Over Walking, Overwatching, and Over Predicting E3.

Gone Home.

It only took several years, and it being free on PS+, but I finally played Gone Home. Playing a game that has been talked about as much as Gone Home was, years after the fact, was...I don't want to say interesting. Gone Home very clearly means a lot to a lot of people. And, having played it, I understand why. But for me? Honestly, I thought it was a little boring.

Before I critique it, I'll mention the things I do like about it. I think the story, the writing, and the voice acting are all pretty good. It didn't really resonate with me as much as it did many others, but I enjoyed it. There was a brief moment near the end where I felt genuine emotion (mostly worry) about what had happened to the main character's sister (who is the actual focus of the game's story), and the ending was good. Originally I wasn't going to spoil it, but hey, that's what the spoiler stuff in the blog dealy are for, right? Maybe a little later on. (I added this after my first "draft" if that wasn't obvious, this blog is a mess and I apologize).

What I didn't like was how that story was presented. In Gone Home, you play as someone returning home, or rather, to the home her parents and younger sister moved to whilst she was off gallivanting around the world. She returns one night to find the place devoid of life, but full of drawers to rifle through, random notes to read. And other, mostly useless things to interact with. At least useless in the sense that they don't add anything to the story, but they do help flesh out the house and make it feel really lived in. At least until you realize how often they reuse assets, and see the same pizza box with the same grease stains in it the second time. But, given the scope of the game, and the small team that made it, I don't hold that against it. There's only so much you can do, and it's a minor thing.

From there you walk around, very slowly, trying to figure out where everyone is, what happened, etc. And that's my problem with it, it's too slow. Both literally and figuratively. I'm not at all against making people search through things to find the story stuff, but it didn't take long before it became tedious. The setting and story are, intentionally, very realistic and down to Earth. Again, nothing wrong with that, but for me, it didn't grab me quickly enough to make me actually care to want to rifle through everything the way it was intended.

By the time I got to a point where I had to go through the whole house, scouring every nook and cranny in the hopes of finding a code to unlock something, it was already too late. So, rather than actually trying to find it, and possibly giving up, I just looked up the code online. From there I managed to make it through to the end (I did look up another code for something else, but at least that time it ended up being something I could've guessed if I actually thought about it).

And, I know this is maybe a silly thing to criticize, but the walking speed is way too slow. It's okay for just moving around in a room, when I'm poking into every corner to see what I can interact with. But when it felt like I was going to have to go walking through the whole house, without really any idea of where to go? That was why I resorted to looking that up. And yeah, that's on me, that's not really a problem with the game. But I will say that for me, in the real world, I walk faster than that. Unless the protagonist of Gone Home had a peg leg or something that I missed, I don't think there's an in universe explanation for her walking so slowly.

It was okay. I get why some people really love it, but it wasn't for me. Maybe that space game the makers of Gone Home are making will be more up my alley. Assuming the character there knows how to run.

Oh, right, that one part. It actually plays into the walk speed thing a little. And SPOILERS.

So, the actual story of Gone Home is about the playable character's younger sister Sam moving with her parents to this big spooky house in a new town. And she ends up meeting and falling in love with a girl (Lonnie) she meets in school, they secretly date, etc. Eventually Lonnie is going off to basic training for the army, and naturally Sam was getting depressed and stuff.

Then I found a Satanic shrine with a pentagram? And some of the stuff made it seem like, to me at least, that she had gone up to the attic (to which I had just found the key) to kill herself. I felt genuinely worried for Sam, so I decided to race up to the attic to see. Or, race as fast as I could in this incredibly slow game. And, maybe that wasn't the vibe I was supposed to get at all, given that Sam and Lonnie ended up running off with each other, hopefully happily ever after. So maybe that was just me. But in that situation, I feel like I should have been able to run and show, you know, some level of actual semblance of character from the person you play at. There's very little of that in the game, and that took me out of the game as well.

I'm also not really sure why the Satanic shrine was there. But I missed some of the journal entries. Well, probably most of them. And I kind of want to go back with a guide and listen to them all? Maybe?

I dunno. I've made this sound a lot more negative than I should have. I think there's something to Gone Home, I just think it's buried too deep beneath a literally plodding character and too much adventure game-y hidden stuff.

Overwatch.

Here's some Reinhardt E Sports I got up to.

Like many, I found myself enamored with Overwatch after the beta ended. So much so that I ended up pre-ordering it on PSN so I could have it downloaded and ready the second the servers went live. Which ended up being about half an hour after they were supposed to, but given how things could've gone, half an hour isn't that bad. And they've been fine ever since.

I glanced over what I wrote about the beta, and I can safely say that I'm feeling a lot more positive about the game now than I did then. I enjoyed it then, but now I also feel safe in saying that Overwatch is one of the best multiplayer games that I've played in years. The best online one for sure. I've put over fifty hours into the game, and every time I play, I usually have to force myself to stop. It's a tremendous amount of fun.

The main reason it's remained that fun for me after dozens of hours is the variety of the characters. They all very differently from each other, and they're all good. I'm not good with all of them, but even when I'm not, I wish I was. Actually, the only ones that I've yet to play a match with and feel like I did at least fairly well with are Hanzo and Widowmaker. They're both sniper characters. Hanzo uses a bow, and Widowmaker has a gun that switches between a sniper rifle and an assault rifle (depending on if you're using the scope or not). I'm not really good enough at aiming, or patient enough to do well with them. But everyone else? Pretty decent, I'd say.

I've gotten especially good with Zarya. I love the interplay between her particle beam and her projected shields. By default, her weapon isn't that powerful. But she can project a temporary shield around herself, and another around a teammate. They only last a few seconds, and only absorb so much damage, but when they do, they charge up Zarya's weapon. By the time the charge gets to 100%, it gets a lot more powerful. Within reason, of course, because it's still a game that retains some semblance of balance, after all. But Zarya's a lot of fun to play, to the point where I found myself picking her a bit more often than I expected.

So I've been forcing myself to diversify who I play as. Still a good amount of Zarya, D.Va, and Junkrat, but I try to play as other characters when I can. At least until I feel like I'm not doing as well as I could be with someone else, at which point I either stick to my guns and don't change (my team often losing), or I switch to someone else, usually Zarya (and we often lose anyway). When a game has 21 characters, it feels wasteful to me to only pick a handful of them, you know? I've often felt the same way about fighting games, and the idea of picking a "main" there. Never mind the variety of characters being one of the things that helps keep the game fresh and expecting dozens of hours later.

I think the maps are really good too. Especially good at focusing the action at specific spots to keep it from just turning into people wandering around aimlessly until you find someone else. That's why I'm glad there's no plain death match in this game, or at least not in the "Quick Play" option. It will do some skirmish stuff if there aren't enough people to start a match, but in my experience, that never lasted very long.

But I wish there were more maps. Really, I wish there was more stuff in general in the game. I know more maps are coming, and more characters, but if this game wasn't the ultra polished, super fun game that it is, I'd be saying it's a rip-off at $60. There's no campaign, and while I think all the maps in the game are good, there's not a giant number of them. I'm not saying the game isn't worth $60, because I'm mostly thrilled with it, but I wish there was more.

And for a game of this scope, and with as many characters as it has, it doesn't do a great job of teaching you how to use them effectively. Every character has a screen showing what their abilities are, and very brief descriptions of those abilities. But I had to go to YouTube and watch videos to really understand how to use the characters effectively. I shouldn't have to do that. Maybe expecting a per character tutorial is a little much, but they could have and should have done more than they did. Spend that money they spent to get those CG videos on having some people at least write some more text about them, or to make tutorial videos for each character. Obviously that's still not nearly as good as a tutorial where you play as them, and that's still what the game should have, but it'd be better than what's in there. Which is almost nothing.

Yes, I know that was marketing money (more or less), and not the same thing. I understand that. I'm just making a generalization. And my point stands, the game would be better served with more tutorials.

I also wish that the "Weekly Brawl" was a daily brawl. I've yet to see a variant of that which was anything I thought was worth playing more than once or twice. I get why some like the random characters one, but at least in my experience so far, it feels like I get characters that aren't suited to what I feel like I should be doing at the time, or I die before I can actually do anything productive, and respawn as someone else. Maybe I've just been unlucky, I dunno. I'll probably give it another shot before the "week" is up. And maybe changing every day is too often, I dunno, but a full week of things like only being able to play as Hanzo and Genji, and only on that one map is lame (last week's Brawl).

We'll just have to wait and see how the game turns out as Blizzard does stuff to it. They've already been talking about adjusting some of the characters, and other things like adding the competitive mode. Not that I'll be playing that, but I hope they keep supporting the game. I mean, they better be with the way they're (probably) getting more money than they should from those loot boxes.

The last thing I want to mention are the loot boxes. I'm not a fan of the fact that they're being sold, and more specifically that there's no way to directly buy the in game currency. Paying money for random items is not something I approve of. For better or worse, it's nothing new, and it's probably not going away any time soon, so I'm not going to harp on it. I am glad that the EXP you need to level up (you get a loot box every time you level) plateaus pretty early. It stops increasing at level 20, and at a reasonable, although strange 22,000 EXP. I've been able to level a little over one level per hour of play time, so I don't think that's bad. I wish there weren't duplicates in the loot boxes, or that the amount of Overwatch Bucks (as I've come to call them) you get from duplicates was higher.

But on the other hand I got this sweet Safari Winston in one and I like getting shiny new things. It's all cosmetic stuff anyway, so it's not like I need any of that stuff to actually do better in the game. But I also needed that Arctic Zarya skin because she looks slick in it, and I need that Scavenger D.Va one and I'm literally five Overwatch Bucks short of buying a new one and...

Overwatch is rad. Rather, Overwatch the game is super rad, but some of the ways in which its monetized are a little unfortunate. But I still can't recommend the game enough if you want a good shooter to play online. It's probably the best one of those that I've ever played, and I doubt any game will top it any time soon.

Moosey's E3 2016 Predictions!

It's that time of year again! Time to get aboard the E3 Hype Train! Now, I know there's been a bunch of leaks this week, never mind stuff that was planned to be announced before the E3 actually started. But there's still plenty of time to get out some ridiculous predictions, so that's what I'm about to do. Some of these are serious, some not so much. You're all savvy readers, so I'm sure you'll be able to tell which ones are jokes and which aren't.

But before I get to them, I want to say that Nintendo has thrown a wrench into my predictions. Since they've basically said they won't be announcing anything new, that means no new F-Zero or Metroid for me to get my hopes up for despite there being zero evidence that either of those would exist anyway. Just wanted to get that out there. Now, predictions!

• Both Sony and Microsoft announce their new consoles. Both make some dumb joke about leaks in the process.

• We get the most teaser-est of teasers for Kojima's new game. It basically amounts to a name, and FMV of Kojima himself, which we initially think is a joke. Once they show actual game play, we realize that Kojima made a game starring himself.

• InFAMOUS 3 gets announced. For release next year, which really means the spring of the following year, since that happens with all of Sony's big PS4 exclusives.

• Halo 6: Finish the Fight Again is announced. This time Cortana is somehow even more naked.

• The new Zelda game looks good, but not good enough to justify that being the only playable game they have at E3. There's still no voice acting. Link has a dog instead of a fairy.

• Actual information about Mass Effect Andromeda, and a remastered version of the Mass Effect Trilogy is announced for PS4 and Xbox One to tide us over until Andromeda is released.

• Sk4te: Burnout is announced. It's a combo skating and car racing game.

• Titanfall 2 takes a cue from Gundam, and has horse mechs.

• Tom Clancy's Cocaine Valley (or whatever that Ghost Recon is called) looks good, gets a release date. Pre-Order comes with actual cocaine.

• Prey 2 abandons everything that looked cool about Prey 2, and has something culturally offensive in it. Spirit animals or something.

• To one up The New Order, the new Wolfenstein will feature Martian Nazis. Also confirms that it and Doom at set in the same universe; BJ Blazkowicz is the Doom Marine. That probably won't all be in the trailer they show, though.

• The Star Wars game Amy Hennig and Visceral have been making is officially named and shown. If it looks bad people write headlines about it saying they have bad feelings about it.

• Dead Rising 4 is announced, but is just a remake of the first one, confirming that Capcom will never make a fully new game ever again. Resident Evil "7" is just another remake of the first Resident Evil. Also announced.

• But also I saw a rumor/"leak" about Devil May Cry 5? There's no way they would actually make that, so of course I mentioned it here.

• Five more Platinum games are announced. Most of them end up being bad.

• Red Dead Revengeance is not announced, because RockStar thinks they're too good for E3.

• I'm still upset that Watch_Dogs 2 wasn't named Watch_Dogs_2.0.

• Shadow of Morder II announced. I'm still the only person that thinks that first one was only okay, not super hyped about new one.

• Agents of Mayhem is revealed to actually be Saints Row 1.

That's probably too many predictions! Oh well. We'll see how wrong I was soon enough, huh? Thanks for reading this mess! Have a good day!