Not too much to say. I managed to launch Episode Three of The DOOM Chronicles, and finally finish up Part Two of The Will To Live.
Unfortunately, February kind of filled up with real-life stuff. Nothing serious, more tedious, annoying stuff. Now, I can say that I will get out two more chapters of DOOM, and that will wrap up Part One. I’ll then take a break to go over what I have for the next part, as it will be longer and more involved. I’ll also see if I can try and get a few more chapters for The Will To Live out, since I’ve actually been feeling the urge to write that one more.
That’s about it. Traditionally speaking, winter is shit for me, with January and February being the worst.
In unrelated news, I managed to get my hands on two new games. One of them was a blockbuster, big budget, AAA game based on a massive IP, one of the biggest ever, and was made by a prestigious studio. The other clearly had a much, much more limited budget, would have been a decent game during 2008 or so, and is based on an IP that hasn’t been taken seriously since the ‘90s.
Can you guess which one I enjoyed more?
The second one.
The first was Fallen Order, which I was really looking forward to. It was supposed to be the Star Wars game that redeemed EA. Or, at the very least, was supposed to be an apology (even if it was a fake one, EA is incapable of being sincere about anything beyond their devotion to money). While the story and the world and the characters are actually pretty cool, there are some serious shortcomings. Besides the fact that although the game is CLEARLY modeled after games like KotOR and Mass Effect, there’s no romance subplots and you only recruit a SINGLE person, and that’s not until near the end of the game, which seems fucking ridiculous to me. But what’s honestly killing it for me is the combat. It’s shit. Now, I will fully admit that I’m also not great at this weird, hybrid, highly timing-sensitive combat, however, there are obvious delays between button presses and character actions, and overall the game severely lacks polish in a number of ways. Which is just beyond frustrating. Like, how do you fuck this up after inciting one of the biggest gaming controversies of the decade? You’d think EA would’ve allowed Respawn to take all the time they needed. Plus, the respawning enemies, just…fuck. That’s irritating. Everyone keeps saying “It’s like Dark Souls! It’s like Dark Souls!” The thing is, I don’t fucking care. I never played Dark Souls because that’s not my type of game. I wanted to play Fallen Order because it was touted as an action-RPG, not a fucking Dark Souls rip in Star Wars.
Anyway. The second game, Terminator: Resistance. Despite the fact that they clearly had a limited budget, and that it feels like a game that’s about a decade too late, I love it! It’s fucking awesome. I bought it brand new and I’m pretty happy about it so far. There’s exploration and crafting and a bit romance and it sticks pretty close to the Future War aesthetic and narrative as depicted in the original two Terminator films, which is awesome. I’m closing to beating it right now and I honestly hope they come out with some DLC. It’s definitely given me a lot of ideas for my own Terminator fan fiction. (Whenever I get around to that one.)
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got to say. See you in March.