Every Friday, A. V. ‘s club staff members start the weekend by getting a glimpse into the world of gaming and diving into the concepts of the hobby we love with a little game theory. games. We’ll talk in the area above and invite you to respond in the comments, telling us what you’re betting on this weekend and what theories you have moving forward.
January traditionally isn’t the most robust time for game releases. Nobody wants to get their big title in stores after the Christmas sales rush, and even indie games are going to be in recovery from the glut of sales that most digital storefronts end the year on. Which means we tend to start the year in a bit of a dead zone, looking forward to anticipated releases later in the year—our own list of which will be arriving next week, by the by—or, if we’re, say, the person in charge of organizing a pop culture web site’s gaming coverage for the coming months, looking at February with a slowly dawning sense of horror. (Shout-out to Ubisoft for delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows this week; you might have done it for the shareholders, but those of us trying to fit Civilization VII and Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii and Avowed and Monster Hunter Wilds into their schedules appreciate it, too.)
Of course, you can’t play “wait for releases due in the year,” so January was usually a late month for me. That means enjoying those genres that consume tons of time or attention, delving into the roles. -esoteric game and puzzle that makes the nerd center of my inner child beat faster. Last week I wasted almost an entire day, for example, on Epigraph, a game I discovered because I longed for the kind of “pass through due to a non-existent “The Thrill of Language” of titles like Heaven’s Vault or the more esoteric Tunic games, and I went to the Steam store to find out more. What I discovered was a minimalist delight that made me tear my hair out, but also triggered all those delicious epiphanic neurons that the best puzzle games are about. compatible.
The concept of Epigraph, created and published through a designer named Matthew Brown, who has published several games like this, is very undeniable: you are presented with seven artifacts, all with inscriptions in an unknown language. A letter provides a little context, some advice on where to start, and an example word or two. . . and that’s it. The next few hours will be spent going back and forth between multiple virtual blocks of stone, seeking to lay out the regulations of grammar, word construction, and even questions as undeniable as “What is an individual symbol?” in an invented language, even supposed? make up? I wouldn’t say I enjoyed every single moment I spent with the game; my frustration threshold was seriously lowered through *vague gestures towards each and every facet of elegant living*; However, little by little I discovered the meaning and logic. hidden beneath the hard-to-understand symbols. It was an exclusive experience. I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed all my time with Epigraph, but it’s the kind of game I wish we had more of.
On a slightly less esoteric note, I also finally put the final nail in the coffin of my playthrough of Dragon Age: The Veilguard—not because I completed it, but because I started a new playthrough of Owlcat Games’ very good 2023 RPG Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader, and the idea of going back to Veilguard is now officially too depressing to contemplate. (True story: I loaded that game back up a few days ago, walked 20 feet, picked up a piece of “5 gold pieces” garbage on the ground, and immediately gave into the impulse to turn it right back off.) Rogue Trader isn’t perfect—although I like it more than Owlcat’s previous two RPGs, mostly because I find its combat more interesting in a strategic sense—but the feeling of being in a universe with a defined point of view was so overwhelming that it blasted any lingering urge to return to Veilguard‘s beige fantasy heroism out of my head for good.
Rogue Trader (and its most recent DLC, Void Shadows, which I installed for this remake) is so deeply committed to presenting a vision of life in the Warhammer universe, with all its gothic silliness, horror framework, and rampant fanaticism. , which can rarely reach the brink of suffocation. But the force fantasy of presenting a rigidly hierarchical, explicitly fascist society, and then hitting the player at the top, in a position where they are allowed to break almost any restriction with near impunity, is incredibly compelling. (On the surface, the ability to start almost one and both verbal exchanges by having my private seneschal announce my beauty and end it by ordering whoever is speaking as a filthy heretic to be executed is very addictive. ) 3 games across Owlcat – Rogue Trader, Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath Of The Righteous – are content with placing players in positions of primary strength in their fictional worlds, but Rogue Trader feels like it goes even further, simply by the dogmatic nature of Warhammer’s Imperium Of Man. Veilguard does something similar, pushing you into leadership positions or having characters brag about how awesome you are. But its true respect for player decisions is so superficial that it feels like an unwanted pat on the head from the designer. Whereas, when Rogue Trader invites me, to give a first example, to make the decision to blow up an entire planet rather than letting it fall into the onerous clutches of Chaos, I feel like my possible options really matter. Void Shadows, which adds a fun new (very gothic) companion, only adds to the nauseating laughter by adding more content to the flagship on which my Rogue Trader’s Dynasty is based, emphasizing how strange and suffering fuels the life of privilege and opulence of my character . It gives both of those great possible options a little extra weight.
So yes: the January dead zone can be painful from a media policy point of view. But as a way to look for those hidden gems that will get me excited about gaming in 2025? Pretty difficult to beat.
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