YouTube Obsession
A fun thing about travelling is forcing myself to curate a watch-list to download for the flight. A big portion of which was Zak Ras and his Metal Gear Solid V challenge runs.
It’s a no-brainer really. I love MGSV and watching people play it well and creatively is always fun. Plus, not only does he do a great job editing down these runs he also posts the original videos so you can watch the entire run without commentary classic LP style.
Reading/Playing
I read a lot of TTRPG core rule books but never end up playing them. This is known, I talk about it all the time, drink if Owen mentions TTRPG rule books. However this time I’m actually playing one! I know, shock, shock!
Monster of the Week is a story heavy, player guided riff on X-Files, right down to it’s episodic "Monster of the Week” nature (Hey, that’s the name of the game!). It’s core rules are based on Apocalypse World, a rule set I am familiar with, albeit via the spin-off Dungeon World, a game I have actually played and ran.
We’ve only done and initial game set-up meet a couple weeks ago and I had a blast creating my character. First off, most of the classes are stereotypes ripped right out of X-Files or Supernatural: The expert (Fox Molder), the half-monster man (Sam Winchester…spoilers?), the Professional (Agent J, MIB), etc. It’s very cute and tropey. However one class really stuck out to me: The Mundane.
Basically the Shaggy of the group. Brings nothing special but is the normie, who sometime trips over the right clue or talk to the other normies in the world without coming off as weird. I love this idea for a character and after a little world building with the other players, came to my basic character bio:
Dan Covington, CPA CGMA, is painfully average. A human bell-curve, wafer the dude, milquetoast incarnate. Born completely void of any supernatural abilities to high-level Warlock parents, he is a constant disappointment to them. Since he is very much aware of the supernatural he knows that what goes bump in the night isn’t always a creaky floor. He is determined to help get rid of the nasties out there hurting the normal folks like himself.
His blandness is helpful in the sense that he is uncannily forgettable. People often feel stupefied in the presence of his abnormal normalness, forgetting he is even in the room with them.
He lives in his family’s generational 2-story Victorian home (With a sensible crawlspace.) on the culdesac.
He usually rides his tandem bike, in full protective gear of course, alone or with a doggie seat for Tupper.
Dan is Tupper’s mayoral proxy.
Dan carries his trusty Leatherman multi-tool (Can never be too careful!) and an enchanted toilet plunger (A mean joke gift from his family for Christmas a few years back, almost completely useless but can always unclog any drain or toilet.) for bopping baddies.
We meet again to play our first session next week and I’m really excited to see Dan get down and dirty with the weird world we’ve created.
Playing
Star Wars: Outlaws dropped in August 2024 to a pallid reception. Bugs, unfinished elements, cantankerous UI and bizarre design choices put this game in the “Some games deserve to fail” discourse. I didn’t play it at launch because I figured it would end up free on PS+ before too long.
Well it was just added to PS+ last month so I’ve been giving it a go. I obviously can’t speak to it’s condition at launch, but as it is now, after a ton of QOL updates? It’s a pretty ok game.
Outlaws has a lot going on. To it’s detriment. I usually like a game with tons of weird mechanics but all of this game’s mechanics are surface level. There’s really no sense of mastery, they are all stock standard Ubisoft open-world, go here, unlock this, go there and unlock that. If you’ve played an Assassins Creed since Black Flag you know exactly what I’m talking about. It could have really benefited from culling a few mechanics.
It also could have narrowed it’s scope just a little. This game really doesn’t gain anything from being an open world other than protracting gaming sessions due to all the travel1. Same could be said for the space combat. It’s just ok. Not really fun to my tastes but I understand why it’s there: It’s an open world Star Wars game, there’s certainly impetus for having space combat. But it’s just ok and I never looked forward to it, more an obligation than anything. So it really could have been an on-rails experience (a la Star Fox) and that would have removed a lot of my frustrations.
The Clan Affinity mechanic is almost cool. I feel like they were trying to find their Nemesis System and realized that that’s just way too hard. So it ends up being a simple slider of “this guy likes you and this guy does not like you.” The system has no real repercussions other than unlocking some cosmetic items if a clan likes you and more people shoot at you if they don’t. I really wish there was just a set story progression through the clan progression rather than trying to game it all the time.
I have to admit I enjoyed the stealth. I’m a sucker for stealth gameplay anyway so even bare bone mechanics please me. Yet Outlaws brings plenty of new things to the table and I enjoyed sneaking into Imperial compounds and bonking storm troopers.
But every time I got to a sneaking mission all I could think about was Metal Gear Solid V.
YUP, SOUND THE ALARM, ITS THAT TIME WHERE I REPLAY METAL GEAR SOLID V AGAIN AND GUSH ABOUT HOW IT’S A PERFECT GAME.
Yeah, Outlaws just got me into another playthrough of MGSV. Eleven years later and it’s still the best stealth game of all time. It’s still the best open world game; traversal is easy, fast and fun, and the mechanics available to the player to approach any situation is nigh endless. I’ve talked about this game multiple times2 so I won’t belabor it here but if you have not played MGSV you really owe it to yourself to give it a go. It’s on PC too, for stupid cheap at times.
Listening
One thing I always tell myself when I replay MGSV is that, this time I’m going to get into all the story tapes in the game. And this time I really have dug deep.
I’m enjoying them immensely this time around and it’s crazy how much of the story is revealed in these tapes long before they are revealed in game.
There’s a really interesting portion of the tapes that has had a chokehold on me since I heard it. Huey Emmerich is on trial for, well, being horrible but in his rantings he says something so poignant and strikes to the core of the entire thesis of MGSV.
“Just look at that dog…You named him D-Dog but it’s obvious, anyone can see that’s a wolf!”
This is MGSV: These men, a culture, so blinded by rage and revenge that they can’t see or just refuse to see the contradictory doublespeak shielding their sham “ethos”. Made even more potent because Emmerich, the greatest hypocrite in Metal Gear cannon is the one who points it out.
Great stuff to be hidden in 6 hours of optional audio in a video game.
Other Notables
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1 There’s an argument to be made that the open world is explorable for all the Star Wars flavor/lore to be found in the game’s far corners by fans of the IP. I’m speaking as a very casual fan of the movies, but who but the most extreme fans are clamoring for more Star Wars lore? They are so fed right now with so much media that even the fanatics have to be a little over it.
2 In the very first Metal Monday lol
