The Curious Case of Kratos

God of War is one of Playstation’s most well-known franchises. The first God of War game came out on the Playstation 2 back in 2005 – I was an excited college student who took a bus all the way to the nearest game store of my small college town just to pick it up. I’m a sucker for mythology and a game themed around Greek mythology was right up my alley. It ended up being absurdly popular – spawning two more direct sequels and several prequels and spinoffs. The next game in the series comes out this Friday for the Playstation 4 and it’s been getting rave reviews and is one of the highest reviewed games on the platform and of this generation of games.

What makes this particular game interesting, though, is that it’s completely throwing away the formula from the previous games. Kratos, the main character, is well known through gaming circles as basically being the villain protagonist of the God of War series. He’s murderous, cold-hearted, consumed by revenge, and doesn’t give a crap about anything other than his stated goal of killing the gods. The games themselves are mature content to the Nth degree – you perform bloody finishing moves on all the creatures you fight, you sacrifice innocents to progress, and when you face the gods Kratos despises in combat you better believe they are brutally murdered in horrific fashion. And most of the God of War games have sex mini-games, too, just to tick all the boxes.

But the new God of War is taking things in a different direction and it’s brought up some interesting questions regarding moral philosophy and the idea of redemptive behavior.

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Fortnite Fervor

After dancing around it for a good while, on Monday night for the first time I played Fortnite’s battle royale mode. I’ve never played PUBG or any of the other battle royale mods of other PC games, so it was my very first experience with the genre. And I have to say, due to me staying up way later than I should have after playing a good three hours of continuous games – I think I can see the appeal of Fortnite. (And then I played for a few more hours yesterday just for good measure.)

The thing that struck me almost immediately was just how easily I got into it. It’s one of those games that is very friendly to new players – even if you suck at it. I didn’t win a match (and honestly didn’t even come close despite having a few top 10 finishes) but I still had a lot of fun playing the matches. Unlike games like Overwatch where I get frustrated with multiple losses in a row, every time I died early I was easily able to shake it off and immediately requeue without any negative feelings or frustration.

So what is it about Fortnite (and the battle royale genre as a whole) that is so attractive and user-friendly?

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Overwatch League Has a Maturity Problem

We’re now officially past the halfway point of the first season of Overwatch League. Clear leaders have emerged (the New York Excelsior who have the best record in the league by far), there’s underdogs (the Shanghai Dragons who have yet to win a match) there’s general favorites (the Houston Outlaws, much to my chagrin) and there’s the teams with drama that make the non-game days exciting (both the Dallas Fuel and Los Angeles Valiant). Blizzard has really been pushing their premier eSports league and while the OWL is definitely suffering growing pains, it’s slowly but surely been on a decent course to a more mainstream popularity.

Unfortunately, this weekend a huge accusation and bombshell dropped. Namely DreamKazper, one of the star players of the Boston Uprising, has been accused of knowingly sending message of a sexual nature to at least one underage fan – but possibly multiple girls.

Action has already been taken by his team – the Uprising has terminated his contract already (in under 24 hours). It seems like other members of the Overwatch League and OW pro scene have been instructed to keep quiet about anything else as the matter is investigated by actual police and what-not – this is thanks to a now-deleted tweet by one of the OWL broadcasters who said as much, but now that it’s deleted even just acknowledging that may have been deemed too much sharing.

But DreamKazper’s contract termination and (assumed) expulsion from the Overwatch League brings up a bigger question about the maturity of the Overwatch League and whether it’s really ready for the big time – both in its players and how the general league functions.

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Spider-Man Spider-Man Spider-Man

So a lot of times on here I talk about current issues in gaming or try to write a thinkpiece on something relevant that’s happened within the last week or so. Today I’m going to take a slight deviation from that norm and instead use my writing time to do things a little bit differently. Instead of a long-form piece on a recent event or game release, I’m going to geek out for a bit over something I’m really, really excited for.

Spider-Man is coming to the PS4 on September 7th this year.

And holy bananaballs it looks amazing – no pun intended – okay, pun kinda intended.

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I Can’t Play Far Cry 5

Far Cry 5 released on Tuesday, the most recent AAA game to get media and gamer attention. (If you’re unaware, AAA is used to refer to big-name publishers who put millions of dollars into their games and run large companies. Examples include Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, and so on.) Far Cry 5 is an Ubisoft joint and premiered to around 260,000 viewers watching it on Twitch on its first night. Sales numbers aren’t available yet but it seems to be pretty popular as a lot of streamers were booting it up – even streamers that normally play other games exclusively. Fan and critic response has been pretty positive on it so it looks like it’s going to be a generally well received game.

There’s just one problem.

I can’t make myself play Far Cry 5.

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Review: Celeste

Celeste is an interesting game that I’ve been both hot and cold on. It released on January 25, a little less than a month ago, on pretty much every current platform – PS4, Switch, XBox One, PC, etc. It’s a single-player platformer from the maker of Towerfall: Ascension, a very fun multiplayer game that my friends and I enjoyed. I even made a few videos of it for my YouTube channel a while ago. As Towerfall was only multiplayer, it seems fitting that the creator designed an only single-player game using similar platforming mechanics.

The object of Celeste is simple: you are a young girl named Madeline who is climbing the mountain Celeste for…some reason. Through sheer will and determination (along with the ability to dash-jump) you help her navigate the treacherous pitfalls of Celeste. You meet a few interesting characters along the way, but the story is a very light backdrop for the real meat of the game – precision platforming fun.

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Endgame Discontent

Endgame content (also sometimes referred to as postgame content) has always been a thing in video games. What it refers to is the idea that you’ve been the main story of the game, but now that that’s over there’s more stuff for you to do if you want to keep exploring the game’s world. These are different from sidequests that are just super hard but still available to you before you beat the game: this is specifically content you’re only given access to after you’ve completed the main storyline. One of the more well-known types of endgame content include “raids” that were popularized by World of Warcraft – very hard bosses that you have access to once you’ve completed the game and have hit a high (or max) level with your character. These raid bosses can take anywhere from 3-4 hours to complete and teamwork from many different players. But they aren’t required for the main game – they’re only for people who really love World of Warcraft and want to participate in that kind of epic strategical play.

This content is a way to keep players engaged and challenged in your game after they’ve supposedly done everything they actually need to. Super Mario Odyssey, for example, only requires a certain amount of moons to beat the game – but once you have beaten it a whole bunch more moons are unlocked across all the worlds along with a completely new world. These moons are more challenging to get but are completely unnecessary if you’ve already had your fill with the game. It’s a good way for developers to add more content for people who really enjoy the game but not to overwhelm other people who play the game more casually.

The problem is that as developers are extending game length, the idea of “content” starts selling at a premium. And the emerging idea of Games As A Service (which I talked about in my very first blog post on here) had made it so developers don’t want their games to end at all. So endgame content stops being extra and starts becoming a part of the actual game which becomes a detriment to the game (and overall game design) itself.

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The New At Games Experience

Recently with my Nintendo Switch I’ve been showing a few games here and there to my girlfriend and teaching her how to play them. Now I’ve played video games since I was about six years old, while my girlfriend has not played many video games at all. Outside of a few tries at games here and there and some mobile games she plays on her phone, her experiences with video games were non existent. She enjoys playing games like the Jackbox Games (Drawful, Quiplash, etc.) and other party-style games but hadn’t ever played anything else on consoles.

I figured I would get a few different kinds of games that might be of interest to her and start slow to try and find some things that she liked and go from there. The games I’ve downloaded so far are Stardew Valley, Snake Pass, and The Bridge from the Nintendo Switch e-shop. Stardew Valley is a Harvest Moon-esque farming simulator, Snake Pass is a 3D physics-based puzzle game where you control a snake and he collects…things, and The Bridge is a 2D physics-based puzzle game where you have to guide a little dude through some weird, MC Escher-esque levels. And after showing her each of these games, I started to observe something I hadn’t really thought about before.

Video games are not designed for people who have never played video games before.

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Souls Hard or Hardly Souls?

I took the last week off because I unexpectedly needed a bit of a break from writing, but I’m back for a new entry! Today I’d like to talk about a game series that’s near and dear to my heart: the Souls series. The main series is, of course, the Dark Souls series – but there is also Demon’s Souls and Bloodborne, as well as games that have similar styles like Nioh and The Surge. Elements of the Souls series have popped up in all sorts of other genres due to its immense popularity and it’s been one of the more influential modern series in terms of game design.

It’s also unfortunately gotten a bit of a reputation due to a certain subset of its fans. The Souls games are often heralded as a series for “true gamers” and the internet meme of “git gud” is often closely associated with it because the so-called “difficulty” of the Souls games is what lots of people like to talk about as if that’s what draws people to the series. Souls games are almost a trial by fire in the gaming world and lots of arguments have been had over whether the series needs an easy mode or a better way to get new people into the game. And since I’m a huge fan of the series, I have opinions on the subject. So here’s what I think:

The Souls games aren’t hard.

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Top 100 Games of All-Time: #70-61

And here we are again! I return with the next ten items on my top 100 games list. I’m starting to gush more so the entries are getting a little longer. But I know you’re not here to listen to me babble. When I looked back at my other articles, I realized that in every post for my top 100 list, I’ve said “without further ado” to lead into the next ten. So why break from tradition?

Without further ado, here’s #70-61!

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