Tale

On today's edition of "Tale plays free games on Steam" we have Antenna. http://store.steampowered.com/app/443580/?snr=1_7_15__13 Eh. Feels like someone really liked Limbo's art style but couldn't come up with a good game to back it. It's a short side scrolling adventure with sound puzzles, and a senselessly obscure password. Three puzzles long.

Have you played Moirai? http://store.steampowered.com/app/496920/?snr=1_7_15__13 You should. It's short, free, and kind of neat. Don't spoil anything.

For all the peace and love of the Drakken espouse, they had no problems chasing an army of mine out of neutral territory, killing them as they retreated. On a semi-related note, yesterday I got a quest in my new game to settle a new region with something like 13 dust production. Easy enough, I thought, I'll just travel through my neighbor's territory and... they just closed borders. Okay, I'll explore this other way! And there's a giant lake blocking my entire eastern side. But hey, I can see unclaimed territory at just the edge of vision! Time to build shipy... and it gets claimed. Whatever will I do? The answer came in the form of one of my neighbor's stealing my tech. I need land, my neighbors are jerks, the solution is obvious. Conquer both of that one's cities, and find nice pristine unclaimed land on the other side. Feeling good. And now I'm thinking it's time to pay the Drakken back while I'm at it. Edit: I long for the day when videogame AI advances to the point that while you pillage their fields and siege their cities, they will ask "why are you doing this?" And when you tell them they brought it on themselves, they will briefly understand before they are ruined.

Nope, no plans to either. She's only really obnoxious between 8am and 10am. Wanting to play and be pet. After that she just finds a place to nap the day away.

This is what I have to put up with every day at work. Look at me, I'm an adorable kitty cat and I constantly need attention. Pet me. DIE HUMAN, DIE!

That's a negative, Ghost Rider. If 4x have taught me anything, it's that I'm terrible at economy and everyone hates me. I need the help.

Time for my Broken Lords play, then! What's the difficulty above Newbie? I'm feeling ****y.

I understood pre-orders more when we were talking about brick and mortar. Helps the store figure out how much they need to order, in addition to gauging interest for everyone else in the chain. In the age of digital, I'm sure it's still of value, but it's something harder to pin down. Still useful for gauging interest and a good item for the company to point to if they're making any deals, but don't know how much value that has or what happens beyond that point.

I expected a 2017 date at this point. That's close! And it's right in the middle of two other games I'll be playing.

Other 4x have me trained to not wage endless war. Either because I'm simply tired of it or because everyone ends up hating you for so much as defending yourself. So I've got to give the quests a shot, you know? It's stuff to do other than wait for a science victory.

Had my first bit of war in Endless Legend. I'm playing on newbie so it was easy. I like how it handles combat quite a lot. And I realized that you can't even put multiple cities in a region if you wanted to. Which makes me love regions all the more. I don't see how I could play Civ VI after playing this, at this point. The downside is I'm getting ridiculous quests that want me to travel to the other continent (and find out I forgot to meet the condition). Or find and destroy cities I've never seen before. Quests are a neat idea, but pursuing them is getting a bit tedious.

I was planning to do every faction's quest line. I hope Broken Lords' is like their faction trailer.

Speaking of the devil, 75% off for the base game and most DLC on Steam. Edit: Endless Legend Collection, which contains most DLC, is 80% off Edit2: Oh, Tale already noticed. That's what I get for not clicking unlabeled links. I got a few rounds in yesterday, right up to someone building a wonder two rounds before I was going to finish it. Savescum time! It feels like a very different beast from the 4X I'm used to. The region system and minor factions are great. I'm not spamming cities just for borders.

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/endless_franchise_sale/ Anyone want lotto numbers while I'm at it?

Hopefully they'll do a sale on the base game to celebrate the new expansion.

How is Endless Legend? We've got civ VI releasing soon, but I think I'd rather have something a little more interesting.

I was really looking forward to playing that, it's on PS+ this month. But it turns out it's not PSTV compatible. There's lots of comments from the developer around saying he doesn't think it's a good experience sit down on a screen, it's better on a mobile device. But he released it on Steam...

Jennifer Lawrence just isn't a very good Mystique in general. She was decent in First Class, but she just can't pull off the seductress/spy thing. She did very well in Days of Future Past, I thought.

I finally watched X-Men Apocalypse. I didn't hate it. But I ultimately thought Magneto was the only strong part of the film. Jennifer Lawrence's performance felt phoned in, too.

Got an MRI. Good thing I'm not claustrophobic, just fidgety. My body still feels stiff.

I wanted to get into it, but it's super grindy. Very little turns me off like grinding.

But when you have too many tools that are too powerful, it stops becoming a challenge and starts becoming about figuring out the way to get all the best XP. In Dishonored (and even worse in last two Deus Ex games) I felt like I could just walk into the room, knock everyone out, then run around freely. The challenge was gone. But if I did that, I also wouldn't get all that sweet extra XP either. That doesn't feel like that level of micromanagement and metagaming is what my mind should be focusing on. I should just be trying to figure out how to get into the next room without getting shot up or getting into a major fight. In Metal Gear Solid 1, you had a bunch of tools, but they all came with risks. And that's what I loved. None of those shooting a guy with a tranq from across the room and just waiting. That's why I dislike Twin Snakes, it brought that into it.

I feel like I'm the only person who didn't really like Dishonored. Only got around to playing it a couple months ago as a free PS+ games. And I stopped right around the start of the third act. Maybe it's because I refused to kill anyone out of fear of the things I heard about the chaos system. But I saw absolutely nothing special in it. Felt like all the other stealth games I've ever played. Walking up behind people, shooting them with tranqs from a distance, save scumming to avoid being detected. I was left maintaining the opinion like that entire genre peaked back with Metal Gear Solid 1. Where you didn't have a billion tools and every room felt like a puzzle that required rhythm and movement. Edit: Mark of the Assassin was great, too.

Mainly playing Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice. But I'm also trying to get back into Dangaonronpa Another Episode, and checking out Trails in the Sky. Just kind of jumping around, hoping I'll hit the point in one of them that wows me.

Still playing Battlefront when I should be playing Ace Attorney. Now I have my scatter gun and jump pack. All is right in the world.