I’d hope there’s some trade off for eating a diet of raw fruit in exchange for lightning fast poops…
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Fanatical has a $1 war bundle deal now that is 14 of Hexwar’s games ported from IOS to PC - U.S. Civil War and WW II. I decided to give it a try and it looks like a nice diversion for $1. Multiple campaigns per game with multiple scenarios per campaign. Each scenario being simple, small, and quick playing. Feels like a traditional wargame, but playable in 30 minutes or less. The graphics and UI are modern, sound is reasonably decent. Mechanics are pretty classic with terrain effects chart, strength points, and a few combat factors, IGOUGO turns, with some units being able to fire after moving (at a penalty) while others can’t.
Despite the titles, they’re not really historical, the only way history plays into it seems to be in the graphics and some flavor text, otherwise they’re pretty generic and not all that different. While they don’t appear great in any way, it’s hard to find small fast-playing casual wargames, and the price point is good.
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Over at the humblebundle store Tekken7 deluxe edition is at 16.86 USD, so guess who started playing Tekken?
I’ve had this on my steam whishlist for a while now, I’m enjoying because it’s pretty technical and there’s a lot of strategy involved which makes the gameplay deep enough tha I’ll probably be playing a while until I’m good.
Interestingly enough you can get the regular version of Tekken at a discount as well but it costs 19.99, go figure.
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So I’ve had GTA V on PS4 for a couple of months now, and for the life of me I just cannot get into it.
It’s objectively a very well made, beautiful game. The characters are well voiced, the world is gorgeously realised, the driving is far more fun than in GTA IV, but I can’t play for more than an hour before getting bored.
It could be that the missions are just blergh - I have a great time just driving around as fast as I can.
Maybe I’m getting a little old for GTA…I loved playing San Andreas back in the PS2 era, so it’s been nice coming back to it in HD, but yeah…
Or maybe the radio stations just suck this time around 
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Yeah I’m less than enamoured by it as well. Funny thing is had a load of fun with saints row 4 which is objectively the runt in comparison.
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I love this game! Just recently thought of it again and played a bit on Monday. (I’ve bought a bundle of the other GTAs, but haven’t played them yet, V is my first.) I think the missions have been pretty cool, and when you hear the reporters on the radio talking about you that’s pretty cool. But once you start a mission you need to commit to it and my gaming sessions are often too short to see it through. So I got up to one of the ones that I think is gonna be a big critical mission and since then I’ve just been playing casually.
There’s so much to do outside of the missions. Cruising around, exploring, finding the easter eggs, playing with the interactive bits (like darts in a bar), taking a speedboat from the lake down the rapids to the ocean, hunting missing persons, alien artifacts, and elk, and playing vigilante to rescue people who’ve had their bikes or purses stolen. 
Watching the cops chase someone else, or computer drivers wreck and other stuff that happens in the background randomly makes it feel alive.
There was also the time when I was playing to distract myself from the darkness after multiple deaths in the family. I just randomly happened to find the goofy dancing DJ and it cracked me up. Silly as it was, that was the thing that made me smile and laugh for what might’ve been the first time in a month.
But for as lively and interactive as the world is, there are moments that break the suspension of disbelief. Buildings that are just solid boxes that you can’t break into. Empty areas. People who won’t talk to you and might even call the cops just for saying hello. Can’t really expect it to be a perfect life simulation.
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One thing that might perk up gta v for you is walking behind someone watching them get twitchier and twitchier until they run off screaming. Passes time for me anyway.
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Well they have it coming.
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A few weeks back, my desktop (and gaming PC) died. Finances what they are, I opted to grab a same generation Corporate machine off lease for a Benjamin and it arrived. Fortunately my ram from the dead system was still good so I’m up and basically operating … except for networking. DOH!
Old desktop had mini-pcie slot for onboard networking. So I can’t easily swap that and I’ve never gotten around to running cable to the room I use as my office. So… looks like I won’t be completely up until next week.
Oh well, one step forward. One step, back.
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I have not played this, and probably won’t anytime soon, but this review is in itself a fine piece of literature:
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A good thread about metacritic’s review:
I am tired of all the “If you don’t play X on Y difficulty, you’re not a real gamer!” gatekeeper bullshit. It’s how we get very pretty and very same-ish games. And other problems.
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And it implies that people who can’t afford certain games, or can’t play them because of accessibility conflicts, or past trauma, or just aren’t interested in those games aren’t real gamers. Even if we design games.
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I loved reading that, thank you! About a quarter of the way through my brain helpfully earwormed a poignantly wistful harmonica tune I must have heard in an old film.
The prose made me wish for a Hemingway who reviews video games. This writer came pleasantly close.
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Just finished FFXIII, that’s 96 hours I’ll never get back.
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I liked it better than most seemed to at the time. I thought the story was good, but not great. I liked the battle system. It’s unfortunate that the game ended up being so linear for most of the campaign, and that was largely a side effect of the troubled development. I played for over 100 hours, but didn’t complete any of the post-game side quests.
I think XIII is the only FF game I’ve actually finished, and I’ve played nearly all of them.
I’ve played just a tiny bit of XIII-2, so I don’t have an opinion on that one, and I haven’t played XIII-3 at all.
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I actually liked the battle system a lot and that’s the main reason why I was able to finish it but the story really made no sense at all. I kind of get it, but the ending was just nonsense, at least I didn’t get it.
I’m trying to work through the series and the last one I played was FF X, which was pretty good overall, the story was a little weird but in the end it all made sense in context so that was never a big distraction, but this one was too much for me, I’ve read that XIII-2 explains some of what happened at the end of XIII so I’ll probably play it someday.
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It’s been a while, but I remember the ending being both abrupt and pretty much nonsense.
The parts of the story that I liked were the themes of class division and some of the smaller character moments. I liked the characters overall, at least in the sense that they have a reasonable amount of variety and had some depth to them.
What little I played of XIII-2 left me confused, so I will definitely need a refresher if I ever get back to that one. It doesn’t look like any of them are backwards-compatible on Xbox One, so I’m even less likely to get to them anytime soon.
1 Like
I enjoyed FF XIII. I finished FF XIII-2 as well but didn’t play the other spin-offs. The ending of XIII-2 really, really pissed me off which was disappointing because in all I found it to be a much better game overall than XIII was. Yeah the plot is a mess but that’s to be expected in a modern FF game.
I did find the hate for the game’s linearity to be strange - the much beloved FF X is incredibly linear.
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So Humble Bundle has a big sale on RPG Maker and VN Maker:
I already have MV. I toyed around long enough to check it wouldn’t strobe me, but not long enough to figure out where to start. Anyone used one of these? Anyone know when the RPG and the VN approaches are better, or where to start writing an adventure with one of these?
Since I already have MV, and can’t run VX, if the RPG format is the best choice, then the $1 pack might be my best option.
My best adventure ideas would be–
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Someone joining Spartacus’s rebellion. If you do enough, you can try to persuade people to better decisions, and maybe escape. I would need conversations, investigation, and menu-based combat, but probably not running around on a map. In addition to a historical start, I could add an alternative Lest Darkness Fall style start where you’re an archaeologist who drops back in time in an accident.
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Someone trying to stop epidemics in Civil Wars Ukraine. Okay, maybe a resource allocation approach might be best for this one-- not enough medicine, not enough clean clothing, too much war.
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I’ve been thinking about the Spartacus game.
However I do this, the outcomes will depend on battles between the rebels and the Roman armies. Even just escaping would require defeating Roman armies on the way, as well convicing other rebels to continue the journey, and convincing others to let you pass.
I suspect RPG Maker would be a better choice than VN Maker.
I would like to let the player play Spartacus as well as their chosen player characters, and I would like to try for a middle ground between a strategy game and a role-playing game.
I think I’d need to start with a decision-tree approach, so players can try side quests at appropriate times, among other reasons.
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