#then reloading gets more complicated that most games lack

[violet-dragongirl]

Yep I need to take a break, eat, drink, maybe get tipsy, watch some Lupin III Series 5 and chill for second

#irrelevant babble #...survival simulators are... #I don't regret the addon I have for this Standalone Mod for an old Trilogy... #but jesu fucking texas toast hell christ... #it really made me remember how ammo and mags are two separate systems that work together... #and not a whole lot of games actually like...separate that for immersion like this addon has it #the tedious unloading of drum and large mags is...jfc I forgot how tedious it is #*sigh* I have the discipline for what this game simulates #but also it feels so different from reality...and I haven't done it in real life in ages... #probably why the length of it feels so odd and off in a game #like it's interesting as a game mechanic #then to have each loaded mag as part of an outfit loadout #then reloading gets more complicated that most games lack #which in total makes it worth while in the sense of a survival sim. Just gotta practice the rhythm of it all.... #and not frantically reload after 2 kills with 5 shots gone #I'm still learning the survival ropes of this game and like...it's fun but also REALLY FUCKING FRUSTRATING HOW IS THIS LIKE THIS JESU #Sisyphus laughs at my own self inflicted torment with this game

[springtrappd]

an updated, straightforward guide to modding security breach and its dlc, ruin (including cheats!)

modding fnaf:sb (and by extension, ruin!) is actually pretty simple, but there's a tragic lack of comprehensive text-form guides that actually explain the process -- and a lot of scams out there. so! here's a straightforward guide to modding sb, allowing you to:

freecam

access the debug menu

access the game's console (and associated commands)

...and whatever else you wanna install later!

interested? hit the read more, and we'll get started! (and if you already have modding experience, just skip to the bolded text for the core instructions)

unlike games like minecraft or the sims, sb doesn't allow the user access to its console (and therefore the ability to manipulate the game); it has no native mod support. this means that we need to modify the game's data to allow 1) mods to be installed, 2) console access and 3) restoring the debug menu. depending on what you want to achieve -- simple console access/freecam or loading mods/debug menu access -- the path forward branches a little. i recommend you do both if you want to bend sb to your whims!

part 1: freecam and basic console access

this process does not require any messing with game files, and is thus the easier of the two. since sb is made using unreal engine, by installing the universal unreal unlocker (or uuu), we can 'unlock' access to free camera movement and the game's console menu, allowing the input of various commands. the direct download link is [here].

it'll download as a zip file (UUU3021.zip). extract its content into a separate folder -- you can put it wherever you want, just don't leave it in downloads -- and run UUUClient.exe to open the program. it should look like this:

process refers to the game you're trying to modify by injecting the DLL into it. the dll we're injecting is the default one, so don't touch that; instead, we need to give it a game to manipulate!

now, open security breach. when security breach is running, select it as the process to be injected into.

then, hit inject dll.

then, just let it do its thing! depending on your hardware, it might take a second for it to process everything, but once it's done it'll give you a little pop-up letting you know it's active. if it doesn't work, try the usual troubleshooting gambit (uninstall reinstall, check you're hitting the right buttons, run program as administrator, ask reddit, etc)...

...aaaaand you're done! you can now access the console! it's bound to ` by default, but you can change that in uuu's configuration tab. it should look like this:

(note that it locks your mouse, so you can't move the player character when it's open!)

using this, you can input a whole bunch of commands, most notably:

toggledebugcamera (lets you unlock the camera from the player character. note that since they're still a physical object, they can still die!)

destroy [entity name here] (deletes the entity mentioned)

destroyAll StaffBotSecurityPatrol_C (deletes all security patrol staffbots! note that they respawn when you die or reload an area.)

summon [entity name here] (self-explanatory!)

viewmode unlit (turns off the lighting effects)

and that's it for method 1! if you want a more complete list of commands, you can find one here. if you're satisfied with this, you can stop here, but if you want access to more traditional 'cheats' (like modifying freddy's power level or triggering game events), we're gonna have to do a bit more. so! continuing on:

part 2: unrealmodloader and restoring the debug menu

this one's way, way more complicated. strap in, because we're about to start modifying the game's files itself. as a safety precaution, you may want to back up your save files to a separate location, in case something goes wrong and you need to reinstall the game again; steam doesn't support cloud saves for sb. if you're using steam, you should find them stored in your local files; the directory should be something like C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\fnaf9\Saved\SaveGames. copy those files somewhere else, and you're good to go!

2.1: installing uml

first, we're going to install unrealmodloader (uml); it's gonna let us modify the game's files on our behalf, which saves you a lot of time learning C++. the download link is [here], and you'll need to extract the file (UnrealModLoader_V2.2.1.rar), same as before. since it's a .rar file, your system probably can't extract it naturally, so you can just download something like 7zip. once extracted, it should look like this:

now, run the uml .exe and then run security breach (without uuu). let it do its thing. is everything loading? is the launcher running? good! as things are, we now have a mod loader without any mods to load. so, onto the complicated part:

2.2: editing local files

we're going to be adding kaydax's debug menu to the game. to do this, we need to mess with the game's files a bit. the file directories will be different depending on where and how you've installed the game -- that's what makes this complicated -- but what's inside them should be the same. if you mess up, just uninstall and then reinstall the game again; it won't affect anything that we've done up to this point.

first: download and extract fnaf_sb_debug_menu_unlocker.zip. (that's a direct download link). open it and find the paks folder. that's the only thing we need.

next, open the game's local files. you can do this on steam by going to its library entry, hitting the cog and finding 'browse local files' under 'manage'. if you're not using steam, just go wherever you installed it. it should look like this:

(note: fnaf9 is sb's name in all the files!)

move the paks folder into the content folder. if there's already a paks folder, move the logicmods folder inside it, and if that's already there, just transfer DebugMenu.pak in there yourself. maintaining the file paths is important; if they're broken, the mod won't work.

('coremods' is irrelevant to what we're doing. don't worry about it!)

finally, download the last bit of the debug menu mod from [here]. extract and open it the same as before. this time, we'll be transferring files into the Binaries folder.

move the contents of the Win64 folder (dxgi.dll and Plugins) into your game's Binaries folder. (you shouldn't have to overwrite any existing files, but my memory's fuzzy on that -- my bad! OTL).

and with that, you have now successfully installed kaydax's debug menu enabler! yippee!

2.3: a brief detour

i'm gonna be honest, this next bit's optional, but definitely something you should do for a smoother experience. kaydax's enabler is great, but it comes with some kinks -- like drifting while in flying mode, or not having any keyboard shortcuts. thankfully, this is easy to fix: just download kokosko's enabler [here] and place it in your paks folder. it should now look like this:

(chowda is ruin, don't worry about it)

congrats! there's just one more thing left to do:

2.4: steam settings

head to the game's entry in your steam library, open the Properties menu, and under Launch Options type -dx11. this makes the game open in DirectX 11, and it's likely to crash without it.

and with that, you're done! run uml when security breach is open, and you're ready to go. you can press f1 ingame to open the mod menu (you'll find the debug menu under logicmods), or (provided you've followed step 2.3) you can just press x. however, if you want uml to open automatically, well... yeah, there's more to do. so!

part 3: automating that shit

because nobody has the time for that!

this is technically explained within uml's files itself, but it felt wrong to not include it here. first, navigate to your uml folder, then from Tools to AutoInjector.

the readme.txt explains what to do, but if that doesn't make sense to you, here's the gist:

3.1: copying files

copy the contents of the AutoInjector folder (minus the readme) into sb's win64 folder, located inside the Binaries folder.

3.2: modify the .ini

open ModLoaderInfo.ini (now in your sb folder) using a program like Notepad. you should see something like this:

you need to change this address to the location of your UnrealEngineModLoader.dll. you can do this by navigating to your uml folder, right-clicking the file and selecting copy as path.

save the file and close it. when you run sb, the console should automatically open -- and all of your mods with it!

aaaaand congrats, you're done! you have successfully modded security breach. be aware that the game is extremely fragile and very prone to doing weird shit, so don't worry if it, uh, does that. you can find the ruin-specific part of the debug menu under the 'chowda' tab. (no, i don't know why it's called that. don't ask.)

have fun, and happy security breaching!

if you're interested in more mods to download, you can check out gamebanana or nexusmods.

huge thank you to jestxfot, kaydax and kokosko for their work! make sure to support them if you can. :) also feel free to contact me if anything messes up lmao i'll try to help as best i can

#fnaf #five nights at freddy's #fnaf sb #security breach #fnaf9 #long post #speaking! #HOPE THIS HELPS!! #now updated for ruin!

[midnightmeteora]

2024-MEDIA THREAD-JANUARY

Heyyy, I going to make monthly posts about the media I see throughout the year, just for the fun of it. I want to just vibe around here and blog my opinions on the things I like. Most of the entries are written in the moment. So they may not accurately reflect my thoughts later on. I'm doing this outta fun so don't take me too seriously if you decide to engage :P

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#1.-Horimiya: Piece

I watched the og show with my GF and WE LOVED IT. It's not a complicated romance anime. But that simplicity is so effective. It was a really cozy anime with good chapters dedicated to just teenage love and it's soo good at it. It excels in character so it makes sense to make a companion piece for it dedicated to just the characters… Sadly it didn't grabbed quite the same until the end :/ I think my main issue is just the kinds of stories they chose, many are funny and enjoyable, but the weakest ones are the ones that have little payoff. EP10 for example was kinda dissapointing for me because the payoff didn't resolved the main conflict. Also I really disliked the teacher character, He gets a ton of screentime on the later half and is such a bore. Overall, is fine if you watch it along side the og or after the og but the main show is WAY better.

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#2.-ORAS' national dex

Not really a piece of media per se, but it was a big project that I started last year around february/march and that I left for a while. This is my first National dex completion and I'm honestly quite proud of it. Will admit, I used PKHex and PKSM to transfer mons from my ds and gba save files to fill the entries I needed. But I grabbed them from my own save files + I had help from my Bestie (I also inserted event mons like the mythicals but like, how else was I supposed to get them gdfñsglk). This was quite straightfoward to do since blissey bases streamline grinding SO MUCH. I love ORAS so much and i'm glad this was the game where I got the full nat dex (not a living one but I ain't doing that yet hell nahhh).

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#3.-Given (TV Anime)

Damn great! It was a really short and sweet show. I'm queer myself. But I haven't gotten too deep into queer media yet, so I'm really glad that this was a really nice anime showing MLM in a rather good light. It's very simple but the characters are so loveable and fun to watch. The music side of it takes a while to fully go nuts, but it has a really warm focus and as someone who also loves music. This was inspiring even dslgkj. I'd love to see a second season sometime.

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#4.-Kung Fu Sion (rewatch)

Still one of my favorite movies, I managed to catch up more details and jokes this time so it was a nice chill rewatch lol. I kinda wanna get into more Kung Fu movies after watching Ip-Man last year.

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#5.-Given Movie (2020)

It was really soft and a great followup of the show. I will admit, I'd like it more if it wasn't for the apartment scene being a bit too creepy. It's not the worst but it was very uncomfortable for me. Regardless it was a nice conclusion to one of the unresolved plot threads from the anime. The last part of the movie was so damn sweet man ngl.

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#6.-Persona 3: Spring of birth

Last stop before Reload comes out, I'm quite excited for P3R since the leaked proof of concept. I've already replayed the main game with FES (minus the answer but whatevs). And the movies are going to be my last P3 recap. So for the first one I gotta say, I'm let down. It wasn't horrible. But it felt like an average anime recap movie to me. Its pacing was too fast and I'm quite let down by this decision. Akihiko and Junpei get very shafted in terms of screentime which is sad, because their character flaws are stablished in this part of the story. For this quarter of the main game (which is easily the weakest of the game imo), it would've benefited a ton from a more character focused story. Fuuka got a pretty nice arc compared to the game, but everyone else lacked screentime. The animation and overall style is sick, but I do wished it wasn't so "on model" for most of the runtime and action scenes, it feels a bit rigid at times. Overall, is just a fairly standard recap of the first quarter of P3. 1 down, 3 more to go.

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#7.-Persona 3: Midsummer Knight's dream

WAY BETTER THAN THE FIRST MOVIE. It feels less like a recap, and more like an actual adaptation. It still has a fast pacing, but it isn't as distracting now that the plot always moves foward, with substancial scenes and character moments for almost everyone. I really like how Ken and Shinji were done here, it has a way more personal focus imo. Ken shines way more here than in the og game, his backstory is so well adapted in this film. Shinji is excellent too, they really use every moment he's on screen to show you more of his character and I love it. This whole movie has excellent storytelling and it's a great adaptation of the Ken/Shinji storyline. The only sour spot that distracts me is Makoto, I kinda get what they are trying to do with him. But it doesn't land for me, I wish we saw more of his inner thoughts and monologue, instead of relying so much on his dialogue. Because he lowkey stands with strega on not ending the dark hour (WHICH IS A VERY BOLD MOVE AND I LIKE IT). But he doesn't express said feelings in a compelling or interesting way. I don't mind quiet MC's. But I'm not digging this Makoto thus far tbh. Maybe movie 3 and 4 will change my mind. Also, the animation is a bit better now! It breaks model more often and it feels way more dynamic and fun to look at in action scenes. It isn't perfect, but it's a great improvement!

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#8.-Persona 3: Falling down

MAN THIS WAS SOO GOOOD, So far this is my favorite P3 movie, it was so thematically rich and substancial. Everyone had their moment to shine and the overarching theme of letting go and the fear of attachment was CHEF KISS. Makoto is great in this movie, while I still hold the opinion that he was very flawed in the last two movies, in this one he steals the spotlight. We now see his inner thoughts and feelings. Tying most of the cast resolves to his own struggles is soo good. He essentially becomes THE antithesis of P3, and it's a great way to develop him, we get a good a idea of him as a character while still keeping his quiet and reserved personality. Junpei gets the love he deserves, and just like the game, he has one of the best arcs in this story. I still feel that he was robbed of more because of the first two movies, but in this one he gets the entire spotlight and it's great. My only complain is that Akihiko and Ken do get sidelined a bit, and their resolve isn't as satisfactory as everyone else, since they start the movie already moving on from the aftermath of the last movie. Which can take you out of it because there's no real payoff for their feelings other than that one pawlonia mall scene but I still find it quite underwhelming. One more to go!

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#9.-Lupin the third: The bloodspray of Goemon Ishikawa

I really want to get into more adaptations of Arsene Lupin. And Lupin the Third sounds really promising. I've already seen Castle of Cagliostro a good amount over the past 3 years and I really like the vibes of this franchise. I saw this movie bc one of my friends really liked the animation in one scene and as a Standalone story is neat. But I did felt that I lacked some kind of context and apparently I did. Since this is a whole series apparently. Will return to this one eventually once I have the proper context, regardless it was a fun 50 minute watch.

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#10.-Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness

Ok so I played this game mostly because I want to get a Ribbon master Scizor. It was either getting thru this game once so I can get the Scyther, or playing Colosseum in japanese so I can get Scizor with the E-reader functionality. So not much of a choice but anyways. I mention this because admitedtly, I kinda speedran the game so I was able to transfer my pokemon to my Emerald save file. So I skipped a ton of extra content. Hell most of the time I fainted the Shadow Pokemon because it was easier and I barely change my team. Regardless, I'm still rather dissapointed with this game. I played a bit of colosseum last year and it was ok. It had a neat premise and concepts that I wanted to see more if. I didn't finished it mostly because my emulator config was garbo, but I didn't hated it. It was a very slow paced game with tons of issues like the long battle animations and clunky purification mechanics. But it was an interesting game that I would've completed if I had the means to do so at the time. XD however left me dissapointed because of the premise and story. It was quite dull for me and nothing grabbed my interest. Colosseum wasn't peak fiction or anything. But its premise felt more interesting to me. A rogue pokemon trainer that captures shadow pokemon from evil trainers? Quite the sick concept ngl. XD has a child protag that is sent to do the work of everyone else. It's such a silly thing to critize the narrative of this game solely on the premise. But at the very least colosseum had a better narrative premise that made me interested in watching how the story unfolds. XD feels like your usual Pokemon narrrative, but if it was only focused on the "evil team" Subplot and nothing else, it just doesn't work for me. And because it was so centered on battling dull grunts over and over again, I was very bored throughout the whole game. I could probably have a better opinion after a replay, but as of now I'm dissapointed.

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#11.-Black Rock Shooter OVA (rewatch)

Small rewatch with my gf. I still really live the cozy vibes and the simple, yet effective story. I vastly prefer the 2012 anime (may rewatch soon who knows), but I respect this little OVA a lot. I lovee the animation and I relate a ton with the story. Let's go lesbians.

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12.-Percy Jackson and the Olympians (Disney)

My GF LOVES Percy Jackson, so this was a must watch for both. As an introduction to this series. Is pretty good imo, I might not get everything yet (since it's a slightly abridged retelling of the books according to my GF). But this was a pretty good first season. I really like the main conflict and drama of this first part and I hope it delivers a banger season 2.

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#13.-Persona 3: Winter of Rebirth

F u c k The best P3 movie by far. I literally have no complaints, that was a perfect adaptation of the last story arc of the game. I'm amazed tbh, it was so damn good. These movies got better as they went along. And i'm so glad they didn't stuck with just re-telling the original game like the first movie did. This movie is P3 as a whole, and it embodies the game perfectly. Not much to say dude, it's peak. As of writing Reload has just came out, and sadly I won't be able to get the game on release, but damn am I reallyy looking foward to that first playthrough. Hopefully I will be able to blog it in this year's thread >:3

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If you reached this far thanks, hope u have a good day :]

#Media thread

[caspersenalbrektsen5]

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[gear-project]

I'm going to ask a question that I think some people fear to ask: Why are so many staples of Guilty Gear being stripped and simplified? I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist (because this is just based on emotion than any fact), but it feels like ever since Katano's gotten onboard, several mechanics that have defined GG for ages are being removed or made more generic. If it's not the IKs, it's the lack of personalized rival intros/outros, the removal of Win/Lose quotes, etc.

First and foremost, the 'blame' does not lie solely on Katano's shoulders.

Ishiwatari said in interviews that he wanted a game that could appeal to everyone of all walks of life.

You have to understand the 'logic' behind what that means.

When someone decides to play a game like Guilty Gear (a game they may have never played before), their first expectations might be intrepidation and concern for how difficult it is to get in and play the game.

This, right here, is the fundamental reason why previous Guilty Gear series games were never as popular compared to mainstream fighting games.

Not GG1, not GGX, not GGXX, not Reload, not Isuka, not Accent Core, not GG2, and not even Xrd Sign, or Xrd Revelator 2.

None of these games (not ONE), can be considered a "simple game" to pick up and play.

Even if you explained to a newbie that Rev2 has a "simple 'Stylish' input mode"… that's going to go right over their heads in terms of fundamentals, gameplay concepts, and not only that has a coddling effect on them, meaning they have to learn a completely different way to play the game AFTER they master Stylish Mode.

So, why does a game like Tekken 7 with its "huge movelists" and "complicated inputs" still maintain popularity?

You don't really need to know those things about the game to go in and start mashing buttons and doing things.

That's the primary and fundamental difference.

Take a character like Ky Kiske for example:

He started out with… 5 special moves and 1 Overdrive (excluding his Instant Kill).

But in the transition from GG1 to GGXX, his gamut of normal attack movements (not including his specials and Overdrives) nearly doubled.

Even for a casual button-masher, it was not easy to use him. Some moves required a forward input, others required a jump or a crouch input, and so on.

Now, transition to Accent Core Plus R: looking at Ky's move entries (courtesy of Dustloop Wiki):

43 Entries.

43 moves that a beginner has to learn. For Ky. Not including generic mechanics or matchup knowledge.

Each and every move has their own nuance too.

Most people who play a game like Accent Core play it for "precisely" that reason:

The complexity.

But what do you tell a beginner? Where do you get them to start?

You can't tell them to button mash, because that's not a smart thing to do in this game… it might work on the A.I. sometimes, but not always.

What motivates a player to keep playing, it's usually different for everyone.

For me, it was because I could cancel one move in to another (Gatling combos and Roman Cancels). That was what motivated me.

What Ishiwatari has DONE to Guilty Gear Strive is THIS:

Taken all of the "complexity" and boiled it down to the most "fundamental" things you need to know about a character.

Of course, that's not all he did.

He made it so that Ky could do things and "get away" with things that no other character (but Ky) can do.

The things we need to know about this game are broken down in to smaller, more digestible bites.

And yes, perhaps that has done some "damage" to the matchup meta… perhaps things are lot more homogenized now that 6P dominates the battlefield as a universal anti-air (in most cases), and disjointed hitboxes rule the neutral space.

But let me ask you this:

If you were going to teach someone how to play Guilty Gear for the first time… what game would you pick?

Out of the whole gamut of games that exist… what game would you get them to learn things from?

GG1? Someone laughs every time I bring that game up.

GGX? Maybe for old times' sake, but it's outdated.

GGXX? Even if they learned anything would it apply to other games?

Xrd? There's a ton of people who hate Xrd mechanics.

AC+R? If you have the patience of a saint, maybe.

Let me just say this… in light of everything I have stated… while GGStrive has its shortcomings… some of which are mechanical errors that still need fixing… I do know that a LOT of players are playing Guilty Gear for the first time with this title.

Is it the only Guilty Gear game out there? NOPE!

Can you spend time to learn other GG games? YUP.

Even if the only reason you hate this game is because of Leo Whitefang and his crossups and parries… Leo isn't the only character in the game. And you could even go so far as to counterpick Leo WITH Leo as a mirror match!

So yeah… there's still a lot that needs to be done with Guilty Gear (as a series).

Was ROME built in a DAY? NOPE!

Can ROME still be BUILT? It takes time, passion, patience, and a STRONG WILL TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.

GUTS! As Ishiwatari once said.

#GUTS! #How to like Guilty Gear #Guilty Gear Series #GG4L

[eljackinton]

Jack's End of Year Video Game Round-up.

There were many things I couldn't do this year, being in lockdown and all, which in turn meant I played a hell of a lot more video games than I normally do. Here's a quick rundown of what I thought of them.

Hitman 2

IO have sort of perfected the Hitman formula now, so future entries in the series simply have to ask the question of what new directions you can take that formula. In that regard Hitman 2 is a resounding success, setting sneaking and assassination in scenarios around the world from race tracks to holiday resorts, and thus making it the best entry yet. It's possible one day the Hitman conceit will wear thin, but today is not that day.

Thronebreaker

Most people will go into Thronebreaker just wanting a stand-alone version of the Gwent we played during Witcher 3. Thronebreaker is not that. Indeed, even beyond the changes to the mechanics brought in by the online version, Thronebreaker is more of a puzzle game which uses the mechanics of Gwent to concoct unique scenarios. Still, the story is pretty good and it is fun overall, even if it didn't end up scratching the itch left by Gwent.

Black Mesa (Xen)

I returned to Black Mesa after Xen was finally added, eager to see what the team had come up with. My feelings are complicated. The Xen portions of the game are really well designed, great to play and visually beautiful. However the levels hew so far from the Half-Life originals that it kind of stops feeling like Half-Life. I would have like to have seen a more faithful recreation to be honest.

Neon Struct

If you've been wanting a spiritual sequel to Thief that actually used the mechanics of Thief, here you go. Though low budget, and therefore having somewhat uninspiring visuals based on reused assets, it's still a really impressive game from what the team had to work with, and it's short enough that it doesn't outstay it's welcome.

Acid Spy

I'm generally usually okay at stealth games but this one was well beyond my skill level. Got through the tutorial but just got frustrated and quit on the first mission.

Salting the Earth

A wonderfully put together visual novel about the legacy of war and the nature of national identities. Also you date buff orc women. One of the best VNs I've played, but it does have some pretty bleak potential endings that clash somewhat with the rest of the story's tone.

Hedon

Speaking of buff orc women, Hedon is a vivid, perfectly designed retro-shooter that really uses the most of it's engine to bring it's world to life, with shades of Thief and Strife thrown in there. Wears its hornieness on it's sleeve, but if you can roll with that you'll have nothing but a good time.

The Painscreek Killings

I really really loved this immersive narrative game, where you explore an abandoned town to piece together a series of suspicious deaths. My only gripes are the town looks very British despite being set in the US, and the final confrontation adding a chase scene felt a little over dramatic.

Deus Ex Mankind Divided

There are many problems with Mankind Divided. Trying to find another story to do with Adam Jensen. Making the game more of an open world by taking away the usual Deus Ex globe-trotting. The clumsy use of racial metaphor being applied to cyborgs. All in all the game just didn't really come together, which is a shame, because the DLC showed such promise, and hinted at the real Deus Ex game we could have had.

Warhammer Armageddon DLC

I managed to complete the Salamanders DLC and got stuck near the end of the Blood Angels one. All in all it's simply 'more' of what the base game offered, and I'm not sure it really needed it.

Unavowed

Easily one of the most interesting games I played this year. So good It inspired me to write a cheesy fanfic. Sure the mechanics of applying squad mechanics to a point and click are interesting, but it's the world, the art and the characters themselves that really make this game. Highly recommended.

Devil Daggers

The ultimate distillation of classic shooter mechanics. One platform, one weapon, endless enemies. I didn't get all that far into it and I think most people won't, but I'm not going to complain for the price. Overdue a revisit.

Dream Daddy

A fun and fluffy dating game that actually does a good job of putting you into the mindset of a recently bereaved bisexual dad. Come for the hunks, stay for the really affecting story of a strained relationship between father and daughter.

Greedfall

Greedfall falls short of the mark in most aspects, but I have to give it credit for being one of the few games to give us a Bioware companion-centric adventure during this drought of Bioware games. It lacks the zing of something like Dragon Age, and handles the subject of colonialism really problematically, but if you can get past those issues, it's a fun ride, and a world I'd like to revisit.

Endless Legend

I've been wanting a game to scratch the Alpha Centauri itch for decades now and Endless Legend finally did it. There is a risk of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of unique factions to play, and I know I still haven't really scratched the surface even after 4 full campaigns. Is that a criticism? I suppose it depends if you think you can have too much of a good thing.

Space Hulk Deathwing Enhanced Edition

A valiant effort was put in to make a faithful FPS of the Space Hulk experience, but ultimately it falls far too short. The visuals look great and the game-feel of stomping around as a Space Marine really works, but the game lacks charm and character. Up against Vermintide, there's no comparison.

Sunless Sea

This is a game that feels like a bottomless abyss of secrets and mysteries tied up in a very brutal one-life-only system. I really enjoyed my time with Sunless Seas, with the music calling me like a wailing siren every now and again, yet in many ways I did find it a bit too unforgiving, and it could have benefited from having a bit more of a progression between lives than the almost solid reset it leaves you with.

Age of Empires / 2 / 3 Definitive Editions

The first Age of Empires has an important place in history, but is borderline unplayable by today's standards. Almost every aspect was improved in 2 and going back now feels like trading a car for a horse and cart. It's clear that the game was intending your slow crawl out of the stone age through hunting and gathering to be part of the game in its own right, but today it's just tedious, and the rest of the game is just so slow.

There isn't much to say about Age of Empire 2 that I haven't already said, but I will point out that multiplayer AOE2 has kept me sane over the course of the lockdown, and I'm glad the Definitive Edition enhanced that experience.

Age of Empire 3 tried too hard to reinvent the wheel. Instead of taking 2 and building on it, it instead contorted it around a colonisation theme, and it didn't really work. On top of that, the mechanics really felt they were built more for single-player story missions. The maps are too small, and the expansion factions clash with the rules badly. Still, there is fun to be had, and I'll be checking out the campaigns next year.

Hand of Fate 2

This game takes the original Hand of Fate and adds way, way too much into it. While I appreciate the addition of companions, a longer story mode, and optional side missions, the game is far too experimental with it's formula, and leaves me struggling with complex missions around being lost in a desert or evading barbarian hordes, when all I wanted was a straight forward dungeon crawl. I tapped out two thirds of the way through the campaign.

Wild Guns Reloaded

I love the style and aesthetic, but I just don't have the reflexes (or the gamepad) for these fast paced arcade games.

Vermintide 2 Drakenfels

Fatshark gave us an entire Vermintide campaign for free this year, at the cost of having to be subjected to obnoxious cosmetic micro-tranactions. Hard to say it was worth the price, but Fatshark really do continue to improve, bringing new scope and ideas to every new mission. As good as it gets.

Pendula Swing

A fun little game that apes the visuals of a Baldur's Gate style RPG but the mechanics of a point and click adventure game set in a fantasy version of the roaring twenties. A strong introduction to it's setting but definitely needs building on if we're to see a continuation. A lot of the world-building feels too simple and half-baked at times, and the gameplay feels like too much is going on too fast. Still, a charming story though.

The Shiva / The Blackwell Series

At first I had no idea that Unavowed was connected to a host of other Wadget Eye adventure games, so naturally I had to check them out. I'd known about The Shiva and the Blackwell games for years, but never actually thought about picking them up. Playing them all back to back was a great experience, and almost felt like a prototype to the episodic storytelling many games do today.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light/Temple of Osiris

Guardian of Light is a fun, inventive co-op game for killing some time with a friend. The puzzles are often unique and interesting and get you thinking, and the story, while nothing fantastic, is fun enough to keep you interested and have a laugh about with your co-op partner in a B-Movie kind of way. Temple of Osiris adds way too much to the formula, with more characters, mechanics and more open exploration and it absolutely loses the charm of the first game, and even then it's buggy as hell. Skip the second one.

Command and Conquer Remastered

Big chunks of my childhood are taken up with memories of playing Command and Conquer and Red Alert, so it's difficult to really gauge my thoughts on the remaster. On the one hand the art direction looks great and preserves the feel of the original, and the quality of life improvements to the gameplay help make it more playable. The nostalgia hit is also palpable. That being said, the mechanics have not aged all that well, with much of the game being far, far too hard. Probably the best way to experience the genesis of the RTS genre but just know what you're getting in for.

Superhot Mind Control Delete

I wrote a lot at length about how unsure I was about Mind Control Delete at the time, and that's because it does feel a little unsure about itself. Is it a continuation of the first game? A fun bonus mode? A mediation on the nature of addiction? A critique of video game content? A joke on the player? I don't know, but I do know one thing, and that is that Superhot is still as addictive as hell.

Opus Magnum

Zachtronic's steampunk alchemy game requires far too much maths brain than I am capable of , and so I had to rely on guides a lot of the time, but that being said, it's still amazingly put together and vividly presented. Really feels like a game that could be used in schools.

Necromunda Underhive Wars (Story Mode)

I'll be checking out Underhive's Campaign mode in the new year, but for now I just want to talk about the story mode. Much like Mordheim, this is a game that's not going to work for everyone, but I really dug it and like it's unique take on a squad based TBS. However, in many respects the game does feel like a missed opportunity. The storyline is fun enough, and the arsenal robust, but much of the character of the tabletop game, the weird, chaotic, and sometimes comical things that can happen over the course of a battle seems to have been lost in translation, as has the quirky character to a lot of the gangs.  

Outer Wilds

There is little I can say about Outer Wilds that hasn't already been said by others, particularly that one should go into the game as blind as possible. A beautiful piece of interactive art, words would fail me in describing it anyway.

Life is Strange 2

Fantastically written, amazingly animated, wonderfully acted, and grim and depressing as all hell. I really love Life is Strange 2, but it it a tough game to bare witness to, especially in 2020. It treats it's subject matter with great maturity, but is so dark it's hard to motivate yourself to continue each gruelling episode. Also, I really think it would have fared better if it had not named itself Life is Strange 2, as not following Max and Chloe turned a lot of people away from a game I think they'd have otherwise enjoyed if they'd named it Wolf Brothers or something.

Half Life 2 / Episodes / Portal / 2/ Mel

After playing Black Mesa earlier this year I decided to revisit the entire Half Life 2 and Portal series. What I concluded is that Half Life 2 is not really all that good. A well told story wrapped around weak combat and average encounter design. This much improves across the episodes of course, but in the end I rather feel Half Life 2 is pretty overrated.

Portal, on the other hand, still feels fresh, though I was surprised I'd forgotten just how much was added in Portal 2, to the point Portal feels more like a game demo. That being said, I think the slowly growing mystery and menace of Portal has aged a lot better than the gagfest the series became with 2. Mel, a stand-alone mod that feels like could be a Portal 3 in it's own right, returns to a more serious tone, and feels all the stronger because of it.

Control

Control has gone from a game I didn't really care about all that much to one of my favourites of the year, if not the decade. Sure there are criticisms I could make, but the world has so much depth, the characters so much potential, and the gameplay such perfectly designed chaos, that it wouldn't really matter. A great time was had.

Icewind Dale 2

Finishing Icewind Dale 2 was the final banishing of the old ghosts of Infinity Engine games I never finished as a kid. Sure there was the nostalgia, but Icewind Dale 2 also feels prefect for the Baldurs Gate era's swan song. Beautiful environments, a well written story and great interface and design, only pulled down due to some overly long busywork at various points and the plot being dragged on a little too long. Still, sad to know I have no further Infinity Engine games left to conquer.

Elsinore

The first half of Elsinore is an absolutely great time-loop mystery, which seems to be an interesting interrogation of Shakespearian tropes and asks the question of how much of a Shakespearian tragedy remains the more you change it. The second half, however, quickly devolves into a cosmic horror story that feels a poor fit for the genre and far too grim for the art style, and that's even before it basically devolves into trying to do the same thing Undertale did but worse. A well put together game whose ending did not sit well with me.

Gwent: The Witcher Card Game

Since Thronebreaker didn't sate my appetite I started playing competitive Gwent. It is a wholly different game than the one that appears in The Wither 3, but is certainly fascinating in it's own right. After 200 hours I am officially addicted, somebody please send help.

And that's that. Not doing a top 5 games of the year because I played too many this year and I've spent too much time thinking about them already. Here's hoping I play less in 2021 and can get back to a more normal life.

#video games

[tibbinswrites]

Suptober Day 19 - Hotels/Motels

Dean closed the door of the motel room behind him and dropped his bags. He’d gotten a twin room out of habit, although Sam was all the way over in Arkansas on another case and Cas had gone with him. Dean’s case looked like a fairly straightforward one, if a bit witchy for his taste, so Rowena was going to meet with him for interviews the next day. She had point-blank refused to meet at his motel room however so he had to go to her, which would be uncomfortable for everyone involved as her place was a five-star hotel in the wealthy part of town and although Dean would be wearing a suit, it was obvious to anyone who knew what they were looking at that it was a cheap one.

He flopped onto the bed nearest the door and then grunted with pain as an errant spring dug up into his ribs. The mattress was barely worthy of the name and he missed his memory foam. The bunker had spoiled him, having a room for the night had been a luxury growing up; for every night John had left them in a motel there were two spent in the backseat of the impala, which got gradually more cramped, especially when Sam hit his growth spurt in his teens.

They all blurred into each other, motel rooms. They were like Biggerson’s, close all the blinds and you could be anywhere. The décor was generic (unless you went to a specifically themed place but that was a whole other ball game), off-white walls, threadbare carpet, linoleum to mark where the kitchenette began, a single framed picture over each bed of a forest or a ship at sea. The chairs were straight-backed and wooden, the sofa had caved in on either side from the weight of so many asses, the TV reception was shoddy, as was the wi-fi, and it was ten to one that the heater was broken. Everything had stains of some kind, the kinds of stains that you could easily ignore if you were only stopping the night, but that once you noticed, you could never un-notice.

Dean had made a game out of this; he and Sam would search the whole room to find the stain with the weirdest shape (the record was Sam’s find in Winnipeg, which had been a creepily specific brown splat that looked exactly like a huge spider, the two weeks they’d stayed in that motel, Dean had had to step on the thing every morning before Sam would come anywhere near the kitchen).

Dean had never really decided if he liked motels or not. He liked the anonymity. No questions asked if you rocked up covered in grave dirt at four in the morning, and if you trashed the place because a werewolf crashed through the window or you had to paint an angel-banishing sigil on the wall that you couldn’t quite erase later… well the room probably needed a do-over anyway. Cash in hand, an illegible scribble on a piece of paper and a ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the door and you had your very own disposable base of operations. The practicality was a big plus. He also liked the noise of it, neighbours rowing, cars pulling in off the interstate, phone alarms blaring, doors opening and closing, pipes gurgling, kids throwing tantrums and beds creaking, even Sam’s breathing from the next bed; they weren’t the most soothing sounds true, but he’d grown up hearing them. Noise to him was safer than quiet, noise was distracting and it meant other people. Dean liked to be reminded that there were other people around sometimes, people who didn’t need saving right that minute, people who had no idea that there were monsters in town. Other people just passing through, on road trips with their families or having one night stands, or travelling for work; people just living. Also, magic fingers, he liked the magic fingers.

But there were many things he didn’t like about motels too; he didn’t like how each one was different enough to never really feel familiar; he didn’t like that sometimes he’d wake up and couldn’t remember if he was in Connecticut or Boston. He didn’t like the tiny bottles of liquor in the mini-fridge and after having had his own fully-equipped kitchen for the past several years, he didn’t like not being able to make anything more complicated than Weetabix. He didn’t like that he never felt clean. Even if he scrubbed down the shower himself before he used it, the fluctuating pressure or hot water or sometimes just the feel of it was wrong on his skin and he emerged feeling dirtier than he had going in.

Maybe he was getting too old for motels. The bunker was home to him now, and even the quiet and the lack of windows and the military-hard style of the place had grown comfortable. He was settled there, he had his own room. Two rooms really since he’d converted the Dean-cave.

He rolled off the spring and into a dip that almost landed him on the floor. Grumbling, he struggled to sit and unlaced his boots and pull them off before switching over to the other bed, testing it out with a couple of bounces. It wasn’t quite as bad as the other one so it would do. He was too tired to bother with brushing his teeth or undressing. It had been a long, drive from the bunker, just him and Baby and his tapes. He’d enjoyed most of it, he could sing as loud as he wanted, stop for chilli fries just ’cause, inch the speedometer over 90 on an empty highway without Sam throwing a bitch fit.

He laid down and blinked at the ceiling, then he squinted. A stain, well… two stains that had merged into an image of wings, spread wide, feathers distinct. Dean smiled. Then pulled out his phone and snapped a picture to send to Sam, that had to be a contender.

He stared at the wings looking down on him a little longer before rolling over, suddenly feeling the weight of his aloneness. It wasn’t that impressive after all. He got that at home too.

@winchester-reload

If you liked this, please consider buying me a coffee.

#suptober #suptoberart2019 #day 19 #motels #spn fanfic #prompt #writing #TibbinsWrites

[argentdandelion]

Why You Should Read: The Anomaly

Introduction & Disclaimers

The Anomaly, by Coffeelemental, is simultaneously the "Saturday Morning Cartoon of Undertale sequels" and the Sistine Chapel of Undertale fan comics in its tone, dedication, polish and detail.

(In this work, Frisk is referred to as “she”. As such, the review will refer to Frisk with corresponding pronouns. The comic also has a major character death, in case one really, really dislikes that. The following review may contain minor spoilers.)

Art

Few other comics compare to its consistent precision, polish, and detail. That said, The Anomaly's sheer amount of content (128 pages, five playable segments, several lore posts and a few animations) and dedication over the years (it started on June 19, 2016) makes the work incredible even among those few.

Its great attention to detail and polish is especially obvious because of all its human characters. Many find humans hard to draw properly: there are so many ways they can look “off”. Yet, even in the comic's relatively crude early pages, humans have perfect proportions and poses. More impressive still is how Coffeelemental draws perfect humanlike anatomy (e.g., humanlike hands) even for characters where she could easily dodge the challenge.

What the Sistine Chapel does not have: a before-and-after (left and right) comparison of turtles in business suits.

In short, The Anomaly is basically the Sistine Chapel of long-form Undertale comics. As Coffelemental points out herself, in the first fourteen pages quality and style varies. But she improves very quickly: there's a jump in quality at Page 9, and it just keeps getting better.

As per its realism/detail, characters look somewhat more biologically plausible and, for lack of a better word, more monstrous or bestial. Undyne has scales in some places, as well as (this may come as a shock) a nose, though in most shots her face is largely flat with slit-like nostrils like Lord Voldemort. (well, some fish do have tiny nostrils.)

Indeed, as impressive as it is, its stylistic approach is so unique it takes some time to get used to. Furthermore, it seems the sheer dedication to precision and detail has its downsides. In Coffeelemental’s first animation attempt, she had to slightly simplify and adjust the antagonists' designs just to make animation possible, and then she could only do it in choppy 15 FPS (frames per second).

While its overall quality is rather consistent, the style/format shifts in tone. Akin to the original Teen Titans' anime-like exaggerations, characters are drawn in a simple style for comic effect a few times.

One particularly stylish element is how Coffeelemental blends in-game mechanics (such as literal buttons) with a somewhat more realistic style and tone. Referencing how battles in Undertale are in black-and-white, the pages are monochrome when Frisk resolves conflicts. Indeed, as it’s revealed later, Frisk can only see in black-and-white ever since falling into the Underground.

Plot & Themes

“Frisk is using her personal control of the timeline to ensure monsters have a peaceful return to the surface world – but the seven who sealed them underground in the first place have some problems with this.” - The Anomaly’s About page

It's clear The Anomaly's plot is carefully planned out, as is suitable for a work of its length. That most of the work takes place after an eight-year time skip, its mentions of other timelines, and its timeline-jumping might seem like risks to a simple, comprehensible plot: it's certainly complicated other works' plots. Nonetheless, in The Anomaly these are kept balanced, leading to a plot that's the perfect blend of simplicity and complexity.

(Pre-game foreshadowing, from this page. If one looks closely, the brown goat has barely visible pink blush stickers...just like Chara. Art by Coffeelemental)

In the comic itself as well as the game, there's foreshadowing aplenty---even for the events of the game itself. One of the playable segments is even an entertaining flashback sequence in itself.

Sometimes consequences are delayed across pages; characters make plans to deal with other characters later. Given the antagonists are immune to reload-related memory loss just like Frisk, they must resort to stealth, trickery and subterfuge when interacting with her.

As befitting a work with several immortal characters, it has extensive historical lore, contextualizing the human-monster conflict and immortal characters' motives. One piece of lore even neatly resolves one big problem in the game’s background: if humans can’t use magic, how did “humanity’s seven greatest magicians” create the Barrier?

The story brings up intriguing questions and mysteries. Why are monsters losing access to their magic? What is the mysterious thing connected to Frisk? Some have been resolved at time of writing, and others have been resolved in a fascinating way that just leads to more intrigue.

While some of The Anomaly's themes (e.g., "With great power [over time] comes great responsibility") are pretty common in Undertale works with a Frisk-based, Post-Pacifist timeline premise, The Anomaly nonetheless deals with those themes in an interesting way. Its biggest theme is "Are you [Frisk] strong enough to protect humanity?"

The theme is manifold. Frisk feels obligated to protect monsters (and humans) from human-monster conflicts, but a secret confidant worries the pressure of her role is mentally running her ragged. Then there's moral strength: as the antagonists fear, despite her goody-two-shoes persona Frisk has used her power for evil, selfish, frivolous or just silly ends a few times. (e.g., flirts and jokes backfiring and leaving others aghast)

Characterization

The characterization is so widespread, so outstanding, that the reviewer figuratively can’t say enough good things about it. (But, literally, will have to do so, or this post will get awfully long)

From the first playable part. Note Undyne's higher LV. Also note she eventually joined the U.S. Coast Guard (which is technically military) here sometime eight years after the Pacifist ending, so whether she gained the LV then or earlier is ambiguous.

Characters from the game itself hew closely to their original, nuanced personalities. (This is especially remarkable for Sans, given how often his character is distorted or misinterpreted in the fandom.) It pays attention to even tiny, easily-missed quirks and variations, such as the fact Sans always takes Frisk out to eat before a serious talk (Genocide Route aside) and Undyne’s military(-esque) background and combative nature. Like in-game, characters have “portraits” when talking in the playable segments, but these ones are small full-color digital paintings with a wide array of expressions.

Many works give Frisk an undefined or pretty bland personality and background. That's easy to do, given Frisk's ever-neutral expression, rare and indirect dialogue, and only faint hints of personal preferences. Yet, in The Anomaly, Coffeelemental made the rare choice of giving Frisk a particular ethnicity and background, vague it is. (Her entire pre-Underground backstory is told within two pages) It contextualizes why Frisk was such a goody two-shoes pacifist from an early age, that one (spoilers) timeline deviation aside.

Speaking of Frisk's friendly and pacifistic ways, while Frisk is indeed as described, it's not her whole personality. Though playful, flirty and, well, “frisky”, she feels responsible for the safety and happiness of a people she brought above-ground, and has kept her role as a “time-space hero” secret. Her duty has made her something of a control freak; after a major character death she rewinds time to prevent the most minor of conflicts. But that absolute control over the timeline may yet corrupt her: she selfishly reloaded just to fix a bad grade on a test.

The Anomaly is impressive not only for its seven antagonists at once working together, but for them all having distinct personalities, approaches, and relationships with each other. Though they broadly agree on particular courses of actions, their motives and level of monster sympathy differ. Regardless of their species, it's remarkable just how humanized they are as villains.

Playable Sections

At a few points in The Anomaly, Coffeelemental chooses to convey the story in a way that is “hopefully more fun and more practical than using a comic format”. Namely, in playable downloadable games.

At time of writing, it has five playable sections. While the reviewer, unfortunately, cannot play the playable sections (the reviewer's computer is rather old), I’ve seen playthroughs on YouTube. The level of characterization, worldbuilding and general atmosphere in this playable segments are excellent. It adds lovely details that simply wouldn’t fit into a comic within a playable narrative.

The author says she’s chosen speed over polish for the sake of regular updates; nonetheless, they are impressive. Four of these sections even have a turn-based battle system, and two are so in-depth they take an hour to fully explore.

Coffeelemental says she tried really hard to emulate Toby Fox’s style and sense of humor...and she succeeded. The quirks and jokes in things like item descriptions would fit right in. Indeed, when looking out the window in the first playable section, one gets the famous phrase “It’s beautiful day outside”, in a non-threatening context, long before Toby Fox did the same thing in Deltarune.

While Coffeelemental didn’t make the music for these segments, she nonetheless curated the music for the playable segments well. Often music from Undertale is used, but for situations where Toby Fox’s music doesn’t suit the situation, she’s contacted composers.

Conclusion

This gem of a multimedia work seems rather under-appreciated on Tumblr itself, or even its dedicated YouTube channel. Truly, it boggles the mind to wonder how a long-running work of such quality could stay obscure.

#Undertale #Undertale Comic #The Anomaly #Coffeelemental

[khtrinityftw]

The Good, The Bad, and the Cards - A Brief Look Back at KH: Chain of Memories

It’s been 15 years since Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories was released, and while I adore this game, I want to look back and highlight 7 specific elements worthy of praise that still hold up to this day and 7 specific elements that aren’t so good and helped derail the KH franchise going forward, the “Franchise Original Sins” as it were. So without further ado, here they are:

Positive: The Card Map System - I really love the usage of cards when it comes to exploring each world. Through the different cards, you get to create your own customized dungeon to crawl through, and the incentive to battle in order to collect cards you need to progress further in the level is a good one.

Negative: The Card Battle System - Unfortunately, using cards in combat isn’t done nearly as smoothly, and they complicate battles way more than they should. This is especially bad in the original GBA version of the game, where the cards are hard to make out on the small screen and the tiny, cramped arenas that you fight in make it all too easy to get backed into a corner while trying to shuffle through or reload your deck. This game could’ve done better.

Positive: Sora’s Story - The main scenario of the game is superbly written by Daisuke Watanabe. Like I said in my video review, he took what he was given, which was virtually nothing, and turned it into something. Sora’s character has never been explored in as much depth as it is here, with all of his raw strengths and weaknesses on full display. His bond of friendship with Donald and Goofy, his strong romantic interest in Kairi, his tortured clashing with “Riku”, his animosity toward Organization XIII, and the interactions he has with Namine toward the end are all handled perfectly. It really reminds you of just why you love this guy.

Negative: Riku’s Story - Reverse/Rebirth, otoh, doesn’t hold up so well. It tries its best to give Riku good character development, but too much of it is focused on practically everyone but Riku, the lack of anything occurring in the Disney worlds means that the story feels too light on content, and the conclusion Riku’s character is ultimately brought to contradicts what was established in the original KH and only creates further problems down the line. What’s more, this was the start of forcing Riku down our throats as the deuteragonist of the series, which is a role he was never suited for and that he only gets worse in overtime. So yeah, not a fan.

Positive: Organization XIII - Primarily the members introduced in Sora’s story; Lexaeus and Zexion are more useful as plot devices than as characters. Not only are Axel, Larxene, Vexen and Marluxia all excellent villains in their own ways, but the villainous arc they are part of is the best-written one in any KH game. Watching them work off each other and against each other in this dark but easy to follow political intrigue plot is one of the game’s highest points.

Negative: The Riku Replica - Don’t get me wrong, this was a decent character with a decent arc, but the execution was way too over-the-top and overstayed its welcome. Between Sora and Riku’s story, you have to fight this asshole six times! That’s just ridiculous for any boss in any game! And then there’s what the whole “replica” concept he introduced was used for in subsequent games, since Nomura just loves taking the simple and making it convoluted.

Positive: The GBA Graphics - This is one of the best-looking GBA games ever, hands-down. The fact that full cutscenes with PS2-style graphics were actually able to fit on the cartridge is simply incredible, and Square should really be commended for pushing the system to its absolute limits.

Negative: Console Spread - COM marked the first time that a KH game was put on an entirely different console than before, being a GBA game released and set in between two PS2 games. This wasn’t too much of a problem back then, since COM was only needed to fully understand the purposefully confusing prologue of KH2 and it ended up getting a PS2 remake anyway. But after a while, the sheer amount of consoles that KH spin-off games that are necessary to understand KH3′s story with became ridiculous. At this point, the only way you can actually get the full KH series is to own a PS4. If you don’t, then you’re out of luck.

Positive: Disney Expansion - Because this game re-uses Disney characters and worlds from the original KH, Daisuke Watanabe got to expand on things that weren’t really delved into in that game. We get more on Aladdin’s character, more on Alice’s character, more on Peter Pan and Wendy’s characters, more on Belle and the Beast’s characters and relationship…and perhaps most notable of all, more on Jiminy Cricket’s character. The Disney worlds and characters that we saw in KH are all enriched by their memory-based appearances.

Negative: An Influx of OCs - The original KH only had four original characters: Sora, Riku, Kairi and Ansem (five if you are counting Xemnas from Final Mix). COM introduced nine new ones: Namine, Axel, Larxene, Marluxia, Vexen, Lexaeus, Zexion, Riku Replica, and DiZ. Again, this wasn’t a problem with the game back then, especially seeing as two-thirds of those characters get axed before the game is through. But it started the trend of Nomura introducing way too much OCs that come to overshadow all the Disney and FF characters. Worse still, he refuses to truly let any of them go, as all six of those dead characters end up coming back to life later on, as do the two who went on to perish in KH2. This results in an overly cluttered canvas by KH3, to the point where no FF characters can appear.

Positive: Set-up for KH2 - This game’s existence did for KH2 what the later Dream Drop Distance should have done for KH3 but didn’t: it effectively set the stage for the following game. It gave all of the necessary foreshadowing for things like Nobodies, the Organization’s true goal, Xemnas, Roxas, Twilight Town, Namine being Kairi’s Nobody, and DiZ being the true Ansem while the Ansem we knew being an impostor. It also removed five members of the Organization from the board, with the sixth slated for removal in KH2′s prologue, which left the villain roster at a much more manageable number for the game’s main scenario. COM truly feels like the middle installment of a trilogy: the shit that happens in it actually matters.

Negative: Too Much Rehash from KH1 - There is so much from the original KH that is on repeat in COM. Beyond the same Disney worlds and characters being re-used, the stories in those worlds and with those characters match the original KH’s beat for beat, except with themes of memory inserted in and all context to the larger narrative removed so that they feel like filler. Both recycling from the first KH and Disney world visits being filler were not so bad in this game, but when it kept happening throughout the rest of the series, players grew sick of it. Furthermore, beats from the first KH still transpire in the main storyline of the game: Namine is in a role like Kairi’s, the Riku Replica is in a role like Riku’s, Marlxuia is in a role like both Maleficent and Ansem while Ansem himself comes back for more fun darkness times in Riku’s story, and we get sequences of Sora being separated from Donald and Goofy (this time it’s flipped and he’s the one who turns on them), the trio making an “All for One, One for All” promise as they put their hands on one another, and Sora making a promise with Namine that has Kairi’s good luck charm at the center of it. It’s all a little too much familiarity.

Positive: Atmosphere - As much as this game rehashes the previous one, it has a markedly different tone. It’s darker, more foreboding, more eerie, more psychological and uncertain. The white walls of Castle Oblivion and the creepy music playing as you go through them floor by floor really helps to sell this, as does a lot of the dialogue, memory-based insights into the characters’ hearts, and twisted machinations of the villains. It makes COM, well, memorable.

Negative: Convoluted Writing - That’s right, it all starts here. The writing for the original KH was smart enough to not actively dwell on the more ponderous elements of its story, keeping the narrative to a simple presentation while leaving the deeper lore as stuff for the player to think and speculate about it on their own. But in this game, it starts getting pushed to the forefront. Memory and darkness are the central themes of Sora and Riku’s story respectively, and yet neither of them quite make sense the way they’re explored. Memory is repeatedly said to be an aspect of the heart, to the point where removing it altogether would shatter a person’s heart completely. Except that this is not only confusing to basic logic that says memory is an aspect of the mind, but it gets contradicted by the following game, KH2, where it states that Nobodies that have no hearts act upon the memories of when they had hearts. Then we have Namine’s powers and how it relates to memories, which is nebulously defined here and ends up ballooning to ludicrous godlike degrees in order to make certain plot turns happen in later games, and you end up retroactively questioning why she didn’t just fuck with the Organization’s memories and shatter them in order to escape captivity all by herself.

Meanwhile, darkness is completely rewritten so that it can be a good thing if Riku isn’t afraid of it and uses it for a good cause...except that this is literally what he did in the first KH and it corrupted him. Darkness was unambiguously bad and something that should not be used in that game, but now it’s being revamped just to make Riku into a special snowflake with uber-awesome darkness powers. Future games continue going back and forth on darkness on whether it’s good, bad or neutral, whether it’s a natural force that needs to co-exist with light or whether it’s the source of all evil in the universe. And I again must remind you that this is only the start of how convoluted the series gets with its stories! By KH3, the series has become an absolute clusterfuck where nothing really makes sense or amounts to anything. There’s no real depth anymore, just pretentious nonsense that Nomura confuses for depth.

[doom-eternal-pc-download]

Doom Eternal Pc Download

Doom Eternal Pc Download Installer

The Doom match from 2016 is not only a single of the greatest initial-man or woman shooters at any time, but also one of the most astonishing reboots. Following about 15 minutes of stay battle our time was up, and we still left the demo unit charged up. Our time with Doom Everlasting Doom Eternal Pc Download Free was adrenaline incarnate, its frenetic motion and pounding weighty steel soundtrack made us come to feel unstoppable. Every single shot, every chainsaw, and every punch gave us a jolt of pure vitality, and we could not get ample.

When Doom Everlasting launches in 2020 it will give players the alternative to enjoy with centred weapons (by means of PCGamer ). This vintage weapon see, from a time ahead of crosshairs and accurate purpose with a mouse, was patched into the 2016 Doom following start but Doom Eternal will have it in the options menu from the outset. It truly is not an effortless way to purpose by any means but it retains nostalgic attraction for gamers who keep in mind enjoying some of the earliest FPS titles, like the classic Doom video games.

Publisher Bethesda Softworks declared the recreation at Digital Leisure Expo 2018 , with the first gameplay footage getting unveiled at QuakeCon 2018. The recreation is established to be released for Microsoft Home windows , PlayStation four , Nintendo Swap and Xbox One seven In 2019, it was declared that Doom Eternal would come Doom Eternal Pc Download For Free to Google 's Stadia streaming platform. eight The match is being produced by id Application with the Nintendo Swap model currently being designed by Worry Button 5 Marty Stratton and Hugo Martin the two returned to serve as the game's directors.

Kate: So poorly. This was my initial playtest for DOOM Eternal and locating a harmony amongst ripping and tearing or skillshots was tough at 1st. Luckily, the tutorial gave me the weak spots on the heavys but at the identical time, the capability to exploit these points is incredibly difficult when you might be not employed to dashing about and retaining on the go. If I stopped aim via my scope I received easily overwhelmed and relied on my 1Ups to get me via Doom Eternal Pc Download For Free the stage, hoping I wouldn't have to reload to the checkpoint. But I cherished this obstacle. It pushed me to pay out interest, be engaged, and in the end how to use my setting. By the finish of the thirty-minutes, I was having time to system, to shoot under, or to just offer with the lesser demons in the mob ahead of taking on the weighty. This game is going to frustrate people, and while it does not hold your hand, it does light the way for you to succeed.

Numerous new guns that are generating a return in Doom Eternal appear with some apparent updates. The trusty double barrel shotgun was revealed in depth and comes with a blade beneath the cannon. Doom Eternal would seem to boast a huge range in it's Doom Eternal Pc Download For Free weapons, from assault rifles, enormous rocket launchers, and different shotguns. During the last trailer a substantial energy sword was teased, which guarantees to make the Doom Slayer come to feel even a lot more potent than ahead of.

Doom Eternal Gameplay

Doom, id Software's rethink of its traditional shooter franchise for Computer, PlayStation four and Xbox One particular, comes Friday in a flurry of hellfire, gibbets and other eviscerated miscellany. And so, that delivers us to DOOM. In this wonderfully puzzling entire world we live in, like so a lot of other video doom eternal games these days DOOM shares its title with the first recreation with no variety to signify if it is a sequel or reboot or something else. In DOOM's situation, it truly is considered to be a reboot of the franchise and bargains with the demon invasion of Mars.

The customization element from multiplayer returns, but instead than syncing your Doom Maritime from that method, you need to unlock almost everything from scratch, this time utilizing an in-match forex that normally takes forever to obtain any first rate sum of. I gave up swiftly simply because it was just cumbersome to consider to do this, specifically when you want that currency to unlock images to create your map thumbnail as effectively, which is clearly critical to make your map noticed and played. but hey, at minimum you get to see your Doom Maritime this time, as opposed to the multiplayer. It's a disgrace that what was supposed to be the large innovative factor of DOOM instead grew to become a weak recreation of the 2005 DOOM boardgame alternatively, which in fact supplied more comprehensive map generating.

The soundtrack by composer Mick Gordon also stood out for offering a wonderful combination of themes. There are musical cues from the original DOOM, tons of rock and metal affect and even some darker parts that somewhat remind me of Trent Reznor's perform doom eternal on the first Quake all appear jointly to make a really atmospheric rating that will probably stop up on my playlist.

In common, players just die too quickly. It is not just an problem of the demons undertaking it in a single hit, but fairly a lot any weapon will get rid of any participant, regardless of well being or electrical power-ups, in two-three seconds. There is no feeling of a combat likely on among gamers, just whoever gets their gotcha” moment initial takes home the destroy, not like prior Id Computer software designed arena shooters the place Doom Eternal you could consider a punch and still push your way via a battle to victory if you experienced the skill for it. It feels more like a bathroom-normal army shooter exactly where you require quick reasonable kills than it does DOOM, include that in with the earlier mentioned issue about not getting ready to tell how considerably you might be getting hit owing to a lack of effect and you have a truly unsatisfying experience.

Whilst Doom arrives with multiplayer, the campaign is the place it shines, in a pleasing inversion of the common dynamic of contemporary shooters. It wastes no time. In seconds, there is a gun in your hand and a lab of possessed researchers bearing down upon you. (That is is the collective phrase for researchers, appropriate: a lab?) It truly is a much cry from the plodding, tale-laden commence of Doom 3 alternatively of investing the initial twenty minutes chatting to NPCs, getting Doom Eternal led through a mining facility, and usually getting bored, it throws you right into the action. You can engage in on an less complicated location with tutorial popups, or on a a lot more challenging setting with none at all. id understands its audience nicely ample to believe in that a great deal of individuals know what Doom is without the need for a primer on blasting factors into globules.

#Doom Eternal Pc Download #Doom Eternal Pc Download For Free #Doom Eternal

[thesportssoundoff]

When the inevitable happens, these will determine who the Cowboys next coach is.

Joey

December 2nd, 2019

When Jerry Jones stood outside a shouting and volatile Cowboys locker room, media onlookers said the proud owner had tears in his eyes. He spoke with absolute confidence in Jason Garrett and uttered the famous line that the only man who could take them to where he believed this team could go (That's the Super Bowl, fellas) was Jason Garrett. That's....actually true. If the Cowboys have any chance, as slim as it may be, to win the Super Bowl it's not going to become an actuality with an interim head coach. It's especially not going to come with no obvious choice on staff as Kris Richard's defense has fallen apart, Rod Marinelli has an endless loyalty to Jason Garrett (and his defensive line is not wowing anybody either), Kellen Moore is in his first year calling plays for a slumping offense and no obvious other choice on the offensive side of the ball. If there's any chance of any sort of post season success, it will lay with Jason Garrett and Jason Garrett only.

Having said that, understand that that comment is less about a faith in Jason Garrett and more about an obvious lack of options. If Jerry Jones or Stephen Jones or Will McClay felt as though they had an option in house, Garrett is probably gone around the Minnesota game when he held a private meeting with the players to fend off a potential revolt. Jerry Jones spoke of his confidence in Jason Garrett but it almost reeked of past tense. It came off like a guy whistfully battling reality while embracing the painful truth. Like a friend in a coma, Jerry spoke optimistically but with the pangs in his voice that this was over. From 2009 until 2019, Jerry held a belief that he had found his own homegrown head coach who would be the successor to the Landry and early 90s era of consistent coaching. Jason Garrett wasn't the guy and no amount of willing, no amount of coddling and no amount of firing him up will get him to where Jerry believed he would be. This marriage is just about done and it's all over but the crying, the paperwork and figuring out who gets to keep the dog. The Garrett Era will be a complicated one; underrated in terms of actual results (he has one season under .500 and led the Cowboys to their first actual success in the playoffs since the Chan Gailey one off in 1999 or so) but one where the gaffes, the post season flops and the inconsistency on a year to year basis will outweigh whatever successes he might've had.

So what now? In January the Cowboys will officially announce their desire to not bring Jason Garrett back and will embark on their first genuine coaching search since the end of the 2006 season. Coaching searches are complex and often times messy, especially with an organization as big and leak heavy as the Cowboys. What factors might determine or shape the coaching search? Well.....

Dak Prescott

Simply put, any head coach will be sat before the QB of the largest franchise in the world and will have to get the approval of the man who is about to be written  a 30 million dollar plus a year guarantee each season. This team asked Dak Prescott to take his game to the next level and thus far on a whole he has despite the chaos around him. The Cowboys will not (and honestly nor should they) hire a head coach who cannot answer the most obvious question that'll be presented: What can you do to further elevate Dak Prescott? Every coach who has had Dak Prescott from his college day until year four in the NFL rave about his work ethic, lack of an ego and adaptability so I have a hard time imagining anybody NOT wanting to work with him. If we can be year five into Jameis Winston trying to figure things out, coaches will be toppling over one another to work with Dak Prescott. Hiring a coach who will hold the QB accountable but also embrace his strengths as a leader and as a developing pocket passer will win out over everything else.

Is it a rebuild? Or is it a reloading?

This will almost entirely be determined by the end of the season. How things end and what the Cowboys do over these last four games (or longer) will dictate where this goes. If the Cowboys finish it up at 9-7 or 10-6 and do SOMETHING in the playoffs, there's a fine chance the Cowboys will look at this team and determine that the ship is fine and the problems are entirely related to the captain and his first mates. If this is about Jason Garrett, Kris Richard, Kellen Moore and company not maximizing the potential of this team then the offseason can be dictated in finding a better captain. Maybe it's as simple as finding a stabilizing hand as a head coach; someone who has been here before, been successful at it and is just in need of a new place to operate. Maybe it's not the sexiest hire like a wacky college guru or a superstar college coach but a guy who has enough real time NFL successes to garner respect from players and not try to re-invent the wheel. Think of hiring a guy like Gary Kubiak in Denver a while ago or more recently Matt LaFleur who was essentially given the same parts and pieces that Mike McCarthy had and then went to work utilizing them better. Hell speaking of Mike McCarthy; maybe the Cowboys look at him, assume his failures were from a collision of egos and figure a guy who won a Super Bowl, flirted with a few more and simply ran into a Seattle juggernaut he couldn't figure out would be of interest. Maybe it's just about changing the guy wearing the captain's hat.

If this team craters then it could get ugly. Real ugly. If the Cowboys ownership and the brass who makes decisions determines that this team simply wasn't good enough then you're looking at potentially wholesale changes. Your veteran OL with a lot of money tied up in it could all be potential dead money inducing cap casualties. Your big money linebacking crew that has underachieved could be stripped and sold off. The Cowboys could tempt fate and let the likes of Amari Cooper go, not wanting to tie up a serious piece of their offense over the concerns of the fit. A LONG term rebuild; often painful in NFL years could be on its way. That also opens up your coaching candidates. If you assume for the sake of argument that a first year head coach needs at least one solid year to implement his own parts and brand his own identity as a coach then you're probably more willing to burn a year of the primes of Dak, Zeke, Amari and company IF you believe you're a ways away. That would in turn open up the Cowboys to maybe a few more "growing pains" options.

77.

When the Dallas Cowboys take the field in 2020, Jerry Jones will be 77 years old with his 78th birthday waiting in mid October. This will be in all likelihood the last head coach he hires with his own influence. 5-10 years from now, the role of being "the decider" for the Cowboys will belong to Stephen Jones likely with Jerry's son in law Shy Anderson or John Stephen Jones (Stephen Jones' son currently playing QB at Arkansas). My guess is that Jerry wants to nail this hire not just for the obvious reasons of the Cowboys success but to leave the Jones family set up with a head coach who will make the transition as seamlessly as possible.

Kellen Moore

Even if you account for a complete shutdown of the offense for the past two games, Kellen Moore's Cowboys offense is off to a really fine start. They've got the most yards in the league, average the 2nd most yards per drive, fourth most points per drive despite being last in the league in average starting field position so on so forth so on so forth. The Cowboys offense under Kellen Moore is actually bordering on prolific if we're being 100% honest. The Cowboys will have Dak Prescott in the midst of a career year, they've got a really good running back sort of kind of, they've got three wide receivers having fine years and are getting more production than recent years out of their tight end spot despite so-so production from Jason Witten and Blake Jarwin being mismanaged. As much as people want to shout from the heavens about hiring an offensive guru, maybe you'd like to give your 31 year old potential guru a chance to keep developing what he's doing? The Cowboys could easily give Kellen Moore a few more years to work his magic offensively while hiring a steady hand head coach to be a reliable proven presence while Moore continues to get his on the job training as a coordinator. The same could be said for QB coach Jon Kitna and ascending WR coach Sanjay Lal. They've all produced in various ways.

The Familiars and the influencers

Let's start with the familiars. Jerry Jones has been in charge of this operation for over 30 years, he's had multiple players eventually become coaches, multiple coaches become friends and advisors. There's a real good chance that with so much riding on the line, their first move will be to try and see if somebody they know, trust and respect might be up for the task of manning this ship. If you're an optimist, your eyes may light up at the fact that the Jones family is very familiar of Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley or that they have a very close relationship with New Orleans head coach Sean Peyton or that they have a great trust and admiration for Mike Zimmer. Dan Campbell was once a member of the Dallas Cowboys and the team tried to corral him to coach their tight ends after Campbell was let go in Miami. He wound up in New Orleans where he's been the figurehead for their impressive running game. Perhaps the fact that Mike Tomlin and Stephen Jones serve on the competition committee together excites you should the worst case scenario happen for Tomlin in Pittsburgh. Not sure if he excites anybody but the Cowboys have a close familiarity with Seattle Seahawks defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. If you're a pessimist, John Fox and the Jones family are very close with one another. Jack Del Rio and Jerry Jones go way back, so much so in fact that Del Rio was called by Jerry Jones to discuss Amari Cooper before the Cowboys made the Cooper plunge. The Cowboys interviewed Ron Rivera for their head coaching job and he was apparently in the running up until the end when the finalists were Norv Turner, Wade Phillips and Mike Singletary. If one truly wishes to swallow some bile, the Cowboys have long had a respect for disgraced Cleveland Browns/Pittsburgh Steelers offensive coordinator Todd Haley. Haley was a Bill Parcells disciple who coached wide receivers and apparently was one of the few guys who could keep TO in check.

Then you have the influencers. For better or worse, Jerry Jones has always been known to be rather...receptive of information sent his way. He has people who have his ear and considering he's been around for years on end, he's pretty much the most accessible owner in the NFL. And so the likes of Larry Lacewell, Bill Parcells, Nick Saban and others will play a heavy part in this process and will be sure to chime in with suggestions. How good of a salesjob would Pete Carroll do for Ken Norton Jr? Will Sean Payton stick his neck out for former head coach and current D-coordinator Dennis Allen? Will John Fox also do the same for his one time defensive coordinator? What's going to happen if Jerry Jones calls for an accurate assessment of Josh McDaniels from Bill Belichick? Who are the influencers outside of this organization who will find a way to impact the coaching search.

The decay of the NFL coaching tree

It's a copy cat league as they say and so coaches from successful teams are often poached away. After all if it's working elsewhere then why not snag and pick it up for your team? The problem with this philosophy is that eventually you'll run out of guys worthy of the spot. Case in point; Sean McVay has been poached to the point where there's nobody who immediately jumps out as being HC worthy. Shane Waldron? Well that's great except he oversees the passing game that has completely collapsed on itself. Wes Phillips or Skip Peete do anything for you? The general rule of thumb was to just raid whoever was on Andy Reid's staff but that too has been picked pretty much clean depending on your stance on Eric Bienemey (who should garner an interview in Dallas). The Doug Pedersen staff? That's just about done too as Frank Reich is in Indy, Jon DeFilippo is trying to figure things out in Jacksonville and the current core of Matt Groh and Deuce Staley have clearly fallen out of favor. You willing to take a bet on Josh McDaniels actually showing up to his next head coaching gig? Can any Saints coordinator be relied upon to run their own team given how much control Sean Payton has? With so many new coaching staffs in play, you're pretty much stuck with a decaying coaching tree to pick from.

#Dallas Cowboys #Jerry Jones #Jason Garrett #coaches #2020 #NFL

[teaandgames]

The Science of Stress Relief

So, a few weeks ago I spoke about how I played Viscera Cleanup Detail as a way of calming down. It’s a very peaceful game, despite not looking like it on the surface. After all, you’re basically cleaning up body parts and wiping up blood. A job with unique stresses perhaps, but it chilled me out. It had simple goals and allowed you to approach things your way and at your own pace. It was a similar situation with Stardew Valley. Basic goals but how you do things is up to you and you’re never really punished for larking about.

This brings me on to an unusual member of the crowd: Red Faction: Guerilla. Specifically, Red Faction: Guerilla Re-Mars-Tered. As with most of these remakes, it’s been so long since I’ve played the original that I don’t notice any graphical upgrades at all. No matter, that’s a subject for the revisit. Instead, I’m more interested in the stress relief element. Smashing up buildings with a big old hammer is not unique as far as stress relief goes, but boy is it effective. But I want to throw this manic destressing into sharp relief by mentioning a game that does stress me out - and how that can be good too. The game I’m using? Pyre.

First, let’s focus on Red Faction. Playing it, I’m reminded of that scene in Brooklyn Nine-Nine where they celebrate a hen party by smashing up an old restaurant with hammers. Anyone who’s broken old tiles knows that hammers are fun to use. Red Faction captures that feeling very well. The buildings may look like they’re made out of cardboard and prayers, but smashing chunks out of them with a hammer is incredibly satisfying. Even when thirty people are firing at you at the same time.

It works because, outside of the structured missions and challenges, it doesn’t hold your hand. It gives you a range of targets and a suite of tools with which to accomplish your goal. My favourite of these targets was a giant bridge, spanning a hefty gorge. I tackled it using only explosives and my hammer, chiseling away at it until it all fell down. Cars would come piling on to it only to fall through the gaps. It was poetry and it was all my work. There was little punishment for slipping up and dying. It was only a short drive back. It was the lack, perhaps, of any responsibility that made it so fun. I could do it when I wanted and how I wanted.

I think that’s the key point in all of this and it’s why I find games like these so relaxing. In Viscera Cleanup Detail, you’re only timed because of a basic leaderboard. Honestly? I really don’t care about that. Otherwise it’s just about getting the job done. There’s no failure state. The same with Stardew Valley. Even though it dangles over the whole ‘three years’ thing, it’s by no means a solid ending. You’re free to farm, and romance, how you want without the threat of ever being thrown out of the community. There’s no responsibility to anything or anyone. You just do what you want. After a long, hard day at work, isn’t that what you want to do?

It’s why, I think, The Sims has never been that relaxing to me. The idea that goofing off will literally kill the digital version of myself is not a relaxing thought. But that doesn’t stop it being fun and I think that’s a key point. Some games will relax me and some will stress me. But this is good stress; emotional stress we should perhaps say. For extreme examples, we can see games like Dark Souls that stress people out enough for them to wonder whether taking their next breath is really worth it. But to really explain what I’m talking about, let’s turn to Pyre.

On the surface, it’s not remotely stressful. It’s beautifully designed, both aesthetically and audibly. The characters are well written and all diverse. I’m not here to smother it in praise (at least until I review it), so I’ll cut to the chase. The Rites stress me out and I love it. See, sometimes having responsibility is a good thing. It brings you closer to the characters, in a way. For those that don’t know, Pyre is centered around a core group of characters who have all been exiled for various reasons. In order for them to rejoin society, they have to compete in the rites. For complicated reasons, you control them when these rites happen. Think basketball but the winner gets the entire Euromillions jackpot.

It’s stressful because it puts responsibility on your head. Suddenly, a failure state isn’t solvable by a quick reload and a loss of cash. Not a game, then, that you would play after a bad day. I don’t want a beloved character disappointed in me when I’m already feeling bad. Instead, it’s a game when you want to eschew these mortal chains and really get into something. It’s really quite an emotional state and I think it highlights what games can do that other mediums can’t. Pyre is ninety percent a visual novel, which usually isn’t my cup of tea. I struggle to connect when I’m just blinking through text. Pyre does more by forcing you to juggle these characters lives.

So it’s in an opposite emotional state to my previous relaxing games. I cared about my friends in Stardew Valley, true, but I never ended up shouting swear words when I couldn’t get them the melon they asked for. Pyre highlights what I look for in games - an emotional connection. Sometimes games do that by chilling me out. Red Faction Guerilla does that, in spite of a fairly dull plot and cast. Other games stress me out by making me care. Pyre does that. In the end, we can reduce it down to responsibility. Sometimes, all you want is no responsibilities. A clean slate. But when you’re in the mood, by heck can they pile them on.

If there is a message at the end of this, it’s that you need to pull what you want out of your library. There’s a lot in Red Faction Guerilla that can stress me out. The missions; the dull plot. Similarly, Pyre’s rites can be dull. Rather, you need to approach your games with a goal in mind. Whether it’s to muck about in a sandbox or chum around with some friends. These games are relaxing when I go in with the right frame of mind. I disliked Viscera Cleanup Detail until I put music on. Forget what the game is telling you. Embrace it how you want.

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[hacks-and-heroes]

Hacks and Heroes #3

For those who are unaware of it, Dishonored is a series of first person action stealth games developed by Arkane Studios. It is well known for its Victorian-style setting, and its intricate and Lovecraft style lore. Dishonored is one of my favorite game series to come out in the last couple of years. If nothing else, the art and design of the series as a whole is breathtaking and unique. One particular special thing is its “Whalepunk” technology; big, bulky wrought iron devices and ships, powered by the oil of speared and skewered whales. All of this and the way it captures magic and gods makes for an enthralling setting.

So how do you translate all of this to tabletop games. Dishonored hasn’t been fully hacked by anyone that I have ever seen online, not for lack of people asking about it. I suppose as a whole it isn’t a complex setting to convert. Most games you play will have the pieces, they may just need a bit of rearranging. I’m gonna start by talking about general ideas that apply to all games, and then delve into a few specific games.

World Building

Firstly, as mentioned Dishonored is of a subgenre of Steampunk, Whalepunk. Truly the only thing in the subgenre is Dishonored itself but the point stands. So what defines Whalepunk? Well like Steampunk it is all about technology tinged with magic. Everything in Dishonored is bulky and harsh like the whaling ships that enable the technology. There are also a lot of Tesla-like devices that are apart of Dishonored’s world. The Wall of Light and Arc Pylon are two whale oil powered devices that produce electricity in a way that would make Tesla very proud. Other important things about the technology of Dishonored’s setting is the use of a railway-like system, with carts and boxes on elevated rails that loop through the cities.

Let’s talk about some of the themes of the story telling in Dishonored. The main games hold a lot of themes about family, royalty and responsibility. As well, the subjects of political discourse and poverty are also made apparent in the world building. It helps when our main characters, particularly of Dishonored 2 when you play the Empress Emily, are they themselves royalty. In the DLC and spin-off games, more is put towards themes of loyalty, survival, and revenge. The first novel also has the classic theme of being unable to change the past.

So now I’ll get into the specifics of making a Dishonored game.

Magic

Magic is complex in the Dishonored world. All magical ability stems from The Void. The Void is another world. The mirror to the tangible. Inhabited by giant floating leviathans and ancient otherwordly beings. There are several ways to receive magical ability in the world of Dishonored. The most prime and prominent answer is to receive the Mark of the Outsider. A godlike being who roams The Void, the Outside may bless anyone of his choosing with a mark on the back of their hand, that grants them various powers, unique to them. If you were to wish a character to have an array of magical powers in a Dishonored game, this would be the easiest way of doing so. That being said, the powers tend to be limited and do not go beyond five or six powers (and a small array of supplemental powers). As well, the bearers of the mark tend to not be mages themselves, often being rogues and warriors who use the powers to add to their repertoire. For example, a Pathfinder “Magus” class may be an example of someone such as Daud or Corvo. However, this isn’t a perfect example, and a better way to portray this in a game with classes would be to allow character class of choice, and offer the powers in a separate way such as Feats or Abilities.

Another way to gain powers in the world of Dishonored is to have them bestowed upon you by the bearer of the Mark. Some holders of the Mark can share their abilities with underlings, giving them access to some or all of their powers. This is how it is in the case of Daud and Delilah Copperspoon. While this is more apparent in Daud’s assassins, whose powers are more clear cut, the Brigmore Witches seem a bit more uncertain. Their powers are different from Delilah in a number of ways and manifest differently from witch to witch. That being said, I’d say there is something to be said of Witch Magic that is certainly aided by the Outsider’s influence. In a game, I’d offer up Witch magic as its own entity that could be aided by Shared Power. Once more in a class system I’d offer Feats like the Mark, but with the caveat that the power can be lost if the giver dies, retracts, or loses their own abilities.

One more source of magical power lies in the Dishonored world. That is Bone Charms and Whalebone Runes. Runes in the games have always been away of improving your abilities, so in an RPG terms, these could possibly be conduits that aid your growth through perhaps ritual. The bone charms are a more interesting tale. There have been several characters who used bone charms to great effect. In the video game, they aided your current powers or gave you small buffs and abilities. However other characters, such as the gang leader Paolo made use of several bone charms and a powerful artifact that gave him Mark-like powers. The character Zhukov from the first Dishonored novel has several powers granted to him through the use of corroded bone charms and a magical dagger. These powers began to take a toll on him in their own right, however he is one of the most powerful people in the series at large. From a gameplay point of view, Bone Charms should range from weak magical items that provide small buffs and bonuses to powerful items that can bestow new powers themselves onto the wielder. As well, they should be able to be combined with other magical artifacts for even greater effect.

A small aside about religious power in the Dishonored universe. While the Abbey of the Everyman is vehemently against the Void and any kind of dark art is met with execution, they themselves make use of some Void magic. To begin they have in their control special Music Boxes that play a song that nullifies all powers in the area. There is also the point of the Oracular Order, a group of women within the Abbey suspected to have powers that allow them to make “prophetic visions”. They seem to be more in line with real world monks, highly educated, trained in battle, and viciously cunning rather than truly magical. However, one may say that through the use of hallucinogens and possibly magical substances, their powers become truer.

Equipment

Much of Dishonored’s base technology is in line with real world tech of the late 1800s to early 1900s. The second game sees the advent of an internal plumbing system throughout the cities. As well, city lighting is through the use of street lamps, and news is pumped through a mix of hanging metal speakers and newsprint.

When it comes to personal equipment available to your party, there is a series of options for sure. Firearms lie pretty much in the realms of pistols, though it is not hard to imagine rifles or blunderbusses existing as well. They are primarily wooden-hafted weapons, functioning like flintlocks and wheelocks. Emily’s pistol from the second game appears at later upgrades to become more of a break-action revolver deal. From a gameplay perspective, these weapons have a one shot magazine without upgrades, and require an action to reload. They also have a small spread when fired, hitting a small five foot cone with shrapnel (half damage to even just 1 damage). Other options for ranged weapons include crossbows (the protagonists all use intricate rotating hand crossbows, or similar wristbows). There’s also several options for grenades, special ammunition, and devices for distraction. The tallboys of first Dishonored game also a type of compound bow, making them an option available to your party as well.

As far as melee weapons go, the games show primarily sword usage. Each faction tends to have a unique weapon. As with the pistol, I believe this primarily for simplicity and design standards. In RPG form, it is within reason to see weapons such as axes and spears, though spears will be more rare, as they became in real life.

Other weapons include several forms of landmines, including the infamous springrazor. Essentially a short range landmine filled with spring loaded razorwire. There are no real options for vehicles besides personal boats (such as Amanda’s boat in the sequel) and if characters are nobles, a personal railcar, though there’s not much one can do with the railcar besides traveling around the cities specific pathways. One could possibly also obtain some of the Tallboy armor, which is a strange mix of armor plating and massive stilted legs. Most modern miscellaneous items should be available within reason. Things such as internet and tv are clearly out, but gramophones and cameras aren’t.

Things such as Walls of Light and Arc Pylons should be treated as traps and obstacles. The arc pylons function within a certain range, and automatically attack a single target in range with a high damage electrical arc. The wall of light is only passable by those attuned to the wall or if the wall is disabled. Those that pass through should either take a high amount of damage, or just to make a safe to be instantly killed. Regardless, if a person survives a wall of light (never seen in the game, but there’s room for cool things like that) they should come out maimed and horrificly damaged.

Specific Game Conversions

So I’ve talked about the ideas that are pertinent to game run in Dishonored’s world. So let’s now talk about what you have to do in specific games to replicate that feeling.

Dungeons and Dragons 5e/Pathfinder

So converting settings to class-based systems like these two can be complicated for a number of reasons. Such as the fact that in Dishonored as a whole, there are numerous characters who have magical powers who would definitely not fit into the roles of Wizard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Bard, etc. So how do we remedy this. Well as mentioned earlier, feats are a possible remedy to these issues. In Pathfinder something like the Drow Magic feat progression offered to Drow players is possibly option, with steadily gaining more magical powers as time goes on.

For example:

Outsider’s Mark

Prerequisites: 5th level or higher, Iron Will, must be contacted by the Outsider and bestowed this power

Effect: Allows the use of Dimension Door and one other 4th or lower Spell of choice up to 3/day.

Some players may be opposed to this though, as this robs them of feats they may feel fits their character better. In Pathfinder this is a completely understandable as feats are a major piece of what makes up your character. Now since feats in 5e are optional, this is a more viable option, if your players meet said prerequisites. You can always decide to give these feats and abilities for free as the story progresses, as long as you are okay with your players having an edge against other characters. That’s really all you can do in these particular systems without being restrictive. If you want, you could also just give the Marked players a choice of spells from their mark and they have a certain number of uses, like other casters. Since the Mark tends be based on the strength of the wielder, Wisdom or Charisma wouldn’t be too off.

One more thing of mention for D&D/Pathfinder; the options for classes should be restricted to primarily martial classes unless under specific circumstances. I could see a point made for things such as Warlocks and Bards for the for former, and a handful of the latters. However, direct magic users, such as clerics, druids, paladins, sorcerers, and wizards should be kept to a very limited number to preserve the setting.

For Pathfinder, there is plenty already around to represent the setting of Dishonored. You may have to come up with some miscellaneous items, but not stuff that’ll have much bearing. For 5e, I highly recommend the Steampunk Compendium and the Urban Arcana Modern Magic Subclasses. Both fit fairly well, give equipment examples and a possible class, the gunslinger.

Savage Worlds

So Savage Worlds is pretty easily one of the best games for hacks and conversions. Not just Dishonored. I have seen hacks for Savage Worlds from Star Wars to Weird War to Conan of all things. So if you are looking for something to do Dishonored in, Savage Worlds is quite good.

So about players and building characters. Giving your players the Outsider’s Mark, or another form of magic, all they need is the Arcane Background edge. From there they will have to take the power edges to gain new powers and points. Any of the Arcane Background edges fit the setting really, even weird science could be put towards characters like Jindosh or Sokolov, but that may be a bit much. However using powers in Dishonored is almost always a force of will scenario, I highly recommend making them Spirit based. With the rate that characters gain powers using power edges, you may think that may too slow for your game. If that’s the case, don’t be afraid to either throw your characters extra powers or advance them a little faster to compensate.

From there it’s just about getting gear and equipment right. The core book does have some stuff that will work. However, if you’re unable to due with those, both The Widening Gyre and Rippers have a mix of settings that you can pull from to build. Rippers especially will have a lot setting appropriate miscellaneous items to pick from.

Aaaaaandd…

Those are the best systems I can think to run a Dishonored based games. That being said, there are a plethora of other systems that can do the job but I did not list for the reasons that will follow!

Point-Buy Games

Both Mutants and Masterminds and GURPS could run this game. I’m not kidding when I say Mutants and Masterminds has been made to run weird. Seriously take a trip over to the Ronin Army forums and look under the pages for characters made using that system. Literally made characters from sitcoms. My sole advice for M&M is that you keep the PL a little higher for your players. This way they will have a reasonable amount of points and limits for their powers.

On GURPS I can’t say terribly much. I’m sure there are plenty of Steampunk settings for GURPS given its age, so you should have no problem hunting stuff down for it.

Story-based Games

So this is anything along the lines of FATE. Very minimal dice rolling, primarily a talkative situation, and self-described abilities and skills. For anyone who prefers a more story heavy game, and isn’t a big fan of the mechanics of other RPGs, check these out.

-

And that’s where I’ll wrap it for the week! Let me know what you all thought, send me your feedback. I know this is a lot talking and there aren’t really any hard conversions from myself this week. If would like to see actual statistical conversions of things from Dishonored or other settings, let me know and I’ll post some stuff up. Now with this, I bid you adieu. Next week we’ll be taking exchanging our Whalepunk aesthetic for an art deco dieselpunk and travel beneath the waves to a world of...Rapture.

#dishonored #dungeons and dragons #d&d #5e #tabletop rpgs #rpgs #savage worlds #rippers #fate #gurps #mutants and masterminds #hacksandheroes #hnh #dishonored 5e

[mznb]

The games I played in 2020 (”a whole year late” - edition)

I intended to post this back in January, but for various reasons I never finished it up and posted it until now. Nearly finished post sitting there as a draft for a whole year... let’s get this one out of the way, before I sum up my 2021 in gaming. This one includes some thoughts on Death Stranding, Half-Life: Alyx and Black Mesa.

Games played:

Alien Breed Evolution

Black Mesa

Death Stranding

DOOM Eternal

DOOM 64

Half-Life: Alyx

Killzone 3

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D

Pokémon Emerald Version

Prey (2017)

Shadow Complex

Star Wars: Republic Commando

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

XIII (2003)

Replays:

Half-Life: Opposing Force

Half-Life: Blue Shift

Death Stranding

I wasn’t planning to play this game anytime soon, but ended up changing my mind after reading up positive impressions some people had. A couple of months and over 100 hours of playtime later, I can say that it was a really enjoyable, wild ride throughout.

Gameplay is far more complicated and in depth than what some people might believe. One could really oversimplify the gameplay to “going from point A to point B over and over again”, but that would ignore all the mechanical depth that’s there. There’s a lot of different considerations in a delivery mission; the method of transport (on foot, vehicle or other), amount of cargo carried, the route you’re taking, any obstacles on the way, weather conditions, etc. Not to mention there are more than just delivery missions in the game. That is not to say the game’s overcomplicated, or even difficult; I played the game on hard difficulty all the way through, and didn’t feel like the game ever got super challenging. Most of the game is actually quite relaxing, which is one of the game’s greatest strengths, and one of the reasons I decided to give the game a try in the first place.

The story might seem confusing for a while, especially since the game starts throwing bizarre made-up terms left and right (words like “strand”, “beach” and “chiral” get reused in multiple different contexts), but just about everything makes sense to some degree by the end. The game makes sure to explain everything in (exhaustive) detail, be it though cutscenes, emails or other. And the ending’s got a big twist that answers just about every remaining question you might have. It’s a strangely heartwarming story set in a bleak, apocalyptic hellscape full of nightmarish horrors.

Half-Life: Alyx

After years of waiting, Valve finally announced a new Half-Life game... for VR. Before the first trailer dropped, I wasn’t particularly excited; I didn’t have much of an interest in VR games since most of them seemed to be basically glorified tech demos lacking in substance. After the trailer though, I couldn’t help feeling a little bit excited seeing something so recognizably Half-Life after so many years. And it seemed like a proper game, too.

The announcement was enough to make my brother to go and buy an Oculus Rift S. When Alyx came out though he was too preoccupied by other games, so I decided to borrow the headset and try Alyx myself. Setting up Rift S ended up being a huge pain in the ass, but after two weeks of banging my head against the wall I got the dang thing working.

I had a great time playing Half-Life: Alyx. With the game being in VR, immersiveness was kind of expected, but I still feel I have to emphasize how goddamn immersive the game is. Never before has opening cabinets, lockers and drawers and searching for ammo/health/etc. been so much fun. Having to manually reload weapons in the middle of a firefight feels so exhilarating.

If there is something about the game I have to complain about, it’s that the environments at mid- to late game start feeling a little bit samey, but the last few chapters change up the scenery, so things get interesting again.

If you have a VR headset for PC and haven’t played Alyx yet I would absolutely recommend you do that. I’ve returned the headset to my brother since my playthrough, but I’ve been yearning to go back in for more, especially so I could check out the updates and custom content the game has received.

Black Mesa

I played the original mod release back in 2013, and had been holding off another playthrough until the full release. Don’t have much to say about the game pre-Xen, although I did notice a host of changes since the mod release.

Xen has been massively reimagined and expanded from it’s original HL1 iteration. It plays much, much better than the original and has a lot of really cool new additions that fit nicely into the game. In terms of the visuals, I’m a bit torn; Xen is very beautiful looking place in this iteration, but it deviates from the original so much and has a very different feel to it. As for the pacing of the game, I feel a lot of the sections last a bit too long (mostly Xen, although some pre-Xen chapters might also drag a little).

I might be too nostalgic for the original Half-Life 1 for Black Mesa to completely replace it, but it is still a damn good reimagining.

#games #video games #2020 #death stranding #half-life alyx #black mesa

[pocketwatchgames]

Why Not Unity?

A question we often get during streaming is “Why not Unity, or Unreal? Why did you build your own engine?”. Having been on a couple large projects that have used Unity I can say with some authority that the answer to that is complicated. Unity is obviously working for many people and definitely gets you into the meat of development and can save you time. The projects I was involved in that used Unity would never have existed without Unity, the team just didn’t have the skill set required to pull that off. So just because we aren’t using Unity doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. If you don’t have the skills on your team to write your own engine, then you really don’t have a choice. If you do have the skills then you are aware of the trade-offs you’re making.

Building an engine to support a small game with a small team isn’t as much work as some people would have you believe. If you’ve never built a game engine before that might seem daunting. I’ve been building them from scratch for 20 years.

We aren’t using Unity or Unreal because I believe we can build a better game on our own engine, and leverage it across future projects (and it really is about the end product).

Our game engine is an expert system that requires a relatively high level of technical skill to use effectively. People have to learn to use it which means we can’t just expect someone to hit the ground running because it’s Unity.

However, the learning curve for our engine is a fraction of what it is for learning Unity or Unreal.

We have to port the engine to each platform ourselves, but I’ve been doing that for a long time too. It does require effort but once the port is established it is minimal effort for maintenance. A lot of platforms share a significant amount of common code, like POSIX APIs etc. The biggest difference between them is typically graphics API and this is where most of the effort goes.

We take advantage of high quality C++ libraries readily available like Dear ImGui, SDL, FMOD and others.

It is significantly faster to iterate in our engine than in Unity or Unreal because we designed it to be that way. We can hot-reload assets and code on-the-fly. It compiles from scratch quickly. This has a direct impact on productivity and quality. The more iteration, the better the product. This is a primary benefit of building custom tools for your game.

Optimized builds of the game load levels in under a second and runs at 500 fps without having spent any time on performance yet.

We don’t fight or worry about garbage collection hitches because we aren’t using a managed language.

No AOT crap on consoles.

We don’t spend time trying to get something to work in Unity or Unreal because of minutiae, things are direct and simple.

We can code down to the metal on consoles and other platforms.

We aren’t on the Unity/Unreal engine upgrade treadmill where everyone has to stop for a couple days while we upgrade and cross our fingers that nothing is seriously broken by the upgrade.

We don’t spend time dealing with 2 or 3 competing systems that do almost the same thing in different ways, and the only one that isn’t deprecated isn’t feature complete yet.

If you step outside of what Unity is designed for you lose a lot of its benefits.

Inevitably the version of Unity you are using will be outdated. The Asset Store middleware you are using will be out of date. Eventually your project will be lost to time, unable to be resurrected.

Like anything that becomes endemic to an industry, people get used to the costs of Unity and are often not even aware that they are making a trade-off. Our development is unhindered by a lot of crap that you have to deal with when you use Unity. We really do spend the vast majority of our time just enjoying the hell out of the development process. In my personal experience on projects that have used Unity it is often stressful and frustrating due to bugs and lack of agency over things that leads to a lot less joy in the process.

Building a game on your own engine affects more than just the programming though, it affects the entire process. If your team has never shipped a game on a custom engine then they may not be able to adapt. Using Unity and Unreal affects how you think about game development and if you’ve never built a game “on the metal” you have to relearn how to solve problems. Using your own engine means the solution space you have in which to solve your problems is effectively unlimited and you can solve them in simple and direct ways. The solution to “how do I make this work in Unity?” is often not direct, but instead takes a meandering, messy, and suboptimal approach because you can’t make structural changes to the engine to support it. *cough* modding *cough*.

One of the most valuable things that Casey Muratori (formerly of RAD Games and author and host of Handmade Hero) teaches, if you listen closely, is simplicity. People who are used to using giant frameworks and other systems don’t realize the enormous complexity and cost inherent in those systems. They mistakenly assume that the problems they have to deal with in those frameworks are inherent in any system. Problems like performance and memory management just aren’t even things you have to really worry about if you just do it the right way to begin with. And it’s usually simpler too, and easier to modify later.

You don’t need fancy generalized tools to build a game. I don’t mean tools like photoshop or Maya or other readily available commodity software. I’m talking about the tools you inevitably need on any game to build the actual game, the part where you are putting it all together. Maybe you need a map editor, or a way to make a library of spells and their effects. The tools you need depend on what you need to build, and every game needs something. Even if you are using Unity sometimes you still have to build these one-off custom tools, but inevitably everything ends up being a question of “How do I get this data into Unity”.

A lot of people underestimate the raw power of expert systems and overestimate the value of general purpose tools, especially as it applies to a focused, and highly skilled team. Text is often still one of the most powerful ways of expressing data, it is easily refactored, searched, and diff’ed. Unity ScriptableObject and Unreal Blueprints are enormously complicated systems that you don’t need to solve in your game engine.

Effort is inevitably spent bending the general purpose tool into the specialized tool you need, and as is almost always the case, the general purpose tool does its job in a general purpose way that is not optimized for any particular use. Sometimes it’s more work too.

Hopefully this has given you some insight into how I think about the tradeoffs. If you have never built a game from scratch you should because you will learn a ton and it will at least give you insight into how to best use Unity or Unreal.

Joseph Riedel

CTO, Pocketwatch Games

#engine #c++ #house

[zappr-upsell]

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If you belong to the following list, you should seriously take it into consideration:

  ♥   Business coaches

  ♥   Affiliate marketers

  ♥   E-com sellers

  ♥   Software sellers

  ♥   Online astrologers

  ♥   Online tutors

  ♥   Self-repair manual & guide providers

  ♥   Online games sellers

  ♥   Freelancers

  ♥   Bloggers

MARKETPAL REVIEW – PROS & CONS

PROS:

  ♥   100% newbie friendly

  ♥   200+ DFY templates included

  ♥   Drag and drop editor with freeflow

  ♥   Limited time commercial license

  ♥   Sell courses, books, digital product or services

  ♥   100% GDPR and can-spam compliant

  ♥   No worries of paying monthly

  ♥   Dedicated support team

  ♥   30 days money back guarantee

CONS:

  X   Up to now, there is none

Pricing

For a limited time, you can grab MarketPal with early bird discount price in these options below. Let’s pick the best suited options for you before this special offer gone!

Front-end: MarketPal ($47 – $67)  👉VISIT OFFICIAL SITE

3 Hours EarlyBird – 10th September’20 (Thursday) – 10 AM to 1 PM EST

Marketpal Start Edition – $47.95

Marketpal Pro Edition – $67.95

(Discount will be applicable only on Pro Edition)

With 11% discount Coupon Code – “palearly11” on Pro Edition

10th September’20 (Thursday) – 1 PM EST

Marketpal Start Edition – $47.95

Marketpal Pro Edition – $67.95

(Discount will be applicable only on Pro Edition)

From here Time Sale will be Started with 1 Hour Timer and Price will increase by $0.01 every hour.

OTO 1: Elite Edition ($37/Month or $197 one time)

Remove All Limitations To Go Unlimited & Unlock PREMIUM Features to Get 300% More Engagement, Leads & Profits Faster & Easier With This Elite Upgrade

Break Free & Go Limitless

Add Unlimited Contacts For All Your Mailing Lists

Create Unlimited Email Mailing Lists

Send Unlimited Emails To Unlimited Subscribers

Setup Unlimited Businesses Of Your Own Or Your Client’s

Run All Your & Your Client’s Landing Pages On Your Own Domains With UNLIMITED Custom Domains

Get Unlimited Visitors On Your Pages

Drive Unlimited Leads From Your Pages

Create Unlimited Pages With No Restrictions

Create Unlimited Personalized User Segments

Get 100 EXTRA Ready-To-Use Lead Pages, Popups And Email Templates

Create Webinar Registration Journey With Exclusive Automation Technology

Advanced Subscriber Management With Suppression List

Get The Untapped Power To Send File Attachments With Emails

Clone Any Page, Popup or Email, And Save Templates For Future Use

Advanced Campaign & Project Management

Auto Webinar Platform Integration

Boost Relation & Conversions with CRM integration

20 Amazing Entry/Exit Animation Effects For Your Popups

Schedule Notification Campaigns to Set Start & End Time or Particular Day or Week

Complete Team Management Upto 5 Members

Get All These Benefits At An Unparalleled Price

OTO 2: Enterprise Update ($47)

Unlock Access To Commercial Grade Online Marketing Features For A Low One Time Price!

Everything included at this level of MarketPal is prime real estate. I’m talking about a house on the boardwalk, but without the fancy pricing. You won’t believe what’s awaiting you at this level when you upgrade today.

Industry’s First Free Flow Funnel Builder To Plan & Create Your Profitable Funnels From Scratch Quick & Easy

Setup Entire Email Follow-Up Sequence When Someone Subscribes

Advanced Analytics For Boosting Your Email Campaigns ROI

Unlimited A/B Testing For Email Campaigns – Choose The Best Performer

Unlimited A/B Testing For Lead Pages & Popup Campaigns

Pin-Point Accurate Analytics For Lead Pages & Popups

Effective Bounce & Unsubscribe Management

80+Extra DFY professional, Mobile Responsive & Ready-to-Go Templates

20 MORE Attention Grabbing Entry/Exit animations

Commercial Use

Provide Services to Clients & Charge Them

OTO 3: Agency Suite ($47)

This Agency Upgrade puts you on whole another level with a touch of a button and enables you to enter in $250 Billion freelancing industry.

From next generation funnel building technology with DFY fresh templates to removing their LOGO, complete business panel to manage your client’s biz from single dashboard, working in collaboration to adding your team members or freelancing staff to manage everything easily, the agency upgrade has it all.

MarketPal With Agency License To Provide – Funnel, Landing Page And Website Creation Services To Your Clients With DFY support

120 Brand-New Funnels And Pages Templates – 20 Fresh Templates Every Month For Next 6 Months In Different Niches

Done-For-Your Business Management Panel to Manage All Your Client’s Businesses From A Single Dashboard

Present Yourself As An AUTHORITY- Easily Remove Our LOGO From Your Client’s Pages And Funnels

Work Collaboratively & Share Proven Funnels Templates With Your Team Members, Clients & Group Of Marketers

Sell Funnels To Other Marketers To Add Extra Monthly Revenue To Your Business

Add Unlimited Team Members – Inhouse & Freelancers

Get Accurate Logs For Team Member’s Activities For Effective Monitoring

OTO 4: Premium Membership ($27/Month or $197/Year or $497 one time)

Convert More Visitors into Customers to 10X Your Business with DotcomPal (An Online Sales Solution Builder for Entrepreneurs)

DotcomPal enables you to skyrocket visitor’s engagement and literally push them towards desired marketing goal at every customer touchpoint of your journey/sales funnelto boost the conversions& sales.

It boosts conversions at customer touchpoints like website/shop, blog, landingpages for ads, sales pages, follow-ups and customer trainings to 10X your business from same traffic.

You can boost engagement on existing sales funnels or build a high converting customer journey/Sales funnel from scratch using DotcomPal without any technical hassles. It’s Easy & fast with DFY templates &hand-holding support.

MarketPal Review Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading my MarketPal Review. I really hope it did help you with your buying decision. This system is coming out with many bonuses for the early bird. Take your action ASAP for the best deal.

REMEMBER! If you purchase through my link, you will be supported 24/7; That means you can contact me ANYTIME when you get trouble in using or can not contact with the authors/ product supporters. I will help you RIGHT AWAY!

Besides, if you buy this product through my link, you can also get these huge bonuses below (Please remember that these bonuses are not for the TRIAL or FREE versions):

👉VISIT OFFICIAL SITE

You can have an opportunity to receive extra bonuses if you finish 3 steps below:

Step 1: Order the product by Clicking here.

Step 2: Choose 1 of my huge Bonus Packages below! Remember that you can pick one more bonuses pack for each Upgrade you purchased!

Step 3: After your purchase goes through, email your receipt & your chosen bonuses pack to me at [email protected] so I can confirm your purchase and email you information about how to access to your bonus material.

I Will Always Update New Bonus

Now, Check your bonus below!

»»Plugin Bonus Package««

»»Theme Bonus Package««

»»General Bonus Package««