Same Same But Different

I was going to take (another) day off from posting because I was out for much of the day and I didn't have anything I particularly wanted to talk about but then I was idly scrolling through all the Amazon Prime Gaming and Steam games I haven't played (or installed) yet and I happened to notice two or three occurrences that looked like they might tie together into a quick post. So here we are.

It's something of a follow-on, thematically at least, from the post I wrote on Monday about playing the gaming field and not staying loyal to a single game, a topic and a concept I'm still mulling. With Solasta out of the way, I've been in search of a game to fill that pause-friendly, tactics-heavy, somewhat cerebral slot and I was browsing the possibilities to see if I already had something that would fit the bill or whether I'd need to find something to buy.

To forestall the inevitable suggestion, obviously the best choice would be Baldur's Gate 3 but I'm definitely not spending that much money. I may see if I can get someone to give it me for my birthday or Christmas although if there's one major downside to  digital distribution it's that it renders video games entirely unsuitable as gift recommendations for aging relatives. Until then it'll have to be something on a budget or preferably free.

While I was dithering, I took a side-turn and started playing Crowns and Pawns, a classic point & click adventure I bought on sale earlier this year. It ticks the pause and brain boxes but as I discovered, after an hour of mostly enjoyable puzzle-solving, it does absolutely nothing to scratch that tactical itch. I'll definitely keep on with it because it seems like a really good game - just not the game I'm looking for right now.

I also tried Shadowrun: Dragonfall, a tactical rpg I picked up at 90% off recently, which ought to have been exactly what I was after but very much wasn't. While it absolutely nailed the tactical elements as well as being fully pausable, it failed to engage my interest in either the characters or the plot. The minute size of the characters and the lack of anything much in the way of visual effects had the unfortunate effect of making the combat seem perfunctory, even though it probably has at least as much going on as the games I'm comparing it with unfavorably. I might give it another go but I suspect I won't.

With nothing meeting my exacting standards, I found myself idly scanning the news along the top of the Steam screen, which was where I was reminded of a couple of items I'd read earlier, along with some new news I hadn't seen before. Two games I'm kinda-sorta still playing are on the cusp of turning themselves inside out in the hope of attracting interest and players and it occurred to me that, if I wanted to see how that went, I'd probably have to start both of them over from the beginning.

Starting over seems to be a recurring theme just now. I wrote recently that I'm on hiatus from Once Human because I haven't quite decided if I want to start afresh on a Seasonal server, either right now or as soon as a different scenario becomes available. Now it seems I can add both Nightingale and New World to that decision tree.

I hadn't really considered the quasi-relaunch of New World, under the New World: Aeternum brand to be something that would necessitate a clean start. I suppose it doesn't, per se, but having read Tyler Edwards' piece on his experience of the press version of the upcoming beta it seems fairly clear that there's at least an opportunity to begin again anew.

The Nightingale marketing department, meanwhile, is urgently attempting to explain to worried punters that that the upcoming Realms Rebuilt update, a rewrite so extensive I have seen it described as a relaunch, will allow players to clone their current online characters to the offline version of the game. 

This, apparently, will take place in something called Legacy Mode, the explanation for engaging with which requires a very complicated FAQ, which I have skimmed but don't yet fully understand. It appears that as of tomorrow, when I next log into Nightingale, all my character slots will be empty but somehow I will be able to recover my "old" characters and play them offline, even if I haven't done anything to prepare for the wipe.

I have to say all of this came as a complete surprise to me. I didn't even realise the update constituted a full character wipe. If I was currently playing Nightingale I might have been a tad miffed. Since I'm not, though, I'm choosing to see it as an opportunity to start the game again from the beginning.

But is it an opportunity I want to take? I enjoyed both New World (Almost 250 hours played.) and Nightingale (Over 100.) but do I want to do it all over again, slightly differently? 

I certainly didn't get much value out of My Time At Sandrock, which I bought at a very early stage, while it was still in early development, then ended up hardly playing at all. I jumped on it because I'd really enjoyed My Time At Portia but it transpired that playing what turned out to be a very similar game (At least at that early stage of development.) didn't light the same fires.

Now I see that the My Time crew are trailing a Kickstarter for a third game in the series, My Time At Evershine and for no good reason whatsoever I find myself quite excited by the prospect all over again. I have at least learned my lesson. I won't be pledging or buying in to Early Access. Even so, when the game finally arrives in a full-featured, launch version, I wouldn't bet against me buying it anyway

A few years ago - okay quite a few years ago - starting over in games and playing through the same content only slightly differently was pretty much standard operating procedure for me. As my EQ25 series is more than amply demonstrating, I used to make a lot of characters in the same MMORPGs, especially when there were different starting areas.

Yeebo posted today about the attraction of all those very different class stories in Star Wars: the Old Republic. I commented to say that the sheer number of stories had actually put me off the game and it did to an extent but I'm sure it would have the opposite effect had the game been around back in my EverQuest days. I'd have taken it as an opportunity to play lots of characters without having to go through the exact same content every time.

The question I'm asking myself, as I look at the revamps of New World and Nightingale and the possibility of a third My Time game, is whether I still find the prospect of rolling a new character in the same game as appealing as it once was. It's a question that applies, not equally but to a significant degree, to my search for a suitable replacement for the turn-based, tactical combat titles I'm craving.

To some extent, every return to a familiar genre or style of game could be said to be tantamount to playing the same content with a different skin. It's just a matter of degree. There's a considerable appeal to the familiar and the more I think about starting over, the more I remember how much I used to enjoy it.

Maybe I'll take the opportunity to see if any of that enjoyment is still there to be had. I could even give SW:tOR another run. 

Okay, let's not get carried away...