T w e n t y S i d e d
Happy Gluttony and Awkward Relatives Day! Hope you had a good one. We cheated and got take-out for Thanksgiving. A decade ago, that would have been an unthinkable breach of TRADITION. But now my wife and I are middle-age and we’re more or less in charge of what traditions get observed, passed on, ignored, or altered. And I think we’ve decided that a whole bunch of take-out is a better way to observe the day than hours of cooking food that isn’t anyone’s favorite, followed by hours of cleaning.
Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
Diecast323
Link (YouTube) |
Show notes:
00:00 Thanksgiving
So it turns out it’s been four years since I saw my oldest two kids. That’s way too long.
06:17 Carrion
Link (YouTube) |
I love this game.
14:50 Elite Dangerous
Link (YouTube) |
This reminds me: It’s been a while since the last installment of Terrible / Sketchy Star Citizen News. Has that game reformed, died, or gone underground? I feel like we’re still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
26:38 Watchdogs Legion
Like we asked on the show: Who’s playing this? Any interest in an analysis?
29:43 Teardown
Link (YouTube) |
36:57 For the King
Link (YouTube) |
47:18 Hades on Steam
Several people emailed, asking about this game. I’m not sure why so many were curious about this particular game, but for the record: Nothing against it, but I don’t think it’s going to reach the top of the playlist soon.
48:12 Mailbag: Writing for games is hard.
Dear Diecast,
I was recently listening to a Podcast interview on Tested.com with Adam Savage speaking with guest Evan Narcisse who if you are unfamiliar is/was a reporter for Kotaku but also the writer on a recent Black Panther comic mini-series. In the interview he discusses adapting to writing for an unnamed video game and how it’s like ‘trying to put a saddle on a hurricane’ in that things keep getting changed around with the design. It has me wondering if this sort of fluidity is the source of some of the incongruities and shortcomings you so love to point out in your breakdowns of games like Spider Man.
https://youtu.be/N_NahbrqFwI?t=1485
Your fan,
Amstrad
Pixel City Dev Blog
An attempt to make a good looking cityscape with nothing but simple tricks and a few rectangles of light.
Game at the Bottom
Why spend millions on visuals that are just a distraction from the REAL game of hotbar-watching?
Black Desert Online
This Korean title would be the greatest MMO ever made if not for the horrendous monetization system. And the embarrassing translation. And the terrible progression. And the developer's general apathy towards its western audience.
PC Hardware is Toast
This is why shopping for graphics cards is so stupid and miserable.
Programming Language for Games
Game developer Jon Blow is making a programming language just for games. Why is he doing this, and what will it mean for game development?
I know you want to see your families and act like everything is normal for a while, I just think this is the wrong year for it. I desperately hope you all behaved safely and sensibly. Outside that, I’m probably the last person to hold people to some random and awkward tradition. If it isn’t practical or enjoyable, get rid of it.
Carrion sounds like a combination of Katamari Damacy and Alien. Maybe the Thing. Good stuff, if that’s what you like. But Shamus, if you keep playing you will learn the map eventually.
I think Evan Narcisse’s last name is pronounced narseess. Paul might have been overthinking it. But really, the lead writer, lead programmer, and lead level designer should sit down together with their rough outlines. The writer asks if his ideas are possible. The programmer says yes to this, no to the other, and can you come up with something to show off this nifty new feature I have in mind? Same with the designer. And as they flesh things out, they should keep checking back to ensure they stay on the same page.
But then, what if someone isn’t as good as is needed? If the level design is boring, if the new feature doesn’t quite work, if the story is full of cliches? And that’s without interference from the suits. It’s a great big mess.
As for no flamewars, I have bad news. Someone started talking about the new Star Wars movies.
Yeah, I hope you guys had fun with your families, but I really, really hope that no one gets sick.
what if someone isn’t as good as is needed?
A company with the budget for Elite Dangerous can hire skilled people. Put the new people onto less important tasks, and get the vets to guide game development. It’s like movies, books, or anything else – you need people who know what they’re doing, to not be gauranteed to end up with a mess.
Another thing to consider is that maybe the company is so large that it’s impossible for any one person to get a full picture of all the machinations elsewhere in it. There may not actually be time available to get the leads of each department in a room together for every piece of content (which is usually why they get someone lower down in that department to vet the content in its preliminary stages).
Worse though, imagine you do actually get all three parties to agree on a plan of action. You find something everyone is happy with and start working on a series of gliding-based challenge missions, only to discover that a different team in charge of the game world just decided to cut all structures over two storeys tall, over gameplay concerns about Kaiju pathfinding and helicopter combat. Now you have quest lines specifically referencing tall buildings and urban areas, NPC animations of people using them, and a bunch of gliding missions that need to be completely retooled to use cliffs as their launch point. You might even need new gameplay like vehicles, cranes, or ski lifts to carry players to the top of cliffs because you relied on building elevators.
Games aren’t just a moving target for writers and devs – they’re a target that changes its own shape while moving, and often you won’t find out what change is coming next until it’s already happening.
I’m still conflicted about whether I should visit my parents in Germany for Christmas this year. All the extended family gatherings are canceled, and if they miss me badly enough, maybe I can get them to pick me up by car. Luckily, they’re less than one Germany away. I definitely want to avoid trains.
Video chat avoids all germs outside your house. :)
After spending the past few years building my Christmas traditions back in, it looks like they’re all going to go away this year for various reasons:
– I always used to buy specific goodies and have them over Christmas, but they’re frozen and the need to store more other things in my freezer as well as not wanting to go to that store close to Christmas means that I can’t do that this year. I’ll get some other things later.
– I always used to watch the entire Babylon 5 series over the Christmas break, but this year I’m working my way through “Hunter” and it’s long enough that I don’t want to stop, and I don’t have time to fit it in anywhere else except during my normal watching time.
– I always used to take a day and watch the Star Wars prequels and OT, but since I needed something to watch during my lunchtime and weekends with less sports on I’ve done it very recently, and so won’t be doing it again.
– I always used to do the same for the Lord of the Rings movies, but again I’ve done that recently.
– I used to listen to Christmas music a lot while off but the laptop that is best suited for playing it is the one I’ll be using, and I’m hesitant to do that at the same time, and I don’t have time any other time. I’m more likely to listen to the radio instead.
So, yeah, I know the feeling of deciding that the way things are means that traditions need to be sacrificed or just don’t work as well as they used to.
I finished Teardown last week. It was a great game and the Heist mechanics get extended quite a bit as you unlock more and more tools. Like a blowtorch to create fires or melt metal. Shotgun, bombs and a rocket launcher. Planks that also act like ropes. There is a lot more to this game than the first two tutorial levels.
It’s been a long time since disagreed so much on various things said in the diecast.
On top of the above, Teardown has a story to be read in the emails and watched on its tv news. Not a great one, but it connects the mission to each other.
AAA games get realeased every year, but the development cycle is much much longer than that. Different teams work on different titles in different development states. Take Call of Duty: There is a game every year but only once every three years there is one from Treyarch, in a different year there is one from Infinity Ward and so on.
And every time there is a descent amount of grayboxing design studies and concept art beforehand. Same goes for Ubi titles.
One thing that the interchanging development cycles cannot acomplish is making use of feedback from previous entrys.
I’m playing Hades at the moment. It’s pretty good!
I especially like how it puts effort into varying things up. The BIG issue with Roguelikes is how much repetition there is, and it feels like a lot of thought was put into how to mitigate this.
I must have heard over one hundred unique lines of (completely unnecessary) dialogue from the NPCs at the moment, just to give them character and make the game a bit more interesting.
Ah, TRADITION. I hate it so. Hours of effort to do the same thing again and again, because That’s What’s Done.
Weird thing is: I’d have said that it’s usually the people who AREN’T cooking a massive, 6-person meal who insist on such traditions – because all they have to do is eat it – but that’s not necessarily true. Some people want to slave away at an oven for hours in the name of tradition.
Also related: I remember working with an American (living in London) who was telling her friend how – in order to properly celebrate Thanksgiving – she’d imported a turkey from the USA, for (about) $US200.
Just…why. We sell turkeys here…
For real. There’s nothing more pointless and regressing than tradition. Doing stuff only because others used to do it rather than because it’s fun or good to do so is the most ridiculous thing in the world. It’s perfectly commendable to know your past, but living in it is a terrible idea. Some of my relatives are big on tradition, but as soon as I moved alone I’ve done nothing but ignore it.
It needs to be a proper Murrican’ turkey! It’s got the nutriments and vitimax your body needs!
Tradition is all well and good, right up until the point where it makes you miserable or becomes actively harmful. At that point, you should feel no compunction whatsoever about doing away with it.
There are a lotta reasons she mighta ordered one from the states. Wanted a different breed (almost all turkey farm turkeys are broad breasted white turkeys). Wanted one that was already spiced a certain way but didn’t want to brine it themselves…..Cajun turkeys are a popular one that way. Or actually ordered a special “turkey” like the Turducken. Or she was just being silly and wanted her specific brand she had used and eaten for years with her family.
Probably was just being silly…..but humans like us are like that sometimes.
I love Carrion! I’ve had the game since launch. It’s rare for me these days to buy a game at launch, but the demo seriously impressed me, so as soon as it became available, I got it. Besides the game’s style being really satisfying, there’s a lot to say for the quality of its animations, and for having a relatively distinct art style rather than taking a lazy approach to pixel art.
I’ll tell you, getting lost is normal. Due to the nature of the setting, there are a lot of similar environments (though thankfully you won’t find two entirely identical rooms), and due to the lack of an in-game map, it gets hard. The game does help you by showing which areas are still not complete (not to mention that if an area is devoid of people you’re likely to have been through it already), but finding those areas is the hard part. Still, it’s ridiculous amounts of fun.
It pays to notice this is the developer Phobia Game Studio’s first game. I’ll certainly be looking forward to their next works.
Yay, new Diecast! Feels like it’s been ages! I loved Carrion! Although, after I finished it, I had no desire of playing it again. But I don’t see that as a negative! To me, it was the perfect length – just when I started to feel like it was overstaying its welcome, it ended.
Like you, my only criticism of it is the lack of a map. I got lost so many times, that I’m starting to feel sorry for all those poor horror film antagonists :(
Regarding Teardown, it seems like is suffering from the same problems as Red Faction: Guerilla – cool destruction engine somewhat ahead of its time, tied to a lackluster game. Hope it sees some improvement in Early Access.
When it comes to Watch Dogs, I probably won’t be interested in reading a retrospective for it. Over the years, I’ve come to view Ubisoft games as extremely bland and uninteresting, and Legion is no different. Nothing about it grabbed me – neither the promotional material, nor the examples of emergent gameplay. Unlike you and Paul, my brain isn’t very engineering-oriented*, so I don’t really have an interest in system exploration the same way you do. There’s just other things I come to games for – I’m mainly interested in the touchy-feely stuff like story, immersion, and game feel.
*Even though – according to the Tortoise Problem for Engineers – I do have the mind of an engineer! But that’s probably because it’s very stupid, as far as problems go :D
Red Faction: Guerilla was one iteration away from being a standout game…and then they decided to do something totally different for the sequel instead.
I also have the mind of an engineer, I keep it in a jar on my desk.
I really wanted to get excited by WD: Legion due to its impressive recreation of London, but sadly the gameplay I’ve seen so far has looked pretty bland. Which is pretty much what I expected when I first heard about the ‘play as anyone’ concept and the procedural generation. How are you supposed to tell an interesting story when everything has to be non-specific enough to fit dozens of different character types? I’d still be interested in hearing more of Shamus’ take on it, though not necessarily a full retrospective.
a Legion analysis sounds like something i would love reading
Agreed. I don’t know how long it would have to be, but I spent so much of my time playing the game trying to analyze the system and what was possible and what hidden gems could be found in my recruits. And a few of the storylines probably bear examining as well for good or ill (though not all; some are pretty generic stop bad guy from doing bad thing setups).
Star Citizen is still chugging along, merrily going mostly nowhere. My understanding is that they are slowly expanding the number of things you can do and the number of places that you can do them in but that they have still not solved the fundamental problems of allowing you to do them with large numbers of other people or in an entirely non-janky fashion. In the meantime, they are hard at work missing development goals, pretending that Squadron 42 exists, updating the roadmap for their roadmap, selling ships–some of which are even sort of playable–and holding big backer-related events to keep the indoctrinated engaged.
I am obviously very cynical about the game. I think that Star Citizen, or at least something sort of resembling Chris Roberts’s promises regarding Star Citizen, will eventually be released, but not until they run out of money or Roberts leaves the project. Star Citizen is in many ways Freelancer 2.0, after all. According to various backers I’ve heard from, however, Star Citizen is still doing quite well at raising money, so I couldn’t possibly say when that will be.
Despite all that, I still think Paul should check it out. I think they even have free or nearly free trials every year or so. It is exactly what Paul says he wants, a spaceship game where you are a guy in a spaceship instead of a spaceship, where you can move around in your spaceship and even leave your spaceship to do other things. Or, given Paul’s distaste for AAA production, he should just go play an indie game with a more sensible scope that’s already been released, like Objects in Space.
How Star Citizen still gets funding is a total mystery to me. Making money is normally the hard part! You don’t get developers complaining that game development is really tricky, because they have these unlimited piles of money, if only they could turn that into a functioning game somehow.
There’s got to have been psychological studies done into Star Citizen, both the backers and the developers. It’s unique.
Is it a con? Maybe, but surely by now Roberts would have disappeared with the money, right?
Is it a failed game? Well, no, because people are still actively backing it and in theory making it…
So what the hell is it? A cult? A cover for something? A giant money laundry? It’s baffling.
I’m torn – either the Star Citizen team is under totally incompetent management and have zero control over their own scope creep, or it’s run by total scammers willing to stay in ‘early access’ forever and keep a number of developers coding, free from the obligations to ever release a game.
Either way, I think it’s never coming out.
Roberts’ history inclines me toward the first option, but there’s no reason that they can’t both be true.
Honestly, with the length of its development cycle, I wouldn’t be surprised if they started as one option, then transitioned into another, then went back to the first option, only to again refocus on the second! And yes – I’m deliberately ambiguous on which one is “Option 1” and which one is “Option 2” :D
But in al seriousness, I think it will come out. Although I don’t follow the news around as that closely, I’ve seen it pop up on Twitch now and again, and from what I’ve seen it definitely doesn’t look half bad! It looks like an acutal game.
As I said, I think something will come out eventually. It’s just not clear to me what that something will be, how well that something will match Roberts’ promises, or if that something can possibly live up to the game that currently exists in the fevered imagination of Roberts’ backers.
My bet is that Roberts (and the rest of the uppermost management) is firmly in the “Endless Scope Creep” department – this thing is his life’s work / passion project / aspirational dream and nothing short of the perfect realization of a living, breathing galaxy will be enough for him. Every potential new feature is greenlit, and hang the schedule delay and cost: if it’s pretty enough, we can get backers to stick in a few more bucks!
Then I suspect there’s a layer below that where people are just happy to keep drawing a paycheck and go along with whatever the thing du jour is. It’s a paycheck and they’re working on someone’s dream job, not the latest EA-branded Iterated Shooter, and they’re not working on some clone of a whale-hunting mobile game from two years ago. Life at RSI in perpetual development is probably better than a lot of game dev, right?
There’s no publisher riding their ass to get a game out the door. The backers seem content to keep feeding the beast, so what the hell – might as well just code, work on assets, and pivot to whatever new shiny feature Chris would like today.
More than merrily. I’m pretty sure Chris Roberts is probably doing more coke than ever right now.
https://i.imgur.com/ZlZnUlV.png
Turns out the plague is good when you are in the business of selling JPGs.
Words fail me. That’s just . . . yeah, I’ve got nothing.
OMG.
It’s worth pointing out that the pre-Covid months of Jan/Feb are also bigger than any previous year so it isn’t just a Covid reaction, if this graph accurately represents Star Citizen funding (source?) then they really are raking in more money than ever before.
If there’s a free-week or whatever for Star Citizen, I’d be interested. But yes, SC seems like all glitz and glitter, and no substance. If I ever play it, it will likely be hate-playing.
As it happens, there’s a free week going on now through Dec 2. I’m genuinely surprised that I’m the first to mention this as far as I can see, which makes me more willing to shill for myself:
Use the referral code STAR-FD7B-JCXQ to give me some freebies. Oh, and something for yourself too, but let’s stay focused on the important part.
Sold! Look forward to hearing about my experience in the next episode.
EDIT: I hate it so much already. This is going to be rough.
Is there anything I can help you with?
Well, the problem is I hate what it is trying to be. Even if Star Citizen were perfectly executed. Even if all the promises were kept. I’m repulsed by the principle of the thing, and have been since it was first announced.
Oh, boy! Can’t wait for next week’s episode! Nothing personal, but I love listening to you and Shamus suffer at the hands of horrible video games and software! I don’t know why. Maybe I should get myself checked out :D
I’m probably only up for a fairly short look at Watchdogs. I don’t think I’ll ever play it, but it’d be fun to hear about some of the unusual game design decisions. However I’m probably not interested enough to read a blow by blow account.
I wonder how well it did in sales. No-one in my circle was ever interested in Watchdogs 1 or 2, but apparently they made enough money for Ubisoft to make a third.
I wouldn’t mind Shamus poking at the mechanics of Watchdogs a bit, though I don’t think I’ll play it. It might be good for the blog to talk about a recent game like Watchdogs, maybe someone will link it on reddit?
(Though for Christmas, I want a Prey retrospective! And a pony!)
From what I’ve heard, the mechanics of the game (or maybe game #2, not #3?) are pretty decent, even if the story isn’t too hot. :)
Elite: Dangerous: I’ve played somewhere upwards of a few thousand hours of this. There’s a lot of depth, but the game has a chronic problem of being pretty shit at teaching new players what’s up or how to interact with it. “A Mile Wide, an Inch Deep” is a common description of the game.
For example, every system has 3-7 various local governments. They control the assorted stations, you can build or lose reputation with all of them, and you can bolster their influence or undercut them – and they’ll stage wars or have elections to take control of these assets. Player groups have had their own factions added and they push for control of wider and wider areas. Player groups fight wars and make/break alliances trying to expand their own influence or remove others.
You’re also right that the assorted governments and states do have an influence on the local markets; for example, “Anarchy” pirate factions remove all policing and crime/punishment from systems they control, and their markets sell lots of valuable commodities that are illegal elsewhere. Democracies ban a lot of things – slavery, narcotics, etc. but generally black markets exist to smuggle things into. Corporate governments close the Black Markets as well. Empire-aligned factions permit ‘Imperial Slaves’ (indentured servants) to be traded, while Federation, Alliance, and most Independent factions ban them, etc.
Re: getting out of your spaceship. With the Horizons expansion you can land freely on any (airless) planet, and get into a little dune-buggy (called the SRV). You can rove around the planets freely which are 1:1 scale. Fun! Mostly this is done to gather materials for crafting and upgrading ship modules. Now, as to getting out of your seat and walking around… not yet, but it’s planned for the upcoming (paid) Odyssey expansion. Apparently it’s been something they’ve been technically capable of for a long time, but haven’t had any real purpose to doing so, so it got back-burnered for a while.
Anyway, if you want to know more or have someone show you a couple more ropes, I might know a guy.
I’m in a similar boat to Paul, tried Elite Dangerous because got it off Epic (also am now between “time commitment” games since I dropped both Destiny 2 and Warframe). Going with that “inch deep” description I get a feeling it’s like one of those seaside beaches where you go into the water and for a while it’s very shallow and then there’s the sudden drop into the depths. For now I’m sticking to the shallows: “oh, let’s do a couple missions* for factions that seem nice”, “oh, someone’s shooting over there, let’s see what this is about”, “oh, maybe it’s time to move three systems over in that direction and sit there for a couple days”. The thing is, I can see the warning signs of the depths, I can see how easy it would be to dive into powerplay and become committed to it, or become an avid contributor to the mapping project, or just a shmuck ferrying cargo and shaking his head at the news of superpowers gearing for war. I’ve seen people say that ED is something where you have to “make your own gameplay” which for many is a negative and I can see why, but it’s also very easy to go into “in character” as “yet another citizen of the galaxy” which has great appeal for others (compare EVE).
*I know real money is not in missions but I like having my game structured.
I feel bad for loving the game but never playing it due to the time investment. And not just in direct play – constantly checking things, comparing ship builds, even just figuring out that I *can* hypothetically do something, deciding whether or not it’s worth doing and how I would then go about it.
Also, to heck with the Guardians. Wake me from cryo-sleep when I can get Thargoid tech.
I really like your analogy of “shallow, until you reach the continental shelf”. I spent some time leading one of the Powerplay factions (with like 6 other people, it’s not a solo project). There’s endless depths there for sure – even managing a single player-faction can be quite the project.
I’m not 100% up on the latest money-making tricks, but the Mission Board had been pretty reliable for a while. You just need the kind of trade rank to actually have the board roll something good. 10+ million for a single hop delivery is really possible. There was a big gold rush in mining but if I understand correctly it’s been re-balanced a bit from “tens or hundreds of millions per hour” to a more reasonable figure.
I rather liked being part of a bigger player group as it contextualizes some of the rest. Yeah, you can still be running cargo or missions from A to B but now it’s in service of something a little bigger. Fun. I even got into the PvP scene a little, although got tired of it pretty fast.
Elite dangerous is an interesting game. From a science perspective, I really like it.
The Milky way galaxy is generated in its entirety (with real stars almost correct), and you have a jump range between 30 to 85 (if you really invest in the best jump range ship). The galaxy is around 100 000 light years across, contains around 300 billion visitable systems, and though the game has been out for 6 years (or so) only 0.1% of the systems have been mapped so far.
It’s just a shame there’s not that much to do in the game. If you go out exploring, you can spend 2 years out in the black mapping stuff (auto generated stuff), you get back and you sell the data for cash, and then what? Use money to buy new ship, and then explore more?
It’s not like you’ll find any cool secrets out there.
The only interesting thing for me is the Raxxla mystery, a supposed secret place mentioned back in the first Elite game. But with 300 billion systems to search, you’d realistically have to solve the clues to find it, and the clues are.. not very many.
One of my work buddies has backed Star Citizen to the tune of about $2,000. He had no responsibilities at the time, but still… His decision making capabilities at the time being what they may he has had access to the Beta(alpha?) build for about 2 years and I have watched him play. It looks good. Like Destiny 2 good; the moment to moment gameplay looks amazing (I personally think Destiny 2’s gunplay is some of the best out there which is where the comparison comes from). I have not seen enough to reliably have an opinion on the grind or long term gameplay. But the ship combat and the in person exploration both look gorgeous
I like the idea behind those open-world spaceship games, especially the trading. But they usually end up feeling empty, and there’s not much you can do with the money you make. You’re just working as a trucker until you can afford a ship to do the shooty story missions.
I’ve heard that the X series lets you build factories and stuff too, but I don’t know where to start with it. Does anyone have suggestions?
That’s actually a rather tricky question as X4 has vastly changed the mechanics from the earlier series. If you don’t mind spending some time reading up on stuff on the Egosoft forums I’d recommend starting with Albion Prelude, the second expansion pack for X3: Reunion. Don’t let the “Expansion Pack” moniker fool you, it’s basically a standalone game, you don’t need X3R to play it if you get it on GOG or Steam (it’s usually bundled with Terran Conflict as the “Terran War Pack”).
Reason why I say this: Albion Prelude has the Stock Market mechanic, which allows you to fairly easily make millions (in earlier games it could take you a while to get to your first million, in AP you can get there in less than an hour), you also don’t have to worry about Kha’ak (nasty, irritating hostiles that will randomly spawn and try to destroy everything in a sector).
Terran Conflict doesn’t have the Stock Market and Kha’ak do spawn
until you defeat them in a very hard questlinebut the basic questline will net you some fairly decent ships for free.Obligatory forum link: Egosoft English Forums
Thanks! Out of curiosity, what has been the trajectory of the X series? Was it incremental improvements until X3 and add-ons and then a bold new direction?
This “stand-alone expansion” thing seems to have been some sort of trend. Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic was also like that. I guess it sounds better than “we didn’t feel like updating the engine”?
Yes, it basically was incremental improvements, culminating in X3: Albion Prelude, and then a clean break with X: Rebirth. X4: Foundations has some of the mechanics of X:R, but doesn’t change the established formula up quite as much (while the factory system has been entirely redone and you can walk about in your ship like in X:R, you aren’t confined to the one ship).
For X3: Terran Conflict and AP Egosoft worked with the authors of the most popular modpacks to get them in as official features, and they also did some updating of the engine (TC and AP share a UI which is more beloved than the one in X3: Reunion, AP also lets you set render distance which is massively useful in Space Fog sectors). AP also ends on a really good hook to explain how everything became so different by the time we get to X:R and X4:F.
I also recommend the X3 series because when you look for a quest they give your time limit in minutes (and optionally hours or seconds depending on how much time you have); instead of series’ standard Mizuras, Stazuras, and Sezuras. Not having to do mental arithmetic to decide whether you can pull off a task in the allocated time is useful.
My experience with the X series is limited to X3, which I picked up from the $2 bargain bin at Microcenter. It was basically fine, I guess, and I had a few hours worth of fun tooling around the galaxy and looking at, oh, space stations and nebula and stuff. All things considered, however, I’m glad that I spent so little. The X games are all about creating and managing a vast, automated interstellar manufacturing and shipping empire. I’d normally be all for that sort of thing, but the X games expect you to do all of that from the cockpit of your off-brand X-wing using a system of nested, keyboard-driven menus instead of an interface that a sane person would design for that kind of game. All I really wanted was Privateer but with better graphics and a decent flight model. You can technically play X3 that way–I know because I did, more or less, before I got so bored and so frustrated that I quit–but that doesn’t seem to be the game’s focus.
Possibly the later games are better. Egosoft–I think that’s the developer–tried to make the game more approachable in X Rebirth. Rebirth had an infamously buggy launch, but Egosoft have a reputation as the kind of developer who patch early and often so for all I know Rebirth is in fine form now. Also, I think that there’s been at least one and quite possibly more sequels since then. Good luck.
I recall there was a pretty exhaustive thread on the X series games discussing and comparing them. I thought they were in the comments somewhere, but it looks like it was actually on the forums… which are down. :(
I played X and X2, and the feeling is very similar. Neat idea about being a captain of industry in Space… that is forever stuck in their fighter cockpit.
Paul, you should try Starsector. It is a great game. It’s far from perfect, but sounds like the kind of thing you are after. Here’s a amazing summary video of Starsector.
I’ve heard Starsector described as Mount & Blade but in space.
Starsector reminds me a bit of SPAZ and Gratuitous Space Battles. There doesn’t seem to be any way to be a “captain of industry in space” though.
Personally I loved Carrion, I love being evil in games and Carrion allows me to infect an innocent person, have them climb into a mech suit and brutally murder their friends and co-workers. I like to imagine that they remain fully conscious and aware of their actions trapped in bodies they have no control over.
Actually, can anybody think of some other games where you get to play “the monster”? I remember the alien levels of Aliens vs Predator, and there are some asymmetrical multiplayer titles like Dead by Daylight, but I’d love to hear if there are other recommendations for singleplayer games of this type.
The new Friday the 13th game lets you play as Jason in multiplayer …
I wouldn’t say no to reading a short post on Watch Dogs Legion. Heck I’d add it to my wishlist if it were on steam and had a good sale. Can’t say I care too much about the gameplay or story but I wouldn’t mind messing around creating my “ideal” team. That amount of freedom sounds interesting to me. Reminds em a bit of creating orc armies in the Shadow of More War games, though you couldn’t grab any orc you wanted.
The irresponsibility of having people travel that far for Thanksgiving this year is shocking.
The presumptuousness of scolding strangers for living their lives is shocking.
(You seem to assume we took no precautions, which is incorrect.)
What I’ll say about Watchdogs Legion is that my interest in playing it (very small) doesn’t have any relation to my interest in analysis (much higher). The same applies to many other games. About the only time I’m not interested in your analysis of a game is when it’s a game that I plan to play in the near future.