#but there are things to love about the bethesda entries as well. They lack the juicy substance of the original two and NV

[obessivedork]

So I live in a hazy bubble and somehow managed to entirely forget there was a TV show happening but if you're just finding The Fallout Series big friendly hugs to you <3 I have thoughts and opinions™ and complaints because no piece of art is objectively perfect but welcome to one of my favourite things ever! :)

[retphienix]

There are so many fucking games I want to play for the blog and I hypothetically have the time, but the energy, the attention span, the drive?

In more positive terms here are some various titles I plan to give a shot for the blog.

Let's do a 5am state of the blog kind of thing to clear some thoughts, eh?

Morrowind (Current Game ramble)

For the moment the blog is more or less on break with me playing Morrowind ""For the blog"" but mostly for me, because that's just a game I've wanted to explore. Not that every other game on the blog isn't that, just that I looked at Morrowind and said "That'll be a terrible game to present naturally. That's a stream game, or a condensed video, not a liveblog" and then did it anyway.

I'm loving Morrowind! Honestly the sense of mystery, fantasy, and adventure is just chef kiss levels of perfect to me.

But it's terrible in a photoset, I'm not particularly interested in doing another format for the game, and it's a game with less 'intense narrative themes!' and more 'Incredibly different game design compared to modern Bethesda' in terms of discussion material and let's all be real here:

We're all fucking tired of that conversation lol.

So there ain't much to talk on in depth, it's more of a "Here's a newbie seeing new things!" playthrough with nothing to talk about after the fact, which ain't a strong point for the blog- again- that's a stream/video kind of thing.

ANYWHO- Morrowind fun, about the only news I can offer on that series is that it might abruptly end and become a 'for me' series because I'm not particularly interested in beating the game nearly as much as I'm interested in exploring aimlessly and seeing what happens.

I'm not playing Morrowind for the end goal of beating the main quest, or beating the DLCs. I'm playing it to wander into caves and find new pants, so if I reach a point where I'm satisfied with what I've shared and my motivation has not borne a new end goal then I'll end the live blog and move on to a new game :P

Backlog

The short statement I'll make is that this blog is a hell for my backlog.

Even without infinite money on hand I've ended up with so many physical and digital games just sitting here waiting to be played either because they caught my eye or because of recommendations by various people over the years.

I keep sitting down, cataloguing my backlog, realizing it's pointless to catalog, deleting it all, and then starting over yet again.

The fact is, if anyone recommended it it's probably still sitting in a text document somewhere, or physically on my shelf, and I don't remotely know when I'll get to it.

I've yet to hit the point where I decide to turn this blog into work, so I have never sat down and gone "Well, Retphienix NEEDS to post! Sit down, 8-12 hours minimum, let's play the next game!"

And part of me wishes I'd do that, but the fact is this isn't a job. There's no money here, there's the opposite even! I don't remotely see it that way, but if you squint and tilt your head I've spent a lot of money on this blog over the years.

Capture devices (a lot of them!), consoles specifically bought for the blog, controllers out the wazoo, I've gone through multiple computers for this thing, and the games, my lord the games- so many games.

And that's fiscally, what about manpower? So many hours have gone into this blog, so many hours poured into the background of making all this work, researching shit, putting my all into formulating my opinions clearly for posts, writing, hell video shit even though it's mostly clips as my one step into edited content became an impromptu awkward hiatus from doing more lol.

What was I on about.

Despite all that nonsense, Retphienix is a passion project. Not a job.

If I lack the passion in some sense then the work doesn't get done "just for the sake of the work". And I don't mean lost passion as much as "No motivation on x day; tired on y day; interested in doing something else on z day" etc.

If things aren't clickin' I don't force it, so the blog has all this backlog and isn't put together in a way that facilitates burning through it quickly.

I do sometimes wish things were different though, I know I'd still enjoy such a playstyle, but I can't justify "faking it til you make it" in a format that literally isn't built to pay and was never intended to.

I can't work myself for nothin'.

Hypothetical "Next" games

While the backlog is a wild wasteland of titles, there are some that just kinda guarantee their spots sooner rather than later.

Yakuza 6 and 7 along with Judgment, obviously. The series is one of my all time favorites and I generally have some of my absolute most fun on the blog side of things with those games, so it's a winner on two fronts. It's just fun to react to, post out of context things for, and talk with other fans about and for whatever reason tumblr has a healthy enough fanbase for the series that my meager blog gets some attention there.

Dragon Quest has a strangely weighted chance all things considered. DQ has many of the same advantages as Yakuza- it's a series I adore, it's fun to talk about in this format, and the fandom is big enough to occasionally spill my way making the blogging experience a bit more fun. It's also a series where I don't know what'd come next to be fair. Probably DQ4? I mean, might as well continue on from that point since I have 1-3 done. I can't exactly justify replaying the entirety of DQ11 no matter how much I want to! Turning on the games above gave me DQ goosebumps which kinda settled how likely it is to show up sooner rather than later, lol.

Jeez. I looked at one of my surviving lists and that's like all that's popping out at me.

Other series feel like giant leaps with no gas in the tank, like do I want to start playing Kingdom Hearts? Not really, not right now. Do I finally play Lisa? Eeeeeeh. Persona? Hmmmm.

I haven't the fuzziest. There are so many one off interesting titles, but if the drive ain't there they might as well be textbooks.

Perhaps instead of any major next game I'll just do some afternoons exploring random titles for a bit here and there with no intention of beating em.

The idea is enticing as hell, but the feeling of not giving the game's a "real shake" feels bad.

We'll see. The only certainties seem to be Yakuza and DQ, as much as I'd prefer far more.

Side project hypotheticals

Outside of the basic live blog stuff I'm still interested in exploring scripted stuff. Mostly to prove to myself that I can overcome some anxieties and break from the meandering pace the last effort gave- I can write! That much I know! So just gotta trick myself into writing for a video and then make the video after the fact lol.

Current thoughts are on a video exploring the monster taming sub-genre. It's a genre near and dear to my heart, and one I know some weird things about as is- but mostly it's a genre I KNOW I know very little about despite that, so I'd like to give it an overall look, or perhaps just explore some random entries, I haven't a clue lol. I'd mostly like an opportunity to talk about some interesting entries in the genre, things like explaining my adoration for DWM while explaining how the flaws make it really rough today, or the interesting mash of genres that is Lost Magic, or the more modern take that mashes idle-like mechanics with Siralim Ultimate.

Won't lie, playing the demo for Monster Hunter Stories 2 threw a wrench in that plan because it made me want to talk about it and how the genre might have a new breath of life after really grinding to a halt as pokemon became what it is today, but all to be seen or not lol.

As far as other things like streams? Not really.

The concept of writing a bit more on games is tickling the back of my head lately, but that mostly just means "more posts that aren't live-blogging" as I haven't the fuzziest where I'd share such nonsense.

Really it's all up in the air as far as retphienix content is concerned, beyond the live blogging obviously.

5am closing

It's fun to explore what games have to offer, both on the individual level, the personal level, and as a whole- as a medium.

So I like Retphienix.

And I like all I've made here.

I hope to continue for a long, long time- no matter what future formats might look like.

[breadknight-likes-things]

Game Journal 05/19/20: Through The Realms Of Oblivion: The Valus Mountains

You know, The Valus mountains are probably the area of Oblivion I think about the least.  So much so I actually left the Valus mountains for the final entry of Through The Realms Of Oblivion (pending a bonus post I have lined up anyway).  In getting screenshots for it earlier today, i’m now wondering what the actual hell I’ve been thinking about this sub-zone this entire time!  I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but doing this series of posts has given me one hell of a new appreciation for the mountain areas of Cyrodiil, where previously I didn’t much care for any of them! The Valus mountains are strikingly green, which is an odd thing to say in a game where the entire screen may as well be bright green most of the time!  Most of the zones in Oblivion are analogous to some real world biome, and I had damn near completely forgotten that The Valus mountains are quite a lot like the American Pacific Northwest!  Now, granted, much like all the other biomes and zones in this game, it’s all pretty low tech.  2006 could really only produce a certain level of graphics after all.  That doesn’t stop the Valus mountains from feeling like a very special part of this game!

Unlike the other two mountain areas, The Valus mountains don’t feel as radically vertical.  Where places like The Colovian Highlands often feel like one large upward slope, and The Jerall’s are a frozen tundra full of high peaks, The Valus mountains feel more in line with the kind of hilly forest you’d expect someone to go camping in (and, at multiple places, you can see that people have).  Even though the area is just as dangerous as all the others, it doesn’t feel that way at all.  In fact, general vibe wise, I’d say these mountains often feel like one of the downright safest zones in Cyrodiil.  

Of course, don’t let your guard down.  The same amount of wild animals, trolls roam this area and are all willing to beat you down for the crime of existing.  Also notable is an utter lack of any kind of civilization.  The Valus’ lack any kind of town, settlement or even isolated cabin. but most notably they have absolutely no city of any kind.  In fact, given that in the southern reaches these mountains bleed into the Blackwood Swamp, this is hands down the widest swath of unbroken wilderness in the entire game.  It lends the whole area rugged appeal! Oftentimes in Oblivion, due to it’s relatively small map size, you can’t go that deep into nature without running across another city or town, but here, good luck finding anything!

One final thing of note, is that while they have little plot importance, and very few quests that send you into them (which I suspect may be a factor of Bethesda simply running out of time), they do pay host to the dungeon containing Mehrunes Razor.  While that doesn’t sound all that interesting on it’s own, I assure you it is.  That dungeon is long, twisting, bizarre (at one point you even stumble across an entire small town that the Bandits have built inside a save system) and one of the best in the game.  If you find yourself in the Valus mountains at any point, make sure you pay attention to some unassuming fortress ruins, I promise they’ll be worth your while.

Random Screenshot Of The Day:

Always been a fan of these rune stones you can find out in the woods in Oblivion, even if the ways it grants you conjured weapons and armor are both pretty much worthless, and hilariously ineffective in most situations.  Especially when they decide to overwrite the armor your wearing and so your character is suddenly shirtless and wearing huge armored gloves.

Stray Notes:

- I’m over here struggling to pick my next character to level in WoW!  I’m trying to pick out an allied race and I really want to do a Vulpera Survival Hunter....but that Dark Iron Dwarf Paladin is calling my name too!

- Mo’ Miku, Mo’ That Weird Blue Haired Guy I Don’t Like.  Seriously though, still loving Hatsune Miku Megamix.

- I got through the Matriarch boss fight in Gears V today which I.....really remember being harder than that?  Was it patched or something?  She was way easier to bait into the freezing water, and seemed to do her big one hit kill move significantly less.  Oh well, why complain!

- I finally sat down and watched that full Ghost of Tsushima gameplay presentation Sony put out about a week ago.  I really want to buy that game now.  Hell, I think I want that game significantly more than Last of Us Part 2!

[cerastes]

Triple A games being colossal failures is a very rare thing.

Even if critically lampooned and not what the publisher expected in terms of output, Triple A titles don’t really “fail”, they still make a lot of money back, usually more than it was spent in production (albeit this cannot be considered a profit as it is usually not much more, and all that time and those resources could’ve been spent in two or three lesser games in less time that would’ve yielded more capital, but I digress), so a Triple A game being an abject failure is not commonplace at all, and they make very interesting case studies.

The three most relevant Triple A failures nowadays are Mighty No.9, Battleborn, and Fallout 76. It’s interesting because they all failed due to different things. This is all extremely compressed and summarized, as each of those titles merits a lengthy discussion and a long post, but this is how it goes.

Mighty No.9 was the result of Keiji Inafune’s incompetence as a producer. His extremely tone deaf decisions and transparent greed ended up sinking the whole ship. Inafune pushed really hard to make Mighty No.9 a media empire, which was very unwise, as what he had promised was a video game. Before the game had even been released, he was already making more promises than he could realistically fulfill, launching more Kickstarters for several additional things, including but not limited to another video game altogether, Red Ash, as well as an anime for Red Ash. When Mighty No.9 had not, again, yet been released and he had already delayed the release date a couple of times. He kept asking for more and more money even though MN9 was the single most expensive Kickstarter of its time (and surpassed by few nowadays), and the stretch goals got so ridiculous that it lost scope of realism. End of the day, it was supposed to be released on ten different consoles, two of which still haven’t seen a release. MN9 sank with Inafune trapped in the cabin, a reminder to the world that Inafune never directed any game. He mostly was a producer and character designer. Turns out, you need actual directing chops to carry the development of a game, not to mention a media empire.

Battleborn was Gearbox’s own karmic guillotine, and it’s the only entry here I’d consider bittersweet. Randy Pitchford is a morally bankrupt businessman and definitely got what he had coming to him after what he had done to Colonial Marines, but the thing is... Battleborn is actually not a bad game? Despite Pitchford’s lack of a soul and the immensely cringeworthy dialogue, Gearbox does indeed possess real talent in its game-making team, and you can tell they put a lot of love into the game, mechanically speaking. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a fun game overall. What killed Battleborn wasn’t it being bad, but rather, it was Gearbox doing exactly everything they needed to kill it. It was an artful demonstration of how to kill a game. If I didn’t know better about Pitchford’s incompetence, I’d be of the mind that this was done deliberately, as no one can possibly beef it this hard. Battleborn, for whatever reason, decided to compete with Overwatch, despite being very different games. Overwatch is property of Blizzard, a fan favorite in the industry who, despite its many failings, no one can deny provides solid games with tight gameplay. Battleborn is closer to a MOBA than a Hero Shooter, and the thing with MOBAs is that they are all free, whereas Battleborn charged you 60 bucks upfront. MOBAs aren’t niche per se, but the competitive, dedicated scene is, and the appeal of games like League of Legends or Heroes of the Storm is that you can try them for free and see if you wanna dedicate to its intricacies or not. Battleborn charged you a 60 dollar fee immediately for a genre of game that a lot of people don’t really stay in until they find the game that they are most comfortable with within the genre. And, all in all? It’s not a bad game, but it’s not stellar, either. It’s very basic gunplay makes it inferior to a dedicated Hero Shooter, but its steep entry fee and overall handling makes it not a MOBA, either. For the kind of experiment that Battleborn was, they really should’ve 1) not have competed with the fan favorite game with tons of momentum behind it and 2) made it free, or at least far cheaper. It doesn’t help that they spent a lot of time not revealing anything about the gameplay proper until it was close to release, whereas Overwatch had released gameplay footage and even a demo. It had no business trying to compete with Overwatch because in terms of both polish and PR, it had no way to beat it.

And Fallout 76... Ah, sweet Bethesda, you’ve really done it now. In the words of Fallout New Vegas: The candle that burns twice as bright, lasts half as long. They really took the good faith of their fans for granted. Nothing new there, really, because Bethesda has always had fans that let themselves be made fools of, what with ”the bugs are part of the charm!” and all that, but F76 is the battle axe that smashed the camel’s back. Todd Howard has charisma, he really does, but charisma isn’t enough for game development because, as it turns out, you need to actually make a game that lives up to the hype you rattled up. Rattling up hype by itself is not enough, and I’d argue it’s ultimately harmful if you cannot deliver on it. Lazily coded, lazily put together, unoptimized, grievously unsafe, and an overall mess, F76 is the logical conclusion of “the bugs are part of the charm!”. You kept celebrating the child’s misbehavior, you kept laughing and clapping as the baby knocked over cups and shat on the couch, so you don’t get to complain now that the baby jabbed a fork into the power outlet and fried its brains. It’s a Triple A title that doesn’t care. Most checks are user-side, not server-side, which, if you know even the bare minimum about game design, is a terrible idea, as players can quite literally modify their game and ‘hack’ it to their liking, and there is nothing you can do against it, because the server sure as hell won’t care. Bethesda isn’t an indie dev or even a newer company like Gearbox is, Bethesda has been in the game for a while now. All of this is simply unforgivable. But the bugs and lack of quality are part of the charm, am I right, guys? We stan Todd “Bethesdad” Howard! Yeah, have fun with that.

Game development is difficult, but these three exercises in failure are examples I like to keep in mind at all times, as they are rare and different case studies of how a game can fail when it absolutely shouldn’t. Be it directorial incompetence or outright laziness, there’s always a way for a video game, something that takes a multitalented team to properly produce, to fall flat on its face.

[imx-doomer]

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (A review of sorts)

[Image Credits: @CallegosY on Twitter]

The latest entry in the Wolfenstein franchise has left quite an impact in many ways. It is been four months since the release of the game but, has it really been said everything about the game? I don't think so.

(I mean, I wouldn't be writing this if that were to be the case, I think).

A disclaimer: This post will be very, very long (I think it has the right to be), and it will contain major spoilers about Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and the previous games (The New Order and The Old Blood). Desist from reading this post if you have not played and finished the game(s) on its entirety, and go play them before reading this.  English is also not my first language so please excuse the grammatical mistakes I might have.

As of right now my experience with the game is based on me watching someone else play the game on launch, not because I prefer it that way (I heavily oppose that kind of practice, actually), but because I do not own Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus or the hardware to run the game on my PC. However, it is my intention to acquire the means to play the game as soon as possible, because I firmly believe that's how you're going to get the full experience.

It took 25 years for a Wolfenstein game to feature Adolf Hitler up front in its main story again. That same amount of time also happens to be the time Wolfenstein was absent from being in a position of controversy. But, contrary to what one would have thought a few years back, the inclusion of Hitler himself was not the cause of the controversy.

A lot has changed in those 25 years, but, as the saying goes: the more things change, the more they stay the same. And if there's something that I have learned from all my years spent playing videogames is that people will always complain about them no matter what. I don't have the exact percentage, but most of the time, those complains are dumb. Really dumb.

As a matter of fact, back in the day in 1992 when Wolfenstein 3-D was released it received complains about being "too violent" and "being heavy on the ketchup", and also even the Anti-Defamation League protested the inclusion of swastikas and nazis in the game (Source: Masters of DOOM, pages 114-115). This also ended up causing the game to be banned in Germany, because of the prohibition of nazi imagery in entertainment.

Keep in mind, this was way back in 1992. Of course, don't get me started when DOOM came out. That's a whole different story.

Another game that fell into controversy (as that franchise usually does, now that I think about it), was GTA: San Andreas. I remembered San Andreas while I was writing this post because I reminded myself of the days where I swore to not even touch the game, in part because of a portion of its fanbase (my experience with the game back then consisted of annoying kids playing nothing else but GTA:SA in arcades or cybercafes).

But then one day I decided to play the game myself for the first time, and after the first three hours I was sold. There's this one spot in the highway that connects Verdant Bluffs with Downtown Los Santos, near El Corona and the Los Santos Intl. Airport, where cars would go fast enough to crash with one another and cause huge explosions without any actual input of the player. Those who have played the game might remember that spot. You could just stand there and watch the show unfold, it was so hilarious to me.

That's how I learned to separate the game from the things that ultimately had zero impact on the game itself. A very valuable lesson.

But now, let's talk about the Wolfenstein II, shall we?

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is a videogame released in November of 2017, developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda Softworks for PC, XBox One and PlayStation 4. In this year (2018) it is expected to be released on the Nintendo Switch with help of the same studio (Panic Button) that worked on the port of DOOM 2016.

Now. The game?

The game...is good.

Keep in mind, I said "good". Not very, or great, or excellent, or fantastic, or maybe even GOTY. "Good". There is definitely a feeling that the game could've been -at least- very good, or that it could've achieved GOTY status. In fact, even after some people claimed The New Colossus to be their own GOTY, it wasn't until very recently that Wolfenstein II received a nomination from an important institution for GOTY; a GOTY nomination that ended up losing in favor of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Now, some of you definitely have issues with a few parts of the game, and I don't really know if we have the same kind of issues, but I'll give you the very short description of mine:

-The story happens, B.J. liberates America from the nazis (big spoilers there I know), but it doesn't really feel like it actually did. There's a feel of balance between the gameplay and cutscenes, but some key moments in the story lacked the necessary impact that was needed in order to strengthen their importance in a game where the story is supposed to matter. -The game also has some balance issues with the difficulty, or rather, the AI of a few enemies. -The gameplay enhancements (you know the ones) arrive perhaps a little bit late, and are not properly introduced in a way that could've improved the experience of the game for many players. -The main villain of this game doesn't even hold a candle compared to the main villain of the previous game, or even other villains of the new game itself. And this is further reinforced by... -The absolute STATE of the last sequence of the game.

There was also another issue. When the game was released there were two groups of people, those who couldn't run the game, and those who bought the console versions. Jokes aside, there were (and maybe still are) some optimization issues with the PC version of the game that stopped a lot of people from playing it, but then again, you had people with PCs that could actually run the game with little to zero issues. Such is life in the mustard zone, I guess.

(Wasn't DOOM 2016 plagued with those issues too? Someone help me with this)

I will expand on each issue in a moment, but before that...

-Wolfenstein: The New(found) Audience-

...Remember what I said about GTA: San Andreas and actually giving videogames a chance? That's more or less what happened with the new Wolfenstein game, I believe. We all were witnesses of that, because the moment when the first trailer for Wolfenstein II was shown back in last year's E3, people that have never touched or mentioned a single FPS game in their lives became instant fans of the franchise.

But, well, to be completely honest, there was more to that than just the footage of the first trailer that made people glued to Wolfenstein. I believe I don't need to go in full details about what I'm talking about. That's not (and will not be) what this post is about and that's an entirely different subject anyway. These series of events have naturally left a lot of people angry and tired. And it should be no surprise that people would latch onto the new game as soon as it was officially announced and started being promoted.

Quite frankly, if you didn't see that coming after the events of August of 2017 in the US, you were either looking the other way, or you haven't realized the kind of impact videogames have these days.

I mean, there's no gentle way for me to put it, that was bound to happen one way or the other. It's not my intention to brag (it isn't something to brag about anyway), but I hinted this scenario way back in a post made in January of last year, so I guess you could say my expectations were met on that aspect.

Though I must say, I genuinely did not expect to see people loving this game when last year they were part of the crowd criticizing DOOM 2016 for being "too violent"...

I did not expect to be proven wrong, that is! I thought their morals were firm about that subject, one can only guess they had a change of heart when they saw the trailer, too!!

(Image by @gamepadink on Twitter)

You have to admit that Bethesda and MachineGames capitalized on this. It took a while, but they did.

They initially choose to distance themselves from any comparisons with real-life events....

And here’s the [SOURCE] of that, by the way.

They did, however, a release of a partial demo of the game to various gaming websites featuring two sections of the game, one of them featuring a very peculiar chitchat between two nazi soldiers that served as a double hook aimed at the new audience gained by the E3 trailer.

It also hinted the very premature death of a certain character, that's also why I told everyone who were avoiding being spoiled to look away from the videos featuring that demo.

They maintained their distance for a while, but then on October 5th they decided to bite the bullet and go all-out. I don't have the screenshot of the initial promotional message but at this point there's no need for a reminder, I think.

Naturally that move turned some people off, and not because they felt personally attacked by the decision, but because there were fears of the game being unnecessary meddled with references to modern-day political events, and making the game look and feel dated in the process.

At least that's how one group of people felt. You also have that other group of very fine tiki torch people that...well, you know the story by now.

Now, after the game was finally out in the shelves and people finally got to play it, personally, I think that was not the case. Keep in mind, there is a handful of nods to modern-day events here and there, but you have to really deviate from the gameplay and search for them in the game to find them; and there's nothing that genuinely gets in the way of gameplay and the main story, and barring three characters that may have been based on real-life characters of the time and a certain old nazi German, there's not a single character in the game that resembles someone in our current day or anything like that.

People will definitely have their opinions of the marketing moves made by Bethesda and MachineGames to promote the game, but you gotta admit that, marketing-wise, they played their cards very well. I mean, one of the golden rules of marketing is to make the consumer feel like they need your product, isn't it? It might be a poor move, but in general the basics of marketing have never been about morals. Whether they turned more people off compared to the ones being brought in or not, I feel it can't be guessed right now. The game was released four months ago and the Switch port is coming soon, I feel there’s something more to come to give a final verdict.

"But WHY were people complaining? Wolfenstein has always been about killing nazis!"

I mean, yes. Nice observation. That is absolutely correct, but let me ask you something:

Where were you back when Castle Wolfenstein was released? Where were you when Wolf3D or maybe Return to Castle Wolfenstein were released? Shit, where were you when Wolfenstein: The New Order was released?

Where were you these 24 years while Wolfenstein was a thing in the gaming industry? Where were you back when Wolfenstein was seen as 'yet another boring WWII FPS game'?

Feel free to not give an answer, I'm not expecting one anyway, but me and many others were suspecting, almost standing by for this to happen around the time of release.

But hey, who the fuck am I to be the unofficial Wolfenstein gatekeeper, anyway? As a matter of fact, fuckin’ welcome to videogames! Pick your favorite and feel free to disconnect a little bit from reality. That’s why they were made!

-The Right Game, The Wrong Time?-

In a way, Wolfenstein II can't really be compared with other games that don't rely heavily on its story like the ones from the new, current Wolfenstein timeline do; DOOM 2016 for example, it employs 20 seconds of the beginning of the game to show the player how much the story matters by making the main character push away a status screen during a cutscene while making a little bit of fun of the usual cinematic sequences that some modern FPS games have.

Wolfenstein II, on the other hand, uses the first 10 minutes to set up the tone for the game by going full narrative/interactive cutscene mode. Unlike the new DOOM, the current timeline for Wolfenstein sets the player in a game where the story takes a slightly bigger spotlight compared to the gameplay.

And from what some of the reactions I saw, most people who picked the game seemed to ignore this, expecting The New Colossus to play like DOOM 2016. Big mistake.

You're not an unstoppable inter-dimensional being of legend, prohibited by Hell itself from being disturbed from its involuntary and forced imprisonment (Doomguy/Doomslayer), you're a war hero that went back from being comatose for more than 20 years, barely survived a grenade blast, and is stuck with half health for half the portion of the game (Blazko).

(Some of) those who complained also seemed to completely forget the existence of The New Order, and treated The New Colossus as the very first time where a Wolfenstein game was more story-driven compared to previous installments. Now, I did not have the opportunity to time the cutscenes and the actual gameplay, but truth be told, and comparing it to other modern-day games, The New Colossus doesn't feel like you're "playing" a movie at all.

With that being said, the story portion could've definitely been expanded a little bit. Some side missions are somewhat important in terms of additional upgrades and missing holes in the main story, maybe they could've been included in a way where you can get to play them in a specific order before getting into the main missions of the game. It's definitely not the "interactive movie" that some people were painting The New Colossus to be. And while it may or may not have the amount of levels that The New Order had, it's still a good single-player ride. But...maybe it wouldn't have hurt if the ride lasted a little bit more?

I will touch the main story in a moment. And boy oh boy, there's a lot to talk about it.

-From 0 To 10, How Hard Do You Want The Nazi Dog To Kill You?-

The difficulty is also something that I've been hearing a lot about. I think this was something that an important portion of the people expected to happen with the buzz that Wolfenstein II got (me included). Now, like I said in the disclaimer, I don't own the game (YET), so I can't really speak much about the difficulty of the game as much as I would like to, but I'll say this:

A good game is not a good game without some kind of challenge. When trying a new game, let the game challenge you for a bit, see for yourself how much you can handle. If you're facing heavy opposition and you can't get past it, lower the difficulty, but JUST by one level.

And if you really can't help it, fine, go ahead and take the dive straight to "Can I Play, Daddy?", but please don't go around saying the only way to enjoy The New Colossus is on Easiest! That's just something you don't want to say in public, unless getting trashed on the internet is your kink.

(Not that I'm actively trying to kinkshame anyone, mind you. You do yourself!)

From the gameplay that I was witness of when I was watching a stream of the game, some enemies were just your normal, run-of-the-mill mobs, then you had the ones that had a little bit of a different dynamic that the player had to get accustomed to in order to advance, and then you had the bullshit nazi dogs that could just end your run in less than two seconds.

There's also another issue with some bosses of the game, because at the time, there were at least a couple of boss battles that the player could dismiss entirely without any punishment. One of them was definitely in Roswell. You could just, escape, run over a few nazis on the way and completely skip fighting that big ass robot. Was this intentional or not, I'm not that sure myself.

Apparently a patch was released recently in order to fix and balance the difficulty a little. Like I said, I really can't say much about it or confirm anything about it, my experience was obtained during the first days after the release of the game. But only those who are willing to give the game a second play might want to check if this ended up benefiting the game or not.

What could also benefit from a patch of sorts is the plot of the game, if you ask me...

-The Story-

Boy...

Except for a couple of people, the characters were fine to me. There was a continuity between some of the characters in terms of their background, but some others were kind of dismissed as the story went along.

Barring the obvious changes that he went thru before The New Colossus, Blazkowicz was the same good ol' Blazko from the previous game. His struggle is pretty damn present throughout the game, and we get a bit of background in regards of his childhood.

In regards to how the game starts, it goes more or less like this:

The game starts with B.J. Blazkowicz back in General Deathshead's compound on the brink of death. A grenade just exploded right between him and Deathshead, which obliterated the nazi leader's head to pieces and left Blazko with a nasty open wound, laying on the ground. Blazkowicz starts having flashbacks as he's being rescued by his comrades before an atom bomb hits the compound. One of the flashbacks involves his mother Zofia (with a very visible black eye) feeding him on his bed, another flashback is the "Make A Choice" scene where you pick between saving Wyatt or Fergus, which is the same choice you make in The New Order that determines which timeline you play in both games. It seems like they decided to make the player pick a timeline again.

After you make a choice, you see Anya (B.J.'s girlfriend) with the rest of the search group (and the person you saved) rescuing B.J. before an atom bomb hits Deathshead's compound, which is something I assumed was going to happen *after* the bomb hit.

B.J. Blazkowicz somehow surviving an atom bomb would've kicked major ass. Oh well. Letdown City - Population: Me.

Someone gives the order to Bombate to drop the bomb, and as soon as it hits the compound Blazkowicz blacks out again. Back to his childhood, his mother (with no black eye this time) hands him a heirloom, an engagement ring that was handed by her father. Then, Blazkowicz's father is back home, and she quickly tells him to hide it.

And speaking of which, yeah. B.J.'s father. Not the very best example of a model dad.

-Rip Blazkowicz, American Traitor-

MachineGames took some ballsy decisions with the direction of the sequel to The New Colossus. One of them being turning B.J.'s father into basically the complete opposite of his son.

On one hand, you have William Joseph Blazkowicz, undeniably a war hero, hardened by one tragedy after another, and caring of his close friends and loved ones, going as far as willing to give his own life to save theirs. On the other, you have Rip Blazkowicz, a good for nothing, selfish, avaricious and failed salesman, and a traitor to the country.

Oh, and he's also racist.

The game tells you right away that Rip is not a very good person. It actually gets you involved with B.J.'s childhood in such a way that the very first interactions you have in the game are throwing jars at him after he hit Zofia, and the other one involves taking yet another impactful decision over the family pet dog. And I really, really hope you were part of the group who intentionally missed that shot.

Rip is straight up a bona fide asshole. And while you may have the usual crowd that will complain about its inclusion because they feel projected on him, some others might be concerned with the prominence of the role he was given in the story

He actually plays a key part, not only in Blazkowicz's childhood but also on the events of the game. And again, more to that in a moment; but if you still can't get over his existence in the game and the role he takes in Blazkowicz's life, just remember that this current timeline is set in an alternate universe where the nazis won WWII; it does not rewrite the events of Wolfenstein 3-D, and in that timeline Blazkowicz still lends a hand in helping the Allies beat the nazis and win WWII, he's still a war hero with a proud family behind him.

I mean, the Blazkowicz from the Wolf3D timeline married a (seemingly) all-American woman, I guess that's all you need to differentiate him from this Blazko (who married an ass-kicking Polish nurse of Jewish descent).

Now back to The New Colossus and back in 1961, B.J. Blazkowicz wakes up after remembering those traumatic moments, and barely manages to sit in a wheelchair in order to defend Eva's Hammer (the submarine he captured in The New Order) from an assault of nazis leaded by Frau Irene Engel, seeking revenge after Blazko killed her lover, Bubi, and destroyed Deathshead's compound.

Blazko receives a gun from a guy that looks a lot like Dolph Ziggler back when he had brown hair, and then goes to town killing nazis while he's sitting on a wheelchair.

Surprisingly enough one of the most enjoyable points in the game. It was also a really big introduction of Blazkowicz's all-out approach against opposition to the newest players, because nothing beats the feeling of killing nazis while strapped on a wheelchair.

(Well, maybe being Doomguy can beat that).

After being (re)introduced to the Jewish scientist Set Roth and seemingly killing all the nazis that got inside the submarine, he gets rescued from a sneaking nazi soldier by a pregnant Anya (pregnant with twins!).

Holy shit, Anya. She became the low-key MVP of the Resistance, and she also plays a few roles in some of the most ridiculous moments of the game. It can be argued that she doesn't really have to do the stuff she does, but if some of the info. I gathered about The New Order is true, she might as well be one of the most heavy-tempered women in any WWII game.

A few moments later you are re-introduced to two returning characters (Frau Engel, the main villainess, and Caroline Becker, the leader of the Resistance) and a brand new one who is directly related to Frau Engel. Engel takes her sweet time to both call out Blazko while she holds an unconscious Caroline captive as well as reprehend her daughter, Sigrun Engel, for not being tough enough to be part of the Regime and their antics. The player can't help but reflect back at the flashback moments that transpired between Blazkowicz and his father, which is definitely something that was put there intentionally by MachineGames to get you involved even further with the story.

Blazkowicz lets himself get captured with the intentions of saving Caroline with help of the friend who was saved during the first cutscene of the game. Inside their ship, Frau Engel taunts Blazko as well as Caroline, orders the nazi guard to knock her down and hands over an axe to Sigrun. Engel wants her daughter to kill Caroline herself by chopping her head off, but Sigrun refuses. Engel insults and berates her own daughter, makes her cry, slaps her, takes the axe, and does the job herself. Frau Engel proceeds to take Caroline's lifeless head and taunts Blazko with it.

Yet another traumatic moment for poor B.J., and boy oh boy, unfortunately the trauma won't be stopping there.

I think the game failed to set up the importance of Caroline for the Resistance, as she was the former leader of the Resistance before her unfortunate demise. She also played an important part in the previous game, which is yet another reason why you should play it just so you can get the idea! Caroline inadvertently becomes a martyr, and one of the main reasons why Blazko pulls himself thru all the bullshit from the first half of the game, to the point of murmuring to himself, asking her to "borrow her wings" for a moment (he actually wears the Da'at Yichud Power Suit that Caroline wore during the first game).

Once she's done, Frau Engel attempts to harm your comrade with the same axe, but Sigrun prevents her own mother from killing him, and then you either get Fergus with only one arm or Wyatt with severe ear damage, depending on which one you rescued. Blazko kills the guards, gets inside the Power Suit and proceeds to fuck up the nazis on their own ship. Having played the first proper level of the game, you end up freeing Eva's Hammer from the nazi captivity, and proceed to carry over Caroline's headless body alongside your friend and a poor Sigrun who wants to redeem herself and distance from her vile mother.

And who wouldn't want to distance itself from your parent who is a fucking nazi general, anyway?

-Sigrun Engel, Too Pure For This World-

Okay everyone, raise your hand those of you who did not like Sigrun at all. Okay, lower them down. Now close this tab and be gone from this post. Leave her alone, you of little faith.

In the midst of the most gruesome global conflict planet Earth has seen yet, Sigrun Engel takes a role that she wouldn't have wanted to play if given the chance. It's one thing to be born a German during WWII, but being the daughter of a nazi general with thirst of world dominance and revenge? Shit, man.

It's pretty clear that before meeting the Resistance (and even after doing so), Sigrun had nobody to talk to and help her cope with her grief. She suffered abuse from her own mother because of her condition, and she goes as far as describing in her diary an encounter with fucking Hitler himself where he orders Frau Engel to put her daughter in a body conditioning camp of sorts.

If you don't side with someone who got fat-shamed by fucking Hitler, I'm letting you know right now, I don't fuck with you.

Now, naturally a few interactions were to be expected between a descendant of a nazi and a descendant of a Jewish family, and this ends up being the case with a heated discussion between Sigrun and Anya that takes place in the dining area of the submarine of the Resistance. Blazkowicz can't help but feel bad for her, and Sigrun seems to understand that virtually nobody wants her to take part in the group.

And things just get uglier when Grace joins the Resistance as their new leader.

After you're done with the first proper level of the game and finish paying respects to Caroline, you are now free to wander around the submarine. You can do a few side missions, interact with some of the members of the Resistance, and you can also end up killing a few nazis that were pretty damn hidden inside the submarine! Apparently they were the reason why they were captured by Engel at the beginning of the game, so your second mission ends up being cleaning that hidden area of the submarine.

After doing that, your next stop is New York, which ended up being victim of an atomic bomb from the nazi regime that ended up causing the defeat and surrender of the US. Caroline's will was to liberate the US from the nazis and make it the central base of operations with the purpose of liberating the rest of the world. With that objective in mind, it seemed that Caroline had made contact with another resistance group hiding in the Empire State Building. And Grace Walker is their leader.

Now, Grace is uh...well, she's tough, and she's got a deep sense of assertiveness that makes her naturally a leader. But she's far from being a great, let alone a perfect leader.

She naturally hates nazis and the white supremacists that oppressed her and her people before, during and after the war, and that's completely understandable and justifiable. But what I find hard to justify is the severe trust issues and prejudice she has.

First of all she points a gun at B.J.'s head the moment he arrives at their base despite the fact that she may have been told by Caroline beforehand that there might be a chance of a white, tall dude with blue eyes named William Joseph Blazkowicz to show up in their base and contact them. Maybe she completely forgot about that, maybe she didn't. Then Grace pulls that idiot prank on him with the grenade that wasn't a grenade but actually it was a dud. Like, come on.

Then you have the inevitable clash with Sigrun Engel. Grace doesn't hold back and just kept calling her names and calling her a 'nazi spy' until the poor European girl had enough. Grace genuinely spend her moments as leader in the game bullying Sigrun whenever she dared to speak, and this isn't up to debate, it is a fact. 

And if you ask me, Grace is a downgrade from Caroline when it comes to leaders of the Resistance. Anya actually ended up being the interim leader while the New York mission played out (a pretty damn fun mission, I might add), and she seemed to be pretty good at it, so why Grace ended up being the new leader, anyway? Yes, she has a good amount of experience, but so does Anya. Oh well, apparently it was part of Caroline's plan for Grace to become the new leader (according to some dialog found in the game).

Grace is also married and has a child. Her husband is Super Spesh, which is a lawyer that successfully defended her on a trial for a murder that Grace didn't commit (and ended up being a trap from the FBI). This trial happened before the events of WWII. Super Spesh (real name Norman Caldwell) is also a little bit paranoid and an avid conspiracy theorist with a certainly unhealthy obsession with UFOs and space alien technology. This takes further meaning when the next mission after the contact in New York is Roswell, New Mexico itself, with Super Spesh's front of operations taking a role during this mission.

Blazko meets with Grace and Super Spesh, they're found by the nazis but they manage to escape with their fellow members of their resistance group while Blazkowicz mows down all the nazis invading the building. Blazkowicz successfully recruits Grace and co., and they part to the submarine again.

With Grace as their new leader, their objective now is Roswell. Grace's plan is to drop a fucking atom bomb in the nazi-filled, underground Oberkommando base in Roswell, which was originally a site of an unearthed Da'at Yichud cache. For those who are not aware, the Da'at Yichud was (is?) an ancient Jewish mystical secret society that designed and created many inventions and artifacts, centuries ahead of the time. This secret society has played a huge role in the development of this timeline and it might be further explored in the next game of the franchise. In fact, the suit that Blazkowicz was wearing during the first half of the game is of Da'at Yichud manufacture and is originally from the first game.

Back to TNC, Blazkowicz is sent to Roswell with the disguise of a firefighter, while carrying the atom bomb inside a portable container. There are ads everywhere with Blazkowicz's face on them, with the intention of selling him as a “dangerous terrorist”, going as far as to label him "Terror-Billy".

Now, there's no gentle way for me to say this, but Roswell has been culled. I don't recall seeing a single non-white person in the town (which had a fucking nazi parade going on during the mission), and this is further reassured when you listen to some of the dialog the NPCs have during the first part of the mission in Roswell. One person talks about slave auctions as if it were the simplest thing in the world, and then you have another person trying to play nice with a nazi officer by speaking German in a poor manner. And then you have some of those white wizards (you know the ones) walking around fully clothed and shit.

All of that was just fucked up.

Your first objective is to locate the base of operations of Super Spesh, which ends up being a diner that he inherited from his father. A nazi officer walks in and you get to see that one scene from the first trailer where he questions Blazko about his whereabouts. The one that ends up killing the nazi officer is Super Spesh, and after doing so, proceeds to lock down the deli and hide Blazkowicz inside.

Once inside his bunker, Super Spesh tells him about a secret tunnel that connects his base to the Oberkommando, not before going into yet another space aliens conspiracy rant while Blazko was there. After he's done, you're set to go through the underground tunnel and reach the nazi base where you naturally dispatch as many nazis as you can, while also finish the job of putting the atom bomb inside a reactor within the base for maximum damage. Once Blazkowicz escapes the base, he detonates the bomb while strapped on a pretty damn cool unicycle, obliterating the Oberkommando in the process.

With that mission done, Blazkowicz is set to return back to the submarine, but then for some godforsaken reason, he decides to take a quick detour to Mesquite, Texas, which was where he used to live.

Now, you have to admit that this ended up being a damn stupid decision. Why would he even return there in the first place? I mean, sure, the heirloom that was mentioned at the beginning of the game was there all this time and Blazko wanted to give it to Anya, but that was actually a setup. Blazkowicz had no business being there. Oh well.

Anyway, Blazkowicz ends up having even more flashbacks to his childhood, one of them being the actual encounter with the African-American girl that his father wasn't happy to learn about (her name being Billie).

Apparently Billie is somehow an easter-egg/reference of a real-life African American jazz singer and musician called Billie Holiday. Now, I'm not entirely sure if this is real or not, but this is what I remember reading on a post in Reddit (which has been deleted by now, but I'm leaving a reply made to it), so take this with a grain of salt.

Blazkowicz enters his former home, and starts wandering around, having even more flashbacks to his childhood and the handful of amicable interactions he had with his father.

I would also like to take the time to point out and remark that, at one point during this section of the game, you may end up interacting with a piece of newspaper located inside the house.

This piece of newspaper in the game was titled "Fragment of Old News Article", and quotes an excerpt of a piece written by Henry Louis Mencken, a newspaperman and political American commentator of the first half of the 20th century. Here's a screenshot of said piece:

This is an exact quote of what Mencken said all the way back in July of 1920, in an article titled "Bayard vs. Lionheart". This quote has been passed around for almost a century, and it had a resurgence because of certain real-life events that have no business being mentioned here.

Now, I won't question what was written by Mr. Mencken, but what I'd really like to question here instead is this: How this piece of paper ended up being there, when we later learned that Rip Blazkowicz had been hiding there all along ever since he learned about the attack to the Oberkommando, and he doctored and moved around a few things inside the house?

Why this particular piece of newspaper didn't include a date that matched the setting of the game, while the rest of the (fake) newspapers bits in the game had a date each, and matched the particular time? (From the early 30s to early 60s)

Especially when this quote was written all the way back to the days before The Great Depression (started in 1929) and the date could match the settings of the game with zero issues? (July 1920)

Why would Rip Blazkowicz keep a piece of paper that could ultimately contradict the way he thinks about the new regime that governs his country?

This particular interaction made me think a lot about whether or not there was an intention to send a message thru the game with the inclusion of this particular piece, even if it ultimately can be ignored completely and has no impact in the gameplay. What I'm trying to say is that this piece could've fit better inside Grace's personal space in the submarine rather than being in Rip Blazkowicz's setup in the house. That detail felt kinda out of place.

Moving on, Blazkowicz finally arrives to the room where he used to sleep, and finds the heirloom. And his father, somehow still alive. Fucker. Rip and William start having a heated discussion, where is revealed that Rip ratted out his friends and his own wife to the nazis and sent them to extermination camps in New Mexico. William has heard enough, and despite being held at gunpoint by his own father (branding the same shotgun he used to kill the pet dog), he takes the gun off from him and kills him with an axe.

His father musters his last words, revealing that the Nazis heard everything thru a telephone. After what could arguably be considered the best non-interactive confrontation in the game, the player now has to deal with nazis falling down the sky while Blazkowicz tries to find a way to escape the house which has been ripped from the ground by Engel's nazi spaceship

Unfortunately for B.J., he ends up falling from the house to the ground, severely hurting himself in the process. He wakes up only to find Engel putting the heirloom in her own dirty hands while he is stripped apart from the Da'at Yichud supersuit.

And this, my friends, is where things...they don't fall apart, but...keep reading and you'll find out.

Blazkowicz is captured, and he somehow wakes up inside a small room in an undisclosed area, only to be greeted by Super Spesh himself, who apparently is now your lawyer (?) for a trial for murder and treason (!!) with heavy implications that you could end up being publicly executed. Spesh claims that the Resistance have a plan, and that they're going to get you out of there (wherever you ended up being sent to). In order to do so, he hits himself on the table in order to bleed, and he's going to pretend that you attacked him so he can stab the officer from behind. Okay?

This obviously doesn't work the way Spesh intended, and he ends up being killed by Engel herself after pretending the nazis didn't knew he was there to rescue you. Now apparently the Resistance is being attacked in the parking lot by the nazis guarding the building, while you're being subject to the weirdest, most awkward attempt of torture ever conceived in videogames by Frau Engel, who puts the same gun she used to kill Spesh in your mouth. Finally, you're punched in the back of the head and they put the black veil on his head again.

And now we arrive at everyone's favorite part of the game: The courtroom level! Yayyy!

Boy, what a shitshow.

The game took a huge jump in difficulty, because at some point the player didn't knew if the enemies were endlessly spawning or not, and it was definitely the hardest level in the game so far and arguably the hardest in the entire game, pre-difficulty patch.

And not only you're out of your supersuit, making you extremely vulnerable to damage, you also have very limited armor and you're also fairly limited in terms of cover in some points of the level. If you were begging for more action after the first levels of the game, the courtroom level was definitely the answer to your prayers.

And what was the reward for your efforts, you might ask? A cutscene where Blazkowicz somehow finds his mother in one room, falls to her knees only to be comforted by her and told that "You just have one more hardship to go through". The screen fades to black, and you're back at the beginning of the courtroom level, only to realize that you're actually being sentenced to death.

All of that was for nothing.

You never punched that nazi in the face. It was all a dream.

Damn.

That was genuinely a criminal move by MachineGames. Think about it, they made you kill all those nazis, reload the level I don't know how many times, and just for "heh, Blazko was hallucinating all along. time to die lol". If I were to be playing that game blindly (as in, first playthrough ever with no spoilers), I would've been so upset. Why didn't you make it into an entire cutscene in first person? You're making the player think that his actions are actually going to influence the outcome with no confirmation or hint that it won't be the case. It wasn't until the last moment where they pull the "it was all a dream" card. Damn.

And then you have the public execution scene. That one moment that cemented two things:

- Frau Engel is genuinely a main villain with no major impact in the story of the game. She might as well be replaced by someone else entirely and there'll be zero impact in the game whatsoever. - In terms of how unrealistic a Wolfenstein game can be, they might've jumped the shark with what they did in The New Colossus.

Blazkowicz is sentenced to death for treason, and beheaded personally by Engel at a heavily vandalized Lincoln Memorial in front of millions in a televised event (or so the game thinks it's making you feel; more to than in a moment).

“The old and the weak are doomed” - Blazkowicz’s “last thoughts”. You get your head chopped off your body, and then you “die”.

"Look, guys, Blazkowicz is dead. For realsies!"

Now, a parenthesis. There were some rumors going on before the game was released that Blazkowicz was apparently going to have his head reattached to a new body because of the heavy damage he suffered from the previous fights with the nazis in the timeline. At the time, I decided to dismiss them, thinking that they were too far out there to actually become reality. Boy I was wrong.

Not only the game hints, almost spoils the fact that Set Roth might've found a way to reattach someone's head on a different body, there's also the omniscient reminder that B.J.'s body is failing him. Anya actually confronts Blazko because of this; she knows something's wrong but Blazkowicz doesn't want to admit it. He knows he must be strong, for Anya, for his future children, for the Resistance, for America.

But as the game went on, I kinda settled on the idea that this was going to happen. And it didn't dawn on me at the time, but it does now, they pulled it off in a mediocre way.

Okay so, you have the cutscene where Engel throws the head of Blazko down the furnace, and it apparently it goes all the way down...

Except not. Because apparently we've been watching a screen all this time, as a tape apparently starts rolling back, and we see Blazkowicz's head fall down the pit, but then some kind of 60's styled drone picks Blazko's head, and replaces it with someone else's head (presumably just another nazi), and flies away from the scene.

Then you're told that Set Roth, Max Hass, your companion and Anya are trying their damnedest to rescue the head in order to make the quick transplant to a new body. The drone arrives where they're hiding, they proceed with the operation, and it is a success! Hooray!

Why did this felt way unrealistic to me? More to that in a moment!

Blazkowicz wakes up in the submarine, and he's told by Anya that they reattached his head to a super-soldier body stolen from the nazis. Somehow they survived the assault at the parking lot from earlier (how they did it is never addressed in the game), and now you're told to make a choice between what kind of upgrade do you wish to have.

You can choose between Battle Walker (some huge ass sticks), Ram Shackles (shoulder pads that can fucking gib nazi scum) and Constrictor Harness (they literally make you a snek).

You go from being literally a dead man walking to a nazi-killing Megaman X

After choosing one of the upgrades, B.J. proceeds to murmur to himself: "Caroline, thank you. Take back your wings. I don't need them anymore". And proceeds to go back to New York in order to retrieve a location of another resistance group located in New Orleans.

Not before catching Sigrun and Bombate having sex in a boat.

If this ends up in the Nintendo Switch port I'll be pretty damn impressed.

After the sequence where you get accustomed with the new contraption, the side missions will be unlocked. These side missions can be unlocked using Enigma Codes, cards that some mobs in the game often dropped during gameplay after being killed. These side missions are pretty entertaining, and like I said previously, they could've enhanced the experience for a lot of people if they were to become part of the main story, because not only they unlock all the contraptions and help you reach their maximum potential, you can also discover new things about some characters.

Like for example, the one side mission where you return to Roswell (the one where you can get to kill the white wizards? Yeah, that one), it is explained that Spesh was actually aware he was going to die one way or another during the fight of the resistance, and had left a goodbye letter to Grace. There's another couple of notes in a side mission in New York where the real name of Super Spesh is revealed (Norman Caldwell).

And of course, like I said, there's also the fact that once you finish all the side missions you'll end up with all the three contraptions fully upgraded. Wouldn't have ruled to have all three of them before the final mission, or the ones before it? You don't really need all of them, but they could've been of great help and could've improved the experience for many.

Now, let's address what bugged me in the second half of the game.

-Where. Is. Everyone?!-

“Hewwo...? Echo, echo, echo...”

Remember what I said about certain moments of the game that felt like they were "not actually happening at all" and needed more impact? Well, let's go back to the execution scene.

Do you recall seeing any American person watching the execution live, regardless if they were pro-nazi or not? Do you recall anyone of the Resistance watching the nazi shitshow before the execution? That's right, we didn't see anyone. The same thing happens a bunch of times later on. For a "highest rated TV hour in history" (according to an article found in the game), it seemed like nobody was actually watching his execution at all (I even recall hearing some 'boos' while Engel was holding Blazkowicz' head).

Why you didn't show any Americans watching the execution live? Where are they?

Barring the members of the Resistance that end up joining you in Eva's Hammer and the people at Roswell on the first half of the game, you never get to interact with a single regular citizen of the US during the game.

They're all either members of the small resistance groups that you recruit during the game, or they're part of the group of NPC white Americans that were inadvertently being oppressed by the nazi regime.

For a game where rising against your oppressors is the main message that is trying to be conveyed, I'm sure as hell that I didn't see any regular citizens that could've felt identified with the liberating actions of Blazkowicz. If your game is meant to be narrative and story-driven, make sure the player is genuinely feeling it, make goddamn sure like it's actually real.

Fuck, I mean, the only regular person that the player could witness in the game got instantly killed by some nazis in the very next level (New Orleans). Barring that single moment, it seemed like all the levels in the game were exempt from any humans other than Blazko and the nazis. And again, yes, the members of the Resistance that join the group and become NPCs inside the submarine exist, but they were all active members already.

Postcards and letters won't just cut it this time. Make sure the next game has some regular citizens, otherwise it'll feel like there is no actual connection between the Resistance and the regular people.

Moving on with the game, Blazkowicz arrives to New Orleans, who has been affected by the nazi regime in a hard way. Basically they have separated the people deemed as "undesirable" in one part of the city and the other "fine people" in the other. The problem is, they basically wiped both these sides at the time of your arrival.

Your objective is to meet Horton Boone, a leader of a small resistance group hidden deep within New Orleans. Horton is a man with strong communist beliefs, an avid alcohol consumer, anti-capitalist as well as a "preacher" (even though he really isn't). Horton didn't seem to have that much of an impact in the game, and was relegated pretty damn quickly. Which is unfortunate because he was a such a refreshing character in the sense that he actually put some resistance (hah!) before joining the group.

When Blazkowicz finally meets him, Horton seems surprised that he's still alive. Blazko initially tries to recruit them, but Horton doesn't seem to be that motivated, as he hands him his "Horton Special" (a liquor of his own craftsmanship). They start having a heated discussion about political beliefs and the way they thought of each other's side during WWII, which ends in Blazkowicz kicking his chair away, claiming that he won't be raising his future kids in a world dominated by nazis. Horton is surprised by Blazkowicz resilience, and as Blazko starts blacking out because of the strong liquor, Horton accepts his proposal to join them.

Grace advises Blazkowicz that they're about to be assaulted by nazis soon, so they escape New Orleans by using a goddamn atom bomb to impulse themselves. The New Orleans stage was pretty damn fun from what I saw. Unfortunately you don't get to mount a Panzerhund in the game after that, which is a shame because the Panzerhund fucking rules.

When you get back inside Eva's Hammer, you're told that the nazis employ the Ausmerzer (the ship they used to trap your friends at the beginning of the game) to shut down any attempts of revolt. Naturally, the Ausmerzer is heavily guarded, and after the events of Roswell, the security codes to deactivate the heavy weaponry were secured in a place far away from our planet. Venus.

Jesus Christ they also conquered Venus.

-It Was Space Nazis, Maaaan!-

Your next stop is naturally Venus, and in order to get inside the new Oberkommando headquarters, you must disguise as an actor named Jules Redfield trying to participate in an audition for a propaganda film based on the capture and execution of "Terror-Billy". Once you get inside their facility, you're greeted by the director of the film, Helene Winter, and the rest of the people trying to get the same role as you, and then...he arrives.

One of the game's highest points, arguably the best moment in the entire game, is when Hitler shows up to the audition. Goddamn. Godfuckingdamn. These twenty-five years of wait were so fucking worth it.

Holy shit, Hitler's portrayal is fantastic. KEEP IN MIND, it is fantastic in an historical and logical sense, don't get confused and start calling me a Hitler-lover. He is (clearly) old, senile, has severe mental issues, aggravating paranoia, he pukes in the floor, he attempts to pee but fails miserable (indicating some severe issues related to pissing blood), mistakes Helene for his own mother...yeah, basically the Fuhrer is not with us anymore.

And it makes sense, because it has been thoroughly documented that he used to be a heavy cocaine and drug addict, and he was malfunctioning already before his death; it only made sense for him to go on a downward spiral at his 70s.

I've been clamoring for Hitler to come back in this current timeline, because who the hell doesn't want to kill that fucker again? Good on MachineGames for having the balls to do that after all this time.

Going back to the main story, Hitler demands immediate respect from the auditionees to his persona, and because of his paranoia against Jewish people, he ends up killing one of them after an hilarious exchange.

RIP Arizona Man

Something to point out here, some people started throwing around the idea that this person was actually Ronald Reagan. Initially I didn't see the resemblance at all, specially when you attempt to align his timeline and age with WWII, but then the developers started uploading the concept art and model designs to ArtStation (preeety beautiful and thanks to every single game developer that does this, by the way), and as it turns out, this character is indeed a reference to Ronald Reagan!

I still don't get it. Maybe because I'm not American?

Blazkowicz in the disguise of "Jules Redfield" is told by Hitler to recite the lines of his role of Terror-Billy. Blazko barely manages to do so, and then Hitler proceeds to ask another participant to do the same. This other guy does a pretty damn good job at it, and both Hitler and Helene get ecstatic about it.

Later on they move to the second part of the casting, which consists of taking down a nazi soldier and recite a monologue inside a glass panel. A participant enters the panel, does a poor job, and gets out not before getting shot in the head by Hitler. Now there's only two of you, and Blazkowicz is asked to participate next. William then proceeds to kill the nazi soldier for real, slams the panel and asks the directors if that's "good enough". Hitler seems perfectly pleased with his "realistic" performance, and ends up killing the other participant left sitting in the room with another bullet to the head. The audition is over, you got the role.

Hitler leaves the audition and is not seen again for the remainder of the game. Until Wolfenstein III, old fuck.

The Venus level is goddamn fantastic, and if you played DOOM 2016, you'll definitely be reminded of the extraterrestrial/futuristic scenery of the game. The mechanics involving the space suit may seem bothersome to a few players, but it only makes sense once you learn about the temperature of the planet (over 400 Celsius/752 Fahrenheit!!).

The nazi Venus facility is far, far bigger compared to the Moon facility of the previous game, and it also features a brand new gun called the Ubergewehr (roughly translated as the "Supreme Gun"), which is basically the BFG9000 equivalent of the game, and perhaps the franchise. According to the game, this weapon is partially powered by energy from micro-portals of extra-dimensional origin. And I don't know about you, but the energy that emanates from this weapon is red, and it bears a striking resemblance to the Argent Energy of DOOM 2016...Unfortunately this weapon appears in a later stage in the game, and you really can't enjoy it as you could've wished for.

B.J. obtains the documents pertaining the secret code to shut down the system, and leaves Venus for good. Back on Earth and back on the submarine, Blazkowicz hands over the code to Sigrun so that she could analyze it, and she finds that the code to shut down the Ausmerzer is VALHALLA. Happy with this discovery, Sigrun proceeds to tell Grace and everyone else about it, but is completely dismissed by Grace and is once again berated.

Sigrun has had enough. She yells at Grace, and proceeds to slap her. Following that, Grace seems to attempt to return the favor, but is stopped and overpowered by Sigrun who shuts her shit down and asks her to start respecting her by stop calling her something that she is sick of hearing (being called “a nazi”). Grace admits defeat and swears to not call her nazi again.

That was an amazing moment. To top this off, NOBODY intervened. Grace had it coming, for all the time she spent literally bullying and bothering Sigrun with that nonsense. If you were to ask me, she should be glad she didn't die at Sigrun’s hands in an hypothetical betrayal plot. I was actually surprised myself because I thought Sigrun was going to betray the team at one point of the game, but fortunately that wasn't the case. Please forgive me for not trusting you, Sigrun.

Now, moving on to the final level...the Ausmerzer. Blazkowicz and Anya (!!!) end up being the ones spearheading the assault to the airborne platform. The level is similarly great to the Venus level, except that it is relatively shorter in comparison. Lots of nazis to kill, including two super soldiers that end up becoming the final bosses of the game (I know, I'll discuss this in a moment). The final encounter with the Zerstörer isn't that much of a hassle if you finish the regular mobs first and then dispatch them later. Add this that you get to maneuver the Ubergewehr again, and the fight shouldn't be that much of an issue.

Before reaching the final room, a door opens revealing a good bunch of enemies, and Blazkowicz is about to be obliterated, but suddenly Anya appears out of literally nowhere, throws a grenade, catches flames from a Panzerhund, takes off her jacket (the only thing covering her naked upper body) and proceeds to shoot everyone and everything on her path.

...Oooookay?

I mean, after the execution scene, the over-the-top silliness of this scene was kinda pointless for me. I personally found unnecessary that Anya ended up playing an active part in the actual fights against the nazi forces, I mean, for God's sake, she's pregnant with twins. I had fears that she was going to die during the entire game, and that scene didn't help at all.

I'm glad that she's still alive, but please, keep her at home in the next game. Blazkowicz has suffered enough, losing her would be devastating for all of us.

Blazkowicz and Anya proceed to enter the VALHALLA code, and the defense system is finally shut down.

And now...the final encounter with Frau Engel...boy oh boy.

-Frau Engel: Die Neue Enttäuschung-

So...Engel is in Los Angeles a guest on The Jimmy Carver Show, but Blazkowicz and co. have taken control of the Ausmerzer, traveled to L.A. and infiltrated the studio. The last thing you ever do in the game is to sneak past the public and get in front of her, she tries to shoot him but Blazkowicz chops her arm off, and proceeds to split her face open with the hatchet. Engel dies immediately afterwards, and that's it.

No fanfare, no spectacular last boss fight, no nothing. That's it. She's dead, Jim.

Here Lies Engel, She Never Scored.

Before I give you my overall thoughts about her, let's recapitulate what Engel did in this game. Let's ignore whatever happened in the previous game and let's focus on what happened in The New Colossus:

-She kills the leader of the Resistance (at the time), Caroline.

-She berates her own daughter for not being nazi enough.

-Kisses Blazkowicz, steals the heirloom from him, and puts a smoking gun in his mouth in what apparently was meant to be a torture scene.

-"Kills" him on a public showing that who knows if it was actually watched by anyone on the planet and felt completely ridiculous.

Now, let's compare what happened in the previous game with Wilhelm Strasse, Deathshead, the previous main villain of The New Order:

-Assumes control of ancient Da'at Yichud technology that helps the Reich take over and gain advantage in WWII

-Captures Blazkowicz's squad in his compound, incinerates some of them, and proceeds to toy around with the rest, forcing Blazkowicz to decide between one of his teammates (Wyatt or Fergus) to sacrifice.

-Then he proceeds to vivisect that teammate on the spot, in one of the most gruesome sequences ever recorded in the Wolfenstein franchise, and saves that person's brain for later.

-HE FUCKING TOOK YOUR FRIEND'S BRAIN

-Successfully invades the original hideout of the Resistance, and his squad captures/executes some of their members, one of them being totally-not Jimmy Hendrix himself in one of the timelines. -Remember the brain of your friend? Well, now he put it inside a goddamn war machine, and now that machine is trying to kill you.

-He basically forces you to kill your friend again to end his suffering.

-And after you're done fighting with that nazi fucker during an actual final boss fight, he somehow pulls a grenade (probably out of his ass) and attempts a suicide attack.

-He dies but he definitely left you for death at mercy of your own friends who are about to drop a goddamn atom bomb.

Well, I don't know about you, but I guess it's unanimous.

Not only Engel’s death resulted in perhaps the most disappointing moment of the game, but overall she was perhaps one of the most pointless, inconsequential main villains of the franchise. She doesn't even come close to what Deathshead did in the previous game, and not just because Deathshead may have put the bar way too high for her, but because she really didn't to much at all during the game to warrant her becoming the final person to be killed at the hands of Blazko in the main story of game.

You know what would've ruled? An actual boss fight against Engel.

Now that her lifeless body is laying on the desk, Horton, Grace and Blazkowicz walk up to the screen and tell the American people watching the show to rise up against the nazis, and start revolting. Game logo on the screen. The End.

(Cue some really, really horrible version of 'We're Not Gonna Take It' playing in the background as the credits roll)

In a post-credits scene, Blazkowicz takes back the heirloom ring from Engel's lifeless body, and proposes to Anya with it. And if you picked either Wyatt or Fergus, you get one of them ranting around in front of the screen.

Well. What can I say?

The main story was okay, it could've definitely been polished a bit in order to turn it great. The liberation of America from the nazis was kind of a given, and when you look back at The New Order and compare it to The New Colossus, the ending of the latter ended up becoming the lowest point of the story. In the New Order the game ends on a cliffhanger, while The New Colossus doesn't offer much in terms of what could possibly happen next.

There's not that big of a difference if you pick Wyatt or Fergus, I think. The interactions with Fergus are more leaned towards your typical "heh, remember the time when you threw away your bionic arm while you were drunk?" war stories, and Wyatt's timeline is more focused with the problems he has to overcome because of war trauma.

Max Hass was fantastic. Max Hass!

The side missions on the submarine are fine. You actually get to explore the same areas but in a different way each. The side missions for the additional upgrades on the other hand, not so much. The majority of these missions are just revisiting old areas, discovering hidden areas, and that's it. The DLC doesn't seem to offer much in terms of new areas to explore except for maybe one or two stories.

Overall, Blazkowicz's father ended up becoming a better and more meaningful antagonist than Engel, and maybe he could've become the actual final boss of the game. Imagine if the Rip Blazkowicz that you killed in your old home was actually a clone, and you end up fighting him at the top of the Ausmerzer while he's controlling a clone of the London Monitor (remember the giant nazi robot machine from the first game?).

The way they handled the story, and adding the fact that some encounters were lackluster, and how they completely missed the opportunity to build some characters that needed more spotlight, leaves the feeling that The New Colossus ended up being a rushed project. I definitely hope this isn't the case and we can get a few explanations about some of the issues I wrote in this post (thanks for reading it, by the way).

With that in mind, I would like to take the opportunity to advise you all to give the game a try. If the contents of the story bother you in some way, try to dismiss them as much as you can, and focus on the gameplay itself. I don't know, you might end up liking it despite of your initial opinions about this game!

Would I recommend The New Colossus?

Well, here's the deal. As of right now, the game is sitting at $60 USD on Steam, and with the DLC added is $80 USD. And look, I'm not the kind of person that prefers to engage in the "is it worth X amount of price" debate for any videogame. Ultimately, a videogame costs what you want it to be. You can buy it right now, you can buy it later at a certain discount, you can visit some third party site to obtain a cheaper copy, I don't know. That's not my problem, it's yours. You should know by now how much money you can (and you're willing to) spend for something, and you should also know by now what you value the most about what you want to obtain in life.

Yes, yes I would recommend The New Colossus on the virtue that, if you want to play the third game, you might want to get some background first about the first two games (The New Order and TNO) before diving in to the third.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I'm not the kind of person that prefers to watch someone else play a game rather than experience the game myself, so at the end of the day if you want to watch a LP the decision is yours. I definitely won't agree, but I'm willing to respect it if you give a good reason about why you don't want to play a videogame.

With that being said, and this is something that is definitely worth pointing out, as of right now you can buy the first two games (The New Order, and the prequel The Old Blood) for $30 USD on Steam. These games were released four years ago, and they're in sale on a regular basis on many sites. If you want to keep your money for whatever reason and wait until a “tri-pack” bundle is released, go ahead. Unlike a handful of games that unfortunately ceased to exist because of pettiness from the developers (looking at you, Konami), The New Colossus is going nowhere. It's going to be there for the moment you want to give it a shot.

Now, if you were part of the group of people who got pissed after what happened with the promotional campaigns for the game, I'd say that you should still give the game a shot, at least one play. If it changes your mind, good, if it doesn't, it's okay. But just be careful not to say dumb shit that could reveal that you're talking out of your ass about things that don't exist.

I will be expecting news about the third installment of Wolfenstein, and there's no other choice but to have Hitler be the main antagonist of the game. I mean, who the hell could it even be other than fucking old Hitler himself?

Any question/comments/suggestions? Let me know! My inbox is open! Thank you for spending your valuable time reading my post!

[nicklesthename]

Get the game at Amazon.ca for PS4, Xbox One, or PC. These are affiliate links.

Ah, Fallout 76. Modern Fallout’s first foray into the online multiplayer territory and it went over…less than perfectly with its fans. When it was first announced that a new Fallout game was coming, people were pretty excited, except for the looming fear that Bethesda would take the glorious single player, choice valuing, multiple solutions Fallout and bastardize it to match today’s most toxic gaming trends. Would it be a battle royale, like every other game seemed to be? Would it be multiplayer? If it had multiplayer, could you still choose to play it as a single player?

Then when details starting coming out about exactly what Fallout 76 would look like, it seemed like everyone’s worst fear had been realized. People were freaking out, screaming into the aether, burning down villages, the usual internet outrage machine. But among the remains lay a small group of people who were at least willing to give this thing a shot. Some were even excited about it! While I had been expecting a typical Fallout game, I had also always wanted to be able to play alongside my fiancee and other friends in my favourite video game franchise. After tens of hours of playtime, here are my conclusions about Fallout 76.

Major Differences

Firstly, I think it makes sense to run down a list of the way this new entry into the franchise differs from other modern Fallout games. Obviously, there is multiplayer, it’s online, and the quests are more MMO directed than RPG. Another difference is that there are no NPCs in the sense that there are no other normal human beings in the world. There are enemies such as ghouls, Scorched, and other wildlife, but there are no raiders or human settlements. Anytime you see another human in Fallout 76 it means it’s another real player. There are also new things like timed events and PvP zones. Finally, there is no real end game, no ending conditions that could be considered winning or completing the plot.

Story and Environment

Personally, I’m no offended by the idea of there being no NPCs. Sure, in the past, raiders have been a key part of the universe, the omnipresent villain no matter where in the US you’re playing. But I was interested in seeing how they would make up for the lost characters. It was also reassuring to know that other players couldn’t hide in plain sight and attack me when I wasn’t expecting it. My problem with this new world is the reasons for it given in the plot. According to the game, there is a virus running rampant across Appalachia that is turning people (and anyone else for that matter) into the Scorched. The reason why there are no people is that they have all turned into Scorched or been killed by them. The only people living are the ones who have only just left the vault with you.  But really, literally, everyone has been turned into Scorched? There isn’t one tiny faction somewhere that survived? Not even one weird hermit living in the mountains? It’s very hard to believe in a world where people have always managed to avoid other plagues such as FEV, Vault 22 virus, and the like.

Besides that annoyance, I find that the world is still very true to modern Fallout. The stories that can be found at every house and settlement, the giant monstrosities hiding around every corner, and the ever cynical take on large corporations and government programs. As far as the story goes, to make up for the lack of actual humans telling you their account, the terminal entries, voice clips, and notes seem to have at least doubled in size. This doesn’t work super well with a game that is now multiplayer. Many times I’ve told Nick to hang on for one second, I’m still reading that note I found minutes ago. If you can deal with that and suspend your belief to accept that everyone was keeping a diary on exactly what was happening to them at all times, this shouldn’t get in your way of enjoying the game.

Workshop Building

In the interest of full disclosure, I have always been a big fan of the workshops in Fallout 4. It’s the first time in Fallout that you can actually have an effect on the rebuilding the world around you. In previous games, you had to just work with what other people have rebuilt into settlements and that was it. I really loved building new settlements, getting people to work together, and trying to fix up the wastelands.

As for the workshops in Fallout 76, I still like it, despite missing a large part of what made them so satisfying in 4. In 76, you have your C.A.M.P (Construction and Assembly Mobile Platform) which you can use to build a personal settlement for all your crafting, cooking, and resting needs. It is still fun to put together a building and try to get creative with your architecture, but the best part about settlements in Fallout 4 to me what the rebuilding of society. Since there are no NPCs, there are no beginning villages to build up.

So far, all I’ve built is a fairly normal 2 story house with a turret balcony and every crafting table in the game. However, I look forward to crafting better and better settlements as my level grows and my settlement capacity grows too. The only choices made with this system that I flat out disagree with is the Stash (a personalized container that you can use but no one else can access) having a limit to how much you can store in it and the lack of ability to scrap other things that were in your settlement before you placed the C.A.M.P. Both of these things are supposed to be changing in upcoming patches though.

PvP

I absolutely hate PvP. I am a horrifically competitive person and while I’ve learned to not get too heated when I lose to computer people, losing to real people still rustles my jimmies. Especially since people online can be a touch rude when then win and when they lose. Luckily, Fallout has a system in place for people like me! Something called consent based PvP means that until your target fights back, you do little to no damage to them. That means you can’t just sneak up on an unexpecting level 5 player and snipe them into oblivion with your level 92-ness. It’s almost like every fight is a proper duel, with both parties aware and prepared for the fight before it begins properly.

Hanging out with all my friends

Queen of electric chairs

All hail the Mothman.

There are some flaws in this system though. For example, there is nothing stopping people from just following you around, jumping up and down in front of you, and waiting for you to accidentally hit them with a stray bullet. Once you hit them even once by accident, you are now fair game. While this has only happened to me once before, and I managed to avoid the jerk anyways, it kind of undoes the work to reduce griefing. Of course, you can block people, but all that does is mute their microphone to you, remove them from your map, and remove you from their map. They still exist in front of you though, so they can still do that annoying jumpy thing. I think blocking someone should remove them from your game in all ways. You shouldn’t be able to see them in the game or on the map and they shouldn’t be able to see you either.

  There is also the bounty system. This means if you are repeatedly attacking someone who is pointedly not attacking back, you get a bounty on your head. This is to stop people from abusing the fact that even if the other person hasn’t fought back, the minor damage initial shots do can add up to a kill. If you have a bounty on you, you are fair game for PvP as well. However, this system is a little broken too. For example, the jumpy thing I mentioned earlier doesn’t net someone a bounty. It only goes into effect if the person is repeatedly attacking a bystander, not trying to troll that bystander into attacking them. There is also no way to forgive a bounty, so in the off time that Nick has accidentally shot my C.A.M.P or me (before we are in a team together), he just has to wait for someone to come and off him. I can’t just report that I, as the target, forgive him and it was an accident.

Multiplayer

Did I mention the occasional visual glitch?

My experience with having other players in my Fallout has by and large been very pleasant. Except for the single moment I mentioned in the PvP section, I’ve only met lovely people. There were the people who came by our C.A.M.P, waved at us, used our workbenches, and then paid us in steel for our trouble. There was the person who came to collect the bounty on Nick and after killing him, not stealing Nick’s loot and just leaving him some stimpacks for when he came back. We’ve had random people come to give us back up in fights, which is especially helpful when we were probably way too under-levelled for it. At one point I needed to kill a deathclaw, and when I ran up to the quest marked one, someone else was about to kill it. Instead of finishing the job before I could get a hit in, they stopped and waited, letting the deathclaw whale on them for a minute while I got my shot off.

  Basically, Fallout 76 is full of cheerfully emoting, generously sharing folk and a couple of trolls in between. I think this comes from the fact that I don’t know if any hardcore Fallout fans really wanted a multiplayer game, so they are trying to make the best of it by being nice to the other players. It actually warms my heart quite a bit, especially if you’ve ever tried playing some of the other MMO games and heard what people are willing to call your mother if they lose.

Quests, Events, and Dailies

I am actually surprised at myself with how much I enjoy the dailies and events in Fallout 76. As someone who absolutely revelled in the normal Fallout quests with their alternate solutions and moral quandaries, I expected to find the quests in 76 to be weak and empty. Honestly, some of them are. But I have found that it doesn’t mean they aren’t fun too! I think the number one less I’ve learned from Fallout 76 is to stop taking Fallout so seriously. I know it might be hard to believe anyone can take a game about a post-apocalyptic sock-hop world full of zombies and smart-talking robot butlers too seriously, but here we are.

Favourite Things

The photo mode is actually ridiculously fun to mess around with

The Atom shop is full of great additions to the options for clothing, C.A.M.P building, emotes, and more! Plus the fact that you can earn the premium currency for free through achievements is a huge plus

Getting to play my absolute favourite game franchise ever with my fiancee, something I couldn’t do besides sitting next to him and watching him play

Honestly, just the fact that there is more Fallout in this world is great

Mothman. Just…Mothman.

Fighting the boss type creatures, such as Scorchbeasts is a great challenge

Weapon crafting, upgrading, and modifying has been tweaked a bit and I enjoy the mechanic

I appreciate the survival mechanics, especially since they are kind of on easy mode. Playing with those additional metrics is previous games would mean playing it on a higher difficulty than I prefer

The new perk system combines what I liked about previous Fallout levelling while adding some new dimensions, such as combining cards and sharing them with teammates

Changes I Want

Anti-griefing systems to take into account people who are griefing without technically damaging someone else

Larger limits on building size and an infinite limit on stash size

More Mothman

I WANT TO SELL EXCESS AMMO

Any automation in settlements (hire robots to tend to crops?)

A better, more robust blocking system

Higher bounties sooner to increase the incentive to not be a jerk

Ability to romance Mothman

Conclusion

I like this game. I really do. Sure I have some criticisms, but I have some criticism for any of the modern Fallout games. It’s pretty impossible to have a completely perfect video game. I haven’t gotten around to playing it in a couple weeks, but I definitely wouldn’t say that I’m giving up on it in any way. I know they’re still working on it and that my issues with the game will be addressed in one way or another. For now, I’m just trying to not get too caught up in fussing about lore or continuity and enjoy just being a wanderer.

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I tried to condense all my thoughts about Fallout 76 into this one review: enjoy! Get the game at Amazon.ca for PS4, Xbox One, or PC. These are…

[imagigirlart]

A Theoretical Fallout 4 Ghoul Quest

Every once in a while, as I wander the Commonwealth, Hancock says something along the lines of:

“You know, if we could find a way to turn you ghoul, we could do this thing long-term. Something to think about.”

Now, as I was wooing the ghoul mayor of Goodneighbor the first time I heard this, my first thought of course was some in-character silliness along the lines of:

But then the further I thought about it, the more I came to think: yeah, that would’ve actually been pretty cool. Why not have the ability to become a ghoul?

Now, I know there’s the Ghoulish perk, which gives you a ghoul’s general resistance to radiation and the like, and yeah, that’s fine, but it’s not quite the same.

So, hear me out. I think there is actually a way that Bethesda could’ve had a Ghoul mission.

Why?

Because they’ve done it before. The Companions Quest in Skyrim. There, you can choose to become a werewolf, which has its own perks and downsides. You stretch your paws a bit, and then, if you don’t feel like the werewolf life is for you, you have the option of de-werewolfing yourself and going about your business.

Now I know that being a Ghoul is pretty well known to be rather…permanent. But let’s see if, for giggles, I can’t come up with a viable what-if story. I suppose you could count this as fan-fiction?

Putting this under a read more, as it is really long, and I spoil a section of Nuka-World.

So, if I were to plan this story, I would bring back this charming fellow for a call-back.

For those who haven’t played Nuka-World, this is Oswald Oppenheimer the Outrageous, former Kiddie Kingdom stage magician for Nuka-World. His story is that when the bomb dropped, he and his coworkers managed to survive the initial blast by holing up in the employee maintenance tunnels. Unfortunately, those tunnels weren’t exactly as air-tight as a Vault, so the employees all felt the effects of the radiation and became ghouls. A plus side for Oswald is that he lucked out and ended up as a cognizant Glowing One, giving him a resurrection ability that he at first looked at as a miracle, like he had been given real magic. The downside, however, was that he was the only one that remained cognizant, the rest of his friends becoming feral.

When you confront Oswald on the roof of King Cola’s Castle, he poofs down to you and explains that the reason that he’s been talking shit at you over the intercoms and showering you with absurd amounts of radiation via Nuka-Mister was an attempt to scare you and the Raiders away so you’ll leave his friends alone. You see, Oswald and his coworkers believed that their ghoulification was an illness, and Oswald’s love, Rachel, actually went out into the Commonwealth in an attempt to find a cure. She never came back, and is in fact dead, but if you don’t bring her up, Oswald still believes that she and the cure are still out there. Now why do I bring all of this up?

Because one of his endings leaves a perfect opening for a Ghoul Cure story.

You see, you don’t have to kill Oswald. If you feel sorry for the poor guy (I certainly did), you can put on your best schmoozing tux/elbow-rubbing dress, pop some Day Tripper, and suggest to Oswald that he go out and find Rachel and the cure. If you succeed, he hands you a shiny sword and his lovely hat and happily wanders off with hope in his heavily-irradiated heart

. So now we have an opening for how to start the mission.

Now in terms of how exactly to turn the Sole Survivor ghoul, I can hear longtime Fallout fans already pointing out that most of the ghouls one runs into in Fallout 3, 4, and New Vegas did not get there easily. Ghouls like Daisy, the Vault-Tec Rep, and Oswald are all more than 200 years old, having been mutated from the initial nuking from the war. Even the settlers of Megaton from Fallout 3 need you to detonate a bomb the size of a smart car if you feel like seeing Moira ghoul-ified. How is the Sole Survivor supposed to get all grim and ghoulish when they can’t even stand within 10 meters of a detonating mini-nuke without having most of their limbs fly halfway across the Commonwealth?

For that, we look back at our favorite ghoulish mayor.

Hancock is extremely young by ghoul standards. Mayor McDonough kicked all the ghouls out of Diamond City in 2282, a mere five years before the Survivor thaws, and Hancock, in talking about this event, notes that he was not a ghoul yet when he tried to help the Diamond City ghoul refugees.

And how did Hancock end up as a ghoul in such a short period of time?

DRUGS!

Yes, Hancock didn’t get that charming mug of his by standing in the glow of a mushroom cloud with a suntan mirror and a marshmallow on a stick. He freely admits that he became a ghoul by abusing a rare, highly radioactive experimental drug. Now, he doesn’t say outright how much of the stuff he took or how long it was before its effects were as obvious as the lack of a nose on his face, but for the purpose of this theoretical story, I’m just going to go with my personal headcanon theory and assume that Hancock became a ghoul in the space of a single drug-fueled bender, no more than a couple days. That is incredibly fast, especially if there wasn’t a lot of the drug. Add this to the fact that we don’t know where the drug came from, and it makes me wonder if maybe this drug was actually meant to make people into ghouls. Maybe it was developed by a group that has a long-storied history of human experimentation, including examining the effects of radiation on people? Ones that would be ethically-challenged enough to zombify people for their own gains?

They’ll do.

Alright, so now we have both a plot thread to start a mission, and a way of fitting the process of ghoulification into a short period of time while still sticking reasonably with existing canon. So let’s see if I can put this together.

After the player has had their fun with Nuka-World, and if they spared Oswald (make the speech check easier?) and sent him on his mission, they’re able to find him out in the Commonwealth, whether it be in a civilization, or in a specific spot in the general Wasteland a la Ada in Automatron.  I imagine that you would find him with a small, controllable group of his painted friends, and on speaking with him, you can ask him how his mission is going, and he tells you that he might just have a lead. He tells you that he’s heard word of a strange man living in a cave off the beaten track that’s been seen gathering machine parts and organic ingredients. And mention has been made of “a cure.” Believing that this is a cure for his friends’ Affliction, Oswald asks you to accompany him to help him find the cave.  

After journeying across the Commonwealth with your new ghoul buddies, you eventually find the cave, the outside strewn with skeletons and dead raiders and ghouls. Wandering inside, you come across that bastion of scientific shadiness, a Vault. You open the Vault (Vault 97 has a nice ring to it) with your trusty Pip-Boy, and all seems normal by Vault-Tec standards, dirty, decrepit, throwing the occasional feral ghoul at you, the works. The terminals you encounter have journal entries suggesting that the vault dwellers had issues with what they thought was a curse, with residents occasionally vanishing for brief periods of time only to come back as feral ghouls hungry for blood.  Paranoia reigned supreme as the vault dwellers lived in constant fear that they would be next.  

Notable characters in these journals:

-An old woman, the elder and matriarch of the vault, who, by careful selection by Vault-Tec, was never taken. She believed firmly in the curse, and spent her life warning the younger generations against actions she believed would make them likely to be chosen to disappear. She died of starvation, alone in her room, the door outside littered with skeletons.

-The overseer, a hard-nosed woman who refused to believe that the curse is a thing, who tried her damnedest to assure her citizens that none of what is happening had anything to do with sins or faults or anything they were doing. As the only sane woman, she despised the matriarch and anyone who believed her, and routinely insulted her both in journal and eventually in person. She was taken out by a ghoulified engineer, and her death was taken as a sign that not believing in the curse was detrimental.

- A zealot, a man who believed in the words of the matriarch so staunchly that he wrote her rules in a great tome, made daily prayers in an attempt to appease the forces that took the dwellers, and even regularly made burnt offerings to a great scrawling painting of a gargantuan ghoul on the wall of the mess hall.  The overseer regularly complained about the smoke. The zealot took this as a sign of blasphemy and denounced the overseer any chance he got. He was eventually killed by someone who was taken, and in his madness, accepted his death willingly.

-An engineer. He was in charge of keeping the Vault running smoothly, a longstanding tradition held in his family for generations. However, while his ancestors were happy to keep their heads down in the belief that their service kept them relatively safe from the curse, this man couldn’t help but notice some strange discrepancies in the Vault’s design as he went about his duties. Specifically, he noticed that the measurements between the Vault’s corridors and vent systems didn’t add up, alluding to hidden spaces between the walls. After figuring this out, he tried to take his ideas to the other members of the Vault. The zealot called him a conspiracy theorist and blasphemer and screamed at him to repent, and the matriarch warned the engineer that his meddling would lead to his downfall. Lo and behold, when the engineer goes to take his theory to the overseer, he is taken, and as a ghoul, kills the overseer.

Now other than these journal entries and the artifacts surrounding them (skeletons in positions with terrifying implications, the Tome of the Matriarch, the zealot’s painting and firepit, scrawilings on the walls reading things like “I’m Next” or “The curse is real”), the Vault is rather quiet. There are a few ghouls, but not many, due to the nature of the Vault. However, this changes when you walk through one specific, nondescript corridor, alluded to by the engineer’s theories, and necessary to reach the back of the vault.

Walking through this corridor, a set of lockdown doors suddenly shoot up, blocking the Survivor in. A hidden panel opens up in one of the walls, and the other shoves the Survivor through into a small lab. In a horrifying first-person only cutscene, large robot limbs come out from the walls with syringes of the experimental radioactive drug. They jab the Survivor, there’s a rather psychedelic visual effect to call back to the high that Hancock mentions, and the Survivor blacks out.

After a loading screen and an unspecified amount of time, the Survivor wakes up in a different room. The door slides open and Oswald and your companion (if you brought one) walk in. From a first-person perspective and a notable lack of face-cam, the Survivor groggily asks what happened, and Oswald explains that he lost track of you for several hours after the lockdown doors came down. He only found you because his friends managed to sense you through a hidden passage. Oswald asks you how you’re feeling in a rather awkward tone, to which you can respond in the usual straightforward/positive/sarcastic way, followed by the Survivor asking why he asks. Oswald answers something along the lines of “Um, well…”, your companion would give a unique line, and the player would get a glimpse of the Survivor’s hand, now shriveled and pitted. A conversation wheel could come up for a reaction (“what the?”/ “oh.”/”terrific.”/”shit.”) and it would be at this point that it’s revealed that the Survivor is now a ghoul.

Given this situation, the player can react how they want, whether it be despairing, neutral, gung-ho, or whatever. But regardless of the player’s response, the quest continues, and Oswald points out that the person you guys are seeking is still in the vault somewhere.

At this point, the Survivor and company are in the secret labs of the Vault behind the walls.  Here, you can see how the Vault scientists were keeping an eye on the vault dwellers, perhaps in a similar way as Vault 81, through one way mirrors and microphones. Through encrypted terminals here, you figure out that the purpose of this Vault was twofold. Firstly, the drug itself was supposed to be a mind-altering serum meant to put the user in a martial trance, a drug meant to be given to soldiers during the war as something like a horrifying cross between Psycho and Calmex. Secondly, in reintroducing the drugged-up dwellers back into the population, Vault-Tec was testing the remaining dwellers’ reaction to cold-blooded murderous betrayal by those closest to them and the paranoia that would naturally result from never knowing who was going to snap next.

However, as is often the case with Vault-Tec experiments, there were unforeseen consequences, and it turns out that the experimental serum very quickly turned people into feral ghouls. But while the first part of the experiment could be reasonably seen as a failure, Vault-Tec are not the type to abort in the face of accidently creating horrible twisted abominations, the paranoia side of the experiment was clearly still viable, and so they just kept on taking, injecting, and releasing vault dwellers. When the vault began to descend into paranoia-fueled speculation on how those taken were chosen, the techs behind the scenes began to choose their guinea pigs based around the speculation like a particularly sick reality show, at least until the techs died off through time and the occasional escaped ghoul. After that, the injection mechanism still continued to function on an automatic timer, taking any dweller unfortunate enough to walk in the wrong corridors at the wrong time, up until the last dweller was killed by the last ghoul, around 100 years in.

Back in the present, the reason the Survivor and Hancock ended up as sane ghouls is because the dose of radiation in the drug had eroded considerably over a century and had lost a considerable amount of effectiveness. It still makes people into ghouls incredibly quickly, but not to the frothing feral ghouls that it once had.

The Survivor continues their way through the vault, fighting off the occasional squad of feral ghouls with the help of Oswald and his friends. The further you go, the more you begin to see evidence of recent habitation like produce scavenged from the Commonwealth and workbenches littered with bottles and machine parts. Finally, you come to a sealed door leading to a massive machine. There, you are met with a scientist and his mechanic partner, both ghouls. At first the scientist panics, believing that you and the squad of ghouls with you were sent to kill him for his research. The Survivor talks him down, explaining the situation, and he in turn apologizes for what happened to you, explaining that he and his friend are in the same boat, having taken both taken refuge in the Vault 97 while escaping from raiders and promptly stumbling into the injection mechanism. However, before his current situation, the scientist had been specializing in genetics and mutation, studying the Commonwealth’s ghoul population and the effects of radiation on the human body. By coming across Vault 97 and its ghoul serum, he found that it was a great opportunity for him to use the serum behind it in an attempt to work on an antidote to the serum and to ghoulishness in general. With the help of the mechanic who came in around a decade later, the result is a large ad-hoc machine cobbled together from Vault-Tec machinery and scrap metal, with steel pods, needles, and nozzles, connected to vials of liquids like something out of a mad scientist’s drug-fueled fantasies.

The scientist explains that this machine is the result of years of hard work and constant experimentation on the local population of feral ghouls. Oswald, impressed and excited, tells the two that this is just the thing that he’s been looking for all this time, expressing a great deal of hope for his feral friends. The scientist, however, counters that while the experiment is incredibly close, the antiserum is still not effective enough to stick, and those feral ghouls he tested it on briefly recovered to cognizant status before quickly deteriorating and melting into radioactive goo. The Survivor can ask if there’s any way that they can help, and the scientist notes that he’s missing just a few crucial components that could lead to a major breakthrough.

At this point, the Sole Survivor must go out into the Commonwealth to find the missing components, which are either fairly rare organic components (fever blossom, bloodleaf, irradiated blood), crafted substances (orange mentats, refreshing beverage, Nuka-Twin) or it could be some kind of very limited chemical from a nearby plant or factory, requiring combat. This is meant to give the player a chance to go out and experiment with the perks and downsides of being a ghoul. I imagine that it would necessarily come with an immunity to radiation and addiction, but as would line up with lore, chems would be less effective. In terms of stat changes, I believe that it would be interesting to have a nice boost to Agility and movement speed, as feral ghouls can run pretty damn fast when they spot you. On the other end, Charisma would take a pretty hard drop, as people in the Commonwealth generally have a low opinion of ghouls and convincing them to go along with what you say would most likely be more difficult. If you wanted to get fancy with it, maybe a radiation damage bonus could be added to melee and unarmed skills, with maybe a small boost to strength. Basically, this change would draw on the function of the lycanthropy from Skyrim, a drastic change that has clear advantages and disadvantages that could make or break whether or not the player wants to be rid of it. There are blows taken to certain stats and abilities, but not in a way that can’t be compensated for by a dedicated player.

Once the player comes back with the necessary components, the scientist, elated, loads the components into the machine and keys the formula for the mix in. However, as you killed the feral ghouls that made up the population of Vault 97, there aren’t any live test subjects. Oswald then steps up and asks if the first batch can be used on his group of painted ghouls. He’s waited for so long to be able to speak to them again. The scientist informs Oswald that there’s still a risk, but Oswald is adamant. Oswald coaxes his group into the pods, and the scientist starts the machine. To their amazement, the machine does work, and out of an electrified mist come the newly-cognizant Nuka employees, trying to figure out where the hell they are and what happened. The Survivor can express amazement, ask if that’s it, or just ask if the project can go farther. The scientist says with regret that due to the toxicity of many ingredients of the formula, individuals can only take on so much, enough to give a feral ghoul cognizance or to bring a cognizant ghoul like yourself back to human. Oswald overhears this, and the scientist apologizes that he cannot cure his party completely of their Affliction. He can, however bring Oswald back to human if he so wishes.

At this point, the mechanic, who has been fairly obliging this entire adventure, steps up and takes out a gun, pointing it at the scientist’s head. The scientist, indignant, asks the mechanic what the hell is going on. It turns out that the mechanic is part of a Raider group that had heard about the scientist’s work at creating a ghoul cure and wanted the formula for themselves, stating a plan to use the ghoulification drug to ghoul up nearby settlements and sell the cure to them for every cap they have. The scientist balks at the mechanic’s betrayal, saying that what he’s done here could be a true benefit to the Commonwealth, worth far more than whatever the raiders could get from poor settlers . The mechanic is not interested, however, and goes to kill the scientist.  Before he can, however, the scientist ejects a holotape from the machine containing the formula for the serum and destroys it. In a blind rage, the mechanic smacks the scientist against the machine, shouting at him and swinging his gun around. Suddely, Oswald uses his teleporting trick to poof behind the mechanic and jab him with one of the ghoul drug syringes. However, it’s too little, too late, and the mechanic shoots the scientist point blank, exploding his head (preventing resurrection via glowing one). Under the additional drug in his system, the mechanic turns into a variant of a Gangrenous Feral Ghoul, very strong and very angry. The Nuka employees, unarmed and still disoriented, back out of the room as you, your companion, and Oswald take on the feral mechanic.

After defeating him, Oswald walks over to the terminal, and after looking through the system finds that there’s only one dose left loaded into the machine, and it’s not going to keep if you take it out. At this point, Oswald asks you what you’re going to do. Asking him about his view, he says that he’s been a ghoul for over 200 years, and spent most of that time watching over this friends and hoping that Rachel would come back with a cure. He really wants the cure for himself. However, he really believes that you should have a say, as he admits that your current situation is partially his fault for bringing you in here.

At this point, the Survivor has their last choice of the quest.

-Kill Oswald and company and take your face back by force.

-Tell Oswald that he should take the cure for himself, making him human again.

-Speech check- Appeal to Oswald’s beliefs. Tell him that the cure would remove the “magic” his mutation gave him that allowed him to keep his friends alive, and that becoming human again would only be a detriment to him. He should be grateful for what he has.

-Speech check- Suggest that Oswald can find someone out in the Commonwealth who can figure out the serum’s composition/encrypted backup and improve it. Oswald remaining a ghoul only helps him, as it gives him more time in his life to look.

As long as Oswald is not given the cure outright, at this point, the player is free to de-ghoulify the Survivor at any point they want, whether it’s immediately, sometime in the future if they decide after experimentation that being a ghoul doesn’t click with their playstyle, or, if it does, never taking it at all and leaving some hope for Oswald and the world in general. I’d also consider the possibility of having a limited amount of some specific item like the Glenmori Witches’ heads so you could theoretically cure Oswald and yourself, or perhaps even use Curie’s cure-developing background as a way to have it both ways, maybe with another potential quest or a very difficult speech check.

Now, while this does somewhat cross-over with the Ghoulish perk, and there’s probably already Ghoul Survivor mods out there, this was a pretty fun thought experiment, and I think it would make a decent story that would allow for something that as far as I know hasn’t been done in canon Fallout, a fascinating opportunity. I think if I took this idea farther, I could make Vault 97 genuinely horrifying , and it makes me happy to give my favorite Nuka-World character some hope. Plus, if I’m already nuts enough to date a ghoul, why not let me be nuts enough to be a ghoul?

[comradezed]

Fallout 76

I’m having quite a lot of fun reading about how players rage over Fallout 76.

I have to be honest, I can understand them, I bought the game as well, but I knew what I was getting into right from the beginning, and I completely understood the implications of not having human NPCs.

The thing is, Bethesda is pretty good at making single player games, but not so much when it comes to multiplayer ones. In fact, remember that they’ve outsourced the multiplayer part of Doom 2016 to another developer? That’s why. Now they wanted to take their chances and try making a specifically multiplayer game - like, you know, there’s a first time for everything?)

It’s important to understand that they had to (I’m quoting someone else on this, because I can’t think of any better words) “translate a single player experience into a multiplayer one,” and not just a classic lobby multiplayer one, but an MMO. The big problem here is... well... you really should know better if you’re expecting much from playing solo. I am playing solo as well, but unlike most customers who don’t like their purchase (and start taring up game shops, click here if you haven’t seen the video), I knew playing solo was going to be boring, and I didn’t expect otherwise.

However, I bought the game because I love exploring the Fallout world and doing various stuff there, and to some degree I sometimes actually enjoy tedious things in games. So... I am playing it as one of those games you play for relaxation and out of boredom, and I really don’t mind. I need more games like that. Having specific goals in mind sets a stress factor that, although I know nobody is imposing on me, it’s just the way it is.

Regarding the story and the lore, the fact that you have to get quests from dead people via their log entries in terminals is quite funny and creepy at the same time, when you think about it. It gives me the impression I’m somehow uncovering relics of a ghost town. When I’m in the right mood, it’s enjoyable. The story seems interesting and somewhat believable to me. I’m not sure if it’s original or not, but I haven’t played any other game with the same kind of story.

I kind of expect Bethesda to someday soon close the servers because not enough people buy the game, and maybe they’ll release an offline patch when they do - I hope.

Until then, if you're really a Fallout fan but at the same time don't care much for, how reviewers call it, "lack of content" (lack of humour is a more adequate description), you can give it a chance. Expect boredom at times, especially if you can't find anyone to play together with - but if you’re looking for a true Fallout game, this is probably not the one for you, because the typical Fallout humour isn't really here.

[geektified]

New Post has been published on http://www.geektified.com/2017/06/13/what-weve-learned-from-e3-2017-thus-far/

What We've Learned From E3 2017 Thus Far

So far this year E3 has had some very surprising hits and few misses. Some already announced games were expanded upon while new properties surprised gamers worldwide and in some cases, older properties are making their way back into the gaming world as well.

If you haven’t had a chance to keep up with E3 this year and need a quick rundown, don’t worry bro, we got you!

Here’s a list of things that we’ve soaked up so far and that I’m sure you’ll find to be quite reassuring:

  1): VR is making progress this year

For those of us who haven’t seen a lot of progress in the VR world, then it’s time to take a moment and look at the announcements. We’ve seen the Fallout 4 VR, ES: Skyrim VR, and Doom VFR and we’ve got to say, it’s looking quite lovely. Please, do yourself a favor and at least watch the Fallout 4 VR trailer. Watching a deathclaw come at you whilst listening to “Mr. Sandman” is destined to get your blood pumping.

  2): Bethesda didn’t disappoint

Not only mentioning Fallout 4 VR and ES: Skyrim VR, Bethesda also introduced us to Wolfenstein 2, Evil Within 2 and ES: Legends Heroes of Skyrim. Treat yo self and watch these trailers. Wolfenstein 2 looks promising and rather gory. Evil Within 2 will continue to give us nightmares upon nightmares and ES: Legends Heroes of Skyrim is a welcome addition to the already successful and quite addictive ES: Legends digital card game.

  Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

  3): Ubisoft nailed it this year

Introducing a lot of sequels, prequels and additions to previous properties does not mean that Ubisoft lost this year’s conference. Just wait till you read the properties we’re talking about. One that might surprise you is the announcement trailer for Beyond Good and Evil 2. Yes! You read that right. And if that’s not enough to get you excited (though it should be) there’s also the gameplay trailer for Far Cry 5, which takes place in Montana, U.S., a very different location for the franchise. We also got a glimpse at a new game called Skull & Bones, a pvp pirate game, The Crew 2, and Mario &  which we’ll see on the Switch. Last but not least, we’ve got Assassin’s Creed: Origins taking place in Ancient Egypt, a perfect exotic location and a nice change of pace for the franchise.

  Beyond Good and Evil 2

  4): It’s a good year to be a sci-fi fan

Yep. That’s right. We’ve got a new game coming called Anthem, a game developed by BioWare which shows its vast and lush locations juxtaposed with new technologies and weapons. If you’re leery on new titles, then don’t forget about Destiny 2, a game that was announced with a trailer some time ago, but had more to show this time around. We’ve also got Detroit: Become Human and Star Wars: Battlefront 2, but we’ll cover those more thoroughly in a bit.

  Anthem

  5): Sony builds on properties 

This year at E3, Sony didn’t have as many explosive announcements like last year’s Death Stranding. But, they did show us more of what they have to offer. First, they showed us more footage of the new Spider-Man game which will be a PS4 exclusive. If it’s as good as the PS2 Spider-Man 2  game, then many nostalgic fans will be flocking to stores on its release. Then, we saw more God of War. Though we saw a good amount of footage last year, this time we got even more. Those of us familiar with the franchise should be pleased, but it appears to be one that newcomers can jump right into without much play history. Sony introduced a deeper look into the post-apocalyptic biker game, Days Gone, as well Detroit: Become Human, a game from the makers of Heavy Rain. Fans of the Uncharted series have Uncharted: Lost Legacy to look forward to as well, which no longer follows Nathan Drake, but Chloe and Nadine, two characters formerly introduced in the series that will be teaming up. And are you ready for the final kicker? It looks like we will be getting a remastered Shadow of the Colossus and it is b-e-a-utiful!

  Spider-Man

  6): Microsoft’s a tech powerhouse

After the launch of the PS4 Pro, we are now getting the Xbox One X, a gaming console that we are told is going to be an extremely powerful console, able to run 4k more easily than the PS4 Pro. On top of that, the Xbox One will now be backward compatible with some original Xbox games. In terms of gaming exclusives, we got our first look at Crackdown 3 and Forza 7, both of which are titles to get overly excited about and scream in public.

  Xbox One X

  7): Nintendo always has a charming way of surprising us

If you’ve got the Switch and are concerned about the lack of launch titles except Legend of Zelda, then don’t be concerned much longer. Nintendo announced everything from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, a Kirby game, a Pokemon RPG to Metroid Prime 4! We also saw a new title, Super Mario Odyssey which has been described as “weird” which just gets us that much more intrigued.

Super Mario Odyssey

  8): Star Wars: Battlefront 2 will be HUGE

We thought Star Wars: Battlefront 2 deserved its own mention and you should too. There’s plenty of content to look at including gameplay trailers and play throughs of the online mode, but from what we’re seeing, it’s going to be HUGE! Building off of the mechanics of the first entry, this game will be adding more eras of the SW universe, promising a variety in playability. What they’ve shown the most is a battle in the city of Theed, pitting the Separatist droid forces against the Republic army of clones and even though many fans of the franchise dislike the prequel trilogy, none can complain about the design aspect of them, which plays a large part of the game. We got to see Naboo starfighters, as well as AAT tank combat and hero integration. I mean, we’re talking Darth Maul and Rey here people! What’s not to get excited about? There wasn’t much in terms of campaign reveal, save a short clip, but we understand their reasons for keeping those things under wraps for now.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2

  9): Final Notable Mentions

Last but not least, there are other games announced and expanded on that should be researched immediately. We got to see more of Middle Earth: Shadow of War, a trailer for a new co-op prison escape game called A Way Out, State of Decay 2, Metro: Exodus which gave us an eerie look into a beautiful waste land, and more footage for Call of Duty: World War 2, which has us excited for new and innovative multiplayer modes as well as a dramatic campaign.

  There is much more to see from E3 this year, so do some digging for yourself and watch the trailers for these new ga

[grabey]

Horsing around

After watching the Darksiders III trailer I’m surprised Gunfire Games didn’t take the opportunity to retcon out Vigil’s bizarre decision to rename Famine and Pestilence. Instead we are left with a game featuring that famed horse rider of the Apocalypse, Fury (the other one is Strife).

The series has always seemed weirdly reluctant to make full use of the cool premise of the Four Horsemen battling against Heaven and Hell. Darksiders II was set largely in a fairly generic fantasy world with the Apocalypse pushed into the background and Death portrayed as an elite warrior rather than the actual Grim Reaper.

I don’t know if they’re just worried about stirring up religious controversy, but I can’t help but feel the setting would be more interesting if it went deeper into the Book of Revelation inspirations. TGN Professor

GC: It’s almost certainly the religious aspect, particularly with regards to the American market. As you imply, we can’t help but feel they would’ve been better off making up their own fantasy universe from scratch.

Stuck in time

Hooray!

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been playing through Darksiders, having enjoyed the sequel a few years ago. I was just thinking about what they could do for a third entry then saw the news about the new game which is great. Although watching the IGN reveal trailer I’m a little disappointed to see that the story doesn’t seem to have moved on at all.

Darksiders has you as War trying to clear your name. Darksiders II has you as Death in a concurrent story to the first game – trying to clear War’s name. The trailer for Darksiders III starts with War in chains, so it looks like his name is still not cleared yet?! Don’t tell me Fury now has to clear his name!

I was also thinking the format might have changed slightly. It’s probably a bit ambitions for a smaller studio (assuming Gunfire Games are smaller studio compared to a company like Bungie) but maybe they could have or will do something like a four-player co-op where you each play one of the horsemen and have to take on Destiny style raid dungeons. Anyway, can’t wait to hear a bit more info.

If Darksiders III does OK, it’s pretty certain we’ll eventually get a fourth staring Strife but let’s just hope it’s not all about clearing War’s name again! PsillyPseudonym (PsillySeudonym – gamertag)

GC: According to IGN it’s ‘set around the same time as the events of Darksiders II’, so we think you’re right. It certainly doesn’t look like War’s name has been cleared in the trailer.

Big impression

Can I just say what a wonderfully creepy game Little Nightmares is. I think walking through the dark with all the mannequins around toward the end was great/nerve racking!

But I’d also like to draw people’s attention to the PS Store, where, if like me, you were happy with the news of a third Darksiders game there is a bundle of both remastered games for £16. Which considering it’s £16 for the first one alone is pretty good! Liam

Furniture land

Thank god Bethesda chose to release a Prey demo, indeed. Wanted to write in to defend against Phil’s point. I was always planning on getting Prey based on the premise, alone but was probably going to wait for some sales first.

After playing the demo on hard difficulty I was not disappointed by the previews suggesting it was ‘a thinking man’s game’, which is undoubtedly a dig at the Call Of Duty crowd. It was a challenge of nerve and mind, like a cross between Garry’s Mod prop hunt and The Thing. I raised my wrench against any and all mugs and chairs. Playing with headphones on, even mop buckets I knew were black spiders made me touch cloth because of that damn music sting!

After multiple playthroughs of the demo I now have a good idea of what skill trees to level up (hacking seems like a very useful starting point) and have now pre-ordered the game (£40 on Amazon Prime). Really looking forward to exploring the rest of the game and I hope it’s not too short. And I’m really glad Bethesda decided to release a demo.

They got extra money out of me by doing so, as the demo convinced me to buy as soon as possible because it is so different from the majority of other first person shooters available now. I never got round to playing Dishonored 2, so I can’t comment how much of a clone Prey may be to it but I like Arkane and hope they do well. Beware the chair! Stretchy Grunt

The second year

I’m seriously beginning to wonder whether the Nintendo Switch could be a hit on the scale of the Wii. Every time we hear a new story about it the situation seems even more positive than before. And despite what it seemed like before launch I think the release schedule is working out pretty well, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe clearly off to a great start and Splatoon 2 likely to do very well too. I’m not so sure about ARMS, but I’m beginning to think it won’t be ignored as others were predicting a few months ago.

But of course with E3 approaching it only makes me wonder more about what Nintendo has coming up next. Super Mario Odyssey should be the perfect way to end the year but what about after that? We know about literally nothing at the moment and they’ve already used up all their biggest franchises: Zelda, Mario Kart 8, and Super Mario. If Nintendo think they can follow that up with second-stringers like Pikmin and Kirby then I would’ve hoped they’d learned their lesson by now.

Maybe a new Metroid, since it’s been so long since we’ve had a proper one, but they need to keep with the new franchises. Splatoon worked out great and ARMS might do too. That’s what we need more of, not diminishing returns with a new Donkey Kong and a new Star Fox, until they get down to franchises not even their biggest fans care about. The Switch in 2017 seems to be working out great but it’s the Switch in 2018 I’m worried about now. Goose

You get what you pay for

Well, I just bought one of them retro game controllers from Argos with 200 games on it (you know the one where it’s in the shape of a joypad the size of a matchbox, priced at a tenner). However, I wasn’t expecting much for the price. Unfortunately, I will never know because my two-year-old LG 4K UHD smart telly hasn’t got the phono plugs to plug the game controller in so I can play it.

Now I not what you’re all going to say – why didn’t you go and get a converter to play the Damon thing? So off I went to my local Maplin store, only to be told it would cost me around £50 to buy a converter so I can see it on my screen. Or go and buy a new telly with the phono jacks already built into it. I wouldn’t mind but the whole gaming box only cost me a tenner in the first place.

So my question is how do other people manage to have all these other retro gaming devices like your new retro Ataris, Mega Drive, and the Nintendo gadgets to work on their tellies, because mines at least two-years-old now and surely any newer telly made after mine is just not compatible for these latest retro-crazed gaming devices to be played on due to the phono plugs. JAH

GC: We don’t know about the others but the NES Mini uses a HDMI cable. We assume you bought this, but it doesn’t seem to contain any real retro games – just a bunch of cheapo Flash games (there’s a PDF list here).

Oldest school

All this talk of remasters from gaz be rotten has got me thinking. I’d like to see much older games put onto games consoles, ones that were invented long before video games.

When I was growing up in Mevagissey many years ago my mates and I used to enjoy a jolly game of Poohsticks. I sure that some sort of video game could be made out of that.

Here’s hoping for some Inbox magic The Dark Fud

Catch up on every previous Games Inbox here

Making the list

I have just finished playing Titanfall 2 and although it’s a great game, it doesn’t quite beat the other multiplayer shooters I’ve played in recent years.

My list goes in reverse order: 4. Titanfall 2 3. Overwatch 2. Star Wars: Battlefront (controversial!) 1. Splatoon (of course)

I’ve got a feeling not everyone will agree with that list. One thing I’ve noticed in all four games is the lack of emphasis or downright absence of a free-for-all mode. Titanfall 2 obviously has one, but the wait for a match was 10 times longer than the team modes – making it very unappealing to actually play. Free-for-all used to be the only game in town, with several different variants, but slowly it is being wiped out by team modes/games.

It seems a real shame as I am naturally a lone wolf player and free-for-all is a much more fitting mode for me to play. Not that I don’t enjoy team games at all, with Splatoon my favourite game ever, but I miss the more cutthroat and chaotic play of having everyone out to get you. Free-for-all is something I’d love to see as an option in Splatoon 2, I’m sure they could find a way to make it work. Ryan O’D PS: I know some would cry foul that they weren’t included already, but I hope they release new DLC tracks for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Inbox also-rans

What’s everyone assuming Bethesda’s two new games at E3 are? Wolfenstein must be one of them, but what’s the other? The Evil Within 2 by the sound of the rumours I’d say. Ollie

Do you know what Link’s favourite song is? A Good Heart These Days Is Hard To Find by Feargal Sharkey. DMR

This week’s Hot Topic

The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Steiner, who asks how much money do you spend on gaming a month?

Do you have a specific budget that you stick to, or some other kind of system to make sure you don’t spend too much at once? What do you do when multiple games come out at the same time? And do you try and have money in reserve for the launch of new consoles and other hardware?

What percentage of your games do you buy for full price and how much do you take advantage of sales? Do you resell your games or buy second-hand, and how are your habits changing as digital downloads become more prominent?

from Blogger Darksiders III reaction, Titanfall 2 free-for-all, Nintendo Switch