Weekly Roundup 04/22/2012

I played some more Xenoblade Chronicles last week, but I ultimately had to just stop. After spending many hours grinding through yet another zone full of boring, repetitive quests and enemies, I had another, stronger moment where I wondered why I was playing this game. I’m not a fan of MMO style combat in the slightest, and that’s where the vast majority of Xenoblade’s game time is spent. And honestly, I think Xenoblade’s combat is, in a number of ways, even duller than most MMOs. It’s hard to implement interesting strategies without full party control, none of your moves are that exciting on their own, and the pace of combat is incredibly slow... almost as slow as the character progression, both of which are equally unfulfilling.

Yet another grind that's ultimately not worth my time.

The zones and quests are also a huge drag. Areas are big, which in some ways is kind of neat, but also makes grinding through them take forever. I have no interest in spending three or four hours in a single area fighting the same monsters over and over, only to move on to another similar, equally large zone. It’s just tiresome. All in all, I came to the realization that Xenoblade really is a single player MMO, and not in the ways I would hope. It take the mundane repetition that causes me to lose interest in MMOs, and stretches it across a 70 hour adventure that, 20 hours in, has yet to grab me with its story and/or characters. That makes the prospect of spending 50+ more hours with the game difficult to stomach. I’m not entirely sure exactly what I’ll do with Xenoblade in the long run, but for now I’m setting it aside. I have much better things I can do with my time, and there are countless better games I could be playing than this.

One last thought on Xenoblade though, which is perhaps the most frustrating part of this whole process. The reception this game has gotten has me completely baffled. Not the fact that people are enjoying it; I get that people have their tastes, and that’s all fine. But I genuinely don’t understand all the talk of Xenoblade being such a revolution. Kotaku’s review of the game sums it up rather nicely:

Fans and reviewers have slapped the game with hyperbolic labels like "the best JRPG of this generation" and "an evolution point for JRPGs," which makes me question whether any of those people actually play JRPGs.

Indeed, who are the people making these claims, and what is their JRPG background? First, Xenoblade is not even a JRPG (much less the best one of this, or any, generation); it’s a single player MMO. Secondly, it’s not an evolution of either JRPGs or MMOs. It’s all stuff that’s been done many times before, and it’s often been done better. Xenoblade is merely a game for people who want to spend 70+ hours grinding in a decent looking setting. Which is fine enough I guess, but it’s not for me at all. Granted, some of the blame is on me on this one; I should have done my research and figured out exactly what this game was before buying it. But as someone who generally likes JRPGs better than MMOs, it’s disheartening to see this game’s reputation be so misleading.

The beginnings of a deep rabbit hole.

Anyway, after setting Xenoblade aside, I both started and finished Fez during the week. Yes, that includes diving down the rabbit hole to “solve” all of its ridiculous mysteries. I put “solve” in quotes, because I did have to look a few things up. Some of these things (the word “puzzle” is too limiting) were just too abstract to the point where I genuinely don’t think I would have ever figured them out on my own, and certainly not without hours of aimless wandering through the game’s world. The meta nature of some of its logic can be pretty annoying at times, and that’s the worst part about Fez to me. Well, that and its technical problems. Bad frame rate, lockups and potentially faulty achievements are among the issues I’ve encountered, and I’m sure the game has other issues as well.

Shifting perspectives is pretty rad.

Otherwise, I really liked Fez. The early parts of the game made great use of its perspective shifting mechanic to introduce some really clever scenarios (something I really liked in Super Paper Mario, and it’s even cooler here). It’s a great combination of platforming and puzzling, and the semi open world map structure is pretty appealing to me. I had a ton of fun just navigating and exploring all the game’s areas during my first run. Then when you get into the new game+, that’s where you realize just how bonkers this game is. There’s an entire layer underneath the basic platforming and puzzle solving that goes in every single direction you wouldn’t expect. You could probably spend a lot longer than I did trying to piece together every single bit of the game’s lore, and I’ve probably spent 10-15 hours with the game already. Not too shabby for a $10 download.

I won’t dive much more into what makes Fez so weird, as seeing that stuff for yourself is a big part of what makes it so unique and interesting. If you have any interest in either a fun platformer and/or puzzle game, or if you just have a soft spot for something completely out there, I would highly recommend giving Fez a shot. I’ve never played anything quite like it, and it was certainly a worthwhile experience. Oh, I also absolutely love its art and music, which is something indie games in general have been nailing lately. Speaking of, the next game I’m looking at playing is Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP; I’ll probably start that later today or tomorrow. And that’s pretty much it for this week, until next time!

Currently playing: Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP