I can only do some bitesized gaming right now but something tells me that I'm not going to be able to resist Pillars of Eternity for very much longer (thanks Cid!). Can't join in on Bloodbourne talk for a while.
Valiant Hearts: So I picked this up on the latest Ubisoft Steam sale, and it was an intriguing game because games aren't often set in World War 1. It has gotten positive press because of its depiction of war and how it displays aspects of war that aren't often shown in games.
And I think I kind of hate it. It actually does some things very well in terms of being an easily accessible education game. You can pick up little collectibles, each of which has a wiki-like entry, and these are really interesting, ranging from the role of medics to more esoteric things like doggie gasmasks and small touches like how gold buttons on officer uniforms were actually disadvantageous because it made you more visible. The problem is that the game is very tonally inconsistent. The narration that comes in between chapters does a good job of conveying the horrors of war, the terrible conditions during the winter, how shitty trench warfare was, etc.
The big problem is that whenever something poignant happens, it is usually followed by mechanics that are... there just isn't a better word than "gamey."
*You throw rocks to distract armed guards so that you can knock people out with a soup ladle.
*Only one character can cut wires. If you run into a fence he is the only one who can ever do anything about it in the history of the world. Only one character can dig, I don't know what the German guy does. The dog is better at everything than everyone.
*You go on fetchquests for everyone all the time. There's one thing where you have to find some dude some socks so you find a dirty sock on barbed wire that you have to wash and he gives you an ink bottle and then you have to find some bread to feed a bird and the bird drops a feather so now you can write a letter to your daughter.
*You use sheep as cover.
*You use a bone you find as the handle of a lever.
*There is a French officer who won't get out of your way until you bribe him with wine (...).
*You shake apples out of a tree and that distracts a set of guards for some reason (they just stare at them forever!).
*The nurse character heals people with a rhythm game.
It's just a weird set of contrived situation after contrived situation drawn from the old tradition of weird adventure game logic, and that just doesn't work if you want to have a game that is wanting to depict World War 1 with any kind of weight. None of the game mechanics are specific to the era, and they're all almost entirely disposable. I feel like something like having the nurse try to heal mustard gas victims but having the rhythm game being impossible and the patient dying would have been a good idea here, but I think in general I may have wanted a much darker game than these guys were willing to make.
It makes me question what exactly they were setting out to do with this. At one point, there will be a fruitless infantry charge into no man's land where your companions just get endlessly bombarded, which shows how quickly a life could be taken in this war. Then there are sections where you are on a car chase running away from policemen in a situation where it seems like the Benny Hill song should play. Or, the main villain of the game is a Looney Tunes caricature of a German Baron, which I would totally be fine with in a game with that kind of tone. He cackles madly while launching dynamite at you and to beat him you throw dynamite into his tank hatch, after which he makes a comic book getaway. This is one area where the visual style (which looks quite good) may impede things because the violence is very stylized and cartoonish, with cartoon style bombs, dynamite, and explosions. Also, if you die, you start at the latest checkpoint and the game seemingly checkpoints every 30 seconds, so it really seems as if there is no consequence for getting caught or accidentally digging in a trench and hitting a bomb. I'm not sure if this game was just meant for kids or what, but it is not really afraid to get into dark and weighty subjects. It's just bothersome that the game's tone and pacing constantly belies that.
I will say that the ending is quite good:
So Emille, who is fairly pacifistic, has a commanding officer that constantly ordering them to charge directly into fire and bombardment. Your companions are getting gun down, basically to no avail. To prevent any more loss of life, Emille hits the officer with a shovel, which kills him. He is court marshaled and sentenced to death. The ending sequence is him in chains, walking slowly towards a firing squad. He sees ghostly outlines of some of the friends (the other controllable characters) as he walks and there is voiceover of him reading a letter to his daughter:
"Dearest Marie,
As the war ends for me, I have no regrets. I have seen too much horror. I hope fate has been more merciful to you. My time on earth is brief, and mine has been filled with so much joy that I can only be thankful for how much I've been blessed, most especially for the wonder you brought into my life. This letter is my last. I've been found guilty from a military court for the death of an officer. It was not my intention to kill him. War makes men mad. Though I failed Karl, I know my sacrifice has not been in vain. My honor is assured, since it is the will of God to separate us on Earth, I hope we'll meet again in Heaven. Keep me in your prayers. Your loving papa, always." [gunshot]
It then cuts to a Emille's plot in a veteran's cemetery, saying that we must strive to cherish the deaths and sacrifices of those lost during the war. It is very emotional and well-done, and if the rest of the story had a similar level of thoughtfulness then this could have been SO GOOD.
At least the dog is amazing.
Ori and the Blind Forest - I finished this. It isn't a long game, but nothing too much has changed since my last post about it. The platforming feels good, albeit not perfect, but it helps when you get things like triple jump and the feather and the ability to "ride" projectiles. All these things make traversal a lot easier and faster, which is good because there isn't fast travel (BOO!). Backtracking can take a while but from what I could tell, there wasn't a ton of hidden stuff anyway, so making long trips to explore old places may not necessarily be worthwhile. Combat never gets that great. You are always spamming while your homing bullets hopefully hit shit, so your primary role in combat is actually just to dodge. There aren't really bosses as such, so combat seems like a bit of an afterthought.
Instead of bosses, there are these very deliberately paced set pieces. For example, there is one where there is rushing water and you need to use the ability to launch yourself off of enemy projectiles to get to high ground or you drown. I'm not really sure how to feel about these. You basically have to fail a lot in order to properly get a hold of what you're supposed to do, and occasionally, the enemies won't cooperate and you will make one mistake and have to start the entire setpiece over again. This was a little jarring a game built around the ability to save anywhere and where you generally don't lose progress. They weren't incredibly hard, but you basically have to fail them to learn how to get through. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I don't think some of them were designed that well. For example, in the water one, the water rises as a function of the progress you're making, so it doesn't matter if you're doing "well" in your current run because the water will just shoot up anyway. I do like some of the creativity involved with the setpieces and they are gratifying to get through I still think they could have used some tweaking.
The visuals remain gorgeous throughout the game. There is sort of this Okami/Miyazaki-like restoration element (mostly in cutscenes), and you do want the affected parts of the world to be revived because of how freaking beautiful it is at the beginning. Each dungeon you go to has a bit of an elemental take to it, so the environments are nicely varied, and the most striking thing is that there are always things moving in the foreground or background to make the world seem alive. There are stills that could very easily be desktop backgrounds or poster prints. I think it's the best art directed game I've seen in a long time, and it's worth seeing it in movement even if you aren't that interested in the game otherwise. The soundtrack is also excellent.
I ran into a really nasty bug after one of the cutscenes where my character couldn't appear and she gets blown away and all was fog. I had to patch my save and activate debug mode to get around it. That was basically gamebreaking though, since it happened every time I loaded. They're patching that and I think adding the ability to teleport between save shrines, so that should really improve the game. It's not a great game but it is good, and it's worth $20, although maybe wait until they have patches.
