Everything Is Fine

Category: Games

Posts about games: analog, digital, or other.

  • Gen Con 2026 was fine – Part III – Extracurriculars (feat. TORNADO)

    Third (and probably final, but we’ll see) post about this year’s Gen Con. First is here. Second is here.

    In addition to the travel and the various “sanctioned” events, there’s also just other stuff that goes on at Gen Con. This year, though, I didn’t really get up to much of that.

    There’s the exhibit hall, where most of the vendors are. I did buy a couple of games: I bought Hell of a Deal by Smirk and Dagger. (Haven’t played it yet.) I bought Jibber Jabble by AllPlay. (It was $9. I had played it the previous evening with some folks and it was a riot. It’s a tremendously stupid game that you should try.) I picked up my pre-ordered expansion for Lunar Rush (a game that debuted at Gen Con 2024 that I didn’t bother with, then I bought used at the consignment store in 2025).

    I also sold a Riftbound card. I don’t really play Riftbound, but I still would like to, and I opened a valuable card earlier this year at a pre-rift event. I got a good amount of cash for it that I’ll probably just gamble with. It’s fine.

    Otherwise, I didn’t do a ton in the hall. I walked around a little, but nothing jumped out at me as exciting or anything. I did see a demo of a game that had some neat mechanics and really cool looking components, but then they said it was a future kickstarter (not like on kickstarter now and they’re demoing to get backers – something they’re going to put on kickstarter eventually). Whatever. Then I turned around and realized I was right by the booth that had the Laundry Files RPG books. I didn’t buy them, but it was neat to just sort of stumble on them like that. I almost bought them. The Deluxe Edition of The Gang sold out every day.

    I didn’t go into the consignment store at all. I was pretty booked with events during store hours most days, and it’s pretty out of the way. Oh well.

    I did go to the auction briefly. Well, I meant to go briefly. I wanted to get food on Saturday and it was raining very hard outside, so instead I took a skywalk to the auction. It was TOVA, after all, when all the weird shit goes up for sale. Then, while I was there, Indianapolis got a Tornado Warning. (Yeah, a Warning, meaning OH SHIT TORNADO.)

    This warning didn’t exactly mean “THERE IS A TORNADO COMING NOW” but there were very ominous signs on radar bearing down right on center city Indianapolis, so taking some shelter was still probably a good idea. There were parts of the convention center where it rained inside, and some hotels, restaurants, and parking garages started flooding. (That’s why my garage being aboveground was fortuitous.)

    The ballroom hosting the auction, while not downstairs, was away from windows and could be sealed off from the corridors and stuff, and so due to the volume of people, it was deemed the safest place to be. So not only did the auction proceed, but people in the hallways and other nearby rooms were brought in. MANDATORY AUCTION TIME. I joked that now TOVA means Tornado Outside? Visit Auction!

    Anyway, it was fine. And not just because of the bit, but it actually was fine. There was little to no actual tornado (I believe an EF0 was confirmed elsewhere in the city) and as far as I know, no convention casualties occurred. (I’m sure there are people dealing with car insurance due to flooded garages and stuff, but that stuff happens.)

    Another Gen Con in the books – different from the 12 others I’ve attended but also kinda the same. New stuff but also nothing new. The most excitement probably occurred for me during an evening game of Hot Streak. Just a bunch of nerds around a table screaming for a hot dog and a bear racing each other. (Oh, and every time I got to spring something weird on the Call of Cthulhu players. Looking forward to doing that again.)

    The games were fine. The events were fine. The tornado was fine. Buc-ee’s was fine. Gen Con was fine. Next year will be number 60. Wanna guess how that’ll be?

  • Gen Con 2026 was fine – Part II – The Events

    The second post of approximately three about Gen Con 2026. First is here if you haven’t seen it: https://everythingisfine.fyi/2026/08/11/gen-con-2026-was-fine-part-i-the-trip/

    So what did I actually do at Gen Con this year? Somehow simultaneously a lot and also nothing. Here’s a quick rundown of official stuff I did:

    • Franchi$e – an upcoming sports management deckbuilder (it was billed as a deckbuilder, but it’s not – the designer has since updated the tagline for when their funding goes live). It was an entertaining enough game. I’m probably not going to buy it, but I had a good time playing it and would play it with friends if they had a copy. (It had a lot of Lords of Baseball in it, which I liked a lot when I first tried it, and like a little less now but it’s still enjoyable and I’ve hardly played it.)
    • Above and Below: Haunted – It’s the old worker placement/adventuring game Above and Below, but a sequel of sorts with ghosts. Enjoyable to play. Would play it again, but not a lot, but it has more variability in it than the original.
    • Kinfire Delve – I’d actually played this before (Chris Grace taught me how to play at Clocktower Con 2025, so I’m kind of a big deal) so I decided to jump into a session of it where you could win prizes completing in-game challenges. I ended up playing with a family. We were able to beat the hardest boss in the game and complete all the challenges we set out to do, except for the ones based on completing the game quickly. (I think we would have won a grand prize if we would have finished in 45 minutes; we took closer to an hour.) Good game – I’ve thought about buying it, and I still might in the future.
    • Mighty Shot! – A silly little game that tries to play kind of like a MOBA in that you summon minions and march them up a board to damage your opponent, and your opponent uses abilities to try to kill them. (And vice versa.) The core gimmick is that, to kill minions, you flick pucks at a target printed on a special playmat. (The target kind of looks like a curling house; flicking the pucks felt very Crokinole-like.) It was surprisingly complicated, but started coming together pretty quickly. I wouldn’t buy it, but I’d play it more.
    • Surviving the GAME: Was billed as a sort of tactical shooter deckbuilder. Host never showed; game never happened.
    • Laundry Files RPG Session: I like the Charles Stross novel series, and none of the Call of Cthulhu sessions being run by the group I usually look for sounded interesting, so I went for this instead. It was a very basic scenario, but it showcased how the system works and was a good illustration of the novels’ universe as an RPG. I’ll look into sessions in the future. Maybe I’ll buy the books, but I already have enough RPG books for games I’ll never actually play.
    • True Dungeon: A friend needed some people to fill out a group, so I tagged along. I did True Dungeon once before, and it was fine. This time, it was also fine. They’ve shortened the runs from seven rooms to five in order to lower the ticket prices. Five isn’t really long enough, but I’ll certainly never pay the hundred-and-whatever dollars the seven room version costs. (Honestly, I wouldn’t pay the eighty-whatever for the five room one, either.) Entertaining, but I can find lots of things that are entertaining for that kind of money. Maybe a board game? I wonder if I can get any of those somewhere?

    This year I also did something I’ve never done before at Gen Con – I GMed two games. First, a session of the Root RPG, where the adventure is meant to parallel the novel Mossflower in the Redwall series. (I knew little to nothing about the Root RPT, Redwall, or Mossflower going in.) It was a good time; the players seemed to enjoy the adventure and it went better than I would have thought. Second (and last – these two events were my actual first and last events of the con), a Call of Cthulhu adventure taking place in a dilapidated, haunted, eldritch Appalachian folklore-based theme park. I had a blast here, and I think my players did, too. Lots of great moments, both from the story itself and the way the players interacted with it. Both were good times. Would GM again.

    No stage combat classes, though. And no mega games, or burlesque shows, or Blood on the Clocktower. (Since my con friends generally don’t want to play, I should start getting into the random hallway games, but weird strangers…)

    And the vibes were good. Last year, I had a fantastic time in events, but moving from thing to thing felt like a drag. This year, the events were fine to good. Nothing mind-blowing, but still always enjoyable, and moving around the space felt pleasant.

  • Gen Con 2026 was fine – Part I – The Trip

    Gen Con was last weekend! So why am I just writing about it now? Because I couldn’t be bothered. When you have lukewarm takes like these, sometimes you just aren’t that interested in vomiting them forth for approximately zero people to read.

    Anyway, this will be a series of posts (approximately three) about Gen Con 2026 – the travel, the events, the shenanigans, etc. This one will mainly cover the travel.

    Travel to Gen Con is boring. At least, it’s boring when you drive from the Midatlantic, because you just get on Interstate 70 and then nothing happens. (Depending on where you get on Interstate 70, you might go through Breezewood!) There were a few notable things, though (or notable lack of things for the first one):

    Nobody’s transmission exploded! I mean, I’m sure somebody’s did, but it wasn’t mine or the one of anyone else I know. That meant that once I was actually on the road, it was smooth sailing. The only stop was near Ohio Valley Mall in Ohio for gas and food, and then to wonderful downtown Indianapolis.

    Downtown Indianapolis is fine, but there is a lot of construction going on there at the moment. Specifically, the block in front of the Sheraton hotel is under construction, as well as various blocks nearby around the city. This meant that I could not put my car in front of the building to unload it, and also that it took roughly 20 minutes to circle around the block to pull into the parking garage because the streets are all one way and the garage is on the wrong side of the hotel to be able to pull in after stopping at the front door. (I did not park in the hotel’s garage, granted – they charge $55 per day for that and the convention affords better uses of money.)

    But once the car was unloaded and stowed, I didn’t need to bother with it again until the end of the convention. It was safely indoors and above ground (which all became relevant on Saturday) and was waiting for me to load it back up and make the trip the other direction.

    As for the hotel – the Indianapolis Sheraton is fine. I’ve now stayed there at least three times for Gen Con and while it’s farther from everything than I’d like, it’s near some good food and walking from there to the con helped me find Jack’s Donuts, which is quite good. (And water didn’t pour in to their downstairs conference rooms. Or at least, if it didn’t, I wasn’t aware of it. Water did pour in other places though – more on that later.)

    I’ve said this before, but not on here – the drive from the east coast (and specifically the Midatlantic) to the Midwest has one big hurdle – the Appalachian Mountains. There are only so many routes across them. From Northern Virginia, you can drive up to Frederick, Maryland and get right on I-70, or you can drive out west on I-66, then pick up I-81 and take that up to I-70. You can either just take I-70, diverting up into Pennsylvania (to Breezewood!) then paying like $9 for the Turnpike, then a segment of the interstate that is specifically described as not up to interstate standards, and then getting into West Virginia and onward. On the other hand, you can divert from I-70 onto I-68, which is a straight shot right across Maryland, passing the future site of Noah’s Ark (that broke ground 50 years ago, but they’re gonna finish it!)… right up until it just sort of terminates in Morgantown, West Virginia. You can take US-40 to get from 68 to 70, climbing the mountains through Uniontown, or you can get on I-79 in Morgantown, spending a significant portion of time going north instead of west toward the destination.

    Anyway, all that’s to say that the eastern end of the trip has a lot of hurdles. It’s a lot of slow going and not a lot of progress. It looks lovely, though. Going to Gen Con, that’s the beginning of the trip. You get some scenic views and crummy roads and a lot of up and down (I’m a little surprised my transmission hasn’t exploded, considering it’s already basically defective) but convention energy gets you going and you make it over the mountains and it’s a nice time. Going from Gen Con, however… ugh. You drive from Indiana, which is flat and boring, into and through Ohio, which is flat and boring, and then when you’re kind of tired and sort of almost home, then you have to deal with all the mountain bullshit.

    So yeah, the trip to and from Gen Con was fine. And there’s a Buc-ee’s along the way now!

  • Final Three Con was Fine

    Okay, so Final Three Con (a local small-ish game convention primarily revolving around “social” gaming (namely social deduction, namely Blood on the Clocktower)) was last weekend, and I would have written this sooner, but you know. Stuff. (And Marathon.)

    I say “small-ish” because it has close to 1000 attendees, but that’s smaller than, say, Gen Con (with its 70,000 attendees) and probably the only Magic Con I’ve been to (Philly 2023), but still, 1000 people is a lot – especially when they’re all there to mainly do the same thing.

    It was a good time. I saw some people I haven’t seen in a while (despite ostensibly being a member of the same local gaming group) and played a lot of games.

    I didn’t do much else but play Clocktower (and The Gang – the unofficial second official game of Final Three Con); the board games I had with me drew some interest, but not from enough people at the same time, and when I had some downtime, I was usually just waiting for another event soon-ish, so I hung out in my hotel room or wandered around for food, drinks, or other stuff like that.

    Also, the Clocktower community is… weird. Like, in a lovely way, and it’s possibly because it’s so much smaller than the gamer community at large (so all the eccentricity is… distilled?) but as an, I guess, “normie” (where I’m not really all that unused to not necessarily fitting into a particular subculture) it’s… I don’t know… off-putting? Not really, but sometimes. Basically, it’s a culture that’s deeply online, to the point where if a game goes around and gives names, a handful will give some sort of online handle.

    And it’s… whatever. I get it (I think). It’s 2026; we’d all rather be somewhere else, or someone else (or I guess maybe these are people who primarily play the game online, and so don’t want to make a link between that identity and their “real world” identity) and that’s fair.

    It’s also an incredibly neurodivergent community. And I say that as someone who’s probably not 100% neurotypical (although I guess it depends on how “typical” one has to be). That’s definitely a good thing – that all of these people are welcome and comfortable and all just hanging out being themselves.

    And so it was a nice weekend of games, friends, weird people, and not really paying any attention to the outside world. (Including the NFL draft that was going on at the same time. Apparently the Steelers drafted the mid quarterback from Penn State.)

    It was fine.

  • Marathon is fine

    I’ve been meaning to sit down and write this for at least a week or so now. The thing is, when I’m not at work or doing something else important like cooking or sleeping, I’m playing Marathon.

    In an earlier post, I mentioned Arc Raiders as a game that I tried and kind of liked. I liked the environment; I liked the aesthetic; I liked the sounds. It just didn’t have the “juice”. Playing it didn’t get me excited or anything. A successful exfil didn’t make me look forward to jumping back in, and getting killed didn’t make me want to try harder next time.

    But Marathon… I played during the Server Slam and it tickled all the right parts of my brain. The environments are cool. The aesthetic is incredibly stylish. Grabbing some loot just makes me want to go try to get more. Getting killed just makes me want to try again. (Ok, getting killed like five times in a row really blows, but I’m getting to where that doesn’t happen as much.)

    The classes feel really different, but not wildly so. I started out playing Recon because I liked having a little spider drone that jumps on enemies, but that’s about it. You get informed when someone else pings you, but if you’re not good enough to do anything about that, well… Then I switched to Triage, and tossing healing drones at your teammates is great. You can help a squad a lot by just keeping everyone put together or getting them back in the fight. (Because it’s an extraction shooter, it’s not quite the same as, say, being a Medic in Battlefield, but there are similar vibes. There’s also a defibrillator that can EMP enemies!)

    There aren’t a lot of maps right now, but the ones there are pretty varied. Perimeter feels like a typical sort of video game map. Some open spaces and buildings with some verticality to them. Dire Marsh has more wide open spaces. Outpost funnels everyone into close quarters. (I have no idea really about Cryo Archive; I didn’t run it last week – maybe this week.)

    There’s a ranked mode, but… why? (I mean, I know why – because some people don’t just want to have the best loot; they want a little tag that says they’re the best so they can put “Top 5 Assassin” in the title of their Twitch stream or whatever.) You don’t need a rank to know when you’re doing well, though. If all your gear is blue and purple, you’re winning.

    But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Since it is an extraction shooter, you can lose stuff. Losing stuff sucks. The game mitigates it somewhat by both letting you go on runs without stuff (either by using free kits or playing as Rook, which is kind of like a Scav run in Tarkov) and by giving you some more stuff when you level up, which you can do without successfully exfiltrating sometimes.

    And some players will just cause you problems because they can. “There are only 3 minutes left; there’s no way a squad is still camping that room. They have to get out, too.” Haha, no, those assholes are ABSOLUTELY camping that room, just to be dicks. Possibly just to be dicks to YOU. (Probably not, but who knows?) “Oh, that squad is exfiltrating; they won’t mind if I slip in there and get out with them.” Oh, they mind, and they will gangbang you and strip you clean.

    Sometimes, you can’t accomplish anything at all. You just fill into bad squad after bad squad that isn’t communicating, or is basically just doing solo runs in the trios queue. But when you get a good squad (either just randomly or that you found via another community)… man does it feel good. Completing your mission; completing someone else’s mission; finding a big stack of the salvage you’re looking for – it really squeezes some dopamine into you. (Out of you? I don’t know how it works.)

    The guns are varied, but sometimes I look at my vault full of guns and the one I really want to use is one I don’t have at the moment. It works, though; there are weapons for long range and close quarters and in between, and mods that can tweak them more to your liking. It’s a Bungie game; at this point, you know going in it’s going to feel good to play. Halo was good. Destiny was good. (Still is, at least at its core mechanics, or so I’m told.)

    It’ll give you wonderful highs, and punishing lows, but they’re both satisfying. A lot of the time, just matching into a squad is trash, though, and finding people to run with when you’re behind on missions or lower-level is hard. It has all the baggage of extraction shooters, although so far it doesn’t quite have the toxicity of Tarkov. (It also absolutely does NOT have the cooperative vibes of Arc Raiders. Sometimes you might be able to find a Rook that’ll cooperate with another Rook, or maybe a squad is happy to find an ally, but if you run up expecting to not have a fight, you’re gonna have a bad time.)

    I’ve had some great runs. I’ve had some terrible runs. I’ve had some sessions where I can’t even put together a run. The game’s only been out for three weeks, and I’ve played it for 28 hours, and I can’t wait for a chance to play more.

    I guess it’s fine.

  • Marathon is fine

    Several posts ago, I mentioned Arc Raiders as a game I might get into. I played their Server Slam (or whatever they called their demo weekend) and had a decent time, but then I never picked up the game. As I read more about it, it seemed fine, but people were progressing through it quickly, so jumping in later seemed like a bad time. Now it has (basically) dedicated PvP or PvE queues, which sounds nice, but also kind of boring. The world of the game was nice. It’s very distinct; everything really does feel cobbled together out of scraps. The enemies come in pretty distinct forms. It’s all-in-all a nice time. I just never felt “grabbed,” you know?

    A couple of weeks ago, I played the Marathon Server Slam. Visually, it’s incredible. The sounds in the game are immersive to the point of being almost a downside. (Was that lightning or some sort of energy weapon? Is that robot I hear a UESC guard, another runner, or my squadmate? (Or me?) Is that banging in the next room someone looting, someone shooting, or just a machine running?) Overall, it went ok. I had some good runs, and I had some terrible runs. However, each terrible run made me say “damn, wanna try one more?” Maybe it’s just because I found people to play with (some via online communities, and some just organically in the game), but even everything falling apart and losing a pile of gear doesn’t make me want to quit, like it kind of did with Arc. I’ve basically put my other games aside for the time, so my last week or so has been work, curling, watching wrestling, and playing Marathon. Time I would spend in the evening idly searching YouTube for things to watch is now doing terrible runs on Tau Ceti IV.

    The rest of the player base is progressing much faster. The parts I want/need to do for missions, everyone is already past. That’s a little bit of a pain. Luckily, I think some new people are still joining the game, so there are still people early in the progression. Or maybe people are just not playing as frequently. I hope I don’t just end up hopelessly behind until the season resets. (And I hope whatever I miss due to not being ready for it before season reset isn’t just gone forever.)

    Is Sony going to kill off Bungie because the game isn’t selling billions? I hope not! Is the game going to last as long as Escape From Tarkov? Probably not. (Although technically, Tarkov just released in November, despite being in alpha/beta/whatever early versions since like 2016.)

    It’s frustrating. It’s exciting. It’s incomprehensible. It’s beautiful. It’s weird. It’s fun.

    It’s fine.

  • A Handful of New Shooter Games are Fine

    After finishing Expedition 33, I started Cyberpunk 2077 (because it’s in the Game Catalog on PlayStation Plus) and it seems fine. I’ll get back to it eventually because cyberpunk (with a small c) is cool and this particular instance has some fun vibes. However, this post is about a bunch of games I was looking forward to all coming out around the same time. One of them, I purchased and am playing. The others, I played demos or betas and might purchase, depending on… I don’t know.

    First, the one I actually bought and am playing is Borderlands 4. I’m maybe like a third of the way through it so far, and… [drum roll]
    … it’s fine. So far, I would put it as better than 3 (most people seem to not have liked 3 all that much, but I enjoyed it), but not as good as 2. Some parts of it are incredibly annoying (like the various “carry quests” that require toting around an item that uses a hand, so you can’t aim down sights or grapple or various other movements you’re very used to, or, to me, things like waves of enemies spawning in pretty much every time you go anywhere, but I’m aware it’s a shooter game with weird guns so enemies popping up everywhere to kill with your weird guns is kind of the point) but most of it ranges from “kind of entertaining” to “pretty fun.”

    The story is kind of dumb, but it’s Borderlands, and “kind of dumb” is basically what the franchise is all about. Because it’s doing the “open world” thing, the enemies and missions scale to your level, so you don’t really get to experience the “look how powerful you are now” bit because the enemies constantly get a little tankier or hit harder, which definitely takes away a lot of the allure, but also helps keep the random waves of fodder that pop up everywhere from being boring. It does keep them from being ignorable, too, though, which is a pain when you’re actually trying to go somewhere.

    It’s enjoyable enough. I’ll finish it in time.

    The next one to talk about is Battlefield 6. I have not purchased this one, but I did play an open beta, and I had a pretty good time. I’m part of an online community that used to play (among other things) a lot of Battlefield 4, and this pretty quickly brought back a lot of those vibes. I also have some “real-life friends” (wow, that’s weird to type) who play and they’re trying to get me into it, and… maybe. The game does have a single-player campaign, but I’m not terribly interested in it, and while the multiplayer isn’t bad and doesn’t really require any sort of grinding, I also don’t really see myself playing it all that much, and so I’m not sure that I want to spend 70 dollars on it. Maybe if it goes on sale or someone gives me a gift card or something. (Or my next trip to a casino is a win, but not a big enough win to do something like buy a new coat or furniture. Like maybe winning a hundred bucks on slots or something?)

    And the third one is sort of a sleeper hit to me, and that it’s a game that I’m not “supposed to” like, but I played the most recent tech demo and had a pretty good time. That game is Arc Raiders – an “extraction shooter” (in quotes because there are gaming bloggers and vloggers commenting that it’s not really an extraction shooter) which is a… genre? game mode? style? whatever… that I don’t really like. Or at least, I don’t like the idea of. I’ve never played Tarkov (god it looks so sweaty and toxic) but I was kind of looking forward to Marathon before the whole art fiasco and Riloe on YouTube has me intrigued about the game Beautiful Light (which doesn’t release for another year), so I’m not entirely against the idea of a “get in, get thing, and get out” game.

    Arc Raiders is very stylish. The sound and environments are very nice, and while it has the “stakes” of an extraction shooter (if you get killed, you lose whatever you were carrying), you can get a free loadout to jump in whenever, and unless you’re really going hard, most of the “loot” you get is gonna be junk like batteries and other scrap. Your best gear is going to be stuff you assemble in your base, and if you lose it, you’ll probably be able to build more. From what I’ve seen so far, the community is pretty chill, too, and yelling “hey, friendly!” on proximity chat seems to mostly get people to chill. The enemies (the PvE enemies, that is, not the other players) are really neat, too. They’re mostly things like aerial drones with realistic physics and stuff so you can send them careening off or crashing by disabling one rotor on a quadcopter. I’m thinking I’m going to buy this one, but mainly because it’s only $40, and I think I can get at least that much entertainment out of it.

    And that’s just shooter games. Europa Universalis V just released, and I kind of want to play that a bunch, too. I like(d) Stellaris and Victoria 3 is/was pretty interesting, too. I might just be getting hooked by YouTubers who are able to be entertaining while playing it.

    And that’s not even including the huge games that I’m not interested in, like Silksong, or… I don’t know, whatever else people are playing right now. (I was going to say Call of Duty, but I checked and the newest one isn’t out yet.)

    So yeah, find your self a game or two. It’ll be fine.

  • Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is fine

    Ok, here’s the post about E33. I finished (at least, the story and rolled credits) this last weekend, so here’s the deal.

    First of all, if I had to sum it up in one word, that word would probably be “beautiful.” The environments are varied and gorgeous, the characters are wonderfully depicted, and the music is absolutely perfect. (Although I’m told that if you know French, the soundtrack spoils the rest of the game while you play it. I can’t confirm that, because I don’t know French.)

    The story is wonderfully told (although I won’t spoil any of it here, because you either won’t get it, are still planning to play the game and don’t want to know yet, or already know) and every beat perfectly pulls you along to the next segment. I had been mildly spoiled on parts of it, but they still hit because of the way certain segments are delivered.

    HOWEVER

    As your characters level up, they gain stats, but the vast majority of their stats come from their equipped “Pictos”, various trinkets you find that boost one or two stats and give the character an extra ability to go with it. Then, after having a Picto equipped for four battles, you earn the “Lumina” that lets you have the ability even without the Picto equipped. You pay for “Lumina” with “Colors of Lumina” (actually, you pay with “Lumina Points” that you earn by spending Colors of Lumina, but I’m condensing somewhat) and each character gets their own pool of Lumina.

    You also find new weapons for your characters, and you find higher level weapons as you go, but you can also use “Chroma Catalysts” to increase the levels of weapons. The higher you’re trying to make the level, the more catalysts you need, and above certain level cutoffs, you need not just more, but an entirely different kind. (There are Chroma Catalysts (that only work up to level 3), then Polished Chroma Catalysts (that work up to level 9), Resplendent Chroma Catalysts (that work up to level 19), and Grandiose Chroma Catalysts (that work up to level 32). There are also Perfect Chroma Catalysts that you use specifically to go from 32 to 33, but you (I guess) only encounter those in the like post-post-game (or maybe in New Game+), since I got my weapons up to like level 23 (which is separate from the character levels which were just under 70) and that was plenty.)

    Then there are skill points! To be fair, any game with any sort of character progression has skill points and skill trees, so that’s whatever, but it’s not just like you spend your points and then you have skills. I mean, you can and do, but then you can only have 6 skills equipped, so you end up switching skills around as you unlock more, and then switching Pictos around because each character can only equip 3 at a time, all trying to make sure to synergize your weapon with your skills and Pictos and the enemies’ weaknesses… sometimes, it’s a bit much.

    And the combat is turn-based. That’s not really a knock against it, because JRPGs have turn-based combat and everyone loves those. (I mean, I don’t, but maybe I do? I really liked Super Mario RPG, but I never played any Final Fantasy games or Chrono Trigger.) I do know one person that doesn’t want to play E33 because of turn-based combat. I think that person should just get over it, but I get it. There’s only so much time to play games, so you gotta stick to the ones you think are fun.

    And this one was fun. It was gorgeous and transcendently scored. You really do feel powerful as you progress, and I legitimately felt emotions during some of the cutscenes. Trying to decide how to spec your characters is a bit of a chore, but eventually, it just becomes a big pile of options you don’t want/need and then a handful that speak to you. It’s kind of a pain, but it also means you can play however you want. There’s an incredibly high difficulty ceiling, but everything on the main path is pretty manageable.

    It’s beautiful, enthralling, emotional, tedious, aggravating, challenging, fun… It’s fine…

    …and it’s probably game of the year.

  • Magic: the Gathering – Final Fantasy is Fine

    Two weeks ago (three if you count the prerelease, which I guess you might as well), Wizards of the Coast released the latest Magic: the Gathering expansion set: Final Fantasy. These cards feature famous characters, places, and events from the history of the video game series (Or at least, I think so; I’ve never played any of them. Maybe there are games that aren’t represented.) and due to that, demand is through the roof. This is bigger than a few years ago with the Lord of the Rings set, which itself was way bigger than the crossovers with Warhammer, Doctor Who, Fallout, and whatever other ones have been done lately.

    In a lot of ways, it’s good. People who have never played Magic are being drawn to the game, which is usually great. (Not every person getting into the game is great, but in general, more Magic players is better, in my opinion.)

    And what is the Final Fantasy series? It’s a bunch of epic stories, featuring culturally iconic characters drawn beautifully that’s been around since 1987. It’s made for a trading card game. (Yes, there actually was a Final Fantasy trading card game. Wait, is a trading card game. It’s still around, and just had its own expansion release in March.)

    Anyway, as far as Magic settings go, it’s a good one. I like it a lot more than Aetherdrift (“Your favorite Magic characters driving cars”) and Outlaws at Thunder Junction (“Your favorite Magic characters wearing cowboy hats”). Having 16 mainline games to pick and choose from means only the most important stuff gets in. I played one prerelease and a few drafts on Arena, and I like the cards. The set is fun to play, which I guess would be the main objective of producing it.

    (Here’s me playing one of those drafts lately.)

    However, there’s more going on here than just a Magic expansion that has Cloud and Sephiroth in it. Magic also has years of characters, stories, and art. Right now, the most popular format that people play is Commander, which allows you to use (for the most part) any card from Magic’s history, and now, alongside all of that history of characters like Jace Beleren, Ajani Goldmane, Liliana Vess, and Chandra Nalaar (not to mention characters that haven’t been the face of the game, like Jaya Ballard, the Phyrexian praetors, and the leaders of the Ravnican Guilds), we’ve also got various Doctors Who, Gandalf, Aerith, and coming soon, Spider-Man and Avatar Aang.

    Basically, sitting at a table of Magic players is like watching a game of Fortnite. Oh shit, is that Doctor Octopus?! Attacking Gimli?! Wielding Excalibur?! (Yeah, there was an Assassins Creed set, too.)

    I mean, it’s still Magic. You tap lands to cast spells, and attack your opponent with creatures and try to reduce their life total to 0. These “Universes Beyond” sets as Wizards calls them, in that sense, aren’t that different from any other, especially if, like me, you play each set in a self-contained way in sealed or draft events. Mechanically, it doesn’t matter if the card has Spider-Man on it since the rules text and the character are independent of each other.

    Fun side note there – that’s actually a snag Wizards has with the upcoming Spider-Man set. They got the license from Marvel to print characters on trading cards, but they did not get the license from Marvel to put the characters in a digital card game, so the Spider-Man cards will not be “printed” into Magic Arena or Magic: the Gathering Online. Instead, a different set where all the cards are mechanically identical but “in universe” for Magic will be there.

    So then why aren’t they just doing that for every set? (Not “having different characters on the cards between paper and digital,” that’s stupid as hell. I mean just having Magic characters and setting on all the cards.) Why pay Square, Marvel, Games Workshop, or whoever owns the IP for Doctor Who (the BBC?) for licensing when Wizards could (and in at least one case, still has to) just use their own IP on the cards. (And they could even cross over with their own IP, like they did with Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate, or with Hasbro’s other properties like they did with Transformers.)

    And it’s not even just Magic being “Fortnite-ified”. Beavis and Butthead are being added to Call of Duty. Freddy and Jason were in Mortal Kombat. The Ninja Turtles were added to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Everything crosses over with everything. Hell, not only is every game like Fortnite by just jamming every celebrity or IP into it they can find, Magic specifically printed cards with Fortnite elements on them. (They were reprints reskinned as Fortnite stuff, so “Smuggler’s Copter” became “Battle Bus”; “Wrath of God” became “Shrinking Storm”; etc.)

    And that’s what’s wrong with M:tG FF – it’s an effort to sell Magic cards to people who wouldn’t want them. It’s an effort to sell Magic cards to people who likely won’t ever play Magic again six weeks from now when the next expansion comes out. It’s an effort to keep selling us IPs we’ve already seen and experienced instead of coming up new ones. And it’s only going to keep happening more.

    But man, the cards are fun. I’m gonna play some more.

    It’s fine.

  • All Board Games are Fine

    In the various texts around the site, I mention that one of the categories of things I frequently describe as “fine” is board games. There are a few reasons for that.

    The primary is that there are too many. Ones that truly delight are few and far between, and when they do, they’re board games. They’re good for a few hours of entertainment at a time. If you play them regularly, like I do, then hundreds, if not thousands of them stack up.

    Boardgamegeek.com gives the following guidance for their rating system:

    10 - Outstanding. Always want to play and expect this will never change. 9 - Excellent game. Always want to play it. 8 - Very good game. I like to play. Probably I'll suggest it and will never turn down a game. 7 - Good game, usually willing to play. 6 - Ok game, some fun or challenge at least, will play sporadically if in the right mood. 5 - Average game, slightly boring, take it or leave it. 4 - Not so good, it doesn't get me but could be talked into it on occasion. 3 - Likely won't play this again although could be convinced. Bad. 2 - Extremely annoying game, won't play this ever again. 1 - Defies description of a game. You won't catch me dead playing this. Clearly broken.

    Given that system, I don’t think I’ve ever played a 10. I’m not sure I could even call something a 9 on this scale. “Always want to play” is hard – there are thousands of games. I would be willing to play most of them, but moods change.

    Of the games I own, the “best” ones top out at 8. I like them. I’ll suggest them or ask if I should bring them, or if people ask me to bring them, I will do so. I would put John Company: Second Edition at 8, but it’s heavy. The weight isn’t for most crowds, and the subject matter definitely isn’t, either. More accessibly, I might call Kutna Hora an 8. That’s more likely to make it to the table because it’s lighter, and also, everyone I’ve played it with has liked it, too.

    7 and 6 are “most” games. Obviously not the actual majority of games, but of the “hobbyist” board games I’ve played and play regularly, “I would play this again” is usually my reaction. (I frequently don’t actually play again, though, because in a friend group that collectively owns thousands of games and continually acquires new ones, there’s always something I’ve never seen before that turns up.) All the classics are probably here; Catan, Carcassone, Power Grid, etc.

    Some fall to 5. In my personal ratings on BGG, things like Codaand Hex Hex are 5s. (Interestingly enough, the site-wide ratings for both are closer to 6.)

    Below that, games become “bad”. But take a look at the descriptions. 4 is “not good … but could be talked into it on occasion.” Now, I can be talked into a lot of games. I’d put the bad party games here, like Cards Against Humanity. I’d probably also put Munchkin (generally regarded as a very bad game) here, too. I’ll almost never “want” to play it, but if the right people ask (or I’m drunk enough), sure.

    3 is “likely won’t play” but “could be convinced” and then closed with just “Bad.” Given that descriptor, I’d probably put Monopoly here (assuming we’re playing rules as written, so it eventually does end). Everyone hates Monopoly. It’s bad. F-tier. But it still rates a 3 out of 10. (That’s not to say a 3 out of 10 is remotely good.)

    In my life, I have played exactly one game that I would actually say was “completely annoying” and that I “won’t play this ever again”. In fact, I like to tell people about it, because I had significantly higher expectations for it. It’s Firefly: the Game. We played it less than once. (We didn’t finish it.) And on BGG, the current site-wide rating is… SEVEN POINT FOUR?! The average gamer is usually willing to play this? I will just about always suggest against it. Often when it’s not even brought up.

    Anyway, rather than get into specific games, my main point is that, on that scale, where 10 is the platonic ideal of a game; one you always want to play and don’t think that will ever change (meaning you’ll never supersede it with newer, which is hard when dozens, if not hundreds of new games come out yearly), “good” goes down to 7, and “yeah, I guess I would play this sometimes” goes down to THREE.

    So yeah, there are too many games. A few are great. Many are good. Some are bad. They’re all fine.