Playlist (March 2022) (Patreon)

Hey! So I’ve been travelling, giving multiple lectures, making video games, and running a YouTube channel. Not a lot of time for video games! But, here’s three things I have been playing since we last chatted.

Elden Ring

Okay, it’s the big one. Elden Ring. If you’ve somehow missed this - it’s basically Dark Souls 4, but also Dark Souls 5 and 6. It’s a monstrously big, open world Soulslike game where you can explore, fight, and - of course - die, wherever you like.

And I love it! I’ve always said that, for me, the extreme difficulty and impossible boss fights have never been the appeal of Souls games. I just love the sense of adventure, exploration, mystery, and surprise. What fiendish horrors are around the next corner? Where’s this ladder go?

And Elden Ring is just that… for like 100 hours straight. After a brief introduction you are chucked out into an open world and where you go next is up to you. It really reminds me of the original Zelda game: you just pick a direction and see what you can find.

And you’re going to find caves full of monsters, bonkers areas that you definitely shouldn’t be in yet, helpful trinkets and upgrades, and NPCs giving you ultra cryptic quests. And Elden Ring has a really high “WTF per minute” ratio, which is to say you’re constantly seeing some new enemy or hazard that makes you go what the heck is that?

Oh, and if you stumble upon a boss who is giving you a lot of trouble, you can just plop a marker on your map, go off in another direction, and come back 10 hours later with such a big sword that you can bop ‘em to death in about five hits.

Which is… a bit weird, actually. Basically, every enemy and boss in the game has a set level and health bar. And so they might be nigh-on impossible to fight right now, or the perfect level of challenge, or laughably easy. And I’ve been finding a lot of the latter: loads of content that I’m just rolling through without a care because the enemies go down in a couple hits.

And I’m not exactly complaining - like I say, I don’t play Dark Souls to get stuck on a hard boss fight for four hours - but it is odd that FromSoft didn’t seem to consider a fix for this problem at all. Even after seeing something similar happen in the non-linear back half of Dark Souls 1.

And, look, I’m not sure what the solution is - level scaling is far from perfect. A lot of people hated it in Oblivion. But, whatever the case, it just seems a tad too easy to wreck the balance of this game. And once that happens, I feel a lot less invested in the world. It feels like less of a nightmare hellscape that I’m barely surviving in - and more of a theme park that I can waltz through.

Still, loving the game! And at about 40 hours in, I’ve still got a lot to do - so I’ll hold my full thoughts until later.

Not for Broadcast

Hm, this is a strange one. So in this game you play as a person behind the control deck of a live news broadcast. You’ve got a big panel of buttons in front of you, and you’re in charge of picking the right camera angle, queuing up adverts, and censoring swear words.

So you might be broadcasting a political debate - all delivered through full motion video clips. You get to see the live feed, and can edit it on the fly, to make the final, slightly-delayed broadcast clip. So you’ll want to switch camera feeds to focus on who is talking, and be ready to bleep out bad language. Oh, and maybe make your favoured politician look good, and tank their opponent’s ratings.

Which all sounds pretty awesome - a sort of quick-fire reaction game, where you can impact the narrative with your choices, mixed with Papers, Please style dystopian commentary.

But, unfortunately… it just didn’t work for me. For one thing, it’s just absurdly silly, and in a sorta cringe-worthy way. For example, in one part you’re interviewing a man about decency - and then his cupboard door swings open to reveal a sex dungeon and an escaping gimp. Which is kinda clever… except this awkward skit just goes on forever. I just didn’t find the game funny, and was hoping for something a bit more subtle and clever.

And beyond that, the minute-to-minute gameplay is a little boring. Just watching a video and picking camera angles does wear out its welcome. Which is why the devs added all sorts of little mini games to the mix, like fixing the signal by playing with knobs and dials. But these are, in my opinion, just kinda tedious.

And so , if you ask me, this is the perfect example of a game with a killer concept - but messy execution. I was sold on the idea of the game - simulate a TV station, influence the populace, juggle the budget! - but just turned off and bored by the actual game. It’s got great reviews on Steam so maybe it’s just me - but I’m sad to say I was totally disappointed by this one.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land

Okay, if Elden Ring is really giving you trouble… then Kirby might be the solution. This is the latest easy-going platformer featuring the pink puffball - and this time you can eat a friggin’ car.

So, just in case you got the wrong idea from the trailers - this isn’t an open world game. It’s set in a post apocalyptic city, but is very much split into small levels. In each one you’ll do some simple platforming, some simple combat, and some simple puzzle solving.

Yeah, simple is the right word. Kirby was originally made as a sort of my-first-platformer, to get people used to these games before graduating to Mario. And this latest game is no exception: it’s very gentle in what it asks you to do, its very forgiving in terms of failure, and there’s loads of quality of life features to bias things in your favour.

But, you know what? That’s alright with me. My wife and I have been enjoying just exploring these little levels and being delighted by all the cute characters and clever little ideas. The big one for this game is Mouthful Mode, where Kirby can suck up everything from a car to a set of lockers to a stadium-sized staircase. And use them to overcome little puzzles. It’s just funny to see what Kirby what shove into his gob next.

And we’ve enjoyed trying to find all the secrets in each stage. Getting from start to finish isn’t too hard, but finding all the hidden rooms, secret items, and unknown goals adds an extra level of challenge that feels just right.

One piece of design feedback, courtesy of my wife, though. HAL has tried to make all the enemies incredibly cute - which makes setting them on fire or squashing them under a giant mallet… kinda horrifying! We’ve actually been avoiding combat because it feels wrong to murder these little guys. Stop making us kill cute things, HAL!

That’s all for March, see you soon.