As I've mentioned before in my previous PC Gaming Review Sunday Showcase, I'm a pretty committed PC Master Race gamer. I'm really hooked on the depth and substance that you can get in PC games as opposed to those on consoles. Partly that is due to the superior control interface (Mouse and Keyboard) and partly due to the vastly superior hardware.
Sometimes, I start a game and will post a First Impressions review... after all, the first impression that you have of a game is a important moment. The first hour or two of a game really gives you the impetus to continue further... or to relinquish it to the dreaded Steam backlog. Also, the feeling that you have when you start a game... when everything is new and exciting is really quite different from the mid-game grind and then the final run to the climax. All of these, if well crafted like a book or a film, are important to the ultimate experience of a game in it's entirety.
Of course, not all games are quite like a fine piece of genre story telling... some are open world games that have player created emergent narratives... and others are just fairy floss action based testosterone fantasies.
So... onward to a selection of some First Impressions.... this time a selection of 3 PC games and one interesting Switch game (I have many Switch reviews in the pipeline... but I'm too lazy to take the screenshots off the memory card!... job for tomorrow... on the train!).
I had heard of Project Zomboid ages ago when it was in a development stage and I was pretty intrigued. The idea of a pretty realistic and hardcore survival simulator in a zombiefied apocalyptic world is pretty awesome! The idea that it was an emergent sandbox to play around in was also something that was pretty decent.
Now, I'm by no means a graphics whore (despite being a PC Master racer..), but I have to say that the first impression ages ago of the low-res isometric playing field was a bit of a turn off.. combined with a pretty annoyingly difficult inventory system made for a quick bounce off the game.... and a relegation to the dreaded Steam backlog...
However, when the game launched out of it's beta status, I was intrigued again. I'm a fan of these sorts of hardcore games ever since the Moria games in ASCII form. So, I was tempted to try it again... and let's just say that I was pleasantly surprised!
I'm a huge fan of hard core strategy, tactics and survival games... perhaps, this would be a side effect of my age slowing down my reflexes. However, I've always been more interested in the more cerebral types of gaming rather than the twitch reflex sorts...
Project Zomboid is a game that I've been following for quite some time while it was in Early Access. However, as is my habit for all these games.. I don't play during the Early Access (I buy them, to support the developer, but I have no desire to be a guinea pig!). Well, Project Zomboid exited Early Access quite some ago... but it has been sitting on my to-play list for a very very long time as well....
An highly realistic Zombie apocalypse survival sim is just right up my alley in terms of games and game mechanics that I enjoy!
Project Zombie: First Impressions
Okay, this one is a bit of an exception to the PC game focus of most of my gaming reviews and first impressions. There are few games that hype me up so much that I just have to make a launch day or launch week purchase. Fire Emblem on the Switch was one game that was something that I just HAD to play... and the fact that I was going away on a month long tour followed by another month long family visit to Australia meant that I was keen to get something meaty on the Switch for the long hours of travel! (Well, at least that was the justification that I was using that made the most sense to me... to be perfectly honest, I think I would have bought it regardless...)
So, let us just say that during this Northern hemisphere Summer (and Southern Winter)... this game was getting a hefty workout... and what can I say, it was pretty damn awesome! There were a few design and mechanic things that I would have disagreed with... but the story and characters were just so gripping! I only wish that Persona would come to the Switch as well...
So, it's been one week since my nerd out about the launch of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Which means that I've had roughly a week to savour the game every moment that I've been able to spare! For once, I'm really enjoying sitting around waiting for the toddler to go to sleep... as that means that I've got some serious time with the Switch and Three Houses!
It really is a game that is just beautiful to play... you know the sort where you just take your time to explore and discover... savouring every conversation and drinking in every cut scene. Every character is fully voiced, which makes for delightful interactions, which meant that I am mostly playing with a Bose QC-35 headphones to get the full enjoyment. Initially, I was just playing it wired... but then I remembered that I had a spare bluetooth audio transmitter in my box of tricks... so, I've been playing it unwired with full audio enjoyment! (As an aside, it was a serious oversight to launch the Switch hardware without bluetooth audio... hopefully something that they fix in the next revision).
After a week of fairly solid (for a parent...) playing time... I'm still well within the Academy period where the main character is a professor at the Monastery. Interestingly enough, the only character that is unvoiced is the protaganist.... which does make for a bit of a weird experience. I really do wish that they had voiced over Byleth.... although it might have been a late decision due to the voice actor being a bit of a dick!! Anyway, I'll be definitely playing more runs of this game with the other houses, so if they re-patch the voice over, then I'll probably get it in later play runs!
Fire Emblem: First Impressions
Rimworld was a game that I hadbeen meaning to play for quite some time... it is another game where the open world and mechanics make for a game which prioritises emergent player driven narratives. Unlike Project Zomboid, you control quite a number of toons.. which means that failure and setbacks don't result in a game ending scenario... but instead create a opportunity and hurdle to overcome.
This is a much better model for this sort of game... but it does mean that you relinquish more direct control over your avatars. Mostly, they are going to be automated according to your assigned priorities... bit in combat, you can fine grain the control so that you have a better oversight of your tactics.
It is a game that really challenges the player's mastery of logistics, economics and just plain survival... but interestingly enough, there is also the social interaction between your toons to also take care of. Of course, it isn't quite Sims 4 sort of interaction... but there are marriages, children born and fights/quarrels to manage. You would think that crashing on an alien planet and trying to gain the resources to survive and escape back to space would create some degree of co-operation... but they got that aspect of human AI down pretty realistically!
I love games that offer a challenge, and the idea of running a colony on a distant world was just the setting that would catch my eye! Dwarf Fortress was always a game that was of interest to me, but whilst the complexity and the emergent gameplay was just the right thing for me, let's say that the UI was best described as an acquired taste.
So, I've had my eye on Rimworld for quite some time now. A smaller number of people and a much better interface and graphical overlay meant that it was likely to be the Dwarf Fortress for me! Since the Steam Early Access, I've been watching and waiting, however I tend not to buy into the Early Access due to the risk of the projects going under (I do back a few games on Kickstarter), but more often because I don't want to play a partly finished game, I want the full experience the first time I play!
Sometimes there is a game that launches with a premise that is just too good to resist... Warsaw was definitely one of these games. The idea of an updated Darkest Dungeon clone set in World War 2 in the Polish uprising of Warsaw was just too good to resist. Now, the launch was followed by a month of pretty heft updates to expand out the game (this is the sort of thing that should be done in Beta or Early Access...), but despite that, the launch game was a pretty decent game. However, I did find it a bit lacking in depth in the shipping build...
That said, the game did improve with the month long cascade of updates... I will revisit it again sometime to see if it has improved enough to make it a decent update to the Darkest Dungeon formula. However, it definitely is a game that has the narrative spot on... that trailer... it is one of the best that I have ever seen, it's not a flashy AAA hero fantasy trailer... but it really does pull at the heartstrings!
This morning, an article about this game, WARSAW, crossed my feed. Reading the article, it was described as taking elements from Darkest Dungeon and placing the game in Warsaw, 1944... during the uprising against the German occupation. Rogue-like... turn-based... dark but realistic setting... I was hooked! So, I immediately fired up Steam before I had to run out the door to get to a concert... I had a quick look at the reviews which were pretty mixed... but the support from the developer seemed to be pretty amazing, with an October full of updates, and a first day patch that fixed a good deal of reported problems... perhaps it should have been an Early Access release, but the premise of the game was really too good... So, a very rare full price purchase... although, at 20 euros, it wasn't too bad!
Now, it is a bit rare to have a good historical war game... most of them can tend to glorify the idea of war, approaching the subject from a superhero perspective... or they can trivialise the entire idea, with a sort of kitschy setting that is more reminiscent of a high school romp in the park rather than a viscous and scarring scrabble for survival. War of Mine was one of the more memorable attempts in recent history, and it WARSAW seemed like it was going to be taking the right path with it's treatment of war.
The setting is the Polish uprising in Warsaw in 1944... if you want to read more about it, you can find it here on Wikipedia... let us just say that it does not end well for the Poles. With this as the setting, you know how this game is going to end... this won't be a superhero treatment, with your tactical genius changing the course of history... I suspect that the way this is going to turn out is going to be heart-breaking...
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