WOOOO! I just beat ________!!!!!

[Quantum Vagina]

On my yearly Halloween horror games marathon, I decided to space it out a bit and play the FNAF games leading up to Song of Saya on Halloween. I made it through the first three nights of FNAF before I got too scared, so tonight, I'm going to try to beat it and get as far as I can in FNAF2.

[Variety of Cells]

Ha, I'm playing as Rome and I haven't gotten Sanitation yet.

I wish I had started my first game of Civ 6 on an easier difficulty. I'm playing on Prince, and I nearly got wiped out 80 turns in. Hell, two of the other Civs have already been wiped out. Actually lost my capital, but managed to retake it. If it weren't for the ability to levy military from suzerain city-states, I would have been screwed. I'm debating whether to cut my losses, or try and come back. I'll probably ride it out, just so I'll know what I'm doing next time. 170 hours of Civ 5 experience doesn't count for as much as I thought.

It bugs me that there's no Diplomacy victory (yet).

Yeah my first two games were on Prince and I abandoned them after about 60 or 70 turns each when I realized how far behind I was.  Maybe I'll just try Prince next instead of King. Hard to tell if my realative ease on Warlord was due to the difficulty setting or randomly starting in a good position.

There seems to be almost no disadvantage to starting a whole bunch of cities now that there is no shared happiness pool. Probably going to be my strategy again.

[Pak-Man]

I find myself role-playing and treating Civilization games as a storytelling device of sorts. Sort of an "If I were king" simulator.  I'm probably really unique in that. So when I start a civilization only to be wiped out in short order, I still consider that a good game because it told an interesting story.

[Compound]

  Buuuttt I had such an advantage in religion on this one... and for the most part my apostles could just roam wherever they wanted and no one would care.  They were ignored harder than a Jehovah's Witness. 

Yeaaaaaah. That's not a usual experience. Take a look at this screenshot.



See those apostles? Those aren't mine. And I'd already militarily exterminated France for doing the exact same thing. And several civs on that left continent denounced me after I converted *a* city of theirs. The AI civs have tended to be pretty good about starting  religions and doing the spread the religion thing. In fact, out of my 3 games that I've played to completion, I've been locked out getting a great prophet twice.

[Pak-Man]

Beat the last chapter of the new King's Quest. A fantastic, heartwarming tribute to the history of adventure gaming from start to finish, but the structure of the games as the chapters progress make it pretty clear that they either had budget cuts or ran out of budget somewhere between chapters 3 and 4, and the adventure puzzles get more linear, and then degrade into block puzzles and finally basic math and logic puzzles. The writing remains top notch throughout, and the voice talent supports it beautifully. (Although you hear less and less of that voice talent, outside of the core cast, as the series goes on, as well.)

Still, it's one of the finest adventure games I've ever played, and I wonder how it might have turned out if so many fans hadn't decided to wait for the entire series before buying the game.

[SJP]

And I promise this is the last one, but the guy picking these quotes keeps pulling from my favorite comedies of all time.  I'll spoiler this one cause I'm sure it's getting annoying. 

Spoiler

Is that quote based off of who wrote it, or who said it?  Because it was definitely John Cleese who said it, but I can imagine Chapman wrote it for the film.

[Variety of Cells]

And I promise this is the last one, but the guy picking these quotes keeps pulling from my favorite comedies of all time.  I'll spoiler this one cause I'm sure it's getting annoying. 

Spoiler

Is that quote based off of who wrote it, or who said it?  Because it was definitely John Cleese who said it, but I can imagine Chapman wrote it for the film.

A good question.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Made it to the end of The Solus Project.  Took about 16 hours.  Very ambiguous ending.

Did it in easy (exploration) mode, so survival was not that hard, I don't think you can starve or freeze in that mode, but injuries can kill you.

None of the puzzles are very hard, just a LOT of walking around looking for stuff and traveling between different parts of the game.  That's my only real complaint, paths between things to do are way too long.  Some areas were really creepy, I can imagine if I were playing in VR it would be really scary to be immersed in those rooms.

[CJones]

Witcher 3

Yeah, I know, I'm late to the party. 124 hours, and I still have the expansions to do. Excellent game all around, one of the best I've played in years.

Unfortunately, it appears I got the bad ending, and I don't know why.

[Variety of Cells]

Ah, how satisfying.  Beat Civ VI on King, large map, science victory without a religion. 

[CJones]

Ah, how satisfying.  Beat Civ VI on King, large map, science victory without a religion. 

Who were you playing as?

In my current game I've got India, Arabia and Spain as my three closest neighbors. They seem intent to flood my empire with missionaries. I've even asked Arabia not to spread his religion to my cities, to which he agreed. He's doing anyway. I think a Holy War will be inevitable.

[Variety of Cells]

Ah, how satisfying.  Beat Civ VI on King, large map, science victory without a religion. 

Who were you playing as?

In my current game I've got India, Arabia and Spain as my three closest neighbors. They seem intent to flood my empire with missionaries. I've even asked Arabia not to spread his religion to my cities, to which he agreed. He's doing anyway. I think a Holy War will be inevitable.

How many civs are in your game?

For me, I just kept an eye on the religious victory tab every now and again to make sure I wasn't at risk of losing. The AI did a great job of keeping a 3 way tie between the religions, so I never had anything to worry about. Instead I let them waste resources on faith buildings as I shot rockets into the sky.

In my previous game on Prince I got into a lot of religious combat because the AI was being a dick, but it never lead actual war. They didn't seem to care if I killed their religious units, just as long as I didn't convert too many of their cities.

Though I will say that if I start up another game to try the final victory type, domination, I'll be sure to get a religion. Being able to buy troops with faith was realllly useful in my first game.

Oh, and I was cleopatra. I love building giant trade networks. Was raking in 600 gold a turn for a while.

[CJones]

Ah, how satisfying.  Beat Civ VI on King, large map, science victory without a religion. 

Who were you playing as?

In my current game I've got India, Arabia and Spain as my three closest neighbors. They seem intent to flood my empire with missionaries. I've even asked Arabia not to spread his religion to my cities, to which he agreed. He's doing anyway. I think a Holy War will be inevitable.

How many civs are in your game?

For me, I just kept an eye on the religious victory tab every now and again to make sure I wasn't at risk of losing. The AI did a great job of keeping a 3 way tie between the religions, so I never had anything to worry about. Instead I let them waste resources on faith buildings as I shot rockets into the sky.

In my previous game on Prince I got into a lot of religious combat because the AI was being a dick, but it never lead actual war. They didn't seem to care if I killed their religious units, just as long as I didn't convert too many of their cities.

Though I will say that if I start up another game to try the final victory type, domination, I'll be sure to get a religion. Being able to buy troops with faith was realllly useful in my first game.

Oh, and I was cleopatra. I love building giant trade networks. Was raking in 600 gold a turn for a while.

I have 8 Civs, including myself. Spain and Arabia are hilariously right next to each other. Suffice it to say, they are not pals. Sparta died an early death. Across the ocean there's India (I love how "Nuke Happy" is Ghandi's secondary agenda). Germany, Great Britain and someone I haven't seen yet make up the rest.

I also love trade networks. I'm playing as Rome, so I've got roads and trading posts everywhere. I think I'm making about 200 gold/turn. Half of my trading is with my own cities. You can get new cities up to speed quickly by "borrowing" production from your own cities via trade routes.

[SJP]

Again, not JUST beat...it was last week...but I finally finished the Wipeout 2048 MP Campaign on Vita.

For anybody who doesn't know what this entails, there are 210 nodes, all of which have some sort of requirement or two to consider a node finished ("Beat 1 Specific Player, Hit Two Enemies with Weapons," and so forth).  You have to complete each node to achieve victory, of which 40-odd of those nodes require you to at least Finish 1st among other requirements.  If you fail to complete one, it does give you three chances to do it, after which it unlocks the next one, but once all are unlocked, it's up to you to go back and finish any you missed...you literally must complete all of them to succeed.

First of all, the difficulty of completing them is bad enough on its own, as Wipeout games get very competitive, and luck can turn on a dime with one point away from victory.  Wipeout players are crazy good at what they do.

Secondly, you need at least 4 people to join a race.  That alone keeps the servers fairly ghost-townish for a game that came out at the beginning of the Vita's lifecycle.

Thirdly, the game is way more popular in England than it is in the US, and finding people to play with even at the best of times can be hard with a 5+ hour time zone difference.  Lag is troublesome, too.

Fourthly, after the company that made it went belly-up, a strange bug showed up in the MP code...all the save info for the MP is on the game servers, not the Vita, and the bug has a tendency to not connect you to your server data from time to time.  When this happens...well, all your progress is erased.  Permanently.  And you have to start over from the beginning.  There is no rhyme or reason to if the server doesn't connect, but one wrong click and it's gone for good...and nobody seems to be 100% on how to prevent it.  I certainly tried every method without success.

For two months, my save data wiped four times.  All within 10-70 nodes of completion.  Fifth time was the charm.  Hardest fought plat I ever had on a game, and I'm glad I got it, but playing well over 1000 races/combat zones of Wipeout is enough to drive someone crazy.

But, I've now jumped into another of my free games...and it's one of those visual novel things from Japan.  On the one hand, I realize I am not the intended audience for this thing, but on the other hand, I'm enjoying something where all I have to do is select between two choices and see a story unfold.  Strangely relaxing.

[CJones]

Civilization 6 - Culture victory as Rome!

I don't think I ever won a culture victory in Civ 5. I also don't think I ever won a game before making it to the last era. I was still in the Atomic Era. I had Ghandi as an ally, but neither one of us ever got to nukes. Despite saying this, I think you burn through the latter parts of the tech tree too quickly. Rationalism is way too powerful.

Towards the end of the game I was just buying off everybody else's Great Works. 100 gold per turn for The Telltale Heart? Sure, I don't care. I'm gonna win next turn anyway. One thing I learned is that the game is VERY finicky about building national parks. I never did find a suitable place.  Seaside resorts are also a little finicky, but I managed to find enough places with "Breathtaking" appeal to win. Those are worth +8 Tourism each.

Rome is pretty damn good.  Roads all over the place. I had 14 trade routes going at the end.