Sure, Epsteinapalooza and the Iran mess are still in play, for all they've quieted down a bit, but it's not all doom and gloom out there. Ukraine is taking the fight to Russia, literally, better than ever before, even with our lukewarm support.
Closer to home, I finally got my hands on a Steam Controller. A little over a month's wait isn't too bad, especially considering I gather new reservations at this point won't get to people until 2027! It's everything I hoped for, especially once SteamOS 3.8 dropped and I was able to use it to wake up my Steam Deck from the couch. The grip to use it is a bit different, but it's not bad in any way, just takes some time to get used to.
So, better controls mean more gaming to be done in Steam's ecosystem... when I can pull myself away from Warframe and Forza Horizon 6 on the XBox at least. What's the game I start with? Well, I was going to put some time into The Thaumaturge - what's not to like about wielding the supernatural while palling around with Rasputin in 1905 Russia? Unfortunately, some graphical glitching I didn't see when testing it on my Ubuntu machine had me set that aside. Plenty of time to get back to it after the Steam Machine launches, I'm thinking.
I decided instead to give some proper attention to Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society. Mechanically, it's a first-person turn-, party-, and grid based dungeon crawler, the sort of thing that dates all the way back to the dungeons in early Ultima games... but much prettier, of course, given its developer, NIS. Story-wise, well...
I'm sure I've vented here before about how tired I am of the standard "team of heroes sallies forth to save the world" shtick. Labyrinth of Galleria is distinctly not that. The titular labyrinth is a space beneath Galleria Manor, someplace off the beaten path, that a former owner collected various objects, then sealed them away with magic such that there is only one way in or out. That access point, a magical wardrobe, has one major issue, though... it will allow entry without issue, but any living thing trying to exit by that route gets minced into meat.
Naturally, there's a Count that wants some of the objects that are hiding down there, and he's not exactly a nice sort. He buys the manor, and hires a witch to work out how to find and fetch the items he wants. Her solution? Get around the "living thing" limitation using soldier puppets - actual puppets with souls bound to them. Problem being, she doesn't have a good way to make them do what she wants while out of her sight.
The answer lies in getting a spirit to follow them in and act as a commander, but the witch isn't capable/willing to handle that herself. Instead, she advertises in a far-off country town and ends up bringing in an energetic, naive, and frankly not-very-bright young noble lady with a knack for finding things to act as a medium for the spirit. In this game, "you" are the spirit, and you follow the story of what happens outside of the labyrinth from the young lady's standpoint.
Now, could this story eventually evolve/devolve into the same old "save the world" trope? Sure, there's no knowing where the story could end up at this point, otherwise there's not much point in following the story. I'm definitely willing to see where it leads from here, though!
No comments:
Post a Comment