Back on the Horse… – Hailing Frequencies for 3/13/19

F#$k daylight savings time y’all. In the ear. It’s Monday as I write this, and I’m half-asleep already, so I know I’m not gonna finish it today, so it’ll go up on Tuesday when hopefully I’m more awake, because there’s a lot to talk about. First, let’s talk videos. This and next week, I’ll be spending time with Terminus, the 2000 space sim by Vicarious Visions that tried to pull off so much, and did most of it rather well. There are four career paths to choose from, though ultimately there are three. The Earth and Martian military pilot careers are pretty similar, but have enough different flair to be worth playing separately. Then, in the hardest career choice, you can be a pirate, which makes the military all hate you, and you also have to cozy up to pirate clans as well. Finally, there’s the mercenary, where you only answer to yourself, the downside being you pay for everything yourself.

For this first week, I take the easier option, taking the role of a Martian fighter pilot. Even though it came out years before The Expanse novels, there are a fun amount of similarities here. In the first video, I’m about to take part in a faux, show battle between Earth and Mars when the game crashes. Old games y’all. In the second video, I take part in said bout, wherein I accidentally crash into an Earth ship and kill the pilot. Whoops.

Next up is Cycle 28 (though the in-game menu calls it Cycle 27, so that’s what I mistakenly called it in the video itself), which is a top-down roguelike shooter with Groundhog Day elements. Every time you die, a teensy bit more of the story is revealed, and you remember each run and each death, which to me just sounds terrifying. You also get upgrades! Yay! It’s really fun, if, again, terrifying.

Finally, we have Dominari Tournament, a fast-played 4X-style game in the Galcon tradition. If you don’t know what that means, basically each planet produces ships, which you use to take over other planets, which produce ships to take over more planets. Only this game adds further depth, such as factories, defenses, probes and the like. In this video, I play against the game’s stupidest and smartest AI, with predictable results. It’s a really fun game that ya’ll should try.

Now, as for other games, remember last week when I said I was likely gonna get Total War: Warhammer 2? Well I did, and HOLY HELL IT’S AMAZING. Seriously y’all, I’ve fallen HARD for this game. The last time I fell this hard for a game — that wasn’t a space game, of course — was Titanfall 2, and before that, Skyrim. I’ve already lost hours to Total War: Warhammer 2, and part of that was restarting its campaign because I am terrible at the battles y’all, so I read some guides — which I never do — and thought I should try again. Thankfully there’s a mod that puts the battles under full AI control, which is likely better than auto-resolving, so I’m doing better this time. I feel like I’m gonna put a LOT of time into this game. I also got Hearts of Iron 4 because it was on sale and wanted to try it out, but refunded it because it was so boring, and then went RIGHT BACK to TW: Warhammer 2. I’m really hooked y’all.

Alright, enough about me, shockingly a lot of stuff happened over the weekend, so let’s dive in:

• Endless Space 2 has two new small content packs, with new missions and music, as well as a new patch!
• 3030 Deathwar Redux is getting a new subtitle and modding support according to this exciting dev update! Yay!
• Rodina got a big update that now adds procedural mines to asteroids for you to explore!
• Astrox Imperium has a new devlog video that really makes me want this game.
• Galactic Crew has a new dev update that shows off…dinosaurs?
• Empyrion posted a big dev post talking about the steps to the next phase of its alpha.
• Voidship has a new dev blog entry talking about the features of the game.
• RogueCraft Squadron posted their second development video, which looks great.
• Infinity: Battlescape has a dev update talking about their alpha weekend that I wasn’t invited to. Sads. ;)
• Station 21 has a small update talking about what’s coming up in their next patch.
• RiftStar Raiders now has a free demo version for y’all to try!
• Starmancer reached more stretch goals, which means a creative mode and more! Yay! Their demo now also apparently has a tutorial.
• Alliance of the Sacred Suns has its news of the week up, giving a recap on development of this awesome 4X.
• Starblast has both a new ship and a big war event coming up!
• Several games hit steam, such as Space Shaft, Alien Crusader and Battle Ion.
• Reassembly got its first patch in a dog’s age, paving the way for a new modding system!
• Starpoint Gemini Warlords got a fairly large patch with a new game start and more! Its composer also had an interview over on WSHU, an NPR station.
• Star Traders: Frontiers got a big patch which adds more filters, which are always a good thing.
• Predestination got a pretty big patch they’re still calling a hotfix.
• War Tech Fighters has tweaked its new survival mode to be more fair, they say.
• Asteroid Defender! has a teensy little patch that fixes a few things.
• Space Launch Engineer also got a tiny little patch.
• Cycle 28 also got the teensiest of little patches.
• Vendetta Online also got the tiniest of patches, especially compared to their other updates.
• Elite Dangerous got a big patch based on community feedback.
• Interstellar Rift got a patch that fixes bugs and its editor.
• Avalon: The Journey Begins got a fairly sizeable update to go along with its new DLC.
• Escort Commander — which I’ve yet to play — also got a patch recently.
• OESE got a patch that fixes ONE THING: the warp drive.
• Wing Commander III briefing stills have been posted by Ben Lesnick, and they’re filled with little details.
• Speaking of Wing Commander, Joe of the Upper Memory Block podcast has a new video series tackling Wing Commander II.
• The Quarter to Three Podcast has an interview with the folks behind Space Tyrant.
• The Concept Ships blog has some amazing art from Alexander Winkler.

In deals, GOG is having a big St. Patrick’s Day sale, which includes all sorts of space games.

That’s it for today y’all! Have a great one!