Month: May 2020

The Outer Worlds: Complete

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So it wasn’t something I was expecting to do so soon, but The Outer Worlds was good enough to get its hooks into me so I played it through before I realized it. I didn’t really read reviews about the game so after completing it I had some questions. I should mention that there will be spoilers in this post, including my personal epilogue which vary from your own. With that said, I’ll continue with some generic screens from the end of my playthrough.

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So one of the screenshots in the above gallery shows the system map, which contains a cluster of planets and some other points of interest, and you’ll notice that there are some planets that appear with a lock over them. These never became accessible during my game, and that seemed curious. Why include planets you can’t eventually visit? I understand level gating or time gating things for the sake of story and wanting particular events to occur in a certain order. But having worlds that cannot be accessed, and then not having any sort of time table on DLC that might allow for visiting said planets is a bad look. Why wouldn’t you just leave those off, and instead add them to that map when said DLC released? Is this perhaps the sign of a rushed game? It’s clear that The Outer Worlds took inspiration from the Bethesda formula, but they instead made a fairly linear game with only a small amount of side quests. The story was engaging and I had fun playing it, and I can see the ability to play again in a different way in order to get different story bits but I don’t see how that would much change the overall narrative. As such, the 25 hour mostly complete time combined with places on the map you can’t visit screams to me that the game was pushed out before it was fully done. Or a DLC plan went awry, because you’d think you wouldn’t be able to go back and do the DLC if you already completed the game, as there is a point in the narrative where you can only move forward and aren’t able to do anything else after the epilogue screens. I’ll share my personal epilogue with you now.

Epilogue:

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I think I missed a screen or two but you get the gist. I appreciated the fact that the game wasn’t overly open-world, with planets having smaller maps that encompassed some larger areas and smaller ones too, with instanced dungeons and such. I feel like they still could have added a ton of quests and things to do though, that would have given the game more life. I suppose if you’re the completionist type you’ll go for all the trophies which will result in additional playthroughs, plus there are other difficulty levels that could make for more of a challenge (though there were some tricky parts here and there anyway). For me personally, I’m shelving it and will perhaps come back to it given DLC or sufficient passing of time to want to experience a different story in the same world. I’ve already picked Borderlands 3 back up and am trying to push through that one to the end, which will definitely take more time.

With all that said, I still recommend the game. It was a fun tale in an alternate universe and I enjoyed my time with it. It does have the flaws I’ve mentioned but I’d still say it’s worth the price of entry. It’s currently set to release later this year on PC if you’ve already waited this long, and would prefer that version.

The War Report: Double Masters

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Today some big news came down from the mothership. The majority of releases and plans for Magic: The Gathering for the rest of 2020 was already pretty much laid out: We knew about Core Set 2021 coming in the summer, Zendikar Rising in the fall, and the Commander-focused booster set coming towards the end of the year. Other supplementals like Spellbook: Chandra and some similar product focusing on green cards along with the Jump-Start product have already been announced as well. I honestly didn’t think anything else could be crammed into the year, but that changed this morning.

So at the end of 2018, the last masters set “for a while” was released. Called Ultimate Masters, it was one of the best masters sets to release in a while. The original Modern Masters sets along with Eternal Masters were all well received and packed a bunch of value, while Iconic Masters and Masters 25 were perceived as flops. I had good luck with all of the masters set packs I purchased over the years (starting with Modern Masters 2017) but I do see where there were less “good” cards in those sets. So WotC decided to go out with a bang, releasing Ultimate Masters and saying that the product line would go on hiatus. A year and a half later, here we are getting an announcement for a new masters set, called Double Masters. It’s a pretty uninspiring set name, and honestly could have been spruced up a bit, but when you read on you’ll see the reasoning.

Double Masters

Release Date: August 7, 2020

  • 332 cards
  • 24 packs per booster box
  • 15-card booster packs, with two rares and two foil cards per pack! (And, yes, those foils can be up to two additional rares.)
  • Two non-foil showcase box topper cards included in each booster box
  • Available in English, French, German, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese

Double Masters will be available on Magic Online starting August 6 (ONE day early!) for $6.99 per booster. It will not be redeemable.

This bullet list gives us a ton of information without saying much at all. It’s a pretty standard set size, along with having the standard lower pack count than a main set release, which should lead us to believe they will retail for $250 or so a box given the typical $10 a pack price point. Since WotC has done away with MSRP, it’s anyone’s guess how much actual pack/box prices will end up, especially if we’re still dealing with COVID-19 complications for production and shipping which leads to shortages and artificial inflation. This happened with Ikoria/C20 products despite WotC delaying physical release by a month. I’ve had conversations with people who don’t have an LGS and got scalped buying product online, and those who couldn’t find the product they were looking for a box stores. I was fortunate to get C20 at my local Wal-Mart for normal price ($40 each), and pre-ordered a fat pack of Ikoria for a normal price off of Amazon, but it did affect some nonetheless. Where we start to see the pattern change, is in the pack contents: Two rares and two foils per pack, so the potential for up to four rares in any given pack. That’s not gonna drive the price up at all, will it?

While the Mystery Booster product did give us many important reprints that brought the price down on some more expensive cards, many of those cards have already leveled off, and some cards that I bought within the last few years have recently spiked by 100% or more, so the need for reprints is ever present. Masters sets have always been a good device for providing reprints and bringing down some of the ridiculous prices that cards can garner, but because of the reserve list, some cards will simply never be reprinted and will never be affordable. Thankfully the PlayEDH Discord community is proxy-friendly, but WotC is not building financial sustainability when cards become prohibitively priced and Timmy on the Internet is just going to print out copies from his home computer. This, like Mystery Booster and other masters sets before it, has the ability to provide needed reprints in a more affordable manner, along with building security for the company from pack sales. I’ll still buy this product even if it doesn’t have my most wanted reprint, but we want more quality sets like Ultimate Masters and less of whatever Masters 25 was.

Two reprints were officially spoiled, though the set doesn’t release until August, and we’ll get the proper spoiler season in July. As is becoming a standard thing, box toppers (full art alternates) are included and we’ve seen two of them, though I’m not sure if there will be more added to the pool. Blightsteel Colossus definitely deserves a reprint as it’s been creeping up in price for a while, but Doubling Season was reprinted not long ago in Battlebond, so I think there were better options (I still want another reprinting of Mana Crypt dammit!). Either way the art looks nice and they’re good cards to have. I hope the rest of the set has a good amount of cards on this level, and it should have a large pool or rares since we’ll be getting two a pack. Thankfully there should be less chaff to dig through.

WotC made sure to get in the fact that there wouldn’t be fetch land reprints in this set, but they said they are coming this year. I imagine they won’t come with Zendikar Rising because it’s a standard set and I don’t see them putting those lands in the standard environment, so my money is on the commander booster set, where they can immediately say the reprints of those lands are not standard legal. More on this set when we get to spoiler season in a couple of months.

Thoughts on X-Com: Chimera Squad

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XCOM: Chimera Squad isn’t the next entry in the main XCOM series, which dates back to the early 1990’s. This means two things: it’s not a full priced $60 game, and it’s not as in-depth as a game in the main series. What some might call “XCOM Lite” or a mobile version of the game, I would argue has a surprising amount of things to do and still manages to keep you engaged for hours at a time. For those of you unfamiliar with XCOM, it was a grand strategy game from the 20th century in which you as the leader of the XCOM program, lead Earth’s defense against alien forces. A few sequels were produced, until eventually the series was rebooted in 2012 with XCOM: Enemy Unknown. This title would later receive an expansion update, XCOM: Enemy Within which added new elements to the same formula. That same year there would be a spin-off title called The Bureau: XCOM Declassified which attempted to take the series in a different direction, and wasn’t as universally loved as the main series. Falling back onto known successful strategies, XCOM 2 would release in 2016 and the series would return to greatness along with receiving a bunch of updates and the full expansion XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. I would say that Chimera Squad falls somewhere between a spin-off in the same way as The Bureau, and a full XCOM title because the game is not too far off from the main series in terms of gameplay and also carries on the story from the two games that are part of last decade’s reboots.

Looking at the screenshots above, you wouldn’t think this wasn’t a part of the main XCOM series, and to a degree you’d be correct. The combat system present in Chimera Squad is familiar to anyone who has played these games in the past. This style of tactical combat is somewhat standard form in other genres as well, so you should feel at home with the mechanics right away. Where some differences emerge is in the new “breach” system, and the addition of encounters. Each mission will consist of 1-3 encounters in which your same squad will have to fight and survive til the end, along with completing other sub tasks as needed. Each mission starts with a breach, where you can arrange your squad in order of entry along with selecting differing entry points depending on your squad makeup. For example, if you have someone with a breach charge equipped, certain walls can be blown up to gain breach bonuses while one particular agent you can recruit has the ability to enter through vents. Otherwise, you’re pretty much playing as you would expect, and after missions end you return to HQ, much like you would in the main series.

HQ is probably the biggest change that makes this game feel like “XCOM Lite.” Instead of having a sprawling base and some options to customize, you’ll have what equates to a police station. Your crew of agents hang out in the locker room where you can equip them with new gear that’s found via missions or built by you. Research takes place, and takes days to complete, but will open up new options for your agents. You can buy stuff from a black market. You’ll spend most of your time looking at the city screen, where you essentially monitor the happiness of each borough. If people are scared/pissed, there will be anarchy, which equates to a new mission you have to complete in order to lower the angst. If too much angst happens all over the city, it’s game over. You do have tools to deal with this though, where you can send teams to each zone and have them do stuff to lower the overall terror level. Upgrading them provides you with abilities to automatically lower terror or freeze the level where it is so it won’t raise for a while. These abilities are on long cool downs though so you’ll have to use them wisely. There are different missions that advance the story, but you’ll have to wait days for an investigation to end so that you can properly enter that mission and progress. In the meantime, you’ll be trying to maintain order by doing side missions in different areas. It appears that there are different factions and though you can only choose one to focus on, I’m unsure if you end up investigating them all or just one per game session. Whatever the case I didn’t quite finish the investigation I am on at this point, so I can’t say exactly how a game is completed.

Though there is voice acting there wasn’t much time put into the story that brings everything together. Most story bits are told through cartoon like stills and barely animated sequences, though there is more dialogue and what have you during combat missions and in HQ as well. The overall story carries on from the 2012 reboot to now. In that first game, Earth was being attacked by aliens. In the sequel, the aliens had overtaken Earth and the last vestiges of humanity were working together to take Earth back. This continues from there, where essentially the war ended, much of the alien forces left, much of humanity was killed off, and the remaining humans and aliens have attempted to create a unified civilization. It seems to be working, but there are various factions of aliens and humans that are against unity and that’s the stuff we’re around to squash.

Overall I think the story fits well enough in the context of this universe and the gameplay is reflective of the series while being easier to just jump in and go. It really is a “lite” version of a game we already know but it somehow works. It’s also a very attractive price point if you are itching to play XCOM but can’t bring yourself to fire up the older games. At $20, you really can’t go wrong. Just don’t expect the same epic overtones as the originals.

TWR: Torbran, Thane of Red Pings

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This column has slowed down a little as of late because of the delay to the release of Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths and Commander 2020. The release of those products was pushed back from April to this Friday, May 15th. As such, I’m still a couple of days away from getting my hands on new cards with which to build decks, and though I’ve already shared a couple of brews that I have intended on making as soon as I get a couple of the new precons, I’m still waiting. I’m super stoked for some of the cards from the main set, but I’m really looking forward to two out of the five new precons, and I think that will get me back to playing a bit more regularly and of course brewing up some new decks. Despite the fact that I’m in a bit of a lull with the game, I did manage to get some time in with two new decks last weekend (along with playing several games with existing ones). One of those I actually brewed on Friday night, put together on Saturday and played a couple of games with — this is the deck we’ll be talking about today. The other is a more competitive one utilizing a strategy I have never tried before — I’m happy to say that it worked pretty well on its first couple of games as well, but I’ll talk more about that one another time. For now, let’s look at another commander from Throne of Eldraine, Torbran, Thane of Red Fell:

When Throne of Eldraine was being teased, I pegged this guy as a must have card for a variety of decks, but didn’t really consider using him as a commander. It turns out that despite not being really into much of Eldraine at that time, that there were more cards I ended up using from the set than anticipated on top of finding a really fun commander in Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig (whom I might add will benefit from cards coming in these new products). Anyway, I came across a guide that suggested using Torbran as the general of a ping deck, which has generally been thought of as a weak option for EDH. However, once I started looking at synergistic red cards from over the years of Magic’s history, I started to see the potential. First of all, Torbran isn’t a pinger himself, but he definitely supports the idea. With him on the battlefield, he’ll increase the effectiveness of pinging units by increasing their damage output by 2. This means a card that reads tap: deal 1 damage to <target> now says tap: deal 3 damage to <target>. But Torbran doesn’t stop at amplifying pinging creatures, rather he counts all red sources of damage — something red has had added to its suite of burn in interesting ways over the years. First up, let’s check out our army of pingers.

Pingers:

Each of these creatures will tap to deal 1 damage to a target. Sometimes the target is a creature, sometimes a player, sometimes all opponents, sometimes all players. Some have haste, others have defender, but they all will eventually be able to lightning bolt at will. Three cards of note here are Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh, Goblin Sharpshooter and Syr Carah, the Bold. The first is one of the original flip walkers, and while being able to ping for only 1 damage herself, with Torbran on the board she will immediately flip int a viable planeswalker that can still do damage. The Sharpshooter is tricky to use, but is part of some combos that I didn’t originally include in this build but might at some point. Still, with him tapping for 3 damage with our commander, we should be able to activate him more than once in a turn. Combos with Kiki-jiki and Splinter Twin (also Zealous Conscripts) might be added as finishers but so far I’ve liked the way the deck has performed without being too combotastic. Lastly, Syr Carah is also from Eldraine and while she is a pinger as well, she also allows us to get some value off the top of our deck, which is certainly welcome in red.

Other Forms of Damage Over Time:

So the meat and potatoes of our strategy is to burn our opponents down faster than they can kill us. Doing it with the pingers we’ve gone over can work, but it’s going to take some time. As such, I’ve added a slew of options that will punish our opponents in their own ways. Casting spells? Electrostatic Field and Firebrand Archer will do damage just for casting them. Playing creatures? Purphoros will do 4 damage to each opponent with Torbran on the field. Playing lands? Tunneling Geopede will shoot lighting bolts for doing so. You get the picture. We’re trying to make sure that no matter what we’re doing and no matter what the board state is, you’ll still be slowly whittling away your opponent’s life totals, and at some point should be able to threaten wins. In my first game with the deck I managed to get out Purphoros and a Sulfuric Vortex, so I was dealing 4 damage a turn to each of them while only taking two of my own, then dealing more damage by playing creatures, and I didn’t even get the fun stuff like Ancient Runes or Burning Earth. Zo-Zu the Punisher also looks like a ton of fun.

Notable Inclusions:

Since it’s red, we have a few ways of making a large chunk of mana. As such I included cards like Electrodominance, Jaya’s Immolating Inferno, and Comet Storm as potential finishers off of a big swing of a turn. Dockside Extortionist can give you a bunch of treasures at once, Neheb the Eternal is a mana engine, and mid to late game Mana Geysers can net a ton. We also have Past in Flames to get back some of these spells if we need to later on, while Outpost Siege is extra card advantage. The version of Chandra I included is also pretty busted, simply because she can’t be countered and immediately gives our opponents an emblem that deals them damage each turn, which is perfect for this deck. Since we aren’t running board wipes due to having lots of ways to remove problematic creatures with our pingers, I’ve included some in the form of creatures that when paired with Torbran essentially end up being partial board wipes on top of doing damage to our opponents at the same time. Lastly, Ghirapur Orrery can help us ramp but that effect is symmetrical. However, if you find yourself with no cards in hand (as many red/burn decks do) we get to draw 3 cards which is likely going to help us more than our opponents. Plus it’s about the only nice thing this deck does.

In testing it has worked well, but I can suggest adding Kiki-Jiki, Splinter Twin and Zealous Conscripts if you’re looking for a way to end stalled out games. I may do so myself.

State of the Game: Current Events 2020

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I don’t intentionally go so long between my State of the Game posts, but it seems that because I have focused more on just completing a game at a time I don’t have as many bite sized bits to talk about. Although I’ve started and completed several games over the past few months since the last round-up, I’ve somehow managed to start a few that I’ve already written about and wish to give updates on. As it goes, I haven’t actually completed (or really played) the games I talked about last time, but I can touch on some of the stuff I’ve been doing recently. This time around we’ll be talking about the Final Fantasy VII Remake, Wildermyth, Streets of Rage 4, and The Outer Worlds.

Final Fantasy VII Remake

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The Remake continues to impress, but has also begun to frustrate. I will admit that much of my nostalgia for the game weighed heavily on my decision to pick this one up, mainly because I absolutely loved JRPGs in the 1990’s. It turns out that older me is not as invested in the storyline, and honestly I’m not enjoying the combat all that much either. The camera gets itself into janky angles too easily, the AI of your companions is absolute dog shit, unlike older games where you could set the behavior of the AI (ala Dragon Age), and it’s twitchy but unresponsive at times. So basically I spend half of the time enjoying the sites and remembering bits of the original from my long term memory banks, and the other half of the time yelling at the screen with how stupid the combat can be. Sometimes it’s pretty straight forward and satisfying though, so I’m torn between loving and hating this game. I should note that I skipped The Witcher III entirely because of similar irritations with the combat, but I still feel like I need to see this one through. I may be that guy and turn the difficulty all the way down because I may not finish the game otherwise. I absolutely cannot fathom how they will implement things like Emerald and Ruby Weapon. They were impossible enough with turn based combat. Whatever the case, we’re starting to see various parts of the game open up a bit beyond the slums, with mini games like darts showing up, more music to collect, and I’ve even had my first couple of summons since then, though they work so much differently now I was a bit underwhelmed. I met a new character on a motorcycle that I don’t remember from the original, but he was interesting enough and I imagine since he did not die we might see him again. I have a friend playing the game who has been ahead of me and given some vague spoilers and it seems that there is more new here than old, so it’s more of a new experience than a remake, so it does keep me wanting to see what happens next.

Streets of Rage 4

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My original post about Streets of Rage 4 was prior to the game releasing, but my first hearing about it. I have since purchased the game and started playing through it over the course of last weekend. During that first session I discovered that most of the game’s features were progress locked, so you could only start off with Story mode or Battle mode. Playing solo I of course started out with the story. I picked Axel as he is the most recognizable character for me, and powered through almost the whole game in one sitting. I started getting frustrated towards the end and decided to take a break before picking it up again another day and finally completing it. From there I unlocked the ability to play any stage where you can try and increase your ranking as there are trophies for S rank on every stage and other such nonsense that I’ll never shoot for. Other trophies include beating the story with every playable character, and others that come from performing certain actions on various levels. I unlocked Adam (from SOR1) about halfway through the story, and unlocked the original pixel art version of Axel for completing his story. I assume the story will largely play out the same despite who you pick, but I also assume that you’ll unlock all of the playable characters and alternate models by playing through the game multiple times. The trophies seem to be tied to solo play, but you have the option to play through the story in co-op, and apparently up to 4 players can join in, but I’m unsure how that affects difficulty. It was clear to me that some levels would have been much easier as-is with more players, but perhaps more enemies are added if you are playing with more friends. There’s also online options that I haven’t looked into yet, but I assume you’ll be able to co-op or battle just the same as you could locally. Overall the game looks great, I love the new combat system and animations, but it’s still challenging because of timing and stuff that was more of a thing back in the 1990’s that we aren’t used to now, but the devs recreated to the letter. You really have to play it to understand what I mean (also need to be old enough to have played games back then). It’s still something I’d recommend for fans of the series or this style of game, but if you don’t like beat-em-ups you could probably skip it.

The Outer Worlds

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In my original post I had only spent a couple of sessions with The Outer Worlds but I already loved what I had seen. I actually haven’t played it much since then only because I’ve been distracted by the other games I’ve mentioned here, along with a couple of others that I have dedicated posts planned for. Whatever the case, I have enjoyed how the game has expanded beyond the early portion. Getting a spaceship has allowed my crew (and I say crew because I’ve recruited a couple of new bodies outside of the original girl that joined the squad while I was leaving the first planet. Different companions bring different skills to the crew, and some of their own quests as well. Some quests will also mention a crew member’s skillset needed for that particular mission so it’s advised to bring them along when needed. As such, you’ll want to keep them equipped with new gear. This differs from older games in this genre where you’d only have one companion and they were likely just a mule to carry your shit. Now you need to pay attention to the different members a little bit more, and you’ll have two of them with you at all times. Another nice feature is the ability to control their special moves which can turn the tide of fights single-handedly. Rather than being a big open world, the devs had designed this one as more of a Borderlands style setup, where you have some planet areas that are large, but they are bordered and you can fast travel while on them, but otherwise have to return to the ship to visit other planets. It’s also clear that sometimes you’re on the same planet but in a different region, and you can’t really travel between them without returning to the ship either. So it’s a hybrid open-world but it seems to work pretty well. You’ll be able to focus on the tasks at hand and then move on. I’ve visited several of the planets and completed quite a few missions. I believe I’m nearly level 20, I know I’m in the teens at least. I’m not sure the amount of content I have still left to go but I look forward to enjoying the ride.

Wildermyth

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I have less to say about Wildermyth only because I have only just started my second session with the game. In my first post I talked about the mechanics and gameplay, but also notated that I only played the beginner 3 chapter session. I have since started up a new game with the normal mode 5 chapter story. I was under the impression initially that characters would transfer between games, but it appears that your legacy is generated in different ways. When you have heroes die and you memorialize them, those memorials will remain in the game. Other characters who survived a story can reappear in new games, so I guess eventually you might see those characters again or perhaps their offspring. It’s not overly clear to me, and though I only played through one chapter before quitting that session, I didn’t seen any legacy stuff, so I guess I’ll write more about it when I figure it out. Whatever the case I have enjoyed starting a new story and getting to know some new characters. Having a new main enemy makes a difference in gameplay a bit as well. This time around I have a group of five, with 2 warriors, 2 mystics and a ranger, so I’ve switched up the configuration a little bit. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this one sooner than later because I really enjoy the story telling here.

So there you have it. Some progress on all accounts. As I mentioned I have a couple other posts in the works for a couple other games I haven’t yet introduced on the blog, so stay tuned for that.