Real Real Gone

I rather enjoyed the start of The Outer Worlds, but two or three planets in I felt myself getting a bit bogged down. Occasional glitches and my seemingly unusual approach to the order of missions were a little irritating, but not particularly off-putting. The main story seemed to be meandering along without much impetus, but in these more open worlds the 'main' story often takes a back seat to wandering around interesting-looking places and my crew seemed like interesting folk, it was good to delve into their pasts as we pottered around the place. Like Dragon Age: The Veilguard before it there was nothing terrible that made me fling it aside in disgust, I've just drifted away and found myself firing up other games instead.

I've been trying to work out why those RPGs haven't managed to stick in the same way that Baldur's Gate 3 did. The writing and voice performances of BG3 are superb, that has to be a part of it, but I don't think they would have been sufficient on their own if the rest of the game didn't do such a good job of implementing D&D on the PC. Casting back to the last RPG I finished, Midnight Suns, it didn't have a great story and I cared very little for the characters; about halfway through it also became a bit of a slog, but I did push on and finish it. It might be oversimplifying, but I wonder if the crucial difference is that BG3 and Midnight Suns have turn-based combat rather than the real-time of Veilguard and The Outer Worlds. Veilguard emphasises blocking and dodging, which tend to be my least favourite bits of combat; The Outer Worlds is fairly conventional, sneaking around one-shotting enemies with a silenced weapon is most satisfying but once you're spotted it's the usual "hit 'em with a bucket, ruffle their hair up, RUN CHARLIE RUN" sort of affair.

It's not like I've always avoided real-time combat, not least in previous Dragon Age and Fallout games, perhaps as my aged reflexes atrophy over time I'm enjoying it less. What I've really been sinking my time into has been Balatro, which is as brilliant as everyone says, a fantastic take on a deck builder. Off the back of that I've also gone back to Slay The Spire and Monster Train here and there and just picked up Fights In Tight Spaces, which looks very promising. It's not all cards - I'll pop back to Vampire Survivors now and again to check out updates, and on similar lines Melmoth suggested Death Must Die. Perhaps there's real-time hope yet.