Halo 3: Believe

 

Damn

 

Starstruck Vagabond

I followed the design diary about this when The Escapist started publishing it on the 13th month of the 12 Months of Game Design series.

Actually, if Will Riker can claim that watching Picard and Dr. Crusher will-they-won't-they for 15 years counts as watching Jack Crusher II 'being cooked up,' then I can claim I've been following this game for 15 years of watching Yahtzee Croshaw's work. 

From Zero Punctuation, obviously, but also his Extra Punctuation series which is a bit more formative. That Rhymedown thing he did with Jim Sterling for a bit. Following his blog occasionally and his YouTube channel for his Drown Out series with is friend Gabe/Trivial Hirsute.

It's not as if SSV is some kind of culmination of Yahtzee's career. He released Poacher in 2012 and he's written, like, six novels since then.

But SSV is something that keeps coming to the surface. The space element. The invisible guy with eyebrows. The mix of metaplot, minigames, and reputation systems. I'm interested.

Lord Mandalore: Dark Wood

I like Lord Mandalore's style. Not always, but generally

Race for the Galaxy is Going Good

The first time I played Race for the Galaxy, it was at a friend's house. He completely sideswiped us with it, we had no idea what was happening, and, IIRC, we all lost. I tried to do a military build because those are usually the simplest.

Poor, silly VanVelding.

Since that night, I was intrigued; had we been hustled? Was this game as terrible as it seemed? I wasn't intrigued enough to actually buy the fucking thing. Gods no. I was just curious.

Until I saw it on Steam. I finally got to play it and I kinda didn't like it. It didn't "taste good"? It just felt bad. I like my games simple and elegant with 'vanilla' game pieces that can have additional complexity later. 

MultiVersus

 

Couple thoughts:

I think that WB forgot that cartoon romance requires one unwilling participant because, problematic as it is, that's what separates cartoons from Rule 34.

I'm afraid that Harley and Taz might fuck.

Dean Pelton voice: Oh, Tom and Jerry are in this?

I forgot Steven Universe could be here.

I don't care about fighting games and I don't really buy shit just because [LIKABLE FRANCHISE] is on it. It's got the Smash Brothers problem where you're just manipulating digital action figures of those characters without any of the real qualities that make them interesting or likable.

It doesn't make you a little sick to make Superman fight The Iron Giant?

I might be interested if there's a story mode that uses the fighting skills in an interesting way with a story that's tailored to each character. I mean, I don't even play Dark Souls, but I'd totally play Dark Souls with Pearl.

 

Cats (2019) and Meditations on Comics (How Stories Fit Into Boxes [and also stellaris])

Previews

I Still Believe - These movies are excruciating. Chirley Kemp? Sad Disease Girl II? Gulf Tears? Every cliche in the book. IDEA: Religious inspo-porn, but every 4th scene is them talking about how immigrant kids deserve to be taken from their parents.

Respect - My dad said “interesting” to himself during this trailer, which is itself pretty interesting.

“The Call” - Oh man, Harrison Ford is gonna get out-acted by a fucking CGI dog in this movie, isn’t he?

Goat Simulator Trailer (2014)

Make Stellaris Great Again, Part 2

So last week I griped about a video game called Stellaris (link here). Today I'm finishing up on all the ways that a great game that's lost its luster could become great again.

Or Simplify Diplomacy. Last week I lobbied pretty hard to have the complicated diplomacy system improved. The thing is, I don’t actually want verisimilitude when I do diplomacy in a 4X game. I only need to know a few things about them: power/weakness, farness/nearness, do they like me, what do they have, what do they want, are we at peace, and how can I change those last four? I don’t know if I need a bunch of buttons telling me what I can’t do.

What I’d like are political packages which read “Make the Imarians Hate Me Less,” “The Rurthar Want Terraforming Gases and We Aren’t Using Ours,” “Special Project: Do Science with The Beldross,” or “The Yamacera are Dicks; Let’s Spend 400 Influence and 1,000 Energy to Steal a World of Theirs.” I need, “These Guys Hate Your Fucking Guts And Will Never Join Your Alliance” to “Here’s The Ludicrous Price Tag That Will Make These Guys Wanna Put Their Fungal Dicks in Your Small Intestines While Barry White Plays In The Background.”  

I only need to know how they feel about me on a scale of one to five. If I’m going to do something that will move allies into the negative on me, those better be big things. I mean big. It should be rare enough that you feel comfortable with throwing a pop-up on the screen asking if I’m sure every time I’m about to do one of those things. I should be able to choose and move toward changing those numbers by doing big things.

Make Stellaris Great Again, Part 1

If you’ve never heard of Stellaris, it’s Civilization meets Spaceward Ho!, which I will assume is a comprehensive description suitable for everyone. It’s everything me and the guys ever dreamed of in a space game. You get to colonize planets, do some diplomacy, and build big fleets that have beautiful battles in space. You even get to make some moral decisions and do some research...y’know, Star Trek stuff. It’s great and we loved it.

But the luster has worn off quickly. The lifetime of a video game is pretty short and despite being excellent, Stellaris only had an average run with us. This isn’t an open letter to the devs or anything because I don’t know anything about game development. It’s not a list of bitches about the game because nothing is less productive than that. It’s nothing more than a vague plan offered for free with an offer for a red hat as a $25.00 upsell that simply reads “Make Stellaris Great Again.”

Quit animating every ship. It’s beautiful when I’ve got a fleet of 15 guys who shoot lasers and missiles in an asynchronous display of attempted murder by hard vacuum. I see the shots glance off of shields. But eventually I’ll have to destroy every other civilization in the galaxy and I’re going to need a pretty big fleet for that. Probably bigger than everyone else’s.

There’s a fleet cap of 1000 points worth of ships, but it’s only a guideline. After 1k points, I simply pay higher upkeep on ships above that limit. That means even more massive massive fleets, which I’ll get to later. The system can’t handle those numbers and significant fleet actions begin causing the game to slow down, space out, or just plain freeze up.

Super Mario Ragtime

Ultimate Skyrim Mod

Chilidsh? Yes.

Clueless Gamer: Super Smash Brothers

Mario Maker Levels

I know everything is about Fallout 4 right now, but Mario Maker still exists, you guys.

The Basket Run: Part 9

The Basket Run: Part 8

THE AUDIO IS FINALLY BETTER!

The Basket Run: Part 5

I'm Such a Nerd

These videos were made eight years ago and I'm still so blown away by them.

I don't even play Halo.

Mass Effect 4

It's true. Mass Effect has the worst fans. Read the comments if you have any doubt about that.

I have some disdain for the intro that it seems weapon heavy, with the emphasis on the gun and the hard light sword. Is that just me? Mass Effect's gameplay is largely built around combat, but no one's buying Mass Effect for the gameplay; they buy it for the story and universe.

If they bottle up a couple of guys and put them on an experimental mission to Andromeda before all of the Reaper shit goes down, that seems to undercut the universe angle a bit while sidestepping the story issue.

I mean that in a good way. How do you resolve an ending that players themselves decided individually. Not doing it seems the wisest option until you're wise enough to find a way to do it.

The Basket Run: Part 1

You know I love Skryim.

It's getting old though. My final sendoff is a game that finishes everything in Skryim. Everything.

The high elf Dovahkiin Kate McKinnon is traveling every population center in Skryim and killing everything that ain't already killed with nothing more than an inventory full of baskets. She is a vampire to facilitate lethal encounters.

Derek is accompanying me on most of this trek.