is interesting and enjoyable, but not as unique as previous games. All the enemies seem to fall into archetypes that are repeated in every level. Each level (so far) ties its general look to the look of its inhabitants. The High Wall of Lothric has dragons, knights, and soldiers. The Undead Settlement has workers, clerics, and slaves and so on. You know where you are just by looking at the enemies, which I appreciate. The bosses are similarly well designed. Dark Souls II came under criticism for the design of its bosses, most of whom were just people in armor. Dark Souls III appears to be taking a much more classic approach, where each boss is represented by its “level.”

Vordt, meet the player. Player, meet Vordt. He'll be mashing you into a fine paste with his gigantic mace.

The first boss is a special favorite of mine. He moves and attacks very quickly, despite his size. He reminds me a lot of the Taurus Demon in Dark Souls in his placement and usage. The Taurus demon is designed to teach new players that they can’t just turtle up behind a shield and hope to block all the enemies attacks; instead they have to think in a more circular fashion, use their environment, and perhaps even get a little too close for comfort.

While the combat is very enjoyable, the level design has declined in quality. The levels in DSIII are very linear, much like DSII. You have the ability to teleport from bonfires as soon as you start the game, so I think the developers felt freer to expand the size of the typical level. Running from one end to the other takes a lot longer than it did in DSI, which is a little annoying.

There also doesn’t appear to be as many connections between levels as you found in DS1, which seems like a step backwards to me. The world of DS1 was very interesting because of how close it all felt. You were doing grand things, fighting monsters fifteen times your size, but the scope of the world felt understandable and manageable. The levels of DSIII look lovely and are fun to explore, but getting through a whole level takes more time than it should.

Your Estus flask has changed for the worse as well. In DS1 you had up to 10 uses of your flask at any “kindled” bonfire (20 if you got the Rite of Kindling from a certain boss). In DSII you started with a much lower Estus usage, but you found items to upgrade that soon enough. In DSIII you start with a lower usage, and your Estus is split between the health restoring flask and the Focus Point restoring flask.

You can head to Andre the blacksmith to allot your estus, which is a little odd. Wouldn't the firekeeper have more influence over your Estus flask, seeing as it's restored by bonfires?

The weapon skills mentioned above take focus points, as does magic, pyromancy, and miracles. No longer do these magic skills have a set number of uses, which sounds great on paper, but since you have to split your Estus flask to restore your focus, it gets annoying quick. Any decent sorcerer, cleric, or pyromancer will have more than one spell equipped at any time and since they all draw from the same focus pool, you’ll run out of uses way too fast. I think things would have worked better if your focus slowly regenerated on its own, or if the designers just went with the old system of each spell having a certain number of uses.

While the weapon selected is varied and interesting, there are some serious balance issues in DSIII. Poise doesn’t do anything for some reason. In the older games, Poise was a stat that represented how unlikely you were to be staggered by an enemy attack. Because poise doesn’t do anything, there’s no point to wearing armor other than aesthetics. While armor does offer some defensive bonuses, it’s generally not worth the weight it adds to your character. Faster weapons are overpowered, at least as of the latest patch.

Even the longsword (seen here), previously a solid choice for PvP and PvE, is definitely second to the faster weapons

The rapier, estoc, and katanas just rip through enemies and bosses while the slower weapons, like great axes/swords etc., can’t match the damage output of the lighter weapons. In PvE this isn’t much of a problem, because using an optimal build isn’t really important, but I think the PvP scene will really suffer until some of the other weapon are powered up a bit. I think this will be balanced out in later patches, but for now, stick with the lighter fare.

Worth Playing

Yes.

If you like Dark Souls or Dark Souls II, you’ll like this game. The formula is definitely starting to go stale and issues are popping up, but this game is well designed and fun. Miyazaki-San, the designer of the Souls series has said that this game will be last one and I think that’s good. Far too few people know how to stop when faced with profits.

Hope you liked the piece! Please share and give feedback, if you’ve got the time.

Let's Start Looking At: Fallout 4

Why do people love post-apocalyptic stuff so much? What is it about the post-end-of-the-world that people are so attracted to? Maybe people think that they’d do better without rules, or that humanity would be better if we got a fresh start. As for me, I think I just like burned out cars and giant mutated bugs. Something charming about them, really. The Fallout series of games is where people have traditionally gone to scratch this itch, so let’s see if the newly released Fallout 4 do the same.

This dog and I are going to totally mess up some giant ants or something.

There’s a lot to like about Fallout 4, but it’s more a mixed bag than I usually like in my games. The combat is punchier than ever before, the settlements system is interesting and adds a new dynamic to the game, and upgrading weapons and armor creates an interesting personal attachment to your equipment that’s definitely new. Fallout 4 also has a terrible dialogue system, little to no RPG elements (something Fallout games were renowned for), and an annoying habit of making you go back home to drop off all the junk you’ve picked up on your thrilling adventure.

Just like last week, this is a first impressions piece. I’ve sunk a little over 13 hours into Fallout 4, which isn’t nearly enough time for a proper review. These are some of the more obvious things I’ve seen in the game, so take them for what you will.

Fallout 4 begins with you designing a male or female character, then witnessing the beginning of the so called “Great War”, which consumed the world in nuclear fire. Over 200 years later, you exit the vault and set out to find the man who stole your son and murdered your partner. Fallout 4 takes place in The Commonwealth, a post-nuclear version of Boston and its surrounding area. This is definitely the most “domestic” start to a Fallout game it feel a little out of place in the series. I like the motivation that the family angle gives you, though.

I like the idea of using a mirror as a character creation tool, but the constant comments from your character and the other can get a little annoying.

So, to start, the combat is much faster paced than it was in any previous Fallout game. The melee weapons have a lot more momentum when you swing them and the guns feel much more responsive and weighty than they used to. There’s a decent variety of weapons, both melee and ranged, and the modification system (which I’ll touch on later) helps keep them interesting. Melee attacks can be done with ranged weapons (some of which can be modified with bayonets for extra damage), which is much more FPS-y than Fallout has ever been. Melee attacks stagger opponents and are generally too slow to be of much use. I think it would be very difficult to play a melee combat only character, but it could make for an interesting challenge run. This is a bit of a disappointment, as older Fallout games allowed you to play with a variety of characters, from ranged, to melee, to pacifists. Despite all that, the combat is very enjoyable and firefights definitely feel less wooden than in Fallout 3 or Fallout: NV.

Enemies are more dynamic and will use cover in the environment.

There’s a new system that allows you to build “settlements” in certain areas of the map, once cleared of enemies. This is a big addition to the Fallout universe. Usually, you just go through the wasteland completing quests, but for the first time you have the ability to start rebuilding the world. You collect different kinds of resources by breaking down junk and other items that you find in The Commonwealth and use them to build things. You can build and plop down houses, defenses, furniture, and other items like you might in The Sims. Each settlement can have a maximum number of people, and you need to provide them with beds, food, water, and protection to keep them happy. With certain perks, you can even build stores that generate income and supplies based on population. While the level of customization doesn’t even begin to touch something like The Sims, it’s still very impressive given that the whole system is new. Building settlements and establishing trade routes is pretty enjoyable and it does make you feel like you’re doing something to improve the lives of the people of The Commonwealth, rather than just murdering people in post-apocalyptic locations.

You can build some damn nice looking settlements if you have a mind to. While not essential, settlements definitely improve the Fallout 4 experience.

Lastly, the crafting system in Fallout 4 is really fun and it makes hunting for junk more enjoyable than it has any right to be. Crafting has been in the Fallout games since Van Buren (Black Isle Studios’ cancelled Fallout 3), but was just a side thing you could do, rather than an important part of the game. In Fallout 4, crafting is how you get better gear. In the older games, you might explore new areas or complete quests to get better weapons or armor, but in Fallout 4 you focus more on improving the basic weapons and armor you find earlier. To improve your gear you need to collect various different kinds of materials, which you get from breaking down junk that litters just about every place in the game. As you level up, you can get perks which improve the kinds of modifications you can give your weapons and armor, up to pretty ridiculous levels.  While some aspects of the junk collecting are annoying, it’s really fun to take what was a simple pistol and add on 6 different kinds of mods with dozens of varieties, to turn it into something really unique.

Each weapon has about 6 modifications, each with about  5-10 varieties. You can really customize weapons to fit your playstyle.

Bethesda has done a lot streamline the Fallout games since they acquired the rights in 2004. Nowhere is this more evident than in Fallout 4. To start, the entire dialogue system has been revamped. Traditionally, you were given a number of conversion options for every encounter, but now you always have 4. Instead of the list format you had previously, you now have a sort of conversation wheel, similar to Mass Effect. The new dialogue system is a serious step down in complexity, role playing, and clarity. Each speech option is described with a word or two and really doesn’t tell you enough about what your character is going to say. This is frustrating, annoying, and kind of stupid. You need to know what you’re saying in a role playing game, that’s just a fact. Conversation becomes a crapshoot, rather than any kind of role playing exercise or storytelling mechanic.

What do any of these mean? Does somebody not "support news"? You may as well blindfold yourself and just mash buttons.

The skill, perk and S.P.E.C.I.A.L systems have been rebuilt from the ground up. In all of the main Fallout games up until 4, you create a character, pick a number of “tag” (or main) skills, and distribute a number of attribute points into strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, and luck (S.P.E.C.I.A.L, up to 10). These attributes affected what level your skills started at and had other effects such as the number of companions you can recruit, which kinds of weapons you could use, and other character stats. Your special points could be increased through perks, gear, and sometimes even surgeries, but it was nearly impossible to get 10s across the board. As you leveled up, you could get perks which might increase the damage you do, make wild animals take your side in combat, or other benefits. In Fallout 4, you no longer have skills and instead your S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats directly govern character stats. When you level up, you can choose to increase your S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats, or choose a perk. Each perk has several ranks, requires a certain number of points in an attribute, and a certain character level. There is no hard level cap in the game, so you can build a character that has 10s across the board and every perk. This removes much incentive to play the game multiple times and diminishes the role playing aspect of this RPG, which is confusing. Like I said before, one of the best parts of any Fallout games is the ability to play vastly different characters. At this point, it seems like Bethesda is just taking little bits and pieces of Fallout’s clothes and dressing up a very different game in them.

There are a huge number of perks, many of which with more than one rank, which would have been great with a level cap. As it stands, there's little reason to make new characters.

No one likes being interrupted in the middle of something. Fallout 4 doesn’t get that though. You have a weight limit for your character and junk fills up inventory very quickly. Most RPGs are filled with a degree of clutter, but it’s usually used as environmental storytelling rather than something you need to weigh yourself down with. Interrupting your adventure to travel back to dump all your junk back at base makes you feel as if you’re playing two different games and one of them is not fun. Scavenging for resources makes a lot of sense, given your situation, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe you could order your follower to head back to the settlement to drop the junk off and then return to you, or maybe you could hire a temporary follower just for ferrying junk back and forth.

Look at all this stupid junk I have to cart back and forth every 20 minutes. This is what fun is, right?

Worth Playing?

Yes.

Despite all the issues, Fallout 4 is really fun and the amount of content is staggering. There are a lot of little annoyances but exploring, combat, and the world that Fallout 4 constructs are just as enjoyable as before. There’s a catch, however. If you were hoping for a return to anything like Fallout 2, you should stay away. This game will not scratch that itch. I would be willing to wager that you won’t see another game like the old CRPGs for a long time, if ever.

Let's Start Looking At: Elite: Dangerous

I remember being a kid and watching Star Wars Episode IV, very vividly. I remember how much I wanted to fly an X-Wing. Flying through space, dogfighting with other ships, and blowing up the Deathstar seemed like the most awesome things you could ever do in your life. There hasn’t been a game that quite sated that urge, but Elite: Dangerous looked like it might come close. There are a lot of things in this game that are well designed, fun, and just plain cool to use but there are also a small number of, but worryingly large, issues that really take away from the game.

Space: the final frontier...

Now, this is not a review. These are first impressions, since I don’t think I’ve put enough time into this game to speak to the whole thing. I’m also only talking about the single player rather than the always-on online world.

To start, the user interface looks awesome. You spend (almost) the whole game in your ship and you can see every part of the UI by looking at a different part of your cockpit. Look right and you see a technical readout of all your ship parts, your inventory, and more. Look at the left part of your cockpit and you can open the system map, the galaxy map, see information about the current system, and your missions. This is a really cool way to get information and it fits really well with the feel of the game as well as the design of the world.

It's all very shiny and very cool looking, really. The cockpit has almost all the info you need, though it's not all directly in front of you.

Flying your spaceship is quite possibly the best part of this game. Flying feels smooth and responsive, but never too easy. You have a number of thrusters on your ship, so you can angle things pretty much however you want to and you can really pull of some ace pilot maneuvers when you get a handle on it. I was playing with a mouse and keyboard, but I think a joystick would give you the best experience. There’s a really good sense of momentum and weight when you try to bank hard, or spin your ship around quickly to shoot at a pursuer. While figuring out the initial controls is fairly easy, using them in combat, or pulling off anything more impressive takes time and practice, which I think is good. This gives the game a good sense of progression that goes beyond what kind of ship you have. 

The open world aspect of this game is pretty close the ideal of the style, I think. There’s no side quests that warp you into some weird side quest-world, there’s nowhere you can’t go if you have the fuel, and there’s no jobs you can’t take. You can be a trader, ferrying goods from end of the galaxy to the other and buying low and selling high. You can be a mercenary, hunting down pirates and outlaws and doing corporation’s dirty work for credits. You can just explore the galaxy and sell the data to whomever else wants it, or any combination of these and more. The freedom here is awesome and probably the second best part of this game.

You really do get the feeling that you can go anywhere and do anything, which is hard to do in games.

The combat is also really fun. You can have all sorts of weapons, from lasers to miniguns, missiles and more. All of the weapons have a different feel, but they all fit. Lasers lance across space, minigun tracer rounds fly towards your target, and missiles leave plumes of smoke behind them as they follow your enemy. The number of different kinds of weapons, potential for a million kinds of combat situations, and easy to learn/hard to master nature of the flight and combat make every combat instance interesting and difficult.

Complex, but fun. You can attach as many weapons as you have hardpoints on your ship.

Now, everything isn’t roses and unicorns here. When I made a pros and cons list for this game, the pros outweighed the cons by quantity, but the cons had way more of an effect on how I played the game and what I thought about it.

To start, the user interface is clunky as hell. I can’t imagine trying to open my targeting menu to target the enemies’ cargo hatch in the middle of a fight, as I’d have to look to the right side of the cockpit (where I can’t see the enemy), click through two menus, and then return to combat. In this time, any decent fighter could have my shields down to zero and be destroying my hull. I love the idea and look of the menus, but I think that they fall apart in combat. It might be better if you could hold a button to create a targeting overlay on your enemy while fighting them, then choose which part you want to aim for. This would allow for the same level of detail in combat without forcing players to “take their eyes off the road” to speak. This might not seem big, but given how much time you need to spend in the menus to play a lot of this game, it’s a constant annoyance and drags down the experience.

Another really big issue is the total lack of explanation the game offers you and how many steps everything takes. There are several tutorial videos, the first 7 of which I found useful, though I think you could start after the first 4. Each video is about 5-7 minutes long, so you’re looking at a minimum of 20 minutes before you actually start playing the game, which is definitely a bit annoying. You would think that with 12 tutorial videos, how to complete some of the missions might be included, but you’d be wrong about that.

I mean look at this. So intuitive. A child could do it. Screw those round peg square hole puzzles, just give kids this game.

The first mission I found was a mission to hunt down some pirates who were harassing a corporation’s supply line. “Sounds great!” I thought. What a fun way to start out a space adventure. So, after using the galaxy map to plot my course to the relevant system, flying a minimum distance away from the station I was docked at, jumping to the system the pirates were in, entering an in-system mode of travel known as “supercruise” (as flying from one end of the system to the other would take real time days), lining up my ship with my destination, waiting 5 (actual) minutes to reach my destination, fiddling with the controls to drop out of supercruise at the right speed, and arriving at the navigation beacon at the center of the system, I found myself looking around at the other ships, trying to figure out who was a pirate, or how to locate them. Now, this may be an issue of taste rather than an actual problem with the game, but the thousand steps needed to do one thing makes playing Elite: Dangerous feel more like work than fun.

I had to go online to find out that the game doesn’t actually tell you exactly where the pirates are or how to identify them. Turns out, pirates will be the ships scanning other ships, trying to find valuable cargo. They could be at the nav beacon, but they could also be one of the literally dozens of random signals that you can only see from supercruise. This means that you have to keep going in and out of supercruise around the system (a 1 to 2 minute process), not overshoot the signal locations (add another 2 minutes), drop out of supercruise, see if people are scanning other people like crazy, then go back into supercruise to try to find more signals. Then, if you somehow find your target, they can jump to supercruise and you literally cannot force them out of it unless your ship has a special upgrade that you are never told about. It’s so frustrating because with combat and flight as fun as they are, you would think that hunting pirates would be awesome, but instead it’s a massive chore.

Worth Playing?

Maybe.

It really depends what you like. If the idea of a space trading or exploration sim sounds great to you, then yeah, this game could totally be what you’re looking for. If you want to enjoy fun combat without resorting to attacking friendly ships and piracy, I don’t think you’ll like this one. It’s possible that somebody could enjoy the work associated with finding your target, but I have a really hard time imagining that you could. Personally, I love a lot of the ideas in Elite: Dangerous, but actually playing it is frustrating, tiring, and so far from the space adventure I want.