Category Archives: Game Logs

Metal Gear Mania 2025 – Metal Gear Solid

At long last we make it to the first game of the modern series, 1998’s highly influential Metal Gear Solid. From everything I’ve seen on the subject, Hideo Kojima’s plans for the game seemed to mostly revolve around adapting the series’ existing gameplay to a 3D engine. Given that few outside of Japan had ever played the game MGS shares most of its DNA with, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, and that the results of this technical overhaul were quite impressive for the time, there’s little wonder why it’s an absolute classic to this day.

“Metal Gear Solid – Tactical Espionage Action!”

As for me, I sided with Nintendo in the 5th gen console war and the only exposure I had to PlayStation games was what I played at friends’ houses. Word about Metal Gear Solid must have caught up to me though, as I distinctly remember almost buying a copy to play with “Bleemcast!” on my Dreamcast a little later. It wasn’t until the release of the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 in 2023 that I had a legitimate way to go back and play the first Metal Gear Solid on a console I actually owned. Yes, I’m sure a lot of people will be reading this thinking of all the other ways I could have played it before then, and I’ll be addressing all of that in a separate bonus post. In any case, for this playthrough I played that version, which is actually the original PlayStation version running in some kind of proprietary emulator, on my Xbox Series X. It’s fairly no-frills compared to what you can do with emulation on a PC, but alas, it’s definitely sufficient… plus, achievements! I’m running the game in the original 4:3 aspect ratio with both smoothing and the CRT screen filter enabled, which is an okay approximation of what the game looked like back in the day, and also why my screenshots look a little dark. Unbeknownst to me they added the ability to run the game upscaled in its final 3.0 patch, released after I started this playthrough. It looks quite good, though definitely a departure from the 1990s experience.

While comparing Metal Gear Solid to its predecessor will be a running theme here, from a presentation standpoint, it’s such a massive upgrade that it’s almost beyond comparison. Starting the game launches into a slick, fully voiced introductory cutscene depicting series protagonist Solid Snake being launched from a submarine while being briefed on the mission. It’s all very cinematic and absolutely brimming with flavor pulled straight from the best political espionage thrillers. If you want to get extra nerdy, you can launch a separate briefing menu from the title screen that goes much deeper into the context. Watching that, I found myself being a bit surprised by how impressed I was with the voice acting. Once I got into the game proper, I continued to be impressed with how fluid the animation, camera, and controls all felt. The music was also great, and a perfect moody fit for the cold lighting and even colder Alaskan setting. A great first impression for a game that is almost 30 years old. It stays consistently excellent as it goes along too – I found myself particularly sucked into the snowy outside areas. it’s definitely a vibe and quite immersive.

“Virtually hiding around a virtual corner from a virtual guard.”

The user interface and control scheme are both very familiar, with gear selection associated with the left trigger and weapons being accessed and equipped using the right, for example, though I realize a large part of that is due to the console ports of the first two games being retroactively influenced by the later MGS games. Regardless, I found it to be pretty easy to pick up. Despite being 3D, the game largely confines you to fixed overhead camera angles. While similar to its predecessors, this feels oddly restrictive since the camera is otherwise quite dynamic. It’s also a bit more zoomed in, sometimes annoyingly hindering your ability to see the items, enemies, and other obstacles around you. Two new features help with this, though: the ability to back up to and look around corners, which besides looking pretty damn cool, moves the camera down to a more typical third person perspective, and the addition of a dedicated button to look around in first person. You can’t really move or shoot in either mode, but in terms of getting your bearings, they work.

The stealth gameplay mechanics are all quite iterative of what we got in Metal Gear 2. Guards are a bit more intelligent, responding to more varied conditions, even bodies on the ground. On the other hand, recalling the first Metal Gear, their patrol paths and sight lines feel more predictable so it’s quite easy to sneak around or up behind them. I find that to be more fun, personally, though a less positive step back is the lack of the sometimes hilarious overabundance of hiding places to crawl into that most areas of MG2 had, making it a bit more challenging to run and hide or to quietly wait for guards to pass. Another mechanic that was nerfed a bit was that of my beloved cardboard box; guards are now much more likely to be suspicious of it, especially if it’s too close to their patrol route. Because of the much greater risk involved, I barely used it. Conversely, MGS’s mini-map has been upgraded to the “Soliton Radar” which shows the enemy cones of vision in addition to movement, making it vastly more useful for avoiding detection and planning your routes. The alert system is almost identical to MG2’s, but addressing one of the major gripes I had with that game, guards are way less annoying when triggered, appearing in smaller numbers and less often, and once you lose them, it feels like the alert phase ends and things get back to normal much more quickly.

“Huh? It’s just a box…”

One of the biggest departures from the first two games is that combat feels way less viable. While Snake’s repertoire of hand-to-hand moves is larger – you can now grab, throw, and choke enemies – I never developed anything resembling “accuracy” when lining up attacks. This is even more pronounced with shooting; I could always take out my targets, sure, but whether I could do so without setting off an alert was a total crapshoot. I’d rather avoid guards entirely than try to take one out given the high chance of failure. If I had been able to line up a perfect head shot and/or consistently knock out guards, this game would have played very differently. This is fine, and perhaps even intentional, but from playing more modern stealth action games, I couldn’t help but feel like I had a lack of tools at my disposal for handling the more routine encounters in a reasonably stealthy way.

Structurally, MGS is a lot more linear than the first two, more Metrovania styled games, with “gates” typically tied to plot progression. You still have a ton of cool items to collect but they’re not really used as overt “keys” into new areas. Instead, new gear usually provides you with more options for handling different scenarios, but aren’t necessarily required. There are still actual key cards, of course, but placement of areas that require them seems much more intentional. That’s not at all to say there is no backtracking in MGS; even if playing the critical path, you’ll be revisiting the armory multiple times, and there are at least two sections where backtracking was added as what feels like a blatant attempt to pad out the playtime. At one point Snake even complains about it, much to my amusement. Thankfully, Shadow Moses is a lot smaller than it feels so these sections aren’t as painful as they sound. As an aside, there has been a notable “quality of life” improvement with key cards in that you only keep one in your inventory now. I still wish it didn’t need to be manually equipped, but I’ll take what I can get!

“Trust me, Mei Ling, that doesn’t make you special.”

Gone are the characters you could talk to in-game for hints and background details, being almost entirely replaced by codec calls and cutscenes. Codec calls are a perfect evolution of MG2’s radio conversations; they’re lengthy and detailed, two-way, often involving multiple people, and most importantly, fully voiced. Just about every one of your contacts has something relevant to say at any time, and they are even context sensitive to some degree. The interface isn’t too different either, though I really love the character portraits by Yoji Shinkawa. MGS’s use of cutscenes actually feels pretty modern, existing mostly to set up a scene or show events outside of player control. Between being rendered seamlessly in-engine and their often creative camera work, they’re a key component to the cinematic quality I mentioned, which itself is definitely an important ingredient in MGS’s special sauce. They’re also mostly relatively quick; the series certainly hadn’t reached total insanity when it comes to long cutscenes yet, and with the exception of Nastasha’s preachy diatribes on nuclear weapons, even the longer codec calls feel pretty quick the first time around.

With that, let’s jump into our story re-cap. Expand the box below for a short but spoiler-filled synopsis of the game’s plot. When I say “short” this is by far the longest one of these I’ve ever written, and I left so much out too!

Story Synopsis - Spoilers!

2005. FOXHOUND takes over a secret nuclear weapons facility on Shadow Moses island, Alaska, demanding the US government give them $1 billion dollars and the remains of Big Boss or face a nuclear strike. Solid Snake is forced out of retirement to infiltrate the island and rescue two of the hostages being held there, DARPA Chief Donald Anderson and ArmsTech President Kenneth Baker, as well as assess the threat. Colonel Roy Campbell returns to lead the operation, revealing that he has a personal stake in that his niece Meryl Silverburgh is on-site. Once inside Solid Snake quickly locates the DARPA Chief who reports that FOXHOUND has seized a new model of the nuclear armed Metal Gear, codenamed REX, being covertly tested there, then suddenly dies of a heart attack. Moving deeper into the facility, Snake locates the ArmsTech President being held by FOXHOUND’s Revolver Ocelot. During a tense shootout in which Ocelot seems to have the advantage, a mysterious cyborg ninja appears, slicing off Ocelot’s hand, forcing him to withdrawl. Snake interrogates Baker who tells him to contact Meryl, as she has the PAL cards needed to disarm REX’s warheads, along with Dr. Hal “Otacon” Emmerich, REX’s designer. Baker then too suddenly dies. On his way to meet Otacon, Snake is ambushed by the cyborg ninja, leading to an intense close quarters fight. As the ninja retreats, Snake realizes that it is none other than his old FOXHOUND colleague Gray Fox, who he believed he had killed at Zanzibar Land. With Otacon providing directions to REX’s hanger, Snake and Meryl team up, but the pair soon find themselves under fire from FOXHOUND’s Sniper Wolf. Wolf hits Meryl multiple times, incapacitating her. Snake moves in only to be surrounded and knocked out. He awakens to find himself strapped to a table, face to face with Revolver Ocelot and the leader of FOXHOUND, Liquid Snake. Liquid confirms suspicions that he and Solid Snake are brothers and that they are the sons of Big Boss. Ocelot then brutally tortures Snake. Somehow holding out, Snake is taken to a cell where Octacon is able to help him escape. Upon reaching Metal Gear REX’s hanger, Snake overhears Ocelot and Liquid discussing their final preparation for their nuclear strike and Liquid’s plans to turn Shadow Moses into a new version of Outer Heaven. After the two depart, Snake attempts to deactivate REX’s weapons but is shocked to discover that FOXHOUND never had the means to activate REX’s warheads, and he has inadvertently done it for them. Snake runs to confront Liquid, who reveals that Snake’s handlers have been lying to him, and that he was actually sent to Shadow Moses to serve as a vector to spread a genetically engineered virus called FOXDIE, designed to kill specific people based on their DNA. The US government wanted to eliminate FOXHOUND and hide all evidence of their attempted takeover, while also acquiring Metal Gear REX for themselves. Liquid jumps into REX and targets Snake. Gray Fox appears, blocking the attack and disabling REX’s radar. Fox reveals that he is there for a final showdown with Snake, but Liquid catches Gray Fox off guard, killing him. Liquid then challenges Snake to a final fistfight atop the hulking Metal Gear, baiting him with Meryl, who he has tied up nearby. During the melee, Liquid tells Snake about “Les Enfants Terrible”, the cold war era project that birthed them in an attempt to create the ultimate super soldier from the legendary Big Boss’s DNA. Snake throws Liquid off of REX and frees Meryl. Racing out of the facility, the two are confronted by Liquid Snake yet again, though he suddenly dies from the effects of FOXDIE. Colonel Campbell vows to keep Snake’s survival secret, though it’s unclear how long it will be before he, like his brother, succumbs to the virus. In an epilogue, Revolver Ocelot calls the President of the United States, who is revealed to be a secret third clone of Big Boss, Solidus Snake.

Whew!

“Yeah, I know it. You must be a real threat in the Muk-Tuk eating contest.”

Compared to the previous games, the writing in Metal Gear Solid is on another level. Much more of a soap opera, there are so many twists and turns, double-crosses, surprise reveals, and weird references that I’d be surprised if most kids playing this in the 90s came anywhere close to fully understanding it. There is so much of this stuff that I’ve been hearing spoilers for this game for almost 30 years and was still surprised by some of the plot twists. There are the occasional clumsy exposition dumps and needless overexplanations, though they’re kind of endearing in a way. Likewise, the frequent insertion of references to real-world military technology, science, and politics comes across a little more like a geeky obsession than anything close to realistic, and yet, this is a fun video game about a dude who is practically a martini and an English accent away from being James Bond, so hey, it works for me. Speaking of, Snake’s penchant for hitting on every female he comes across is even worse than in MG2. There are some other slightly pervy moments too, like Meryl’s ass being a significant part of the plot, but I think it mostly keeps it together. The first Metal Gear had some hints of the quirky humor often associated with the series, but MG2 was quite a bit more buttoned up. With MGS, it’s out in full-force. Personally, I think this is all pretty amusing, somehow managing to strike the balance of injecting moments of silliness into an otherwise very serious story without throwing off the tone. Unsurprisingly, there is some stuff that just comes across as more cheesy than quirky, though. A lot of the dialog around the whole “love blooming on the battlefield” theme, for example, just didn’t land with me. It’s sometimes hard to tell if it’s knowingly a little dumb or legitimately a bit hamfisted in its execution, but really, I’m not sure it matters.

When it comes to a lack of realism, the game’s numerous bosses, which are now a much bigger part of the plot, are where we go from a semi-plausible espionage story with some questionable stuff about genetics and a bit of deep state conspiracy theory to complete nutso fantasy. I don’t remember FOXHOUND being some kind of rogues gallery of super-villains when Snake was a member of the unit, but then again, I guess we were never shown too much about them. Among our bosses we have a cyborg ninja, a mustache twirling Russian gunslinger, a telepathic psychokinetic flying fetishist, a hulking Inuit shaman who wields a massive Vulcan cannon and has some kind of a magical connection to ravens, a master sniper femme fatale who rocks the cleavage even when laying prone in snow, and of course, the series namesake, a badass mech “like one of my Japanese animes!” A huge positive for having this weird cast of characters is the varied mechanics around each one. Everyone has heard of Psycho Mantis and his fourth wall shattering attempts to mess with the player, but practically every boss fight in the game is unique and memorable. Even the Hind D fight (yes, another one…) was really cool, blowing away those in earlier games. Speaking of fourth wall breaks, yeah, MGS has those in full-force too. They’re everywhere, not just with Psycho Mantis; you’ll have some of your crew telling you what buttons to hit on your controller, friends and enemies alike discussing your saving habits, weird rumble shenanigans, etc. It’s fun!

“Another Metal Gear game, another Hind D fight…”

I played the game on “easy” difficulty after learning that it was the normal difficulty in the original Japanese release, and I definitely think it was a bit easier than the earlier games. I didn’t use a map at for this playthrough and only glanced at a walkthrough from time to time to get my bearings when it had been a long time between play sessions. That said, you’ll need to do a lot of exploring if you want to find every item and have a good amount of supplies, and as mentioned, anything besides a strategy of avoiding guards is going to be challenging. One tip I’ll impart to anyone planning on playing is to not be an idiot like me and use your damn grenades! Stun and especially chaff grenades are kind of an easy button in many situations. Despite the variety of mechanics, none of the boss fights are that obtuse either, and a quick codec call during a fight will often tell you exactly what you need to know. That doesn’t mean there aren’t still some really frustrating moments. For example, my first attempt or two at counter-sniping Sniper Wolf was aggravating as she kept hitting me, interrupting my aim before I could get a bead on her, and I absolutely hated the final jeep sequence where it seemed almost impossible to hit Liquid. Also, my checkpoint before the Ocelot fight had me low on both rations and ammo, which made it incredibly challenging. Speaking of, saving in MGS is another case of a positive iteration over what MG2 did. This time we have modern checkpoints which you can usually resume from any time you die. However, you need to use your codec to actually save your game between sessions, though its pretty quick if you can resist chatting with Mei Ling. As an added bonus, there’s also a cool “mission logs” feature that dynamically describes the previous events from your playthrough every time you load a save game from the main menu. I love this kind of thing, though as I heavily leaned on my Xbox’s “Quick Resume”’ feature, loading a save was a rarity for me.

“Tap for your life! Err, well, Meryl’s life…”

There’s so much more I could go into about the game, though the most important thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the unusual level of detail here. MGS is full of little one-off mechanics that don’t really feel necessary, seemingly just because Kojima thought they were cool. There’s also a ton of easily missed codec conversations, weird interactions, and secrets sprinkled throughout. Toss that in with reasonably open gameplay in which almost every scenario has multiple solutions and this leads to some unique emergent, or at the very least highly memorable, moments. This all goes to make the game feel deeper, letting players’ minds run wild imagining the possibilities, which is surely an important factor in why MGS resonated with so many people.

Wrapping up, I think if I hadn’t just played Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake I’d have a lot more to say about the gameplay and systems of Metal Gear Solid, as frankly I’m a bit surprised by how similar the games are in so many respects. Yet, I’m glad I did given how much MGS references it, and I definitely think MGS is the better game, having improved just about everything, and upping the ante on the presentation to the point that it’s easily one of the standout games of its generation. I’m absolutely positive that if I’d owned a PlayStation and played the game back in the day, I would have loved it, and I’m quite happy to have finally experienced it. It’s a damn good thing too, as I still have a lot of Metal Gear games to get through… 😅

“I suspect this isn’t the last time we’ll hear about that place.”

I should quickly mention a couple of other related releases. Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions is something of a standalone expansion that greatly expands on the VR training missions that served as an optional tutorial in the main game. While I’m sure I would have tried to complete all 300 of these back in the day, a handful of more interesting missions aside, they’re mostly a test of the player’s mastery of the mechanics, and the mechanics, particularly the combat, weren’t really my favorite part of MGS. Once I got to some slightly more challenging missions, I found them more frustrating than fun and made the hard call to bail. I’m still tempted to go back and finish them, honestly. The other would be Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, which is the 2004 remake of MGS for the GameCube. That game will be getting its own article when we get to it.

By release date, Metal Gear Solid for the Game Boy Color (AKA Metal Gear: Ghost Babel) should be next, but considering it is going to be included in the upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2, I’ve decided to wait and play that version. Barring any delays, it should be released by the time I make it through my next game, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.

Flying Around, Underground

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about World of Warcraft, or any MMORPG for that matter. While I skipped Shadowlands entirely (I’m sure I’ll play through it some day) I jumped into Dragonflight not too long after its launch and started gradually chiseling away at its campaign. It was rarely a priority, and the amount of time I spent on it waxed and waned without much of a discernible pattern, often with massive gaps of no activity at all, as has been the way I’ve casually played World of Warcraft for many years now, with the major exception of the launch of World of Warcraft Classic, of course!

“Vibin’ in the Emerald Dream.”

You know, I don’t think I ever wrote about how that ended. To keep it short and sweet, in an amazing recreation of how a lot of WoW guilds probably ended back in 2004, and indeed have ended in many games before and since, my dozen or so guild mates (all coworkers!) found ourselves with differing levels of interest, different gaming schedules, and different playstyles, and as soon as we entered into the mid-late stage of leveling, when things really started to slow down, that lack of cohesion started to matter more and more, and we began to splinter. At first one or two people made the call to leave, and then our numbers continued to bleed. I think I quit not long after writing my one post about WoW Classic. I might have made it into my 50s, I don’t recall, but I hit one of the very same leveling walls I remember hitting back in the day, yet this time I simply decided I’d had my fill and that the experiment was over. No regrets, it was a fun little trip back in time!

Back to Dragonflight though!

This expansion’s big new feature, Dragonriding/Skyriding, kind of sucked at first, but as I got used to it, and of course as I leveled it up, it started to feel superior to the old way of flying. Challenging at times, yes, but also much funner when it all worked correctly. This is especially true now that Blizzard allows it anywhere, with any flying mount, and more recently, has removed the need to manage your vigor – this has dumbed it down a bit, for sure, but also makes it a lot less of a hassle, and therefore more appealing for casual travel. Dragon racing challenges are fun, even if they did kind of feel like extraneous, bolted-on content. I also loved all of the customizable mounts you unlock throughout the campaign, though I wish so many of their customization pieces weren’t locked behind reputation grinds and other endgame busywork. Such is life in Azeroth, though.

“Thar be dragons! and boy, do they have a lot of quests for you to do.”

Dragonflight also added the new Dracthyr race and its exclusive class, the Evoker. Of course, I had to play through their new introductory questline just to check them out. While I don’t think the Dracthyr are quite my style, the Evoker is pretty fun, and I’m sure some will love both. I’d recommend anyone playing “retail” WoW to at least try them out, if you somehow haven’t already.

The Dragon Isles and their new zones were really quite enjoyable. In many ways the variety of biomes, enemies, and storylines reminded me of my first playthrough of Wraith of the Lich King’s Northrend zones, although with a ton of added verticality to support Dragonriding shenanigans, of course. Part of that might be due to the return of some old favorites, the Tuskarr and the Centaurs, having major parts to play. In some ways it felt like a return to form to me, especially once you make it to the Ohn’ahran Plains and The Azure Span.

At some point I stopped to catch-up with all of the dungeon related quests I’d skipped while leveling, which happened to coincide with the addition of the new Follower Dungeons feature. This basically lets you bring a full party of NPC bots into dungeons, so now even the most asocial WoW player can at least play through the more story-relevant dungeons and complete dungeon related quests. I gave this a spin and I was delighted with how well it worked. Unfortunately, I later found out the hard way that because I’d reached max level, this feature was no longer available to me. I guess I’ll have to finish those quests when I can easily solo those dungeons or *gulp* join a PUG. That felt bizarrely punitive, though I believe this has since been changed, thankfully. Another new feature to help out us lowly casuals is “Warbands” which is just a catchy way of saying that there is a lot more in terms of items and progress (reputation, various unlocks) shared account-wide rather than per character, similar to Star Wars: The Old Republic’s Legacy system. About time!

“This random return to Dalaran’s sewers was certainly unexpected.”

Once I finally beat the main story quest (I lost a lot of steam when I finally reached the final zone, Thaldraszus, plus Plunderstorm is always a major distraction when it comes up) it was onto the areas added via seasonal patches. The Forbidden Reach wasn’t that exciting, but it had some cool quests and was kind of a fun diversion. The Zskera Vaults was a cool idea, but playing it so long after their release, the excitement to keep pushing through them just wasn’t there. Zaralek Cavern was also kind of neat, giving me major Planetside: Core Combat vibes. It wasn’t until Bel’ameth and the new Emerald Dream zone that I really connected to one of these new areas. Overall, a little boring, but part of that is on me as this seasonal content, even the meatier stuff, is design to keep players occupied during the current season, and don’t quite hit the same once their time has passed.

By the time I wrapped all of that up, The War Within had been out for a little while, so I continued right onto that expansion’s main story quest. TWW feels like much more of an iteration on what was done in Dragonflight than we typically see with WoW expansions, which I definitely prefer to throwing away most of the prior expansion’s systems and pretending like it never happened. Dragonriding is still here, as are its racing challenges. The crafting system is still more or less the same (unfortunately – I’m not a huge fan) and its talent trees were expanded upon instead of more dramatically overhauled. Likewise, Follower Dungeons and Warbands were iterated on quite a bit, becoming more standard features of the game. In fact, one of TWW’s biggest (and best) new features feels like it was built on top of Follower Dungeons.

“The majesty of Hallowfall!”

Delves are basically little micro-dungeon instances scattered all over the Isle of Dorn and Khaz Algar. Most people will run Delves solo, choosing only to bring your NPC companion, Brann Bronzebeard, though you can run them with up to 4 people. There are a lot of challenges related to grinding through Delves, which can lead to an endgame gear progression track, amongst all kinds of other goodies. There’s also quite a bit of variation and customization in the system – beyond the huge number of delves, each has multiple, sometimes drastic variations, quite a few tiers of difficulty, you can level and customize Brann in various ways, etc. I had quite a lot of fun running Delves, and while I won’t go into describing every mechanic around them in detail, I did progress quite far, using them instead of my usual PVP grind for catching my gear up once I hit 80. Between my own experience and what I’ve heard and seen from others, I’d definitely call them a massive success, and thankfully, they appear to be a mechanic that is here to stay for now, already confirmed to be coming back with Midnight.

The only thing I didn’t enjoy about TWW’s campaign was its odd habit of locking various things behind completing the main story quest. For instance, at one point I really wanted to create an Earthen alt, but I had to beat the campaign to unlock it. Okay, that’s somewhat understandable, but those delves I was loving so much? I couldn’t access higher difficulty tiers nor the “bountiful delves” which have better loot until, yep, beating the campaign, despite being max level for much of the time. And I have to say, the main campaign of both of these most recent expansions felt far longer than I wanted them to, despite how much I enjoyed them overall.

“I could run around in a mech killing elites for hours on end. In fact, I did.”

TWW’s campaign was filled with all kinds of cool moments and areas. I loved the Dwarven inspired architecture of the Isle of Dorn, the city of Dornogal, and the Ringing Depths. Hallowfall and the Arathi Lamplighters were an unexpected, extremely cool surprise. I can’t say that I loved Ajk’kahet nearly as much, but as a Warcraft 3 fan it was cool to see Nerubians get so much more attention. The seasonal patch zones were really cool this time around too. For some reason I got absolutely addicted to Siren Island – I’m not sure why, it just clicked with me and I ended up almost 100%ing it. I don’t think I’d had that much fun since tooling around on Mechagon Island in Battle for Azeroth. It should come to no surprise, but The Undermine, the huge Goblin city zone, is an absolute trip. While I didn’t obsessively grind it like I did Siren Island, I really loved how much detail went into it – speeding around in my G-99 Breakneck while some sleazy jazz plays in the background, passing by all kinds of bizarre Goblin robots, trash blowing around in the streets – there’s nothing else like it in all of WoW. K’aresh, the Ethereal zone, was neat but ultimately didn’t do much for me. Perhaps I just had a sour taste in my mouth because I accidentally triggered “The Warning” questline which locked me out of doing it’s main storyline in the proper order.

I wrapped up almost all of the TWW storylines and side quests the very week the Midnight pre-patch came out. It’s a good thing too, as my Outlaw Rogue feels a lot less punchy after its stat squish and talent changes, and the patch itself has been a bit rocky, with broken add-ons, performance issues, and the occasional disconnect. Nothing new for these huge expansion pre-patches, I guess, so hopefully this has all shaken out before the launch of Midnight. As usual, I’ll probably wait quite a while to dive into it to find out for myself. In fact, I believe I’ll be taking a break from WoW for quite a while.

“If you like Warcraft’s Goblins, you’ll loooovvvve Undermine.”

I should mention that I’ve played quite a lot of other MMOs in recent years, but I’ve yet to write about many of them here mostly because I’m planning to revisit almost all of them sooner or later. Next on that list was New World, which I played a bit at launch and haven’t been back to since. I liked it a lot at the time, and I was already planning on going back into it to see how it has shaped up, but now that it is closing down in early 2027 it seems I have no choice but to make that a priority. 🙁

Cleaning, Climbing, and Crime!

As a follow-up to Surviving Survival Tres, my group also snuck in some lower commitment co-op games in between some of the sessions of those games. We mostly did this if completed a game early and weren’t ready to quit playing for the night and/or hadn’t quite made up our minds on what our next longer game would be. The first of these games was Viscera Cleanup Detail.

I’ve been wanting to play VCD for quite a long time, after first hearing people rave about it on my favorite podcasts when it was still in early access, something like ten years ago. It had a reputation for being a scrappy little indie game that both helped invent the now hugely popular genre of games that capitalize on repetitive and comfortable yet somehow addictive activities (see Powerwash Simulator and half of the other “simulator” games on Stream) as well having a pretty amusing narrative conceit: ever think about the carnage and wreckage left in the player character’s wake in shooters like Quake and Doom? No, probably not, but these guys did! They also thought about the poor bastards that have to clean it all up. That’s VCD in a nutshell. You, and assuming you’re playing cooperatively (you should be!) your companions are essentially space janitors who have to bring order to the utter chaos left in each of these spaces. My boy Roger Wilco never had it so bad…

“Welp, it’s another day in the office…”

These days repetitive task games, as well as games that give players purposely inaccurate controls and/or wonky physics for laughs, feel, eh… kind of quaint. Both gameplay tropes have been iterated on so much over the succeeding years that I can’t help but feel that VCD has aged kind of badly in comparison. Despite how much I love the concept of VCD, I was caught off guard by how much it leaned into the latter in particular – I was hyped to clean the ever loving hell out of some gore-strewn space station corridors, but I really wasn’t expecting the game to fight me so much in the process. Worse yet, given the game’s age, I was also never quite sure whether this was all very intentional or if these systems were just… bad. I have to imagine the former, since the game also gleefully puts other weird roadblocks in your way, such as randomly malfunctioning equipment. Regardless of intent, it feels a bit outdated and clunky by today’s standards and, honestly, while there were some hilarious moments in the 90 minutes or so I played it, I found myself more frustrated than amused most of the time.

I may go back to it one of these days just to give it a fairer shake, but I left the whole thing a little disappointed.

Speaking of indie darlings, we also hopped into a much newer game to hit the zeitgeist, Peak. I’d heard about Peak from podcasts like Rebel FM, but honestly, it seemed like everyone was talking about it for a little while there.

“I mean, this picture was too perfect not to use.”

Peak is a cooperative game where you and your friends have to navigate some fairly harsh terrain, including climbing up mountains via some pretty sketchy cliffs. There’s a bit of that wonky physics stuff going on here too, but all and all it feels much more like it’s giving you the basic confines you need to work within to create a bit of a challenge rather than purposely trying to sabotage you. I suppose that’s a fine line and not all that objective, but that’s certainly how it feels to me. There are some neat little touches too, like how climbing works, the ability to give your friends a hand to pull them up, and the numerous items you can loot along the way that can sometimes help you achieve your goals.

The game also has an optimistic vibe which starts off feeling like a fun adventure with your friends. It doesn’t really stay that way though – while you’ll quickly get better at the game, naturally, the first several attempts to get to the top of the first mountain can feel tense and a little harrowing, and it only gets worse from there. That is, each run in Peak has you navigate through 5 different biomes, procedurally generated daily. Some of these biomes are harder than others, and many have some neat features unique to their themes, like the prevalence of ice anchors and storms in the snowy area, for instance. It’s worth noting that we played before the most recent two types of biomes were added to the game, so no experience with those. Anyway, this culminates in a final area, The Kiln, which is an almost vertical climb up a massive shaft while lava rises beneath you. Ooof!

“Looking back down onto the beach from the first mountain.”

Of our sessions, we managed to make it to The Kiln multiple times, but by the time we got there we were in bad shape and had depleted most of our items, and were therefore ill-equipped to make it to the top. Not that we didn’t give it a go regardless. Making it all the way to the end but not beating it multiple times is a bit of a downer, though honestly I think most of our frustration came from other areas. For one, if your character dies and can’t be revived (which is common, since sometimes you’ll die from a nasty fall and your teammates won’t be able to backtrack to where you fell) you can’t be resurrected until reaching the campfire at the summit of the current biome. This means if you die just after getting there, you might be effectively out of the game for a very long time.

There’s also something of a time limit in the form of a rising fog which, not unlike the closing circle in a Battle Royale game, forces you to keep moving and keep somewhat of a decent pace.The fog is rarely a problem in and of itself, though if you all manage to die, be it to the fog or a series of misadventures, you all have to start all over again. I was personally pretty surprised that the first time this happened we didn’t restart back at the last campfire. Having the campfires be checkpoints seems like an absolute no-brainer to me, but I suppose that is counter to the rogue-like “run” design the developers had in mind with Peak. Fair enough, I guess, and it does seem like they’ve added a partial solution to this (the “Checkpoint Flag” item) in their latest content push, so perhaps that will help (although given the random nature of finding items in this game and the fact that its a per player, single use item, I’m skeptical!)

“Okay, now shit is getting real!”

After my 8 or so hours with Peak, I think my biggest frustration with the game is how close it is to being really, really great. I fully expected the devs to iterate on the design and quickly release more and more content, but it’s been a little slow and underwhelming. These types of games (recently I’ve been hearing them called “Friend Slop” which is both very descriptive and a little unfortunate) tend to be a little short-lived in terms of player interest, with a new one, RV There Yet?, currently getting a lot of attention. Still, I think Peak is a fun game and recommended for people looking for a quick, pick-up-and-play cooperative experience, and I doubt that’ll change even after everyone has moved on from it.

One game I almost forgot we even played was Escape First Alchemist. This was a pretty simple escape room style cooperative game, though unlike the last game of this type I played, We Were Here, EFA feels much more like a true escape room experience – you and up to 3 others are tossed into an area with no prescribed roles, you just have to work together to solve puzzles to progress.

“Unraveling the mysteries of… a door.”

The setup is that you’re an alchemist’s apprentice, and you’ve got to try to free the master alchemist, Trismegistus, from whatever kind of magical pocket dimension he’s got himself trapped in. The puzzles are themed around this – brewing potions to affect yourself with whatever strange abilities they grant, fiddling with arcane machines, accessing secret passages with interesting mechanisms, that kind of thing. Honestly, while the game no doubt has some very cool moments and interesting ideas, as a whole I didn’t find many of the puzzles or the gameplay overall to be all that compelling. I was especially let down by the ending, which didn’t feel anywhere nearly as climactic as I want from a game like this. Honestly, ending with some vague text is kind of a letdown when the rest of the presentation was so nice.

Still, EFA only takes 2 or 3 hours or so to play through, and as a co-op experience, it’s fun enough. It has some really nice visuals and an excellent presentation overall, which really helps sell the experience, although the magic book that acts as your narrator apparently annoys a lot of people. I think in our case we were too busy talking amongst ourselves to focus too much on it, really. Personally, if Escape First Alchemist sounds appealing to you, I’d probably hold off until it’s on sale.

“Well, it definitely looks like a narrative adventure game!”

Radically changing directions, it’s been a while since my partner and I played through a narrative game together, but the mood struck us and we ended up diving into As Dusk Falls. Really, As Dusk Falls has been on my radar since before it was released back in 2022, but despite constantly hearing people sing its praises, I was skeptical of what little I knew of its story, and I actually found its unique art style, which reminds me of a low-rent version of A-ha’s Take On Me music video with its stylized makeovers of static images of real actors choppily stitched together, kind of off-putting. I’m not sure what intrigued her about the game, I’m guessing she heard some buzz about it from somewhere, but when she suggested it, I figured why not finally check this thing out.

For those unaware, As Dusk Falls falls is a narrative adventure game where you make conversation choices and other decisions, occasionally spiced up with some action scenes in the way of relatively simple QTEs. The game is split up into numerous chapters over 6 episodes, although for some reason the episodes were released all at once rather than the usual strategy of having weeks or even months between releases. In terms of how this is all implemented, I think it falls closer to the confusingly similarly titled Until Dawn or one of SuperMassive’s other horror adventure games (although I believe Quantic Dream’s DNA is what is actually at play here, though I’ve yet to play any of their games so I can’t quite compare them) which is to say that your choices matter a lot more than, say, a Telltale game, in terms of impactful results, with numerous endings (or at least, variations of endings.) The game wants you to be aware of this too, as at the end of each chapter you’re shown a tree of every impactful decision and how they all branch out, which is always really fascinating to look through.

“These end of chapter decision trees are too cool!”

We played ADF via the game’s couch co-op mode, which assigns some decisions and actions to random player, and others more democratically (which may sound weird, but it also supports up to 8 people online, so a majority wins scenario makes a lot more sense there.) Interestingly enough, something I hadn’t seen, or at least not so prominently in other similar games, is that you can tune a lot of the game’s difficulty modifiers, like making it impossible to run out of time when making a decision, or making the timing on QTEs ridiculously easy. At first we had tuned a lot of this stuff to make it all really easy (I mean, who wants to fight against ridiculous QTEs?) but we actually ended up turning it all back up, as these kinds of games are a little broken if you make them too easy. I mean, if you never fail a QTE, you never get to see the resulting branches, and I’d imagine some of these scenes are tuned to be harder than others to push players towards a more likely path. It just made things feel a bit more linear than they were intended to be, and where’s the fun in that?

The story of As Dusk Falls revolves around a couple of brothers who get into some trouble with a corrupt sheriff, which quickly escalates into a hostage situation involving a whole heap of other characters. You mostly play as either one of these brothers, Jay, or as one of the hostages, Vince. Set against the backdrop of a small town in Arizona, the whole “bored teenagers stuck in a seemingly dead end rural wasteland” vibe stuck with me probably more than anything else about the game. I actually find something about that vibe, especially when it comes with crime stories and the desert, a little unappealing, but hey, I love Breaking Bad and No Country for Old Men, so maybe there’s also something in that inner conflict that works for me? That said, it’s hard to feel much sympathy for the Holts, even if Jay was somewhat more relatable and redeemable, and like a lot of good crime stories, there are some pretty harsh outcomes that some might find a little distasteful.

“Most of your decisions will be fairly black and white, and very impactful.”

As I suspected, despite kind of disliking the art style, I got used to it pretty quickly, and while I’d occasionally see some animation or other element that was laughable, it mostly ceased to become an issue, and I might have even warmed up to it a little by the end of six episodes. I still don’t really know if this was a budget concession, strictly an artistic choice, or somewhere in between, but alas, if it was done to cut costs, I suppose I’m good with it if it allows more games like this to be released in the future.

In the end, I do think As Dusk Falls is a really good adventure game, but just how much you’re going to enjoy it is going to come down to whether its story, setting, and unique art style work for you. I still have some mixed feelings about it, myself, but I can’t deny that it deserves its place amongst the more notable of these types of games, and I’m quite surprised that INTERIOR/NIGHT still hasn’t followed it up yet, although they did just get the PlayStation port of it out last year, so perhaps they’re just not far enough along yet to make any announcements.

A couple of these As Dusk Falls screenshots were swiped from elsewhere due to us neglecting to take any screenshots while playing, with the exception of that end of chapter 1 decision tree.