Playlist (June 2020) (Patreon)

Hey everybody! I don't know what time is anymore, but it feels like the end of a month so let's do a playlist! 

Obviously, over the past few months I've spent a lot of time playing Mass Effect games. And The Witcher games. And Fallout games. All for that massive Commanding Shepard video. But I won't bore you with more talk about those games. Instead, let's get into some other nonsense I've been sampling…

Watch above, or read below. The choice is yours!

Oh, and I said that I wanted to write some more about The Last of Us Part II. So if you've finished the game, check out my super spoiler-heavy critique. 

Monster Train (PC)

So, there aren't many games that have proven as wildly influential in such a short period of time, as Slay the Spire. The game's only been out for a year and yet Steam is full of deck-building roguelikes with the same interface and set-up. 

And while that's not a bad thing, a lot of these games just feel like half-arsed cash-ins. Monster Train is different.

A lot of the game will be instantly familiar to Slay the Spire junkies. A hand of cards at the bottom, a node-based map, a choice of new card at the end of each encounter, and so on. But there are also some fundamental changes.

The biggest one being: the game has a vertical element. Your train has multiple levels, and enemies generally appear on the bottom level, and then work their way up to the top in order to fight the pyre that keeps your train running. If you can stop them before they get there, you'll take no damage whatsoever.

And instead of just dealing damage to enemies, you also spawn in monsters and robots who fight autonomously for you. And deciding where they're placed is as important as what they do. There's an almost tower defence like quality to the game: do you put your strongest units at the start to defeat foes quickly, or save them for the top so you know you're safe from stragglers who get through?

And of course, the game constantly mixes this stuff up, with things like bosses who can move between the different layers, and enemies who can spawn in at the top level. 

I haven't dug into the game super deeply: the number of moving parts on each encounter is pretty involved and so requires more brain power than Slay which can sometimes be played with in a very quick and casual manner. But if you like Spire and usually dodge these obvious clones, give this one a go. It takes a great idea, and then builds something completely new on top. 

XCOM Chimera Squad (PC)

XCOM Chimera Squad was a surprise release. Firaxis just dropped a brand new XCOM game on everyone without the usual tease and announce hype cycle. It was just like: hey, there's gonna be a new XCOM game on Steam in a few days! Kinda crazy.

But maybe that's because this is not really a new XCOM game. It's not XCOM 3. It's an experimental, standalone spin-off, intended for the designers to try out some fresh ideas that maybe wouldn't work in a full on XCOM game.

So there are some major differences: instead of you moving all your units, and the enemy moving all of their units, the turn order happens on a unit-by-unit basis. And you can then manipulate this timeline with special abilities, maybe sacrificing one unit's action to expedite an ally's turn and let them get out of danger.

Also, your team is a combination of humans and aliens, so you get to play with cool powers like swapping spaces with enemies or mind controlling your foes. And then there's the fact that the game is all about breaching into hostage situations and the like, so part of the game involves choosing how to bust through windows and doors.

Also: permadeath is now gone. As your units are fully written, characterful personalities instead of randomly generated goons, a dead soldier is actually just injured and will return to action in a few days. Though, as they are left with scars that impact their performance, this doesn't really fix those nagging feedback loop problems that XCOM has to deal with.

And I think that's the biggest problem with Chimera Squad for me: despite Firaxis having the luxury of making this game whatever they want, it's still shackled by the same stuff as XCOM proper: including the strategy layer, which is always my least favourite part of the franchise. 

Games like Into the Breach show that there's something to be gained from really simplifying the strategy layer and just giving players loads of tactical battles to fight. But once again, in Chimera Squad, you've got to research stuff, send units out on missions, and generally do a load of stuff that will impact on your ability to succeed in a completely different part of the game. 

So - some interesting ideas and I'd like to see Firaxis use some of these in XCOM 3. But, I wish the developers had been a bit more bold in their experimentation. Nothing is sacred, everything should be reconsidered. 

The Last of Us Part II (PS4)

Okay - so don't worry. No spoilers here. While I would like to get into the nitty gritty of the game's story, I'll do that later. Right now, lemme just talk about the first few hours of the game, only show footage from the first couple hours, and simply tell you what this game is like to play.

And the truth is: it's really great! If you played the first The Last of Us, you'll know what to expect: just everything has been improved. Better AI on the enemies, better animations on the fighting, more places to explore and scavenge. 

This game really shows the true genius of Naughty Dog: and that's pacing. There are so many gameplay pillars in The Last of Us and the designers are constantly swapping between them in a way that never lets you get bored. Stressed out and exhausted? Yes. But bored: very rarely.

So just in terms of combat alone, you can fight human enemies and infected enemies, which work completely different. Sometimes they're combined. And there are sub categories of these: like human enemies with dogs, who can track your scent and make stealth much harder.

And then outside of combat, there's puzzle solving, exploration, traversal, narrative-heavy walky bits, crazy cinematic setpieces, and more. There's even a great moment where the game takes influence from the last Uncharted game, Lost Legacy, and lets you explore a wide open-ended area on horseback, gathering optional supplies and secrets in whatever manner you like.

So a typical hour of this game might be quiet exploration, tense stealth against infected that turns into a frantic fight, then an intense cinematic moment where you're running away from danger, and then a flashback to a calm and cozy moment in Ellie's history. 

So, yeah, I've really enjoyed this game so far. And boy, there's so much more I could talk about - but let's leave that until everyone's finished it, eh? 

Talk soon, you're the best!

Mark