Having had felt like playing more Bannerlord for some time now, I loaded my completed campaign the other day to traipse around Calradia a little and see if the prospect of another continental upheaval seemed appealing enough to give it a go (Bannerlord playthroughs take forever and are not to be started on a whim). To my surprise, in my absence, the Khuzaits had turned medieval warfare on its head by developing personal stealth fields for their troops.

Thankfully for all the disparate factions – whose primitive capabilities would surely falter in the face of invisible opponents – Khuzait efforts met only with partial success, resulting in technology that could, at best, baffle or momentarily postpone hostilities (as their opponents came to grips with the prospect of fighting disembodied heads).

Still, the long term implications of this development were troubling, to say the least. Given enough time, there's no telling what new engines of destruction Khuzait ingenuity could come up with (ground effect horses? depleted uranium core trebuchet stones?)

I'm joking, of course: all that really happened is Taleworlds devs changed item names in a new patch and didn't bother implementing them retroactively, leaving poor Bannerlord confused...

It's not a new phenomenon. What with the modern model of "release now, fix later," poor planning and nonexistent quality assurance, basically any game whose playthroughs take a while is susceptible to having existing saves retconned by a deluge of inconsiderate patching.

There's no good workaround for this issue. I mean, what are you supposed to do? Start a new playthrough every time a patch alters in-game content? Or wait literal years until devs finally get the game to a place it should have been on release?

And, yeah, it's not that big of a deal: I may well be just a simple barnyard animal, but even I can approximate center mass with a bow and arrow given only an opponent's head and shoulder pads to work with. None of these issues are critical or game-breaking...

Then again, none of them are unavoidable, either (or difficult to foresee, plan for or fix, if we're being honest). You get the sense that if the world wasn't in such a hurry to turn a profit, a lot of these small oversights could be addressed — in gaming and elsewhere.

Farming no more

Other than mulling over new campaigns and chortling at floating heads out Akkalat way, I've stopped playing Stardew Valley and finished playthroughs of In Other Waters and Citizen Sleeper.

The farming "RPG" turned out to be a long-term disappointment which couldn't deliver on its basic premise. When you start Stardew Valley, the whole point of the game is that the PC is leaving the nine-to-five rat race and abandoning material pursuits in favor of a more wholesome lifestyle out in the country... The only problem is that Stardew Valley's interpretation of "wholesome country life" is a materialistic rat race — only in different clothing.

Money remains the most important resource – with every major milestone boiling down to a six-figure-or-more investment – every relationship hinges on gifts or payments and every day is as rigorous and structured as (one imagines) the PC's recent corporate past (only this time, in twelve hour installments). For all of its cutesy graphics (and, to be fair, they are pretty darn cute); Stardew Valley is more of an economist's wet dream than an idyllic farming experience.

I'll miss all the piggies and kitties, bunnies and raccoons, but – frankly – no amount of adorable wildlife will drag me back to duplicitous Pelican Town. I play games to escape the sad facts of everyday life — not to reenact them.

The two Gareth Damian Martin games played almost exactly alike — with great narrative and imaginative settings hampered by very basic gameplay.

I liked Citizen Sleeper more, but that's down to the fact that there was more game in it and not entirely fair. If In Other Waters was made now, it would probably be a more complex experience...

Then again, I've seen screens from Citizen Sleeper 2 and they look almost exactly like the first game, so maybe that's just where Mr. Martin's strengths and interests lie (in constructing elaborate settings and stories, rather than in making more engaging games). I'm giving the sequel a pass, at any rate. The first game had its moments, but as soon as I finished it I knew I wouldn't want to play it again.

Onward and upward

While I reserve the capacity to be pleasantly surprised, I haven't seen anything I'd want to play among upcoming releases. I'll probably hunker down and keep plugging away at Cyberpunk 2077, Rogue Trader and (possibly) Bannerlord — with occasional bouts of ETS2 (where I'm some 4,000 klicks into a forest-green, 1969 M-series Sisu).

There was one wacky game that looked halfway interesting a week ago or so (retro low poly graphics and a charmingly-grating soundtrack, all about racing on hover-scooters and beating people with sticks); but I've gone and forgotten what it was called... Anyway, it didn't seem good at first glance — just markedly different.

Here's hoping your gaming February is off to a pleasant start.

Pig — out.