What we’ve played – Arthurian sandboxes, old favorites and Links

June 28, 2024

Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little about some of the games we’ve been playing over the past few days. This week, we delve into a new fantasy MMO that’s something of a social experiment; we return to an old favorite through something of a director; and taking the fuzzy categories first.

What did you play?

If you want to catch some of the older editions of what we’ve played, here’s our archive.

Pax Dei, PC

I have been fascinated by the Pax Dei since it was announced. It is a medieval MMO and the unique part of it is that everything in the world is made by the players. There are no pre-built cities or settlements; it’s all built by you. The same goes for all devices in the world. What’s even more interesting is that it’s something of a social experiment. After all, the goal of the game is for players to organize feudal societies. She wants them to join together to make baronies, appoint knights and go on crusades. Check out some of the player-powered stories that have come out of spaceship MMO Eve Online – developer Mainframe Industries wants it. By the way, this is an intended comparison; Pax Dei creative director Reynir Hardarson was one of the co-founders of Eve creator CCP.

So far, the excitement has been all based on promises and a few popular playtests. But on June 18, the Pax Dei was launched. However, it only launched in early access, and is far from a finished game. There is a basic implementation. The focus is on building houses and there are many detailed and functional systems based around it. In general, it’s very similar to other crafting games: chop trees, mine rocks, collect things, then refine them into different machines to make what you need. What is slightly different is how open the house building is and that there is some sort of building integrity system that supports it. Roofs and walls will collapse if not properly supported.

This approach means that houses look different in-game, and it’s nice to walk around and see what people have made (and steal ideas for what to build in the process). Being an MMO, Pax Dei also means that there are a lot of people in the world playing, so there are a lot of houses to look at. And it helps that the game world looks beautiful – like a southern French mountain dream – and that it comes to life in a kind of quiet summer evening way. I’ve built high on a mountain to look down on the valley below, and when the sun sets or rises, it’s stunning.

But it’s very difficult – the resource costs for individual parts of houses and for armor are high – and there’s not much to do except create a house. You can equip yourself with fancy looking armor, but you don’t know what there is to fight but the pig. That’s because large parts of the game — and of this grand vision — are still missing. Mainframe is open to this; I’ve been told and the community is being told that the adventure systems and civilization systems are the next big things to be worked on. But that doesn’t stop it feeling a bit like a tech demo – a very nice tech demo – which it is.

– Bert

Beyond Good and Evil: 20th Anniversary Edition, Xbox Series X

There is a universe out there where Beyond Good & Evil sold millions of copies. It was what Ubisoft had hoped for: a grown-up Zelda that would explode and become a huge new franchise for the firm. Instead, this unusual adventure achieved a different kind of success, as a beloved cult classic.

I doubt we would have received the Beyond Good & Evil 20th Anniversary Edition the same way if it had been a blockbuster blockbuster. Alongside the original game – now refreshed with updated textures and a re-recorded score – the package includes a surprisingly detailed and honest behind-the-scenes archive, full of documents and commentary detailing its original development.

There’s an honesty here that I like, especially when discussing how the game tried to explain itself to a wider audience. Photos dating back to May 2002 – when Ubisoft held a demo at E3 to show it off for the first time – indicated that Project BG&E is struggling to keep up with the company’s other monster franchises.” A summary of the cutscenes of the press stated that the media coverage was “thin but positive: journalists seem to really like the demo.” It’s a shame the coverage didn’t inspire bigger sales.

But it’s a credit to Ubisoft that it continues with a series that many consider beloved after two decades, and that – despite memes about its never-ending development – Beyond Good & Evil 2 is still on the cards. Like its story of a brave hero fighting seemingly insurmountable odds, Beyond Good and Evil is still going strong.

-Tom

Links, iOS

I’m not wild about Connections, but I play it some evenings with my wife, we both try to start at the same time, and we both scream when we lose a life or get a category. It’s one of those games that’s most interesting when it’s vague, or cheap, or just broken, when its categories are only categories if you’re really willing to follow some bogus arguments.

But this has actually led to some fun. Links should not be about getting all the categories as quickly as possible. It must first be about taking on vague categories, moving from things that are profoundly stupid and implausible to things that are reasonable to the point of being obvious.

Playing this way has kept the game alive a little longer for me. I still regret having it on me, but it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to.

-Chris Donlan