Link off first

I like Stranger Things.  I think the 80s are a great setting of tropes and set the standard for a lot of the media/art we see today.  The 90s were nihilistic, the 00s were new discovery, but the 80s… they seemed self-aware.

Fancy enough, there’s a mobile game out for Stranger Things.  Free.  No in-app purchases.  It’s a call back to 80s exploration games.  Midi-sound track and all.

It’s not a terribly long game, maybe a few hours. But it has a lot of collectibles, pretty much everything from the series, but isn’t really beholden to the series storyline.

In all honesty, I am overly surprised at the sheer quality of this game.  No news about it until the release showed up, no glitches that I’ve found, no crashes.  Just smooth 80s gaming.  Extremely easy to pick up and play too.  The overall challenge is simple enough for all but the library (act 5) and some of the collectible puzzle.  The upside-down world puzzles are more Sokoban than anything else.

I cleared the main story, now I’m onto the collectibles.  I find myself smiling a lot while it’s up.  It scratches just the right itch.

I don’t exactly have rose-colored glasses for old gaming memories.  Early MMOs had some positives certainly, but they also has some horrendous mechanics.  UO was my first kick and regardless of what people the shard split, it was needed.  EQ provided a “safer” space in true 3d, but it came with a massive grind and hard requirement to group.  WoW took all of that, got rid of everything people complained about (and hired EQ guild leaders) and presented an “optimized” gaming experience that pretty much everyone could get into.  Optimization unfortunately brought simplification of some systems.

I personally like the concept of multi-tiered crafting.  This makes all items relevant in the crafting process.  UO started with this, where that ingot at the start of the game is still relevant at the end.  EvE does this too.  There are multiple ways to find these “ingots”.  It isn’t just one location, and one method.  Find them with miners, find them on enemies, trade them, NPCs trades.  There are some rare materials, or rather less common, but they follow the same thought process.

Warframe follows this as well.  Of the dozens (and dozens) of missions, there’s a lot of cross-over of materials.  Some missions are better at some sources, and some areas require a bit more work.  The end result is that no matter what you’re doing, it’s rewarding and (somewhat) relevant.  It also means that as much as you have vertical progress (levels) you have horizontal progress (options) at the same time, rather than closing off content.

This is a flipside compared to the modern “ubisoft sandbox” model.  All the icons are things to do, but once you do, then there’s no real reason to go back.

The system isn’t perfect but it does work.  Keeping all the content relevant for longer periods of time is a smart investment of resources.  Also means that players have a lot more options to play through as the product keeps evolving. Choice is good.

Warframe’s greatest strength is also a weakness.  There’s a theory on the paralysis of choice.  Like when you need to buy toothpaste and there are 60 different kinds.  Why?  Sandbox/open world games really suffer from this (or excel).  Minecraft has zero goals, so the fun you have is the fun you make.

Warframe has so many things to do and see, and each one seems to impact another, that it’s a fine mess.  Expected in a 4 year old game, but after years of WoW (and clones) that completely isolate one activity from another, it’s jarring.  I’ll give a rather lax example.

There gate on Mars (to reach Phobos) requires 3 things.

1. Kill 150 enemies in 1 mission on Mars
2. Open 3 Lith Void relics
3. Scan 3 Cephalon fragments

The tasks seem fairly clear, SMART even (dammit).  All non-endless missions have about 100 enemies.  Endless missions have continuous waves of enemies attack you, increasing in level over time.  Mars has 1 of these missions (defense).  If you play in a group, then you won’t get 100% of the kills, so you have to solo it.  I was able to get it just by the 10th wave (you can leave every 5 waves).  Ok, not too bad.

Opening Lith Void relics requires you to a) have Lith Void relics and b) have Fissure missions. I have not found a practical way to “farm” for a), it just seems to happen randomly.  For b) there are one or two available most of the time.  I should have mentioned c), understanding that this system even exists and how it works.

Finally, the Cephalon fragments.  You need to a) know what the hell these things are and b) find them.  I could not find any reference in game to what these were.  I could not see them on any map.  I went wiki-hunting.  Sure enough, here they are.

Ok, now I know what they look like.  It also seems that for b) one randomly spawns in every regular map.  I have played 4 planets, dozens of missions, maxed out a few things.  Never saw a single one.  I’m not saying they are hidden, but they are not on the “main path” of a level.  I tried actively finding them, running some short/easy missions.  No luck.  Most people who have issues, recommend getting a Thief’s Wit mod, so that you can see them on the radar.  That’s another post.  Anyhow, I’m currently at this phase.

Objectives

Each mission has a goal (or goals).  There’s a yellow (do something), red (kill something) or green icon (exit the map) on the screen (radar and actually play screen) that shows where to go.  Without this, it would be impossible to navigate the maps, as there are many branching paths.  Heck, I get lost even with those icons.  But they do a great job of telling you “go here”.  Simple, effective.

The meta objectives though, ouch.  Where to find items to craft.  What an item actually does.  What is on what planet.  What the terms mean.  What the next goal is.  How to actually attack a boss!

This may sound like a complaint, but in reality it is just a comment.  5-6 years ago, when we didn’t have Wikia, this would mean hours pouring over game forums.  Nowdays, people have ideas and they post it out of the game.  The developer can focus on developing rather than training the user base, letting them discover as you go.  For the most part, that discovery works.  It isn’t being thrown in the deep end, you learn gradually.  The irksome part is when you reach a hard wall, where there are no hints.  Where you’re given puzzle pieces without the large image to reference.  What’s the next step after this one?

After years of hand holding in some many other games, it’s both frustrating and refreshing to have to actually learn again.

A bit more time, a bit more information!  I will go over some high level points first.

• Aside from a few trading hubs, and the clan hall (dojo) everything is instanced.  Think D3, or Neverwinter dungeons.
• Chat in combat is not really viable.  Voice is the way to go.  Expected in any FPS really.  General chat is a mess (as in every game).
• From what I can tell, nearly everything is free in this game, minus customization (icons, colors, skins).  There is a LOT of free customization, but the bigger ones have a cost.
• Acquiring new items is time gated.  Hours up to 3 days.  Can spend money to speed it up.
• There are two ways to progress.  Item levels, and character levels (mastery).
• There are many items.  Warframes (classes), ranged, melee, small fire weapons.  It’s actually hard to keep track of it all.  Each can level up to 30.
• Each item can be modified with Mods.  The level of the item determines how many and how strong the mods are.  Mods impact pretty much everything you can think of – speed, damage, crit, health, elemental attacks…it is very complex.  Adding and removing mods is free.
• Mastery has a cap of 29.  It is raised by getting more level 30 items (and some small mini-quests along the way).  It opens up more of the game, and capacity.  It also gates progress as some items have minimum mastery levels.
• Mods are life.  You can upgrade them.  You can mix them.  You can make a speedy crit master, or a super tank.  Some enemies are resistant to X, others are not.  You need to make conscious decisions before heading to missions.
• There is no progress under regular MMO terms.  Assuming you have access to all the level 30 Warframes, each Warframe has a specific use for a specific mission type.  Each weapon is the same.
• I have played FPS before.  This is not a ranged FPS.  The rooms are generally tight, enemies run up and there is a lot of opportunity for melee.  The parkour movement makes defense more about not getting hit/always be moving, rather than soaking damage.
• The actual controls are ok.  It takes a few hours to get used to the rather insane speed and to get your eyes used to what is around you.
• The art-style works for me.  Mileage will vary.
• There is actual lore, though mostly gated through quests.  You can scan everything and their mom to build an information log though (and there’s a faction for this too).
• Factions (syndicates) are present, with reputation gains.  Aligning with one may impact another.  Poor rep causes hit squads to come after you.  It’s like Vanilla WoW factions more than factions as we see them today.  There’s a choice to be made. Yay!
• There are bosses to farm.  Bosses are quite different.
• Each planet has 10-12 missions to complete.  Leaving a planet requires achievement based goals.  e.g. kill 150 enemies in 1 mission, kill a boss, scan 3 statues.  You can’t just skip to the last planet.  There are good and bad aspects to this.  It does prohibit catch up work, but item and Mastery levels are the true gates.
• The Archwing is not good.  It’s a 3d space sim shooter.  It is bad for 2 reasons.  First, it’s in 3rd person, which means you can’t see half the screen.  3rd person is designed for forward, one axis movement.  Second, the radar/map is not built for 3d combat, so it doesn’t show anything.  You end up getting attacked from all sides, with no notice, and no ability to see them.  Thankfully, this thing is not critical for game progression.
• There are a dozen mission types, then variants of those mission types.  Assassination, decryption, tower control, rescue, wave defense… all but tower control can be soloed.  Variants adds different enemy types, objective modifications and higher rewards.
• Default LFG for every mission, for up to 4 people.  You get a bonus to everything in a group.  It is a great way to experience the game.  Solo if required for some specific objectives.
• Tutorials are not good and do not do justice to what’s in the game.  You learn by playing and asking questions.
• The combat, art, and mechanics are polished.  Way more than I had ever expected.  This thing runs super smooth and responsive.

High level…. yeah right.

The important thing to remember is that there is always something to progress towards, always something to do.  It’s as if you mixed an FPS with an action RPG.  Think Hellgate for those that played it (I did).  The lack of focus or general direction can make it challenging for some people, but if you like settings your own path, this scratches a bit of that itch.

I hit Mastery 3.  I’ve yet to max any item or warframe.  I have a pet that shoots ice beams.  I shoot fire bullets.  I spin through the air like a dancer, and land with a giant axe.

I am having a lot of fun doing it.

Seems that whenever someone talks about Destiny 2 nowadays, Warframe comes up in the conversation.  I had played it when it was still in early launch, but never really gave it a chance.

An aside first.  I usually go back to WoW a month before an expansion.  I cannot decipher half of the text in chat, most of the content is new, and I feel like a new player.  FF14 feels the same way.  Heck, even some stand-alone games on replay feel new.

Warframe takes a kitchen sink approach to a skinner box.  Everything comes at you, with very little context as to what it all means.  There’s no hand holding.  No “magic number” that tells you that you are stronger (plenty of numbers, just not 1).  Missions feel like crack on speed.  Movement and combat feels really good, so far.

There’s an entire junkpile of information related to crafting, upgrading, optimizing… it feels a whole lot like those action RPG games on mobile.  Plenty of things to do, lots of numbers to improve, plenty of bad guys to swipe, and a lot of time gating.

I don’t truly mind time gating.  In fact, I truly think that everything is time gated, whether online or off.  How many people have hunted the Horseman in WoW to get the mount and never got it?  I spent 2 weeks getting the boots off giants in EQ.  I could raid a week straight and not get an upgrade.  I do not suffer from the “I need it now” mentality, so I guess that is a factor.

After 4 years of content push, I can understand it.  There appears to be content to meet everyone’s needs.  I’ll be putting more time into this and see what pops out after a few weeks.

Spoilers.  Does that even really matter though? There’s no way that this is legit canon.

I fought a forest god who transformed into a cat, a giant, and a dragon.  I took it down with 4 arrows per transform. Then a Balrog was summoned and I shot arrows at its fire back to make it run away. Then I jumped on the forest god (in all 3 forms) to attack the Balrog, who eventually fell through the ice and froze in the water.  I am trying to find an adequate analogy to this…sort of like a squirrel taking down Superman.  It makes no sense.

Did you know that Isildur, the guy who cut of Sauron’s hand to get the ring, was turned into a Nazgul?  I learned that.  Oh, he can summon drakes at will too. (had 4 at once in one battle)

Didja know that Celebrimbor (the forger of most of the rings with Sauron) nearly possessed Sauron to take over the world?   Cause Celebrimbor forged another ring (perfect) without Sauron?

Didja know that Shelob used to sleep with Sauron?  That she can tell the future?  That she’s actually pro-human? Ya know, Ungoliant’s kid, the one that brought darkness to the entire world.

I mentioned in the previous post on this game that lore was out the door.  It was a fun fantasy pitch to start.  By the end, it’s parallel-universe logic being applied. I like the LOTR lore and I consider myself well-versed.  This makes no sense.

Gameplay

Most of it works and works well.  There are skills that are way more powerful than others.  Fire explosions seem to clear entire armies.  Graug summons clear maps.  Dragons are powerful but hit too many people.  Stealth attacks, in particular chain attacks, are amazing.  Freezing captains is the way to go.  Groups of captains with competing strengths make combat different enough.

Items, those work a bit less.  Stats on everything but Legendaries are randomized.  This results in god-rolls.  I have a particular set of items that applies Curse, Poison and Fire on critical hits.  Others that increase that damage (which is much higher than weapon damage).  And a bow that fill focus when I hit something, making it for near infinite focus while I have arrows. Actual damage or health increases are meaningless when you have these kinds of passive stats.  Getting more damage from beasts is useless compared to setting every captain on fire/poison/curse with 2 swords hits (or a headshot).

Gems don’t make a lot of sense.  There are 5 tiers.  It takes 3 gems of one tier to move to the next.  I get the basic tier most often, with maybe 10% on the 2nd.  After all my time playing (level 40, all side missions, all keeps taken, all outposts cleared…) I have 1 max level gem that I don’t even use.

The quests are solid and fit the story.  The flashback missions all work to perfect a given skill, and in 90% of the cases you can 3 star it in a few tries.  There are a few where you need to be extremely lucky/timely, and that final reward is relatively useless (gems).  There just seems to always be something neat to do.

But that doesn’t really matter much, as most of the game is the minute-to-minute movement through the world, the randomness of the orcs, and the feel of control in combat.  All of that, without exception, is amazing.  It’s just plain fun to play.  The sum of the parts is so much more here than the pieces.

After the first game, I thought we’d see more of the nemesis system in other games.  Bits and pieces show up in the rogue-likes, but nothing that took it to the next level.  It’s a stronger system here.  I’ve yet to see any duplicates and no one is impossible.  The next thing to see will be enemy adaptation – machine learning.  Skynet anyone?

All told, highly recommended.

Similar but different.

In the previous game there were 2 large zones, each with a hierarchy of sorts, and you moved your way through the various captains to take over the top.  Now there are 6 zones, and each Warlord controls a massive keep, with 3-4 chiefs.

I’ve cleared enough of zones for most of the sandbox to be present.  I still have a few skills unlocked by quests, but nothing that I can’t live without.  Shadow Dominate would be nice though…

Each map has a similar structure.  3 sub-areas that are controlled by specific Captains.  You run a small quest (poison 5 grogs, kill 10 archers) and he shows up.  Rarely alone.  Take him out and the sub-area is no longer controlled, saving some extra alarms and enemies.  There are more Nemesis quests (5-6) on the map at any time, putting one Captain against another.  The goal in all of this is to either kill or dominate the Captains.  The ones that are dominated can either assist you in a siege, be a bodyguard, or infiltrate the War Chiefs.

War Chiefs only come into play for the final siege mission.  They show up with their posse of Captains and make a right mess of things if you are not prepared.  The ones that have infiltrated can betray their chiefs, making combat a lot easier.  You can also draw out the War Chiefs in order to disable a specific defense (like strong walls, archers, defenders).  It is hard to dominate a War Chief since they are usually a few levels above you.  Taking them out does reduce the overall level of the siege, which is the really good part.

The most recent run was in Seregost.  I had dominated about 12 Captains, 5 of which infiltrated their chiefs.  I took the 4 call out missions to take out the chiefs and there was a lot of backstabbing going on.  I finally ran the siege and things went rather smoothly, all told.  The final Warlord was in a room of eternally spawning Caragors and Orcs.  He was enraged by almost anything too, so 2 hits and I was ready to kick the bucket.  I did manage to take him out with some strategic arrows and explosions, but it was a 10 minute battle.

Kill vs Dominate

Killing a captain gives you loot, dominating converts them to your side.  There’s a point where your loot gains have little overall benefit to the playstyle.  5 more hit points on 400 isn’t much.  In particular if you consider the secondary stats on some gear, such as elf-shots when you crit, or increased poison damage.

Dominating makes future battles easier, for two reasons.  First is that they can assist you in battle and betray their chiefs.  Super useful.  Second, if they are not dead, then they are not replaced with new Captains.

Plus, you’re going to end up killing a few Captains anyways along the way.  Either forced, or by accident.

Once you have the ability to dominate Captains, that’s what you should be aiming to do.

General Strategy

In 90% of the cases, it is best to have an in-out attack strategy.  Dominate a few archers, stealth attack the Captain, retreat, repeat.  There are some cases where it is not possible to stealth attack, or use arrows.  That requires some hefty fighting skills.

For those battles, you need:

• Double-jump – frozen attack.  Lets you jump over enemies  and freeze them.
• Counter – kill grunts.  Press counter at the right time to single shot a low level enemy.
• Elven light – fire attack.  Grunts are not immune to fire and this will take the large majority out
• Consume – chain attack.  Lets you dominate 3-4 orcs in a go.
• Shadow Strike.  Let’s you teleport to another grunt.  Great for quick escapes.  Uses 2 arrows.

I find the best route is to freeze/stun the Captain, then take out the grunts with some area attacks.

For fights with multiple Captains (most I’ve had so far was 4 at a time), you want to use the environment.  Poison some grog barrels, bait some traps, and Detonate some firepits.

Finally, as a general rule, you want to avoid an enraged Captain.  They attack twice as hard and twice as fast.

Finally had a chance to put some time in and there are some high level thoughts before I put in a meaty post.

• This remains a mash between the Batman series and Assassin’s Creed.
• Before you even control Talion, you’ve constructed and lost a new ring of power.  To Shelob.  Lore is taken behind the shed.
• Is it ok to not like any of the characters?  I don’t quite understand Talion’s motivations given that, ya know, he’s immortal and all.  He makes incredibly poor decisions.
• Shelob is neat.  Doesn’t at all match with the books, she plays heavily against type and lore, but as a foil, it works.
• As a side thought, if this had nothing to do with LOTR, it would be a much better game.  It’s like trope-city.
• The world is built more on vertical zones rather than the sprawl of the previous version.
• Moving around the world is a bit bumpy at first, until you get the double jump.  That’s after the 2nd main mission if I recall.  In fact, I recommend completing all the main missions on the first map before playing the sandbox portion.  You don’t get stronger, simply have more mobility.
• The game really doesn’t have any training wheels.  You are fighting captains within 5 minutes.
• Further lack of training wheels, the sub-systems in the game get complicated quickly and with little intro
• The time to kill (TTK) is rather high considering the amount of tools at hand to start.
• The Ubisoft problem of throwing tons of icons on the map is very present.  On the first map, within 5 minutes, you are overloaded with stuff and very little idea what it means.
• It appears that the same engine is being used, as it is not a graphical upgrade.  There’s more on screen mind you.
• There is much more focus on the bow here, at least in combat.  Many captains have some serious tweaks defensively and offensively that mean you should stay at range.
• Enemy archers are a massive pain.  They are hard to spot, and the vertical aspects of the zones make it hard to reach them.  Like mosquitoes that break your combo streak (and prevent use of special skills).
• Fire.  It’s like dropping a nuke on the field.  And it’s all over the place.
• There is a fluidity to combat and movement at the start here, that only showed up near the end in the previous game.  It is very nice.
• That said, there are dozens of buttons presses and situational attacks that can complicate your play.  You can certainly button mash with attack/retaliate, but you’ll never take down a captain that way.  The skill floor for progress is high.
• The side quests and gear upgrade mini-missions work well.  Really well actually.
• The main missions are less fun, as they break from the open world at various points.
• You collect elf words to make poems, to unlock doors, to access legendary gear.  Seriously.
• The first skill you should acquire is the “auto loot” one, at the end of the Wraith tree.  I do not understand why this is not a default skill.  I also do not understand what it has to do with Wraith powers.
• Captains appear with randomized stats.  That means there are very easy ones, and very hard ones.  I had one kill me in 1 hit due to the way he enraged and attacked, plus no ability to counter.  Intel seems more important than in the previous game, in order to avoid those situations.

If you play this as a game, then it’s a solid experience and easy to lose yourself in the sandbox.  If you play this as a LOTR story, woo are you in for disappointment.

From this interesting article, where the ESRB states that loot boxes are not gambling since you always get something.  In fact, they go on to compare it to collectible cards, where you may get a double, or a card you didn’t need.

The key argument here is the chance of loss in order for something to be considered gambling.  I can’t really think of any traditional gambling game where you leave with even a portion of your investment.  There’s no way to bet $20 on roulette and leave with something other than $0 or more than $20.  (This is not the argument around investments…)

Loss itself is an interesting thing to define.  I think most would associate loss to the concept of value.  You go into something with X value and leave with less than X.  Most times it relates to money, but there are certainly gambles that are not (like jumping out of an airplane and hoping the parachute opens).

The main issue I have is that it’s near impossible to provide a value metric against virtual goods.  It’s not a regulated market (it is a market), so an item in one game may be worth something different in another (like a name change).

It would be easy to argue that loot boxes provide no contextual value to a person, but not objectively.  If you already have that mount, then it has no value.  If you don’t, then it does.  If you’re in full epic gear, then more gear is useless.  So what loot boxes effectively do, is provide a floor value for virtual items.

This doesn’t dismiss the view point where the loot box is a way to reward a company for their efforts.  In that point, you’re actually always winning something, as the reward is the service you’re being provided.

Given that the both the objective value (the hat) and contextual value (the mount) typically have no value to me, I don’t use loot boxes.  In the case of F2P games, then my way to reward the dev is through anything but a loot box, first – like with Path of Exile or cosmetics in another game.  If there are no options, odds are it’s not a game I want to be playing (most mobile games).

All to say that I agree with the ESRB in their definition, as all loot boxes I’ve ever seen have something in them.  All those things have value to someone, so you’re getting something out of it.  People just need to assess what that value actually means to them.