Only better. Cause they’re way less scary,

There’s been a fair bit of motion in my video game so-called life so I thought I would take a break from the angst and porn (guess which one’s more fun?) and rap about that thing I have in the spot where a life should have gone.

There are other, meatier, more psychologically fruitful things I could be talking about. But fuck it. I’d rather pretend something in my life has meaning and purpose.

And sometimes, I get well and truly sick of myself and need to do something to get away from my usual fetid swamp full of graveyards and tombs.

First all, we shall talk about the Knights of the Old Republic series.

These are roleplaying games set in the Star Wars universe in the days before the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire. You play someone who eventually becomes a Jedi (in the first game) or starts off as a Jedi (in the second game).

I recently played through the first two games, having gotten them in one of those crazy Fanatic bundles with like 12 games for $4 or something.

Granted, said games are quite old, but I am not fussy. I just want something worth playing. Age matters little to me when it comes to media.

Ain’t nothing but two kinds of art : good and bad. And that’s as true of video games as it is of jazz, French cuisine, or comic books.

The one thing games can’t be is ugly. I am a highly sensitive artistic type and if the graphics are gross I am out of there.

Anyhow. The first game I had beaten before, on the Xbox, and so while it was highly enjoyable it was also somewhat familiar.

I say somewhat, because my initial run was around a dozen years ago, so it’s not like the memories were super sharp. But I had a lot of little flashes of remembrance.

Not so in the second game. As I played it, I realized that I definitely had not finished it when I played it before. In fact, I am fairly certain that I must have lost interest right after I finally had my trusty ship, the Ebon Hawk, and full run of the galaxy, because nothing that happened on any of the planets was even remotely familiar.

And the game is good. It is that rare sequel that successfully exceeds the original. Especially in terms of the writing. The storyline and dialogue in KOTOR 2 are far more in depth, well written, and richly detailed than in KOTOR 1.

The first game’s plot kept me interested.

The second game’s plot had me absolutely riveted to my seat. Especially once you complete the various planetary plotlines.

Plus, the voice acting in the second game is far better than in the first. Not because there was anything wrong with the voice acting in the first but because the voice acting in the second is so damned good.

Of particular note is Sarah Krestelman as Kreia. She is the most pivotal character in the game besides yourself and has the most lines of any of the NPCs. What’s more, there is a lot of layers to the character, as there often is with characters who are elderly, and Kestelman masters every single one of them, and packs each syllable with a level of nuance and conveyance that made the character spellbinding.

The character acts as a dark mentor to your character for most of the game, challenging you spiritual, morally, and mentally, and that takes a lot of skill to convey properly.

I wish I had a dark mentor. Or any mentor, really. Someone to challenge me and stimulate growth. It would make staying interested in life a lot easier.

But they would have to be awfully strong-willed and smart.

On to newer arrivals. After reading some glowing reviews and watching a very interesting trailer, I tried out a game called The Binding of Isaac : Rebirth.

Looks like it’s going to be a dark and twisted descent into utter madness in some kind of horror type game, doesn’t it?

It ain’t. It’s a rather spare and boring roguelike type game with very little in the way of plot and with game mechanics so primitive that they feel like they came from the 90’s.

The game seems to think that gross, bloody, fucked up graphics are a substitute for actual content and all you actually do in the game is run around collecting powerups and shooting things.

I was terribly disappointed in it. So I returned it. Luckily, Steam is super chill about returns these days. They have even extended the maximum time you can play the game and still return it from one hour to two.

And it only took 24 hours for me to get my $ back!

And with said money (and a little more), I bought Slay the Spire.

Here’s the trailer for it :

The reviews for it are glowingly positive and it certainly sounded like my sort of game, so I thought I would give it a shot.

And I was not very impressed at first. The graphics were meh, the CCG-tyle gameplay mechanics seemed way too simple, and overall I was pretty meh about the whole thing.

But I have gotten into it now and I must say I love it. Its charms may not be obvious but it drew me in and hooked me hard and now I am very pleased with my purchase.

Plus, there seems to be a fairly good mod scene for it, so if I get tired of the regular game I can always mess around with it a bit.

Like I said in the bad old days of Skyrim, there’s playing the game, and there’s playing WITH the game.

And they both can be a heck of a lot of fun.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.