Look What The March Wind Blew In

Amazon Prime Gaming freebies for March: let's have at them!

March 2 - Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition

March 9 - Adios and I Am Fish

March 16 - Faraway 3: Arctic Escape

March 23 - Book of Demons and Peaky Blinder: Mastermind

March 30 - City Legends: Trapping in Mirror – Collector’s Edition

Hmm. Well, the first thing I'd say is it's a good job this isn't an awards ceremony. I mean, way to blow the big reveal right at the start. Baldur's Gate, eh? We'll get to that in a moment.

The second thing to occur to me is that every month doesn't have the same number of Thursdays, does it? That might be an issue one day. Also, Thursdays. Why?

Logistics aside, it's a more interesting collection for me than February's, from which I claimed nothing at all. Looks like I'll take home at least three titles from March's giveaway. Whether I'll ever play them is another question, of course. Anyway, on with the show.

Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition - "The classic adventure returns! Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition includes the original Baldur’s Gate adventure, the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion, and all-new content including three new party members."

I don't imagine anyone needs me to tell them what this one is all about. The original is one of the very few games I've played all the way through, twice. I already own the base game and expansion in box form for PC and in some digital version for tablet, too. Well, they're all digital but you know what I mean. I would have grabbed this for convenience' sake anyway but now I see it has extra content I might even play it. Again.

In terms of quality, they really don't come any better. In terms of bargain value, if you had to buy it, it would cost you £15.49 on Steam.

Adios - "A pig farmer decides he no longer wants to dispose of bodies for the mob. What follows is a discussion between him and his would-be killer."

This looks interesting. And odd. Mostly odd, if I'm honest. I watched the trailer and it reminded me of one of those games a team of students knocks out for an end of course show. It has a "Very Positive" rating on Steam but most of the reviews I read, both positive and negative, seemed mildly apologetic for either praising it or knocking it. Makes me think it might be more worthy than entertaining.

One thing I did glean from the reviews was that whatever responses you give during conversation make no difference to the outcome of the game. I did say recently that I approved of games with meaningless choices so I guess I ought to enjoy having no real say in how things turn out. It's also quite short, apparently, which also in it's favor. There's a decent chance I'd play it - eventually - so I'll definitely claim it.

Costwise, it's £13.99 on Steam.

I Am Fish - "A charming, physics-based adventure starring four intrepid fish friends, forcibly separated from their home in a pet shop fish tank. Swim, fly, roll and chomp your way to the open ocean in a bid for freedom and to re-unite once again."

This one really appeals to me. It looks fast, funny and full of character. Unfortunately, it also look hard as fuck. I am not good at these kinds of games even when they're super-easy so it would be completely pointless for me to attempt one that attracts comments like

 "What I saw : cutesy fish game. What I got : pure rage simulator"

 "Its sole problem is unreasonable difficulty and inconsistent physics" (FYI, that's two problems...) 

"The level quality is all over the place, even within the same levels... Many levels have great sections that are over too quickly, followed by horribly boring ones that last far longer, like the devs were unable to tell which parts of their game were actually fun."

And all of those were from positive reviews. The negative ones tended to focus on the inadequacies of the physics engine, quite the problem for a physics game, and the general shoddiness of everything but the graphics, which pretty much everyone agrees are "cute". Pass.

Can be had for £15.99 on Steam, where there's also a free demo. 

Faraway 3: Arctic Escape - "A relaxing adventure escape game full of new puzzles to solve. The final sequel of the Faraway trilogy"or so says Steam, where the game is known simply as "Faraway: Arctic Escape" and has no reviews whatsoever.

On Google Play, however, it has a rating of 4.3 and a more detailed description: "Escape all-new distant places in Faraway 3: Arctic Escape that are full of mind-bending puzzles and new exciting locations to explore. This room escape game will challenge your puzzle solving ability. Sequel to one of the all-time best escape games with over a million players! A room escape puzzle game that will completely challenge your mind, captivate you & offer hours of amazing mobile gaming entertainment."

It's clearly a big hit series on mobile with no presence in PC gaming at all, then. The graphics look super-stylised and quite attractive, if a tad bland, the music is really soothing and most of the complaints I saw revolved around the puzzles being much too easy. Probably a nice, relaxing diversion, then. 

I'm on the fence about this one. I might enjoy it but I suspect that, like the hidden object games, it won't feel so much like a nice timewaster as just a waste of time. It's also free on Google Play and compatible with my Kindle Fire so I could grab it any time. I certainly won't be paying the £4.29  Steam's asking, not even with the curent 10% discount. 

Book of Demons - "a Hack & Slash in which YOU decide the length of quests. Wield magic cards instead of weapons and slay the armies of darkness in the dungeons below the Old Cathedral. Save the terror-stricken Paperverse from the clutches of the Archdemon himself!"

A weird mash-up of isometric arpgs and card battlers with roguleike gameplay that seems designed to please no-one and annoy everyone. And yet it's rated Very Positive from over eight thosuand reviews, so I guess they managed to cut and shut all those parts together without anything too important dropping off. 

Judging from the videos, gameplay looks a little frenetic for my tastes and the voiceover is actively irritating but I still might claim it anyway. I like the idea of the card-based item and spell system and the way the whole thing is set inside a children's pop-up book. Probably won't ever play it, but what the heck.

Should you need to buy it, it's actually the most expensive of this month's offers, retailing at £19.99 on Steam.

Peaky Blinder: Mastermind - "a puzzle-adventure game, based on the multi-award-winning TV show. Become the Mastermind as you control key characters and pull off perfectly synchronized plans."

So far, I've managed to avoid the Peaky Blinders phenomenon and I'd really like to keep it that way. Whether or not this game has anything to offer someone who's never watched the show, I wouldn't care to hazard a guess. I have even less idea whether it'll make the fans happy and frankly I don't care. Pass.

It's also the only game in Prime's March collection that is "no longer available on the Steam store". The link on publisher Curve Game's website goes to a dead page.  Where you'd get it for PC I have no idea. Oh, wait, yes I do: Amazon Prime!

City Legends: Trapping in Mirror – Collector’s Edition - "On your way to writing the perfect supernatural novel, be prepared to face danger. Are you ready for such desperate measures?"

This is yet another hidden object puzzle game, something which doesn't do much to sell it to me. There also seems to be some confusion over what it's called, with Steam having it listed under the rather more gramatically convincing title "City Legends: Trapped In Mirror Collector's Edition".

Either way, the Lovecraft-lite plot coupled with typical hidden object game wishy-washy graphics makes for a pretty unappealing prospect. Pass.

If you had to buy it, Steam would charge you £8.50 but you're not paying that, are you?

And that's that for March. Looks like I need to make a note on the calendar for the 2nd and the 9th and add a question mark against the 23rd. 

Like I really need any more games right now...

Five To Conquer

When I saw the replies begin to roll in on Krikket's post about her Five Favorite Games Series I was certain I wouldn't be joining in. I wasn't sure I'd even played five games series, let alone ones I could call favorites.

As I kept reading the posts, though, names began to bubble up from the swampland of my memory. Then the topic came up on the Blapril Discord and in thinking about it some more I found myself with four, then five, titles I had at least played.

Luckily I don't have Wilhelm's scruples on what counts as a series. I agree that including expansions to MMORPGs might be stretching a point but a check on the accepted definition finds "a number of similar or related events or things, one following another" from Cambridge University Press or "a number of things or events of the same class coming one after another in spatial or temporal succession" from Merriam-Webster.

There's no stipulation as to how large that number must be. For the purposes of this excercise, I'm going to allow it to be as low as two, although I don't genuinely believe that's  what we usually mean when we talk about a "series". If it was, we probably wouldn't talk about "pairs" or "couples" instead, would we?

I have considerably fewer qualms about the question, raised again by Wilhelm, of whether we need to have played all or most of the games in a series for it to count as a "favorite". In all seriousness and entirely without irony, I don't see any reason why we should have played any of the games in a series at all to consider it a favorite. 

I could perfectly reasonably include Pokemon based on the posts I've read and enjoyed about the games or Grand Theft Auto because of its cultural significance. I have favorite bands I've barely listened to and favorite authors I've scarcely read, after all. Why should games be any different?

I'm not going to do that, if only because I think I can come up with five series from which I have played at least two games. The first is blindingly obvious, of course.

EverQuest.

My first MMORPG. Responsible for a fundamental change in the direction of my life and for much of my last two decades. 

There are more EverQuest games in the series than you might immediately remember. I've played only two of them although I own three and wish I'd played four. I played EverQuest itself from November 1999 and EverQuest II from September 2004 (beta). I played both of them this morning.

I own a copy of Lords of EverQuest but I have yet to install, let alone play it. It's an offline RTS set in Norrath that came out in 2003 and I just discovered that it's available as a download from a website called MyAbandonware. I've downloaded it, which gets me one step closer to playing it, I guess.

There were three Pocket EverQuest games released for a forgotten device called the PocketPC. I wrote about them less than a year ago. I still haven't gotten around to trying that free trial.

Then there's the console mmorpg EverQuest Online Adventures. I regret never playing that one and hope I still might, even though it sunsetted long ago. There's an emulator project called Return Home I have bookmarked to that end.

And of course there's Landmark, once known as EQ Landmark. Or EQNext Landmark. Or something. I liked Landmark. I don't miss it, though. It was a time vampire.

Guild Wars

A series of two, so far. Speculation on a third seems to have no basis in fact.

I played Guild Wars for something like a couple of months, close to the time it came out. I wasn't all that interested when I thought it was a hardcore PvP title, which was how it was advertized prior to launch. When reviews started talking about the large amount of PvE content, though, Mrs Bhagpuss and I decided to give it a try.

I stuck with it long enough to reach Ascension on two characters. Took me about six weeks. I have the clearest memory of how frustrating some of the fights were. I remember having to stop one Sunday afternoon and go for a long walk because if I'd carried on playing I probably would either have had a stroke or thrown my PC through the window.

Mrs Bhagpuss carried on for a couple of weeks after I stopped, taking her characters into some fiery hellhole that passed for endgame back then. When she stopped too we forgot all about the game for many years, until the sequel went into open beta. At that point I bought all the expansions, nearly finished Eye of the North, messed around in the others and collected points for my Hall of Monuments in Guild Wars 2.

GW2 has been my main MMORPG, on and off but mostly on, for the last eight years.

 Baldur's Gate

Mrs Bhagpuss and I both played BG1 through to the end, including the expansion or add-on, whatever it was called. We used to watch each other playing, often, but we never played co-op. 

My memories of the game are colored by the voice and image pack I downloaded right at the start. I made a custom bard and gave her the character portrait and voice of Daria from the eponymous animated tv show. I wrote about it here.

Mrs Bhagpuss played Icewind Dale, which kind of counts as part of the series. I tried it but didn't like it. Too hack and slash. I bought Baldur's Gate 2, played it and finished it. Mrs Bhagpuss was deep into MMORPGs by then and didn't have any interest in making time for offline games.

I'm currently playing (actually on a break from playing but I'm close to the end) Divinity:Original Sin 2, whose creators are working on Baldur's Gate 3 as we speak. I will buy that and play it. I hope it's better than D:OS2.

Broken Sword

Mrs Bhagpuss and I played the first Broken Sword together when were still a one computer household. When the sequel arrived we played it the same way even though, by then, we already had a computer each. Back in the early eighties, when I was married to my first wife, the two of us played text adventures that way on the ZX Spectrum. I still think it's the best way to play adventure games. 

I've owned Broken Sword 5 for several years but I still haven't played it. Well, I've played a little on my own but I'm waiting for a suitable opportunity for us to play it together. The fact that it requires a Steam account has put a block on that, simply because it adds a level of irritation too many when it comes to setting it up so we can both play. I wanted to install it on a handheld device and take it on holiday but my Windows tablet died, which put a stop to that.

We still do impressions of Nico's fruity French accent sometimes. We're such a caution.

Might And Magic

This is the longest series on my list, with ten numbered games and a load of spin-offs. We only played two of them, VI, Mandate of Heaven and VII, For Blood and Honor. That was in 1998 and 1999, immediately before we discovered EverQuest and MMORPGs, which explains why we never bothered with the rest of the series. 

We both loved Mandate of Heaven. I wouldn't mind playing it again right now. Mrs Bhagpuss often mentions it, particularly when we're out walking and she thinks some piece of farmland looks like somewhere lizardmen might lurk.

Might and Magic seems to be one of those series where the controls and the gameplay change from game to game. We neither of us enjoyed Blood and Honor as much. 

That's always a problem with series of games. Series of novels or movies frequently all stick quite close to each other in style but games tend to careen around all over the place. I think that's why I don't feel the same kind of drive to follow them. It's often better to find a different game that plays closer to what you remember about an old favorite than it is to keep adjusting for the inevitable disappointment and confusion series insist on bringing.

I also notice this list of favorites ended up being a list of series Mrs Bhagpuss and I played together. I don't think that can be a co-incidence.

Money Is The Anthem

BioWare's Anthem is The Big New Thing. There seems to be absolutely no doubt in anyone's mind about that.

I foresee finding myself in a very familiar position: reading thousands of words about a video game I have no interest whatsoever in playing. I predict there will be a torrent of posts, varying from the gushing to the gutted. Some will skate across the surface on a wave of feels; others will dive into the depths, dragging up a deadweight of extraordinary detail.

After a couple of weeks the torrent will turn to a stream then a trickle. In six weeks only a couple of die-hards will be left, working the pump-handle for those last few drops. Everyone else will either have moved on to the Next Big New Thing, if there is one, or back to an Old Favorite. Either that or they'll be posting about how bored they are and why doesn't anyone make any good games any more?

The game's not even out yet and already the dam is breached. There are leaks springing up all over the place. I've already heard plenty about the Demo Weekend and its issues. Isey and Gevlon had a sparky little interchange about that.

The post that prompted me to join in, however, was Alli Rense's compelling anti-Anthem rant at The Parent Trope, unequivocally entitled Anthem? No Thank You. Alli isn't just uninterested in playing the game, like me; she sees it as an active threat to the future of the kind of games she enjoys. Very specifically she imagines that if Anthem is successful it will lead to future BioWare games following the Anthem model and abandoning the narrative RPG format on which they built their brand.

She's probably right, too, although she doesn't speculate on what might become of BioWare if Anthem isn't successful. Hard to imagine that would have a positive outcome for the company or its future projects - if any.

I don't have any emotional attachment to BioWare, either past or present. They made one game I really liked - Baldur's Gate - and one I quite liked - Baldur's Gate 2. That was twenty years ago. Since then they've made nothing I care about at all.

I did try the first Dragon Age and found that, while it had a powerful impact at first, it very rapidly became tedious, repetitive and obvious. I played DA intensely for about a week and then one day I couldn't stand the thought of ever playing it again.

It was a useful learning experience. The most important thing I learned was that I really, really hate the "Companion" mechanic, where the player character is expected to schmooze, romance or otherwise jolly along various NPCs, either by buttering them up with flattery or giving them gifts.

Who ever thought this was a good idea? And how old were they? Six? Will you be my best friend if I give you my Action Figure?  No, cos I can't be your friend any more, cos you like Jimmy and Jimmy's bad! Geez. Give me a break.

That experience beyond anything else is why I have yet to even download Star Wars: the Old Republic. The mere thought of having to deal with managing the imaginary emotions of a bunch of virtual pre-schoolers in battle-armor gives me the heebie-jeebies.

The other lesson I learned from Dragon Age is that I really can't take any more Generic Fantasy Plots (or Generic Science Fiction Plots for that matter). I can stomach them as background in MMORPGs, where all narrative is set dressing for the main performance - building my character - and I can get on board when  narrative provides atmosphere for enjoyable mechanics, as in the two Baldur's Gate games or Pillars of Eternity, but the last time I encountered a plot in a video game that I found as immersive or compelling as a good novel or movie...well, if it ever happens, I'll let you know.

When Alli says "I think video games are the best way we have to tell a story. Better than TV, film, and even books. Because they’re the most immersive, they have the biggest impact." I imagine she speaks for quite a few people who might be reading this. Even I would say that the medium has the potential to compete on equal terms with established narrative forms.

It's potential that's gone largely unfulfilled for decades, though, primarily because of the mechanics involved. I have a big issue with all video game mechanics when it comes to storytelling. Video games are clunky. They persistently pull you out of the moment to fight things or solve puzzles or click through dialog trees. It's the equivalent of trying to watch a movie with someone sitting next to you going "Who's that guy? Wasn't he in that movie we saw last week? Are you sure you switched the lights off when we parked? Can you hold my Coke, I want to get a mint out my pocket...no, wait, your pocket. You had the mints, didn't you?"

The ones that do it the least and which probably make the best stab at telling an uninterrupted narrative come from the sub-genre often somewhat derisively labelled "Walking Simulators" but what those mostly seem to me to be doing is trying to edge as close as possible to being movies. One of the main criticisms often levelled at them is that they aren't really video games at all.

We do all make some sweeping assumptions at times, about what a video game can or can't be - or should or shouldn't be. At one point, in a piece that has enough comment hooks to hang a dozen blog posts on, Alli asks "Aren’t video games supposed to be an introverted hobby?".

Are they? I don't know. They certainly have had that image at times, particularly in the eyes of worried parents or politicians in search of a headline. I did think the image of video games as the exclusive province of the socially maladjusted was behind us but it does recur disturbingly regularly, even now.

Getting back to Anthem itself, while I don't feel as disturbed by the prospect of its success as Alli, I do see it as not so much a straw in the wind but a bloody great haystack in a hurricane barrelling towards the traditional MMORPG. Belghast said something very revealing in his recent post on returning to FFXIV: "I am trying to get back into playing an MMORPG again…  but it just feels weird considering how much of the Destiny style MMO Lite I have been playing of late."

Pete S in reply to Belghast clarified that feeling with some solid reasoning: "I’m really struggling to engage for that same “been playing quasi-MMOs too much” reason. I just feel like the time-invest:reward ratio is off now."

Pacing in MMORPGs is something many of us have been talking about and around for years. People have argued that leveling is too fast, too slow, too uneven; gear ladders have been both too long and too short. The genre suffered years of post-WoW speeding up that then slewed into a "Slow MMO" car-crash that threatened to bring the entire crowdfunding process into disrepute.

While all that was going on deep in The Niche, the hinterlands were filling up with somewhat successful hybrids like Destiny and The Division and bona-fide hits and mega-hits like PUBG and Fortnite. If the last five years have told us anything, it's that there's a huge market for Massive Online Games - provided you don't add those fatal three missing letters.

So I can see why Alli is worried. The current trend in large-scale online games, supported by sales, would seem to have little to do with either narrative storytelling or traditional rpg character-building. What's more, I would contend that, with Destiny, Warframe and now Anthem all choosing to house the player character in form-fitting, personality-occluding body armor, the current version of "character building" has closer affinities to driving games than to any imagined ancestry in Dungeons and Dragons.

Beyond any other reason, that was why I lost interest so fast in Warframe and it's very high on the list of things that put me off trying Anthem: I don't mind my character owning and driving a vehicle but I draw the line at them being one. But no-one cares what I think because not every game has to be for me.

Anthem will be a success. Possibly not as big a success as it needs to be but there or thereabouts. The trend of narrative-light, combat-heavy, fast-paced MMOs set in open worlds or open maps, using or at least including Battle Royale and Survival mechanics is going to be with us for a good while yet.

Will that trend prejudice the production of other types of video game? Of course it will. That's what bandwagons do - roll over everything else. Will there be anything left for the rest of us? Of course there will. Whether we'll want it when we get it, though, that's another story...

Did I Say That Out Loud?

I was flicking through my Feedly this evening when I came across a piece on Pitchfork that for once seemed to be about someone I'd already heard of. Naturally, it wasn't a musician.You could say it wasn't even a real person, although we all know reality is a lie.

Back in the mid-90s, just before I discovered MMOs and thereby lost my fingernail grip on popular culture, at least for a while, I used to watch a quirky animated t.v, show called Daria. You may have heard of it. Apparently it was kind of a big deal. Not that we knew.

As I recall it was on Channel Four, possibly on a Sunday afternoon. I didn't watch it a whole lot but I liked it well enough. I particularly enjoyed the flat, deadpan delivery of the lead character, Daria Morgendoffer.

Around the same time the show was running, I was beginning to get back into video gaming after a few years' break. In 1997, I think it must have been, I'd bought a PC with my redundancy money, ostensibly with the intention of writing a novel. That never really panned out but inevitably some games got bought and among them was the original Baldur's Gate.

I'd scarcely begun playing before I discovered it was possible to swap both the character portraits and the characters' voices for custom versions. After a few experiments with making my own I took a look at some of the many versions floating about online and there I came across one that replaced the player character's entire repertoire of sayings and exclamations with lines from Daria. That's how I came to play through the whole of  Baldur's Gate as "a smart, snarky, sensitive teenage girl", to quote the Daria wiki.

This is also, surely, one of the primary reasons the first Baldur's Gate remains the only BioWare RPG I have ever - unequivocally - loved. The sardonic tone of these short clips (voice-acted by Tracy Grandstaff with admirable lack of affect) brought an astringency to the fantasy setting that undercut the sometimes ponderous self-importance of the narrative. Plus it made me laugh. Every time.

They say that once something's on the internet it'll be there until the heat death of the universe but if the original soundset I downloaded is still around then my google-fu isn't good enough to find it. I believe this clip features one of the soundbites it used. I'm sure I remember hearing my bard saying "I'm the Misery Chick" about ten thousand times over the course of the campaign.

All of which brings me to my point (and yes, I do have one, thanks). Earlier in the day I made a new Square Enix account and patched up FFXIV to take advantage of the new, improved endless free trial. No doubt I'll get around to posting about that in due course but for now I just want to mention the character voice samples.

In common with almost all Eastern MMOs, FFXIV offers you a choice of voices for your characters. You can have all kinds of squealing, grunting, yelping, groaning or giggling. The range runs the usual gamut from hysteria to...well, more hysteria. If you want anything more nuanced, though, well you're kinda outta luck as Lana Del Rey might say (Now there's an idea...Lana as the voice of your Miqo'te. That's a cash shop killer if ever I heard of one. I'll give you that one for free, Square, just make it happen).

Actually, it's not even fair to pick on Eastern MMOs. I've been playing a lot of LotRO of late and my Dwarf there can't go two seconds in a fight without growling or yelling "yaaarghh!" like a drunken pirate. It's really quite distracting.

GW2 has a seldom-mentioned function that allows you to replace any or all of the in-game music files with your own selections culled from your no doubt extensive and eclectic library of math rock and hair metal. If that can be a thing then why not voices?

I'm guessing that just about all MMO sound files are client-based, even when the character spouting the nonsense isn't my own. When I hear some passing mesmer boasting how she can run faster than a centaur, presumably that's the game triggering a sample that's already installed on my PC, so why couldn't it trigger a sample of my choice instead?

There doesn't seem to me to be any technical reason this couldn't be a standard add-on for games that allow such things. Maybe it is and I just haven't noticed. Oh boy, I hope so!

If not then someone better get right on it. I don't even mind if I have to cull and compile my own samples. I'm hearing voices already...