Author: MrBlueSky

PAX 3: The Third Part

That’s right, it’s time for Part Three, the part where I talk about everything I didn’t already review. It’s time for more

VIDYA GAMES

MAGIC: LEGENDS

Another one I got in line for because they were giving out a free pin, except they didn’t actually end up giving it out. Pretty bummed about that, gonna try to get it at another PAX I suppose.

With that said, actual gameplay was pretty decent. I wouldn’t consider myself a huge ARPG person, but Path of Exile is my second most played game, and I’ve played a decent amount of D3 on switch.

Overall, it seemed pretty fun. I’m not sure I would play for the story, as it was pretty “eh” or get into end game, but I can see it being something fun to pick up and play with friends. The whole Magic: The Gathering theme thing is reflected in the fact that you have a deck and your abilities are constantly switching. In theory, this sounds cool, in practice, I more or less just spammed whatever was off cooldown.

But like, show floor demo. You can find more about it here.

DRAGON FANG: Drahn’s Mystery Dungeon

For me, when I think the mystery dungeon games, I mostly think of the Pokemon ones. I know there are some others, but I really loved the first few of the Pokemon ones, and so every time I see a mystery dungeon game, I really want it to be good.

I’m gonna just get this out of the way. I don’t think Dragon Fang is very good. It has a very nice art style and whatnot, but unfortunately, it’s also a port of a Japanese mobile game. So yeah, while the actual game play could be good, and there are some neat ideas, it’s mostly just a very watered down dungeon crawler, where most of the enemies get more interesting powers then you do. Additionally, a lot of the good monsters are locked behind Gacha.

So yeah, skip this one, but if you really want to try it, it’s free on Steam here.

AREA MAN LIVES

Didn’t play this one, did check it out, but it was a neat VR title. it seemed weird enough for me to mention it. I’ll be honest, I’d really like to play it when it comes out.

Find out more about it here.

KEMONO HEROS

This was at the NIS booth, and since theey made Disgea 4, which has been my go to game on the switch the last few months since I got it around Christmas.

Not too much I have to say on it, it seems cute, just didn’t also seem like it did anything fascinatingly new for me to spend more then a few minutes playing it, and then mention it. Find out more about it here.

One more PAX post to go, mostly just about Sento Fighter, and how I don’t own it yet, and why can’t I buy it yet. Until then, see you next time.

PAX EAST – Part 2

Okay, let’s talk about some more stuff to cover. That’s right, it’s time for more

VIDYA GAMES

RELIC HUNTERS LEGEND

This is a sequel to Relic Hunters Zero, a free game that according to steam, I played for about 2 hours. I’m gonna be honest, I don’t remember it at all. I played a bit of the new one, and it was… fine. However, at a PAX, fine doesn’t keep my attention, and so I wandered on. Here’s a link if you’re curious though. If a cartoonish Destiny/Diablo mashup sounds like your sort of thing, you might enjoy it.

MAQUETTE

Maquette is published by Annapurna Interactive, the people who also published What Remains of Edith Finch. I’m gonna be honest here, I got in the Maquette line because they were giving out a free pin.

Clearly the moral of this story is that I do way too much book judging by covers, because Maquette was one of my top three games at the show. It’s a really cool puzzler where you move objects around to solve puzzles, except that your central point of interaction is a small model of the much larger world outside you, and you can move things in the small world, or the big world, to make them exist in the other.

There also seems to be as story about a relationship falling apart that’s also told in the game, and I’m gonna be honest, it felt a bit too real for me, but that’s a story for another day.

Just go play Maquette. If you looked at it and thought “Oh, someone made another artsy walking simulator” you’re dead wrong. There’s a really cool game here, with some big ideas, and I’m honestly really excited to see more of it.

You can learn more about it here, on it’s Steam Page.

RISING HELL

I was gonna write a bit about this, but it looks like it has a demo on steam? And the demo comes out in like two days? So yeah, I’m just gonna wait two days, play the demo for probs longer then 15 minutes I played it at the show, then write about it. That just seems like a better policy.

WUNDERLING

I have been trying to figure out what to say about Wunderling for a while, and have been failing, so I’m just gonna type things and post them. Wunderling is small and cute, and as a result, I want it to succeed. Wunderling’s primary game play mechanic is simply that you can’t actually control your character, you can only control your jump. And while that seems really simple, there were some moments in the demo that were really clever, and made me want to see what the rest of the game could include. For example, one of the secondary mechanics is that if you don’t pick up a collectible every now and then, you die. In the opening levels, this was really simple, but one area had a hidden chest that required you to skip collecting some of these earlier, so you could grab the chest later, and if you picked them all up, you would actually starve to death.

I dunno, I just want to see it work.

That’s all for now I think. This took longer to write then I was expecting, but I think I’ll be able to wrap the rest of this up in part 3, and finish giving my thoughts on the stuff I saw at PAX East.

MISBITS – Early Access

I got a free key for Misbits at PAX this year, and honestly, I’m not sure if the game is very good. At the time of writing this, I’ve played about 38 minutes. Before I publish this, I’ll try to play another 20 or so minutes so I can say I played it for at least an hour, but I really doubt the next 20 minutes are gonna change my opinion, because I’m simply not having fun at the moment with it.

I first went over to Misbits because it looked neat. It has a sorta nice toy box aesthetic, which makes sense given the game is based around the idea that you’re a toy head, and that the biggest game play element is that you can go around jumping onto different bodies, with different special attacks. You also have health on your bodies, so if you get hurt, you can jump to a different one. I think I’ve seen about 5 different bodies so far, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more.

So why am I not having fun? Well, simply put, everything feels really floaty and it feels really hard to actually connect with hits or attacks. It doesn’t help that everything is either a melee attack or a thrown weapon, the only ranged weapons I’ve seen are turrets. Also, it can be surprisingly difficult to figure out what to pay attention to. New bodies are constantly dropping down from the sky, as are items. Enemy players are marked sometimes with a sorta line, but it can still be hard to quickly and easily spot them.

There are two big features that are supposed to be added later to the game, a workshop for building your own levels and sharing them, and the creation tools for said levels. Right now they’re not just present.

For the moment, I wouldn’t recommend it.

You can find the Misbits website here, and you can find the game on steam.

MIT League Challenge 3/7/20

So, whenever I have good and bad news. I usually ask for the bad news first. So I’m gonna start with that.

I did not do well at the League Challenge. In fact, I came in second to last.

However, there is some good news to this, and it is as follows.

Yeah, I somehow managed to come in 4th. As you might have guessed, this would have been more impressive if it hadn’t been 5 people competing.

So what happened, and what went wrong? That’s what I’ll be covering in the rest of this writeup.

DECKLIST

Pokemon – 20
4 Jirachi TEU 99
3 Mewtwo & Mew-GX UNM 71
3 Dedenne-GX UNB 57
1 Charizard-GX HIF 9
1 Reshiram & Charizard-GX UNB 20
1 Magcargo-GX LOT 44
1 Latios-GX UNM 78
1 Naganadel-GX FLI 56
1 Naganadel-GX UNM 160
1 Solgaleo-GX PR-SM 104
1 Mega Lopunny & Jigglypuff-GX CEC 165
1 Victini V SSH 25
1 Blacephalon CEC 104
Trainer – 28
4 Welder UNB 189
1 Professor’s Research SSH 178
4 Quick Ball SSH 179
4 Cherish Ball UNM 191
4 Switch SSH 183
2 Great Catcher CEC 192
2 Reset Stamp UNM 206
2 Escape Board UPR 122
2 Stealthy Hood UNB 186
3 Giant Hearth UNM 197
Energy – 12
8 Fire Energy 2
2 Psychic Energy 5
2 Weakness Guard Energy UNM 213

If this list looks familar, that might be because it’s an exact copy of Nico Alabas’s ( @LimitlessNico ) list from the Melbourne International a few weeks back. You can see more of the standings, and decks used here.

GAME 1 – LOSS TO PIKAROM
Game 1 was against a an electric deck, that appeared to be a variant of Pikarom using the Morpeko V and Morpeko V MAX. However, instead of using the V Max’s attack, it primarily used memory energy with it to allow it to blast with Electro Wheel, and then retreat and swap in a Lillies Pokedoll. Overall, I wasn’t able to hit hard enough, and simply got beaten down and outplayed.

GAME 2 – WIN VS PIKAROM

Game 2 was a win, but was a much closer match up. Despite playing vs Pikarom, I was able to hold on, and after two of my Dedennes got sniped, my opponent misplayed, and tried to use Tapu Koko’s V’s Thunderous Bolt twice in a row. Unfortunately, that’s not how that attack works. The game went to time, and with both of us having two prizes left, he retreated his Tapu Koko V on turn two, meaning I needed to either knock out both of his basics in play, or the Koko on the bench. I was just barely able to get the 200 damage from Mega Lopunny & Jigglypuff GX with Puffy Smashers GX, and take the game on turn 3 of time.

GAME 3 – LOSS TO MILL

Game 3 was against mill, and was one of roughest openings I’ve ever had piloting the deck. My opening hand had no draw, and my starting Pokemon was Dedenne GX. Despite this, of the match-ups, this felt like the most winnable one. However, I utterly botched first. Of my three answers to a mill deck, my Blacephalon got milled turn one. Then, I rather foolish put both my Nagandel GX, and my Magcargo GX into the discard at the same time. From then on, I just got locked out and milled down with Pal Pad, Lt. Surge, and Bellelba & Brycen-Man.

For me, this game felt the worst because it was a match-up I could have won if I had played differently.

SO WHAT WENT WRONG?

Of the three games, I feel like I definitely should have been able to win at least 2 of them. However, in game 3, I critically failed to understand how the control combo worked, and made what I’d consider to be several major misplays. They were as follows

  1. Knocking out his pokemon, allowing him to use Lt. Surge
  2. Discarding both my Magcargo GX and Nagandel GX at the same time, allowing him to remove them with Girafarig.

I think that if I had gone for one at a time at a maximum, I would have possibly been able to reset the prize card status, or go for a mill win with Magcargo GX mill 5. But I let my win conditions get removed, while helping him set up his prizes.

For game 1, I think I would have won if I had teched slightly differently. One of the biggest issues I had piloting the deck overall was having a very hard time grabbing psychic energy when I needed it. The deck only runs two, and venom shock is a really good tool for dealing with benched mons, and stuff like Morpeko. If I was to run the list again, I might try adding a Viridian Forest.

I want to stress I don’t think this would generally improve the deck for a larger event. It did, after all, win an international. However, I think that the deck most likely shines against ADP and Zacian V decks. At a smaller event, however, a Viridian Forest would help the toolbox nature of the deck set up a bit faster.

Finally, I also mispredicted the sorts of decks I expected to see. I was expecting to see a lot more goons, and maybe a few weird grass decks. But there wasn’t actually a single one.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading, and hopefully I can report better progress next time.

PAX EAST 2020 – Part 1

Another year, another PAX East, another massive hole in my wallet due to purchasing way too many incredibly wonderful DND related objects I don’t need. But yeah, you’re not here to read about my wallet being eviscerated, you’re here because I’ve linked you to this page.

VIDEO GAMES

LUCIFER WITHIN US – As much as I’d love to just copy paste the games description of itself, I can’t do that, because 1. It wouldn’t be fair, this game looks really cool, and 2. I only have their handout for it.

So, here is the website for it instead. I’ll do a longer write up on this one a bit later, and hopefully, more once I’ve actually gotten to play it. But yeah, really neat aesthetic in which you’re a sort of tech-priest, comparing the testimony of witnesses to a crime to try to find out who dun did it. Thing I’m most excited to see how it turns out.

KNUCKLE SANDWICH – I didn’t actually play this one. I just looked at it. It looks sorta like a combo of Earthbound and Warioware? Weird shit. Looked neat enough for me to care about it though. More info here.

GIGABASH – I did play this one. I did not win. One trend I’ve noticed over the last few years is games that are really fun to play at Cons, but actually kinda suck once you play them elsewhere, because they’re intended for couch co-op, and I don’t have friends. But yeah, GigaBash is a monster brawler where you try to beat the shit out of each other while not being murdered. You play as a bunch of Giant Kaiju things. It looks really nice, I just can’t say whether I liked it because of the convention atmosphere or the game is just good. GigaBash can be found here.

GENSHIN IMPACT – It’s some anime thing. Gameplay looked kinda like a brawler? I didn’t get a chance to play it, didn’t want to wait in line. Looked pretty though. Click that link to get to it’s website.

TURNIP BOY COMMITS TAX EVASION – Yeah, that’s the name of the game. Seriously though. I didn’t play it, did watch for a bit. Catchy title if nothing else. Kinda hard to tell if it’s YouTube bait, or legit good gameplay. I’m gonna be keeping an eye on it if nothing else. Here is the steam wishlist page.

That’s all for part one. In the next several parts, I’ll work my way through the rest of the video and board games I saw, and then maybe finish with a few brief posts about how amazing Sento Figher is. Like seriously, I need to own it.