Month: December 2025

Battlefield 6 is fine, but too expensive.

As we approach the end of the year, I’m pretty tired. I have a bunch of cool writeups I should finish up (Blue Prince! Omegathon!), and a few posts like my writeup of Horses that could go up, but I’m somewhat hesitant to actually post, because they’re both A) slightly soul scouring and B) I think Horses purely as a video game is pretty banal, and not some sort of incredible and transformative piece of interactive media. Wheels of Aurelia was more innovative in it’s mechanics and narrative.

So while scrounging around for something to talk about, I remembered that I’ve played 100+ hours of Battlefield 6. So lets talk about that real quick.

A quick confession.

I loved Call of Duty. However, just over four or so years ago, I stopped playing Activision-Blizzard games. If that wasn’t clear enough, when Diablo 4 came out, I made some statements that will probably prevent me from ever being invited to certain press events. Really, the kick-off for all of this was when Blizzard censored a Hearthstone player protesting for Hong Kong. I really don’t like it when companies kowtow to authoritarians of any stripes, so I stopped playing their games. No Overwatch. No Starcraft.

But I missed Call of Duty the most. I loved me my stupid gun shooty game, and I’d fire it up every day after work on my travel laptop. There’s some deep think-pieces on the the soft power image control of the military gun violence fantasy, or the jingoistic nature of the campaigns in these games.

I don’t think I’m qualified to write that piece and frankly, I’m not very interested in trying to write it. I didn’t even play the campaign in Battlefield 6, because I’ve never understood why you would play the campaign in one of these live service shooters. I’m just gonna talk about the game as it is for me, which is mostly Call of Duty methadone.

The General Overview

I was gonna joke that I could just copy my Battlebit review across for this part, but I actually can’t. My general take on Battlefield 6 is that once you’re in a game, the general experience is pretty good.

Guns work well. Movement feels good, and a lot of the weird secondary gadgets are quite useful. Maps are mostly even and pretty well designed.

There are definitely weak points. The map pool is a bit anemic, and pretty much every game mode reuses the same maps. I wish the engineer class had a second gadget that was actually useful modes without vehicles.

But once you’re in a game, it’s a good time. Everything that isn’t the game though?

It sucks.

The game is $70, with an in-game cash shop and battlepass. The battlepass has it’s own mini-battlepasses, with timed challenges for maximum FOMO. If there’s a way to make more then 3 loadouts for a given class, I haven’t found it in the labyrinthine menus. Getting the game to even launch for the first time is a pain, not a huge pain, but a pain.

Every update also seems to make the game slightly worse. The most annoying one for me is that helicopters seem to have some sort of animation culling turned on now when they’re far away from me, and given that helicopters are in the sky, they are usually far away from me. It makes it look like a Pokemon game.

Also, now it’s time for the longer set of complaints

Battlefield isn’t realistic, or super memorable.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from reading ACOUP, it’s that I don’t know anything about war. And if there’s anything else I’ve learned, it’s that games will almost always sacrifice fidelity for fun. By default this does not annoy me. When Battlefield 6 added the cash shop, I wasn’t pissed because someone could now play as their fursona, I was pissed because I had already paid $70 fucking dollars for this game.

That said, for a game about high troop number combat, you would think there would be literally any way to meaningfully communicate with the other 28 people on your team. I’m pretty sure modern war isn’t conducted by taking 32 dudes, giving them thousands of dollars in military hardware, and then pointing at a burnt out mall and saying “Go fuck em up!”.

But wait, you say. You say 32, then 28. Those are different numbers. Yes, they are, because you do have voice chat with your squad, but you only have text chat with the rest of your team. I have used the text chat maybe 4 times total. The only time it had any measurable impact was when one teammate was complaining that a challenge was too hard, that they could not overcome it, to which I suggested that “through jesus christ all things are possible”, which was followed by a series of “amens” from other team members.

They managed to complete their challenge.

Side Note: I suspect that the Lord, if real, and in the habit of intervening in the mortal world, has better things to do with their time then help someone get three air vehicles kills in one match, but what do I know.

I also mention this because in 134 hours, it’s the only memorable moment I’ve actually had in game. There’s no building, so there’s no real opportunity for anything clever or tricky, just destruction. It’s a bit of a bummer.

The lack of communication would bother me less if the classes were less obviously synergistic. The assaults spawn beacon is the only reasonable way to make extended pushes across the map, but you can’t push with one person. The engineer is the only class that can reasonably deal with vehicles, but without extra rocket rounds refilled by the support, is going to do have a very hard time doing that. Recon can paint vehicles with it’s gadgets, enabling faster lock-on for the engineer, but without that engineer to followup, it’s pretty much useless. Support enables everyone to do their job better, with extra gadget and grenade usage, but can’t do any of those jobs particularly well on it’s own.

It’s just aggravating for a game where communication is key to have no communication. Now, if I remember correctly Battlebit did have local voice chat, and the result of that was every game started with a cacophony of racial slurs, Free Bird, and Fortunate Son, but at least it was possible shout “Rez me” at someone.

Overall

I personally enjoy Battlefield 6. I don’t really recommend it though. It’s a pain in the ass to get running, it costs too much too much money, it’s lacking quality of life features, and goes hog wild everything that’s bad about modern live service games.

I don’t even think it’s a bad game. I just think you can more better games for $70. For that sort of money, you can go buy Titanfall 2 and Blue Prince, and a lot more if you’re willing to wait for a sale.

Battlefield 6 is that one restaurant in town that’s just a bit too pricey, but no one in your friend group hates. It’s a good place to hang out, chat, catch up, but if anyone could really make a choice, you’d all go somewhere else.

Card City Critters – Boston FIG Thanks

Wow.

I have a lot of things I want to say, but I think I want to start with the most important one, and that’s an absolutely massive thank you.

Thank you to Boston FIG for putting us in the showcase, and an extra special thank you to Joshua Chin, who graciously accommodated our requests for extra tables to station NPC’s at, and letting us hide cards around the venue.

Thank you to our friends Lucas, Sukie, and Tyler who helped us run Card City Critters. Without your help as NPCs, hiding cards, repacking decks, and doing booth setup and breakdown, none of this would have been remotely possible.

Thank you to my co-designer Max Seidman, who has taken a two sentence idea that I had 3 years ago, and worked to turn it into an actual game that can be played, while I’ve puttered about drawing goofy monsters, and designing a few cards.

And most of all, thank you to everyone who stopped by the booth try out the game! Whether you just tried a demo, took a starter and went off the challenge the gardener and drake master, or were one of the six players to make it all the way through to challenge and take down the magnate, thank you so much for playing.

I’ll have more to say over the next week, and some thoughts about what worked well, and what didn’t, and a million other changes, some big and some very small as a result for the feedback we got, but right now, just thank you!

Card City Critters – Dragon Hatcher

We’ve got just two days left until Boston FIG, and the first chance to try out Card City Critters! And with that time, I’d like to introduce the second of our starter decks, the Dragon Hatcher.

Dragon Hatcher is based around hatching and raising mighty dragons. Dragons are all about growing stronger, and this is represented by their key mechanic: Evolve!

Cards with Evolve like Mighty Dragon can’t be put directly into play. Instead, they need to be placed onto a card of the evolve type. While this means they take a bit longer to get into play, they can often attack the turn they come if they’re evolved from a card played on an earlier turn.

Of course, you can’t hatch anything without an egg! Dragon Hatcher has a wide variety of eggs to use. Some, like Big Egg, are pretty simple. Others however, can be quite unusual…

Eggs tend to have low power. They haven’t even hatched yet, after all! Instead, their purpose is to hatch into something incredible.

Of course, just because you’ve hatched a dragon doesn’t mean it can’t get even stronger! Given enough time, they might grow much more powerful and wise.

And of course, dragons, like all other cards, can be played from the Trap Zone! Pitfall Dragon in particular rewards this sort of play, providing one of the most powerful stun effects in the game, while bringing out one huge threat to turn a losing game around.

Of course, some speak of an even more powerful dragon… perhaps the strongest critter in the game… a critter that can’t even be stunned…

But these are just rumors. Right?

Here There Be Dragons

Of course, this is just a small sampling of what Dragon Hatcher has available. There are also a fair number of non-dragon support cards, and other useful tools to fetch what you need. I’ll have one more day of quick self promo, but then it’ll just be time to play!

If you want to keep up to date on the game, you can sign up for our mailing list here, or join our Discord here.

Card City Critters – Beach Day Starter Deck

When I introduced Card City Critters yesterday, I mentioned that we’d have three starter decks available for play at Boston FIG. Starter decks might not be quite the right word. It’s best to think of them as a bit like choosing a starter Pokémon.

Before I go over the decks, a brief reminder that you can play Card City Critters this coming Sunday, December 7th at Boston FIG 2025! And if you want to keep up to date on the game, you can sign up for our mailing list here, or join our Discord here.

Today, I’ll be introducing the first of the three, Beach Day!

First though, before you decide if sun, sand and seagulls is your style of play, let’s talk a a little bit about how Card City Critters is actually played.

Basic (Card) Gameplay

A game of Card City Critters is played over a set of turns. Both you and your opponent start with 15 life, and the first player to reduce their opponent’s life to zero wins! You do this by calling up critters to fight for you, and casting spells to power them up, or slow your opponent down.

We’ll talk about critter cards first.

All Critters have a cost to play. That’s the number in the upper right hand corner of the card. Sand Dollar has a cost of 2.

The easiest way to tell that a card is a critter is the big number in the circle under the art. That’s the critter’s power. Sand Dollar has a power of 2.

Power is how much damage a critter can do when it attacks. For a card like Sand Dollar, that’s only 2 points of damage! It’s not a lot, and since in Card City Critters only one critter can attack per turn, it would take a long time to defeat someone with just Sand Dollar.

But Sand Dollar has one more thing going for it, and that is its ability. The first time you tuck a card each turn, that ability triggers, and lets you draw an extra card! But what exactly is tucking a card?

Building up at the Beach

In Card City Critters, a lot of different cards use tucked cards. But the Beach deck is the one that cares the most about them. So much so that even their most basic little guys use tucked cards.

The first big thing that tucked cards do is provide a buff to power. Forecaster Crab starts out as 0, but since it tucks a card under itself when it enters, it immediately become a 1 power critter.

Other cards in the Beach Deck use tucked cards to activate effects, such as this Seagull Crab.

It snatches tucked cards off other critters in order to make itself more powerful! Fun Fact: this trick is shared by Seagulls, who as a group, like to snag things from other critters to perform effects, or buff themselves. The pinnacle of this is probably the Queen Gull.

Even the spells in Beach Day tuck cards!

Packing Up From The Surf and Sun

Of course, Beach Day is just one of the starter decks. If you find that tucking and untucking cards is a little too complex, you might have a better time growing and rearing mighty dragons with Dragon Hatcher. Alternately, if you really want to challenge yourself, you might be the perfect person to prune the twisting and tangled Homegrown garden deck.

Want to learn more about these other two? Keep an eye on the blog over the next few days.