Late To The Party: Dispatch

 After reading some VERY hype posts about Dispatch, I gave it a go.

It's pretty good. Game of the year? Not quite sure about that.

The story is solid, the voice acting and animation is good and I thought there was a game there too. It wasn't just a story with prompts. 

The gameplay breaks down into the following columns; dialog/action choices, sending heroes on missions, and hacking.

Of these, one and a third of them are given the short shift-and it has impacts on the rest of the game. 

Obviously, you have plenty of time with dialog choices; the player has those in every chapter. However, when the action prompts appear, they only do so in the beginning and the end of the game, so I didn't have much experience with it and ended up missing prompts I felt I would have gotten otherwise. 

The hacking game is both on a timer and has a fail state, so there are two ways to blow it. But I never felt like I was given enough information to succeed at the task at hand. There were multiple times where I just hit the fail state and felt like there was nothing I could have done about that. 

In addition, I wasn't made aware of the consequences of that failure from a gameplay point of view. 

Finally, when sending heroes on missions I felt like I didn't have all the information I needed to send the right hero for the job. There would be keywords associated with the missions, but the corroborating info via the heroes wasn't so easily seen. 

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the experience! I'm not sure I'd play it again, but I'm glad I gave it a shot. 

Late To The Party: Resident Evil: Requiem

I just finished the latest Resident Evil game and I have to say: they do a lot right. 

There's a good balance of scary parts to action parts-Clare and Leon's sections respectively. Clare's gameplay is full of tension and trying to make smart choices about your limited resources. Leon's is about maxing out the damage output in fun ways. 

I especially enjoyed how the stories would overlap and there were a few-albeit small-opportunities for one character to help another. 

The gameplay is solid too, each character behaving in a manner that befits their skills. 

However. 

There are two very disagreeable things about Requiem. 

The first is the voice acting for Clare. I want to be clear: I'm not blaming the actress. She sounds very scared. But the choice to have her stammer 95% of her dialog is bad. It works for the opening section where the player is learning the game mechanics, conveying how frightened she is. Then it becomes increasingly grating as the game goes on.

My first playthrough was a little over 14 hours. I hated hearing that actress speak by the time it was done.

Now I need to talk about the ending and that is going to involve ALL THE SPOILERS. You have been warned.

OK here we go. 

At the very last moment, the player is given a choice, one that has a meaningful impact on the ending. That's right; there are two endings: A gloomy one that is disastrously anti-climatic, or a triumphant one using Leon's gameplay for an action-oriented finale. 

The action oriented one feels OK but even then the fight isn't terribly interesting. It is at least against the correct character; the one who has been plaguing the player for most of the game. Emotionally; that is fulfilling. But it doesn't play very well as an action piece. 

Which ending should you chose? The game doesn't give you any context, there's no buildup for this, no layering of information to help the player make a choice. There aren't any signals that the player WILL have to make a choice. So it feels like a trick that's pulled on the player, as opposed to a meaningful decision. 

Then, as soon as the credits roll the player is asked if they'd like to start at the last save and just play the other ending. Now I agree with this, since it's what I was going to do anyway and this saves me the trouble of having to go to the loading screen. 

But doing this cuts anything out at the knees because neither of the endings matter! I felt cheated and irate.

However, the ending aside, I found the game to be a lot of fun and will likely give it another go! (If I have time).

Treeless Cul-de-sac

Well....this went a lot better than I had planned. I'm not upset about it! 

I don't know who approved Risky Shortcut but...how is this just not better than any other Black spell doing the same thing? I draw two cards and YOU lose two life? (Yes I lose two life too but I was going to lose it anyway).

Decode Transmissions comes close but I'd have to jump through hoops. 

Still, I think I like this:

4 Jet Medallion
1 Nightmare

2 Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
1 Ihsan's Shade
1 Reiver Demon
1 Visara the Dreadful
2 Magus of the Coffers
1 Maga, Traitor to Mortals
3 Twisted Abomination
1 Phyrexian Obliterator
1 Griselbrand
2 Black Cat

4 Heartless Act

21 Swamp
2 Cabal Coffers

3 Forced March
3 Drain Life
3 Hymn to Tourach
4 Risky Shortcut

Reiver Demon is probably the weakest creature in the bunch, actually. When it works it's pretty great, but the successful targets for it just aren't what they used to be. Still, this has been a fun deck to play. Is it great? No-I'd probably give it a B-. It can do a lot but there are times when the deck gives me a handful of nothing to do. Still quite enjoyable overall though.

A Hostile Climate

Let's get back on track.

With ten cards to add, I took a look at the deck and made some decisions. 

First; I needed a way to disrupt my opponent. Second, I needed a way to draw cards. 

Which lead me to the following additions: 3 Hymn to Tourach 2 Black Cat, 1 Griselbrand and 4 Risky Shortcut.

Of those, only Griselbrand is more than 3 mana and as a beatstick you'd be hard pressed to do better. 

The rest all keep my costs low so that I have something to do in the early game, either to set me up, or stalling until I make it to the point where I can cast my haymakers. 

Free Pizza: Guardians Vol 2

 I used last month's tech to beat this month's tech.

Ghost is the flex slot, but this is what I ran when the new Proscenium location was hot. I am not above taking advantage of a good thing.

The other thing I'm not above is finding ways to double up on Shang-Chi. With so many players utilizing the new Star Lord and Fang Foom, being able to take out 2 or 3 characters can really change the game. Absorbing Man can also repeat Shou-Lao's ability, which is not to be overlooked!

However, right now the meta is adapting with a TON of Stardust, so be careful about adding Scarlet Spider. 

TMNT Analysis

While I'm not going to dive into the TMNT set-and no shade to anyone who is-I think there's a few things to talk about.

First; there's the Professor's video on the set design. I highly recommend it, as he's very good at breaking down what the problems are, drawing from experience and the game's history. 

Second, I said back in September that the small sets were being floated as a way for WotC to introduce a new set every month. I feel like the Prof's video supports this idea-because he thinks this is just the way things are going to be, going forward. At least 4 of the 7 sets are UB this year and TMNT and I guess The Hobbit are small ones? 

That's not great for the game. 

Third, all of this product is having an impact on the card quality. I don't know if you've ripped any Lorwyn Eclipsed boosters, but I have and it is clear to me that multiple cards have been miscut. It isn't much and you might not notice at all if you just automatically sleeve every card you get before paying it. But it's something I've noticed and it's diminished my optimism about things going forward. 

Boarders

 Just a neat post about how the iconic boarders were created for Magic cards.