DISPATCHES AUGUST
All hands
I am now the lucky and proud owner of a Steam Deck. It’s a really impressive machine, but perhaps not as impressive as a showcase in the way media oversaturation can skew expectations. I must have read and watched several dozen articles and analyses of the Steam Deck over the past few months. As a result, when it arrived it felt smaller, lighter, and quieter than I expected. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not small, light, or especially quiet. In a child’s hands it looks like the Bayeux Tapestry. But I guess reading repeated complaints about the Deck’s size, weight and noise eventually built up a subconscious image of a monstrously distended Game Gear.
It’s also surprising how many untested games are, in fact, eminently playable on the Deck – and often more stable than on my Windows 10 PC. The 20-year-old Arx Fatalis, for example, runs fine without the Arx Libertatis mod, which has become pretty much mandatory on Windows 10.
The things that disappoint are those that I hadn’t read about. The main one is just how busy some modern titles look. Elden Ring runs well, for example, but there are frequently so many assets thrown onto the Deck’s 7.5-inch screen that it can be difficult to parse what’s going on.
The corollary of this is that older games suddenly look great again. System Shock 2 is a perfect fit for the Deck’s 1200x800 screen. Here it presents clear, sharp lines that are easy to read and navigate.
Similarly, there is an odd sense that some games just aren’t appropriate for the Deck. On one hand, it feels amazing to bring Gordon Freeman’s crowbar into a real toilet. On the other, there is something profane about playing Half-Life in a place where you can’t give it full attention.
All of which, of course, is an elaborate argument that the Steam Deck was really built so we could have another way to replay Rez and Tetris Effect.
Leo Tarasov
As if we need another excuse. But yes, where possible we’ll try to highlight games that run particularly well (or otherwise) on Steam Deck. Of course, it would help if we could get another three or four review units. That OK, Valve? Splendid – thanks.
Ice cream! Ice cream!
The desire for more of our favourite childhood experiences has been ruthlessly monetised – Picard and Obi-Wan Kenobi are simply the most recent examples. Rarely are these treatments of old IP given the care and attention they deserve, generally losing much of what made them part of our childhood fabric in the first place.
In the gaming sphere many of our desires remain unrealised (no edition of Dialogue is complete without a mention of Half-Life 3), so it was a treat to read your article on Dotemu, who have shown themselves to be safe custodians of our old experiences, modernising and offering new content without losing the magic of the originals. For my part I’ve always harboured that desire for more of my old favourites despite the fact that I know in some ways this trend is regressive and must present an obstacle for original content.
That being said, I am more than happy to make an exception for Speedball 2. It has already been the subject of any number of reprehensible pseudo-sequels, mobile ports, and 3D updates – none of which captured the magic of the original (which still plays well today) and most of which even managed to lose vital aspects, such as aftertouch. Many years ago I went so far as to send some thoughts for a potential sequel to the IP holder – set farther in the future, with a
“Older games suddenly look great again – System Shock 2 is a perfect fit for the Deck screen”
domestic league and cup, an interplanetary cup (like a galactic Champions League), and different alien and AI species with their own strengths and weaknesses, such as a large reptilian alien species that is slow but almost impossible to get the ball off – a good choice for goalkeeper, perhaps?
Reading your article on Dotemu, a thought swelled. Dotemu. Speedball 2. A match made in heaven. If anyone can make it work, they can. Surely if Windjammers 2 is commercially viable then Speedball 3 is a no-brainer (providing the rights issues can be navigated). Please. Make it happen.
Neal Coughlan
Agreed, the Bitmaps’ finest hour is surely overdue a revival. Dotemu, shall we pencil in a preview cover slot for late 2023?
Call this progress?
Label me a cynic, but when I look at the difference in graphical fidelity and gameplay between Wolfenstein 3D (1992) and Unreal
(1998), there’s an enormous gulf. Yet I’d argue that since Half-Life 2 (2004) and
Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), the technological leap has shrunk considerably. Obviously graphics have improved, but the fundamental gameplay has stayed the same. In some instances, I’d even argue gameplay has regressed. Do you think we will ever see another big jump in technology like we did in the 3D boom days of gaming?
I’ve been playing Tunic, which calls back heavily to the Zelda series. With this and the ’90s boomer-shooter trend I ask myself: would it be interesting to see a stylistic iteration of whichever game is popular – say, a God Of War pastiche – 25 years from now, in the same way Dusk evokes Quake, for example? Does Dusk expand on Quake’s
design and show how far games have moved forward, by looking back? I’d argue, playing through the Quake remaster, it will still stand the test of time better than Dusk. I’m sure there’s plenty out there to be excited about but I worry what the landscape will look like 30 years from now with such a heavy lean into nostalgia. I still love games, I just used to be more excited by them.
Nathan Brady-Eastham
Hopefully this month’s cover demonstrates that looking back can be a journey worth taking, but we’ll leave you to decide. Anyway, have 12 months of Edge on us, and we’ll do our best to help reignite that old spark.
Goal keeper
The past six months of gaming, for me, have been monumental. I belatedly got into Hades
at the end of last year, and that obsession went on for a couple of months or more. But I always had my eyes ahead, for I was finally going to be able to play 2018’s God Of War.
What a masterpiece! Then, right after I finished that timeless epic, Elden Ring
dropped. Last week, I finally finished my first playthrough, which took somewhere around 240 hours, and in which I believe I scoured practically every square inch of The Lands Between. Twice. It’s hard to know exactly how many hours I spent because I often left my glintstone sorcerer chilling at a Site Of Grace for hours and hours while I was AFK. (FromSoftware’s quit process is still so annoying on PC that I usually just left it running – or was it that I couldn’t bear to not have the game available at all times?)
But what to play after three of the greatest and most intense games of all time in a row? Heck, forget Hades and God Of War – what do you play after weeks of living and breathing Elden Ring, a game that’s probably left many of us wondering if we’ll play anything equal to it for the rest of our lives? Well, for me, I play my palate cleanser. My palate cleanser is a game that is familiar and fun. It’s low on commitment, isn’t story-driven, but focuses heavily on engaging gameplay mechanics. It’s a game you can play for a bit, go away from, and come back months or years later and find it there waiting for you. For the past five or six years mine has always been Rocket League.
It might seem counter-intuitive that such an intense, competitive multiplayer game could fit the bill, but I imagine many of your British readers have gone back to FIFA when they simply couldn’t think of anything else to play.
So for now I’m enjoying gaming with my brain off. This Rocket League phase shall pass, too, yet I know someday I’ll need it, or something like it, again. It makes me happy to know that it’ll be there for me.
Rayburn Odom
Cruel to be kind
Lee Hyde has a point. Many computer games on the market aren’t really played like games. Without fail states, they are more akin to toys (The Sims). Lee laments the lack of depth in walking sims, which I put under the category of ‘gallery’ (The Stanley Parable). And for those keeping score: those with fail states but a lack of complexity I label ‘puzzles’ (Wordle).
Technically speaking, a game must have a fail state. For a thorough discussion on this, read Salen and Zimmerman’s Rules Of Play. But that’s describing ‘games’ as a concept. As a medium, they’re broader. Many discussions about the importance of failure in games have people getting the concept and the medium mixed up. ‘Interactive entertainment software’ would more accurately describe the products found in Edge or on Steam, but language is also steered by mouthfeel.
What has complicated matters even more is how much game products can be tinkered with. Difficulty modes, mods/patches and options mean that a computer game can often be twisted into a toy, gallery, puzzle, or traditional game. It’s 2022: users have never had so much authority on what we can do with our products, nor so many ways to quickly see what a game has to offer. I don’t want to sound harsh, but one must be especially lazy to accidentally buy a game they don’t consider a game. And if you really want fail states, may I recommend Cruelty Squad?
OK, but make this the final time. One more and we’ll have to send the boys round.