Numerion's Rants

I have just finished playing a TW: warhammer campaign as the beastmen and I used the Shadowgave legendary lord from the start. I (again) didn't bother finishing off the dwarves for the long campaign, mostly because due to how the beastmen work, they wouldn't be able to beat me in a single combat anywhere on the map, but it would still take a lot of time to conquer all of their forts. Now for the ones who have no idea about beastmen in this game: It is a scavenger race, that doesn't have stable settlements and cities. Instead all you have are armies that can produce units if you set camp (which you are very heavily discouraged to do). Since for most factions, the settlements are what generates money, you are in a bit of troublesome situation early in the game. What you are supposed to do is attack settlements and loot them for money so that you can run at a deficit until you lower the upkeep cost of your armies under the default income...so that you can create more armies...

It is very popular in modern gaming to look up optimal strategies for games.  There are some obvious reasons for it. Major one being why bother trying to learn how to play stuff on your own and trying to catch up with everybody else the hard way, especially if it's a competitive game? That's pretty much like reinventing the wheel. It just makes sense. I also hate it.  For me, a big part of the enjoyment of games is figuring them out. I don't mind being somewhat ineffective or less than optimal, if it means I got to that point myself. Sometimes this leads to me discovering strategies on my own and then later finding out they are considered the best (mostly the other way around though).  But why do I hate it then? Surely I can live (ignorantly) in peace and leave it be.  Yeah, no.  If I am playing a highly competitive game like Starcraft, if I am matched against an opponent who looks up and tries to adhere completely to an optimal strategy, while I am in my...

You guessed it, this is going to be centered on Dark Souls. But not in the way you probably think. I've struggled with this a lot over the past few years. Passively, slowly. And I realized that going around the topic is a way to get lost in words, rather than getting into the topic itself. So I am going to state it outright: I don't think that Dark Souls are hard games. No I have not beaten them. No I have not gotten through the "Git gud" stage. And yes, I have mostly gotten stuck near the beginnings in all of them.  This is the part where more words and side stepping comes in. When I think about "hard" games, I think about games that I cannot possibly ever learn or beat. I think of games like Osu and Dance Dance Revolution, on the former of which I spent a few dozen hours and didn't get past the easy difficulties. I think of games like Touhou and other similar bullet hell games. Even of fighting games and I know that no matter how much time I...

I was surprised. I found the game in a cheap bundle and didn't expect much. In short, the game is a digitalised "choose your own adventure" book with slightly improved combat. Now, choose your own adventure books have always had their drawbacks. They are simple and usually very branching, not allowing you to go back and fix things you did previously. Lots of times you want to do actions which are not written out and you can't do them. Sometimes these books featured meaningless deaths, just for the purpose of teaching you a lesson and those always pushed you towards a path of "cheating" the game. This game....fixes none of those problems. There is something to be said about pushing a specific older medium into digital age and staying so true to the original and all you change is QoL changes. And exactly that is what hooked me in. I have (mostly) fond memories of these games. They had this feeling of a boiled down DnD. You still had choices and winning ...

We are in an age of huge budgets. If you are making a game, you quickly realize how much every single thing you create costs. Both time and money. If you make a character, it has to have a model, a texture, a voice, lines...this all adds up.  What this means is that most of the time, every single part of the world you produce will take several hours to create. This includes silly easter eggs, lore contents, joke characters...everything. This boils down to a simple thing: There is an upper limit of content you may have in a game of certain budget. You can mitigate this by not including some features (for example voice)  allowing you to focus on others more. But all in all, you can find this in most games. There is a total amount of content and not a bit more. And then there is Dominions. Dominions is a hack. Usually games are developed over several years and then released, maybe improved later, but that's it.  But not Dominions. It is a game perpetually developed from ear...

Spears. What's so special about spears? Well, mostly the fact that it was one of (if not THE) most common weapons of the whole middleage. But do you see them in games? Sure they are pretty often in strategy games but for the most part, that's about it!  I mean, I get it, swords are cooler and spears don't have fancy moves. But most games have ridiculous and unreal moves with swords and it's alright, so why not make some with spears? Why not slash with spears in games? After all, you are not in danger of getting the weapon knocked out of your hands. Why not use the handle to parry attacks? Spin it like a glaive. Whatever! Just fucking do it. And yes, this was mostly inspired by the Vermintide 2 trailer where THERE IS A SPEAR BEING USED.

Whee, that came out 13 years ago. As far as "outdateness" goes, this is my record for now. People tend to have a love/hate relationship with Betrayal and I seem to know why. The game has a major problem that tends to show itself if you really like the game. After numerous plays of the game and about three years of playing it once or more in a while, I realized where the problem lies and how to solve it. Not for the game, but for the player playing it. From my point of view, Betrayal is meant to be experienced, not played. When you play a game, you analyze it, explore it, abuse its weak points and exit out stronger than if you 'just let the game go on'. Many games encourage it. Economy based games, games with an engine, games with opponents, hard coop games all force players to min-max to as far as they can go and reward them for it. Betrayal is not like that. Betrayal doesn't respond well if you try to powergame it. In fact, your enjoyment of the game comes ...