I guess the radio play marathon of the last few months is now taking its toll. My son, who will be five next week, does nothing better at the moment than a well-kept role-playing game – the analogue kind, where you build more or less new things from the inspiration from the audio stories. So my son is the author, voice narrator and main actor of his own little hands-on stories.
Pirates are currently the most popular and the adventures of “Captain Kacka”, which he came up with himself. Along with your own catchphrase, which you trumpet at every suitable and inappropriate opportunity. And that’s pretty good considering that this is the protagonist of the story: “No one trusts Captain Poop”!
But just today he clarified again that it has nothing to do with bowel movements, but that he is only called that because he is so evil. I’m glad that’s out of the world. Otherwise, house renovation is dominating my everyday life right now, but more on that below (than you will like).
contents
Marauders’ is ragged but good. I believe.
It goes without saying that Captain Kacka’s fantasy sloop also sails through my everyday play. During yesterday’s extended game of Marauders in the closed beta with our Benjamin Schmädig and two other cronies, I felt the urgent need to command my crew as Captain Kacka. Luckily, I was able to resist and just dropped the name a few times.
Still, I kept imagining what Captain Kacka would do in certain Marauders situations. After all, no one trusts him and there must be a reason. In Marauders, a space Tarkov, in which you board stations and other ships as space pirates, the cutthroat factor is at least built in. This is about loot that you (laboriously) move back and forth between missions in the inventory, sell, disassemble or modify. So my inner Captain Kacka asks himself first, “How often can I let my people down before I have to rely on random teammates in matchmaking for the next few games?”, “Do I put my ‘murdering fellow marauders’ over the box of treasures in Knowing you I just found?” and “Is friendly fire actually on? I’m just asking out of interest.” Things like that.
Yet this turns out to be a game where you benefit more from collaboration than anything else. It starts with the mere movement. One flies the small rust bucket, which you call home at the beginning, through the generously marked-out space instance, navigating around asteroids and shipwrecks to capital ships and refineries. Two more look through periscopes or do things on board, while the fourth sits in the turret whenever possible.
I found it elegant how quickly the game changes the state of aggregation. You spy comfortably where you want to go, where other player ships are on the way and then put together a plan – or you will be attacked by others straight away. Players then have the choice of letting the cannons do the talking or – and this is particularly cool – use one of the escape pods that serve as a boarding vehicle. This allows you to force your way into the enemy ship and finish off the crew in the manner of a tactical, slow-moving shooter.
In one situation we were actually defeated, our ship almost destroyed, when I gave the order to go into close combat. We actually turned the tide with our risky boarding maneuver and then used our opponent’s ship. Since there are apparently almost unlimited escape pods, you then have the choice of how to proceed on your “new” ship. Early extraction with what you gained (and lost – dead playmates and spent ammo stay away for now), or still try to move on? That’s some cool poker.
Too bad Marauders is too hardcore for clearer communication. There isn’t a real HUD with compass directions or a ping option, and the game doesn’t believe in visually distinguishing friends and foes. We at least partially remedied the latter by coordinating to wear all white clothes, which definitely helped and was a cool touch. But when it came to the orders, which are supposed to be the main source of income for money and experience points, a few rough mission guides would have been at least helpful.
How do I know what the asteroid mine, what the lunar colony and what the spaceport is supposed to be? The actual tasks there are also not explained further. “Activate the distress signal”. I would like to. But where and how please? The art design also looks like it’s only half done so far. The interiors of the ships in particular are as banal as possible and make orientation tricky. And the general feel of the game is also subtly notchy, the server browser almost unusably nervous. But… and that’s a big “but”: I have to admit I had a lot of fun that night.
The concept is so fresh that it turned an otherwise disastrous week into a positive one (more on that below). Now if the operation, design, bugs, server browser, the terrible downtimes where literally nothing happens, and a dozen other things get fixed, Marauders will be a game I’ll sink hundreds of hours into. That sounds like a whole lot of trouble, and it is. For a closed alpha, however, the potential is already clear and visible just below the surface.
Coming to PC, Marauders is set to go into Early Access “later this year” and will be included as a Game Preview in Game Pass. So Captain Kacka goes ‘ARRR…Okay!’, but who trusts that?
The most important thing of the week 18/2022, Alex Edition
With me in the rotation: Dune Spice Wars I’ll let it rest for now until Early Access has progressed further. That’s why I’m playing with pleasure King Arthur: A Knight’s Tale, for which I will provide a text next week. Besides, I’ve been trying for days Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion to start and I think I’ll be able to do it someday. In addition, I can finally use the trial version of Songs of Conquest gamble, but still has to keep quiet about it.
Music tip of the week: Today in the category “Ten year old indie daddy music”: The National – Afraid of Everyone. The guys still make excellent music today, but I’m not quite up to speed with them. Today, as a parent, this piece sends shivers down my spine even more than it did back then and is more relevant than ever. Media poisoning that sows resentment and fear, the desperate and despairing tug-of-war between enlightenment, consumer culture and coldly stiff conservative forces and oneself somewhere in between. At worst, with children you worry about more than you’ve ever worried about yourself. A perfectly captured attitude to life, which is conveyed in a shocking manner even on Letterman’s stage, which is often not exactly merciful or even flattering.
Low point of the week: Today the low point first. You’ll see why right away. Of course it has to do with the renovation of our new apartment building: the floor should be done first, because that was also the largest and most expensive construction site and after moving in nothing works in this direction. First the cork tiles came too late, then ridiculously few of them, whereupon my in-laws, who had come especially to help and with plenty of tools, drove home again. The rest of the delivery then came a day earlier and all of a sudden on more pallets than I could exchange back – of course almost ten percent of the more than 40 packages were visible and in some cases severely damaged.
We have rarely felt worse and more desperate than this Tuesday and we have already experienced a few things in 17 years of relationship. But here it was simply unyielding, new construction sites opened up in all possible and impossible places. That really took a toll on my nerves. It went so far that on Wednesday I “check it out soon” removed House Flipper from my Steam wish list after two years, I was so miserable because of the misery.
On the gaming side, my biggest problem was that Dinosaur Fossil Hunter seems made for me, but already produces a blocker in the tutorial, after which I can’t get any further. This is a pity.
Midpoint of the week: After our landlord had long problems getting craftsmen for some urgently needed work and repairs, the house was suddenly full of them on Thursday. A lot was actually done or at least tackled in one go, I got a few good tips in passing and now consider myself the plastering mason king I never was. After being really exhausted two days earlier, since yesterday we have felt a defiant energy burgeoning within us.
Otherwise I got the Star Wars Obiwan Trailer liked it better than I like to admit. I kind of hate myself for making myself such easy prey for Disney, but Ewan McGregor was the one thing that worked on the prequels and from what I’ve seen so far… gosh, I’m falling for her again , or?
Highlight of the week: Actually today: I’m sure, after I cleaned and primed the huge crack in the plaster in the hallway yesterday before going to bed, I’m already looking forward to filling the bitch after putting the kids to bed. It’s my first time, but it would be laughable if this house, which hasn’t been touched in decades, didn’t look a lot better than it did before. I’m almost euphoric and not sure if this is normal anymore. Maybe there was something in the deep that clouded my mind? Doesn’t matter. After wanting to set fire to the shop at the beginning of the week, I suddenly really feel like dressing it up.
As far as games go, I applaud Square Enix’s sale of Crystal Dynamics to the creepy Embracer Group. I have a vague feeling this is the reboot Tomb Raider needed. And if CD is now thinking again about whether to just leave it at that with the Avengers – Square Enix has certainly paid the bill long ago – they have time again for the beautiful things in life. Which of course means Lara.
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