4X: Excite, Excel, Exhaust, Exclude?

Yesterday my friends and I had a snowy day to contend with and we passed the time by playing a board game. It’s a game called Scythe that I got as a gift from my girlfriend for Christmas. Scythe is described as a 4X board game – and just in case you didn’t listen to last week’s podcast, 4X stands for Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate. You explore a map, expand your empire, exploit the land for resources, and exterminate your rival empires.

These types of strategy games are found in both the spheres of both board and video games. Classic examples of 4X video games include the Civilization series, the Masters of Orion series, Endless Space, and Stellaris. Examples of 4X board games include the aforementioned Scythe, Civilization: The Board Game, Twilight Imperium, and Clash of Cultures.

4X games often take a very long time to play – I’ve personally spent a whole day playing Civilization 5 on the computer and not finished the game, and it took two long gaming sessions to finish one game of a board game version. This is because there are often a lot of intersecting mechanics and choices you have to make and since it is a strategy game there are lots of considerations to make every time it is your turn. Also because there is a lot of information to cover, the first time you play such a game it will take a lot longer to set up and understand.

I really enjoyed playing Scythe with my friends and am already eager to try it again. However, when I’m faced with a 4X video games I often shy away from them aside from the Civilization series. So why is 4X more palatable to me in board game form over video games? That’s what I’m going to explore and expand upon (get it?) in this article.

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Overwatch & LGBT+ Representation

Soldier 76 is gay. Blizzard has now revealed both of what would be considered the “primary” Overwatch characters to be LGBT+. The first reveal was Tracer being in a lesbian relationship in a comic, and now Soldier 76 through the short story Bastet. Tracer is the face of Overwatch – she’s on the box when you buy it and was the primary good guy of the very first Overwatch short. And Soldier 76 is the grizzled veteran who is who you control when you boot up the tutorial in Overwatch and is considered to be one of the easiest and most basic characters to introduce you to the game.

Blizzard has been very inclusive with Overwatch with characters of all different races hailing from all different countries. Aside from the continued controversy over a lack of a playable black female character, the representation has been wide enough to include most everyone. So it’s no surprise that some of the characters are LGBT+.

But the question I pose with this article is: is Overwatch gay enough? Is Blizzard taking the right approach to sexual representation in their game, or is this more of an appeal to the masses for good press?

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Episode 18 – Nanomanagement (Ft. Slim as Special Guest)

On today’s episode of Make Me A Gamer, HarveyZ is off living the jet-setting corporate lifestyle, so TMan has brought in a special guest by the name of Slim! While Slim is more of a regular gamer than HarveyZ, he tends to favor older games. So he and TMan delve into his favorite games and why he likes them – the topics range from Starcraft to Descent to Masters of Orion. There’s also discussion about the Civilization series and Age of Mythology and its fifteen-years-later expansion. We hope you enjoy the special guest host! (This episode was recorded January 5th, 2019.)

TMan on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tmanplaysgames

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E-Mail Us at: makemeagamerpodcast@gmail.com

As always, thank you so much for listening and please leave us ratings and feedback however you’re listening to our podcast!

After The Hype: The Witcher 3

So this past weekend I started playing Witcher 3 for the first time. I read The Last Wish (the first chronological book in the Witcher series, although it is a collection of short stories and not a full novel) for a book club my friends and I participate in. The characters and world building were enough to intrigue me and finally got enough of my attention to actually start the Witcher 3. I’d bought the complete edition for PS4 during a sale who knows how long ago and it’s been sitting on my shelf as a “to play” game for a long time.

Despite it getting rave reviews and it winning a ton of Game of the Year awards back in 2015, I was never super jazzed about the game. I’d played the Witcher 2 on the XBox 360 and finished the first chapter, but I didn’t end up completing the game. I don’t remember a lot about the story (other than Triss was there and Geralt was in a town doing witcher things) and I ended up dropping it in favor of other games. It always struck me as generic fantasy – well done and in an interesting world – but generic fantasy nonetheless.

I watched everyone rave about how good it was and how the sidequests and stories were very well developed and meaningful. But I was hesitant to jump in since I knew I’d already given up on Witcher 2 and I have a low tolerance for generic high fantasy worlds. But nonetheless I ended up with a copy of it since it’s reputation was so strong and it just laid in wait until I was inspired enough to play it.

Which is apparently now. So for today’s article I’m going to talk a little bit about my first few hours of Witcher 3…just three and a half years later than everybody else did.

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TMan’s Top 5: Overwatch Characters

It’s Friday! And since it’s resolution week, it’s time for yet another New Year’s resolution from me! Well, sorta. If you haven’t noticed, there’s been a post on the blog every day of the week this week. As I mentioned on Wednesday, I wasn’t terribly happy with my output quantity by the end of 2018, so I’m looking to change that this year. So my goal is to have a post on this blog every weekday. To create some semblance of a schedule, here’s what the content will look like:

Monday: Gaming Related Article
Tuesday: Podcast Episode (no real writing in this one, but keeps with my current schedule of posting podcasts on Tuesdays)
Wednesday: Grab Bag (article can be about anything)
Thursday: Music Theory (as seen yesterday)
Friday: Top 5

As I’ve noted before, I like lists. And as such, for Fridays I’ll be posting Top 5 lists for all sorts of different categories. Maybe this way I’ll get some of those sweet, sweet BuzzFeed clicks. I’m guessing some of the lists will be more in-depth than others.

To start us off, I’m going with my Top 5 Favorite Overwatch characters in honor of me recently opening and playing some Overwatch for the first time in a long while. They’re my favorites all-around, including the actual character, any story they might have, and if I enjoy playing as them as well. Here we go!

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Choice Paralysis: Video Game Edition

For 2019 I’ve made several resolutions – many of which are directly related to my writing. One of them is just quantity. I started off 2018 with the goal of 3 blog posts a week, which I kept to for about a month and change. By the end of the year I was getting two to three a month done which is still good (because I was still writing!) but not an output amount I felt good about.

Part of my writing problem is I feel everything article I write on here has to have a definitive point. It has to either be a review or an in-depth analysis or a summary of games I’ve been playing. Sometimes I have a lot of topics I really want to write about but can’t decide on one, or I wait for that “moment of inspiration” that drives me to choose one out of a hat. And because of these factors sometimes I never write at all.

This leads into the topic that I’m writing about today that applies to my writing, video games, and life in general: choice paralysis AKA analysis paralysis.

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Episode 13 – Predator with Parkour: The Assassin’s Creed Episode

On this week’s episode of Make Me A Gamer, TMan and HarveyZ have an unusually focused episode where they do a deep dive into Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and the Assassin’s Creed series as a whole. They do get on a few of their trademark tangents, though, including discussing magicians, sex scenes in video games, and….John Leguizamo’s The Pest? (This episode was recorded on October 13th.)

TMan on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tmanplaysgames

HarveyZ on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ThaZIsSilent

Make Me A Gamer on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MakeMeAPodcast

E-Mail Us at: makemeagamerpodcast@gmail.com

As always, thank you so much for listening and please leave us ratings and feedback however you’re listening to our podcast!

Episode 12 – Pika Pika, My Ass!

On this episode of Make Me A Gamer, TMan and HarveyZ start off with some more excellent adventures in XCOM 2. Then they go over some Overwatch League news and cover Square Enix’s unfortunate Final Fantasy XV conference. After that, they get a little reflective when they talk about Stan Lee’s passing before ending on a discussion about the new Detective Pikachu trailer and other video game movies. (This episode was recorded November 13th, 2018.)

TMan on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tmanplaysgames

HarveyZ on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ThaZIsSilent

Make Me A Gamer on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MakeMeAPodcast

E-mail us @ makemeagamerpodcast@gmail.com

Please rate and leave a review for us on whatever podcast app you’re using to listen to us, and thanks to everyone who gives us a listen!

Episode 9 – John Carpenter’s It (The Spooky Spoiler Episode)

We have a special Halloween treat this week for Make Me A Gamer! TMan and HarveyZ accidentally recorded a semi-spooky themed episode! After talking about our experience with simulation games (including early experiences with “titillating” games and mods) we dive into talk about horror movies and what we like and don’t like about them. TMan and HarveyZ also get into spoiler territory as we have differing opinions on them. (Spoilers: we spoil some fictional events that are 10+ years old in this podcast.) We also talk about some scary, spooky video games and end with a little bit of talk about the Secure, Contain, Protect wiki. (This episode was recorded September 29th.)

TMan on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tmanplaysgames

HarveyZ on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ThaZIsSilent

Make Me A Gamer on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MakeMeAPodcast

E-mail us @: makemeagamerpodcast@gmail.com

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s Traversal Problem

My play timer on Assassin’s Creed Odyssey sits at around 25 hours right now. It’s not entirely accurate – I have a short attention span and will often be doing things on my computer at the same time – or sometimes I will leave the game running and forget about it until the PS4 auto-sleep modes after an hour. But I’ve definitely been playing for somewhere between 20 and 25 hours, which I estimate is about how long it took me to 100% Spider-Man on the PS4. Meanwhile in AC: Odyssey I’ve explored maybe a fourth of the map at most, the main plot of the game is only barely beginning to come into focus and I’m only level 20 out of a soft level cap of 50. (Spider-Man’s soft level cap was also 50 – in both games you can level past 50 but the rewards are minimal.)

Both are considered “open-world action” games that have an RPG element to them. Both have skill trees that you can upgrade and customize your play-style through. Assassin’s Creed has loot-drops and equipment to upgrade, along with a system of tracking mercenaries out to kill you and the ability to recruit people for your ship crew, while Spider-Man has gadgets to acquire and special suits and powers to unlock and upgrade. Spider-Man, however is a very story-focused game with a smaller overall map that allows for a high density of things to do in the playground you’re given, while AC: Odyssey gives you an extremely large map that is still dense with things to do, but is more focused on letting you explore and find those quests at your leisure.

So why is it that, even though the map is clearly larger and encouraging you to explore everywhere, getting anywhere in Assassin’s Creed is a chore? But in the smaller map of Spider-Man I had the most fun I’ve ever had getting from point A to point B?

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