WATCH DOGS: LEGION (Ubisoft, 2020)

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In spite of repetitive missions, dodgy-at-best controls, and largely uninteresting protagonists (more on that in a second, particularly in how it relates to LEGION), I adore every game in the WATCH DOGS series – WATCH DOGS: LEGION in particular – because, if nothing else, Ubisoft knows that if you're going to make the missions repetitive, have dodgy-at-best controls, and uninteresting protagonists, you might as well make those missions fun to repeat.

red female mannequins with middle fingers raised

While the ASSASSIN'S CREED games rarely hit that sweet spot (the only one I've made to the end of without giving up in boredom is ODYSSEY) and the FAR CRY series can be hit or miss (no matter how much I do love that series HURK BROS FOR LIFE), the WATCH DOGS series is endlessly – if, occasionally, mindlessly – entertaining; LEGION, in particular, throws every franchise Ubisoft's got - ASSASSIN'S CREED (literal assassins), FAR CRY (turn the borough defiant! – though it would've been fun to have to deal with Albion reasserting control as the evil factions do in FC) and WATCH DOGS together into a beautifully rendered near-future corpo-fascist police state London which, for the first time in the series, feels like it has the heft of some urgent, existential stakes to it though, as with almost all UbiSoft games, the ending didn't really stick the landing and the main story sort of just ended to leave you to explore the post-Zero Day, post-credits London in a BOTW-esque picture gathering mission, mission types which have yet to endear themselves to me.

But then again, it's all to help Bagley and Bagley is the best.

As for the most oft-discussed aspect of LEGION, the ability to play as nearly any NPC in London after requisite scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine favormaking: while I was, more than once, thrown off by the wildly out-of body voiceovers (it sounds like they had three people doing the voices of all of London) and noticeably glassy-eyed visages of everyone in the game, I loved it. That being said, I don't think I took as much advantage of this feature as I could have because once I found characters I liked (the mercenary dude with the face tattoos and Kathy Green, the spy with the rocket-launching Aston Martin) and whose weaponry and gadgets aligned with my general playstyle (silent stealth / hackings and takedowns / bullets until I screw up and have everyone after me and resort to grenade launchers), I played most of the game as them.

Favorite non-mission oriented activity / way to amuse myself during the far-too-long drives to each mission: taking control of Albion vehicles while driving at breakneck speed on the wrong side of the road because, in spite of having played the game for more than a month, I never got the hang of driving on the left side of the road which led to much collateral damage.

Not a capital G-Great game, but great fun and highly recommended.

CYBERPUNK 2077 (CD Projekt Red, 2020)

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Two months, a few tears, an unwavering belief in the awesomeness of Keanu Reeves (Silverhand is nothing if not the ur-rockstar), and a deeper immersion in its augmented RipperDoc world via playing it on more than a few occasions whilst plugged into a power cable myself to charge the H.E.R.B.I.E. the insulin pump, I've reached the end of my first playthrough (female Nomad V, Judy romance) in what felt, to me, to be the most narratively complete and satisfying ending for that character.

Before I get to my overarching gripe, I want to lay out that I

  • a.) Enjoyed the game quite a bit – enough to spend two months immersed in its world without a single thought of throwing in the towel.

  • b.) Found the story to be more or less engaging and populated with intriguing characters. Damn it, Jackie.

  • c.) Didn't encounter any bugs other than the occasional person walking through a car, the customization screen not taking my customizations, or crash which was always fixable by restarting without "quick resume."

  • d.) While the combat system is more than a little dodgy, I only got annoyed at the controls after I had the blade arms: that I couldn't cycle back through weapons but only forwards was a pain in the ass and led to my flatlining more than once.

  • e.) OK, other time I got pissed at the controls: I crashed more times than I care to count while driving a car but was ok on the motorcycle (I mostly drove Jackie's motorcycle) even though I was floored by its occasional superpower of running into cars and send the car flying (see item c?)

OK, the big gripe – and this could be applied across multiple current gaming trends which, I suspect has more to do with the need for everything to be an online multiplayer experience at some point in its existence than the narrative needs of a lowly single player (though CYBERPUNK will, thankfully, remain a single-player one): while Night City and its surrounding environs are beautiful – at times, jaw-droppingly so – I do long for a more contained gaming experience to bowl me over with more deeply drawn levels (though I do understand that the appeal of the CYBERPUNK IP from its tabletop gaming roots *is* that expansive world and putting yourself in it): ARKHAM ASYLUM remains my favorite of the ARKHAM games because it was so claustrophobic while CONTROL is, as far as I can recall, of a similar milieux. I can only imagine what CYBERPUNK would have been had it been similarly contained, if they used all of the imagination let loose in massive worldbuilding and applied it to a deeper level design; if they took a more DEUS EX-style cyberpunk gaming vision and built from that as opposed to a WITCHER/GTA-style sprawl: I fail to see what it is about character/narrative choice and infinite customization that requires an overwhelmingly massive and, at times, onerous and superficial open world playground itself lacking in character: for me, there's a bigger appeal - maddening though it may be – of WANTING to know what's outside the narrative walls of a world and being held back than being given free reign to drive down endless highways winding through neon-teeming cityscapes.

Like I said, though – above bitchiness aside – I did enjoy the game, far more than I thought I would and do recommend that you play it. Will give it some time (and watch the apparently-excellent EDGERUNNERS anime on Netflix) and return to Night City as a male V and see where that takes me; perhaps another dive will change my opinion (I will write another Postscript on it and link back to this one). Parting note of minor personal fascination: I find myself more often than not using the phrase "go back inside" when discussing that impending replay with myself.

GOTHAM KNIGHTS (WB Games Montréal, 2022)

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That I find continuities that aren't the main comics one to be more fascinating has been a constant throughout my lifelong love of Batman: the ARKHAM games; the RED RAIN vampire Batman; BATMAN: TAS; the Jiro Kuwata Bat-manga; the Flashpoint Thomas Wayne Batman; Paul Pope's YEAR ONE HUNDRED; Sean Gordon Murphy's WHITE KNIGHT / Murphyverse; the Affleck-Irons Snyderverse (I still wish we would get an Affleck-led film) version; Burton and Hamm's Batman'89-iverse; and now the Batman-less world of GOTHAM KNIGHTS: I want to know more about this Gotham, about how the characters became the characters they are here (the prequel comic series really isn't doing it for me, though), and what awaits them in the new world after the game (FWIW I already have a pitch ready for a RED HOOD series set in the GOTHAM KNIGHTS world – love Jason here).

I find this fascinating with GOTHAM KNIGHTS especially because the game itself – while *nowhere* near as bad as it was made out to be is, nonetheless, repetitive, glitchy, and more than occasionally frustrating in combat (don't give me an ASSASSIN'S CREED-style combat system without the ability to block and parry, I mean come on) – makes getting to that post-game world a chore as soon as the true antagonists are revealed (and immediately neuters any of the menace of the group I vastly prefer - which could have been left as the mains and STILL kept the overarching narrative intact) at the end of the second act: in other words, I vastly prefer the world of GOTHAM KNIGHTS to more than a third of the game itself.

(Let it be considered an inescapable truth that, in any continuity, the arrival of ninjas - with few exceptions - rarely makes anything more interesting.)

Another gripe, perhaps the most frustrating (though note that I’m only discussing single-player here): it's difficult at best to feel like part of a team when I'm the only one out there doing anything night after night, while the other three, inactive members of my team sit around and/or work out and/or have emotional "human side" cutscenes: It'd be great if I could call in for help from one of them when I'm stuck or if we were all on patrol and items on the map vanished as other Knights cleared them up, or if I could leap from character to character. GTAV did multiple single-player protagonists ten years ago and made it work insanely well. That it hasn't been done well since is shocking.

All that aside, I did enjoy myself for most of it, dug the characters (except Tim, really didn't get a feel for him) and 2/3 of the story. Worth playing and picking up during a sale, but not at full-price: it's a world waiting to be fully explored - that it offers so much promise is cause for praise, flaws of the main notwithstanding.

"(but I don't know) what that something else could be"

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Wrote the above in a note to myself in (one of the) WIP(s); I write this rather frequently, actually: an agnostic faith that I might find it or might not (?) – difference being now that it bothers me far less, if it's the latter, than it used to.

(This is what I tell myself.)

Playing GOTHAM KNIGHTS on the Series S and I'm entertained enough: once I read that the combat was more ASSASSIN'S CREED than ARKHAM (I can't counter? What?!) it made sense and I was able to get over the initial reluctance to embrace it. CYBERPUNK 2077 is waiting in the wings. Still playing ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD, though that's much more of a backburner endeavor, more often than not played in handheld mode (that OLED screen on the Switch is GORGEOUS), except when I have to face one of those stupid tests of strength in the shrines; as someone sagely told me on Mastodon: "When fed up, go foraging": I have been foraging with increased frequency – perhaps I should apply that axiom beyond ZELDA and into the WIP…

Important note: in spite of my Racoon Mario getup below, I've yet to actually fly but the day is young and the sun is only now rising.

the morning's attendance card, a sketchy me rocking something approximating a Racoon Mario getup from SUPER MARIO 3 with one Spockian eyebrow raised. Thus far, I'm unable to fly.