OddballGreg - Magic The Gathering (Duels Of The Planeswalkers 2013)

In my ever present lack of mind, I managed to screenshot almost everything except the title screen. Triple points? (Teehee)

 Do you like Magic The Gathering, find shuffling tedious, or simply need something "new" *cough* to try out and do? If you said yes to any of these things, then you might find some enjoyment in Magic The Gathering: Duels Of The Planeswalkers 2013.

Those of you with significant mental acuity are likely already or about to ask: "2013? But isn't it almost 2015?". In which case you would be correct, I am perhaps somewhat late to the discussion in terms of this game. Although, that could be said for most games I've discussed considering this blog did only start in June. (Half a year now, goodness how the time flies.)

In any case, my good friend Richard decided to grace me with a copy of this game so that I could play it with him from the other side of the world while he waits to become a part of Her Royal Majesty's Navy in UK. (At least, I hope that's how you refer to it. I'm going to defer to ignorance if I'm wrong.)

In any case, lets talk about the game. MTG: DOTP 2013 (Longest acronym of my life...) is the computerized version of the massively popular trading card game Magic The Gathering which you are guaranteed to have heard of if you know anyone that is just a little bit nerdier than average. DOTP is the 3rd of three such computerized version of the game, focusing on people who prefer to have computers do all the shuffleing/counting/mathing done for them, as well on those who would like to play Magic with distant friends or from the convenience of their homes. It's also pretty good for playing against the AI if you have no internet. (Though that could easily get old quickly.)

The flashy, card based menu makes no allusion to this game being anything more than you expect. But then, it does what it does pretty well.

DOTP is, for all intents and purposes, Magic The Gathering for computers and consoles. It is admittedly a hard thing to sell if you have little knowledge of the actual card game, though some reviewers have pointed out that, apart from having an experienced Magic player teach you, this is about one of the best ways you could learn to play. DOTP's AI can hold it's own, the tutorials are well explained and the Campaign does a great job of introducing you to new ideas, decks and tactics in a fun and only occasionally frustrating way.

Some basic statistics about your game habits or records, as well as a plain viewing of my childhood nickname.

 Perhaps the only original part of DOTP is what is called the "Planechase" mode, in which a normal game of Magic is played between up to 4 opponents, but with an added random element of a deck of Planes with their own effects and a die which allows the players to enjoy the benefits of the plane or cause it to change, often resulting in a frantic and different experience to the usual duels. I will point out again that this lack of originality is not a bad thing. Like Call Of Duty and Assassins Creed, things are made the same, because people enjoy it. Had this game been anything more or less than what it is, it would have been grossly criticized for having utterly dropped the ball and trying to be something it's not.

A rudimentary "deck builder" lets you change out a selection of cards from pre-defined decks and choices. It's fairly restricted compared to the real cards game, but it' is functional and approachable.

 That said, DOTP does what it does well, has leaderboards and online play, achievements, a fair length set of campaigns and challenges and a deck builder. More or less everything you could expect or want from it. Everything works very well give or take one or two interface issues, and the gameplay is solid, unabashed Magic. For anything more than that, you're going to have to step away from the computer and find your local hobby store that stocks Magic The Gathering cards and knows where it's players congregates. Is it worth your time? Yes. Despite it's occasional limitations, DOTP is definitely fun and enjoyable computerised version of Magic, and certainly worth a couple bucks considering the many hours you can sink into the game. (If Steam happens to put it on sale this Christmas, do yourself a favor and buy a couple copies for yourself and your friends. Head to head matches are always a giggle.)

In any case, that's all I can say on the game. Feel free to peruse the rest of the screenshots below as they tell their own story. Otherwise, if you think this game is good, or completely disagree and think I'm weird for playing a tabletop game on a computer, do be sure to let me know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Happy gaming my friends.

My friend and I having a "two-headed giant" match versus the AI. While not an easy match, there are some fantastic cards that can completely turn the tide when used correctly as we soon found out.

The interface for starting new games is fairly simple and easy to figure out. No complaints here.

I think I speak for everyone that's played DOTP when I say: "F*** this encounter."

Came for the game, stayed because of the pretty pictures and the game. DOTP does a good job of showing off it's fantastic illustrations, very few of which were actually made for the game itself.

OddballGreg - Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (And The Unfortunate Tale Of Victor Henning)

Screenshot was nicked from the Cataclysm website's screenshots page. Don't you just love ASCII graphics? XD

ASCII Graphics, an absurdly fun (lack of) premise and the perfect mix of seriousness and humor, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is one of the most fun roguelikes I have ever played. Lets talk about that.

If you've been reading the TCSA blog for a length of time, you may be familiar with my absurd tastes in games and content, preferring originality and fun over all else. You may also remember me talking about a ridiculously difficult strategy game called Dwarf Fortress at some point as well which is another of my favorite ASCII based games.

If you're wondering, ASCII is the the american character classification system for all the symbols a computer might need to use. (Though ASCII is hardly as all encompassing as USF which includes various non Latin character sets like Cyrillic or Kanji.) In any case, I found Cataclysm by chance while, big surprise, I browsed YouTube for something interesting to see and came across a YouTube Commentator by the name of Aavak, who had just begun playing the game and proved to be quite entertaining to watch as he did his best to make the most of a character he'd purposefully made inherently flawed. (Like you do in games like these. The fun is in the story that results from the game, not the victory screen.)

What caught my eye about Cataclysm in particular, (apart from it being open-source and free - big plus there), was just how insanely detailed this odd little game is. Apart from the interesting premise built around almost any apocalypse you can think of in a strangely cohesive pot of madness, there are some truly well thought out systems which, apart from helping to create the story of your character by morphing their actions, are incredibly well thought out and logical. Learning is determined by how focused your character is, skills degrade over time, clothing encumbers individual parts of your body to provide a detailed understanding of whats affecting your ability to do things, and for good measure you can build a functional car from all kinds of various components and drive it using logical car controls instead of the direct control most games give you over the vehicles... and that's only some of the stuff.

Suffice to say, there's a lot in this game to make for absolutely fantastic gameplay and storytelling, to the extent that I thought it might be a fun exercise to chronicle the (admittedly short lived) exploits of my first character in the form of a narrative that explains his various character traits and skills through a story, rather than simply spelling out stats. It's probably a really terrible read if my inner critic is to be believed, but the purpose isn't good reading, it's to give you an idea of what kind of story's can emerge from this ridiculously detailed game. So without further ado, here is the unfortunate (and rather short) tale of Victor Henning.

Victor Henning had never been a particularly lucky person. Born with an unfortunate jaw deformity which is best described as "hideous", he spent most of his life as a social outcast. While his parents were more forgiving of his looks and did the best they could for him, even those he spent a lifetime training martial arts with at his parents behest shunned him for looking so intimate with the proverbial ugly stick.

Eventually Victor's parents grew old and could no longer support a son that nobody wished to be near for long, forcing him to enter the job market without any marketable skills. As it turned out, he made a rather good construction worker, and few people had to look at him while he was at it. At least until the "Cataclysm".

Not many people know what happened (or lived to tell the tale). Whatever it was, Victor had been having lunch while it happened. Stampeding people, car crashes, screaming, explosions. Whatever it was, Victor didn't want to find out, quietly finding his way to an evacuation shelter outside of town that he had helped build a while ago. Seemingly under-stocked and empty of people, save himself, Victor set about looking for something to help him survive whatever was going on.

The shelter was basically furnished. Benches, counters, lockers and a couple computers were it's contents. The room was also centered around a central staircase which added to the building's symmetry, as did the 4 doors on the 4 sides of the building.

Victor, figuring his best bet would be to take what he could and leave, looted the lockers quickly for the thermal blanket and luminescent emergency jacket that they contained before heading for the basement to continue his looting.

The basement was dark. Not dark in the ominous and evil sense of the term, but the "I can barely see my hand in front of my face" sense of the term. Stumbling around blindly for a few minutes, Victor realized that the floor was strewn with a wide variety of items, and decided to gear up, starting with a set of hiking boots.

Of course, this being the "unfortunate" tale of Victor Henning, it should come as no surprise that trying to put hiking boots on in an near pitch black basement during some apocalyptic event is probably a bad idea. Having not yet even removed his own shoes, Victor suddenly found himself covered in disgusting smelling bile which had issued from the bloated stomach of what looks like a fat, rotting man. Said man then beset upon Victor with violent intent.

Victor, however, fell immediately into the instinctual self-defense movements that he had practiced for so long, delivering a startlingly strong punch to the assailants face from which a sickening crunch emanated. Oddly, this blow did little more than cause the bloated man to stumble before setting upon Victor once again with renewed rage. Taking no chances, Victor delivered an additional set of blows to the head which would have crippled an ordinary person, but instead prompted an enraged swing at Victor's own head. Ducking this, Victor bounced into to rabbit punches which rocked the creature's head further.

Still not subdued however, the assailant tired to grab Victor with a flailing swing, only to be yanked forward with the offending arm and tripped. Unceremoniously delivered to the floor, Victor delivered a unceremonious kick to the it's bloated stomach, with veritably explosive results. Wiping the gore from his face, Victor quickly set about looting the basement of some basic supplies before hurriedly heading for better lit surroundings above.

Emerging from the basement, Victor considered two things. Firstly that he had just been covered in gore after beating the hell out of a raotting fat man, and secondly that there was enough food and supplies in the basement to keep him in health for weeks if need. Was Victor surprised about the fat guy though? Nope. Anyone who lives in the 21st century knows what a zombie is, and poor Victor had spent many solitary hours of free time playing games and watching movies about them.

Taking a seat at one of the computers, Victor decided to see if maybe the government knew about the zombies. Logging into the computer, Victor was greeted with the glowing green message you would expect at a time like this.

"Greetings citizen. A biological attack has taken place and a state of emergency has been declared. Emergency personnel will be aiding you shortly. To ensure your safety please follow the below steps:

1. Do not panic.
2. Remain inside the building.
3. Seek shelter in the basement.
4. Use provided gas masks.
5. Await further instruction."

Victor chuckled at step three considering how he currently stank like a lunch, once digested, with a side order of grave-robbers delight. Of course the useless terminal had no internet access, leaving Victor with a problem.

While Victor did have enough supplies to last him weeks in this building, and probably should just wait like the terminal told him to do, that would make for an absolutely rubbish story about an ugly hermit. So of course in the grand scheme of story telling, Victor decided he'd go exploring.

Knowing that whatever was out there was probably going to try to kill him, Victor decided that now was a good time to quickly brush up on his first aid skills from a book he found in the basement earlier. A few minutes of skimming and Victor felt a touch more ready to deal with any injuries if necessary, keeping the book on hand to consult.

Sucking up some courage from the air about him, Victor stepped out into what I *cough* he had forgotten to mention was the freezing cold of early spring. Walking about ten paces from the shelter, it was immediately apparent to Victor that he could no longer feel his face nor his fingers. Whatever was out there, it would have to wait for Victor to find a way to keep himself warm if they wanted a fair chance to kill him before the weather did.

Stepping back into the shelter which had suddenly grown colder itself as the night fell, Victor set about grabbing anything that might help keep him warm. Gloves, winter jackets and fur boots. Anything that might keep the cold at bay. When that turned out to be insufficient, Victor decided to set up a fire. Smashing one of the benches in the main room of the shelter, he quickly threw a fire together using the wood and a lighter he found in the basement earlier, sighing with relief as the heat washed over him from the warm flames. Calming down, Victor found himself dozing off into a relaxed sleep after the days events.

As you might expect though, lighting fires inside of buildings is a really bad idea, and Victor awoke to screeching metal, falling rocks and thick smoke in his lungs as the building began to collapse around him. Unfortunate Victor may have been feeling somewhat silly about this revelation as the first chunk of roof fell on top of him. And the second. Finding a moment of respite, he began crawling for the exit in the hopes of outliving his poor decision. Moments before reaching the door however, an significantly large piece of burning rubble fell upon him and set him alight.

Thus ended what Victor had likely expected to be a somewhat longer foray into the Cataclysm. In the final thoughts of those who had learned from bad ideas too late, Victor wondered what his tombstone might have looked life if anyone could make one.

In his head, his epigraph simply read: "Fuck.", before he died.

Fin

And so ended the badly thought out tale of Victor Henning. I admit that his death was a moment deserving of a truly epic facedesk on my part, yet it was still a very humorous thing to witness. If you agree, and think that it could be funny to have more of these stories written, do be sure to let me know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback as it helps us bring you more of the content you enjoy. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Good luck surviving my friends.

OddballGreg - Democracy 3 (Country Management Simulator)

The wonderfully utilitarian menu screen for a rather effectively utilitarian game, welcome to Democracy 3.

 Do you believe that you could be a great leader? Don't answer that. But on the chance that you do, or are just extremely weird like myself, then you may find the delightfully intricate country management simulator that is Democracy 3 from Positech Games to be a rather interesting use of your time.

What is Democracy 3? If you want to be particularly deadpan about it, you could probably call it a spreadsheet simulator, snort at the idea of that being fun and move on with your day. Of course, if you happen to have megalomaniac-like tendencies, or simply enjoy the idea of trying to see how various things can affect a large body of people, (Like myself), then Democracy 3 may be worth more than a simple passing glance to you.

Ooooh. Buttons and bars. I'd like to nominate Democracy 3 for best graphics ever. Snarkiness aside, this is a relatively effective way of finding your way to all the statistics, issues and policies of the country.

Democracy 3's gameplay is somewhat passive, and it's fun is fairly self-made. There's no campaign, no grand scheme, no action and explosions, and about the minimum amount of graphics that was necessary to make this game functional. While that does not sound very positive in terms of reasons to play Democracy 3, I haven't mentioned it's positives.

First and foremost, Democracy 3 is perhaps one of the most positive societal simulators out there. While it's not showing you people going from building to building in real time leading their lives, it is giving you a fairly logical and interesting representation of the issues and conditions under which your chosen country, (Britain in the screenshots), is currently functioning. Factors ranging from CO2 Emissions, to GDP, to the Global Economy and the constituency of your countries population all hold far reaching effects on all the other various parts of the country.

For example, at the beginning of the pictured game as Britain, I was suffering from a couple issues ranging from deficit spending, to Organized Crime, an Uncompetitive Economy, Technological Backwardness and far reaching homelessness. While you might think "oh well, set up the taxes and your deficit spending will be solved" if you're thinking in practical terms, the problem is that if you set the taxes to highly you can do everything from provoking wide-spread tax-evasion to a brain drain of your skilled workforce and make your economy even more uncompetitive depending on which taxes you choose to apply.

GDP, possibly the single-most important factor for your machinations. If it collapses, chances are good that the country will too.

 The solution is somewhat more long-term as you would expect. Considering that the existing taxes such as "Capital Gains Tax", "Corporation Tax" and "Income Tax" already exist on a percentile basis, it would make sense that improving the base amount of domestic product would in turn result in increased tax revenue. Which it does.

So while you would think that solving the deficit spending issue first would be the priority, you would do so by solving the other issues. In my Britain game, I maximized science funding to remove the technological backwater as time passed. (The ingame turns take place in intervals set before you starts, usually quarters of a year.) After 16 turns, the new Science Funding would be fully implemented after gradually increasing and would result in a few things. 

Firstly, it would directly improve the technological and educational status of the country as obviously, having people doing sciency things inspires more people to do sciency things. Of course, better technology and educated workers leads to a highly productive workforce which directly improves the country's GDP. Even better though, the better technology serves to eliminate the technological backwater issues, (Issues are depicted as red buttons), which leads to a further increase in productivity which again boosts the GDP. Even better though, is that this additional productivity ends the Uncompetitive Economy issue, which again helps to stabilize the GDP and cause a positive balance between governmental spending and expenditure, despite the global recession at the time. And all that without increasing taxes. 

Recycling. While it's affect on the actual environment is somewhat negligible compared to other things, it is a great way to make the Enviromentalist people in your country happy... it also makes more of them.

Of course, the massively boosted GDP does come with it's own issues. Specifically, pollution and Oil dependency, both of which are linked. Obviously, the larger your economy, the more people there are doing things. More factories, more cars, more refuse. You get the picture. Suffice to say, that additional tax income suddenly had a use as the degrading environment was causing an Asthma epidemic in the populace, which was deleterious to the health of the workforce, which then damages their productivity and ultimately, the GDP. 

By starting a national monorail, subsidizing bus lanes, railways and free bus rides for the elderly and students, as well as initializing a telecommuting initiative, the countries CO2 emissions were dropped quite extensively, while the subsidization of micro-generation and various other environmentally minded policies helped to improve the country's energy efficiency. This resulted in an decreased oil usage and dependency which served to minimize the world economy's affect on Britain's own, as well further reducing pollution and ending the asthma epidemic. It also helped improve the GDP as the decreased oil demand led to lower prices for the little that was still being imported. (On the extreme side of things, public transportation eventually became so efficient that I banned the use of cars in cities altogether, at the outrage of motorists... well, the 3 of them that still existed.)

Ethnic Minorities are an interesting group in that they are often not the cause of many issues barring a decrease in average wages due to high immigration and maybe race riots if you, for some reason, think that racial profiling and not passing the racial discrimination act sounds like fun.

Phew. All that, and I haven't even told you about the politics. (Irony is sounding like politics is a fun thing.) Essentially, this game is based on the idea that you have been elected as the President/Prime Minister/Chancellor of your country and are obviously responsible for solving it's issues. As you may expect, the "solution" to some issues, is not exactly the same to everyone, and you have to to carefully handshake your way around all kinds of issues specific to these various peoples while you solve the actual economic issues.

As an example, I mentioned earlier that Britain starts out with an issue of Organized Crime being a problem, with regular and violent crime being similarly bad problems, if not to the same degree. Community policing, while expensive, is one of the better solutions to the latter two due to the fact that it works with the people and keeps them happy, which further helps avoid racial issues down the line as well.

The institution of additional policies does eventually become very necessary in a whole bunch of regards, especially if you like the idea of having a very education and patriotic Space Program. Or if you simply want to ban all forms of private education and healthcare.

Of course, community policing is hardly enough to solve everything, luckily, our GDP improvements are fantastic for providing the funds necessary to exponentially expand the police force to the "patrol car on every street" status. These two things effectively ended all crime and violent crime in the country in the space of a few quarters. (Turns) Unfortunately, Organised Crime is a little craftier than that and is not as easily fixed by mere police. By increasing funding of intelligence services to the maximum and providing them with "Spy Satelites", we're able to mostly take care of the Organized Crime issue, but it's necessary to institute Wire-Tapping "by Judicial Order" to finally push it over the edge and end it. I indicate "by Judicial Order" because obviously, people living in a liberal society do not like secretive spying things like intelligence services and invasion of privacy. While making a full on Big-Brother state does sound like fun, that comes with it's own issues.

Turns out, even a game that simulates the management of country governance knows that political figures get killed... Who would've guessed?

As you might expect, governing a large body of people can be a somewhat precarious, (and fun), thing to do. Consider my favorite people to piss off; The Religious. (I will point out that this is in game only, and will explain my reasoning now.) Quite simply, the religious are good and bad at the same time. While religious people will tend to be satisfied with things like the banning of Sunday shopping and prayers at school, they tend to become a little problematic if you're looking to make a scientifically minded, (and productive), society, since their insistence on the teaching of creationism in schools and their moral disgust at stem cell research tends to make doing those things difficult.

While you could simply ignore them and do all that stuff anyway, you'll soon find that your governance become condemned by the religious community who define you as a morally corrupt leader who should step down. Continue on that track for long enough, and you're probably going to start finding bombs in your office as compliments of the "Crusaders Of The Lord". (This has a habit of ending your governance prematurely if you're wondering.)

What I did in my game as Britain however was left them as they were, and proceeded to boost the Science Funding and eventually start Britain's very own Space Program much later on. The resultant existential questioning caused by all this science stuff going on leads to a fair number of people giving up their religious beliefs. (In the game that is. Please do not lynch me.) Given enough time, their pull as a group becomes small enough that you can start exclusively teaching evolution at schools and pretty much eradicate the religious as a political group in the country, which leaves your free to make a very science focused community.

As you would expect, the removal of a group of people that don't like you is pretty handy for ensuring your reelection at the end of your term as the President/chancellor ruler guy. Of course, doing things like solving bad economies and making people less homeless is also pretty handy for that. So is ending organised crime and asthma epidemics. Basically, rule number one: The customer is always right.

The fun of Democracy 3 is that most times, you get to choose who the customer is. There are Capitalists and Socialists, Liberals and Conservatives, Environmentalists and The Self Employed, The Religious, The Youth, Parents, Commuters, Motorists, The Poor, The Middle Class, The Wealthy, Ethnic Minorities, Trade Unionists and Farmers. (There may be some that I missed.) Pleasing them all is a task worthy of an actual in game achievement, but it's often better to just focus on the largest population constituencies, or, if you're up to the challenge, simply change the constituency to something that suits you more. Communist America? Sure. Police State France? Why not. Free Market Britain? Go ahead. Religious Holy Land Germany? You're crazy, but sure. (You get the picture.)

Manage your country right, and you'll be able to make anything happen. Or you'll end up assassinated, which also tends to come with it's own hilarity depending on what kind of absurd things you were trying to do when it happened. In any case, it's pretty clear that in politics the only wrong move is the one that gets you killed if this game is to be understood. (There's no corruption factor ironically enough. Perhaps that would have been too hard to simulate. Who can say?)

The end of every in game turn is met with a screen that details the overall progress of your country as according to the six most important statistics even to real world countries.

In any case, that's about as much as I can say about the awesome game that is Democracy 3. Perhaps you think that I'm really weird and play some very odd things, or maybe you just want to share your own story of world manipulation. If so, do be sure to let us know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Happy politicking my friends.

OddballGreg - Fallout Lore (ShoddyCast)

Something something screenshot something boring something from https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7mFkx1Um4KJZKkUHsSV1uA. I know I need to come up with a better Header Image system, we've had this conversation.

Some games are very dependent on their story for their worth. Whether it be Dragon Age, The Elder Scrolls, or, in this case, Fallout, the main reason that you play these RPG's is for their stories. Of course, sometimes their stories can become a little bit convoluted, and the lore of their universe too expansive. Luckily, ShoddyCast is here to shed some light on their brilliantly detailed worlds.

Like most things I discover on the internet, I found ShoddyCast by complete and utter accident while doing my typical internet browsing that usually forms part of my work schedule. (Don't ask how that works, it makes no sense to me either really.) In any case, suffice to say that I soon found myself watching the absolutely enrapturing and fantastically narrated Fallout Lore series on the ShoddyCast channel. (When I say enrapturing, I mean I watched every episode today...)

So what's so good about this series? Simple, it tells you the tale of American Wasteland from both before and after the great war and atomic bombs dropping, and all the stories of those within it from the original Fallout game all the way to Fallout: New Vegas. (Suffice to say this is gamer nerd's dream and I was quite happy to spend about 4 hours watching every single video in a row.) Quite literally the best part was finding out that many of the characters I knew from the latter 2 Fallout games had a history in the earlier games that I had never had the opportunity to play, and as such, thoroughly enjoyed the experience. (Admittedly, if you've never played any of the Fallout games then a lot of the coolness or sentimental value of the lore will probably be lost on you... but then... why haven't you played any of these games yet?)

In any case, I've shared the first video of the series above to give you a first hand experience of what the ShoddyCast narration is like. (Which I personally think is really awesome and very well done... Just saying.) Give it a watch, and if you like it or find it interesting, then follow this link to watch the entire series in order. Also, don't forget to give the Dragon Age and Elder Scrolls lore series' a check as well. (I have yet to watch them myself, hence why this post is somewhat exclusively on the Fallout Series. That and the fact that I did a post about hoarding that was centered around Fallout in the past. Teehee)

Do you agree that ShoddyCast is really good at narration? Or maybe you simply want to suggest something for future blog post? If so, do be sure to let us know down in the comments below, of via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Enjoy the show my friends.

JovialJman - RimWorld (Entertaining Colony Sim)

This is an image showing a colony in-game taken from rimworldgame.com

RimWorld is an Indie game, created by Tynan Sylvester. It is a simulation of 3 survivors on a distant planet on the rim of the galaxy, (hence the name). It is a very interesting game and has many aspects to it that make it really enjoyable.

I have spoken about simulations before, and OddballGreg has spoken about RimWorld briefly, but I believe that it deserves a post of it's own. So with further ado, here is the post. When starting the game you are greeted with a message, (it is the picture below), it gives a warm feeling to show that this shall be the home of your colonists for some time.

This is a screenshot of the beginning message in Alpha 7 of RimWorld

From here, you will set up a base, by either creating the walls that will surround you or dig into the earth for some shelter, both having their pros and cons. You shall be visited by a range of people, some being wonders of the galaxy, while some are towns that are somewhere else on the world, some might not be friendly so preparations must be made. Without food you shall starve, without shelter you will go mad, and without defences you might get over run. All of these need to be thought of before beginning any activities as some people might be able to do some things better than anyone else, and others might not be able to do something at all.

I have spent many hours on this game, and is the cause for me publishing some of the posts as late as 11:58 on some nights, since you lose a lot of the sense of time when playing the game because there is nothing telling you what the time is on the screen. Everything in the game has a randomness to it so no two games are the same. If you were to go to a previous save and play from there, you will be surprised at the different events that may take place. One of the reasons that you cannot stop playing. The game is really well made, and it isn't even done yet. There are many features Tynan is still going to add to the game through input of those who play it.

In game development, Alpha is usually regarded to the stage when there is playable content, but there is still going to be new things added to it, which is where the game is at the moment. Beta is the next stage and is usually regarded as the stage where all content is in the game, but it is all being polished and made ready for the final release. However there is no regulation of the terms so some companies may use it in different manners. 

There is a whole community around this game, and some dedicated people have made mods for it already to add features that they would like to see in the game, and some of these might eventually be made into the original game. Many of these people work really hard for these mods and really enjoy making them. Tynan has let people mod it as much as they want, and even has a tab in the open menu for activating these mods. Tynan works almost every day on this game to try get it better than what it was the day before and most changes can almost be seen on the daily basis at this website.

Some people have made walkthroughs of how to best survive in their opinion and some have commentated while playing it. I really enjoyed Pyrion Flax's story telling of his game. It is the story of Rebecca Cain and how she survived. The way he tells the story is really amazing and when something bad happens you really feel it and have symphony for these moving pixels on the screen, it is beautiful.

This is the first video of his 6 part series, I really recommend watching them all

With that it brings today's post to an end. I hope you enjoyed reading today's rather short post on a game I really enjoy, and I hope you are able to play it yourself unless you are in matric at the moment then I hope you are studying for the exams, and you can try the game after you are done with them. Anyways, if you have any comment or suggestions on anything I have said in this post or anythings else, please leave it in the comments below and/or on Facebook/Twitter. Do you know of anyone who might like to read this blog because they enjoy reading, or playing games, or you wish just to contact them, please share this with them as I am sure they will thank you for the thought. If you would like to see more post like this and others please like us on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter, using the associated buttons on the bar to the left. I hope you have/had a really good day.

Enjoy playing friends.

Tomfoolery Tuesday - Dota 2 (The Game Sequel Of The Mod)

Hello and welcome to Tomfoolery Tuesday; the day of the week where I talk about a game that is the sequel to the mod that inspired the other game that I hate. (Also, Russians)

If that description sounds confusing... Don't worry. It's intentional. (Teehee) Make sure to read the image captions, they tell a story mostly separate to the blog article.

If you're anything of a gaming veteran, then chances are good that you have probably heard of Dota or it's now rather (in)famous sequel Dota 2. Considering how often I mention League Of Legends, a game which is effectively based on Dota, I thought it only fitting that I do a review of Dota 2 as well.

A rather funny result of the topics I choose to talk about on this blog is that my passing references to my experience playing League of Legends has become almost as common as my references to the sudden impact of my head against my desk. So it makes sense that after my friends dragged me into playing a game of Dota 2 with them, I would have to do a review of it in order to get a fair balance of opinion between the games. (Before you ask, I think they're both good in their own right. There's no choice of "which is better" to be found in this article.)

First and foremost, Dota 2 is the famous Free to Play, Valve made MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) which is sequel to the original Dota which was actually a mod for Warcraft 3 and the first MOBA ever made. (You get all that? No? I don't blame you.)

All set to go with my randomly chosen death knight support champ. (I thought. I should point out that I am really bad at these games.)

Starting out, I should point out that MOBA type games have to met specific terms in order to be classified as such. So if you've played any MOBA in your life, be it League of Legends, Smite, the original Dota, etc, you will likely feel relatively comfortable with the way that Dota 2 works. (This does mean that I'm probably going to be mentioning what I wasn't used to mainly...)

Dota 2 involves 5 champions on each side fighting down 3 lanes of minions, (often referred to as creeps) and towers to ultimately destroy the enemy Ancient (Their base basically.) This is done by earning gold which is used to buy items which improve your chosen champion, and earning experience which improves his abilities, so that you can outperform the enemy and ultimately win. (That's the simple version. There's a lot more strategy to it than that.)

The shop is fairly much like you would expect it to be, except some slight differences in gameplay means that LoL veterans won't be quite at home with Dota 2.

However, what makes Dota 2 notable to me are, as I said, it's differences to League Of Legends. There are a multitude of gameplay changes firstly. Things like a special defensive buff for structures that can be activated every five minutes, (I had no idea what it did the first time I clicked it.), a day/night cycle, the ability to pause, requiring portal scrolls to teleport to your base, the availability of couriers to bring items you buy to you instead of fetching them from base, and even the fact that there are actually multiple shops throughout the map rather than just the one at your base. These things all through me off quite badly the first time I played Dota 2, but I found that by my second match, I understood how things worked enough to not be utterly terrible. (For those of you who haven't played a MOBA before, this paragraph probably made no sense to you. I fear only playing the game will help with that.)

However, it is not just the inherent differences in gameplay that make Dota 2 and interesting and discernibly different counterpart to League of Legends, but the way that Steam and Valve run it which truly changes the experience.

"Heh. This doesn't look so hard." I thought for the first and last time...

Firstly, while League of Legends has a large selection of champions of which a selection is made free to play every week; Dota 2 bars absolutely no content in any way, except for the cosmetic items which it uses, like League of Legends, to make it's money in a way that does not affect the experience of the users. While I can't say either system doesn't have it's pro's or con's, I'm most likely simply enjoying the refreshing differences after so many years playing League Of Legends.

Dota 2 does also offer a fair deal more choice in terms of how you want to play it. While there is not exactly a wide range of maps, (a common issue in all MOBA's), there are a fair deal of customization options for how you play that I had not expected. Options ranging from captains picking for their teams to building a champion from a pool of abilities are not exactly standard, and had me fairly surprised when I found them. Considering that Dota 2 boasts Steam Workshop modability while League of Legends bans anything more than client side aesthetic changes, it clear to see which has the greater choice in gameplay options.

Not to say that League of Legends was stale to any degree, their bi-weekly updates ensured frequent changes and a necessity to adaptation that Dota 2 avoids by not releasing new champions constantly. Both again have their pro's and con's.

I happened to be first blood in this match...

In terms of performance on my frankencomputer with it's dual core Amd Athlon and Nvidia 6800, Dota 2 is a clear winner in terms of not freezing and maintaining a fairly constant Framerate unlike League of Legends which freezes frequently and dependably. (I cannot buy an item in LoL without the additional cost of 5 seconds for my computer to come out of it's coma.) Both have a fair deal of graphical options to choose from, though my obvious default setting is to just put everything down to the minimum and cross my fingers.

Which brings us finally to the subject which was pretty much the entirety of my League of Legends review. The community. Unfortunately, a side-affect of being a South African is that I cannot speak with much authority on the subject, and can only pass on what I know through secondhand knowledge.

Firstly, Dota 2 is interwoven with the Steam community features, and makes playing with friends and teammates quite easy and painless. It also allows for the creation of ranked teams and even the in-game browsing of championship and league games. Mostly what you would expect, but very easy to use.

The reason I cannot so much comment of other players behavior however is due to my inability to connect to any of them. I sat in queue for 30 minutes, and the one time I found a match, I was busy making something to drink and got promptly kicked from the queue. I didn't bother to try again. However, if the steam reviews article by Kotaku is to be believed, the Dota 2 community is as toxic as the League Of Legends community. The game is also very good in their opinion... but then again, so is the word "cyka" if those steam reviews are to be believed. (There were also references to Russian Learning Simulator 2014 and a loss of dignity. What on earth are they talking about I wonder? Teehee. You should definitely read that article.)

I was also second blood...

In any case, in the end, Dota 2 is a good game, and has yet to have the fun of it brutally stripped away from it by the competitiveness of it's community. It's differences are still interesting while it's familiarity dispels the brutal difficulty that learning a new competitive game usually has. I will probably play it some more in the future and will perhaps comment on the community in the future if you guys are interested. If you are, or just want to tell me about something else I should have spoken about, be sure to let me know in the comments below or over Facebook or Twitter. Also, if you have any friends looking for something new to play or wondering what Dota 2 is like, be sure to share this review with them. I'm sure they will appreciate it. And of course, if you would like to keep up to date with all the latest articles and upcoming changes to the blog, be sure to like my Facebook page and/or follow me on Twitter so that you can get them, as they're made.
Regardless of what you do however, I thank you for taking the time to read this review; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again tomorrow.

Proshchay moi druz'ya.

As usual, there are additional screenshots below that I couldn't quite fit into the post. Their captions tell a story separate to that of the review, so be sure to peruse them at your leisure.

And *cough*... third blood

I got pretty good at running by this point. Dota 2 champions are far squishier than LoL champions, and things hit harder to boot.

Thankfully, I figured out how not to die after this point...

Aesthetically, I quite like Dota 2's preference for realism over the slightly cartoony LoL artstyle.

Not really an issue, but I'd never realized quite how flat the LoL maps were until I played Dota 2.

At this point, I almost felt proud of myself for eventually getting strong enough to squash bots.

There are a few more elements to the base that League of Legends has, but the overall impact on gameplay in comparison is negligible.

I would feel proud if I hadn't been playing with bots on Easy difficulty.

If the goal was to be the lowest leveled character on the team by the end of the match... I won.

A decent selection of champions, immediately available for use no matter what.

A fair selection of items grants a fair deal of versatility to your champion builds.

Integrated character builds and steam guides. At least they're easier to find and manage than in League Of Legends. Not that I'm likely to ever use either.

Of course. A valve game without hats would be blasphemy. Dota 2 goes one step further with hats, horses, clothes, weapons, names, etc. A steam card traders dream.

Steam Workshop integration means that people can change things up if they like... Last I checked somebody was making a League of Legends mod for Dota 2 *facedesk*

As you would expect, there's a fair deal of competitive play involved in Dota 2.

While I do like the way that Dota 2 works in terms of matches and playing the game. I fear there's a distinct problem for South African Gamers.

After waiting patiently 25 minutes in the South African queue for a match, I went away for 2 minutes to wring out a kidney and get a drink, only to come back to this. Suffice to say my patience promptly flew out the window.

Tomfoolery Tuesday - Path Of Exile (And Another Segment Name Change)

Hello and welcome to Tomfoolery Tuesday; that strangely named day of the week where I can talk about games without trying to paw them off as technology. (*Cough* Richard *Cough*)

Screenshot taken from https://www.pathofexile.com/. Don't ask me about the blank timer. It's just weird.

Diablo has been cited as the classic hack&slash game to have played by many. So it should come as little surprise that its successful mixture of combat, character progression and treasure grabbing would be copied and improved by others. Path Of Exile is one of those games, but makes it a Free To Play Online game to boot.

Before I begin in earnest, allow me to explain the change in Tuesday's segment name. Unlike Thoughtful Thursday, the change was not inspired by a lack of topic's to talk about; but rather on the technicality of preference in topic. A certain friend of mine mentioned that games are not, in technicality, technology. Which he is not wrong about. However, he suggested talking about actual technological subjects such as "The evolution of the Wheel". Good as the idea is, after reading 2 pages of information on that, I figured that was boring as hell, and I know more about games anyways. And so came Tomfoolery Tuesday, bearing in mind that Tomfoolery is the only word that starts with a T that comes anywhere close to entertainment. (Besides, it's vague enough to allow me to talk about other strange things as well, like the Tabletop Roleplaying article I wrote.) Not to worry though, should there be any technology themed topics, they will likely be found on Thursday's or Saturday's.

Moving onto the topic; Path of Exile is a GrindingGearGames developed "Online Action RPG" available for download from Steam that a few friends and myself decided to start playing about a week or two ago. (This was following the realization that games like Unturned get boring rather quickly... ) Free To Play with a huge reputation as a good, fun and well made game, it seemed like a great choice for us to play, especially considering our enjoyment of co-operative Diablo dungeon raiding in the past. It sounded like a lot of fun, despite what can only be referred to as my general skepticism for everything. Turns out it actually is.

Perhaps not the most exciting home screen for a game, but that's partially the point considering the history of your character is told through the beginning menu's.

 When I first started PoE up, I expected a fairly average Diablo clone with online elements and a microtransactions shop that would bar you from everything if you wanted to play for free. Having experienced that kind of treatment in other MMO's, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Path Of Exile had  indeed chosen a different path with regards to it's development and the way it was being run. After a few days of involved playing; I must admit that I've been enjoying the game a fair deal.

First and foremost, a common trope in the so called "Free to Play" games these days is that they offer to let you play some of the game, but hide a deal of the features behind paywalls and "Premium Memberships", forcing the player to fork over money if they want to enjoy all the features of the game. Path Of Exile takes a leaf out of League Of Legend's fantastic free to play model, and allows all content freely to everyone, with only what they refer to as "Ethical Microtransactions" involving purely cosmetic items or other things which give no competitive edge over those who choose not pay money. (Thank you GGG for that, by the way, if you somehow end up reading this.)

A somewhat clever introduction of each available class is told below the decks of ship on it's way to Wraeclast with you, an exile from the lands of Oriath.

 Perhaps even better than their business model though, is that the game is actually pretty well made and genuinely interesting though. It should be obvious, but if your game sucks, even the prettiest business model won't attract anyone. Path Of Exile however, has taken the elements of Diablo and other action RPG's like it and improved on the formula enough to make the game feel well thought out and well fleshed out.

Combat with the creatures, which is obviously the focus of the game, feels genuinely challenging and interesting just as you would expect from a Diablo clone, with a large variety of creatures with varying abilities and strengths with which to test out you characters skills and strengths against. As said on the Path of Exile website, a large point of the game is replayability. As such, everything from the layout of areas, to the strengths of creatures, and the stats of the items you find are entirely randomized. Speaking of items, as you would expect, the items are varied and filled with interesting magical effects that are certain to leave you keen to find your next magical sword or suit of armor. The item system does what you expect it to, which is good because as far as I can tell, there's not really a way to improve on the tried and tested "Find item, use item, find item, use it instead" formula. However, there are some unique twists to the game. (Oooh twists. I love twists.)

If you've played one of the Diablo games or a similar clone in the past, you will likely feel at home with the familiar UI and elements such as the map and quest journal. 

Firstly, there is no such thing as gold in Path Of Exile. The selling of equipment gives players fragments of items such as "Orbs of Chance", "Orb of Alterations" and a variety of other appropriately named objects which become full objects when enough are obtained. These fully formed objects usually range from the mundane Scrolls of Knowledge which identify legendary items, to the aforementioned orbs which can change the stats of an item to better suit you and your needs. You can buy weapons and armor with these items, but I've never really found it necessary to do so.

Perhaps more interestingly though, is the way that these items are linked into the "Crafting System". Path of Exile doesn't allow for items to be created in the generic sense of the term, but there are item recipes that can be used to get various items of use from the vendors, such as giving them 3 small health potions will result in a return of a medium health potion. (Before you say that sounds kind've pointless, Path Of Exile all uses a tactic similar to Diablo 3's health orb drops by having potions refill as you kill enemies, allowing you to keep playing without continual returns to town for a restock.)

Combat is what you would expect it to be. Lots of action and fun. The ability to bind abilities to mouse buttons make combat far more interesting and fast paced than your average MMO.

 Finally, the third important part of Path Of Exile, characters and skills. Path of Exile has 7 character classes to choose from which fill the typical roles you would expect. (Witch that casts spells, Ranger that uses bows, etc) However, what it does differently is in the details. Firstly, skills and weapon use are not inherently linked to characters. You can create a witch that shoots bows if you wish, or a marauder that casts spells. (Not that those two combinations make too much sense to me.) This is all because of the way the basic stats of strength, dexterity and intelligence are obtained, as well as skills.

Each character does not possess a talent tree as you would expect, but rather have their own starting point in a mutual "passive skill tree" which is so big that I could only screenshot half of it. This skill tree infers various statistical bonuses to the character depending on what you choose, allowing you to design characters around the use of a bows, dual wielding, spells, or anything else you could think of really. The scope of it allows for a great deal of customization which means that making multiple characters is fun simply to see what new combinations you can get.

This is great thanks to the way skills are applied to the characters. Instead of selecting them from a similar tree, skills are obtained through gems which are found and then slotted into weapons and armor. This means that if you design your character correctly, they can effectively use any skill or weapon in the game based on your choices in the passive skill tree. The fighting skills also level-up as you use them, so there is no need to continually find new gems.

"Boss" creatures are always around to mix up combat with a variety of randomly generated stat modifiers.

There are a variety of multiplayer aspects as you would expect from a game like PoE, but apart from adventuring in PvE (Player Vs Environment) with friends, I've not had much experience with them. There are however guilds and PvP gameplay if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Perhaps less importantly, it's still worth stating that on my archaic AMD Athlon 2.51Ghz dual core and Nvidia 6800, I had no issues running this game at a reasonable frame rate, and rarely experienced any latency issues, even when partied up with other people. The graphical options are not extensive, but the attraction of PoE is hardly graphics by any length anyways. (Egads, that computer sounds older than your grandmother. It's possible. My motherboard is somewhere around the decade mark in age.)

This is the passive talent tree as it is called by the game. I should point out that this only the bottom half.

All in all, Path Of Exile is a fun and enjoyable game which takes the good aspects of hack&slash action rpg's, adds some interesting new choices to the formula and then holds it out for anyone to play. Well made and very well polished, having never crashed or had bugs or issues, Path Of Exile is definitely worth playing, and it a fair deal of fun to play with friends as well. (Path Of Exile hereby receives the OddballGreg seal of approbal. Play it. It's fun.)

In any case, I hope that you have found this review of Path of Exile interesting, informative, or just pleasant to read at least. (There are a few more screenshots below because I didn't want to scatter every paragraph between another image, but at the same time wanted to further represent the game. Peruse them at your leisure if you wish.) Think I put too many pictures in, or forgot to mention any important aspects of the game, make sure to let me know in the comments section below. Also, if you happen to have any bored friends, or just know someone considering playing PoE, perhaps consider sharing this review with them so that they can better decide if they actually want to try out a really cool FREE game. (Free. Should I say it again for emphasis? Free.) And of course, if you would like to read more reviews like this, make sure to like my Facebook page and/or follow me on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the right so that you can get the latest articles, as I post them. Regardless of what you, I thank you for taking the time to read this lengthy appraisal; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again tomorrow.

Have fun my friends.

To add emphasis, the lit up line are the skills that my level 15 duelist has unlocked, focused towards dual wielding bonuses. That's a lot of skills and effects.

The "stash" as it's called, which is shared between all characters, allowing you swap excellent loot with ease. The far left of the stash also holds a variety of  "Currency Items" in the game

Fans of min/maxing are sure to enjoy the wealth of information with regards to everything that influences how your character works and the way it can be fine-tuned.

The settings are hardly over the top, but to be fair, the fact that this fairly pretty game runs so well on my ancient relic of a computer is a feat in itself.