Now Playing: The Vaulters (DLC)

Endless Space 2 was one of my top rated games of 2017. A fantastic 4X strategy title that I don’t feel received the attention or sales it deserves. Which is part of the reason why I decided to purchase the first DLC – The Vaulters – upon release. This is a game I want to support and continue to see evolve and improve.

I was already familiar with the Vaulters race from Endless Legend, so it was interesting to see how they’d be incorporated into ES2. Their primary and most useful mechanic is their portal technology, allowing you to instantly transfer fleets between your colonised systems. Knowing you can immediately jump a fleet to even the most distant system in your empire gives you far greater freedom not only to defend your borders, but to attack others.

The Vaulters, like the other races, also have their own unique quest chain to complete and heroes to recruit. They also have their own unique ship designs, the best of which is their carrier class vessel. But this DLC doesn’t just add new things for the Vaulters.

It fleshes out the pirate ‘faction’ and allows you to engage with them diplomatically. It also adds a new ‘boarding pod’ module, allowing you to capture enemy ships – although I must admit, I found it easier to just keep blowing them up.

I played my Vaulters campaign on the Hard setting with 5 rival empires. It was great to jump back into the game and see not only the additions of this DLC, but the free updates I’ve missed in my time away – such as the new fighter and bomber modules, or the improved diplomatic options.

Just as I did at release, I still feel the game has difficulty issues – my Hard campaign versus 5 empires was actually pretty easy to win. But when I started another campaign on Easy against a single empire to test some things, I actually started to lose. The difficulty in ES2 can seem strangely random, regardless of the setting.

Overall, The Vaulters DLC expands and improves an already enjoyable and content rich experience. I wouldn’t say it’s an essential purchase, because it doesn’t really add much in the way of new mechanics, quests or events, but if you’re a fan of the game, this new race is certainly worth your time and investment.

That said, I hope the next DLC isn’t just another race with a handful of new mechanics, but one which overhauls how the campaign plays for every race. Maybe some kind of invasive horde from beyond the galactic borders, creating a campaign not of expansion, but survival. That would be pretty neat.

7/10

Now Watching: The Justice League

The Justice League is the best comedy of 2017. I can’t remember the last time I’ve laughed so much or so hard whilst watching a film. It’s also really bad. I consider it to be the worst of the DC Cinematic Universe films, not just because it’s bad, but because it’s so damn bland.

I can at least say Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman were bad in an interesting way. But there’s nothing interesting or surprising about TJL – it’s as safe and by the numbers as you can get. I don’t know how much of an impact the reported re-shoots / change of director had, but the inconsistencies in tone, style and structure are clear to see.

Visually, the film looks off, as if the colour gradient is all wrong, and many scenes look ugly as a result. This isn’t helped by the poor CGI. I’m not sure what’s worse – the big bad Steppenwolf, who looks like he’s just stepped out of a Mortal Kombat cut-scene, or Henry Cavill’s fake upper lip. They’re both hilarious, though.

What’s not hilarious are the numerous, extremely awkward and bizarre attempts at humour. Many of these misguided quips fall to The Flash, who is unfortunately the only character with some traces of a personality.

The plot is paper thin, the villain is a joke, the action is poor and everything looks fake as f**k. Cyborg looks like a cartoon. There’s no sense of stakes, tension or emotion. It’s flat, drab to look at and poorly scripted. The only redeeming aspect of The Justice League – and the reason it didn’t score lower – is because it’s so damn bad it’s funny.

The film opens with a music montage – never a good sign – lamenting the death of Superman. But the sad music and glum faces only serve to remind us how poorly the death of Superman was handled in BvS. DC, in a misguided attempt to keep pace with Marvel, is riding roughshod over what should be major plot and character developments in the series.

The Justice League desperately wants to be The Avengers and fails miserably at it. Aside from Superman (to a limited degree) and Wonder Woman, none of these characters have been appropriately established. What’s the rush, DC?

The Wonder Woman film felt like a step in the right direction, but The Justice League isn’t just a step back – it’s a flying leap. I honestly can’t see a way forward for the DCU at this point. I think they need to scrap the entire project and start over from scratch. The Justice League is just . . . embarrassing. It’s a joke.

3/10

Bayonetta & Vanquish (PC)

I’ve played Bayonetta on 360, Wii U, the Wii U version emulated on PC, and now the official PC release. I’ll also be picking up the Switch version. To say that I love Bayonetta would be an understatement. The question, I suppose, is which version do I think is the best?

At the time of writing, I’ve not yet played the Switch port, so I can’t comment on it, but if it’s equal to, or even a slight upgrade of the Wii U version, it will probably become my favourite. Because I must say, despite the sharper graphics and more consistent frame rate of the PC port, I actually still prefer the Wii U version.

Why? The extra, Nintendo themed costumes, mostly, some of which add some pretty fun gameplay effects. As much as I’ve enjoyed playing through Bayonetta again on PC – I probably won’t come back to it once the Switch version is released. But if you don’t have access to a Wii U or Switch, then the PC port is a fantastic alternative.

The PC version of Vanquish, on the other hand, is easily the definitive version. With sharper graphics and a rock solid frame rate, it’s the best Vanquish can possibly be. I wondered if I’d enjoy Vanquish more on PC, and I did to a degree – it’s nice not having the frame rate tank whenever there’s a missile spam. And switching to the precision of a mouse is a great – although it does make the game significantly easier as a result.

But overall, I still feel Vanquish is one of the weaker Platinum titles. The story/characters aren’t bonkers or interesting enough for you to care, and if you skip all cut-scenes, the game is only about 5 hours to play, with about 30 minutes of tedious ‘walk and talk’ segments.

The levels are kind of bland and don’t really do anything interesting with the enjoyable gameplay mechanics. Once you’re half way through the game you’ll have seen every enemy type Vanquish has to offer, and from that point on it just starts to recycle and double down on everything. It’s still damn fun to play and a game I’d recommend, but it’s a shame the game surrounding the combat mechanics isn’t more elaborate, extensive or clever.

Now Playing: Game of Thrones

When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. Or just die, in this case. Because you’re not really playing Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series – you’re just watching a scripted story play out and occasionally pressing a button to progress to the next scene. I’m going to be pretty hard on GoT in this review, not because it’s a terrible game, but because it’s so damn lazy and shoddy.

I’ve played a number of Telltale titles and enjoyed all of them to one degree or another. They’re titles that live and die primarily on the strength of their narrative and characters. They’re interactive stories which present choices to the player – choices which shape both the characters and how the narrative will progress.

I’ve never had unrealistic expectations for how divergent the narrative in Telltale titles will be. I’ve always said there’s going to be a limit to how far a plot can branch based on player choice. But it’s also an aspect to these games that I’ve wanted to see improve.

Considering that GoT was released after both The Walking Dead: Season 2 and the excellent The Wolf Among Us – not to mention the strong potential of the Game of Thrones licence – I expected far more. Instead, GoT takes a significant step back.

Graphically, GoT is shoddy, with poor environmental textures and character models. Animations are stiff and awkward. There’s also a number of visual bugs, such as characters winking in and out of existence in the background. It feels rushed, and somewhat incomplete – playing with subtitles on, it was funny to see so many lines appearing that actually had no VA.

The ‘gameplay’ segments of GoT also feel lazy and pointless to the point that they may as well not exist. You’ll be given control of many of the characters for short ‘walking’ segments where you only take five steps before it triggers another scene. The few environments you get to ‘explore’ are small and the items you can interact with entirely irrelevant.

It’s like they just didn’t know how to incorporate these gameplay segments into the title – or just couldn’t be bothered to try. Who thought having you walk slowly along The Wall lighting torches one at a time would be an engaging gameplay segment? It’s just – like nearly all of these segments – filler. It adds nothing to the experience but irritation.

Fortunately, the overall story is okay. It’s not great, but it keeps you fairly engaged. Which can’t really be said about the characters, some of whom I just found annoying to play as, and as a result, I didn’t really care about what happened to them.

Not that what happens to them is in any way under your control. This may be the most restrictive title I’ve played by Telltale as far as its ‘choices’ go. It became clear during the first episode that nothing I did or said would result in a different outcome.

Even dialogue choices don’t really change scenes, as other characters just respond with generic ‘one size fits all’ dialogue. Some of the episode ‘recaps’ even played dialogue I’d not chosen – not that it matters, but it gives you a sense of how poorly this title has been put together, when it can’t even properly keep track of your choices between episodes.

People may argue this isn’t that different to previous Telltale titles, but at some point, surely we should expect them to step up their game? And a GoT title was the perfect opportunity to create their most complex, divergent narrative yet. Instead, we get a title with practically zero narrative branching.

It’s only at the very end of the title that your choices can change things – but only in a potential sequel that may never come, and if it ever does, will probably ignore and make those choices irrelevant anyway.

And when you know your choices won’t actually change anything, you just don’t care about those choices – dialogue or otherwise. You’re not concerned about the impact your choices will have on these characters, because their fates are predetermined whatever you do.

With the GoT licence, Telltale had an opportunity to deliver their most ambitious title yet, but instead delivered a title that doesn’t even try. It’s a step back from their previous work – both graphically, technically and narratively – when it should have been a step forward.

As I said, it’s not a terrible game. The story and characters are decent enough to see you through – even if it does often feel like someone’s mediocre fan fiction. Overall, it’s a disappointing title. It’s lazy, shoddy and should have been so much better.

5/10