July 19, 2024
Hello! Welcome back to our regular column where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve played over the last few days. This week we’ve ventured into space to touch some attractive machines; we’ve enjoyed FromSoftware’s much friendlier series of games; and Bertie has been horrible to everyone in Baldur’s Gate 3.
What have you been playing?
View older editions of this column in our ‘What We’ve Played’ archive.
Bertie’s Gate 3, PC
What always amazes me about Larian’s role-playing epic – dare I call it that now – is how much extra there is. You think you’re quickly tying up a loose end, but five hours later you find yourself still working on it. You dig through a layer and discover that there are more layers underneath.
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Act 3 is an example of this. It’s the chapter where you complete the final quest, I like to think. Last night I was finishing up Shadowheart’s companion quest – I’ll be honest, I thought she was done, but no, apparently there’s more. Last night I met the leader of her holy order who felt betrayed by Shadowheart, so wanted me to hand her over as punishment. Big chance! She’s my only spellcaster. I’ve killed everyone else; I can’t give her away.
I said no, and a fight ensued, and eventually—as games go—I won. But not before the game’s ever-growing pile of choices and consequences began to unravel a little. Characters began to behave strangely. That definitive “no” I’d given at the beginning, which had kicked off the fight, didn’t seem to matter by the end of the fight. The leader came back to me and demanded that I hand over Shadowheart. It was as if we’d never spoken—maybe they’d taken too many blows to the head. Not only that, my real-life partner tells me that the same leader demanded she Give Shadowheart to her too, despite the fact that Shadowheart was dead in her game – she had pushed her off a ledge ages ago (we are a bad couple – some would say we are meant for each other).
But what do we expect from a game with so much reactivity and choice? I shudder to think of the flowchart of decisions and their branching outcomes. I bet Larian designers still have nightmares about it.
-Bertie
The Invincible, PC
Continuing my Elden Ring detox with the walking sim theme, I finished The Invincible this week, which I missed in the flood of really good video games that came out last November. Based on the novel of the same name by Stanislaw Lem (which I haven’t read, but the developers tell me isn’t a 1:1 retelling anyway), the game puts you in the spacesuit of a biologist named Yasna, who has woken up on the surface of a planet called Regis III, unsure of the whereabouts of the rest of her crew or how she got here. The only person to keep you company is the voice of your commander, Astrogator Novik, who you’ll be in constant radio contact with throughout the story as you try to figure out what happened and why.
To say that The Invincible is simply “Firewatch in space” is, I think, doing it a bit of an understatement. While the story is fairly slow-moving (slowed down by Yasna’s occasionally breathless and wobbly running speed), The Invincible has a level of tangibility that I really enjoyed. To activate the various gadgets and control panels that you’ll occasionally come across during your search for your missing crew, you have to push buttons, turn dials, and twist levers, and pull with the appropriate button presses, trigger squeezes, and thumbstick twists. It gives every action a nice analog kind of physicality, which helps ground you in this strange and unfathomable place as you continue your investigation. Sure, there are still plenty of moments where you’re effectively left standing still as you wait for the story to be poured through your lug holes before you can proceed, but for me, the plight of Yasna’s expedition (and the growing sense of mystery and conspiracy) was enough to keep me engaged.
Regis III’s intergalactic vistas are often gorgeous to behold, too, with enormous moons and satellite rocks looming large on the horizon in striking and contrasting color palettes against the sandy husks beneath your feet. There may not be a whole lot to ‘do’ in the game, per se, but at around six hours in, it certainly made for a more engaging and fascinating story to ponder than the actual book I’m currently reading (no offense, David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks , but holy heck, would you please hurry up because now I want to go read Lem’s real The Invincible to see how it compares).
–Katharina
Armored Core 6: Fire of the Rubicon, PC
After “finishing” MechWarrior 5 and its DLC earlier this month, I figured the next game on my to-do list would be the thematically similar Armored Core 6. Both games see you control a giant mechanical being – a mech, or AC as they’re called – and while they’re customizable in terms of speed and power, they couldn’t be more different in terms of feel.
MechWarrior is slow. You trudge across the battlefield in the beefy mechs you’ll need for most missions, and you trudge across the galaxy, taking odd jobs to pay your exorbitant operational costs. You either agonize over every weapon and gear upgrade, or rely on a winning combination of SRMs, AC20s, and PPCs to get you through. It’s satisfying, but it’s slow.
Armored Core 6, on the other hand, is like dancing. Missions can fly by in a minute or two. Duels between two ACs last 30 seconds of frantic machine gun fire, and throughout it all your AC is constantly sending out brightly colored bolts of thruster fire that leap off the ground and shoot into the air at the slightest provocation. Upgrades come thick and fast, and with the ability to sell gear back for the price you paid for it, there’s no reason to play it safe or hoard things. You’re constantly mixing and matching and adapting to the demands of the mission, and the notoriously unforgiving Dark Souls developer From Software gives you carte blanche to retry bosses without penalty.
It’s not a long game – I’m entering the final chapter after a leisurely 19 hours – but what’s here is real gold dust. I’m having a great time.
–Shall