Middling Mechanized Mayhem

 

The beloved MechWarrior/BattleTech IPs return to the classic strategy space loaded with giant mechanized armors and the pilots who command them. As a longtime fan of the franchise, I was pleased to see plenty of customization options for my mechs big and small, true to form with heat sinks, jump jets, and particle projection cannons (PPCs). However, frustrating gameplay elements, a plodding pace, and frequent “stress to progress” initiatives keep players in tough spots even as they attempt to acquire a bay full of combat-worthy scrap.

 

The core concept is simple: Bring up to four mechs (and their pilots) into a huge variety of contract encounters. The ability to select missions lets you plan your strategy – picking cold environments for your heat-heavy mechs to excel in, for instance. You also take on simple tasks to earn cash to upgrade your ship, buy weapons, purchase mechs, make repairs, and pay the constant upkeep on everything. The missions run the gamut of purported objectives, but almost always boil down to blasting your way through mechs and vehicles. This focus on meaty combat works out to be more than fine because that’s the real strength of the game; if you’ve played other modern strategy titles like X-COM, you have the general idea of what you’re going to be engaging with.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

 

The action is fun, with enough freedom to try out many different mech configurations. I enjoyed building melee-centric mechs designed to knock opponents down and unleash flamers and machine guns, as well as long-range heat-hogs designed to take advantage of multiple lasers and PPCs. The combat and related customization options are the stars of the show, and make the tactical warfare worth diving into. Preparing perfectly for a battle and letting loose with your creations feels great, and finishing a map with a huge coffer of supplies without taking a scratch is awesome. Most of your time in BattleTech is spent in battle, and that’s exactly where you want to be.

 

Encounters are accessible and easy to dive into, as all weapons fire by default (you can dial down and select only certain weapons to fire) and you can clearly see your hit rate. Later, you can get more complex with precision shots designed to nail critical stores of ammo or just blow the legs off a bot. While strategy games are not known for lightning-fast action, a sense of unflattering slowness permeates some missions, with actions and turns playing out across many units – especially the lengthier story encounters.

 

Strategy off the battlefield can be more important than on it. Your ship, upgrades, pilots, and mechs all cost tons of money, and you need to keep the lights on while attempting to keep everything upgraded to handle continually more challenging encounters. You’re free to roam the galaxy taking on minor missions as much as you like, but eventually you feel the crunch of the taxman and need to push hard into story content to stay above water. It feels too oppressive at times, putting a ton of pressure on the player to take on story missions to keep mechs up to speed. Stopping to smell the roses can be devastating, especially if something goes wrong.

 

Having one of your mechs get randomly headshot and blown away can result in a frustrating cost that simply cannot be recovered. Saving often, even during a mission, is essential. “Save scumming” isn’t a practice I advocate for often, but here it must be done to prevent a lucky shot that could literally bury your business in a single salvo. Beyond these design issues, I also experienced myriad crashes and freezes during gameplay that cost me big chunks of time and progress. On the flip side, if you do come up against a foe that might be too much to handle – you can attempt those headshots and hope. If they don’t work, you can load the save. It isn’t a great way to play, but you may feel like your playthrough is backed into a corner sometimes.

 

Despite some gameplay quibbles, the core loop of BattleTech – mech acquisition, customization, and combat – does a great job of adhering to the source material and providing engaging ballistic battles. Crunching an enemy core under your metal boot or scoping out a target for an enormous missile barrage are satisfying as hell, even if the frame of the title could stand for a little extra armor.

 

Read More

A Surreal Grind

Retro-inspired 2D action games are plentiful on digital storefronts, so it can be difficult for them to distinguish themselves from their competition. With a distinct art style, wacky humor, and role-playing elements galore, Super Daryl Deluxe immediately stands out from the crowd. While the journey is enjoyable and features plenty of novel ideas, frustration and uneven design drag the experience down on a regular basis.

Super Daryl Deluxe pulls inspiration from the Metroid series, letting you explore several 2D landscapes as you fight enemies, acquire new moves, and build out your map. However, developer Dan & Gary Games differentiates this title from the traditional Metroid formula by allowing you to enter its frenetic fights with customizable loadouts. Whether you want to keep enemies at a distance or make every kill up-close and personal, a sizable bank of available moves gives you full control.

I love the personalized loadout; being able to designate two melee attacks, an area-of-effect ability, and a ranged ability helps create a well-rounded character, but I had most fun building a melee loadout. Each ability handles differently: one turns you into a twisting tornado, spinning out of control, while another allows you to quickly throw tainted darts in all directions, inflicting poison on your enemies.

Despite the modification and upgrade elements, encounters are slightly clunky. While you can spec Daryl for melee or ranged combat, the attacks all operate on cooldowns and the transition from one attack to the next feels stiff. Even once I had a fully upgraded melee loadout, I resented the quirks of several moves. My sword-slash attack forcing a dash into the mix always threw me off, and a wave-riding attack that forces you to move in the direction you're facing made it unconventional in many situations. Still, finding the sweet spot for your preference and then stylishly chaining together combos with all your abilities is satisfying.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Outside of combat, Super Daryl Deluxe wholeheartedly embraces the role-playing genre. The adventure hinges on working with Daryl's classmates on quests. You collect optional missions by talking to NPCs, and I love how you can pin multiple quests to the top right of your screen to track progress. Some of these quests are straightforward, like killing a set number of enemies in an area, but others are more nebulous and confusing. On multiple occasions, I wandered into a sprawling dungeon to figure out how to progress because the current quest objective was unclear, obscured, or glitched.

I like chipping away at my massive list of sidequests, as each one rewards you with XP and gear, but some of them don't inform you that they can't be completed until much later in the game; one had me searching everywhere for an item, but I only randomly stumbled upon it in late-game exploration.

Leveling up Daryl and regularly equipping him with better gear is fulfilling, but I'm less impressed with the pacing. It's expected that each new area in an RPG brings higher level creatures, but some of Super Daryl Deluxe's jumps feel egregious. Even completing every sidequest I could along the way, I felt the need to grind for hours just to get to a comfortable level. The occasional slog is also accentuated by the lack of checkpoints, which means any death sends you back to your last manual save. While the save points aren't too spread out, adding any additional time on top of multi-phase boss fights or the lengthy dungeons within the high school adds insult to injury.

These dungeon areas emerge within the school after a mysterious apocalypse. As a result, each of the classrooms has become a massive level themed after the subject; the history room has quests for Napoleon Bonaparte and Julius Caesar, while the science class has you battling beakers and assisting a supercomputer. This sets the table for some fun scenarios and allows the goofy sense of humor to shine through. Ridiculous plotlines with recurring gags and unexpected cameos from important figures in the classrooms' subjects provides ample chuckles throughout the story. Getting ambushed by a Babe-Ruth-led horde or saving Santa Claus from Ebenezer Scrooge's basement prison made me laugh at the absurdity of the situations.

This apocalyptic state also provides an excuse for the distinct art style. Unique hand-drawn aesthetics with exaggerated character design and muted colors effectively convey the sense that the fabric of the world is hanging by a thread. Unfortunately, the abstract visuals are hit-and-miss. For every appealing NPC or enemy, you get an eyesore environment.

From its art style and writing to its structure and design, Super Daryl Deluxe is strange. I enjoy the combat, humor, and the checklist structure of the quests, but the nondescript method by which you complete some missions mars the experience. Super Daryl Deluxe features multiple good ideas, but the execution is limited in its success.

Read More

A Frigid, Unrelenting Survival Success

I rule a city in crisis. The next ice age is coming, and people will die as the blizzard worsens. With supplies diminishing and hope fading, discontent sets in and people are talking about my ouster. Backed into a corner, I name myself the supreme ruler, a semi-religious deity whose word is bond. Those who rebel must publicly repent. I feel dirty about this decision, but I’m convinced that if we silence dissent, most of us will do what’s necessary to get through this. But what if it doesn’t work? Maybe they would have been better off banishing me to the frigid nothingness surrounding our base. 

Horrible decisions like this are a regular occurrence in Frostpunk, the callous, intriguing, and addictive simulation from the studio behind This War of Mine. In this thematic follow-up, players assume command of one of the last human caravans in an alternate history nineteenth century. With civilization all but dead, your small group of stranded survivors huddles around a solitary generator on a barren ice sheet. You must will this solitary outpost forward in the face of unrelenting cold weather, dwindling natural resources, and an unsettled populace looking for hope wherever they can find it. The job isn’t easy, but it’s also unforgettable.

You may walk into this situation with firmly held ideals about human rights, but the avalanche of dire circumstances that occur during your reign tests those beliefs. When faced with injuries that threaten to halt your resource gathering, do you forcibly amputate limbs so you have enough able bodies to gather coal to heat homes through the next freeze? Or do you take the humane path and create an invalid ward that puts yet another stress on productivity that may endanger the entire outpost? Do you provide daycare for children, or put them to work given your shorthanded situation? The immediate benefits of instituting draconian laws like these make them tough to pass up when your society is on the brink of extinction, but that doesn’t make them any easier to swallow when you’re the one issuing the decree. Giving players these moments of doubt and regret is Frostpunk’s biggest triumph. The cascade of stressful, tense situations isn’t fun, but I was consumed by each decision –whether it made me feel like a benevolent ruler or a rudderless reactionary.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Providing food, shelter, and enough heat to stave off a frosty death is the main goal of the campaign, and the sim gives you several easy-to-understand tools to do it. The city-building options are largely comprised of basic infrastructure like infirmaries, housing, and gathering posts. Researching new technology allows you to improve productivity and even automate some operations. But surviving these inhospitable conditions takes more than a smart building plan; unanticipated dilemmas often throw your best-laid plans to the wayside. 

Frostpunk is a min-maxer’s nightmare. Manpower is always stretched thin, so efficiencies are rarely optimized. You have to accept that. The art of survival comes down to thinking two or three moves ahead. When a deep freeze is on the horizon, you may need to shift priorities beforehand to making sure your generator has enough reach (and coal) to keep your vital operations heated, often at the expense of your other necessities. If a refugee group is headed your direction, making sure you have enough housing and food when they arrive can save you a future headache of having overflowing medical tents.

The real leadership struggle comes when multiple needs arise at the same time and compete for your limited manpower. I often felt overwhelmed, but rather than feeling like the attrition was forced by a sadistic game studio, I second-guessed my own decisions that led to the unfavorable position. Trying to devise a plan for surviving a giant storm that threatened to cease any food gathering options and blow out my overworked heat generator literally kept me up one night. How would I gather enough food rations to outlast the bitter cold? Could I realistically keep discontent from rising when making tough calls during this impossible situation, or was I doomed to be killed like so many other rules who overstepped the bounds of what is socially acceptable? That’s when I decided to drug my populace with the opiate of the masses. I felt hypocritical doing it, but at least I created the hope necessary to power through a storm that killed half the settlement. Therein lies the beauty of Frostpunk; the crisis management has your mind reeling with potential problems and solutions so you hardly notice the people behind the curtain placing you in these unforgiving predicaments. The freedom Frostpunk gives you to dig your own grave (or those of your fellow refugees) is problematic, and that’s the point. 

(Please visit the site to view this media)

The design only falters when a story beat takes away some of that freedom and forces players to choose between two law paths that could lead to totalitarianism or a religious zealotry. You can go down the path of a police state, with propaganda centers and prisons at your disposal, or institute an easily exploitable national religion to instill a sense of hope. You’re never obligated to implement any of the more overreaching laws, but sometimes they are the only way out of a dire situation. I appreciate forcing players to make tough decisions, but the game does that anyway without strong-arming players down ideological paths. Outcomes are potentially more interesting when more diverse governing tools are provided.

Given the do-or-die nature of every action you take in Frostpunk, getting players up to speed quickly is paramount. While developer 11 Bit largely succeeds in its onboarding, poorly explaining the dynamic of how certain buildings interact with one another caused a few early failures from which it was impossible to recover, such as learning I needed to pair gather outposts with coal thumpers to maximize their output. Restarting missions provides a few variable outcomes in certain interactions with your populace and while scouting the larger world, but the campaign largely follows the same beats. Injecting more variety into the story could have eased the repetition; right now, the only motivation for replaying is to do better or try new ideological approaches.

In addition to the main story campaign, Frostpunk includes two other scenarios, one to preserve the last seed banks on the planet by optimizing automation, and another to provide refuge for settlers and protect them from their former overlords. Both test your leadership in new ways, and though they are much shorter than the campaign, they are worthwhile. 11 Bit Studios promises more scenarios in the coming months. 

Rarely does an interactive experience keep me awake at night wrestling with big decisions. Frostpunk did this on multiple occasions and made me feel squeamish when forcing edicts upon society instead of building consensus. Extraordinary circumstances call for desperate measures, and all I can do is ask for forgiveness from those trampled by my headstrong approach.

Read More