#the goal shouldn't be smooth perfection and i hate that it is for so many. does that make sense

[zachsgamejournal]

PLAYING: Oddworld: Soulstorm

Why does this game make it so hard to love it? While I might be frustrated with dated mechanics, poor level design and imprecise gameplay, I think what really bugs me most is the disappointing story.

Firstly to cover a topic I missed out my last post: I hate crafting. I understand that crafting is a beloved genre of video games, but anytime I see crafting advertised on a game, I am immediately annoyed. I don't want to figure out a billion different recipes. I don't want to go hunting for different materials. I don't want to get frustrated when I get to a place and I can't progress because I'm missing that one stupid item that's hidden under a rock or some bull crap.

So yeah when I found out that Soulstorm had crafting I was pretty pissed off. It's not even really meaningful crafting because they mostly give you all the supplies you need to achieve your crafting goals for the level. Instead of giving me different materials to put together, why not just give me the items themselves and so that if I go around searching all the trash bins and lockers I will find all the necessary grenades and what not in order to find all the secrets. To me it just adds nothing to this game and instead makes it overly complicated and less fun.

Moving on for a brief moment. I thought I loved this game. I was playing the level where you try to steal the train. I was about 80% done and I was facing a really hard challenge that was pissing me off and killing lots of my friends. But at some point I figured out the trick to doing it very easily and I saw that I was very close to collecting every mudokon on the level which inspired me. So I restarted the level from scratch and I found that playing through it a second time I felt much more comfortable with the mechanics and I was actually enjoying myself. I figured out a few ways to play the game more correctly and have a good time with it. Then after about 45 minutes, I'd finally reached the same place I'd reached before and I had my mudokons with me ready to beat the level.

But then when I was trying to get a few of my mudokon, I've been collecting to come to the top of a platform and I did everybody call. I accidentally attracted mudokon that I couldn't even see on screen and they ran right into a hazard and died just as I crossed into a checkpoint. So now whenever I loaded the checkpoint that mudokon died. I was so pissed. I wanted to give up the game right then and there. I didn't want to have to replay a 45-minute level to save one mudokon that shouldn't have died in the first place and it really just made me think this game lacked the precision to be great.

That experience really soured the mood for me. As I play through the next few levels, there were moments where I felt like the game was good and other times where I thought the game was poorly designed. I wouldn't say it was ever terrible. There was just a low threshold for failure and mistakes and sometimes the levels were designed in such a way that without the conditions being perfect success was impossible. That's just not how the original game worked. Each puzzle was very precise in particular and there was a way to play it so that you could perfectly accomplish your mission. Honestly, this is the problem with Munch's Odyssey as well. The game wants you to do much like the original, but it doesn't have the precision of the original. It's too organic. It's too chaotic which allows too many opportunities for errors. I think what would help is if the mudokons themselves were a little bit smarter and therefore you wouldn't have to babysit them so closely.

But honestly, sometimes as bland as the game can be the graphics aren't that bad. The design is interesting. The lighting works for a Unity game. It actually looks pretty good. The gameplay itself is pretty responsive and smooth for the most part, even if I'm not as happy about the precision. I do enjoy running around and playing as the different sligs and trying to solve puzzles.

But what really ruins the game for me is the levels are too long. The story's too scarce and the story itself sucks. The original game wasn't exactly Shakespeare but it was pretty good for what it was and I enjoyed the rhyming. And I think what worked best for it was the timing. It was very succinct and on point it gave you just as much information as you needed in the moment to entertain you and to communicate the plot and then move forward. It never overstayed. Its welcome and always kind of left. You wanting just a little bit more but never left you starved.

Soulstorm is starved for story. You go whole levels which can take 45 minutes to hour and a half with almost no story development whatsoever and then when you finally do get story, you get overly long cinematic videos that are very redundant and give almost no information. At one point about halfway through the game, Abe discovers that the Brew being made is to enslave the mudakans and if they don't drink it, they die almost immediately. After that, we get a similar scene from the bad guy's perspective that gives us almost the same information. If not a little bit less, there's no point to the scene. It just shows us that the bad guy is mad that he's not succeeding. Who cares? Now that I'm closing in on the end of the game, there are tons of really long cinematics by really long. I mean about 60 seconds. One about 10 seconds would have done it and they go on and on giving us no real plot. No real character development. Not only that, but there's tons of radio stations giving out propaganda that we all know is false. But why do we care that it's false? We know this is a corrupt world and we know that people listen to the radio station are evil. So why do we care what the radio station is saying it just doesn't make sense.

Each level is made up of about 5 to 10 subsections in my opinion and in truth, each one of these sections is almost about a good enough level in its own right. Also, given that there's a lot of failure in messing up and trying to save all the mudokins, you can get stuck in a single area for a long period of time, so adding more length to the level just adds more frustration that we're that much further away from victory. What could save this is filling it with good, meaningful story. Instead of having these really long dumbass cup scenes that aren't worth anything. Why not sprinkle details out as you play the game?. It would be wonderful if the mudokons you rescued gave you information gave you insights about the area. Or maybe as you wonder the levels you overhear the gluckons talking to sligs and gain more information and their plans to take out aid and their plans to make profit off the enslavement of the Dawkins. I don't know, just split it up.

This is something that naughty dog does a great job with and Uncharted and The Last of Us. There's a little bit of gameplay and then just a touch of story to inch you forward over the entirety of an hour or so. You've gotten about 10 minutes worth of story split up throughout the game. That way no gameplay moment takes too long without story and no story moment. Overstays us welcome. I mean their story development moments and then and The Last of Us s that probably could have been summed up in a 5 to 10 minute scene, but they're spread out over a 60-minute level. I think that's a good balance and that's something that soulstorm really could have used instead. It's just filled with long levels that are scarce for story and then when we get story it's not only over long. It just isn't very interesting. I hate to say it who wrote this shit?

Ultimately, I'm kind of torn. I enjoy this game. I enjoy the vibe. I enjoy the design but I just don't like the story and it doesn't make me love the game and that's always going to be a sore disappointment. So I'm glad that I finally got to play it after all these years. But I'll be forever disappointed and likely never touch it again.

[cazzyvintage]

Hi Cazzy!!! Congratulations on the follower milestone!!!💕💕I always enjoy everything you write. Smut are hottt and angst makes me cry and i absolutely adore the fluff too🥺🥰

I havent read all the requests you wrote so idk if you've written smth like this. but what abt a dialogue prompt "it's ok, you don't have to love me" with zemo. just take it any way you want😌

TW: mention of attmepted Su*cide

Behind the self-obsessed persona Zemo often portrayed to those around him, Zemo knew how much of a horrible person he really was.

He liked to pretend that he was the smooth guy, who was cool for getting into bad businesses like that, who remained everyone's ally when it convenience him, that he was someone who could have fun, have a laugh but couldn't be trusted.

But deep down he hated himself as much as Sam and Bucky hated him.

This was never the life he had ever thought would become of him. He had so many plans, inheriting his father's position, helping the people of Sokovia, raising his son into the best man that he could be, doing his duty for his country. But the cruel twists of fate had destroyed any hope he had of ever achieving those goals.

He didn't want to kill other people. Though he had been trained he has always killed the guilty, and though he still aimed to destroy the guilty, the avengers, it meant he had to kill innocents as well and his self-hatred for himself grew over it.

Years he spent in his cell, his own thoughts plaguing him for what he had done, the families he had torn apart just like the Avengers had once done to him. In order to take them down, he had to become just like them and the thought of it left a bitter taste in his mouth.

When Bucky offered to break Zemo out of jail, he was already forming plans in his head. This was the perfect opportunity to end everything. He knew he wouldn't be allowed to stay outside, and he refused to go back to jail. So he made the decision that he was to die.

He had tried to previously, but was prevented from doing so and so instead had suffered for years in jail with his guilt, so he had to this time, he had to bite the bullet in a literal sense.

But once again there was something he hadn't planned for. Some that came and screwed up his plans all over again.

You.

You had come along and changed everything, all of his neatly timed out plans were ruined because of you, and he wasn't even mad at you for it.

But it put him in a tough decision. He couldn't let you know how he felt. He had to keep these feelings to himself for he knew he was to die and if he grew close to you anymore, he would risk getting to the moment and not wanting to die, and what was worse, potentially hurting you with his death.

Yet no matter how much he tried to keep his distance, tried to remain cold to you. He just couldn't. Not when you were so nice, so friendly, so heartwarming and against his wishes, he fell even more hopelessly in love with you and little did he know, you the same way.

You knew you shouldn't like the man after all that he had done, but deep down you knew there was more to him, you could see the pain in his eyes, the sorrow he tried to hide about his crimes and it made your own heartache for him.

You couldn't hide these feelings forever, and so you just had to tell him before it was too late for either of you.

One evening at Zemo's safe house, Sam and Bucky had gone to bed early and you found Zemo sitting on a sofa, reading a book. Happily, you took a seat beside him making him look up at you and smile.

"I hope today hasn't been too hard on you y/n" he murmurs, closing his book so that you had his undivided attention.

"It's the same as every other day really, it feels like we are no closer to stopping Karli than we were when we started... but there has been something on my mind recently"

Zemo tilts his head curiously, "Pray, tell"

"Zemo... I like you, well, more than like you. And I know I shouldn't! But I can't help my feelings towards you, not when you have been so kind and generous to me this whole time"

When you saw the horror upon his face, instantly you felt scared that you had made a fool of yourself, and had reputedly damaged your friendship with him.

"It's okay, you don't have to love me" you quickly told him, "I just... I needed to say before something happened to either of us"

This was exactly what Zemo had always wished for yet feared at the same time. Now you were going to get hurt because of him, if he died, which was his plan, you would be deeply hurt and Zemo knew he just couldn't do that to you. Blast the plan, blast his self-loathing thoughts towards himself. He would do anything to save you from hurt, and he knew deep down though he didn't think he deserved someone like you, he was deeply pleased by your confession.

His hand slowly reached out and grasped yours, pulling it up to his lips.

"I am deeply honoured by your confession" he whispered against your fingers, "and I must admit I harbour the same feelings towards you and would like to be able to court you, though perhaps Sam and James shouldn't be told"