Marvel's Midnight Suns (2022)

I really like this game. But I want to focus on what motivates people to play. And how that shapes the perception of what it will be like to play this game and how that perception is important while playing the game.

Premise:

• Do strategy game players want a card game system in a triple-A game? no idea.

• Do comic book game players want a strategy game? maybe?

• Is it instantly clear that Captain Marvel, Captain America, Spider man and Iron man are in this game? no.

• Who do you play as in this game? not an established hero, oh.

• Can I imagine the gameplay? fuck no.

• What kind of impact does the name have? who the fuck are the midnight sun's.

** what kind of comic book game is this?:**

1. This is a superhero game that you play from the POV of a no-name. Thus the story exists outside the traditional framing of most comic books stories. Not necessarily bad, but it effectively removes strong character dynamics in the canon. Guardians of the Galaxy is a stellar example of the importance of maintaining a template.

2. Super hero stories very rarely take place in a static location. There is a sense of progress. The base element of this game makes it feel somewhat dull as a premise. Fire emblem has you marching across the continent. And I can't think of a comic story that didn't leverage multiple amazing settings.

3. The style of game play also inhibits player movement, thus the sense of wonder traditional for comic book stories is just absent.

How does the game work?:

Western hero's always have static power. Very rarely do you find them growing in strength as you do find in Japanese media. So the growth aspect of the game-play is always at odds with narrative structure of superhero stories. Overall, it causes me to feel like my progress isn't real. Comic book decision making is "next-step" in orientation and progression fantasy is always "more power" in orientation.

Game play:

Pretty amazing though I have a major gripe. The camera movement on each card play makes the game play feel clunky. Imagine if each time you played a card the camera was locked in place. It would be possible to plan your next move. Overall, I feel this ruins the flow of the game-play at the cost of looking cool.

Greed:

I don't know if this is just me being an old man. But I feel paid skins in a game, especially an RPG, absolutely destroy my sense of immersion. I'm fine with games selling paid skins, but when I see them in my game menu, effectively abusing my suspension of disbelief, all respect for the game I am playing run's away. I need to put up my walls again. Playing god of war, I can't imagine loving that game so much if the armor system was kneecapped behind a pay-wall.

Progress visualization:

My enjoyment of games in the strategy arc-type lies in a future vision. What will my game be like in 10 hours? how am I going to shape my build? The RNG aspect of this game destroys the sense of control I feel in a traditional strategy game. The game overall provides you with very little input as to how characters develop. Loot boxes as the way to acquire new abilities just feels... weird to me.

Moon logic:

Something that stood out to immediately with this games combat is the inherent silliness of the game-play in terms of realism. The base of most card games has you put out pieces and then control them. Having abilities as the cards is inherently unrealistic. Superheros always have access to all their powers.

Moreover, the creation of new abilities, the improvement of new abilities, the relationship impacts of this game all requires moonlogic. You need to suspend your disbelief on all points of the games systems. I think most games maintain a lot of moon logic, but moonlogic in a new genre is more jarring than moon logic in an established system.

Overall, too much moonlogic and you lose the player before they even pick up your game.

Mobile game:

This game feels like a mobile game, to the extent that I believe it was developed to be a live service game before a hard pivot. It has all the random currencies you would expect in a mobile game, a cosmetic system, the base of collecting characters, a mission structure that is plot independent, loot boxes for new cards.

Summary:

I like this game a lot. But I think it makes sense it didn't take off. Overall, it is just confusing to understand before actually playing it.

It’s a good game but get’s pretty tedious later on. The card collecting combat system is great, story is good but I was expecting more from the graphics. Lots of exploration to do through out the yard but don’t be scared to take your time with it. Lots of replay-ability

if you’re into collectable cards / turn based fighting I highly recommend.

I am tempted to give it 3 stars because of the amount of bugs I had to deal with throughout, on top of the usual 2K nonsensical microtransactions that have no place ever but specially in this game, because it ruins all cosmetic unlock progression...

But it's so extremely weird that I'm holding onto the 4 stars. A mix of dating (friendship only) sim, walking sim exploration with the simplest of puzzles sometimes, and a deep deck based tactical turn based system. XCom this is definitely not, even tho there is some leftovers like the "research projects" and selecting the squad for each mission. The story is all over the place, with small side things like Blade's book club or the history of the witch hunt around the abbey being my highlights, and the general avengers fare that occurs through most of the main mission being just meh.

My recommendation is that if you can, you wait for them to be over with the bug fixing (if they even do that... XCom was broken until the end in several platforms) and also to be over with the season pass stuff so there is a cheaper bundle. If you are the patient type (I'm not, clearly) you might even wait until the microtransactions are left behind, maybe, some day, and you just buy the game for money, like normal people should be able to.

PS: I bought it day 1 on PS5, physical edition in case I sell it, but I think I'll hang around for the DLC, even if I'm not a fan of the characters they announced. Also, I bought it day 1 because Nico Minoru is in it and everyone should read Runaways.

I'm playing this and Solasta: Crown of the Magister at the same time and I can't help but think of this article on randomness that went viral a few years ago:

http://keithburgun.net/three-types-of-bad-randomness-and-one-good-one/

As a player, the "output randomness"/X-Com style odds of an attack landing (as in Solasta) leads to so much frustration. When you're trying to play a game where you generally have ~65% chance to succeed, you're in a very high variance, high entropy scenario. The first few actions of a battle are generally the most important -- they can lead to one side being up 1 or 2 members over the other, which obviously snowballs quickly. Say there are 10 initial dice rolls. Looking at the PDF of Binomial(.65, 10), you'll see that there is a 25% chance you fail half or more of those rolls. With how games like Solasta are balanced, you're in a pretty deep hole by the time you've failed half of the initial dice rolls. And that happens 1 in 4 times, without any player agency! Of course, making sure to ambush enemies and boosting those odds helps, but it also really doesn't take half of your dice rolls failing for the game to feel bad!

On the other hand, Midnight Suns focuses on the "input randomness". That is, the randomness happens before you make your choices. It's still mildly frustrating to not draw the card you're looking for, but you're making your decisions after that information is known. You feel like you have a lot more agency since you aren't just left hoping -- you know what your decisions are going to do and you get to make the best of things when they've not gone your way. The juxtaposition of the two styles of randomness really makes me appreciate my time with Midnight Suns' combat system.

Also, the writing in Solasta is beyond terrible and makes Midnight Suns look downright elegant in comparison haha. I don't hate Solasta by any means -- it's actually impressive how faithfully they implemented D&D 5e. It just has some massive flaws that are a nice backdrop to help me appreciate other games :)

About 10 hours in so far and I'm having a really good time. The card based combat is excellent. It keeps you on your toes and having to adapt to what you have available while still letting your super heroes feel like they're super heroes.

I'm a bit surprised just how much hate the writing is getting... it just seems like the standard schlock you'd get from the comic genre. I think that's appropriate for the game and fun. I guess it harkens back to the goofier days of comics a bit more than most modern Marvel projects, which may be what people find off putting?

I definitely agree with the criticism that the non-combat portions of the game take up too much time, especially early on. Even though I enjoy the silly little social interactions you have with the other heroes and exploring the Abbey grounds, it shouldn't take up 80% of your time for the first portion of the game.

There are still a bunch of hot games coming out this year, but this is the one I want most. Who is going to be on my team you ask??? Well let me tell you.

SPIDER-MAN OF COURSE. Carol fucking Danvers And I guess the hunter character?

Little disappointed that I can only take three characters into a map. Such limitations may make me check out some of the others if my core starts getting too powerful.