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October update: 49/52
It's December, most people not from a Scandinavian country probably celebrate christmas today, and I can barely remember what I played yesterday, but whatever, let's remember October together!
46. October 25th | Baldur's Gate 3 | Playstation 5 | 91h 39m | ☆☆☆☆☆(/5)
I guess this is sort of what has kept me from writing the October update until now, because what is there to say about Baldur's Gate 3 by now that hasn't already been said by everyone? It's a fantastic game, second best of the year (would have been the best basically every other year, but Tears of the Kingdom is just too good...), and as someone who is very passionate about and spends a lot of time thinking about the writing in the various video games I play, I was constantly impressed by not only the overall quality of basically every line of dialogue throughout the entirety of BG3, but also how the game world and characters react to your actions in an often highly believable way, and just how consistent it manages to be despite how much the game allows for player expression for almost every little thing you do.
Of course, Baldur's Gate 3 is also a goddamn mess. Insanely long load times, way too many bugs, an endgame that sadly is way too linear and hinges on a character completely changing their personality just in order to give you a difficult choice to make, and battles that could really use a speed-up option, if not outright letting you skip enemy turns. I also beat it before the character epilogues were patched in, so pretty lackluster ending as well. All things that really should affect the overall grading that I'd give a game, but as the credits rolled, all I could think was "this is one of the greatest games I've ever played."
A lot of it is the aforementioned writing, and especially the characterization of your party members who always feel so present in whatever's going on, never just feeling like generic characters with stock lines because the game can't keep up with having all these people react to every little thing (or just letting them be completely quiet for most of the game), but having them be active participants very often, and having their own voices and personalities that are kept consistent no matter the situation or how the player chooses to resolve a situation. Not to mention how they themselves change over the course of the game depending on how you interact with them and the world around you, in ways that feel believable where most games would rush their developments in highly unsatisfactory ways. You can't bathe in the same river twice, as they say, and the Shadowheart, Karlach or Astarion (just to name the ones I mostly used throughout the game. All the others are great as well, though) you start out with are probably not going the be the exact same people you end with because just like you, they've experienced so much over this entire journey that they've had serious character development and can't ever go back to what they previously were.
The side quests you do for the people inhabiting this world are mostly great, and never feel particularly video game-y or like these people were just plopped onto this map to give someone a quest, and that does help a lot to, but it really are these people with you for the entire game that makes the entire world more believable, with how they really feel like a part of it, and how they have their own mini-narratives and previous relationships that keep coming up and show that my Tav (who I obviously renamed since Tav is a very dumb name) isn't really the center of the universe, but that there're a lot of other things going on, that have been since long before they main story kicked off, and which are at least as important to these people as Tav's adventures they've tagged along for. They are still very player sexual (though weirdly none in my party. Everyone I kept back at the camp tried to seduce me, though, which was a bit annoying, and led to me not really romancing anyone), and I do wish romance in games could be a bit more dynamic than it usually is, and party members could get together with either each other or at least having a bit more agency in the matter, but it's at least not worse than in basically every other game with similar mechanics, and the short romance scenes I did get to see were at least very charming.
I don't like to say this because I don't want to say that good looking game = better, but it also can't be understated how important Baldur's Gate 3's overall presentation is to the experience. It's not graphically the best looker of the year, not at all, but the art direction is fantastic, really selling this magical world, the possibility to get more of an over the shoulder perspective gets the player so much closer to that world and makes the experience so much more intimate and personal than isometric camera ever could, which is very important for a game where player expression plays such a large part. Cutscene direction is also so much better than every other CRPG ever made, and is backed up with maybe the best cast of voice actors that have ever come together for a video game (though maybe it's tied with Red Dead Redemption 2), that complement the great writing so well (and can save the weaker writing those few times that's an issue.) The Game Awards very rightfully awarded Neil Newbon as performance of the year for Astarion, the best voice performance since... maybe ever (and he was great as Zeon in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 last year as well!), but everyone deserves serious praise for how good they are in their roles.
God, I haven't even said anything about actually playing the game yet. I've never been able to get into CRPGs, I should say. I appreciate what a lot of them do, but in a lot of cases, I sort of get a bit overwhelmed by how much freedom they give me, while also having very steep learning curves. Baldur's Gate 3 does give the player a lot of freedom and as a novice to the genre, I also found it to be quite difficult at times, but I also always felt like I could get through a difficult fight, or like there was always some quest that I could pursue. Even if it wasn't necessarily the main quest, I always had a goal in mind, and that does help a lot to keep me interested, I guess, and the zones for each act were large enough to feel believable and like I'm not just running back and forth between the same few locations and there were a lot of discoveries to be had, but also small enough that I never got lost in them, and they could be really dense without the game having to dilute the side content's high quality by throwing even more content on the map to fill it out and not risk "boring" the player by having longer moments of traversal without any new discoveries or things of interest.
The battle mechanics, though still very much with the DNA of turn-based CRPGs, are intuitive and allow for so many different strategies (player expression rears its beautiful head yet again!) that even if I'm struggling and have to *gasp* save scum during some dark moments, I can always get through a battle no matter how impossible it may seem at certain points if I just think things through a bit and look through my characters' different abilites. This being unlike, say, Fallout where I'm sure that's also the case if you're more well versed in the genre than me, but it also felt like I could randomly wander into battles in that game where I'd be killed before even getting to act. Also helped that there really isn't that much combat in the BG3 (at least not mandatory combat), and how a very large amount of them felt like they were against actual characters that existed in this world before fighting you, and not just faceless monsters or goons. Those battles do exist as well, of course, but are fairly rare.
Pretty good game, all in all.
Soundtrack highlight:
Raphael's Final Act
47. October 26th | Mario Tennis | Nintendo Switch Online (N64) | 3h | ☆☆☆
This one is surprisingly difficult to rate. I like tennis games, and I like Mario Tennis games, and when I played Mario Tennis way back in October, I had a pretty good time. It's a very basic tennis game, but it does what it's supposed to do, though I did find it a bit stale at times like a lot of early 3D tennis games. Still, had a fun time going through the singles tournament with Yoshi that did start out very easy, but ramped up quite a bit by the final cup and thus ended up being quite challenging, but also very satisfying to complete.
By this point, the game was a pretty clear 3/5. Fun, but maybe a bit to barebones and not very memorable. Then I thought I'd unlock the final character by completing the doubles tournament, which turned out to be a nightmare when being paired up with an AI partner who seemed to always be in the way, could't return a serve without giving the opponents a free smash opportunity, and overall didn't really seem to try to win us any points ever. Not exaggerating at all when I say that trying to win the star cup with this brain dead partner was one of the most frustrating things I've done in a game in a very long time. Not that I'm perfect, by the way, and that every lost point was because of the AI, but it genuinely felt like it was playing against me more often than not. I did win in the end, though, but a part of my sanity was probably lost after the countless replays of that final.
With a lot of rage within me, the game sunk to being more of a 2.5, and I felt pretty done with Mario Tennis. It was still at that 2.5 until yesterday, Christmas Eve, where I found myself playing some Mario Tennis multiplayer to kill some time, and, maybe not very surprisingly at all, I had a very good time with it this time. I mean, every game is fun when you play it with someone you don't actively dislike, so maybe it was the company more than the game that made me enjoy it more, but having two people that really aren'y very good at this game face each other in really tight matches and laughing at our mistakes and sometimes even getting some really long, tense games where we played as if we were somewhat competent was such great time that I just have to retroactively give back that 0.5 to the, ultimately not really very important, score. It's still a very simple tennis game that could feel a lot smoother to play, but find a loved one to play it with, and it's a grand ol' time for everyone involved! I should really check out the Switch Mario Tennis game at some point.
Soundtrack highlight:
Ending
48. October 30th | Alan Wake Remastered + DLC Episodes | Playstation 5 | 15h | ☆☆☆
Hyped for Alan Wake 2, and thought I'd play the original game before playing that one (and then I found out you should apparently play Control as well, and maybe Max Payne and Quantum Break, so I still haven't gotten to it...), and I can't say I'm super impressed by AW1. I mean, it's not a bad game, but I had hoped for a lot more considering the praise it got back in the day, when I wanted to play it but didn't own a 360.
Alan Wake does start out fun, with nice Twin Peaks vibes and an intriguing, trippy mystery where Alan has to find his suddenly missing wife, but I feel like the plot is really interesting during the first chapter, and then it doesn't really go anywhere interesting until maybe the second to last chapter, and that's a lot of game to not have that much happen other than Alan being confused in the woods. The game keeps being fairly weird for its entirety but not in an interesting way, and more like Sam Lake wasn't really sure how to progress things so he just threw things in that were vague enough that they'd sort of work in a way where you'd just accept the weirdness and move on. This does result in a couple of really cool ideas, to be fair, but most of it just feels like a very watered down David Lynch, without his abstract artist's mind and dream logic, and more weird for the sake of being weird. I do love the idea of collecting manuscript pages telling you about the lives of the different townspeople, though.
Actually playing Alan Wake is sort of the same, I guess. It has a lot of good ideas, but execution leaves a bit to be desired. Chapter 1 is pretty cool, where you're running around the dark woods and scrambling to light up the shadow enemies before shooting them, but then you get to chapter 2 and it's basically the exact same woods, and then chapter 3 where... it's even more woods, and I was getting so tired of running around in these very samey looking environments, with enemies spawning constantly, and even more often when going off the beaten which is a shame since the game often wants you to explore at least a bit to find collectibles and ammo stashes, but I just stopped doing that since I couldn't take more of this tedious combat where enemies would just show up from every direction and waste my time. Not like they're difficult to fight either, just very tedious when they keep on coming and you always have to shine enough light with a flashlight (that uses the worst batteries in history) in order to hurt them, and Alan's piss poor stamina ensures that you can't really run away from most encounters without constantly having to dodge attacks coming from behind.
Luckily, the game does get better at chapter 4. Still a lot of combat, but we get some new environments that aren't just completely open forests and much smarter encounter design where you can really take advantage of area layouts during fights, and also really trap yourself in smaller spaces which at least adds some tension to the battles. Enemy variety still sucks, but it does feel a lot more fun to play when there is a bit more variety, and there are even some fun set pieces thrown in that really livened things up whenever they showed up. I do wish there was a bit less combat and a bit more of that nice, Finnish atmosphere with a touch of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness that the game does have sometimes, and definitely more during the final three chapters than the three preceding, but there is definitely too much shooting and too little cool exploration overall. There're also some very weird driving segments that don't really add anything, but I guess anything that isn't shooting at yet another shadow man is a plus in my book.
God, I really sound like I disliked Alan Wake, Don't I? I really didn't, to be clear, and I don't even think the core gameplay of lighting up enemies in order to then shoot them is bad, it's even pretty clever given that the game was made at a time when every other game was a pretty basic third person shooter, but there's just too much of it when I was mostly interested in finding and reading more manuscript pages, having Alan get more and more confused the further into the game I got, and explore some cool places without constantly being interrupted by enemies. I mean, Uncharted was never exactly the thinking man's game, but it at least had light puzzling and platforming so as to not constantly have Drake in combat, and Alan Wake really could have needed something similar just to give some moments of relaxation and variety here and there. The story is intriguing, though, and I do want to play Alan Wake 2 even more now to see how it continues and if some of the cool things this game does are fleshed out a bit, and if Alan has worked on his cardio since 2010.
The DLC sucks, though. Adds nothing to the story, has way too much combat and even throws in some pretty terrible platforming to make matters worse.
Soundtrack highlight:
A Writer's Dream
49. October 31st | Slay the Princess | PC | 4h 30m | ☆☆☆½
The less said about such a story driven game like Slay the Princess the better, really, so all I have to say is this: by far the best looking game of 2023, and I can't see anything beating these hand-drawn images of both beauty and extreme violence (though I still haven't played Alan Wake 2, of course). Also extremely reactive to every player choice, with basically everything you do will change which story you'll encounter next, and morphing the Princess into a very wide variety of forms that each react to you in different ways based on how you treated her in the previous story. The stories I experienced were all really good, I should add, with some pretty fantastic writing that ranged from awfully sad, to surprisingly funny, to really creepy, and in some cases that juggled all three and shifted between them in an instant without feeling the least bit jarring.
Main issue with Slay the Princess is, sadly, that the endgame is pretty lacklustre, not really affected by previous choices in any meaningful way, and tries to really sell the "this is a love story" angle without really earning it during any other part of the game in my opinion, at least not after the routes I took, which is sort of the issue with the endings not really having much to do with what you did previously and instead being chosen by the player in the moment. The game can also feel a bit overwritten at times, with some scenes having way too much dialogue that doesn't really add anything other than really putting a damper on the otherwise really snappy pacing in each story, and some humour that just doesn't work at all.
Stil, definitely recommended for everyone who wants to read a couple of really good short stories, which you're guaranteed no matter the routes you happen to end up on. Slay the Princess does end on a low note for me, but the way there is at least a very good time, and it's honestly worth reloading some stories a couple of times just to see how things change just through one different choice here or there, without necessarily even going through the rest of the game. Sort of wish there was an option just to go through these fantastic short stories without reaching a destination after playing through enough of them, but I guess that sort of defeats the purpose of the main plot.
Soundtrack highlight:
The Prisoner
Currently playing:
Octopath Traveler II (PS5)
Super Mario Bros. Wonder (NSW)
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