Redwolf's Journal (continued)

I finally got caught up and finished watching the latter half of Star Wars: Rebels , of which I'd only seen an episode or two. I have some mixed feelings. I was never really a fan of the art style. It felt a little too simplistic and areas too isolated as if arbitrarily limited by polygons on screen. It wasn't a huge drawback, but a little bit of one. Narratively, there were ups and downs. It re-canonized several things, like Thrawn. It brought back Ahsoka, who remains one of my favorite characters in Star Wars in general. It called back to one of the most questionable and unnecessary episodes of Clone Wars (in my opinion) that focused too much on origins of the Force. It established a Force-based space-time Stargate network of sorts... for some reason. It wiped out an Imperial fleet with a bunch of space whales, which is somehow both cheap and glorious at once. I think I like the overall arc of things, but individual episodes often felt formulaic/repetitive to me, which ...

Broken Lines was an interesting little tactical alt/weird-WWII game that was fun for a playthrough. The mechanics are interesting in that you issue move/abilty orders for an 8-second block of time, then it plays out with characters shooting as opportunity and gun rate of fire permits. There's no pausing to change orders during that "turn." Also, there are food/morale/composure elements that remind me of Darkest Dungeon, but did not seem quite so brutal in my experience. The story centers on a group of soldiers on a mission who crash land in regions unknown. The officers who knew the details of their mission are dead, and the only detail that comes out is something about a dam in the area. This is complicated by mysterious mist, sickly locals, and a hostile force of unidentified soldiers wearing gas masks managing pumps that are doing something with this gas and barrels of hazardous materials. I find it a little disappointing, though, that there are not any definitive a...

Wasteland 2  feels fairly old-school. I suppose in many ways that's the point as it's following the pattern laid out by the original Fallout games. The isometric tactical squad gameplay works just fine. There remain a few hiccups here and there with controls, but I didn't run into anything major. There are a lot of uses for most skills along the way, though some are certainly more commonly called upon than others. On the down side, travel (even with random encounters and managing water supply on the first map) is pretty dull, particularly when running back and forth for quest reasons. I'd also argue there are some difficulty issues as, which it is adjustable, it is possible to hit some serious spikes (like enemies that'll one-shot characters while taking almost no damage in return due to higher armor stats) in places. Maybe it's me or the times, but I didn't really see the same level of quirky, twisted commentary style humor in the game than the Fallout s...

Greedfall successfully made me hate everyone in its fantasy-colonial world. Actually, that's not entirely true. The companion characters are mostly likable, and there are a few of the otherwise supporting cast that are individually fine. The game definitely did manage to evoke a changing emotional response over the course of it, so that's something. As far as mechanics and gameplay, it's... fine? Combat has a little variety in styles and such, but isn't precise enough to be stand-out. Environments work, but reuse a high percentage of assets. Quests and things to do feel a little bit sparse with a whole lot of running back and forth. Boss fights are certainly harder, though mostly that's a matter of magnitude (more incoming damage and more health to go through on enemies). The story is one of a colonial-ish mainland with various factions suffering an increasing plague of the "malichor" turning to a newly settled island to investigate/exploit in hopes of...

It's definitely odd to see so many retail and office spaces closed downtown. Wrrf. Even businesses that are open are going to be suffering from all this. About the only places I can think of that aren't going to take a major downturn in revenue may be shipping and grocery stores - and that assumes they aren't directly  hit by infection issues. Steven Universe came to a full end this last week. Appropriately enough for a series that dealt heavily with relationships, identity, and helping people work through their problems, the final arc leaned heavily into Steven himself needing to find his way. It felt a little too simple for me, though. I feel like it may be unfair of me to say, considering this is a series in which many things span beyond the 15 (10?)-minute episode run time. Many issues have been resolved quicker than they probably "should" have been. I'm not sure if maybe it's just because it feels close to home, but shining a light on Steven's ...

Times change, and there may be a certain inevitability to things, but we cannot help long for brighter points of the past, neh? I'd say "now more than ever with all the social distancing, I get a lot of my socializing online," but truthfully it's been that way for a long while. I prefer it in a lot of ways. The company I keep needn't be local and I don't have to deal with the energy-sapping direct interactions that are common. Oh, face-to-face stuff is great sometimes, but I can only take so much. Socializing through online RP, though, has been tapering off more and more, it feels. When Kit shifted from the MUCK over to Discord pretty much exclusively, that was a big change for me. It works better for some people, but seems a bad fit personally. Several games and scenes have been run with a more play-when-you-can-anytime flow, and that has led me (as someone who practically has a window of a few hours a day to be 'present') to feel left out. After ...

So, after finishing an Assassin's Creed game fairly recently, a bit more open world adventuring seemed appealing, especially with shutdowns coming and increased time at home looming. So with some rifling around, I picked up Watch Dogs . I remembered how it made a big splash on reveal and was a bit of a let-down graphically when it released, but hey - open world stuff to do and a bit of a cyberpunk-ish bent with all the hacking. Weeeeelllll... It's okay. From the get-go, I found I didn't really like the revenge-driven protagonist, Aiden Pearce. The hacking involves a lot of jumping from camera to camera, taking control of things based on line-of-sight, and waving a phone at things to make them blow up or otherwise activate. There is a certain empowering element to that in gameplay, though it's functionally more tech-flavored magic than anything more grounded, not that there's anything inherently wrong with that. Along with that "hacking," the game has the...