I will survive

Lately I have been playing multiplayer Project Zomboid with some friends. It's a zombie survival game and it is really good. But there is one problem. It's not finished yet.

The zombie apocalypse survival genre is currently extremely popular and there are dozens and dozens of games out there. From the accomplished like Dying Light (crap ending and all) to cheaply thrown together Unity asset “games”, there's no shortage of titles to choose from if the idea of running around and trying not to become fodder for the ever growing army of the undead sounds appealing to you.

Of course there are other games in the survival genre as well. Games like The Forest (run around a forest dodging cannibals) and Stranded Deep (run around tropical islands dodging sharks) and The Long Dark (run around in snow dodging wolves) run the high end of the genre, but there are currently seventeen pages of survival games on Steam alone. So if you want to test yourself against the elements and some kind of enemy trying to eat you that's not a necessarily a zombie, you can.

But before you do, there is one thing every survival game must have, and most currently don't, and that's an end game.

To be fair, games like Project Zomboid are usually indie developed and that often means that they lack money and manpower. This in turn means that it takes time to finish the game and the Zomboid guys have done an amazing job so far. The problem is that the game becomes pointless after a while if you can't win somehow.

Sure, it's fun to see how long you can survive and how many zombies you can stomp to death before succumbing, but how many times can you be bothered to restart again?

The crux of the matter lies in the core of survival:

1. Find shelter
2. Fortify said shelter
3. Stock up on rations
4. Wait

But if point number 4 never happens, you have ultimately nothing to do in the long run. So you start to take stupid risks in order to be entertained, which is why you play games to begin with.

I really like the survival genre, and if you find a game you think looks interesting, maybe support the developer, but playing an unfinished survival game is kinda nuts, because you can't ultimately survive it.

Until next time, have a great week!

Summer (sale) is over

The Steam Summer Sale is almost over for 2015. As I write this, the Encore Deals have seven hours left.

It's been a good sale though. I picked up a couple of games that I've been meaning to get in order to play with friends, like the Steampunk airship combat game; Guns of Icarus. I got to try it yesterday and it's really cool.

I also went totally retro with The Last Door, a horror point and click adventure game that makes the original Monkey Island look sophisticated graphically. But for having such incredibly simple graphics it really carries a potent punch when it comes to atmosphere and story. Very cool game.

Apart from rounding out my collection on a couple of points, the one event this sale that stood out was Grand Theft Auto V. Now I had the game already, but I decided to pick up a good deal on cash cards for GTA Online. However it didn't work. Annoying as this was, a quick email to Rockstar sorted it out in a couple of days. They apparently had a lot of trouble with this, since a cursory glance at their troubleshooting page found well over 600 people with the same problem I had. But it's all good now though.

All in all it was a good sale, but perhaps a bit underwhelming. This can of course be my own fault for being too picky and stingy. Who knows, but it's always fun to refresh the page and see what's on sale.

That's it for today. I'm pretty busy but hopefully I'll have something better next time.

So until then, have a great week!

Bethesda has really done it now!

When Bethesda announced that they would have a press conference at E3 this year the speculations started to buzz like flies.

At the forefront was Fallout 4 which has now been confirmed, it's even in the Steam store... Other speculations were Dishonored 2, the new Doom and Elder Scrolls 6.

It's not Elder Scrolls 6. But it's everything else!

I just sat down with a cup of coffee and had my mind blown. I'll link the videos down below due to work safety concerns, but wow...

OK, focus.

First off, the rumor that you wouldn't be able to play as a female in Fallout 4 is firmly squashed. You can indeed play female, and the character creation is perhaps the best I have seen so far. It is absolutely gorgeous. So just as I was coming down from that, I saw the building video. Yes, you can create your own houses, even an entire settlement complete with resources you can trade. Then you can set up turrets to defend it all from raiders. But if you don't want to build you don't have to. It's all up to you.

I'm very excited. And it seems like it'll be out in November, but I'm not 100% on that yet.

Now, Dishonored 2.

Oh yeah, this is going to be good. You play as either familiar Corvo or as Emily Kaldwin. Every one who played Dishonored 1 should know that name, right?

It seems that the Outsider has given her an entire new set of skills unlike what Corvo has. And it looks good. The game looks so gorgeous it belong in a museum. Not much to tell about the story yet, but damn it, I'm already hooked.

Finally Doom.

I was a huge Doom fan back in the day. The action, the demons, the setting. All of it spoke to me and I blew the ever-loving hell out of those levels both in Doom 1 and 2. Doom 3 didn't excite me that much, in fact I never finished it. Maybe I'm not really that into FPS's anymore or maybe it was the lack of light that made Doom 3 so uninspiring to me, but this new Doom does look good. It's slated for release in 2016, so plenty of time.

E3 has only just begun, but I'm having a hard time thinking about what the other companies are going to do to have even a chance against Bethesda this year. All I can say is:

Shut up and take my money already!

Here are the videos:

Fallout character creation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXzlkJEUPDs

Fallout Building:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj06B-QQJTM

Dishonored 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnsDyv-TtJg

Doom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NteAPGprDJk

That's all for now, I need to take some deep breaths and calm down. So until next time, have a great week!

P.S. If you didn't know, the Steam Summer Sale is on as we speak.

Cya!

Titanic Thunder

Hello and welcome back to Eccentric Spheres.

We've been having a magnificent thunderstorm here, and since I'm not sure it won't be back, today's post will be very short.

Below you will find a video that postulates that the Titanic is not in fact the Titanic at all, but another ship entirely. Whether this is the case, you can decide for yourself.


So without further ado and until next week, enjoy this thought provoking documentary:

Movie Night

Last Friday my wife and I decided to watch a some movies. As every couple knows, agreeing on which movie to watch is rarely easy, but ultimately we decided on Lucy by Luc Besson.

My one big complaint about Lucy is the faulty premise it builds upon, namely that we only use 10% of our brains. We do in fact use a great deal more, just not all at once. Every part of our brains are necessary and we couldn't function if only 10% were in use.

Apart from this, Lucy is a really good film. I can't explain the plot without spoiling it, but it's beautifully shot, the acting is definitely there, particularly Scarlett Johansson who goes from convincingly terrified to absolutely dispassionate with style.

The effects were wonderful. There aren't as many action scenes as the trailer had led me to expect, but trailers usually lie, so no real surprise there. In fact, I was pleased that Mr. Besson didn't rely on explosions or gunfights to cover up slow parts. All in all Lucy is a very well crafted movie. Part action, part sci-fi - all good. But if the whole 10% thing is too much for you, maybe watch something else. I for one would warmly recommend Lucy.

The other film we watched I can't and won't recommend. Ever. DisasterWars: Earthquake vs. Tsunami... I know, I know you can't have any expectations with disaster movies, but they are a weakness of ours and sometimes one has to indulge. Films like The day after tomorrow and 2012 aren't good in any stretch of the imagination but they are technically well made and the disasters look awesome. But then there are the other sort of disaster movies like Super Cyclone and Into the storm that are extremely low budget and it shows.

The sad thing though is that a film doesn't have to be bad just because they don't have a lot of money, in fact there are hundreds of films that had tons of money and still reek to high heaven. But for some reason, people with barely any money and sometimes even less talent really want to make disaster movies, arguably one of the hardest genres to make if you have zero cash.

There are only two elements to a disaster flick. The people and the destruction. The people drama is necessary in order for the catastrophe to mean anything and the destruction is cool and we like to watch everything get torn to shreds. But with only two elements, at least one of them has to be good, and in Disaster Wars: Earthquake vs. Tsunami neither works. The FX is laughable at best and there are scenes where I'm convinced that the “actors” forgot their lines. To make it even worse, you have dumb mistakes like a Colonel with U.S. Army on his chest who has a Gunnery Sergeant as his second in command. The Gunnery Sergeant is a Marine Corps only rank. I'm not American and I know this. What excuse do the film makers have? I could go on, but that would be needlessly cruel to you. Just do yourself a favor and avoid this movie at all costs. Please.

That's it, so until next time have a great disaster wars free week!

BookBub

Last week I tripped over a link to BookBub. I'll tell you what it is in a minute.

Over the last few years I've read more and more books on my tablet. In the beginning it felt really weird, but once I got used to it, it was regular books that started to seem weird. I still really like paper books, and I do read them, but the practicality of the ebook has won me over.

What hasn't won me over is the price of most ebooks. As it stands, most ebooks are as expensive as their paperback cousins, and it's ridiculous. With paper books you have printing, materiel, transport, middlemen, labor, you name it. It all costs money. But with ebooks you have a server and a webmaster and that's pretty much it. You can store an entire library in a closet, so real estate isn't much of a problem. This should drive the price down, but this is rare.

Amazon, the biggest retailer of electronic books understands this, but unfortunately the publishers don't. Or rather they won't. When Amazon started selling ebooks they wanted the price to be low, after all you're only downloading a copy of a file but the major publishing houses balked. They demanded to get the same prices as paper books. Whether this was out of fear of the printed market falling or just plain old greed I couldn't tell you, but Amazon had no choice but to agree to their demands. This is why you're paying as much for a file as for a printed book.

Of course the writer deserves a fair share, and so does the editor, but the rest of the costs are minimal, so that's why I was really happy to find BookBub.

If you've ever been to Amazon you'll know how huge it is. Unless you're looking for a specific author it can be really difficult to find something for you. Especially if you're just looking for good bargains, and that's where BookBub comes in handy.

You simply log in to BookBub with your email and then specify which genres and authors you're interested in, and then they email you when those books are on sale. And the best sale in the world has to be a free book. Yupp, I have downloaded several books for free and it's completely legal. Because with the messed up prices most ebooks have it's hard for me to give new authors a chance, but with prices from free to 0.99 cents I'm more than happy to go for it.

There are other sites like BookBub, but since I haven't tried them I can't comment. But if you like to read on your electronic device of choice, give BookBub a chance, otherwise you are going to have to sift through Amazon's kindle store every day on your own.

Until next time, read a book you haven't read before and have a great week!

Darkest Dungeon

As a rule I do not buy games that are in early access. I find the risk doesn't outweigh the gain. But on Saturday evening, I couldn't wait anymore, and picked up Darkest Dungeon on Steam.

I've been drooling over this game for months, checking almost daily if it was out of early access and reading the developers site all the time.

The fact that Red Hook, the developers, have handled the whole early access so well made me take the leap. Their constant updates and the way they interact with fans in taking suggestions and their dedication to communicating in general made me confident that they will complete this game. Something many developers don't do. I have no fear that Red Hook is going to take the money and run. Besides, by now Darkest Dungeon is almost complete anyway.

So what's it all about? The clue is in the name, really. It's a dungeon crawler but with a twist. Although the combat is dangerous and challenging, the real threat is the stress the adventurers face. The style of the game is sort of Warhammer Fantasy meets Lovecraft, so that's right up my alley.

You take the role of a nobleman whose ancestor (father, uncle etc. it's not explained) got bored living in excess and decided to dabble in the occult, with predictable results. Now you have to hire adventurers to clear the monsters out of your holdings and restore your family name.

In a nutshell, you hire the adventurers, send them through the dungeons, collect the loot and improve the town. But, in doing so, the adventurers get really stressed out and if you want to keep them around so that they can level up, you need to de-stress them, and that also costs money. This is the management aspect of the game.

The dungeon aspect is where the game really shines. It is a sort of sidescroller with the heroes lined up on the left side of the screen and monsters in a line on the right. Different heroes need to stand in a specific order to be effective and this strategy plays a huge part. Some monsters can mix the line up and this really screws with you. Over all the combat isn't that hard, but it works on a number generator and sometimes nothing goes your way. My Leper (a hero class) got eaten in one round by giant maggots before the healer could save him. There was nothing I could do. But if you can accept this, it gets really fun.

Then there's the light. You have to bring torches and how bright you keep the party is a huge question. You hit harder in the dark and you get better treasure, but the stress levels skyrocket and the opposition gets worse. The whole game is a give and take and how you choose to do things is the key to success.

The final thing I want to talk about is the stress the heroes suffer. Many things stress them, from the dark to damage taken to having to retreat etc. Some things like causing critical hits reduces stress, but the positive influences are far fewer than the negative. When a hero finally has had enough and cracks he is “tested”. He may well get stronger, but usually bad stuff happens. Like in one of my forays into the Ruins:

The Crusader, St. Denis got so stressed he became abusive and started mocking the rest of the group, screaming things like “Good, you should die, it'll give me more room to swing my blade”. Naturally the rest of he heroes didn't like this, so it finally pushed the Plague Doctor Matzzeria into also becoming abusive. He in turn kept shouting nasty things that almost brought the whole group down before I managed to push them through the last few rooms and then back to town.

St. Denis was also a kleptomaniac and stole treasure before I could order someone else to grab it. This element of free will really adds to the atmosphere and makes the game even better. Sometimes they just do things and you never really know what's going to happen next.

I should point out that you can rename your heroes, and I like to name them after my friends. It makes for a better story...

In conclusion, I would like to say that my initial impression of Darkest Dungeon is very positive, bordering on great. I have only played four hours and defeated one boss, so this is in no way a review. Just a first impression. But the art style is wonderful, the music is awesome and the narrator (Wayne June) is perfect.

That's all for now so until next time, have a great week!