The Courier
gaming.31
Monday 20 March 2017
What I’m Playing: Stellaris
Gerry Hart enters into socratic intergalactic diplomatic negotiations
I
know its customary to start these things with some sort of witty quip but I’d like to get serious for a minute. When it comes to aliens have you ever thought about how human-centric our narratives concerning them often are? Even when they’re not cast as some sort of existential threat to our species any narrative concerning them serves to reinforce our own sense of self-importance and exceptionalism. No I’ve not taken to the danker things in life. But still, playing Stellaris has got me feeling contemplative as of late. Stellaris is a grand strategy game released by Paradox Interactive in March of last year. However unlike most Paradox titles, Stellaris has eschewed a historical setting for the far future, where politics is played out on a galactic scale. And whilst many of the trappings of Paradox strategy games such as intricate government systems and beautifully written story events remain, Stellaris also borrows heavily from Sid Meyer. The initial stages of Stellaris are very reminiscent of Civ 5, with the player starting isolated and alone, prompting them to explore nearby star systems for habitable planets and resources before encountering other alien
races whom you must negotiate with or around. Even the diplomacy and technology interfaces operate in a similar manner. But what I find most fascinating about Stellaris is how it constructs its world and the philosophy underpinning it. Like I said in the beginning, most sci-fi tends to place mankind at the centre of its narrative yet through its gameplay, Stellaris deconstructs any notion of exceptionalism. No matter who you play as, it is made very apparent that you are just one of many competing galactic empires and whether you sink or swim hinges entirely on your own skill. And because Stellaris is mechanically a mashup of Civ and Paradox games, the game essentially boils down to a merciless rush for resources like minerals, habitable planets and even pre-space faring cultures, with things like the precursor civilisation events serving as a constant reminder for the consequence of failure. Granted you can form Federations with other empires but these aren’t bastions of harmonious unity like in Mass Effect or Star Trek so much as a sort of Entente Cordiale in space, acting as a convenient alliance to further the interests of like-minded
powers. Speaking of federations, why doesn’t anyone want me in theirs? They’ll let those creepy, genocidal spider people in but not me? Fine, screw you guys I’m gonna start my own Federation with the Fungus people next door. However Stellaris does have its flaws. Like many Paradox games it relies heavily on RNG which can dick you over in terms of planet placement and blocking you off from the game’s more interesting story events. In fact some aspects of the game such as the Federations (which are a key aspect of diplomacy) are pretty incomplete. In short, it’s a Paradox game, intelligent, imaginative and likely to improve dramatically with future patches and expansions such as the upcoming “Utopia” expansion but currently stands rather threadbare and a little bit broken. But despite its shortcomings I still believe Stellaris is a good game. I’ve not even begun to scratch the surface of what the game has to offer, like the utterly breath-taking visual design or the in-game anomalies and endgame crises. It’s a fascinating, daunting and contemplative experience and I love it.
thecourieronline.co.uk @Courier_Gaming
Top 5: Non-Playable Characters Ollie Burton examines the zany world of game inabitants 5: Tingle Kooloo Limpah! With the release of Link’s latest outing, Breath of the Wild, it seems wholly appropriate to give this greasy manchild the attention he deserves. First gracing our screens in Majora’s Mask seventeen years ago, he’s actually a skilled cartographer and will part with them for a rupee or thirty. He seeks to become a forest fairy, hence the green costume. He’s even received a few spinoff titles of his own, including a Japanonly Wizard of Oz themed title with dating sim elements called Color Changing Tingle’s Love Balloon Trip. Make of that what you will.
4: GLaDOS Congratulations! The test is now over. GLaDOS has perhaps been most visible in the press as a floating, megalomaniacal overseer of the Aperture Science testing facility, delighting in torturing the hapless Chell with demeaning and irreverent antagonism. During the events of Portal 2, she has her personality uploaded to a potato battery after your erstwhile companion Wheatley takes over her position. Not that that makes her remarks any less pointed, mind you, although she does take an uncharacteristically futile view of the world.
3: King of all Cosmos
Credit: Paradox Interactive
Breath Of The Wild: Letters From Hyrule The Courier Gaming writers discuss their historic Hylian escapades
T
here was a certain awe in my mind as I left the Shrine of Resurrection and gazed across the Great Plateau for the first time. The sheer size of the open world is amazing, and throughout Breath of the Wild, the variety and beauty of the terrain is something to behold. You never encounter two places quite the same, and there really is no end to the possibilities of what you can accomplish. After completing the trials of the Plateau and finally acquiring a paraglider from the mysterious Old Man, I flew down into the plains and began to fulfil my dream of taming a horse. I found a small herd and selected my steed from among them – not realising that the plain coloured ones are the hardest to tame – and promptly spent approximately three hours chasing it around the open world, trying to leap on its back and make it my own. I don’t think I’ll forget all the bruises to my face from being hoofed for a while. Steed acquired, I began to traverse the vast lands of Hyrule. I’m still there today, gathering my strength to defeat the greatest evil. Did I yet mention that no matter where you turn, there are always new enemies and rewards lying in wait? Using whatever weapons you can find and acquire as rewards, you take on all manners of fiends, from the goofy Bokoblins, fierce Moblins, annoying bats and… bees? Yeah, mind those.
Georgina Howlett
B
reath of the Wild is truly something to behold. In my short ventures I’ve managed to conquer one of the four ‘divine beasts’ and clear a ton of shrines, but these aren’t the moments that I remember most fondly. Zelda excels in its downtime. Genius design choices that lead you down a path to finding incredible loot, and the wondrous, minimalist accompanying score that lets you know that this title is very much a pastiche of everything that came before. I can only feel like I’ve scratched the surface on this version of Hyrule, and every time I stop playing and feel like there’s nothing Aionuma could’ve done to surprise me I’m shocked by a new enemy, or I stumble across a new piece of clothing hidden in a forgotten labyrinth. Finding out that the hot springs restore your health on Death Mountain, taming Zelda’s fabled horse to get the Royal Bridle, or even just spearing a Bokoblin in slow motion, all of these moments are still present in my mind. Breath of The Wild is built from the ground up to make you and your friends talk about it when you put down the console, and I’ve had tons of fun sharing secrets and discovering hidden stories in this vast, beautiful world. From my humble pants-adjacent beginnings to my adolescent axel rose cosplay, leading into my fully upgraded Zora armor, every footstep has been an adventure and I can’t wait to take a few more.
Jordan Oloman
I
’ll be upfront: Breath of the Wild is a game changer in the most literal sense of the phrase. It’s already apparent that this is the new standard future Zeldas and Zelda imitators will aspire to, replacing the ocarina-shaped measuring stick to which all successors are held. Let me tell you about my time with it. The first thing I did, having emerged from Link’s subterranean time prison, was try and get to grips with the controls and as such immediately launched my only weapon off a cliff. Part of this was just teething with the interface, but equally I was disorientated by how goddamn stunning the view before me was. Wide open rolling plains, distant mountain ranges, forests rippling in the breeze – all of it spoke of the promise of wonder and exploration that has always made Zelda great, and here finds by far its best incarnation. What also stands out to me, incredible vistas aside, is how open and creative the gameplay allows you to be with problem solving. Thus far, I’ve defeated enemies by sneakily disarming them before attacking, by rolling explosives downhill into their camps, by baiting their archers into sniping them for me, and much more than I have space to list. Breath of the Wild stands aside and sometimes even above Bethesda or CD Projekt Red in terms of open world depth. This, pure and simple, is the James McCoull new timesink.
Credit: Nintendo
If you’ve never played the Katamari series, it basically involves rolling objects up into progressively larger balls. The reason you might want to spend a lifetime ball-handling is that your father, the King of all Cosmos has knocked each and every star from the sky during a heavy drinking spree. He speaks in incredibly bizarre non-sequiturs, alongside constantly referring to himself as ‘we’. He’s certainly one of the most vibrant NPCs to grace our screens, and might spontaneously vomit a rainbow on you.
2: Dogen Tim Schafer’s Psychonauts universe is full of zany and grotesque characters, so you have plenty of choice for fantastic NPCs. My pick is the one and only Dogen, tinfoil hat-clad resident of Whispering Rock psychic summer camp. He’s easily scared, and often subject to bullying by the other campers. Dogen also has a pathological fear of squirrels, claiming that they lie to him and trying to use his powers to explode them as a result. As it happens, they were communicating the villain’s true identity to him all along, but that won’t stop the rain of squirrel bits.
1: Claptrap HEY! It’s impossible not to avoid the piercing tones of this metallic pest. Relentlessly optimistic and always ready to offer ‘advice’, the claptrap units are as inherently useless as they are omnipresent. Unfortunately no matter how much I tried, peppering him with bullets served fruitless. Claptrap gets his comeuppance in the Robot’s Revolution DLC, piloting a monstrous weapons platform from which to enslave and/or eradicate humanity.
Credit: Namco, Valve