Category: Video Game First Impressions

Falling Frontier: Coming soon

I randomly came across the newest gameplay demo (Duel Over Saturn- video below) and based on that video alone had to find out everything I could about this game that seems to hold an incredible amount of promise.

This 6 minute video checked so many boxes that it has become one of my most hotly anticipated upcoming games (especially now that Zelda Tears of the Kingdom released). The visuals are breathtaking and the audio seems to be extremely well thought out and immersive with radio chatter, orders and comms between the sounds of gunfire, thrusters and missiles.

Beyond the incredible graphics, presentation and sound though is what appears to be one of my oddly favorite things – a naval combat game, centered around massive vessels rather than small fighter craft and carriers. Don’t ask me why… I can’t explain it… it’s been something that I’ve found just plain awesome as far back as the tabletop Battlefleet Gothic game that did not translate as I’d hoped into an RTS game in Battlefleet Gothic Armada. The feel of the ships in the Warhammer 40,000 universe were hulking, 1-5km long behemoths that have served the Imperium for centuries, if not millennia; crewed by thousands upon thousands of people. This feel was completely lost in the speed and scale of the game. The original BFG was a call back to historical naval warfare in the Age of Sail, trading broadsides and duking it out. There’s none of that in BFG: Armada.

However, Falling Frontier looks to be what BFG should have been. The game aims to make every ship feel like a massive, expensive asset and not an expendable, easy to replace unit. The goal is to make ships feel rare and precious, simply more than a pawn that you can send into battle without fear of losing. Which leads to the next major point, the additional layer of crews and officers for each ship.

From what’s been seen, it seems like each ship will have at least its own set of officers. How that will affect the running of the ship remains to be seen but that facet is promising and really lends itself to the power of keeping the game smaller in scale as far as fleet size goes. The trailer’s 2 v 1 battle over Saturn is the sort of combat that is intense and seems like it would be pivotal to lose one or especially two of these ships in a small-sized fleet.

The core of the game seems to feature an incredible map of the solar system (or we are told a randomly generated one) so battles can take place throughout. There is going to be a heavy focus on logistics and a few other showcases have shown off mining and hauling a bit, though I don’t think we’ve seen how it will look on a macroscale. It will certainly be interesting creating small flotillas and trying to defend your assets as best as possible with the limited resources at your disposal. It doesn’t seem like it’s a game where you’ll be able to get a fleet of dozens of ships all together and steamroll and from that perspective it looks fantastic.

The ship customization seems to be there with customizing turret and weapon upgrades along with subsystem and component swaps. Not much is known here but it was stressed that fleet composition creating flotillas of ships with loadouts that work well together will be critical to success in battle.

The combat itself looks pretty slow and methodical, and the ships turn so slow. The ships pound at each other with flurries of missiles and broadsides from massive turrets like it is a return to age of sail naval combat… and it’s AWESOME! As I had mentioned before, the breakneck speed of Battlefleet Gothic was a nightmare of who can push ability buttons faster, but this looks like what it should have been. The ships slug it out in what looks like almost slow motion, as I’d envision combat to be in the future. It also looks like radar and stealth will play an important role (silent running was an option for the ships), in addition to abandoning ship and life pods and more.

Last, it seems that the game is getting full mod support from the start- hopefully at the very least seeing new ship sets, to other more advanced gameplay changes and additions. I can’t imagine how great it will be when some experienced modders get ahold of it. Maybe… just maybe we’ll see a conversion mod to make Battlefleet Gothic the way it was intended.

I watched a bit of older videos that the developer/publisher released, one showing some campaign footage, or longer gameplay. It still remains to be seen how a game / match plays out, with resources and creating bases in a traditional RTS-sense. Or a full campaign for that matter. Since multiplayer is currently off the table and I’m doubting it will ever be something we see for it, I’m hoping there is a lot of replayability, especially in a sort of career-type mode. It would be very interesting to see a mode where you’re more of a flotilla commander, taking charge of just a couple ships and being given orders to patrol sectors and deal with various events, fights, etc. This would obviously be a departure from the RTS that it is but doesn’t mean it can’t exist in the same game.

I’ll be keeping a very close eye on this one.

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40k Boltgun: First Impressions

I’ve had my eye on Boltgun ever since we were teased with dusting off an old floppy disk found in the attic. It is fantastic to see games call back to the days of old with a little bit of new flair to it. The retro graphics, level design and gameplay are packed into an incredibly fun and inexpensive package that the game industry needs a lot more of.

Some might call it an eyesore but I call it beautiful- the retro graphics and 2D sprites offer a glimpse for newer gamers to look through a portal (don’t look too closely, or else the inquisitor will want a word) into the games that spawned the FPS genre.

The game is just mindless fun for those that want to just run and gun, maybe relax and shoot some heretics. The mechanics of Boltgun offer fast-paced gameplay with many ways of serving out justice to the Emperor’s foes.

The guns and melee combat feel great, a fine-tuned balance between a boomer shooter and modern FPS. The movement and fluidity is fantastic and really lends to the feeling that you are truly a god-like warrior.

I think my biggest concern here is replayability / staying power. A major concern with most 40k games is their modability and I am huge on mods and how they positively affect the lifespan and game itself. 40k games in general are notoriously horrible to mod, for the most part this is intentional because of the tight control on the IP.

I have not gotten a major way through the relatively short (10-ish hours) campaign, but I fear after that, there might not be much reason to continue playing. I am optimistic we’ll see some interesting DLCs, hopefully which address this to some extent, but customization at the hands of the playerbase is second to none.

Imagine a horde-type mode (a la Gears of War) in Boltgun, facing endless waves of enemies with increasing difficulty and fun twists (like skulls in Firefight). Or with modders unleashed, what could be dreamed up? New campaigns? A dynamic campaign? New enemies? New friendlies?

I think they’ve got something here in Boltgun, and I hesitate to say its simply “a great foundation” because it is more than just that. But there’s a lot more that can be done with this and hopefully this is just the start.

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Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom First Impressions

I’ve spent about 20-30 hours (no thanks in part to the number of sicknesses going around our household) on Tears of the Kingdom and barely sunk my teeth into the story itself. For the most part I have kept the story to a minimum, doing some of the first few steps of each of the main storylines but not venturing too deep, instead opting to explore and take in the new. Trying to see everything that is new and compare, while also getting a feel for all the new gameplay elements and things to do.

A follow up to the legendary Breath of the Wild has been a long time coming, even disregarding the fact that the Zelda series is usually not one to dwell on games and instead moves on to another new and unique title. In knockout after knockout of successful Zelda games, does Tears break this tradition?

The answer is most assuredly: no. It somehow surpasses expectations, even if all you’ve heard is that it is a Breath of the Wild sequel and it takes place in essentially the same place, not long after the events of the first game. But to stop with such a simple overview of the game is a complete injustice.

At the start of the game, the world is literally upended, throwing many chunks of land to the sky and creating chasms across Hyrule. These floating islands and archipelagos form one of the major changes to Hyrule itself, with the sky above packed with these interesting islands that contain puzzles and challenges throughout. The three dimensionality of the map goes up several notches with how high some of these islands reach, with some being true challenges that I have yet to uncover. I did manage to make it up to one that was incredibly high and my jaw dropped when Link bounded across the landscape as if he was hopping across the moon, because apparently it was lower gravity. It was so neat.

The added three-dimensionality doesn’t end there though, the map is littered with new caves and recesses to explore. And most of all, plunging down the chasms scattered across Hyrule brings you down to the depths where a huge cavern network exists – a completely new and different land to explore that is dark and mysterious.

The game throws you into a familiar tutorial area similar to the Great Plateau and forces you to complete several shrines to gain more abilities. It is in a lot of ways a mirror image to Breath of the Wild’s intro. In some ways I found it frustrating because I was very eager to move on to the part where I could go anywhere and do anything. Yet Tears’ intro is yet again a perfect example of how to do an intro to a game.

At a gameplay level, Tears features many new gameplay elements while ditching some of the more cumbersome ones for streamlined options. Addressing a common complaint of its predecessor, Tears also features a lot of new enemies, some of which I fear I’m nowhere near capable of taking down yet, and that’s okay. UI and controls in general have been greatly improved, making it far easier to cook, switch weapons or call on Link’s new abilities.

Link’s new abilities are very fun and offer some incredibly interesting challenges with the puzzles you face. One thing I found quite clever is that there’s one guy in dozens of locations across Hyrule that is holding up a sign (of varying shapes and sizes) and you have to create something using Link’s abilities with the wood nearby to brace the sign so he can let go and secure it.

Some of the things, story-wise that have left me a little confused that haven’t been answered (at least not yet) are regarding the legendary beasts. Where did they and their champions go? Where did all the Sheikah towers and shrines disappear to? Just some things that aren’t really stated, at least explicitly.

I look forward to a full review as I continue to plunge into the game, mixing it as much as I dare with my current workload. It’s incredibly hard to put down and harder still to decide on what I’d like to do… before I get distracted on my way with something else.

My biggest challenge thus far has been avoiding spoilers. For the most part it has been easy but I’ve had a tough time even forcing myself to avoid looking for help on one thing or another, or where to find something specific. For the most part I’ve managed it but this is a lesson to you all, the game is best played with a lot of mystery and you’ll not regret immersing yourself into the game.

One small detail that just shows the level of detail put into this that you don’t really see in modern AAA titles anymore: At the beginning, when Link was not wearing any pants / boots I tried to open a chest. If you circle around the chest to the side or back, Link will kick the chest open instead of opening it with his hand. When he kicks it, he recoils in pain because he’s shoeless. Did they have to animate that? Not at all, especially considering, how often does he kick open a chest without boots? How often would a player be running around the game without that?

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