Oh, boy! Another Series that Ends…Badly? Lilly’s Rant on Orphan Black, Season Developments, Audience and Narrative

It is Sci-Fi TV series ranting day boys and girls! Yeah! Sure you were waiting for this! What has got you ranting today Lilly, you may be asking yourselves? Well! Glad you asked! I am rather annoyed at the investment I have done in a couple of science fiction tv series and how their endings have been terribly underwhelming, almost making me feel like they might as well just try to push for another season and actually wait for the series to decline naturally because…What was that about?

I am talking about Orphan Black, yes. 5 seasons I have been attached to a screen following these clones and their stories. Not only that: I have even involved them in an academic paper I gave at a symposium at the University of Winchester just last year (March 2016). And…what for? Well for a very jolly ending, innit? I do not usually do spoilers, as you know, but today there is gonna be some of that so, from here on, please be aware *SPOILERS APPLY*.

Total War: WARHAMMER – Out With The Old World

If you have played Total War: Warhammer but haven’t kept up with it for a while, then there is a lot of new content that has been added to it in the last few months. With the fast approaching release of the second installment in the Warhammer series, one which will be compatible with the first game in a few ways, they’ve been bringing the current game up to date with some new changes and additions. 

The last time I wrote about TW:W they had just released the Wood Elves faction, which was their last fully new race pack added to the game, but that isn’t to say that what they’ve added since has been lacking in comparison, far from it. So what may you have missed since then? what have they brought in to see out the Old World in preparation for their introduction to the New World?

Fleshed Out Factions

Since the game came out there have always been a few factions that seemed very placeholder. The most obvious example of this was Bretonnia, which only featured a very small roster of units that you could only play in custom battles but were unplayable in campaign. Another faction that was even more meagre was Norsca, which was essentially a poor copy of Chaos, as it just used their basic starting units. Well in February this year they released a big free update to Bretonnia, and just this month they released a full Norsca as a pre-order bonus for buying the second game that can be added to the first game right now. 

Geek Economy – Considering to Switch to LCG’s for Good

For the last few years I have been thinking to myself that I was very much done with my trading card games – mostly Magic: The Gathering, to be honest. You have probably heard me rant before regarding the way the game has changed and how Wizards of the Coast’s strategy of milking their customers and destroying the game through their exhausting power creep and extensive new releases that to be frank do not seem to add anything other than rather lame hype to the whole thing. I also find it rather annoying that every set requires a new random ability that tends to create a new set of rule issues that force you to play with new cards constantly. Same problem that we have these days with Yu-Gi-Oh, right? Like how ridiculous it is that for those of you who wanna play competitively, unless you play 3 very specific variant of a deck, you are essentially done and dusted. I am fed up of having to spending a fairly copious amount of money fetching cards, the same cards everyone else is after. I am done having with new sets every 3 months that unless purchased will make me an obsolete gamer, so on and so forth. Instead, I have decided to give a go to LCG’s: living card games as the cool kids in the industry like to call them. Why have I opted for this approach? Well, probably for the same reasons than many other people, but here are my thoughts.

Modding Skyrim in 2017

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been around for almost 6 years at this point, which in terms of videogames, is relatively old. Despite this there are still tons of mods for the game being constantly made and released on the Nexus and Steam Workshop. There are over 53,000 mods for Skyrim on the Nexus, and there are probably even more from other sources and different mods you can find for the Special Edition of the game (although less overall). So if you’re new to mods, or haven’t modded Skyrim for a few years, how are you supposed to find the good ones with so many out there? Well I’ll do my best here to give you a rundown of some of the best new mods as of 2017.

Instead of going through every small mod that adds a new object to the game or a tiny tweak to the gameplay systems, here I’m going to focus on the mods that I think add a lot to the game. There are a fair few of these now, which is probably thanks to the fact that modders have gotten so familiar and proficient at modding the game we are seeing far more substantial mods than before, when they were much rarer in the past.

Overhauls

There have been a lot of ‘overhauls’ for Skyrim over the years. These are mods that significantly change and rework the gameplay systems. Most of these involve changing the perk trees or spell lists in some way. Some of the older ones to check out include Skyrim Redone, and Perkus Maximus which mainly change the perk trees and add more interesting and specific perks. Duel – Combat Realism makes combat a lot tougher with more varied and clever enemy behaviour. and Midas Magic Evolved which adds a lot of new spells.

As for newer mods, there have been some fairly interesting ones. First there is Path of Sorcery – Magic Perk Overhaul which as you can imagine, makes changes to the magic perks of the game. Instead of with something like Midas Magic and other spell mods, this one doesn’t just dump a ton of spells into the game, but works on the core principles of the vanilla magic system, but expands on it greatly, allowing you to specialize more, or simply become more powerful and varied in your magical abilities.

My Thoughts on Splendor v Century Spice Road

So thanks to the wonderful resource that is Board in the City (Southampton), I have been playing a few more new games and trying out some stuff. There is two in particular that caught my attention recently: Century Spice Road and Splendor. The former was like the sensation game at the Expo last year, sold out and stuff, so I thought “ok cool, we will give this a go”. And I had heard lots of people talk about Splendor so, why not, ey? The two games themselves are pretty comparable as the follow very similar dynamics and the game goals are in essence the same: be the player that has more victory points at the end of it, all based on your capability to do your best at resource management to maximise your economic gain.

In Century Spice Road you are merchants trying to set up a spice road (obvs!). There are victory cards with a set value of points for your end score that you can buy with cubes of different colours starting with yellow at its lowest value, green, red and brown. Your turns are devised in such a way that you either acquire cubes, cards that allow you to gain or exchange cubes or purchase the victory cards. Splendor is fairly similar, just instead of cubes you have gems (blue, red, green, black and white). Whilst in Spice Road you end the game when a player has purchased 5 of the victory cards, in Splendor you stop playing when someone reaches 15 victory points. Fairly simple games in any case, easy and quick to play, however, after having played both, I am still wondering why did Century Spice Road perform so well, when in comparison I think it is less straight forward – and more lame if you ask me…Also, who wants to pay nearly 30 quid when I can buy Splendor for like 20?