LogFAQs > #967664123

Hi! I'm not sick anymore. I also just struggled to think of shit to say about my next game. This writeup is a disaster.

#16: Valheim

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/8/6/AAA-H0AADnfa.jpg

Oh, so speaking of things that happened during the pandemic! I got 1200 dollars from the US government in May of 2020. In a sick, twisted way, the pandemic actually benefitted me a great deal - previously I had no money and didn't have enough money to buy a new computer, but this sudden infusion of 1200 dollars was exactly how much I needed.

I was desperate. I'd had my previous computer since 2010, and it was seriously showing its age. It was pretty good in 2010, but ten years of heavy use and no upgrades and it was falling apart pretty fast. I think a lot of that was thanks to a probably-dying hard drive, but it didn't have enough memory or a good enough graphics card to keep up, either. I needed a new computer. So I set out in May 2020 to build a new computer for the first time! It was a challenging experience that I never would've gotten through if not for having just the right network of friends who could carefully guide me through the process, but it ended up being incredibly rewarding - not only was it a lot cheaper to get a new computer this way, but I also feel like I learned something! Building a computer's not so bad. It's like making legos! Out of really expensive parts that might break if you touch them wrong! And they might not work for no reason! Thankfully, my new PC, the one I'm using right now as I type this, worked the first time I booted it, which is an accomplishment I'm really proud of.

It's a really good thing it worked because my old computer would have had no chance of running Valheim.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/8/4/AAA-H0AADnfY.jpg

As I alluded to in my Animal Crossing writeup, I really suck at building stuff. I don't know what it is - I have a really hard time working with 3D space in my head, so I don't do very well when it comes to making a plan and then executing when it comes to assembling something in three dimensions. It's just something I'm naturally bad at, for whatever reason. As a result, I tend to avoid the builder games. I've never touched Minecraft; the thought of actually playing Minecraft to even 1% of its potential stresses me the hell out.

So Valheim is REALLY not the type of game I would normally even think of touching, because it's got that same sort of focus on building stuff, except it's not made out of conveniently shaped and arranged blocks like in Minecraft but... like, actual building materials in semi-realistic worlds. Absolutely my worst nightmare. I mean, it SOUNDS cool in theory, obviously. I love it when OTHER people build stuff. I live in a house that someone else built!

But hey, I DID build my PC successfully, and that was a pretty complicated assembly project, so maybe I can handle it after all! I told myself that when one of my friends wanted to get me into Valheim. As nervous as I was about the idea, I was kind of into it, too - Breath of the Wild got me into the spirit of enjoying exploring open worlds, and having a friend who I can play with who can help me build is nice. I always feel a little bit guilty about never getting into online games with people; my social anxiety kind of flares up a lot and I end up preferring to do things at my own pace instead of scheduling times to do them with other people, despite the fact that I do love playing games with others. So I kinda owed it to him to give Valheim my best shot and I dove into it headfirst.

Valheim is a sort of open-world survival game where you can build rustic nordic cabins and shit. You generate a massive world filled with tons of geographical features to explore and resources to exploit, and what ensues is the typical crafting-game loop; get wood and ore, combine them to make tools that get you even better wood and ore, which you combine to make even BETTER tools, etc. You make weapons for combat, as well, since there's monsters everywhere, and sometimes they raid your carefully build villages for fun. Eventually you get strong enough gear to go and take out some bosses which give you some progression materials that you can use to make tools to get EVEN BETTER wood and ore. It's the crafting gameplay loop. You've seen it before.

In most cases, I'd be pretty tired of this gameplay loop, but Valheim kept me glued to it by making the world really pretty to look at. Valheim's a beautiful game; the textures are intentionally pretty low-res, like a very upscaled Minecraft, but you can see out to the horizon for miles and the sky lights up pretty colors all the time and it's just gorgeous to look at. Kind of like Breath of the Wild, Valheim is escapist entertainment for me; it's about playing pretend in the great outdoors, getting lost in this huge open world and just kind of taking it in and just having fun existing there.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/8/5/AAA-H0AADnfZ.jpg

I like the emergent gameplay that comes out of Valheim. You just sort of get dumped into the world and you have to figure it out; you gotta start chopping down some trees and building a camp for yourself so you don't get attacked by monsters at night. You have to decide for yourself where your expeditions take you to gather more resources; you have to decide for yourself where you want to build new things. If you get stuck somewhere at night, you have to end up putting together a new camp together in the woods to defend yourself. Dying is mostly not a terrible fate (although losing skill ranks is a very annoying mechanic) but I still kind of get a thrill out of going into dangerous places and surviving it.

I'm bad at building stuff, but's a lot of fun to do. This game does have some questionable quality of life choices, where the game has tons of different resources you need to collect but treasure chests can only hold so much stuff, so you have to have like a crazy organizational system of like 100 chests just to hold all your shit; but it's kind of fun putting together a little town area with you and a couple of buddies where you can organize all your stuff. It's very cozy to build a nice lodge where you can just kinda hang out. It's a little more satisfying to do this sort of thing than it is in Animal Crossing, where you can do whatever you want and you don't need to pay off Tom Nook to do it for you.

I played it for about 80 hours off and on with some buddies before I eventually got tired and dropped it - I actually never explored the game's final biome or beat the final boss. We made a bunch of trips up to the mountain, mining as much silver as we could before taking it down, crossing the river, and storing it back at our encampment, eventually fighting a dragon once we had all our silver armor built. It was fun! Felt like a good place to stop, I guess.

Here is around the point at which I realize I have nothing to say about Valheim. It's just a fun little open world survival game that kind of scratches a particular itch I have to wander around a big open world and get excited about finding random geological features. It's relaxing and there's something fun about playing 'pretend' with the idea of carving your own adventures out in a sandbox world. I wish I could do this game more justice in talking about it because it's just so fucking pretty to look at and I could just lose myself in it for hours. It's also got a bunch of annoyances like inventory management and awkward combat, but, I dunno, it's great in spite of all that. I'm surprised that I haven't seen Valheim get more praise.

(I used screenshots from my own game again but I didn't have as many screenshots as I thought I had, oops. I figured I had at least one of my friend's cool buildings)

Next up: A puzzle game that I think is most specifically geared to me than any other game on this list. I dunno if anyone will get this one.