If you spend any time in the MMO community, you will inevitably see discussions of how these games can be made more social, how can they can be designed to foster more player interaction. Given my famously antisocial nature, it may surprise you to know that I am entirely in favour of this. These are social games, and building bigger and better online communities can only be a good thing.

But I do take issue with a lot of the ideas that get bandied around for how to make MMOs more social. Most of them are the sort of punitive design that will drive me away, rather than make me want to reach out to other players. It’s mostly people who are already social trying to find ways to force solo players to be like them. We don’t hear from soloists what would make them want to reach out.

It’s an issue I tackle in a new article for MMO Bro, where I speculate on how to build a social MMO for the solo player. I can’t say for certain my suggestions will apply for everyone, but I know these are the steps that would help me become more social.

While I’m pontificating on MMO design, I also have an article on why themepark MMOs work. Hopefully this isn’t taken as a knock against sandboxes; while some comparisons are necessary, it wasn’t really meant to be about what genre is better. It’s just an analysis of what makes the themepark such an enduring formula.

A few weeks after I hit what we would generally think of as the level cap in Elder Scrolls Online, I have now hit what could be argued to be the true level cap, 160 Champion Points. It is only at this point that you cease hitting new tiers of equipment and can begin gearing up in earnest.

This is where all those long hours I spent leveling my crafting finally paid off. Normally at this point in an MMO, I’d be hitting up dungeons or world bosses, or perhaps grinding daily quests or even doing PvP. In ESO, I had to do none of that. Like Tony Stark in a cave full of Middle Eastern stereotypes, I simply built my own equipment from scratch.

This first entailed several hours trekking all over the length and breadth of Tamriel to find enough materials, as the final tier of gear requires ten times more ingredients than what came before it.

I thought this would be a chore going in, but I actually didn’t mind it. It seems a small price to pay to free myself from the shackles of RNGesus, and this is a genuinely nice game to ride around and explore. I actually started the journey a bit before hitting 160 CP and made it the rest of the way thanks to the XP from exploration, killing mobs that got in my way, and doing the occasional Dolmen as I happened across them.

I had planned ahead and saved a bunch of crafting surveys for every profession, so that turned what could have been weeks of grinding into something that only took about a day of pleasant wandering.

My one complaint is how vague the survey maps can be. I had one where X didn’t so much mark the spot as it covered the entire northeast quadrant of Reaper’s March. That’s less than helpful.

In the end, I wasn’t entirely able to achieve my goal of 100% self-sufficiency and had to buy some things from guild traders. Most notably glyphs, since I didn’t level enchanting. Thankfully 160 CP glyphs are fairly cheap as long as you’re willing to settle for them “only” being epic. I also needed some extra leather, as I wound up a few hundred short of my goal even after clearing out all my surveys.

Once I had everything I needed, it was finally time to craft my new set of gear. That’s not exactly an exciting story, since it mostly entailed my going to some crafting stations and clicking some buttons, but it is interesting how much thought I put into those clicks.

I did what is for me a surprising amount of research and planning before making this final set of gear. I read online about the various crafting sets before settling on the ones I wanted, and even I drew up some basic graphs to track what traits I’d unlocked on what pieces and which I wanted to use.

I was a bit disappointed by how lame most of the five-piece bonuses for crafted sets are. The only one that really stands out is the double Mundus Stone one from Craglorn, but I’m not going to have nine traits on everything anytime this year. In the end I settled on two four-piece bonuses instead.

The end result of all this work and planning is that I’m now 100% equipped with gear made by my own pixelated hands.* Every piece has been tailored to have exactly the stats, traits, and appearances I want.

*(Excluding jewelry, which can’t be crafted.)

Every piece is at least epic quality, and I also managed to make a few legendaries, most notably both my weapons. In my bow stance, my crit chance is now near 60%, which calls to mind fond memories of being a fire mage back in Wrath of the Lich King.

I’m also mostly happy with the appearances. I still miss my mid-level Argonian chest, but what I’ve got now is okay.

On the whole, I’ve found this a very satisfying experience, though I’m not entirely without complaints, of course. Getting three crafting professions fully upgraded was pushing the very upper limit of what I’m willing to tolerate in terms of grind.

This is also something of an example of rewarding time spent over skill, which is a design philosophy I’m not fond of. I’m honestly not sure I deserve to have gear this good. Maybe instead of surveys just giving you a pile of mats you should have to fight bosses who drop the mats, or maybe they should entail puzzles or mini-games of some sort.

And I’m now living in terror of the inevitable gear reset. Hopefully it’s still aways off — I don’t want to do this again anytime soon.

But there is something deeply gratifying about being able to fully craft my own gear. It’s not even the fact that I don’t have to worry about being screwed over by bad luck, or that it’s a viable gearing path for solo players, although I love both of those things. There’s just something special about building the gear yourself that’s hard to explain in rational terms. It just feels good.

Crafting is something I’ve always liked as an idea but rarely enjoyed in practice. Elder Scrolls Online is a very welcome exception to that rule.

And now I can craft gear for any future alts, too.

There is an argument I have often seen bandied about that Lord of the Rings is a “low magic” setting. It probably comes up elsewhere, but I often see it brought up in regards to Lord of the Rings Online. In particular it is at the centre of the unending controversy over the game’s rune-keeper class, which is essentially a mage.

I am a lifelong Lord of the Rings fan who has read the books and watched the movies more times than I can count, and I am completely baffled by this belief in a non-magical Lord of the Rings.

Lord of the Rings isn’t low magic. Lord of the Rings is dripping in magic.

Magic is everywhere in Middle-Earth. Before the Hobbits even make it to Bree in the Fellowship of the Ring, they encounter evil psychic trees, are saved by an immortal nature spirit, spend the night in his enchanted home, get bewitched by evil ghosts, and steal a bunch of magic blades from them. And all that is just a tangent the movies didn’t even bother to cover.

Also in the Fellowship of the Ring, there’s a scene where Gandalf basically blows up a small hill just to chase off some wolves. Saruman calls forth incredible storms to drive the Fellowship back from Caradhras. Glorfindel (or Arwen in the movie) is able to drive off the Nazgul by unleashing the inherent power of Rivendell.

The Mirror of Galadriel. The Light of Earendil. Sting. Ent-draughts. It just keeps going. The Elves were so suffused with magic that the mere touch of anything wrought by their hands caused Gollum excruciating pain. And did you think that the Lorien cloaks kept their wearers so well hidden just through clever stitching? That a few bites of lembas a day can sustain a person for weeks simply because the Elves are good bakers?

The counter to all this might be that these examples all involve very special people. Gandalf, Saruman, and the Elves are immortals with abilities far beyond that of mere humans. Magic is out of reach of the ordinary person in Middle-Earth.

Is it, though?

Aragorn is mortal, yet his mastery of healing quite clearly comes from more than a simple knowledge of herbs and medicine. The Oathbreakers were cursed to undeath by Isildur, then commanded and subsequently released by Aragorn. Most tellingly, the Mouth of Sauron, a mortal man, is said to have learned great sorcery from the Dark Lord himself. This shows magic can be taught in Lord of the Rings.

Now these are Numenoreans and therefore still a bit beyond your garden variety human. But there are other examples.

Even Samwise Gamgee, a simple Hobbit gardener, is able to make hardened Orcs flinch before him simply by shouting a few Elvish phrases. He’s able to regrow the trees of the Shire using naught but a small pouch of soil from Lorien.

Even the humblest resident of Middle-Earth is therefore capable of wielding some degree of supernatural power, and one can imagine someone with more time and inclination to study ancient lore and seek out objects of power could accomplish quite a lot. Perhaps they might not equal Gandalf in power, but still…

Consider, also, that for a time Sauron masqueraded as “the Necromancer of Mirkwood.” Necromancers had to be a relatively common thing for him to not be immediately identified as his true self.

Although we don’t see a lot of mortal magic-wielders in Lord of the Rings, it is my opinion that they certainly could have existed, and probably did in some number. To get back to LotRO, then, I see nothing wrong with the rune-keeper.

Magic is everywhere in Lord of the Rings, so where did this perception that’s it’s a low magic setting come from?

I don’t know. Fanon is a strange thing at the best of times, and this is definitely one of the weirder examples I’ve seen in my time, all the more so for how widespread the misconception has become.

The one explanation I can come up with is perhaps it has to do with the fact magic in Lord of the Rings tends to be less visually flashy than you see in other settings. Magic in Tolkien’s universe tends to be more often about influencing minds and emotions than about flinging fireballs and lightning bolts. The magic is very common and very powerful, but it is subtle, so maybe that’s how people have come to dismiss it.

I can especially see this being the case for people who are more familiar with the movies than the books. The medium of film cannot easily convey things like how the heart is seized with unnatural terror in the presence of the Nazgul, or the serenity that can be bestowed by the Elves and their works.

Even then, though, there are still plenty of more dramatic examples of magic in Lord of the Rings, so it still doesn’t make much sense.

It is a great mystery. How have people convinced themselves the story that created the high fantasy genre is not high fantasy?

Life has a funny way of surprising us sometimes.

My plan for this month was to spend a few weeks getting caught up in World of Warcraft until the release of Mass Effect: Andromeda. However, somewhere along the line, I somehow fell into playing Mirror’s Edge Catalyst as well. I’ll have full thoughts on my brief return to WoW and Mirror’s Edge sometime soon.

However, I noticed something distressing while playing Catalyst. My once mighty gaming computer was struggling with it a bit, with the in-game textures often not displaying quite right and occasional moments of lag. It hasn’t massively impacted my ability to enjoy the game, but it is a bit disappointing.

Then I saw how gorgeous the trailers for Andromeda are, and I started getting depressed that I wouldn’t be able to appreciate it in all its glory. Inquisition has the dubious distinction of being the first game my current computer couldn’t handle at max settings, and while I was still able to get it looking pretty good, Bioware’s now had a few years to push their graphics even further.

And it also occurred to me my computer has been showing its age in other ways. Nothing serious, but small hiccups and annoyances here and there that are becoming more common as game technology becomes more advanced.

So… I ordered myself a new gaming computer, which should arrive right around the time Andromeda launches.

This is sooner than I expected to get a new computer, and it’s maybe not the most financially responsible decision I’ve made in my life, but it’s not going to bankrupt me, and now I should be able to enjoy Andromeda in all its full glory.

Like most gamers, I’m counting the days until the release of Mass Effect: Andromeda (or until my new computer arrives, if that turns out to be later). In the meanwhile, I decided to make a short return to World of Warcraft to get caught up in the game before the release of patch 7.2, which should come right as I’m in the thick of Andromeda.

Ru shanna Shal’dorei:

My biggest goal with this return visit — and one I accomplished much sooner than I expected to — was to finally finish off Suramar, both the initial reputation grind and the additional storyline added in patch 7.1.

Taking a break in the middle of the storyline probably didn’t help my impression of it, though admittedly it was rather disjointed to begin with due to all the reputation grinding between story arcs. I will say that I quite like the twist with Arluin. At first I thought, “Oh, this is such a cheesy, generic twist. The seemingly heartless rogue isn’t so bad after all.”

Well, I was right about the second part, but then came the follow-up quest afterward, and I realized Blizzard was being a lot more clever than I gave them credit for. Well played, Blizz.

That leaves the post-launch storyline, Insurrection. I feel like I should have loved this story, as it seems like exactly the sort the sort of thing I’m normally into. It’s almost pure story, and it’s basically Elfapalooza 2017.

But while I don’t have any big complaints about it, I can’t say I was blown away by it, either.

One thing that I found jarring was the presence of what I’m going to call “micro-grinds” breaking up the story. Every so often the storyline would come to a screeching halt as I was sent off to do arbitrary numbers of world quests or order hall missions.

None of these tasks took very long, and by WoW standards — or really any standard — they’re hardly onerous, but they did throw off the pacing, and I just don’t understand why Blizzard included them at all. The questline was originally gated on a weekly basis, so it’s not like they extended the life of the content any. Are the WoW devs just so addicted to grind they’re now physically incapable of designing anything without it?

I think the lack of good soundtrack in Legion that I’ve touched on before also hindered Insurrection. The grand and terrible events of this arc deserved some epic musical accompaniment, but most of the time, it’s just the standard Suramar ambient soundtrack, which isn’t terribly inspiring.

And I must admit the premise of a corrupt government selling out to a foreign power and then commencing a totalitarian crackdown while fueling the flames of xenophobia is hitting a little too close to home these days.

But more than anything I think I’m just tired of Suramar. It’s a great example of the sort of thing I’ve been complaining about pretty much since I started playing WoW. Blizzard will design amazing content, and then they’ll make you hate it. Suramar is an absolute triumph of game design in so many ways, virtually unmatched in my extensive gaming experience, but after weeks upon weeks of mind-numbing grinding within its twilit streets, I’ve just had enough.

Again, none of that is to say I didn’t enjoy the story. It just didn’t blow me away, even though in theory it really should have.

Honestly I think my favourite part was the banter between Valtrois and Stellagosa. I know some people have been shipping Kor’vas Bloodthorn and Stellagosa, but now I’m wondering if Stella/Valtrois will rise as a rival ship. I’m still not sure I’m on board with Dragons dating humanoids, but those two definitely have chemistry, I’ll give you that.

Also it was nice to see the Blood Elves taking an active role in the story, and especially nice to see Liadrin out and about. I’ve always felt she had such potential, and while her role in Insurrection doesn’t entirely make up for her neglect, at least it’s something.

The Nightmare to the Nighthold:

This visit also allowed me to experience Legion’s raid content for the first time.

Somewhat like Insurrection, the Emerald Nightmare has no crippling flaws, but failed to particularly impress me, especially after so many years of hype around the concept. I did think the ending after the Rift of Aln was a nice touch.

Trial of Valor I like a bit more. It’s a nice solid wrap-up to Stormheim’s story, the fights are decent, and it drops some very pretty gear.

I kind of wish Blizzard had the courage to do more small-scale content like this. It’s not evil to reuse art assets or have small raids you can finish in an under an hour. It might be a problem if that’s all Blizzard did, but as a supplement, humbler offerings like Trial of Valor add some welcome texture to the game.

Now I’m really sad we never got that Abyssal Maw raid in Cataclysm.

But undoubtedly the crown jewel was the Nighthold raid. Now that impressed me.

I think my favourite part has to be the Star Augur fight. It’s been a long time since a raid boss in WoW really wowed me (no pun intended), but this is a hell of a fight. While it’s ostensibly an illusion, in effect you spend the fight warping through space, arriving at a succession of increasingly hostile and alien worlds. The glimpse of the Void near the end is genuinely horrifying.

Most of the other bosses are solid, too. The voice actor for Trilliax was clearly having way too much fun with the role.

Only one I didn’t really like was Botanist Tel’arn. Annoying voice-overs, unremarkable mechanics. I also don’t think that Elisande or Chronomatic Anomaly quite lived up to the potential inherent in their concepts — last time we fought a boss with powers over time it was a vastly more entertaining experience.

I am curious why Elisande couldn’t see any future where the Legion didn’t win. Are we as players so awesome we broke the space-time continuum? Did the Demons trick her somehow?

Probably the latter. She did have frickin’ Tichondrius camping out in her guest room.

The Nighthold concludes with our long-awaited confrontation with Darkness Incarnate himself. The fight might not be quite as spectacular as Star Augur, but it’s still pretty impressive, and the cinematic at the end (a cinematic for a first tier raid!) was awesome. Like a lot of Legion, it did a good job of playing to nostalgia without using it as a crutch, and it was incredibly satisfying all around.

Just a bit of a shame it spoils the end of the Light’s Heart quests, as I hadn’t finished the grind for that yet.

Again, why did this need to be a grind? I actually like chain-running heroics, so the grind hasn’t really bothered me in this case, but I don’t understand the rationale. It’s a story quest with no significant power rewards. Why does it need to be such work? Or any work at all?

Other thoughts:

Few other random things to note about my vacation to Azeroth.

I got my first legendary item of the expansion, the Pillars of the Dark Portal, despite putting no significant effort toward getting one. I honestly didn’t think I’d get ever a legendary in Legion.

It’s a bit of a weird feeling, really. My philosophy has always been that I’m opposed to exclusive content, but in favour of exclusive rewards. I’m honestly not sure someone like me deserves legendary gear. But then again I suppose the Rubicon was already crossed when they Oprahed the legendary cloaks back in Pandaria.

The whole thing was rather an underwhelming experience, which I guess illustrates how much of a non-event legendaries have become. The special power for this particular legendary is so niche as to be virtually worthless (though the raw stats still make it a huge upgrade), and there’s no fanfare, not even an achievement. It just appeared in my bags like any other random piece of loot.

Meanwhile, in my absence Blizzard went ahead with the plan to allow people to convert WoW Tokens to Battle.Net Balance, meaning you can now pay for most anything Blizzard offers with WoW gold, at least in theory. This was followed by a massive upswing in Token prices.

I had feared I wouldn’t be able to continue paying my subscription with gold, let alone buy anything else with it, but it seems I may have underestimated just how easy it is to make gold these days. Despite putting only the barest minimum of effort into farming, I’m ending the month with three Tokens, which means at the very least my sub is safe for a while, and in the long run I may earn enough of a surplus to buy other things, as well.

This is a better deal for me than you may immediately realize, because Tokens convert directly to USD. This means I’m not being screwed over by exchange rates, which are getting pretty brutal these days. And it’s not like I’m going to stop spending on Blizzard games anytime soon.

Just the other day they released a new teaser for the necromancer in Diablo III, and while I’ve been hesitant to support what appears to be a largely abandoned game, the preview of the female necro is turning that around a bit. You’re basically playing as an even more badass version of Liv Moore from iZombie; how can I say no to that?

I really wish I’d known they changed it to let you have more than one unused Token at a time before now. I could have bought two or three Tokens before my sub lapsed the last time, back when they were still relatively cheap. It’s strange I never heard about the change; I’m usually pretty good at keeping up with WoW news, even when I’m not playing. But what’s done is done, I guess.

Now I just hope that Token prices don’t get much higher.

I went into Logan with very high expectations. I’ve enjoyed every X-Men movie to date, Wolverine is one of my favourite characters from the franchise, and the buzz around this film has been very good.

So perhaps my sky-high expectations are causing me to judge Logan with an unfairly critical eye, but for the first time, I’m leaving an X-Men movie feeling more disappointment than anything.

Logan depicts a grim future where mutants are dying off. An aging, sickly Logan is working as a limo driver while caring for the decrepit Professor Xavier. Well, “caring for” is probably the wrong term. Xavier is more of a prisoner. His mind is failing, and he needs to be kept under lock and key for the safety of all, lest his telepathic powers run out of control with deadly consequences.

Into this wretched purgatory of a life comes Laura, a mutant child with powers eerily reminiscent of Logan’s own. Laura is the product of horrific corporate experiments to create mutant super-soldiers, and the nurse who raised her is desperate to see her to safety. She believes Logan is the only one who can save young Laura.

Unsurprisingly, Logan isn’t eager to take responsibility for the girl, but in the end he doesn’t have much choice, and he, Laura, and Xavier find themselves in a desperate flight from the ruthless forces pursuing her.

I knew going in this was going to be a very dark movie. That much was clear from the trailers. If you’ve ever read any of my fiction, you know I’m down with grim stories.

But in the case of Logan, it just doesn’t quite work.

You see, there is a difference between trying to be something and actually being something. You’ve probably heard it said that the harder you try to be cool, the less cool you actually are, and the same is true of most of anything.

Logan is trying very, very hard to be a powerful movie, but that’s exactly why it isn’t. It’s such an unrelentingly bleak and brutal story that it just ends up feeling bland and tasteless. You need some light to contrast the darkness, or else you’re just fumbling blind.

It works so hard to be tragic that it misses opportunities to be genuinely impactful. Xavier has degenerated so much that I no longer see anything of Professor X in him. If there had been more flashes of his old self, if I could have seen something of the character I know in him, his issues would have been heart-wrenching, but instead he’s just this incoherent, foul-mouthed old man who isn’t a shell of his old self so much as he’s a different character entirely.

I very much like the idea of superhero movies being a little more serious, a little more about character and less about spectacle. Part of the reason I’m such a fan of the X-Men movies is that they’re already doing a pretty good job of that.

But Logan has gone to the opposite extreme. It wants so desperately to prove its emotional weight and artistic prowess that loses sight of the forest for the trees and fails to actually tell an interesting story.

That’s not to say that there aren’t positives to the movie. Indeed, there are a lot of individual parts of Logan that I enjoyed quite a lot, even if they don’t fit together very well as a whole.

By far and away the best part of the film is Dafne Keen’s performance as Laura.

This kid is going places.

Despite the fact that she doesn’t speak any coherent words for roughly the first three quarters of the movie, she manages to communicate an incredible amount of personality and emotion. You can see a clear resemblance between her and Wolverine, yet she’s also clearly her own person.

And the sheer intensity of her performance is staggering. When danger comes, she morphs into this shrieking avatar of bestial fury, and yet her quieter moments are no less powerful. She’s as convincing as a vulnerable, innocent child as she is as a cold-blooded killer.

The villains of the story also put on excellent performances. They’re skin-crawling, blood-boilingly, disgustingly and utterly vile, and I mean that in the best way possible. Villains should make you hate them with every fiber of your being, and these guys accomplished that with flying colours.

But still, Logan is a movie that ends up feeling like less than the sum of its parts.

There’s one other thing that bothers me, but it’s a spoiler, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet and want to go in fresh, I’d advise leaving now. For the record, I’m giving this 6.9. You can leave now and not miss anything non-spoilery.

Everyone ready for the spoiler? Good.

I don’t like that Logan died. Now, I want to be clear that I’m not being sentimental here (see my Dark Knight Rises review for proof I’m willing to kill my darlings). This was always going to be Hugh Jackman’s last movie as Wolverine anyway, and Logan has got to be pushing his second century at this point. We all have to go sometime. I’m not upset by the death of the character.

What bothers me is it sabotages the whole theme of the movie. The core thread running through the movie is Logan’s struggle to cope with the pain and horror of his long and violent life. He’s outlived everyone he ever cared about, and he just doesn’t have the strength to go on anymore.

What a powerful moment it would have been if Logan could overcome that in the end. How meaningful it would have been for him to find the strength to continue on, to escape with Laura and finally have the peace he long ago gave up hope of ever finding.

But instead he’s just killed off. It’s not even his choice; it’s just something bad that happened. Again, they were so desperate to make this movie a tearjerker that they ignored their best chance to tell a truly powerful story and just went for the most blunt, contrived, obvious solution possible.

It’s a death with no thematic meaning. It doesn’t make any point about the character. It doesn’t have any real emotional payoff. It’s lazy.

Again, if Logan hadn’t been so hyped by both myself and the media as a whole, I might view it less harshly. It’s not that it’s a bad movie, but it could have been so much more than it is. Honestly I liked the previous Wolverine movie much, much better.

To make it official:

Overall rating: 6.9/10

As I post this, most gamers are probably either playing Mass Effect: Andromeda or counting the minutes until they can (myself included). I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say on it soon enough, but in the meanwhile, there’s another game I’d like to discuss.

I had planned to spend the month leading up to Andromeda focused on World of Warcraft, but some happenstance had me splitting my attention with another game, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst.

While looking for info on Andromeda, I discovered that Origin was offering a free trial of its subscription service, which allows you to play a number of games for no additional cost. I’d long had my eye on Catalyst but wasn’t willing to drop the dough without trying it first, so this was a great opportunity. After a couple hours of play, I knew I wanted to see more, and it also happened to be on sale for a generous discount, so I bought the full version of the game so I could playing even after the free trial ran out.

It’s an interesting game, though I do have some conflicted feelings on it.

High, just like the Runners:

Catalyst is a reboot of the Mirror’s Edge franchise. It has roughly the same general concept as the first game, but there’s no continuity between them that I’m aware of. They’re starting fresh.

Catalyst takes place in the futuristic city of Glass, a glittering metropolis whose pristine beauty conceals dark secrets. In Glass, nearly all information is digitized, and therefore vulnerable to hacking. The only way to prevent this with total certainty is to go old school and deliver letters by hand.

To this end, a strange subculture of “Runners” has developed, elite agents operating in a legal gray area, darting across the roofs of Glass to ferry packages and information.

As in the original Mirror’s Edge, the star of the game is a young Runner named Faith Connors. At the beginning of the game, Faith is released after several years spent in prison and resumes her life as a Runner. But Faith’s reckless curiosity soon finds her drawn into a dangerous conspiracy that threatens to end what little freedom exists in the shining prison that is Glass.

The gameplay is focused on high octane first person platforming as the player uses Faith’s speed and parkour skills to navigate the city, solve puzzles, and defeat her adversaries.

Long-time blog readers may know I have some history with Mirror’s Edge. I remember seeing a preview of the first game on Electric Playground many, many years ago and instantly falling in love with the concept, but when I finally got around to playing it, I simply couldn’t. I never was very good at jumping puzzles, and I became hopelessly roadblocked shortly after finishing the tutorial.

So the question with Catalyst was not so much, “Will I like it?” as it was, “Can I play it?”

The good news is that the answer is yes. I won’t profess to be particularly good at it, and there were still more than a few occasions where I screwed up and left a small crater, but that wasn’t the sum total of my experience this time, and I managed to finish the story, at least.

The funny thing is I’m hard-pressed to determine what the difference is. Catalyst offers more or less the same gameplay using more or less the same controls, and yet the difference is night and day. The first game was unplayable for me, but Catalyst just… works. I don’t know how else to describe it.

It’s a hard game to rate because it can be thrilling and frustrating in equal measure. Leaping, climbing, soaring, zip-lining, and wall-running across Glass is incredibly enjoyable — poetry in motion — when everything is going well. When things aren’t going well, it can get ugly.

The combat is the same way. Faith has access to a few basic martial arts moves, but on their own they’re woefully inadequate to deal with the heavily armed goons she finds herself up against.

To level the playing field, you need to take advantage of the same acrobatic movement that gets you around the city. Faith can literally run circles around her enemies, and the more momentum she can maintain, the stronger her offensive and defensive capabilities are.

When you get it right, this makes combat spectacularly satisfying. There is no way for me to adequately communicate in text how much fun it can be to flow like water around your enemies, to wall-run into a flying kick or leap off a zip-line and crash into a guard like a freight train.

But it’s a very finicky system. When it works, it’s brilliant, but it doesn’t always work, and then combat just turns into a flailing awkward mess.

Combat is a relatively small part of the game, though, and interestingly it is often possible or even advisable to avoid fighting altogether. You can simply outrun your enemies. Unlike a lot of video games, Mirror’s Edge is fundamentally about wits, not brute force. Enemy soldiers are more of an extension of the game’s puzzle nature than anything. The goal is not to kill them, but simply to stop them from killing you.

On a similar note, I do find it interesting that Faith as a character has no particular super-powers or exceptional abilities. She’s very fast, agile, and smart, but not inhumanly so. She’s not enhanced in any way, nor does she have elite military training or any of the other inherent advantages most video game heroes have.

I like playing super-powered characters, but Faith’s relatively ordinary nature is a refreshing change of pace.

One difference between Catalyst and its predecessor is that it is now an open world game, which is another thing that has its pros and cons.

On the one hand, I love the actual open world part. Movement is such a joy in this game that I love the option to just run around and explore the city at leisure, and there are lots of little collectibles that are just rewarding enough to make exploration feel useful, but not mandatory.

Conversely, though, Catalyst has also inherited many of the sins of the open world genre, like a preference for quantity of content over quality. The game is overflowing with side-missions, time trials, and other random activities that are for the most part just dull.

The good news is you can skip pretty much all the optional content and not miss out on anything important, so that’s what I ended up doing.

The one side activity that is a little interesting is billboard hacks. These allow you to hack into electronic billboards so that they display your Runner’s mark, a customizable sigil. Oddly, you can’t customize it in-game; you have to go to the game’s website, which is less than convenient. Still, it’s a neat idea, and it can be gratifying to see your personal sigil shining over the city for the rest of the game.

Supposedly any friends who play the game will also see your mark on billboards you’ve hacked, but since I don’t have any friends who play, that’s a non-issue for me. (Insert Forever Alone meme.)

One other thing that needs to be said about the gameplay is that Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is not at all a relaxing game. In fact its constant “go-go-go” mentality can make it quite physically and psychologically exhausting at times.

It’s a very interesting game. It will challenge your intellect and your reflexes, and it can be both fascinating and satisfying, but it’s not something I’d recommend if you’ve had a long day and need to unwind.

The story, meanwhile, is mostly enjoyable, though a bit on the basic side. I played so little of the original that it’s hard to compare the two accurately, but based on what little I saw, the original seemed to have a bit more personality.

I made my Mark purple, of course.

For the most part there’s very little to set Catalyst apart from any number of other sci-fi dystopias where corrupt corporations rule the world (a genre which seems increasingly prophetic by the day). It works, and it does get pretty exciting near the end, but it’s not especially surprising. What twists there are can easily be seen coming.

The ending is also fairly inconclusive and clearly intended to set-up a sequel, which may or may not actually happen.

I did really like the cast of characters, though. Faith is a great protagonist; she’s tough, but not to an unrealistic degree, and she still feels very human and relatable. Her recklessness and curiosity remind me of Leha a bit.

The rest of the cast isn’t quite as impressive, but they’re still pretty solid characters. For a game that isn’t particularly long or story-driven, they have a lot of depth and development, even the ones that seem one-dimensional at first. The one exception is Plastic, who is as artificial as her name would indicate.

It’s one of the more diverse casts I’ve seen in a game, too, which is always nice to see.

Graphically, I imagine this is a very good-looking game on a powerful machine, but as previously discussed, my rig was showing its age when I played it. Catalyst ran well enough, but the textures just never seemed to display quite right, and it did get a bit sluggish or laggy at times. The funny thing is that no amount of tinkering with the graphics settings seemed to affect any of these issues. At least the cinematics looked good.

One other thing that I did really like is that you actually have a body in this game. If you look down, you’ll see Faith’s feet and legs. If you grab onto a ledge, you’ll see her hands. It seems like such a small thing, but I found it made the game vastly more immersive than the standard first person game where you’re just a disembodied head.

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is a very hard game to rate. I’m coming away with more positive feelings than negative ones, but there’s no shortage of either.

Overall rating: 7/10

One other amusing thing to note: Early in the game, you’ll encounter a jukebox you can activate to play music in-game. This is hardly a radical idea at this point, but imagine my joy when the very first song to be played was by none other than Chvrches, one of my most beloved bands of all time (though ironically not the one referenced in the sub-header).

Now, I knew they’d done a song for the game, so it didn’t come as a total shock, but it was a great way to be welcomed into the game. Needless to say my progress ground to a halt as I listened to the song.

I’ll level with you: I’ve had an unusually busy month, and it’s not done yet. I would frankly rather spend what free time I have on continuing to explore Mass Effect: Andromeda than blogging, but I suppose blogging about Andromeda is the next best thing.

I’m still pretty early in the game, and I’m a long way from ready to do a full review (though you can be sure that will come at some point). Any of my current impressions of the game can and will probably change with time.

However, right now, I would say it has met or exceeded pretty much all of my expectations. Of course it also needs to be said my expectations were very carefully managed, so don’t think I’m without complaints, but they’re complaints I expected to have. Too many boring side activities, slow pacing, iffy combat. In other words, it’s a Bioware game.

Right now the thing I’m enjoying the most is the sense of discovery and wonder of the unknown that runs through the whole game. I’ve said before that Mass Effect feels like it’s become something of a spiritual successor to Star Trek, and never has that been more true than it is now.

Some other quick and dirty (and spoiler-free) thoughts based on my first few days with the game:

-I don’t like Cora or Vetra as much as I expected to. I definitely don’t dislike either of them, but I was expecting to be more impressed than I am. Cora’s a beast in combat, though. I think she’s getting almost as many kills as I am.

-On the other hand, so far I like PeeBee more than I expected to.

-In general this may be the first Bioware game where I don’t hate any of my companions, assuming Jaal turns out okay. I’m not yet blown away by any of them, but so far none of them rub me wrong way, either. Even Drack is growing on me.

-Overall, though, my favourite characters so far are all outside the squad. Suvi is awesome, and Kallo and Gil are both a lot of fun.

-I like the Tempest a lot better than the Normandy. Easier to navigate. Pretty windows.

-I actually kind of like scanning planets and systems this time. If only because the space graphics are so pretty.

-On that note, I love my new computer. I’m running the game at 100% maxed settings, and it’s smooth as butter. It looks real.

-I’m far too pleased with how my Ryder looks. Also, the game’s ability to automatically make her father look like her is amazing.

-With keybindings being as limited as they are, Throw and Pull really should have been combined into one power. It sucks to give up 66% of your slots just to be able to combo them.

-I’m glad they brought back so many guns from the original trilogy. I’ve already been reunited with my beloved Viper.

-Jump jets! Jump jets.

-Did I mention Suvi is awesome?

-I am a little worried the wealth of side missions will start to beat me down after a while. That’s what happened with Inquisition. But at least this time the places you’re exploring seem to be a bit more interesting, and so far nothing is as annoying as collecting shards.

-The Remnant are the Xel’naga. I’m not saying they remind me of the Xel’naga; I’m saying they are literally the Xel’naga.

-For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over lack of polish, I’ve encountered very few issues, and all of them minor. Some very mild animation hiccups once in a blue moon, and I keep finding references on the Tempest to squadmates I don’t have yet. I’ve already heard Jaal mentioned, and I haven’t even encountered his species yet. But that’s hardly game-breaking.

-Above all, this is a Mass Effect game, for better and for worse. For all the talk of how much has changed, this is still fundamentally pretty much the same sort of experience as the original trilogy, with all the good and all the bad that entails.

After months of speculation, Blizzard has now officially announced StarCraft: Remastered, an HD update of the original game and its expansion, Brood War. They’re going to make SC1 and BW totally free, while the Remaster will be a paid upgrade.

A remaster of a classic Blizzard game seems like the sort of thing I’d be over the moon about, but to be honest… well, as Randy Jackson would say, I’m not feelin’ it, dawg.

The trouble with updating old games is that there’s such a fine line between changing too much, and not changing enough, and where that line sits can be quite subjective. For me, this remaster isn’t changing enough.

It’s basically the original game with slightly tweaked graphics. That will undoubtedly please the purists, but to be honest I don’t really want to be dealing with clunky UI, infuriatingly brain-dead pathfinding, and graphics that may be better than the original but still look about fifteen years out of date.

Ultimately, what kills my enthusiasm more than anything is Mass Recall.

The main thing I’d be interested in when it comes to a remake is the campaign, and Mass Recall already provides all of the story content of the original with fully modernized graphics and gameplay. And it’s free. It’s giving me more while costing me nothing, whereas the official remaster is offering less for a price.

The main thing the official offering has over Mass Recall is that it includes competitive play, but I’m not much for PvP, so that doesn’t really matter to me.

I am a little intrigued by the animated interludes they’re talking about — I don’t know if that means the briefings, the cinematics, or both —  as those sound pretty cool, but I don’t think it’s worth dropping cash for.

I’m sure there are people who will enjoy this remaster, but it seems like it’s going to be a pretty small niche.

I’m not really that disappointed because the remaster I want already exists in the form of Mass Recall. I am, however, concerned about the precedent this sets for other hypothetical remasters of old Blizzard games, which don’t already exist in the form of mods (not good ones, anyway).

I’d love to see modernized versions of a lot of older Blizzard titles, but if they’re all just going to be minor graphical face-lifts and nothing else, I’m not sure I’d want to bother. Warcraft III could maybe work with nothing but mild visual tweaks, but the others would need more changes to really be worth playing in this day and age. I’m not saying I want them totally redone from scratch, but at least fix some of the more broken old school mechanics.

“Full Murphy” is a concept I came up with in a recent article, and I like the idea enough I’m kind of trying to make it a thing now. It’s when Murphy’s Law expresses itself in its purest form, when literally everything that could go wrong does, a cataclysmic confluence of awfulness. It’s a perfect shitstorm.

Suffice it to say, you should never go Full Murphy if you can avoid it.

Funcom just went Full Murphy.

Today the news has come down that The Secret World will be put in maintenance mode to make way for a new incarnation of the game called Secret World Legends. It revamps most of the game’s systems while maintaining largely the same content.

I’ve been pretty nervous about the relaunch of the game since it was first teased, but I am impressed by Funcom’s ability to vastly exceed even my most pessimistic expectations. This is bad in pretty much every way that it possibly could be.

Character wipe? Check.

No compensation for the hundreds of hours we’ve already put into the game? Check.

New business model that’s less player friendly? Check.

Requiring people to pay again for things they already bought (character slots)? Check.

Interesting and unique progression mechanics replaced with generic level grind? Check.

No new content to go with the new systems? Check.

The only way this could have been worse is if Grandmaster benefits didn’t transfer over. Thankfully, Funcom will allow lifetimers like me to keep our permanent subscription, but that’s about the only thing that gets transferred. You can reserve one character name for the new game if you want, and “some” of our cosmetics can be transferred, which sounds terribly ominous for someone who’s spent as much time collecting cosmetics as I have.

I’m pretty speechless, honestly. This is truly Full Murphy.

I have five characters in TSW. Two have completed the full storyline to date and have full ability wheels (well, Dorothy is at like 98%). I have full launch lore on one. I don’t have the words to adequately communicate my feelings on losing all that.

Yes, the old game will still exist, and I’ll be able to play it still, but it’s never going to see any new content, and I doubt it will survive for much longer. With no way to acquire new players (only people who already have accounts will have access to it) and no new content, it’s going to die pretty quickly, and once it’s no longer profitable, it will undoubtedly be closed down.

So it’s move to Legends or bust, practically speaking. And that means starting over entirely from scratch. As much as I love the world and setting, going through everything yet again is a less than appealing prospect.

In a way this is worse than if the game had simply shut down or gone into a more traditional maintenance mode. There will be new content (eventually, supposedly), but I have to repeat the entire game over again to experience it — several times if I want to keep getting the perspectives of multiple factions. I’m between a rock and a hard place.

And would it even be worth investing in Legends? I can’t imagine this is a game with a bright future ahead of it. You’re not going to attract huge crowds of people to a game that is still essentially five years old and has a reputation of having failed once before. Nor do I see a lot of veterans making the transition, as Funcom has been pretty thorough about burning their bridges there.

Honestly at this point I think I would have preferred a more traditional maintenance mode. They could have continued the IP through single-player titles. The current situation is the worst of all possible solutions.

The only positive I see in this unbelievable mess is that Legends will apparently be even more solo-friendly than TSW is. They’re not even calling it an MMO anymore. That’s good. At this point I think we can be honest that making TSW an MMO was probably the biggest mistake Funcom made (until now, at least). It was never a good fit.

It’s pure fan speculation at this point, but there’s some talk of maybe adding solo modes for dungeons. That would be nice. I enjoy the group versions, but it would be great to able to explore them solo at your own pace.

I would also love to see raids made soloable or otherwise made more accessible. They’re the one part of TSW I’ve never been able to experience.

At this point, though, I’m not sure if I’m going to play Legends or not. I’ve long said that if games can provide me with a story I care about I’ll put up with pretty much anything, but this is a bigger test of that principle than anything before. Even SW:TOR’s crumby business model and all of WoW’s mind-boggling blunders pale in comparison to this.

The Secret World is one of my all-time favourite games. I’ve spent years loving it, obsessing over it, and evangelizing it. It would take a Herculean effort to burn away all the goodwill I have for it. But right now Funcom’s answer to that seems to be, “Challenge accepted!”

Similar to Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect: Andromeda has a certain feeling of a single-player MMO to it. Given that, it’s hard not to draw comparisons between Andromeda and its multiplayer cousins.

For my latest article at MMO Bro, I take an in-depth look at how what lessons MMORPGs could take from Andromeda.

This also feels like a decent time to update on my progress in Andromeda (again, no spoilers).

So far I continue to enjoy it, though the nigh-endless side quests are beginning to grate somewhat. This is definitely Inquisition in space.

There doesn’t seem to be as much depth to the companion content this time (or I just haven’t gotten to it yet), but I am reasonably fond of them all so far. I’m waffling on PeeBee, but she has her moments, at least. Who could be considered my favourite changes from day to day, but at this very moment, I’d nominate Cora and surprisingly Drack as the frontrunners. I’m normally not keen on Krogan, but the big lug is growing on me.

Suvi and Kallo are still my favourite characters overall, though.

I also quite like how much variety there is in the gun selection. If you haven’t already, I recommend trying the P.A.W. assault rifle from Remnant research. Just be aware that every time you use it you have to shout “IMMA FIRIN MAH LAZOR” at your screen.

I’m still seeing StarCraft allusions everywhere, too, but that would get into spoiler territory, so I’ll say no more.

Right now I’m in the thick of Mass Effect: Andromeda, but massive as it is, it isn’t going to last forever. It was such a landmark release that all my gaming plans for the last several months have dealt with Andromeda and the lead-up to it. As a result, I’ve given very little thought to what I’ll play after I’ve finished.

Here are some of the leading candidates.

World of Warcraft:

This is probably the safest bet for where I end up after Andromeda, though I wouldn’t quite declare it a sure thing yet. As always, I maintain very mixed feelings on the game, but there’s still a lot more I’d like to do in Legion, and now that flying has finally been turned back on, now seems the time to start.

My main goal is still to go alt-crazy and see as much class content as possible. My monk has already started on the Broken Isles, so she’s probably next, but I’m not sure who to level after her. My paladin, shaman, demon hunter, priest, and warrior are all in the running.

Elder Scrolls Online:

I’m in a strange place with ESO. I almost always enjoy it, but I’m never particularly blown away by it. It’s good enough, and it’s consistently good enough, but it’s never more than good enough.

So I remain very open to playing more without feeling a very strong push to do so. There is an expansion coming soon, but there’s still so much in the base game I haven’t done yet that I’d be in no rush to move on to it.

I did rather like the templar alt I was tooling around with, and it’d be a shame for all the effort I put into crafting my gear to go to waste, so there are pretty good odds I’ll be back in Tamriel at some point, but I’m not sure when.

Star Wars: The Old Republic:

I was pretty heavily invested in SW:TOR for a while there, but as you may have noticed, I haven’t touched it in a few months. I was getting burnt out, but don’t think I’m done with the game. I just needed a break.

I will be back, but as with ESO, I’m not sure when. There’s a major story update coming soon, but I don’t necessarily want to jump straight from Andromeda into another Bioware game, so I may hold off on that for a while.

There are also still two class stories I fully intend to finish. Again, it’s all just a question of when.

The Secret World:

Sigh.

I’m still pretty heartbroken over what’s happened to TSW. I don’t like to ever rule anything out (I certainly never could have predicted getting into SW:TOR as much as I have), but I currently don’t have much interest in making the transition to the new game. It sounds like a much shallower experience, and I just don’t think I can start over from scratch.

There isn’t much point in investing much more time in vanilla TSW, as it will undoubtedly be shut down before too long, but I do think there are a few more things I might want to do before it’s over. Dorothy is very close to getting her Panoptic Core, and even though there couldn’t be less of a reason to do so, I’d kind of like to finish that.

I may also run some of my favourite missions one last time, and I’m thinking about where I want to park my characters before they log out for the last time.

For a game that I once considered my virtual home, this is really hard to cope with.

Old favourites:

When I was younger, I used to spend a lot of time replaying games. It was often a matter of necessity, as there simply weren’t enough good games to keep me fully occupied in those days, whereas now there’s more good games than there is time to play them, but I still kind of miss it. Lately I feel a slightly stronger pull to revisit some old favourites.

I’d really like to play through Dragon Age II again, but the lackluster gameplay has always driven me off. Recently I’ve been considering downloading some mods to try to make it more palatable, because I loved the story in that game. For that matter I’ll probably replay Andromeda at some point, but probably not right after I finish it the first time.

The thought of more StarCraft replays is also in my mind. At the very least I should do another playthrough of Covert Ops at some point, as I’ve only done it once so far. Plus there are still a few Legacy of the Void achievements I’d like to get, and I have a vague desire to do another replay of the original (via Mass Recall), if only to once again bask in the awesomeness that is old school Zeratul.

Then there’s Diablo III. I remain very bitter that the story is apparently being abandoned unfinished, but I still have a lot of fondness for the game, and the new necromancer class is seeming increasingly tempting. Have you seen the blood golem model? It’s the most disgustingly horrible thing I’ve ever seen, and I need it in my life.

I even briefly considered reloading Neverwinter the other day. I was organizing my screenshots and realized how badass my Half-Elf paladin looked. I never did try tanking in that game…

Other possibilities:

I maintain a list of games I’d like to get around to playing if I ever find the time. The Division is prominent on that list, especially now that I have a computer that can run it a bit better. I enjoyed what I played in the beta, and while I don’t think it’s a game I’d stick with for a long time, I think it could be an enjoyable diversion for a few weeks.

Star Trek Online also pops into my mind every now and again. It’s not a great game, but I did really enjoy the whole “I’m a Romulan commanding my very own warbird” part, and every time I get a jolt of Trek nostalgia I want to play it again.

Destiny 2 is apparently getting a PC release, which is tempting, but since I never had the chance to play the first one, I’m not sure it’d be worth it, since the story is the main thing that would interest me. Plus I’m not sure I’m okay with them replacing an MMO with its sequel so quickly. I know they don’t like calling it an MMO, but let’s be real here.

Plus I’ve got a Steam wishlist a mile long at this point.

For those who are playing Andromeda, what are your plans for when you finish it?

Given recent events, I didn’t really like having so many references to The Secret World in my blog’s banner. Too many unhappy memories. Plus I’m probably way overdue for a new banner anyway.

So, yeah, new banner. Whatcha think? It’s a lot simpler than the last one, partly out of a desire to do something different and partly due to my lackluster photo manipulation skills.

Try not to read anything into the fact this is the first time in my blog’s history the banner hasn’t referenced an MMO in some way.

Feedback welcomed. I’m not married to it and could always come up with something else if people don’t like it.

In other news, I’ve had another new article published at MMO Bro. This one deals with character stats and whether they’re actually serving any purpose. It’s a long-standing pet peeve of mine.

From the very beginning, complaints about combat in The Secret World have been all but omnipresent. It’s virtually impossible to read about it anywhere on the web without someone lamenting that they would have loved the game if not for its awful, awful combat.

I, of course, never agreed. In fact TSW’s combat ranks among my favourite combat systems in any RPG, and none of the arguments against it have ever made sense to me. It was always frustrating, but in time I learned to grit my teeth, ignore the faulty logic eternally present in criticisms of TSW’s combat, and move on.

But now things have come to a head. TSW is being shut down to make way for a new game with different mechanics, and a large part of the reason for this is to allow for a new combat system. I’ve been robbed of my favourite MMO, and while I don’t think that can necessarily be blamed on the combat haters, I don’t think you can entirely separate the two issues, either.

I try to respect other people’s opinions, but I can hold my tongue no longer: The Secret World’s combat is fine, and those who say are otherwise are wrong, period.

The double standard:

The easiest and most obvious argument to make here is to point out that TSW has almost exactly the same combat system as Guild Wars 2, a game where nobody ever seems to take issue with the combat.

There are differences between the two systems, but they’re negligible.

Really the only major mechanical difference is that GW2 has more realistic mechanics surrounding projectiles. If I fire at an enemy, and there’s another mob between me and my target, my shots will hit that mob rather than whatever I had targeted. In TSW, my shots will always home straight to their target, as in other tab target games.

But that’s it. It’s exactly the same system otherwise.

Even the tuning isn’t that different. It does take a bit longer to kill mobs in TSW — or at least it did before the global nerf; maybe not now — but not by so much. I haven’t exactly sat down and timed myself with a stopwatch, but having played both games heavily, I never found it to be a drastic difference.

So we have two games with virtually identical combat. One’s combat is beloved, the other is despised. Honestly, that alone should be enough to shoot down criticism of TSW’s combat, but I think it’s worth delving deeper to understand what’s really going on here.

The real issue:

As an ardent TSW fan, it would be very tempting for me to write all the combat criticism off as merely a meme parroted by haters. And I do think that is true in some cases. Funcom seems to have unusually devoted detractors, even for an MMO developer, and I think in some cases “bad combat” is just an easy thing to seize on for people who are looking to trash the game.

But the complaints about combat are too widespread, and they can even come from people who do play and enjoy the game, so as appealing as that narrative is to me personally, I have to grant that this isn’t a purely imaginary issue. There is something going on here.

But I don’t think it’s a problem with the combat. I think the “problem,” if you can even call it that, has to do with the build system.

In most MMOs, you choose a class, and that’s it. The game gives you a pre-designed rotation that works and should hopefully be engaging to play. Worst case scenario you reroll until you find a class you like. It’s easy to hit the ground running.

TSW isn’t like that. You basically have to build your own class from the ground up — you’re almost playing amateur game designer — and it can often take significant trial and error to find a build that works for you.

By that I don’t just mean a build that lets you complete content without dying. I also mean a build that is efficient, that doesn’t make killing enemies into a miserable chore. I also mean a build that feels fun to you personally, a highly subjective affair for which there are no guides. Contrary to popular belief, there are many different playstyles and rotations available to TSW players, but there’s no way to know which one is right for you without trial and error.

And this period of trial and error can take a long time. It took me until Egypt for my main’s build to start to click for me. I’m still tinkering with Dorothy’s build now and then.

If you haven’t found a build that you like, it would seem as if the game has bad combat.

Never step outside the builder x5/consumer x2 paradigm, and you’ll probably get bored fast. Neglect self-healing, and you’ll probably get slaughtered. Run around with too much health on your gear, and it will take a miserable amount of time to kill anything (I can’t prove it, but I strongly suspect a large majority of complaints about TSW’s combat come from people who stack too much HP, because that’s the only way the comments I’ve heard make any sense).

Even if you’ve been playing the game a significant amount of time, you still may not have found a build that’s entirely right. I’ve encountered plenty of people suffering through with terrible builds even at endgame, and even if your build is effective, again, it still may not be the right build for you.

There are other issues that could contribute. TSW’s combat has also traditionally been unusually challenging, and not everyone can hack it, even with a good build. I have definite sympathy for such people, especially if they’re being held back by age or physical disability. I’d like to see some solution to help people like that, but I don’t know how to do that without making things too easy for everyone else.

Some people are honest enough to admit the challenge is an issue for them, but I also suspect some people have let their gamer’s pride get in the way and have fallen back on the “bad combat” meme rather than admit they’re not up to the task. I have less sympathy for that.

A lot of people also like to bring up TSW’s mediocre combat animations. This is the one criticism I can agree with, because they’re definitely not great, but the same is true of nearly every other Western MMO of that era, so I’m not sure why TSW gets singled out for it.

Ultimately, though, I think the build issue is the biggest contributor. Not everyone is willing to put in the time and effort it takes to find a build that works for them.

And here’s the thing: I totally sympathize with that. It is a lot for a video game to ask of someone, and I can’t blame them at all for not wanting to put that level of effort into an entertainment. That’s totally understandable.

But it doesn’t mean the game has bad combat. It just means you weren’t able to find the build that’s right for you. TSW’s combat is actually pretty amazing once you find the build that truly clicks.

And what you have to understand is that for a lot of us, the challenge of the combat and the amount of experimentation it takes to find a good build aren’t bugs; they’re features. I like that I can spend limitless time tinkering with my build. I like feeling overwhelmed by it all.

This is what the people who trash TSW’s combat have never understood. Their complaints cannot be addressed without robbing the game of that which makes it unique.

I’ve never been that big a fan of investigation missions. I find them more frustrating than fun. I’d benefit greatly if they were simplified to let me focus on the story instead of tearing my hair out trying to translate Morse Code or whatever. But I also recognize that investigation missions have fans who are hugely passionate about them, that they are a very unique form of content not found elsewhere, and that the game would lose something very special if they were changed to suit me.

The same is true of the combat/build dilemma. You can’t “fix” it without alienating those of us who do appreciate what Funcom has done, without robbing TSW of that which makes it such a special game.

The no-win scenario:

And now we come to the real heart of the problem.

TSW has always been a very niche game. Everything about it holds back its mainstream appeal in some way. Its gameplay is challenging. Its build system is overwhelming. Its story is almost absurdly complicated. Its setting is bleak. Its subject matter is disturbing.

All of those things can drive people off, but they’re also what makes the game so unique, so special. You can’t change any of it without losing something important, and you can’t change its niche nature without completely erasing the soul of the game.

This is why I am so skeptical of the new game. It’s changing so much that it threatens to drive away the fans TSW did have, but I still don’t think it’s changing enough for it to be a game with truly mainstream appeal. Funcom is tossing aside their loyal fans for people who never have and likely never will take the effort to appreciate what the game truly represents.

Are you watching iZombie yet? If not, start.

Season three of the show has begun, and while I’m still going to avoid doing formal reviews on it because it is my favourite show for relaxation and I don’t want it to feel like work, I did want to take the opportunity to once again sing its praises.

We may only be two episodes in, but so far iZombie season three continues to delight. If anything this might even be a little better than past seasons.

Of course, it’s still hilariously off the walls. I missed a lot of lines of dialogue in episode two because I was laughing too hard at the preceding line. Ravi’s eyes while Liv and Major were bickering… my sides…

Liv and Ravi have always been a joy, but Clive and Major are really starting to come into their own, too. I always liked them, but season three is giving them much more freedom to shine than ever before. The guy who plays Major is a better actor than I’ve given him credit for, and one gets the impression he’s immensely enjoying the role he’s been given.

It’s not just funny, though. So far season three seems to be taking the show in a bit of a new direction, and the implications are intriguing.

Without spoiling too much, the scale of the show seems to be broadening. No longer is it just about the trials and tribulations of Liv and those close to her. iZombie is beginning to think on a more cultural scale as the battle lines are slowly drawn between humans and the undead.

It’s different, but so far, I really like it. The show is going down a darker path — while somehow still maintaining its off the walls comedy — and I’m starting to see a certain sophistication in the writing. Maybe it won’t ever be quite as cerebral as Continuum, but iZombie is getting smarter.

*Insert brain joke here.*

Anyway, I’m thoroughly enjoying myself, and I can only reiterate that if you haven’t tried iZombie yet, you totally should, because it’s excellent.

Not the kind of porn you may have been looking for if you found this on Google. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This post is not about porn in space, but porn of space. Mass Effect: Andromeda’s interstellar graphics are nothing short of breath-taking, and the game helpfully lets you hide the UI and explore all sorts of different camera angles from which to view the planets, stars, and stellar phenomena.

For a screenshot nut like me, this is basically crack, and I’ve developed an extensive collection of photos from my exploration of the Heleus Cluster. I now share the best of them with you.

There’s no plot spoilers here, but if you’re really passionate about exploring, you may prefer to stumble on these vistas yourself.

It’s funny to think I was so skeptical about a continuation of the Mass Effect series. For a while there are I was considering not trying Andromeda at all. But having now finished the game, I’m very glad to have kept an open mind.

I will be avoiding major plot spoilers as much as possible.

Exploring the unknown:

First of all, let me say that this is very much a Mass Effect game. A few things are different, but nothing’s radically changed. If you liked the previous ME games, you’ll like this one. It does have its flaws, but most of them are things you would naturally expect of any Bioware game.

That doesn’t entirely excuse the problems, of course. One of the biggest is that this is once again a game that has favoured side content to an unhealthy degree. In the end, it’s maybe not quite as obnoxious on this front as Inquisition was, but it’s still kind of obnoxious.

It’s not just the amount of side quests and exploration, but how repetitive a lot of it is. I think something that dragged Andromeda down is how little environmental variety there is. More than half the worlds you visit are empty deserts, and the monotony of the scenery really wears you down after a while.

It’s very disappointing in a game that is supposedly about exploring the unknown and discovering wonders, and doubly so when you contrast the endless wastes with the sections of the game that are more creative. One of the most memorable parts of the game for me was the planet Havarl, a bioluminescent jungle world that is absolutely breathtaking.

We needed a lot more locations like that, and a lot fewer endless brown desert zones.

Something else that inhibited the game’s sense of exploring the unknown is how much time you spend fighting criminals elements of your own people, the Andromeda Initiative. I’m okay with the idea that some people went Lord of the Flies when confronted with the challenges of Andromeda, but it’s, like, half the game. How did so many immoral, unstable people even get admitted to the Initiative?

I know this much: I didn’t buy a game about exploring another galaxy so I could fight generic human crooks.

In general some more variety in threats would have been nice. Andromeda has a better variety of enemies than past installments, but it’s still mostly lacking boss fights. When they want to ramp up the difficulty, they just throw more of the same old trash mobs at you. Some more creativity would have been nice.

The one exception is the Remnant Architects, open-world bosses analogous to Inquisition’s dragons, but even these quickly become repetitive.

You see, every Architect fight is exactly the same. The mechanics never change at all. And their mechanics also happen to be virtually the same as those of Dark Matter Monoliths in Defiance, which made them feel even more repetitive for me.

I have killed a lot of Monoliths.

But when those issues don’t apply, exploring the Andromeda Galaxy can be a real treat. You may spend too much time trekking through the desert, but you’ll also marvel over wondrous new worlds and delve into profound alien mysteries.

A few weeks ago I said that Andromeda is the best Star Trek movie in years, and while I was half-joking, there is a lot of truth to that. There is an incredible sense of mystery and discovery running through many parts of this game. Not as many parts as there should have been, but when it delivers, it really delivers.

It’s not just about the sights and the story, either. A wealth of puzzles and environmental hazards constantly remind the player that exploration is a difficult business. It makes the game world feel much more like a real place — it’s not always an easy road, but that’s what makes it rewarding.

The feeling of exploration even helps make the wealth of side quests a little more tolerable. It’s easier to justify wandering all over and investigating every little thing as a Pathfinder exploring a new galaxy than as an inquisitor in a race against time to stop the world from literally exploding.

Similarly, the combat has its repetitive elements, but fundamentally it’s still very fun, and it can offer some real thrills. Andromeda doesn’t change a lot about Mass Effect combat, but it changes enough to matter.

Combat in Andromeda is a lot more mobile, a lot more dynamic, than in past installments. You can’t just camp out in cover and snipe enemies with impunity anymore — not all the time, anyway. It’s a little more challenging and a lot more exciting.

The build system helps with this. In Andromeda, classes are gone, and you can instead pick any skills you want from combat, tech, or biotics. You can even save multiple skill sets and swap between them in combat.

Now, this isn’t quite as much flexibility as advertised. It took me until relatively late in the game to unlock a second set of skills (a vanguard-style melee set-up) without compromising my main build, and I never had enough skill points for more than those two builds. But it’s still much more flexibility than we had in past games, so I call that a win.

One final thing about the gameplay that bugged me is that Andromeda has taken a step backward by returning the Mass Effect franchise to a vertical progression grind wherein you have to regularly update your gear, and where loot (most of it entirely worthless) drowns you at every turn. Not a change I welcome.

The best gear by far comes from crafting, which means you don’t have to be at the mercy of RNG, but it also means all the dropped gear is just a waste of space.

Finding a home:

But the story and the characters are the true heart of any Bioware game, so let’s talk that, shall we?

The main story in Andromeda is pretty sparse, but unlike Inquisition or ME2, it doesn’t feel underdeveloped. It tells all the story that it needs to.

The villains this time are a race of imperialistic aliens called the Kett. The Reapers were some of the greatest antagonists in sci-fi history as far as I’m concerned, and the Kett can’t live up to that legacy, but they’re scary and alien enough to serve their purpose.

Really my only complaint is how dorky they look. Everything about the Kett themselves and their technology looks like it came from the bottom of Star Trek: Voyager’s reject pile.

But ultimately the Kett are just one part of the grand galactic mystery that makes up Andromeda’s story. I can’t say much without spoilers, but it’s a story that exemplifies the sense of wonder that lies at the heart of speculative fiction. I loved it, and the ending is magnificent.

The characters, too, are strong, as one would expect from Bioware. This is perhaps the first game I’ve played from them where I didn’t strongly dislike any core characters. Liam started getting on my nerves after a while, and Vetra’s a little boring, but there’s no one I truly hate the way I did Vivienne or Zaeed.

The biggest surprise was Drack. I’ve never been a Krogan fan, but he actually became one of my favourites. Turns out “adorable Krogan grandpa” is a pretty good character concept.

Jaal also stood out. It took me a while to warm up to him, but in the end he really won me over. He reminds me of Garrus — he’s the one you can trust to always have your back when it hits the fan — but he’s warmer and all around more likable than Garrus was.

However, I was disappointed by the amount of character content. It’s definitely less than you’d expect from a Bioware game, and it’s quite imbalanced, too. Some characters get a lot more attention than others.

PeeBee seems to get quite a lot of content — of course the sexy Asari is going to get plenty of time in the spotlight (eye-roll) — and Jaal and Drack also get a decent amount, but Suvi has hardly any content at all. Which is a crying shame because she’s easily the game’s best character.

Anyone who complains about the facial animations in this game has never seen Suvi nerdgasm.

I also found Ryder, the main character, a little flat-feeling. This despite the fact I like Fryda Wolff a lot better than Jennifer Hale (sacrilege, I know). I think the dialogue changes might be to blame.

I don’t mourn the rigidity of paragon/renegade, but the new tone options are so similar to each other it’s hard to define a specific personality for your Ryder.

There’s also a surprising dearth of “mean” options. It’s like instead of blurring the lines between paragon and renegade, they just made everyone paragon. This shouldn’t bother me since I was always pure paragon anyway, but somehow it does. Being the good guy doesn’t feel as meaningful if you don’t have the option to be the bad guy.

Still, there is enough character here to give the game real heart.

We made it:

I’ve been reviewing things on this blog and elsewhere for a long time, and I’m coming to the conclusion reviews can be surprisingly hard, because there’s a lot about how things fit together and how things feel in the moment that can’t be explained in rational terms. Andromeda is a good example. I can rattle off no end of things I didn’t like about it, but the end result is still a game I deeply and truly enjoyed. It’s somehow more than the sum of its parts.

Reading it back, this sounds like a fairly lukewarm review, but the fact is I loved Andromeda. Partly it’s that a lot of my favourite things about it are things I can’t talk about without spoilers, but partly there’s something special about this game that can’t be readily quantified.

I can’t wait for DLC. I’m most hoping for stories relating to the “benefactor” and Keelah Si’yah.

Overall rating: 8.7/10 Familiar enough to be nostalgic, but fresh enough to be exciting.

One another thing: I was surprised and delighted to discover the song that plays during Andromeda’s credits is by none other than Norwegian prodigy Aurora Aksnes. I’ve been a big fan of Aurora’s for a while now, and I can’t believe I didn’t know she was involved with the game.

I hope the extra exposure gets her more fans; she totally deserves it. If you’re looking for it, the credits song is called Under Stars, and while you’re at it, I recommend checking out her other stuff, too. Warrior, Winter Bird, and Runaway are my favourites.

It’s a pretty grim time to be a fan of The Secret World. The other day I logged on for the first time in a while, and the game was just dead. Agartha was a ghost town. No one was talking in chat.

And this is just a few weeks after the announcement of Secret World Legends. Clearly TSW is not long for this world now.

One way or another, the future lies with Legends. For my latest article at MMO Bro, I look at previous relaunches of MMORPGs in an attempt to understand what might await TSW’s successor. The conclusions are less than comforting.

This is something I perhaps should have done when I first started the blog… six years ago… but it occurs to me that I’ve never really explained my thought process when scoring my reviews.

Better late than never.

First, I will be honest and say that they are pretty arbitrary. There’s no particular math or codified logic behind them. It’s as much about feelings as rationality.

That said, I do still put a fair bit of thought into them. I often change a score several times before a post’s publication as I go back and forth on my opinions.

The scoring system is identical regardless of whether I’m reviewing books, games, movies, or TV. Since I’m measuring the total quality of the finished product and how it left me feeling, the medium doesn’t really change the process.

I also have a pretty consistent idea of what each number range represents, which I will now outline:

10: Perfect in every way. A score I have never given and likely never will.

9-9.9: Brilliant. The item I am reviewing may have a few minor flaws but is otherwise exemplary in concept and execution. Something that everyone should experience, regardless of taste.

Examples: Lord of the Rings, Warcraft III, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Greatshadow, many Continuum episodes.

8-8.9: Excellent. Strongly above average, with strengths that significantly outweigh any weaknesses. Recommended to most people, unless it’s a genre or franchise you strongly dislike.

Examples: Mass Effect: Andromeda, The Summonstone, Remember Me, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

7-7.9: Good. Either items with significant flaws but also impressive strengths to compensate or all-arounders that do everything decently but don’t excel at much. Recommended to all fans of the genre or franchise, and may appeal to others as well.

Examples: The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, a lot of Defiance episodes, most books by Lawrence Watt-Evans, X-Men: Apocalypse.

6-6.9: Imperfect. Not bad, but struggling to rise above the pack. Recommended to devoted fans of the genre or franchise, but not the general populace.

Examples: Mass Effect 2, Logan.

5-5.9: Mediocre. May have some things going for it, but usually not enough to make it worth spending time on in a world so awash in entertainment. Possibly worth it for ardent fans of the genre/franchise, but even they’re likely to come away underwhelmed.

Examples: Dungeon Siege II, Honor Amongst Thieves, Diablo: Legacy of Blood.

0-4.9: Bad to terrible. Severely flawed with few if any redeeming qualities. Entries in this range are not worth it for anyone.

Examples: Immortals, Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome, Warlords of Draenor.

I realize that having such exact numbers for what I will freely admit to be an inexact science may seem a bit strange, but I think the granularity is important. There’s a difference between a 6.9, which fell just barely short, versus a flat 6, which is much closer to total mediocrity.

I do not agree with the viewpoint that numbered reviews don’t serve a purpose. It provides a helpful, at-a-glance way to organize things, and it helps provide clarity in cases where it’s difficult to fully articulate the feel of a certain product — cases where something is more or less than the sum of its parts.

MMORPGs are a special case, as they are constantly evolving. That makes giving them a specific numbered rating less helpful, though it can still work if you’re reviewing a specific snapshot of an MMO’s lifespan (like my reviews of WoW expansions).

I have never been paid or otherwise compensated for any of my reviews. I’m not opposed to the idea, but no one has offered. If I did accept compensation for a review, I would offer disclosure of the fact in the review. I’m greedy, but I’m honest.

Pet classes in RPGs tend to provoke strong reactions. Most people either love pet classes and play them at every opportunity, or hate pet classes and avoid them like the plague.

I’m a strange case in that both of those are true of me. Depending on the game, I either love or hate pet classes.

For example, you’ve probably heard me complain bitterly about pet classes in World of Warcraft. Yes, one of my most played characters is a warlock, but I started her as a leveling challenge to see if I could play a lock without pets, and once Grimoire of Sacrifice became a thing, I’ve used it as much as possible. The pets have always been my least favourite part of being a warlock.

Similarly, pets are one of the bigger reasons I haven’t spent much time playing a hunter, and it’s not entirely a coincidence I started losing interest in my mage around the time they made frost a pet spec.

On the other hand, when it comes to single-player games, I tend to embrace pet classes with open arms. When the Van Helsing games revamped their classes, I went straight for the Constructor and terrorized Borgovia with my army of dismemberbots.

I don’t have a lot of fond memories of the gameplay of Diablo II, but one of them is definitely having a posse of skeletons following my necromancer around. In D3, I never quite managed to click with the witch doctor, but I have done my level best to rekajigger my crusader into a pet class (a “zoosader”). At a maximum, he can be accompanied by three swordsmen, four archers, Kormac, and a demon minion summoned by his sword.

And let us not forget my zombie goons in Lichdom: Battlemage.

“…Zombie goons?”

Then there’s party-based RPGs to consider. We generally seem to separate companion characters from pets, but practically speaking, they’re pretty similar. AI minions who assist you in combat. And I definitely enjoy party-based RPGs — I prefer them to games where you only control a single character. In fact, my most common complaint about them is that the parties aren’t nearly big enough. Dungeon Siege spoiled me with its nine party slots.

So what accounts for this split?

Honestly I’m not entirely sure. I don’t think it’s necessarily one factor as much as a combination of them.

Broadly, it seems to be a difference between single-player games and MMOs.

For one thing, MMOs never really seem to take pets into account when balancing the difficulty in the open world, so while pet classes are at no particular advantage at endgame, they’re brokenly OP when soloing, and since most MMOs tend to make their solo content rather insultingly easy to begin with, it just makes the whole experience a snorefest.

On a related note, most tab target MMOs have incredibly stilted combat with little meaningful interaction between the player and their opponent. You kind of just ignore whatever the enemy is doing and mindlessly drill through your rotation. Having a pet tank hits for you exasperates the issue.

MMOs also usually use an over-the-shoulder camera, which causes pets to take up an obnoxious amount of screen real estate. They mess up screenshots and cause all sorts of problems.

Meanwhile, a lot of the single-player RPGs I favour use an isometric camera, which makes pets far less of an encumbrance.

Perhaps due to less concerns about lag, single-player games also tend to allow you to control much larger numbers of pets, and I definitely prefer a swarm of minions to just one.

It could also have to do with the rigid threat mechanics that tend to exist in a lot of MMOs, but not in single-player games. Most MMO pets have taunt abilities that ensure enemies will focus on them almost 100% of the time. This, again, robs you of any meaningful interaction with your opponent.

In single-player games, pets usually don’t have taunts or threat modifiers. At best they’re a physical barrier between you and the enemy. Even in Dragon Age, where the warrior in your party will likely have taunts, it’s rare for them to hold aggro on every enemy. This means that you still have to look to your own defenses and survival at least a little.

Another divide is that MMO pets tend to require a lot of micro-management, at least in group content, whereas single-player pets and companions are almost always fire and forget. I definitely do not want to have to spend a lot of time baby-sitting my pets — that defeats the purpose as far as I’m concerned.

All that said, I can still find exceptions that muddy the issue even further. I quite like the companion characters in SW:TOR, for instance, and they’re essentially pets. In that case I suspect it’s a combination of the fact they’re meaningful characters within the story and the fact I already dislike the combat in that game, so how much worse can the companions make it?

In ESO, also, I’ve leaned heavily on my Clannfear pet, perhaps because unlike most MMO pets it doesn’t require much management. Then again it’s also worth noting that I have been moving away from using it recently — it doesn’t fit my character’s RP very well, and it bugs out a lot.

It’s definitely a very muddled alchemy that determines whether or not I will appreciate pets. The one thing you can be certain of is that I will always have strong opinions on pet classes one way or another.