2025 May
Wrapping New Vegas, Dredge, Stray Gods + Arranger
To-Play: 14 | Ongoing: 1 | Completed: 5 | Retired: 0 | Punted: 0
Est. Time to Beat: 23d 1h
Almost coming full circle with the reposts of September and October of 2024:
I didn’t plan to spend May wrapping up a bunch of games but here we are…
Fallout: New Vegas + Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Lonesome Road (2010)
Completed | 136h 53m
The last time we left off, I was struggling in Dead Money. Not only did I finish it, I’ve also since wrapped up Honest Heart, Lonesome Road and the main game. I’m staying high level instead of diving into individual DLCs.
What Worked for Me:
Episodic Continuity: Yes, most (TBH, probably all) DLCs are spin-offs for the main game. The FNV DLCs sharing a continuity, referencing characters hinted in the main game and taking place in parallel, feels like a spin-off episodic companion game. Dead Money (this, I experienced) and Lonesome Road (this, I didn’t) could impact the main content was a bonus.
Breath of Radioactive Fresh Air: After being mostly in desert environment in the main game (except the green in the North West at Jacobstown), it was refreshing to see a weird Sci-Fi dome, a ruined, toxic casino town, the Zion National Park and a recently nuked wasteland. I enjoyed the exploratory open-world DLCs (Old World Blues & Honest Hearts) more than the combat focused ones (I wish they supported a non-combat build better, especially since I resolved the finale conflict with the Legion by just talking with the Legate); Lonesome Road’s linear gauntlet was more tolerable being at max level and without the gameplay gimmicks of Dead Money that I mentioned last time (the area in the climax was excruciating…).
Be Good or Do Good: I completed this playthrough siding with the NCR but they’re not exactly paragons of morals—bureaucratic inefficiencies, corruption and massacre of the Great Khans. The inclusion of faction reputation allows a more nuanced take on player’s action and consequences beyond being good or evil, waddling in a grey muck of trade offs. A nice consequence is an epilogue that showcased the gamut of outcomes with the various parties involved.
It also makes the question it asks, via Hanlon, a real pertinent brain-twister: Can you wish for your own country's defeat, patriotically? -A single character shows why Fallout: New Vegas is a classic
What Didn’t Work for Me:
Companions Mixed Experience: While they were intriguing, I feel there was not a meaningful enough time spent with the companions of Dead Money. In Honest Hearts, I spent some time with the 3 simpler companions that were assigned to me in sequence; in a way, it felt better because I don’t feel I’m missing any hidden depth. Ultimately, I feel it’s hard to have truly meaningful DLC-only companions they last 5–8h. I get a long playtime to deal with the single companion restriction & obscure companion quest triggers in the main game. The lack of a Legion-aligned companion (though Ulysses was rumoured to be that at some point) is also probably a consequence of the 18-month development timeline (the fact they got so much in 18mo is incredible!)
Encumbrance: My carry weight woes were mostly managed when I fixed the broken restored content earlier. However, 2 of the DLCs strips the player of all inventory only to return all of it on completion, this will result in being overburdened and unable to run or fast travel. Fortunately a reward from Old World Blues was an item that allows teleportation to the home base—I also made that my permanent home base complete with sorted containers and companions tagging along.
Mod it or Skip it: Beyond the general bugs/instability, some of the gameplay improvements from Viva New Vegas, makes it very hard for me to recommend playing vanilla FNV to most people (it’s hard for me to imagine playing without sprinting or needing to open containers only to find them empty). Even then I miss some of the quality of life features from more modern games like knowing which recipe an item is for without going back to a crafting station.
After more than 6 months, I’m finally done with FNV. I expect some people to jump on it once Amazon’s Fallout airs its second season later this year, and I highly recommend the Viva New Vegas modlist (now with an automated Wabbajack installer and was updated a fair bit since I installed it) when they do.
That’s 1 chunky RPG in the list down, 2 more—Pathfinder: Kingmaker & Personal 5 Royal—to go.
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (2023)
Completed | 6h 52m
I wrapped Stray Gods in just another 2.5h since the last entry. Grace also gained an additional trait (meaning she has 2 out of 3) in the last chapter.
I’ve since read up on impressions on the Internet and it’s clear Stray Gods didn’t quite resonate with me as it did for some. I think a lot of it has to do with expectations—a writer of David Gaider’s pedigree being attached and both “roleplaying” and “musical” in its subtitle.
What Worked for Me:
Technical Writing: I really appreciate the narrative design part where dialogues flowed naturally and without repeated options. I love an epilogue and one which is interactive is just the cherry on top.
Visuals & Style: The minimally animated, clean art really stood out for me. The Greek mythology theming has been explored recently in games & other media. With the revelation at the end of the game, perhaps there is an opportunity to explore the gods’ struggles with modern society—Fables/Wolf Among Us was what came into my mind.
What Didn’t Work for Me:
“Roleplaying”: I wished they would’ve stuck with the original subtitle of “Adventure Musical” with it being more like a visual novel with no lose state— roleplaying is such a loaded term and gamers/nerds as we know can be a pedantic bunch. I recognize the parallel between Stray God’s Kickass, Clever, Charming and (my favourite game I can’t recommend) Alpha Protocol’s 3 JBs —Jason Bourne, James Bond, Jack Bauer—dialogue options where the player needs to make a quick decision under time constraint. Unlike Alpha Protocl where you get an immediate pay-off from the dialogue choice, it being a song in Stray Gods muddied the choice and consequence for me (kinda like what I’ve seen of Fallout 4’s simplified dialogue options where players don’t always know what they’re picking).
“Musical”: Even after finishing the game, the only song that was memorable to me is the very first song in the game, Adrift (you can see all the variations here), —it may be the only where I recognize a tune? It’s ranked #8 of 9 in The Gamer’s list of their favourite songs which kinda confirms that musical taste is all subjective (I could be just used to to Disney-fied musical cartoons from watching them with the kids.) I think it’s hard enough to tell a story in games, it’s harder still when told with songs, and I’ll admit that I was struggling to follow the narrative thread the entire way.
Unfortunate Dampened Climax: The format of interactive musical meant that the emotional climax was kinda soured when the song and subtitles went out of sync during the scene where Grace finally found the subject of her quest. Unlike a dialogue tree that could be held to allow things to sync up, the song had to flow and there was really no coming back from when things go awry…
Variations of Adrift: Charming, Kickass, Clever
The following is the song from Pyre’s ending—Bound Together—I mentioned in the first Stray Gods entry. It only has the default phrasing sans player’s choices. Having it all play out as the credits roll might have been in its favour—though the game still had to dynamically splice parts of the song together.
Stray Gods explores the idea of being paralyzed by a legacy and unable to let go. In a way, I read it as Summerfall Studio’s commentary on the gaming landscape, stuck in its traditional ways. They are clearly trying to be a different studio, this is a bold idea of a game. Their next game, Malys, is described as a “unholy roguelite deckbuilder”, and I hope it brings along something equally fresh and isn’t merely jumping on the roguelite deckbuilder bandwagon.
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure (2024)
Completed | 6h 22m
Arranger’s art style is probably what first caught my eye. Sliding puzzles are something I thought I can probably something I could would wrap my head around. It being on Netflix meant a no risk way to try something I don’t know if I’d be into.
What Surprised Me:
Story & Lore: NPCs being aware of the protagonist’s ability to shift the world surprised me. The ability was incorporated into the lore of the world that slowly unfolded. I also thought the mural-esque illustrations in the background of the play space was both an effective narrative tool and clever use of space.
Sliding Good Time: I don’t typically play puzzle games (though it seems I’m almost knee-deep in them this year…) and I didn’t know you can do sliding puzzles in so many ways. Not only did it have interesting twists for all 3 boss fights, there were also optional challenges which I needed to step away and come back with fresh eye to solve. The action of sliding became quite meditative at some point, especially the repeated “square movement” to inch objects along (somehow I imagine that’s how sequences for solving a Rubik’s cube felt like but I’m probably totally off there…)
What Didn’t Work for Me:
Mobile UX Woes: One of the assists/accessibility options you can turn on places a white square on the board which pops up an option to skip the current option when stepped on. (The other shows you the direction of the current objective and I recommend just leaving that on.) With the smaller form factor and repeated touching and swiping, I might have fallen into a UX trap waiting to happen—unintentionally skipping the entire final phase of the final boss. Since there’s an entire separate menu, a “Skip Puzzle” button there would have less chance of being hit by accident.
As mentioned earlier Arranger coincidentally shares Stray Gods’ theme of change versus stagnation/being static. I initially thought they also shared the dubious honour of having “roleplaying” as a subtitle when there isn’t much roleplaying until I noticed Arranger’s says “role-puzzling”. A clever name considering much of the game is the protagonist trying to figure out their purpose.
An easy recommendation for fans of puzzle games if they already have a Netflix subscription. It being relatively short doesn’t hurt.
Off-list
Dredge (2023)
Completed | 16h 55m
I ended up stumbling upon the alternate/good(?) ending. Once I got that quest, I basically made a beeline for the ending.
What Worked for Me:
Grid Effect: The whole grid-based spatial inventory was the main draw for me. Having it tightly integrated to upgrades and loadout was just the special cherry on top.
Daily Catch: I really ended up enjoying where the fishing minigame landed with its variety and simplicity. They brought it up during the documentary that it was also for accessibility where fishes will eventually be reeled in if you left the minigame running.
Smooth Sailing: The general sailing around the world was enjoyable, seeing the world and the difference in atmosphere between day and night. Having worked on (and played) a few nautical games, it’s easy to get the balance wrong and end up having boring sailing segment or throwing in hazards mechanics just to break up the rhythm.
What Didn’t Work for Me:
Lost at Sea: By the time I got to the last biome, I felt like I had enough of the game. It didn’t help that it was very dark and sooty (being a volcano biome you know?), with poor visibility, making it really hard to navigate.
There are no happy endings in the dark world of Dredge
Check out noclip’s documentary on Dredge:
Also check out Spilled if you want another boat game, albeit swapping cosmic horror for an ecological message:
Balatro (2024)
Retired | 2h 34m
Many people warned me not to pick up the multi-award nominated and winning indie surprise of last year: Balatro—having lost plenty of hours to it.
I’ve played its demo during one of the Steam Next Fests and really enjoyed it (I believe it was the standout game during that Next Fest as well). When it arrived as part of PS+ monthly essentials for May, I decided not to heed those advice. Thankfully(?), it didn’t stick around for long.
What Worked for Me:
Trance-like Flow: I can totally see why Balatro is so sticky. There is just a constant chill vibe that makes it so easy to just keep going, especially for people who enjoy watching numbers go up. Almost the perfect multitask game.
What Didn’t Work for Me:
All cards, no lore: Being a pure mechanical game (even Slay the Spire had some theming and a thin narrative), it just isn’t super compelling to me.
Arco (2024)
Ongoing | 5h 25m
So I finally got around to playing a game (well, I’m not counting the Vampire Survivors DLCs) from the batch I got to treat myself back in February. Arco impressed me with its demo and I’m sure it was recommended by media that I follow, or maybe it just caught my eye (I mean, just look at it!).
Arco describes itself as “A Mesoamerican fantasy RPG that blends turn-based and real-time combat.” which basically plays out as plan-and-simultaneous-execute in gameplay (think Frozen Synapse).
What Clicked for Me:
Aesthetics: The lo-fi colourful pixel art style is very distinct—not just blocking but actually done at a high resolution that if resized (like below), one might not realize it’s pixel art. There was also a beautiful musical piece at the end of the last chapter I played.
Improved take on the Niche: I wanted to love Frozen Synapse and more recently Phantom Brigade, the idea of simultaneously executing actions simply tickled part of my brain. Arco’s simplified commands (compared to Phantom Bridge) and feedback on enemy intents (missing in Frozen Synapse, IIRC) really worked (like Into the Breach). Having a much stronger narrative on top of it just completes the overall package.
Choice & Consequence: The other way into my gamer heart is forcing me to make decisions and watching them play out. Not only does Arco have story decisions and a skill-tree, the combination of challenging gameplay and scarce resource has on occasions forced me to make hard decisions—that’s a good thing because when you can do everything, you essentially have no choices, or just given busywork.
What Didn’t Work for Me (until I was allowed to fix it):
Accessibly Challenging: One of the twists on the already challenging gameplay is the presence of ghosts—they continue to attack during the planning phase when everything else is paused. I did not enjoy the forced urgency; the lack of the ability to simply pause the game during combat basically made it almost unplayable for me. Thankfully, one of the accessibility options is to simply remove the ghosts.
So far, Arco really showed why it’s reviewed at Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam, at time of writing. I put it down to wrap up some other games (*cough*New Vegas*cough*) but will return to wrap the estimated remaining half of the game.
Postscript
I swapped something out in the To-Play list (*gasp*) which I’ll touch on next month since this has run on long enough…
AI Watch
Read - Early adopter of replacing humans with AI is backpedaling
Watch (1:28) - Same company’s business model is also unsustainable
Read - So… AI can make people redundant including the person in charge of the AI
Watch (10:29) - Explainer on why we can’t explain how AI works. Reading I, Robot with the “AI revolutionary” happening is a kinda surreal experience.
Watch (15:57) - Make sure you click the right ChatGPT when you using ChatGPT, especially if you’re going to pay for it.
I straight out copied GMTK’s formatting for the above, go check it out if you enjoy more serious takes on games:
New Bad Lip Reading Star Wars Song
Not as good as SEAGULLS! (Stop It Now) but who knows, it might catch on