Hello gamer,

Meck’s back. The weeks sure gone by, huh? We’re one week away from moving into the busy month of February.

So it’s nice to be able to have some extended downtime and catch up on games.

Table of Contents

• BUT FIRST!

• The NEWS From Last Week

BUT FIRST!

I started playing Warframe again, and haven’t stopped.

If you haven’t heard about it, Danial shared a feature piece of it last week, Warframe had its occasional massive update and now with free time in my hands I ended up back in this game, whatever it is right now.

And man, this game is very bingable. I’ve been putting in the hours to catch up on four years of content I’ve missed out on, and it’s amazing to see this game still has most of the old content in tact. Getting through it is a pain, as some of these older missions and grind spots have basically no one doing them in public matchmaking anymore. But that’s expected.

I know the gaming world revolves around gacha games these days, but man, I just couldn’t get into them. I tried Girls Frontline 2, and I don’t click with the thrilling story and despite the familiar XCOM-style strategy tactics game loop, it bore me. I feel asleep when trying to play this game on my phone once!

Goddess of Victory: Nikke also has that “tacticool waifus” vibe but I don’t think that gameplay’s for me. Though I did stumble into listening to the cash shop theme and that’s music fire. Now I’m afraid of ever installing it due to fear of spending money because the menu music is so good.

The closest I got to latching on to this free-to-play gacha games was Zenless Zone Zero. It ranked highly on our Game Of The Year Awards list last year and surprisingly I am a strong proponent for it. But I dunno, something about the latest update (and this before the latest latest 1.5 update set to drop tomorrow) makes the character action game feels less juicy. Previously it was all juiced up, it’s a one-minute gameplay loop filled with a ridiculous dose of dopamine where you just mash buttons until you fingers hurt to see cool action stuff happen. Now it’s all damage-spongey.

And that’s how I got back to Warframe. I need that dose of power fantasy. In Warframe, you can build a character that can take out 50 high-level enemies with a press of one ability button. And then sustain that for 20 minutes to grind for that specific loot drop you’re hoping to get. Being OP is what Warframe is about, to the point that in one of the cinematic stories, you get to play as other normal characters and it feels so weak and relatively bad, on purpose. There are two long boss fights where you have to face as a terribly underpowered character. And then you do a similar boss fight again with your Warframe of choice and that slog of a fight last merely seconds.

Being OP takes a lot of time, however. It’s a free-to-play game. But at least the gamblecore aspects does not lock you out of getting a thing you want. You want that Warframe now? Buy it with premium currency. But if you don’t want to, you can attempt to grind it out through its convoluted, time-consuming but entirely free “gacha” that is relics cracking.

Oh, and outside of Warframes now have pretty faces attached to them (so it’s technically a hero shooter but one where nobody plays PVP) with the Warframe 1999 update, they also added a shrine maiden Warframe, who’s entire toolkit is based on RNG.

I may not like gacha, but gamblecore mechanics (as in, RNG-based systems with no real money involved as stakes) I can roll with.

I don’t recommend playing Warframe just to see that 1999 content. It’s for veteran players due to it having a pivotal point to the game’s overarching story. Plus you need to play about 150 hours (and a lot more of grinding) just to reach this point.

So listen to this sweet boy band ballad out of context for now. Proper 90’s bop I tell you:

So this is me, describing my hell. Playing Warframe over and over again. Don’t know if I can get out of this one, kiddo.

Well, until February arrives, I guess.

The NEWS From Last Week

Some interesting highlights that came out of last week:

• Danial went to Singapore and got to play Civilization VII. Expect a review of the game on Gamer Matters ahead of its release!

• How about a local (well, Singapore, but close enough la) flavour of Papers, Please? Compensation Not Guaranteed is a new game where you are a government clerk doing paperwork to get land rights from folks to develop the country. Which may or may not include compensation for those folks.

• Shuhei Yoshida retired from his post at PlayStation and immediately landed on a new gig: a voice actor for indie game Promise Mascot Agency.

No reviews? No reviews, for now.

That’s it for this issue. Stay tuned to Gamer Matters as we figure things out coming into award season in two months’ time. Check the site for new stuff coming in hot this week as well!

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Play games and have fun,

—Meck and the Gamer Matters Team