#my theory is unfortunately the end of respawns

[lionheartedmusings]

"no one is expecting this"

i can assure you a bitch on tumblr has written a 500+ word essay on whatever's happening as a theory, and it's buried underneath gay headcanons and shitposts

[suna1suna1]

Redraw of this scene

Honestly I think I like how it came out. Very textured, I feel like the colors came out pretty well.

Also THIS EPISODE WAS INSANE

Theories under the cut

Okay so… unfortunately, I don’t think Doll is coming back. Flesha (love that that’s what we’re calling her lmao) ate her core, and given J didn’t respawn after N stabbed her core, I think she’s gone for good. Which is honestly sad, but I’m not really devastated? I liked Doll, but she wasn’t my favorite.

Now in terms of analyzing what “Tessa” said in Ep. 6, about N having to “choose the universe over one little drone.” Cyn’s goal was to kill all the other hosts. I think she can only fully possess one unit at a time, because she seemed to jump back and forth between her main body in Tessa’s suit and Uzi’s. I think that means that the other hosts are the key to her defeat. I think N made the choice between the universe and Uzi, and he chose Uzi. Now it’s all up to her unless he can get to her and help her (which I’m sure he will tbh).

Now the question becomes, how is she going to end Cyn? We know Ep. 8 is gonna be the finale. So that’s when (hopefully) all our questions will be answered.

Also, something I noticed; in Ep. 4, that’s the first time Uzi’s solver goes yellow and starts going haywire. That’s the first time she’s possessed.

That’s also right after Cyn lands on the planet. Coincidence? I think not. I think the proximity to Cyn either caused the possession to start, or accelerated the potentially already inevitable process. But given Yeva and Nori were patched and could still use their solvers, and Doll had been using her solver for a lot longer without getting possessed, I think it was Cyn that started possessing Uzi once she had landed on Copper 9.

And the closer Cyn got, the worse Uzi’s possession became.

Anyway those are my thoughts for now. What do y’all think?

[wintys-ghost]

My personal theory about what happened to Hunter (RW)

Okay this is just my interpretation of the ending and I can’t find anyone else who shares this idea so like

idk

So my idea is that The Hunter was a wild slugcat who NSH attempted to give a little bio-engineered advantage (like to @ninten-draw’s idea sorry for ping) but messed up, but then said to Hunter that if they went into the Void Sea there was a chance that the Rot would die, but not Hunter, and Hunter would respawn in NSH’s chamber, similar to the Saint’s echo respawn being the same throughout the ages (as far as we can tell)

unfortunately, when Hunter got to the void sea both them and their rot melted away. NSH’s shadow is the expectation :/

anyhoo yea

[sleepless-in-southlands]

The Paper Cut that Kills You

Ao3

Chapter eight of This Predacious Song, my multidimensional big bang fic! It’s a Mumbo-centric Hermitcraft/Last Life fic heavily featuring violence, blood, trauma, and horror-like themes. It is hurt/comfort with a happy ending. Please follow the embedded title link or the ao3 link for a complete summary and list of warnings for the story as a whole

Chapter eight’s title from The Amazing Devil’s “That Unwanted Animal”

~

    If Mumbo wasn’t already so used to something constantly being wrong with his body, the cut on his arm that refused to heal or disappear with respawn might have been more concerning to him than it was.

    As it was, it was mostly just another annoyance for him to have to deal with and hide.

    He had picked it up in one of the less-than-public servers, though now that he was back to Hermitcraft he didn’t really remember which one it had been. He had been dealt the blow shortly before his final death for the game, along with a multitude of others, but it was the only one that had stuck around after he respawned. He had thought it might fade when he switched servers, but that theory had been disproven as soon as he had returned to Boatem and found it still very much present.

    It wasn’t that bad of an injury, if Mumbo ignored the whole ‘not healing’ thing. It was a short and shallow cut on his upper arm, easy to hide and only minimally involved in his day-to-day activities. The way it constantly, albeit sluggishly, bled was unfortunate, but nothing that Mumbo couldn’t work around. And as to the fact that its edges were oddly straight-edged, seeming to move and even flash different colours at times… well, that had yet to be a problem Mumbo found necessary to address.

    He made his way to Treesa as soon as he arrived back in Hermitcraft, the sleeve of his suit jacket steadily getting redder as he used it to hide the wound. Mumbo had never thought he’d see the day he ran out of suit jackets to wear, but with so many of them bloodied, he was beginning to. He’d have to start cleaning them at some point, if he could figure out how.

    Mumbo went first to his potion chest, now well-stocked with healing potions of all sorts. He tried both drinking one and dabbing some splash directly on the wound, but aside from the splash cleaning up some of the blood, there was no result. Given the cut’s resilience to respawn and gradual regeneration, Mumbo couldn’t say he was surprised.

    Accepting that the best he’d be able to do for the cut, at least for now, was to wrap it, Mumbo started shifting through his other chests in search of bandages or something similar. As he opened one he quickly identified as being his primary non-potato food storage, Mumbo was briefly caught off guard by the blue shine of diamonds nestled between his carrots and apples.

    Faintly, the memory of Scar visiting him while he was attending to his ankle rose in his mind. His plan to ‘reverse-rob’ Mumbo, the way he had attempted to distract Mumbo by commenting on his storage system, both hands casually slipping inside a chest as he looked through it.

    Unconsciously, Mumbo began to smile. Of course Scar, that tricky businessman, would make a deal with Mumbo he knew he had already broken.

    Except, at the point where he would usually make off with more diamonds than he had earned, he had left them with Mumbo. Mumbo, who had endlessly refused them. Mumbo, who hadn’t wanted to accept anything for his help.

    Mumbo, who had only ever been his enemy in Last Life. Mumbo, who had watched helplessly as his own trap took one of his final lives.

    Scar… Scar had wanted him to take some form of repayment, of thanks, for his assistance, even if he had to trick Mumbo into taking it. Despite Last Life. Despite how easy Mumbo had made it to give up and just keep his wealth for himself. So had all the hermits who had refused to take no for an answer when they tried to pay Mumbo back. So had all the hermits who had insisted on not forgetting they owed Mumbo one.

    Mumbo didn’t realize his hands were trembling until he wrapped shaky fingers around one of the diamonds. If Scar- if they all- were this insistent about something as small as diamonds and favours, then… then…

    “Mumbo? Are you there?”

    Xisuma.

    Mumbo stepped away from the chest so fast the lid dropped with a loud thud. Of all the hermits he couldn’t let see his injuries- or his blood- the admin was at the very top of the list. If Xisuma saw them, he’d try to check Mumbo’s code for the mod packs, and if he couldn’t find anything-

    “Mumbo?” Xisuma repeated, having likely heard the sound of the chest falling shut. “Is it alright if I come up?”

    “Yes, of course, go right ahead!” Mumbo responded as he tugged his suit jacket back on, having taken it off when applying the splash healing. He didn’t have the time to get a new and clean one, so he hoped the dark material of the jacket would be enough to hide the red stain still soaking into the sleeve.

    Xisuma’s pink axolotl helmet popped up over the top of Mumbo’s ladder a moment later, artificial frills waving slightly as he fully entered Treesa. Mumbo remained standing next to his chests, keeping his injured arm and bloody sleeve partially shifted behind his back.

    “I’m sorry if I startled you,” Xisuma apologized as he walked into the main area of Treesa, facing Mumbo, “I heard one of your chests shut rather suddenly.”

    Mumbo waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, don’t worry about that, just looking for some misplaced blocks. Is there something I can help you with, or did you just come by for a chat?”

    “Little bit of both.” Mumbo was far too aware of his blood trickling down his arm. “Have you been working on any big redstone builds lately? Some hermits have been reporting lag issues and I want to make sure it’s not any player error before I check the code.”

    Internally, Mumbo let out a sigh of relief. Out loud, he chuckled a bit. “Running through the list of repeat offenders, are you?”

    Xisuma laughed as well. “Technically I’m asking everyone but, yes, you are one of the first people I’m checking with.”

    “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint, but it’s not me this time.” Mumbo informed him. “I haven’t done much redstone work in Hermitcraft recently.”

    “The server appreciates your consideration for it.” Xisuma joked as he flicked his fingers through the air, marking something only he could see in his visor. “Been busy with the mountain instead?”

    “Pretty much, yeah.”

    “Need any help with it? Any extra materials?”

    Mumbo gestured at his row of chests. “I’m plenty well set on that, no worries. Would probably help if they were a bit better organized, but it’s still all there. Somewhere.”

    It took Mumbo a few seconds to realize his quip hadn’t only fallen flat because it was, objectively, unwitty. Even a joke of perfect comedic proportions would have failed to catch Xisuma’s interest right at that moment.

    Because, in motioning at his chests, Mumbo had unthinkingly put his darkly stained suit sleeve right on full display.

    “Mumbo,” Xisuma started slowly, brow creasing as he focused on the discoloured spot, “what’s that?”

    Mumbo resisted the urge to hide his arm away again, knowing at this point it would be much more suspicious than admitting to the stain’s existence. “Oh, just some redstone. Gets on everything, you know.”

    “I thought you hadn’t been doing much redstone work?”

    “Must have accidentally grabbed one of my older suits this morning.” Mumbo said with a shrug, ignoring the burn from his cut as he did so. As long as he acted casual about the whole thing, it would be fine.

    If Xisuma would be willing to believe his story, anyways. He knew the stain didn’t really look like redstone- it was too dull, too sunk into the fabric, too far spread- but nothing else Mumbo could think of off the top of his head would explain it either. He just had to hope Xisuma would buy his bluff.

    “Are you… sure?”

    “Positive.”

    Another long moment of silence stretching on too long for Mumbo’s liking. Even without looking through Xisuma’s visor, Mumbo could feel the admin’s eyes on him, trying to figure out what was wrong.

    “You’ve been off server a lot recently.” Xisuma said haltingly, as if he hadn’t wanted to bring the subject up but now felt as though he had to. “And I’ve had more than one hermit mention to me that you’ve been acting off for a while now. Is everything alright?”

    For a moment, Mumbo was caught off-guard. It had been a while since anyone had asked him that question directly.

    But his shock didn’t last long, a fake smile that had become practiced with use tipping up the corners of his lips with little conscious thought. “Is it that weird for me to be doing things outside of Hermitcraft? I really have become too much of a homebody.”

    “Is that really all it is?”

    “What else would it be?”

    Xisuma didn’t answer the question, worried expression remaining intact nonetheless. The hermits weren’t blind. Obviously they had noticed Mumbo’s frequent absences, and they had been noticing his odd behaviour for longer than that. But that didn’t mean they had any solid proof that something was wrong. There was nothing that Xisuma could accuse him with, a fact that pushed their conversation right into a stalemate.

    Finally, Xisuma sighed. “I still have to check in with the other hermits about the lag issue.”

    “Don’t let me keep you.”

    “It wouldn’t be a bother if you did.” Xisuma reminded him as he continued to frown. “Remember, Mumbo- my door is always open, and my communicator is always on if you ever need anything.”

    Mumbo just nodded in response.

    With their conversation having hit a dead-end, Xisuma was left with nothing else to do but exit Treesa, climbing halfway down the ladder before Mumbo heard him drop off to the ground. Mumbo listened to the light sound of footsteps across grass as he walked towards the center of Boatem, likely planning on talking with the rest of the group before he continued asking around the rest of the server about the lag issue. Not that Mumbo had noticed any such thing as of late, but what would he know? He wasn’t around that often as of late.

    At the thought of his extracurricular activities, Mumbo’s arm began to ache again, and he resumed his search for bandages, the gifted diamonds forgotten about.

[littlemisssquiggles]

Pretty random question, but do you think that RT could wind up killing Ruby or Oscar off? Idk, I feel like if they did it right then it could be really sad. What are your thoughts?

…Uhmm…no?At least not in a permanent way. I’d like tobelieve that Ruby and Oscar both have a strong set of plot armour in theirarsenal. Ruby because she’s our series main protagonist and Oscar because…okayI’ll be blunt here: The CRWBY Writers axing Oscar would honestlybe a rather absurd plot decision given the context of how Oscar wasfirst introduced into the story.

Oscaris meant to more or less replace ProfessorOzpin at some point as the newest incarnation of the Wizard of Light. The CRWBYkilled off Ozpin to bring Oscar in and right now, they’re supposedly integratinghim into the main group and plot indicating that he might have a bigger role inthe story. I mean he certainly does just as much as Ruby given his connectionto the main series antagonist: Salem.

IfOscar dies and it’s a permanent thing then the first question I would ask is: What was the pointof creating his character?

What was thepoint of killing off Ozpin to introduce us to this new child character that wasmeant to replace Ozpin only to kill him off after spending seasons makingaudience members invest in his character and story arc? Why do all of that atall if that was his endgame?

I’msorry. This is mostly my personal Pinehead bias talking but I really do thinkkilling off Oscar for good after killing off Ozpin to get him instead soundreally dumb. Feel free to disagree with me if you will but that’s how Ihonestly feel about that.

Butto really answer your question Momfriend, in the event that the Writers do planon kill either of these two off, I can only see it being done for like the series finale.

ForRuby, I can only picture the Writers’ writing her final swan song as hersacrificing herself for the fate of humanity. While I technically don’t believethe CRWBY would actually kill Ruby, this is one way I can see them doing it ifthe thought ever crossed their minds.

Maybethey can even pull a River Song in Doctor Who where Ruby dies bravely to stop Salem and Oscar useswhat bit of the God’s light he had left in him to bring her back with a literalkiss of life.

Imagine if…in the end, the Writerspull a bit where Oscar is able to share his immortality with Ruby Rose so theyboth become immortalbeings whose love ends up shaping Remnant and its history for many,many generations.

Theycould become the epitome of soul mates wherethey’re attached at the soul and if one of them dies, the other dies as well.So they die together but are reborn separated with their memories intact. Butno matter where they respawn they always find each other again and relive theirlove.

That could be sweet.But I doubt the Writers will do something like this. Makes for a kickass AUthough.

ForOscar I can more picture him dying temporarily onlyto be revived later. Not as a new character but as himself. His true self. Hiscomplete self. I’ve been repeating this theory for the longest time where Ibelieve Oscar is truly Ozma---the reincarnation of his original form reborn inModern Remnant.

Ihave this picture in my head where Salem captures Oscar and takes him to her Dark Domainwhere she performs some kind of dark crucifixion ofsome kind. I’m not sure if you’re an Avatar fan as well but in its sequelseries, the Legendof Korra, it is revealed that the Avatar is in fact a combination ofa spirit and a human soul.

InKorra’s second book, the Avatar spirit---Raava is ripped out ofKorra---the current Avatar and whipped right before Korra’s eyes.And with each beating, Korra loses his connection to her past lives going downthe lineage until the Avatar cycle is reset and Korrabecomes the first and last Avatar.

Somehow I’ve picturedOscar suffering a similar fate like that where the reincarnation cycle is reset with him as theLast Wizard of Light. The last life. In my vision, Salem uses her dark magicto force Ozma or what she believes to be Ozma’s soul out of Oscar’s body. Ozpindescribed himself not just as one man but a culmination of them. So it’s my assumption thatwhen the Merge occurs, the souls of the other Wizards don’t truly die ordisappear but become a part of something I dubbed the Wizard Persona which they share with their current successor.

Ithink all thesouls of the past Wizards live within Oscar.He just hasn’t done anything to really connect withthose differing souls beyond Professor Ozpin. However I do think they are allthere with him. My Pinehead headcanon is that Salem will strip Oscar of his connection tothe other Wizards, killing them one by one until all that remains isOscar’s feeble soul.

Similarto Korra’s experience, picture…Salem extracting the souls of each of theWizards before Oscar who are a part of him. Picture Salemkilling each and every one of them for good, right before Oscar’s very eyes andwith each disconnection, Oscar feels his soul suffer as if he’s being torn in two.

Salemdoes this because she’s trying to get to Ozma who she’s trying to find amongthis mess of men. Unfortunately for Salem, she never finds Ozma and it isrevealed later that Oscar has been Ozma all along---his true reincarnation of him as the younger revived version of hisoriginal self. So Oscar technically dies but he’s brought back one last time tocomplete the mission he promised to fulfil all those years ago in his firstlife as Ozma.

Mytheory is that Oscarwill meet the God of Light or at least one of the Gods in the Realm BetweenRealms again. Since Ozma met the Godof Light, I think it’d be a cool contrast if Oscar met the God of Darkness and it would fit with the theory I have where Ibelieve the Godseach contribute to the creation of life inspite their differences.

My theory is thatBrother Godsdon’t just represent light and darkness but also body and soul. Dark represents the body while light represents the soul.

Mytheory is that through a consult with the God of Darkness, Oscar will learnthat he has been Ozma all along. He is the original form---the body ofOzma---that the God of Darkness brought back with his power. But when questionedof why the God of Darkness would do such a thing, he informsOscar that he did it in aid of his brother. The Brothers may differ in theirsentiments and levels of mercy shown towards mankind and while the God ofDarkness might not share much what fate befalls his so-called greatest creation,he does care and believe in his brother; even if he might never say that to hisface.

Let’s say, the God of Darknesshad a hunch that his brother’s experiment with Ozma’s soul mightfail at some point. There was no way he could keep doing this forever and atsome point, humanity would fall again by Dark’s premonition. So as one lastfailsafe, in addition to reviving the God’s Champion: Ozma, each Brothercontributed an additional trump cardto aid Ozma in the event that he failed to see through with his mission.

TheGod of Light’strump card were the Silver EyedWarriors---beings he blessed with his eyes to destroy the Creaturesof Grimm. The finaltrump card, the one Darkness had a hand in, was the creation of Oscar.

Godof Light was never able to revive Ozma’s old body. It was a feat out of hispower. But not Dark’s. While the God of Light revived Ozma’s soul, Ozma’s old body wasreborn and granted a new life and a new nameuntil his truepurpose will be realized. Destiny has a way of trailing back to where it’s supposed tofall after all and eventually Ozma’s revived soul would ultimately merge withhis revived body, reviving the hero---the champion known as Ozma completely. Ozma was theChampion of the Gods. The Wizard of Light andOscar is Ozma.

Thisis why I’m standing with the Merge not killing Oscar. It’s supposed to make himcomplete.Ozma will be made whole again. Oscar will be made whole again. That’s my headcanon and boy do I love it.  

Do you knowwhat would be interesting?

What if… the Gods being gods foresaw their greatest creation bringing abouttheir own damnation? What if…the Godsalready knew Salem was going to bring about humanity’s destruction but wereunaware on how to stop it.

Sothey introduced players and trump cards intheir game of Fate against Humanity. It’d be funny if RWBY is revealed to be one big game that theBrother Gods have been playing this entire time alongside another known God.

Possibly a third God---A higher being who warnedthe brothers that their greatest creation would fall and rise to destroy themboth and themselves.  Picture…this third Godbeing the Creator of the Brother Gods.  Perhaps there isa female Goddess---AMother of theCosmos who is the mother of the Brothers of Light and Darkness.

AlrightI think this is where my headcanons needto stop since I’m getting ahead of myself here. But it’s cool to think about,right? Hope I actually answered your question fam.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

[cultofthepigeon]

Todd Howard has done everything in hi power to stop me joining the Enclave and yet he has still failed. the tale of my conquest below.

so when the game dropped i was already paired up with my to buddies. pretty much as soon as the game started I start heading to what i THINK might be the white springs resort, based solely on theories i’d heard about its irl government bunker

we end up spending like an hour at the gold course with me disappointed that thats all it is, before we find the actual resort

day two our third buddy joins the game. i get my ass handed to me like 8 times in flatwoods cause i dont know when to give up an obviously outmatched fight. we actually find the entrance to the bunker but its locked the fuck down. i am despondent. we do some actual main quest stuff. Todd watches on, bemused.

we build our main camp on th egolf course cause i still hold hope this place might hold the secrets to the enclave. its a really pretty view with a good amount of resources, not to mention the entire place is patrolled a step away from the all robot security team. its a step up from when we parked our ass five feet from a scorch beast spawn. no more Bob The Sky Man stopping by to ask for some sugar very aggressively and very frequently

DAY THREE MY FUCKHEAD FRIEND PERSEUS INFORMS ME HE PLAYED FOR A BIT AFTER I GOT OFF AND JUST STUMBLED ACROSS THE BUNKER OF SOME SENATOR GUY AND THAT MAYBE THAT WILL HELP

so i drag the entire team up the map to go and try to re-find it since the game didnt save my friends discovery on it.

on the way there i find power armor, which then becomes the Communal Power Armor of our team. i offer to hold some guns for my pal Colton, only to immediately throw them away and lose them.

Todd realizes I’m getting too close and need a reminder of his power.

we come across someones camp, stop off to scrap some stuff. i step on a punji board and get mad so i break it

this instantly makes me a Wanted Man

what i can only describe as a self ascribed team of mercenaries come looking for me. in a panic i pass ff the armor to shawn, and run for the hills. im on the lamb, desperately trying to keep my innocent friends safe from the crossfire of my misdeeds. im eventually found in an unrelated bunker and gunned down by three players 20 levels higher than me. the punji board has been avenged

i respawn and they try to goad me into shooting again but i just do finger guns at them

anyways we find the bunker. the inner deathclaws have glitched so i just chase them around like theyre giant puppies playing a game. we find the stuff and get into the bunker with enough team work. turns out according to the math four quarters of a whole idiot is still one functional person

Todd is displeased

but the game glitches, i need to open a painting and find a holotape but it wont let me. so my friends all drop their holotapes so i can pick them up. i do. and the game immediately crashes for all four of us

Todd

We get back in. My friend Shawn has lost a whole level for his crimes. Todd believes hurting my friends will stop my prideful journey and stay my treacherous hands. He is wrong. I redo the whole bunker puzzle 

and i get my fucking holotape

we get into the whitesprings bunker and find the enclave.we end up all joining and its great. unfortunately none of us are a high enough level to use the plasma weapons or armor Modus sells. doesnt matter, im running around with the enclave emblem on my chest.

but later after two of my friends go to bed, me and shawn are searching out a red rocket (to help my friend Lyndsay find the Bos, god bless her). And then I just...stumble upon a plasma pistol.

Todd has conceded.

He knows I won.

Anyways 7/10 minimum I’ve been having a blast in this game

[mst3kproject]

Dance Hall Racket

Remember Timothy Farrell as gangster Umberto Scalli from Racket Girls? He's back with a new scheme in Dance Hall Racket!

What's that?  You want to know how he could be back in 1954's Dance Hall Racket when he was shot and killed in 1951's Racket Girls?  So do I.  My first theory was that Dance Hall Racket was actually a prequel to Racket Girls rather than a sequel, but he dies at the end of this one, too.  Farrell also played Scalli in a third movie, 1949's The Devil's Sleep (which I guess is actually the first Scalli movie, being as it was made before the other two).  I haven't seen that one, but I'll look for it, and if he doesn't die at the end I will be extremely disappointed.

Scalli's scheme this time is using a nightclub as a front to launder the money he makes by smuggling diamonds inside dogs' ears (this actually happens), but if he wants his longtime girlfriend Fortuna to marry him, he's gonna need more than that. An old friend of Scalli's, Victor Pappas, is about to be released from prison – if Scalli can make Pappas tell where he hid the loot from their last heist, he'll be rich enough to win her over, but little does he know, his criminal empire is about to topple (again). Undercover cop Charlie Edson is investigating him, looking for the murderer of a sailor.  You'd think being killed once would be enough to teach Scalli that crime doesn't pay.

The cops use the phrase 'sea men' to refer to sailors.  I'm imagining Tom and Crow snickering over that while Joel tries his best to keep them from making jokes too overt for television.

“But Joel, he said...”

“I know he did, Crow, but there are kids in the audience!”

I went into this movie trying not to remember the pain of watching Racket Girls, but I really expected more of the same.  Because of this, the first quarter hour or so of Dance Hall Racket was actually a pleasant surprise.  Racket Girls began with a scene of wrestling that really contributed nothing at all – Dance Hall Racket, however, got right on with actually telling its story!  The exposition about Scalli, Pappas, and Fortuna wasn’t too annoying, we got to see the sailor killed and Edson sent in undercover, and I began to hope that this might be an actual movie. Sadly, having set up all of that, the story came to a dead screeching halt and began puttering around killing time.

It does this in two main ways: one is watching women change.  These scenes are filled with weird cuts in which the characters’ clothes appear and vanish again, while the actresses remain standing in the same spot.  They’re often not wearing any less clothing, and the dialogue continues, so we’re not supposed to think that any time has passed.  I think the cuts may have less to do with modesty than with a camera that could only film a certain number of seconds in one take.  There’s also a scene in which two drunk women have some kind of limp-wristed parody of a catfight which is so bad it’s actually laugh-out-loud funny.

The other way the movie fills time is with Punchy, a supposed ‘comic relief’ character who is so devoid of humour I think I’ve forgotten how to tell a joke.

So yeah, all this goes on for another half an hour, during which time very little happens that’s actually relevant to the plot.  Occasionally hints of it peek out of the foliage, but mostly we’re listening to Punchy fail to be funny, or watching Scalli’s goons threaten women with knives when he thinks they’re stealing from him (like Jackie and her Swanky Apartment in Racket Girls, I guess).  Then when we’ve almost forgotten about him, Pappas finally shows up and the movie actually takes a surprising turn, when jealous and trigger-happy thug Vinnie takes exception to Scalli appointing his girlfriend Rose as Pappas’ date for the evening.

This is a surprisingly good piece of storytelling for this movie – Vinnie’s possessiveness of Rose was set up earlier, although by this point we’ve pretty much forgotten about that, too.  So much time was spent on other details of the characters’ lives and relationships that turned out to be irrelevant, we can’t be blamed for assuming Vinnie and Rose are more of the same.  Seeing it paid off like that was actually kind of satisfying.  Unfortunately, it also serves to emphasize just how many other things were set up in the movie that didn’t pay off, many of which seemed like they ought to be important.

What, for example, happened to Fortuna?  We only saw her in one scene and then she vanished utterly.  She was the one Scalli was trying to please, so you’d think we’d see her hanging around and pestering him.  What happened to Icepick, the guy who wanted to leave the racket and get married?  His story was set up in a way that makes us sure something terrible is going to happen to him, but the movie never gets around to it.  What’s up with Pappas being unable to speak?  We’re told twice that he had his tongue cut out and that really sounds like it ought to be a plot point but it never is. When he made sure Vinnie got shot I thought for a moment it would turn out that he’d agreed to work for the cops in order to get out of jail, but the movie ends without going into it.

It’s also another movie that can’t really be said to have a hero.  We don’t know Edson at all – we don’t even learn his name until well after he’s introduced and nothing he does ever gives him a personality.  He’s just A Cop.  The movie is much more interested in the various double-crossings among the nasty types who work for Scalli.  None of these people can really be considered a protagonist, since they’re all horrible and never sympathetic in the least, but they at least have relationships and motivations.

For all that, though, this is still a better movie than Racket Girls!  The irrelevant dancing is somehow much more bearable than irrelevant wrestling was, maybe because the dancing isn’t a contest and we don’t feel we’re supposed to have something invested in it when we can’t. More importantly, we don’t have a Peaches Page in this movie.  There are plenty of half-clothed women in it, and the movie leers at them unapologetically, but there’s no single one who is set up as a potential hero only to be exploited and forgotten about.  In this sense, Dance Hall Racket feels a little more honest and a little less disappointing.  It’s a terrible, terrible movie, but it’s not quite as bad as I know it could have been.

Between this and Racket Girls, I also think I’m starting to get an inkling of what, if indeed anything, the ‘Scalli Trilogy’ is trying to say.  The films are obviously about how crime doesn’t pay, but the comeuppances in them are not brought about by the police but by Scalli’s fellow criminals. Crime doesn’t pay, but organized crime in particular cannot possibly pay because everybody in the organization is a criminal, and criminals are by nature untrustworthy and therefore unable to work together.  Maybe this is what’s being emphasized by Lois the thief in this movie, or Jackie and her Swanky Apartment in Racket Girls – there can be no cooperation when everybody is out for themselves.

I also have to wonder what’s going on with the thing where Scalli dies in Movie One only to reappear in Movie Two a few years later and die again.  The two can’t possibly be in continuity with each other unless Scalli respawns like a video game character every time he’s killed, so what gives?  Is Dance Hall Racket supposed to be a remake?  That kind of makes sense when you consider how it does try to start correcting some of its predecessor’s mistakes. Is this an alternate universe, demonstrating that crime doesn’t pay in any possible world?  Has Scalli been reincarnated, only to learn nothing from the mistakes of his previous lifetime?  This fascinates me far more than it should.

You may wonder why I bother to think about it when the real answer is obviously just that the film-makers and actor Timothy Farrell were just too damned lazy to come up with a new character.  It’s true that there’s probably no more to it than that, and yet I’m not totally sure, because the movie does make a point of ending where it began.  With Scalli and Vinnie both dead and Icepick out of the racket, management of the club falls to the next guy down on the totem pole, bouncer Bert.  We’ve heard the girls who work there talk about him and how he keeps everybody in line – both the customers and the girls themselves. The policeman who has supposedly been narrating the whole story says they figure Bert is continuing to launder money and sooner or later he’ll be next on their list, and thus the whole cycle starts again.

I gotta see that third (first) Scalli movie.  Maybe that one will tell me whether there’s really anything going on there.  Or maybe, considering how much of an improvement this one was over Racket Girls, it’ll just be totally unwatchable.  The only thing I can be absolutely certain of is that Dance Hall Racket would have made for some awesome MST3K.

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Fort Triumph Review — A Pyrrhic Victory

May 6, 2020 12:00 PM EST

A functional blend of fantasy-themed XCOM battles with Heroes of Might and Magic strategy, Fort Triumph replicates their concepts but without the depth.

Fort Triumph is a tough one for me to review. It does everything it set out to do and has some rock-solid ideas conceptually. Imagine a strategy game like Heroes of Might and Magic, but replacing the massed army combat with fantasy XCOM. The combination works well, and Fort Triumph borrows strongly from both parts to make something reasonably complete. But when all was said and done, I just found myself completely unable to particularly care for it. It should’ve been something I adored, on paper, and I suspect that others will get more from it. I just found nothing to cling to, though.

“But when all was said and done, I just found myself completely unable to particularly care for [Fort Triumph].”

Tactical battles are the heart of Fort Triumph. You’re presented with a grid-based field to which your party of heroes are deployed, then take turns moving your armies. Each character gets three action points which can be used in any order and combination. Moving will cost one point up to your range, but you can spend more to move further. Most abilities and attacks will cost two to use, barring a few exceptions. So you’ll move, attack, etc. until all your characters have expended their action points, then your turn is over and the enemy moves. Fairly straightforward.

The physics are the most unique draw to Fort Triumph’s battles. Much like XCOM, standing next to objects of various heights can give either half or full cover from attacks in that direction, making you tougher to hit or damage. In Fort Triumph, every character has at least one “physics” ability that can directly interact with objects, whether they be units or cover. If an object or unit gets moved by these and strikes something else, it’ll do damage and stun them for the next turn, making them unable to use abilities. This quickly becomes the best way to manage enemies and keep them from overwhelming you.

This definitely makes for a less defensive approach to battles than XCOM. Cover is now a weapon that can be turned against you, so hiding behind a pillar will usually see it falling on you for huge damage instead. As such, I tended to play fast and direct, setting up chain stuns by pinballing objects between each other and controlling the field of battle. It’s a pretty neat idea, and definitely a good way of differentiating Fort Triumph from the crowd. This also makes sense, given that it was one of the key features of the original Kickstarter.

“Cover is now a weapon that can be turned against you, so hiding behind a pillar will usually see it falling on you for huge damage instead.”

Throughout the course of a game, you’ll build a party from any combination of four character classes: Mage, Paladin, Archer, and Barbarian. They play largely to their archetypes, gaining skill points as you level up. These skill points can be spent either learning new abilities, or upgrading the existing ones. Choosing a new ability will give you a choice out of three, with the order in which skills appear being random (and occasionally cross-class skills being an option). In theory, this keeps your characters varied in between playthroughs or squads. In practice, I couldn’t help but feel like my characters were becoming a homogenous blob. There were other factors to that though, like the story; we’ll get to that.

Between battles, you’ll be presented with a map that’s lifted almost directly from Heroes of Might and Magic 3. Parties have a set amount of movement per turn, which you can use to traverse across the map and interact with the objects you’ll find there. Some grant you items or resources, others are battles with treasure stashed behind them. Ultimately, it serves as a means of getting into more fights and accumulating experience before throwing your parties at the enemy team, who is doing exactly the same.

Bolstering this are the cities and “farms” you’ll find. Claiming a city lets you spend the resources you’ve accumulated on buildings, upgrades, and new heroes or parties. You can maintain up to three parties, but this is a risk, as the encounters on the world map won’t respawn. It can be hard to effectively level up all of them. As for buildings, you can construct up to one per turn, and space is limited so you can’t gain everything. These will generally grant your units some kind of bonus, increase your resource generation, produce more defenders if the city is attacked, and so on.

The buildings you have available are determined by your faction. There are four available, but as each of them have the same hero classes, these building abilities (and aesthetics) are the only real difference. I didn’t encounter any faction-specific skills for the heroes, so this seems to be a fairly minor feature at best.

Unfortunately, I found the overworld map to be fairly lackluster. The encounters are numerous and are usually only there to grind levels on. Challenge is minimal for most, unless you’re trying to level up a secondary party. Some of the items that can be found can change up your party capabilities quite extensively, but those are few and far between. Without the variety of units, armies, or options that something like Heroes of Might and Magic provided, Fort Triumph’s maps feel like little more than a shallow homage.

This is made all the worse by the enemy AI seemingly not playing the same game as me. They seemed to have no problem spawning pre-leveled enemies without regard to the cost. Did I beat up one of their roaming bands? It’s fine, they’ll deploy another a turn later. Losing my main party could seriously slow me down or see all my progress grind to a halt. If I’d already cleared the easy battles on the map, good luck to me.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen often because the AI also doesn’t seem to utilise the physics system well. There’d occasionally be minor attempts, but nothing like the coordinated map manipulation and stun locking I was doing. Maybe this would change on higher difficulties, but given that I was already disadvantaged in resources and party spawns, I didn’t care to find out.

Fort Triumph’s campaign will start you with a party of three adventurers — Mage, Paladin, Archer — and your first objective will be to meet the Barbarian. From there, you’ll travel the map as new objectives are placed on it, culminating in you defeating the opposing group in their city. Act completed, and on to the next. You can keep the leveled “story” units and a single artifact or boon to the next stage.

“Without the variety of units, armies, or options that something like Heroes of Might and Magic provided, Fort Triumph’s maps feel like little more than a shallow homage.”

Story in Fort Triumph is extremely lacking. Most cutscenes and moments are little more than a chance to apply some tongue-in-cheek humour that, for me, missed more than it landed. The notion of pointing out the fantasy stereotypes and then subverting them or laughing about them doesn’t make them less cliched. In fact, a lot of mid-budget fantasy games seem to use this instead of actually telling their own story; just try and evoke Dungeon Keeper’s humour but do little else, to the point where such attempts seem more common than the stereotypes.

In fairness, Fort Triumph did start making an attempt in Act 2 and onward. It started interspersing the jokes with attempts at moral quandaries, cynical statements on the way the nobles mistreat their peasants, and so on. Still, it was delivered amidst all the humour that made it really hard to want to take anything seriously.

This was even further hampered by the realisation that cutscenes specifically require a representative of each class to be present. They don’t need the individual characters, mind you; any old class member will do. Say the primary Paladin in your group was split from the party (or killed) prior to starting a story mission. No problem: the game will throw a level 1 Paladin into your party to fill in their lines. At that point, it’s kind of impossible to feel for said Paladin’s crisis of faith at learning of their order’s corruption when they aren’t the same character who discovered it. There was no attachment from that point onward for me.

There’s not much to say about Fort Triumph on the presentation front, either. The graphics are colourful and crisp, but don’t really have anything to make them stand out. Sounds are generic but effective, while the music is very limited and started growing repetitive extremely quickly.

Aside from the campaign, you can set up skirmish matches against the AI, or set up hotseat local co-op against them. There’s no online functionality, though Steam’s remote local play is enabled for it.

“Fort Triumph is a perfectly serviceable game built on an interesting blend of concepts.”

So to summarise, Fort Triumph is a perfectly serviceable game built on an interesting blend of concepts. It just ultimately feels too shallow and uninteresting for me to find anything worth attaching to. Battles are entertaining, but quickly become grindy. There’s a lack of variety in the hero classes, even with their skill customisation; there’s no real cosmetic customisation beyond colours and gender, either.

  I almost feel bad that I walked away from it with such a negative sentiment. This clearly meant something to the team, but I just found it dull before too long. Perhaps there’s someone out there who will absolutely adore this game and praise it as a hidden gem.

Still, when you’re based so heavily on a fusion of two very good games, you really need to iterate on those ideas. There has to be something about the combination that stands out; otherwise, people will just compare you to your inspiration and end up going right back to those games. On that note, I just want to play more XCOM now.

May 6, 2020 12:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/05/fort-triumph-review-a-pyrrhic-victory/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fort-triumph-review-a-pyrrhic-victory

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Just to be clear – I wanted to be a fan of SuperEpic: The Entertainment War. I love Metroidvanias, I love indies, and I love retro pixel and sprite art. Which means that SuperEpic had all the right tools at its disposal to enchant me. The premise of the game revolves around a fictional world where one company, RegnantCorp, rules all the game industry with an iron fist. They publish video games that steal the willpower of fans, while pushing irritations like microtransactions and subscriptions onto their slaves. They may also have more sinister motives than that. You play young raccoon Tantan astride his llama companion as you both venture to RegnantCorp in the pursuit of justice.

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So far, so good. I liked the tongue in cheek humor, and how all the characters are animals. Especially the added touch that all of RegnantCorp is run by literal money grubbing pigs. The art style in SuperEpic is also really attractive, featuring colorful and complex sprites. Everything looks fantastic, and there’s a fluidity to how everything moves. Frankly the art is what drew me to covering the game to begin with. Sadly, that’s about where the positive ended and the negative began.

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Any Metroidvania is make or break from the gameplay alone, and unfortunately SuperEpic just didn’t do the trick. In theory it’s sound. You move through large areas (with very intermittent save points), fight hordes of minor foes, acquire items and new abilities. In execution, it’s a very different story. As an example, the game loves to swarm you with minor enemies, including some that keep respawning, such as flying robots which drop tiny crawling bots. If the game can, it will always interrupt and try and swarm you in a dogpile. Further making this a challenge is how many of the enemies in the game lack audio cues before attacking. And since the window for dashing through an attack is very minimal, this quickly became an issue. Even minor enemies have a lot of health, which means you’ll be choosing whether it’s better to attack through them or just run away. The only advantage to killing foes is grabbing money, which is much more important in SuperEpic than in most games in the genre (more on that later). But since you don’t level up by acquiring experience, it’s generally best to cut your losses and run from a difficult room.

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All that would be fine if the combat had solid mechanics, or if the UI was easy to use, but neither is the case. You can equip three different weapons to three different face buttons, allowing a forward, upward and downward melee attack. But again, since most enemies have tons of health, that means you’re encouraged to juggle them, which really isn’t that fun and got repetitive incredibly fast. Hell, later you get some super moves that can only be recharged by juggling enemies in midair ad nauseam. And though I kind of appreciated having different weapons mapped to different attacks, there’s one big problem – you can’t change your equipment while exploring. You can only change it while you’re at the one of the shops you buy items at, run by a cadre of masked pigs. All they want is your sweet, sweet coin, and lots of it. You’ll need money to buy new equipment, attacks and even upgrades to your basic stats. Since there’s no leveling system, you have to go full Scrooge McDuck just to have a fighting chance. And while there are new abilities you gain as you progress, I didn’t ever get any that felt as though they sufficiently changed the game. In classics of the genre, each new ability you gain would make a huge impact on your exploration and combat, but here they just felt like underwhelming stopgaps. Sure, you quickly get a double jump, and that’s handy, but the levels are so huge that even having it won’t allow you to fully explore each area. Worse was that the rage attacks you get just feel equally underwhelming. You get a freebie downward kick, but it didn’t feel any more powerful than my basic attacks. Every additional rage attack costs diamonds which are very hard to find.

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Now while I’m unimpressed by the combat at large, at least the bosses are a bit more interesting. Those I encountered had some good diversity, different attack patterns and witty fourth wall breaking banter. Fighting against them felt more like playing Fatal Fury than an actual Metroidvania, with more button mashing than precise combat. The main issue is most of them wander all about the rooms you fight them in, and will generally charge you without much warning. To be fair, there is an icon that flashes to show approximately where they are off screen, but I personally was aghast at the need for this. There’s also a general floatiness to the physics in the game that upset me. It just felt like the design wasn’t tight or precise enough, and that feeling translated to the rest of the SuperEpic experience. I did have some slight hope when the game introduced a rogue-like mini game, but sadly that was hampered by the same flaws as the main experience.

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One issue that was completely perplexing was SuperEpic’s use of QR codes. I’ve never before had to use my phone to play a game on the Switch, and I wasn’t about to start here. The problem is, complete rooms are totally blocked off unless you scan various QR codes and then play a minigame to unlock a gate. I would have much preferred that investigating these codes prompted a minigame on my Switch instead, but alas that wasn’t the case here.

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I can forgive a lot, but there’s one thing I absolutely detest and that’s when a game doesn’t properly explain how things work. I know some gamers hate any sort of tutorials, but I’m fine with them so long as I can ignore them if need be. In SuperEpic, you’re often left to your own devices. You are shown how to do basic attacks early on, but that’s it. For example, I got healing items as I wandered, but couldn’t recall if the game ever explained their use. I finally confirmed that yes it does, but only after talking to the PR for the game. More importantly though, you should never not be able to figure out how to use healing items. That’s pretty basic. Later in the experience, I got a new ability to throw bombs, and was instructed to use them to destroy a wall in front of me. Key issue? They never explained how, and I tried every button without success. Hell, I even checked the pause screen for clarity and nothing was apparent. Now I know that it requires pressing down on the joystick, but that’s far from intuitive. Ultimately, these issues kept me from really enjoying the experience.

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All in all, I just can’t recommend SuperEpic: The Entertainment War. It had the right tools to be a fun game, but completely mismanaged their use. Features like odd QR codes and poorly explained mechanics made it a slog, despite the attractive aesthetic. I honestly hope this feedback helps Numskull Games produce a much better and clearer experience after this. Or perhaps even prompts them to update SuperEpic with a giant batch of fixes. As it is, there are better examples of the genre currently out there.

IMPRESSIONS: SuperEpic: The Entertainment War Just to be clear - I wanted to be a fan of SuperEpic: The Entertainment War…

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Super Rude Bear Resurrection Review

Super Rude Bear Resurrection is one of the hardest games I’ve ever played–but only at times. Certain games, Resident Evil 4 being a famous example, use a dynamic difficulty system, invisibly adjusting to keep the action challenging but not frustrating. Super Rude Bear Resurrection does something similar, only in a much more obvious, tangible way.

It’s a hardcore platformer in the mold of Super Meat Boy, but with a novel twist that gives meaning to the countless deaths you’ll suffer throughout. Corpses persist after death and can be used to create a safer path through levels (where one false step will send you back to the last checkpoint). In essence, almost every death serves to make the game slightly easier–though you can also clear levels without ever dying. It’s a delightful concept that further enhances a game that’s already strong thanks to its wealth of ideas and fantastic soundtrack.

At its most basic, Super Rude Bear Resurrection is a fairly straightforward platformer, tasking you with navigating stages filled with all manner of deadly spikes, arrows, swinging axes, more spikes, and creatures that toss snowballs at you harmlessly–until those snowballs just nudge you to your doom. You’ll maneuver through levels using simple jumps and wall jumps. You have no offensive capabilities, and the game doesn’t offer any special abilities to unlock or power-ups to find. You could, in theory, complete any level right from the get-go, although it’ll likely take dozens–or, more likely, hundreds–of deaths before you’re able to consistently overcome the trickiest obstacles.

The level design shows a tremendous amount of care on the part of developer Alex Rose Games. Stages are meticulously crafted to maximize difficulty without feeling unfair, but they’re also created in a way that allows for corpses to ease your path. A carcass might block incoming arrows or give you a safe spot in a row of spikes to jump on, and it can destroy certain traps when it comes into contact with them.

It’s easy for the corpses to pile up, particularly due to the way Super Rude Bear Resurrection’s levels toy with you. The game plays with your expectations and sets up hazards to punish you for relying on anticipation, rather than your reactions. Many deaths stem from hazards located immediately after checkpoints–these are seemingly placed for the explicit purpose of punishing your eagerness to immediately get back into the action after respawning. You can practically hear Alex Rose chuckling to himself every time you rush into an easily avoidable death. That might explain the mocking remarks of your floating companion, who also delivers the story (and jokes), allows you to destroy corpses in your path, and lets you scout out the areas ahead.

Super Rude Bear Resurrection isn’t an especially long game, although seeking out no-death runs, better leaderboard rankings, secret worlds, and dialogue (easy to miss the first time around) provides ample incentive for multiple playthroughs. The primary upside to not being long is also what’s most impressive about Super Rude Bear: it never runs out of steam. It feels fresh from beginning to end thanks to the way it consistently sprinkles in new types of challenges over the course of the entire game. Falling spikes, NPCs with hammers, arrow launchers, homing missiles, spinning lasers–you won’t play for long without encountering a new idea.

Some of these new ideas introduce interesting ways of interacting with corpses. Deaths caused by missiles and lasers freeze your body into an ice block. In the case of the missiles, ice blocks can provide stepping stones over a gap or block further missiles from being fired, while lasers pull the ice in, thereby preventing the lasers from reaching you on your next life.

“On the strength of its pacing and basic mechanics alone, Super Rude Bear Resurrection would make for an extremely engaging platformer. The addition of its corpse mechanic elevates it to something greater.”

Further adding to the variety are the boss fights littered throughout, each with its own unique gimmick that doesn’t feel at odds with the platforming framework of the game. One tasks you with avoiding spikes and the attacks of a breakdancing robot while standing on a rising platform. Another requires you to ride a moving platform through an otherwise standard level while avoiding a flying enemy that attempts to knock you off or crush you. The latter was particularly memorable, as being knocked down doesn’t guarantee death; provided you’re skilled enough, you can jump off of the boss itself and potentially recover. Whereas the bosses in Super Meat Boy have always felt to me more like obstacles that stand in the way of returning to the regular action, Super Rude Bear’s boss stages were among my favorites in the game.

Later levels ask a lot, requiring an almost-superhuman level of precision to complete without a death–an accomplishment I couldn’t even begin to sniff over the last quarter of the game. Yet, because of instant respawns and an excuse to continue listening to the stellar soundtrack, I never found myself frustrated, even when a particular section would cause me to die dozens of times. In fact, it was often hard not to laugh as I amassed an abundance of corpses (every one of which is dumped into a pile from the top of the screen at the conclusion of a level, just as a reminder). These attempts where I clearly wasn’t going to set a new time on the leaderboards often became fun experiments to see just how much I could screw with the design of the level.

In certain cases, the game actually becomes far too easy with even just a few deaths. Thankfully, if you find that to be the case, higher difficulty settings restrict the ability to destroy traps, leave behind corpses, and even use checkpoints. These options give you the flexibility to make the game as difficult as you want, which is great, since it’s most satisfying when played at the highest difficulty you can tolerate. The thrill of making it through a tough level with little help is matched by few other platformers I’ve ever played.

Not everything is quite so well executed, however. Visually, the game isn’t always clear about where you can safely stand or whether a corpse will protect you–spikes or blades sometimes extend beyond a body but won’t hurt you. The lack of an overworld is disappointing, if inessential, but the inability to access leaderboards anytime other than at the end of a level feels like an unfortunate oversight. A glitch when changing difficulties would cause the sound to drop out until I paused and unpaused the action. And certain level elements, such as falling icicles, are occasionally triggered before they should be after a respawn, which requires a quick death to reset. Because this only happened after a death, it never cost me a flawless run, but it was nonetheless a small source of frustration.

For all of these minor gripes, none of them stand in the way of enjoying nearly every second of playtime. On the strength of its pacing and basic mechanics alone, Super Rude Bear Resurrection would make for an extremely engaging platformer. The addition of its corpse mechanic elevates it to something greater, allowing it to simultaneously serve as an extreme challenge for the most diehard platforming fans as well as a game that can be enjoyed by the novice crowd. Super Rude Bear Resurrection demands a lot from you, but the satisfaction of success is immense in the end.

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Mortal Engines-style game Last Oasis aims to solve the survival genre’s problems • Eurogamer.net

Remember the Mortal Engines film that came out a few years ago? Me neither, but something that could scratch that itch for massive roving machines is on its way, as Last Oasis is heading into early access this week – and I’ve had an early look via an online press demo.

First announced as part of the PC Gaming Show last year, Last Oasis is a post-apocalyptic MMO survival game with an enticing hook: you’re a nomad in a vast desert which can be traversed with rickety wooden walkers, sent out by society to collect resources and ensure humanity’s survival. The lore behind this explains that Earth’s rotation has stopped, meaning the planet is split into fiery desert and extreme cold, with a small sliver of hospitable land in the middle. As the sun moves, the nomads must also travel to avoid the burning rays. It’s a clever backstory, but is it enough to separate it from the crowd of other survival MMOs?

During the early stages, Last Oasis shares many of the mechanics you’d expect to see in survival games like Rust: harvesting wood, crafting better tools, and a tech tree that can be expanded with technology gathered from old wrecks and settlements. While ranged combat is an option on the walkers, we were also shown hand-to-hand melee, which aims to provide more depth than other survival games by tracking whether players click on the right or left-hand side of the screen, with melee hits corresponding to these in-game. As the same mechanic works for blocking, it means there’s some level of reflexive skill rather than just spamming – and a stamina bar means you’ll have to deploy your hits carefully.

Thankfully things get interesting quite early on – your first machine, an insect-style walker, doesn’t require too many materials and plays a key role in allowing you to explore the vast environment (and providing a valuable respawn point). Players load into hexagonal worlds called oases, which in turn connect to a bunch of others across the globe as part of a larger world map. To travel between these is quick, but requires water, a valuable resource which also powers the machines you use to climb over sand dunes and find more resources. Early-stage walkers can’t hold an awful lot of water, and therefore can’t take you very far, prompting players to search for ways to upgrade or swap their machines. You get the idea.

Donkey Crew plans on developing the game by adding more content, but also introducing temporary event maps such as Rupu dungeons which players will be able to explore for an hour. Rupu are the more basic monkey enemies, if you were wondering.

As all the tiles and servers are connected across the globe (allowing European and American players to intermingle, for instance) I was a little worried about potential latency problems, but Donkey Crew project lead Florian Hofreither assured me this wouldn’t be an issue.

“We don’t expect overly-large issues because we’ve been busy from day one making sure that performance is great,” he told me. “With all survival games out there, we’ve noticed that when lag comes in at crucial moments it’s just not a great experience. So we decided to cap our servers at 100 people per server, and doing our tests we’ve seen no issues.”

The walkers themselves are by far the most enticing aspect of Last Oasis: there’s something really satisfying about their movement, along with the clacking and groaning noises they produce. In total, there are 13 types of walker for players to choose from, some of which are better suited for certain tasks (such as attacking or moving cargo). All of them can be customised with extra parts at stationary trading posts – including slingshot cannons and darts, with options to power movement with either pedals or wings. The larger ones can provide useful shelter if attacking other players, or better stability and health for fighting massive monsters in hunting parties. Killing said creatures brings in some serious rewards – although you’ll have to put up with being shaken about, as unfortunately the big monster fight felt a little nauseating when watching the demo.

Here’s the big bug boi, called an Okkam, who caused all the trouble.

Rather promisingly, it seems the devs have gone to great efforts to dial back the sort of griefing that undermines other PvP survival games, while also maintaining some level of danger. Offline raiding isn’t an option, while player-clans are given incentives to protect players that come into their territory.

“The way it works is if you are on a region that is owned by a clan, then the clan will welcome you,” project lead Florian Hofreither said in response. “The reason is because a part of your resources goes to the clan as a passive income. However, that is only true if you stay alive – once you get murdered, the clan loses your bonus. It doesn’t affect you as a solo player, but the clan will try to make sure that as many players as possible stay alive on their territory. This is interesting because clans will never hunt in their own territory because they will damage themselves, and they would much rather hunt in the territory of enemy clans where they can damage them.”

If being an asshole really is your thing, however, there are still opportunities for you – a little like the way space is controlled in Eve Online, there are territories which are uncontrolled by clans where players can effectively become pirates and hunt other players without consequences. Well, unless that player has a bigger walker. But in theory, this means solo players should be able to avoid more hostile regions if they wish.

Overall, I’m still intrigued by the idea of roaming the wastes on the back of a crawling wooden structure (and the possibility of building a walker armada) – but I do have a couple of reservations. Namely, it’s difficult to see exactly how Last Oasis will work once handed over to a larger community, particularly as much of the game seems reliant on player-driven content. While we got a brief glimpse at the player-driven economy at a trading post, it’s hard to know exactly how this (or the endgame) will work out in practice until thousands of players get their hands on it. And although the devs emphasised it’s quick to travel and there are multiple biomes, I do wonder whether this game will end up feeling a little empty by virtue of being, well, a big old desert. Will there be enough to keep me entertained beyond constructing and driving my first few walkers? In any case, we’ll find out when Last Oasis enters Steam Early Access on 26th March, and as it develops over the coming years.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/03/mortal-engines-style-game-last-oasis-aims-to-solve-the-survival-genres-problems-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mortal-engines-style-game-last-oasis-aims-to-solve-the-survival-genres-problems-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net