Category: maxeditpls

Ball X Pit

Ball X Pit is Breakout X Vampire Survivors. There are a lot of things it does that I like, and it executes well on a most of it’s mechanics. Despite all that, I’m not sure that I want to recommend it, because I don’t really feel like I’m having fun with it. More on that later.

The Basics

Ball X Pit is easiest to describe in terms of just listing off all the places it’s cribbing features from. We’ve got the standard roguelike formula of incremental runs, complete with a 3-pick-1 system. The items in question are a set of brick breaker balls with special powers, and some side items. Balls can poison enemies, shock them in an AoE, split into more balls. These get bounced off enemies to deal damage, enemies drop EXP when the die, and the pressure is killing enemies before they meander their way to the bottom of the screen, at which point they punch you in the face.

Where Ball X Pit innovates is its fusion system, letting you take two balls, and combine them. Grab an Earthquake Ball, fuse it with Ghost, and suddenly you have a ball that pierces enemies while hitting them all with a massive AOE. There are also evolutions, combining specific balls to fuse into new, stronger balls, but these are a bit less novel, as both Vampire Survivors and Holocure had similar systems.

At the end of a run, you’ll be kicked back to the hub screen, a small city builder with a twist that’s actually quite novel. Instead of being your standard Farmville setup, you harvest resources by playing more brick breaker, launching your inhabitants into the village, bouncing off buildings to finish their construction, and across wheat fields to harvest them. These resources can be used to construct new buildings, and generally engage in meta-progression.

Then you’ll jump back into a run, perhaps with a new set of characters, better equipped for the given challenge. Rinse, repeat. Clear a level with enough different characters, and you’ll unlock another level.

It’s probably worth spending at least a bit of time talking about characters. At the start of a run, you’ll pick a character (later, you’ll unlock the ability to bring a second to set up interesting synergies!) to bring into the run. They bring a starting ball, some stats, and some sort of twist modifier. These are interesting, running the gauntlet from “shooting faster, but less accurately” to the one I’m using during while I’m doing this writeup, that auto-plays the game completely on their on own.

That character brings me to my main problems with the game: It’s really compelling, but around hour 5, I found that I wasn’t really having much anymore. I’m mostly ripping off a friend here when I say this, but the game feels kinda like looking at TikTok, there’s a point where you’re just a bit zoned out, but still present enough to keep going. After you stop though, you start finding yourself wondering what you just did for the last several hours.

It’s a shame because all the little things in Ball X Pit are pretty great. I love the low-poly aesthetic, the sound and music are good, and if you don’t like them, they’re easy enough to turn off, because some things I’ve played over the last few weeks, the game has a proper options menu.

It just keeps going

I had a different friend ask why I’d play 20+ hours of this if I’m not having fun, and I think I have two answers. The first is that early on, as the game is unfolding, showing off new systems, new characters, and new ideas, there’s this hope that it’s going to turn into something more then it currently is. I kept hoping that I’d unlock some subsystem that would crack the whole thing open. It’s also during the first few hours that you’re constantly unlocking things, finding new balls, new evolution and fusions with them, and just generally being entertained.

But this whole process slows down later on. Progression tapers off. There are no more twists, and the enemies, while having variety, don’t really require you to play any different. The game turns into a chore.

The second reason I played that much was to make sure that before I did this writeup, I’d really given the game a chance. Seen all it had to offer. And I feel fairly confident of that at this point.

I haven’t even beaten the last boss myself. Instead, I plugged in that character I mentioned above who plays on their own, and just let them do it. I bet there’s some sort of secret if I beat the final level with all 21 characters, maybe a bonus level, or secret 21st character, but at this point I’m just so bored, and frankly, don’t really want to.

Ball X Pit is $15. It’s not the worst $15 I’ve spent this week, but it’s not the best either. It’s an absorbing experience with clever ideas, but ultimately a slightly empty one.

Funspot NH – A Quick Review

For my mildly belated birthday, one of my friends put together a trip down to Funspot several months ago. If you haven’t heard of Funspot, it’s the “worlds largest arcade” according to Guinness World Records.

It’s an interesting place, both for the entertainments inside, and a secondary “vibe”. One of the first things you might see driving up is the electronic outdoor sign switch over from an image of Funspot’s mascot Topsnuf to the yet unanswered question “Who is John Galt?”

After arrival, if you need to relieve yourself and use the first floor bathroom, after exiting you may find yourself looking up at a large picture of Ronald Reagan extolling the virtues of video games for their values in training future pilots for the Air Force.

It’s an interesting tone.

I’m here to talk about the games though.

The Games

Funspot has several hundred cabinets, dozens of pinball machines, and just a general smörgåsbord of other types of arcades. I absolutely can’t review all of them, and I’m not going to try. Instead, I’m just going to section them off, and give my opinions on the various parts of Funspot.

Pinball

There are two general areas for Pinball, a set of old machines, and a set of standard more modern ones. Despite having a lot more machines, I think I generally enjoyed Capital Pinball‘s more.

A big part of this is because when the machine breaks, at Capital Pinball, I’d flip turn it off and on, and at Fun Spot, I’d have to find some exhausted looking employee to fix it, which might not necessarily happen. Two quick shoutouts on machines, first to Gottleib – World Series, the first Pinball machine where I managed to never even score a single point, and Joker Poker, a machine one of my friends quite liked.

Mini-Golf

There’s a self-serve indoor mini-golf area at $5 a person. It’s not the most inspired mini-golf I’ve ever played, with most of the holes being fairly basic straight shots or maybe only two bounces. There are no real gimmicks or super clever designs, but it’s perfectly serviceable, good for maybe one play through total.

Arcade Machines

There’s a lot of old arcade machines. I actually don’t have too much to say on these, as I probably spent the least amount of time on them. Old arcade games are fascinating to me from a technical and design perspective, but as gameplay experiences, I tend to find them a bit underwhelming. Also, a few of the ones I did try to play just kind of ate my money and didn’t start.

That said, my friends had a great time with Tetris and Smash TV.

Air Hockey

Air hockey probably the best token to fun ratio. There are three giant sheet metal air hockey tables, two of which mostly work. There are a few spots on the table where the air doesn’t come out, but overall, it’s Air Hockey. You smash the puck, try not to injure anyone, and just generally have a good time.

Skeeball

There’s a row of Skeeball machines, most in reasonably good shape. They’re an excellent place to watch an 8 year old just absolutely wing a chunk of plastic at the wall, an environmental storytelling explanation of the “Management reserves the right to limit players” sign. They’re a terrible place to earn tickets though, with a max of 10 for a perfect score. Overall, it’s Skeeball. You either know if you like it, or you spend a single token to find out.

Daytona

Okay, so this part was actually kinda cool. There were a bunch of Daytona machines, and they were all hooked up together. We had one bit 7 player game, and that was fun. Also, I got run off the road.

Ticket Counting Machines

Sometimes they count your tickets correctly! Sometimes they don’t. A lot of the time they break, and some kid in a high-vis vest has to come over, crack em open, and unstick the machinery. They still look super cool.

Prize Wall

I mean, it’s an arcade prizewall. It’s not great. I’ll be real here, I had slightly higher expectations from the “World’s Largest Arcade” bit, but like… not much higher. Maybe expectations is the wrong word, and I meant “hopes”. I had higher hopes for the Prizewall.

Like, you could have some Magic cards? Or maybe gold bullion. Instead, this is your general prize wall. There’s some candy, there’s T-Shirts, and there’s a few other things. But I think we turned like 40,000 tickets in 10 cups of candy and T-Shirt.

Overall Thoughts

Frankly, I’m a little underwhelmed by FunSpot. While the number of machines is incredible, the cost to play and ease at which things break was disappointing. I enjoyed getting to hang out with my friends (you were all awesome!) but I’d probably choose to bring folks up to Capital Pinball instead for my next birthday.

If I’m being honest, part of this is also the weird super-right wing vibe the place has. Maybe if it was a different time, I would feel differently.

Path of Exile 2 – The (Beta) Campaign

The Path of Exile 2 beta is out. I got a demo a few months ago, but now that I’ve fully played through it, I have even more thoughts. I’m going breaking down my thoughts on it into two writeups, one on the campaign, and one the endgame. Technically, they are the same game, but mechanically they are very different experiences.

Now, before I get into that, there’s some brief background that is necessary. Path of Exile 2 is a sequel to my 2nd most played game of all time, Path of Exile. (about 3000+ hours?) My thoughts are going to be at least somewhat in comparison to it’s predecessor.

As a brief filter, I offer the following phrases:
“juicing maps”
“6L”
“Farming blood adqueducts for a Tab”

If you know what any of these mean, just click here to skip ahead. If you don’t, you are likely to find the following background information helpful.

ARPG’s in Brief

Path of Exile 2, hereby abreviated to PoE 2, is a isometric ARPG from Grinding Gear Games.

For those who might not know, ARPG stands for “Action Role-Playing Game.” ARPG’s are defined by having virtually no roleplaying elements, and the action parts dominated by spamming your abilities every second you have the mana/rage/potato points to do so.

Here’s a less cynical definition: ARPG’s are traditionally top-down or isometric real time action games defined by extensive skill trees, character customization and itemization. Combat generally has two modes, fighting against trash mobs, which are pinatas for stacks of loot, and fighting against bosses, which are also pinatas, except this time they have a baseball bat.

Trash mobs are fairly brainless and just rush the player, while bosses tend to be more correographed experiences, closer to something from a Bullet Hell, or Hades.

The first Path of Exile differentiated itself from other ARPG’s by making everything into game an item, and making those items tradable. Skills are items, (skill gems) which got socketed into other items you wore, and those sockets had colors determining which gems could be socketed.

The ability to refund skills points was an item. To enter endgame areas, specific items were needed. Same to fight endgame bosses. To buy items from vendors, it was necessary to have more items to trade them.

It’s other big differentiator was a skill tree so massive that one of my favorite things to do is pop it out as a joke, just to mess with people, who did not believe it was real.

Finally, there was the gem system. Gems could be supported by other gems. Take a fireball, link it to a multiple projectile gem, and now it shoots three fireballs. Link it to a piercing projectiles gem, and now they penetrate. Link it to a faster cast speed, make a few more tweaks, and now your character is a Fourth of July fireworks display.

Changes between PoE and Poe 2

PoE 2 makes a lot of changes to the above underlying systems, most of which serve to make the campaign much less punishing for inexperienced players. Gold exists as a flat currency to use with vendor NPC’s. This makes getting leveling gear a much easier process.

Gold can also be used to refund skill points. This is possibly the biggest change between the two games, because in PoE, a badly built skill tree would softlock a character. This would make it impossible to get the items needed to respec, and pretty much force the player to make a new character.

Sockets on items and their associated colors are also gone. Skill gems are socketed into a general skill gem menu. The types of support gems that can be used are limited by primary stats. There are even more small tweaks to make suggestions to players on what gems to use, and to prevent them from making choices that simply don’t work.

The skill tree is still massive. There’s now a dodge roll. Movement is a much more flowy thing then it previously was.

The general changes though result in much easier on-boarding experience with the games initial systems, instead of purely being thrown into the deep end, like the player was with the first Path of Exile.

Does all of this mean the game is easier?

Well, yes and no.

The Campaign

Generally I like the campaign. There are some incredibly sloggy bits, notably a single map in Act 2 that just goes on forever, and three or four of the Act 3 areas really tested my patience for just wanting to see the next few things.

That said, outside of these, I really didn’t have many complaints. The bosses feel far more diverse and interesting then their PoE 1 counterparts, and also much harder. The final boss of Act 1 in particular killed me about 10-20 times before I finally defeated it. It’s worth noting that I actually killed it right as it killed me, but that still counts, so on I went.

They’re also just much more fun as a general visual spectacle. My personal favorite is probably Crowbell, a giant crow-man thing that tries to beat the player to death with a bell. The fight isn’t particularly hard, but does have a fun transitions, with Crowbell running around, powering up, wrenching a bell off it’s stand, then using it as a bludgeon.

The trash mobs… well, they’re ARPG trash mobs. The nicest thing I can say about them is that they did in fact contribute to my /deaths count.

Finally, there’s the story elements. I generally quite liked these, even if the current content kinda ends on bit of a cliffhanger. I’m also the only person I know who cared about the lore of PoE, so maybe take that with a grain of salt. There are some callbacks to PoE, but I don’t think missing them will have any impact on your enjoyment.

I will say that I personally experienced a moment of glee getting to fight a character whose only ever been hinted at in flavor text from PoE, but another friend of mine who played the game before me didn’t even realize he was a recurring character, and thought he was someone new.

If you’re playing through the campaign without a build guide, or information about the game, I’d estimate it’ll take about 12-20 hours to play through? There’s a good chunk of game here. That said, the campaign does not currently conclude the story, as that’s planned for the games full release, so if you’re playing the game just for the campaign, I’d hold off.

Overall Thoughts

I like PoE 2. I have problems with the game, but they’re not present during the campaign. It changes a lot of esoteric bullshit that was required to play, made the boss fights more interesting, and is just generally more friendly, if not easier.

Some parts are a bit of slog.

That said, I think the main reason to currently play the campaign is to get to endgame. The campaign is not a finished game yet, with a complete story, and the beta is currently $30.

If the full campaign maintains it’s current level of quality for the remaining acts on full release, Path of Exile 2 will be worth playing purely as a standalone ARPG just for that. But for players who aren’t in a rush, or want a new ARPG, I would say to wait.

How to Get the Lorcana Starter Decks for Cheap

So, maybe you read the last post, and despite the fact that Lorcana boosters are currently going for a street value of $5 an ounce, (a ratio that really feels like it should be reserved for a different type of substance), you still want in?

All right. It’s a pretty fun game. But instead of buying those starter decks at prices people are selling them, we’re instead going to use the power of the free market in our favorite for once.

DeckSealed CostSingles Cost & TCG Player Link
Amber & Amethyst$34-38$24
Emerald & Ruby$23-25$16.28
Sapphire & Steel$30-32$24.37

Here’s how it works. First, click on one of the above links. This will bring you to TCG Players bulk entry page. It will look something like this.

If this all looks good, click the add to cart button! And presto, we have a cart with all the cards in the starter deck!

It’s also going to currently be costing you a lot more then the starter deck. No worries. We can fix that by clicking on the Optimize button in the lower left corner, right under the Paypal option.

After this, TCG player will try to optimize for shipping and buying from the fewest number of sellers. If everything looks good, you can send your purchase though, and end up with your very own Lorcana starter deck for less than a retail video game.

Ed Note: This writeup contains links to TCG Player, the management of which is a bunch of union busting corporate weasels. These aren’t affiliate links, (we don’t ever do that) and we don’t endorse their anti-competitive bullshit. That said, they’re owned by eBay, so it’s not like there’s a better place to go buy cheap singles that isn’t tainted by a desire to screw the employee.

Ed Note 2: This was written when Lorcana was being CRAZY scalped. It’s possible that the prices have gone down to a sane range by the time you look at this writeup. Such is the internet, and writing about collectibles. The general approach to using TCG Player, and the optimize functionality for buying singles likely remains the same though.