At last, we have reached the final stretch of our journey. Though asking Gol and Maia for help is no longer on the table, we nonetheless press on. Our goals have changed from turning Daxter back into saving the world.

Y’know, that and collecting everything not nailed down to the floor.

Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

One of the things I appreciate about Jak and Daxter is how they actually do a good job foreshadowing what the final boss is going to be well before we get to it. The idea of a powerful Precursor Robot is brought up multiple times in incidental dialogue, especially from Samos if we take the time to talk to him before setting off.

We even see it come up a few times in levels. One of the primary goals in Boggy Swamp is to prevent the excavation of a robot arm, which is why Gol and Maia have to make do with some personal modifications in their own machine. This same mech was seen earlier, as the lurkers were trying to pry it out of the Spider Caves.

In much the same way seeing other levels in the background helps sell the idea of a contiguous world, this too helps connect everything we’re doing. It’s by far one of the greatest strengths of the game, and something they don’t fully bring into the sequels.

Very few things make me smile more than evil, corrupt politicians getting their comeuppance. And today, Agent 47’s mission is to do just that. We’ve only got one shot, but after all the targets we’re taken care of I’m sure we can handle it… Right?

Afterward, our greed begins to overwhelm us once more as we finish what we started in Dubai.

Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

I knew I had played this target before, and thankfully I still have a record of my old run. If anything, this shows how much better I’ve become at playing Hitman since then, probably through playing Hitman 3. I can’t say I’ve necessarily gotten more patient. If anything, what’s improved is my ability to read the map.

On the other hand, I like how the Greed escalation rewards us for hording our coins by letting us spend them in the final round on tools that dramatically reduce the difficulty of the assignment. That’s a nice touch that really embodies that cardinal sin.

It’s also fun for me to forgo my usual mercy and become as an angel of death, never seen yet leaving a trail of bodies, blood, and violence in my wake. Rarely in Hitman do I ever feel like I have license to carve a bloody path, and I must say it feels good to let loose every now and then.

All for those beautiful, valuable coins… >:)

Our journey north to meet the Gol, the Dark Eco Sage, has progressed to the Rock Village. However, we’ve encountered another stumbling block in the form of a boulder-hurling monster barring our path.

Fortunately for us, we have a solution to this problem. It just involves collecting a few more Power Cells.

Thumbnail provided by Sam Callahan.

Something that I miss from this era of platforming was the notion of temporary power-up effects. That’s not something we a whole lot of anymore. These days, most platformers grow the player’s kit as the game progresses, Zelda/Metroid-style, with new equipment and abilities.

It’s brave to have the entire move list available to the player at the start of the game, because often those new moves are used to not just evoke a sense of character progression. They serve the second purpose of adding variety, by giving players new activities and actions to perform over the course of regular gameplay.

Temporary power ups like the colored eco we have access to in Jak are a great middle ground to solve this problem. They allow the dev team to temporarily give us abilities we don’t normally have access to for a segment or set-piece where they would be useful, while allowing them to design other levels in the game without having to take them into account unless they want to.

Players get the variety they want, and the dev team gets to more tightly control the experience so that we see the best possible version of the game. It’s a good compromise that allows for the best of both worlds.

We’ve got a bit of an opening on the schedule, and Monster Train has just added a ton of brand new content through a DLC pack. For that reason, it seems like a good time to dive back in for another run.

I will say that the new faction I unlocked surprised me, but pleasantly. Considering how important units are to the structure of Monster Train, I didn’t expect there to be an entire faction that revolves around spells and spell damage.

For our first run with them, we even did well. Obviously, it wasn’t a perfect or successful run, but we managed to go far.

Additionally, I have to assume that the Rune Shard mechanic was added as part of the new expansion, because it wasn’t around the last time we played. I’m not entirely sure what I feel about it. In theory, players would be making interesting choices on what boons they take in exchange for a more difficult run down the road.

And yet, in order to achieve what the game has dubbed the “true ending”, we need to reach maximum difficulty before we get to the final boss of the run. In other words, we would need to stack up as much punishment as we can. This partially eliminates the choice aspect of it, because it incentivizes us to just take whatever benefits we can afford to take on at the moment we’re able to.

Something feels lost in the translation from game design document to final product, but that doesn’t stop the mechanic from being a fun addition to Monster Train.

I needed a brief reprieve from Halo, after playing through Reach. What better way than to delve further down the nostalgia hole into an old PS2 platformer from… 2001.

Yup. Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy is 20 years old. And we’re going to play it. Should be fun!

Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

While Jak & Daxter never eclipsed either Ratchet & Clank or Sly Cooper as far as my interests were concerned, I still loved playing the trilogy back then, and replaying it every now and then. I currently don’t have any plans to go through the 2nd and 3rd games in the same way, but that can always change.

What fascinates me about The Precursor Legacy is how much of a departure it is from Crash Bandicoot in terms of the core structure. Both are platformers, but Crash Bandicoot comes from the linear tradition of 2D platforms like Mario and Sonic translated into 3D hallways. On the other hand, Jak and Daxter is a far more open-ended game with larger levels that can explored at the player’s discretion.

It might not seem as impressive now, but having such an expansive world without a single load time between any area was a significant technical feat back then. They successfully sold the illusion of a fully continuous world, where one could travel from the first village in the game all the way to the end.

I hope to show off more as we proceed.

As time passes, new targets appear on our radar. This one is particularly dastardly, killing all the people who ever possessed the paintings he sought.

The Collector is active, and this is our window to take care of him.

Afterward, we express a cardinal sin to go after what truly matters most: Money.

This is a rare one where the secondary objective is almost a non-issue. Once I confirmed the paintings location, I knew from previous knowledge that I could take care of it whenever I wanted. The method I used to sneak it and steal it was the exact same as the one I used to complete my Silent Assassin: Suit Only run of this mission, and the same one that I learned from performing an escalation contract.

That left the target himself. Took some doing, but eventually we found a tactic that worked. That lethal poison syringe is a weapon I don’t think I’ll ever be able to part with.

As for the Greed escalation: Credit to Diana’s voice actress for her performance. Even though it’s clearly being processed for added effect, that wouldn’t have been possible if Jane Perry didn’t deliver in the raw performance. I also like the distorted sense of reality that accompanies the mission.

Thank god I maxed out my mastery for Dubai, otherwise I would’ve been completely lost on this one. Next time we get free time playing Hitman 3, we’ll finish this Escalation off.

It’s official. At this point, Reach is lost. No matter what we do at this point, there’s no chance that we’ll stop the Covenant from glassing the planet.

And yet, all is not lost. While we may have lost this battle, we can lay the groundwork so that the Master Chef can cook the best risotto he possibly can for Arby’s.

I think it’s more than safe to say that out of all the Halo games I have played up to this point, Halo: Reach has the strongest finale by far. As I said on stream, it reminds me of Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season 1 in how everything perfectly leads up to that moment. While I obviously don’t know for sure, it feels like that’s because it was the first thing Bungie worked on, and knew from the beginning that every scene in the game had to culminate in this one final push: A suicide mission where your only objective is to stay alive long enough to buy time for the Pillar of Autumn.

This would be a good point to end the franchise on… if we were in a culture that allowed IP to die a graceful death once it reach its time. Alas, we are not, so at some point we will likely play Halo 4 to continue the story. I’ve heard equal parts praise and scorn for it, so I’ll be curious where I fall on that spectrum.

But that’s a story for another time. For now, let’s take some time off by playing an entirely different game from an entirely different franchise. I’m talking about Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy.

The Lab of Legends mode in Legends of Runeterra hasn’t been around for too long, but long enough that it’s been updated and played with a few times. Up until now, I haven’t really had a reason to give it a shot, but I friend suggested I should try it out.

I’m glad they did. I’ve had a lot of fun with it. Enough fun that I figured it’s worth showing off.

I’m aware Hearthstone starting implementing game modes like this some time after I ceased playing the game, but if they had before then I might have stuck around far longer than I did.

It’s a good way to test the player’s knowledge of the game mechanics, and their general decision making skills. If you know what cards and effects work well together to produce strong synergies that will overcome the otherwise daunting gauntlet laid bare enough them.

It feels almost like a rogue-like combined with a booster draft in that sense. If you know we, and what I’ve played on this channel, you’ll know that’s right up my alley.

We knew that against a force this powerful, we were bound to lose people. The Covenant was prepared for war, and our own people have been scrambling to mount a response.

Still, it’s one thing to know it’ll happen, and quite another to be prepared for it.

Something I’ve noticed that Halo: Reach does well is allow the player to soak in the emotional gravity of a scene, without feeling the need to interrupt it with a cheesy one-liner. Eventually, as any story does, we move on to the next plot point, but we’re given the time necessary to let an emotional beat linger.

New Alexandria is a great example of this, because while we are doing things to further the war effort, we’re also doing it over the ruins of a dying city after it’s population has been evacuated for their own safety. Nobody in the cast ever feels the need to draw attention to it, since they have tasks they need to accomplish and no time to mourn the loss of this haven in a cold, lonely universe. And yet, they don’t need to. We, as players, can feel it just by existing in this space, flying over decaying buildings as Covenant forces assail us from all angles.

And of course, Bungie expertly convinces us to care about our NPC companions, feeling their loss. Jorge gets to go out in a blaze of glory, and even without a body to bury we feel his loss as Noble Six returns to the rest of their unit alone. Kat doesn’t even get that, dying an ignoble death to a sniper shot on our way to the next objective. The shot that follows, the remaining four members of Noble Team wordlessly starring into the fiery rubble before them, says more than words ever could.

It’s also worth noting that Jorge and Kat were some of the most important members of the team before they were killed. Jorge is the emotional heart of the group, and one of the most empathetic among them. Kat, meanwhile, played a significantly role in feeding us intelligence and focusing the group on their objectives. They chose the two most front-facing Noble Team members, aside from the player, to kill off early, so we feel it harder than we would with anyone else.

Credit where credit is due, this was a well thought out section of the game.

When Wizards of the Coast announced that work was being done on a Magic the Gathering “MMO” during the 2019 Game Awards ceremonies, I was cautiously intrigued. While the concept was appealing, I honestly didn’t trust that the game would be work. Later, they corrected misconceptions to make it clear the game was an Action RPG in the vein of Diablo. It seemed like that would be difficult to screw up, so I allowed myself to raise my hopes.

That’ll teach me to get excited about video games…

It is difficult to me to express just how disappointing this game turned out to be on every possible level.

Some of this can be chalked up to the Open Beta status. Through my time with it, and even in the recording, I saw subtitles that barely matched what was being performed by the voice actors. Lines would get cut off as if the next piece of spoken dialog was mistimed. Levels felt empty, barely evoking the plane and setting that are supposedly representing. Combat is floaty, with little in the way of anything that approximates a challenge. And even on the lowest possible settings, I was getting below 30 FPS. All of this makes for a poor showing, even in a Open Beta, but these are things that can be fixed and adjusted over time.

What can’t be fixed is how Magic: Legends is inexorably tied to predatory microtransaction-laden business models. So many of the unlocks, including the first and currently only prestige class as of the time of writing, are gated behind loot boxes in the form of booster packs. If I wanted to avoid spending real world money, I could buy it off the in-game auction house. However, there’s no earthly I could practically grind enough in-game gold to purchase it in a reason amount of playtime. Throwing in a starter bundle that costs a full $40 worth of funny money, and a battlepass system they somehow attached to a Diablo-like, ever aspect of progression seems tailor-made to milk players for as much money as it can.

It’s painful to watch, because the concept of deck-building for a ARPG, to bring that aspect of MTG to the genre, is a cool idea. A lot of thought and care was put into that system, and it’s going to waste on this game.

I couldn’t be more disappointed.