I honestly had no idea of what to expect of the Minisodes. All I knew going in is what I heard from others, that it would give us a peek at Sigmund Corporation. It not only did that but it was certainly an interesting peek for a lot reasons.
If you just stumbled here and have no idea what this post is about then here is the deal: this Play-Along project is like a book club except for video-games. It is being hosted by Naithin of Time to Loot and you can find more information as well as a link to all the participants here.
With that said, let’s get to the questions!
WARNING: Spoilers ahead for the minisodes of To the Moon. Proceed at your own risk!
Act 3 of To the Moon answered a lot of the questions that has been in my mind since the start of the game. It also hit really hard in the feels to the point of almost making me cry. And I am not the type who easily cries with fiction!
Anyway, in case you just stumbled on this post, this is part of a Play-Along projected hosted by Naithin of Time to Loot. It is like Book Club but with games. You can find more details about it as well as links to all the participants over here.
Down below you can find my answers about Act 3.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead for To The Moon! Proceed ahead at your own risk!
It is time again for another post on the To The Moon Play-Along hosted by Naithin of Time to Loot. If you have no idea what I am talking about: this Play-Along is like a Book Club except with games. You can find more details as well as links to all the blogs participating here.
This time we’ll be tackling Act 2 of of To the Moon. I was already expecting it to be shorter than Act 1, thanks to the Play-Along discussion about the game but even then it still felt too short. On the other hand I don’t know how they could extend it without it feel like it was just wasting the player time. It also raised a lot more questions about Johnny’s situation than answered it. Hopefully everything will be tied up in Act 3.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead for Act 2 of To the Moon. Don’t read any further if you don’t want to be spoiled.
A little while ago Naithin, of Time to Loot, came with another idea for a shared blogging project. This time it is kind of a “book club” version of games, where we all play a game until a certain point and then discuss it.
The discussion in this case is more like answering a set of questions proposed by our host, Naithin. It is a good way to keep things focused so people don’t ramble on about different aspects of the game in each of their blogs. If you want more details, including links to all the posts from participating blog, you can find it here.
The first game we are playing for this project is To The Moon, from Freebird Games. I bought this game a long time ago, during a promotion, since I heard good things about it. But as is too common with me, I didn’t play it immediately saving it for when I was in the “mood” to play it and just forgot about it completely.
So, this seemed like a good opportunity to correct that mistake! Just from Act 1 I can already say it was worth every cent and just Act 1 alone already hit me in the feels more than I expected. 🙂
WARNING: From this point on there will be spoilers about Act 1 of the game. If you don’t want to be spoiled stop reading here.
With the release of Patch 1.4 for Stardew Valley I figured out it was a good time to go back to the game and check all the new stuff.
Usually I start a whole new save when there is a big update like that, both to reacquaint myself with the game as well as to learn all the new stuff in a more natural manner. Then once I get those goals accomplished I return to my original save. Or at least that used to be my plan. In practice I never end up going back to my original save, I just play the new one until I am satisfied and then move on to a different game.
This time I decide to go straight to my original save which led to some complications.
Anyone that follows me on Twitter has seem me talking about returning to Dark Souls. This post will be kind of an extended edition of those tweets.
Rewatching the “Let’s Play” videos that got me into Dark Souls in the first place got me in the mood to play the game again. It hasn’t helped that I also have been in a pretty moody headspace lately where I haven’t felt like doing anything, not even play games. So I have been poking my head into random games to see if they would stick and Dark Souls was one of those.
The MMO Tourist term is a pretty much known one among MMO players. For those who never heard of it, the idea of the term is to describe those players that left the game but come back for a few weeks (or months) once a MMO receives some new content. Then once they see anything that might pique their interest they leave just as quickly as they came back.
I am starting to feel my behavior with Monster Hunter World mimics that even though it hasn’t had any substantial update for a while. In my case it is more when an event is announced. I get back into the game with the full intention of checking the event out, and finally finishing the base game’s story, only for a few days later to completely forget about it and then play something else.
Some time ago Syp of Biobreak wrote a post with tips for Stardew Valley. I thought I might add some of mine to the mix in the hopes they might help someone else. Or at least help me if I take an extended break from the game and forget all of this. :p
These are things that me and a friend found out while playing the game and discussing it. They should all work with the current version of the game, 1.06, but if a future patch changes things I will update this post.
If you have any tips of yours to add feel free to put it in the comments and I will add to the list with the proper credits. 🙂
First off, I apologize for the lack of more interesting screenshots in this post. Just like the start of this playthrough the decision of writing this was pretty much a spur of the moment thing. In other words this was born more of an “Hey, why not write about it?” than anything else.
To be completely honest (and as you may already expect from the title) I am a terrible player of Crusader Kings 2. I barely know enough to get through with dinasty in the west european/feudal countries. In fact, I usually just tried to start playing in Ireland, also nicknamed “Tutorial Island” by the players due to how easy it is to start there. :p It is just that was the only place I usually got anything done to my satisfaction as my attempts to play in other locations or other cultures (like the vikings, muslim or republics) didn’t work out so well. So, Ireland was a safe, known place. And I thought if I mastered it enough, if I was start there and expand from it to conquer to other places I might have a chance later on with different scenarios.
Well, that never really happened. But in one of those whims of what to play, I decided to play Crusaders Kings 2 and this time try something different. Instead of starting off as one of the counties that would one day form Ireland, I decided to start as a Duke in Italy in Early Medieval Ages. This was the time of Charlemagne, before Italy was the way we know of it today and it was called Lambard.
My plan was relatively simple: I was going to start as a Duke, try to get as much control over the adjacent counties until I had an army strong enough where I could just demand to be nominated King of Italy, perhaps even expanding from there to conquer other countries.
I decided to start as a duke in Pisa. This decision was based on no other reason that I liked the name of the place. Plus for some unbeknownst reason I thought it would be a good launch place to attack one of the arabian nations across the ocean if I felt crazy enough. :p
Well, since I am addicted to Dark Souls right now and not really playing anything else, I thought I might as well make a post with some of the Dark Souls videos I’ve been watching.
This is the Let’s Play that got me quasi-obsessed with Dark Souls until I actually bought it in the latest Humble Bundle. Despite the name, and being a newbie at the game, Dan is pretty good at it. Or at least he is better than me since I died far more times than he did. :p
The series, as you can guess, has Dan, who is an animator in the game industry, playing the game. Serving as a sort of advisor is James, who is a designer in the game industry, and who already played the game to completion. Both of them discuss the game’s design as Dan progresses through the game. If you are an armchair game designer like me there is a lot of interesting game design discussion here. Right now it is incomplete and in an hiatus while they produce more episodes. Still, pretty interesting to watch if you like watching newbies trying to learn a game as they play it AND game design discussion in one show!
If that is not your cup of you tea but you do love discussion about game design then you might enjoy their main show, Extra Credits. That one is all about game design discussion.
Another Let’s Play, this one is more of a walkthrough with some tips and lore discussion. Obviously it is played by a very experienced player. But what I find fascinating it, besides his player skills which made it fascinating to watch (at least for a noobie like me), is the lore discussion. As he goes through the game he talks about what the description of items he finds means, what NPCs are probably talking about, the themes of the game and so on. Describing it sounds boring but the way he talks about this stuff is very, very interesting if you like the game.
I also find it fascinating how our playstyles are so very different. Yes, there is the obvious huge gap in game skill and knowledge about the game between us. But I also think it is due to the different choices and preferences in the way we play our characters. I end up making a knight, which starting out is a class that is pretty slow to move around due to the gear and initial stats but they can block a lot of enemies attacks without losing any HP. While he made a warrior that although isn’t the fastest starting class in the game isn’t nearly as slow as the knight. He also doesn’t use the shield much, and has been gearing and leveling his character to make sure he can move fast, preferring to dodge enemy attacks than block it. While I have been keeping my character pretty much a turtle, slow but steady and very well protected.
Another interesting thing is he hasn’t been following the most obvious path through the game. Part of the reason is to make some detours to get some loot, the other is so he can trigger some dialogues that people might not have seem and can lead to interesting discussion about the game’s lore.
This is also incomplete as of this writing but I think it is updated about every two days.
This is a series that was recommended by the guys in the Side Quest Let’s Play. Basically, it discuss the story and lore of Dark Souls through a focus on its main NPCs that you end up finding through the game. I admit I have watched almost nothing of it because I want to keep myself as spoiler free as possible. I did watch his series about the Demon’s Souls Lore though since it is a game I am unlikely to ever play (unless a Playstation 3 and a copy of the game somehow ends up in my hands) and they are pretty interesting. He also makes a pretty good case of the reasons for Dark Souls being the way it is in Dark Souls: Why it’s Different.
This video is a discussion about Dark Souls design, why it is like that, what makes it tick and its themes. If you like that some intelligent and interesting discussion about games in general give a look at the rest of his channel too!
This one is a parody of Dark Souls, where a guy goes from complete newbie to someone who finished the game. It is pretty funny but be warned it does contain spoilers about the game’s story.
