Hey friends, happy Friday! I am so, so sorry I didn’t write anything for the past couple of days, but this week has been a doozie. On Wednesday I worked from home (which always throws me off, but I’m glad of the flexibility) so Nicole and I could get to a nearby courthouse before it closed and get a marriage license. THAT part went without a hitch, shockingly, but it meant a super early day. Yesterday I just had a ton of stuff to do before last night’s stream, so the last two days just totally escaped me. Enough about excuses though, let’s talk games!
The last three videos of Galactic Civilizations II show me actually doing pretty well…until I attack a starbase the Drengin snuck into my territory. Sneaky devils, they. They didn’t take well to this, and immediately declared war on me. I thought I could handle it, but then was shown that I clearly could not, and while I’m keeping them at bay, I just hope I can hold them off long enough to fight back. This game is surprisingly impressive. Solid UI, great AI, fantastic pacing, fun middle and end game as well as the early game (which is typically my favorite part). Overall I have to say I came away from GCII feeling very positive, and now plan to play more Galactic Civilizations III as a result.
On Wednesday, on my lunch break, I played a lot of a game I was gifted that day, You Must Build a Boat. It’s a roguelike dungeon crawler with a match 3 mechanic that is just delightful. I somehow already seem to have about 1.5 hours in because it’s just so engaging. I also played a bunch of twin stick shooter roguelike thing ATOMINE, since it was on a deep discount and I loves me some twin stick shooters. It’s actually a great deal of fun, with great moment to moment gameplay, fun persistence and clever levels. I like it a lot.
Yesterday the entirety of my gaming was taken up with two games. First, we were intending to play Ultimate Space Commando because the devs sent us keys, and it won the wheel spin last week. Spaz and I tried to get a game going, but we ran into some technical issues, so sadly we had to scrap it. This left us with plan B, the amazing Deep Rock Galactic (which we’ll also be returning to in a couple of weeks as previously scheduled). This game was fun. SHIT tons of fun. Once we finally got the group thing going (pre-alpha ladies and gentlemen), it was GREAT fun. Seriously, it’s nice to have something to do in these co-op games BESIDES killing. I really liked the scout role a lot, and will likely stick with it as long as I’m in the alpha. The gunner was also fun, but the scout definitely seemed more my speed. GREAT fun.
This weekend, for the blog, I’m gonna cover a game I somehow missed a while back, Strike Squadron: Caracará. I think my brain still registered it as an early access game, even though I was SPECIFICALLY TOLD it was 1.0. I’m not sure how this all happened, but I plan to rectify this immediately. I have played a little bit of it, and it is fun (it’s also less than a dollar right now y’all). I have a four day weekend coming up, but it’s gonna be busy as heck, so besides SSC, I’ll likely only have some time for LOGistICAL as well as some Lord of the Rings Online, which I feel comfortable enough returning to now (I took a break to avoid full-on burnout). If I get more time to myself (which I hope to on Monday), I’ll like play more ATOMINE, Star Fleet Armada (since the dev is coming on the podcast in two weeks, and I do love the game) and whatever I pick up on the Steam sale (which may be a few small things). Overall, it should be a good weekend.
Now, onto news! There surprisingly hasn’t been a lot over the past few days…
- Osiris: New Dawn got a new little hotfix which fixes accidental character deletion.
- Remnants of the Precursors’ developer will be away for a bit due to a family emergency. Everyone send good vibes his way! :)
- Star Trek Online is getting the vocal talents of one J.G. Hertzler, better known as fucking Martok (sorry, I love Martok).
- The Wing Commander Prophecy Model Upgrade Pack is coming along nicely, as evidenced by this Pelican transport.
- Legends of Azulgar is apparently getting an overhaul, according to this little dev blog.
- Avorion is getting a beta patch that adds backward compatibility for saves.
- Stellaris has gotten multiplayer fixes for its Bradbury patch in its latest update.
- Endless Space 2 got the teensiest of teensy patches. Seriously, it’s like, five things.
- Infinity: Battlescape’s latest dev update shows off a swanky new space station model.
- Drifter has hit 0.8.2, which adds pilot attributes, an improved HUD and much more. Time to revisit it!
And that’s it my friends! I’ll likely not write another one of these until Wednesday of next week (due to the holiday and just needing some down time), so I hope y’all have a lovely weekend! Thanks for reading!
