Blog Archives
sFinal Fantasy XV Literally Had Me Begging the Game To End
Monday , 29, October 2018 Computer Games 2 CommentsWhen you get to the end of a game, and you’re begging for it to be over (out loud even, at least once), that’s not a good sign. I’m not saying it’s a bad game, just that it’s way too long. I wish I could tell you that Final Fantasy XV was completely awesome in […]
Everything’s been done before. If you think you made something totally original, don’t worry: you haven’t. You’re just don’t know who did it before you yet.
So E3 is hoving into view, and once again I must spend some of my dwindling store of precious time watching company men try to get people pumped up for the latest round of sequels, remakes, and rip-offs. Surprisingly, there were some original games scattered here and there, and some of the sequels (etc.) actually […]
On this Memorial Day, when we stop to pay our respects to the fallen, I think it’s apt to remember the veterans of a wholly different war, a war in which the fallen got back up and began wandering around, looking for people to eat. I present to you: THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE! Z Nation is […]
This week I discovered something so absolutely amazing, so utterly startling, that I was compelled by my sheer amazement to share it here, with you my loyal readers: The much ballyhooed 2015 Mad Max video game, a sorta-but-not-really movie tie in for Mad Max: Fury Road, by (not so) famed developer Avalanche Studios, makers of Just […]
The primary focus of my contributions to this, the best darn science-fiction and fantasy blog on the internet, have been to search out and find the hidden gems of independently published sf/f novels for you to add to your growing “wish I had time to read it all” stack of titles. My initial role as a […]
One-on-one with Shields: Upsetting the Conventional Wisdom
Saturday , 28, April 2018 Game Design, Games 3 CommentsToday’s guest post marks the return of Douglas Cole to the Castalia House blog. Douglas wrote the series Violent Resolution which appeared here as well as his own blog Gaming Ballistic. His most recent project is Dragon Heresy, a Norse-inspired fantasy RPG now in its final hours on Kickstarter. The lessons discovered in this guest post on adapting the […]
Far Cry 5: I Was Wrong About Why It’s Bad… But It’s Still Bad
Monday , 23, April 2018 Computer Games 13 CommentsI was wrong about Far Cry 5. When I saw the first publicity photos—featuring a panoply of villains with an American flag with crosses on it—I assumed the game would be a hatchet job on Americans, Christian Americans, and gun-owning Christian Americans. Mea bad. Mea maxima bad.
This is the continuation of the ASL Starter Kit scenario S24 that I previously described at Vox Popoli. As you can see Turn 3 turned out to be eventful, as my AT gun revealed itself as soon as one of the Russian tanks presented it with a clear side shot on the right flank, while […]
A Vital, Overlooked Quality in Fantasy Games (Hint: It’s NOT Story)
Saturday , 24, March 2018 Games 3 CommentsAs I mentioned in a previous article, Castlevania is my favorite game franchise, of which I’ve played almost every title. Which one is my absolute favorite? Is it the fantastic Symphony of the Night? Or is it perhaps one of the later Metroidvanias that improved upon the formula, like the superb Portrait of Ruin? Maybe it’s an old-school action platforming […]
Borderlands 2 is one of those games where it’s a damn shame the people who made it are such total creepos and jerks, because it really is quite good but the experience of playing it is ruined if you know anything about them. Pandora, the planet Borderlands is set on, is a crazy funhouse version […]
It’s been a good long while since the first expansion to GMT’s Space Empires: 4X rolled out. But here we are with a whole ‘nother box of awesome for the best Space Game on the market. What’s inside? Four new reference charts because the build options and tech tree have received yet another iteration. New […]