Just Another Manic…Tuesday? – Hailing Frequencies Open for 8/29/17

Hello my friends, and welcome to Podcast day! So, so sorry I didn’t write one of these yesterday, but I only got four hours of sleep and just did NOT have the mental capacity to get through the work day and do one of these, so today you get something of a doubleshot, with news to cover several days below along with my rants about the weekend. :) This weekend actually had a lot of gaming in it, starting with our game of the week, 1995’s classic 4X, Stars!!

It had been ages since I played this, and it likely shows as I flail around a bit. This interface is so, SO Windows 3.1, but it’s not impenetrable like Aurora. These first two entries show off clearly the early portion of the game, where it’s explore and expand. It took a while to find colonizeable planets, but once I did I claimed them as quickly as I could so that the AI couldn’t. There’s no diplomacy in Stars!, so it’s kill or be killed. I sort of think the game suffers a little bit for that, but I guess that’s not what the game was going for, as it’s primarily meant to played over email (and still is to this day, awesomely enough). It’s odd though, while this is a great game, it didn’t hook me like the original Master of Orion did, which came out two years earlier. That game feels much more gamey, you know? Anyway, Stars! is still great, and it’s a shame that Supernova never happened.

I also spent a little time with Masteroid, a top down mining game that I had fun with. Right now it’s got some basic factions and missions, plus a lot of mining (and y’all know how I love mining), but even though it’s still early, I had a great time with it.

For my final bit of blog-focused gaming, we had another MMO Meetup with Earth & Beyond Sunday morning, and it was a lot of fun. I spent this round as a Progen explorer, and did a lot of exploring, shooting and questing. One great bit was when a veteran player took me to this place I had to go for a quest via wormholes and such, which was infested with enemies. He had a group cloaking capability that was just AWESOME.

For non-space gaming, I actually got a lot in! I played a heaping helping of LOGistICAL, finally finishing all the roads in Hawaii! Now that all the roads are done, I should be able to start fixing towns since all the industries are now accessible. I did have to go back to the Isle of Man though, in order to fully finish the tutorial island. Once you finish that, you get a speed boost, so I was able to go from 2x to 4x as a result. Finishing the rest of Hawaii should be much easier now. I also dabbled in Australia a little for a change of scenery.

I also played the tutorial of Deadhold, a Myth-like game that really lives up to the hype. Since there’s only one campaign mission right now, I kind of wanna hold off on that for the time being until it’s more fleshed out, but I DEFINITELY plan on playing more. I also loaded up Section 8: Prejudice for the first time and played the first level of that. What a fun game. It’s a shame there’s no more multiplayer, but I definitely plan on finishing the campaign, as it looks fairly bite-sized (even more so than Titanfall 2’s amazing yet shortish campaign). Finally, I bought and played some Asura, a mythologically-themed ARPG with random levels AND skill trees. It’s hard, but wow, it’s fun. I need to get better at the controls because I keep dying by the bosses, but I’m really super enjoying it so far.

Tonight after the Podcast — which I am super excited about by the way! — I hope to get a little time in with Disputed Space, as it now has procedural mission goals, so I HAVE to try that. Also likely some more LOGistICAL. That game is just my JAM lately. I mean it hit just the right spot between being slow enough to relax but engaging enough to play for hours. BTW, it’s still on sale y’all. ;)

Anyway, enough about me, there is so much news! Let’s get to it!

• Starway Fleet left early access today, and got a big patch along with it. I really hope they fix the issue with my joystick soon.
• X4, subtitled Foundations, has been officially announced, and you can see both the game’s home page and Twitch stream to get excited!
• Stars in Shadow is getting what it’s calling a DLC, but looks more to be an expansion, with its upcoming Legacies update.
• Dominus Galaxia has a new version for folks to try out!
• Navalia got a big patch that basically changes much of the game entirely. Can’t wait to dive back in!
• Avorion has got two small patches that fix a multitude of issues from their last big multithreading patch, and a much larger one as well that adds a ton of new stuff.
• Interstellar Rift got a big update to ship handling as part of its latest patch.
• Star Fleet Armada got a patch that updates its tutorials and much more.
• Stellar Monarch got a fairly sizeable patch that expanded audience events (I love those) and more!
• Disputed Space got a patch with a (gasp) procedural mission system! I know what I’m playing tonight after the podcast!
• Wayward Terran Frontier: Zero Falls’ dev detailed the skinny on an upcoming patch which looks incredible. I may have to revisit this thing.
• Battlefleet Engineer wants your help in determining its focus for next month’s development. They also released a sizeable quality of life patch.
• Helium Rain got a massive new patch with just a ton of fixes.
• Interstellar Transport Company got two patches, one huge and one less huge, that adds and fixes over two dozen things, if my math is right.
• Masteroid got a pretty big patch recently as well, with new sectors, ships and more!
• XO has a new dev update which shows the game is gaming momentum. Yay!
• Thrust & Shoot got a pretty large update which improves a boatload of things.

Finally, we have some sales!!

• Steam’s Weeklongs include Star Chronicles: Delta Quadrant, Stars in Shadow, The Long Journey Home, Transcendence and Holy Potatoes! We’re in Space?!!
• It’s not part of the Weeklongs, but the aforementioned Star Fleet Armada Rogue Adventures is on sale as well for its lowest historical price. Buy it, people!
• Star Trek: Bridge Crew is also on sale randomly on Steam, not sure why.
• Finally, the Win/MacGameStore is having a “Back to School” sale, and the best deal I could find was Kerbal Space Program for about $18, which is really good.

That’s it for today folks! See y’all tonight on the Podcast!