Tag: video games

TMan’s Top 5: Favorite Robot Masters

Hello again! It’s the last Friday of January, which means it’s been four weeks of continuous daily updates of some form! I’ve been doing pretty well with my New Year’s Resolution and I appreciate everyone who has been reading and keeping up with everything I’ve written! Next week Kingdom Hearts 3 is dropping which is going to be the first test of my commitment to daily writing since I’m going to want to do nothing but play through that as quick as possible.

But before we get to that, it’s time for another Top 5! This week, after a little bit of deliberation, I decided to dig around and re-explore one of my favorite series of all time – the Mega Man series – and list my top 5 favorite Robot Masters! Enjoy!

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Bandersnatch: Expanding The Gaming Medium

This past weekend my friends and I got together and watched Bandersnatch – the standalone Black Mirror episode/movie on Netflix. It was highly talked about when it released at the end of December last year, but I had put off watching it in favor of making it a group activity. My friends and I had fun playing both Until Dawn and Hidden Agenda (although we all agreed the former was way better than the latter) and this was likely going to be a similar experience.

Bandersnatch was touted as a kind of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure movie where you get to make choices for the protagonist and affect the ending of the episode. It ended up being very similar to a Telltale game or Until Dawn – where two choices were presented to you and you had a time limit as to decide which way to direct the character. The group seemed to have a lot of fun with it and the episode itself was pretty entertaining – over the course of about three hours we managed to see most of what the episode had to offer.

The idea of an interactive story has been around for a while – after all Choose Your Own Adventure as books for kids have been around since the 1980s. However Bandersnatch was definitely targeted towards adults and adds an interesting data point towards the future of interactive media (especially with virtual reality possibly just around the corner). But Bandersnatch’s viewer engagement also intersects with the world of gaming and how they give you choices, and I’d like to take a moment and talk for a little bit about Bandersnatch, games like Until Dawn and Telltale choice-based games, and games like Mass Effect which also offer the illusion of choice.

Since it came out several weeks ago, I’m going to be talking very openly about Bandersnatch, so just as a warning spoilers will follow for the Black Mirror episode as well as some of the games I just previously listed. You’ve been warned.

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Episode 20 – The “Stick It To The Man” Episode

We’ve made it to a full twenty episodes of Make Me A Gamer! To celebrate, this week TMan and HarveyZ are sticking it to the corporate overlords of gaming! First they gush over the new Spider-Man trailer and Into The Spider-Verse, but then they get into discussion about the Gearbox CEO’s problems with porn, Activision and Bungie’s split and why TMan hates Activision’s CEO, and how Ubisoft’s management bungled their inclusive message with the latest DLC for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Enjoy! (This episode was recorded January 15th, 2019.)

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 19 – HYGGE!

HarveyZ’s back for a new episode of Make Me A Gamer! After educating TMan on the philosophy of HYGGE! the two talk about the latest Overwatch news & controversies. They also cover the hit new Venmo trend that’s been going around, along with Nintendo officially making Bowsette non-canon, Soulja Boy’s consoles getting pulled off the internet, and Bethesda’s Nuka Dark Rum misfire.  Then they end with a short discussion about board games. (This episode was recorded January 8th, 2019.)

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!

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

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!

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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