We’re here and it’s Pride month! This episode we get into Julia’s birthday, Shrek, PowerPoints, and we tease our Ranking of Seltzers. All before our usual gahbage bins & friggin’ hoorays!
Content warning for discussion of body dysmorphia, diet, and weight from 10:26 to 18:10.
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We’re back, and this is what we did over the holiday. We hope you missed our voices.
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RUINER has a release date. It’s just shy of a month out, at September 26th, and came with a trailer that highlighted new combat features.
Hi all! This is just to say that there’s not going to be a new episode this week. We had some unfixable audio issues, unfortunately. However, we have good news! We’ll be at the opening of Balance Patch, the first social video game cafe in Boston. We’ll be there hanging out later in the afternoon, and we’d love it if we got to meet some of you guys!
At Tennocon this weekend, Digital Extreme’s yearly Warframe convention, developers announced Warframe’s most radical update yet: a change to the base game which would turn it into the open world MMO players (like myself, at first) have always wanted.
Something very important happened in between the release of Titanfall 1 and the upcoming release of Titanfall 2. That important thing is that Call of Duty Advanced Warfare came out and did it’s job significantly better than the first Titanfall. Sure, it didn’t have big ridable mechs. But it really solidified how futuristic first person shooters should feel. The past weekend Respawn Entertainment ran a technical test for Titanfall 2, and it feels like a piece of the core from the first Titanfall is among the missing.
With the time I spend with Titanfall I learned a few very important things. There wasn’t a SINGLE, not a single issue with any technical aspect of this game. It ran beautifully, no latency in any of my matches and I found matches absurdly quickly. This is all stuff they learned from the first Titanfall, during the Titanfall’s technical tests and on release date, it was a mess. So it’s nice to see that Respawn has figured out their server issues.
I also learned that this game plays surprisingly different from the first one. The controls feel clunkier than before, and it feels significantly slower paced. The thruster packs don’t seem nearly as fast and useful and the wall running also seems substantially slowed down. It also showed me the only bad grappling hook I’ve seen in a video game. It feels absurdly limp and almost useless. Whenever a game adds a grappling hook it’s almost always a positive thing, this is the exception. Something I really enjoyed from the first one was how snappy and quick the game felt at all times, even if it was often erratic.
During the test, they were showing off three game modes. Amped Hardline, which is your standard Domination game mode. Pilot vs Pilot, which you should never play if you’re playing Titanfall in the first place. And finally Bounty Hunt, which is a new game mode that really intrigued me. When you start the match, the team is drawn to a location where there’s going to be a bunch of grunts. When you kill those grunts you get money added to your player. At certain points during the match, the bank will open up. This is when you take the money you’ve earned and you deposit it to your teams score. The team that reaches a certain amount of money first wins the match. While all of this is going on, the other team is still there to stop you from killing these poor helpless grunts. Also, during specific points in the match, higher valued targets will spawn randomly and teams will have to get together to take them down. I had a good amount of fun with this game mode, even if it can get a little hectic at times it’s a neat twist on the stale Horde modes we’ve seen for a long time now.
During this test, they had two maps available and they are making a third one available for the second test weekend. Out of these two maps neither of them had any interesting points in them. Maybe it’s because Overwatch spoiled me with cool looking maps, but they just seem super generic and grey-washed. If you can picture what a generic Titanfall map would look like, I promise you, that’s what they look like.
They also made some massive changes to the mechs themselves. Now each of the mechs have MOBA like abilities that are on cool downs and they even have ultimate abilities. This is definitely a good change and it helps making the mech gameplay more diverse rather than just running around and shooting things. It also makes the mechs feel like much more of a formidable opponent.
I’m excited to see what the future holds for Titanfall, but it seems like the need to make some fundamental changes to how this game plays. Even Respawn Entertainment agrees with me.
Following our recent trend of D&D homebrew and other useful tips, I’m back with some Shadowrun tips. There’s no doubt that one of the most fun things you can do as a GM is build a world that your players get to explore. Worldbuilding is satisfying in ways that just writing the twists and turns of your campaign isn’t. Without further ado, let’s get into it!
If you follow us on Twitter or Facebook, you would’ve seen that we published a few videos recently. Yes, videos! I’m proud to announce that The Lifecast now has regular video content coming to you guys about once a week. We publish all our video content on YouTube, so subscribe if you want to see more! This time around, Adam, Greg, and myself opened up a bunch of Overwatch’s Rio loot boxes, and I’d like to think we had a good time of it.
Below is the playlist for easy watching.
As I’m sure we all know by now, Nintendo recently released a new trailer for Pokemon Sun and Moon–not only do we now have confirmation that the region is based on Hawaii, but we now also know who our new Professor is, his assistant, the names/types of the new legendaries, and the names of a few new characters. Perhaps the most surprising (in a good way) thing Nintendo announced was the Rotom Pokedex–something we’ve never seen anything even close to in previous Pokemon games. Despite this well of knowledge Nintendo has gifted us, there’s still plenty that we don’t know yet, and won’t know for some time–or at least until after E3 because Nintendo Treehouse said that they’ll be talking about Pokemon after E3. So without further ado, here are my predictions and hopes for Pokemon Sun and Moon:
Hala– the man in the yellow coat
Image courtesy of Daily.Pokecommunity
Although nothing was said about this man in the American trailer, the Japanese trailer states that his name is Hala. Although originally speculated to be the professor of this region (after all, the hala is another kind of tree native to Hawaii) we now know that Kukui is the Professor of this region. It’s also safe to assume that Hala won’t even be his assistant, as we know that will be Lillie’s role (and I’ll talk about what I think about her later.) My guess is that he’ll either be a “secret” (only for a short while) gym leader or a member of the Elite 4–possibly the champion, but I think it’s less likely. In previous Pokemon games, there’s almost always a gym leader or member of the Elite 4 that meets the trainer and helps them a few times before they face each other in battle. If nothing else, I’m sure he’ll be very relevant to the plot somehow–perhaps he knows what the evil team is doing and he tries to stop him? Maybe he has information, maybe even involvement with the legendary Pokemon? I’m guessing he’ll be one of the next few details about the game to be explained at least a little more since everyone else that’s been shown in the trailers has been given a name and a role.
Lillie
Image courtesy of Bulbapedia
There seems to be a big stir about her everywhere–she’s the professor’s assistant, but why are we only now seeing her? Why does she hate battling Pokemon? She looks so sweet–why the stern look on her official art? I predict that she’ll end up being an antagonist of some kind–probably related to whatever evil team this game has. Her profile explicitly states that she hates battling Pokemon and I’m sure that’s going to be crucial to these games. My guess is that this game’s evil team will either follow something close to Team Galactic’s “We’re liberating Pokemon!” idea, or that she’s actually a master Pokemon battler–perhaps to an extreme level that we’ve never seen in Pokemon. If that were the case, if she’s not on our trainer’s side (I highly doubt she’s on our side, her facade seems to innocent) she might be involved in extreme levels of Pokemon battling, to the point where she battles them to the death. Perhaps that’s what the evil team in this game is involved in, as well.
HMs as Key Items
Image courtesy of aminoapps
This one is all hope rather than prediction. Having HMs be key items rather than moves is something Pokemon fans have been wanting for a while. For anyone unfamiliar, let’s take Cut for instance: Not a particularly useful move in battle, right? But you need something with cut on it in case you run into a tree. What if instead of cut taking down the tree however, you’re given a pair of gardening shears–a key item–that will cut the tree down? And if you still want one of your Pokemon to learn cut it can be turned into a TM instead. This eliminates the need for HM slave Pokemon while still giving an option to people who want their Pokemon to learn the moves regardless. It would be incredibly convenient.
Starter Evolution Lines
Image courtesy of gameskinny
Before I go into detail on this one, I’d like to point out that I’m assuming all the “leaks” of their evolutions that we’ve seen thusfar are fake and I’ll continue to think that until we see confirmation, so you won’t hear me talk about any of them. Since that’s out of the way, here’s what I’m guessing is going to happen: Rowlett will retain its Grass/Flying typing throughout its entire line and will shift from looking really cute to more like a Noctowl on steroids in a pile of leaves and branches. Litten will almost certainly pick up a second type in its next evolution–judging purely by its design, it will likely be dark type or ghost type. Phantom cats exist in a fair number of Hawaiian folktales so I’m leaning towards fire/ghost. If that’s the case, it’s next few evolutions will take a more ghostly appearance until it eventually looks like one of the phantom cats. Popplio is harder to to make such a confident guess for since its design could go in many different directions at this point and its inspiration is from sea lions. I’m leaning toward that it will be water/fairy for two reasons though: 1. Fairy types being so new and well-liked, it would make sense for Popplio to eventually become half fairy for the sake of adding more fairy types to the dex. 2. Fairy-type Pokemon tend to be more playful, happy, and cute in the traditional sense–all of which Popplio is. Again though, it has a much simper and, for the sake of guessing evolutions, vague design so it could just as easily go in any other direction. After all, how many of us predicted Piplup to eventually become half-steel?
Mega Evolutions
Image courtesy of PokemonRubySapphire
We’ve seen the mega bracelets on the trainers in this game–mega evolutions are here to stay. As for what Pokemon we’ll see new megas for, I’m guessing we’ll see at least one of the following: Rotom (because of the Pokedex), Dragonite, Flygon, Lunatone, Solrock, Kingdra (because there are seahorses in Hawaii–I’ll admit, my reason for thinking this will happen is pretty flimsy, but I’m holding out hope.), Solgaleo, Lunala, Magmortar (because of Hawaii being famous for its volcanoes), Electevire (because if Magmortar gets a mega they’d give one to Electevire, too) the final evolutions of the starters, Milotic (honestly, I just think its design makes it look like it’s begging to megaevolve. Besides, given the setting, I’m sure that there’s gonna’ be at least 2 or 3 water Pokemon getting new megas since water Pokemon will certainly be particularly important in this game) Corsola, Tentacruel, Raichu. As for ones I simply just hope get mega evolutions but it seems more unlikely for them, the main one I’d like to see is megas for even one or two of the Eeveelutions just because they all look like they could evolve again–besides, Eevee being the evolution Pokemon, it would make sense. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if only Eevee received a mega evolution for that same reason. Some other unlikely hopes I have for mega evolutions are Dunsparce, Stunfisk, Arcanine, Hitmonlee, Hitmontop, Hitmonchan, Torkoal, Delibird, Sigilyph, and Hawlucha. All of them just look like they’re just waiting to evolve–besides, I’d love to see them all become more competitively viable choices.