Beginning with one of the two I chose not to bother with, does anyone actually remember Infantry Online, because I certainly don't. I thought I at least knew the names of all the games in the Sony Online Entertainment portfolio back when EverQuest was the pack leader there - I even tried Tanarus once, I think - but I have absolutely no memory of this one at all.
Some people do. It's back on Steam with an even less evocative name, something I'd have would be next to impossible. It's called Freeinfantry, a name not made cooler or more edgy by running the two words together. Whatever it's called, though, there are people who just love it:
"Awesome game."
"My favorite game of all time."
"Best game ever made."
"Outshines games from the last two decades."
And there are plenty more superlatives where those came from, the Steam Store, where Freeinfantry currently enjoys a Very Positive rating from 92% of reviewers.
As seems to be standard for the era, the game has a very convoluted history, which you can learn about on its Wikipedia page, like I just did. Then you can immediately forget it, like I'm about to. The part that interests me is the way even now, a quarter of a century later, no-one really seems to agree on what the historical facts mean.
Some longtime players think of it as an SOE title, others as an independent gobbled up by a corporate. Some hate SOE for ruining it, "milking" it and/or abandoning it, others are grateful to them for returning it to the players, even though it has apparently been running continuously in some kind of emulator mode since SOE shuttered it over a decade ago.
The MMOBomb report, which was where I heard about it in the first place, places the game squarely in the SOE/Daybreak timeline, while making it clear the current Steam version "operates under a license agreement similar to that of "Project 1999". Presumably DBG picked it up as part of the job lot when they bought SOE.
It's worth noting the P99 agreement itself only happened after the buyout. Any credit Sony is getting for any of this would seem to be misplaced. The blame for exploiting it then cancelling it in the first place though? That's still theirs.
There's no chance whatsoever I'll ever play any version of Infantry Online. Neither the setting nor the gameplay have the slightest appeal for me. The same cannot be said for another game even more tangentially connected to SOE, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, the game once thought of as the spiritual successor to Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, itself occasionally referred to informally as EverQuest 2.5.
Today, a few yeara afer the untimely death of its creative force, Brad McQuaid, the man with a vision™ that, arguably, should always have been prefaced by the word "tunnel", Pantheon is just another crowdfunded wannabe-retro MMORPG but I'd still like to give it a go. I just don't want to pay the required access fee, even though the cost has been somewhat reduced of late with the addition of the "one week every couple of months" option.
I was, then, more than a little excited to read at MassivelyOP of an opportunity to piggyback into the game for a few days on the back of a code given out for watching streamer Cohhcarnage. I wasn't going to watch the stream, of course, but MOP were kind enough to publish the code so I gave it a try.
Unsurprisingly, it didn't work. It had already been cancelled by the time I got there and I was quite fast, too. Credit to the Visionary Realms PR department for closing the loophole so quickly, although obviously they must have been the ones who opened it in the first place.
My first visit to whatever the name of the world Pantheon takes place in ( I can never remember.) will have to wait. Fair enough. I've been waiting years already. I've gone right off the boil, anyway.
It is odd how these games bubble up and then just go on simmering, seemingly forever. I can't recall when I first read about the whimsically, if somewhat incoherently-named Swords 'n' Magic and Stuff (Why abbreviate one conjunction but not the other?) but it must have been a few years ago.
If I've thought about it at all since then, which I kind of doubt, it would have been to wonder when it might reach some kind of publicly accessible build. Apparently that happened a while back. As in five years ago. It's on Steam with a release date of 2020. Who knew?
A lot of people, apparently, because like Freeinfantry, SNMAS (No, not gonna work.) has a Very Positive rating, only this one's from almost a thousand reviews as opposed to FI's 60 or so. It's still in Early Access but given a) that I definitely knew about it as a game in development and b) it's "a cozy, cooperative, open world RPG centered around the joy of discovery", a description which makes it sound almost tailor-made for me, I'm at a loss to explain why not only had I never realised it was available but also why there's not even a tag for it on the blog. Have I really never mentioned it at all?
I've played it now. There's a new demo that lets you go through the very early tutorial, up to the point where you jump off a cliff. I did that. I managed to get my glider working before I crashed to my death but as I landed on the beach next to the starting town, a big banner unfurled in front of me, thanking me for my interest and suggesting I should stop freeloading and get my wallet out.
And I might, too. The game is currently on half-price offer, making it quite an attractive purchase at £10.49. In fact, looking at it more closely, the offer ends in just over five hours as I write, meaning if you're reading this it's probably already ended. I guess I'd better make up my mind. Or wait for the inevitable next sale.
From what I saw, Swords, which is what I think I'm going to shorten it to (I toyed with SnM but, well, y'know...) is a jolly romp of a game with plenty of good ideas but perhaps still some work to do on some of the details. The look is Minecraft-meets-Lego-Minifigures, which I have to say is not one of my favorites, but they do more with it than you might expect. I found it pleasant enough to look at although I can't say any of the scenery made me giddy. Then again, it was only a tutorial.
There's a mildly unusual selection of races including fauns, dryads, orcs, elves and the ubiquitous humans. The potentially divisive and difficult gender issue is handled very simply by not having any. You are you and that's that. I picked a Faun for no reason - they all look much the same and the game doesn't give any indication of practical differences between them.
There are a few customization opportunities - skin tone, hairstyle, facial hair - but none seem very distinctive. They are at least charmingly described, particularly the Face options, which include a whole range of "Cute" looks, many of which come with freckles. It only took me a few minutes to settle on something I was happy with and then it was into the game, where I found myself in the virtual equivalent of an escape room.
Although this isn't an especially egregious example of the species, I could happily never see another introduction like this. Locked in a cell with nothing but the clothes you stand up and a disturbing inability to remember anything about your circumstances, personal background or even how you got there, your one and only job is to get out.
Why we can't just start in the village or town, with full knowledge of who we are and where we live, beats me. Still, you play the hand you're dealt, so I spent much of the next hour trying to work my way through a series of cells, rooms, caves and caverns in search of natural daylight.
During my time in an orc dungeon (For that is where I found myself.) I learned that resources respawn infinitely, not just mining or logging nodes but obstacles you'd imagine were only meant to be removed once. I had recourse to double back on myself a couple of times (The route out is far from obvious.) and each time I had to break the same crates that I'd broken before to clear my passage.
I also got loot each time, suggesting you could easily spend the rest of your life just looting the same chests if you were so inclined. They can drop different items as well, which is both exciting and disturbing. Imagine if you missed out on an ultra-rare and could never go back to the tutorial once you'd left.
Sorry. Just messing with you. I have no firm evidence the game has "ultra-rares", let alone that there are any in the tutorial. But there might be...
The writing is uniformly solid. Good sentence structure, grammatically correct, idomatic. I imagine the real quests, once you get to them, might be pretty good. There's also a light puzzle element to the gameplay, although not so light it didn't completely stump me at one point. I couldn't figure out how to open a door so I had to watch someone do it on YouTube, where I learned how important it is to look up now and again, even underground.
There's some fighting, mostly (Entirely?) against dim-witted orc trainees and their teachers. I had four weapons by the end of the tutorial - a limp stick, a two-handed branch, a bow and a magic staff. The bow never runs out of ammo for the basic atack but you can also find all kinds of special arrows that do different damage, like setting things on fire. The staff sets things on fire too, or heals people, depending which magic book you're holding in your other hand. It looks like an interesting combat system; clunky but fun.
Worthwhile, too. There's lots of loot. Really, a lot. Mobs drop stuff, there are chests, you can smash vases and crates... I imagine there's a limit to how much you can carry but I didn't hit it and I picked up everything.
Eventually I found my way up and out into daylight, where I was able to meet my friend Sen, who'd escaped before me. He promptly ran off, telling me to meet him in town, leaving me to kill more orcs and generally goof around until I met the guy with the glider who told me to jump off the cliff and here we are back where we began.
I've been thinking about it as I write the post and I'm not going to buy the game just now. Not because it doesn't look good, just because I have other things to do and I probably wouldn't play it much. I will wishlist it, though, so I can reconsider next time it goes on sale.
All things considered, it seems like a very nice game to potter around in, especially impressive given it's all the work of a single developer. Why it doesn't get more attention when so many similar titles get more than they deserve I have no clue but at least it's firmly on my radar now so I guess the demo did its job.
And finally, the other game I opted against downloading, a decision that isn't any kind of negative criticism of the game so much as an observation on just how cluttered the field for open-world, sandbox survival games feels at the moment. It's called Soulmask and it's available on Steam in open beta format right now.
If you're interested, you have another four days to sign up and join in. There's also a demo that's been on Steam since the start of the year, so that may still be available after the beta, although the proposed release date for the game is Q2 2024, otherwise known as "now", so maybe not.
The screenshots look very appealing. I'm getting a pre-Columbian, North American vibe although, possibly through someone having learned from Amazon's missteps with marketing New World, I don't think that's overtly mentioned. The detailed description on the Steam store page makes the game sound amazing, too, so if it lives up to its own hype I imagine we'll be hearing a lot more about it.
As yet, there's not a single review, so either no-one's playing or there's some kind of block due to it being in beta. I'm not sure how that works on Steam. Either way, it doesn't entirely imbue me with confidence. There are still a few days left so maybe I will try the beta before it ends. I've kind of intrigued myself now just by writing about it.
Of course, before I get around to doing anything, some new game will probably have thrust itself into the spotlight, demanding my attention. There are altogether too many of these things to give every remotely interesting game a fair examination.
I guess it's better that way around than the reverse, although some days I do wish there was some sort of pre-registration process you could sign up for, where someone would winnow out the chaff for me and just leave the good stuff.
Oh, wait, that would be what I'm doing now, wouldn't it...?
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