Sometimes Gaming Can be Heartbreaking – Daily Dispatch for 10/12/18

Opening/Random Thoughts

Games like Origin Space are why people hate early access. They come out with all this promise, only to be abandoned and left to rot, and it. Is. INFURIATING. Seriously, I really, really liked this game when it first hit the scene. I was fun, fast, and had such promise. And then, apparently, it was just…abandoned. Like a stray kitten. If it was a bad game from the start, it would’ve been…I guess okay…if it were abandoned. No one is going to remember or care about a bad game left to rot. Well, some might. Anyway, this game had so many good ingredients, but in the end, the developer left us in the lurch, and it’s such a shame when potentially great games like this are left to flounder and die.

Would it have been better without early access? Just released as the incomplete, buggy mess it is? Maybe. Because if it just came out in the state it’s in now, we would’ve had months of hopes dashed by a developer who, for whatever reason, stopped caring not only about their game, but its fans. It’d have been one thing if they came out and said “Hey, I can’t work on this anymore, here’s the source code, have fun with it.” We could at least EMPATHIZE. But to not update it for months, just release it (hah, “release”, right) and then hope we wouldn’t notice. Screw you, Rimware. Developers like are what give early access, and its developers, such a poor reputation, and in this case, yours will certainly be well-deserved.

In happier news, this arrived yesterday:

My new, twenty-seven inch, 1440p 144Hz monitor! YAY! It was rated pretty much the best gaming monitor you can get, so I’m SUPER excited to set it up tomorrow. I basically have three monitor arms, so I’m gonna use them all to mount the two monitors I currently one (one twenty-seven inch 1080p and one fourteen-inch 900p) alongside this one, for three monitors! Yay! I just hope my desk can handle the weight. It’ll also involve me rearranging much of my desk too, so it’ll be a big indeavour, but I can’t wait.

Today’s Video(s)

Buggy. Incomplete. Fun. Heartbreaking. Forever uninstalled. That’s how Origin Space should be remembered, for that’s all it, and its developer, ultimately deserve.

Last night on our LAN Party, Spaz and I played Dustwind, a top-down, co-op thing that many confused for Fallout or Wasteland, and kind of rightly so. It’s its own thing though, and it’s shockingly great. While it does have single-player — which is admittedly fun and easier — we had a BLAST with the co-op. We made several attempts to clear the same map, each hilariously failing in the end. I think twice we failed because I tried to heal Spaz’s character and got sniped as a result. Oh, and you can also play as a dog. That throws grenades. No, I’m not kidding. There are a lot of different kinds of characters, from ninjas to snipers to dogs, plus more to unlock, along with driveable vehicles, robust multiplayer, and a map editor! Overall, we were very pleasantly shocked with just how much fun Dustwind was, and we’ll definitely be putting it back in the rotation soon.

Today’s News

• Helium Rain is now available on Itch.io if you’re averse to Steam, on which it was released yesterday! Yay!
• Battlestar Galactica Deadlock is getting new DLC next week! Entitled Anabasis, it adds — among other things — a skirmish mode that mirrors the TV show, and sounds AMAZING!
• Interstellar Rift had moved into beta mode! It also got a teensy beta patch with just a few little fixes, which followed another teensy patch.
• EVE Online is having an event called Crimson Harvest which begins next week. Looks like fun!
• Celestial Command redesigned their entire tutorial, which is a really good thing.
• ARM Planetary Prospectors has a post about their revamped roadmap for the future.
• Stellaris has a new dev post looking at traditions.
• Hyperspace Delivery Service has a dev post about what’s coming up in the next week for the game.
• Hexterminate has a new dev post over on IndieDB about switching physics engines!
• Spacebourne got a pretty sizeable patch which adds and fixes a lot of things.
• AI War 2 got a pretty big patch that revamps a lot of things.
• Landinar: Into the Void got a nice patch which adds ship ratings, laser audio and more.
• Beat Hazard 2 got a teensy little patch which tweaked hitboxes.

Today’s Deal(s)

• GOG is having a Disney Sale with the entire X-Wing series and more. This is the place to get them if you don’t already have them.
• Steam is having an Iceberg Interactive Weekend Sale, which includes a lot of wonderful games including the entire Starpoint Gemini series.

What I’ve Been Playing

• Starfighter: Infinity – Been a while since I played this one. Last time I played — which was to record a video for the podcast — some thing in the alpha led to me dying over and over again. Left a bad taste in my mouth, honestly, so I took a break from the game. Well, now it’s in beta, and holy cats as it improved. You can walk around stations now, the controls are way snappier, missions feel better implemented, and the tutorial is WAY better. I am super, SUPER excited for how this game is coming along.
• Executive Assault 2 – Before the Dustwind stream yesterday, podcast co-host Spaz and I tested out this game’s multiplayer. He was the CEO — who runs the station, does the research, etc — while I was an Executron. An executron can’t do a lot of higher-level stuff like trade or research, but you can fight off invading soldiers, take over ships, build ships and repair things. So basically I helped manage the stations defenses while Spaz did building, research and so on. And my god you guys, it was SO FUN. It was buggy, but we reported the bugs, but even with these issues, we had a BLAST. It was amazing to stand in the space station and look out upon a frigate being built. Or watch as a fighter is being built in the hangar and then watch it take off. Just AMAZING you guys. I can’t wait for y’all to try this next week.
• AI War 2 – I finally managed to finish the tutorial, and then started a new, basic game, which I promptly lost because I built too many ships. What a crazy game, but I think once I fully grok it, I’ll love it.
• Beat Hazard 2 – Tried out the new folder method of finding songs, loved it of course. This game is so fun. I picked some random songs to try out, and the hardest one? “Ikea” by Jonathan Coulton, believe it or not. SO DIFFICULTY. Took multiple tries to pass it.
• Solar Explorer: New Dawn – I finally finished off the moon, and then headed to Mars, which has new challenges due to different gravity and such. Lost a bunch too, but that’s okay because you learn when you lose. This game is sooooo fun.
• Space Hulk: Tactics – This came out the other day, so I played the tutorial and in the midst of the first marine campaign mission. Crap, it is HARD. Seriously, lost a guy in the first three turns. THREE. Freaking Genestealers. I’LL STEAL YOUR GENES YOU BASTARDS.

Welp, that’s it for me. Thanks for reading my rantings today, and I hope y’all have a lovely weekend!