Pages Tagged “Games”
Reviews
- Assistant for No Man’s Sky ★★★★★ Very useful for looking up crafting recipes and other reference while playing the game on my PC. Updated quickly when the game adds new features.
- The Bard’s Tale (reboot) ★★★☆☆ While I liked the attitude and metatextual humor, it was annoyingly linear when compared to the original series.
- The Bard’s Tale IV ★★★★★ This is the game Might and Magic IX wanted to be. A classic party-based quest in an immersively detailed world. Only, you know, playable. Plus amazing music!
- Clusterduck ★★★★☆ Fun and weird, good for killing time while you’re waiting in line. Eventually it gets monotonous, but it takes a while to get there.
- Heroes of Might and Magic III ★★★★★ Possibly the high point in the turn-based strategy battle series.
- Might and Magic IX It’s interesting and immersive, but some of the game and UI design choices make it really frustrating.
- No Man’s Sky
- Outer Wilds ★★★★★ A fascinating game of discovery in a finely-crafted, tiny solar system trapped in a time loop. In a ship made of plywood, sheet metal and duct tape. Where you can roast marshmallows on every planet.
- The Outer Worlds ★★★★★ Immersive space RPG that at once satirizes corporate control while asking you to make hard choices within it.
- Squirrel With a Gun ★★★★☆ Fun, absurd, and absurdly fun. Yes, you play as a squirrel, outrunning and outgunning secret agents and charming the civilians.
- Star Wars: Dark Forces (Remastered) - First Impressions ★★★★☆ The remastered Dark Forces is the game you remember playing back in the day, not the game you actually played.
- Stellaris - First Impressions ★★★★☆ An empire-building game, like Heroes of Might and Magic in Space, but more complicated, with diplomacy, espionage and alliances along with base building and battles.
Tech Tips
- Fix for “Among Us” not joining games on Linux Change your server region and change it back. No, it doesn’t make sense to me either. But at least it works.
- Installing Valhelsia on Linux MultiMC no longer downloads mods from CurseForge, and CurseForge won’t run Minecraft on Linux. But AT Launcher will, and has a workaround for CurseForge’s API limits.
- Minecraft Bedrock Beta vs. the Microsoft Store There’s got to be a better way to do this. Actually, I know there’s a better way to do this, because Minecraft already does it in Java Edition.
- No Man’s Sky: Disappearing Freighter Base (Obsolete) Before the Fractal update, No Man’s Sky had a bug where if you completely empty your old freighter before buying a new one, the base doesn’t transfer.
- Rebuilding a Minecraft Village’s Economy Upgrading a Minecraft world to the Village and Pillage update leaves all villagers unemployed. Here’s how to build all the workstations and upgrade the village!
- Recover Disappearing Inventory in No Man’s Sky: Waypoint If new items have been disappearing from your inventory, they might still be there but hidden. And you can probably use the refiner to get them back!
Blog Posts
- Hearts Among Us
Spotted at a park last week. Amusingly, my phone autocorrected “crewmate” to “cremate” while I was adding the alt text. Considering this is Among Us, it’s not that far off…
- Meloetta is Ready for Rehearsal
All set!
- Returning to Outer Wilds
I picked up Outer Wilds again and finally finished the endgame. It’s a perfect, bittersweet coda to the story you uncover over the course of the game.
- Overload the Cores
I finally got around to trying out No Man’s Sky a few weeks ago. I started on a super-hot planet, where you need to find shelter and/or resources to recharge your suit’s hazard protection system to keep cool. Got killed a few times trying to figure out what I was doing. And after about 20 […]
- The Sun Sets Over Minecraft Earth
I like Minecraft Earth, but it didn’t quite hit its stride before the pandemic, and didn’t adapt as well as Pokémon Go has to the pandemic. I’ve mostly stopped playing since hitting the level cap because gameplay is still too awkward, and while it is fun, it’s not enough fun to overcome that when I […]
- Impostmates
So if your fellow crewmembers are crewmates, does that make your fellow impostors impostmates? (They can deliver anywhere.)
- Jedi Blocks
Apparently Mojang hired Anakin Skywalker to write the captions for block descriptions in Minecraft Earth.
- Be Like Spark
Spark is considerate enough to wear a face mask per pandemic recommendations. Unlike Jessie and James. You know they’ll only wear masks for disguises.
- Ghost Pokéstops
I need to start collecting screenshots of ghost Pokéstops in Pokémon Go. Not ghost-type nests, but the stops that highlight something that isn’t there anymore. In my area there are several murals that have been painted over, fountains that have been converted to planters, a park pond that’s become a splash pad, a sculpture in […]
- I Guess
I’ve got to appreciate this network error UI from Minecraft Earth. Especially the button text.
- 15 Minutes with Minecraft Earth
Took Minecraft Earth for a spin around the block. Most of the demos I’d seen showed either the build-on-a-plate mode or the AR adventure mode, so I wasn’t sure how the map mode was going to work. You see a Minecraft-ified version of your local area. Real-world buildings appear as raised ground instead of buildings, […]
- That time I had to rebuild a Minecraft Village’s economy
The latest Minecraft update, “Village and Pillage,” has completely revamped villager professions and trading, and made major changes to the village structures as well. Each profession now has a work site defined by a block like a stone cutter, or a loom, or a composter, etc. and unemployed villagers will try to fill jobs based […]
- A joke that will only make sense if you’ve played Minecraft: Story Mode
This wine could be made…useful.
- Boom Today
Downloaded MCEdit so the 8YO can edit Minecraft worlds. He used it to fill ten entire chunks with TNT…then lit one of the edges. The chain reaction has been going for at least ten minutes, punctuated by periods of major lag.
- A Dynamite Approach
Working through a book on modding Minecraft with the kiddo. It knows its target audience: the first few lessons are all about explosions! It’s written for 1.8, which is a problem because a lot of the structure has changed between then and 1.12, but a decent IDE with auto complete and a sense of common […]
- Upgrade Frustration
A few years back, we replaced our aging Windows PC with a newer system, figuring on using it mainly for office-type applications, casual games, and kids’ games. (Both of us had drifted out of playing the sort of game that really pushes a system’s specs, largely because there was a small person in the house […]
- Need to Find a Safe Point
Interesting vocab mixup with the 7YO last night: He agreed to stop a game at “the first save point” and get ready for bed. When he didn’t, he said he hadn’t gotten to a “safe point” yet. It turned out he didn’t understand what a save point was, because all the games he’s played up […]
- Mobile Minecraft
The first time I played mobile Minecraft, I ended up stuck in a tree all night, trying not to move so the skeletons wouldn’t shoot me down. Every time I ventured down to try to finish my shelter, I got killed and re spawned in that tree, so I finally just set the phone down […]
- Minecraft’s Hierarchy of Needs
Minecraft’s hierarchy of needs: Tools Shelter Light Food Once all those are taken care of, you can start exploring and building.
- A Minecraft Halloween
Homemade spider jockey costume (a composite Minecraft monster consisting of a skeleton archer riding a giant spider). Kid-sized, built by Katie (I assisted, mainly with painting, but the design, planning, and most of the construction was her). Mostly cardboard, covered with paper to smooth it out and provide a painting surface. Heavy fabric and dowels […]
- Bedtime Stories
Wow, bedtime stories have really changed in the last couple of years.
- Nether Mined
Kiddo talked me into Minecraft. Today we made obsidian from a pool of lava, and gathered enough to make a Nether portal. We got back from the Nether OK, but it sent us to a new portal hundreds of blocks away, in an unexplored cavern…under the ocean. We spent all afternoon tunneling up (slowly) and […]
- Targeting Pokémon
I went to Target this morning and found that someone had painted one of their signature red ball traffic barriers as a Pokéball. At first I figured it was a local thing, but I ended up having to make a second run, hit a different Target, and found that they’d done the same thing. I […]
- Sugary Smash Chronicle: Thoughts on King.com’s trademark brouhaha
King.com wasn’t always synonymous with Candy Crush. Some insights on the evolution of the game and the trademark controversy.
- Grog!
Argentina news warns of the dangers of Monkey Island “Grog.” (via @GreatWhiteSnark)
- Lamest. Controversy. Ever.
Well, probably not, but the complaints over color in Diablo III — specifically that it has some — have got to be the silliest controversy I’ve seen in a long time. Fans even went in and recolored the screenshots to show what they think it should look like. The link above is an article where […]
- Techno-weird Links
Lisa the Barbarian: A woman poses with a viking helmet and a sword…and an Opera Browser T-shirt. (via Espenao’s Opera the Barbarian) CNET UK presents The 30 dumbest videogame titles ever, including “Spanky’s Quest,” “Ninjabread Man,” “How to Be a Complete Bastard,” “Touch Dic” and “Attack of the Mutant Camels.” (via Slashdot). Cowboy Bebop at […]
- Found âem!
Yes, we found both Waldo and Carmen Sandiego – twice! We didn’t even need a GPS! (And who would have guessed that she’d be in San Diego?)
- The City Still Has Heroes
It seems Marvel Comics’ insane lawsuit against City of Heroes has been settled. Details are sketchy, but “no changes to City of Heroes® or City of Villains’™ character creation engine are part of the settlement.” Given that the lawsuit was basically the equivalent of suing pencil manufacturers because they could potentially be used to draw […]
- Forget GTA: The Sims is the real danger!
Well, now that people have successfully gotten Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas reclassified as Adult (18+) instead of Mature (17+)—since we all know that sex scenes that you can only get at by hacking the game are far more damaging to 17-year-olds than interactive sequences in which they shoot people, commit carjacking, and run over […]
- Fantasy Gaming: Good News and Bad News
I’ve started installing games on the new computer, some of which I haven’t played in over a year. Arcanum seems to work fine, and maybe now I can actually play it. (It stopped working on the old computer, so I moved on to other games.) Heroes of Might and Magic IV installs fine, but Game […]
- Marvel vs. City of Heroes: Half Off!
According to The Beat, a judge has thrown out about half the claims in Marvel’s lawsuit against City of Heroes. Apparently several of the “infringing” works they cited were in fact made by Marvel, not by players. The judge also threw out claims that the game makers infringed trademarks directly and refused to issue a […]
- New meaning to PDA
OK, this is bizarre. Apparently a Hong Kong software company is preparing to release a Virtual Girlfriend for high-res mobile phones. It—or I suppose I should say “she”—is structured as an online game, on the virtual pet model. (Remember the tamagotchi fad?) You hold conversations with “Vivienne,” give her virtual gifts, even work up to […]
- Now, let’s not be hasty
Marvel is suing City of Heroes’ makers for copyright and trademark infringement. What’s that, you say? The game doesn’t have any Marvel characters or lookalikes built-in? Of course not—they’re suing because it’s technically possible for players to design a character with a similar costume and use a similar name. Sure, it’s against the terms of […]
- Always check the requirements
We have a “yours, mine and ours” set of computers at home. My system started out as a Compaq Presario in 1994 and has been upgraded piecemeal over the past decade, Katie replaced her Power Mac with a G4 last year, and we picked up an eMachine to use as a dial-up server when we […]