| Side Talkin'

My iPhone 6+ came in yesterday and it's big as FUCK! I didn't bother to even check the specs when I ordered it, other than "wee, bigger screen". It's almost an iPad-Mini. So now I look like I'ma side-talking fool.

Other than the crazy size, it IS pretty awesome when you're lounging around. It's super light and a good "in between" size for browsing and games. But lugging that around as my phone is gonna take some getting used to. There aren't any good cases yet, so just got a generic one for the time being.

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In gaming news, I picked up 2000 penny sleeves from my local game store. They didn't have the MayDay ones, so they're not a great fit for Legendary, but it'll do. Getting the fancier sleeves would have been pretty expensive.

Gotta say Rude, it's been pretty strange checking the blog first thing in the morning and not seeing some random post from you at 2:45 am!

Played a bunch more W2 and definitely liking it quite a bit more than SR now. I dragged my ass into work today, but I'm still pretty sick, definitely wishing I was at home shooting mutant cockroaches instead (not in real life, in the game I've been discussing in this paragraph).

Happy belated birthday Ry! Don't forget to "hang 10" off a sweet rip curler for ol' jr0n.

I've played around 2 hours of Shadowrun and it's fun for $4 bucks. The "interactive novel" aspect is kind of killing me. Story stuff can be fun, but this seems like the dialog and text in the game could have been cut down significant. It drags from the opening of the game. The combat on the other hand is a lot of fun, so it balances out enough.

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Have any of you ever taken a free online Coursera class? They offer a ton of legitimate online college classes from big universities all over the world. Since it's all free, I've usually just signed up and watched a few lectures over the years, but this time I'm taking a class on Comic Books that I'm going to try and finish. They have classes on EVERYTHING and it's worth checking out if you're interesting in further education on the cheap.

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My wife's totally hooked on Legendary Marvel now which is pretty awesome. We've played 6 games now in about a week, and I'm already contemplating picking up expansions and spin-offs. We play it "open hand" which isn't exactly how you're supposed to play, since it's really only partially co-op. We still play for the most points at the end, but we help each other out when we're calculating our hands or interpreting weirdly worded cards. You can pull off some epic combos in that game, but that also means some awkward number crunching and vague rule chicanery (a lot of times when cards can trigger is confusing, so it's taking us a few games to figure those things out).

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That new Batman (without Batman) show, Gotham, premiered last night. It was alright! It was a little heavy handed in all the "cameos" they crammed in, like "Greetings, I'm Jimmy J. Oker, a young magician", but overall it was pretty fun so far. The young Bruce Wayne they have is already pushing the "my training begins now" angle pretty hard, but I figure that they'll pace shit out better as the season develops, and not try to have EVERYONE being a future hero/villain.

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I'm still not used to starting work so early. The first few hours of the morning are fucking impossible.

Thanks.  I better start flipping some switches on my email settings.

On the plus side, I dug out an old email that led me to the Keymaster.  Apparently I'm the Gatekeeper?  Just finished downloading the game (took a long time).  Launched it, clicked quit, now it's time for bed.  Yay!

I'm a marginal coffee snob, but I'm a full on sucker for this:

Brew!

Yes, an interactive novel with periodic combat breaks is exactly how I'd describe Shadowrun as well. Wasteland 2 is basically the exact opposite of that. It's a long, crunchy, gnarly, easy-to-fuck-up game. One of the first things you do is decide which of two settlements to help, and while I'm not sure, I -think- the one you don't help gets wiped out of the game permanently.

Xander, I took the liberty of examining your steam history and it looks like you played Wasteland 1 and Wasteland 2 for .1 hrs each on July 25th. Definitely give Wasteland 2 at least another 6 minutes before making a final judgment! As for Wasteland 1, it was a good game back in the day, but a little hard to approach these days unless you've got the nostalgia thing going.

Pump - yes, they sent out Steam keys MONTHS ago, back when the game was in alpha. I don't exactly remember how it worked. I think you had to sign in to Humble or something like that. You probably better figure out that Kickstarter email thing, unless you just like the feeling of throwing your money into a dark hole! (Well, even more than Kickstarter normally is. :) )

Jr0n - Did you get your copy through the Kickstarter?  I think my email is blocking all kickstater emails, so this was news to me (that it was out).

Eric - I too have played the Shadowrun.  Pre-patch save points were the worst.  It is light on the aar pee gee.  I guess since its roots are the console NES and Sega, it's not as RPG'y.  From what I've seen of the previews, Wasteland 2 is looking closer to the Fallouts 1 & 2 than Shadowrun.  And apparently the Toaster Repair skill is kinda important.

And I will not mention the big unpainted elephant in the room.  I was doing some light cleaning (playing closet tetris) recently.  There are metric tons of lead (actual lead) that are very upset they have not been painted yet.  And most of it is older than all your children.

My favorite part of your Wasteland characters is that their favorite brand of smokes is right up there as the third or fourth thing on their character sheet, right under religion.


I kickstarted both of those games, and have played about 2 minutes of shadowrun, and 5 minutes of Wasteland, but it might have been Wasteland 1 since it was seriously retro 80s Atari 2600 action.  I think Wasteland 1 was included as a "stretch goal" to thank backers or something.  Maybe punish backers?


Time you spend playing Wasteland 2, Eric, is time you're not painting Deadzone.  You make the call.

| Compare and Contrast

Shadowrun vs. Wasteland

I'm a few hours into Shadowrun and it has lost it's luster pretty quick.  It sort of feels like an interactive novel, where nothing you do means anything and each scene ends the same no matter what you do.  Right now, it's a murder mystery where, say, I need to get x clues from a scene.  I will either get those clues now, or I will get them later, but I won't leave the scene until I do.  I can either sweet talk someone into giving them to me (if my skill is high enough to click the option that says CHARISMA:4, else I will still see it but it will be grayed out), or I will have to pay for the clue, or something like that.

Unless the game is amazing (btw, my characters name is Amazeballs) and the story is being manipulated behind the scenes based on my choices, it really feels one dimensional, the combat is kinda lame, and I'm overall losing my interest.  I AM right on the cusp of hiring my own Shadowrunners, so maybe the game will open up some once I can hire a crew, but that's a big if...

jr0n, having played both, and given that i got Shadowrun for $4 and Wasteland costs $40, how do they compare and is Wasteland enough like Shadowrun that I'll be super-fuckin-pissed if I buy it?

I've put a few hours into Wasteland 2 (second major area), and so far I'm digging it! It's very similar to the Fallout series, except that you run a full party rather than managing one character assisted by NPCs. The character creation is pretty hardcore, and I'm kind of nervous that I've already made critical mistakes that will mess me up dozens of hours into the game (it's like 70+ hours long). We'll see. Here's the gang of four. I randomized each one's appearance and took the first thing that came up each time:

Hemo's the leader. As befits his high charisma, he wears a cowboy hat and a low-cut rubber top. He's incredibly slow and not a great shot. He was the first man to go down in combat and slowly bled out after the combat, the rest of the team ruing the fact that Hemo was the guy with the medical abilties. Whoops, time to reload!

Ragnar is the (so far) largely ineffective pistol/bladed weapons guy. Pistols may look super dope, but they aren't really the way to go in a world full of shotguns and assault rifles. Might need to burn some skill points and switch him to SMGs. He has managed to pull off some sweet computer hacks using tips he learned from his buddy Cythrax.

Steve (I'm Steve) is a laid-back dude who claims to have psychic powers. Which don't exist in this game, but nobody minds because he doesn't make a lot of fuss, just chills out and blasts people into gel with energy weapons. He also once convinced a giant mutant frog to be everyone's friend. He's OK in my book!

Deaf-Mute is probably the MVP of the team. He charges in balls-out with his shotgun and blasts everything apart, and always survives except when Hemo shoots him in the back. He also is the bomb squad for the frequent booby traps the team comes across. He sometimes even succeeds at disarming them!

Wow, that "Dance of the Fates" from the end of Ep. 1 was pretty great.