Starfield guide: frictionless game design

You probably don’t need another Starfield review. But the myriad things that drag the game down still need discussing. I need to vent all that frustration, mostly with all the game design choices that make the game frictionless. And what do I mean by that? For the purpose of this post, friction is “obstacles that require skill and adaptation from the player.” As Starfield stands right now, the only player trait you need is tolerance of checklists.

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Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden Review | Oink, Stalker

So there I was, one team member down, bleeding out, with only a turn left to live. My shotgun-armed trooper had rushed out of cover to get a 100% shot and sank buckshot into an enemy – the last living foe in a three-way battle that lasted nearly half an hour. The sniper was the last of my team to activate. From where he was standing, he had a 50% chance of hitting that last dude He had used his first action to reload his one-shot rail rifle. He couldn’t reposition. The whole endeavor was resting on a coin-toss.

I closed my eyes and fired.

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Deep Sky Derelicts review | Airless Dungeons

After playing some Darkest Dungeon, I thought “it would be great if this was a Warhammer 40K game.” Well, nobody has pitched that easiest of pitches to Games Workshop yet. However, we have a DD-in-Space(ish) game in Deep Sky Derelicts, which I saw for the first time while visiting GamesCom last year.

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Painted a Zombiecide: Black Plague Bruce

Zombiecide Black Plague Bruce
Your lame, unpainted Bruce on the left, my cool, fully painted Bruce on the right.

I run a beginner’s painting workshop at my FLGS. Yesterday, I used the opportunity to paint up this promotional Bruce character miniature from Zombiecide: Black Plague. The details were a bit of pain in the ass to paint. The character card was basically useless as a reference, since he’s covered mostly in mail rather than shirt.

On the other hand, he’s a real beauty in the photo!

Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus Announcement

Games Workshop has just announced Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus, which seems to be an Adeptus Mechanicus focused XCOM-like game. Bulwark Studios isn’t a total nobody – they have made a game and a DLC, according to Steam, and both of them are on the “mostly positive” side of things. All in all, I’d like to see more gameplay to make a solid opinion about it.

Magos Dominus Reditus still seems like a very cheeky name, though.