The Lions Led By Donkeys history podcast* is always somewhat robust, but they get especially sweary in the episode „Mount Rushmore is a Racist Tourist Trap Built on Stolen Land“. I think you can infer the editorial stance they took.
*whom I support on Patreon and endorse for their approach to military history.
Sorry, Aussie expression - South Dakota was awesome! We just did a lap there - loved the Badlands / Custer / Crazy Horse - Days of 76 rodeo (that might be North Dakota - we came back via there and Teddy Roosevelt national park).
Medora was so cute, and Americans really love their presidents!
Yeah, the Badlands are amazing. I still remember a visit there nigh 50 years ago: we were camping out and watching a thunderstorm roll in, and it was spectacular.
I’ll back away slowly from any political discussion of Mt. Rushmore, but it’s hard to deny that it’s an impressive monument.
It is an incredibly impressive monument!
We also got to Crazy Horse, which I hope gets completed as a way to offer something else to the culture.
I am always looking for something simple, yet not simple, for my iphone that can easily be picked up and played in line, or while waiting for my wife to finally be ready to leave the house after saying “1 minute” for 10+ minutes (or in the bathroom).
Dungeon Raid was probably the first great of these. I have Dungeon Falan, but it is just not doing it for me. The Clever games (I like So Clever the best) have been great for some time. Threes is an all time classic that I return to all the time.
This past week I discovered Luck Be a Landlord, and that has been my new mobile obsession. It has been some time where I actually would pull out my iphone just to play a game since I mostly game on iPad or PC.
Love that game—bought it on release and have a couple hundred games under my belt already.
Tiny Armies is simplistic but has been a good time waster as of late. Nice that it’s on the Apple Watch too.
Can you explain it a little more? The first screen on the App Store is a mess of icons and it looks unappealing, though I certainly know not to judge just based on that.
So…. You have a tiny army on a square grid against 1-3 AI opponents. You can move horizontally or vertically each turn, but all of your icons move in the same direction. There are obstacles on the map - water, which drowns your guys (no swimming allowed); mountains, which can’t be crossed; plus symbols, which give you another guy; forests, which randomly redirect your troop; and portals, which spit you out in the other portal. Maps are all randomly generated and some have fog of war, which is always fun when you swipe everyone into a heretofore undiscovered ocean lol.
Combat involves merely swiping your troop onto another army’s troop; if you land on them you kill them, and vice versa.
Last man standing wins, and it’s an exercise in strategy and luck. Maps range from small to large; the tutorial maps are very well done. I forget what the price was but I think it was worth it. Again, not a deep game but great for killing time when needed.
I appreciate that because Tiny Armies is on my wishlist, but I was asking @kennfusion to elaborate on Luck Be A Landlord a little more, lol. Sorry for the confusion. If it makes you feel any better I just bought Tiny Armies.
I’m gonna beat Kenn to the punch: the game’s title comes from using the “slot machine” to pay rent in an apartment building. Each symbol is worth some coins, and several of them have synergies that usually trigger when they’re adjacent. For example, a bee gives 1 extra coin when it’s adjacent to a flower, which also gives 1 extra coin. Some symbols destroy other symbols and gain extra coins for doing so, like a cat which gains 9 coins for destroying an adjacent milk.
Rent has to be paid every few spins and the amount keeps going up, so you have to add and remove symbols on your slot machine that help you earn enough coins to make all the payments. Make all 12 payments to win a game and you’ll unlock the next floor, which increases the difficulty. The first few floors make small changes to make the game harder, and it gets more interesting after that.
The reliance on building synergies means the game plays like a deck builder, IMO, but each run is very quick. Well worth the $5 I spent on it.
Too many games, not enough time right now.
On the Xbox, Diablo 4. Despite all the Reddit hate (is there anything but vitriol on that site ffs?) I rather enjoy the game. It’s not perfect, but things rarely are. I think a lot of the complainers look at prior iterations of the series through rose colored glasses, forgetting the utter shitshows they were on first release as well. < looking at you, real money auction house >
Grabbed Armored Core VI, henceforth known as AC6, because From Software (Elden Ring devs) and GIANT CUSTOMIZABLE MECHS. Played for a bit using remote play, got absolutely destroyed by the first tutorial boss in typical From fashion. I blame the shitty Jersey shore WiFi. Also accepting ideas for excuses to use when I still suck on 1gig fiber WiFi.
Very much looking forward to Starfield. Looks fantastic and has spaceships - again, I’m a man of small pleasures. Guaranteed I’ll be awful at the combat and have not nearly enough time to realize the game’s potential. Ah well, at least this one is free on Gamepass.
Attempted multiple times to get physical Wingspan to the table down the shore, but people were either a) disinterested, b) doing puzzles, c) going to the beach, or d) hammered out of their ever loving gourds. Mostly D for the adults, solid A for my children. (Hey siri, remind me to put wingspan on their iPads).
Discovered finity on Apple Arcade, for those that have it. Neat little match-3 with the twist thrown in that you don’t just move a single block, but the whole row or column. Blocks can only be moved a certain amount of times before having rules placed on them, such as only moving vertically or horizontally, and eventually becoming stuck in place. Adds a bit of thinking to it, good sound effects, great tutorials, and pretty colors make for a good light phone game.
Also consistently hurting my brain and self-esteem with the NYT games - spelling bee, Wordle, and the new Connections game which is a lot of fun and will make you feel dumber than you ever have whilst still enjoying yourself.
I’m 20 hours in and Starfield is amazing imho, and it gets better the more I play (playing on Series X).
It’s like Cyberpunk2077 and Interstellar had a baby.
It’s also glorious to look and and listen too.
Despite not having revolutionary individual tech features (besides maybe volumetric fog which is the best I ever seen, even better than Elden Ring one which was my previously favorite, it’s on par with Cyberpunk2077 with RT) graphically it ranges between good looking (like evey game of this scope) and absolutely next gen glorious (most of the time…even the most barren planet can be outstanding to look at expecially at the right time).
I really can’t understand the citics…like the UI…it’s imho absolutely great and I can do everything (and there is a LOT to do) at a single menu/button press.
But maybe having just compelted Elden Ring (where the interface was imho atrocious dspite the game being awesome) it was easy to get accustomed to it.
The sense of space exploration is out of this world too (yes even with the much criticized fast travels).
Yesterday I explored some barren moons just to check some vistas…so I land on this random desert rocky moon with nothing notable just to take a screenshot. 4 hours later I’m still there doing things I won’t spoil, struggling to stay alive…till I decided to RUN to my ship and go back to orbit.
Game starts a bit slow but now all I can think of (I’m at work) is when I’ll play again.
Some gameplay screenshots I took first day of playing on my Series X (took out the interface and added some logos in photo mode, but that’s the game graphic).
What I’ve seen of starfield looks great. Fallout in space (or skyrim in space I guess). What’s not to love, if you’re into those games.
As for the elephant in the room, the buzz I’m getting is that people are unhappy it’s not a space simulation. I don’t think it’s trying to be. It’s trying to be a rpg with a space theme. When we played outer worlds, we weren’t mad when we fast travelled between locations. No one is gonna leave their pc in for weeks while they fly across the galaxy.
If I can be a little controversial, it seems like a lot of star citizen fans are mad they don’t have the game they kickstarted a decade ago, and are taking it out on a game with a similar theme. I think it’s a sunk cost fallacy. They’ve got to keep championing their game because it’s the only way their investment makes sense. I hope star citizen succeeds, but they won’t be getting my money yet (despite them getting another $100 million in funding in the last year somehow)
I can’t compare to previous BGS games because last one I completed was Oblivion too many years ago. I didn’t play Skyrim nor Fallout (just tried Fallout 4 months ago but it was like 1 hour or so).
As for Starfield, it’s definitely an action RPG (with surprisingly great shooting I might add, expecially after you tailor your weapons and skills) and personally I never expected a space simulation like Elite Dangerous or even deeper similar games.
It’s not trivial tough, and I actually LOVE the space part of the game, expecially after I acquired the skill to individually target enemy systems (which you can use to disable enemy engines and then try to board them, which is amazing). I actually LOVE you dont spend hours in the cockpit travelling between systems because it’s not the point of the game and would very boring. (Not to say things don’t happen when you are in space, which is generally when you exit or approach a system).
Space fights are similar to Star Wars Squadrons (slow version): you can shift energy between systems and fire all you have at enemies, using thrusters (which have a perfect middle spot speed to do turns more rapidly, as in Squadrons) and limited boosts.
The real meat of exploration is on planets tough…with you exploring a cave in a barren planet or in a Cyberpunk neon city full of life. And that is top notch.
If I may say, the worst thing in the game is the main hub, which you see almost immediately. I really do not like the look of the main city (expecially compared to the rest)…a plain chirugically clan white city similar to the Mass Effect Citadel (which I didn’t like either), with atrocious early 90 trees. City is very lively and massive, but I really do not like it and this is in stark contrast with the dirty/foggy/dusty/used look of everything else, starting by your ship.
21h in on Starfield and farewell Diablo 4, we knew ye well.
The game is immersive and fun; combat in both space and the ground feels good and I’d agree with all that it’s not a space sim - turn, shoot, manage your systems like in FtL. I enjoy some of the small touches, like all the different ammo in use throughout - you may have a great gun in one area and not be able to find a single round for it on other worlds.
The game isn’t perfect; some dialogue is repetitive and you can see the limits of the procedurally generated worlds after a bit, but at the end of the day it’s a lot of fun and Good Enough.
(Not to mention free on Xbox game pass)
I’ve had no problem shelving Diablo IV. As a solo experience, it probably has more to offer than the previous Diablos but in the end it boils down to the same thing - create a new character and grind levels/gear in areas you’ve played dozens of times. That isn’t a complaint; it’s just the nature of Diablo. One of the reasons I like the series is that I can pick it up and out it down any time. Seasons add to the FOMO a little, but they haven’t offered enough that I feel like I’m going to miss out by not playing.
By God you’re a fickle bunch.
When the last Path of Exile season started, I switched over from D4 and played about what I usually play - around 2 full weeks. This is normal for me for a season. Generally I play up to red maps and around level 80 and then get bored. If the league mechanic is really good, I might play a 2nd character, but not usually. The league mechanic is fun this season and I might go back and play a Ruthless character before the season ends.
I did try to go back to D4 this past week, after returning from 2 weeks traveling on business. I had accidentally activated the battle pass and thought I would try to finish it to 90, but I just can’t do it. Grinding NM dungeons is just not fun. The game is slower than PoE, which is a problem for me. I have to work too hard to kill trash packs in D4. Season 2 starts on the 17th though, so i will pick it back up for a bit next week.
While traveling I find that I play more on my iPad. I even brought my Steamdeck with me and still mostly spent time on my ipad in hotels.
I played a LOT of Hearthstone Battlegrounds in hotels on my iPad Pro while traveling. I actually ended up buying the battle pass for nonsense cosmetics and finished the whole thing on the trip. The new season is a lot of fun with Anomolies which are like global enchants that effect the game state. It really changes things up. I highly recommend trying it out since it is FTP.
Once I finished the battlepass, I switched over to Team Fight Tactics, which also plays well on the iPad Pro. I am still learning that game. I think I have the factions down for the most part, but I don’t know much about equipment optimization yet. But I do enjoy the game. And I am fully FTP there.
I did play on the Steamdeck and since getting home some Soulstone Survivors. This is my favorite of the “survivors” type games. They just added a whole lot of progression stuff to it that is really cool.
Honorable mention goes to Honkai: Star Rail. This is the same company as Genshin Impact, it is very high quality RPG with Turn Based, JRPG style combat. It is a Gacha, but very generous and for the main story the free characters are all fine. I put about a half hour a day into the dailies most days, and then occasionally play longer sessions.
Inkbound - from the creators of Monster Train. Still in EA, but it’s a roguelike with meta progression, so that does not really matter. It answers the question of what happens when you cross Hades with Into the Breach. Works really well.
