Games

I've been taking another shot at Rogue Trader these last couple weeks. Game is really quite good. Previously I had tried it around when it came out and got hard stuck at the chapter 1 boss fight. I don't know if I just have better builds and comp this time or if the updates since then have made it better, but I managed to get into chapter two now and I'm loving it. The game really does a good job of portraying the strict and monstrous hierarchy of the setting. I know it's not Owlcat's first rodeo having a very powerful and important player character, but they are still very good at it. Makes me quite curious about their next 40k crpg where my understanding is you'll play as more of a nobody.

The game seems to be fucking massive in both length and in scope, which is a double-edged sword - it's real nice to spend a lot of time in the setting, get to know all the characters, and go on all sorts of adventures, trying all kinds of shit out, but it can also be pretty fatiguing to be presented with yet another set of decisions to make for your ship or your domain or simply leveling up a dozen characters yet again. Still, I'm glad that someone is doing that sort of thing even if the execution is uneven.

The art direction, but especially the music are great, and the writing is generally skillful. There's a lot of intrigue in the squishiness at the edges of Imperial authority, particularly with a rogue trader involved, and the plots and prose do well in that space. The vocal performance range from adequate to relatively inspired, although it is limited to particular dialogues.

Besides that I have been playing some Darktide, as I am in the grip of 40k. Game is still a solid horde shooter with good action and well-designed missions - it just got some new ones that shake up the format a little too, which is fun. The big improvement from when I played it a year or so ago though is in the gear and character progression, which seem to have been revamped into a much freer and less rng format. For me the game is definitely a casual romp, and I think is performs that role excellently. It's tremendous fun to explode ogryn heads or cleave through waves of heretics with a big fuck-off sword while trying to avoid getting tackled by mutants. My understanding is that the game has a pretty high difficulty ceiling, if you're into that sort of thing though.

I have booted up Space Marine 2, but it crashed my graphics card when I lost the tutorial boss fight so I haven't tried it again. I'm less into the space marines than a lot of other aspects of the setting, but I'll probably give it another go at some point. I do like the Tyranids at least.