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.