#I’m trying to make a sci fi dungeon crawl | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

intheticklecloset · 4 years ago

Text

Haikyuu!! Sentence Starters #61-70

A collection of the Haikyuu sentence starters I’ve done, compiled for the sake of ease. These are all stand-alone stories.

~~~

61) Lee Oikawa, Ler Iwa

“Do not change the channel.”

“But this is so boring!”

“Leave the remote, Toru.”

Oikawa promptly ignored Iwaizumi and leaned forward from his place on the couch, trying to grab the remote that would change the channel from this Old American West TV show to literally anything else.

“Toru!” Iwa snapped, reaching over to squeeze his side, effectively stopping him with a squeal and some giggles. “Leave it!”

“But nothing’s happening! I want to watch sci-fi or something.” Oikawa reached for the remote again, and again received a sharp squeeze to his side for his trouble. He collapsed back onto the couch cushion with high-pitched giggles. “Hajime!”

Iwa smirked. “Reach for it again. I dare you.”

Oikawa pouted. “You’re so mean.”

“Go on. Do it again.”

The setter hesitated, watching his friend closely. He couldn’t decide if he was bluffing or not, but either way, he made a desperate grab for the remote, faster this time. He was able to pick it up, but only at the expense of being tackled onto the couch with fingers digging into his ribs and sides. “Nohohohohohoho! Stahahahahahahap!”

“Change the channel, captain,” Iwa teased mercilessly, reaching one hand down to squeeze his hip, and Oikawa bucked and nearly fell onto the floor. “Change it. Watch your sci-fi. Go on, Toru!”

“HAHAHAHAHAJIME!!” Oikawa screamed, dropping the remote onto the ground in favor of grabbing his friend’s wrist, trying to pry him away from his sensitive hip. “STAHAHAHAHAHAP!!”

Iwa instead chose to knead his thumb into the hip bone. Oikawa threw his head back and absolutely cackled, writhing helplessly.

“PLEHEHEHEHEHEASE, IWA-CHAHAHAHAHAHAN!!”

“Too late, Toru. You distracted me from my show.” The ace smirked, keeping up his tickling assault. “Lucky for you, this is far more entertaining!”

62) Lee Oikawa, Lers Aoba Johsai Teammates

Oikawa was completely losing his mind with laughter. He struggled as best he could from his position stuck under the bleachers in their gym – why had he thought to crawl under after the volleyball in the first place?! – shrieking and cackling as fingers dragged along his ribs, scribbled over his spine, squeezed his thighs, spidered along his knees, and raked up and down his soles. He didn’t even know how many of his teammates were on him right now; he couldn’t see anything from here. All he could do was feel it, and it was driving him absolutely crazy.

“PLEHEHEHEHEHEASE!!” he begged, unable to do little more than squirm side to side for the several pairs of hands holding him firmly in place, tickling and tickling and tickling him. “PLEASE, STOHOHOHOHOHOP!! I CAHAHAHAHAHAN’T TAHAHAHAKE BEING TIHIHIHIHICKLED!!”

“Seems like you’re taking it just fine to me~” one of his underclassmen teased.

A particular swipe of fingers down his arches made Oikawa squeal, slapping his palms against the floor under the bleachers. “PLEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEASE!!”

Someone squeezed his ribs, someone else slowed to a light tracing along his inner thighs. This latter nearly made him scream with laughter; the light touches always tickled so much worse than the harsh ones. For him, at least.

“I got a feather!” someone called.

“FEATHER?!” Oikawa cried, making his teammates laugh. “NONONO NO FEHEHEHEHEATHERS!! NAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!” The light plume began dragging its way up his leg, from the heel of his foot to the inner thigh and even further up, dragging along his spine on its way to his neck. Oikawa burst into helpless giggles, wishing desperately that he had some room to squirm, but finding very little, if any at all.

Then someone started pinching his hips, and the team captain lost all pride as he began to laugh so hard his hysterics went silent. He slapped his palms on the ground, trying to find some way to break out of this tickle torture dungeon he’d gotten himself into.

“Ooh, good spot, captain?” someone teased him, kneading harder into his worst spot.

“PLEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEASE!!” Oikawa begged, crying with laughter at this point. “MEHEHEHEHEHERCY!! I BEHEHEHEHEG YOU!! STAHAHAHAHAHAHAP!!”

Finally his teammates had their fill, and they helped him wiggle his way out from under the bleachers, red-faced and teary-eyed and panting like he’d just run a marathon. But he had a big, dopey grin on his face, and he’d never felt higher on dopamine in his life.

63) Lee Hinata, Lers Karasuno Teammates

“Come on, Hinata,” Noya teased, sitting on his waist and digging into his ribs, making the poor tangerine scream with laughter. “You know you wanna say it~”

Daichi and Suga held his arms above his head, scribbling into his underarms. The captain remarked, “I’m honestly impressed he’s lasted this long.”

“Yeah,” Suga agreed. “You’re getting him pretty good, Noya.”

Hinata squealed as if to make their points, tossing his head back with absolute hysterics. He couldn’t even kick to relieve some of his ticklish frustration because Kageyama was sitting on his knees, scribbling over his thighs with a wicked, wicked grin. He was having way too much fun with this gang tickling thing.

“Yeah, come on, short stack,” the setter teased relentlessly. “You know you want to give up. Just say it.”

Hinata was absolutely losing his mind laughing; all of his worst spots were being targeted at once and he could barely focus on what they were saying, let alone think clearly to form any kind of smart response. He knew he was far too ticklish to take this for much longer, but he was bound and determined not to give them the satisfaction of begging them to stop. Wasn’t that how he got here in the first place?

After a practice match earlier that day Kenma had accidentally brushed against his side, causing the redhead to yelp and say, “stop!” before anything even really happened. Kageyama had overheard and teased him that he couldn’t handle more than a little poke to his ribs, and of course, Hinata had to open his big mouth and claim he could last being tickled a long time before begging for mercy.

So here he was now.

“How long has it been, do you think?” Daichi asked Suga.

Suga glanced at his phone, which he’d opened up to a timer when they started all of this. “Almost three minutes.”

Noya laughed. “He looks like he’s dying to ask us to stop.”

“Why don’t you, then, shorty?” Kageyama taunted, grinning evilly. “All you have to do is say one little word.”

But Hinata was nothing if not determined, so despite his loud, screaming hysterics and his pure desperation to push Noya off of his freaking ticklish ribs, he shook his head and forced himself not to say anything.

His teammates grinned at each other, shrugged, and unanimously decided to indulge in this little game for as long as it took.

64) Lee Kuroo, Lers Iwa and Oikawa

“Kenma would be happy to see you in this state,” Iwaizumi observed casually, as though he and Oikawa weren’t currently tickling Nekoma’s captain into a desperate, cackling mess.

Kuroo struggled against them. Each of them had one of his arms and were holding him firmly in place while they tickled his ribs and sides, making him squirm and laugh while he struggled to stay on his feet. “Shut uhuhuhuhup! Dohohohohon’t bring him ihihihinto this!”

“He was already a part of this conversation.” Oikawa hummed, smirking. “Or have we tickled you so much you’ve forgotten why you got yourself into this predicament?”

“I’m not reheheheheady!” Kuroo protested, squealing and arching his back when Iwa strayed a little too close to his underarm. “Stohohohohohop it!”

Iwa said reasonably, “If you don’t just rip off the Band-Aid now, you’re never going to. Ready or not, you’ve got to tell him.”

“Nohohohohohoho!”

Oikawa sighed. “Ah, Kuroo. Must we really tickle it out of you?”

“Bahahahahahahack off!” Kuroo yelped, his laughter turning more frantic when both his underarms were tickled at once. “Lehehehehet me go! It’s nohohohohone of your business anywahahay!”

Oikawa met Iwa’s gaze, and they shared a knowing smirk before reaching around to rake their fingers down Kuroo’s back in tandem, causing the taller boy to let out a rather high-pitched shriek before laughing so hard he finally couldn’t keep his footing anymore.

“NOHOHOHOHOHO, STAHAHAHAHAP!! THIS ISN’T FAHAHAHAHAHAHAIR!!”

“Tell him,” the Aoba Johsai players said in unison.

“NOHOHOHOHOHOHO!!”

“Fine, then.” Oikawa chuckled as they worked together to push him to the ground, pinning him in place to tickle him into submission. “We have ways of changing your mind~”

65) Lee Noya, Ler Kageyama

“Eeeehahahahahahahaha! K-Kahahageyamahahahaha!” Noya squealed, kicking and squirming to no avail. He was pinned to the floor by the first-year setter, arms crossed at the wrists above his head, Kageyama kneeling over him with his knees pressed into his hips to keep him in place as he tickled. “Stahahahahahahahap!”

Kageyama’s eyes flashed mischievously, but he couldn’t hide the wide, excited smile on his lips as he used his free hand to travel from the libero’s underarm to his ribs, digging in gently but still with enough pressure to keep him laughing rather than just giggling.

“Plehehehehehehease, stahahahahahahap!” Noya shrieked. He bucked his hips (the little that he could) when Kageyama reached his ribs, making him twist to the side uselessly, hysterics turning screechy. “Kageyama, plehehehehehehease!”

In response, the setter let his hand travel further down to his belly and sides, quickly leaving them behind in favor of the libero’s hips when his cackling died down for a brief moment. He smiled even wider at the yelp he pulled from his upperclassman, followed by a long string of pleading protests.

“W-Why ahahahaharen’t you sahahahaying anything?!” Noya squeaked at last, bringing a leg up to try and kick Kageyama in the backside when he got a little too close to his worst spot.

“Sorry,” Kageyama replied in a quiet, almost awestruck voice. “I think I’m just kind of…mesmerized.”

“Whahahahahat?”

“Your laugh. I’ve never really heard it like this before.” Kageyama pressed a thumb into Noya’s inner thigh, pleased with the loud scream it caused. “It’s hard to want to stop.”

“AGHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA NAHAHAHAHAHA!! NOT THEHEHEHEHERE, YOU JEHEHEHEHEHEHERK!!” Noya tried bucking his hips again to escape the strong, ticklish sensations now shooting through his body, but that’s when Kageyama decided to straddle him, bringing his thrashing to an abrupt end, making his laughter go up an octave and become even wilder. “NONONO STAHAHAHAHAHAHAP!! KAGEYAHAHAMA PLEHEHEHEHEASE!!”

Kageyama was full-on beaming now, struggling but determined to keep Noya pinned and helpless as he tickled, focusing on the spot that got the most genuine laughter from him. “I like hearing you laugh like this,” he said, so quietly Noya almost didn’t hear him. “But I…I can stop if you really want me to.”

Noya spasmed when a particularly sensitive nerve bundle was hit, and his laughter went silent for a few moments before Kageyama eased the pressure enough to allow him to respond. He gasped for breath, looking up at his tormentor through giggly, squinty vision, surprised to see the look of honest eagerness on his face. The libero shivered, twisted to hide his face in his shirt sleeve. “Ugh. You’re lucky I like you.”

Kageyama blinked. “Noya?”

Noya bit his lip, considering, then finally let out a long whimper and squeezed his eyes shut. “Fine, just – just stop when I tell you to again, okay?”

The setter’s eyes lit up, and his smile was back, and Noya would have melted at the sight if he weren’t busy throwing his head back with a fresh round of hysterical laughter.

66) Lee Kenma, Ler Kuroo

“You are the best friend I’ve ever had,” Kuroo said seriously, “and I don’t want to lose that.”

Kenma gave him a sideways glance, surprised and mildly concerned. “There’s no need to get all emotional about it. You’re my best friend, too.”

“I appreciate you. I dragged you into learning to play volleyball and you went with it so well.”

“Seriously, are you dying?” The setter paused his game to give Kuroo his full attention. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Suddenly Kuroo was smirking. “I just didn’t want to ruin the progress you made when I started to tickle you.”

“Wha – AGH!!” Kenma squealed when his bigger, taller friend pushed him over onto his bed, fingers deep in his ribs, making him choke on a laugh and try to push him away. “Nohohohohohoho! Kuroo, you jeheheheheheherk!”

“I just want to show you how much I appreciate you,” Kuroo teased, settling himself easily on Kenma’s hips and reaching under his shirt to scratch deliberately at the bare skin of his sides and belly.

“Aiiehehehehehehehehe! I f-feheheheheheel appreheheciated, Kuroo! Plehehehehehehease!” The setter squirmed and giggled on the bed, grasping Kuroo’s wrists but not really trying to push him away. A light pink hue colored his cheeks. “Nohohohohohohoho!”

“Aww, what’s the matter, Kenma? My best friend in the whole world?”

“Kuhuhuhuhuhuhuroo!”

“Is someone a little ticklish, hmm?”

“Plehehehehehehease – NAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAT THEHEHEHEHEHEHEHERE!!” Kenma tossed his head back with a screech of panicked laughter when his friend got to his hot spot – his underarms. He bucked and tossed himself around as best he could, but the next thing he knew Kuroo had both of his wrists snatched up and pinned above his head, forcing him to lay there and take the tickling that was slowly but surely driving him insane. “EHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! KUROO!!”

“Whaaaaat?” Kuroo chuckled, grinning wickedly at his friend, whom he knew was having more fun than he was letting on. “I just want to see you smile!”

67) Lee Suga, Ler Daichi

“I’m sorry, I’m confused,” Daichi teased, a grin creeping across his face as he pinched his friend’s sides. “You said you weren’t ticklish, but I’m tickling you and you’re laughing.”

Suga gripped his shoulders, desperate not to give in so quickly, no matter how many traitorous giggles spilled past his lips without permission. He’d been backed into a wall – quite literally – and now had to figure some way out of this mess before his friend found his worst spot.

“N-Nohohohot t-t-tihihihicklish,” he attempted to reaffirm, shaking his head through his snickers. “Just…l-lahahahaughing at your attehehehehempts to try.”

“Mhm.” Daichi slid up to his ribs, kneading purposefully, pinning Suga against the wall harder when he started squirming more violently. “What’s this? More not-ticklish reactions?”

“I’m nohohohohohot!” Suga insisted, hands flying down to grab at Daichi’s arms. “Y-You’re huhuhuhuhurting me, thahahat’s all!”

“Oh, am I?” Daichi feigned concern, switching from kneading to gentle rubbing, like he was trying to massage the pain away. “I’m terribly sorry; let me fix that for you~”

Suga couldn’t help the slew of high-pitched giggles that burst out of him. He arched his back, pushing at Daichi frantically. “Nonono that’s worse, that’s wohohohohohohorse!”

The team captain smirked. He was amused by his friend’s resistance, despite it being painfully obvious that he was, in fact, ticklish. He decided to try one more spot, shoving his hands under Suga’s arms. “What about here? Does it ‘hurt’ here?”

“Nohohohohohoho! Dahahahahaichi!”

“No? It doesn’t hurt? That’s great!” Daichi smiled wickedly, leaning in close to the setter’s face. “Does that mean it…tickles?”

Suga’s cheeks flushed red, and seconds later his resolve crumbled under all of the teasing and gentle but persistent tickling. “Fihihihihihine, okahahahahay! I’m tihihihihihicklish! Dahahaichi, please, stohohohohohop!”

Daichi chuckled, only digging in harder, making Suga laugh louder. “Nah. I think you deserve a little more, Suga.”

68) Lee Noya, Ler Tanaka

“Ah-HA!! N-No – Tanahahahahaka, nohohohoho!” Noya squealed as the taller second-year pushed him down onto the couch, fingers deep in his ribs. The libero kicked and squirmed, but Tanaka only laughed and dodged out of the way.

“I knew it! I knew you had to be ticklish!”

Moments before they’d been playing video games, during which Noya’s character had – for the tenth time in a row – beaten Tanaka’s. Frustrated but still feeling playful, Tanaka did the first thing that came to mind, which was tickle his smaller friend into submission since he couldn’t beat him in virtual combat. He’d been hoping the libero was actually ticklish (it would have been even more humiliating if he wasn’t), but now he was pleasantly surprised to find that his cool little friend was not only ticklish, but extremely so.

Noya tossed his head back and shrieked. “TANAKAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!”

“Oh? Did I find a good spot? Huh, Noya? Did I?” Tanaka giggled along with his friend, kneading his thumbs into his bottom ribs while using the rest of his fingers to curl into the backs of them. It seemed to be a deadly combination for the libero, whose laughter had turned screechy and wild as he bucked and kicked.

“STAHAHAHAHAHAHAP IT!! S-SOHOHOHOHOHORE LOHOHOHOHOSER!! LET ME GO – TANAKA YOU JEHEHEHEHEHEHERK!!”

“Keep calling me names, Noya!” Tanaka smirked. “See how well that goes for you.”

“YOU’RE JUHUHUHUHUST MAD I KEHEHEHEHEHEEP BEATING YOHOHOHOU!!”

“Yes, good. Taunt me more, why don’t you?”

Noya’s face was turning red and he was desperately gasping for air at this point. Finally he tapped weakly on Tanaka’s arms. “OKAY, I GIHIHIHIHIHIVE!! LET ME GOHOHOHO!! PLEHEHEHEASE!!”

Grinning, Tanaka stopped his attack, sitting back with a satisfied smirk. “Heh. Knew you had to be at least a little ticklish, Noya! Good to know for the next time you start kicking my virtual butt – h-hey, what are you—? Nohohohohohoya!”

Noya latched onto Tanaka’s sides and dug in deep. He chuckled wickedly even as he panted, still recovering from his own assault. “I’ll show you what happens when you mess with me, Ryu!”

69) Lee Kenma, Lers Nekoma Teammates

“Come on, Kenma,” Kuroo groaned, looking over the top of the camera. “Just a little smile.”

“I can’t smile on command.”

The team captain sighed. He was trying to set up the camera to take a picture after ten seconds so he could run and join the others for their team photo of the year, but he wasn’t going to do it until Kenma agreed to at least try and smile.

“Don’t worry, captain,” Lev replied, reaching around from where he stood in the back to wiggle a finger in Kenma’s side. “We can get him to smile one way or another.”

Kenma tried to scramble away, but in seconds a few others closest to him had joined in, grabbing his limbs and tickling his sides, ribs, and thighs, making him burst into giggles whether he wanted to or not.

Kuroo smiled. “Good idea! Just let us know when you’re ready to smile on your own, Kenma.”

“Stohohohohop it!” Kenma squealed, eyes squeezed shut and lips turned up in a huge grin he couldn’t control. “No fahahahahair! Don’t tihihihihickle me!”

His teammates teased him playfully, one after the other.

“Come on, smile for us!”

“Smile for the cameraaaa~”

“You know you want to!”

“Tickle, tickle, tickle!”

Finally, with a squeal, the setter cried, “Okahahahahay, fine! Fine, I’ll smihihihihile!”

Kuroo quickly fussed with the camera settings, then pressed a button and hurried to stand at the end of the group to pose for their official team photo. He didn’t look at Kenma before the flash went off, but once it did, he practically lunged for his smaller friend and yelled, “Get him!”

Once again Kemna was sent into fits of cackling laughter as his entire team ganged up on him at once, making him shriek and giggle as the camera continued to click quietly in the background, taking extra photos of his beaming smile that Kuroo would treasure for many years to come.

70) Lee Suga, Ler Daichi

“It’s just one little feather! It can’t tickle that bad,” Daichi teased, grinning down at Suga as he lay helplessly pinned to the floor, a feather from one of their gym’s dusters twirling in his belly button.

Suga’s face was already red, hysterical giggles spilling from his mouth as he squirmed and pleaded. “Thahahahahahat’s not for yohohohohou to sahahahahahay! It tihihihihihihickles a lot! D-Dahahahaichi, plehehehehease!”

“Really? Just this one tiny, super soft feather tickles you that bad?” The team captain smirked. “What would happen if I used the whole duster, then?”

Suga’s eyes went wide. “Dohohohohohon’t!”

“Why not?~”

The silver-haired setter whimpered, arching his back when Daichi flipped the feather over so the slightly harder bit was digging into his most ticklish spot instead. It seemed to send shockwaves through him, as he jerked and shook his head and squealed, growing steadily desperate.

“Dahahahahahai! Plehehehehehehease!” Suga cried. He gasped in a grateful breath of air when the feather finally disappeared, only for it to be replaced with his captain’s finger instead. He let out a shriek and exploded with laughter. “NAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! DAHAHAHAHAHAICHI, NO MOHOHOHOHOHOHORE!! PLEHEHEHEHEHEASE, I CAHAHAHAHAN’T!!”

“I love how this tiny little spot gets you hyena laughing in an instant,” Daichi chuckled. Sure enough, seconds later Suga’s infamous hyena cackles began to fill the air, amusing the tickler and embarrassing the ticklee. “There it is! It’s so much fun to make you laugh like this, Kou.”

“STAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAP!!” Suga begged, going insane from the persistent tickling of his death spot. “PLEHEHEHEHEHEASE, I’LL DO ANYTHIHIHIHIHIHING!!”

Sensing he was nearing a limit, Daichi finally let up, skittering his fingers teasingly over the soft flesh of his setter’s belly and sides before finally letting him up again with a grin. “Have fun, bud?”

Suga punched him in the shoulder, and they both laughed.

#fanfiction #tickle fic #tickle drabbles #compilation #quick prompts #sentence starters #coffee shots #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#hq

91 notes · View notes

utilitycaster · 5 years ago

Text

Session Zero: why tho

So here’s my take on why one does a session zero, since it’s not universal (but you should do it for a long term campaign unless you know your players super well already)

One part is to get some logistical stuff out of the way - when to meet and how often, virtual meeting tools if applicable (hint: currently applicable), if anyone needs to borrow the books/get a PDF copy, and so on. But that could have been an email. Why a session?

1. Figure out what your players want.

I don’t think this is a very spicy take but it might be new to some people; not all players are down for “hey here’s my cool campaign idea meet me at 2 pm on Saturday, bring dice”. The DM is not the storyteller. Or rather, you’re not the only storyteller. If you don’t want the players to break your cool premise, write a novel, but if you want to build something together, have a session zero. That doesn’t mean you can’t put in some restrictions, and you shouldn’t run something you’re not excited about because the DM is going to be working hard, but this is a shared world and your players will be more invested if it’s theirs, too. Do they want dungeon crawling? monster hunting? political intrigue?

This is also a good time to cover no-go topics (triggers or just things people don’t vibe with) and things people really want (sometimes someone really wants there to be a dungeon. or a dragon), and to talk about structure. Do you want a sort of sitcom structure of “problem arises at beginning of session, is resolved by end” or do you want something more overarching, or a mix? All these approaches are valid, so it’s a matter of being on the same page.

2. Party balance and also a note on what you want.

I am opposed on a philosophical level to that tweet about how an a party of all tiefling bards is not unrealistic because it misses the point to the extreme. It’s not unrealistic for a friend group to share a lot of similarities. A D&D party, however is not a friend group. It becomes a friend group, and even a family, but it starts as a group of people with some kind of shared motivation, which may be as tenuous as “a troll attacked the tavern we were all in”. It’s less a friend group and more putting a heist team together (either on purpose or by accident); the uniting feature is not “we’re all the hacker” because that would be a really bad heist.

What I’m saying is balance is subjective, and the DM is allowed to say “that won’t work.” Don’t force anyone to play something they hate, and give people room to play a character they’re enthusiastic about, but if everyone’s first idea is a rogue and that’s not the premise you want to run, you don’t have to. And also, from limited experienced I’ve found that most people either are open to suggestion because they don’t have a specific character in mind and just meant that rogue might be cool, or on the flip side have like ten PCs they’re itching to run and will happily switch to a different one.

3. Other restrictions

This can be practical/mechanical (I asked players to run any unearthed arcana subclasses past me before committing in case they seem super broken), making the DM’s job easier (I asked for no evil characters on the grounds that I don’t know if I can run a mixed evil and good party yet), or just personal preference within reason. I decided to let the players choose their deities if applicable, but I am not going to have all several-hundred deities listed in the D&D published material play major roles so I figure those who are linked to a god can pick theirs and then I’ll come up with a smaller pantheon; someone else might have an idea in mind (eg: the Norse gods) and tell their players they need to pick from that list.

4. Come up with the premise/setting

Once you have some idea of what the players want, there’s your premise.

Things players had brought up: two expressed interest in clerics or multiclassing into cleric. One couldn’t make it but had floated a few suggestions including a rogue. One had an idea for a druid, and one is relatively new to D&D and wasn’t sure. We also talked about settings; I expressed my concerns about running a modern setting but said gaslamp fantasy works okay, and people were generally into something other than Generic High Medieval. Between all of that we settled on a world in the early stages of an industrial revolution that the druid opposes, and full of the social upheavals this kind of economic change causes (it makes the noble background super interesting; it provides some hooks for the religious establishment to get involved; it opens up a lot of room for social encounters which people stressed they wanted a lot of rather than Kill These Rats, You Murderhobo). That’s about all I have now; once the players have their backstory I’ll flesh it out more.

------------------------------------

Obviously you can do what you want, but I will say for session zero a lot of internet advice seemed to trend towards this weird combination of “tell your characters your setting...and then let them create whatever characters they want with no input from each other” when the opposite approach makes way more sense to me!

It’s actually funny: the only reasonably fleshed out campaign premise I’ve ever come up with was a world that had been on the brink of a major industrial revolution that was foiled by unknown seemingly extraplanar forces, went into a relative dark age, and is slowly emerging a few hundred years later and the campaign is to figure out what happened and prevent a relapse into the dark ages (definitely influenced by me taking a walk in a public green space while thinking about D&D and seeing a bunch of lampposts overgrown with vines; probably influenced by my general love of planar stuff and The Vorkosigan Saga and some other sci fi works). Based on what my players were interested in...they might not have enjoyed that, and it’s also great because I get to see the opposite perspective of the players perhaps being the ones doing the foiling, and why they do it! It’s really exciting and it’s going to push me in an interesting way. I had previously toyed with just trying to write stories set in that campaign premise universe, and this will again force me to see multiple perspectives.

#my dm guide #session zero #d&d #dungeons & dragons #my hot take on that tiefling bard line is you do know you can just like. make a gay character?#like a tiefling bard is not inherently more gay than a half-orc fighter

18 notes · View notes

chibachitv · 4 years ago

Text

Lunar Artifacts - Devlog (1)

I originally wanted to set out remaking Lunar Artifacts by making another bullet hell game (thank you Touhou 8 ~ Imperishable Night for the original drive to make a bullet hell!), just expanding on the story of the game I did so many years ago. However, recently I’ve had an itch to make some sort of dungeon crawling, randomly generated, item-collecting, rogue-lite-styled game still bound by a set in stone story. So, I think I’ve found my inspiration!

Story

Based on the Japanese folklore, and contender for one of the first (proto) sci-fi stories in the world, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (竹取物語, taketori monogatari) lays out the story of Princess Kaguya and her life on Earth, array of suitors begging for her hand in marriage, their quests to complete her impossible tasks, and finally her eventual return to the Moon.

In my retelling of the story, I’m either considering having another suitor (the player) being placed in the same time frame, or having the player introduced years and years later, finishing the task, and needing to go to the Moon to meet Princess Kaguya herself.

Characters

Dot (Player)

Young adult woman infatuated with Princess Kaguya. Thinks clearly she turned down all the male suitors because of lack of interest.

Strong, independent, loves alcohol. Think like Disenchantment’s Princess Tiabeanie but... somehow different. Huh. I’ll work on that. I had the idea of Dot before I saw the show, but now typing this out I realize they could be sisters. I’ll flesh out Dot a little more! Also taking inspiration from Aqua, because she's perfect.

Princess Kaguya

Lesbian.

The 5 Suitors.

I want to include them as either possible boss fights? Or maybe if I have this set at a later time, the ghosts of one or two could serve as a warning for upcoming areas, or they themselves could be the boss fights! I’ll figure it out.

Progress

So far, I haven’t got a ton made, but I do have the GUI almost working! I’ve got a row of abilities at the bottom that are interchangeable. Clicking on them, if they link to a spell with a cast time, it’ll show a progress bar. Also, have the GUI ready to show Dot’s remaining lives, current health, and sobriety level. (I figured making a mana system but making it alcohol-based where you can readily replenish it with drinks might be fun! Who knows!)

The next step is going to be making a variety of basic spells and abilities + trying to make some sort of tutorial level / make level one. Wish me luck! 🙂

#devlog #game development #gamedev #unity3d #unity2d #programming #madewithunity

1 note · View note

fridge-reviews · 5 years ago

Text

StarCrawlers

Developer: Juggernaut Games Publisher: Juggernaut Games Rrp: £14.99 (Steam) Released: 23rd May 2017 Available on: Steam Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard Approximate game length: 40 Hours plus Being a Crawler isn't the easiest job in the world, or the safest, or the most well paid... actually its a pretty crappy job, but if there is one thing that makes up for it all its that you are the one who decides what jobs to take and when. It's freedom, of a sort. Sadly you'll always be dancing to one corporations tune or another but at least this way you can choose the track and the dance. Take solace in that when you are wiping alien guts off your armour for the fourth time today. In StarCrawlers you play as a Crawler. What's a Crawler? You may ask. Well a Crawler is someone who takes on jobs that corporations, groups and companies don't want to be officially tied to, the dirty work such as exploring abandoned spacecraft or corporate espionage. Typically they're freelance adhering to no singular master, although some have got favourites. In this game, you assemble a team of Crawlers to take on jobs and eke out a living. However as the game progresses its clear that your actions are having consequences far beyond what you imagined.

If any of what I wrote there appealed then this may be just that game for you. StarCrawlers is a 3D dungeon crawler with a sci-fi setting, however it's not just the theme that set this game apart from most others in the genre. But we should probably begin at the start, specifically with the character creation process. This game starts this by asking you what class you would like to play as, you'll be given seven to choose from and each will have a small write up that will inform you what can of weapons, armour and shields you can equip. There's also a handy button that will allow you to view what abilities you can obtain as you level up. Next comes your background, this is how you grew up. You get three choices which themselves are dictated by what class you chose and these will allow for certain dialog options to appear during special events in the game. After this comes the 'adulthood' section, this part handles what you did when you grew up, once again there are three choices but each choice will improve two stats that are listed at the bottom of each selection. Lastly, you have the 'Now' section. This is the most recent part of your history, this influences your starting reputation with certain companies, how much money you have and what equipment you start with. As you can see it's quite in depth, however if you're expecting to alter your characters look in any way I'm afraid your out of luck there.

Unlike most dungeon crawlers such Legend of Grimrock and Vaporum where you are dropped into a dungeon and have to work your way out, this one is mission based and has a hub screen where you can rest, re-equip, and take on new jobs. Most jobs will increase your reputation with a faction and decrease it with another. Actions you perform while on a crawl (the in game term for a job) also affect your standing with various factions. Such as stealing classified intel while on a job and selling it later will lower your standing with whomever you are stealing from but also increase it with whomever you're selling it to. Some jobs won't have a negative impact on another company, sometimes you get hired to investigate a mine owned by the company that's hired you. However if you steal from that company it will still lower their opinion of you. Not all jobs actually involve going on a crawl, some jobs specifically take place in a virtual space, in these types of jobs you remain anonymous from your target until your 'masking' points run out. Once they are gone you are immediately removed from the job and your reputation takes a hit. Generally the only thing that can lower your 'masking' points is failing on a percentage option, however some of the defensive programs aim specifically at your masking points. These hacking jobs actually function very similarly to the combat while on a crawl except that between each combat you choose which 'node' to move to next.

Since I mentioned the combat I suppose I should talk about it here. StarCrawlers works very differently from most dungeon crawlers in that when you encounter an enemy you are take to a different screen. When in this screen you find that this game uses a active time battle system similar to Child of Light or Final Fantasy VII (the 1997 one). It should be mentioned though that for some reason the game would stutter for a brief period after combat. Earlier I mentioned that both factions and reputation play a rather important role in this game. There are over twenty different corporations, companies and groups that you will be attempting to court. Doing a job for one will almost always affect your standing with another (usually negatively). This in turn affects the game as these companies can inexplicably change how your weapons and armour perform. If you're in good standing with a weapons manufacturer then those weapons will perform better. This also means that if a mission is set somewhere owned by a company or group you've pissed off then it will be a bit harder to accomplish.

The people you have on your team will make a difference in what you find and how you can work your way through the level as well as influencing dialog options that appear. For example if a door is locked perhaps the hacker can open it by accessing a nearby panel, or the soldier could just bash it down. It has to be mentioned though that the levels are procedurally generated, which sadly can make some levels feel very cut and paste, especially the non-story related missions. I personally didn't find that to be such a problem but I couldn't help notice that the story related missions generally tended to be a bit more imaginative with how rooms were laid out or what was in them.

Speaking of the story, I rather liked what the developers have done with this game. The narrative is full of twists and turns that those of us who have watched way too many sci-fi shows and movies can see coming. However that doesn't make them any less fun plus in this case I had a hand in how this all plays out because depending on which corporations you side with different events will occur. I have to say I've really enjoyed my time with this game, the difficulty curve is a bit on the brutal side but since you can choose your own jobs you can make sure to grind with easier missions first. It's clear that the creators of this game are really into their sci-fi, the whole game is riddled with little references either in the environment or in dialog. If this appeals to you perhaps try; Legend of Grimrock Vaporum Shadowrun

#StarCrawlers #Juggernaut Games #dungeon crawler #sci-fi #science fiction #video games #video game #video gaming #game review #game reviews #games review #games reviews #indie #independent #independant #indie games

2 notes · View notes

dommesticpet · 6 years ago

Text

La Danse Macabre

As always I make sure to send a message to Echo overnight when she’s sleeping to know I love her. This is what she got Sunday morning. This is the part of a D/s dynamic that you don’t hear very much - the spooky puns part. It’s very important. We’ve been watching the new Creepshow streaming show, and it dawned on me that I’m pretty sure neither of us have actually seen many or possibly any of the original Tales from the Crypt TV show. We’re going to have to do something about that. I’m... dying to see it. I’ll need to dig up the DVDs somewhere. Missing it was a... grave mistake. I choked on my water, I can’t stop.... coffin. OK enough of that. Creepshow doesn’t have any puns. Just a puppet that laughs.

The DommesticPet world tour continues today, so this will probably go live while I am unable to see or read any replies to it. I think it’s my last one of the year, but I’ve been wrong before. I won’t be at MindQuake which is a pity because its classes look to be pretty diverse. The non-hypnosis classes look significantly more varied and interesting (as in, I am largely uneducated in this topics) than what our local dungeon has been doing for most of the year. If you go, let me know how it turns out please.

Sunday morning was fun. “You should have been there,” is what I would say if I didn’t want the entire morning to myself. I was trying to sleep and Echo decides to crawl back into bed and not wake all of me up. Just a bit. After that, we took a few minutes and she set up the Nova Pro 100. She tried a new setting which phased back and forth a bit, and synced up with some weird beats. Echo asked if they were more effective than usual, and I’m not sure - some times I can’t really remember much about the beeps or lights, this time I have a pretty good sense of the sounds in the headphones, the lack of light, and absolutely no idea what it was she was telling me to do. I can’t really describe the main audio other than it was a different-than-usual sound which I later had found out was supposedly designed to be “entertaining” and “best played with sci-fi type music.” We’ve found another use for the setting, thank you kindly.

Afterward we, uh, did what we do, and we had a good time. I spent a chunk of the experience as a mostly spaced-out not-entirely-aware toy, and I think she enjoyed it based on the noises I can remember. I think that’s sufficient. I did OK.

We were also late to lunch, which is how you know it went well. Halloween is this week so I assume I’m going to see a sack of candy dropped off on the counter at some point. I am not a huge candy person, but the bits and pieces that showed up I’ve tried. I would liken this to like going to a lot of the random kink classes we saw a year or two ago. “Hey this is interesting.” “Do you want more of it?” “Not really, but it was awesome to see.” Somehow I thought Whoppers and Milk Duds were the same thing for more than a couple of decades, and it turns out they are not.

#dommestic life #hypnosis #nova pro 100 #the more you know

2 notes · View notes

zombiescantfly · 6 years ago

Text

Words About Games: Unreal (Epic Megagames, 1998)

Unreal Tournament 2004 is my favorite videogame ever. It's always a close match between it and the first Unreal Tournament, but 2k4 always manages to win out, if just barely. However, I am of the firm, unyielding belief that UT2004, when played with both the ‘No Adrenaline’ and ‘UT Classic’ mutators, is far and away the best multiplayer fps experience anyone could ever ask for. We'll get into that a bit later, because it's time for a bit of an explanation.

Unreal Tournament 2004 turns 15 this year, and I wanted to do something special to celebrate the release of a game I have such an unreasonably high appreciation for. Up until the day of its official release 15 years ago, I'm going to be putting out one of my infrequent essays on the games in the series I have experience with, starting now with 1998’s Unreal. I'll warn you, this one gets a bit rambly, but if you reach the end and still want more, take a look at the cooperative non-coop playthrough I did with a friend, where we each played a singleplayer campaign while discussing our experiences and thoughts on all aspects of the game.

But first, a little background.

I was born in 1992. Wolfenstein 3D, the game commonly attributed as the progenitor of the entire FPS genre (yes I know about Maze and Battlezone and all the various first-person dungeon crawlers) was released three months later. This makes me just barely older than the modern first -person shooter.

My dad has worked in the business end of the tech industry since the 80s. As a result, he was always very close to the then-rising PC gaming scene, and even dabbled in game dev for a few years. His position in various companies made him a very early adopter of the ‘home pc,’ something still rare up until like the mid 90s, seriously. He had free reign to take old hardware his workplace was replacing or to buy it for cheap, and by the time I was old enough to start forming memories that actually stuck around, there were two computers in the house.

In 1994, id Software released Doom 2, and my dad bought a copy. Thus began the long tradition of young me standing behind his chair to watch whatever he was playing, starting with Doom 2 LAN deathmatch with my older brother, progressing to his playthrough of Quake 1 and 2, and the first stop in this extended flashback, Quake 2’s online deathmatch.

Young me knew what a marvel online deathmatch was, because my dad told me. It's also just kind of a hard concept for a 5 year old to grasp, especially back then before the internet was in the public consciousness. Nowadays I doubt there's any lack of understanding, and that's cool.

(And yes, I know Q1 had online play but I never managed to catch any of it. Both my dad and brother liked its singleplayer more.)

So where does Unreal come in? Actually, not until about 2009. Bear with me.

In 2000, when I was 8 years old, my dad and brother had gone to spend the day at a local tech trade show. This was a common enough occurrence since we lived less than an hour away from Philly and that attracted a lot of businessy types. They'd usually come back with a new game or two, and I'd have something new to watch over one of their shoulders.

That day, my brother brought this home.

And said to me, “Hey, you should try this one out. It's from Epic.”

Or at least something to that effect.

Now, at this point in my life, I wasn't as avid a videogame connoisseur. The first game I ever truly felt grab me was Starcraft, which I played way more than I probably should have. But also at that time was a growing collection of titles from Epic Megagames. Epic Pinball is one of the first things I remember playing by myself, followed by Jazz Jackrabbit 2 and One Must Fall: 2097.

So I'd been with Epic for a while at that point.

So, Unreal Tournament. Spoilers for the next post, but I loved it, and I still love it. It capped off my experiences with shooters from the mid to late 90s with the first taste I was allowed myself, no longer stolen from over a shoulder while hoping my mother wouldn't choose then to come down the stairs and yell at me for watching and at my dad for letting me. It gave me a love for arena shooters, for the chunky, harshly and gaudily lit 3d graphics, for imaginative weapons, for tightly designed maps, and for a special sort of way to deliver a story buried in map and item descriptions…

But I'd never played Unreal.

Once, at a thrift store, I found a big-box copy of Unreal Gold, still in the shrink wrap, for five bucks. “Oh, I think your dad has that one,” my mother said, turning me away from it.

He did not.

So in 2009, I finally bought Unreal for myself off Steam and promptly returned to the chunky 3d I had probably just been seeing a day prior because I put UT99 on my school laptop.

Enough digressions, let's finally move into it.

Unreal is a strange game, and more than a little unlike its contemporaries. See, from 1993 to 1998, shooters were kind of a one-note experience. You, bad guys, big maps, many guns. From Doom to Quake to Heretic to Blood to Rise of the Triad to Shadow Warrior to Duke Nukem to Dark Forces to anything else you could find in a magazine for mail-order, the shooter was a pretty standard experience. Sure, this or that game had this or that thing that set it apart, some were more advanced than others for the time, but the general idea never really wavered: Click on men from point A to B until you find all the keys and reach the exit.

That gameplay loop made the genre successful, and it's not exactly different now. Keys could be anything, of course. They were literal keys, sometimes they were gas for a generator, now they're mostly cutscene triggers, but the point is that you must locate them to progress. Along the way, there wasn't much other than bloody slaughter to distract you, and that was fine.

It was fine. For those 5 years.

Then, in 1998, a very special sort of game came out that changed the way not just shooters but videogames in general were presented. A game that made expectations higher, products examined more critically. I'm talking, of course, about Half-Life.

On November 19, 1998, Half-Life released and literally changed the course of game development. It offered players a brilliantly constructed narrative delivered naturally by characters speaking in the moment rather than the then-common blocks of text before or after a level. The setting, the Black Mesa research facility, was a meticulously planned space made to feel like a real location and not a jumble of corridors whose first concerns were how many monsters could fit in them. Structured plot points replaced red and blue keycards, well-designed enemy encounters replaced rooms full of cannon fodder, and a new mentality replaced the old.

Which is a shame, because Unreal did something different, too.

Released earlier the same year on May 22, Unreal was the end result of a project always too ambitious for the four years it bounced around development. Conceived first as a medieval RPG of sorts, Unreal eventually morphed into a sci-fi shooter set amid echoes of that original idea.

In Unreal, there is no opening cutscene. There is no opening text crawl or long train ride to prepare you. The title screen is a looping fly-through of a location in the game made to show off various engine effects like reflective surfaces, particle emitters, real-time colored lighting, animated skyboxes, and volumetric fog. Selecting New Game sends you to a loading screen where you quickly fade in from black, staring at the wrecked interior of . . . somewhere. You start low on health and walled in on three sides. As you step forward towards the only path available, a pleasant, computery voice calls out “Prisoner 849 escaping.”

You are Prisoner 849, you are on a prison ship, and it has crashed. This is all evident within the first few seconds of the game. As you progress through the first level, you can see half-broken displays showing the sudden path the ship took, read status logs of engines and ship components, and even get a little taste of some daily life among the prisoners and crew alike. Yes, Unreal has text logs, but they're the good kind, used to inform the world rather than exposit at the player.

Very quickly you learn that something else is aboard the ship. Growls and snarls appear in the distance and screams of terror can be heard through the walls. Every so often, the same calm robot voice calls out another number, another prisoner escaping. This all tells us a good deal of the game’s primary theme. You're just someone.

You are Prisoner 849. You are not the captain of the ship, you are not the high profile super prisoner, you are not a space marine guarding the ship. You are Prisoner 849, one of many to board the Vortex Rikers, and one of many to leave.

There are no friendly human NPCs in the game. Two crewmembers aboard the ship live long enough for you to get close, but one bleeds out as you approach him and the other is slaughtered behind a door stuck partway open so that you can only see a mysterious pair of legs sprint away amid a shower of gore. Shortly after, you catch a fleeting glimpse of a strange figure at the other end of a ventilation shaft, obscured by fog.

Unreal slowrolls its opening. It's reminiscent of Quake 2’s opening level, though with no combat. You're free to wander the small area of the ship, reading various inconsequential text logs and looking at various readouts. Words like “unknown moon” and “sudden course alterations” pop up, telling - but not explicitly - that coming to wherever this is was unintended.

Eventually you leave, exiting through an emergency hatch somewhere on the side of the ship. A few steps forward brings you to a somewhat common looking grass expanse, not too unheard of at the time. You're closer to the ship’s bow, and a short walk around it and through the furrow it plowed in the ground leads to a small rise that still obscures the level until depositing you at just the right angle.

You stand close to the lip of a tall cliff overlooking a shimmering lake. On the other side, a waterfall crashes over the cliff. Trees dot the landscape, birds fly overhead, and small critters scurry away from you.

In truth, it looks more than a bit quaint today, but in 1998 it was without equal. Unreal is a game that put an intense focus on its world, Na Pali. This is a world inhabited for centuries or even millennia by the Nali, a race of four-armed pacifist aliens with a little bit of magic to their claim. Some unknown time before you begin playing, another race known as the Skaarj arrive to exploit the planet for a resource called Tarydium, enslaving the Nali in the process.

Here's where another game might set you up as the Big Badass Hero. You, the lone survivor of this crash; them, the downtrodden alien race; the other them, the evil tyrants. But Unreal never does that, because you're just someone.

Remember hearing those other prisoners escaping? More did even before you woke up. There's a small collection of Nali huts not far from the crash site where you can find the corpses of a few other prisoners and crewmembers from the Rikers next to some healing pickups - the Nali tried to care for them. Small bits of visual storytelling like that appear all throughout the game coupled with its smart use of text logs, and it starts strong and stays strong. A quick swim through a lake infested with carnivorous fish can lead you to a small secret where two dead escapees can be found next to a half-eaten fish. Further in, a dead human sits in a corner of a room, a dead Nali in the center, a flak cannon pickup on top of the latter showing their frantic last stand as the Nali abandons its pacifistic ways to protect its companion. Much later, you’re in a Skaarj warehouse where you can see stacks of boxes bearing the same logo from the Vortex Rikers - as you’ve been doing your thing, the Skaarj have gone back and started looting the ship.

Unreal is a game where things have been happening before you the player show up, and continue to happen while you the player are playing. The plot does not start with you and it does not wait for you. You’re just someone who’s been thrown into this whole situation as it unfolds, from a centuries-old conflict on Na Pali itself to the more immediate conflict of the crashed Vortex Rikers and what happened to its crew. Around almost every corner is another story just like yours, and the fact that we’re playing Prisoner 849 and not Prisoner 521 or Ensign Burt Masterson or whoever else feels like a roll of the dice.

Half-Life gets a lot of praise for finally putting the player behind just a regular guy. Gordon Freeman has been made to become something of videogaming’s first everyman in the way that John McClane of Die Hard ushered in the everyman action hero. But honestly, Half-Life wouldn’t happen without Gordon. A scientist tells you right away that they’ve been waiting for you so they could start the test. Without Gordon Freeman, the plot would never have progressed, and that makes it distinct from Unreal. Half-Life’s various expansions actually do this better; Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and Decay all put you in control of someone who is distinctly more Just Someone than Gordon Freeman.

But Unreal, man, Unreal just does it so well. Occupied Na Pali is a world that does not care about you as a singular entity. The Skaarj don’t turn and attack you because you’re The Player On A Mission, they attack you because you’re some dumb human who goes places they’re not supposed to and shoots all their friends (yes, Skaarj have friends, read the text logs). Hell, your mission isn’t even anything particularly grand! From the beginning, nobody tells you to do anything, you just wander out of the ship and start trying to find a way to leave. Obviously from a game standpoint, there’s always going to be a level start and a level end, and you will go towards the end because it’s a videogame, but in the context of that game, the story is “just find a way out.”

There is a thread you pick up on early, though it might be a bit strange and requires some minor explaining here real quick: in Unreal, you have the option when starting a new game to choose your player model. You can see yourself a few times throughout the game - Unreal has reflective surfaces in a few spots - so it’s not totally useless. By default, Prisoner 849 is a woman. Canonically, Prisoner 849 is a woman.

Early on, past the first level, you enter an ancient Nali temple, ruined and defaced by the Skaarj over the years, but not without its still-devout followers. It’s here that you get the first hints of what seems like it might be a story more appropriate for a 90s shooter. You see a carving on a wall that talks about “the Princess from the Stars” coming to deliver retribution to “the Demons from the Sky.” Now, if you’ve changed your player model to male, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But obviously the intent is to key you the player into the mentality that “oh, I’m some prophesied Chosen One, right?” Yes and no. We'll get back to it.

See, about a third of the way into the game you come across another crashed human ship, the ISV Kran. The Kran, gameplay-wise, is a mixed bag of levels ranging from good to meh, the worst of it stemming from symmetrical layouts and a lack of texture variety. But in the narrative as it unfolds, the Kran is very important.

So far, you've passed through a dozen unique and varied environments ranging from the cliffs at the start to the ancient temple, to a Tarydium mine near a small village, a high-tech processing plant nearby, and even an old coliseum or sports arena converted by the Skaarj into a torture chamber. The Kran is your first look at anything human-built since leaving the Rikers.

I'm not going to go through the game bit by bit, but the leadup to the Kran is important. Throughout that first third of the game, you find escaped crew and prisoners from the Vortex Rikers fairly frequently. The events of the game are happening without you, and things aren't going well.

Once inside the Kran, things change a little. Amid the text logs of status readouts and final words before the Skaarj broke in, there's a tiny narrative being constructed about a crewmember by the name of Kira. Kira had managed to do much of what you have - she's armed herself and set off in search of a way off Na Pali with a small group of other crew, some of who you find, once again already dead. One of Unreal’s longest maps comes in around this point, and Kira is a large focus. She was captured, made contact with a group of Nali also held prisoner in the temple (lots of temples in Unreal, the Nali are very religious), mounted her escape, and had to leave her last remaining crewmember behind, his final log suggesting she headed for something she heard was held in the nearby belltower…

This small aside is a brilliant piece of the game, it really is. When I said there was another game or another story behind every corner, I meant it. Kira’s journey from the Kran to Bluff Eversmoking is a full story on its own, and it lends some interesting insight towards a lot of the various prophecies and Nali beliefs you've run into along the way. From the Kran to the Bluff, you find more mentions of the Messiah, of the Sky Princess. You, right? Right?

Or was it Kira?

Kira followed the same path you did. Less of it, sure, but she fought the Skaarj infesting sacred Nali temples. She, an alien warrior, cleansed their holy places of demons who had enslaved them. A small group of Nali risked their own lives to break her out when she was captured, based only on their horror that she would be executed.

This is why keeping 849 as the default lady playermodel is important. The text logs were written with that in mind in order to muddle things. Are you the Messiah? Is Kira? Presumably both of you just want to go home, and maybe falling into a vaguely defined prophecy with incredibly generous qualifications (not Nali or Skaarj, girl, can kill Skaarj) was just an accident.

It certainly seems that way, because when you finally find Kira, she's dead. Your hopes of finding another living human, the Nali’s hopes in an alien warrior, lie dead on the ground with an empty pistol beside her.

Unreal, and Na Pali within it, does not care about Prisoner 849. The story does not revolve around you nor does it even stop to make room for you. Any one of those human bodies you pass throughout the entire game was another escapee. Between the Vortex Rikers and the Kran, you follow a trail of bodies almost up until the end of the game. Except for a very small stretch at the end, someone has beaten you to where you are. But you go further. You encounter things no human has. You escape Na Pali.

Eventually.

If it sounds like I'm taking Unreal a bit too seriously, it's because I most likely am. I admit that. But Unreal just creates such a unique atmosphere among games that I can't help it. Videogames are inherently power fantasies, and most facilitate this by making you play as someone obviously powerful. BJ Blazinsky. Doomguy. Lo Wang. Duke Nukem. A jedi. Even in Call of Duty, where you often just play as some grunt, you get to be the special grunt who sees all the coolest stuff first. And yes, again, even Half-Life doesn't start without you. Gordon becomes mythologized even in the first game, to say nothing of Half-Life 2. In Unreal, there's nobody to put you on a pedestal. Na Pali has its own problems and you're just plopped down in the middle of them while trying to solve your own. It isn't your fault that they intersect.

So it shouldn't be that big of a surprise that one of my other favorite games ever is another hero-by-random-circumstance romp through an uncaring world, Dark Souls. If you like the narrative themes Dark Souls has going on, you'll like Unreal, end of story.

Wait, no, not end of story, because all I did was wax philosophical about the theme for like 8 pages. I gotta talk about design now, ‘cause hot damn does my love of Unreal not stop with flowery prose.

The Skaarj are the primary antagonistic force in the game, but they're some kind of powerful empire with other races on their payroll. After escaping the Vortex Rikers, gaping in awe at the waterfall, and spending some time chasing harmless wildlife around the field, the first actual enemy you fight is a Brute.

Brutes are big lumps of meat with two rocket pistols and a permanent scowl. They move slow, they turn slow, and they fire slow. The first one you fight is really close to the exit of an indoor area. What Epic have done here is create an excellent enemy encounter.

Nothing in Unreal has hitscan weapons. Ignore Legend Entertainment’s Return to Na Pali, I'm gonna. That means that everything coming your way can be dodged. Two rocket pistols sounds scary, but you're in an open area and you have the ability to strafe. If you're somehow not comfortable doing that while shooting, that's why the Brute’s so big, he's hard to miss.

From there, you get exposed to the tentacle and the Razorfly. The Tentacle is essentially a stationary, ceiling-mounted autoturret that fires a single projectile at you every half second or so, and the Razorfly is a big bug that hits you with melee attacks. Neither are particularly challenging, but all three so far get you ready for your first encounter with a Skaarj.

You're in a small facility and have just shut off a force field. Coming back through the hallway, bars suddenly slam out from the wall, blocking your progress. The music fades out. And one by one, the lights turn off until you're sitting in pure darkness. You get a few seconds to sweat before the music kicks back in, the wall beside you slides open, flashing red emergency lights appear, and a large shape leaps out at you.

The first encounter with a Skaarj is cramped and claustrophobic, and intended to have you miss a lot of its capabilities. It runs around, does a forward leaping melee attack, and can shoot little bolts of energy at you. At the time, you only have two weapons: the Automag, a hitscan pistol with a decent fire rate, and the Dispersion Pistol, a projectile energy weapon you can charge up that acts in the same capacity as Doom’s fist or Quake’s axe as a holdout weapon. You'll most likely take out the Skaarj with the Automag because there isn't a way to run out of ammo with it unless you try, so you most likely won't see how this type of enemy reacts to projectiles.

Because, see, Unreal has very smart AI, and the people who made these enemies took great advantage of that fact. The Brutes and Razorflies of the level so far are pretty simple cannon fodder type stuff, they amble around and attack towards you. Once you're away from that first encounter, the Skaarj enemies have a few tricks.

A Skaarj will try to circlestrafe you. If you're using a projectile weapon, a Skaarj will dodge your attacks with a pretty damn high success rate (deviously, the very next weapon you get after the Automag is the Tarydium Stinger, a projectile-based minigun, and you start seeing Skaarj commonly around the same time). If a Skaarj is getting near death and has allies close by, it'll try to run away towards them. Sometimes a Skaarj will fake its death to try to catch you by surprise. It won't ever get back up while you're looking or within a certain range, and you can take the time to see if flies start buzzing around the supposed corpse or just gib it to make sure. A Skaarj will intuitively use cover, as well, thanks to a dead-simple pathfinding mechanism inside the level editor.

A Skaarj is a really cool enemy today, let alone in 1998, half a year before everyone lost their shit over Half-Life’s stilted Marine encounters.

Unreal keeps a pretty steady flow of enemy varieties coming your way, as well. Various types of Skaarj show up, often with ranks padded out by the Krall, another race they employ or enslave, and they have plenty of variety among them as well.

But Na Pali isn't just a collection of levels stuffed full of bad guys to click on. Most levels actually don't have all that many enemies to them, instead relying on strong encounter design over sheer overwhelming odds. . . . Most.

No, Na Pali is a world, and Unreal wants you to believe that. The game bounces you between open outdoor areas and various structures at a healthy pace, and it always manages to give it all a fresh coat of paint. Harmless critters hop around or soar high above, schools of fish scatter when you explore a lake, beasts of burden grumble at you as you charge past their pens, flak cannon in hand. And better yet, enemies aren't often just waiting around for you to show up. They have things to do or time to waste, and may very well be doing that when you come across them. In areas controlled by the Skaarj, you can often see them tapping away at computers or just staring out a window before you alert them, and Krall mercenaries are fond of drinking or playing dice. Brutes amble around on patrol patterns, stopping every now and then to scratch themselves. The more feral Slith enemies found near water tend to just be swimming around until they're alerted.

These tiny details make Na Pali feel like a place, and the levels you play through are no different. From the wrecked Vortex Rikers to the various Nali temples to the Kran and even up to the final levels set on the Skaarj mothership, the levels make room for details like bedrooms, kitchens, and even bathrooms in a way that shooters just sort of didn't usually do at that point. Sure, you'd have a bathroom in another game every so often, but it was usually there for a gag or some sort of reference. Unreal makes a concentrated effort to really sell you on these levels, and it works. There's so much variety in the maps that not a lot has a chance to get boring, though sometimes, as I mentioned before, things can get a bit muddy. The map Terraniux and the middle levels of the Kran are a bit less navigationally-friendly than they could have been, but there's nothing as egregious as the later levels of Doom or any of the other maps from various games that are mazes first and gameplay sections second. There are no out-of-place platforming sections or agonizing breaks for switch puzzles. There's just a world as you might find it in real life.

Another strength of Unreal’s level design is that sometimes it just lets you take a break. You might go minutes without seeing an enemy, leaving you free to explore your surroundings. There's even a level that has an entire segment dedicated to calmly floating down a river on a small boat, with no combat at all. It comes after a challenging combat section and acts as a nice little breather with great visuals and fantastic music.

Oh man, Unreal’s music. Never before or again have I heard a more distinct soundtrack in a game. Unreal has its fair share of late-90s electronic tracks, but the majority of its music is a very chill mix of unusual instruments. I know next to nothing about music, so let me just drop some links real quick.

Dusk Horizon

Nali Chant

War Gate

Surfacing

It's such an intriguing mix of styles, and it's all perfectly suited for the environments you hear them in. All of the levels are colored very deliberately, and the music matches the mood that texturing and lighting creates. Coupled with how each track has an ambient and battle section and how it seamlessly slides between them as you enter and leave combat, the levels in Unreal are all a treat to explore, and I really do urge people to look up the soundtrack because it's really just that good.

The music in this game created a precedent of quality that the series kept up easily, and is just more evidence of how committed Epic at the time were to making as immersive and vibrant a world as they could. It's just another part of a beautifully crafted experience that created a game so unlike any other at the time or since.

Unreal is a game that is still incredibly playable today. On a technical level, it's the Unreal Engine so you can pop it onto anything and get it working without any real trouble. The unofficial OldUnreal patch is easy to find, and is just a single .dll file that gets dropped in the system folder. But that's not the only thing playable means. Design philosophies and public reception to various systems and elements of gameplay change over time, and it renders a large number of games either too obtuse or too clunky to really get into. But there are always games that are timeless. Doom is still a treat because the only thing in it is shooting, there's nothing particularly experimental to have been done better over repeated iterations. Unreal is simple in that way, too. Its weapons are varied, unique, and famous. Man, I didn't even get into the weapons, but I'll save that for the Unreal Tournament essay.

My point is, Unreal did a lot, and it did it very well. It and every other game from 1998 was overshadowed by Half-Life, unfortunately, and that became the game to beat. Half-Life isn't the reason we never saw another Unreal in the same vein as the first, but I do think that a desire to be the next Half-Life is why the industry moved to such a narratively-focused philosophy. There was another game three years later that also focused on sprawling outdoor areas mixed with indoor structures, but it didn't have the same lonesome exploration, living world, or details that suggested hundreds of years of mythology. This game would go on to affect the industry just as much or even more than Half-Life, and was in fact Bungie’s Halo.

Halo had cutscenes and voiced NPCs and all the things Half-Life made people want. Halo is another beast, but its success was all but the final nail in the coffin for any hope Unreal had of spawning any imitators. The era of frantic slaughterfests in key-locked mazes was over, and Unreal’s attempt at carving out a spot for contemplative exploration in living worlds was ignored.

That style of game would come back, but not in shooter form. Both Dark Souls and Shadow of Colossus have similar feels to them, and I'm sure there are others out there. Other Team ICO titles, Journey, there have to be others, there are too many videogames for there not to be. But as it stands, Unreal is all but alone, and even now, in this wave of 90s revival indie shooters, they aim more for Doom and Quake. Even Epic would step away from Unreal’s distinctive style with its very next release.

See, Unreal was popular, but at the time, released into an audience high off of Quake 2, those same people wanted to dive into its multiplayer. And when it worked, it was incredible. But it often didn't work. Epic set to fervent work patching it to fix poor netcode and a variety of other issues, but that project turned into something far, far larger, prompting them to release an entirely new game running on an updated version of the Unreal engine. New maps, optimized and redone versions of existing maps, remodeled and rebalanced weapons, new music, new gamemodes, everything.

Unreal Tournament would come out a year later, setting the industry alight in its own ways. We'll take a look at that next month, so until then, take a day or two to play through Unreal. I played it and loved it a decade after its release, and another decade won't have changed much.

#unreal #words about games #review #epic #epic games #fortnite #videogames #unreal retrospective

4 notes · View notes

oldschoolgaming · 7 years ago

Text

Dragonmeet 2018

I find it hard to believe that it’s December all ready but it must be true because I’m just home from Dragonmeet, my last gaming convention of the year!

Dragonmeet has been around for decades in one form or another but this year’s event was only the second I had attended.

I set off early on Saturday morning to collect my mate Darran from Derby. He’s recovering from a broken leg and knowing he normally relies on public transport I thought I could help a fellow GM out. I’m sure navigating the tube in London would be hard work with crutches but it wasn’t completely altruistic; sharing accommodation costs made the trip much more affordable and it was good to have company on the long drive.

We made good time down to Hammersmith. I’d booked the same B&B I used last year which, even with the extra (but very affordable) parking charges worked out cheaper than a room at the convention hotel.

I’d booked to run two games this year. In the morning slot I ran Stephen Newton’s ‘Children Of The Fallen Sun’ for Mutant Crawl Classics RPG

Initially I was unsure the game would run as sign ups were thin on the ground for some of the morning games. I had two confirmed players but picked up more as other games were cancelled and late arrivals drifted in, finishing the adventure with five players at the table.

The game was great fun with some really memorable moments including a near TPK when our Yak manimal fumbled his artifact check on a control panel, blowing the thing up and killing himself and two of the party’s Porcupine men companions!

Some quick thinking and good rolling got the rest of the party back on their feet but it seemed that the party’s very own ‘great disaster’ didn’t put them off prodding and poking the rest of the artifacts. Before long we had a mutant with a freshly acquired set of gills and (despite reasonable warning) another who was reduced to a dehydrated husk and spent the rest of the adventure rolled up in another character’s backpack! It’s a great module and I look forward to running it again soon.

Mutants, Manimals and Humans united!

During a swift lunch break I sat down with a sandwich and a pint of Guiness and was finally able to meet up with with fellow tabletop nerd, twitch streamer and 3D printer geek LaughingBoy who was visiting Dragonmeet for the first time with his son. We’d missed each other at the Expo this year so it was great to catch up!

On the subject of the expo I also caught up with Kalum from the Rolistes podcast who had recorded one of Brendan’s DCC games at the Expo this year. I also had a chat with the non stop ball of energy known as Lloyd Gyan, who works for Modiphius but is also involved with the ‘Games On Demand’ at UK Games Expo It looks like I’ll be running some shorter ‘on demand’ Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, X-Crawl or Mutant Crawl Classics sessions at the Expo next year.

Me & Lloyd

I didn’t take any photos in the trade hall this year but l behaved and was almost on budget, December being and expensive time of year! I picked up physical copies of a couple of bits I’ve already got as PDFs:

The Midderlands is fantasy OSR setting based in the part of the country I reside in, which I picked up from Squarehex’s fantastic stand.

Mothership, an awesome OSR Horror/Sci fi game with simple mechanics and divine artwork and layout. I bought a physical copy mostly because the home printed version I made from the PDF doesn’t do the product justice (or my eyesight any good!)

I also picked up a new Lamentations Of The Flame Princess T Shirt (the Ramones shirt of the RPG hobby?) but made my saving throw against James’ sales pitch and avoided buying any more product for that game - I have a backlog of stuff to run already having overspent at both last year’s Dragonmeet and the UK Games Expo this year.

My afternoon game was Julian Bernick’s ‘Outlive, Outsmart, Outkiill’ a funnel adventure for his Noir/Urban fantasy ‘Nowhere City Nights’ setting for DCC which I reviewed here.

The adventure is a fairly linear dungeon - not a bad thing for a funnel in this judge’s humble opinion. The simple premise is that characters from all walks of modern life (fast food chef, executive, cab drivers and IT worker, stripper and so on) have been kidnapped and are forced to make their way through the trials of the dungeon, whist being constantly taunted and ‘encouraged’ to fight each other by a hidden group of sadistic NPCs.

We had some PvP early in the game resulting in one of the players knocking another of his OWN characters into a spiked pit trap, but the group mostly worked together.

Highlights included an attempt to make an improvised flame thrower from a bottle of vodka and a length of rubber hose; one character aimed the device, another blow the vodka through the tube. As judge I was desperately hoping for a crit or a fumble on that roll, but it was not to be!

The adventure is a good mix of combat, traps and a wicked trapped puzzle encounter that had the remaining characters playing very cautiously.

We had a death toll of just over 50% as we reached the final encounter. I tried my best to encourage PvP by offering a ‘special prize’ (I had a full set of funky dice to give away) but no one took the bait and the players opted to stick together and fight their way out of the dungeon. The final encounter was pretty chaotic and good fun despite me rolling a ‘1′ on the bad guy’s initiative check!

After the game I did another lap of the trade hall, resisting more goodies from The Dice Shop and Atlantis miniatures. (check out their awesome Dwarf sculpts!)

The real downside of a one day convention is how quickly things seem to wrap up in the evening. I thought about trying to get another game going but although the mind and heart were willing the body (and voice!) was weak so I decamped to the bar with friends for more Guinness and an excellent, if expensive, portion of fish n chips.

Another great Dragonmeet experience and an excellent finish to convention gaming in 2018!

#tabletop #rpg #dnd #dungeon crawl classics

3 notes · View notes

kinetic-elaboration · 3 years ago

Text

June 6: 3x23 All Our Yesterdays

So at last I return to my TOS rewatch, with the penultimate episode, All Our Yesterdays. I’m super awake right now because I’ve slept so much this long weekend but I DO need to work tomorrow, so I’ll try to write up my thoughts fairly quickly.

They’re arriving at the planet three hours before a supernova destroys it. Really getting there at the last minute, huh, boys?

Aw, a library. And a librarian! The Librarian. I feel right at home.

“A library serves no purpose unless someone is using that.”

I love this concept so much, honestly. Like the core sci fi idea of this ep is really on point: escaping a disastrous near future by hiding out in your own past. Literally crawling into a book and staying there.

Let me show you the new book display.

There’s no demand for recent history. Well I mean... I feel like that’s understandable.

Mr. Atoz and his replicants.

The real one is Reference Librarian Atoz.

Oh no, something was mis-shelved! This is why you never go in the stacks.

I am the #1 Kirk Stan and Defender but hearing a random shout and then just running off through a random portal into who-knows-where is an extremely amateur hour mistake. I know he loves rescuing people but please, Kirk, think!

Yes, where IS the Captain? That’s the most important question, especially since they followed him through the mystery portal like 2 additional dumbasses.

I remember this Kirk story line being very boring and generally... unmemorable. Like it’s truly just to keep him away from Spock so they don’t appear Too Gay.

IT’S SPIRITS.

“We’re in a wilderness of arctic dimensions.”

Kirk controls the spirits. Among his various other talents.

McCoy is such a drama queen. “Leave me! Leave me here to diiiiieee!”

Gotta make him all cozy under the furs in the cave.

An agreeably warm cave.

"I've never seen anyone who looks like you." And Spock just nods like, “Yeah I get that a lot.”

His poor ears look blue and frostbitten.

“We came not as prisoners, but as idiots.”

Honestly this is a pretty ingenious prison idea. Like it’s awful and nefarious and evil but also very smart.

Yet again Spock encounters someone with an Alien Kink.

"I am firmly convinced that I do exist." Hmmm, that sounds exactly like what a hallucination would say.

That dungeon Kirk is in looks very familiar. Could it be... from multiple previous episodes??

“He called the spirit ‘Bones.’“ That’s good evidence, because it’s exactly the name you’d expect a spirit to have.

I love when Spock is so concerned about Bones. Practicing his bedside manner on him.

“Who is this Jim? Should I be jealous?”

Quit the outfit reveal there, Zarabeth.

“It should be an equation!” Poor bb.

"Our basic cell structure is adjusted to the time we enter.” Hmmm... not sure how I feel about that bit of hard science.

And yet Mr. Atoz made a big deal of them not being “prepared” so...

I love that McCoy just wanders out of bed as soon as he feels even a little better and Spock has to turn him around and put him back under the blankets.

TRAPPED!!

Jim Kirk Action Hero.

I’m paying so little attention to this Kirk storyline that I don’t know how he figured out this guy was also from the past. Was it a lucky guess or did I just miss a clue?

Ah, so it does come back to being “prepared.” I am prepared to accept this bit of Lore, I’ve decided.

As soon as Bones feels better he IMMEDIATELY starts to flirt. This man cannot be stopped. He sees that Spock is interested too and he’s like ‘may the best man win.’

“Practicing medicine without a license.” Lol.

Spock reverts to his pre-Reform self and he’s immediately meaner. Mean, horny, and honest, that’s the personality. They were not a nice people.

I always felt bad about that line “I don’t like that. I thought I didn’t but now I know.” Like he’s just been wondering if he’s offended by the ears comments but he couldn’t bring himself to admit it.

Only 17 minutes! That doesn’t seem good.

Oh no, someone’s talking about loneliness. That’s Spock’s kryptonite.

Animal flesh!

He’s so confused by his own flirting. Spock’s relationships are always really intense because it’s the only type he allows himself. Whereas Kirk has the sickly sweet romantic relationships and McCoy’s are often the fun and flirty kind.

“I’m behaving disgracefully.” It’s okay, it’s the Pre-Reform talking.

Spock’s existential crisis. I ate a deer and I liked it...

Aw, he can be romantic!

WHAT IS THIS WHY IS KIRK ON A LIBRARY CART?? That is so random. I will force you through this portal no matter what.

This here is Bones’s superpower: being able to discern someone’s feelings and then talk to them honestly about those feelings, without either sugar coating or cruelty. That’s his bedside manner. It’s so good.

Also, this is the best scene in the episode and one of the best in the series, btw.

Did he just steal Zarabeth’s coat?

No, okay, it’s just some random furs. Probably from that animal Spock had such a good time eating.

What’s this, a plot device that makes it impossible for Spock to purposefully maroon himself in the past by pushing McCoy through the portal alone? How inconvenient.

Well the furs didn’t come back with them. That’s weird.

“I’m glad Mr. Atoz made it safely to his family. No thanks to me.”

“Yes, it happened. I ate meat. Gross. The end.”

Overall... I would give this episode a B. I enjoyed it and it had several positive qualities. But I have some complaints as well.

The good: I loved the sci fi concept. Like the writer of this episode, I also work in a library, and I thought making it the center piece of the idea was really smart and interesting. I also enjoyed that it was used for both good (saving the people from the destruction of their planet) and evil (imprisoning Zarabeth).

I also thought the exploration of pre-Reform Vulcan Spock, though I’m not convinced it flows from time travel itself, was cool. I think that’s a part of Vulcan history that everyone, both other characters and viewers/fans alike, are really interested in, so even the hints of it here were tantalizing. This rewatch, I noticed in particular that he wasn’t that violent, really, but he was very mean. I don’t think Pre-Reform Vulcans were enjoyable to be around.

It’s also a great Spock and McCoy episode--more a Spock episode than anything, but whenever he and McCoy get scenes together just the two of them, it’s always intense, and that was true here as well. Those scenes were great.

And I like Zarabeth and Mr. Atoz as today’s guest aliens. I have a bias about Zarabeth because Mariette Hartley, who plays her, once had a boat repaired by my grandfather and I have a signed headshot of hers from that and that’s like my Star Trek Connection. But I legitimately think Zarabeth as a thoughtfully developed character given the number of scenes she’s in, and I believed her and Spock and their short but passionate romance.

The bad: first and foremost, the Kirk story line sucked, and Kirk in general didn’t really have much to do. Separating him from the other two seemed kinda clunky, and not necessary except as an artificial way to keep him and Spock separated. I don’t know what I think about Spock forgetting Kirk as he started to regress, how I should interpret that as it connects to the Pre-Reform thing. Does he have less loyalty? Is his horniness overwhelming? Who can say? At any rate, as a Kirk stan and a K/S girl, I wasn’t too keen on that.

Also, the pacing of this episode was.. unsatisfactory. On the one hand, it felt really sparse, like there just wasn’t enough to fill a 52 minute episode, so they went about everything realllly slowly. But on the other hand, the actual interesting stuff--the Pre-Reform Spock scenes and the Spock/Zarabeth romance--got barely three scenes total, and so it seems like there WAS more material there that could have been explored had there been time.

And I think the characters are way smarter than they were portrayed in this ep. As I already mentioned, Kirk’s absolutely rookie mistake of just jumping through a portal unprompted was pretty bad. I also don’t get why they didn’t identify themselves as Federation earlier. Their actual purpose on the planet was kinda vague. I’m assuming it was to save the people from the supernova--but they were already saving themselves! So the only reason they didn’t share information sooner was because there would be no plot but for this weirdly glaring and OOC error. I thought all that was a little shaky.

But overall, I thought it was an interesting and unique take on time travel. The ending was sad in a sort of...ironic way. It was a thoughtful take on Spock that gave me a lot to think about in terms of Vulcan characterization.

#the year 2022 #2022: star trek #2022: fandom thoughts #star trek tos

1 note · View note

starrehtales · 7 years ago

Note

For the DM questions, 6, 10, 12, 18, 20 :)

6. Have you ever played over discord, or do you strictly a live meet up in person?I started off with having games in person. We met in an empty classroom on my college campus until the room was reserved for some club’s meeting. Then it turned into a mixture of meeting at my apartment/ using discord. 10. Do you prefer dungeon crawlers or more story-driven campaigns?I enjoy the occasional dungeon crawl but I prefer more story-driven campaigns. I love interacting with the players and listening to them talk about their characters, going over backstories and character motivations… things like that. I like having campaigns that have a main story/problem that has to be addressed but also weaving the characters own stories into it as well. 12. Do you make homebrew content? How much?The most homebrew that I’ve done has been items and monsters. This new campaign that I am doing probably will have more homebrew elements because it involves the planes and I really want to have fun with it so >_<18. Who are your favorite players? (I promise I won’t tell ;))I’m probably biased in this because the people I’m going to pick have become really good friends of mine but eh *shrugs* My favorite players have been Jack (his characters are usually entertaining and when he isn’t tired, he’s a really interactive and clever player), Luke (I’ve only ever played with him and just started to DM for him but he is just an overall great guy and his characters are the best. He brings a good energy to the game) and Peter (I love the characters he creates and enjoy how engaged he can be with both his character’s stories and the main campaign story. It’s great to see how passionate he is about the game)20. Do you like to mix other genres into it or are you strictly keeping it medieval fantasy (sci-fi, steampunk, eastern, etc)? I usually keep it fantasy because it’s what I prefer personally. If possible and it fits the story/area, I try to add a bit of steampunk or other genres

2 notes · View notes

marketingatlightspeedreadin-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Games You Might Not Have Tried #11 – Find New Games – Extra Credits

youtube

I sure hope you folks enjoy watching these as much as I like making ’em, because… I don’t know, these are fun! These episodes always take us a couple of months to put together, so by the time each one comes out, James has already got a new batch of games to recommend. Anyway! You know the drill. We don’t promise that all these games are good, just that they’re different.

Their design is interesting in some way, even if the most interesting thing about them is how they failed to achieve what they’re setting out to do. Anyway, enough talk. Have at you! Zero Time Dilemma. Years ago, we recommended 999 in one of these episodes. It’s been quite the journey since then, but now the franchise (or at least this chapter of it) is coming to a close, and the story is perhaps one of the best yet in the series. The graphics… not so much, but don’t let that deter you. This game may handily demonstrate just how much better 2D graphics can look, and that switching to 3D isn’t always the best choice, but, if you’ve followed the series so far, you owe it to yourself to finish this one out. And if you haven’t checked these games out yet, well, maybe get on that. Inside. We would be remiss if we didn’t mention this one.

Brought to you by the creators of Limbo, this is a dark and mysterious run through a puzzle-filled testing facility. James didn’t find it quite as compelling as Limbo, but it’s still a solid title, and the atmosphere alone is worth your time if you want to learn how to build that sort of oppressive feeling into your own games. Reverse Crawl. James just tore through this one. It’s one of those, “just one more battle” type games that’ll have you so sucked in that you won’t realize the sun is rising and, oops, you didn’t sleep. The really interesting thing about this game is that it takes the “Heroes of Might and Magic” or “Kings Bounty” formula, and does away with the exploration.

Now, that might sound terrible – James felt that way too, at first. I mean, exploration kind of seems like the lifeblood of those games. But by doing away with the exploration, Reverse Crawl is able to make the combat much tighter, with specifically designed encounters and a progression system that really makes the player consider what they want to be able to play with. Add to that the fact that the player can’t just barge into battle with a ridiculously broken combination of units, but instead has to pick from a wide variety of pre-made unit groupings for each encounter, and you get a tightly designed experience.

You can even beat it in one night if you don’t sleep. I don’t recommend it, but, I’m just saying, you could. ([evil laugh]) (And this, my distinguished gentlebots,) (is the new SteamWorld!) SteamWorld Heist. Since we’re talking strategy games, let’s talk about this pleasantly surprising little gem. This is a game that takes all the conventions of our isometric or top-down tactics games, and puts them on a 2D plane. And it works! It works because the designers considered how 2D might change the formula, what they might be able to do with the design in 2D that’d be harder in one of those other formats. And the conclusion they came to was to make you aim manually.

Yep, this is a tactics game like any other, but sort of like Valkyria Chronicles, when it comes time to shoot, you’ve gotta eyeball it. With no reticle to guide you, this makes variables like cover become a much more interesting and interactive element of the game than we saw even in games like XCOM. So, if you’re looking for a quirky tactics game, or even just like thinking about how we can push the formula, you might want to check out SteamWorld Heist. (And of course it all went according to plan…) Now, a whole lot of you asked if we could talk about some tablet and mobile games on one of these lists, so let me just throw a slew of those at you before we get back to the weird PC games. Let’s start with Galactic Keep. Galactic Keep is exactly what I always wanted a storybook adventure to be when I was young. It takes some of the work done in Steve Jackson’s excellent Sorcery series to the next level and really makes you feel like you’re playing a solo tabletop role-playing module.

Seriously. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt more like I was at the Barrier Peaks without a GM screen on the table. Out There. This game has no combat, and yet, it is brutal. It’s a roguelike survival adventure where you are the last surviving member of humanity trying to make it home. Its vignettes are excellently written, but unlike most story driven games, you will not easily reach the end of this story. I think it’s the very fact that Out There presents a harsh universe where you will die time and again before ever being able to see one of its many endings that kept drawing James back. If you like sci-fi, if you like roguelikes, if you like narrative and are interested in a brutal challenge that never once involves firing a blaster, you better check this out.

Icebound Concordance. Speaking of writing, here is a game that is all about writing. Or rather, it’s all about rewriting. The game itself is a conversation with an AI built from the mind of a writer, and you are there to help it edit and rewrite its last book. That’s pretty interesting in its own right, but then you get to the real bit: the Icebound Compendium. If you’re willing to pony up $25 to pick up the companion book, you are in for something…

Novel. I can’t say much about the Compendium without spoiling things, but, suffice it to say that periodically throughout the game you will be prompted to search through the book for pages related to some of what’s going on on-screen. Then, the game will use your iPad camera to scan the pages and to make the book itself come to life. My only complaint here is that the book itself is poorly made. The cover fell off the binding of James’ copy before it even got through the mail. Of course, that’s a sample size of one James, so hopefully yours will be sturdier. (♪ This is the Guild of Dungeoneering,) (♪ On our quest, we’re never fearing…) The Guild of Dungeoneering.

This game is here simply as an example of what a difference platform can make. James found this to be a mediocre strategy title when he first played it on PC, but on a tablet, its lighter shorter sessions and more casual strategy experience really works. If you want a relaxing strategy game to play on the go, it’s worth trying. Really though, this game is worth buying for the songs alone. (♪ The Guild of Dungeoneering!) (♪ Curse and swear, but don’t despair,) (♪ The way out appears to be over there,) (♪ I think we’re lost, but what do we care?) (♪ The Guild of Dungeoneering!) Templar Battleforce.

I haven’t tried this game on PC, but the mobile version was exactly what James was looking for in a slightly more hardcore tactics game. If you want to play Space Hulk, but the actual modern Space Hulk video game didn’t cut it for you, get Templar Battleforce. It’s everything Space Hulk should be. It’s got an interesting class system, a varied advancement tree, multiple ways to customize units of the same class, and yet the levels are short enough to play on the go. Alright, that’s enough mobile games. Let’s return to the PC, and let’s get weird.

Cat Lady. We so rarely get to recommend adventure games, so I’m glad we get to talk about this piece of weirdness. There are a lot of counter-intuitive design decisions in this game: sometimes on purpose, sometimes as pitfalls of the old-school adventure game ethos, but if you’re looking for something surreal, creepy, and dark, Cat Lady has you covered. The art style perfectly fits the madness, feeling at times like Monty Python channeling Poe.

And the decision to do away with the mouse entirely in an old-school adventure game and streamline things by going with a keyboard interface alone? That’ll put you on a “Games You Might Not Have Tried” list. Fran Bow. We can’t talk about horror games without talking Fran Bow. If you want disturbing and strange, this game has it in spades, but it’s the ambiguity of this game that I love. I’ll try not to spoil anything, but let’s just say, the game leaves itself open for interpretation, and I think that’s great. Too often, horror stories try to explain all their nightmarish surreality, and in doing so, kill the horror. That’s not to say that horror stories shouldn’t make sense, but leaving your nightmare world as an ambiguous metaphor is often so much better than feeling like you have to tie up all the loose ends by saying something like, “See? It was a dream all along!” Fran Bow is an excellent example of this.

Killing Time at Lightspeed. I love the premise of this game. You’ve left Earth. You’re traveling away at light speed, but you can still see your Facebook feed. But here’s the catch: at relativistic speed, every time you hit refresh, a year has passed. You can touch base for one snapshot of everyone’s lives back home then it whirls past and time moves on – for them, if not for you. My only complaint is that most of the time, most of my friends back home simply talked about the news, and for me at least, that’s not how social networks work. That’s a big part of it to be sure, but it’s in the background of all the tiny day-to-day things that people post. I would have loved to have more emphasis on the personal, on the relationships of people and their daily lives, as that backdrop would have given the big events of the world that much more impact, seeing how they affected the people I loved even as I whipped away from them at the speed of light.

Anyway, neat game. Try it out. And finally, Quadrilateral Cowboy. What happens when you mix stealth capers with command line hacking and a PS1 visual aesthetic? Well, you get Quadrilateral Cowboy. Your mileage may vary with the art style, but there is something so cyberpunk about actually hooking up a computer to a jack and having to turn off a security laser with a series of semicolon delineated commands. Am I alone, though, in this making me long for a multiplayer game where one player plays the stealth action hero, and the other one plays their off-site hacker buddy? Like, unlocking the doors and shutting off security cameras in the nick of time with a command-line interface? That would be rad. Somebody, get on that. Anyway, I think that’ll do it for today. Thank you for watching; recommend some of your own weird favorites in the comments below, and we will see you next week..

For More Info : Visit Here : Light Speed Reading

#Reading speed test #Speed read test #Read faster #Read fast #Speed read #Mental Photography #reading at light speed

1 note · View note

zydrateacademy · 8 years ago

Text

Review: Destiny 2

It took me a while to compile enough thoughts for a proper review, and to find time to actually begin writing because I’ve been far too busy actually playing it. This will come with a minor disclaimer or two. First, I haven’t played the first game. It was on console and I’ve been on PC for a long time. Secondly, I may mention a lot of other game comparisons and there’s a reason for that. This game feels like it borrows some of the best parts of other games and stitched them together to make something great. I can’t really comment on the game’s previous story, but I hear from most players that there wasn’t much of one. Somehow I feel that this is hyperbole on their part because you can’t really have a game without a story. Even team shooters like Overwatch shoehorn some lore within their dialog or various external material. All the same, I’ve gathered that a giant alien ball gave a large portion of the Earth population immortality topped with magical powers. Not exaggerating, I have literally heard the word “magic” be used in what seems to be a Sci Fi adventure. The game proper starts off with a full on assault from an enemy faction that only had a tertiary presence in the first game. They win pretty swiftly and kick you off a tower. Your guardian loses their “light” powers and must traverse the first forty-five minutes or so of the game without the ability to resurrect. Of course that is of limited value as checkpoints are still a thing so feel free to die if you don’t quite have a handle on the gunplay.

The campaign is stated to be around six hours long and that’s fairly accurate. It felt incredibly short and it was surprising to learn about this sun-destroying device that the Red Legion created. Funny enough, that’s actually the halfway point and the exact moment where the story becomes less interesting. Before that, you hop between planets to “get the band back together”, essentially. You collect the various class leaders across the system, each with their own unique problems that you solve and get back together to help lead the push against the guys who took everyone’s light. After that, it’s a generic doomsday device that you must disable, and the campaign missions themselves feel a bit padded at times. You’re often assigned to disable something, only for it to not work so you must go destroy something else two more times before the thing actually works. The old school trope of “You cannot thwart stage one” is in full effect here folks, and you’ll likely predict what will happen to the big bad Ghaul himself long before you actually see it. Weak story aside, the gunplay is some of the best feeling in a first person shooter I’ve had in a while. At first glance the game looks and feels like a less irritating version of Borderlands, a franchise of which I love anyway like a slowly improving problem child. Enemies have large health bars and every hit you land, magical floating numbers pop up signifying your damage. Ultimately these numbers mean very little because max level players can play with level three’s and nobody can really one-shot anything except for the basics. There’s some strange autobalancing coding going on in the background, but it still manages to make sure that anyone can play with their friends regardless of people’s gear level. This includes the fact that max level players will constantly get tokens and can break down lesser gear for yet another type of turn-in token. There’s always a reason to do things and I find that it’s a great mechanic.

The story is mostly just an excuse to get you to maximum level and have access to the tower. After that, the full game unlocks to you which is common MMO fare. It lets you dip your toes in some player-versus-player but after you beat the campaign, every planet and game mode will have a set of challenges and milestones for you to work towards and continually get your item level up, also known as a “Gearscore” if you’re a veteran of WoW. Ultimately this is where the game shines and where I typically have the most fun, because it essentially becomes a first person sandbox. No, there’s not really an open world and there’s not much to explore unless you’re hunting for Lost Sectors, secret sections of the map that typically have yield chests with better loot that will only unlock when you defeat the local miniboss. They’re a lot of fun. Each planet has this sort of “hub” area that you’ll find a few other players running around in. I figure they’re instanced with a likely player cap because I’ve never seen more than a few at a time. At most I think I saw about seven other people joining in on a public event with me, one of my favorite features of the game. Public Events are not a new concept in recent gaming history. The earliest comparison I can personally think of is Rift (2011), but I think they started dipping into MMO’s a year or so before that. It’s as it sounds, in hub areas these events will trigger down from a five minute timer to allow other people gather and prepare and it will spawn a moderately difficult boss or objective based event. They’re typically too difficult for me to solo but I’m sure other, better players can manage. By completing optional objectives you can help upgrade every event to “heroic”, which yields a lot more experience and a bit more loot. You might have to research or simply take cues from other players and see what you have to do, but if you see people shooting at that ship circling the area or slamming on this random device in the middle of the firefight - That’s probably why. Those side challenges I mentioned can be a bit fickle sometimes. Sometimes they’ll require you to kill enemies with a certain weapon or a certain way that doesn’t necessarily to cater to my playstyle. One in PvP once wanted me to make a few kills with a subclass I never used and thus had no upgrade points put into. I never got that challenges because, as per the game’s meta, there’s certain gun types or subclasses people just don’t use in certain modes. For example, nobody ever really uses the Hunter’s “Nightstalker” subclass in PvP because it’s a sort of crowd control that’s useful against several clustered enemies. In PvP that almost never happens and it would be too easy for actual players to escape the little orb that the Hunter created.

There’s also a multitude of gun types, all with their varying clip sizes, fire rates, and range capabilities that are more useful in one mode than the other, so this typically encourages you to keep a certain ‘collection’ of things depending on what you’re playing. So far I’ve only talked about challenges and public events. I’ve found it hard to talk about what and first because there’s a lot to the game to chew through between the various updates the game will inevitably have. Of this writing, the game’s first expansion has already been announced for the fifth of December which will likely bring a whole new set of milestones, strikes, missions and most importantly, loot. I’ll try to get through some of the fun stuff you can get a hold of at the endgame which mercifully doesn’t take long to get to. Strikes are basically just dungeons from other fantasy based MMO’s. There’s not a lot to say about them, they’re ten to twenty minute encounters with a variety of bosses and mechanics you need to figure out. My least favorite so far is this Fallen boss who will constantly disappear after just a few hits and spawn these electrified robots that will limit your movement and now allow you to jump at all (and there’s a LOT of jumping in this game). They’ll also constantly damage you because of course they will. It reminds me of a survival game to be honest.

There’s the Crucible, Destiny’s name for PvP combat. It’s run of the mill PvP with your usual zone controls, team deathmatch and even a mode that’s reminiscent of Call of Duty’s “kill confirmed” mode where you only get points by picking up a sigil from a fallen enemy; Or else let their allies pick them up and get denied the score. I enjoy it and I can sometimes get rewards from it even by losing. I’m currently working on an exotic weapon quest where you have to dismantle rare or better scout rifles, which the crucible rewarded me with one just for losing. So hey, progress! There’s also something called “Nightfalls”, which remind me of “Heroic dungeons” from World of Warcraft, but are actually more comparable to Starcraft 2′s mutator mode in their Co-Op. Every week it changes, typically with some kind of timer mechanic to make sure your team is at their most optimal. On our first week, in addition to the timer, all of our skills recharges what seemed to be five times faster. So the mutations are not always there to hurt us. Naturally it gives much better loot than their more basic versions and can be incredibly intense. Myself and two buddies from my gaming community managed to kill the boss of one with a mere four seconds left on the timer. Our first ever Nightfall, to boot. I alluded earlier to the fact that there’s tokens you get from a variety of activities. This mostly gives incentive for high level players to continue playing, as you can turn these tokens in to a variety of faction leaders for engrams (a fancy word for “loot boxes”) that typically level with you so they’re usually good to grind out.

And yes, there is a grind here to a certain degree. There’s a sort of soft cap to gear levels, I found it a crawl to get past the 260-265 hump but then slingshot past it on the game’s second week with a new rollout of milestones that wanted me to play several crucible games, complete five challenges out in the world, and a few other things. Each of them gave me 269′s and 271′s and helped me gear up a bit. At a certain point it becomes advantageous to roll multiple characters so you can do all of this more than once, padding the gameplay and turning it into a grind. There is a bit of fatigue once you hit that soft cap I will admit but it’s typically relieved by playing with friends. This goes with any multiplayer game, true enough. As mentioned I can continue playing missions with newer players, hunt for public events, or toss my scrub ass into the unforgiving ring of failure that is Crucible and I’ll always get something for my trouble. There’s never not anything to do. All this time I’ve actually forgotten to talk about how really damn pretty the game is, to boot. Most of my settings are on maximum with the sole exception of my textures, which have to be medium as to not stress my unfortunately low about of VRAM. I’ve had people smarter than me try to explain why exceeding it matters but regardless, the game is still one of the best looking things in my entire library.

There’s a lot of chatter about microtransactions in the industry lately. Yes, they are present here in the form of “Bright” engrams, which can be acquired in two ways. Obviously you can buy “Silver” which acts as a separate currency for Bright engrams. The other way is, as a level 20 you will get one per ‘level up’ as you continue to play. The flow of such is pretty slow and I typically only get one or two a day (If I’m actively playing my main Hunter) as opposed to dropping ten dollars and getting five immediately. They typically contain cosmetics, some more practical than others like faster speederbikes that will help you traverse stretches of land on planets with a bit more ease. They’re the primary source of the shinier “shaders”, or armor dyes. You can get shaders out of basic chests and other loot boxes but shaders do have “rarity” like any gear does and I don’t think I’ve gotten some of the better looking ones through more basic means. Still, the microtransaction craze does speak to a seedier part of the industry and I will admit the “It’s just cosmetic!” argument doesn’t quite hold up, but I’ll leave that for the individual to decide. I’ve already purchased some silver twice now, but that’s my prerogative. I’ll just say that the game never, not once, beats me over the head with “BUY SOME OF THIS AND YOUR LIFE WILL BE MORE COMPLETE”. They better not, after I spent the full hundred dollars to begin with. In conclusion, the game feels like the most refined collection of a dozen games I could name, like the world’s cleanest zombie. Borderlands, The Division, World of Warcraft, Rift. The gameplay constantly reminds me of other games but is the absolute best version of all of them. The gunplay will keep me coming back as I do occasionally itch for an ironsight shooter but all the current ones I have are boring or have dead communities with long matchmaking. A large portion of my gaming community is playing so I can typically play at my own pace, or get others to join me if I feel like I want my objectives to go a little quicker than usual. There’s plenty to do and it’s all up to me to figure out what I want to prioritize when I log in. For a game with this much in it, it can only improve with more content.

#Destiny 2 #Bungie #Activision #Blizzard

3 notes · View notes

liketheappliance · 8 years ago

Text

I’m really wanting to get a new regular RPG going, but there are just too many different games I want to play. I’ve been thinking about doing a Doctor Who campaign since the Thirteenth Doctor was announced, I’d love to try out that new Star Trek Adventures system, and I still haven’t played a full session of Metamorphosis Alpha since reading through the rule book. The problem is I can’t do them all at once, and each would require a fair bit of planning (as well as brushing up on or learning rule systems).

The other thing they’d require is players, and since the group I have now is for Dungeon Crawl Classics it might make sense to stick with that for the time being. But I want to do something different from the D&D-style adventures we’ve been playing since January, which is why I’m leaning towards a new standalone campaign using the Purple Planet setting.

Introduced in the Peril On The Purple Planet box set, it’s a ‘sword & planet’ setting like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom stories (A Princess of Mars, Warlord of Mars, etc). I like the idea of doing one big self-contained campaign that starts with the characters being transported to the Purple Planet and ends with them finding their way home. I’d also probably use accelerated XP rewards for the sessions so the heroes can get to Level 5 (or beyond) before the last adventure (progress in DCC is generally pretty slow, which is why after months of consistent play only a couple of our regulars have achieved Level 2 with their characters).

Of course, that’s assuming my current group is up for putting their current characters on pause long enough to play through this campaign, or play both at the same time (which would require me to step down as GM in the regular game). If not, I might try and get Adventures On The Purple Planet going at the new store that’s closer to my house (provided there’s an audience for it there).

None of this addresses my desire to get a Doctor Who or Star Trek game going, but it would allow me to stretch my creative muscles a bit and run games in more of a sci-fi environment (even if it’s still closer to fantasy).

#Dungeon Crawl Classics #DCC #Peril on the Purple Planet #Star Trek Adventures #Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space #roleplaying games #RPGs

4 notes · View notes

makeberkgayagain · 8 years ago

Text

Interdimensional Radio (WIP)

I was talking to bae and they said my story about my misbehaving wireless headphones made them want to write a story, but that they weren’t feeling like writing and they weren’t sure on the plot. I got a burst of inspiration, and I decided to write it myself. If you’re interested, click readmore and tell me what you think

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

El groaned slightly as they settled into the couch. They could feel the release of tension in their aching joints; they stretched and popped their back for good measure. They had the computer booted up and routed to the big screen, their controller plugged in and extended to the couch. They were just about to press “start” to begin their Skyrim experience, but they needed their headphones. They grabbed the wireless pair from the table next to them, which they’d set up the night before. Brand new batteries, volume where they like it. Now just to synch it to the broadcast tower. reset, scan; reset, scan. After a couple of cycles, they landed on the epic Dragonborn Song from the opening menu.

They pressed start, and waited through the silent loading page. “Finally,” El muttered as their character appeared on screen in the last dungeon they’d entered. They leaned back to begin their leisurely sneak through the cavern and… Static. Fucking Hell. reset, scan; more static. reset, scan; some random classical station. Not altogether unpleasant, but it certainly wouldn’t help them detect any wandering enemies. reset, scan; Okay, there’s the game again. El realized they had sat up straight in order to fiddle with the headphones, so they slouched back into a more comfortable position. Immediately they got more static.

“For fuck’s sake!” Reset, scan; reset, scan; reset, scan… On and on it went. It kept picking up on that damn classical station. They sat up again, and tried once more. reset, scan; success! “Welp, guess I’m gaming in this position now,” they grumbled. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but at least they could hear their game. They continued on their dungeon crawl, finally finding a room with some people to kill. They drew their bow, released – Thunk! 3x sneak damage. Target dead. It went on this way for a while, fairly uneventful.

They reached a larger cavern, full of enemies. Far too many to pick off one by one with a bow. Dropping in with an axe and a shield they began swinging, quickly becoming overwhelmed. As things got intense they started to lean forward in concentration, and paused all to quickly. More fucking static. They tried again – reset, scan; reset, scan. One couldn’t very well fight a battle with multiple opponents in silence. Reset, scan; reset, scan. Scan, scan, scan, scan, scanscanscanscanscscscscscscSCAN. Classical, every time.

Defeated, El flopped backwards into the cushions. They settled for this station, if only to have some sound. It wasn’t bad, they supposed. They finished up their battle, and fast traveled to Whiterun. They weren’t very well going to crawl through a dungeon when they couldn’t hear their surroundings, but they could handle some smithing, enchanting, selling, and inventory management. At least this way they wouldn’t be able to hear that annoying asshole in the Cloud District sneer at you as you ran from Breezehome to Dragonskeep to the blacksmith and back.

As they went on their way, El felt a nagging feeling that something was off. They tried to write it off as a product of listening to classical music instead of their game sounds. Surely not being able to hear their game was the off-putting part of this experience. The music itself was quite lovely. El would know, with the years of research they’d put into the field of orchestral music through the ages. The strings had a wonderful harmony with the woodwinds, the cadence was more than easy on the ears. The way it lilted along was… Well it was unlike anything El had ever heard. That was odd.

Their eyebrows stitched together, and they leaned forward again. Their character on screen was in a selling dialogue with the blacksmith, but El had no regard for this. They were far more focused on trying to place the song. Even if they didn’t know the exact title, they should be able to recognize the composer. They knew every composer that had ever existed. It couldn’t be a contemporary original, could it? No, El was very up to date on these things as well. It just didn’t sound right, didn’t line up with any of the composers they were familiar with.

Now that they noticed, the strings didn’t sound quite right either. There was a wavering quality to them that didn’t quite make sense. Everything sounded layered strangely, as though they were overlayed with a theremin. But no respected composer would use a theremin, even now. They would be laughed out of the classical community; keep your sci-fi junk to your own genres. And even so, it didn’t sound quite like that either.

El racked their brain, trying to figure out the ethereal quality of the music. The rhythm was wrong, unlike any time signature they were familiar with. The instruments were wrong. The cadence rambled along in an unfamiliar direction. It was just off. Everything was wrong. Why was it so wrong? How could this be happening?

The song faded out; it must have been near the end. El sighed in relief, perhaps now they would play a song that actually made sense! They tried to return to the blacksmith, scoffing at the obscenely low prices offered for their carefully crafted and enchanted weapons. The next song faded in with no commentary from a DJ – just as well, DJs had a tendency to ramble annoyingly. Before El made it three steel daggers into their dump on the blacksmith, they threw their controller down in disgust. This song wasn’t right either!

Why was this happening to them? Did they need to change their medication? Did they miss their medication? Were they dissociating? No, that didn’t make sense. Technology didn’t work correctly in a fugue, so they would not have been able to play Skyrim at all. Nor would the headphones be blasting anything but static.

El tried again to scan to the correct bandwith; this music station was stressing them out far too much to enjoy their afternoon release. Reset, scan; reset, scan. Classical, static. Reset, scan; R&B. Yeah, no. Reset, scan; Skyrim ambiance. Okay, good. This was good. El resisted moving in any way, unwilling to lose their connection to the correct channel. On and on they played, staying in Whiterun just in case something went haywire. It was going fairly okay until their nose began to itch. “No, not now, come on!” They were pleading with an unknown entity. Even El was unsure who, given that they were not religious. Maybe that’s why it didn’t work. They sneezed, loudly and epically. They felt their entire body shiver as they launched forward, splattering their controller with spittle. This of course was not nearly as distressing as the orchestral nonsense once again playing through their headphones.

“FINE! Fine, I’ll play your game,” they yelled into the room. They of course received no response from the dust motes floating through the light streaming in the window, nor the cats who were too used to El’s boisterous behavior to even bother lifting their heads to see what El was yelling about. El saved and quit, stomping over to the desktop to run a google search. What radio stations even broadcast in this area? For that matter, what radio stations broadcast on bandwidths their headphones could pick up?

They searched for their model of headphones, found their frequency range, cross-referenced that with all the classical stations in the area and… nothing. Maybe they’d found the wrong frequency range? They searched their headphone model again, but on each result they found the same frequencies they’d originally searched. They broadened their search to just the brand and found a forum result. Normally they weren’t one for lengthy discussions complaining about technological issues, but they were at the end of their rope.

Now El was thoroughly creeped out. The OP in this thread was describing the same radio station that had been terrorizing them for the last half hour, in extreme detail. The ethereal quality of the music, the insistent nature of the headphones to pick it up, the complete lack of a jockey. Some responses detailed taking the batteries out and reinserting them, others moving the broadcast tower. OP claims he’s already tried each of these solutions. Just like El, at this point he was just wanting to know what the damn station was so they could look up the music.

El was becoming impatient scrolling through the thread, when they happened across an interesting response. This commenter, DragonGal89 as her screenname would have El believe, believed she’d found the source of the ethereal music. She began her response pleading for the OP to hear her out; she was afraid she’d be seen as crazy. The music had been plaguing her for months, at this point it was the only station her headphones wanted to pick up on. She linked to a Discord Server she was part of, where they’d been discussing the problem in length.

This server wasn’t about classical music, or even technology, however. It was a home for paranormal research. These people were experts in various fields – spirits, cryptids, even quantum physics for some reason? DragonGal89 knew it sounded odd, but she swore up and down they knew what they were talking about. Between the four of them, they had found what they felt was a plausible explanation. Alternate dimensions. Why or how, they weren’t sure. They had no idea why this particular model of wireless headphones seemed to be able to pick up on the bleed between this dimension and the one next door. The quantum expert, however, insisted that he knew that’s what the problem was. The membrane between the dimensions is quite thin, DragonGal paraphrased. Occasionally wavelengths will bleed through.

Usually these frequencies cannot be picked up by the human ear or any technology, but they were definitely there. The cryptid expert says this is why sometimes your cat will stare into the distance for seemingly no reason; she can see things that you can’t. Hear things you can’t. Perceive things humans simply aren’t capable of.

At this point, El was skeptical and upset. They were about ready to throw the headphones away never to be seen again. If this were true, they didn’t want to fuck with any inter dimensional bullshit. If it wasn’t, well, the headphones were useless to them anyway. They hated this station and if they couldn’t use the headphones to listen to anything they actually wanted to listen to, they were useless to El.

They were about to resign themselves to playing Skyrim over their speakers and forgo playing at night when the neighbors would complain, but a small nagging voice in the back of their head urged them to log onto the discord server. Talk with the experts. Was El really ready to give up on this? Would they ever know peace until they knew for sure whether these people were for real? If they were too crazy, if it seemed fake, they could just log off, El reasoned with themselves. It was worth checking out.

And so to the discord server they went. They set their name on the server to TsarChasm, hopefully different enough from their typical handle of ZardZar so as not to be recognized elsewhere if these people were completely crazy. It looked as though DragonGal and the ghost hunting expert were online, having a jovial conversation about the possibility of dragons ever having existed. When the message “TsarChasm has entered the channel” popped up they stopped to greet El enthusiastically.

“What brings you here?” DragonGal89 inquired, a smiling emoticon punctuating her message.

TsarChasm: Um… I saw your forum post? About the headphones?

TheOGHunter: The interdimensional radio channel??? It’s bothering you too?

TsarChasm: Well I’m not sure I buy all this interdimensional stuff, but yeah. I’m picking up the station

DragonGal89: But you’re here. So you must be curious

TsarChasm: I mean I guess. My brain wouldn’t leave me alone about it, and I can’t ejoy Skyrim while I’m thinking about this shit

TsarChasm: *enjoy

DragonGal89: We’re not crazy!!! I swear!! When QuntmJmp gets online he can explain it to you. Please, stick around?

TsarChasm: I guess I’d like to hear the words right from the horse’s mouth…

DragonGal89: THank you so much!!

TheOGHunter: Man thanks for giving us a shot. The last person to come through called us all retarded ghostfags :s

CryptidFucker has signed on

TheOGHunter: … Thanks Crypt. Really helping sell the “not ghostfags” thing

CryptidFucker: Man come on, G. You know it doesn’t mean like that

TheOGHunter: Yeah but newcomers don’t know that

CryptidFucker: Fuck off, G

TsarChasm: … Guys it’s fine. I don’t care. Can you not right now?

CryptidFucker: !!!! A new guy?? WHat’s up!?

TsarChasm: I found Dragon’s post about the headphones on the net. I wanted to talk to yall, see if I believe all this stuff

CryptidFucker: Oh man, you’re gonna love Quantum! He really knows how to explain it, he’s like the Niel DeGrasse Tyson of quantum mechanics

DragonGal89: Yeah, he’s a word wizard. So Tsar, a/s/l?

TsarChasm: Oh man, chatroulette much? lol… Anyway, 32/NB/Ohio

TheOGHunter: Ohio!? Ohio is like the US capital of paranormal activity! You ever experience a haunting?

TheOGHunter: I mean, other than this headphone thing

TsarChasm: I think maybe my late greatgrandad messes with me sometimes? Not sure if I believe all that hocus pocus tbh

DragonGal89: Yeah okay Ohio sure sure, that’s so interesting G. Like it’s not the most boring state in the country. More to the point – Pronouns, Tsar?

TsarChasm: They, thanks. Y’all?

DragonGal89: She

TheOGHunter: He

CryptidFucker: She or they

TsarChasm: Cool! So anyway, how did yall find eachother?

DragonGal89: Well Cryptid and I were already trying to figure this out ourselves IRL

CryptidFucker: Yeah, I figured it sounded supernatural. So I asked OG about it, to see if he knew anything about poltergeists messing with radio signals. He said that usually they just corrupt signals, they shouldn’t really be able to play music that didn’t exist. It sounded more like an interdimensional thing

CryptidFucker: I tried to do my own research on it, but I didn’t even know where to start. All the stuff on alternate dimensions seemed to be crack theories, just foilhatters trying to explain some lizardpeople bull

TheOGHunter: I knew a guy, so I hooked her up with quntmjmp. I figured he’d be able to give her a run-down, and maybe know something about this radio situation

DragonGal89: After a few emails back and forth, with me and Cryptid blowing up this guy’s inbox, he made this discord server. He said group chats were easier

El fought the urge to start a private chat with Cryptid and have a private conversation about gender politics. Now wasn’t the time. The chat carried on into the wee hours of the morning, explaining the backstory of how they all met and came to their conclusion. None of them could really explain it to El’s satisfaction, however. Much to Dragon’s chagrin, quntmjmp never logged on that night. El went to bed frustrated, completely unable to sleep. The haze in their mind played static over the voice in their head attempting to replay all of the night’s events, and still another voice told El to get the headphones again. Listen to the music. Maybe you can make sense of it. Maybe you’ll hear it and it’ll be normal, and you can dump these weirdos.

#WIP #Novella maybe #paranormal #Original story #Interdimensional Radio #long post #read more

1 note · View note

schirdotblog · 6 years ago

Text

The best games I played in 2018

That's what these lists really are, right? Just a list of the best things you played in a year.

I've been keeping track of what I've been playing, and it looks like I played somewhere in the vicinity of 215 games in 2018. I didn't finish most of the games I played, for obvious reasons, but I want to go over some of the better ones I played last year.

I think crowning any one game as being the best of the year is kind of dumb, and limiting it to just 10 means ignoring a lot of stuff that was equally good. I’m just going to talk about a bunch of games I liked in no particular order, and I hope that’s alright.

WHOLEHEARTED RECOMMENDATIONS

WEST OF LOATHING

Two years running now, West of Loathing remains one of the best games out there. It's the king of comedy in games. The jokes are masterfully crafted and there's more options to approach situations than just about anything else on the market that's even slightly worth checking out. I mean, they're so committed to the jokes that they're selling the game for $11.00 instead of $10.99 just because of a running gag (11 dollars? That's absurd. It's not even funny!).

I wish I had more to say about West of Loathing since it's the game I spent the second-most time on in 2018, but it's the sort of comedy where the jokes rely on the particulars of the phrasing and it sounds lame if you describe the jokes in any way other than the way they're told in the game. It's very experiential.

I'm looking forward to the West of Loathing DLC that should be coming out relatively soon. I think that Jick said that that's mostly finished on the most recent Podcast of Loathing.

Go play West of Loathing if you haven't already. It's quite possibly my favorite game of 2017 and 2018.

EVERBLUE 2

I really wish Everblue would get a remaster or a rerelease. It's so good. I mean, it's rough around the edges, but it's a really solid 'chill out and explore' sort of game. I think that the games press of today is a bit less stupid than the games press of 2002, and gamers today would have an easier time understanding what Everblue's trying to do.

Everblue 2 is a diving game where you hunt ruins for treasure, take pictures of fish, and help out villagers in a small town while competing against a big diving organization. If the game were made today by different people, there'd probably be a lot more cinematography and/or visual novel-esque cutaways. There's not, and a bit more art and making the characters bigger on screen probably would've helped sell the story bits and gotten people to feel more emotional than the relatively small characters and understated text boxes.

But, as it is, I think that lack of cinematography and overdramatization helps to give the game a really understated aesthetic. It's like the game's saying "look, just go diving and appreciate the ocean. Human drama's relatively small in the grand scheme of things, and what really matters is finding something you love and pursuing it aggressively." I mean, it feels a little bit off to navigate through the town. The town's done in a relatively static point-and-click sort of style. Moving a cursor around with an analogue stick feels a little bit off and makes me wish I was back in the diving section. And that's the point. The ocean is vast and huge and wonderful, in the game's eyes, and if you're playing as a diver then you'd want to just get back in the ocean ASAP. All the characters are small on the screen to help communicate how small and less-than-relevant all the drama is to the main character. Everyone else in the scene is going off about how "oh no, the evil corporation bribed one of the Amigos to get ahead of you in finding the treasure" but there's no cinematography to any of it so the feeling you get is just like "Yeah, but they suck at diving and I'm obviously going to get there before they do." You'll feel that way because it's a video game, but since the character's a preternaturally gifted diver, I'd believe that the character feels that way as well, even though they don't talk much.

Everblue 2 was surprisingly good, and I really enjoyed my time with it.

TETRIS EFFECT

Apparently there are people writing off Tetris Effect because it's Tetris. That's really weird to me because Tetris Effect is really good Tetris. I mean, I played a few different versions of Tetris in 2018 and Tetris Effect is by far the standout among them. If there's ever been a case for the value of sound engineers being closely involved with the design process, it's probably Tetris Effect. The subtle animation touches, the dynamic aleatoric music, the particle effects that are overblown but not in the mobile game way -- all of it mixes together to create one of the best versions of Tetris out there.

SEGA AGES: PHANTASY STAR

There's something about Phantasy Star that gets me. Maybe I'm just feeling nostalgic because Phantasy Star was one of the first RPGs I ever tried, but I feel like there's something that Phantasy Star 1 has that no other RPG I've ever played has ever quite captured. Maybe it's the sci-fi setting. Maybe it's the way that the game moves from top-down overworld movement into first-person dungeon-crawling. Maybe it's just that I really, really like the melody playing on the title screen. Maybe it's the fact that the game is fairly serious for an anime game, with the main character being a noble driven by revenge instead of a high school student being driven by the will of the plot.

Phantasy Star feels like a traditional sort of pulpy sci-fi adventure novel, and I think that's what really strikes me about it. RPGs don't really ever try to tell a straight-laced traditional sci-fi adventure, especially turn-based JRPGs. They didn't back then and still don't now. I mean, just trying to think of other RPGs that do the traditional sci-fi thing -- spaceships, interstellar travel, laser guns, robots -- off-hand, I can think of KOTOR, Mass Effect, Cosmic Star Heroine, Star Ocean, Ar Nosurge uh, maybe System Shock? A Blurred Line? Trials in Tainted Space? It's kind of slim pickings. And that's weird, isn't it? I mean, if we're trying to think of generic medieval fantasy titles, we can go and list off Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Dragon's Dogma, Ni no Kuni, Kingdoms of Amalur, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Age of Decadence, Pillars of Eternity, The Witcher, and so on before needing to reach into the bottom of the barrel for RPG Maker games and porn. It's like everyone writing sci-fi just kind of went "spaceships are lame, let's go do Shadowrun instead", and that's a shame because there's so much room to explore when you have literally the whole universe to work off of.

Genre trappings aside, I think the way that Phantasy Star transitions between top-down and first-person is really interesting at a gameplay level. Top-down exploration, at least at the time, would've evoked lighthearted romps like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, while the first-person dungeon-crawling would've made people feel a bit uncomfortable, since it's so claustrophobic and disorienting, evoking memories of more hardcore games like Wizardry, where traps were commonplace and the difficulty was insane. The contrast between the lighthearted and the deathly serious still comes through, even as this particular rerelease has gone and added automatic mapping and an easy mode that rebalances the game to be more accessible to modern design sensibilities. I could go and be all snide about the easy mode, but the whinging about easy modes is tiresome and the dick-waving around hard modes and difficulty and authenticity in games is dumb. The easy mode cuts out a lot of the grindy bullshit and makes it so that you can finish the game in a reasonable amount of time. It might be a little bit against the original spirit of the design, but it makes the game more enjoyable, and that's an acceptable tradeoff.

I really wish that Phantasy Star were its own genre of games, with new people experimenting with the mechanics every couple of years. Like, when you remember that the only other games that are structured in the same way as Phantasy Star are the NES and SNES Megaten games, right down to being able to talk with the monsters and having a first-person view of the item shopkeeper, you can start to see the edges of one of the most fascinating genres that games never explored. Top-down overworld into first-person dungeon-crawler turn-based RPGs with conversation mechanics has so much room to explore, and it's just intrinsically really gritty and cool. I wish more people would explore it. ... Goddammit, I'm going to have to make it myself, aren't I? I guess I'll go bash my head against that later.

Anyway, Phantasy Star is really great, and honestly one-of-a-kind. The spark of creativity that led to the first Phantasy Star game shines bright, even as the series has fallen off the map.

OCCUPY WHITE WALLS

Occupy White Walls is one of the most distilled social games I've ever run across. The goal of the game is to build an art gallery. Put up a couple of walls, go buy some classical art from the art that's loaded into the game's database, place it on the walls, open your art gallery, and wait to buy more art. The only things to do while you're waiting to get more money to expand your gallery and get more art are fussing around with the art placement, talking to people in the chatroom, and visiting other people's galleries. The fact that there's not some monetization scheme to speed up the timers makes me think that the point of the game is honestly and sincerely to get more people to appreciate fine art. The people in the chatroom are pretty reasonable, as online chatrooms go. Everyone has their own style of organizing their galleries, and their own taste in art. That's interesting to see, and it's honestly just a nice little game.

The game's in Early Access, so this is all subject to change. The game might add microtransactions or ads in a later update, and if they do then just ignore everything I've said.

SLAP CITY

I've been a big fan of Ludosity for a good few years now, and a fan of their cofounder Daniel Remar for even longer. The guys at Ludosity have been improving at making games for a while, -- I think Ittle Dew was the turning point where their output started becoming pretty consistently good -- and Slap City is the point where people have finally started to take notice.

Slap City is a platform fighter in the mold of Super Smash Brothers. Where other games in the genre tried to focus on elements like 'big franchise characters' (Playstation All Stars) or 'the technical fighting of Melee' (Rivals of Aether, Icons: Combat Arena), Slap City focuses on the silly party aspect of Smash, and the part where characters who normally don't fight are given a bigger moveset to fight with everyone else. Slap City captures the essence of what makes platform fighters fun, adds its own twists, and has clearly seen a lot of success because of it. I'm very happy that Ludosity's finally getting the credit and acclaim that they've deserved for years.

VALKYRIA CHRONICLES 4

Valkyria Chronicles 4 is, at present, the best game in the Valkyria series. I was really hesitant to buy this one after the absolute disaster that was Valkyria Revolution, but was pleasantly surprised to find that not only was it not a dumpster fire, it was actually pretty good!

Valkyria Chronicles 4 doesn't do anything especially grand by the standards of the series, but it's refined a lot of the rougher parts of VC1 and goes through a lot of the same ideas. Essentially, it's just Valkyria Chronicles 1 again, but way more polished at the gameplay level and with different characters at a different place at a different point in time. Frankly, that's what the series needed, and I'm going to be really interested to see where they go with Valkyria Chronicles 5. VC4 establishes Valkyria Chronicles as an anthology series, has really started polishing the core mechanics, and the designers are getting better at crafting levels with these systems. If Valkyria Chronicles 5 continues along this path and the designers are given more creative leeway to explore war from a different part of the army, we'll have a genuine classic on our hands.

Valkyria Chronicles 4 wipes the slate clean for the series, but does so in the way that soft reboots ought to. That is, it panders to the existing fans by sticking to the core ideas that made the original good and polishing them. It establishes its own identity, and is worthwhile in its own right, and doesn't lean on the original for a cheap sell. It's a really good game, though they need to distill the experience a bit further for it to be a truly great game.

SUPER CLOUDBUILT

I don't have that much to say about Super Cloudbuilt, but it's still the best 3D platformer out there if you can get past the initial learning curve and avoid the Defiance levels like the plague. I think the designers have learned from some of the weaker parts of their design and I'm really looking forward to seeing what Coilworks does with Sky Tracers. Guys, please buy Sky Tracers when it's released. The guys at Coilworks are getting really good at making 3D platformers but nobody's buying their games. Please buy their games so that they can keep making the best 3D parkour-platformers out there.

GRADIENT ADDICTION I don't know what primordial creative ooze this game came out of, but it’s absolutely delightful. There's a sheer joy of creation underpinning this game that's really hard to dislike.

GLOGWILLETTE Everything I said about Gradient Addiction applies here.

VAMPIRE THE MASQUERADE: BLOODLINES Everyone was comparing Vampyr to Bloodlines and it's really difficult to see why they were doing that. I mean, yeah they're both vampire games but Bloodlines is really good and Vampyr is really bad.

Bloodlines is a game that's edgy in the sense that the word was used back around the time of its release. It's incisive. It's biting. It's cutting. They doubled down on the mid-2000s goth aesthetic, and it permeates this game. That's good, because the goth aesthetic absolutely rules.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines has a lot of charm to it. The writing's excellent and the gameplay feels pretty good. It's one of those classics that everyone's heard about, so I'll spare you any more words about it.

Ni no Kuni 2 The United States gets nuked and the President is transported to a fantasy world where a young king is about to get overthrown. He caps a few fantasy assassins with his pistol and decides to help the young king conquer the world.

Ni no Kuni 2 is absolutely delightful, go play it.

LESS WHOLEHEARTED RECOMMENDATIONS, BUT STILL REALLY NEAT

XENOBLADE 2: TORNA THE GOLDEN COUNTRY This is going to be the cult classic of the Xenoblade series, I can feel it in my bones. I didn't play much of Torna because I was burnt out on Xenoblade 2's systems after playing 110 hours of Xenoblade 2 and seeing the writing just getting stupider and stupider and the game not ending.

Torna the Golden Country is a prequel to Xenoblade 2. From what little of it I've seen in ten hours, it looks to be focused on all the most interesting characters of Xenoblade 2 at a more interesting point in the game's history. It's not really my thing right now, but I feel like I'm seeing a lot of the elements that people who are a bit more forgiving in their entertainment consumption than I am tend to really love. There's something here, but it's buried. The quality of writing seems much higher than in Xenoblade 2 and we've got a better protagonist than Rex in Laura and the character designs are much more grounded than the main game, and everyone's got clear motivations. These are the sorts of things you see in cult classics.

It's probably relevant to note that, while Torna the Golden Country is described as an expansion pack, it is standalone. You do not need to own Xenoblade 2 to play Torna the Golden Country. I bring this up because the marketing was really unclear on this.

I should really play more of this one.

CROSS CODE It's absolutely delightful, but I don't have much else to say about it. Starts dragging around the 14 hour mark.

YAKUZA (6, Kiwami, Kiwami 2) The Yakuza games are genuinely pretty great, but none of the ones that came out in 2018 really hit home for me. I'd recommend them to people in a heartbeat if they've never tried 'em before, but I don't have anything much to say about the ones that came out this year.

LABYRINTH OF REFRAIN: COVEN OF DUSK NIS put the cool bits of Hundred Knight's aesthetic into a game that doesn't suck ass.

MARY SKELTER: NIGHTMARES It's been like 8 months since I've played this and I don't remember much but I remember that the art style's neat and that it's one of Compile Heart's better dungeon crawlers. Need to get back around to this one.

GO VACATION An absolutely delightful family party game. The minigames are pretty decent and all the different vehicles makes traveling around the resorts reasonably interesting. I get strong MySims vibes off of this, and the MySims games were great.

There's something delightfully video-gamey about the way that you can initiate a cutscene with an NPC by pressing the A button while your car's hurtling towards them at 60 miles an hour.

B+, would recommend.

ALL OF THE KATAMARI GAMES We heart Katamari.

GAMES THAT EVERYONE ELSE REALLY LIKES THAT NEED TO BE ADDRESSED OUT OF OBLIGATION BECAUSE OF THEIR UBIQUITY

CELESTE Celeste is a neat little platformer that's kind of hollow and empty. It's technically competent and fun enough, but kinda bland. It's easy to recommend, but hard to find anything much to say about it. It's alright, but I don't really understand why it won the indie game lottery this year.

ASSASSIN'S CREED ODYSSEY god I just don't care about assassin's creed

RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 I haven't liked any of the other Rockstar games I've played and see no reason to play this one. Looking forward to the games industry unionizing so that Rockstar and other major studios stop exploiting their employees.

INTO THE BREACH I'm not into roguelites and this one hasn't changed my mind.

HOLLOW KNIGHT Hollow Knight's got a really neat art style and feels pretty good to play, but the Metroid and Souls styles are getting extremely tiresome.

THE MISSING: J.J. MACFIELD AND THE ISLAND OF DREAMS Didn't quite grab me.

VAMPYR Sucks! har har i did a pun

THE MESSENGER I mean yeah it's a ninja platformer. Seems competent enough, plays fine, has decent melodies.

BLOODSTAINED: CURSE OF THE MOON It's neat, but didn't quite grab me.

GOD OF WAR (2018) I don't want to play God of War.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN I'm burned out on superheroes.

SUPER SMASH BROS ULTIMATE It's fine, and I like it more than Smash 4, but it's missing the creative excitement of Brawl and 64 and Melee.

MONSTER HUNTER WORLD I played it to the start of the high ranks and I still don't get it. It’s fine.

SOUTH PARK: THE FRACTURED BUT WHOLE It's competently made and probably worth a look, but kind of a step down from Stick of Truth.

SUBNAUTICA Really good, but I didn't see much reason to continue after I'd gotten the big submarine. Just kind of fell off of it.

RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN Haven't gotten around to it yet.

OCTOPATH TRAVELER it's a really bland jrpg that does nothing new and nothing exceptionally well. h’aanit sucks and her speech quirk drives me up the wall.

DRAGON QUEST XI it's a really bland jrpg that does nothing new and nothing exceptionally well. does not take any creative risks. dragon quest 5 remains the only really good dragon quest title.

POKEMON LET'S GO eh.

MARIO TENNIS ACES It's fine.

PATO BOX It's really neat. I should play more of it one of these days.

DELTARUNE CHAPTER 1 Toby Fox remains quite good at making video games.

BEAT SABER It's good.

SPLATOON 2 OCTOLING EXPANSION in the splatfest, the octolings had black shirts and the inklings had white shirts

the octolings are trapped and the only way out is to ride a train under the city. the octolings are on an underground railroad, as it were HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

FORTNITE haven’t played it.

#game of the year #goty #2018 #some thoughts on a lot of the stuff that came out in 2018 #video games #some thoughts on some things that didn't come out in 2018

0 notes