We Are The Dwarves Preview (PC)

I was hoping We Are The Dwarves would be a fun, real-time tactical action game--like a strategic Diablo--but after a little over two hours with the game, finicky controls and a surprising level of difficulty quickly pushed me away, saying, "I think you've had enough," and I can't help but agree.

The story of We Are The Dwarves is light and poorly voice-acted, incredibly poorly voice-acted, making it hard to care about anything going on with this band of dwarven astronauts as they journey to find a new star and avoid extinction, and the funny thing is, I actually wanted to care about the story because I like the sound of dwarven astronauts, but what I experienced during my time with the game was as empty as space. But who needs a great story if the game itself is great? (I'll take great gameplay over a great story any day of the week.) That said, if the story isn't great, it forces the gameplay, mostly, to make up for what the rest is lacking and, as I mentioned earlier, We Are The Dwarves suffers from more than just a bad story.

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When you're playing The Division, running through Manhattan

...and a group of baddies magically appears just like they do in real life.

Watch the most boring video of The Division you'll ever see

I thought going to the Dark Zone would lead to some exciting video content, but boy was I wrong. So wrong.

PSP #281: An Endless Dungeon of Multiplications, Divisions, and Rabbit Doodles

Marc starts off the show talking about the launch of the official Pixelated Sausage Patreon page, where you can support the site with a bit of spare change every month if you feel so inclined, and then talks a wee bit about a magical new TV show called, The Magicians. After that, Marc hits a good chunk of anime, starting a new Shin Atashin'chi weekly segment and going over their favorite anime of the winter 2016 season as the season is weeks away from ending. And then, when you thought you already had more than enough Marc to satiate your appetite for nonsense, Marc spends a whole lot of time (so much time) talking about games, including their recent breakup with achievements and a review of Dungeon of the Endless on Xbox One.

Anyway, that's it and that's all, folks, and, if you're feeling extra generous, you can become a patron, donate a little something-something, or subscribe to show your support for the site, podcasts, and all the ridiculous jazz we make; it's not free to host the site, the podcasts, to make and record videos, and everything in between, so anything would be greatly appreciated, even if you just tell a friend or two about the site and blah, blah, blah, we would be forever thankful for anything at all. And don't forget, you can also support the site by shopping at Amazon if that's your jam--you can probably by jam on Amazon, too.

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Blood Alloy: Reborn Review (PC)

Blood Alloy: Reborn is a 2D arcade shooter where you're thrown into one of three areas and are left to shoot and slash your way through countless robots in order to achieve high combos and high scores; sounds like fun, and it was fun for the first ten minutes, but every minute after that was tedious, repetitive, and anything but fun. The problem is, Blood Alloy: Reborn is rather empty and it only took me ten minutes to feel like I had experienced everything the game has to offer and, while the game is all about high scores, there are no online leaderboards, so I was only competing with myself and that's not very compelling.

As I mentioned previously, there are only three areas in the game and the two I played in didn't feel different enough to make me pick one over the other, feeling different only in terms of how they look; however, the visuals are only okay, so I didn't care if I was playing in a factory of a jungle because they shared similar [enough] layouts and average visuals. When I first unlocked the jungle I was hoping it would force me to play in a completely different way, but that didn't happen and I highly doubt the city--which is the third and final area--will be any different--I didn't unlock the city because that would have required hours of time I'd rather spend in just about any other game right now.

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I really, really like marksman rifles in The Division.

Pixelated Sausage is now on Patreon

I've been talking about getting this up and running for a while now and, well, I finally kicked my own skinny white butt and did it, so, you can watch the video below to see my face and words coming out of my face, or you can just click this link and be whisked away to our Patreon page: Why Pixelated Sausage is on Patreon.

McDroid Gameplay Preview: It's a Thing

Watch Marc play the first two levels of McDroid, a tower-defense game full of robots, strawberries, a cute coating of cel-shaded visuals, and so many strawberries...did I already say strawberries 'cause, strawberries.

RYB Review (iOS)

RYB is making me feel awfully stupid and this may come as a surprise, but I don't like feeling stupid. I don't like being thrown into a puzzle without directions, forced to solve it on my own with not even the slightest clue as to how I can do it, and that's what RYB does. I've played the game for about thirty minutes now, cleared ten puzzles, and still don't know what I'm doing; it hasn't clicked and I keep hoping, with each new puzzle, some switch in me will turn on and, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, I'll get it, but that's still not the case and I don't know how much more time I want to spend feeling stupid before enough is enough.

And just like that, after taking a break from writing this to play a wee bit more, I finally get it. It's quite simple and fairly obvious, making me feel stupid in a completely different way, but I don't think that excuses the horrible first impression RYB gave me, especially for a mobile game, which, more so than ever, are quite disposable these days--there are so many mobile games coming out each and every day that, if a game doesn't grab one's attention immediately, it's very easy to just delete it and move onto a new one, something I was so close to doing with RYB, until it clicked--however, even though I finally get it, I can't recommend a game that throws the player into the middle of the ocean without a life raft, turning its back while saying, "Don't scream for help, just figure it out on your own."

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Breaking up with achievements

I have decided to break up with achievements; we're still going to be friends, we're just not going to live together anymore. What I mean when I say this is, I am going to (try to) stop actively thinking about achievements because they have become a prison, a prison that takes away from my gaming experience more often than not.

For years I have chased achievements and always made sure to check out a game's achievements before I played it so I would know if any were missable, if the difficulty affected them, or any other information I deemed "important." But what was I getting out of this? Do achievements mean anything? Are there any tangible rewards? Will I ever "catch 'em all?" The answer to each question is no and I'm finally ready to accept that.

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