Month: March 2020

Review – Rimworld

Did someone say Dwarf Fortress? But quicker? More efficient? Easier on the eyes? Feeling more coherent and finished?

Ah yes, the world of colony management. From the days of Spore‘s weird pseudo-RTS colony mode, to the incredibly interesting BanishedOxygen Not Included, even something like Prison Architect— it seems like colony management has really exploded of late, especially on the more indie side of things. Of course, you can’t really say how much of it would exist without Dwarf Fortress, which feels like the godfather of too-deep one-more-hour colony management simulators.

But the caveat is that Dwarf Fortress has drawbacks. I’ll be the first to admit that, as of this writing, I have put maybe an hour in Dwarf Fortress in the past ten years– but before that? Even putting 3-4 hours a day into it, I constantly had to google if something was possible, how to do it, etc. It has its drawbacks, but Bay 12 Games has always been uncompromising in their vision, for better or worse. With Rimworld, though? It seems they took the ‘idea’ of Dwarf Fortress, but made it into a completely coherent game. They saw what people enjoyed about the game, and what wasn’t popular, and chose to focus on the things that worked, the things that people… well, cared about. That’s not to say that Dwarf Fortress’s adventure mode isn’t an absolute marvel of technology – because it is – but it’s not what most people went to Dwarf Fortress for.

So what did they go to Dwarf Fortress for? Managing a colony of assholes with their own personalities, constantly being pushed to their limits, dealing with strange events and rare enemies– and that’s exactly what Rimworld gives you.

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Posted by Robert Wall in Gaming, 0 comments

Review – Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot

Wait, I still do gaming content? And reviews? What’s the world coming to?

Yeah, it turns out I still like video games. It’s just hard to find time to thoroughly review them, what with having a life and all that. I actually finished this game off weeks ago and haven’t done much with it outside of messing around, but it’s certainly… a video game! Of all the Dragon Ball Z games I’ve played, this is definitely one of them.

Is it good? Is it bad?! I’m… not actually sure. I’m writing this in hopes that it will somehow organize my thoughts into whether or not I would recommend the game to anyone. On the one hand, I definitely feel like I enjoyed my time with it. On the other hand, did I really? Really? There’s that pang of guilt that I was only enjoying it because it was taking me back to a classic story that I’ve heard 800 times before, but not in a decent few years.

So let’s review a video game, yeah? That’s something I’m vaguely sure I can still do.

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Posted by Robert Wall in Gaming, 0 comments

I Was Wrong About Battlemaps

You read that right. Everyone’s favorite egotistical narcissist is admitting he was wrong. Well, not completely. Allow me this modicum of clickbait so that I may bask in my own humility.

Alright, now that that’s done, this is my blistering hot take: I used to hate battlemaps, and now I don’t. But to really explain this incredible shift in my belief as a DM, I have to go into detail. A lot of detail. Context is important, so we’re gonna go through it, point by point. Oh, and as an aside, more than half of this post can be disregarded if the comparison is for pre-made adventures, as there’s an expectation of railroading and the battlemaps would obviously fit the situation already, if you can find them.

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Posted by Robert Wall in Tabletop, 0 comments