Mostly Normal Monthly #0007, March 2021
Chris Catches the Souls Bug and AJ Rides Out
Outriding with Friends
By AJ Eide
Testing the waters in the latest shooter-RPG hybrid.
Developed by People Can Fly
Published by Square Enix
Demoed on PlayStation 5
The next big multiplayer live service game seems to be just over March’s horizon. We are on a collision course with Outriders. A game developed by Polish studio, People Can Fly and published by Square Enix, it certainly seems like it has the chops for a better launch than most live service games we have witnessed bygone. Boasting cross platform play at launch, finding a friend to play with is easier than ever and the gameplay itself is frenetic. After putting some substantial time into the demo, I think it’s going to be killer. Look for it to drop on Xbox, PC, and PlayStation on April 1st. Up until then there is a free demo for anyone to play, no fooling.
Looking out on the ruined battlefield - captured by AJ.
As far as my time with the game. The demo starts out with a semi basic character creation. A scattering of preset faces to select from, there are two genders, hair choices, markings, and the like. As far as I could tell you are not able to change actual body and facial structure as of this demo. Let’s be real this game isn’t about looking at your face.
After you make your character. The game throws you into an extremely dark prelude to explain your motivations. I honestly had trouble finding a reason to save any of the shit. If you play the demo, you’ll understand what I mean. The Outriders are to secure a new planet to start a new human civilization. Humanity’s last hope (of course) is a planet hundreds of years from Earth, which, is now dead and, yes, we killed it. There is no going back... dun dun dunnnn. Once completing the prelude you get to chose your class.
The four classes are standard for this type of game all with different powers, abilities, and battlefield advantages that play off of each other. They are the Technomancer (long range healer with Cryo powers), the Trickster (close range in and out, assassin), the Devastator (tank, close range), and the Pyromancer (straight fire).
During my first play through of the demo I chose the Technomancer and I surely enjoyed my time with it. I did a lot of sniping which feels mostly stable in this game. I will say there is fantastic feedback from the different guns. I am playing on PS5. With the haptic feedback on the Dual Sense controller and you can really feal a difference between a rifle and your side arm. You start to unlock abilities and weapon drops immediately. The Technomancer has this sweet auto turret you can throw out that shoots the enemies for you while take out the enemies trying to flank. In order to avoid spoilers, I won’t go into details but think like a combination of Division and Anthem abilities with a little bit of Mass Effect 3 and Doom mixed in. The Doom part being that you can only heal while killing enemies which makes for aggressive sweaty fun.
I must stress how the different classed really complimented each other’s abilities. Imagine the Technomaner freezing an enemy, the Pyromancer throws a wall of fire at them, all the while Devastator is devastating and who knows where the Trickster went. I’m in!
Sekrio: Reviewers Die Hundreds of Times
By Chris Stern
The many lessons of a Souls game.
Developed by Fromsoftware
Published by Activision
Available on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4
Reviewed on Xbox Series X
I’ve bounced off of Fromsoft’s games a number of times at this point. Having beaten one for the first time, I would like to thank everyone who got me to this point. Thank you to Respawn Entertainment and their game Jedi: Fallen Order for allowing me to ease my way into parry timing and the routine of dying over and over again. Thank you to Polygon, Eurogamer, IGN, and all kinds of YouTubers for your guides on how to overcome the constant onslaught of bosses (both mini- and major-). Thank you to my co-worker Dylan and to my co-host Jon for their insistence that, yes, beating one of these games is possible.
The game knows how to set a damn mood! - screenshot via Sekiro Website.
Confession: I grew up with my nose in strategy guides. Nintendo Power and Prima Games held my hands all the way through FFVII, Ocarina of Time, and more. GameFAQs helped me learn the basics of navigating game worlds, discovering their secrets, and how to best min-max my character builds. I feel like in the long run, this probably made me worse at video games. Without a guide to hand-hold me my pattern recognition and puzzle solving skills leave a lot to be desired.
As I have gotten older, I have tried to force myself to overcome these shortcomings by avoiding guides unless I am absolutely stuck beyond belief in a game. There are exceptions, like looking up strong character builds ahead of time in an RPG, but in most adventure and action games, I try to dig in and figure it out myself. But then, Fromsoft came along and my desire to triumph over their games pushed me to reconsider what a spoiler is, and what the challenge of a game can be.
So it was with a great amount of intention that I started Sekiro and ventured into the game with an open and patient mind. I snuck my way through the opening areas and defeated the first general with little challenge, as I had come straight off of Jedi, and my parry timing was on point. Then I took a pause and let my parry timing atrophy as I played through DOOM Eternal.
Upon returning to the game, I had to regain my footing in the parrying, and regain my patience and composure. Once I had that composure back, I had to actually learn the game.
Learning the game meant knowing that there is absolutely no shame in running away. It meant understanding that, sometimes, the block button is actually your main attack. It meant observing enemy behavior patterns, both in combat and in stealth. It also meant knowing that enemies have posture bars that can be filled in two ways - pressuring their blocks with your sword and parrying their strikes. Once that bar is filled, the enemy’s posture will “break” leaving them open for a deathblow. Average enemies will be defeated after one death blow, while mini-bosses and bosses will often require more than one. Conveniently, the game teaches you that most enemies with more than one deathblow will have a way to steal one of those lives away with a sneak attack.
I developed a routine for me when I would arrive at a new area, involving spending ample amounts of time steeping in the open areas - learning enemy placements, stumbling upon hidden items, and finding alternative routes. Then, I would grow a bit overconfident, take one step too far forward, and immediately recognize I had gotten in over my head. Then comes the delight of holding the sprint button and fleeing, often taking to the air with my shinobi grappling hook. I would soar onto a nearby roof or ledge and hide as my enemies broke their search pattern. Then it was time to slowly inch forward and take them down one-by-one with backstabs, tall grass, and sometimes the amazing prosthetic tools (I came to rely on the Loaded Axe and Shinobi Firecracker).
When it came to the games memorable and challenging boss fights, learning the game meant doing some studying ahead of time. I would open online strategy guides to learn the patterns to look out for in the attacks, and try to pinpoint the exact moment it would be safe to strike during an opening. I would learn that spirit enemies require you to use the Divine Confetti item to imbue your sword with the magic required to deal damage to their ethereal forms. I would learn that Gokan’s Sugar would strengthen Sekiro’s posture, making enemies that attack relentlessly lose their nerve before I would. Thanks to the demands that Sekiro’s boss fights put on me, all of this preparation felt like it gave me a fighting chance, but not enough that it made the fights a walk in the park. Every boss and mini-boss demanded that I be fully engaged, fully prepared to react, and never overeager.
A great example of this is that despite having utilized a “cheese” way to defeat part of the final boss, I still barely made it out of the fight alive. By the end of my successful duel, I had no remaining ways to heal myself, and one more hit from any of my vicious foe would have brought the battle to an end. I still had to be observant of animations and patterns, still had to time and execute attacks and dodges correctly, and still made it through the first two of the boss’s four stages by engaging with the mechanics 100%. By the end of the fight my hands were shaking and my blood was pumping, in shock from my accomplishment.
The further I get from my experience with Sekrio, the more I hold the game dear to my heart. Since playing it, I have picked up Dark Souls: Remastered, and have a great appreciation for the ways in which Fromsoftware streamlined Sekiro in order to push the demands on the player to new levels. Instead of a spreadsheet and a half of stats and equipment, Sekiro gives you one sword and two stats - Vitality and Attack Power. Attack Power is self explanatory, and can be upgraded by 1 after each boss that you defeat. Vitality is a bit more complicated, increasing both total health, and total posture. Increasing vitality requires you to collect four Prayer Beads.
The “collect four of an item to boost your total health” isn’t the only Zelda connection the game has by the way. There are cool merchants who hide in pots, with only their decrepit arm poking out. These called to mind the hand in the toilet in Majora’s Mask. One wants fish scales, the other toilet paper, but all in the same spirit.
Sekiro also plays far more like a character action game than Dark Souls. The game targets 60 FPS instead of running at 30 like other Souls games. Sekiro has an ability tree and so you can utilize Combat Arts of all kinds to mix up your approach to each fight as you see fit. Combat and exploration feel fast, fluid, and exciting. The grappling hook was a special highlight for me, never quite losing its luster, even after the 300th time soaring to a rooftop.
I forgot to mention, this game is cool as heck! - screenshot via Sekiro Website.
Finally, it is of note that Sekiro combines the button for “Block” and “Parry” into one. This decision clearly messages their intent to elevate the parrying system in the game, if the inclusion of the posture mechanic was not enough of a hint. It is truly an accomplishment to make parrying an attack feel like it does MORE to damage an opponent than sneaking in a quick slash with your sword.
All of this discussion about mechanics and challenge obscures the fact that Sekiro tells the most straightforward narrative of a modern Fromsoft game, while maintaining the lore in enemy and item descriptions that build out the worlds and backstories of its Soulsborne brothers. One of the game’s hidden endings turns the mechanics of talking to different characters and consuming certain items into a ritual, reinforcing the ritualistic themes of that narrative pathway.
I do not want my review of Sekiro to understate how much of a challenge it poses. There were boss fights that took place over several two to three hour play sessions. There were mini-bosses that cleaned my clock over and over again - I’m looking at you Snake Eyes Shirafuji and Seven Ashina Spears Yamauchi. This game pushed me to my absolute limit. Its difficulty curve is almost a straight line. I improved as a player because the game required it. I had to become more observant, more patient, and more ruthless in my approach to the game. I had to learn that dying and losing so, so much money and experience points was okay, and that I would just make it back later. But most of all, I had to learn that even though Sekiro demands that you play it all by yourself, you can still rely on the help of others to guide you through to victory. Accepting that help made the game no less rewarding - and that may be the final lesson that Sekiro had left to teach.