Play Relevant Month: Grim Dawn

I actually picked up Grim Dawn all the way back in early September, but sort of set it as my tertiary game, something to work my way through over the coming months. ARPGs are often long and take a considerable amount of time to truly review. There's actually several ARPGs out relatively recently I'm inclined to play, but Grim Dawn for whatever reason just looked like the best of the lot, though Victor Vran looks pretty good too.

Grim Dawn is the work of Crate Entertainment, which according to their wikipedia page appears to be an off-shoot or descendant of Iron Lore, whom produced Titan Quest for THQ quite a while ago. While I've owned Titan quest for ages, the game never appealed to me. I couldn't tell you why, but for a long time

Grim Dawn on the other hand was in one of the humble monthlies, and I think this is the game where I mathed it out and realized a full 12 month subscription (which gives a month free) essentially would have worked out as good enough to pick up. Since then, the monthly has actually been even better, with several excellent sidetitles to go with it. So you can sort of blame Grim Dawn from crate entertainment on convincing to me to buy into some crate-style entertainment...

Does that even count as a pun? I'm not even sure anymore.

Regardless, Grim Dawn is an isometric view style ARPG of a proper pedigree and the usual nonsense. Fantasy world overrun with nasties from other dimension, with zombies because zombies, loot because loot and "corruption". No prophecies, though, and mostly bad-ass characters who actually survived the apocalypse.

They actually removed THQ from the credits: Warhammer 40k Space Marine

My personal relationship with Warhammer, and more specifically 40k, is a cliche tale. Almost generic. I played back in the late 90s, probably like 98 or somewhere around there, when the game was in its second edition and I have no idea what fantasy was like. There's a legion of people out there like me, who played a year or two, had some fun with the game then moved on with their life. In the same way there's no end of thirty something Transformers fans like me - manchildren who reconnected with the franchise at some point - there's no end of late twenties to late thirties dudes who remember the good times with Warhammer.

40k is patently ridiculous, and ridiculous with patents (look up the stuff about Games Workshop vs Chapterhouse, it's absurdity in action) but that is a big part of its charm. When done well, it carries itself with just enough of a smirk that the insanity doesn't register as the capricious nihilism and you can still, well, have fun with it. It's sort of like a crazy heavy metal van. Done well, and it's ridiculously cool, done poorly and much like the van it just feels ... Like bad things are coming.

Relic on the most part had a pretty good, but not great, handle on 40k. There were a lot of points where it largely felt in Dawn of War like they wanted to put their own spin on things but couldn't quite get there. Relic might still have the GW license now, I don't really know, given their wikipedia article is out of date and who largely cares. Games Workshop itself is now something of a joke, coasting on that positive energy but making no further gains as a company. I'm sure in 15 years whoever is building the best "formative years" brand will be coasting by as they are. Maybe that's privateer press, maybe not.

ya I noticed

As an old man thinking about getting back into painting miniatures, I can tell you Games Workshop is priced to the point of absurdity, but anyway, back to vidya games.

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine is Relic's attempt to branch out into other genres than just endless rehashes of RTS scenarios that, I think, sort of fell out of favor with the rise of the crippling might that is f2p MOBA games. You can sort of respect the attempt, innately, but you can also seriously begin to wonder how it's going to go.

Rest in Peace you crazy THQ fellows: Darksiders 2: Death Lives: This title makes no sense: Attack of the Colons

It's kinda hard right off the bat to take a game seriously when the title is just so grimdark. I feel like it's the most evident flaw in the game's marketing. Tell me I'm in for a treat when I play Darksiders 2, the prequel sequel to a nice looking new IP? Alright! Tell me I'm in for a treat when I'm up to play Darksiders 2: DEATH LIVES and my mouth does that thing where I try to sound out the words because they were so stupid in the air a moment ago. It's just a struggle.

I mean, are we going for Lovecraft here, twisted eons, even death may die? Probably not. It's just an odd looking marketing blurb, but hey we live in an era where Microsoft knowingly marketed into a press release where people came out of it going 'Ah yes, the Xbone' rather than giving their console a name that didn't shorten into a phallic reference. C'mon guys, it isn't hard. You just look at the words and go 'can this be shortened into a penis joke?'

Then again, it worked for Nintendo. Maybe dongs are the new hotness. Or wait, maybe they were when the Wii was burning up sales they were and now Microsoft is riding coat tails of a dying trend? I'm getting sidetracked here. Darksiders 2: Death Lives. Terrible title. And honestly, after finishing Darksiders itself, terrible sequel concept. I mean right from the get go you end with this super bad ass moment and instead you swerve, make a U turn, and get to work on a Death-centric parallel prequel? Death the guy, not Death the concept, which is centric in like 99% of video games.

It's not all that difficult to look at stuff like this and realize why the game was, to my understanding, a bit of a failure. I'm not trying to rag on the Vigil boys, because they seem like cool dudes, but rather the marketing team that dreamed this one up. Ugh. Seriously, Death Lives? Death Lives where? Detroit? The other decisions rapidly scale up to form a game more cobbled together, less unified, but none of them really stand out like that.

But this is probably the last true Darksiders game, unless the IP ends up back in Vigil crew's hands over at Crytek. Granted, that doesn't mean the next game will be bad - Assuming it exists at all, which it probably won't. I guess Death doesn't live. (The Nordic guys did comment here here but that's well into the territory of All Well and Good, But)

Rest in Peace you crazy THQ fellows: Saint's Row 3

I talked about this last year when I was playing through Just Cause 2: I've never played a GTA game. I can't recall if I mentioned that GTA came out on PC back when I was a youngun with a friend who tried to sell me on it. I'm still not sure why he successfully got me into Master of Orion and X-Com, but not GTA or Fallout. It's a mystery for the ages. Mind you, GTA was a top down game that was a bit of a letdown from Carmageddon. I don't know if they came out at the same time, but Carmageddon was way more interesting. You know, because I love murder. He played the shit out of both of them though...

His sister was very pretty. I considered making a misogynistic comment here to help set the mood for talking about Saint's Row 3, but the game is into some sort of bizarro land where the very concept of misogyny or misandry fail to deliver enough punch to what the game is like. Saint's Row 3 is nonchalant and almost inoffensive in its vile tendencies, simply for lack of anything connecting to real life response. There should be some level of revulsion to using a stripper as a human shield before throwing her into the pool and taunting her, but the game is so far gone into clown college territory your brain just can't make the connection. Like you know those words should hold meaning but the game is just one big crazy bear show.

This game hates humanity. Loathes it. Even if you play very tightly, drive safe around civilians and refuse to kill cops, they'll end up dead. A burst of gang warfare sees traffic around you freak out, with passing grannies plowed over by desperate fools who spin their car 360 degrees before moonwalking into a curb that six people happened to be standing on. Hell, sometimes you can just see traffic screw itself up without any input from you. Someone will walk into a car, a body will go flying, people will panic and then there's just death everywhere.

this it not ever going to be mature

Once you get away from the ridiculousness of its parade of buffoonery the real game lies beneath and ... Actually, that game is pretty good. For an effort that is tied very intimately to the death of a publisher and its years of excess, Saint's Row 3 is neither desperate or ugly. It's an attractive game, a mad men murder simulator, in which you take your sharp dressed gangster and plow into a cadre of opposing thugs in a garbage truck before leaping out from your flaming wreckage to benny hill your way into the distance. In theory you can dress your guy or gal in whatever outfit you like, but I just can't get over the idea of dressing as some sauve motherfucker as I barrel through city streets with barely any idea what I'm doing before t-boning a truck in traffic and dying in the resulting three car pile up explosion. Death and carnage follow in your wake, leading me to feel like you should dress for a funeral, because holy fuck people die.

And once the heavy weapons come out? Only the dead can know peace from this circus. Murder time fun time, indeed.