Alright. Purpose 1951 is done and dusted. This is the latest release by Tonguç Bodur, and a return to the more straightforward style of walking simulator he is well known for. I feel like each time I play one of Tonguç’s games, I find myself thinking it’s his best so far, and this is no different. Which is a testimony to his ability to continue refining and evolving his skills as a writer and developer.

In this game, the setting of the story is a bit different as the name suggests. You are a doctor in the post WWII era, who through circumstances beyond his control, is blacklisted from the community he lives in. The game follows his reflections on the medical community, his relationships, and the events that led him to this moment in time in his life.

The story format will be familiar. It begins somewhat wistful and contemplative, turns dark, but then closes out on a hopeful note. It was very well written. As a side note, I was a department director at two hospitals in real life for many years, and I have some of the same perspectives regarding the medical community and healthcare as are expressed in this game.

Gameplay is very straightforward walking simulator through some stunningly beautiful locales. Each chapter offers some new things to enjoy. And, as a first for Tonguç to my knowledge, there is even a city setting for one part of the game, which was cool. Each full chapter (other than the game ending itself) ends with a puzzle that upon solving, provides a story recap for the chapter.

I really thought the area transitions were cool as well. Starting in black and white, then changing to full color or sepia tones (depending on the area) once you have control of your character was a nice touch.

Something I noticed that I thought was interesting gameplay-wise. When you’re moving downhill, you actually move faster. It’s a minor detail, but I thought that attention to detail was really cool. Additionally, there was one part of the game where the controls started the section very stiff. Then I realized it’s because you’re actually not walking. You’re riding a bike. Completely made sense.

The voice acting was comfortable and believable. Nice job there. Similarly, the soundtrack was perfect, and varied based on the moment in the game. Each track was highly reflective of the story at that time.

I played on the Steam Deck with zero tweaks required. The controls are all analog stick movement and FoV, so this comes as no surprise. I also experienced no bugs at all, although I note that the game would start to blur a bit with quick turning. However, it never quite did.

It took me right at an hour to complete this game, and I enjoyed every moment of it. If you’re looking for a walking simulator with story depth and a fantastic soundtrack, you need look no further.

I’m doing my part

32.2 hours

23/39

5690

More

Well, I spent quite a bit of time last month and this month playing Helldivers 2. I unlocked all difficulty modes and personally found eight to be my sweet spot for challenge and gameplay. But, despite its awesomeness, I did eventually get bored of the gameplay loop despite the gameplay itself never being dull. So, I’m calling that one done. I then moved on and spent the rest of this month so far playing:

Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition, which is also now done and dusted. I played this many times on console, but this was my first playthrough on PC. And for me, on an unmodded Steam Deck with the current version of Proton, and with no game mods, this ran immaculately.

In fact, this may have been one of the best games I’ve played on the Deck performance wise. Which is crazy to me considering how often the game would freeze stutter and crash when I played it previously (on console). I had one instance of stuttering in Operation: Anchorage during the final push and another instance of stuttering in Mothership Zeta, but beyond that, I literally had zero stability issues and it ran at a consistent 60 FPS on maxed settings with an average of around 25% CPU usage.

It took me forever to get around to buying and playing this on Steam due to its compatibility issues, but thankfully, those were nonexistent for me. The home screen for some reason wasn’t gamepad compatible, but everything else was and the default settings were fine.

So, with that out of the way, I want to talk a bit about the experience itself. For one, this game still looks great. Does it show its age? Yes and no. Things like character models actually look better than they do in Skyrim and Fallout 4 for some reason. But they don’t look modern of course. However, the world itself has aged very well. The audio is pretty legendary, and that will never change I’m sure.

The gameplay also holds up to modern games quite well. Gunplay is fun and VATS never disappoints. Early to mid game, I would recommend keeping a Dart Gun on you. It makes fighting things like Deathclaws much easier, especially if you use it to target legs. Once you get the Gauss Rifle though, you won’t need the Dart Gun or much else lol. It does great damage AND typically knocks enemies down as well. Nearly game breaking in its OP-ness, but it’s also incredibly satisfying.

Btw, special weapons aside, Deathclaws are still panic inducing and terrifying lol. They’re the fastest, strongest and meanest things in the game, and they have a sixth sense for being able to find you. You could be forgiven if you scream like a child when one leaps at you.

Exploring the DC Wasteland is quite memorable, and I went into this playthrough with a clear agenda for what I wanted to do and see outside of the main story. Given how well written a lot of the side quests are, there’s a lot of good times to be had.

As far as the DLC goes, I’d recommend doing Operation: Anchorage first. It’s the easiest, and although it lacks any nods to loot whores, the final payoff includes the other nearly game breaking piece of gear in the game: the Chinese Stealth Armor. Once you acquire that, the world is your oyster. Especially if you’ve leveled up your stealth. Takes maybe three hours to complete and is basically set up as a corridor shooter. If it weren’t for the armor, I’d probably skip this DLC.

The Pitt is probably the most heavily reliant on the morality system and the one with the largest grey area in that regard. The actual setting is cool and does feature the best melee weapon in the game should you be playing that way. You can roll through this in three to four hours, but it can also take longer depending on how thorough you are. Fairly easy overall.

Mothership Zeta is the quirkiest DLC. You get abducted by aliens, but you and some other abductees rebel and eventually take over the ship lol. Features some good weapons and some excellent healing/repair items. It’s probably the funniest DLC and is moderately challenging.

Point Lookout is the most difficult DLC, is at least partially inspired by Deliverance and Southern Comfort, has some good next tier versions of weapons you’ve probably been using a lot, has some cool story stuff including an important item for concluding a Cthulhu story arc in the base game, and is also the largest DLC.

Broken Steel is an endgame DLC, so once you’ve finished the main story, this one kicks off. I honestly wrapped this up in about two hours, maybe a bit less. But you could potentially get eight-ish hours out of it depending on how you handle certain situations and how much you explore and loot. Personally, I already had more ammo and healing stuff than I’d ever be able to use, so I took a more direct approach with this DLC. It does tie a bow on the Fallout 3 story, and is definitely worth experiencing.

So yeah, I was very glad to get one final playthrough in. It was still awesome in this age of gaming, and while not perfect, each individual aspect of this game holds up immaculately.

Still not done with Shadow of War. I did finish the Branor DLC, but had to postpone my run of the second DLC, Blade of Galadriel, due to a project I want to really get off the ground. I still played it a bit, and I was a bit disappointed at how same-y it feels to the base game. There’s not much difference between Talion and Eltariel, except a few moves. They did make recruiting some orcs more interesting than the “press B to dominate”, so that’s nice. You get proper missions where you help these orcs out, which I think is much better and the orcs feel more unique compared to all the orcs I faced as Talion since they relied on RNG for everything, including their personalities.

But as I have a ton of shots in my bag to keep me posting for at least a century. And since I really, really loved the Baranor DLC, here’s another shot that I found pretty cool. The photo mode is really awesome in this game and I hope that you enjoy the pic I chose for Screenshot Sunday #51, as well as my super duper secret project that I will look to complete as soon as possible.

Soon, the fort shall know the power of Chadanor

• Life is Strange: True Colors
  

  8 hours playtime

  40 of 40 achievements

Report #394: Life is Strange: True Colors

Got this in HB Choice and was very glad that I got it. Had it on the wishlist for a while, hesitating in steam sales. Finally able to play it.
Actually played it twice as the first time was on Steam Deck without Internet connection. Lucky me, no achievement unlocked, so had to redo the whole game from start to finish.
But second time was much faster as I was using a guide to get the collectibles and already knew what to do in each chapter.

Story is good, but not as strong as for example the first game of the series.

Update

• Batman: Arkham Knight
  

  91 hours playtime

  81 of 113 achievements

• Ghostrunner
  

  25 hours playtime

  45 of 45 achievements

• STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order™
  

  30 hours playtime

  29 of 39 achievements

• Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
  

  26 hours playtime

  31 of 78 achievements

• God of War
  

  23 hours playtime

  19 of 37 achievements

Recently spent some time on a few demos, and even “completed” one, but to my dismay they aren’t detected by BLAEO.
Decided to make posts to track such games:

Chaos Reborn demo

1.1 hours, no achievements

Click to expand

Time Loader demo

0.4 hours, no achievements

Click to expand

Repella Fella demo

1.3 hours

Enemy Front

5/10

9.2 hours

24 of 45 achievements (53%)

#297
#15 of 2024
April 18, 2024

Oof, this one certainly stings considering I've waited for it since release on EGS. And yet here we are. What is it with vampire games being such hit or miss, airing more on miss side lately? Looking at Bloodlines 2 on the horizon fills me with dread even more. Oh well. Enjoy the read and have fun.

• REVIEW – Are You Scared Now?

Vampire: the Masquerade - Swansong

( PC – Adventure, RPG– 2023 ) + TRAILER

---

Playing Vampire: the Masquerade – Swansong felt like a very familiar journey. Why? Because it's based so heavily on studio's previous game, The Council, and a more cynical person might call it precisely that game with the addition of RNG to simulate dice rolls. What put me off from playing Swansong initially was the fact it was confined to Epic Game Store for a good while. Here we are at long last and I have to ask myself... was it worth the wait?

As Camarilla Kindred of Boston are preparing to attend a party meant to announce the alliance between the Prince and another Kindred group, that being Tremere with their Chantry, disaster strikes as Code Red is activated indicating something has gone horribly wrong at the party and early attendees from both parties. It seems to have been a massacre. With Prince Hazel being in the dark she summons her three agents; Ventrue Galeb, Toreador Emem and Malkavian Leysha, to accept their tasks and go figure out just what happened. Needless to say this being Vampire: the Masquerade there's a lot more going under the surface internally and externally. Since game is based on the latest edition of the tabletop roleplaying game there's a new top dog in town who just might throw a wrench as far as vampire politicking goes...

In case you're not familiar with the property at hand and above makes little sense to you there's nothing to worry about. Swansong assumes as much as it drowns you in pages of supplementary lore and backstory.

Game is structured in scenes as it takes place over multiple nights and each of our three characters gets to shine. They're not created equally, however. Needless to say this is entirely subjective but if you ask me this could've been entirely Leysha's story, and I'm not saying that simply because she's a Malkavian who have an additional hook of their own. Game will actually pull a fast one with that just as you think you've figured the character out and you were oh-so-smarter than the writers thought you were. Then there's Galeb who happens to be an Elder with his own baggage and angles. For all intents and purposes he is the protagonist who gets to do the heavy lifting as far as the main story goes even as all three perspectives intertwine in the last third or so. Which lastly leaves us with Emem as she's stuck with odd jobs. One of her scenes can be rendered completely moot as player can decide “nah, I'll do it alone” making you wonder why you've just wasted an hour trying to convince multiple parties to help you on direct instructions. She does get to make a doozy of a story reveal, though.

Speaking of story.

My final impression is it's as flawed as approach to game's characters is. There are definitely few high points, mainly dramatic choices you get to make as games does feature those and I will get into them later, but uneven three-way storytelling has a toll that must be paid. Some scenes are simply more interesting, some drag on for far too long, and towards the end they become so brief as to distract. Keep in mind this IS the kind of game that expects of you to pay attention to documents you come across if you want more than just the bare minimum game will feed you to keep its wonky pacing on schedule. This is at odds with how Swansong approaches investigations and puzzles, something I'll get into as well. Ending especially did not land for me with how it turns out a half-way measure between epilogue text and character resolutions.

You can get decent mileage out of something like Auspex as alternate means to discover clues and information.

On top of your attributes and Disciplines there's inventory with scarce curatives I very rarely used. Stat boosting “gear” even less.

Always time for a classy selfie. Swansong gets to show off neat lighting when it feels like it.

Interactive hot-spots are conveyed clearly to the player thus sidestepping the age old adventure game issue of pixel hunting.

Confrontations are very much the dramatic highlights of the game with no immediately obvious I-WIN buttons.

I II III IV V

Game's biggest strength is also its biggest weakness – it is both an adventure game and RPG. I've often lamented how there are very few /true examples of this genre fusion out there and perhaps it's for the better. Which is also weird since I liked The Council and that game did the exact same thing. What's the major difference? Well, you have THREE characters in Swansong. Their Clans are fixed, but this doesn't define them nearly as much as you'd think. Only your Disciplines are fixed and everything else is up to you. When you get experience points to spend, based on what you've managed to do on per-scene basis, your hands are completely free even if you go with one of the starting archetypes since those just determine initial spread. Even with scenes aka levels tailor made for that particular character developers still had to build in redundancies. What if you made Galeb go full Intimidation + Dominate, for example? You won't get stuck since there's a basic progression thread always there no matter what “build” you went with, but it makes the game lend itself to this uncomfortable sensation where you always get the feeling you've built your characters... wrong?

What I mean is you're constantly seeing grayed out options unavailable to you so you KNOW you're missing out on alternate routes or extra experience. Or you're out of Willpower chips, fuel you use to activate skills in conversations or in the field, as well as sporting high Hunger as you try to rely on magical disciplines to force solutions. Even on the best of days if you have a good spread of skills you may find yourself wasting precious resources on a progression route in the scene that leads to the same outcome, but one that simply drains your resources more. Did I forget to mention you only have autosave available and restarting the level is the only way to undo mistakes? Well, I have now. In essence, Swansong ends up being very anxiety-inducing where the RPG half interferes with the adventure game half resulting in missing out on options rather than opening new ones for the player. You have two choices to make: either embrace [hehe] what the game is and go with your gut, or you'll need to have a guide on the side to stray sane. Choice is entirely up to you.

It occurs to me I forgot to mention at all about what the game is actually like to play. Don't be fooled into thinking this is a casual Telltale experience. Yes, it's a seemingly familiar third person adventure with interactive hotspots to alter the world, doing away with pixel hunting of yore, where some have accompanying skill checks. This ties into how you've built your character, see. These same skills are usable in dialog as well. You will spend a decent chunk of Swansong in conversations. To game's credit simply using options tagged with your highest ranked skill or Discipline is not a way to automatically resolve conversation when it matters. Game calls those Confrontations and you have a limited number of misses lest you fail to convince the other party. They're reserved for pivotal moments and sometimes it's not mandatory for you to WIN to progress. Swansong sometimes allows for story to continue from what is seemingly a failure state. Another thing I've noticed is game being pretty heavy on moral decisions you get to make. It will never outright tell you which is the correct one, or even judge you, but I've noticed being shortsighted is not necessarily always in your best interest. One of those calls resulted in the worst level for poor poor Leysha, for example.

Production values diagnosis? Typical case of jank all-around. Can't say I experienced any major issues besides the game freezing in dialog couple of times. Overall level of polish leaves much to be desired and definitely reveals smaller budget. This is fine by me, though.

Final Thoughts and Rating?

I can't be blind here and let bias toward the property affect my judgment - Vampire: the Masquerade – Swansong is a flawed game. Unlike the studio's last title, this tale of three vampires looking to resolve a mystery involving their shadow society doesn't nail the landing. Questionable pacing and RPG aspects getting in the way of adventure gaming are simply too distracting. I have to respect it for actually having puzzles, even if they do boil down to perusing various documents to figure out computer passwords, though. This isn't even the case where polishing the game would've perhaps fixed the issues. Neither the characters or their stories are created equal and I definitely took notice. If you're inclined towards replaying adventures for different outcomes this might be worth checking out.

Ninglors Log 346

April Progress:
1
PPU monthly:
done
April Additions:
1

Completed Games:

Won/Gifted Games:
Bought Games:
Currently playing:

So much from me :)
Have a lovely week!
Queen Ninglor