Fallout 76

Fallout 76

A massively single player RPG.

I'm a fan of the Fallout genre. I've played Fallouts 1,2,3,4 and Fallout Shelter. Fallout 4 is my favorite, and I like MMORPGs, so Fallout 76 should have been a slam dunk. 

Single or Multiplayer

Unfortunately, Fallout 76 incorporates the worst features of a single and multiplayer games. The world doesn't have many other players in it and doesn't really encourage grouping. There is no player economy. For the most part it feels like a single player game. 

As a single player game, Fallout 76 falls short. You can't pause, you can't save the game easily. There are no actual NPCs. Quest lines are shallow. Playing Fallout 76 made me want to replay Fallout 4 to explore areas I missed.

Team Play

Where Fallout 76 shines is playing with a group of friends. It has built-in voice communication and squad combat is fun. You can teleport to people in your group and use each other's bases. You can trade blueprints, weapons, ammo, or whatever. Difference in levels is handled fairly well.

Recommendation

Buy Fallout 76 if you want to play with friends. As a single player or mmo, it is lackluster.

Disciples 3: Reincarnation

Disciples 3

A turn based strategy game with tactical combat, a strategic map, and rpg elements.

Overview

Disciples 3: Reincarnation follows the long tradition of tactical combat on a strategic map. You control one or more heroes who command a small squad. You roam the map looking for goodies while following the story line. Your hero and followers can gain levels and equipment, and you can build your home base.

I lost interest with this game before finishing the first scenario, so this review might be skewed.

Story

The story seemed pretty generic and I wasn't engaged. On the other hand, it didn't get in the way very much. If thought of as a loose reason to move from fight to fight, it was sufficient. I liked the setting, though. It is a little more grungy medieval without a lot of the high fantasy elements you generally see in a game with wizards and angels.

Combat

What should be the meat of the game feels very bland. Combat is only a small step up from Final Fantasy style. There are few real decisions because most moves are obvious. Frequently you overpower the enemy so you can auto-resolve the combat. Unfortunately the AI is not very good so don't be too liberal with this. Also, auto-resolving the "most fun" parts of a game does not bode well.

Strategic Map

The exploring the map is a bland experience. There are a lot of resources to be collected, but it isn't exciting. Really it's just a mechanic to get from fight to fight. Some fights are too difficult and must be avoided and it's a little tedious examining enemy forces to make that determination. 

There is very little time pressure so you can wander around to pick up all the treasure and fight the easy fights, then go back and fight the harder encounters once you are higher level. That sounds extremely boring to me, but the alternative is sub-optimal play.

Often treasures are difficult to see because they might be under a tree or something. You can get around this by rotating the map, but what a pain.

This game triggers one of my biggest pet peeves in turn-based games. After a combat, you don't automatically heal. This means that you might intentionally drag combat out a few turns to give your healer a chance to catch up. This is both mechanically annoying and breaks the fiction. If my healer can cast a spell every minute in combat, why can't he cast a spell when I am spending days to travel across the map?

RPG Elements

You can have more than one hero, although it looks like you only really want one squad for fighting. Perhaps a second hero might make sense for picking up treasure.

Heroes gain levels and have a skill tree. Most of the skills in the tree are very bland and just points on the way to the interesting powers. Even the "interesting" powers weren't exciting to me. Equipping items are similarly bland. Generally they are things like +15% fire resistance.

Followers also gain levels. With each level they gain a predetermine skill. Every three levels they can be promoted to a more powerful unit. This feels exactly right. There is just enough variety to be interesting without having to micromanage mundane choices.

Buildings

Buildings allow your followers to be promoted. In the first scenario, money isn't a problem and buildings are mostly an automatic process with no real decision making. You can choose if you want your mages to be wizards or elementalists but the game could have that decision be made when your follower is ready for promotion. There is no building time or building prerequisites. 

Art

I like the art. The design is good. The animations are good, but they get old quickly. After half an hour I set the animation speed to maximum, and it was still clunky.

Conclusion

Despite my criticisms, Disciples 3 is a fine game for the genre. The tactics aren't complicated but they aren't totally brain-dead simple. You can get attached to your squad as it levels up. The story is light, but it isn't bad. For a similar game, I would recommend Mordheim: City of the Damned.

Dishonored

Dishonored

A stealth/combat game with a rich setting and good character development.

Summary

This game feels very much like Assassin's Creed with a little Shadow of Mordor. I enjoyed both of those games more than Dishonored. However, if you like that style of game, Dishonored is very true to the genre.

I really like the settings of Assassin's Creed and Shadow of Mordor. The world of Dishonored is fine, but doesn't have a massive body of lore to expand on like those other games.

In the end, I wouldn't especially recommend Dishonored unless you like the stealth genre but don't want to play those other titles.

Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley

A cute farming game with lots to do.

Overview

At first glance, Stardew Valley is a farming simulator but once you get into it there is much more. You get to learn the personalities of everyone in the town. There is an interesting plot that is slowly revealed. Besides farming, there are other activities like fishing, mining, crafting, combat, and all sorts of collecting. There is a lot of depth to it.

The Good

There are lots of things to do and you can pick whatever style you prefer to focus on. Every type of sub-game has a fair amount to do, so there are many avenues of progression. Collection is a big part of the game.

The Bad

Like other farming games, there is no real challenge. There is some enjoyment in finding optimal ways to achieve your goals, but at the core the game is little more than grinding. Watching the story unfold is enjoyable but it is slow.

The Neutral

I'm not a fan of the retro art style and game interface. However, it is done well so if you are a fan you will likely enjoy it. The inhabitants of the town have extensive scripts, but ultimately I did not care much about them.

Conclusion

Stardew Valley is very good for a relaxing way to pass time. If you enjoy farming simulators or simple RPGs, you will certainly enjoy this game.

Broken Age

Broken Age

A cute point and click adventure game.

Point-and-click isn't my favorite genre. I've played many, and I certainly have fond memories of Monkey Island and Space Quest. There are some great Telltale Games out there (RIP, Telltale).

The Good

Broken Age has a lot going for it. The artistic style is unique, the voice acting is incredible, the plot is fresh, and it has a neat gimmick where you switch between two characters.

Art & Sound

Some people love the art in Broken Age. It is very unique and creative and adds much to the surreal atmosphere. For me, it is easy for "unique" art to be distracting, but Broken Age managed to find the line between entertaining and off-putting. 

The voices actors have an impressive cast including Elijah Wood, Will Wheaton, Jack Black, and Jennifer Hale (one of the most talented game voice actors out there). The dialog is well written and has a lot of funny lines when you attempt to do the wrong thing.

Plot

I've played so many adventure games that it is rare to see such a fresh plot. Normally I sit back and watch the story unfold, but the twists in Broken Age kept me guessing and that engaged me further.

The Bad

Broken Age suffers from the same problems as all point-and-click games. It is easy to miss a hot-spot on the screen. Sometimes the "correct solution" doesn't really make sense. Often you have to figure out puzzles through trial and error, applying all of your inventory items on all the screen hot-spots.

Puzzles are hard to balance. It's hard to know where a player will be stuck and need a hint vs. a player is who just starting to try things. For example, if there is a lock a smart player might try to put a key in it. Someone playing around might put a spoon in it and get the response "that spoon can't unlock the door". I mean.. thanks for the hint, but I don't think most people need a hint that a key goes into a door. On the other hand, Broken Age had a few spots where I missed a single piece of dialog and wasn't sure how to proceed. In general, however, the puzzles were more likely to have too many hints than too few.

Conclusion

Broken Age is of the highest quality. If you are in the mood for a point-and-click adventure, you won't go wrong.

Heat Signature

Heat Signature

Heat Signature is a little bit stealth, little bit roguelike, little bit realtime, little bit sandbox, and little bit pause-and-think.

Overview

Heat Signature is a top-down game where you go on missions to infiltrate starships. The game is loosely real-time, but you can pause at any time to give a command, so it's a more thinky and less twitchy. The game is fairly unique so I'll go over some of the features. 

Features

Stealth

If I had to pick a single genre, I would call Heat Signature a stealth game. For the most part you can't just go in shooting and dodging. You have to look at guard walking patterns, and often sneak up on them. Frequently you will try to avoid guards rather than kill them. While stealth is not my favorite genre, this game has the perfect amount. You quickly learn that all guards will do some sort of patrol, and it's pretty easy to guess their route. There is a fast-forward button so you can quickly advance the game to when that one guard moves where you want him to. 

Roguelike

I hesitate to call this game roguelike, since the term is overused. However, you gain items and money and can experience permadeath. 

Sandbox

There is a strange combination of sandbox and campaign. When you start, there are a lot of stations to unlock and it seems like the goal is to win by liberating enough stations. However, there is no urgency to it and not much story to drive that goal.

When you start a new agent, they have a personal goal. To me, this feels more urgent than the campaign goal. To complete the personal goal, you have to save a bunch of money to unlock a really difficult mission. 

Beyond the goals of liberating stations and doing personal missions, there are achievements, defector missions, and codes of conduct. There is also potential to do unstructured challenges, or you might choose to only take missions from a certain client.

One way that it really tries to be like a sandbox game is to have some surprising interactions that you mostly discover accidentally. Like, you sounded the alarm and you only have 10 seconds to get back to your ship, but it's too far away. You think and think and realize there is a window near by. You shoot the window and get sucked into space. Fortunately, you have about 30 seconds to remote pilot your ship to pick you up. While not as rich as a true roguelike (like Nethack), there is a lot of fun things to learn to keep up the interest. On your first mission, you might have trouble killing one or two guards with a single gun. After a while, you can take on a group of five with just two wrenches.

My Take

I pretty quickly stopped caring about personal missions and unlocking stations. Without a larger goal, the individual missions became less interesting. The most fun for me was to do the defector missions. These are like puzzles where you do a mission with a fixed set of gear and don't impact the campaign in any way.

Should You Buy It?

I enjoyed it well enough but I played less than 20 hours, which isn't much for me. I found the game similar to FTL but I enjoyed FTL more. So, if you loved FTL and want something like it, give Heat Signature a try. If you haven't played FTL, take a look to see which one you think will appeal more.

Magic the Gathering: Arena (BETA)

The first time I saw Magic: The Gathering was at a convention. Nobody had heard of it back then. The guy demoing it tried to get me excited about the collectible nature of the game and I totally didn't get it. What is the fun of a game if one person has an advantage? Anyway, I was wrong and MtG was immensely popular. Even today, 25 years later, it remains the best combination of strategy, tactics, depth, and accessibility. It spearheaded the most lucrative business model in gaming, the loot box. 

Overview

I only played Magic the Gathering: Arena beta for about 30 minutes, so forgive the lack of depth in this review.

The game starts with a tutorial, which is reasonably short and fun. For that style of play, Hearthstone is probably overall. After that, I was pushed to play against other players with a beginner deck. More decks and boosters were available for purchase.

The interface itself is well polished. If Hearthstone is the gold standard, MtGA hold up nicely. It still suffers somewhat because instant cards can be played on the opponent's turn, but at least in the tutorial it was handled well.

Who Should Play?

Normally I would say "nobody". If you want more cards you have to buy boosters with real money or grind out coins to buy them slowly. This is the reason I never seriously played MtG and I don't play Hearthstone. It feels too much like "pay to win".

However, MtG has maintained their business for 25 years and is still going strong. The game appeals to a lot of people. If you are willing to sink the money into the game, it might be for you.

Hearthstone and MtG are almost enough fun for me to pay for drafting tournaments. You pay some money, draft some cards from sealed decks, and play a tournament with your draft. When Hearthstone launched, that was a fun option. I don't know if MtGA has that game mode.

Magic is Fun

Magic the Gathering remains to be a very fun game. However, the style has been copied hundreds or thousands of times. There are plenty of deckbuilding games out there that are free, cheap, or offer different play styles. I would only recommend MtGA to someone who is already a fan of MtG and knows what they are getting into.