The plot thickens on our first mission with the Master Chief. Where we saw a simple weapon with the potential to terrify and/or eliminate the Covenant, the truth was so much more sinister. Our military leaders, such is their wont in their endless hubris, unleashed and awakened sinister forces that threaten all life.

Thankfully, we’re here to see if we can clean up the mess and stop The Flood from spiraling out of control.

And as always, thanks go to Sam Callahan for the thumbnail.

One of the things I can always appreciate in a game is a huge shakeup in the pacing and flow, and this is a pretty good example of that. At the end of the day, Halo is a power fantasy where the player inhabits the role of an unstoppable badass, so this section never really crosses over into true horror. Nonetheless, I did have moments of being unsettled when The Flood was first introduced, until I understood that I was supposed to fight, rather than flee.

And at the risk of repeating myself from the last time, it is honestly shocking how much the new lighting detracts from the experience. The original game conveyed a darker, both literally and metaphorically, atmosphere which helps sell the cosmic horror of The Flood all the more. Yet they translated this brooding palate into this bright, almost vibrant and varied color scheme that betrays the tone the old style establishes. It’s genuinely shocking to me.

My other real criticism stems from the game itself. Maybe it’s just me and the way I consume video games in 2020, but I cannot help but feel that several of the levels in this game overstay their welcome by about 15-20 minutes. By the time the introduction to The Flood was over, I had more had my fill of fighting them off, and I was ready to most onto the next set piece.

While that feeling was particularly noticeable here, I felt similarly in earlier stages as well. There’s an odd pacing to this game that didn’t survive the test of time the way the rest of it did, and that’s understandable since it’s almost 20 years old at this point. I must remember that this is the game that codified how one can make first-person shooters, and make them well, on controllers and game consoles. It is inevitable that it wouldn’t be perfect, as this was something of an experiment.

Minor gripes aside, the experiment was largely successful. I’m still having a mostly good time playing it, even all of these years later and without the benefit of nostalgia beyond my nostalgia for the genre as a whole. It’s impressive in its own right.

So here I am, doin’ everythin’ I can.
Holdin’ onto what I am.
Pretendin’ I’mma Superman.

That’s right. We’re going back to a old classic. Pretty much every person in my age bracket grew up with the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games, and I am no exception. That franchise almost single-handedly created a boom for the skateboarding community, and it’s easy to see why that would be the case.

What this stream impressed upon me most was just how important the soundtrack was to the overall tone and experience of playing these games. Without it, some of the levels are a little eerie and unsettling, especially in their emptiness. If I wasn’t afraid of getting copyright strikes, I would gladly turn the music on, but sadly practicality wins out this day.

That aside, I’m impressed by how great this remaster is. It feels so good to play a Tony Hawk game that isn’t awful again. My skills have rusted over completely in the time since, but even then it plays exactly as I remember. I look forward to doing the rest, though it will be on my own time.

With the closure of one series, it’s time to start another. And just like before, this one harkens back to a by-gone age in video game history. Though I have no experience with the Halo campaigns, I’ve obviously played my fair share of their multiplayer modes at the houses of various friends from my childhood. Additionally, I’ve played many console shooters, all of whom trace their DNA, in some way, back to Halo.

This is a series that’s been on my list for a long-time now, and I can think of no better way to run these games than on stream for everyone to watch. Naturally, since I’m running this campaign for the first time, I’m going so blind.

Join me on the new adventure with the Master Chef.

Thumbnail by Sam Callahan.

I want to preface this by saying that 343 did an incredible job with this remaster. Early technical issues aside, the game runs extremely well, and it felt good in my hands. Credit is also due to both them and  Bungie for the sound design, music, and the remaster work. And the ability to switch between old and new graphics on the fly is such a cool feature than must have taken ages to implement.

That said, I have two major critiques about the HD release overall, particularly the new graphical style. Firstly, the new style is difficult to read in comparison to the original. The Elites are what brought this into focus for me. In the old style, their shields light up in response to gunfire, so I knew when I was connecting. This wasn’t the case in the HD version, where their model was so busy that I had to focus to perceive their shields responding to my gunfire. When in a tense fire fight, it is difficult to summon that level of attention to detail, making the theater of combat difficult to read.

On top of that, there is a noticeable brightness to the HD treatment, one that I found unpleasant to my eyes. The most obvious example is early on in the stream, where a dark corridor in the original style turns into a dimly, but visibly lit corridor in the up-res. In other locations, I noticed that there was a slight, but noticeable strain on my eyeballs when I switched to the updated look. No matter how beautiful a game is, there’s no excuse for that kind of discomfort.

With regards to the game itself, my only real complaint thus far is that I find myself getting lost a lot, since it doesn’t do a very good job signaling where we’re supposed to go to proceed. At many times, I found myself either wandering aimlessly, or petitioning my stream chat for aid in figuring out what I was supposed to do.

But such complaints are ultimately minor, and this promises to be a fun series for the rest of our experience.

Welcome back to the lands of Runeterra, where it’s time to conduct another experiment in The Lab. This one is unique, in that it is an entirely single player experience. Two of our newest champions, Leona and Diana, are looking to reach the peak of Targon to face Aurelion Sol. Along the way, they’ll each face obstacles and enemies barring their path.

Let us help these champions complete their journey.

I like the decision to use both Leona and Diana as the champions for this event, because they are complete opposites from a mechanical perspective, doubly so when their special abilities for this event are factored in.

Leona has an aggressive play pattern. She wants to play about one, maybe two units per turn and use their powerful Daybreak triggers to gain the advantage. Because her units are powerful, but only if they’re the first one played each round, she folds if her opponent is allowed the chance to recover. Therefore, her objective is to quickly close the game so that her enemies can’t out-value her in the long game. Her ability to give the weakest unit on her board a power boost and a barrier also allows her to more safely attack into strong board states.

Diana, meanwhile, favors a more deliberate style. Unlike Leona, she can gain multiple Nightfall triggers in a single turn, many of which allow her to either create or draw additional cards. The net effect is that her hand is constantly filled with tools that her can use to get out of any bind and accrue value over the long game. And if she is out, her combination of Challenger and Quick Attack should allow her to take out any foe in her way, clearing the path for her other forces to finish off her adversaries.

Of course, we had no trouble either way because it’s still a single-player mini-campaign against Runeterra’s AI. No matter what abilities or cheats they bring to bear, they’re still easy to manipulate. That said, I hope they produce more of these because it’s a good way to just relax for an hour or so and play a low-stakes card game.

I can even feel good about it because Runeterra doesn’t utilize predatory business practices to keep the profits flowing. This is much unlike a certain magical card game that I’ve played a lot of on here, but I suppose it’s weird of me to point that out here.

For the fourth time, our adventures with the blunder from down under have come to an end. Although the odds are that we’ll eventually return to the series once the new Crash game comes out, and It’s About Time, for now we can close the book on the bandicoot.

And of course, there are no drivers more fitting to end this series than the titular protagonist. Since we’re on the PS4, we also have access to the old-school, retro version of him. Truly, there is no better way to go back to where it all began. My co-host Acharky even agrees with me.

The gem cups are probably some of my favorite challenges in the entire game. They’ll be instantly familiar to anyone who has played Mario Kart, because they’re similar to many of the circuit challenges in that series.

Basically, each on is a four race marathon. At the end of each race, the contestants are given point values corresponding to the position they placed. Once all four races have concluded, the one with the highest overall score is the winner of the whole cup. Of course, if we want the gem, that winner needs to be us.

In that way, the point is that a single stroke of (mis)fortune won’t make or break one’s final rating. Rather, the key is consistently be in the top standings so that we can as many points as possible. It’s okay to do poorly in one race so long as we excel in the others or otherwise knock out the ones with more points than us.

And then after that, we beat Oxide once and for all to save our planet. Be sure to join us next week, as I begin a blind playthrough of the next Halo game.

It’s been quite some time since our last foray through the Greek Underworld with the handsome and kind Prince Zagreus. Back then, the game was still incomplete, even if all of the stages, including the final boss, were ready and waiting for anyone who could brave through a full run.

And yet, much has been tweak, added, or adjusted between then and now. Additionally, the game has a proper ending for players to experience when they finally succeed. Join us, as we take this opportunity to take a few Quick Runs through what has become one of my favorite rougelikes from the past few years, and possibly my favorite game from Supergiant to date.

It has been a ton of fun watching how this game has progressed since it started out in Early Access nearly two years ago. Even back then, Hades felt like a polished, if not fully complete experience out of the box, that still gave other roguelikes a run for their money. Even if Lernie, the Stygian Hydra was as far as one could go, that was still fairly substantial at the time.

And that only grew more and more true as the updates rolled out, adding features that people entering now would struggle to envision the game without, like the House Contractor or the many aspects of each of the Infernal Arms. Further, each update always felt substantial, bringing in big changes and improvements to the game that made running it again feel different than it did before.

As someone who has “beaten” the game over sixty times now, the joy I feel at seeing how far the game has come is compounded further by my own excitement at finally seeing the true ending for it. That they even thought of a clever solution to the problem of still needing to give the player an excuse to go on additional runs only makes the artistic all the more apparent.

Having lived on-and-off with this cast of characters for all this time, it’s also been heartwarming to see the memes, fan art, and fandom practically reemerge in the wake of the 1.0 release. I have friends who are making their first escape attempts and I can’t help but smile because they’re having the same amount of fun, if not more, than I did starting out. They get to share in my excitement, and I theirs.

It’s a wonderful feeling.

It’s that time of year again. The Ravnica sets, including War of the Spark, and Core Set 2020 are out, and Zendikar Rising is now in. That’s right: Standard Rotation has occurred. And though many powerful spells have left, still many more remain.

Having said that, it’s also time to beginning experimenting with new decks for this bold new frontier. And while I’m not convinced it’s the most powerful deck in the rotation with four-color Omnath out in the wilds, seeing a viable Rogue tribal deck coming together, and in my favorite two-color combination, how I could possibly play anything else.

That’s right. It’s time to play Dimir Rogues!

There are several different formulas for the deck, but all of them utilize two key pieces: Thieves’ Guild Enforcer and Soaring Thought-Thief. Both of these cards have a ton of traits in common.

• Both cards have Flash, which allows us to play them on our opponent’s turn and hold up mana.
• Both have effects which mill cards off the top of our opponent’s deck
• Both have bonuses that activate once we reach a threshold of our opponent having eight or more cards in their graveyard.

From what I’ve seen, the deck takes those two as a skeleton, and can go in one of two different directions. The first utilizes the triggers from both cards to keep an opponent’s graveyard full with at least 8 cards, and rush them down with a small army of rogues. You’ll see cheap one-drops like the Merfolk Windrobbers and Zulaport Duelists in the deck I played in these lists, because they aim to move quickly. And though I didn’t run any copies of it, it would make sense to run Nighthawk Scavenger is this style of rogue deck because it becomes a powerhouse extremely quickly.

The other version leans more into the flash ability, turning into something akin to the Simic/Sultai Flash decks people who have been here for a while might be familiar with. They use cards like Slitherwisp and Cunning Nightbonder to both accrue resources from and protect our instant-speed plays. And now that Teferi, Time Raveler is gone, we no longer need to worry about losing access to our ability to play at instant speed.

Either way, cards like Brazen Borrower and Drown in the Loch have quickly become cards that are non-negotiable, as both formulas are different types of tempo decks that need bounce spells and counter magic to keep our opponent off balance while we sweep in with our own tactics. In fact, cheap removal like Eliminate also forms another aspect of the deck’s backbone no matter how it’s built. We can also use cards like Jwari Disruption and Hagra Mauling in these slots to shore up our land drops, but I am unsure how effective that will ultimately be.

Lastly, the question exists as to whether or not Zareth San, the Trickster earns a slot of two in the deck. It’s a difficult quandary, which depends on how the meta shakes out as time marches on. In some of the games we played, it turned the tide in such a major way that our opponent had no choice but to surrender to us. On the other hand, we does little when our opponent isn’t committing to the board and we aren’t hitting many useful permanents in our mill strategy. That said, he does still have flash, which allows us to choose when would be the best time to cast him. Additionally, he has an effect similar to ninjutsu which allow us to place him on board so long as one of our forces aren’t blocked.

But again, no matter how you build it, and there are several ways to do so, it’s a fun deck that combines flavor and effectiveness. And as a start to post-rotation meta, it’s exciting to see a deck like this doing well, even if it might not make the cut once the meta solidifies.

Now that Zendikar Rising has officially released, a new set of legendary creatures has been released upon us for our amusement. And naturally, that meant it was a good time to have a theme night. Each of us built a deck based around one of these new legends, similar to how we had our Ravnican Guild Night a few weeks prior.

Just as before, we each rolled for the order we got to choose our commanders. While I didn’t go first, I did get the commander I was most interested in. Oddly enough, the creature that stood out most to me as an interesting build around was Akiri, Fearless Voyager. Obviously, the deck focused on the use of equipment to power up and protect my creatures.

The other players chose Yasharn, Implacable Earth, Grakmaw, Skyclave Ravager, Charix, the Raging Isle, and, of course, Omnath, Locus of Creation.

While I hesitate to say that I took an “early” lead, I definitely drew first blood. On the turn after Omnath hit the board, my Akiri was ready to attack, and when Omnath moves to block I was able to use my Embercleave to take it out and deal some extra damage while keeping my own commander alive. Unfortunately, Grakmaw had nature lay claim to it at the end of my turn, but it was still an extremely satisfying play.

That said, I wasn’t one of the three big players making waves. Yasharn played Wolfcaller’s Howl extremely early on, which kept him swimming in wolf tokens since the rest of us were either accumulating enough cards in hand to keep, or unable to play enough cards (raises hand) to get below that four card threshold. For a very long time, it served as a very intimidating presence. And with Seedborn Muse giving them pseudo-vigilance, it was difficult to do anything about it.

Grakmaw, on the other hand, approached it in a different way. While they weren’t going as wide as Yasharn, but they were going tall as well. Through a combination of effects like Winding Constrictor, Loyal Guardian, and Path to Discovery, their creatures were growing far strong than most of the rest of ours. And unlike the rest of us, they had flying Thopter tokens to soar over the rest of us.

Omnath, meanwhile, was doing the exact same thing you would expect a commander with a Landfall trigger to do. Using Field of the Dead and the new Felidar Retreat, those land drops translated to a bunch of extra tokens of their own. And with creatures like Azusa, Lost But Seeking and Oracle of Mul Daya, those land drops were accelerated.

That said, for some reason they kept neglecting the second mode of Felidar Retreat. If they had, they would have had their own powerful, vigilant force to attack with and more quickly close out the game. Additionally, their forgetting to use that second mode was starting to make Yasharn the biggest threat. Perplexingly, when I tried to remedy this problem with an Austere Command, they countered it with Dovin’s Veto, another move they would later admit was a mistake.

The only reason Charix, was able to survive all of this chaos was through a deluge of mass bounce effects. From Scourge of Fleets, to Cyclonic Rift, and Devastation Tide to keep the board clean. And during the chaos, that’s when he struck.

Since Yasharn attacked him earlier, he used the empty board state to get revenge with his weapon-master crab. Equipped with a Grappling Hook and an Inquisitor’s Flail, combined with Charix’s own ability, he swung in for well above lethal at a completely empty board. Realizing that he couldn’t win with the meager 2 life he had left, he took me out next with a Sword of War and Peace. Thanks to the protection from the only two colors I was running, I had no defense.

Of course, Omnath’s third landfall trigger finished him off afterwards, which left it to a one-vs-one Between the remaining two players, it was no contest. Omnath has way more cards and mana, and quickly overwhelmed Grakmaw through sheer value.

I’m disappointed that I didn’t make a bigger splash, but I think that mostly just came down to bad luck. It happens sometimes, especially with a new deck and playstyle.

Our favorite little dragon had to retire back to the Dragon Realms: Something about Gnasty Gnorc coming back for the umpteenth time. Nonetheless, Team Newdarkcloud still needs a new driver to continue our efforts to win the right to face Oxide for the fate of the planet.

Fortunately for both myself and my Marvelous Duo cohort, Acharky, we had another lined up for just such an occasion. Everyone’s favorite unreasonably muscular, top-heavy gladiator, Tiny Tiger, is ready to represent!

In the first post I wrote for this series, I promised that I would talk about the weapons and how I feel that the Nitro Fueled remake changed them. Those changes, and their consequences, aren’t something one’ll notice unless they start to really focus on the minute aspects of the game.

Like many kart racers in this genre, the weapons serve as a way for players falling behind to close the gap that separates them from those ahead of them in the competition. The further one falls in the standings, the more powerful the weapons they receive. This is still mostly true, and you’ll see that it’s not until I’m in fifth place or lower that N Trophy’s Clock or the Warp Orb start to spawn for me.

What seems to have mostly changed is that spawn rates for certain weapons in the higher positions, particularly second and third. First place seems right: When we’re already in front of everyone else, we really only want weapons like Nitro crates and the beakers, which can be laid behind us to protect ourselves from missiles or to lay traps for the competition, keeping our lead. 

In second and third, we still want this same protect because there are people in the back who want to get ahead of us, but it’s not as urgent as taking out the person in the lead. This means that we want a healthy mix of forward facing projectile weapons like missiles and bombs and more defensive items. However, the remake appears to skew that balance more towards the later than the former. And since forward facing items spawn less frequently, those looking to get ahead find it difficult to take out the person currently winning the race, entrenching their position.

This effect is made even worse since missiles appear track a lot worse than they used to. Back in the PS1-era, I remember that no matter how far ahead for with respect to the person who launched a missile, they did a fantastic job of navigating the obstacles of the track in order to home in on their targets. With the exception of the Warp Orb, they’re still far and away the most effective weapon in the game, but that effectiveness appears to be diminished significantly. 

It’s something you may have noticed while watching me play, but it’s even more clear once the game goes online: The person in first place, once they get sufficiently far ahead, becomes impossible to interact with to the point where we might as well concede the race. I don’t recall having this same problem in the PS1 original, so I have to assume there’s something that was lost in translation, even if I don’t have exact knowledge of what was changed to cause both of these effects.

That said, it’s only a small blemish in the grand scheme of things, and doesn’t overly impact the quality of the game as a whole.

Most of the commanders you’ll see played against you in a match have an obvious direction or set of directions the deck could go: A Yuriko deck is probably going to swarm the table with unblockable ninjas. A Teysa Karlov deck is likely to have some token element and some aristocrats element to out-value the rest of the table. A Korvold deck is going to end your friendship with its pilot. Whatever the case, it’s easy to see what it’s trying to do.

Other commanders require a little more thought in how they operate. Such was the commander I opted to run at the head of my deck in this last round: Mishra, Artificer Prodigy. I didn’t get to show off just what kind of tricks can be pulled with him in this game, playing one of the most fair matches I have ever played. That said, I need you to trust me when I say that despite how the text reads, there are tricks one can pull with him in EDH. Hopefully, I’ll be able to show off some of those tricks in the future.

Naturally, my opponents had ploys of their own. One of them was recently enchanted by Homura, Human Ascendant, and opted to build a mono-red deck utilizing him. My fellow graveyard-loving compatriot brought Kathril, Aspect Warper to the board. And last, but not least, the Melek, Izzet Paragon player from before was continuing to break in the deck and grow more comfortable with it.

Kathril was the first to make a big splash. After casting a Buried Alive on turn three to stack with graveyard, they quickly created a graveyard filled with many powerful keywords to distribute among his forces. Though he chose to bequeath most of the other keywords to non-summoning sick creatures, the thing to note is that Kathril became a 10/10 with Flying, Trample, and Double Strike when it was summoned on turn 5.

Some of us thought about scooping since it wouldn’t be hard for Kathril to wipe us out, but we all chose to play on regardless. Homura, in particular, had to act quickly since he was clearly the first target. Luckily for him, he had the exact tools he needed to take charge, with some timely aid from the rest of us.

With Homura already on board, his pilot uses a High Market to sacrifice him to transform him into his enchantment half. Then, we played a Tempt with Vengeance, dumping the rest of his mana to do so. In most circumstances, giving your opponent a bunch a 3/3 hasty flying elementals is a bad idea, but this was not one of those times. It was true that none of us had the tools to deal with Kathril at the ready, so we had to settle for the next best thing… killing the player who chose to run it.

And with one problem taken care of, we were still left with an entirely different problem: That of eighteen 3/3s with flying. Fortunately for me, Melek had a plan in place, since he could order the top cards of his deck with Sensei’s Diving Top. Using his commander’s static ability, he casted, and copied, a Mana Geyser from the top of his deck, followed by a Fiery Confluence on top as well. I lost a few artifacts, but nothing of import. I was mostly just breathing a sigh of relief that the field of attackers had been dealt with.

Then, Melek managed to luck into a Mystic Confluence on the top of his deck, dumping his remaining mana into it and copying it with a Twincast to draw 9 cards. With his Thought Vessel, he figured having all of those cards would be beneficial for him, and it’s not a bad thought. However, he forgot that I had 6U open. As I couldn’t just let him keep those cards, which meant is to time to play a Cyclonic Rift. And since I waited until he had moved to the end step to do it, and he was all tapped out, he had to make some hard choices.

Following that, I took a turn off to play a Darksteel Forge, and in order to reestablish his board Homura put down Krenko, Mob Boss and a spell that created goblin tokens to start doubling. I couldn’t allow that to persist either, especially since it wouldn’t be hard to make an unstoppable army, so I used a Meteor Golem to kill Krenko. While he still managed to get 11 tokens out before I could do it, I felt very good about my choice once Purphoros, God of the Forge reared his ugly head the very next turn.

Unfortunately for Homura’s pilot, both Melek and myself were growing scary in our own ways, and he didn’t have enough mana to both cast and sacrifice his commander to bring his swarm online. Before he could, Melek launched a Mizzium Mortar. Most of my creatures were artifacts, and therefore indestructible, but it still dealt with the goblin horde.

On the following turn, Melek attempted to close out the game by using Comet Storm, copied by Reverberate and Increasing Vengeance. Unfortunately, the math didn’t add up. Though the 20 damage Kathril inflicted upon Homura made that lethal for him, I was able to push through since my life total was scarcely affected for most of the game.

And even though he could use a Mystic Retrieval to bring back the Comet Storm, he ultimately still didn’t have enough mana to deliver the killing blow, and my small force of artifact creatures was enough to swing the game back in favor to net me the win.

Yet again, I manage to sneak by mostly by making a few decisive waves when I needed and letting my opponents take center stage at all other times. I was never one to hog the lime light, so I’m quite happy watching everyone else turn into the “big threat” while I slip by largely unnoticed.