I still am on a quest to find the One True Game (of the moment). I will note that I’m going through some personal shit at the moment, so that might be influencing my mood at the moment. I’m also dealing with health issues (which, sigh), so I’m not always up to trying something new. I’m not really up to anything arduous, including my beloved Souls. The only thing I can play with any regularity is Binding of Isaac: Rebirth*, and that’s maybe one game a day plus a go at the Daily Run. It helps that I only have to use the keyboard as well. It’s very minimal exertion, which is pretty much all I need at the moment.
At any rate, I’m trying to find other games. There is a Steam sale going on because there always is, and I picked up Vampyr, DMC 5, and Gris. By the way, I have a disgusting number of games in my shame pile. I can’t tell you how many because, as I said, it’s disgusting. Before the sale, I heard tell of a game called Disco Elysium. It’s a open world RPG detective noir game, and it sounded like it could be right up my alley. I have been searching for a lifetime for a detective game that is actually enjoyable and a good game. I have tried countless of them over the years, and I have only tasted bitterness and disappointment. The Sherlock Holmes games that everyone loves so much? Bollocks. I’ve tried five or six of them, including the most recent two, and I hated every minute. Well, that’s not completely true. There were glimmers of goodness, but overall, it was tedious, grinding, not good gameplay. The reason I kept trying is because people loved them so much. I thought I must have been missing something, but I finally gave up. Until they are done by someone else, I’m not buying another Sherlock Holmes game.
Side Note: Casual game devs get away with so much shit. I kind of put the Sherlock games in this category, but not quite as bad. They churn out the same game over and over again with the slightest tweaks–sometimes, not even tweaked at all. In addition, for the love of god, do not have a cut scene before I have a chance to mess with the options. I play casual games without the sound, and I turn off the sound as soon as I can. The Sherlock games are not that bad, but the basic gameplay doesn’t change at all. Or rather, it didn’t and then it did with the modernization of the games, but then it didn’t again.
Disco Elysium. I didn’t know much about it before I bought it. I knew it was dystopian and D&D based. By the way, ever since I started watching the Oxventures, I have a desire to play D&D. Jane is playing the character I want to play–Prudence, a tiefling warlock who has dedicated herself to Cthulhu–but I found out from the interwebs that a tiefling warlock is so basic. I have a feeling that the D&D community is going to be a lot like the Souls community. Mostly good folks, but with a very vocal minority who blather on about the right way to play. Let’s face it. Mostly young white dudes because that’s how it is in most nerd communities.
I had read one article and watched one video on it before playing. I knew that I started as a detective who didn’t remember anything, but had one hell of a hangover. If I had played without watching/reading anything at all, I wouldn’t have even known he was a detective. In the game, I literally wake up with a pounding headache, my room a mess. I don’t know where I am or who I am, and I amble around the room I find a necktie around…the light fixture I think? A ceiling fan? Something like that. I put it on, and it starts talking to me. It’s called Horrific Necktie, and it tries to convince me to kill myself. It’s pretty clear that’s what I had tried to do before, and this an interesting conceit in the game.
I will write more about this game later, but the point of this post is that I haven’t really gotten into any one game. While I want to love this game–I really, really, really do–I just…don’t. I like it. There are so many good things about it, and some downright brilliant aspects. Such as, I’m proficient in self-critique and communism at the moment. I don’t know what good these will do me in the long run, but it’s pretty cool. The UI shit is almost overwhelming and not well organized, There are so many traits/skills you can put points into, and I’m almost paralyzed by the choices. I feel I’ve described this before, and searching my archives, I find out I did. In this session of Disco Elysium, I failed four white checks in a row. Including one that had an 83% chance of succeeding.
About that. It was a non-optional situation. My partner and I were checking out the lynched body, and I kept throwing up. I failed the check once, and then the game suggested I up my Endurance, a stat that wasn’t in my preferred category of stats. I was not happy about it, but I did it when I finally had enough XP to level up. Then, I went back for the white check, and I failed again. I don’t remember the percentages for the first two check, but I’m pretty sure at least the second was over 50%. Then, I boosted another trait (much later), I think it was Empathy, that put my percentage at 83%. And I failed. So, for those keeping count at home, I failed three times on a check I had to pass, and I had to put a point into a trait I didn’t want to put a point into. After I failed the check for the third time, the game suggested yet again that I put another point into Endurance. I was pissed, but I did it because I wanted to pass this goddamn check. When I went back for the fourth time, I had something like a 92% chance of passing, and I fucking finally did.
Then, later on, I met a wealthy woman in the course of my investigation, and I decided to ask her for money. One of the aspects in my mind told me not to do that, but I did because I wanted to play it the way I would do things in real life. In other words, make choices that ‘felt’ good. I had earlier asked someone for money and got it from him. Like ten reals. Remember, I had 1.70 reals up to this point, and I got most of that by recycling bottles. So, after wiggling ten reals out of a dude, I was feeling confident by the time I talked to this wealthy woman. Plus, one of the loading tips in the game urged you to ask people for money, so what the hell? I asked her, and she asked how much. One of the options was 130 reals, which was how much I needed to pay off my hotel bill (damages). I decided what the hell, and she said it was a reasonable amount and gave it to me. What???? I get 130 reals just like that? That was exhilarating!
And yet, it just doesn’t have that thing that a game has to suck me in. Plus, it’s really heavy, theme-wise, and so goddamn bleak. And, this seems like a tiny thing, but it isn’t, they make sprinting annoying. You have to point your mouse where you want to go and double tap. If you deviate from the route at all or you can quite tap where you want to go, then you just stop. I much prefer continual sprinting until you reach your destination. I intend to play more of the game because I really like it, but every time I think about playing it, I…just don’t. I have to be in a certain mindset to play it, and that mindset doesn’t seem to be happening much these days.
I bought The Legend of Bum-bo because it’s related to BOI:R. It’s a pre-sequel, and I was hyped about it when it was announced. That was ages ago, however, and I lost my enthusiasm in the meantime. Yes, I’m playing BOI:R on the regular, but it’s more because it’s easy for me to play at this point than because I actually like it any longer. Also, while I like Bumbo, I wasn’t sure how he would translate into a Match 4 cardboard game. I mean, it looked charming, but how would it play? I bought it when it came out because it was reasonably priced, and I fired it up. It’s very charming with the cardboard figures who are moved along like puppets. I immediately hated the narrator and his very over-the-top performance, but I gritted my teeth and bore it.
The game itself? It’s fun, but frustrating. You start out with Bum-bo the….just maybe Bum-bo? No, it’s Bum-bo the Brave. You face off against enemies, many of them you can find in BOI;R, and it’s a standard Match-4 kind of game. You match four, then throw whatever it is you matched at the enemies. There’s strategy, of course, and it’s turn based. At the end of the rooms (which is RNG and includes a treasure room), you meet the boss. If you beat the floor, you unlock the next character, which is Bum-bo the Nimble. Each Bum-bo has a thing. The original Bum-bo has a smash that is considered magic, and you get it when you match four bones. Bum-bo the Nimble gets more damage for his needle spell–which is based on matching urine–every time he uses that magic spell. He’s my favorite my gal.
It was fun for the first few hours, but then it just…fizzled.
I’m running long so I’ll leave this here for now and tackle it again in another post. See you then!
*Yes, I know it’s technically Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ at this point, but in my mind, it stopped after BOI:R.