Xbox Game Pass

I am playing The Outer Planets thanks to the Xbox game pass (pc) €1 trial month. This is a great deal from Microsoft and a lot of gamers are signing up to it but I wouldn't be surprised if I and many others stay subbed after the trial period ends. Even though others like EA Origin Access have tried to push gaming as a service with a monthly sub for some years now I feel like this could just be beginning of a seismic shift in the way most people get games. I wouldn't be surprised if in five years time the majority of my games come this way.

Twenty years ago I bought games in physical boxes that I proudly kept on display. I still have a bunch of them on the shelf in my office. Having a physical copy gives a real sense of ownership  and occasionally  I go back and play some old time favourites. But ... even when I do go back to play an older game I am more likely to play a Steam, GoG or Origin version than to physically insert a disk. It is just much more convenient so I have picked up digital copies of most of my favourites over the years.

I have never really felt the same sense of ownership for any of the hundreds of games in my Steam and other digital libraries as for the physical disks. Its a license to play certain games whenever I want. I don't own anything. The "whenever I want" bit is important though. The first Steam game I bought was Half Life 2 about 15 years ago. I could play it today if I wanted to using the same Steam account. I really like that.

Will a monthly gaming subscription offer similar permanency? Will I still be able to play The Outer Planets in fifteen years time if I stay subscribed. It remains to be seen but I wouldn't put money on it. Netflix shattered that illusion in the video streaming world when series started dropping off the list even when people were still watching them.

At present there are only about four games on Xbox Pass PC that interest me. That is probably enough to keep me subbed for a few months and after that we will see. There is a convenience though to monthly subscriptions and the world has already moved that way in video and music. Why should games not go likewise?

Big Stompy Robots: Battletech

The October Humble Monthly bundle included the 2018 mech combat game Battletech. I have always loved big stompy robot games and I have very fond memories of playing  Battletech: Mechwarrior games from a quarter of a century ago when they vied with Metaltech: Earthseiege for the mech gaming crown.

This latest Battletech game ticks a lot of boxes for me. It has a story based campaign set in the very rich lore of the Battletech  universe. Combat is turn based so no twitch shooting is required. The player controls a squad of mechs which are simulated down to the sub module level giving lots of of variables to play around with and control. All of this is right up my alley. Unfortunately my first couple of hours in the game tarnished this shiny picture some what. The game feels buggy and unoptimised. At times the action is jerky and have I experienced sound dropouts and a crash to desktop during combat. The crash happened as I was attempting the surprisingly challenging first mission that the game throws you into after a hopelessly inadequate tutorial. I thought I was doing well as I overcame the easy enemies of the first few encounters but the mission went on much longer than expected and ground me down by attrition. Even though the enemies were weaker than my forces the oncoming waves were smart enough to continually focus on the single most damaged member of my party. Given that the loss of a single member ends the game this meant I had to reload several times before I managed to successfully drag that most damaged mech to the end. 

Normally this level of hassle early in a game would cause me to move on. Life is too short and there really are too many games to play. I did mention however that I have always loved big stompy robot games and Battletech has done just enough to rekindle my enthusiasm. I can feel myself getting sucked in once again to logistical calculations of loadouts and tactics.

Aside: The fact that Battletech runs quite poorly on a modern PC highlights what an incredible job the programmers of earlier games did on much more limited hardware. Earthsiege  from way back in 1994 for example had a very similar level of complexity with real time simulation of mech combat down to sub component level. That game ran flawlessly on my 50MHz 80486. Battletech runs somewhat haphazardly on on a modern PC with a six core 3.6GHz CPU and decent GPU.

Currently playing Mooncrash and Total Warhammer II

I am about three quarters of the way through a Dark Elf vortex campaign in Total Warhammer 2. Unlike previous campaigns I am deliberately limiting territorial expansion. I hold only three provinces and I am using diplomacy instead to secure borders. This slows down the game but it makes it much easier to defend against the random chaos armies that spawn during vortex rituals. With so few settlements it did take a while to get my economy off the ground but at this point some 150 turns in I am the strongest and richest faction and I have managed to disrupt the plans of my vortex rivals with expeditionary forces, allies and intervention armies.  

Dark Elves are a very enjoyable faction to play with no obvious weaknesses and some very strong creatures and magic. The armour piercing crossbows of tier one Dark Shards mean that even early game Dark Elf armies can inflict serious damage. Dark Elves unique faction ability allows them to build black ark ships and use them as mobile recruiting platforms. This has proved essential to my non expansionary playstyle because my expeditionary forces use slash and burn tactics which would leave them with no home territory in which to replenish if not for black arks. 

Despite my two year obsession with Total Warhammer (games, books and video streams) I still manage to fit insome other games. My most recent alternate game was Mooncrash, the addon to Prey, Arkane's 2017 homage to System Shock 2. Mooncrash has all the mechanics of Prey but turns it into a rogue like using the conceit that you are running a simulation in order to conduct industrial espionage. In the simulation you take on the roles of a cast of characters in a destroyed base belonging to Transtar the company behind the original Prey shenanigans. The game is roguelike because you must run the simulation over and over to achieve the objectives with each run having randomised hazards to overcome along the way. It is very well done and I do recommend it but be warned I found the game transitioning from confusing to frustrating to trivial as I progressed through the campaign. The initial confusion stemmed from the fact that the premise behind the game is quite odd and it took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do.  Even after I figured out what was required I found myself getting frustrated by the randomised obstacles that thwarted in true roguelike fashion my attempts at completing the objectives.  I kept playing however. My characters got stronger and more importantly I figured out tricks to overcome the various obstacles the game might throw at me and the game eventually became relatively easy. One annoyance is that once you finish the game by completing all objectives you cannot revisit the simulation without starting a new game over from scratch. This doesn't bother me too much but I imagine completionists will be very upset by this because even after completing the objectives there are still plenty of nooks and cranny's left to explore.