Tag: PC

Star Wars Zero Company Review

To unfairly summarise Star Wars Zero Company, it is XCOM with a Star Wars skin. This reductive assessment, however, neglects Zero Company’s lean toward story, and the overall polish of a product that genuinely builds on XCOM’s foundations.

Mechanically, I was surprised how similar to XCOM the game is, right down to the UI. The moment-to-moment gameplay will be immediately familiar to fans of the tactics gene and XCOM in particular. Operators run around the map, take cover, shoot, assume overwatch position, throw grenades and deploy a variety of other tools to outsmart and outshoot their opponents.

The game overall is a strong package: beautiful, varied visuals connect with an addictively flowing gameplay loop. The pleasure of setting up tactical traps for your enemies never gets old, and on victory you are returned to a hub in which you can choose and purchase meaningful (particularly in the early game) upgrades for your next adventure. I think Zero Company deserves particular praise for its “Star-Wars-ness”, an intangible quality that various media have had varied success in capturing: flawed but likeable characters swashbuckling across the galaxy against a backdrop of larger melodrama.

The story follows a politically-neutral group of mercenaries toward the end of The Clone Wars, who take whatever jobs they can get to pay the bills. They are pulled into a Republic plot to foil a Separatist ploy to use a disease against the republic, and action, drama, comedy and betrayal flow from there. Some aspects feel a little rushed here and there, some resolutions unearned, but it works well, is enjoyable and thematically consistent.

Zero Company ties the in-game operators that do the running and shooting into the narrative in a manner that XCOM never did, and this raises some new benefits and disadvantages. The pros are that Zero Company integrates story into the gameplay in cool and meaningful ways. Without resorting to blatant spoilers, just at the point when you have become comfortable with the play and feel of your operators, a powerful Jedi is dropped into your team. They are only present for part of one mission, but completely blow the rest of your operators out of the water. You really feel the strength of the character. There are more impactful examples later in the story that I don’t want to spoil, but suffice it to say that a particular betrayal is sown into the gameplay in a neat and innovative way.

On the other hand, some problems emerge from this integration. For instance, it confuses your choice of Operator for missions. You are given more than enough “main characters” with individual stories and side missions that you would never need to choose one of the randomised recruits – so why are the randomised recruits there? It kind of felt like they were there because they were in XCOM. Additionally, who should I take on the next mission? The heroes that are the strongest and least likely to get everyone killed? Or the ones that make most narrative sense? Perhaps these were choices developer Bitreactor wanted players to make, but it didn’t sit well with my desire for tactical purity.

I was most impressed with this game in its first act, when things were still a little chaotic and I didn’t have the technique nailed down. There was more risk and higher stakes. Operators actually got knocked down (which incidentally forces you to use other characters while the injured party “spends a cycle in the med bay”). As the in-game “cycles” (days) wore on, a bit of the novelty and sheen wore off and repetition set in.

While it never gets old setting up a complex chain of moves allowing you to clear most of your enemies in a single turn, the fact remains that after about 15 hours you are simply repeating the same procedures with incrementally improved efficacy. This is exacerbated because the systems encourage you to stick with the same operators since this is how you improve their “bond” – the main upgrade system in the game. I feel there should have been an alternative system that gives more XP-equivalent for switching up your operators and varying your methods.

(Having looked on reddit it appears that there are some benefits to switching up your squad, but they are only meaningful on the very highest difficulty)

I played the game on Hard, and it really was too easy. Once I was through the first act there was very little jeopardy. The game has a knockout system, from which a character can be easily revived by any other – but the third knockout is an automatic kill. However, I didn’t see a single knockout in the last 20 hours of the game, and had zero permadeaths at all. In the final few hours I didn’t even need to think about cover because by Operators took such little damage from a shot to the face. I defeated the final boss in a single turn.

I am also obliged to mention the performance issues that I experienced, primarily in the form of crashes to the PS5 home screen. These were not enough to completely write off the game, but were certainly an irritation. At one point I thought my whole save file had been lost, but with the help of Sony Support I was actually able to recover it.

Mostly, my criticisms are minimal and nitpicky. Overall this is a great package and a wonderful modern spin on the XCOM formula. The visuals, story, mechanics and upgrade system mesh together into a characterful, flowing piece of the Star Wars universe.

Watch Dogs: Legion Review

To begin with the good, Watch Dogs: Legion’s rendering of London is quite phenomenal. The iconic areas are suitably recognisable and some of the less well-known parts are still true to life. I have found myself recognising streets that I used to run down and feeling nostalgic about pubs once frequented. The streets teem with a diverse population that makes London feel alive and realistic. There have been reports of poor performance on PC but it runs well on my admittedly beefy machine *humblebrag*.

WD:L is an open-world action game set in a near-future London, which casts an underground resistance movement against authoritarian forces wrestling for control of the city. The player will use cameras, traps, drones and an incredibly useful spiderbot to take down those who seek power.

The flagship feature of WD:L is the “play-as-anyone” technology. It is possible to recruit any NPC to your ragtag team of resistance fighters, and it works fairly well. After completing a couple of procedurally generated missions, the character is now yours to control and comes with their own unique skills and abilities. This is good fun and the visual variety in “agents” is tremendous, but the downside of this effort is there simply isn’t enough voice-acting to go round. This leads to repeats and awkward dialogue. For these reasons, the story (wisely) doesn’t hang on the player character at any point and is carried by supporting characters. However, the occasional inclusion of the player character rarely works.

The moment-to-moment gameplay in WD:L is fun, but can be repetitive and, on the default difficulty, too easy. Each scenario almost always involves infiltrating a building. With upgrades easily obtained in the first hour of play, you can do this using drones and your trusty spiderbot without ever entering the building. On the occasions when the player is needed in-person, it’s trivial to “neutralise” all the enemies patrolling the area before you breeze through a corridor of corpses. Despite DedSec’s vague ethos of non-lethality, there is no punishment for hacking a drone with a machine gun and mowing the guards down.

When the player is required to do some shooting themselves (how last-century!), the mechanics are competent but sometimes buggy. Due to some interaction between the crouch, cover and gun systems I was, more than once, left pulling the trigger but no bullets were coming out. Frustrating in clutch situations.

While moving through the world of Legion I can’t help but miss the sense of fluidity that comes with other open-world games, most notably Ubisoft’s own Assassin’s Creed. WD:L feels a little stunted in comparison. This seems intentional, as the game encourages more calculated, careful strategies for problem-solving but when this turns out to lack much flair and creativity it ends up feeling awkward. Fingers crossed for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla next week.

The most interesting combat occurs in the pseudo-boss battles which involve holding a point against waves of incoming enemies using all the skills at your disposal. It is very satisfying to defend a point while a download is happening with a swarm of drones helping you, some of whom have been hacked moments before to turn on their masters. Not to give too much away, but the final boss is a fun spin on this which, while not entirely awe-inspiring, felt appropriately climactic.

The city of near-future London is thoroughly enjoyable to explore, but there’s very little incentive to do so. Available to be collected we have ETO (in-game currency) and Tech points (used for upgrading skills). ETO can only be spent on buying new clothes. Perhaps this belies a sad lack of imagination on my part, but I have no interest in customising the look of a character (they already look wacky enough!) so the ETO is literally worthless. The Tech Points unlock and improve skills, which are shared between all agents. This is more-or-less the extent of progression in WD:L. I unlocked most of the skills I used after a few hours, so there was little need to seek out more (plus you are rewarded with them for completion of story missions!). When I identified Tech Points late game I simply ignored them if they were even slightly out of my way.

The small remainder of the game’s progression is built into the Agent Recruitment system. Some agents have unique skills and skills that improve the whole team, such as faster recovery from injury. This is very light and the combination with Tech Points means you don’t get much out of exploring the world except for its own sake.

The story is where the game is at its weakest, rolling out cliche after cliche about the dangers of technology, governmental oversight and authoritarian ideologies. To be fair, the conclusion of the parallel narratives was gratifying, if heavy-handed. It’s always nice to see an ideologue die by the sword that they lived by. However, the overall tone is so up-and-down as to be almost offensive. It is possible to have your street-magician character, adorned with pink LED-illuminated jacket and top hat, helping to free victims of human trafficking or modern-day slavery. The game can accidentally, though inevitably, make light of some very dark and important themes.

Additionally, so predictable is the story that when the third-act twist was revealed, it was something I had thought was assumed from literally the opening sequence of the game. And I had been skipping through the boring, stunted dialogue.

As a native to the north of England myself, it struck me as odd how much this game treats London as an island, its own sovereign state. There is literally no mention of how the game’s events are affecting other parts of the country. Are they also under the control of technocratic authoritarians? I realise this would only really bother Brits, but as London-centric as things in the UK tend to be, even this was extreme. It broke the immersion because this was so clearly a marketing decision – London holds much more capital on the world stage than Liverpool or Birmingham, so they were just ignored completely. Also, to be picky, there were a few annoying non-britishisms that snuck into the script. I’ve been a british nerd my whole life and have never attended a “science fair”.

Overall, Watch Dogs: Legion is an enjoyable but bland romp. I have to give it credit for having something to say, I was just luke-warm on the execution. Generally, this is one that can only confidently be recommended to fans of the series. To everyone else, you might be better off finding your open-world kicks elsewhere.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds – Impression

After seeing a Quick Look on everyone’s favourite videogame entertainment site GiantBomb, I knew PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (henceforth referred to affectionately as PUBG) was a game I would like very much. I struggled to justify the expense on an early access game, but succumbed one lonely evening. And I did not regret it.

The streams of PUBG fail to express the sheer intensity of the experience, especially when playing solo and especially when you’re new to the game. Every sound spawns terrified jamming of keys while trying to go prone. I am a particularly jumpy person and this can be embarrasing when dead team-mates (more on squad play later) are spectating my play and see my view leap up and down again when a gunshot rings out. Despite being in early access it’s clear that PUBG neatly walks the fine line between the thrill of looting, the fear of being shot, and the sadism of ending another player’s round in a bloody haze.

I was fortunate to notice friends also playing on Steam (not surprising since everyone is playing at the moment) and was quickly able to form a regular squad. The game takes on a slightly different tone when playing as a group of up to four, the abject fear of a lonely death replaced with considerations of strategy, positioning, resource management and not humiliating yourself in a more public way. The best way to describe squad play in PUBG is to say it is the best game that I have ever experienced at replicating children playing soldiers. You get to shout “Moving to cover!”, “Reloading!”, “Check my six!” and other such pseudo-militaristic jargon in a non-ironic way that actually means something in the game. It’s cool.

Frustrations are definitely present, however, particularly for those of us who are not very good at shooting. I find myself regularly able to get into the top 15 or 10 living players, only to be deftly outgunned by more skilled opponents. This is not unfair, but it’s vexing that the only practice I get at PUBG’s shooting is in a live fire situation. One cannot help but feel that you’re in the ever-closing circle with 12-hour-a-day streamers, but I’ve got a day job. Some kind of training or deathmatch mode would definitely be appreciated.

Despite this, I have definitely spent a lot of time thinking about PUBG recently and am keen to see its development in the coming months. More on this to follow, probably.