Welcome back!

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I started this blog way back in 2013 with the expectation that I’d spend a little time each week writing about what I was playing, thoughts on games and gaming, and just general observations. That… didn’t happen, as the four posts over the course of two years (and nothing new since 2014) shows. Some of that was life – I changed jobs, moved across the country for the third time, and kind of fell out of the ‘documenting things’ headspace – and some of it was the ADHD tendency to lose things that aren’t consistently in your face.

So, now it’s the beginning of fall, 2022. We’ve been through almost three years of the COVID-19 pandemic and much of the way we, as people everywhere, dealt with the boredom of various lockdowns was gaming. Between the proliferation of PC and Mac/Linux gaming, consumer-grade VR, and the eighth and ninth generation of gaming consoles, choices of ‘how to game’ have never been greater.

I never stopped gaming. I did stop writing about it, and now I want to fix that. I’ve started streaming over on Twitch and I’ll be using this blog as a place to keep thoughts between streaming sessions. Right now, I’ve been slowly streaming my way through a Switch escape room game, but I’m also planning to do some streaming from my Atari 800 to talk about old games, new technology for ancient home computers, and to share some of my gaming history from the last fifty years.

Looking Backwards and Forwards

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I may not have blogged much in 2013, but I did have a lot of fun finding and playing new games. Let’s take a quick look at what I really liked (and some that I didn’t) in 2013 and some of what I’m excited about for 2014.

PC Gaming:

FTL: I’ve already written about it once, but FTL was the big winner for me this year. I’ve sunk a lot of hours into it, and I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface. With the DLC that’s been announced, I think FTL’s going to be high on my play list for quite a while.

Papers Please: Who could have predicted how engaging the 1980s Eastern Bloc could be? As a newly hired border guard for the fictional Iron Curtain country of Arstotzka, you have to decide who is and is not permitted to entry the country today. You’ve got to juggle your income, pressure from peers and superiors, emotional requests from possible immigrants, and the occasional suicide bomber. There’s a surprisingly compelling story here, with a lot of replayability.

Race the Sun: The elevator pitch for this one is “It’s like Tiny Wings, but in 3D”. Fly your solar-powered craft toward the rapidly-setting sun, dodging an ever-changing array of trees, rocks, mountains, and other impedimentia. Grab pick-ups that give you the ability to jump, resurrect you in the case of a collision, or zip you forward fast enough to roll the sun back a little higher in the sky. Let the sun set, or spend too long in the shadows, and you run out of juice and coast to a stop. Simple graphics, gorgeous background music, and a world map that changes every day. Try it – you’ll keep coming back.

It should be noted that all three of these games are available for multiple platforms through Steam, or directly from their publishers’ websites (although, at this writing, the websites for both FTL and Race the Sun are down).

I also spent quite a bit of time in Shadowrun Returns, after having backed the Kickstarter campaign. The game itself is gorgeous, and it’s obviously a very powerful storytelling engine, but I was a little let down by the size and simplicity of the first included campaign. There’s a strong community of folks making content, though, and the Berlin campaign should be coming soon, so I’m sure SR will get another chance from me.

The only PC game I picked up this year that hasn’t turned my crank is, sadly, Surgeon Simulator 2013. My 15-year-old, however, thinks it’s hilarious.

What PC games am I excited about for 2014? Top on my list: the long-awaited Wasteland 2 is scheduled for this year after its very successful Kickstarter, as is Torment: Tides of Numenera.

Tablet/Phone Gaming:

Lords of Waterdeep iOS: Holy Jebus. This is a beautiful and (I’m told) faithful recreation of the board game of the same name. Very tough computer opponents, but with a nicely detailed tutorial to get you started. Probably the best German-style board game I’ve played on a tablet.

Little Inferno: From some of the minds behind World of Goo and the director responsible for one of my favorite Nintendo DS games, Henry Hatsworth, Little Inferno is a both a great puzzle game and a wonderful call-back to the original Yule Log TV channel. Darkly humorous, oft-times gross, always beguiling. Also available on Steam for multiple platforms, but I found it most fun on a tablet.

Candy Crush Saga: ‘Nuff said. I love ‘join 3’ type games, and CCS has hit just the right inconstant reward button in my brain.

The biggest tablet gaming disappointment this year, for me, was the perennial Magic the Gathering: Duel of the Planeswalkers edition (at least, on iOS). DotP 2014 started out well, but the first expansion introduced an apparently infinite supply of crash bugs which WotC has not, at this writing, addressed. Very few people, at this point, appear to be able to complete, or even start, a duel. A bugfix update was pushed on 17 December which has apparently helped some, but by far only a minority, of players resolve their crashes. Hopefully, WotC will continue hammering on things and we’ll have a playable game soon.

Tabletop / Roleplaying:

Sadly, I did not do very much of either of these things this year, although I had several opportunities to play the always-fun Cards Against Humanity. 2014 is looking good, however, as several successfully Kickstarted games are now, or will soon, be shipping. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on David Malki!’s Machine of Death card game, and the re-issue of the classic Ace of Aces is just about in shipping stage (and I can’t wait to introduce my 15-year-old to a game that I remember playing at his age).

What did you play this year? What’s upcoming in 2014 that’s got you champing at the bit? Let me know in the comments!

Where’d the Year Go?

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2013 is rolling to a close, and 2014 (as expected) is right behind it… and I only managed two blog posts, the last 7 months ago.

I’d actually planned to use this blog regularly. I play a lot of games, and I love to talk about them. It made sense, deep in the recesses of my brain, to combine these things in a way that required me to be creative. I just didn’t do a very good job of this in 2013.

So… 2014? Will have to be different. This year, I’ll have *something* up, every week, no later than Tuesday (so, the next post will be up here no later than 7 January). It might be as little as “Here’s the new stuff I bought on Steam this week” or “Talked my aunt- and uncle-in-law into playing Cards Against Humanity this week, and hilarity ensued”, it could be a detailed review of something that’s caught my fancy (I’ll be writing up some impressions of Race the Sun soon, I suspect), or maybe a little history of me and gaming (I still have a draft of “D&D: Teacher, Mother, Secret Lover” that NEEDS to be finished). I’m even considering some vlogging, which I’ll link here; possibly some “Let’s Play” type stuff, or video reviews. Whatever the posts are, there will be at least 52 new ones here between 1 January and 31 December, 2014.

And, yes, I know… I’m already prepping the “I probably have to post 26 of them between 15 December and 31 December to meet the target number” jokes.

Why Romer Doesn’t Play MMOs Anymore

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Over the last several years, I’ve had many people try to get me interested in MMOs. EverQuest, World of Warcraft, EVE Online, City of Heroes… All of them have had their proponents. And, to be honest, I’ve tried a couple – I spent about 10 hours in Auto Assault when it was in beta, I’ve played a few hours of EVE Online, and I’ve tried DC Comics’ DC Online. They all have their good and bad points, and I can totally see why MMOs continue to draw such huge audiences, but none of them have ever managed to pull me in the way the Old School MMOs did. Let me tell you a story…

No shit, there I was. Flying the banner of C-land, tooling around in my P-38 about 18,000 feet over B-land, when I see a pair of Mitsubishi A6M5 Zeros (colloquially known as Zekes) turn-fighting underneath me. I’ve got a lot of altitude on ’em, so I figure I’ll go in for one boom-and-zoom pass, get some hits in, and get out before they know what hit ’em. I roll over, pull the nose down into my dive, then roll right-side up. Somewhere just south of Mach 1, I realize that a) they’re a lot lower than I thought and b) if I can’t pull out, I’ll be the prettiest pancake in B-land. I throw out the air brakes, pull back on the throttle, and hope that the elevators will start biting as the air gets thicker. Icons pop up – I’m closing on the Zekes like a bolt of Lightning (pun intended), and I’ll be in shooting range in seconds. Suddenly, I’m less than 800 yards from them, and they’re lined up almost perfectly. I lean on the trigger – 4 .50 cals and a cannon start growling. A burst of smoke, then… POW! The first Zeke explodes. A quick kick on the rudder brings the second into my reticle; another burst from my guns and it, too, is suddenly an expanding mass of very small pieces. I’m under 4,000 feet now, nose still below the horizon… but, the airspeed’s coming off, thanks to the air brakes. I start to pull back on the stick and, slowly, the nose responds. Under 1,500 feet, and the altimeter isn’t spinning down as quickly. 1,000… 600… 300… at 150 feet, the nose clears the horizon and, at 75 feet, the altimeter starts climbing again. I quickly honk the throttle to the firewall and start trading airspeed for altitude; soon, I’m at 5,000 feet, still climbing, looking for my next targets.

That’s a probably-fictionalized story from the MMO that I started with, almost 25 years ago. Air Warrior, by Kesmai, ran on the old GEnie network. It was an extensively researched multiplayer flight simulator, with amazing (for the time) accuracy in flight characteristics of the multitude of planes available to players. Players chose to join one of three different ‘countries’ (imaginatively, A-land, B-land, and C-land); good players were often asked to join a squadron who would train and fly together. Originally designed for that era’s graphical computers (Mac, Amiga, Atari ST), a port soon found its way to DOS- and Windows-based machines. The graphics, primitive as they look now, were evocative enough to make you feel like you were actually in the plane. And, if you didn’t like the default cockpit art of the plane you were in, you always had the option to create your own.

What sets AW apart from today’s MMOs (and, especially, MMORPGs) is the lack of pre-planned scenarios, encounters, and missions. AW had the occasional “Scenario Night”, when certain planes would be limited or completely unavailable, to try and emulate classic battles of WWII. Mostly, though, AW was a never-ending stream of what pilots used to call “grab-ass”. You’d hop in a plane and go hunting, hoping to bounce an enemy or three before you got bounced. If you scored some kills (or ran low on ammo or fuel), you’d go running for the nearest friendly airfield to score your points and grab a new ride.

Ownership of airfields was fluid and constantly changing. Each field had a few anti-aircraft guns that were OK at plinking aircraft but deadly accurate at taking out paratroopers. A couple of bombers successfully silencing the “ack” at a given field would prompt calls for a Skytrain. Someone would grab a C-47 (which always came with its own paratroopers) and high-tail it for the disputed airfield. IF you weren’t shot down and IF you got there before the ack regenerated and IF you got all 10 troopers out the door from above 1000 feet, your country could take control of the airfield. Having bases closer to the enemy meant less time flying over empty land to get to the action, and allowed you to respond more quickly to enemy action.

All of this came with a price, and a pretty steep one at that. Access to the GEnie network at speeds up to 1200 baud was $6/hour; 2400 baud was available at a premium rate. Yes, that’s per hour; since GEnie was a time-share on General Electrics’ mainframes, they figured that per-hour charges would prevent over-usage (and, yes, rates were even higher during business hours). Based on some of the monthly bills I remember, I was probably averaging 70 hours/month just on Air Warrior (there were other GEnie games that had my attention, too). Hard to justify $400/month online expenditures when one is a delivery guy for Domino’s, barely making minimum wage.

I have a healthy respect for the story-telling and art design that have to be the hallmarks of any new MMOs. Today’s gamers have come to expect cinema-level writing and art, along with an immersive experience and a definable path of progress. Game companies have come to realize that a constant stream of new content helps keep the world fresh for jaded old gamers, which keeps those monthly fees rolling in.

Me? I think I’m ok with my memories of creating my own content, high above the clouds in Air Warrior. And, if any of you old-timers see this (Dok, Jenni, Phoenix, Red Tail, and so many, many more), I probably still owe most of you a beer. Just name the place.

— Lord Mhoram [AFU] (Retired) — #5856

FTL: Faster Than Light

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I completely missed the original FTL: Faster Than Light bandwagon. I didn’t back their Kickstarter project, I kind of rolled my eyes at the few folks I knew who lauded it, and, without evidence, assumed I wouldn’t like playing it. I have a long history of not really enjoying the classic “rogue-likes”, y’see. And then, it popped up in a Christmas sale on Steam. For $7.50, I figured it would provide a little entertainment, so I snagged it. And, sometime later, fired it up in a fit of boredom.

I’ve now played over 200 hours, according to my Steam stats.

Oh, not in a row, of course. But FTL has sucked me in far deeper in far shorter an amount of calendar time than many other games; for example, I’ve completed the main quest line in Skyrim, along with the main quest in the Dragonborn DLC, and I don’t think I’ve spent 200 hours playing that. FTL is a brilliantly executed game. Every single play-through has been different; every one has offered a chance to see a little bit more of the possibilities.

The backstory’s pretty straightforward – the Federation’s in trouble, rebel spaceships are rolling up the remnants of the Federation fleet, and you have strategic data that can turn the tide of the war. You have to navigate a pathway of 8 sectors (out of 18 randomly distributed sectors); each sector comprises a number of jump gates, and you move across the sector via these gates. Gates provide any number of experiences – some are empty; some have shops to purchase repairs, weaponry, and crew; some have navigational hazards; some just have enemy ships. Your ship starts lightly-crewed and lightly-armored; hopefully, by sector 8, you’ll have been able to update your ride to something capable of taking down the many rebel ships you’ll encounter, and maybe even take a bite out of the Rebel Flagship.

Visually, FTL is delightfully old-school, with the character sprites bringing an 8-bit feel with them. The ambient music gets a little repetitive, but can be turned off. The sound effects are utilitarian, but add just the right amount of atmosphere – hearing the heartbeats of a soon-to-be dead boarding party while waiting for your transporter to recycle so you can bring them home to the medi-lab definitely adds a layer of tension.

“Boarding party?”, I hear you say. Yep, the easy alteration of your ship, and the wide selection of unlockable ship forms, allows you to play any number of ways. You can be a heavily-armed and heavily-shielded tank, laying waste to enemy ships with a barrage of lasers and missiles. Perhaps you’d like to be a puppet master, sending robotic drones to capture or destroy your enemy. There’s a ship form that lends itself to a sneaky, non-combat role (although you’ll find it hard to complete the game with that one, I think). My current favorite method of playing, though, involves beaming my crew members over to the enemy’s ship(s), letting them kill the crew, then stripping the ships for scrap. Encounters run in real-time, but can be paused at any time to make strategic decisions. In fact, liberal use of the pause button has helped get me out of any number of scrapes and close calls.

However you play it, FTL has a short, gentle learning curve and a lot of replayability. With 9 total ship types (your basic starting cruiser and 8 unlockables), each with an additional unlockable variant, you’ve got 18 different starting points to build your ultimate Federation-saving ride. You’ll meet 6 different non-human species (some of whom may want to join you) and find new weapons and ship add-ons each time. Random encounters can change, based on the things you’ve used to equip your ship, so be prepared for new choices and results every time.

I didn’t think it would be my cup of tea, but FTL: Faster Than Light turns out to be the next best thing to Earl Grey, hot. Available for Windows, MacOS, and Linux.