Unfinished Games of 2020: Part II

Unfinished Games:

Unfinished Games of 2019: Part 1

Unfinished Games of 2019: Part 2

Unfinished Games of 2020: Part I

Unfinished Games of 2020: Part II

This article includes four more games I started in 2020, but will never finish. Though I try awfully hard to slog through every game I begin, some games exhaust my effort. A few of these games may be good, but I didn't enjoy them.

Firewatch

Time Played: 1 Hour

Firewatch was another defeated the best efforts of my wife and I. The game isn't as simple as a walking simulator, but it doesn't escape the limitations of the genre. Somewhere between Tacoma and The Walking Dead in gameplay style, part of the writing was done by ex-Telltale employee, Sean Vanaman. He was credited with writing the best episodes in the first season of The Walking Dead (video game). Vanaman partnered with Nels Anderson, the designer of the fabulous Mark of the Ninja, to make Firewatch, so I had high expectations. They went up in flames. The developer's worst decision was to begin with fifteen minutes of text and no visual effects. The story is told in text on a screen, where the player is repeatedly compelled to choose between two miserable choices. The protagonist seems unlikable, childish, boorish, selfish, a drunk, a lout, and a frat boy. The dialogue uses swearing and crude humor as a crutch for a miserable writing.

Eventually the game begins, with the protagonist hiking up to their new job, a lookout in a fire tower. He is taking the job to escape the difficulties of his life. At the tower he meets his partner, or at least he meets her voice. Delilah supervises Henry with a radio, and they remain in constant connection, bantering and chatting. The dialogue between the two, while well acted, is cliched and dull. Eventually a Henry discovers a mysterious series of events. The player is free to explore the Shoshone National Forest, and this is what makes the game really disappointing: the view is excellent. It's the only exceptional aspect of the Firewatch.

In conclusion, the fantastic hiking in the woods can't compensate for the abysmal characters, dialogue, and story.

Fallout

Time Played: 6 Hours

Before playing Fallout 4, I tried to play through the original Fallout. After the original I was going to play Fallout 2. Those with knowledge of the original Interplay Productions series claim it is vastly superior to (and different from) the Bethesda games. I wanted to confirm these rumors. Alas, I failed.

In Fallout the protagonist lives in Vault 13, an underground shelter which protected the residents from nuclear war. Eighty-four years after the war a computer chip regulating the water system malfunctions. The protagonist is chosen by the community to leave the vault and find another. They have 150 days before the people of the vault die.

Set in California, Fallout introduced all the classic enemies which tiresomely reappear in the later games; ghouls, super mutants, and radscorpions, though I mostly died from overgrown rodents and gunfights in the small towns.

The initial mission leads the player to a nearby vault which turns out to be abandoned, but full of feral, mutated, animals. I purchased Fallout from Steam, and I had to jigger with the settings to even get the game to run, and then to make it look suitable. Still the game is so dark, with a muted brown palette, that is nearly impossible to see objects on the ground, or click on the correct item. Eventually I had to look up how to complete this basic mission, and it was some small object I couldn't see before. Like its visuals, Fallout is dark, with morbid humor, and gruesome deaths, as one would expect from people living in the atomic ruins of a civilization they never knew. Unlike Fallout 4, most of the remnants of civilization are gone, no towering buildings, or one hundred year skeletons scattered about. It's a true wasteland, mostly empty space with plenty of peaceful travel time. Fallout contains significantly less fighting, and more talking, with better dialogue.

My greatest compliment. Badly injured enemies flee instead of fighting to the death. They are characters, people in their own right, not just enemies for the player to gun down. I wish more RPGs thought of the enemies like this.

In conclusion, it's easy to see why video game developers prefer First Person Shooters. Even the worst FPS still generate that basic thrill that pushes the player to persevere. It isn't that Fallout 4 is better than the original. It's almost certainly worse, but is new, with new graphics, a user interface that is more comfortable to modern gamers (and that's saying something because Fallout 4's UI was abysmal), and it repeatedly delivers something to do, without too much thought. Fallout requires the player to manually write down any valuable information, it has only a limited journal, a major inconvenience in 2020.

This is a self-criticism, a criticism of the times, but it's also an unfortunate fact.

Rise to Ruin

Time Played: 7 Hours

A quick glance at Rise to Ruins makes the player think it is like Dwarf Fortress or RimWorld. It's the same genre and yet most of the share appearance is superficial. The player starts with a small settlement of humans in a fantasy world. A blight corrupts the land and eventually sends monsters to attack the player. The player assigns jobs to characters, and builds buildings. The humans collect resources and transform them into buildings, tools, and other resources. To survive the player needs defenses and food. Both are created through a process of collecting raw resources and refining them multiple times. Constructing an adequate defense isn't difficult, but I could never grow enough food. Half of my citizens were working at farms, but the settlement was always low on food, even as winter approached. I was doing something wrong, but even with online assistance I couldn't discover the solution. Veterans of Rise to Ruin may justly criticize me for my failure, but I suspect it's common among new players. My food failure wasn't the part that rendered Rise to Ruin unenjoyable. Unlike Dwarf Fortress the residents didn't feel unique, they didn't feel like characters, or real people. This was the greatest strength of Fortress, and it was missing.

In conclusion Rise to Ruin feels more like a economic community, where every person is another cog in the wheel, than a community of individuals like Dwarf Fortress. Also, I couldn't grow enough food, even on my third attempt.

Panzer Corps

Time Played: 11 Hours

This 2011 turn based video game is based on a board game, that should feel like a video game, but unfortunately feels like a board game.

Panzer Corps is a hex wargame where the player controls the Axis or Allies in World War II. It would seem complicated for people unused to war-games, and includes complex, and unexplained terminology, like spotting, soft attack, close defense, and suppression. Even the PDF Game Manual and the in-game rules are missing some relevant details. My notes are littered with rule question that I never answered.

One advantage for the video game is that it uses fog of war to mask the movements of the enemy.

I began the British campaign retreating from the Italians in Egypt, before counter attacking into Libya. Eventually I fought on the beaches of Crete before quitting. I finished at least ten missions, and one of the best parts was the feeling of progression. Units (tanks, jeeps, soldiers, paratroopers, fighters, artillery, and more) all display an experience level, which fluctuates as they inflict and suffer casualties. For particularly valiant behavior, specific individuals earn bonuses for their division, and the entire history of a division can be read at any time. The player spends resources to buy new divisions or replenish losses on current ones. Divisions can be given better equipment as it becomes available, and still retain their skills.

Because of this progression, I actually quit after the fifth mission, and restarted. Because if you are doing poorly, you'll stumble into a spiral of failure. My second play-through built on the knowledge gained from the first.

Every battle ends in Triumph (completing regular and bonus goals), Victory (completing regular goals), or Defeat (failing to complete regular goals). While most maps require Victory to advance, some accept Defeat. But advancing with Defeat means you should probably go back and replay the level, because you lost too many resources. Panzer Corps has no campaign decisions, only tactical ones. The player never chooses the area of battle, just how to fight it.

Combat is fine. It's complex, it's tactical, it's deep. There's so much to consider on each turn; the terrain, the enemies you can see, the enemies you can't see but know are there, the enemies that you don't know about but suspect are nearby. But it is very frustrating to see the results of combat. The game generates a preview of the outcome before the player attacks, but occasionally the result diverges wildly from the expected. Also, mission introductions don't provide any intelligence about the enemy force distribution. This is a glaring error. How can I choose which of my forces to deploy (the player is limited to a certain number of divisions per map) if I don't have any information about the enemy force? Lastly, the computer plays entirely static on defense, and a headlong charge on offense. The defense is the worse, because it feels like the player is trying to chisel through a brick wall. There isn't much movement on the enemy's part and one imagines it's because the developers didn't enough programming.

In conclusion, Panzer Corps has some advantages over its board game relative, but the poor play of the computer blows up the joy of the experience.

That's the end of unfinished games for 2020. If anyone reads these reviews and can't understand why I didn't like a game, I'd be glad to accept some advice on how to make them more enjoyable.

Recent:

Two Yellow Eyes, Facing Each Other: Not Daisies

Relevant:

Unfinished Games of 2020: Part I

Tacoma: Can You Go Home Again?

Fallout 4: The Fall and Rise of the Commonwealth