Smallish update here. I’m learning the AI behavior a bit more here, in particular around aggressiveness. In particular around the planetary bases.

• Get Missile Towers. That’s steps 1, 2 & 3.
• Destroying a base and NOT filling in the “hole” means you’ll see a new base in about 60 seconds.
• It takes a little less than 10 minutes for a base to construct fighters
• The attack wave progression has a linear linkage to power generation. You make more power, they become tremendously more aggressive. At mid-game, this could mean an attack wave every 30 seconds.
• The enemy will continuously try to create bases on the planets in a system. 3 seems to be the main goal to run at any given time.
• Letting the enemy dig bases and filling with a geothermal plant = ~310% efficiency, and a relatively small footprint. It’s a decent boost in the early game.
• Enemy waves drop random items, at volumes that are relatively meaningless aside from inventory hassle. And they can drop any base items (there’s like 20 of them), that you’d need to build a sorting chain to manage. I am hopeful this is a placeholder for something else.
• The space hive doesn’t get angry or attack you, even with interplanetary towers. The next step is to see what happens when I deploy warpers.
• Defending planets from random base construction is an interesting feat. I don’t think the game does a good job explaining how to get there, at least in a practical sense. If you’re on planet #2 and planet #3 all of a sudden has an imminent attack, you are not going to get there in time. And my planet #3 is a production hub, meaning half of it has stuff on it, making it quite important to stay “up”.
• Oh, planetary shields are worth a mention. While they are listed as a mid-game item, the material/power to make/run them is actually late game. And you need 80(!!!) to fully protect a planet. I am clearly missing a key piece of info here.

In terms of quality of life here, the added materials/products that were released with this add a substantial amount of complexity to builds. Not that I’m advocating for a single simple bus to build every end-state item, but at the same time it shouldn’t require massive spaghetti farms. The saving grace for this challenge are Logistic Distributors+ Logistic Bots.

These little doodads sit on top of storage containers and ship items between them. They don’t move huge amounts of items, but for a production bus they do wonders. It allows you to construct base materials in one area, and ship a few around the map to another container. So if you need to inject a single item within a bus, it works great! If you want to produce material around a planet, then you can centrally store it too. It doesn’t really work if you are producing multiple items (say 6 assemblers making the same thing) as the volume is too low. And the initial versions have a limited range, which can be upgraded to a decent place by mid-game. By the time you get to planet-level production, it’s simply required, and you need the upgrades to increase their range.

I’m nearing the warp phase of the game now, which I consider late game. Getting rare resources has a huge impact on simplifying production chains – especially the oil ones. Oh, how the oil ones are painful.

Again, if you don’t own Dyson Sphere Project, you really should be picking it up. Or, don’t, and then you won’t have a bar set so high to disappoint with other games! I’ve completed it a half dozen times now, its really that good.

For the last year or so, the devs have been trying to add PvE content into a procedurally generated 3D game, in a similar vein to Factorio. (There have been a pile of QoL patches along the way, the game is way more intuitive now.) This has been labelled Dark Fog, and came out in early December. I’ve waited a few weeks because a) Steam Sale!!! and b) bug fixes always come after major content. Smart move, let me tell you.

The concept of Dark Fog is actually quite simple in theory, but amazingly complex in practice. In your starting area, the enemy has a starting base on your planet and one in space, with a few more planet-based bases in the system. You don’t have the ability to view other systems, but they are also infected to a degree. Now, the kicker here is that the enemy itself adapts to your progression, and increases its threat based on a set of variables – for the start, it’s power generation. It progressively increases its attacks until you can build enough strength to wipe it out. Which, as a progressively challenging enemy, becomes progressively more difficult to achieve.

In order to defend against these enemies and conversely counterattack, you are giving new items to research (approx 20% more “things”). If you are familiar with that concept, anytime to add a “thing” to a production chain, you are effectively adding a multiplicative factor of complexity. I’m not terribly far into that path now, just started the 3rd research tier, but I’d easily say it’s added what amounts to a sub-game to my regular path, or for those older-school folks, this is a large expansion of content rather than simply DLC. 

In practical terms, this means that not only is the main bus longer, but you’ll need to protect the bus from attack, effectively building defensive walls around it. That’s simple! (says you), until you realize that building the wall needs material to construct, material to continually arm, and importantly, precious power to keep active. The secret sauce here is the Signal Tower, which acts as a planet-wide extender for your relatively short-range missile towers. You’ll need at least 5 missile launchers + enough signal towers to destroy an enemy base, and then you’ll need a geothermal plant (which is mid-tier tech), in order to prevent future incursions. It’s a relatively complicated dance to learn at the start.

Swapping to other planets, you’ll have 3 or more bases to destroy, using a similar setup. Build a missile factory (iron, copper, coal), build a dozen or so missile towers, and extend your Signal Tower network until you take out the base. The higher rank those bases, the more missiles you will need, but more an issue of scale.

And that’s just the planetary portion. The space/hive portion is even more complicated as these bases you’re destroying are feeding an ever growing space fleet. Which effectively puts you against the clock to a) build up enough defensive power to survive, b) build enough offensive power to destroy it and c) not tick them off by accident (don’t attack relays!!) And even the smallest of space ships is the equivalent of 5 planet bases, so you don’t really want any fleet attacks.

My current run is about the mid-way mark, where I’ve cleared out 2 of the 3 planet’s bases, and I’m about to install a interplanetary logistics hub (to get silicon & titanium to my home planet). The steps that follows generally go:

• Clear out planet #3.
• Build a power generation hub with solar panels + batteries (in this case, that’s planet #2)
• Build gas planet harvesters (40)
• Build a Deuterium harvest cycle (planet #2)
• Start terraforming planet #3 to build a planet-wide construction hub.
• Transfer production from planet #1 to planet #3
• Get purple cubes
• Scale up production hub
• Explore other systems for raw / rare materials
• Build Dyson Sphere frame
• Get green cubes
• Fill in Dyson Sphere frame
• Collect solar power
• Final planet scaling
• Get white cubes
• Win!

Somewhere in that, I’ll need to figure out the math for a planetary defensive shield + attack base. I’ll reserve some thoughts for when I hit the later portions of the game, in regards to speed, complexity and difficulty.

Or more accurately, Fallout in space.

I bought this at a rather large discount, more curious as to the hubbub than actually expecting disaster. In the simplest of terms, Starfield is one of the better Bethesda games in a very long time, but still less than what was pitched.

I’ll hit the bad stuff first, as it’s a somewhat short list. 

• Yes, there are way too many loading screens, especially those relating to your ship. Learn to use the fast travel option.
• Yes, there are game breaking bugs. I crashed to desktop numerous times, had to reload saves, had everything turn hostile for no reason, quests didn’t work, the Bethesda regular stuff. But, there was less of it than I expected. (The bug where you can’t unlock more powers is gamebreaking and has no fix aside from a console command.) 
• Yes, the game has an absolutely stupid and archaic view on inventory management. Infuriatingly dumb. 
• Yes, the game is complicated rather than complex. Ship building and Outposts (only practical reason is for a bounty terminal) are way too complicated for their own good. Ship stealth is a standout of complicated with no purpose.
• This is a bespoke universe, it is not infinite, it is not random, and 99% of it is empty. This is NOT No Man’s Sky. That means a lot of repetition (Temple puzzles in particular are a lost opportunity.)

And really, that’s about it. There are many more good things here.

• The story line is quite good. 
• The faction quests are generally well thought out (Ryujin excepted).
• There are some very well thought out side quests (I like the concept of Starseed)
• Combat controls are much, much improved. Much. 
• Ship combat works well enough, and with the proper skills, feels generally powerful.
• Levels matter.
• Some space powers are quite cool to use.
• Companion AI is pretty decent. The voice work is really well done!
• The game looks quite good. I found myself at quite a few times just stopping to enjoy the planets or towns.
• Terrormorphs are a really cool idea (Red Dwarf flashbacks) that could have been more present.
• The sense of exploration is there for a good dozen hours or so. Quests randomly pop up based on conversations you hear.
• There was clearly a lot of passion put into world building. Things make sense and aren’t randomly placed. Lore is generally meaningful.

Overall, I’d say there’s about 20-30 hours total of content here, if you’re looking to complete the core content + factions, which I would recommend. The Crimson Fleet one in particular was a ton of fun.

I found zero joy in ship building (this sounds crazy, but Kingdom Hearts 2 has a much better system). The concept is cool, in that you can explore what you’ve built – but the practical part is that you never will because of the mass of loading screens.

Outposts are a mixed bag. I think the idea itself is somewhat sound, but the implementation of too many material types and sub-steps (nearly 90) makes this more complicated than need be. Finding the material is enough of a challenge, getting it from one planet to another is a bonkers logistical, where it’s a 1:1 cargo link. So let’s say you have a main base, and a half dozen mining outposts (which is still low ball). You need a cargo link on each of those outpost (fine), then you need another cargo link for each on the main hub (so 6 in this case). What? I was sure I was doing it wrong trying to connect just 3 together, and simply gave up. No Man’s Sky does it infinitely better.

Is there as much staying power here as in say, Skyrim? I honestly, cannot see that. Is it innovative? It’s Fallout 4 in space (so no) and the piece it tries to innovate (ships & outposts) are done better elsewhere. Is it good? Yes, but not to the point where I’d recommend buying it at full price. Then again, it’s a rare feat for me to recommend any AAA game at full price. Not worth the hype, but also not meriting the hate.

Say what you will about Epic, but the weekly free games are a real treasure trove of curiosities. I tend to pick up at least one offering a month, and in almost every case, they are a 4-8 hour stroll through an idea that is right on the edge of execution. There are moments of pure brilliance and a risk taken, but it’s missing something key to really make it stand out. Deliver Us Mars is perhaps the best example of this.

This is a hard sci-fi adventure game, which certainly checks boxes for me. There’s no combat, no decisions, no real way to “fail” the exploration part. It’s on the edge of an interactive novel where a concept is explored, one exploring the failures of humanity and the implications of hope. The broad sci-fi stuff, in truth.

Importantly, the game has a prior game (Deliver us the Moon) which sets up a fair chunk of context for the characters at play, though not necessarily required. Essentially, the Earth is encountering human-brought disaster, they are using the moon to generate power, and the colony on the moon (smart-folks) essentially gives up on humanity’s faults and decides to pick up shop and rebuild on Mars. In Deliver us Mars, you play a character trying to reach Mars, as her father was part of that group. Throughout, you learn that the evils of humanity exist at all levels, and how people with the best of intentions can fall to their own hubris and fears.

I won’t spoil the game, as it’s a fun page turner to get through, with some interesting pieces to discover. It’s not a terribly original story, but it’s still a good one. Getting though it..

The game part is where this gets less challenging. The puzzle portions are simple enough where they grow in complexity until the end, with the same set of tools. The platforming portion is less fun, as you’re stuck with two ice picks to climb walls, with very loose controls. With one small exception, these pieces are extremely minor and more of an annoyance. The real kicker is the graphics. The scenery is quite good, the environment, and the concepts art. The issue is the ragdoll physics and in particular the hair of the characters. It’s pure uncanny valley, which distracts a lot from the rather well-written and well-acted performances.

Overall, the journey here was satisfying and I am well aware I never would have even bothered if this wasn’t available on the Epic store in the first place. It’s an unfortunate space where games like this would not get the attention they are due as they are grasping at a really great idea and on the edge of really pulling off the execution. I have no idea how the Epic store curates these items, but I’m quite thankful that it is finding those rough cuts for the world to experience.

That this game even exists is a miracle. For a Finnish company to release such a strange and surreal experience, based on an already rather niche IP is wild. Honestly, it’s inspiring to see the sheer amount of creativity still out there and gives hope that gaming can exist outside of the FPS space.

I can’t really do justice to what this game is. Survival horror I guess is where it starts, build it flirts with alternative realities and sensory changes that really challenge your gaming instincts. I guess it’s more like an interactive novel in a way, or “true art” in another.

The story follows the first Alan Wake, intersects a bit with Quantum Break and Control, and ends with a satisfactory question. You play alternatively as Saga Anderson and Alan Wake, each in their own realms of reality. The mechanics of Saga’s journey are more familiar to the genre, with exploration, small puzzles, and combat (more on that). The unique twist is her Mind Place, where to slot elements of the plot on a board to uncover the larger story. That is more like a detective novel trying to piece together random elements to tell a larger story. Alan’s mechanics are more fuzzy, with some very minor combat pieces and shadow folk who may or may not be aggressive, for some extra horror/jump moments. His unique element is the ability to re-structure a space given plot elements. Maybe it’s the start of a cult ritual, or the end of it. It is fascinating to see how plot elements can interact with a given space and dramatically change your experience – calm one minute, and pure chaos the next.

It’s hard to properly explain how this simply all just works. At no point did I ever feel like I was ill-equipped, or that there was some game-y way through a challenge. Nursery Rhymes in particular were a nice highlight. It is by far the most coherent surreal experience I have ever played.

The sole exception is combat, and this is more of a balancing thing. Alan’s mechanics are lose and understandable – he’s a writer. Saga’s portions are rarely fun, in particular due to ranged attacks, limited ammo, and respawns. There are parts of the map I simply ignored because I didn’t want to waste ammo, which is less fun. There is one particular event that highlights this to a significant degree, where your NPC friends are obliged to keep throwing you ammo, ala “Booker I found ammo” from Bioshock Infinite.

The plot construct is such that you can alternate between both characters at your choosing, and both threads need to complete in order to reach the final conclusion. Each particular thread has multiple chapters, which are wonderfully constructed. You’ve likely heard of one of them on the interwebs, it is much more fun to play than watch, and is a blast to watch!

Alan Wake 2 may be one of the best games I have ever played, certainly one of the most unique. I have no idea how Remedy was able to pull this off, as it feels like every risk they took here paid off, and the playing-it-safe portions are the weakest part as a result. You absolutely should play this game. Just do it with headphones.

I get a kick out of making mistakes. I find them to be the best way to learn. The consequences of mistakes tend to be the largest driver for change.

In the video game world, the only true consequence is time. In Everquest, you died, lost XP, and needed to get it back – time. In a permadeath/hardcore mode, you lose a character and have to rebuild – time. In Valheim, you get taken out by a deathsquito – holy moley the time.

In Return to Moria, when you die, the cost is generally a mild amount of time to return to the place of death from your bed. The cost to create a new bed is relatively small, sort of like a mini-save point. For some encounters, this is absolutely required. For the more complex areas, the game tends to provide a fast-travel point. Now, have I died in really bad spots that caused horrible corpse runs? Heck yeah! The Deep runs in particular (holes in the ground that require 4x rope ladders to get down to, and have a permanent DoT) are perfect examples of risk/reward, because they provide access to some rare materials. I’ve died more than a few times by pushing my luck to harvest a couple more Black Diamonds.

The dungeon tile exploration aspect also highlights this, very similar to a D&D campaign. You know there’s a door, will you open it if you are low on HP and lacking spells? Same thing here, do you want to open the new room when you’re tired, hungry, and your armor is gone? For the first half of the game, you are generally at a disadvantage to address those issues. Eventually you will acquire the material to build temporary (and useful) camps that address all that (medium hearth, table, bedroll, repair station, and mushroom/sun onions to cook). This temporary camp model is required, as the later parts of the game can go for very long stretches of combat/exploration. Orc camps or hordes will absolutely wreck your shield/health.

Which highlights a larger challenge with fast travel, where the game considers you having walked the distance. Meaning any buffs you may have acquired before travelling are mostly worn off by the destination (buffs that are stupidly short duration). This generally means that the home base model is more about a place to store stuff rather than prepare for the next run. It takes a long time to get a bag big enough for that to be practical.

I will flag that the game difficulty does increase over time, more so in the space of significant vertical travelling, more enemy density, and more environmental hazards. Vertical movement starts off rather simple, maybe a single floor up. Later though, you’re going to be going through 4 floors at a time in a single dungeon tile. Enemies move from patrols of 3 orcs to a dozen + wargs. And the environment is just chock full of poison/despair which eats away at your health if you don’t go above it. This costs time. Add into that the move from fairly linear exploration to multiple paths, there’s a crazy amount of time spent just trying to figure out where to go and getting there alive.

There’s a rather long list of QoL gripes I have with the game, and already patches are coming along to address them. You get stairs very early now!! Slag and Scales drop more frequently and less are needed!! It reduces the grind and RNG aspects. QoL things are often hard to balance out, so hats off here.

Now having opened the Dimrill Gate and effectively completed the main quest, there are some exploration and completionist portions that remain. Which I can say without hesitation is a much different game altogether. Having access to Tier 6 armor & weapon (after the final quest), plus continued access to Miruvor (a quite strong HoT) reduces the overall risk tremendously. And if you’re so inclined, you can lay down a special lamp to clear piles of purple mist. Sure, you may still encounter a large troll or fell beast, but you’re more than prepared for it after that final run. Of note, once you do have a particular item, you can restart a new world (or join another) and very quickly unlock a shortcut to the near-end of the game.

Hindsight is a heck of a thing however, and it is next to impossible to avoid comparison to Valheim, which is an all-around better game. Return to Moria is built upon, and suffers for, the need for claustrophobia and lack of freedom. Freedom is the reason survival games exist. I am not against the concept of dungeon tiles as an exploration mechanism, but the inability to make mistakes and explore too deeply is wildly confusing. “The dwarves were greedy and dug too deep” is not possible here. Every player will start in the West Halls, head to the Elven Quarter, the Crystal Depths, Lower Deeps, and so on, in that order. The concept of procedural generated worlds off seeds is almost pointless.

I will say that this disappointment is offset by potential. The game a week later is much better. Improved maps, improved food/buffs, clearer direction about digging in deep cracks, better building tools, and better combat are all things that would put this much in much higher regards.

The game does an admirable job of making you dig through a mountain, and once you’re done, you can look back and better appreciate that journey. And certainly the journey is better in a group. Return to Moria may not be a GotY candidate, but it certainly fits in the top shelf of of LotR games.

Lord of the Rings + Base Building + Survival? Count me in.

In reality, none of those things actually turn out to be what you may expect.

Lore

Lord of the Rings is just oozing lore at every corner, and Moria certainly is ripe for the picking. Since this game takes place at the end of the 3rd age (Rings is gone, Gimli still lives), you won’t ever cross paths with the Fellowship, but Moria is a tomb and should be full of history. Sure there are orcs in every corner, but you’re borderline Indiana Jones in terms of potential here.

In practical terms, there isn’t much here that comes from the official lore. You have target quests to complete along the path, which guide your exploration to a degree. It’s mostly window dressing, with some minor exceptions (Elven Quarter and the final bit). I will say that the art style is where things make a bolder statement. This feels like Peter Jackson’s vision.

Base Building

For some reason, the entire game is built on a cardinal grid. North-east does not exist. The net effect is that the base building portions are locked into this grid, and if you happen to a generated corner, you may be stuck with things locked into 45 degree angles. You don’t have the ability to fast travel, build roofs, or ramps until QUITE a ways into the game.

If you’re going into this wanting to build a new Kazad-dum, this is not the game. If you’re going into this for the pragmatic base building – in particular where fast travel stations are located, then yeah, this will work out just fine. Due to the general lack of continual harvest, you will never backtrack to a prior base once you have a new fast-travel point/base. Always you are heading east.

Survival

This is the most confusing part to me. Survival games are not new, there’s an entire genre of amazing ones out there. You need food/sleep/shelter to survive, tools to acquire material to progress, equipment to attack/defend, and exploring the world.

The food/sleep/shelter portion sort of works here. You won’t have the ability to create portable food until you’re well into the Deeps (what appears to be the half point). Light sources are weird, where even with a torch you’re considered in the dark, which drains stamina. Food variety is generally meaningless, as the stat boosts are identical, and “feeling full” is whatever item you can cook. That farming is present with food seems strange… perhaps I am missing something or this is simply a QoL thing.

Tool progress is a mixed bag. You need to keep moving forward to find new things to do. Take on some tougher foes to barely collect some material to make a better sword, so the next time is easier. The tiers of progress are ultra confusing mind you, as you’ll enter the proper Mines of Moria and not be able to collect half the stuff around you, and no indication what to upgrade in order to do so. I do like the exploration aspect, that discovery is predicated on trying to mine something, or repairing random statues for recipes. But if I’m given the option of a gold vein, I should be a few minutes away from unlocking the ability to mine it. Note to all: collect as much coal, stone, granite and adamant as you can.

Equipment has tiers, which you unlock well after you actually need them, which again is a nice risk/reward function. The downside is that Moria has way to many frigging enemies with absolutely stupid AI. You’re fighting constantly through swarms of enemies, stuck repairing gear after nearly every attack, and the combat is simply mind-numbingly boring. I triggered a horde attack of orcs in Moria, which lasted nearly 15 minutes. Orcs drop zero loot of use, except to repair your gear. I’m sure there will be a mod (or an update) that controls enemy spawn rates, or increases the damage you do so that this is a bump rather than a wall of dumb. The bosses (and trolls) are interesting for multiple reasons, but I’ve had my share of orcs. Learn to love the dodge-roll.

Exploration

This is the broken expectation part. The game is fundamentally a dungeon tile explorer. You are in pre-generated “rooms” that have a dirt path connecting to another pre-generated “room”. You can explore any of the rooms, but progress is entirely and absolutely gated behind the dirt paths. The walls of these rooms are also unbreakable, same with the floors. I was absolutely not ready for this. In hindsight I can’t see how this game could have functions with pure freedom given the lore limitations. Not like you should be able to dig down as deep as you want and find a Balrog in minute 15.

The net effect is that plays much more like a dungeon run, with survival elements. Explore the tiles to find the entrance to the next zone. Explore that zone for the “McGuffin” that allows access to the next, at so on.

Subvert Expectations

This is not Valheim. This is not Ark or Rust. You are in Moria not to rebuild it but to traverse it. It took way too long for me to come to that realization, but once I did my enjoyment of the game drastically changed. Each room become a puzzle to solve. Every zone one to conquer and leave behind. I needed to buff up before the next spelunking.

This is a very slow burn game, and if you’re going into this expecting a free-craft survival game (as it’s promoted), you’re going to be in for a bad time. If you look at this instead as a dungeon crawler with survival elements, then yeah, this game is actually pretty solid.