Remembering how to play Elden Ring

Plus hands on with Nintendo World Championships, and artificial board game art

Hello there! This week we’re diving back into Elden Ring (just as soon as we can remember which button does what and where the land octopus is) and getting an early peek at the latest first-party NES reincarnations. Also, AI art is inevitably coming for board games, and we have thoughts.

We’re also just about half way through the year, so be sure to tune in next week for the twice-annual GOTHY list! It’s been a good six months for us indie-loving sickos. Please also prepare your own personal games-of-the-half-year choices to hit me with in the comments!

The Tarnished’s toughest task

By Jam

Something I think about a lot is how utterly dreadful video games are at welcoming you back to them after an extended break.

It becomes hard to find the time to delve into your backlog when you do a lot of game reviews for a living, especially for anything long and deep like an RPG. I am in no way complaining about having the task of playing new games that I received for free. But the disruption that a ‘work game’ brings on top of the disruptions of life in general means that countless are the times I’ve started a massive game like The Witcher 3 or Persona 5, only to be pulled away from them for several weeks. When I do find the time to get back to them, I invariably have no memory of what I was doing or how their systems of play mechanically function. 

I tell myself that I’ll put in the work to re-learn them later, but never actually do so. Instead I find myself just starting over from scratch ages later, often only to end up repeating the cycle over again.

Like many of you, I started playing Elden Ring again this past week. 

I’d put over 60 hours into it when it launched but never really came close to finishing it. I also put a dozen hours into a second character when the just-released Shadow of the Erdtree DLC was announced a while back. I am now playing a third character.

I just so sorely wish that all games of this scale featured compartmentalised re-tutorialisation modes for all of their systems that were accessible at any time. I want to be able to reload my first Elden Ring character and have a hands-on re-education with them about how the whole game plays. Would that really be so hard to implement? Maybe, but it's wild to me that none of these huge games have ever really tried.

What to play

• On Game Pass this week is a pair of excellent metroid-likes; Steamworld Dig and Steamworld Dig 2. Don’t be afraid to start with the second one, since it’s much better and you’re not going to miss any mandatory story beats. There’s also Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders, which absolutely sounds like a concept dreamed up by an AI, and Game Pass Ultimate subscribers get the latest football-themed card-pack-opening-simulator EA Sports FC 24 (of the series formerly known as FIFA).

• Free on Epic Games right now is a donut factory conveyor belt puzzler I’ve never heard of called Freshly Frosted, and later this week you’ll be able to grab the gothic horror rougelite space train RPG (which you have to admit is a good combination of descriptors) Sunless Skies.

• If you’re yet to get on the bandwagon, Nintendo is taking advantage of the Metroid Prime 4 hype with a slight series discount on the eShop. Metroid Prime Remastered is $42, while Metroid Dread is $53. Or just play Zero on the GBA NSO app. It’s the best one!

The makings of an 8-bit party fave

By Tim

Many players are familiar with Nintendo’s 8-bit classics, either because they played them as kids or they’ve been exposed via the dozens of re-releases and all-you-can-eat services over the years. I’d go as far as to say that people largely fall into three camps; very familiar, not interested and never played. So the challenge for the upcoming Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition — which seeks to remix these games into bite-sized esports events — is not only to appeal to all three groups but to ensure something of an even playing field.

Having recently played the game for a few hours I think there’s a good chance it can become a light party series; something that falls between the more competitive fare of Smash Bros or Mario Kart and the more casual Mario Party or even Jackbox, aided by a dash of the kind of online shenanigans we’ve seen with Mario 35. But a lot will depend on the variety Nintendo can deliver.

In NWC, 13 NES games are cut into a dozen or so micro-challenges each, the longest of which take around two minutes. As a solo player you can practice these to improve your time, earning currency to unlock more difficult missions, and the most difficult give you a nice hint sheet in the style of an old magazine. Existing knowledge of the games will help (i.e. knowing how Kirby’s fireball works or the trajectory of Ice Climbers’ ridiculous jump), but equally, running through these tasks could spur you to go and check out the full thing on the Switch Online service.

Party Mode lets up to eight players tackle the same challenges at the same time, either as individual events or in a Mario Kart style cup. As in Mario Party you can practice these first, and I think this mode will be a lot of fun among groups of similar skill, but it does risk being dominated since elements of chance are low.

I wasn’t able to test the online weekly championship mode, but I did take a look at the interesting Survival. Using ghost data from players around the world, this is an asynchronous kind of knockout mode that I can see myself sinking a lot of time into. There’s a luck element in whether you get your preferred event early or late, and I love that each player can choose a sprite, a favourite game and a little descriptor to represent themselves.

My main question at this point is whether the 150 or so missions are enough to sustain interest in the game long term, or if there are plans to extend or follow them up with more content.

What are the ethical limits for AI in board games?

by Anthony

I bought a game recently with AI art.

It wasn’t deliberate; the game, Path of Civilization, seemed like a pretty nifty mix of hand management, civ building and forced evolution that I knew would tickle my fancy.

When unboxing it and reading through the rules, a caveat on the rulebook stood out. Essentially, it mentioned that the developers used AI art in the design process, and that human artists had spent a good amount of time refining and tweaking those initial images for the final production.

I was a little taken aback. As a teacher, I am confronted consistently by the ways in which students use AI to their advantage, and disadvantage. For every student that uses AI to generate an opening line to a poem, there are many more who rely on AI to provide them with accurate information for assignments, and even worse, write entire assignments for them. Never mind that this AI work is often so mundane that it wouldn’t get more than a C on a good day. The tool is there, so the tool will be used.

And as we well know, having isn’t knowing in education, just as accessing AI art in the development of games is short-changing human artists, and essentially uses the input of millions of artists to generate the works in the first place.

As for Path, I’m unsure what to think. While they have employed real people to touch up and ‘humanise’ the art, the use of AI in the first place rubs me the wrong way. But in the vein of technological determinism, tools in and of themselves aren’t malicious or biased; the way we use them is, and how we decide to use them — to elaborate on our creations or to mimic them without acknowledgement — is a confronting topic that we must all come to terms with, sooner or later.

Retro Esoterica

by Tim

With June almost done, we’re looking back at some of the games that have just celebrated a notable anniversary this month.

Now 25: Ape Escape A late first-party effort for the original PlayStation, this was the first game on the system to make an analogue controller mandatory, allowing Sony to really make effective use of the sticks for the first time. In retrospect, capturing a series of time-travelling monkeys with various sci-fi gadgets doesn’t pack quite as satisfying a punch as manoeuvring around the evocative worlds of Mario 64, but in the world of 90s 3D platformers this is still a standout.

Now 30: Donkey Kong 94 Technically this game is simply called Donkey Kong, and its unceremonious release on the Game Boy meant that many players at the time might have believed this merely to be a port of the arcade game. Even its opening levels give that impression, but once the ape is defeated he runs off into the city, and an entirely new puzzle-platforming adventure begins. This is arguably the best Mario-related game for the system, and was the genesis of the Mario vs Donkey Kong series.

Now 40: Sabre Wulf Though not super recognisable for those outside the UK, this colourful jungle adventure for the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 is nonetheless historically noteworthy. It’s the first in a series of games that really helped elevate its maker, Ultimate Play the Game, in the UK scene and worldwide before it would eventually become prolific NES developer Rare. Quick and difficult, it’s somewhat impenetrable when played today but with some perseverance (or the help of a guide), it still holds up as one of the era’s more gratifying action adventures.