Monaco - 10/20 hours

I was all set to write a post about the romance of thievery, about the way that it gets depicted in video games and popular fiction as a kind of daring alternative to making an honest living, and about the way that many fictional thieves are also portrayed as heroes, with their tendency to steal being a kind of charming character quirk.

But then, last night at the hotel, one of the guests had their bike stolen from the parking lot. It was not fun to be the one who had to tell them. When you see theft from that perspective, it's apparent that it's not a romantic adventure. It's cruel.

I also have more sympathy for the guards, now. It's not really my job to protect people's possessions in the parking lot, but I do walk through it a couple of times a night just to keep an eye on things, and if I had interrupted the thief, maybe they would have just run away, or maybe they would have assaulted me. Certainly, if this were a scenario in Monaco, and I were controlling the thief, that's what I would have done. How many of those poor, pixelated security guards were just ordinary working stiffs, trying to scrape together enough pay to keep their tiny simulated lives going?

I guess the romance of theft comes from the fact that, in fiction, the victims are almost always the wealthy. Then it's not so much about taking away the prized possession of a regular person and causing them to miss the big bike race that they took a vacation to participate in, but rather about setting yourself against a larger societal power structure. The things you take, the art, the jewels, the cash, and whatnot, are not important in themselves. They don't have stories attached to them, nor are they central to the victim's hopes for the future. Rather, by their very abundance, they are commodified - entries on a balance sheet, distinguished only by a price tag.

The implication is that property itself is the crime, that what is true of art is true of people - to the very rich they are merely a tool to be manipulated, valued only to the degree that they impact a balance sheet. By leveraging their wealth into a form of social power, the rich make themselves legitimate targets for theft.

That's pretty ideological. On the other hand, the opposite - genre fiction that portrayed the rich as mere hapless victims who were terrorized by heartless criminal scum - would also be signalling a strong, counterfactual ideology. I think, then, that the fantasy of theft boils down to two things - elaborate plans are pretty cool, especially when they cleverly circumvent reasonable and intelligent security features; and the expression of a poorly articulated emotional truth - in our society, wealth is intimately tied up with coercion.

The "steal from the rich" fantasy is essentially the same as the "quit your job and live in harmony with nature" fantasy. In both cases, money acts as the connective tissue in a rigid hierarchical structure that seeks to place every individual into a position of optimal utility, regardless of their personal potential or basic desires. The main difference between the fantasies is their vision of what escaping the system means. Theft is much more materialistic than a spiritual awakening. It posits that while you may not be able to invert the hierarchy, you can sidestep it and live like the rich without playing by their rigged set of rules (designed as they are to keep themselves at the top and you at the bottom).

That's why a thief doesn't necessarily have to be altruistic to be considered heroic. They are resisting a force that we've all felt to one degree or another - brutal economic necessity shaping our lives into something we never asked for, something that our younger selves would despise and our older selves will regret. And sometimes it is impossible to imagine being authentically free without also being free of the illusion of property.

The problem is that there is no such thing as an abstract crime. The poor are a lot easier to steal from than the rich, and truthfully, even the absurdly wealthy probably do have an intense emotional connection to the rare Monet they absolutely have no right to own and which would better serve the world hanging in a museum. And while one could make persuasive arguments that the distribution of wealth in our society is unjust and that we should take corrective measures, a single person cannot take it upon themselves to make that decision. You can't hurt people and have the moral high ground . . .

Except in video games (don't worry, I didn't forget what sort of blog this is). In a game, justice tends to be more elemental. There's always someone more corrupt, and vigilantism really can clean up the streets. I never got the impression that the characters in Monoco were noble, or that any of them were doing this for any reason other than their own personal gratification, but they are masters of their own destiny (when they aren't backstabbing each other - which may or may not be canonical), and that's what the fantasy of theft is all about.

Monaco - 5/20 hours

I am a weak person. I ran into a level that was repeatedly killing me and I was starting to feel incredibly frustrated, so I went online and found an invincibility cheat. It's the same damned thing I did with Velvet Assassin, so I guess you could call it a pattern - I would rather play a game with literally no challenge whatsoever than attempt difficult stealth missions.

It's possible that, through persistence, I'd be able to get through every level in the game without cheating. It's happened before. In Velvet Assassin, actually. But I'm not sure I even want to. Something about the game's frenetic activity when you fall out of stealth really gets under my skin. I guess it's a feeling of utter helplessness. You can run away, but as often as not you're just running into a worse situation, and there is always a delay when passing through doors, going up stairs, donning a disguise, or hiding in air vents or bushes - a delay that, in the harder levels, will usually get you killed.

I understand why the game is the way it is. It's about strategy and care and making and following a plan. I'm supposed to learn from my mistakes and use my knowledge of the environment to perfect my timing, slipping through the levels like a ghost. In order to win, I must develop the skills of a criminal mastermind.

But I don't want to. It's hard.

I should get over myself. It's not as if there's some compelling plot that I must advance to discover. The story of a high-class crime spree, told from multiple angles, with increasingly unlikely revelations, is interesting, but not so interesting that I need to break the game to see what happens next. But activating God Mode was so satisfying, I don't think I'll be able to stop.

I guess it's mostly revenge. The game makes me feel so small and afraid when I slip up and those guys with machine guns start chasing me. Even when I'm armed, getting ammo is kind of risky. Usually, I have, at most, two or three shots before I'm back at square one. So being able to stride through the level, impervious to harm is intoxicating. How do you like me now, assholes? I will steal all your coins right in front of you and there's nothing you can do about it!

It's immature, I  know, and with fifteen hours left to go, I will probably get over it sooner or later, but for right now, I need this. I refuse to play your game, Monaco. . . well, okay, not literally, but, you know, in spirit.

Monaco - 2/20 hours

I've said before that I don't like stealth, and so far in this blog, it's always been in the nature of a curmudgeonly skepticism - I'd see that a game had it as a feature and I'd fret and I'd worry, but ultimately it has always been something I could cope with. That's mostly down to selection pressure. I've tried to avoid games with excessive stealth, and with the exception of Velvet Assassin, I've succeeded. Until now.

Playing Monaco . . . it's like someone distilled my nightmares and then made them into a game. That's barely a hyperbole. I've had that nightmare, where I am alone and being stalked by enemies, and one wrong move means they'll spot me and I then have to run away, using every trick at my disposal, but it isn't enough.

Monaco has captured that feeling very well. Each level is like my own personal ten-minute Tartarus. Getting to know the individual character quirks of your team and then watching them get slaughtered one by one by security because I went around a corner at the wrong time? Wow, it just hits every one of my buttons. I can play it for about 20 minutes at a stretch. Much longer than that and I start to get overwhelmed with resentment. Which wouldn't be too much of a problem, except that when I'm away from the game and think about playing it, I feel incredibly stressed out. I don't want to send my cute little pixel robbers to their deaths in a terrifying death-maze. I want them to live and collect coins and banter nonsensically in cutscenes. I mean, those little skeletons they leave behind when they die . . .  horrifying.

I guess I should say, begrudgingly, that Monaco is kind of a great game. It is often visually striking, and there is a lot of complex strategy in navigating around the levels' obstacles using the wide variety of character abilities. I can definitely see how it would shine as a co-op game. And I imagine that, even for me, there's a level of skill where you can go through the levels intentionally, solving them like puzzles, and exploring the lavish world of high-class burglary.

But man, do I dread doing what I have to do to get to that point. Oh well, the only way out is forward, and if I have to relive this sensation of harried helplessness and ever-tightening confinement a hundred times before I'm done, well I guess that's just what I'll have to do.

Monaco - Initial Thoughts

About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)

Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine is a single player or co-op heist game. Assemble a crack team of thieves, case the joint, and pull off the perfect heist.

The Locksmith: Blue-collar infiltration expert
The Lookout: She can see and hear everything... a natural leader
The Pickpocket: A hobo with a monkey and a penchant for crime
The Cleaner: A silent psychopath... Jack The Ripper in pink
The Mole: Big and dumb... likes to tunnel
The Gentleman: He doesn't always wear a disguise, but when he does, he looks fantastic
The Hacker: Armies of viruses shut down security... a modern day warlock
The Redhead: Manipulative and murderous... a lady always gets what she wants

Play with up to four people online or on the same screen. Compete with others via daily leaderboards. Find out why it won the 2010 IGF and has been described by PCGamer as "one of the best co-op games of all time."

Previous Playtime

0 hours

What Was I Thinking When I Bought This

I bought this during the 2014 Steam Winter sale, and as I recall, it was a time in my life when I felt invincible, and was just buying video games speculatively, because of course I was going to play them, I have a blog now. Monaco wasn't something I was specifically interested in, but I'd heard of it, and a lot of my friends already owned it, so I figured it was worth a shot.

Expectations and Prior Experience

This is another game I'm going into blind. From the screenshots it looks like a cute top-down adventure game, but also there's stealth? Once again, I'm put in the position where I'll probably like it if it's easy and not like it if it's hard.

Also, I'm not sure how well a co-op game like this is going to play as a single-player experience. I like the description of all the different classes in the store page write-up, but how many of them will I get to control?

I can foresee the potential for a very bad time, if it turns out I have to split my focus in several directions at once while carefully navigating a maze and avoiding enemies that can instantly ruin my day. But that's a worst-case scenario. It will probably be fine.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor - 20/20 hours

If Shadow of Mordor were a generic fantasy game, its plot would be perfectly serviceable. However, it's so at odds, thematically, with The Lord of the Rings that it feels like it's set in a different universe.

The backstory to the game is a little complicated (there's this ranger guy who, due to unfortunate legal circumstances, had to take his family to the border of Mordor, where they were killed as part of a blood sacrifice, and as he lay dying of his own sacrifice wound, he met up with the wraith of an ancient elf who somehow spiritually bonded with him and keeps bringing him back from the dead), but the plot is pretty simple - get revenge on the high-ranking officers in Sauron's army for all the bad shit they did, both to the ranger Talion, and in the past, generally.

However, the way they go about this is through a campaign of terror that leads to them wielding the weapons of the enemy in an effort to bring him down, which is kind of the opposite of what The Lord of the Rings said they should do. I suppose it's possible that this will all go horribly sideways in the last two story missions and we'll learn that the plan was flawed from the start, but the game is going to get a sequel soon, and so . . .

Although, I actually think the most fundamental flaw in the game's plot is that it's a revenge story. Talion's wife and son were killed, as were the wraith's, all those thousands of years ago. And while that kind of loss is understandably very motivating, it kind of stifles any sort of robust characterization. The pain of losing a loved one is something everyone can relate too, so having it as the driving force behind your main character says basically nothing about them. At the very least, it would be nice if the grizzled male main character lost a friend, or a father, or a cheerful next-door neighbor as the inciting incident for their vigilantism. Those sorts of relationships are uncommon enough in revenge fiction that they'd almost have to be rooted in specificity by default.

Even with the bland protagonist, I'm tempted to keep playing Shadow of Mordor, just to see how it ends, but I think I'll have to pass for now. The mission I'm currently on involves brainwashing the five orc warchiefs in order to raise an army to attack Sauron's loyalists. And it's nice that it is presented as a freeform exercise in tinkering with the Nemesis system, but the flipside of that is that it requires a lot of effort to plan and execute the dozen or so assassinations/stronghold invasions (when I'm in control, there's not much of a difference) that are required to climb the ranks. It could easily be another 5-10 hours before I even touch another main story mission.

I'm definitely coming back, though. I enjoyed how dynamic the open world felt, and while I could do without the stealth, having it as an option did make me feel like I was making a significant choice in how to approach the game. And it may not have been the Tolkien nerdfest I was hoping for, it was clearly made with a love for, if not especially great understanding of, the source material.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor - 10/20 hours

I had a pretty amazing moment while playing this game. I was fighting a large gang of orcs when suddenly control cut away and there was a brief cutscene introducing an orc captain, and my first thought upon seeing this was, "oh great, not you again." It was an orc who had previously killed me, got promoted to captain, killed me again when I tried to get revenge, and got a power boost, and who I eventually tracked down and assassinated - only he survived the attempt, got a metal plate in his head, and then showed up randomly at an otherwise unremarkable brawl. And I recognized him by his name and appearance.

In that instant, I had a genuine emotional reaction to the game. Not like with Star Wars Starfighter, where I was frustrated with the game itself, and not like in any number of other games, where the prearranged story layer does all of the emotional heavy lifting, but rather I was engaging with an actual game mechanic. The system for generating recurring adversaries caused me to have an authentic and spontaneous feeling that mirrored what my game character was currently going through. The nemesis system is, like, 75% of the reason I bought the game, and I still wasn't expecting it to hit me like that. That single moment was probably worth the four dollars all by itself.

The only thing that is even remotely comparable is the last scene in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, but I almost think that shouldn't count, because the whole game as clearly building up to that moment. This was incidental and part of the general fabric of the game. It didn't pack quite the emotional punch, but it does make the game world seem that much more alive.

Unfortunately, I've gotten a lot more efficient at killing orcs in the last 8 hours, so there's only been a couple of times where I've had that same sense of recognition, but it's been great every time.

I've only advanced something like two missions into the story, having gotten distracted by collectibles, side missions, and all that other open-world rigamarole, so I'm not ready to talk about it just yet. A couple of observations, though - Gollum is here, which fits the timeline (I think), but kind of makes the story feel a little fan-fictiony, and both of the story missions I've played so far have been semi-tutorials, which have explained and unlocked new mechanics, so maybe I shouldn't have waited so long to play them. Oops.

But I am officially out of side-quests for now. I'm pretty sure there's a second area that contains precisely as many as I've played so far (because in my progress screen, all the different collectible types and major side missions are sitting at 50%), but I won't know for sure until I complete more main missions. I'm also looking forward to unlocking the rest of the mechanics. I've gathered that it will be possible, later, to mind control some of the orcs and pit them against each other for some ill-defined profit. That ought to be fun.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor - 2/20 hours

I think I started worrying prematurely. In Shadow of Mordor, you can run while in stealth, and you can sneak attack orcs in the face. Never mind how that's supposed to work, I can deal with it.

So far, the worst consequence of failing at stealth has been getting forced into a battle against unfavorable odds, leading, eventually, to my death. Which I'm okay with for two reasons - first, death in this game is pretty cheap. You respawn at the nearest tower and can go again right away. And second, the fight, despite the odds, was winnable. What it boils down to is that I can use stealth opportunistically and sporadically, and even then like a reckless idiot, so I'm fine.

Although, I haven't actually played any of the story missions yet. It's possible there's at least one where you have to crawl through at a snail's pace, worrying about lines of sight and the noise of your footsteps, where one wrong move will force you to start over (and, indeed, in the rpg.net forum thread, someone confirmed that there is), but since there are a lot of open world activities to get distracted by, I should have plenty to do, even if I hit a roadblock.

Overall, my first impressions are favorable. I like fighting orcs, leveling up my weapons, and finding collectibles, and while I've had only brief contact with the Nemesis system, hunting down the orc that killed me was pretty fun. I can definitely see how it could become an enjoyable mini-game on its own, provided it gets a little more complexity down the line.

The only real flaw that I've noticed so far is that it doesn't really feel like a Tolkien story. I won't go into more detail just yet, because I'll probably want to write a whole post about the plot later on, but there have been moments where I'd look at the screen and say, "wait, am I a wraith?"

I don't think continuing this game is going to be a problem for me. So long as there isn't a sudden difficulty spike down the line, I can continue with the way things have been going indefinitely.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor - Initial Thoughts

About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)

Fight through Mordor and uncover the truth of the spirit that compels you, discover the origins of the Rings of Power, build your legend and ultimately confront the evil of Sauron in this new chronicle of Middle-earth.

Previous Playtime

18 minutes

What Was I Thinking When I Bought This 

Well, it was on sale for silly cheap, like four dollars for the game plus all the DLC. Now, that alone is enough to get me to buy a game (hell, I'll buy just about anything for 80 percent off), but by that time in my life, I'd been through enough Steam sales to know that the same four dollars could have bought me any number of excellent games. So why Shadow of Mordor, specifically?

It really came down to a combination of things. I heard that it had a really neat system where it procedurally generates recurring enemies that you will grow to know by name. Also, I've long been both intrigued and intimidated by Tolkein's expanded universe, and while I have no idea if this game is based off stuff like The Silmarillion, the idea of a professionally crafted story set in Middle Earth was pretty appealing.

Expectations and Prior Experience

First things first - this is a stealth game, at least in part, and that worries me. I don't care for stealth in video games, and every time I've tried it, I've always been like, "ach, why can't I just kill these guys and sneak past their corpses?" On the bright side, I've been assured that the stealth in this game is fairly optional, and I'll usually be able to brawl with orcs as a fall-back position.

Basically, my line is Assassin's Creed 2. If this game has less stealth than that, I'll be fine. If it has more, I may have a problem.

I'm optimistic, though. When I first got the game, I fired it up to see if it would even run on my computer, and I have to say, nothing in the first 18 minutes made me think I was in any danger of having to creep around like a jackass rather than fight. That may change as enemies get tougher, but at least I know this an action/stealth game, and thus I can hold out hope that there will be a lot more action than stealth.

Galactic Civilizations III - 20/20 hours

In the course of finishing Galactic Civilizations III, I was forced to do something I didn't want to do - I won the game.

Oh, I didn't object to it in principle, it just snuck up on me, though. I was tottering along, micromanaging my planets when all of a sudden - defeat! It took me awhile to figure out what happened. I'd been exploring the galaxy, looking through the mostly-empty map to find the NPC empires, for trading purposes mostly. I'd long since had contact with the Altarians, and we'd been allies for about 100 turns, but the Iconians were tucked away in a distant cluster with a lot of dark space between them and me. My persistence paid off, though. After settling a forward base to extend the range of my ships, I was finally able to get a purpose-built exploratory vessel through.

And then ten turns later, I lost. It turns out that the disadvantage to stacking your AI opponents with all the benevolent factions is that they can go from strangers to allies in less than a year. The Altarians wound up winning a diplomatic victory. Which wouldn't bug me so much, except that you can't keep playing afterwards, and I was having too much fun upgrading my planets. So I loaded an old autosave, bribed the Altarians into hitting the Iconians with a Trade Embargo, then went and allied with the Iconians myself, a couple of turns later. Because you can keep playing after you win the game.

I'd go into more detail about why these machinations were worth it to me, but I'm sure they would be impossibly tedious. I like clicking buttons and seeing numbers go up.

Overall, I would not say that Galactic Civilizations III won me over to the series. It's a fine game, but it didn't actually solve any of the problems I had with its predecessor. Still too much warfare and expansion, and it still isn't as slick as its contemporary competition. That said, I had fun for almost the entire time I was playing it, and were something to happen to make me unable to play the rest of my 4X games, I would find this one to be a worthy consolation prize.

I know that sounds kind of back-handed, and I don't really mean it like that. It's just that the problem I have with the Galactic Civilizations series, and it's not really a problem, per se, more like an "issue," is that it's a game that confuses "size" with "scope." Progress is usually in the form of bigger numbers - more planets, longer ship ranges, higher credit and research totals. There's nothing that really comes along and changes the way you approach the game. It's not like the Space Empires games, where the end of the tech tree brings you radical new powers. What you're doing at the end of the game is a lot like what you're doing at the beginning.

Which is fine. I like most of the stuff you have to do. And except for contesting territory, I like it more the more of it you have to do. It's just that as your empire expands, it feels less like you are growing in power and more like you are growing in the number of repetitive chores you have to do.

I'm actually pretty sure that's the case for all 4Xs, though. It's just GalCiv doesn't even pretend to balance small empires against big ones. So for a guy like me who always plays "tall," even when I'm forced to go "wide," it just seems like work shoveled upon work. Not something I object to in principle, but just enough to put this game at the middle of my list, rather than the top.

Galactic Civilizations III - 11/20 hours

I finally found the correct map settings to get the AI to leave me alone. It doesn't feel entirely fair, because they really can't seem to deal with the isolated star clusters, but that's what they get for crossing me on a more economically balanced map.

If I'm being completely honest, this is not a new "strategy" from me. I first started doing it back in my Alpha Centauri days when I realized that the AI was completely unequipped for "Arid and Rocky" map settings. It was a handicap applied to all the factions equally, but only I, the human player, had the mental flexibility to adjust my strategy accordingly. I eventually grew out of needing that boost, but a large part of the reason I was able to outgrow it is because I was able to use the peace it bought me to learn the game's tech tree inside and out.

I feel that starting to happen with Galactic Civilizations III, though the process now, like then, is slow. I'm pretty sure I won't even finish my current game by the end of the 20 hours, and it will probably take me a dozen at least to get an effective early game worked out. It's exactly the sort of challenge that I used to love back when I was playing games like a normal human being.

My plan for the short-term is to stay the course. I love playing the degenerate version of the game as a type of tile-filling solitaire, and I could probably do that indefinitely. Nine more hours will be nothing.

Galactic Civilizations III - 5/20 hours

BORDER GORE!!!

Whew, I had to get that off my chest. I really do like Galactic Civilizations III. It's a lot like Galactic Civilizations II, but it's got a few new interesting features, like improvement adjacency bonuses, strategic resources, and research specializations, that, while they don't dramatically change the feel of the game. do at least add some more engaging choices around the edges.

However, the initial colony rush and the AI's tendency to treat your borders as suggestions are still around, and they are just as exhausting as they were before. I know this is a weakness on my part, but I don't actually care all that much for the expansion part of the 4X genre (or, for that matter, the exterminate part. But I really like the explore and exploit parts . . . maybe I've been looking for a 2X game this whole time).

I don't know what it is, but I like to scope out the geography of my territory and find its natural limits - the whole of an island, the quarter of a continent that lies behind a bottleneck, the cluster of stars surrounding my homeworld. Then, I'll rush to the edges of that limit and try to back-fill the interior. But that strategy won't work here (and, to be fair, it barely works in other games), because the AI sees an uncolonized planet and thinks "hey, I could put a colony there right now and there's no downside." And the pathetic thing is, aside from annoying me, it's right.

Which, I don't know where I'm going with this. The GalCiv series has a very particular early game. You've got to balance early construction with rapid expansion with steady population growth and it's not so much a strategy as it is a formula. You're racing in the early game to build the foundation for a mid-game empire, and if you screw up, your opponents will walk all over you.

There was a time when I knew how to handle this. I played so many games of Galactic Civilizations II in a row that the thing where you've got to throttle your early tax income to afford explosive population growth that you channeled into a massive number of colony ships came as second nature to me, but I keep forgetting. I'd rather play around with micromanaging my planets' production queues than actually play the real game in front of me.

I don't think I'll ever change. I'm going to try here, at least a little, because there's a lot about Galactic Civilizations III that I enjoy and if I can be just enough of a non-pushover to be able to focus on it as much as possible, than I'll be pretty happy.

Galactic Civilizations III - Initial Thoughts

About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)

The human race has finally mastered faster-than-light travel opening up the stars for exploration and colonization. As the leader of the newly formed Terran Alliance, you will guide humanity's expansion into becoming a space-based civilization. Soon, you will discover that we are not alone. Alien civilizations with their own histories and motivations are expanding as well. Research new technology, design starships, negotiate trade and treaties, wage wars, colonize new worlds, construct starbases in the largest 4X strategy game ever made. And when you've finished that, play again as one of the many included alien civilizations each with its own history, technology tree, ship components and more.

Previous Playtime

0 hours

Expectations and Prior Experience

I first want to say a word of thanks to reader PAS for sending me this game. I've been looking forward to playing it for quite awhile.

I've played the previous game in the series quite a bit, and while in my latest go-round, I found the relentless need for expansion to be a bit of an annoyance, it was still a planet-settling, tech-researching, ship-customizing, menu-browsing sort of game, and thus one I could easily and happily play for hours at a stretch.

My big hope for Galactic Civilizations III is that it brings a bit of modern polish to the GalCivII formula. If the menus are slightly easier to navigate, the opposition a bit more respectful of my borders, and the ships a bit more balanced against each other, I expect I will be perfectly happy.

Star Wars Starfighter - 20/20 hours

I tried to beat the canyon level a few more times, but I couldn't do it. I got almost to the end a couple of times, but the ship I was escorting would fly into that last open area and get blown up. I'm sure it's possible, but I don't have the reflexes for it.

So I went with my backup plan. I enabled invincibility and got gold medals on all the levels . . . in easy mode. Since many of the medals required strict time limits, this wasn't exactly a gimme, but it was pretty easy. Even the canyon level wasn't too bad, given all the practice I had on medium mode. This killed a couple of hours. Then I was left with all the ships and bonus levels unlocked, so I went to get gold on all but one of the bonus levels, using the cool "Sith Infiltrator" bonus ship. That was fine, but I still had about an hour left to go. So I decided to try the canyon level on medium difficulty, while invincible.

I couldn't get through it. Whenever I flew more aggressively, the screen-shake from taking fire made me completely ineffectual. And the Sith Infiltrator's extremely powerful gun was useless if I couldn't aim. Even cheating, that level still managed to beat me. I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse, but I do know that I removed this game from my hard drive with a great deal of satisfaction.

It mostly wasn't that bad. I may be getting a little old to keep up with it, physically, but I still understand the appeal of whizzing around in a spaceship, blasting stuff with lasers. It's light and sound and spectacle and split-second decisions, and it's been a long time since I played a game that was so adept at coaxing out both the good and the bad type of adrenaline. But it's not my thing. Not any more.

Still, I managed to finally complete the last game in my Star Wars bundle. I really feel like the end of the blog is something that's actually going to happen. Once I get Age of Wonders III, the Stronghold games, and the Divinity series out of the way, that will be the last of my big bundles. It's only a matter of time now!

Star Wars Starfighter - 15/20 hours

Well, this game made me cry. Literally. I've been trying to beat the game on Medium difficulty and I was doing well right up until I got to that canyon mission that thwarted me at around hour 3. I played it for about 2 hours, and I just felt this bone-deep exhaustion. Why does the ship I'm escorting keep flying into lasers? I try to clear out the tanks as quickly as possible, but if I stray too far ahead, out of cover, they hit me from all sides, shaking my ship, making it impossible to control, and costing me more time in the long run. If I play with anything less than perfect precision, my ward will die, or I will.

The thought of having to go back and play that level again fills me with dread. I suppose I could avoid it. Maybe try some of the earlier levels on Hard. Or maybe activate invincibility mode and just dick around for the next five hours.

All I have to do is get past my desire to do literally anything else. Prior to playing that damned canyon level, I felt a kind of bland indifference to the game. I was tempted by other, more rewarding activities (and, admittedly, succumbed to those temptations for a day or two), but continuing to play was in the back of my mind as something I would not be averse to when I finally mustered the will.

Now, those distractions are calling to me with a thunderous voice. Why not indulge in a strategy game, or a crafting game, or a writing project or binging a television show, instead of just punching a brick wall over and over again, until your hand is bloody and raw? You know, metaphorically speaking.

I guess it's a real challenge now. Before, I could reframe allowing myself to become distracted as a mere wandering interest. There are so many amazing entertainments available to me (as the past three years of the blog have proven) that it's only natural my head would be turned, especially when I already beat the game. Now, my pride is on the line. Tears were shed. If I give in now, I will be admitting the pain was stronger than my spirit.

Which is not something I object to generally. If we were talking about a broken heart, an injury, or a traumatic personal experience, I would say that the idea that one must be stronger than the pain is toxic. It is inappropriate and destructive to demand that people "prove themselves" by putting an abstract notion of strength above their personal happiness. But this is a video game. It is literally the least consequential problem imaginable. I'm not ashamed that I let it make me cry, but I'm not exactly going to let that be the final word, either.

I'm not yet sure what victory over the game will look like, whether it will come in the form of determinedly trying to beat the level that thwarted me, regardless of my personal frustration, or if it will be in finding ways to enjoy the game that sidestep its creators' punishing idea of "challenge." Either way, I'm making it to 20 hours by this time tomorrow. Then I'll delete Star Wars Starfighter and never look back.

Star Wars Starfighter - 10/20 hours

The very next time I played the final level, the exact same thing happened to me - flew through the Trade Federation starship, defeated the overpowered mercenary, blew up the shield generator, and then died in the process of flying out. It was really frustrating. But I stuck with it, failed a few times, and then got through the whole level again . . . and it happened again.

At this point, rather than give up, I watched the walkthrough again. It turns out I wasn't quite paying attention the first time I watched it. I thought I remembered everything I needed to know. But watching it again revealed to me exactly what I was doing wrong - the place I kept flying into was not a window, it was an alcove. I kept dying because I kept flying into walls.

I wouldn't say that I dislike this game, exactly, but I definitely have trouble playing it for more than a half hour at a time. It's too stimulating. Too many things are going on at once. The need to focus both focus my attention on my immediate peril and split my attention to keep an eye out for upcoming peril is aggravating to me. I've been known to enjoy an action game from time to time, but the ones I tend to like don't excessively punish me for having tunnel vision.

Now that I've finished the main story and unlocked and beat all the bonus missions, I'm not sure how I'm going to approach the last 10 hours. This would be a really sensible place to stop and move on, but let's not think about that.

I think what I've got to try and do is beat this game on Medium, and then Hard. That should easily carry me through my deadline. The trick is to do it without my eyes melting out of my head. What I'm going to have to do is play it steadily, but in bursts. A half hour of the game, then a half hour for me to cool down and relax. Then another half hour of the game. If I keep it up and be consistent, it shouldn't be much slower than just sitting down with a couple of marathon sessions.

We'll see how well that plan survives contact with reality.

Star Wars Starfighter - 7/20 hours

I was going to wait until I beat the game to write this post, but I'm so infuriated, I knew I had to capture this feeling for posterity.

The last level of the game has you flying into a Trade Federation droid control ship, you know, as one does. The level is so confined that my first few times I tried it, I wound up getting shot at by enemies from all sides before crashing into the walls and dying. So I looked up a video that showed how to navigate through the various stages of the level.

And then I tried it again. And again. And again. And finally I did it. I beat the boss character in his ludicrously powerful ship with the fast regenerating shields and the missiles that both homed in on me and exploded in a near-unavoidable AoE damage field when I managed to shoot them down early. I navigated through the crumbling ship and blew up the shield generator. And then I ran into a piece of debris and died, literally one second before the very end of the game.

Sigh. This is bringing back memories. When I was 19, my console of choice was the Gamecube. And one of my most played games was Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader. It's been a long time since I played it, but I remember two main things about it - being awed by its gorgeous sci-fi environments and being angry nearly every second I played it.

And anger was just my baseline state of being. There were moments when I was furious. When I yelled and swore at the game, and the ground my teeth and hit reload. And, while Star Wars Starfighter is not as interesting, diverse, or polished an experience as Rogue Leader, it nonetheless handles similarly, and is bringing up old feelings long since forgotten.

Maybe it's maturity, but I wonder why I ever subjected myself to that, all those years ago. I know why I'm doing it now - because I'm stubbornly clinging to an ill-considered goal that only allows for the slightest nuance and flexibility. But back then, why did I spend so much of my leisure time on activities that enraged me.

I suppose there might be such a thing as constructive rage. Anger that drives you to improve and excel, overcome obstacles and finish jobs that aren't always pleasant. But we're talking about games here. So what's my angle? Why do I care about missing the end by 1 second?

I think I get invested in the narrative. Not the game's actual plot (which in this case is a serviceable, but forgettable number about 3 ace pilots from very different backgrounds getting caught up in the Trade Federation invasion of Naboo), but the logic of its world. The progression of cause and effect. I didn't just fail to experience 1 extra second with no significant challenges or insights. I died. I got so close to beating the mission, and I failed. I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and now I have to start the level all over again. Even though this is 2017 and I could easily just look up the final cinematic, were I especially curious about what happens to the three people whose names I've already forgotten.

It's ridiculous to be frustrated by something like this, but maybe that's central to the appeal of video games as a whole. It's not just a fantasy world where things like space ships and robots exist, it's also a simulation of significance. Within the context of the game, my actions, my choices, and even my failures matter. I mean, obviously these things matter in real life too, but in real life I have too much to lose and not enough to gain. I'll never save a planet from invasion, I'll never get in a dogfight with the mercenary who killed my mentor, I'll never help pirates escape an army of robots. But if I do too badly checking people into hotel rooms, if I accidentally let a drug dealer be my roommate, if I fail to notice a suspicious mole, I may well end up homeless, in jail, or dead. And that's not a lot of fun to contemplate.

Which I guess means that in order to have the sort of simulated triumph that's earned with a harmless sort of simulated risk, I have to open myself up to simulated anger. Unfortunately, it doesn't always feel simulated at the time.

Star Wars Starfighter: 3/20 hours

I skipped my 2 hour post because at that time, I was already on mission 9, and I saw on a guide that there were only 14 missions in the game. So I naturally assumed that by hour 3, or shortly thereafter, I would have at least completed the main story. And yet, here I am, an hour and a half later, and I'm still only on mission 11. On easy mode.

It all comes down to escort missions. I don't get it. Why would I want my success or failure at a particular mission to hinge on whether or not an NPC is smart enough to stay out of the line of fire? Like in mission 11. I have to escort an ally through a canyon. Which is fine, in theory, because that means that enemies cannot come from the sides and are unlikely to come from behind, so if you were carrying volatile ammunition and had to rely on the protection of your fighter escort, all you would have to do is move slowly enough that your escort can clear out the enemies in front of you. Seems simple, really. So why on earth would you just charge ahead and fly into a clearing full of tanks when, if you waited 2 goddamned minutes, the fighter could wipe them all out from the safety of the canyon's protected cover. My only guess here is that the game itself wants me to fly around like an idiot, exposed to fire from all directions, instead of taking the boring and sensible precaution of not engaging more enemies at one time than I can handle.

I'm wracking my brain trying to remember if I've ever experienced this from the other side. Is there a game where you have to play the defenseless cargo ship and work your way through a gauntlet of enemies by relying on the protection of a more powerful attack ship? Or, at least, its genre-appropriate equivalent, like maybe you're a young child and you have to stay near your bodyguard. I can't think of any examples at the moment (except for tongue-in-cheek ones like Bioshock Infinite), and I'm guessing the reason they're so rare is that they're the sort of thing any human being could do with a minimum of prompting.

Despite my frustration, I do understand the appeal of an escort mission from a design perspective. Theoretically (they are rarely executed well enough to justify the downsides). They disrupt the player. Force you out of your old habits, optimized as they are for keeping yourself safe. They force you to have a broader situational awareness. It's no longer enough to know where the enemies are in relation to you, you also have to expand your mental map to include a second focal point. It's an order of magnitude more complex strategically. And thus could be immensely satisfying . . . if you had a partner capable of coordinating with you.

It doesn't help that Star Wars Starfighter is not an especially polished game. Don't get me wrong, it's fine by 2002 standards, and you actual ship controls pretty well. It's just that way games present information to help you navigate in 3D has advanced quite a bit since then. There is a targeting reticle that helps you track enemies, but it auto-places itself in a somewhat . . . whimsical manner. It's gotten better since I changed my controller configuration to map the manual targeting to a button the game actually recognizes, but even then, I have to be directly looking at my next target to do so, and that's not always easy (especially in a canyon).

I'm still expecting this game to be disappointingly short, but it would not surprise me if it takes me another hour to get past mission 11.

Star Wars Starfighter - Initial Thoughts

About the Game (From The Steam Store Page) 

Join three heroic starfighter pilots in harrowing deep space and planetary missions to save the planet of Naboo. Rookie Naboo pilot Rhys Dallows, mercenary Vana Sage and alien pirate Nym form an unlikely alliance as they join together against an unexpected assault on the peaceful planet.

Pilot three unique starfighters: the sleek Naboo starfighter, nimble Guardian Mantis and lethal Havoc.

Engage in over 14 challenging missions to save Naboo: deep space dogfights, attack runs, escort missions, and more.

Vast environments take you deep into Star Wars worlds: from enormous open plains of Naboo to the furthest reaches of space to the interior corridors of the Droid Control Ship.

Previous Playtime

0 hours

What Was I Thinking When I Bought This

This game was part of the huge Star Wars bundle I bought awhile back, but my owning it is purely incidental. I had no idea this game existed and it played no role in my decision to purchase the bundle.

Expectations and Prior Experience

Honestly, I don't even know. I've played a couple of Star Wars-based flying sims before - Rogue Squadron and its sequel Rogue Leader and I found them alternately enchanting (when I got to look at cool ships flying through awesome Star Wars environments) and frustrating (when I had to protect that goddamned "medical frigate" or take down AT-ATs on Hoth for the hundredth time in my life.) So I'm guessing that my worst case scenario is that this game is unforgiving and I crash into cliffs and get lasered into oblivion a bunch of times. Best case scenario is that it's a fast-paced and lively action game where my reasonably developed quick twitch skills are rewarded with a bunch of gratuitous explosions.

Seeing as how I've never heard of this game until now, I'm willing to bet that its closer to the former than the latter. However, it is also the last game of my Star Wars bundle, and thus beating it feels a bit like a milestone. For that reason alone, I expect to get through it easily enough.

Star Wars Empire At War: Gold Pack - 20/20 hours

I spent most of my last few hours playing the Imperial campaign. I thought it would be fun to command the awesome power of the Death Star, but it actually just turned out to be grim and unpleasant. I mean, you've got these planets and they produce resources and have space for garrisons, and then you blow them up and they become these near-worthless asteroid fields. It doesn't feel worth it, especially when you still have to win a massive space battle to get in position to use the Death Star's laser. Since I had the resources of 90% of the galaxy at my disposal, I wound up just crushing the Rebellion with my conventional forces.

I'm not sure why Star Wars games keep making you play as the Empire, though. The movies are known for their straightforward (some might say simplistic) depiction of good vs evil. The heroes, even scoundrels like Han Solo, are unambiguously on the side of light. And the villains revel in the darkness. I suppose there is some potential pleasure in being a scenery-chewing bad guys, but I've never really felt they've done it well. Darth Vader choking minions just feels petty and counterproductive. The Emperor is overly smug. And the rest of the Imperials, from the storm troopers to the officers, barely have any personality at all.

But I think the biggest problem with playing the Empire in a game is that their signature weapon is the Death Star. Even leaving aside the fact that it blew up the first time they moved it out, it's not a very good villain weapon. Sure, it's big and imposing, and could theoretically chew through entire fleets, but its main thing is that it blows up planets.

And if you saw it coming up over the horizon, blotting out the sun, churning the sea with its massive tidal forces, you would cower in its shadow, certain of the doom that was to come. But you never see the Death Star from that angle. You always see it from above, a grey dot, floating in space, that uses green light to blow up a rock. The Empire's violence is rarely presented in a victim-centered fashion. Snuffing out a billion lives is spectacle, and even when we're given the viewpoint of people who are intimately involved with the dead, their state of mind is not the focus. Luke mourned more for Obi-Wan Kenobi than Leia did for Alderaan. I don't think this is because Leia was cold and uncaring, but rather because Star Wars was more interested in pulp sci-fi action and less in realistic character work.

The bloodless and impersonal nature of the Empire's crimes makes them tempting video game protagonists, because they don't seem "that bad" and yet also makes them awful villains because you can't humanize them too much without whitewashing their atrocities. For example, Darth Vader's "redemption" in Return of the Jedi, where he doesn't confront and answer for his many, many crimes, and just kills a guy he hates to save his son. It's a plot that makes sense if the dichotomy is between "pure evil" and "some good," but for redemption to make any sense as a concept, it has to be the beginning of a process of healing, and that is not possible if you don't acknowledge the wound.

Bringing it back to Empire At War, the upside to playing as the Empire is that they have more strikingly designed units and messing around with Star Destroyers and AT-ATs is pretty darned cool. The downside is that they have terrible, unsympathetic motives, and no psychological nuance to make them more compelling (or, failing that, over-the-top humor like the Saints Row crew).

Overall, though, I enjoyed the game. I downplayed its RTS elements as much as possible, but it is a high mark in my book that I was able to do that. I enjoyed playing the Rebels, though I wish I could have had a real Death Star battle (provided it wasn't a tedious escort mission). I merely tolerated playing the Empire, but I did enjoy the look and feel of their units. I didn't get enough of a chance with the Forces of Corruption expansion to have a strong opinion of it one way or the other, though playing as a ruthless criminal syndicate did seem like a step up in the villain protagonist department.

I don't think I'll ever play this game again, simply because I have about 50 others that outrank it in my order of preference, but if I was ever in a situation where I had no other choice, I would play it again. It would not strike me as a trial I had to endure. Real-time strategy games are not my favorite in general, but this particular RTS managed to strike a positive balance for me. And, of course, I love the Star Wars franchise quite a bit. When taken together, I dub this game "perfectly adequate."

Star Wars Empire At War: Gold Pack - 15/20 hours

I finished the Rebel campaign and it was fine. There were too many escort missions. And I question the wisdom of making me play a stealth mission in an RTS. Still, it was fine. I could list a couple of quibbles with the plot - like, I never got the impression from the movies that Han Solo worked with the Rebellion prior to meeting up with Luke Skywalker, and the final battle had you attempting to beat the Death Star, but it was really just an escort mission where you protect the NPCs who do it off-screen, but you know what, you don't play RTS games for the plot. You play them for the small-unit tactics.

Now, I'm no aficionado, but so far they seem pretty good. I could probably squeeze more efficiency out of my units by developing my micromanagement skills and deploying my units' special abilities more frequently, but even without that, the strengths and weaknesses of the different unit types make force composition an interesting puzzle. And the separation of economy and unit deployment into two different phases of the game does make battles less frantic and more driven by positioning and forward-thinking. The only problem I've been having with it so far is in the various campaign chapter breaks, where a whole new bunch of planets is brought into play and the enemy suddenly has a disproportionately large fleet capable of threatening multiple planets at once. But even then, after the first wave dies down and I'm able to proceed more deliberately, it proves to be pretty enjoyable.

That being said, I've been avoiding a lot of potential RTS battles by selecting "auto-resolve" whenever possible. This is an objectively terrible idea, because I lose between 5-10 times as many units to the game's battle-resolution algorithm as I would if I just played the battles out manually, but since it only takes a second to get through, and since I always build up to my unit cap between battles, it works out as a lot easier in practice.

It's probably a bad idea in the long run, though. I have a feeling I'll get through the Imperial campaign far too quickly, and have to find something else to do for 3 or 4 hours. Luckily, I still have the DLC campaign to try, and if that proves to be too short, I can always attempt a randomized Galactic Conquest.

I wouldn't rank Empire At War among my favorite games, but I'm pretty sure I have this one in the bag.

Star Wars Empire At War: Gold Pack - 9/20 hours

I know it goes without saying, but I hate to lose RTS games. Even more than any other genre, it bugs me. And I always assumed it was because I was, on some level, an emotionally frail person who would rather be coddled than develop the skills necessary to win. And while I won't say that's untrue, I've recently had an insight that puts my love-hate relationship with the genre in a new perspective.

It's not so much that I hate to lose, as it is that I hate playing defense. I think the confusion comes from the fact that whenever I wind up playing defensively, it's usually a prelude to a loss. Maybe that's because playing defensively is strategically inferior. Or maybe it's because my lack of interest in that style of play leads me to execute it poorly. Either way, it's a habit that carries across genres (for example, in an rpg, I will always prioritize offense over defense, unless a particular defensive skill proves unusually good).

Which is weird, because when pacifism is an option, like in your typical 4X game, I will almost always go for it. Which you'd think would mean that I'd learn to focus on defense, just as a practical survival skill, but it's always been a huge blind-spot for me. I'll often rage-quit if I'm not able to fight my defensive wars in enemy territory.

I think it's because I resent defense. I mean, the necessity of it. I never bought into the idea that my lacking an army meant I was asking to get attacked. Yes, from a strategic standpoint, it's ridiculous, but there it is. In fact, my usual defensive doctrine is to build up my infrastructure at the expense of my military, rapidly retool to a military footing in the hopes of outproducing my enemy, and then launch a massive counterattack. This doesn't always work, but even when it does, it bugs the hell out of me. I'd rather not deal with it all.

Star Wars Empire At War is a pure war game, so there's no real choice about fighting. You've got to do it. So even though I wound up having to defend a few of my colonies, the attacks were not a surprise. And yet, even though I handily won all my battles, I was still pretty annoyed.

It's not my proudest character trait, but what the hell, it's not like I'm getting points for consistency here. I'll just continue attacking the Empire in the hopes of mercilessly crushing their tyranny once and for all. And then, if I still have time, I'll switch sides and do it again.