Game 86 - Emily is Away Too - Week 168 - Mar 23

mily is Away Too

There’s something about this series that is so masterful in its ability to transport me 20 years back to my youth and immerse me in its MSN messenger style conversations to the level that I feel real emotion toward the NPCs I’m talking to. The first game did all this and had a devasating story, investing you in Emily and then giving no option except for your relationship with her to end in tatters. Life is that way sometimes and beyond the nostalgic purview at it’s heart this is what the story was about – but also how you conduct yourself as person – through lies or honesty in a setting that is all the more easy when you’re not speaking face to face.

Of course you can't show the mid 2000s without our boy Rick Astley. I remember this dominating WoW and other vids at the time. 

This time around the format remains the same. The game mostly taks place in a chat window with several characters. You can set your profile image and bio, read others and then chat with people. This time however there’s a few key difference namely in its external links. Throughout the game characters will send you links to music videos on “Youtoob” or have links on their profile that link to Newground, Steam or Facenook. Many of which you can interact with, browsing videos on YouToob, playing games on Newgrounds or cyber-stalking on Facenook. All in all it expands on the Emily is Away experience by giving you plenty of nostalgic content to immerse you in the story it has to tell you. I love that they give you an 8-bit wallpaper to round out the entire experience on your computer. It's perfect. The presentation and references are on point AF. Rise Against, MCR, World of Warcraft Burning Crusade, Oblivion… just FKN amazing. The game will even save stuff to your desktop as your love interest writes a poem for you or a girl sends you chatlogs to ask you if she was a bitch with her begrudged ex.

To my surprise the game doesn’t open up with Emily, but instead Evelyn is Online (otherwise known as punk4eve). It’s pretty clear from the start that you’re going to have to choose and well Eve is a girl after my heart with her love of punk music. But at the same time Emily is into video games and so lovely. This won’t be easy. Like the first game it’s set over four seasons but unlike that it’s set over the final year of high school instead of graduation leading into college. Questions shift from “will we keep in touch” to “do our plans align after graduating?”. The chatting between these two girls goes back and fourth. Both end up dating douchebags and you’re their closest gay guy friend with a shoulder to cry on. Which if you think about it is a clever premise in itself because that’s something the audience itself, pale, nerdy, socially awkward would have likely experienced. So it goes right for the jugular.

Something that the first game did that was extremely clever was you’d choose an option, and the character would forcibly backspace chickening out. It did this until the end and you ended with a saddening result regardless of what you do. It was clever in its accuracy of the time in how scared we were as teens to say how we really felt. So this time around your character does it and I’m like “oh shit, here we go again”. But then Emily responds “hey, what did you just delete?”. Fucking chills. The game took our expectations from the first game and completely flipped it on its head. It gives you 3 options – 2 for the cowards and 1 for the “fuck it, I’m gonna say it” approach. I did the latter of course and to my surprise it actually lets you do it! What a nice twist.

As you go back and fourth all this reaches a head. Both NEED to talk to you and are clearly neurotic. They need you to respond right away and the game drops a time bar on you out of nowhere. Bouncing between the two becomes increasingly harder and eventually you just have to choose whether you want to or not. Whether subconsciously or not I ended up going with punk4eva over emerz35. Maybe it was the punk style, but I don’t know because I’m equally attracted to the girl next door. But I guess Eve just had the punk with a bit of girl next door vibe. I continued to talk to Eva and give her good counsel (I think) but Em wasn't happy at all. 

Some time passes and Emily is Away. Eva thanks me for the useful advice and things get a little cute and flirty. From that point on things flourish, you ask her on a date and she likes you to, you go to prom, have an amazing time and she writes poems about you. I’m fully invested at this point and I’m 13 again. I can’t stress just how well written this is for the time to the degree that I’m fully enveloped in these characters.

Speaking of poetry, guess who else is in this class? Emily. The final chapter and they get to talking. Em apologises for being a massive psycho and you become friends again. I tell her how Eve is great and you can’t help but feel she’s got massive FOMO. But that could have gone a lot worse and I’ve got a prom to go to… Prom passes with flying colours but Eve is concerned as we’re going to different colleges and doesn’t know what to do. I tell her we should stay together and she agrees – ending the story with “I love your stupid ass". 

Awwwwww

Boy was I wrong about this game. Like the first I expected a sad ending, but nope it got all fucking nice and genuine. For me, when I was a teen I always wanted a companion and even though I don’t believe in it any spiritual or fatalistic sense - I wanted a soulmate. And so in my head cannon it was meant to be. I imagined myself throughout that college and was there hiccups? Absolutely. But Dan told her "College is only a few years, we have a lifetime ahead of us".

All this got me thinking: What happened to that romantic in me? When did it die? Did the failure of a first relationship make me more pragmatic about relationships (which I am in all other aspects in my life)? Then repeated failures? Or was it when I first put on a tie (i.e. got a job) and became that way inclined? How can I get this back how? Is it even possible? It’s fucking phenomenal that this game could make me even think and feel this way. An absolute masterpiece in nostalgia that had me remembering parts of me that I forgot even existed – the naïve romantic, the shy kid, the IM master of sarcasm – tapping into the deepest parts of my memory and emotion.

Not only that but chatting away while listening to banging AF punk music made me experience a side of myself that I feel like I missed out on. The punk emo goth version of Dan that never existed? All in all it was nostalgic in every sense of the word. That being the true German meaning of painful memory – like I missed out on a part of me I’ll never get to experience. A true reminder to enjoy and find joy in every single day and not block myself to different experiences.

Game 85 - Anno 2070 - Week 167 - March 23

nno 2070 is a game that has been on my radar for almost 10 years. I picked it up while at uni and played a little with an old friend Brenden but never came back to it. 55 hours later I can see this game is addictive AF. The premise is quite simple: Due to climate change sea levels have risen and much of previously inhabited land masses have flooded. With the new waters and volcanic reactions new land has developed and as a ARK agent you need to find new lands to inhabit to help relocate humans as the pressure for land and resources continues to rise. Gives the game a sci-fi Atlantis vibe that reminds me of BioShock in it’s own way (oh god that’d be an amazing game). Putting yourself in the mindset of these people also adds an extra level of pressure to the cause when disaster strikes. There are three main factions in the world (or at least this part of it) competing for your attention. The right-wing Tycoon’s who are business production and pay high taxes, the left-wing Eco’s who have pollution reduction tech and the moderate Tech’s who are focused on researching new technologies.  

Speaking of managing disasters, the campaign is fun and serves as a great tutorial and it’s well paced. A stark contrast to the previous city-builder sim Railroad Tycoon 3. But it’s also full of drama and catastrophe in a drowning world. You own a mobile base of operations designed to be a response unit for struggling new coastal cities. Your first “superior” Thor Strindberg is a condescending prick. So when he !@#$s up a dam and floods a city, it's all the more gratifying when you come in to clean up his mess. Earning the praise from Mr. Thorne and the corporation.

That was part 1 of the campaign, the rest of the story is pretty run of the mill. F.A.T.H.E.R. is executed well as an AI overlord, but inevitably he goes rogue spreading viruses and nuking islands. So it’s up to you to establish a dominant island and unite the other factions against him by gathering evidence. At the end of the day its only function is a tutorial and this is the best to piecemeal the player different mechanics. Even if some of them aren’t very well explained – like being able to build certain structures on open water, faction buildings requiring certain works, homes being your income source (so go nuts) or eco workers increasing your max fleet cap – it’s still a great way to introduce gameplay. Also about the Tycoons giving you smack talk at the start, Yana and the Ecos aren’t much better. After helping them clean up oil spills, smog, many many natural disasters and cleaning up nuclear fallout! What’s my reward you ask? “The organisation still doesn’t trust you…” WTF get that shit outta here. Jokes aside I do like how the cities carry over between missions. It’s a unique take on a campaign compared to the one and done missions such as Startcraft who often want to move you to different interesting maps. It’d be cool to see more campaign maps that evolve over time as you go through the story, perhaps unravelling over years in a medieval city builder like Stronghold.

Art wise this is a beautiful game with a lot of detail. Especially when you get your island cities humming and see all your “children” roaming around. Zooming in will show citizens going about daily life, flying cars to work and walking prams into the heavily polluted and “safe” industrial area (lol). At first I thought moving the hero unit around would get old fast but then I realised this was just a regular unit and can be destroyed and replaced. Soloing a single unit was mostly for the story and tutorial to get you use to moving. Your navy is made up of many ships as your main mode of transport. Part of the strategy is managing different islands via cargo trade routes as they all have a limited amount of resources that must export to another. Typically I’d choose the biggest city for my island and have a few production islands around this. Battleships and Cruisers are cool especially when you get a fleet going but it’s the cargo ships and submarines that really makes these units shine. The game truly shines when it opens up between multiple islands (your own, allies and enemies) this because a much more fun feature to manage trade routes and build warships that can defend themselves. Although combat is quite limited at first and reminds me of F2P web browser resource management games like Vega Conflict it has some depth to it when you start to develop your tech workers and discover EMPs, cloaking tech, shields and even nuclear missiles. Not only is it cool to sink enemy fleets but if you have the Tech faction unlocked you can explore the depths and build underwater bases. The game already felt unique with it’s hydro-focus planet, then it (almost) went full Rapture. Sadly these buildings are industrial only so no underwater living quarters (sorry Andrew Ryan). While it is awesome to see the underwater remnants from the lost civilisations of today’s world it would have been cooler yet if you could repurpose these and build a true underwater city with all the risks that would entail.

The focus for most of the game is economic management and how that servers your growing cities. The progression loop is as follows:

• Choose eco or tycoon
• Settle an island
• Build housing and foster immigration
• Extract natural resources
• Build factories & farms
• Satisfy citizens desires & upgrade housing
• Unlock a new buildings from upgraded housing and skilled immigration
• Repeat the above
• Plus some trade routes to synergise differing resources between islands
• Eventually unlock tech, repeat above
• Eventually unlock eco/tycoon (that you didn’t choose), repeat above

It can be stressful at times to manage so many resources but once you do you can appreciate the joys of  running an efficient city, then sit back and watch your island paradise flourish. Especially when you zoom in and look at the flying cars move from the upgraded glass towers at the centre of your megacity, off to the worker residences i.e. the suburbs. The civilised ecosystem is an absolute joy to behold and much of it is automatic and melds together so organically. 

My pride and joy (pre-typhoon)

Industrial area keeps the main city alive and running. 

Each faction has their own requirements which I like – Eco’s like sushi and Tycoon’s like hamburgers. One likes technology and the other likes jewellery. One likes classical amphitheatres and the other likes casinos… you get the idea. What I find interesting about the Triumvirate is that the most efficient way to run a society is in harmony, not competing. Eco’s are effective at agriculture and anti-pollution, while Tycoon’s are more productive and produce more income. The Ecos can build wind farms and generators that are more effective in population centres, which are more environmentally friendly than the Tycoon’s coal. While the Tycoon’s can build trash compactors, also effective in population centres to bring up the Eco cities Ecobalance. The tech's can use their technology to enhance various areas of both groups. The synergy is best through balanced cooperation – just as it is in real life. With that in mind I realised it might not be the best idea to build them on opposite ends of the island like I did in the finale of the campaign. So in the next scenario I tried creating a coexisting city. Only problem with that is they both enjoy different activities (even when you get your headquarters). So I think its best to have cities with eco/tycoon districts or just keep them separate. Maybe I could try same city but Tycoons in the CBD and Eco at the edge towards forest and parklands? That’d make the most thematic sense. I also enjoyed building a beautiful parkland but no one used it. Would be cool to have stuff like this not only add eco balance (more trees) but provide points of interest that citizens would stroll down, have picnics, etc. Perhaps the fountains could be this? Also I wish there was an easier way to manage income. It’s so hard to see what costs what. Everything else has a strategy map to oversee your cities – why doesn’t this? A balance sheet or heatmap – something, anything. Like I didn’t know fountains cost -30 income to maintain jesus… Eventually you figure out what costs what but the game doesn’t do a very good job explaining taxes and income.

No one used my beautiful parks :(

At the end of the day this is a world very much still suffering from climate change and you will be struck with typhoons and the black sea (mass oil spills). The game has a pollution mechanic and I’m still unsure if this causes those events or they’re completely random. In one instance a typhoon tore through my beautiful capital metropolis, destroying skyscrapers before ending at my power grid. It wiped out my nuclear power and then of course I ran out of uranium. The mass power crisis that ensued caused years of protests and emigration from the island. I still haven’t recovered in that play through going from a humming 3k in credits per turn and 600k in surplus to a measly 150k in surplus and a few hundred credits per turn. Events like this have a cascading effect – destroying your production and thus exports to other islands. Luckily I had a surplus of credits in this playthrough but I could very much see myself forgetting to setup firestations or a hospital only to lose a cities production – which in turn disrupts an export and causes another city to become increasingly dissatisfied and leave the island because they have no food or drink. Centralising your population on one island is good if the maps islands allow for it but it also puts those cities at risk during natural disasters! There is a lot to weigh up, balance and adapt to in this game – just as you’d expect in when your mission is to turn a flooded dystopia into a tropical utopia.

Lastly it’s worth mentioning that the menu is pretty rad. The first RTS where I’ve created an avatar and the main menu has acted as my “world overview”. I just wish it fully committed by letting me customize my avatar and arc instead of recycling assets from the campaign where I’ll see my character in the wild. From the menu or my ARK control panel I can launch:

• Campaign – basically the tutorial
• Single Missions – different scenarios and missions 
• World Events – single missions towards a global objective. Helps make the world feel more alive.
• Continuous – ongoing game where you can build up your city. Each difficulty is essentially its own mode with easy being free build, medium being normal and hard adding an extra layer of difficulty.
• Multiplayer – above but with friends.

The campaign was quite long and after playing it felt like I experienced everything I could. If the game had more indepth underwater cities for the tech faction (hell make them their own starting faction if there’s ever an Anno 2080) I’d stay for sure. I might go back and play if I get the itch for Anno again. I’d like to see the final tiers of all three factions all upgraded in one campaign, working together and in harmony and perhaps research everything… which will require a continuous campaign of 30+ hours. But after doing a full Tycoon and Eco playthrough to the final tier I feel satisfied in putting this game to rest. I have to say, it’s certainly peaked my interest for other games in the series such as Anno 1800; which has very positive reviews!

Game 84 - Warhammer 40:000 - Darktide - Week 166 - Mar 23

arktide 

Let’s get down to the brass tax. This is one of the best Warhammer 40:000 games I’ve ever played and hands down the most immersive and best FPS 40k game I’ve ever played. But overall that’s a low bar – set by a string of low-mid quality games especially in the last decade. The fact that people argue the best Warhammer 40k games are from over a decade ago and a single developer (R.I.P. Relic – Dawn of War I & II, Space Marine) should say it all. The game absolutely nails three areas, but fails in many other areas that ultimately stopped me from coming back.

The visuals are on point. Walking through the desolate industrial halls and roads of Hive Tertium you can’t help but look up. Your attention is constantly drawn up and above the foreground into the towering backdrops whether that be a grand standing cathedral or towering spires. It’s so good in fact that it feels detrimental in some ways – lacking the variety of prior FatShark games. The adherence to a Hive and only a Hive interior removes from the replayability as you eventually get sick of seeing the same levels over and over. More on that later however. As a 40k fan – the hive itself is phenomenal and I really wish the developer would make a Half-Life style single player shooter.

The gameplay – my god does it feel good. They nailed that moment to moment gameplay mowing down hordes as they run into your hail of gunfire or wide sweep never stopped being satisfying. The eviscerator chainsword does exactly that, cleaving off multiple cultist heads or revving up to dig its teeth into an armoured Plague Ogryn. The flamer oozes pure petroleum of death that is oh so addictive and makes you feel like a pyromaniac with an urge to burst out in laughter sending the enemies of the Emperor to their fiery doom. I’ve never seen a flame thrower in a game done so right. Like dropping  a keg of oil on a hallway it covers entire areas creating choke points and obliterating foes. All other games should take note. The lasgun feels weak but plentiful, accurate and deadly if you hit the right spot, just like it should. Finally the Bolter. From Godwyn himself the holy weapon of Mankind rips people apart, limb from limb exploding into the dust it came through. My god its glorious wrath makes you feel like the emperor's fury himself incarnate as you send out mini rockets to smite cultists. It'll outright stop many of the special infected in their tracks (such as the dreaded hounds). It’s easily the best bolter in a game yet and I would LOVE to see a Deathwatch game from FatShark (perhaps for Darktide 2?)

Bolter. Chainsword. Flamer.

The sound track is fucking phenomenal. Jesper Kyd has done for Darktide, no Warhammer, what Mick Gordon did for DOOM. This is the definitive Warhammer 40:000 sound. Industrial, synth but with gothic orchestra and organs playing. It’s unique, it’s phenomenal, it’s grim dark. There’s nothing like an incoming horde ramping up to organs blaring and holy piano keys smashing to the sound of the Imortal Imperium as deliver justice to the enemies of the Imperium with Flamer in one hand and Chainsword in the other. Disposal Unit is another highlight with it’s cult like chanting and tempo, which feels like I’m performing a ritual dance to a neon lit bonfire. Darktide Main Theme and Data Interference are also bangers worth shouting out.

The soundtrack captures the glory of man perfectly from its humming industrial worlds to its god inspiring cathedrals - man truly is god in this universe. 

Now for the bad. For starters the game was buggy as hell at release and should not have been dropped in that state. Especially with a perfectly functioning cash shop (no bugs there). Secondly the progression loop is terrible. The loop is as follows. Do a mission – get a bunch of meaningless resources (because they’re not explained) and maybe get some loot. Go to the random shop and hope a good weapon is there. Nothing? Repeat. Sure, they updated it later so you could get whatever gun you want at its base level. That’s nice and needed especially for beginner players but there’s next to no end game incentive or progression loop. No clear path towards legendary gear or even gear sets. I have no idea why they scrapped the Vermintide 2 dice system. Not only was it amazing to push through with the grimoire (which now feel meaningless) for that extra dice roll, but the loot you got seemed much better in V2 even at launch. Others will tell your even V2 took a while to get off the ground – but it was no where near this bad – a clear step back for FatShark. Also why armour doesn’t have stats beats me – it could have easily replaced curious and had set effects. Which leads to the other point – all the armour sucks and there’s barely any. You have a paid cash shop with amazing armour in a buggy unfinished full priced game from day one. Scummy AF and anyone review bombing or boycotting this game is more than justified considering FatShark has learnt nothing from the last two games or industry mistakes in general. 40k is so rich for potential cosmetics and they have less than Deep Rock Galactic which is limited in its creative scope by both size of its staunchy characters and facial hair, but still manages to outperform this game in that department. Challenges also suck. They’re quite difficult and unreasonable such as pickup 12 grimoires (which I’m still not sure works). Not only this but you need to finish them all in a week. So if you have a life they'll all reset before you can finish them. And I still don’t know what the resources are used for because the game explains nothing. In other words they're useless.

Lastly the story and writing is dreadful. The plot shows promise at the start with an absolutely stunning intro cinematic. Your characters starts in a classic prison break scenario (Vermintide 2 had this as the tutorial too) showing off some nice voice acting and a threatening gang of renegades here to free their leader who would of course be a boss later on. So you manage to escape, save an acolyte and are now a criminal ready to repent as part of an enigmatic and masked Inquisitor’s legion of acolytes on their quest to retake the hive. Sounds pretty cool right? Well the plot is as follows. You gain trust by completing missions, inevitably talk to a retinue member who now respects you, repeat steps 1 and 2. Eventually you’ll hear about a rat and traitor. Towards the end this culminates in you getting called to the Interrogator’s chamber among many other unknown (supposedly the people I’ve played with) acolytes. The Interrogator waves around a gun at you and the guy next to you who you’ve never seen but looks nervous. Am I meant to feel threatened? I never did anything remotely traitorous? Is this meant to feel like a witch hunt – the wrongful persecution that happens in the Imperium oh so often? If so it did no such thing with zero agency and the game did a terrible job setting it up. The ending like the story overall falls flat. 

It would have been a little more interesting if they put the characters you played with, seeing your best friends among the crowd as you’re judged would have been nice. But not by much.

Like the story the character creator is about the same. Cool at first but the dialogue is just mid and I found myself ignoring it completely by the 10^th level. Compare this to the zany mix of characters from Vermintide 2 that were always interesting to listen to. A clear indication of the strength of written characters vs. non-linear ones. Also why does your character never speak in cutscenes? She/he speaks in-game so there is no reason not to do it. Is he silent protagonist or a spoken one? It’s just awkward and feels stiff with your character just standing their getting monologued. The mission selector is a hub in the centre of your HQ and is way too random. The map pool is already limited but it caters to certain difficulties as well so you’ll play the same maps over and over and over and over and over…. Normally I’d love this if the maps are will designed (think Dust 2) but they all blur together which hurts replayability. I know a hive is meant to be this way but they should have done something to add more variety. Maybe an Arcade with botanic gardens rotting to nurgle I the Noble district? Or a trudge through the sewer systems ala Resident Evil. One other thing that's sorely missed is the scoreboard. All in the name of "promoting cooperation over toxicity". For me personally this is a ridiculous justification. The scoreboard pushes me to perform the best and work with my team more, not the opposite - these games have never been Call of Duty and a lack of cooperation and skill at harder difficulties will send players hurling back to Challenge 1 and 2 missions where they belong. Removing scoreboard won't solve that...

Aesthetically pleasing, functionally useless.

All these issues and lack of features than both the spiritual predecessor Vermintide 2 and the trailers and gameplay previews culminates in an overall unsatisfied feeling and made me long to go back and play V2. And the fact that the cash shop is here day 1 in a fully paid game with full functionality makes the meta game feel like its designed to push you into the paid store. It’s a shame because the core gameplay is so much fun – it just has no meta-game to keep you coming back especially after you hit level 30. The game creates a marvel unique to 40k like no other in its core gameplay, Hive and soundtrack to accompany it. I really do hope they make a story shooter because if you disregard the bad non-linear writing in favour of Vermintide 2’s intentional characters and story, they have all the hallmarks of a great game. Maybe in a year or so they’ll have something to come back to by then.