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in Tips and Guides
Mount & Blade 2 artwork for my Bannerlord & War Sails guide

After forty hours of epic battles and embarrassing failures, I realized that Mount & Blade 2 is an awesome game that simply doesn't teach you how to have fun with it. So with this guide I'd like to help you skip past the learning curve and get to the good stuff.

1) What Do I Do?

Your first order of business after finishing the tutorial should be to gain reputation. Once you have enough you'll be able to pledge yourself as a mercenary to one of the kingdoms, and that's where the real game begins. At that point you can tag along with their armies, fight massive siege battles, and eventually even become one of the nobles.

So how do you do that? Fight bandits, do tournaments in big cities, and solve any quests that don't sound like a pain in the ass. It really is that simple.

in Reviews
Against the Storm artwork for my retrospective

Usually city-builders want you to kick back, chillax, and just watch the taxes roll in. But not Against the Storm. It wants you to suffer... which is an insane way to sell a game to someone. I mean, the trees want to strangle you and your boss is a phoenix god who will fire you - and I have to emphasize the fire - if morale drops too low. So why did I spend over fifty hours with it these past two weeks? Well, as I found out, there is a surprisingly addictive pleasure to be found in the pain.

When you don't even know what buildings and tools you'll be able to use in each mission, something weird happens with your brain. You stop thinking about creating a mathematically optimal beaver labor camp and just start working miracles with whatever garbage you have on hand. And then, five hours later, you'll finally wake up from your trance and realize it's 3 in the morning and you have to get up for work soon.

in Reviews
Outer Wilds artwork for my 7-year retrospective

Twenty-two minutes. That's exactly how long you have before the sun goes supernova, everyone you know and love is turned into dust, and you wake up back at your campfire roasting the world's crispiest marshmallows.

In most games, falling head-first into a black hole or trying to tap-dance on a cactus would be an obvious mistake. But Outer Wilds encourages you to be curious. This is a game with no loot to find, no XP to grind, and no gear to upgrade. Your only currency is information - and your only objective is to figure out why the universe is ending before the clock hits zero again.

This focus on curiosity over stats creates a very unique form of progression. If you know exactly what to do and where, you could finish the entire game in under 10 minutes. But you don't. So instead, you're forced to step into your rickety, wooden spaceship and fly into the unknown - trying one insane idea after another just to see which ones kill you the slowest, all the while piecing together a cosmic puzzle that spans an entire solar system!

in Reviews
Project Zomboid artwork for my Build 42 retrospective starring Spiffo the survivor

Project Zomboid's Build 41 didn't so much launch in December 2021, as it did explode onto the scene. New animations, vastly better immersion, and actually functional multiplayer - it was the update that turned Zomboid from a cult classic into a full-blown juggernaut. In that single month, the playerbase skyrocketed to seven times its previous size!

So naturally, expectations for Build 42 were sky-high. What's going to happen next? How could they possibly top this? The community was beyond excited, and then... nothing.

in Reviews
Total War: Warhammer 3 artwork for my 4-year retrospective

Total War: Warhammer 3 had a rough launch. Rough enough that the tutorial was the best part of the game - and no, that's not a joke. The tutorial mini-campaign genuinely felt more polished and more coherent than whatever the February 2022 version of the Realms of Chaos was trying to be. It's honestly kind of wild looking at the game we have today and remembering just how poorly it all started.

Now normally this is where the music swells and I tell you how the game's redemption arc got started, but Warhammer 3 didn't get a redemption arc. At least not yet.

in Tips and Guides
Darktide artwork for my Hive Scum build guide

Unlike the Arbiter who could probably face-tank a Greater Deamon, the Hive Scum is a true glass cannon. It can shred through heretics by the hundreds, but it's about as durable as that awful one-ply toilet paper you bought once, used once, and then swore never to touch again.

Or as normal people would say, Hive Scum has a pretty steep learning curve. So to make your life easier, let me walk you through a couple of fun, powerful builds that can handle anything the game throws at you - short of the most grueling Havoc missions.

in Tips and Guides
Moonlighter 2 artwork and logo for my beginner's guide

Moonlighter 2 has a lot of different interlocking systems, and while none of them are particularly complicated, the game can still feel overwhelming, especially in the first few hours. So instead of telling you exactly how to play, I want to teach you ten core concepts that'll help you learn (and enjoy) the game at your own pace.

1) You're expected to fail

First of all, Moonlighter 2 is a roguelite with a staggering amount of permanent upgrades. And because you start with absolutely none of them, your early game power level is going to be somewhere between 'wet napkin' and 'oh god, this hurts'. But the person you are at the 1-hour mark is not even close to who you'll be 10-15 hours later.

So if you're struggling at the very start, don't worry - that's completely normal. Unless you're some kind of manic roguelite prodigy, you're not meant to crush every run right from the get-go. Instead just focus on pushing as far as you can, grab as much loot as you can carry, and then when things start going sideways, hit the handy "get me the hell out of here" button to bail out and cash in your loot.

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