Saturday Morning Gaming: Crying Suns

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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21 Responses

  1. Andy says:

    Thanks for this post.

    I was (and remain) an FTL fan, so I will definitely get this even though it’s on the turd that is the Epic games store.

    Since I beat Cyberpunk I haven’t been gaming too much. I’ve played some Darkest Dungeon (thanks there as well for the recommendation and pointing out the Steam sale), as well as two stand-bys I play frequently – Hearts of Iron 4 and Civilization 6.Report

  2. Side note: I had that exact Lego’s set from the commercial at the opening of the piece. Still at my mom’s houseReport

  3. Fish says:

    Thanks for the tip yesterday. I plan on installing this and giving it a go today. Gray and cold and snowing so it’s a good day for it.Report

  4. Saul Degraw says:

    What if it was a free kick to the nuts?Report

  5. Jaybird says:

    Okay, I beat it.

    So. It’s a (relatively) short game. This makes it easier for me to say what the ideal price point for the game would be. It’s selling for $25 right now on Steam. I’d say that it is absolutely worth $15. So, if you prefer Steam, wait until it’s 40% off and you won’t be disappointed at all.

    (And in these trying times, is there any higher recommendation than “I beat the game”?)Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird says:

      The thing that always bugged me about FTL was the way the gameplay included timers and an arc, and there was really only one way to beat it. There was no way to play it as “can I 100% every map” because the timer cut you off, there was no “endless run” mode because you always had to fight the end boss, and if you showed up at the end boss without a lot of lasers you would lose. There were ways to dawdle a bit, and sub-optimal ways to fight the end boss that depended on you being really lucky, but despite the myriad options there was basically only one path to follow if you wanted to do anything but lose.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to DensityDuck says:

        This isn’t going to fix that problem for you. There are… what? Six solar systems between Point A and Point B on the map? And the stuff is chasing you down and you might have one opportunity to make a lateral move on the map… but if the stuff chasing you catches up to you, you’re just going to have to run as fast as you can to the right to get to the next map so you can have breathing room again.

        That said, ship-to-ship combat is a little more forgiving. Which means that you can win putting a lot more emphasis on a different things. The little pawn-type ships have a rock/paper/scissors thing going on (fighters do massive damage to drones, drones do massive damage to frigates, frigates do massive damage to fighters) and you can either have a balanced fleet or an overwhelmingly droney one or put more emphasis on your mother ship’s weapons.

        The downside is that there is enough room for doing what you want that it feels like it doesn’t matter which you choose so long as you’re not downright dumb. But there are S-level tactics, A-level, B-level, and so on and it’s fun to figure out how to tweak your stuff and turn a slog into an assassination strike.Report

        • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird says:

          I’m glad to hear that there’s more than one way to win. Because that was basically what ended FTL for me, that I tried different ways to play and the game replied “no, you have to go to the end and fight the boss, and if you haven’t spent the playthrough building a ship to fight the boss then you lose”. And despite the wide variety of starting ships and capabilities, every ship I built that beat the boss looked pretty much the same.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to DensityDuck says:

            Well, no, you still have to go in and fight the boss.

            It’s just that you can beat the boss with a fighter-heavy build or you can beat the boss with a drone-fighter build or with frigates and ship-to-ship weaponry.

            But you’re going to be fighting the final boss.Report

  6. Jaybird says:

    Okay, only one more day to get this for free.Report

    • Andy in reply to Jaybird says:

      Just a FYI, Bomber Crew is now free on Humble Bumble for the next couple of days. It’s a fun little game.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Andy says:

        Star Wars: Battlefront II is free on the Epic store this week.

        I understand that The Mouse whipped EA into submission and so the lootboxes are gone and the only thing that other players might have that you won’t are cosmetics from various holidays or events that you’d have missed.

        (But I still ain’t gonna get it.)Report