What have I been playing?

I had a busy busy couple of weeks and didn’t get much gaming in, but in my idle moments I have been trying (actually trying) to win FTL: Faster than Light and have failed again and again, which is the point I guess. It feels like an SNK fighting game. You get the hang of it and can beat the computer opponents with relative ease– and then you hit the boss and you are fucked forever (see Samurai Shodown 2 or King of Fighters 97 as examples). I’m waiting to see if anyone I know that has it has actually won it– because on easy– well, it ain’t. While the AAA titles can be awesome, FTL is case in point that almost all the PC gaming gold resides almost solely in the camp of the indy developer.

spirit

That said, I’ve finally uninstalled Rome Total War 2 (my box has my games on a small SSD so I have to free up space), because it just crashed too much– blue screens, other crashes and I just really do not like the direction they’ve gone with the fights. Even the biggest battles are over in 5-7 minutes and it all just turns into a big mob. It has some great things about it and the graphics look really good but I just ended up going back to the Napoleon expansion to Empire Total War, which if you haven’t played, is fantastic. I expected to be playing Rome Total War 2 for months and months, but that was not to be unfortunately.

Sure BF4 looks really good, but I just didn’t end up buying it. I feel like just playing Bad Company 2 would scratch that itch just fine (and it’s on Steam).

Talisman. Maurice!Bastard gifted me Talisman on Steam and I got in a game last night. It was– interesting. I think it’s a completely viable means of playing the game, and interface wise they did a fine job, but is Talisman the type of game that you want to play on the computer rather than face to face? I really don’t. I’d rather just bust out the boards and cards and go to town. Even if we only play once or twice a year that way, it’s OK.

The bad things about the game are that it’s a computer version of Talisman first of all, and second the art is terrible. Given that the 4th edition art was not great in the first place (I would be great if Fantasy Flight put out a new base set with new art so it could match the quality of their later expansions), the computer version is even WORSE in some areas– some of the pieces look like they took a photo of an employee and ran some photoshop filters on him and slapped it in the game. Pure garbage. Overall I’m going to give it a go. Since I’ve played hundreds of times, the base set is really not that exciting. If they get some expansions, that may be cooking with gas– but of course that will lengthen the game.

One thing that came up last night to haunt me is that I drew the Monk and the bastard asked me what I would do to fix it in 4th edition. Here I go to great length about it, but short version is that since the new version of Talisman allows players to collect CRAFT trophies as well as Strength (2nd edition allowed only Strength trophies to be collected and traded), there is no way to fix the Monk as he was originally– he would simply be the most powerful character in the game. So what did FF end up on? A guy who can’t use weapons and armor and adds +3 to his rolls in combat. Really you have a 5 STR character who can have a spell early on. Granted they tried to make up for this character’s weakness by piling on the FATE counters, he’s still one of the craptacular characters in the game (like the Elf and Dwarf).

Now what have you been playing?

Ah Strategy – Successor to Alpha Centauri released!

On the day of the Playstation 4, this release is likely far more of interest to the mraaknerds because it heralds a (possible) new dawn to a much-missed franchise: Alpha Centauri.  While the base game was excellent, AC with the expansion was up their with the best strategy games ever made (I spent most of the period that AC was out playing Emperor of the Fading Suns though).  Though we’ve gotten Civ after Civ (which are also excellent), there’s been no return yet to Alpha Centauri land by Sid and the gang.

Seeing a gap in gamer’s desires, Slitherine, creators of new versions and games in the Close Combat series (like Panthers in the Fog) and Battle Academy for the iPad, has released PANDORA: a 4X land-based sci fi strategy game that has been dubbed (likely by them) as the spiritual successor to the Alpha Centauri series.  It looks at first blush really polished.

I figured I wouldn’t look at ANY other strategy games until 2015 or so, but with Rome Total War 2’s constant ability to frustrate and crash so much I uninstalled it– this is welcome news!

Mount & Blade: Banner Lord

Oh yeah.  September gave us the announcement of a new Mount & Blade (and one without fucking guns in it) — and it’s an update to the Warbands version, which is going to be open-ass awesome.  It still amazes me that a game made by just a couple guys has turned into such an exemplary  series (except for the one with guns that is).

Ah… I guess I hate generic RPG system books

Lament this!
Lament this!

I hopped on both the Fate Core 3 and Cortex Hackers Guide kickstarters earlier in the year with no regrets and while this is NOT a review or discussion of the systems included in these books, nor the layout, nor the art or anything content wise by any means, I don’t like either of them and here’s why: they are generic RPG books and little did I know– I can’t fucking stand them! There’s really nothing more boring than a system without a reason to use it and while I really like both Cortex and FATE, the ownership of these books is fundamentally useless to me– and I can’t even get through reading them….at all. Imagine trying to learn Advanced Squad Leader or Mystic Realm (both very difficult games to learn) without having a strong affinity to the gaming theme they represent. Could you get through such rules? I thought I could, but I can’t. Not ever.

Let’s take Lamentations of the Flame Princess as an example of a similar game to the of the books above in that it still presents a sort of generic system for running Fantasy RPG’s first off. Lamentations uses the most generic and nearly universally familiar OD&D system (Moldavy Basic essentially), changes a couple of things (like only fighters get +1 to hit at levels) and then tells you how to run a Fantasy game with it. There is a (very strange) adventure in the back, but other than that there is no description of the Lamentation’s world at all– just about what survival Fantasy Horror gaming should be like. Yet, while the system is one most of us are intimately familiar with (being the basis of all D20 play ever anon), Lamentations, while not including much in the way of a world, has a very clear Swords and Sorcery /Survival Horror focus for the game, the art and writing; a setting that makes what you are getting into with the game extremely clear. It is not a base rule set for any genre it is a base rule set for Swords and Sorcery. Of course we know from the years gone by that D20 has been used for everything under the sun with some incredibly weighty systems (Pathfinder, 3.5, etc.), but that’s not what Lamentations is doing. Instead it’s laying out a well-known set of rules within a specific paradigm even WITHOUT a massive world-spanning gazetter included in the base package. I love Lamentations and it will be my go-to D&D game if I ever give that a whirl again, and who can deny modules like The God the Crawls or FUCK FOR SATAN to boot? Most importantly, I was able to get through the text of the rules, the GM advice (which is amazing and goes far beyond anything I’ve ever read for running an actual group of players) and the supplemental materials. Why?

Let’s talk about Cortex and Fate– both excellent rule-sets. At the moment I prefer Cortex a bit more because, those of us that love Exalted want to play high powered crazy fights in less than 8 hours a piece. While I really enjoy exploring a new RPG system, what I don’t like, and this is a recent discovery, are these tool-kit only rulebooks. While clearly laying out what can be done with the system and the system itself (in the case of FATE 3), there’s absolutely no hook at all saying to me as a GM, i.e.: the person that will have to put all the work into the game for the most part, that I should try to make stories for this. It’s more like saying: ok you as a person should make an RPG out of this– and if you have time for that type of thing you are in a completely different demographic. Even the awesome Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, whose setting I really have no interest in at all (apart from Guardians of the Galaxy) gave myself and my players some framework to WANT to play. When I pick up FATE 3 and peruse the Hackers Guide for Cortex… I fall asleep, LITERALLY. There’s just nothing there but laying out an RPG system which, while incredibly important that it’s not pure shit (I’m looking at you Twilight 2000), it’s extremely boring when extracted from any sort of genre framework to spark the imaginations. It’s like one side of the brain is satisfied while the other one just sits there, bored off it’s ass.

Then, there's Exalted.
Then, there’s Exalted.

Dresden Files (FATE 2), while not that fun to play as any sort of Wizard, are essential books for my RPG library as a basis around how to create that TYPE of game (modern Wizardry) with FATE. Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (CORTEX), again while not a specific world I am interested in playing in was yet another awakening to what is possible for handling high powered, superheroic RPG’s. Even very difficult systems like Legends of Wuilin (which will likely never see print) Strange Fate (FATE 2 on crack) are extremely interesting books because they weave the stories you are going to tell in with the system it’s presenting. While you are reading the SYSTEM you are also beginning to create the stories that you will tell together with your group–and I think this is absolutely key. Sure some people that want to make a FATE or CORTEX game may love the generic system books, but for me, it’s just a waste.

Nemo: Heart of Ice references

I finally picked up the newest League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Nemo Heart of Ice) and while extremely short, it is chocked full of references.  Nearly every comic PANEL has some reference to an earlier work, many of which you have never heard of.  While of course it hits the Jules Verne stuff and in this particular story, tons of Lovecraftian references as well, there are numerous sources I had never even heard of.  I bet eventually in the span of time, these comics will be published with annotations, but for now we have to turn to the internet.

Anyway, highly recommended.  It’s not the best LoEG book (the first two were incredible and Black Dossier was an astounding achievement for a sourcebook) but it’s great.  My only complaint is that it was way too short but in light of thinking that CENTURY was the end of the series, it’s all good.  The art, in particular, is astounding.

Stuff (mostly Dark Souls)

So last night I continued the Dark Souls addiction and beat the GAPING DRAGON which is one of the scariest mofo’s in the game (so far)– an absolute fucking triumph of monster design by any measure. I had my bonfire Kindled (10 health potions), I’m in human form (not for long!) and I had upgraded my armor as much as I can possibly afford at the moment (all the shit around the first bell church drop titanite BTW), I bought 2 Uncurse stones in case I ran afoul of the cursing frog things on the way to the boss, AND to cover my ass, I spent my 10K souls I had lying around on leveling up (you do not need to level up much in the game from what I’ve read) so if I get killed my soul-pile will be small.  I also switched out my chain leggings for some leather pants so I can move quicker.  With some of the bosses you can’t block their attacks effectively so there’s no reason to go in there armoured up.  It took me three tries to beat him.  The first one I just got sloppy and got killed, the second one I was running away from his acid spill attack and fell off a cliff (embarrassing) and  for the last one I had help from another human player instead of one of the CPU phantoms you can grab (only available when human, not hollowed).

It’s taken me a long while to get this far and I think this is the point where you get into the meat of the game.

That said, there are other things going on!

First, there will be an ipad blood bowl game! Cyanide is continuing their BB license usage and coming out with an iPad version of blood bowl this year called Blood Bowl Star Coach. Looks more top down than the current PC version, but still has 3d Models. Should be a blast, though I don’t get ANY iPad time normally at home, I may have to steal it away from the crying children for this.

Dogs

Second, Mouth let me know that while Confrontation is DEAD (and AT-43 for that matter, sniff), the spirit survives  at Cyanide with their acquired license from now defunct Rackham.  While the Confrontation game wasn’t too good, Dogs of War looks like a game where you have a perpetual warband of monstrosities and they gain experience over time– much like Mordheim, Necromunda, Chaos Warbands from the old Realm of Chaos Books.  Looking like something to watch.  Ironically it was the Dogs of War expansion to Confrontation 3 that made me not want to play C3 any more…

Torchlight 2: I still haven’t finished ELITE mode with my Berserker which is sad (but it’s really, really hard on Act 3) but in the news recently is that Runic is still pursuing the MAC version of the game– but there is no timeline and no release date.  While I love the game and it is superior in every way to Diablo 3 (except the sound which in D3 is amazing) if I pre-purchased it on MAC I would be pretty fucking cheesed off by now (matt).