Post Archive

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Review

Even if the script becomes a little too fan service-oriented and quippy, and the first act is a jagged mess, Rogue One holds its own against some of the better films in the franchise.

TLC D&D 5E Homebrew: Throws, Suplexes and Slams

The Lifecast’s Dungeon Master shares his wrestling homebrew for D&D 5E. If you wanna slam fools. Read on.

Tutant Meenage Neetle Teetles | Ep.43

Today we learn that one blimp can’t even hold all of The Lifecast. There go our plans for an office.
Thank you to Kennedy for our other fun fact today.
To recap announcements, we’ll be releasing The Coda Conflict on YouTube every other Sunday.
Our Discord server is here: The Lifecast’s Slav Squad
Our Twitter and Facebook are here too!
Host/Producer: Deanna Minasian
Guests/Co-Hosts: Sydney Smith, Greg Fernandes, Adam Osmani
Music: Tiffany Ma

No Man’s Sky: Rise Again

What the Foundation Update did for No Man’s Sky was, at first glance, make it a lot like Minecraft. This was my original gripe with the update, and that’s what the patch notes sounded like. You can build things, you can craft things, and most importantly, manage your inventory. No shame in trying to reinvent the wheel unless you’ve got bad PR to work with.

Tangents on Tangents | Ep.42

This week, as like many others, we get distracted. And then we get back on track. It’s a really nice Mobius circlejerk.

Our cover art and this week’s question are from Kennedy. Please go commission her!
Also, join our Discord server! The link’s on Twitter.
If you’d like to contribute to our collaborative Spotify playlist, message, tweet at, or comment on any of our social media. We’ll find you.
Host/Producer: Deanna Minasian
Co-Hosts: Adam Osmani, Kennedy Parker, Sydney Smith
Music: Tiffany Ma
Cover Art: Kennedy Parker

Existing, but not For Profit | Ep.41

Cue the dread. At least we can all laugh about it.

Thank you to Colin for our question this week!
This Sunday we’ll be releasing the first episode of our Shadowrun actual play series on our YouTube page.
Host/Producer: Deanna Minasian
Co-Hosts: Sydney Smith, Greg Fernandes, Dan Silvia
Music: Tiffany Ma

TLC D&D 5E Homebrew: Samurai Class(Second Draft)

The Lifecast’s Dungeon Master Greg Fernandes shares some of his D&D 5e homebrew ideas. This edition attempts to create a unique take on the frequently homebrewed Samurai class.

Cover Image by Lubliner

My Top 5 Most Replayed Games

The idea of a game’s replayability being one of its main selling points is, I think, a really interesting idea because the standards for replayability have evolved with the standards for video games in general. After all, when you say you want replayability in a game, do you mean that in a sense that it’s fun and you’d like to relive the fun? Perhaps you skipped some content in the game that you’d like to go back and find? Maybe you want to take another look at the writing in the game now that you know the conclusion? Or are there multiple endings that you want to discover? Or perhaps you’re playing a game in which you make very important decisions and you want to experience the game from other answers? Perhaps it’s something else entirely? Regardless of reason, there are several reasons one could have for replaying a game. Admittedly, I probably don’t replay as many games as I should. Moreover, most of the games I’ve replayed I’ve only replayed once–maybe twice if it was short. Yet I also think that gives more gravity to the games that I have replayed more than once or twice because it speaks in volume on behalf of their timelessness. The only stipulation that I’m putting on this list is that there’s only 2 games on here that I can recall the exact number of times I’ve beaten them–the others are approximations which will be listed.

 

5. Harvest Moon: More Friends in Mineral Town

“Beaten” 3-5 Times
via gamefaqs.net

via gamefaqs.net

I have the word “beaten” in parenthesis because you don’t necessarily “beat” Harvest Moon–you just get to a point where you’ve done pretty much everything, so you start over and try something new. And that’s exactly what I’ve done with my first and favorite Harvest Moon game, More Friends in Mineral Town. I’d usually get to about a millionaire status before I’d start to get bored of my farm and want to try something new–making new friends, making them at different times, trying new crops, trying to get certain events, although I never did marry anyone else since Cliff was my waifu4laifu. Outside of marrying everyone, I’m pretty sure I’ve otherwise done everything there is to do in this Harvest Moon entry.

 

4. Kingdom Hearts

Beaten 4-6 Times
via wikipedia

via wikipedia

I’ve made no attempts to conceal the fact that I’m a JRPG junkie. The first JRPG I ever played was Okage Shadow King, but the first JRPG that I fell in love with and even beat was the first Kingdom Hearts. Regardless of how I feel about the franchise now and what it’s devolved into, it will still always hold a special place in my heart for being the JRPG that got me into JRPGs.  I got Kingdom Hearts shortly after it came out in the States, but because I was so young and such an inexperienced gamer, I could never even figure out how to beat the ambush on Destiny Islands. It wasn’t until a few years later, shortly after Kingdom Hearts 2 came out, that I would decide to revisit it to see what all the hype was about. Needless to say, I was hooked. I made it a point to replay it at least once every other year or so, eventually. And when the 1.5 Mix came out in the States, I replayed it yet again. Because I’ve replayed it so much, I know what to expect and exactly what to do anytime I enter the game now, and replaying it now has become very relaxing for me.

 

3. Devil Survivor 1 and 2

Beaten 6 times each
via eurogamer.net

via eurogamer.net

I didn’t expect to fall as in love with these games as I did, yet here I am: Having played each to 100% completion. These games are oozing with moral ambiguity–who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? You can just as easily argue one over the other–and I adore not just games, but any kind of story like this. Antagonists who are arguably more justified than the protagonists, protagonists who may or may not be in the right depending on how you look at it–I think stories involving these kinds of factors add a HUGE layer of interest and involvement to the story, especially if it’s a story in which you’re in charge of several important decisions, as you are in these games. Because I got so interested in the story, and more importantly because I thought each side was equally right and I wanted to see what would happen had I sided with one over the other, I ended up getting all the possible endings to both games: 6 in each.

 

2. Spongebob Squarepants Battle for Bikini Bottom

Beaten countless times, but less than the #1 game
via youtube.com

via youtube.com

I can’t tell you how excited I was for Christmas 2003 when all I wanted was a copy of this game–and lo and behold, my amazing parents got me a copy. The ad made it look amazing, despite all the technical problems of Revenge of the Flying Dutchman I still had lots of fun with it, and most importantly, I was 9 years old–I loved Spongebob. There was no reason for me to not be excited about this game. Needless to say, upon playing it, it exceeded my expectations. With a wide variety of levels, collecathons that added a lot of replayability to the game, and just plain being fun, it’s really easy to understand why anyone would replay this game as often as I did. Like many of the other games on this list, I didn’t want to stop until I’d hit 100% completion–which, by the way, was no easy task for me in light of just how much there is to do in this game. It’s aged incredibly as well, on top of that. To this day I’ll re-play it if I want to play something more relaxed even though there’s nothing new for this game to offer me–it’s just that fun.

 

1. Jak & Daxter

I’m not sure numbers go high enough to reach the amount of times I’ve beaten this
via wikipedia

via wikipedia

Ask any passionate gamer about the games that got them into gaming and they’ll usually have one or 2 particular games that turned them from someone who casually enjoyed video games to a full-blown gamer. This, to me, is that game. The first console I ever had was a PS2, and at first, we mostly just had racing games. This was the first non-racing/non-puzzle game we owned and my sister and I fell in love with this highly-praised platformer immediately. I didn’t know games could be this fun–and so, both my sister and I would play it endlessly. We wanted to experience everything this game had to offer. And when we did, we wanted to do it all over again. And again. And again. There’s so much variety in this game that it definitely never felt repetitive–an absolute must for any games hoping to have any replayability to them. I still replay this game every so often, in fact–hell, I can still 100% the game in a few hours, no problem. It’s aged wonderfully. There aren’t many games that have enticed me as much as the colorful world of the first Jak & Daxter game–mixed with the nostalgia I have for it, this is a game I’ll still be replaying in years to come.

 

 

 

As always, feel free to comment with your most replayed games and why you’ve replayed them so much! Do you think replayability is important for a game to have? How much replayability is too much?

Relaxing Games: Things to Play When You’re Stressed

With the holiday season upon us, it’s high time for stress, commotion, and of course, a lot of really good food. Sometimes though, it’s important to take a step back and chill. Sometimes it’s with a book, sometimes it’s with some music, and sometimes you need something to take your mind off of things for a bit.

I’m Ugly and I’m Proud | Ep.40

Everyone’s playing Pokemon Sun and Moon, including two people on today’s podcast. And if you aren’t you’re apparently calling Dragon Quest by the wrong name.

Thanks to Colin for our question this week!
Host/Producer: Deanna Minasian
Co-Hosts: Pat Bowden, Greg Fernandes, Dan Silvia
Music: Tiffany Ma

Why Don’t People like Annual Games Anymore?

Many of us have to wait what seems like an eternity to finally get that long-awaited sequel or prequel we have always craved. But there are some games that don’t take such a long development cycle. I’m talking about annual entries of games. Some examples would include Call of Duty, Assassins Creed, Madden, Fifa, and Halo to name a few. However, it seems like people are looking at these series with more and more disdain.Why is this? My thought: it’s the problem of too much of a good thing.

The Madden series may not be perfect, but it has definitive reasons to come out every year. Image Source: Walmart.com

The Madden series may not be perfect, but it has definitive reasons to come out every year. Image Source: Walmart.com

Sometime people want a sequel but what they get isn’t what they had hoped for. You also run into the problem of people taking it for granted. “Why should I get excited for this? It comes every year.” For some games however, it’s expected. Mostly sports games have these annual installments. This makes sense as rosters change, new players are added to teams, members are drafted and stats changed. People want to use players in a different way, and introduce new ones on their team. There’s a reason for the sequel there. This it ties into another problem annual releases have: not enough reason.

Let’s take Assassin’s Creed. The series has done such great work trying to bring history to life and making a great saga. However, after the third game, the response to them went down. This was due to the third game finishing the framing narrative of the series. Assassins Creed 4 did well however, as people saw it as less restrictive and less likely to be bogged down by a narrative many thought had run it’s course. But then Unity and Rogue were released. People picked up on the purpose of these. The story and experience wasn’t as important to the developers. What was important to the developers was keeping the game popular.

Probably the lowest point of the series, Assassin's Creed Unity highlighted the lack of polish and the want to push out a product. Image Source: Moby Games.com

Probably the lowest point of the series, Assassin’s Creed Unity highlighted the lack of polish and the want to push out a product. Image Source: Moby Games.com

This is counter-productive however. If you want something to remain popular, keep it fresh. Keep what people loved about the old but give them something new. It can be alluring to have an annual upsurge of millions of copies sold for your development company. Even though Infinite Warfare isn’t what people wanted, it’s still selling copies. But it’s projected to sell much lower than hoped. The numbers have been consistent over the years, but they seem to be going slightly down. More than that, they are resonating worse with fans. Hopefully annual releases can become “I can’t wait for that this year” instead of the same thing, but a different year.