December 13
Hello! Welcome back to our regular section where we write a little about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week, we admire the temporary changes to the rules of a game, somehow play a real-life advent calendar, and progress to the end of a long fantasy adventure.
Catch up on previous editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive.
Dragon Age: Veilguard, Xbox Series
This week I was looking at my Xbox version of Spotify Wrapped, which lets you see how much time you've spent playing this year and which games you've played the most, and while my favorites weren't many, it's a surprise (an atrocious amount of Fortnite and another 90 hours of Baldur's Gate 3, standard). I was surprised at how much time I had already spent on Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
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To be clear, I haven't finished The Veilguard yet. I have every intention of doing it, and maybe next week when I have some free time I'll finally do it, but right now, going by Eurogamer's handy list of main quests, I think I'm probably only halfway there. And I'm already at 45 hours. Have I really spent almost two days playing? I mean, I guess so: I've been working about an hour a night for much of the last month. But what have I really been doing? Is everyone else taking this long?
I think I'm playing The Veilguard slowly, not only in the short duration of my play sessions around the other details of life, but also physically in the way I move through its world. I travel fast, obviously, because going through the Crossing and finding the correct Eluvian portal for each area would be ridiculous. But when I find myself walking through those areas, I'm actually walking, compared to so many other games where I feel compelled to run.
Veilguard is beautiful and its large areas are cleverly designed to funnel players to specific locations while maintaining a sense of freedom. This is not an open world, nor what the Inquisition was, where you can run uphill and find nothing worthwhile when you get there. Veilguard's areas feel cared for, their limited spaces enhanced by a great view whenever you're en route to something specific.
Plus, of course, I'm doing all the side quests. I have a pretty good idea of where the game is going: I can see faction reputation bars needing to be filled, and I'm somewhat of a completionist, especially when it comes to BioWare games. So, yeah, 45 hours later and probably another 45 more. But it's okay, I'm enjoying my walk! I really don't want this to end.
-Thomas
Path of Exile 2, PC
I'm in love with Path of Exile 2 (as you've no doubt gathered from my Path of Exile 2 Early Access review). There are a lot of good ideas throughout the game. Something I currently alternate between loving and frustrating are the Trials of the Sekhemas, which are trials you must complete to earn your ancestry (your class specialization) because they show off a lot of what the game is about.
Number one: they have a great environment. The Trials are located in a mysterious temple carved into a dark canyon, whose braziers light up as you pass, as all the furniture in cool temples tends to do. There's little to no explanation of how it works when you get there, which is maybe an early access thing or maybe a Path of Exile 2 thing; It's hard to know (I totally agree with it being the latter). You simply talk to an equally mysterious NPC, the one you recently fought in battle, and enter. It is disturbing, dark, premonitory.
Number two: Trials change the rules and I love this. ARPGs can become disengaging games when things get too repetitive, so finding a way to mix things up works great.
The Trials turn the game into a sort of Roguelike in which you have to complete alternating types of trials in a series of rooms, through which you plot your route on a contiguous map, all culminating in a boss fight at the end. But here, instead of just losing health the normal way, you also lose Honor, which is a resource specific to Trials. And if your Honor reaches zero, you will fail. It doesn't matter if you have a full health bar: you will fail and have to start over.
Therefore, you have to be much more careful and respectful with your enemies. You can't rely on refilling shields or health potions to get ahead; Once honor is depleted, it is very difficult to recover and you will need as much as possible to face the boss at the end.
I haven't passed the first test yet; by the way, these things are expanded until the end of the game. It took me a lot of runs to really understand how it works and how best to approach each room and what the buffs (buffs) and afflictions (buffs) do, and something about being a melee character makes the boss encounter end is really complicated. But I'm getting closer. It's a slow process, but I'm getting there.
But I'm enjoying it, that's the key. I'm learning, and that's what Path of Exile 2 is all about. I've been forced to learn more about how enemies work and where I take damage, damage that I didn't even used to notice. In essence, the game has found a way to teach me more and I love that.
-Bertie
Advent calendar, cardboard.
I'm a little elf who works hard to get everything ready for Christmas; I can't disappoint everyone on the Nice List. But oh no! In an attempt to fix things, I accidentally locked myself inside a closet in Santa's Workshop, and now I must find a way to get back out before Christmas Day.
This is the premise of my advent calendar this year. It's an escape room, and every day I must solve a puzzle that will lead me to the next door (and a rewarding square of chocolate). There are no numbers on the outside of the Advent calendar, which adds extra excitement to the puzzle-solving process. The only way to know if I've solved the puzzle correctly is to open a door and see if the number inside matches the date.
Puzzles so far have seen me cutting out a door and rearranging the pieces to make a word, which took me to the next door. In another puzzle, I turned the entire calendar upside down and used a previously removed door as a kind of compass, which then pointed to some flags related to different letters of the alphabet. When I found all the letters, they spelled a word that took me to the beginning of the calendar and to the correct door. I definitely felt like I had earned my chocolate that day.
This year's advent calendar is easily my favorite advent calendar to date. It even beats last year's coffee, which is something I never thought I'd say. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a rather curious image of a checkerboard that needs my attention. Bye bye!
-Victory