Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

I stopped playing this a while back so I'd better write a review before I forget.

Summary

Play it if you are a 40K fanboy.

Review

In some Warhammer 40K games the space marines are the wimpiest unit around. In Space Marine you get to see how badass they really are. The campaign has you single-handedly saving platoons of regular military from the relentless orks. 

The campaign story is pretty good, although I admit I'm only moderately into the lore. The voice acting is also good. Visually, the game holds up despite it's age. However the game isn't perfect and two flaws come to mind.

The first flaw is the complicated melee system. Some players will appreciate this and it's certainly fun to slaughter orks with a chainsword, but I found it clunky. Certain moves are required to pull of combos and special attacks. I kept having to pause the game to remember how to do an area attack vs. a power attack. And why is the power-attack a kick when you are holding a friggin' chainsword?

The second flaw is the difficulty of boss fights. Again, some people will probably love this feature. Personally, I find it frustrating. You try shooting it but it's immune. You try to slice it up, nope. You try your power attack, it takes a sliver of health. Really, I have to hit it 300 times with a power attack while dodging missiles and claws? No, wait, there is a tank over there I can drive. Oh, but it destroys the tank if I don't sneak into it. I'm not a fan of fights where you have to make 20 mistakes to learn the pattern to kill the boss. It's why I don't play a lot of platform games these days.

Eventually I quite playing because I got stuck on a boss. I probably should have read the spoilers but the plot wasn't quite compelling me. The game was awesome at first but once I got over being a badass it didn't hold my attention.

Star Wars: Forces at War

After seeing Rogue One I got pumped for Star Wars. There was a Steam sale on a huge pack of old Star Wars games. One was already on my wishlist and about ten of the games looked playable so I got it.

So far I've played the Rebel campaign and I've started the Forces of Corruption expansion.

Summary

Worth it for the nostalgia. For a non-fan, I would not recommend.

The Good

Fairly immersive Star Wars RTS experience. You get some extra backstory on Han and Chewbacca. You get to see various races defending their homeworld. You get to blow up the Death Star. In my game, the Death Star destroyed five planets before I could take it down.

While the graphics are largely outdated, the models are pretty great. It's fun to pop into theater mode and watch the battle play itself out. 

I'm especially enjoying Forces of Corruption because I'm interested in the lore behind Tyber Zann. If the Zann Consortium wasn't the focus of the game I might not be playing it.

The Mediocre

The gameplay isn't great. There are three arena.

Most of the building happens on the galaxy map. The decisions might be interesting in tense PvP match, but weren't in the campaign. If a system is near the front line you might build planetary defenses, but probably won't. 

On the system map you can see massive fleet battles. This is pretty satisfying. Dealing with reinforcements isn't as fiddly as planetary battles. However, I never felt much in control of the tactical combat. In some ways this is a good thing.. I prefer when an RTS gives the individual units some intelligence. An X-Wing should know to prioritize a TIE Bomber over an Imperial Corvette. You still need to give orders to concentrate fire, and this is where many RTS's fail. In Forces at War a unit can only belong to one hotkey group. So my bombers can belong to the "bomber" group or the"attack large ship" group, but not both.  In the end, I mostly just used two groups, an "X-Wing" group to attack fighters and an "everything else" to attack capital ships. Because of this, I didn't build many corvettes for fighter defense. It's like playing rock, paper, scissors but never using paper because you think it's dumb that paper beats rock. 

The planetary map lets you capture planets. There are some cool ideas here but the gameplay isn't as polished as Starcraft 2. 

The Bad

The galaxy map passes too quickly. It might take 10 seconds to move ship from one side of the map to the other. The UI for organizing fleets isn't great so even if you see an attack coming from a long way off, you might not be able to separate your defenseless transports from your mighty fleet. It is odd that the strategic map feels requires fast reflexes to respond to a threat.

The AI (on medium) does not handle static defenses like starbases very well. Starbases have a small defense squadron and when one unit of the squadron is destroyed it gets regenerated. The AI would continuously destroy my units and never focus on the building generating the units. This isn't just me exploiting the AI, the same would happen if I hit the fast-forward button and let the battle play itself out. The AI would win, however, if I used auto-resolve. 

The voice acting in Forces at War was fine, but in Forces of Corruption it is often bad.

Gambling

I enjoy Vegas every so often so it seems a discussion about gambling is appropriate. I'm focusing this on table games. I have much to say about slot machines and poker, but that is for another time.

Reasons for Playing

Why would anybody gamble? It's a tax on the stupid, right? Wrong. That's a narrow way to view entertainment. A person might spend $1 on a lottery ticket to dream of winning big. Heck, I have an uncashed check from the IRS for $1.22 that I appreciate as art. 

People gamble for a thrill. Some imagine winning big. Others want to beat the odds. I once read an article saying that gamblers are motivated by the threat of losing money. Like a bungee jumper cheating death, a gambler wants the thrill of not losing.

There are plenty of other reasons for sitting at a blackjack table - socializing, flirting, showing off. But I want to focus more on the financial aspects of gambling.

How to Win

In the long run, you will not win at the casino, so a person must ask himself why he is playing. Once you understand your personal goal, you can find the style of play that works for you. 

Never Lose

I had a rich friend who didn't gamble much but liked to say "I always win in Vegas". He used a Martingale strategy. Basically, he would bet $1. If he won, he would quit. If he lost, he would bet $2. If that lost he would be $4. Eventually he would win and leave the casino. That's a totally valid strategy if you have unlimited wealth and the casino will accept an unlimited bet. In practice, my friend was betting $10 and was willing to lose.. I don't know.. perhaps $10,000 or so. That means a nasty losing streak could make him walk out of the casino a big loser.

Let's say my friend was playing craps. The chance of him losing 10 times in a row is 0.11% or basically 1 in 1000. That means 999 times out of 1000 he will win $10. However one in a thousand times he will lose $10,230. 

For my friend, that is the perfect system. Losing $10,000 would annoy him but wouldn't be a big deal. And that will likely never happy. Instead he gets to walk out of Vegas saying, "I won again" every time he visits.

 Hourly Fee

This is how most people play table games. They take money to the table and want to win but expect to lose. Mostly they want to have fun for a while. In this case, they are giving the casino a lot of "action" and action is how the casino makes money. 

For this example, let's say that a person is playing a game with a 5% house advantage. That could be Let it Ride, or Blackjack. A good way to think about it is that for every $1 bet, the house returns 95 cents. Over the course of thousands of hands played, the final result will end up very close to this.

A person who plans to gamble a lot should strongly consider this house edge. 5% of a $5 bet is 25 cents. That means you are paying the casino a quarter for the privilege of making a wager. Is that a good deal? Sure, sometimes. A quarter isn't much money. But if you are spending thousands of hours feeding quarters into the machine you will end up broke.

Variance

Ah, variance. My favorite word. This is the reason we gamble. In the investing world, variance is terrible, evil, and something to pay to remove. In gambling, variance is the only reason we are there. 

Variance is the likelihood of ending up with much more or less money than you start with. Let's say you have $10 and want to bet on the flip of a coin. A low variance option would be to make 10 bets of $1 each. You might break even and are unlikely to win or lose more than $5. The high variance option would be to bet $10 on a single flip. You are guaranteed to win or lose $10. 

Why is variance a good thing? Who would want to lose big? Remember that all bets in a casino have a house edge. A zero variance game would be "give the house a penny". A high variance game would be "put all my money on a single roulette number". 

What Should I Play?

What you play depends on your goals. Here are some ways that I play.

Free Coffee

I just want to sit at a table, order a free coffee and gamble a little. For this, Pai Gow Poker is excellent. In an hour I will probably win 2 hands, lose 2 hands, and tie a bunch. If my bet is $20, the commission on those two wins is $2. Plus a $1 tip for the cocktail waitress is $3 for my free coffee. Here I probably don't want much variance. I'd hate to run out of money before getting my drink.

Socializing

It's lots of fun to get a group of friends at the blackjack table. Ohh, the dealer has a 6, everybody double down! You got an ace... c'mon blackjack! I view this a paying the casino an hourly wage for the entertainment. Paying an average of 25 cents a hand (as I mentioned above) is likely to be about the same cost as drink at an overpriced cocktail bar. Here, moderate variance is good. A big winner in the group can buy everyone dinner.

Big Score

I get my thrills from the chance of winning a large bet. For that, I like to play roulette. A single bet on a single number pays 36 to 1, so a $30 bet will win over $1000. Here, I want variance. I expect to lose all of my money very quickly so I am not giving the casino much action. In the rare case when I win, I don't sit and keep playing, I take my money and dance around and brag to everybody how I won $1000, and I'm buying dinner because they are suckers for losing all their cash at Let it Ride.

Beating the Casino

You can't beat the casino. According to wikipedia 17 of the 30 largest hotels in the world are in Las Vegas. I'm not saying Las Vegas has more big hotels than any other city, I'm saying Las Vegas has more big hotels than all other cities combined. We are talking about a city in the desert deep smack in the middle of nowhere. You can't beat the casino.

But you want to try anyway. Here is what you might consider.

Card Counting

You can potentially gain an advantage over the house playing blackjack if you count cards. Basically, high cards are good for the player so you count how many are left in the deck. When the deck becomes favorable you greatly increase your bet.

This is fine as an academic exercise or perhaps to add another level of depth to your gambling experience. However it's a crappy way to make a living. I'm going to assume you don't want to do anything illegal or anything that will get you banned from a casino. You probably don't want to work with a crew. In that case you will be lucky to earn $5 per house of expected income. And this isn't fun and easy income like flipping burgers, this is mind numbing hours and hours of simple arithmetic. Spending hours and hours thinking 1+2-1+1-2+1+1-1+1-1-2+1-2-1 would drive most people insane. And remember variance. Now you actually don't want variance. Some month you lose money.

 I have a friend who counted cards for a while. Unfortunately he is cursed with a real job and realized one day that he would rather lose $5/hour drinking and flirting than win $5/hour sober in arithmetic hell.

If you really want to try card counting, the first step is to play a perfect Basic Strategy. Memorize it and deal yourself 1000 practice hands. If you get any wrong, deal another 1000.

Players Club Points and Video Poker

If you like video poker, great. You might as well get points for playing. But don't expect to win.

I have a friend who is super-deluxe-secret-diamond-platinum with one casino. It is somehow tied into his hotel and flight programs. He loves the VIP status. At airports he has his own private cabana with a staff of ass kissers. At hotels he gets to use the secret check-in desk that movie stars use so he need not associate with us common folk.

I asked him how many points he needed to earn for this status. It was 1,000,000. Most of those points he got from video poker. At 99.5% return on video poker, that means he spent $50,000 to earn super-VIP status. When I confronted him, he said, "sounds about right". 

For him, it might be worth it. He travels a lot for business. He didn't grow up rich so maybe he really likes all the butt-kissing. For me, I'd rather have the $50,000 sitting in a tax-deferred retirement savings plan.

The moral of this story is that the points systems will cater to some people, but you likely aren't that person.

I'm not anti-players club. If you are going to gamble anyway, you might as well sign up. When you lose $500 it's nice to get a free buffet and 2-1 show tickets. 

Craps Skill, Roulette Bias, Poor Shuffling

Any time I have looked into the claim of a skilled craps player it is bunk. I know humans are capable of amazing feats, but this is too much.

Modern roulette wheels are not biased. If you think you see a pattern, it is just your insanity poking through.

Some professional gamblers can spot poor shuffling techniques. They noticed when cards are discarded and how the clump together. On the next shuffle they can predict when a certain card is likely to fall. I don't doubt that happens, but that sounds like a lot of required skill. With the same time and money to get trained you could have gotten a PhD in something.

Poker

Beyond the scope of today's ramble. While it is true that a player can be good enough to beat other players, the reality is that you likely aren't that person.

Betting Systems

Just no. Any bet you make carries with it a house edge. You can't escape it.

Best Bets

Baccarat: Want an easy chance to simple win or lose? The house edge isn't too bad.

Blackjack: If you play basic strategy, this is a good game. Pro-tip, buy a strategy card in the gift shop. A $3 investment might save you lots of money. And you make friends with other players who know they should hit on 16 but are afraid to.

Craps: If you stick to the pass line, the house edge isn't bad. But playing the Odds is the best bet in the casino. There is zero house edge on the Odds bets. If you aren't playing full odds, you need to be making a cheaper line bet. Technically Don't Pass is better than pass, but the difference is so minor that it isn't worth pissing of Guido when you cheer when he loses his $1000 bet.

Tales From the Borderlands - A Telltale Game

Tales From the Borderlands

After so many downer reviews, finally a game that I enjoy!

What is Telltale

It's like interactive fiction, but it's not even very interactive. Perhaps a better term would be "immersive fiction". You make just enough decisions to see yourself as the protagonist. It has a little feel of the old Lucas Arts games and in fact has the license for some of those games. 

Basically you watch and participate in the unfolding of a story, not unlike watching a cartoon show.

Why Borderlands

I still scratch my head over this. I loved Borderlands 2 and solidly enjoyed Borderlands Pre Sequel, but the world didn't feel like a real place. It was more of an amusement park for murder-hungy looters. 

Tales from the Borderlands tries to humanize the setting. There are real people with real struggles that I can relate to. The final work is pretty amazing. I don't know why that surprises me. Final Fantasy set a high bar long ago and plenty of games and comics have managed to be fantastical yet human. Perhaps it's because Borderlands has been the Mad Max of computer games, and while I love me some Mad Max, I never tried to relate to the characters.

Why Tales From the Borderlands is Great

The humor. That's it. Sure, sometimes it's exciting. Sometimes it's touching. Sometimes you get an insight into a real-life problem. But you can get that from any prime-time TV show. In TFtB, the humor is what keeps you engaged. The best parts are the snarky sarcasm, which this game drips with Archer quality wit. 

How Long to Play

There are five chapters, and I have only completed four. Each chapter seem to be about an hour and a half or so. You probably want to do an entire chapter in one sitting. 

Who Should Buy this?

That's a good question. I don't know the target audience. If you don't play Borderlands, then why get this game? There are a ton of other Telltale games out there. I would recommend this game for anybody who likes Borderlands and Archer.

That's the end of my review. Here is how I spend my time lately:

What I'm playing

Dungeon Crawl Stone Stoup

Diablo 3

Tales From the Borderlands

Overwatch

Star Wars RPG

Traveler RPG

What I'm watching

Westworld

South Park 

I wish I was watching Star Wars Rebels but I don't want to steal it or pay $20 per season.

Risk of Rain

My last few posts have been downers. I've been trying to clear up some of my Steam backlog but really I just want to play Diablo, Overwatch, and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Risk of Rain

You've read other reviews. You know this is a silly cooperative platform shooter.

Is It Worth Playing?

Do you like silly cooperative platform shooters? Then yes. 

Did You Like It?

So-so. I beat it once on easy with a friend and don't feel like playing it any more. It has tons of replayability so by that metric, I must not like it too much. 

Dead Space 2: A Short Review

Dead Space 2

The idea seems fun but it has a fatal flaw.

Console Port

I'm a PC gamer and find even the best console ports to be a little bit annoying. I'm talking Tomb Raider, Assassin's Creed, and Batman: Arkham. I generally need to tweak the Field of View and often the controls or the action feels a bit wonky.

Dead Space 2 wasn't one of the best ports. Maybe "fair" or "above average" but not "best". The inability to change the field of view is the worst part for me, but the general feel of the game isn't great.

Starbound

Starbound

I loved Terraria so much that I bought Starbound during Early Access.

I have a love/hate relationship with crafting games. I really enjoy this process:

• Gather raw materials
• Make something basic
• Combine basic things to make something better
• Use better thing to get better resources
• Combine better resources to make cool thing
• Pat myself on the back for making a cool thing

However, I don't much enjoy building game. Simcity is fun because I can optimize placement for efficient function. Minecraft is not fun because I don't like laying bricks. Terraria was a great combination of action, crafting, and exploration. Some people enjoyed the building aspect, but I chose to minimize that part, making basic houses out of dirt.

Starbound seems to have everything I liked about Terraria with even less focus on building. 

Not Fun

After a few hours of playing Starbound, I gave up. I just wasn't having fun. There wasn't a clear progression for crafting. There were more caves and less mining. 

Inventory Management

A big problem I have with this sort of game is the clunky inventory management. Let's say I'm hungry (a feature of the game I don't enjoy). This is how I feed myself:

• I open my inventory with the I key. Why do I have to reach all the way over to I in a WASD+mouse game? Maybe they could combine the crafting and inventory windows so that they are both accessed with the same command C.
• Now I have a big opaque window in the middle of my screen. I have to drag the window to some other less inconvenient location. Fortunately the game remembers that location until I quit. How about saving the location for the next time I load up? Or find a way to display my inventory without blocking off 20% of the screen? Perhaps there could be a widget permanently docked on the side of the screen to show whatever it is I need to interact with.
• With my inventory open, I need to find food. There is a convenient Food tab to click. The button is small. Now I have an unsorted list of all food, raw food, ingredients, seeds, and other various semi-edible things. I mouse hover them until finding something that seems good to eat. Couldn't this be auto-sorted? Like by calories or something?
• This part bothers me the most. Now that I have identified my Delicious Meal, I have to move the meal to my action bar. I can't just click and eat, I have to make the food available.
• With my food on the action bar and so close to my mouth, I now must select that action. Basically I need to wield my Delicious Meal. 
• Finally, with food in hand, I can left or right click to stave off starvation for a few more minutes.

Instead of that cumbersome exercise, I propose the following user experience to consume food:

• Auto eat when hungry. 

Early Access

I feel the need to plug my opinion of Early Access. Don't do it. Maybe if you want to participate in the development of the game, fine. But don't buy Early Access because you are exited to play a game. It always ends badly. Instead go find one of the thousands of completed games to buy. Many of them are on sale right now.

Limbo

I knocked Limbo out of my Steam backlog last night.

What is Limbo?

Limbo is a puzzle platform game. The controls are simple. Most puzzles involve interacting creatively with the environment. While there are a few timing puzzles, mostly it involves figuring out what to do.

Why Play Limbo?

The atmosphere is unique. There is no color in the game, it's all gray. The atmosphere is quite well done. 

Why Not to Play Limbo?

The basic game play is simplistic. The quality of the puzzles can be found in free flash games, although that's more of a testament to free games than a criticism of Limbo. There isn't a cool RPG like story, it's more about trying to understand who the hero is and what the world is. Those questions are never fully answered, although that is part of the charm of the game for some people.

Should I Buy It?

It's often on sale for $5, so I can't say it isn't worth the money. The more important question is if it is worth the time. Most people who think it looks interesting will enjoy it. 

Did You Enjoy It?

Yes. Pretty much. Like 3/5. I was able to knock it out in a few hours. I looked at spoilers about three times. One was the game's fault, one was my fault, and one was somewhere in between. 

The biggest draw for me was nostalgia, as it is reminiscent of one of my old favorites, Another World. 

Normally I am not a big fan of platform games. I can enjoy puzzle games, and this one just barely made the cut.

BGGCon 2016

Oh no, a post about board games?

What is BGGCon

It is a celebration of board games, sponsored by boardgamegeek.com. Thousands of gamers meet in Dallas for 5 days and play a ton of games.

Why BGGCon

I used to be big into board games. I still play quite a bit but video games have gotten in the way for the last few years. I have a lot of friends who attend the convention that I only see that time of year, so it's a big social thing.

What Games Did You Play

The library has thousands of games to check out and they get advance copies of games about to be released. My friends like to use the convention to try out new games, and I'm mostly there to hang out so that's what I end up playing.

Mechs Vs. Minions

The is the League of Legends board game. I'm not sure how the publisher is related to Riot but it is part of that world. It is a cooperative game for up to four players stopping the minions from moving to their goal. The $75 cost might seem high to video game players but it's a good price for the quality of components. 

This is the game I am most excited to play again. I love coop games and this one delivers. It's not a Pandemic clone (I will review one of those below). It has a great story and good pieces and tense game play. After beating one scenario, one of the player jumped up, whooped, and gave everyone a high-five.

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

This is quite an old game, perhaps 35 years old, and another coop. The players are trying to solve a crime in the Sherlock Holmes setting. Clues are gained from reading stories and the players decide where to go and who to interview. There is a lot of flavor and the game has a sizable cult following. This is a little more social than most board games. It also works well if some players just want to kick back and be part of the ride.

Gear and Piston

A game about building cars in the early years of car history. It was a fine game, but nothing special for me. It uses the same skills that hundreds of other games use. I do well at this type of game, but it isn't my favorite genre and with so many to choose from I don't need any more in my life. Perhaps my favorite similar game is Princes of Florence.

Terraforming Mars

This game had some similar complaints as Gear and Piston. I was hoping to see something innovative but nothing really grabbed my attention. It felt like a drawn out game of Race For the Galaxy. Not as elegant but with a few other interesting things going on.

Dreams

Very similar to Spyfall which is not my thing. You are a group of gods and one mortal. The gods must identify the other gods without letting the mortal know who they are. I do enjoy the Mafia/Werewolf genre, but not this one.

Dungeon Rush

Silly quick dungeon crawl type game where you make quick analysis and claim a reward before someone else does. The group I played with didn't like it, but for how quick it goes, I'd give it another shot.

Captain Sonar

This was another winner. It plays like a combination of Battleship and Spaceteam but more fun than either. You are in a submarine trying to find the enemy sub. You move by calling out directions in real-time, but the other team can hear you giving those directions. Eventually you can figure out the location of the other sub and shoot him down. It gets very hectic trying to keep track of everything going on.

Black Orchestra

A cooperative game about assassinating Hitler. This was a bit of a Pandemic clone, but had enough different things going on to be unique. The theme is pretty solid and the balance is good. We lost two of the three games we played on Easy. 

Njet

Just a boring card game. Worse, it uses a specialized deck from Mü and More. I love this type of trick taking game. Njet is good because it can support up to five players and because it is different from other similar games, yet anybody who knows how to take tricks can pick it up quickly. It's a bit of a tradition for me to spend one night staying up late and playing this. Sleepiness is a great equalizer when some people count cards better than others.

Summary

Favorite New Game: Mechs Vs. Minions

Favorite New-to-me Game: Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Favorite Speed Game: Captain Sonar

Renowned Explorers: International Society

An interesting new take on the traditional turn based RPG.

Something Explorers: Something something

Come on guys, a game title needs to be catchy.

All in all I enjoyed the few hours it took to do my first play-through. However, I couldn't quite finish the second. This game has a lot of neat ideas and I would recommend it to anyone who thinks it might appeal to them. However, don't expect the tactical combat to be very satisfying.

Fallout Shelter

Fallout Shelter

Since I'm talking mobile games, let's talk about one that I've been playing for about a year.

Fallout 4

I really enjoyed Fallout 4. I did a fairly quick play through once and then started another one. For me, that's a big deal since I usually want to retire a game once I have finished the plot.

So is Fallout Shelter like the Fallout series? No. Not at all, except superficially. The art style, the setting, and some sounds is just about it. Fallout Shelter is more like a resource allocation building game or a tap game.

Gameplay

There is a lot to like. You get to build your vault, acquire resources, train people, and do quests. For the most part the game is pretty slick and satisfying.

On the downside, it takes a long time to load and it crashes quite a bit on my phone. I have a hard time accurately selecting individual people. When disasters hit the vault, sometimes the location is not clear and I have to scroll around a lot to find it. I don't like the barely-3d look of the game any more than a 2d sprite based game and a 2d game would solve a lot of the annoyances.

The hardcore mode was appealing to me, but the difficult interface leads to occasional frustrating deaths, and in a hardcore game I know it would lead to rage quit, so I never tried it.

The game itself is free and I never saw a reason to spend money. You can get a good feel for the game without a large time investment. For that, I give Fallout Shelter a solid thumbs up.

Pathfinder Adventures

Pathfinder Adventures

I've been stuck for a week away from home with poor internet. Normally I lug my laptop around to get my gaming fix, but I thought I'd load up my phone instead. The main games I've been playing are Pathfinder Adventures, You Must Build a Boat, and Fallout Shelter. By far my time has been spent playing Pathfinder Adventures so that's what I'm here to talk about.

Long Time Coming

I'm big into board games, card games, and RPGs, especially Pathfinder, so I was excited to play Pathfinder Adventures card game when it was first release. However, my initial play of it left me lukewarm. It was too dry and I didn't understand the interesting interactions that I now know the game has. Perhaps instead of d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 they should use something more colorful and engaging like slight assistance, minor help, or massive boon.

What really sealed the nail in the Pathfinder coffin was when my gaming buddies played through the campaign. There was no way I would bother to look for another group to play with.

You Paid How Much?!?

Normally I'm a real cheapskate with IOS games. Of the hundreds of free games I've downloaded I doubt I've spent more than $5 on In App Purchases. I doubt I spend more than $10 per year on IOS games. So it was a big surprise that I was willing to shell out $25 for the Pathfinder Adventures campaign pack. Normally for this kind of game I would be happy to grind out free gold, but that puts me in a different mindset. I wanted to play the card game, not the grind game.

The Good

The game seems to be very faithful to the card game. The interface is mostly great (not an A+, but perhaps an A). Clicking on a card makes it large enough for me to read on my iPhone 6+. Often I find information that I need is buried under a few clicks but it is never onerous.

I have played 1, 2, 3, and 4 characters at a time and each combination has a unique feel. With a single character, you have plenty of time in the blessings deck. The limiting factor is more the character life deck. Characters that can self heal work well. With more characters in the game there is plenty of life to go around but the blessings deck becomes the problem. 

Best of all is the character progression. You keep items and followers that you find and you start to customize your deck to synergize with the other characters. You also gain more powers and abilities. All of this allows for a lot of flexibility and many different play experiences. For example, one game I decided that the sorcerer would be the "thief" of the group. She collected lockpick sets and I improved her dexterity. 

The Bad

Like any fairly complicated game, it takes a lot of time. This isn't your typical phone game where you can play for 5 minutes and put it down. Often I would have to spend some time clicking around to remember where everyone was and what they were doing.

Sadly there are a few bugs. For the most part it isn't bad but I did experience one bug that wouldn't allow me to continue a game and I had to resign it. I have also seen a bug that miscalculates the difficulty of completing a task.

Overall

This gets a thumbs up for me but I'm not sure whom to recommend this game to. If it were desktop I'd say it was worth $25. However I don't know a lot of people that want to play a brain burner on their phone for blocks of an hour at a time. It has a free to play mode so at least that's worth trying out, but I'm confident I would have given up on the game had I started in that mode.

Dream Quest

Let's Talk About Dream Quest

Dream Quest is a game written for mobile devices. I play on my iPhone. It's essentially a deck building game with crappy art and a some rpg exploration and leveling. 

Dream Quest is not a Blizzard Game

I love Blizzard games but there is plenty of quality entertainment in other corners of the world. I've played hundreds of mobile games since they fit into a certain type of time availability. 

Why is Dream Quest Great?

It's very much a Roguelike, one of my favorite genres. There are many classes to pick from and each dungeon is different. It's sort of like Nethack meets Desktop Dungeons with a little bit of Hearthstone or Magic the Gathering. 

Dream Quest is free or cheap and I've put in over 100 hours. I haven't beaten it with every class yet (missing Druid and Dragon). I'm generally a completionist but not when it comes to "achievements" and this game is no different.

Diablo 3 -- Seasonal is Fun

Like everyone else, I played a lot of Diablo 3 when it first came out. It didn't fully grab me and the auction house made the game too easy. I didn't like the play of the Witch Doctor so I rolled a Wizard. He also wasn't very satisfying, but the voice acting was so good I stuck with it. When I finished Diablo I shelved the game without much thought.

Then Reaper of Souls came out. By this time the auction house was gone and I played a barbarian. It was lots of fun. After hitting max level I started to play with friends and coworkers and it opened a new dimension of the game. By this time the endgame of Diablo 3 was very strong and I played a lot. Finally other games got my attention and I put down Diablo 3 again.

A year later, a friend wanted to start a seasonal character with me. Seasonal play is interesting because you are treated like a new player. You don't have paragon levels or access to items in your main stash. You get set item rewards for achievements which makes the grind faster and more satisfying.

Now I'm playing in season 7. I rolled a wizard to give it a second chance. At endgame, it is much more like the wizard I remember from Diablo 1. Teleporting, raining death, and a big force shield is the experience I was looking for. I'm sad that, for this season, top wizards don't compete with top monks and witch doctors, but I probably won't make it that far, especially with the World of Warcraft Legion expansion recently launched and the 20 hours per week of Overwatch I still play.

Overwatch

Overwatch

Lately I've been spending the vast majority of my game time on Overwatch. Hundreds of articles have been written about this so why care about my opinion? Because I'm old and slow, just like you.

I've played a lot of Overwatch. As of this writing I'm level 170, but that doesn't count the hundreds of hours I played in Beta or the hundreds of hours I played in Alpha. I was working at Blizzard at the time so I have very early access. I don't think any of my code is actually in the game although I wrote example code for an SDK used by the game team.

I find Overwatch fun for a wide range of skill levels. My 11 year old nephew enjoys seeing who can get the most points wiping out the AI. For me, the most fun is playing with friends over chat. I don't care about skill levels or balanced matchmaking. Mostly we play to win but every so often we will pull out a "concept group" of 6 bastions or whatever. Solo Quick Match is my most common way to play. I like competitive Solo Queue although I have only played 6 matches so far.

Playing Overwatch as an Old Fart

Overwatch is plenty twitchy so how can an old guy compete? My best heroes are Symmetra, Reaper, and DVA. None of them have to aim very well. I also do well with Reinhart (who doesn't aim) and Torbjorn (who has a turret). I often play Torbjorn much like Reaper -- get in close and blast with the shotgun.

I don't do as well with healers. My Zenyatta has gotten much better and my Lucio is passable on the King of the Hill maps. My Mercy has a terrible win rate despite how often I get complimented playing her. My theory for my lack of success with healers is that I am willing to switch heroes to compensate for the enemy team. At my MMR, often my team is unwilling to switch. So when I am healing often we lose a game because we didn't compensate for the enemy's composition, whereas if our Widowmaker had been healing I could have switched into Reaper or Bastion to break Reinhard's shield.

I Love to Complain

My wife thinks I complain about things I like too much. I see it as being critical to find a way to improve the game. So here are things I don't like about Overwatch.

Whining In Chat

"Toxic Behavior" is an old problem and a lot of research has been done about it. My solution deserves an entire blog post but to summarize it, I would like to be able to "thumbs down" and "thumbs up" players. In the future, those players are more or less likely to be on my team. But more importantly, the game uses this data to guess at other players that I would likely "thumbs down" and makes it less likely for me to play with them.

Snipers

The more I play the less of a problem this is, but I used to hate snipers. Walking along, minding my own business, then boom, respawn. Nowdays I figure if I hate the sniper then the rest of my team does too so I'll grab Reinhard and protect everybody.

Leavers

I'm surprised that leavers don't have as much of an impact compared to, say, Heroes of the Storm. But still, leavers are gonna leave and I think the game could handle it better. It does a great job on fast backfill, but how about pause the game for a few seconds to let them log in. Also, if someone leaves before the match starts the countdown should absolutely be paused. Also, in the early part of game as defender, a backfill should get some sort of speed boost to get to the front line quickly.

Advertising Picks on the Selection Screen

When the team is picking heroes I want to show which heroes or role I feel like playing. 

Complaining about Missing Roles

So many times I've seen people tell the last person that they must play a tank or healer. What I hear is "I'm so bad at playing a tank that I would rather you play a tank even if you aren't very good either". I once saw a game where 5 people insta-picked. The 6th paused a long time before picking a healer but then got berated for not healing well. Look. In Quick Play I don't care what our comp is. I mean, I generally prefer a balanced comp but if someone says "all genji hahaaaha" I'll play along. But it is both ignorant and selfish to expect another person to want to play and be good at a role that you don't want to play.

Hanzo and Genji

Any complaints I have about Widowmaker go double for Hanzo. So often I die when Hanzo is aiming at someone else but I run into the arrow. And I hate his ultimate. I liked it better back when you could see it coming, but now often I will hear it come from the other side of the wall but not know to run left or right. Genji, I just doesn't understand. Most games I feel unimpressed by him but other games he kills everybody in one shot, is in your face, and can't be hit.

Group UI

The whole user interface for grouping with friends is screwy but the worst part is trying to invite someone who is already in game. If I invite him, it drops his game. He could invite me, but that requires some communication with someone who is pretty busy. I want a better way for people in a group to be able to play their own games, and if they are ever in the menu at the same time it will bring them into the same team.

Summary

Despite my ranting, Overwatch is a great game. It lets you feel epic and is fun for all skill levels. I didn't expect to put so much time into a FPS but this one's a winner.

Introduction

Mandatory Introduction

I've played a lot of games. More than you. I want to give back to a world that has been so generous to me and will do so by sharing my opinions and experiences.

Credentials

My first computer game was Pong around 1973. From there I went to Atari 2600, Apple 2, and then PC. While I've played some game on console, Mac, Unix, web, coin op, and mobile, my first primary source of games is Windows.

I've made my career as a game programmer, mostly working for the big boys like Origin/EA, Blizzard, and Microprose.

In addition to computer games I play quite a bit of card and board games. I generally attend BGG Con annually and a board game event nearly once a month. I also play role playing games once or twice a week. I make it to my local Puzzled Pint a few times a year.

My computer game interests are quite varied. FPS, RTS, MMO, turn based strategy, crafting, puzzle, and logic games all appeal to me. I suppose my least favorite popular genre is platformer, although I will pick one up every so often. There are quite a few mobile games that aren't very appealing to me, particularly clan warfare and tap games. Even those have eaten hundreds of hours of my life.

Games That Have Influenced Me

Nethack
It is only recently that A titles have competed with the depth of interaction in Nethack. It was perhaps the largest contributor in creating the "roguelike" genre.

MMORPG
I will give equal credit to MUDs for creating the genre, Everquest for making it financially successful, and World of Warcraft for making it fun. I'm leaving out Ultima Online because I didn't actually play it and Origin was a huge part of my life in other ways. Honorable Mention goes to Henry Melton for his story Catacomb published in 1985.

Wizardry
If I can only pick one RPG, it will be Wizardry. Ultima is high on this list too but I'll use the same Origin cop out that I gave about.

Netrek
As the first Internet team game, Netrek's influence went far. Doom only had in-game chat because that programmer was a Netrek fan. Extensive UDP vs TCP testing was performed that acted as a template for future network communication in games. It was a MOBA 20 years before the term was coined.