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Continue reading ⟩⟩ “DM of the Rings Remastered CXI: You Can’t Take it With You”
DM of the Rings Remastered CXI: You Can’t Take it With You
Wednesday Action Log 03-19-25
This week is more of the same, Deep Rock Galactic, and R.E.P.O.
nothing new with Deep Rock Galactic, just bugs and minerals.
R.E.P.O. on the other hand continues to be delightfully silly. The game has remained spooky despite its silly nature, and there is a lot more skill involved than I previously thought. It turns out you can get significantly better at hiding under tables and throwing lawn gnomes
Anyway, what’s everyone else doing this week?
Spring 2025 Around My Gaming World
General news update. Probably one or two other things. The latest Galactic Season has started in Star Wars: The Old Republic. As expected and understood, there is no real story for this season and no voice acting; a facet of the game that has been a prominent feature until the last year or so. There is an ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike against performing in video games, and a handful of attempts to “go around” the strike have been caught by the strikers. It has been interesting to watch Reddit discussions on this feature, as it shows how many people are actually noticing the lack of voice acting AND how many players of the game seem to know *why* there is no voice acting already. The primary functionality of this season is playing “Uprisings” with new stimulants that have unknown effects. SWTOR Uprisings are four-player, existing-open-world short missions that essentially work like those “survive X waves of assault” and/or “while moving from point A to point B.” They are meant to be kind-of “short” Flashpoints for multiplayer content. I don’t play them myself, although I don’t rule out maybe trying them in the future. I have a couple of characters geared up and playable enough to not embarrass myself, I think; but I just don’t do hardly any multiplayer. The biggest prizes of “beating the season” so-to-speak seems to be the same combination of mounts, pets, appearance armor, Cartel Coins, etc.; so I’m taking part of course. It’s free appearance stuff!
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Spring 2025 Around My Gaming World”
DM of the Rings Remastered CX: Roleplaying, at Last
Wednesday Action Log 03-12-25
This week I’ve played more Deep Rock Galactic. I kind of assumed I would be done with it by now, but it turns out shooting bugs takes a lot longer to get bored of than I thought.
I also played R.E.P.O. there’s something so delightful about being silly little robots, trying not to break every valuable item, while running away from various things that want to kill them.
What’s everyone else doing this week?
Final Fantasy 1 (part 005) – The One Where We Finish Elfheim
It is finally time to finish out the Elfheim story and prepare for the next quest. Although technically, the next quest is the prep quest for accessing the rest of the map. It’s hidden behind A) completing the game to this point, as you have to finish this story to get access to a quest item you don’t know you need to finish a quest in an area you’re not sure the location of but have heard about. Technically you have access to this place, and could have got pointers to the quest item you will receive soon, but then again; you may not have gone that direction yet. B) Figuring out that all that stuff is connected…it’s obtuse, but *not impossible*.
We stopped last week by returning to Elfheim City, the possible location of Elfheim Castle. The Elf Elf King in the Dark Castle to the Westnorth claimed his castle was ruined, and if we returned the crown to him from where it was hidden in the third level of Marsh Cave, he could restore it and fix all the other various problems with his kingdom. This didn’t 100% jive with everything else we saw and heard, such as the citizens of Elfheim City not really being aware at all of the Dark Castle. The Elf Prince is magically asleep in the Castle near Elfheim City, so I don’t know for sure what’s going on. But we were about to tackle the lowest level of Marsh Cave last time, so that’s where we’re going.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Final Fantasy 1 (part 005) – The One Where We Finish Elfheim”
DM of the Rings Remastered CIX: Give Peace a Chance
From The Archives:
Who Broke the In-Game Economy?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
Philosophy of Moderation
The comments on most sites are a sewer of hate, because we're moderating with the wrong goals in mind.
Project Octant
A programming project where I set out to make a Minecraft-style world so I can experiment with Octree data.
In Defense of Crunch
Crunch-mode game development isn't good, but sometimes it happens for good reasons.
Diablo III Retrospective
We were so upset by the server problems and real money auction that we overlooked just how terrible everything else is.
Fixing Match 3
For one of the most popular casual games in existence, Match 3 is actually really broken. Until one developer fixed it.
The Opportunity Crunch
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
This is Why We Can’t Have Short Criticism
Here's how this site grew from short essays to novel-length quasi-analytical retrospectives.
Silver Sable Sucks
This version of Silver Sable is poorly designed, horribly written, and placed in the game for all the wrong reasons.
PC Hardware is Toast
This is why shopping for graphics cards is so stupid and miserable.