I had a scare where I thought my site may have been compromised. I no longer believe this, but I am migrating my site to a new installation anyway. As a result, things will be a bit less polished than usual for a while.

Midair is a new game in the general vein of the Tribes series (of which I have spoken before); in summary, it is a team-oriented, round-based shooter focusing on the Capture the Flag game mode in a futurist setting involving jetpacks and high explosives.

I could rant. The tl;dr is the new Hanzo ability is awful in two specific ways that both come down to consistency. Please pardon any vitriol I might spill, I have a bit of a condition.

For whatever reason--depression, a lack of discipline--I never manage to write down the stories that circulate in my mind. This is a synopsis of some I've had over the last few years.

This entry contains a spoiler discussion for 2017's "Star Wars Ep. VIII: The Last Jedi".

In an August 2017 podcast, NPC Cast discussed what Player Unknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) might teach tabletop game masters and people who were making role-playing games in general. At the time I started to write this essay, which got set aside and forgotten, the summary of which is this: in a round-based game where you are more likely to fail than succeed, players are constantly making their own objectives.

This is a brief review of the reMarkable Tablet, which I ordered as a Kickstarter project. It is, for those not aware, a touchscreen e-ink tablet (10.25" screen) with a stylus, so you can write on it like paper.

This is a copy of something I posted in the Overwatch Feedback Forum regarding the late-2017 changes to the healing character Mercy.

I am wondering if maybe the Mercy change and this nerf are both... well, it's difficult to explain. I understand why the nerf, but I don't understand why the original Mercy change, since that flies in the face of both good game design and good strategy.

This is a copy of something I posted in the Overwatch Feedback Forum regarding the late-2017 changes to the healing character Mercy.

Caveats in advance: I prefer old Mercy, am used to current Mercy, and what I am going to suggest is something nobody wants, which is yet another massive overhaul to Mercy. I would also accept old Mercy again.

The Reasoning:

Overwatch Free-for-all deathmatch has opened my eyes a bit to something which might actually drive me away from Overwatch in the end. It may not really be their fault; I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and certainly they have been trying to make the best game possible. But playing Overwatch for the first time without any semblance of being on a team made me realize just how lonely I feel playing Overwatch in general.