Category Opinion

Victoria 3 (late) review

Carr Nyuli Leave a comment

Since Victoria 3 has been out for over half a year now, gone through three major updates, and gotten a DLC, I think it’s about time I finally did a review. We’ve also recently passed Victoria Day here in Canada, which isn’t really relevant to the review, but kind made me get my butt in order. Before we start I’ll say that this will be a short review, and more a simple game explanation, because the game came out October 25, and there are a lot of better reviews out there, especially since this is the first time I’ve played the series and am fumbling around with it a bit. I’ll also be reviewing the game as it was in version 1.2 (when I last played), even though 1.3 was recently released. So, some things may not be of full relevance.

Continue reading “Victoria 3 (late) review” →
Advertisement

If you’re on the fence, just try it

Carr Nyuli Leave a comment

I’ve owned the Paradox Interactive’s grand strategy game Hearts of Iron IV for quite a while now. It came out in June of 2016, and I’m going to guess I bought it a year later during Paradox’s infamous summer sale. So let’s say four years. Aaaand I sucked. So I didn’t play it. And while I wanted to like it, I wasn’t really sure I did, mostly because I sucked. So until spring of 2021, I’d only put about eight hours in. Come about a month ago, I’d put about twelve hours in. In the past three weeks of starting this article, I’ve doubled that. Yeah, my crappy yearly average is still crappy, but damn that’s a pretty good increase.

Continue reading “If you’re on the fence, just try it” →

(Watching) multiplayer strategy is more fun than I thought

Carr Nyuli Leave a comment

I’ve been a fan of strategy games for a long time now, but I’ve never played them multiplayer. It’s just not my thing. When I’m playing strategy games, I want to do it on my own time–even the “real time” ones I play can be paused or run at different speeds. With multiplayer, you can’t really do that. Yes, you can still (usually) pause or play slower in multiplayer, but if you’re running at a slow speed and constantly slapping the pause button with other people in the game…you’re kind of an ass. Multiplayer Europa Universalis IV, the game in question for this article, does seem to allow pausing at any time according to the wiki, but I’d imagine it’s pretty frowned upon by players.

Continue reading “(Watching) multiplayer strategy is more fun than I thought” →

Things I’m excited for after the Halo Infinite gameplay trailer

Carr Nyuli Leave a comment

We’ve finally seen some of what Halo Infinite‘s first-player gameplay is going to look like, and even though we’re not directly told anything, there’s a lot we can figure out for ourselves. Here, in no particular order, are five of the things that most excited me after watching the six minutes and forty-six seconds (approximately) we got to see.

 

Continue reading “Things I’m excited for after the Halo Infinite gameplay trailer” →

Quasi-let’s plays have breathed new life into my gaming

Carr Nyuli Leave a comment

I wrote a couple of articles for Novus last year about beginnings and endings. One was about RimWorld, and the challenge of saying goodbye to a simulated community you’ve built over many hours. The other was about Europa Universalis IV, and fighting for an achievement. After each article, I started a new run of their respective games. My RimWorld colony at the time was dying a slow death, and I couldn’t get the EU4 achievement I wanted with the country I was playing. And, while starting those new games, I started something else as well: let’s plays.

Continue reading “Quasi-let’s plays have breathed new life into my gaming” →

Thanks devs, for hanging around

Carr Nyuli Leave a comment

It wasn’t all that long ago, that when you got a new video game, you got the game as it was, and as it was going to be. If the game was on a disc or especially on a cartridge, you weren’t going to get anything different. If there was a really big problem, a re-release of the game might happen, but patches weren’t a thing. Even as video games started to move into the realm of the internet, updates (which not all that long ago could still be purchacsed on disc) didn’t really do anything. You might get a few more maps for multiplayer, or an expansion, but the base game was still basically the same. But in the past few years, all that’s changed.

Continue reading “Thanks devs, for hanging around” →

I’m a difficulty dweeb, and I’m okay with that

Carr Nyuli Leave a comment

Back in the spring, I was planning to do an article documenting my attempt at a more challenging game of Europa Universalis IV. It came about after I got the feeling that all of my EU4 achievements were ones considered either “easy” or “very easy” by the community. And so I thought, “why not try to get a medium level achievement?” An easy medium, of course, because going all-out on my first attempt at a higher level would be, well, hard. And so I picked one I thought I could do: “A Tale of Two Families” Continue reading “I’m a difficulty dweeb, and I’m okay with that” →

AI friends are really hard to abandon

Carr Nyuli 2 Comments

I’ve been playing RimWorld since Alpha 15, almost two years before the full game came out. In that time, I’ve seen a lot of things change. I’ve seen a lot of things added, and I’ve seen a lot of things taken away. For example, I have a nostalgic desire to start using the survival rifle again. It still technically exists with a slight accuracy nerf, it’s just call a bolt-action rifle now. Same with deathfall traps. They still exist with a bigger nerf (they were kind of OP before, so I won’t complain about that) under the name “spike traps”. They’re still super useful, I just really want that name back. It’s a cool name.

Continue reading “AI friends are really hard to abandon” →