I play fighting games for the story.
I say, “I play fighting games for the story,” and then, I usually follow up with the joke, “which is like saying that I read Playboy for the articles.”
But it’s true… or, it’s at least, partially true. I could say, rather, that I play fighting games for the characters. After all, colorful characters are the core of fighting games, and central to their appeal. But that’s not quite it, either.
It’s been a very long time since I wrote about Dungeons & Dragons. I was once editorializing in a time when what is now D&D 5th Edition was still an uncertain series of playtests. This year, however, I’ve started up a new campaign in that edition. As I mentioned in my last article, I’ve been streaming live on Twitch, with a focus now on our Dungeons & Dragons game happening here in Philadelphia. We generally play every other week, on Sunday afternoons Eastern Standard Time.
We are not playing this week, however, because I’m at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, starting this Thursday and going through Sunday, June 18! While I’m there, I’m going to be helping out with the D&D Adventurer’s League events happening throughout the show. Thanks to Wizards of the Coast, I got a sneak preview of some of the new Dungeons & Dragons material coming out this fall. At Origins – and hopefully soon in our campaign, too – we’ll be playing through material in the adventure series, the Tomb of Annihilation.
Ukrainian developer 4A Games took advantage of E3 to pre-pimp their work in Metro: Exodus, the third interactive installment and member of the growing cross-media phenomenon that began with Dmitry Glukhovksy’s brilliant novel Metro 2033. Let’s recap before the news.
I wanted people from my group to also play the game, to the point where I promised them a free game of equal value if they picked up Nier:Automata, played through the whole thing, and said they didn’t feel it was worth full price. I REALLY wanted them to play it.
The Nordic Games Conference is going on right now in Skyrim Sweden. There’s a vibrant Scandinavian developer ecosystem out there, and interesting stuff often comes out of this event, which I imagine to be rife with Viking-related imagery such as mead and hats with horns.
GamesIndustry.biz reports on a fireside chat (possibly in a longhall!) between Massive Entertainment’s Managing Director David Polfeldt and Fumito Ueda, the legendary artiste behind Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and (ZOMG) The Last Guardian.
Among other things, Ueda sort of reveals that he’s working on a new game, which is kind of a surprise. I at least had assumed he’d lost interest in game design, but his remarks seem to indicate the opposite. Which is exciting.
Last week Joel posted up our latest episode of Side by Side where we discuss Powerhoof’s Crawl, a competitive (sorta) co-op dungeon crawling arcade hack and slasher.
Episode 6 of Side by Side is now up! (Well, it was up a couple of weeks ago but I sacrificed Magicka 2 for some Disney and Orlando ‘magic’.)
I’ve dabbled with Magicka 2 since Joel and I played it last year, both on my own and with friends who I played through the original with. I was very surprised to find that they didn’t click with it. Like, at all. They gave it just shy of a couple of hours and got a refund. Though they were unsure what felt ‘off’ about it, I attributed it to a few things.
I can’t always find time to write long essays about games. I’m often busy playing them!
I figured I’d go ahead and share that gameplay with all of you, so I re-invigorated my Twitch stream. I haven’t streamed since Extra Life several years ago, so I’m shaking off the dust.
Check my channel out at http://twitch.tv/litagemini
I’m going to be live tonight. A few details under the jump…
Games, games, games! Everybody’s got some games! Games, games, games! Games for you and I to play!
As always, there’s a lot I didn’t play this year, mostly because of games from previous years. One in particular from a very previous year. Like, 2001. But that’s okay! Here on Tap we don’t let that kind of thing spoil a good list. A good wordy list.
Wow, where did 2016 go? It feels like I was just writing a —
Haaaaa…. Just kidding. 2016 has been regarded by many as a kind of rough year, from a personal or historical perspective. It was a perfectly good year for video games, though. Let’s start off with a few obvious picks, then a few not so obvious, some runners up, and finally, in the spirit of 2016, a few complaints.
For those of you who don’t pop by our friend Harbour Master’s site Electron Dance every day, well, you’re missing a lot of brilliant work. Brilliance like The Drake Incident, a video that basically has everything you could ever want, ever.
Sometimes I wonder if we talk about Dark Souls too much around here, then I realize how crazy that is. You can never talk about Dark Souls too much.
I badgered Jay into writing this series. I felt that if anything needed his particular treatment, his uniquely Dobryvian acid humor, it was RimWorld. He’s outdone himself. But then, he always does.
“I did something different with Part Four,” Jay said. “Sort of a tonal shift. The pure humor angle wasn’t working.” What he has done instead is circle back to the point he made in Part One: that the player creates unique internal stories within each game, and that’s what makes RimWorld so memorable. This, the final chapter of Death in Fire, is one of those internal stories.
Anyway, consider yourself warned: the series title is not necessarily ironic in meaning, and if that comes as a surprise then you haven’t been paying attention.
— Steerpike
An escaped sex slave, a one-armed builder, an “herbalist”/sniper, and a cat-lover head into their third week of survival on a forgotten world. Hilarity ensues. Or perhaps blood. Bloody hilarity?
If you’re new to the series or need a refresher, go check out Part 1 or Part 2. Steerpike still owes me a Swedish massage, or at least a bag filled with money and drugs. (I promised him a cookie bouquet and nothing more —S)
If you’re new to Death in Fire, go check out Part 1. Otherwise, welcome back to my band of merry Black Mesa-ians!