@RogerRoger Oh wow, had no idea Telltale was up to their old schtick again under a new name!
Telltale Games tended to fail as choose-your-own-adventure narratives (illusion of choice, etc.), but I can't deny that you're right about them fundamentally understanding the power of effective storytelling in the first place. My choices might not have meant anything, but I can't say, in the case of their breakout hit The Walking Dead Season One, for example, that the emergent and tragic father/daughter dynamic between protagonist Lee Everett and Clementine was anything less than utterly compelling. It's good to hear that, despite being subpar game developers, the writers still have that magic touch that allows them to tell a brand new story in a way that aligns well with the general ethos of the licensed property it belongs to.
BTW, I'm not sure how far off you are with the PS3 graphics thought. I mean, it's probably obviously running at a higher resolution than 720p, but those screenshots do NOT look like they belong to a game releasing on a modern power console. Not even when you consider their lower-budget nature.
I've actually, since last December, been watching through the Star Trek series with my family, starting with TNG (also finished Strange New World and Picard, and am about halfway into the first season of TOS, which is... interesting...), and not even Star Trek fully understands what makes a good Star Trek story sometimes, frankly. And I don't mean in terms of quality. While I'm generally pretty tolerant of "pew pew" sci-fi in TV/film form, I was a little horrified when I watched First Contact (supposedly the best of the TNG films) and found little more than a violent action vehicle. It felt very wrong in the context of such a thoughtful franchise. So if these developers can capture that Trekian essence at all, it's to their credit. It's much easier to do generic space drama than actually flesh out interesting character drama, which I'd argue is at the root of the IP.
The game might be VERY imperfect, but it sounds like they generally got it right where it counts when it comes to Star Trek.
As always, an excellently constructed review! Although is that final score actually supposed to be a 7/10, I wonder?
Currently Playing: Resident Evil Village: Gold Edition
@RogerRoger Great review, and another hidden gem in the haystack of the PSN! As a fan of the old Telltale games I must admit that the game arouses some interest. I’ve almost done a clean sweep of the old Telltale games but thanks to @johncalmc ‘s grave 3/10 review of the latest New Tales from the Borderlands , I’ve wondered if the magic could ever be recaptured. I’m not a Trekkie or a Trekster or anyone who identifies with the clan, but I have a shallow working knowledge of the Star Trek Universe and enjoy it from an arm’s length. I’ll keep it in mind if I ever get around to finishing the last Season of TWD, and get an unquenchable thirst for more Telltale. It sound vastly superior to the new Borderlands one.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Thank you for the review as always @RogerRoger. I've just picked this up myself, so I'll be interested in going back through your review again when I am done.
I think most Mass Effect fans will tell you they've spent over a decade chasing a high that series gave them that has just never really been replicated by anything else. I am not one to replay games generally, but I tend to play Mass Effect through again every couple of years because there really is basically no other. I picked up Resurgence in the hope that it scratches even a little bit of my itch, followed by the Expanse game later in the summer.
That said, I booted up Resurgence for an hour or so to give it a quick go and it makes an... interesting first impression. I am playing on PC, and it is in a pretty rough shape there. PC really has taken a battering this year with a string of woeful ports. There are basically no settings at all and it is locked at 30 fps. I guess that is fine for this style of game, but more annoyingly is that if I set it above 1080p resolution it warps the image, squashing it down and stretching it out. 1080p on my 4K TV, when I know it is capable of much higher resolution, just looks really bad to me.
I also can't tell whether it is the lower resolution, but it visually has a real seventh gen game given a HD remaster vibe to it to me. Like facial animations are somehow vibrant, yet there is a stiffness to them as well, same with the walking animations, hair etc yet the skin on some of the models is crazy detailed, I dunno, it is weird. It sorta looks great and kinda off at the same time. Although I thought the art direction captured the world of Trek quite strongly and started lighting that Mass Effect fire for me for sure. Again, it is weird we often don't get games like this where we can move through these sorts of spaces from this perspective and level of fidelity.
I can't work out whether Rydek is a Bajoran or a Kobliad which is probably bad form of me, but it is cool to play one of these games as a non-human. The human perspective was central to Mass Effect and couldn't really exist without you playing as a human, but we've played countless games where we experience the perspective of fantasy races like orcs, dwarfs, elves etc not enough science fiction games where we navigate a world through the perspective of a non human.
@RogerRoger Indeed it is quite a lot of Telltale games I’ve played. The furthest I went back was to play Back to the Future (ed. — unintentional pun 😄). I never played the older stable of games like the Sam & Max games or the CSI and Law & Order games, etc. I also skipped the apparently abysmal Jurassic Park game. And the only recent-ish games I’ve not played are the Minecraft ones.
Taking a look at their Wikipedia page, I’m reminded of the collaborative effort with Deck Nine to develop The Expanse: A Telltale Series and it shows a release date of July 27th. That’s not too far away and so I’m really curious if that will actually come out as planned. Deck Nine did a bang-up job with Life is Strange: Before the Storm (and by all reports True Colors also, which I can’t yet confirm) and so this might be another really good Telltale entry to keep in mind, especially for lovers of Sci-Fi. I really need to go back to watching the Expanse TV show but when I was watching it I did enjoy what I saw.
@RogerRoger That reminds me of the Back to the Future Telltale game which I remember really enjoying about 10 years ago. Definitely more of a classic point and click game than the ones that followed.
I just finished my New Game+ playthrough of Midnight Suns and realised I have never written any real detailed thoughts about this game, but now at almost 120 hours (spread across the main game, the DLC, and NG+) played, I feel like I am in as good of a position I will ever be to get some thoughts down.
Right away, I must make it clear that I am not a New Game+ enjoyer, so the fact this enticed me to play through it all over again - and just a few months after I finished it the first time, no less - tells you more about how much I like this than maybe it would for those who somehow play a 20 hour single player game for hundreds of hours.
It obviously helped that Midnight Suns had post launch heroes, and actually delivered them all, which meant that my New Game+ had new characters to interact and play with, with new missions to go through, meaning it wasn’t just an identical playthrough like it might be in other games. By its nature too, playing a second time allowed me to make different choices than I did the first time around. Although admittedly this is more in the True Colors style of choice, rather than Life is Strange. I also played as a male Hunter the second time, to experience a slightly different central performance as well. This does I guess make it somewhat of a cheat, as it is almost like a 1.5, rather than just playing through the identical thing again, but even without all of those things, I just think Midnight Suns has such an addictive, incredibly playable, loop.
What is Midnight Suns? Effectively it is like what you would get if you took say a Fire Emblem or a BioWare RPG, filled the cast with Marvel characters, added deck building elements and took out any direct reference to sex and romance. If you thought that sounded like it might be a bit of a mess, you would be correct, but it is the hot kind of mess, at least in my books. This game clearly polarised people, but I feel like if you vibe with this niche, you are gonna vibe hard. There is no middle ground here.
Plus like… I’d like to think I wasn’t a prude, but I feel like sex is rarely handled well in games..? Am I allowed to say that? Almost all of the relationship stuff in say a Fire Emblem is usually kinda creepy that I've experienced, anyway. But then even in say BioWare games, which are often considered more on the mature side, I often just find a lot of the romance stuff really cringe. And those sex scenes in Cyberpunk 2077? Christ, they live rent free in my nightmares.
I dunno, I am sure some people would have loved to have been able to bone down with Spider-Man or whatever, I just don’t think it would have ever worked. Especially as the quality of the writing isn’t that great, I am not sure they could have pulled it off in a way that just wouldn’t have felt really uncomfortable.
Instead, Midnight Suns social sim elements are about taking your player created character and embedding yourself in a family of super powered weirdos, who all are just chomping at the bit to call you their best friend and play video games with you. Is it all rather stupid and wish fullfilly? Yeah, sure, I guess, but what is wrong with that? Just a lovely cosy, comfy, good time.
Like I say though, what I am not saying here is that the writing itself is perfect or… even that good, a lot of the time. There are some really jarring uses of tone, and characterisation throughout, which I think really was the source of much of the negativity around this one.
Midnight Suns very much makes the characters their own and this comes with the best and worst of what that approach offers. There will be some diehard fans of X character who will absolutely hate the representation of their character here, but if you take Midnight Suns as its own universe with its own internal rules and logic, I feel like they found a cohesive tone within the four walls of the game. Plus, like, I vibe with way more of these versions of the characters than I don’t. Would this have worked better if it was set in like Xaviar’s school or something? Probably. But I dunno, I liked it overall.
Outside of the social sim elements, the game also delivers really excellent turn based, deck building, combat. For all the wobbly characterisation outside of combat, in combat, almost every hero has been distilled perfectly into a deck of cards. A difficult feat on its own, but an even greater one given you can focus down specific roles for heroes based on the cards you pick, meaning they needed to create not just one authentic feel per hero, but multiple, as they serve different functions decided by the player. Every hero is so much fun to use, experiment with and see how they combo with other heroes.
Part of what makes this such a great NG+er is that deck building sandbox, I am sure you could spend dozens of hours just experimenting with decks, and combos of heroes, if you really wanted. Building individual heroes in different ways as you swap in and out types of cards, apply cards with different modifiers, and then experiment further how those roles for those heroes can complement other heroes with different roles that you have also built. Combat won’t ever feel truly unique one encounter from another, but it will certainly feel varied enough - especially with the inclusion of the 5 bonus heroes (one for clearing the game, four through the season pass) - to give the smoke and mirrors feeling of having an almost limitless chain of combinations to mess around with. Like I say, it is just buckets of fun.
I do, however, have a lot to say on the things that I don’t like about combat (negatives are always easier to go into detail for me) so this is going to seem like a more negative section of this review than I actually feel about the combat in practice, just a warning. Here we go:
Probably my biggest issue with combat is how random it can be at times. For all the control you have over building your heroes your way through your card choices, once you take that deck into the field, it becomes almost entirely hands off at times. Especially at higher difficulties, the deck based system is less of a fun sandbox tool and instead feels like an infuriatingly restrictive prison cell.
Some missions are like watching the car go off the road at 10 MPH, and it would be so simple to just turn the wheel to the left and get back onto the road safely, but there is either no steering wheel provided or the steering wheel is locked behind an unnecessarily convoluted layer of interacting systems, meaning it's right there but you just aren’t allowed to use it. Forcing you then to just helplessly plummet over the side of the cliff into a chasm of frustration. It is one thing to lose a battle due to poor planning on your part, another to basically lose to RNG.
Part of the problem is combat is sorta overly complicated despite its seeming simplicity on the surface. The core fundamentals is you get three card plays and one move once per turn, and this is shared across your party of three. However, most attack and more powerful cards also have a Heroism cost associated with them as well, which is a resource you have to build on a turn by turn basis using specific types of cards. You can redraw cards if your hand stinks, but you only get two of these per turn. Although, there are also systems to generate more card plays or moves or whatever as well.
The cadence I guess is to play weaker, or more support focused cards, to then generate enough Heroism to get off your big damage moves. However, there will be turns where you generate massive piles of Heroism, use up your redraws and still have absolutely nothing to use it on. And trust me, especially later on, a single dead turn can often be at times as good as game over. Sure, you can use your Heroism to turn your environment into a weapon too, but once these environmental interactions are used they can’t be used again. It just feels so frustrating at times because you are absolutely at the mercy of RNG and as a player there really is little you can do to circumvent, brute force or overcome a bad hand.
For the first third of the game though, this feels less apparent, because enemies are generally well tuned and designed so that a dead hand every now and then doesn’t necessarily have to be a game over. This all changes about a third of the way through when new enemies are introduced, all of which do not feel properly balanced in mind with the limitations the combat system can at times layer onto the play.
They suddenly throw a lot of ***** into the mix at once, and almost all of it ***** sucks. They introduce enemies who can replicate, bind you in place or apply status effects, none of these systems feel like there were given a shred of testing or balance, status effects can be stacked onto your heroes, and the combined ticks will kill you faster than anything else can in the game and this is seemingly unavoidable.
Likewise the replicating enemies can only be stopped if you kill them in one hit, but they are introduced at a point in the game where one shotting enemies is not a reliable or even particularly realistic prospect, so they can quickly overwhelm your board and the game basically just gives you nothing to answer back with, other than to just turn the difficulty down until you can one shot things, which feels bad that it is at times necessary.
Talking of difficulty specifically, there is also a difficulty ladder to climb. Combat actions are weighted, and they provide you an overall score of up to three stars depending on how well you perform. Getting a teammate downed might ding you some points, but clearing the battle in x amount of turns might give you a boost, whatever. If you get enough three star clears a new difficulty unlocks and the main benefit of this is it adds a higher modifier to the cosmetic currency rewards you would earn for that mission. So let's say you get 10 currency for completing the mission in five turns, at base difficulty this might multiply by 0, but at difficulty five its times by like 0.75 or something. However, personally, after I climbed to maybe the sixth difficulty I think..? this system just did not seem to be tuned or balanced properly.
My team was basically getting one shot by everything, and every time someone is downed it would minus some currency from your overall rewards. And having a person downed also puts you behind tempo, so it takes more turns to clear the mission as well, which also reduces the currency you can earn if you take too many turns to clear a mission. So by the end when it totalled up how much I earned, minused off the amounts I lost, and then applied the modifier, I was coming out with less than I was on the lower difficulties, where I wasn’t getting downed, or taking multiple extra turns to clear the mission, as the currencies deducted at higher difficulties were always far greater than the modifier applied at the end.
And that isn’t even talking about how all of the frustrations and poor balancing in combat are magnified to excruciating degrees at the higher difficulties, too. I eventually made my peace with basically always running the game at least two difficulty notches below the highest one I had unlocked at that time. These are superheroes, they are meant to feel powerful, they aren’t meant to be getting one shot by goons or using ultimates on goons just to do a bit of chip damage.
And I get it, this is what makes a game strategic or tactical, rather than just a straight turn based RPG. Combat is a puzzle to be solved, but the puzzle has to be more than artificial shackles you have chosen to layer onto me and then force me to overcome with no mechanics to support it. At least in my books. Obviously this’ll be unique to you, but the higher tier difficulties are in my opinion total garbage and not worth the trouble.
Now for the hardest part, wrapping these thoughts up so we don't end on a negative note. I guess my tl;dr really was already said higher in the review. If any of the stuff in here sounds like it'll appeal to you, it'll appeal to you tenfold. If anything in here sounds like you'd really dislike it, times it by ten again. It is just the weird affect Midnight Suns seems to have on all of these who play it. Personally, for all its warts, I vibe with its unique wavelengths and I may have to come back for some more again sooner rather than later.
Not to over complicate things @Kidfried but game length is fairly subjective. What I mean, is that the game has a collection of main missions set over three acts, sometimes these missions will require you to do a randomly generated side mission first or complete a research project or something, but really these are the only mandatory activities in the entire game.
While it will make up a bulk of what you are doing, basically everything else is effectively optional. Especially if you are running it on the lowest difficulty, where minmaxing your bonds and stuff may not be quite as important.
An example is that your base of operations, The Abbey, has this Metroidvania style extended quest branch that threads through it, unlocking additional areas which provides lore or character details that feed back into the main questline. It is an ungodly mountain of tedious busywork though, so while I finished this the first time around, I didn't touch any of this the second time (outside of the mandatory introductory missions/cutscenes for this questline) and was never required to, either. I can't imagine how much time that shaved off of my playthrough.
Likewise, there are groups that run social clubs in the Abbey too, they also come with a bunch of busywork side activities which I also skipped the second time around, which again probably saved me so much time.
I think of my 120 hours, probably about 60 to 70 of that was my first playthrough with me being super thorough to try and do everything in the core game (no DLC touched). There is probably another 10 to 20 hours on top where I dabbled in endgame and DLC content. Then the last forty or so hours was my new game plus run with all the DLC included.
I know people love Persona 5 for letting you pick a partner, but I thought it was done in such a weird hentai dating sim way, that it creeps me out
No idea what you could possibly mean!
It always struck me as a little weird that you can date your teacher or little sister, but all the guys are off-limits lol.
@Pizzamorg The card game aspect of Midnight Suns baffles me. How does the developer of XCOM develop a card game instead of the polished SRPG gameplay everyone thought we would get? I'll never understand the choice.
It definitely sounds like you tended to enjoy your time with it, though. Will have to give it a try at some point. I also love social simulation gameplay. I just wish it was literally anything other than Marvel superheroes!
Currently Playing: Resident Evil Village: Gold Edition
Yeah it is weird, because in a lot of ways the best part and absolute worst part about Midnight Suns is its deck building stuff. Like would the game have worked without it? Of course, and it would probably be a lot less frustrating too. But also so much of the loop is built around you building decks and shaping your heroes, the game would lose so much if you took the deck building out. And I guess you could probably replace it with some other system, but off the top of my head I can't really think of anything that would fit nearly as well.
Also, it is probably fine if you don't like Marvel, as few of the Suns really truly embody their characters in other media (at least outside of battle). It is also full of smaller heroes too which maybe you won't have much knowledge of to take in with you, like Magik, who is voiced by Laura Bailey of all people doing a terrible Eastern European accent.
Perhaps subconsciously motivated by @RogerRoger , here’s another review of a walking sim in space!
We now live in a world where Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an expanding part of daily life. AI are composing poems, creating art, and writing research papers, not to mention chatting with you like a friend or recommending recipes. It’s not too far fetched to imagine a reality 60 years from now where AI moderated space stations exist.
Enter Tacoma, a game made by Fullbright studios, which you may recall made a splash with Gone Home.
When Fullbright began developing Tacoma 10 years ago, ChatGPT wasn’t even a twinkle in Elon Musk’s eye, but the fiction surrounding senescent assistive interactive computer personalities dates way back to Knight Rider’s K.I.T.T., or HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The idea of commercial space travel has also been percolating for many decades. And so it is here that Fullbright selected a setting to tell this story — in the year 2088 we begin our journey of the tragedy of the Tacoma space station.
The game drops you into the role of Amitjyoti "Amy" Ferrier who has been sent to investigate the abandoned Tacoma station and retrieve information from its AI, ODIN. With no remaining crew members and only partial augmented reality (AR) log data and environmental clues left behind, you are tasked with unraveling the circumstances surrounding ODIN and the 6 crew members.
The Good
It’s not necessarily a novel gameplay idea, but it’s done expertly here. The clues about the events are given thorough AR generated clips that were preserved prior to the partial destruction of the station’s database. As you might guess, the messages and scenes left behind are scattered, disjointed, and cryptic. As you uncover information, it’s like putting a puzzle together one piece at a time.
It sounds like it might be frustrating or boring, but in reality, the unfolding narrative is done in a way that keeps you engaged throughout. You’re never very far from the next piece of story and the game directs you through a relatively linear feed of information so that each reveal builds upon the last. There’s plenty of gaps in information, yet the major events are laid for a foundation. The end result is a satisfying storyline that manages to be both concrete and also open to some interpretation. If you have the patience to explore more thoroughly, environmental storytelling embellishes the experience further.
Surprisingly, you grow emotionally attached to each of the six crew members, despite spending very little time with them. From the first AR scene, each individual’s part in the tale starts to crystallize and uncover its own compelling story in the background of the greater narrative. Much of the success of these personal story hooks come from solid voice acting performances.
Like I say, Tacoma doesn’t pioneer new storytelling territory, but what it does is keep you engaged. It’s aided by a very short runtime — the whole game can easily be completed in under 2 hours. But I’d argue that its brevity is one of the game’s positives. There’s no prolonged exposition about how the world got to this stage or excessive side content to distract from the tight narrative.
The Bad
In the “walking sim” gaming genre, by definition there is little by way of dynamic gameplay, so the extras surrounding a walking sim experience need to be top notch. Things like visual appeal, set piece design, and strength of lore should be compelling and captivating to help sell the experience. Unfortunately Tacoma falls short in a few of these areas. The world building and artistic representation of life on a space station come across as oversimplified. I do think some of this was done for the aforementioned storytelling purposes, however there’s a difference between tactical omission of detail and flat infeasibility of concept. For example, it’s hard to believe that computer interfaces would be this simplistic in 2088. It does keep the gameplay easier to manage, but for me it was immersion breaking at times to see things like smiley faces 🙂 and frowning faces ☹️ to represent mechanical parameters that were either good or bad. It’s difficult to describe, especially without story spoilers, but suffice it to say it wasn’t the most convincing vision of the future I’ve ever seen.
The Ugly
And from a technical aspect, the game is not without flaws. Firstly, the performance was very spotty on my base PS4. In fact, after about 30 minutes the game started to crawl and stutter so badly and eventually froze, so I had to shut down and reboot. I did a database rebuild on my PS4 just in case it was my hardware’s fault and that seemed to help, but the game still slowed down at points and looked like it was about to crash again on a few occasions, although it didn’t recur. I had been heavily using the rewind and fast-forward mechanics of the AR sequences when my crash occurred and so I avoided doing much of that again, but I’m not sure if that’s what the problem was.
The poor performance was surprising, given the game’s visuals were nothing spectacular. In addition to rewind and fast-forward, I think part of the technical strain relates to the interactive items in the environment — you can pick up mugs, pieces of trash, floating rolls of duct tape, etc. Most of the items you can pick up are completely superfluous, but every now and then you pick up a letter or an item that helps tell part of the story. I appreciate that the unnecessary interactivity was included because it motivated me to be thorough with exploration, but it also probably contributed to the chugging frame rate and instability of performance.
Overall
Tacoma was a game I really enjoyed. It was a nice distraction from larger, gameplay heavy action-RPGs and open-world time sinks. In the end, your satisfaction of the experience depends upon your tolerance of walking sims. Additionally, it’s hard not to judge the game in the context of its price. I picked it up on sale for less than $5, so for me that was a good value. Due to the game’s short run time (even the platinum can be obtained within that 2 hours with a little effort) if you’re on the fence then maybe wait and see if it drops on one the the services like PS+ or GamePass.
For me, the game effectively scratched a specific itch.
I give it 7 lunar orbits out of 10.
@RogerRoger Thanks so much for the feedback and also for reading. 😄 And I now I do remember reading your ADR1FT review a couple years ago. I’ll have to keep that game in mind too for when the mood strikes. I read someplace else that Tacoma was also comparable to Deliver Us the Moon which is encouraging because I already had that in my backlog and if I enjoy it, it’s sequel Deliver Us Mars also reviewed well.
I feel like you’d like Tacoma but after I wrote the review I realized that I probably subconsciously gave it a small bump, maybe 0.5-1 points worth, just for the sheer welcome change it was from the longer games I’ve been playing. As much as I’m loving Jedi Survivor I can’t help but feel a little overwhelmed that I’m 25 hours into it and I’m still closer to the beginning than I am to the end. 😅
@Th3solution great review! I actually think I have owned this for years and just never played it. Think I got it for free for some reason because someone said its like BioShock which is one of my favourite games ever. Based on your review I dunno why those two games are similar, I guess I need to play it.
Thank you for your kind words @RogerRoger! I must have done something right, given I sold it to some and put you off 😂
Interestingly they actually got Yuri back to voice Spider-Man here (same actor as the PS4 game), the game actually has a lot of name value cast members when I looked them up on IMDB, so it kinda surprised me the acting wasn't better, but that probably speaks more at the quality of the writing.
@Th3solution nice write up sol! Had never even heard of the game but you experience with it has definitely put it on my radar. Added to the wishlist, so the moment it hits a sale I’ll pull the trigger 👊
@Pizzamorg Thanks! Likewise I really enjoyed reading your Midnight Suns breakdown. It was entertaining as well as very informative. I feel like I’ve got a much clearer picture into the game. Midnight Suns seems quite unique. I can’t think of another game that sounds anything like it. For that reason I continue to be tempted. I usually try to support games that innovate. Honestly I’m intrigued by the social sim aspects more than the combat. The gameplay I’ve watched and the explanations in your review haven’t really inspired me with any confidence that I’d like it. The only deck building game I’ve tried was Slay the Spire, which I did get some enjoyment from but I fell off it pretty quickly. I dunno, there wasn’t enough of a hook to keep me engaged, I guess. And that’s where Midnight Suns should have a edge with the Marvel theme, which I like, and the social sim / relationship building, which I also usually like. It’s almost as if Firaxis Games has planned for these preference contingencies by throwing several genres into the mix, just to cover their bases. I imagine the board room pitch going something like this:
“Alright people, we have the Marvel license secured. What do we do with it? People are at the saturation point with this superhero stuff. We can’t possibly churn out a competitor to Insomniac or Rocksteady’s games here. We could never improve on NetherRealm in the fighting genre. Square-Enix is flailing with the multiplayer action venture. How can we give gamers something different and a reason to stand out?”
“Let’s do a deck building strategy game.”
“Hmmm… ok. That’s a pretty small gaming niche.”
“We can add in a social sim part. Don’t people want to see what it would be like if Wolverine were to hang out with Dr. Strange and have pint?”
“Sounds good. Let’s throw in some Metroidvania components because people need a familiar loop to hold on to.”
“Perfect. Something for everyone.”
[Two weeks later…]
“Uh, scratch that Ghost Rider-Magik sex scene. Disney says no.”
😂 Anyways, I’ll continue to keep Midnight Suns in the back of my mind. If I didn’t have so many games in the backlog I’d be more inclined to pull the trigger on it.
As for Tacoma, yeah, it’s way different from BioShock. More like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture on a space station. I suppose it’s like BioShock in the way that there’s a lot of narrative told through collectibles, environmental clues, and recordings, but not nearly as fleshed out as BioShock and it has absolutely no combat.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@colonelkilgore Thanks, colonel. Worst case scenario, it’s half of an afternoon and a couple pounds wasted. And even then there’s the platinum at the end, so it’s not all in vain. Have you played the likes of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Gone Home, What Remains of Edith Finch, or Dear Esther? I think I recall you did Edith Finch but can’t be sure. Either way Tacoma would be a reasonable entry point into the genre, although Edith Finch remains my favorite of the bunch.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution yeah I played two of those - Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and What Remains of Edith Finch. I really liked the former but was left a bit unsatisfied by the latter… so guess that there’s a 50/50 chance that Tacoma will land for me.
@colonelkilgore As far as “piecing together a narrative of past events by reviewing historical accounts of people who are no longer present” goes, Tacoma is definitely more like EGttR, so that bodes well.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution Nice, tightly written review. I enjoyed how you established context for the game's exploration of AI in the introduction. And, yes, the almost overnight explosion in commercial and popular adoption of AI tech recently is another one of those things that has made me realize I'm living in the midst of the sort of science-fiction settings I used to read about as a kid.
It reminds me way back in the 00s when people asked William Gibson (early titan in the cyberpunk subgenre) why his novels stopped adopting explicitly futuristic settings, and he said that contemporary reality was sufficiently filled with science-fiction potential for him. I feel that more than ever.
I used to be intolerant of the 'walking sim' genre, but I've since come to appreciate what good ones can offer in terms of immersion and atmosphere. Sometimes adding gameplay elements actively detracts from the effectiveness of a genre, too (SOMA is a good example of what should have been a walking sim, but had a bunch of standard horror game mechanics stuffed in that didn't do any favors to the pacing or ultimate experience with the game). But you're right: sans real gameplay, the writing and presentation need to be top-notch, so it's too bad that the game fails somewhat in this respect, even if it did ultimately end up winning you over.
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