Yet One More Manic Monday – Daily Dispatch for 1/7/19

Opening/Random Thoughts

Hey folks, welcome to Monday! I’m using WordPress’ new Gutenberg editor to make this post because I’m giving a presentation on the dang thing next week, so I need a bit more hands-on time with the thing. So far I still don’t like it. I feel like blocks are a hindrance to content creation, rather than a boon.

For example, I just hit the Enter key to start this new paragraph, which makes it an entirely new block? Yay, I guess? Anyway, this is gonna be a short one today y’all, since there was barely any news this weekend — will 2019 be the year the space game slows doing again, just like 1999 was? — and I didn’t have time to play a lot, but there’s some good stuff regardless.

Today’s Video(s)

Event Horizon is a pretty poor game. Seriously, it has a tutorial that explains combat — the simplest and shortest part of the game — and that’s it. This game also has resource management, research and more. How do I use any of it? F%^k if I know. It’s also not fun. The battles are repetitive, the exploration is boring and rarely worth it, and there’s really no reason to keep playing. The entire time I played this, I wish I was playing something else.

Hypergate, on the other hand, is a pure delight. Fast, fun and violent, this is basically the Freespace 2 campaign condensed down to a few hours. That’s not to say it’s bad or anything, it’s just shorter than other games of its ilk, but it’s a fun campaign, with tons of enemies to kill. Those hoping for espionage or other types of missions should look elsewhere, to games like Freespace 2 or Star Crusader, because this game is all about combat. Thank GOODNESS it does the combat so well.

Star Dynasties is a character and intrigue-driven space strategy game similar to Crusader Kings or Star Wars: Rebellion, but with a more macro scope. For this preview — as we’re having the developer on our podcast this week — I decided to go with the more focused “Story” mode, in which you’re basically given only the options your character has available, apparently, rather than everything. I honestly had a lovely time making grand strategic decisions without worrying about tactical stuff. Between this and Alliance of the Sacred Suns, things are looking great for this kind of game.

Today’s News

• Void Destroyer 2 has a new dev update talking about upcoming story missions for the game.
• Reentry has a new small, yet important patch that fixes a serious Mercury bug.

Today’s Deal(s)

• None, really, which is sad.

What I’ve Been Playing

• Assassin’s Creed: Origins – Only had time to dabble with this over this past weekend, and had a blast. I feel more invested in this game than I have in many others of late, so much so I might…actually…finish it? Or come close to finishing it? I’m not sure, but that’s crazy, right?

Man, the preview function for Gutenberg takes FOREVER. It also doesn’t always save my tags. Ugh. Anyway, that’s it for today. Thanks for reading y’all!