Inspired by ThatPunk’s livestreams of classic Castlevanias, I recently completed Odallus: The Dark Call on my livestream. The three streams are collected in a playlist below for you to enjoy at your leisure.
Category: Gaming & Culture
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Deadlock Review – Who Asked For This?
There’s something about shooters (FPS or third-person) that has led them to become one of the most popular types of games for as long as we’ve been able to put pixel to screen. Valve was and continues to be at the forefront of FPS development and can be somewhat to blame for the last decade of team-based shooters trying to bite Team Fortress 2’s success. Concord and Overwatch 2’s failures to launch make me wonder what the heck Valve is trying to do with their latest FPS project, Deadlock.
Similar to Counter Strike and Team Fortress Classic, Dota 2 has also helped pushed Valve to the front of the ARTS space. Deadlock adopted much of the lessons that they’ve learned from the sequel to Defense of the Ancients and the sequel to Team Fortress to create a combination FPS ARTS. Deadlock’s current state of development reminds me a LOT of the state of the ARTS scene prior to the release of League of Legends. Valve is clearly playing it very safe, but at the same time, they are fusing two genres together in a way that doesn’t speak to a team trying to replicate the success of Riot Games in the 2010s.
If Valve’s goal is to capture the wave of casual players that gave Tencent a reason to buy Riot Games in the first place, I don’t think that Deadlock will succeed. Not only is it more similar to Dota 2, which leans more complex and competitive, but the hybrid nature of the game will likely present too many barriers to entry for those who would prefer to cosplay or draw fan art than to grind ranked. In this regard, Marvel Rivals has Deadlock beat. Having to find five other players to play with is enough of a hassle, never mind having to aim, plan item builds, and coordinate with those team mates to achieve collective goals.
If the goal is to create a new FPS that competes with games like Team Fortress 2, Apex Legends, or Counter Strike, then why is so much of the game focused on aspects other than aiming at your opponent and shooting them? So far, it feels that Deadlock borrows about 70% of its DNA from Dota and the remaining 30% from Team Fortress 2. This leads to drastic shifts in survivability, damage output, and utility can change how the game is played through its different phases and between matches. I don’t assume to speak for all FPS players, but it feels like they generally prefer the mechanical core of their games to be more in focus than what some might call “fluff.” I don’t see why an FPS player would pick Deadlock over a game that actually values the skills and abilities that they’ve specifically honed.
At the end of the day, Deadlock will either end up as an ARTS with guns or an FPS with special abilities, and I don’t suspect either will be able to necessarily bridge the gap between the genres. I also don’t think more of a combination of the two styles of games will be all that appealing after a while. When I played Counter Strike mods that included special abilities back in the day, I preferred that they assisted me in accomplishing my goals of shooting my opponents and not getting shot myself rather than supplementing the traditional gameplan of an FPS with spinning around like a cartoon character or putting up giant walls to block my opponents only path of retreat. That shit is whack as hell.
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Death, Destruction, and Chaos – An Age of Sigmar: Warcry Battle Report
If playing tabletop wargames is your favorite part of the hobby, then you likely play a skirmish game like Warcry or Kill Team. Either provide all of the glory that traditional Warhammer provides at a significantly smaller scale. It’s been around six months since I last played a game of Warcry, so I thought it would be worthwhile to walk through some of what happened on that fateful night.
After work, three of my friends came by to trade Magic the Gathering cards and play Warcry. I set up the board with five objectives and a couples pieces of terrain (unfortunately, I had temporarily misplaced some of my more vertical terrain) and laid out the available warbands for my friends to select. Noah chose his ever faithful Ossiarch Bonereapers, Sam stuck with his Kruleboyz, Alec brought out the Iron Golems, and I represented the Daemons of Nurgle.
The battle plan was a simple capture and hold objective with the twist that anyone who controls an objective turns it into a healing spring for any nearby allied models. What started out as a patient game of Red Rover turned into a mosh pit in the middle of the board once we all realized that it was going to be the turning point in the game without serious upsets occurring. Alec’s sturdy Iron Golems marched to the center objective first, followed by a skeleton warrior and a Beast of Nurgle. Sam’s Kruleboyz were ambushed by Noah’s Liege Kavalos, which kept them securely in their corner of the battlefield.
Despite having a ton of wounds, the Orruks were eventually able to fell the Ossiarch leader and begin spilling onto the rest of the board. By that time, however, most of the battle had already taken place. As the Ossiarch retreated, the Ogor Breacher and Beasts of Nurgle continued to clash over the central objective, while the Plaguebearers charging in toe were easily felled by the remaining Iron Golems.
By the end of the game, the Kruleboyz were able to slink away mostly unharmed but without achieving their ultimate victory of poisoning the local water supply. Their job was done for them, however, as the blighted corpses of the followers of Nurgle piled up around the well and oozed foul bile into the soil. A new dawn rose slowly over the battlefield to reveal the Iron Golems standing victorious over their enemies, unaware that grandfather Nurgle’s wishes had been fulfilled as well.
tommgoldrick.com 