Tag Archives: Eternal Card Game

WELL HELLO THERE. I haven’t posted anything on here since May. I have a new plan to sort of fix my posting infrequency. Not so much a posting schedule, more giving myself a reason to post more. I’ve also just gotten back from PAX, which always revitalizes me a bit.

So let’s start with the content plan, which is going to be in basically 3 stages.

1. Twitch: I’m still going to be streaming on Twitch at my regular times (Tuesday – Thursday 6PM – 10PM CDT & Sat @ 5pm – Whenever CDT). My focus is still mostly on shooters and competitive games with a side of JRPGs, and that is what I want to build my content and community around going forward.
2. YouTube: When Streaming new games, I’m going to take the first hour(ish) of me playing and do a summary of my feelings on the game after that. I’ll then Highlight and Export that to YouTube as a First Impressions video. These videos will be a bit of a knee-jerk opinion, by design, since that is essentially what a first impression is. I’ll also still export other random videos, and might do some highlight stuff as well.
3. Blog: I’m going to go back to reviewing things. Games and Hardware mostly. I haven’t fully decided how I’m going to write these out. I’ll probably just do whatever feels best for what I’m reviewing and go from there. So these might start off very rough while I get into the groove of doing reviews again. For the record and all that: I’ll only review a game if I’ve finished it if it is single player, if it is multiplayer I’ll put in an equivalent amount of time into the game before reviewing it. I’m not sure what I’ll do for hardware. Maybe just use it regularly for a week’s worth of playtime? I’ll figure that one out. I’ll also disclose any info (free copy, sponsorship, etc) where applicable. I’m pretty small time still, so I doubt there will be much going on there :P.

Stuff I’m playing semi-regularly right now:

• Overwatch (FPS-PC)
• Ratz Instagib (FPS-PC)
• Hearthstone (TCG-PC)
• Unreal Tournament (FPS-PC)
• Trails of Cold Steel (JRPG-PSVita)
• Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE (JRPG-WiiU)

Stuff I want to play in the nearish future:

• Final Fantasy 15 (JRPG-PS4)
• Midair (FPS-PC)
• LawBreakers (FPS-PC)
• Diabotical (FPS-PC)
• Shadow Warrior (FPS-PC)
• Battlerite (..MOBA?.. “PvP team arena brawler”-PC)

This next section is going to be all about PAX West. I probably had the most fun at this PAX West since the first one I ever went to. I didn’t give a single fuck about any of the games with large lines except of Gears of War 4, and I was pretty okay with skipping that. Instead I got to take Friday to see all the games I cared to poke at (Namely LawBreakers, Midair, Dusk, and Shadow Warrior 2) and then spent the rest of the convention hanging out with friends or looking for gems (and I found a few interesting things!). In no particular order, I’m going to give some brief impressions of some of the games I played.

• LawBreakers (Boss Key Productions): Of everything I’ve played, I’ve had the most experience with LawBreakers. I played it at PAX East and RTX, and I’ve also been in the Alpha for quite a while. LB is a good blend of Unreal Tournament style arena shooter, with some class based abilities thrown in. It plays pretty smooth mechanically, but movement can be a bit weird and getting used to it (especially in the gravity zones) can be a little difficult at first. That being said, I’ve enjoyed the game thoroughly and intend to play it a lot more when I can.
• Midair (Archetype Studios): I was stoked to finally get my hands on this after backing it on Kickstarter. I was a big fan of Tribes and Tribes 2 way back when, and I was really hoping this game would deliver on the feel of those games. I probably played a total of about an hour and a half at PAX and really enjoyed the game. I’m definitely extremely rusty with the Tribes style movement because I botched my movement quite a few times. I mostly used the Disc Launcher and Chain Gun while I was playing, both of which were very responsive and destructive in their own ways. I can’t wait to play it on my own setup. I didn’t care for the mice they used, and couldn’t take time to get my sensitivity right. So playing felt a little wonky due to that. Still, the game looks great and played well.
• Dusk (New Blood Interactive): This one sort of came out of nowhere for me. Dusk is an old school looking shooter in the veins of DOOM, Half-Life 1, or Hexen. The demo I played looked to be just a wave based endless survival game mode where you could try out a whole bunch of different weapons. I talked to one of the folks at the booth and was told that there is also a campaign for the game where you have to survive the spooky woodlands of the American Northeast. This one was pretty low on my radar but was an interesting play. I spent about 30 minutes and 2 sessions worth on the endless survival mode. The shooting felt responsive and the weapons were fairly straight forward. Some pretty gnarly looking dual scythe for melee weapons or your standard double barrel shotgun for example. Hard to give some solid feelings on this after only 30 minutes, but it was really interesting and I liked the retro style. I definitely want to play it some more. So I’d say that it gets a thumbs up at least.
• Shadow Warrior 2 (Flying Wild Hog/Devolver Digital): This was the only game I stood in a line for. It wasn’t a huge line, but it did move sorta slow :P. I got to play a 15 minute demo. I skipped all the cut-scenes so I could get to the gameplay, so I’m not sure what exactly it threw me into. It seemed sort of like a Diablo style rift, but enemies kept respawning (which was kind of annoying). I did get to try plenty of weapons though and they were all pretty smooth. They didn’t feel quite like Shadow Warrior 1 did, but I didn’t find anything to complain about. The short demo I played just made me want to play more though. Really enjoyed it and looking forward to the Oct 12 release.
• Eternal (Direwolf): This one was a bit of a surprise for me. Eternal is a card game, but it is closer to Magic: The Gathering than it is Hearthstone. There aren’t any classes, instead there are 5 different factions. There is actually blocking and counters similar to MTG. I played 2 matches against a bot at PAX and found it very interesting. They were nice enough to give me a beta code so I’ve been poking around at it at home too. I’m trying to get through the single player stuff to familiarize myself with the cards and learn all the mechanics. I like it so far though! We’ll see if it can hold my attention. Depends on how powerful control decks are since those are my style :D.
• Heavy Metal Machines (Hoplon): This was another game that sort of came out of left field. Heavy Metal Machines is part Rocket League, MOBA, and Twisted Metal. I played 2 matches against bots, both of which were one sided. Sorta dominated them :P. It was fun though, and the game has a great soundtrack. It is top down, and the car moves towards the mouse with Left Click accelerating and Right Click  going reverse so that was a little weird to get used to. Each car (or character) also had QWER abilities of various types. There were also roles for each car Support (self explaining), Interceptor (Kills enemy cars), and Transporter (Runs the ball). It has a pretty interesting dynamic and I’d like to see what it looks like in PVP. The Beta starts soon, so I’m looking forward to getting more hands on time with it. They get bonus points too, because I accidentally left a mouse pad at their booth and they held onto it for me. Awesome folks!
• Dropzone (Sparky Pants): Dropzone is an interesting mix between a MOBA and an RTS. You control 3 mechs of 3 different roles (Tank/DPS/Support) in any combination. Each role has a few different available characters, each with unique abilities and all of it heavily customization. In the game, you control all 3 mechs at the same time, with the goal being score more points than your opponent (1v1) in 15 minutes. Points are gained by completing side objectives (ex: First Blood) or delivering cores (gained by killing neutral creeps) to a central core. This is an interesting bit of difference on the standard MOBA gameplay. First that it is 1v1, and second that you’re simultaneously controlling 3 unique characters. Sort of like Lost Vikings from Heroes of the Storm, but each character has a full suite of abilities. Players that are really good at micromanaging units will really excel at this, though there are some passive abilities for players that might feel overwhelmed by too many activate abilities. The community manager actually gave me a bunch of beta keys for the game and was really cool. I’ll be playing this on stream in the nearish future 🙂

I think that is everything I wanted to talk about here. Regular streams will start back on Tuesday! Will probably start with some Overwatch. I need to get warmed back up so I can do my placement matches for Season 2. Hopefully I’ll see you there!