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Bioware: Mixed Feelings

 I have seriously mixed feelings around all the reports of Bioware's closure... One one hand, I almost never like to hear about studio closures and job losses. Bioware has produced some incredible games in its time. Some of them may have had more impact than they deserve, but some were genuinely great. One thing I really enjoyed about them was a sense of iteration and building in several over the years. And the repeated process across the industry of a big publisher buying well-regarded studios only to shut them down shortly thereafter is, frankly, sickening. On the other hand, Bioware has felt like its quality has been slipping for quite a while. ME3 was raked over the coals for its ending. My problems with it were deeper than that, but I still loved that game. DA: Inquisition was good, but felt full of systems that were under-baked, and were never further developed. ME: Andromeda was also beat up for bugs and design issues, though I still largely enjoyed it in spite of the narrat...
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Radio Oddities

 Minor amusements that caught me enough to note: Yesterday I pulled in at home and shut off my truck while the radio was playing a particular song, albeit a cover version. This morning I turned on my truck and what starts on the radio? The latter part of the same song. I think the original this time, but that's just a weird little coincidence. Then, a radio DJ came on at the site of a local event. He was interviewing someone about the event, but the other guy's microphone wasn't working, so it was a lot of, "Tell us more about X," followed by long stretches of silence.
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Star Wars: Zero Company (story)

 So, more on the story of Star Wars: Zero Company and what I appreciate about it. Very much spoilers follow. The story opens with the customizable Hawks (reminding me of Dragon Age 2's "Hawke" as a gender-neutral name) running a small merc group in debt to a Hutt. He's a disgraced/discharged Republic captain accompanied by Trick, a medically discharged clone who served under him, and Kabb, an ex-boxer scoundrel. There's also Aurelio, who seems destined to perish in the tutorial mission. They operate out of a grounded freighter with Runa, a former Separatist financial specialist, along with their quartermaster and a couple engineers. So you've already got a group of mixed backgrounds who are not fully aligned with either side of the ongoing conflict, but they each have their preferences. They catch a bit of a break when offered a contract by a Republic Intelligence officer, Bennic, to assist an ore baroness, Jae, in taking her mining outpost back from a cult kn...
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Star Wars: Zero Company

 A long holiday weekend was enough to get through Star Wars: Zero Company , and I'm fine with that. To state is up front, it's good. As a tactical game, it's good. I might describe it as something closer to Wasteland 3 than XCOM, though the quality of the latter shines through, because of the heavy story focus. The XCOM games I've played largely felt about the combat missions and everything in between fed into and supported that. In this case, the combat missions are just as good, but they serve the story rather than the other way around. The credit economy gets real tight real fast until perhaps the last few missions. It doesn't feel great, though it does fit a barely-scrapping-by mercenary outfit. It pushed me to run almost all missions with a non-companion recruit because they had an ability granting a few extra credits each mission. There is a bit of time pressure in that missions only last so many cycles (each mission taking 1 cycle). If you delay running a com...
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Of Ash and Steel (End)

 So I finished up Of Ash and Steel. And I would say that's... an ending, I suppose? On the gameplay side, things do get easier in the later game. Teleporters are available to avoid running across the entire map. Enemies get a couple more tricky abilities, but their attack routines done change much. The final boss has a habit of teleporting back and shooting a ranged attack that took away a ridiculous amount of health before I could get up close and essentially stun-lock him. But as stats increase, gear gets better, and you can finally unlock combat-related skills, avoiding any fights is more out of time saving than genuine worry over losing. Of more note is the story.  Act 4 left Tris with some magical powers in a world that had seemed largely bereft of them, delving into old "Primestrider" ruins to pick up a few more. He gathers up whichever faction was chosen and retakes a fort in the center of the island, gathering allies against a nebulous foreign threat that apparen...
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Of Ash and Steel

I had my eye on Of Ash and Steel for a while as a possibly-worth-playing second- or third-tier RPG. I've enjoyed such before in spite of a certain level of jank that is expected. In this case, other things lined up such that I didn't come in until several patches into its lifecycle, which is probably a good thing as it cuts down on bugs. The term I keep coming back to with this game is "high friction." You can't even access the map screen until Act 2, then have to find survey points to reveal details, and even then I wish there was more labeling. There are zero quest markers and the directions given range wildly from semi-useful to "you should just look this up outside the game if you don't expect to lose hours searching." Traveling around is limited to running (technically some teleporters open up in Act 4), which is especially painful in the early game when you stamina is particularly low. Heck, you even fall down if running through puddles until ...
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Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the best movie I've seen in quite a while. This comes from someone who is definitely experiencing a degree of superhero movie fatigue. And yet, I was not taken out of the movie once for the entire runtime. The movie may be couched in "hero fights villain(s)" trappings, but it leans more into the "and discovers things about himself along the way."  There are several story threads examined that I figured would be handled in a typical and simple way, but were instead treated more with the nuance they deserve - primarily how Peter handles connecting with people who magically forgot about him. I don't think it's too spoilery since that's hinted by previews and fairly obvious from where previous movies left things. The simple cop out would just be to have the magical amnesia overcome by the power of friendship. This movie, for the most part, does not treat it as such a simple matter, and that's good because it should be me...
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