Four in February – Week 3 Update
Just joining us? Catch up with the previous posts: intro, week 1, week 2.
This week was a touch tumultuous. It started with an ice storm that threatened to completely derail my attempt at this challenge but has ended with the goal very close to realization with one week to go. This week I was able to finish Infamous: Second Son and FTL and am close to finishing Uncharted: Golden Abyss. That just leaves Shadow of the Colossus as the major hurdle to completing the challenge.
Monday evening an ice storm hit and knocked out my neighborhood’s power from Monday around 9 pm to Wednesday morning around 2:30 am. It was very chilly in my house. Still, I would be remiss to not take this opportunity to publicly thank all of the people who were out in the bad weather working to fix things. Thank you.
Tuesdays are normally heavy playing days for me. Instead, I had one (luckily full) charge on my PS Vita to last the entire time my power was out. It turned out to be fortuitous that I did not spend more time with Uncharted, otherwise that full charge would not have done much good in relation to this challenge.
However, while I am close to beating Uncharted, I am not quite there and I do not want to give my impressions right now, because I am at a crucial point of the story (I think). I need to play more of the story from where I am now to give a fair and full impression of the game.
Once the power came back on, I still had a couple of days to make progress in the challenge for the week. I focused on Infamous first, and found I was further in the story than I anticipated- or rather, the story was shorter than I thought, after I was done freeing Seattle from DUP control. This is the flip side to my play style when it comes to these open world games. I spend a lot of time doing the side missions and powering up which in turn makes the main story missions easier than intended.
It would be unfair for me to hold my play style against Sucker Punch. The only way for them to mitigate my play style is to put artificial barriers to my advancement into the game. They do put one in by making you get a certain power by completing a certain mission to reach the second half of the map. Used sparingly, a story block works but if there are too many it makes the game feel linear and defeats the feel of choice and openness that the game world is based upon.
So, you get players like me who spend time going around collecting all the power shards and leveling my karmic standing enabling me to max a power’s level as soon as I gain access to it. I absolutely break the game’s power curve. In addition, because I leave the story missions for last, I mess with the narrative’s timing and pace to its detriment. That is the choice I make in how I play and if Sucker Punch were to do too much to deter my approach, it would break the larger framework of the game. That would be a shame, because Sucker Punch did a really amazing job with Infamous: Second Son.
The graphics, story, sound design, and design decisions all work together to create a compelling game play experience in Infamous: Second Son. The characters are well introduced and developed through game play. When back story is introduced, it is done in a way that makes sense within the mechanics of the game. Learning about the other conduits through nicely stylized vignettes when gaining some of their powers worked for me as a story telling device. It also gave the player these characters’ stories through their own voice, which goes a long way to making them more real. Yet, at the same time, you get a visual reputation that allows another layer of subtext to their story allowing the player to interpret the character’s story through a different view. This worked best for me with Fetch and Augustine. Those two characters felt more well-rounded and real to me than the other conduits. Still, all of the characters have motivations, and more importantly, agency within the story. I find that to still be a minority position in video game storytelling- especially AAA-title video game story telling.
Additionally, the story and interactions of your main character, Delsin Rowe, and his brother Reggie, while told in a more traditional narrative approach, was well crafted and delivered. Those interactions and that relationship felt genuine. That is all the harder with the karmic system on top of the story. The relationship and story has to work regardless of how you choose to play Delsin, and they do.
If you have a PlayStation 4 and you have not played Infamous: Second Son, you are missing out. It is exciting to see a game this polished and this good this early in the console’s cycle. It makes me excited for what is to come. I highly recommend it, and am glad that I chose it as a title for this challenge.
With FTL, I am pleased that my strategy proved effective. I took my time with my victory play through. Last week, I was just starting sector 6. It took me all week to advance through sectors 6 and 7 and last night I triumphed in sector 8. I barely made it. My ship had only 4 hull points left when I defeated the main boss. It is humbling to remember that this was easy mode.
I am very glad I pulled off this victory. If I had not won on this play through, I am not sure I would have had the determination to play back through another attempt this week. I am not sure FTL was a good choice for this challenge. That is not a comment about the quality of FTL by any means. I have loved my time with FTL and will probably use it as my spare time game for a while. Any time I have my computer and 10 – 15 minutes of spare time, FTL can fill that time and I do not have to worry about being able to stop where I am. I mean simply that FTL can be an unforgiving game and when a loss means starting over from square one it can get very taxing on a player with the artificial deadline of the challenge compounding that pressure. When a random procedurally generated encounter can destroy a perfectly good play through it can get frustrating if your only goal is to “beat” the game.
That is the other issue in terms of FTL and this challenge. Being a rogue-like game, I am not sure the point of FTL is to get past the final boss. At some level it is, sure, but there is also the element of just bettering your previous game. I would have felt terrible if the only thing that separated me from feeling like I completed this challenge was defeating the final encounter of the game. Even without that, I felt that I had met this challenge in relation with FTL just by enjoying my time with the game, and finally playing it and seeing what it was all about. Oh well, I did beat the boss encounter, so no worries there.
Alright, so there we are. I have a little more than two and two thirds of the challenge complete, but only one week left to complete it. I am not quite as far along as I hoped I would be last week, but I can blame the weather for that a little. Still, I am optimistic that this is going to happen and that I will complete the Four in February challenge and that my Pile of Shame will be 4 games smaller. Will I make it? Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion.
