Tag: games

In which we escape

On By Luther M. SilerIn ReviewsLeave a comment

Okay, well, if you’re gonna be picky about it, technically we didn’t escape. By, like, under a minute, I think, and I’m pretty sure I spent at least a minute saying “Wait, we didn’t win? Explain why we haven’t won,” before the final clue and the final win condition was made understandable.

Lemme back up.

My wife and I have done two escape rooms– one with a bunch of her college friends where we were not successful, and one just with the two of us where we were. She’s done a couple of others for work things as well. She got me the game pictured to the right for Christmas, and we finally pulled it out and played it tonight on her birthday. Not like we can go out to dinner or anything, right?

(I know the exact date of the last time I was in a restaurant, by the way, and we are closing in on the one-year anniversary of that date.)

Anyway, Escape Room in a Box: Flashback is exactly what it says it is, an escape room in a box. It’s a one-shot play, basically, but at basically a buck for every three minutes of play I figure the time is worth it. I would say you’re looking for between one to four players (there’s no reason you can’t play by yourself, frankly,) mostly because more than four are going to get in each other’s way. There are three of what they call “paths” but are basically separate puzzles, and then clues from all three are necessary to solve the final puzzle at the end. The final puzzle at the end is more or less what cost us the game; I thought you had to just put three physical things together, and I did, and then precious time was wasted convincing me that no, there was one more thing needed. Anyway, small teams could work on the three “paths” individually, but at some point you’re making it too easy– if three teams are working on the three paths simultaneously you’re more or less guaranteed that you’ll finish in a fraction of the time you’re allotted.

There’s a werewolf theme, but it’s not that important. It’s also technically a sequel to another game (prequel? Is that why the word “flashback” is in the title? Maybe.) but no knowledge of the other game was necessary at all. I do think we’ll end up picking it up, though, because if it’s of equivalent quality to this one it’ll be a good time. The puzzles themselves are also pretty refreshingly clear of anything that can be looked up or Googled; you’re not going to miss a clue because you’ve never seen a movie or didn’t know the date something happened or something like that and knowledge of trivia will not save you. There are maybe a couple of clues that could have been worded a little more clearly but that’s about it.

Oh, and you’ll need a freezer.

5/5 would play again, but I’d win immediately, so I’m actually never playing it again but you get what I mean.

#REVIEW: The Surge 2 (PS4)

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, video gamesLeave a comment

The PS5 hasn’t made an appearance yet, and I did a test drive by Best Buy earlier to see if it was reasonable to get the new TV brought out, and it … was not. I might take another shot at it after dinner, but I’ll probably just wait until tomorrow at this point. I did put The Surge 2 to bed last night, and it has the distinction of almost certainly being the last game I’ll beat on my PS4, since the PS5’s backwards compatibility is pretty universal so there won’t be a need to pull this console out of mothballs if I decide I want to go back to something.

Short version: 8/10, solid but occasionally garbagey. The Surge 2 takes the Soulslike tradition of losing resources on death, mild RPG elements, and punishing difficulty and sets it in a cyberpunk/nanotech future sort of world. As basically everything I play nowadays is a Soulslike of some sort (and the first game that graces the PS5 is going to be the Demon’s Souls remake) this was more or less right up my alley.

Strengths: weapon and armor variety is awesome, and the armor pieces in particular are interesting; each set has six pieces (two arms, two legs, body and head) and they can be mixed and matched, and each set also has a bonus if you’re wearing three pieces of it and a bigger bonus if you’re wearing six pieces, and the bonuses are different between sets– so you find yourself wearing three pieces of one set and three of another a lot. Weapons are varied enough that I never kept one for very long, although I definitely found myself gravitating toward the spear- and staff-class weapons by the end of the game, which both had good range and were fast. Nothing really looks like anything else, though, which is great.

The combat in general was one of the game’s strengths, although there’s a directional block mechanism built in that I never really got the hang of, and timing on blocks in particular felt sluggish a lot of the time. That may just be me, though as timed-parry mechanisms almost always give me fits, but I swear a lot of the time I’d hit block and my dude just wouldn’t. Sometimes that was due to being out of stamina, but by the end of the game my stamina pool was so huge that that was rarely an issue and I still had a hell of a time with timings.

The story is … fine. I never played The Surge and I never got the impression that I needed to; the sequel is completely standalone.

Less good: boss fights are challenging but repetitive, the game was buggy (I don’t remember the last time I had a game hard crash to the desktop, and this game did it six times) and level design was kinda samey and I had a hell of a time finding my way around. They did a good job of different levels wrapping around and connecting to each other in lots of places, with lots of shortcuts and secret passages and such, but the game’s color palette and overall look just didn’t really vary all that much from place to place, and there’s an event partway through the game that rips up the old map and throws it away, and after spending as much time as I had exploring and trying to figure out where everything was, having all that knowledge stripped away from me was really annoying. The trophies also seemed sort of buggy, and I’m convinced that I earned one of them that never popped for me at all.

The game also does a sort of cool thing after the credits roll where it shows you a bunch of stats that compare you to how other players did, both in terms of how many deaths and playtime in levels and to bosses. This was neat but I’d rather have had access to it in the game. There’s also a new piece at the beginning of New Game + where you pay through something that happened offscreen in the first playthrough, which was kind of neat.

This has been out for a while (every game I review has been out for a while) but if it slipped your radar and you are into this kind of game, it’s worth checking out.

Adventures in dungeonmastering

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

True fact: I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons off and on since I was in fifth grade and never once in that time have I actually been a Dungeon Master. Now, granted, my first outing was about as foolproof as it could get– my audience was my wife (inclined to forgive me any errors I might have made) and my son (who wouldn’t know the difference) and I was using a prewritten, off-the-shelf adventure that I only made a small handful of modifications to, but I still think I acquitted myself pretty well. I added a character who wasn’t in the original adventure to sort of guide them through everything and created a couple of encounters before everything got started to help them get their feet wet, and we were off to the races after that. The problem with D&D is that it takes so damn long– the adventure was two pages long as written in the sourcebook and the session took three and a half damn hours. The boy wants to play again tomorrow— he’s second level now, which is just unbelievably powerful, of course– and it’s going to be hard to convince him that Daddy is not going to have this kind of free time every single day for the rest of the winter.

The kid’s a frickin’ fiend with his dice, though– three natural 20s over the course of the session, which wasn’t super combat-heavy so that’s more impressive than it sounds, more than balancing out my wife’s two natural 1s, one of which left her flat on her back at the feet of a mimic that was doing its best to try and eat her face. I wasn’t super inclined to kill either of them, although I made sure the boy in particular knew that if he tried to pull anything particularly reckless or dumb during the session he was going to pay the price, and other than offhandedly suggesting that they kill everyone in the room during an early negotiating session with some gnomes he more or less did a decent job of reining in his more destructive impulses.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Sunday. I look forward to doing this again.

Merry Christmas!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting3 Comments

Raise our hand if your wife bought your 8-year-old son what is obviously a drinking game for Christmas!

(Looks around)

Just me, eh?

Okay.

In which we build, ctd.

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, ParentingLeave a comment

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Something happened today that, somehow, hasn’t happened yet, despite the fact that the boy is in first grade: he woke up feeling sick, and I decided to call in myself and keep him home for the day.  By noon my plan had been shown to be less than wise; a headache so bad that it had him swaying in the morning had given way to, well, nothing, and I’m finding myself fighting off a slightly delayed case of con crud.  I think it’ll run its course today and be done tomorrow, but I’m definitely low on spoons, if you know what I mean.

We spent the morning in Minecraft again, and I added a floating cabin, complete with waterfall and a manmade lake underneath, plus the totally-made-up flaming magic rocks that help it float– the floor in the house is actually made of glass covered in carpet because glass won’t burn and nothing else I was putting down was keeping the fires from getting through.  All of this is across the river from yesterday’s efforts.

In the background there is another floating fountain made of emerald.  Yes, there’s apparently a theme in this world; much like IT, everything floats down here.

Less mangled children, though, I suppose.

I’ll try and write something that isn’t about Minecraft tomorrow.  If nothing else, I have a book review or two to write.

In which we build

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, ParentingLeave a comment

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I had plans for a post tonight, but instead the boy declared it was going to be Minecraft Night, so we each sprawled on the couch with an iPad in hand and made stuff.  I decided to go with an elemental shrine theme, building a pool with an infinite waterfall, a fire shrine, a nature garden (which was as close to “earth” as I could come up with) and a glass house in the sky only reachable by flying but providing an awesome double-slime-diving-board down to the lake below.

The boy only went with one element, shamelessly stealing my glass sky house idea, but then did it twelve thousand times as interesting as mine, so I think he wins.

So yeah.  I didn’t manage much of a post but I think I spent my evening pretty damn well.

7 Days, 7 Black and White Pictures, no explanations

On By Luther M. SilerIn PhotographyLeave a comment

…I’m given to understand that I broke the rules on this little game at least once by including a picture of my son, so it’s possible that the Meme Police will be filing charges of some sort.  I think I’ll survive.  At any rate, I’ve been posting these on Instagram and Twitter and I figured I’d archive them here:

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Shall we play a game?

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics5 Comments

300px-WOPR_test.pngFor some reason I’ve been fiddling with this in my head for the last few days: what would the American presidency have looked like if the 22nd Amendment had never passed?  (The 22nd amendment was the one limiting presidencies to two terms, passed because FDR decided he was cool enough for four.)

Now, obviously, there’s a lot of butterfly-effect stuff that might have happened with this, and most of that I’ve ignored, although it might be fun to play with later.  The main rule I’m working with is that people who were interested in the presidency stay interested in the presidency.  So, for example, you can imagine that different Presidents might have altered our Vietnam policy from what it was, and that if our Vietnam policy is different, perhaps John McCain is never shot down and imprisoned for five and a half years, or perhaps whoever is in office intensifies the war and McCain never even makes it out.  For the purposes of this conversation, McCain survives the war and is still interested in being President during the years he ran.  If you want to play along and go into more detail, feel free, but that’s where I’m coming from.

So.  That in mind, here we go:

All elections before 1952 are unchanged, because there was nothing preventing Presidents from running for a third term– and, in fact, both the Roosevelts did— only the tradition that no one should serve longer than Washington did.

1952 election:  This actually remains unchanged.  Truman was grandfathered in by the 22nd Amendment and could have run again had he wanted to, but he lost the New Hampshire primary to Estes Kefauver and dropped out quickly.  Dwight Eisenhower becomes President.

1956 election:  Eisenhower demolishes Adlai Stevenson, and is elected to his second term.  No change.

1960 election: Still able to run, and not much trusting his Vice-President, Eisenhower runs against a young Senator named John F. Kennedy.  In the actual election, Kennedy only barely squeaked by an unsupported Richard Nixon and may only have won by cheating in Chicago.  In my alternate universe, Eisenhower easily wins a third term.

1964 election: Real-world Eisenhower started having major health issues in 1965.  In my world, after the stresses of a third term, those health problems manifest a bit earlier and Eisenhower declines to run for a fourth term in office.  The 1964 election is therefore Nixon vs. Kennedy again, and Kennedy wins.

Note that because Kennedy was not President in 1963, he’s still alive in this scenario.  I’m choosing to decide that Oswald would not have shot Eisenhower.  Kennedy was in Dallas on a campaign stop, after all; Ike may as well have gone elsewhere.

1968 election:  Kennedy easily defeats Barry Goldwater and wins a second term.

1972 election: Running against Richard Nixon again, Kennedy wins a third term in office.  In 1973 his Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson passes away from a massive heart attack (NOTE: this actually happened) and Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, JFK’s original pick for the Vice-Presidency, is named to fill the role.

1976 election: Finally unable to deny his health issues any longer, JFK declines to run for a fourth term.  Sitting Vice-President Stuart Symington is unable to defeat former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter in the Democratic primary, but California governor Ronald Reagan wins the election.

1980 election:  Reagan defeats Carter again.

1984 election: Reagan makes a thin paste of Walter Mondale and spreads it on his toast for breakfast, winning 49 states and beginning his third term.  (NOTE: You could make a good argument that Mondale, having never been Carter’s VP, would not be the nominee in 1984.  I would contend that Reagan loses to no one in 1984 so the name of the punching bag is irrelevant.)

1988 election:  Reagan becomes the third three-term President in a row to decline to run for a fourth term.  We all know his Alzheimer’s was starting to kick in in 1998 anyway, and now he’s at the end of three terms, not just two, so it probably would have been worse.  Gerald Ford, his VP, runs against Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis and easily wins election.

(Why Ford?  Because George HW Bush’s career becomes mightily murky if Nixon is never President.  He had just lost an election for the Senate when Nixon appointed him ambassador to the UN in 1971, and didn’t hold elected office again until being elected Vice-President with Reagan in 1980.  Without Nixon in the White House, he never runs for Senate (it was Nixon’s idea) so maybe he’s still in the House or still in the Senate and maybe he would have run; it’s hard to say.  This is another place where folk can argue.)

1992 election: Ford, not actually a very good President, is defeated by Bill Clinton, serving the same single term he’d served anyway, just not in the same years.

1996 election: Clinton defeats Bob Dole for a second term.

2000 election:  Clinton runs against George W. Bush, the former Governor of Texas.  Now, in the real world, Al Gore won the popular vote and lost the electoral college, at least partially because of his incomprehensible choice to run away from Clinton’s accomplishments as President.  Clinton himself, a much savvier politician with sky-high approval ratings (68% in 2000) and unlikely to run away from his own record, easily defeats Shrub for a third term.

2004 election: Clinton bucks the tradition set by the previous three three-term presidents and chooses to run for a fourth term, because, really, Clinton would have to be dead to decide not to run for office.  However!  After 12 years of Clinton scandals, the nation has decided it would rather shoot itself in the face than ever hear the word “Whitewater” again, and a popular maverick politician by the name of John McCain narrowly defeats Clinton in the 2004 election.

(I can hear you: whaaaat?  I put it to you that GWBush destroyed John McCain, and McCain was actually a fairly popular politician on a bipartisan level before, specifically, the 2000 South Carolina primary.  The shame of having had to endorse the guy who used his own daughter against him in South Carolina broke something in him.  I think this is at least arguably possible.  And if not, well: fight me!  That’s what this is for.  🙂  )

And, at any rate, it doesn’t matter much anyway, because:

2008 election:  Barack Obama defeats McCain anyway, stopping him after a single term in office.  (And this is fuzzy too, though, right?  If Clinton is still in office, does 9/11 happen?  Do we go to war in Iraq?  Obama used the war as a cudgel against both Clinton and McCain.  Absent that war, potentially, what happens?  Or does McCain start a different war in between 2004-2008?)

2012 election:  Barack Obama wins a second term, defeating Mitt Romney.

2016 election: Barack Obama wins 48 states against any of these yahoos, for the easiest third term since Reagan.

 

So.  What did I get wrong?  Let’s argue!