Azurephile27

Joined 02/23/2012
  Super Member

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329 Posts

Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales Review
Azurephile gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
Azurephile gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
If you’ve played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you may be familiar with its mini-game called Gwent. Gwent is a card game played by various NPCs in the game. However, you no longer need to play The Witcher 3 in order to play Gwent as it is now it’s own free-to-play game. Gwent is a simple card game where most cards have values and the one who has the highest strength value on the board at the end of a round wins. There are three rounds. You can pass if you decide your strength value is high enough, saving some of your cards for the next round. This is sometimes a good strategy to use. Some cards also have abilities which can be helpful and there are cards that only have abilities.

Thronebreaker is actually more like story mode Gwent. You walk around on a map as a queen. You run into various things on the map such as resources, which can be used to upgrade your camp. Your camp has a few different buildings and some of what you can build makes available new cards that you can create. All combat in the game is actually a Gwent match. There are also puzzles you can find where you may have a limited amount of rounds to play, limited deck, and must complete the puzzle a certain way in order to win. Puzzles seem to have their own level of difficulty. One beautiful thing about matches is that if you’re playing on the easiest difficulty and lose, you can choose to skip the battle. This completes the match as though you won. This applies to all matches, including puzzles.

I’m not sure how I found out about Thronebreaker, but I watched a video about it on IGN. The person said this was a game that reminded him why he got into gaming in the first place. IGN also gave the game a very high score, 90+ out of 100 I believe. I don’t know that I think of it as highly as that reviewer, but it’s still a good game. The story is interesting and the characters are cool.

If you’d like to play Thronebreaker, you’ll need to hop on over to GOG to buy it as this game is not available on Steam (*edit* this game is now on Steam). There you will also find Gwent, which you can get for free. One cool thing is that even owning Thronebreaker unlocks cards that can be used in Gwent. You can also unlock other cards while playing the game. I think it’s pretty neat, especially since it seems that getting an achievement in the game always unlocks cards for Gwent.

If you like customizable card games, check out Gwent, since it’s free. If you like what you see then I’d recommend getting Thronebreaker.

World of Final Fantasy Review
Azurephile gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
Azurephile gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
Review

  • Recommendation: Kind of around "meh" and "rad"

  • Final Fantasy meets Pokemon

  • Many familiar Final Fantasy monsters and characters

  • A couple PC quirks
We no longer have to imagine a world where Final Fantasy meets Disney, that of course is Kingdom Hearts. But there’s a new FF blend, it’s like FF meets Pokemon and it’s interesting. I’ve had this on my wish list and it recently became a $20 game (50% off), so I picked it up.

In World of Final Fantasy, you wake up (late as always) and find yourself as a twin of mirage keepers. Mirages are basically monsters and you can catch them, much like Pokemon. However this isn’t a game where you have monsters fighting monsters, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Instead you stack them on your head. There are also two sizes that the main characters can be, called Lilikins (for small) and Jiants (for large). Lilikins can have a mirage on top of their head, but they may be able to actually ride a large mirage. As a Jiant, you can have two mirages stacked on your head. Each mirage has a size, which can change as it….”evolves.” There are small, medium, and large mirages. Small ones get stacked on top of medium ones, while large ones are ones that you stack yourself on top of.

There are a number of unique mirages, many of them familiar monsters within the world of Final Fantasy as a whole, such as chocobos and cactuars. Each mirage has it’s own way of what you need to do to capture it, such as use physical attacks, magic, or give it a status ailment. You can find out how to get the mirage into capture mode by using Libra on it. Libra can also tell you the mirage's elemental resistances. Each element has it’s own weakness and strength and it goes something like this; fire is strong against ice, but weak against water. Ice is strong against wind, which is strong against earth, which is strong against thunder, which is strong against water. Dark and light seem to be strong against each other. So, it’s not quite set up like Pokemon, but it is kind of similar.

The reason capturing mirages is so important is because mirages have abilities (like Cure) and stats. You make yourself more powerful by stacking a mirage (or two). Areas in the game seem to have similar mirages with similar and expected strengths and weaknesses. For instance, in a fire place you can expect to find fire based mirages like the Bomb.

The game does a pretty decent job of telling you how to go about capturing mirages and how to stack them to receive their benefits. It also explains that, for instance, if you have two mirages stacked that have the ability of Fire, it will in turn give you the upgraded spell, Fira. You are limited to how many mirages you can keep with you. The rest go in a special storage area that easily accessible at save points.

One thing that makes this game a bit more enticing for fans of Final Fantasy is that it contains areas and characters in previous Final Fantasy games. For instance, I met up with Tifa who lead me to Nifelheim, but there are many others!

The PC version is kind of confusing in a way. When I first started the game, it was in windowed mode, which I didn’t like. I went into the options/settings menu, but didn’t see anything to change it. However, there’s a small configuration tool you can select after clicking on the “play” button on Steam. Here you can chose to configure it or jump in the game. This still doesn’t add very much configuration, but you can change to full screen and a different resolution. It’s actually simple, it’s just a bit buried.

Another interesting thing is that I wanted to play with a controller. I have an Xbox 360 controller I use for PC gaming. At first it was kind of difficult because the game was telling me which keys to press instead of which buttons. Then, I noticed in the options menu that you can select which input device is shown in how to do things. I thought this was cool, even though it didn’t auto detect.

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age Review
Azurephile gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
Azurephile gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
Review

  • Recommendation: Kind of around "meh" and "rad" after 57 hours of game play

  • Visual style by Akira Toriyama, creator of the Dragon Ball series

  • Similar to Final Fantasy

  • Many of the same elements that are in other Dragon Quest games, but also containing some new elements such as characters and story

  • Really good initial reviews
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age was recently released. I saw a commercial for it and read a review (that contained a few reviews) and decided to pre-order it. The pre-order bonuses looked nice, I got accessories that restore HP and MP each turn for the character that has them equipped. It seems different stores had different pre-order bonuses, but I’m happy with what I got on Steam. This is a $60 game, which can be a bit of a turn off, but after some time playing it, I feel like it’s pretty much worth it.

Dragon Quest is a series of RPGs by Square Enix. One of the unique parts of it is that the characters were designed by the creator of the Dragon Ball series, Akira Toriyama. If you’ve seen any of the Dragon Ball series, you’ll definitely notice how Dragon Quest looks similar.

My experience with the DQ series is very little. I have DQVIII for the PS2, which I enjoyed. So, getting back into a DQ game is pretty interesting, because I can see things that are still in the series, such as familiar monsters. Both games are turn-based RPGs and remind me a lot of Final Fantasy games. So, if you’re a fan of Final Fantasy, you’ll probably be a fan of Dragon Quest.

Many of the reviews I read before the release of DQXI gave the game a high score, such as a 9 out of 10 or similar. This is something I can agree with even after only playing the game for 8 hours. Not all the reviews gave it such a great score, after all the game doesn’t quite bring a whole lot new to the series. Instead it sticks to what’s been done successfully with previous games in the series. After all, if something isn’t broken, why fix it, right? Perhaps the biggest changes include the cast of characters, story, and how it looks. This game looks beautiful!

While I agree with a high score for this game there are a few minor things that make me hesitate to give it that perfect score. Mostly, there are things I wish the game told me, things I some how figured out on my own. For instance, I can hit the X button on my Xbox 360 controller (that I use for PC gaming) and I get to see a map of where I’m at. This is very helpful, but the game never told me about that. Perhaps it did tell me, but I didn’t see it. There are things it tells you while it’s loading your saved game, but it loads so quickly that I hardly get to read any of it at all. I wish they would have inserted a pause so you could read those tips.

One other thing was that I had to use Google for was to figure out how to access the pre-order bonuses (DLC) that I got. Luckily, I found the answer, but I wish I had known that at the beginning. The game does have a bunch of information in it’s menu, under “Misc.” that can tell you a lot of what you need to know about the game. I didn’t look too deep into this, which may be why I missed out on some of these things. One thing that impressed me was that the game didn’t require any configuration at all. I can only assume that it detected my hardware and realized it could max out all it’s settings. It even turned Vsync on by default.

The game also has two camera modes for when you’re in a battle. One is called “free-form” and you can move around. There’s a circle for the battle and you can try to escape by stepping outside that circle. My problem with this (default) camera mode was that I was centered on the main character and other characters were off camera. I decided to change the camera mode to the next one and I think I like it better, it’s just taking some time to get used to. You get to see each character as they attack or get attacked, it’s definitely better. Where as before when another character got hit, I didn’t see how much damage was done, unless I noticed how much depleted from their HP gauge. I don’t know that you can escape battle as easily with this other camera mode, but I don’t find the need to do so. You can, after all, select “flee” from the menu.

One thing that sets this game series apart from most Final Fantasy games is that there aren’t random encounters. Meaning, you don’t have to walk around and worry about suddenly getting attacked by some random invisible enemy. Instead, you can clearly see monsters walking around. If you want to avoid them, you can do so easily enough, there’s plenty of walking space. If you want to attack a monster you can either walk into it or you can get close enough and attack it preemptively. At first, I felt a bit overwhelmed with how many monsters were roaming around, so I avoided most of them. I was after all just beginning and didn’t want to die too easily. However, I decided against doing so and since I’ve attacked almost every monster I’ve seen, I’ve become a lot stronger and richer (since you’re awarded gold and XP upon victory). Still, that option is there, which is nice.

There’s not much I can say about the story since I’ve only played for 8 hours, but it seems pretty good. I was surprised by an early twist I wasn’t expecting the story to take. One thing I like is that other party members act on their own. You can select the party’s tactics, which tells them what they should be doing, healing, attacking, conserving MP, etc. I now have 4 party members and they’re pretty useful.

So far the game seems really good, I like it. I’m hoping there are plenty of gaming hours left.

*Update 2/1/2020*
I played this game for 57 hours. I'm sure I made it to the end, but I didn't finish it. I found the end-game to be too difficult and I lost my desire to continue playing in order to get better and finish it. I did enjoy this game, especially in the beginning, but there were some things I didn't like about it. There was a wide range of feelings I had for many characters. Some I really liked or loved and some I really disliked. My dislike for some characters wasn't strictly for "bad guys." I know this game is on the Switch now (or coming to) and I believe it has a demo. I would recommend trying out the demo and seeing if it appeals to you before jumping in. That is unless you're a die hard DQ fan, in which case you'll probably love it no matter what.

Jurassic World Evolution Review
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/648350/header.jpg?t=1530634318
Azurephile gives this an astounding "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale
This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.
Azurephile gives this a "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale
This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.
Review

  • Recommended +1

  • Jurassic Park/World simulation, with dino breeding, expeditions for DNA, and even a bit of a strategy game
If you ever thought it’d be cool to create your own Jurassic Park (or World), then the time for you has come! Jurassic World Evolution is pretty much a Jurassic Park/Wold simulation game that was recently released and seems pretty popular (especially on YouTube). It’s an interesting game and I’ve played some of it, so I thought I’d share it with you.

You’ll start off on one of a few different islands (not Isla Nublar, which you unlock later). You’ll have a basic structure going on, such as a large pen already built. You’ll still need a few other buildings, but you can purchase them whenever you can afford them. The starting layout is pretty good, but there’s more room for you to grow your park. You’ll also start out with a few million dollars to buy new buildings or get started on dinosaur incubation.

You won’t have all (48 I think) dinos unlocked right away, but I think you’ll have at least one “viable” genome with which you can incubate into a dino. You won’t be able to incubate a dino until you have enough DNA, which you get by doing expeditions. This part of the game is pretty simple. You’ll see an expedition map, which contains real-life expedition sites. You’ll click on one to send your team to (for a price) and they will come back with fossils after a few minutes. You then have to analyze fossils in order to get more DNA for whatever dino you’re working on. You’re going to want to constantly send out expedition teams to gather more fossils, so that you can incubate more dinos.

Obtaining more of the dinos genome means you’ll have more success when incubating a dino. I believe 50% is “viable.” Also, with a full genome, you can modify each creature, giving them extra stats like disease resistance, better rating, or a new skin. Personally, I’m very fond of the rain forest skin, which gives dinos a bit of blue.

The park has a variety of needs. Each building requires power and a path. Each building also has it’s own utility. The Asset Containment Unit uses helicopters to tranquilize, move, or sell dinos. You’ll also have a Ranger station which uses jeeps to repair structures or resupply feeders. You can drive them yourself, but it’s not required. It also can heal dinos and allow you to take pictures.

Guests have other needs such as shopping, food, fun, and security. You can increase these with an appropriate building. Hotels will increase how many guests you can have. There are also shelters you can place to give your guests some where to go when an emergency happens such as a bad storm or a loose dino. Satisfying all of these needs will earn you ratings on that specific island. In order to unlock further islands you will need to get a three star rating for the island you’re on. Each island is a bit unique. Isla Nublar is pretty much the “creative mode” island, where you have unlimited funds and can pretty much do whatever you like. Another island has a problem with frequent storms, including tornadoes that can severely damage structures or even fences.

It’s worth noting that each island has it’s own amount of money. However, you can use one island to send an expedition team and retrieve fossils. Sometimes these expeditions recover materials that you can only sell. So, once you have those materials, you can switch over to another island and sell them, increasing the amount of money you have on that island. (Pro tip!)

Dinos also have their own needs such as food, water, grassland, forest, social, and population to name a few. If these needs are met, the dino will be comfortable, if they get uncomfortable then they start to break fences and escape their enclosure. This is definitely a problem as herbivores can stampede and trample guests, while carnivores will eat guests (and you can watch this happen). If they break out of an enclosure, you’ll have to use a ranger team to repair the fence and an ACU unit (helicopter) to tranquilize and move them back into their enclosure. So, it’s very important to keep your dinos comfortable, or else there’s going to be serious problems.

There are three “factions” within the game, science, entertainment, and security. You can do tasks for each of them that will increase your reputation with them. Doing so will unlock a variety of things such as dinos and buildings. They have missions on each island, but they also have contracts. Contracts are basically activities you can do that will not only increase your reputation with that faction, but also reward you with money (which you’ll need).

As you play more, you’ll unlock new buildings, technology, and dinos. You may wish to be careful of which dinos you put together as some of them will obviously not get along and start fighting (even to the death). Or, you could just decide to see for yourself which dino would win in a fight. You could even edit their genome and make one much better than another. It’s pretty interesting.

The game looks good and runs well. There are some issues you may run into. For one thing, sometimes building is difficult due to obstructions of the terrain. Also, it seems that some of the animations don’t quite work together. For instance you might see a Rex kill a Raptor, but you won’t actually see them touch, just almost touching. Hopefully this is something the developers will fix.

So far, the game does have one cheap DLC that adds (I believe) 5 new dinos to the game. There was also a free update when Jurassic World Extinction was released, which added more dinos, including the Indominous Raptor. It has been speculated that the game will get aquatic and aviary dinos in the future, but so far that doesn’t seem to be guaranteed.

If you like simulation games and Jurassic Park/Wold, then this game is probably for you.

*Update* 2/2/2020
There is a lot of DLC for this game now. There are multiple dino packs of new dinos and skins you can buy. There are also a few expansions. I have not yet played all of them.

A great source for all things Jurassic World Evolution, you should check out the YouTube channel of BestInSlot (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWB212HLA4MyZBpn0qlBpXA).

The Sims 4 Review
https://eu.playgames.dk/9397/the-sims-4.jpg
Azurephile gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
Azurephile gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
Review

  • Recommended +1

  • Human/household simulation, that’s a fun, calm, easy-going, and interesting game.

  • Lots of expansions
I wouldn’t call myself a die-hard Sims fan, but I have played some of the games in the series, starting with the first one. I’ve also played The Sims 3, as it was given away for free on Origin. However, there was a recent sale and I was able to buy The Sims 4 for just $10. I thought that was a great deal, so I got it. Unfortunately, I was pretty blown away with how many expansions there are for the game and there doesn’t seem to be an all-in-one version, which I think would be cool, although probably a bit expensive. I figured if I liked the game enough, I could buy expansions whenever I wanted or catch them on sale. That said, I didn’t buy any special version of the game, there are some that come with an expansion, but I decided to just get the base game.

If you’re familiar with The Sims or have ever played one in the series, you pretty much know all there is to know about it, with some differences. However, if you don’t know, The Sims is a simulation game. You control people in a household. You move them into a furnished or unfurnished house pre-made or built by yourself. The Sims (the people in the game) have their own needs and desires. They can take care of many of these things alone without your direction, but you can still command them to do other things. Getting a job is not something they will do on their own, so you’ll have to pick one for them, if you want them to be employed. There are a good variety of jobs you can choose from, each suited to different kinds of sims. For instance, creative geared sims may find a job in the music industry. You could also have a writer, who can write and sell books on their own, a cook, a gardener, etc.

When you start the game, you can create your own sims. You can create a household of one or more, if you wish. There are a lot of customization options! You can customize how your sims look and most definitely create unique looking sims. They look good though, there’s a lot of detail in them. There are also a variety of wardrobes you can customize, such as their informal and formal wear. Along with looks, you will be able to customize their personalities. In The Sims 4, you can select their aspirations from a decent list that even breaks aspirations down into more specific aspirations. For instance, creative sims could be creative at art, music, or comedy.

Once you’ve created your sims, you can have them move into a house. There are a couple of neighborhoods to choose from, each unique in their own ways. The neighborhoods pretty much contain the same social buildings such as a library. Different families live in them, too. Once you’ve decided on the neighborhood, you can choose which house or lot to move them into. Here you can have them move into one that’s already built and furnished or unfurnished or you could build your own. You’ll start out with some simoleons, the game’s currency, however there is a cheat you can use to give yourself infinite simoleons and thus plenty of money to be as creative as you want. The game doesn’t punish you for using cheats.

Once you’ve moved in and furnished your house (if need be), you can then start managing your sims. They have a variety of needs such as hunger, energy, bladder, social, fun, and hygiene. In this version, you can actually click on these needs and set them so that the sim will take care of it own their own. One of the first things you’ll want to do is get the sims a job, but you can always switch jobs, change careers, or just be unemployed if you wish. There are other ways to make money without having a job. For instance, writers can write their own books and sell them to a publisher. This ends up generating a lot of income, especially with a high writing skill. You can practice skills by doing them or reading a skill book. So, a programmer could level up their programming skill by practicing programming on a computer.

Some differences of Sims 3 vs Sims 4: Since I’ve played The Sims before, I noticed a few differences, although it’s been a while, so I probably didn’t fully notice all of them. The camera was one of the first things I noticed was different. I had to Google how to control the camera, as it is different from The Sims 3, however you can enable an option to use the same camera settings from The Sims 3. Another thing I noticed was the lack of an alarm clock. Previously, you needed an alarm clock to wake up a sim in time for work, otherwise they’d miss it. This time, it seems, you can wake them up manually on time. A notification will tell you, for instance, that your sim starts work “in one hour.” So, you have plenty of time to tell them to get up and take care of whatever needs they have. They will automatically go to work on time, so long as you don’t have them focused on something else. There is, what I guess you’d call an activity bar, where you can cue up various activities for your sim to do. They mostly do them one by one, but there is actually some multi-tasking they can do, like eat and watch TV. It’s easy to cancel an activity, just by clicking on it in the bar.

I think emotions are new to this version of the game. Sims can be happy, sad, uncomfortable, focused, flirty, and a lot more. Certain activities or events will trigger different emotions. For instance, sleeping in a cheap bed will cause the sim to be uncomfortable. There are also a variety of items you can put in rooms that will change a sims mood, which is handy.

Another interesting, new addition is the smart phone. Sims no longer need telephones as they all have smartphones. They can use them to call another sim, travel, or just browse the web.

An employed sim will have a daily activity (such as “practice programming”) and other goals in order to gain a promotion. One of these goals could be to reach a certain skill level (such as reach level 7 programming skill). Some sims will also want to go to work with a certain mood, like “focused.” Promotions can change the job schedule and they definitely increase income.

You can change the speed in which things happen with your sim. For instance, you can make time go by faster while they’re sleeping, but this is something the game actually does automatically. This also happens when they’re at work. So, you don’t necessarily have to wait around forever for them to finish completing an activity. Some activities (like leveling up skills) will also show you a progress bar. Usually for skills, you’ll want to pay attention to the meter above their head. However, other activities, like hacking, will have an outline of the activity in the activity bar that shows the progress being made for that activity.

Other than needs, your sim will have up to three different desires, which depends on their mood or their aspirations. This could be something like “chat with” another sim or “buy an instrument.” If you have your sim complete these activities, they earn another kind of currency which can be used in the aspirations menu to buy traits or potions. For instance, you can purchase a potion to make your sim younger.

It’s a fun, calm, easy-going, and interesting game. I do believe that the latest version (The Sims 4) is definitely an evolution to the series, as the game has progressed during development. If this sounds like something you’re interested in, you should check it out. Perhaps catch it on sale, buy it a full price, or catch The Sims 3 if it’s ever on the “on the house” part of Origin (the EA standalone game launcher).

Far Cry Primal Review
https://steamcdn-a.opskins.media/steam/apps/371660/header.jpg?t=1530032970
Azurephile gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
Azurephile gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
Review

  • Recommended +1

  • Open-world, taming animals
I found out about Far Cry Primal from one of my favorite YouTubers, Sl1pg8r. He had early access to the game and was able to show it off before it was released. I had never played a Far Cry game, so I knew nothing about the series. I only knew what I saw in those videos Sl1pg8r posted. It looked interesting enough, so I added it to my wish list (on various sites). I ended up buying it recently at a good discount. I recently finished it, so it’s time to write about it!

The game is called Far Cry Primal for a reason, it takes place in 10,000 B.C.E., so you’re not going to have access to modern technology. You do still have a variety of primal weaponry, such as bows (and arrows), spears, clubs, and “bombs.” Although this may sound like a short list, it gets a little longer considering that there are variations of each weapon. For instance, later you can unlock the long bow and also the ability to use two arrows at once, which is definitely very effective against enemies. Also, there’s a one-handed club and a two-handed club. There are also stone shards you can throw at enemies, like throwing knives. You can also toss a rock into a group of enemies to distract them, aiding you in maintaining stealth. Not all missions have a stealth bonus and I don’t seem to recall any actually requiring stealth. However, in some missions if you’re not stealthy then the people you are trying to rescue will get killed.

This is an open-world game, but you won’t be able to explore every area right away. In order to get to some areas, you’re going to need to unlock the grappling hook, which is done while finding a tribesman. There are some humorous cut-scenes, especially with the one who unlocks this skill. Basically the point of the game is to reunite your tribe and defeat the other two tribes. One tribe is a group of cannibals and the other are pyromaniacs.

You’ll have a small tribal gathering, which you can expand by finding new people. They will give you their own missions, which will unlock skills. There’s a small handful of them, but they each have their own role within the tribe. My favorite is the shaman who helps you become the beast master.

One of the features of the game I found most intriguing was that you could tame “beasts” and use an owl as a scout. There are a variety of animals you can tame and each one has their own unique abilities and stats (such as speed, strength, and stealth). Even with a variety of animals, most have their own varieties as well, especially “rare” versions. For instance, there’s a brown bear and a cave bear. Other than bears you can also tame dholes, sabertooths, and wolves. As you advance in the story, you’ll unlock different animals that can be tamed. Eventually, you’ll even be able to tame some that are “hard” (or “very hard”) hunting missions. These animals are the best of the bunch.

Taming animals is very helpful, because throughout the entire game you are alone. You can, however, have one tamed beast with you at a time, which removes that whole fighting alone thing. Your beast can scare away other animals and even attack enemies or other animals, which is why they’re so important. You can also ride some of them, once you’ve unlocked that skill. This can help you move through the map much more quickly and safely.

You’ll also have access to an owl that you can use to scout ahead. However, as you progress and unlock new skills, the owl can do much more for you. It can eventually attack and kill enemies (with one hit). It can also drop “bombs,” which there are a few in the game such as the ball of bees, my favorite, or the fire bomb. The owl is actually extremely useful if you’re trying for stealth. Some missions give bonus experience points for stealth and thus the owl is the way to go. It does have a cool down, so you can’t spam it too fast, but if you’re patient, you can still take out a small group of enemies. You can also use the owl to send your tamed beast in to kill your enemies, this still seems to give you the stealth bonus, as long as you’re not seen.

Not all animals in the game can be tamed, like birds or badgers, but you can still use mammoths, even though you can’t tame them. Once you reach a certain point of the game, you’ll be able to ride wild mammoths, but I think it’s only the young ones. There are still a variety of wild animals that are dangerous and can’t be tamed such as crocodiles, woolly rhinos, elk, and hawks. The hawks will attack you and it’s hard to attack them, but I did once see a hawk pick up a deer and fly away with it, it was amazing!

There are a variety of optional collectibles you can find. There are four types, I think, and I collected all of three of them. However, even by collecting all of them, you still won’t spend a huge amount of time in the game. My total game play was probably about 40 hours, maybe less.

One thing I really liked about the game was how solid it was as a program. The game never crashed nor did its performance ever drag. It is definitely a solid piece of work. It seems there were only two or three patches done to it. I once did run into an issue where I got stuck in the world, or in between things, but I was able to resolve it by fast traveling to another location. Otherwise, I didn’t run into any bugs and I think that says a lot about the Ubisoft.

ARK: Survival Evolved Free Mobile Version Now Available!
In case you miss the slight mention of this in my Extinction post,.....Ark is now available on iOS and Apple mobile devices for free! Feel free to give it a try and let me know what you think of it. I imagine there's a Local (single player) mode, like the PC has, otherwise you'll be playing with random people.

My phone is incompatible so let me know what you think! It obviously doesn't look as great as it does on PC, but at least this gives you an opportunity to experience the game for free!

ARK: Survival Evolved Extinction DLC Releases 11/6/18
Studio Wildcard just released a trailer with a release date for the new DLC expansion, Extinction. It looks cool and takes us back to where it all “begins and ends” on Earth, which is hardly recognizable as it looks like something horrible happened. In the video you get to see a few new things, like a Tek creature using blink teleportation and going after a Giganotosaurus. You also get to see a huge beast, known as a Titan. There are more than one of them and apparently they’re mini-bosses. You also get to see someone using binoculars and piloting a drone.

Extinction is the last paid DLC for Ark and is included in the Season Pass. What comes next? Possibly a sequel! For now, Wildcard is slowly revealing pieces of Extinction during events titled “Extinction Chronicles.” They’ve already begun with a new “Arkaeology” Event in which they released Tek T-Rexes onto official maps that contain Rexes. There are also a few new Explorer Notes which apparently unlock a new Extinction related cosmetic helmet skin. They also created three new skins, turning a few dinos into other related dinos, such as the one that turns a Bronto into a Brachiosaur.

It’s all interesting and this DLC arrives on 11/6/18. In the meantime, Ark has been released as a free mobile game. Also, Ark is having it's "biggest sale ever on all platforms" right now.

More info: https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/articles.html/ark-extinction-release-date-revealed-r850/

Fallout 76
Fallout 76 has been announced with a trailer (embedded). No other information has been provided. After watching the video, it sounds like it takes place in West Virginia, a neighboring state of mine. I would expect some serious irradiated wild life as WV's theme is "wild and wonderful." Let me know what you think and share any additional info you have.

News source: https://www.cnet.com/news/fallout-76-is-the-next-bethesda-adventure-in-the-post-apocalyptic-wasteland/

My Favorite Mods for Ark: Survival Evolved
My favorite mods:

  • Structures Plus

  • StackMeMore

  • Ark Advance

  • TameXL

  • Taming Gun

  • Egg N Poop Collector/Incubator

  • Kibble Vending Machine

  • Awesome Teleporters

  • Awesome Spyglass

  • Builder's Helmet
I recently watched a video by one of my favorite YouTubers, xBCrafted (embedded in post). This video was about his top five must-have mods for Ark: Survival Evolved. I left a comment for him, but I also thought I’d write a post here about my favorite mods for Ark. Here we go!

Ark is absolutely my most favorite modern day game. I’ve actually played it way more than I’ve played any other game EVER. I’ve already clocked nearly 2,700 hours! So, I know Ark! One of the great things about this game is the Workshop, the ability to use mods. There are a lot out there and some of them are pretty dramatic, turning the game into something more bizarre and crazy. Here are some of my personal favorites, which may be updated over time.

There are some mods that are pretty much ESSENTIAL! One of which is perhaps the most popular mod of all, Structures Plus! S+ makes building in Ark a lot easier. One of the things it allows you to do that you can’t do in the base game is to pick up things (like walls, foundations, ceilings, etc.) that you’ve placed. One problem with the base game is that if you don’t like how you placed a wall, for instance, you can only demolish it, you can’t simply pick it up and place it some where else. S+ allows you to do just that and more. *Update: The base game has added a similar feature, but only allows you a short period of time to do this.* S+ comes with it’s own versions of crafting stations, like the smithy and fabricator. S+ actually allows you to pull resources from one place (crafting station, storage box, or creature inventory) and put it in another. So, if you want to make some flak armor, instead of carrying all that material over to the crafting station, you can click a button and the mod will pull the required materials, if you have enough of them for whatever you’re crafting. There’s quite a lot more about S+. It’s difficult to get into all of it from memory alone, but I strongly recommend this mod! Another tool S+ adds is a “Nanny” which is something you can place that will imprint your babies for you, so you don’t have to wait around until it’s ready to be imprinted. It also removes the requirement to do whatever the baby wants or give it whatever kibble it decides it wants. This is definitely a time saver. It also has something that makes hatching eggs easier and quicker, but I use another mod for that.

Another ESSENTIAL mod for Ark is StackMeMore. This mod reduces the weight of everything and increases their stack sizes. So, you can easily carry a huge load of materials without having to run around back and forth to store things that normally weigh a lot and have very limited stack sizes. I’ve gotten so use to this mod that I can hardly remember playing without it.

Another really good mod is Ark Advance, currently called “Ark Advance 10.” It has it’s own crafting station which allows you to make some interesting things. I primarily use it for two things. With this mod you can make tranq arrows that slow down your target. But, you can also make tranq arrows and darts that are extremely effective! These, to me, are an essential part of taming. The mod author has stated that it could take about 5 of these special tranq darts to take down a max level Rex. Most things don’t take too many darts, in fact earlier I knocked out a Megalosaurus with just one dart. Another really helpful piece of this mod that I use is the feeding trough. This feeding trough uses power to keep food from spoiling fast. The normal (and even S+) feeder actually makes it so that nearby resources can't respawn, but the Advance feeder doesn't do this. This is super helpful. I also like to use the portable refrigerator in this mod.

Speaking of mods essential for taming, TameXL is another amazing mod. Normally when you knock out a creature with a tranq arrow or dart, you have to wait until it’s hungry enough to eat the food you’re trying to give it. You also have to keep an eye on it’s torpor, making sure it doesn’t get too low or it’ll wake up. There’s been debate since the beginning of Ark whether or not you should let the creature starve before putting food in it’s inventory. A hungry creature will eat food more quickly, but you still have to wait for the creature’s food stat to drain. Luckily, this mod removes that waiting time. It allows you to create narcotic that completely increases a creature’s torpor and completely drains their food. This means that you can go ahead and give them food. This really cuts down on the amount of time necessary to tame a creature.

Since I've grown tired of taming, I've found another essential mod called the Taming Gun. It's just a pistol that uses tranq arrows. You fire it at a creature and it gets instantly tamed at the max level. It removes the need to feed and wait for torpor to drop. I had used some console commands to force tame creatures, but it wasn't very effective, especially when I needed to aim at a moving creature. This gun works both on land and under water.

Another mod I really like is called Egg N Poop Collector/Incubator. As the name says, it adds a collector that collects eggs and poop. It can then transfer that poop and thatch to another station (within the mod) that turns it into fertilizer. Once that fertilizer is created, it can send it over to your crop plots. This makes farming automatic. There is a chance that instead of dropping poop, a creature will drop an egg. This collector picks up both, so you don’t have to go hunting around for either resource. Eggs and poop are essential to creating kibble, while eggs are used in the recipe and poop is used to grow crops that are used in the recipe. I also like the Incubator, which requires power. You simply drop a fertilized egg on it and it hatches quickly. Normally to hatch an egg, you need to put it in a place that has the right temperature. Each egg has a different preference of temperature. Normally you would surround an egg with some air conditioners or torches, but this mod removes the need to worry about temperature and hatch time.

Farming and making kibble does require a bit of work, but if you don’t want to bother with making kibble, the Kibble Vending Machine mod is for you! It allows you to make kibble using raw metal (ore). This is really handy! I’ve often carried one around with me when I go out to tame creatures. I usually collect enough metal to have the machine craft as much kibble as I need.

Awesome Teleporters is exactly as it sounds. You can craft teleporters and place them almost any where. Then, craft the remote control for it and you can teleport back and forth. This is incredibly handy! You could live in one place, but teleport to another area for gathering metal and teleport back.

Awesome Spyglass is also exactly as it sounds. It's a spyglass, but it has more features. It can zoom in and out. It can display the levels of creatures and what it takes to tame them. It can outline wild creatures, helping you see which are aggressive towards you and which are passive or don't see you.

Finally, the Builder’s Helmet is another essential. It allows you to pick up any structure. You can craft the helmet out of cheap materials. This is good especially if you’ve made something that isn’t part of Structures Plus. You can even make the skin version of the helmet that can be inserted on your helmet, therefore not losing your armor.

If you play Ark with mods, feel free to share your favorite mods in the comment section.