Review: Civ: Beyond Earth

After reading head lines about Beyond Earth I was afraid it was just a stand alone expansion for Civilization V. But after at least 15 hours of playing I would say that this installment is worthy of it's own name rather than being called a mere expansion. Therefor this review will focus on the changes and review those.

First, we have to look at the setting, taking place after our planets resources have gone dry, that is after a match of Civ 5, and leaders for countries and big corporations journey to seek out new planets to start over. 
There are several different planets to land on, and I have to give extra nerd credits that the planets follow the naming convention for star name and discovery order.

Tech Tree

One of the first things you will discover that have changed after landing on the planet will be the tech tree, of tech web which is now divided into main categories, branches, and specializations, leafs. As you landed in a space ship, there's no reason to researching basic technologies such as pottery or irrigation. You can now specialize what you want to focus on. You still have to take some techs to get to the one that you'll want, but you'll only have to take branches, which are cheaper. There has been some concern that you can slingshot your way to some powerful techs that will quickly give you an advantage. But having tested and discussed this, I don't think it's any more powerful than it was before in Civ.
There are two things about this new tech web that bothers me, first is that it feels hard to get a quick overview, and if you zoom out, you loose the advisory suggestions. You'll also want to take Pioneering as your first tech about every time, by the time you have the tech you should want to create a second and a third outpost. Pottery or not, this is an auto pick for me, which makes it even less of a choice than Civ 5.

Quests

The next thing you will see that differs is that you now have quests, no need to find a city state to tell you what to do, this game will do this from start and will reward you for it. One of the first things will either be to explore an artifact if you find one, or to settle a new outpost, which is one of the reasons you'll want that technology. The quests makes the game feel more that you get requests from the nation or corporation and will be a driving force for you to progress when you don't know what to focus on. The quests are different from the one that the city states give you in that way that they are not time based, no one will compete for them other than you and they will bring you a more permanent reward rather than an ally. The only downside here is that they can sometimes give you a quest to build some sort of building, which you'll have no idea whether or not you can actually build yet. I find this really strange, especially when other quests that require technologies will tell you to research that tech as a first step, irritating when it so easily could been better. Hope they'll patch this soon.

Social Policies

There are fewer social policy, or virtues as they are called, specializations in beyond earth, actually only four. But each one is much larger and is divided in three tiers. Each tier, regardless of what tree will give you milestone bonuses, such as free technologies or extra production output. Each tree will also give you milestone bonuses for putting points in that tree. So regardless if you have a broad set of virtues or a deepen specialization you will still be rewarded. This is much better compared to the old system in Civ 5, I feel that there are many different ways to match my specific play style that game session and it will take many hours of gaming to explore all the combinations. I also feel so much more rewarded due to the milestone bonuses than in Civ 5 where you get an adoption bonus and a completion bonus.

Affinities

Affinities function as ideologies, they will progress your civilization in a specific direction, giving you passive upgrades and even upgrading your troops. There are three different affinities in Beyond Earth. Harmony is for those who want to live happily and coexist with the aliens that wander the planet, they feel very much anti war but of course have unit upgrades as well, kinda like a militaristic version of Greenpeace which can even include domesticated aliens. Purity is for those who doesn't like aliens or their planet and rather terra form it than adapt to it. Supremacy put their trust in technology and augmentation of them self, the middle path. You get points in each three of these affinities by researching and doing quests, and even though you'll want to specialize in one to get your troops upgraded, you also want to broaden a bit to get more bonuses. This system feel new, innovating and fun to explore and ties in to many other parts of the game. Some of the later units will be very strong and require that you have points in a specific affinity, which can make you somewhat focused on unit progression from time to time, especially when in war...

Spies

This is my favorite part of the game, spies are such a fun element now, where I can steal energy, technologies or even do a coup d' etat to take control of a whole city, all without having to brake the trade agreements! In Civ 5 you always had your spies in city states to rig elections, to get allies and not upsetting other civilizations. Now spies have a real impact on the game, and making them super interesting, there is even a civilization that specialize in spies, and therefor is my favorite for the moment. Spies are great in this game and broadens the ways of warfare.

Bottom line

Beyond Earth is a really fun 4X game, I recommend that you'll play it, it it's not perfect, but it's fer better than Civ 5 was before Gods and Kings. One thing that's worth mentioning is that the equivalent units of caravans are much stronger when moving internally and can ship production and food from start, it does however feel sometimes that you spend a lot time micro managing your transports more than you should. I'm hoping to see a Mass Effect mod to this game, or why not a nerdy Twilight Imperium mod?

My guide to get back into Thedas

With less than one month left until Dragon Age: Inquisition is released the hype is higher than ever, and while the both first games where really good, if you forget about the lack of impact you really had to the story outcome in the second game, it's been well over three years since the second game came out and you might be in as much need of a lore refresh as me.

Sure, you can replay both games and be done with it. I'm on the other hand see more good releases now than I have time to play, which means that spending 20 hours per game for a quick play through just won't cut it. So, then what do I do to get myself into the lore?

First, there is this wonderful YouTube channel which have a lore series episode come out every Tuesday up to the release date. That's 12 episodes, every with 6 minutes of easy digestible chunks about a specific part of the lore. From races to nations to the Fade. I watched their series on Elder Scrolls before the launch of ESO, and it really got me into the game more. All the effort these guys have put into making these episodes make them such a delight to watch.

The next part of this short two step program is the comic books from Dark Horse Comics. I've read the first part, The Silent Grove, of three comics in the series following Alistair, Isabela and Varric in Antiva. And don't worry, this is the hardened version of Alistair that willingly became king, not the whiny one from the first parts of the game that can end up drunk in Kirkwall. The story is centered around Alistair and his mission of finding answers to his past, but also broadens Isabelas story, which hasn't had as much focus as Alistair's.
I can strongly recommend reading this comic, firstly as the story has been written by David Gaider, the game series lead writer of the game series. Secondly, the comic is beautifully drawn, and full of dark humor and the quick, sometimes snide, dialogue that made the first game, and every other BioWare game, such joy to play. This comic series is also one of the closest one to Dragon Age: Inquisition, happening two years before the game starts, making it a perfect way to fast forward to the current part of the lore.

While I eagerly wait to get my hands on the next comic book, and for the next episode to air, I'm trying to decide what to play in Inqusition and the only thing I've decided so far is that it's not going to be a mage, probably.

Review: October Loot Crate

This loot crate was a really sneaky one, I totally missed that it would come so soon after the last one. Anyway, this is my third loot crate, and maybe the best one so far. Okay, the Groot from the August Crate his hard to beat given the timing of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

Anyway, this months theme was FEAR (Not F.E.A.R.), which made my "not so zombie-loving" girlfriend hope that next month will be fluffy and cuddly, but I like this one. The items inside was thematic but still so generic that even though I haven't actually played Dead Rising that much, I still enjoyed the loot from that franchise. Let's take a look on all the items inside this months crate.

Horribly cute

My new bible

Let's start with what I think are clear winners in the crate. First the shirt, this is so right up my alley, cute cats making a skull. The cute weirdness of this shirt makes it so fantastic it's a clear winner of the crate.

Then we have the book, a book! How to survive a sharknado is includes guides of what to do when in disasters such as sharknados or whalestorms, read it before the disaster strikes where you live! Also, clear winner, how can it not be? This is even useful!

Then we have a nice looking pen from Dead Rising 3, which I'm totally going to play whenever my girlfriend is out of town for a weekend. As I mentioned before, a sledge hammer and a chainsaw is generic enough to fit even non-hardcore fans. This is a really smart move from loot crate after their super specified Galactic crate last month. I don't know if the pen is ergonomic to write with, then again, I seldom use pens.

Next, we have the Walking Dead magazine, which reminds me that I have to continue watching the series, or I can just read their facebook page which spoils everything the morning after they release an episode... Anyway, haven't read this one yet, but heard it's good, well see!

Some of the last loots worth mentioning are the tattoo stickers, which might come handy for Halloween, and the TWD postcard, cardboard printed picture. These things are nice, but not fantastic, and I don't expect them to be, they are fillers for loot crate to make my moneys worth.
We also have the monthly pin, looks about as nice as ever, pretty fun, and reminds me that I have to put these somewhere for bragging rights or nerd points. There was also a pair of paper 3d goggles for viewing their folder, which is commercial for something I'm clearly already buying.




Oh! Almost forgot, a candy, or I think it is. I'm to cautious to eat something randomly lying in a crate from the other side of our globe.
Last, but as usually, not least, we have a gaming code. This month it's for Smite, which I don't play now, but will when they release it to Xbox One. I just hope the code will work on both platforms. The code grants access to a skin, supposedly making me look as a pumpkin headed Jack the reaper.

There we have it. This months loot crate, if you want some discount on setting up your own subscription, use this link here, which also helps me of course.

Project Spark: WIP project

My first creation is in the condition where I can at least show it. It took much, much longer than expected, and the reason is Kode, the programming language in the game. I sat over an hour trying to get a platform to flip every 4 seconds!
But it has been a great learning experience, and now I'm much more familiar with Kode's syntax which should make the next stage easier.

Here's a link to my project:
http://www.projectspark.com/#world?id=5759583

My To Do list for this project:

• Add a feature that, when you fall off, will take you back to the beginning of the part where you were.
  
• Add a timer, this is rather redundant at this moment, but when the leader boards feature will come online it's a nice thing to have implemented.
  
• Make some signs that warn you about the exploding crates, these do not yet re-spawn, so blowing them up will result in a failed run.
  
• Make the crates re-spawn, or else nobody will ever finish.
  
• Extend the level, it took about 5 hours to make, but a skilled person can finish it in about 3 minutes or even less.

Remember, the game is free if you want to test my project, or create one yourself!

Review: Shadow of Mordor

I came to the decision of buying Shadow of Mordor after reading so much nice about the game. And after spending some hours with it I thought that a review is fitting. The game itself is an open world semi action, semi stealth game, very similar to Assassin's Creed, and I mean look alike competition similar. Okay, so the environment isn't a city, it's Mordor's tundra with camps and fortresses, so you don't have any crowds to blend into or benches to sit on to become invisible. But the way you stealth, assassinate, jump on ledges and climb any surface as if you where the child of Spiderman and Ezio (He climbs better than
Altaïr) is so identical to Assassin's Creed that it's plainly silly. You can even make leaps of faith, only that you land on the ground rather than in a haystack.

The skill tree

Enough ranting about how this game copied it's game engine from Ubisoft, it's still a good game on levels that Assassins Creed never got to. Let's see if I can brake it down somewhat for you.

Before we get into what's good in the game and what isn't let's take a moment and look into the level system. This game has some different kinds of ways to rank up your character. First there is the XP where you can spend it for upgrades on your health or power, where you really want to go for health when you start of. Then there is the point system where you will get a skill point after a certain amount of XP, this can be spent in a tier based skill tree that let's you unlock new moves. The tiers in this tree is locked from another type of XP that you get mainly from killing Uruk of higher ranks. And the last one if a rune system that let you have passive bonuses in your weapon, such as life regain on assassination etc. I know it sounds rather messy, and it is, for the first hour or so before you get the hang of it.

The Good

This game can be challenging, which is a nice thing for a change in the genre of super easy fights a la Assassins Creed. The Uruks really love to bunch up on you and attack whenever possible, and you're not invulnerable when using a special move such as killing of an Uruk on the ground, so you still have to be ready to counter incoming attacks, cause they will come. Bosses are even harder and have attacks that will kill you in two hits, be sure to dodge and parry all you can! The game will soon teach you that you won't win fighting with honor, cause your opponents sure won't give you that option. Be sure to kill of a few with stealth or bow before going into melee and you will have a much better chance of surviving, and don't be afraid to do a tactical retreat to regain stealth.

When you die, and you will, there's another nice little mocking feature that makes this game fun, the Uruk who killed you gets promoted and will become even harder to kill. Die again from the same guy and he might become even more brutal, this is something that really makes you want to kill all those green skinned bastards! 

A portion of the map - red and white symbols are events.

Another good thing is that wherever you turn in Mordor, there is action. Events spawn all the time and there's always things to do and Uruks to kill. And with the fast travel system of discovered towers, you will always be close to the fun.

The Bad

There are things that really annoy me in this game, and the main ones is the control I have over my character, or rather the lack of. In combat, if you press attack the instant before the game tells you to parry, you will change target to whoever is making the attack and most of the times strike him before he has the change to fulfill his action, this feels rather weird when you are about to kill a target and also keeps you hitting all the Uruks around you instead of finishing them off, one at the time. 

The other thing about controls is when running or chasing a fleeing Uruk, the character locks on to everything that can be climbed instead of just running on the ground. If the developers of this type of games just would realize that when chasing people, I don't want to show off my ninja skills, I just want to kill the coward who's fleeing!

Some Uruks will become captains for no obvious reason, they just come up to you and present themselves as someone who's going to kill you and then become harder to kill. This can be very annoying when you're already fighting another captain. Often, if this happens the most logical thing to do is to flee, which makes perfectly sense if it weren't that this is a game based on killing Uruks, and I wan't to kill them, not flee from them! Much frustration when you know that the one who kills you will become stronger, so you can't just die and hope that that random captain won't walk into your fight the next time.

The Ugly

Would you give him your number?

This game isn't anything I would ever describe as pretty, but one thing in the game is uglier than most, in a good way. His name is Ratbag, and he contribute in the game with some dark comic relief. Hate him, love him or even worship him, it doesn't make him any prettier. The only thing I see when looking at Ratbag is that his character model is better made than my character, which makes me wan't to play as an Ururk. Which wouldn't had been a bad story, just not with a very goodhearted protagonist.

Bottom line is that this game is worth it's time and money, and it will put some pressure on Ubisoft to up their game some, which certainly is a good thing.

I know I haven't talked about the story, that is because you can't mention much without spoilers. Also, the story at the point I'm at feels remote and added to the game to give me a cause to kill Uruks, not the other way around.

So, if you want a good action game that will taunt you for failing, this just might be it.

Xbox, go to Plex

Finally! The most requested app by the Xbox One community is here, the Plex TV app. The app is a client for you Plex media server, which is filled with all your legal copies of movies and series that you own.

The client have every nice feature that all the Plex apps have, such as showing recent additions to your library, and remembering which episode or movie that you've watched and which to watch next etc. The better features in this app is not only that it can utilize from the Xbox power, which is considerably more than a TV, it can also use the kinect voice command. Now I never have to move from my couch when starting the next episode!

It has some more nice Xbox features such as the search function, which let you search for movies or episodes from the normal Xbox search outside of the app.

There is one downside, it's only for Plex Pass users, which costs $5 per month. It will remain that way for about 3 to 4 month before getting released to the non-pass users for a one time fee.

This app has changed many users media solutions, leaving chromecasts and appleTVs behind. The Plex feature was the only this I used my smart TV for, which have a rather slow and lousy app, so this really is a welcome change in my household.

The only thing left to solve now is whether I will watch series, play Shadow of Mordor or some Project Spark. Tough decision...

Project Spark is live, let the creation madness begin

Project Spark, for those who missed it, is a hybrid between a game and a level design tool. You can swap between playing others creations and make your own, and it's fabulous! Oh, and it's also free, with a catch, sort of... Spark is free, and you can play all creations for free and you can create things, and it won't ask you for money. You can however buy in game prop kits, like tundra kit or a castle kit, which most of the times can be bought with in game money received from simply playing, or bought with real money.

I've seen so many wondrous creations in the game that I've decided to endeavour on my own quest of making a beautiful little game. What I end up making is yet to be seen, but I have some really interesting things in mind, I just have to see if I'm able to build my framework work what I have in mind.

So where did this hype come from? I played in the early open beta on Xbox One, and at that point they had terrible problems with optimization. Horrendously long loading screens and lag made me quit during my first creation. Then I saw how long they've come since I last tried, and yesterday I played without lag, on my Surface Pro. Now that's optimization!

"Dirty UI" from Reddit user default159

Yes, optimization is good, but what about creations you might ask? Well the community has already made things from board games, to inventories. The game also supports pretty impressive AI scripting, or Koding as it's called, which lets you create the perfect NPC for your game.

As I mentioned before, you can play this on any Windows 8 device, or you can play it on Xbox One. You will also be able to create on PC and play on Xbox, but I'm not positively sure that they've implemented that just yet. Anyway, I will start creating today, and as soon as I have something to test, I will share it here.

So, head over to ProjectSpark and start creating!

Late with the September Loot Crate

My second loot crate was quite a miss for me. That is why it's taken so long for me to write anything about it.
Now, I don't want you to get me wrong, the items inside is quite awesome, but it's from franchises I don't care much about. I will try to be objective with the value of the crate while I will explain why this particular crate was such a miss.

courtesy of Ben Spark for the picture

The first item is the Tribble, a little hairy ball from a Star Trek episode I've never seen. I'm no huge Star Trek fan, and from what I've heard the opinions on this one is rather torn in two. I can't decide if I should gift it to a friend or to my cats. I love my cats, maybe they will love it, who knows?

Next up is the Alien action toy, made to resemble an original toy from the movies, or at least I hope that is the meaning of it. I don't have any strong feeling about this one. I think a collector would simply love it and I guess it's kinda cool.

Then we have what many think is the main attraction, and my absolute miss, the two Firefly loots. The first is a special edition action figure of Mal holding a rifle. The normal edition hold a pair of guns, but this LootCrate special has been equipped with more firepower. Also, there are a pack of real size bills from the series. I have to admit, these are rad and would have me drooling if I only cared about the series. Fans for this show really had a treat, and I know that's a lot of fans.

Also in the crate is a poster of Han Solo in carbonite, and I love it, maybe I should have it framed. It's super simple and really awesome, I just have to find a place for it to hang. There also a magnet of a Star Wars / Astroid game that's rather fun. I don't know if there's a lot of value in a magnet, but it's more fun than the ones I have now, so why not?

There's also some Pop Rocks candy, with sour apple flavor. To be honest, I haven't dared to try these, and I'm not sure that I will.

And the last loot, a code for a Halo-cartoon magazine. I haven't had time to use this code yet, but this was actually the one loot that made me the happiest, I've been thinking of reading the Halo cartoon for quite a while now and this brought me one step closer.

So, to sum it up this loot crate was okay for me, and surely great for most of their customers. I don't see it as waste of money even if it was a miss for me, I see it as gifts for my friends and readers, which is a great thing. If you're interested in any of the things from the crate leave a comment and I'll get back to you.

Next Crates theme is FEAR, no, not F.E.A.R, although that could make it as one of the loots. A shirt, Walking Dead and Capcom loot is more or less confirmed, and I am looking forward to it!

Windows 10 and Xbox One

Microsoft revealed, or rather teased, about Windows 10 the other day. And the good ol' rumor mill has already started to work. International Business Times writes that Xbox One will have Windows 10 and that how all platforms will use unified apps.

They also claims that we will be able to stream Xbox One games through our web browser to what ever device we want. The future is here, or rather will be here... In the future.

I think the rumor has gone a bit to far, Microsoft said that they will bring the platforms together to one product family, with the same application platform for developers. This will make it much easier for developers to make apps across all of the platforms, but it won't make all the apps accessible to every device. Although the idea is to have all the apps in the same place, so there will be one app store to rule them all.

Now, about that streaming Xbox One games. It sounds really awesome! A bit to awesome really. I think that someone at IBT got a little to exited about Microsofts Project DeLorean, which really is a cloud based streaming service for gaming. Who knows, maybe we'll see it soon, but I still think it's some years away, even if they have the tech with their Azure servers the magnitude of this would require them to consider how it would change the market.

We can always hope, cause I wouldn't have a problem with playing some Xbox One games on my Surface or any other mobile device.