Librus

The Dragon's Dogma 2 drama has been unyielding - whether it's outrage over misconceptions about its monetization strategy, anger at its "lazy developers only including one save file," or the Dragonsplague being a "game breaking mechanic" by players half-paying attention to tutorial prompts, every single thing I have heard about the game from The Discourse has been negative. Heated. Aghast that such a product would have the audacity to exist.

And yet playing the game I find it's more or less exactly what I expected - a poorly optimized but otherwise sprawling title that merges both Japanese and Western traditions of CRPGs with an engagingly deep combat system, lots of actual expressive space, a ton of work on its Pawn NPC system, and a lot of friction that pushes back against players in the best possible way. It's not without its flaws and frustrations (good lord, the framerate hit in Vernwroth. And if I have to hear about how my entire adventuring party is women one more time I'm gonna lose it). But, broadly speaking, I'm having a wonderful time with it. It's surprised and delighted me several times over the few hours I've explored its world.

Which is weird, right? The discourse is nothing but how much this game sucks, but it's all pretty thoroughly disconnected from whether the game is any good or not.

charming, and brave, and lustrous, and everyone is so proud of him, and he’s small enough to sit in a coffee cup (due to the witch), and none of his clothes fit him anymore (because of the witch), so could you please get him a napkin or something, and hey what are you doing with that doll, and hey why are you taking off the doll’s skirt,

boy is a status effect that you can be afflicted with by, for example, a witch

While I'm deep enough into Helldivers 2 to have some qualms (primarily the poor servers buckling under the unforeseen masses + community being pretty nasty at high difficulty levels), I still adore this game and how much of a love letter it is to militaristic sci-fi cinema.

The Shriekers are a currently rare Terminid (the bugs) variant that boast the uniquely terrifying capacity to fly. They're more like freaky insectoid wyverns than, say, locusts, with big leathery wings and scary claws.

My first encounter with them absolutely went like it would in a movie: seeing them flapping in the distance, before they begin to swoop in and cause immediate panic. Shooting them is difficult, but some of us realized we could shoot out their wings and cause them to come crashing down. Others ended up getting swarmed, where it genuinely looks like they try to grab people and drop them from up high.

Eventually we find their freaky, unique nest/spawn site, and struggle to fight through them as we try and figure out how to destroy them (since these nests are shaped like odd tree-like growths, rather than the usual "termite mound holes" you're prompted to toss a grenade into to collapse). But eventually someone calls in the right grade of explosives, and we pick off the rest...

... And then a corpse of one manages to land on me hard enough to crush me instantly.

I love this game.