Literally the only superhero-related screenshot from a game I have. This is Colossus from Marvel Heroes. The big story in MMORPG news lately is about City of Heroes, the second-most talked about dead game after Star Wars Galaxies. Apparently, somebody has been working on (yet another) City of Heroes emulator in secret. There’s a lot of drama around it, because of course there is. I don’t know all the details and it’s tiresome to read through the articles about it. (742 words.)

I’ve had nothing at all to write about for the last month except Critical Role and Sekiro. I can’t write about Critical Role because a) most people don’t care and b) any discussion of it would basically be 100% spoilers and c) D&D isn’t really my thing anyway. I can’t write about Sekiro because there’s nothing much to say except “I’m playing Sekiro.” It’s not the kind of game that lends itself to a lot of discussion. (1195 words.)

March was a veritable explosion of gaming variety for me. I dropped Dwarf Fortress like a hot potato (just when people were starting to like my videos, oops) and picked up Souls again in anticipation of Sekiro. Not that there’s anything wrong with Dwarf Fortress, but nothing compete when the From Software fever hits. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, 16 hours. The new game from From Software. I just love writing “from From Software” and do it every chance I can. (276 words.)

Just some quick spoiler-free bullet points about the first five-ish hours of Sekiro, the latest game from From Software. It looks like a slightly-improved version of the Dark Souls 3 game engine. It has basically the same bleached-film aesthetic. I’m playing with mouse-and-keyboard to save my thumbs. The implementation is slightly better than Dark Souls 3, which was better than Dark Souls, but it’s still probably going to be “best” with controllers. (629 words.)

Google announced a new gaming “platform” curiously named Stadia. It’s a lot of things, but in simple terms I’d call it a cloud gaming service, similar to that OnLive service that died a horrible death some time ago. But it’s more than that. On first glance, I’d say it has about as much chance of long-term success as OnLive did. It sounds like a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. (497 words.)

My 2013 MacBook Air died recently. Don’t ask how, because it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done with an expensive piece of electronic equipment. Okay, I dropped it in some water. It wasn’t in the water for more than a second, and only the keyboard part was submerged, but that was enough. It continued to work while wet, surprisingly enough, but I immediately turned it off to let it dry out, and it hasn’t powered back up since. (1209 words.)

Last week there was a sudden burst of attention for that media juggernaut known as “Critical Role,” the Friends of the RPG community. They launched a Kickstarter to fund an animated show, and smashed through their goals and stretch goals and super stretch goals somehow within a negative amount of spacetime (or so it seemed, without actually paying that much attention), and the tabletop RPG corners of the Internet rejoiced. (3635 words.)

Oops it’s over a week into March and this post is still sitting here waiting for me to attach a picture to it. Hey guess what? I played Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf Fortress, 118 hours. ANTHEM Open Demo, 1 hour. I don’t think I turned on my PS4 at any point either. Why did I buy that contraption again? Well, there was a sale. And it’s the only way to play Bloodborne. (92 words.)

I tried the open beta this past weekend, because it was free. First, in marketing terms, it was a far better game demo than The Division 1 Open Beta, because you got into the action much faster, and didn’t spend your first 30 minutes just wandering around trying to find where to start. So in that sense, it’s much better. Other than that, there’s nothing much to report. It’s basically identical to the first game, except it takes more CPU and GPU power to run. (895 words.)

I think I’m getting a little weary of Dwarf Fortress. I’m starting to detect some repetition in how each game plays out. The outcomes aren’t exactly the same, but the events that happen along the way are starting to feel a bit routine. There’s always artifacts, there’s always a cavern system, there’s always goblin invasions, there’s always forgotten beasts and titans and ettins, there’s always unhappy dwarves, etc. It feels a little like if I build the same fortress plan every time, I’ll get the same outcome every time. (1676 words.)

Bhagpuss’s recent post and also one of his older posts that I can’t remember-because for some reason I never, ever bookmark things I want to refer to later-remind me of a theory I’ve had for a while now but I haven’t quite been able to articulate, so I’ll give it a shot now. This also touches a little bit on “Gevlon’s final post,” which I haven’t read yet, but Bhagpuss quoted some of it. (875 words.)

I can’t stop chuckling about this so I have to mention it. I got an email. Someone saw my Dwarf Fortress videos on YouTube and sent me a Steam code to try their game. I’m an INFLUENCER now. Live image of a YouTuber becoming an influencer. This is hilarious to me. After 4 years of putting videos on youtube, someone thinks I'm an influencer and sent me a code to try their game… all it takes is 4 long years of punishing work, a thousand hours of video editing, and you get a free game! (510 words.)

ArenaNet is laying off an undetermined number of employees on the orders of NCSoft. Random Guild Wars 2 screenshot because thumbnail. I actually don’t have much to say about this, but I felt like it was big enough news to warrant a blog post to mark the occasion. To be perfectly blunt, I’m so numb to the game industry right now that this barely elicited a mild shrug. It’s a weekday, so of course another major MMO studio is suffering losses. (521 words.)

One of the interesting things about Dwarf Fortress is that your “save game file” (which is actually a huge directory of tiny files) contains not just your fortress, but the entire world around your fortress, including all of the other AI-controlled fortresses and civilizations on the map. In RimWorld, if you get an itch to try something different, you simply save your game and start a new game with a new colony. (1665 words.)

I’ve been trying to think about how to approach this particular story, and whether I should address it at all. It doesn’t really affect me personally, and it’s dangerously close to Expressing A Political Opinion On The Internet. Which is basically an invitation for the world to come over here and yell angrily because there is only one correct opinion on everything and conformity must be enforced at all costs. Because yelling at people is historically proven to be the best way to change their views. (2326 words.)