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While the graphics are largely outdated, the models are pretty great.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.