Pacific Drive - title

When I first saw the trailers for Pacific Drive, it was being pitched as a survival horror that takes place entirely in a car. Or at least, that was my takeaway from the initial announcements and teasers. It had me intrigued, such that I immediately wishlisted the game. However, that isn't quite what the game ended up being. Instead, Pacific Drive is more of a survival/crafting/extraction game with light-to-moderate horror elements. There's also an emphasis on logging and cataloguing everything you encounter, which nullifies much of the horror and mystery that it could have, in favor of encouraging exploration and curiosity.

The bulk of the gameplay consists of driving to different parts of the map, scavenging for materials and supplies, and using those materials to craft upgrades for your possessed station wagon. And all the while, you're scanning almost everything you encounter in order to catalogue it (from paranormal phenomena, to resources and equipment, to the different types of wrecked vehicles you find rusting along the roadside, and everything in between). Maybe I misunderstood those initial announcements and teasers. Whether I misunderstood, or the game's concept was poorly communicated, or its design simply shifted over the course of the intervening year or so (which happens), the final game errs much closer to No Man's Sky than to Resident Evil, and might even have tiny hints of inspiration from things like Outer Wilds and Portal.

The crafting focus also means that the gameplay is split almost evenly between driving and scavenging on foot. I'm constantly getting out of the car to search an abandoned building for materials, or using the various tools to break down other wrecked vehicles for their constituent parts. So the idea that the game would be played entirely from within the car also ended up not being the case. In fact, a majority of my opening hours of the game were played on foot, since so much of the early game is a series of tutorials on how to craft various tools and car parts.

Pacific Drive can be serene and beautiful, and almost zen-like.

So Pacific Drive takes a while to really get going. Whether it's the sub-genre-defining horror game that I anticipated, or a more trendy survival/crafting/extraction game with a driving gimmick, Pacific Drive still turned out to be quite good and addicting. In fact, the survival and extraction focus might even have made it a better game than what I was envisioning in my own mind.

Grab 'n' Go

Pacific Drive's core gameplay loop is more akin to an extraction shooter, except that it's single-player PvE (Player vs Environment), and the player uses a possessed, beat-up old station wagon as your primary method of locomotion and eventual escape. You choose an area from a map menu, and the specific details of the area are pseudo-randomized each time you enter (and can change if you return later). You drive around the area, collecting any resources or materials you find, avoiding paranormal hazards, and occasionally finding documents or audio logs that slowly explain what happened to the Olympic Peninsula Exclusion Zone.

But there's also a ticking clock, and this is where the "extraction shooter" influence appears. If you lollygag too long, meticulously avoiding obstacles, and gingerly collecting everything that isn't nailed down, a blaring siren will sound, and a mysterious Fortnite-esque "storm" will slowly engulf the area. If you get caught in the storm, you'll slowly take damage until you either escape or die. And the only way to escape is usually to trigger a warp portal that appears somewhere on the map. These portals can only be activated if you're more than a certain distance away, and once activated, the storm starts to rapidly expand. You have only minutes to drive halfway across the map to the portal and escape, with the storm breathing down your neck.

Each voyage is punctuated by a frantic race to a gateway portal.
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Star Trek Ascendancy 50th anniversary edition

Star Trek: Ascendancy must be a more popular game than I thought. Usually I think of Star Trek games as being pretty niche and unlikely to find widespread success. But Ascendancy must be doing well because 8 years later, Gale Force 9 is still pumping out expansion packs and new accessories. Ascendancy deserves it. It's a fantastic game! In fact, it might very well be my favorite tabletop game at the moment.

The Vulcan and Andorian expansions were both released a few years ago, in 2019. But I couldn't review them near their release because I hadn't had an opportunity to play either of them until this past year or so. That's partly due to the fact that Gale Force 9's distribution isn't the best. The expansions were delayed several times, and my pre-orders were also late arriving. By the time I finally had them both, schedules just weren't favorable for playing. I had an opportunity to play with either faction within a few months of purchasing them, but we ended up sticking with the Ferengi and Cardassians.

We expected to play again soon and break in the Andorian and Vulcan sets, but then COVID happened. Ascendancy wasn't the only victim, as several other games (including Bloodborne, Tapestry, and U-Boot) have also sat un-opened or un-played since the summer of 2019.

Several games (or expansions) have sat un-opened or un-played since 2019 and 2021 thanks to COVID.

Now, GF9 has released another pair of expansions in 2022, with the Dominion War and Breen. This time, I didn't want to wait and risk letting them sit un-played for another 2 or 3 years, so we made sure to find time to play. Though reviews were still very late because I had 4 expansions to play and review instead of just 2. Which means it took quite a few play sessions to play everything and get a decent feel for it all.

It certainly helped that I introduced the game to some new players in the year or 2 following COVID, and they all loved it. I've now played with all the new factions and have impressions on all of them. I'll discuss the Dominion in a separate post, since the Dominion is a lot more complicated than simply being a new faction. It includes new rules for the Bajoran wormhole, Gamma Quadrant systems, and also includes a team variant game mode based on the Dominion War of Deep Space Nine. So for now, I'm going to cover the Andorians, Vulcans, and Breen.

Pre-Federation factions

The pair of 2019 expansions were both themed around Star Trek: Enterprise, offering versions of Federation-member cultures that represent their pre-Federation empires. I have to say, I was very surprised to see these factions be announced. Partly because they are both members of the Federation, and so don't seem like "big enough" galactic powers to warrant their own factions. To me, it seemed comparable to seeing the Virginia Commonwealth or Republic of Texas show up as a playable civilization in Sid Meier's Civilization.

But it was also a confounding release because I was expecting to see the Tholian faction that was promised by the base game's "Crystalline Entity" exploration card. I would have expected to see factions like the Dominion, Tholian, Gorn, or maybe even a Delta Quadrant faction like the Hirogen or Kazon, before seeing the Vulcans and Andorians show up as factions. Nevertheless, both introduce novel new gameplay mechanics and concepts, and show the development team at Gale Force 9 is getting quite creative with its faction concepts.

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Cities: Skylines II - title

One of the biggest criticisms of Cities Skylines II since its release last fall, has been the lack of expressive options for the player to customize the look and feel of your city. The sequel lacks a lot of the content that was in the first game. But considering that the first game had a 10-year life span, during which it received around a dozen expansions, numerous other content packs, and uncountable mods, it's understandable that the sequel would feel a little lacking in this regard at release. We can't expect a brand new game to have all of the content of such a massively expanded and modded predecessor. That being said, I do think that there are ways that Colossal Order could modify its rules and mechanics in Cities: Skylines II in order to restore some of this expressiveness.

I already published a video and blog outlining my suggestion for a modification to the building upgrade and industry area mechanics in order to make them a lot more flexible and to allow greater freedom for the player to tailor how these assets look and behave. While I was working on that project, I had another idea for how Colossal Order could give players a bit more expressive control over their cities. I had originally planned on briefly sharing this other idea in that first video and blog, but decided to break it out into its own post. I'm not going to transcribe the whole video here on the blog. Instead, I will summarize the main points of the video, and refer you to the full video if you want to see specific examples and more detailed explanation.

Full video outlining my suggestion for adding specialized zoning.

As I mentioned in my previous feature suggestion video for Cities: Skylines II, I have posted a poll on Patreon asking if Patrons would be interested in seeing a "Farewell Tour" video of my Cities: Skylines cities before I uninstall that game for good, and those cities disappear into the ether forever. This poll will close at the end of April. If I get enough interest in such a video, I will plan to begin work on it during the summer.

Patreon

Remember, my channel is not monetized, and so all of my financial support comes from viewers like you via Patreon. Patreon pledges go towards offsetting the cost of the licenses for the software that I use to create video content like this, as well as the cost of maintaining the blog website at www.MegaBearsFan.net. Patrons receive previews of upcoming content, early access to select content, and voting power in polls of what content I will make next. I would like to take this moment to thank all of my Patrons, past, present, and future. Your support really means a lot.

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Cities: Skylines II - title

One of the biggest criticisms of Cities Skylines II is that it is lacking content or feels "incomplete". I don't necessarily disagree, but I feel like saying that the game feels "incomplete" might be doing it a bit of a disservice. It is lacking a lot of content from the original game, sure, but that original game had over a dozen expansions and countless content packs and mod assets released over its decade-long life cycle. So of course there's going to be things that the original, expanded game had, which the new game doesn't have.

But the sequel also has (and does) a lot of things that the original didn't do. It has a much more complicated economy, in which all industries generate specific types of raw materials or goods, and all commercial stores sell specific types of goods or resources. Basically, the core idea of the Industries expansion supply lines and logistics was expanded out to the entire game, rather than just those few specialized industries.

In fact, the sequel includes content or ideas from almost all of the original game's expansions. In addition to the industrial aforementioned seasonal cycle and industrial supply lines, we also have a few natural disasters, some eco-friendly upgrades to various polluting infrastructure, pedestrian roads, road-building tools that put Mass Transit to shame, and some customizable, modular buildings.

Unfortunately, some of these mechanics imported from the original game (and its expansions) do not quite live up to my hopes and expectations. I made a video describing how the modular buildings and industry areas of Cities Skylines II do not live up to the expressiveness and creativity of the Parklife and Industries areas from the first game. I'm not going to transcribe the entire video here. Instead, I will summarize the main points and ideas, and refer you to the full video if you want more detail and examples.

Full video outlining my suggestion for improving building upgrades and industry areas.

Also, I would like to remind my readers and viewers that video and blog content like this is supported by viewers like you through Patreon. So if you like this content, and would like to see more like it, please consider becoming a Patreon for just a dollar or 2 a month. Your patronage helps to offset the cost of maintaining this website, as well as the software licenses I use to create the video content.

Patreon

Patrons also get previews of and early access to upcoming content, and Patrons at higher tiers have voting power in polls of upcoming projects. I've been working on a massive project about Star Trek video games over the past few months. There are currently a couple previews available on Patreon, and I plan on releasing the entire project early to Patrons when it's finished, while publishing the episodes one at a time to the general public. So if you'd like to see that project early, then consider becoming a Patron. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all my Patrons, past, present, and future. Your support really means a lot.

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The UFL hasn't even started yet, but It's already proving to be a disappointment. The recently-merged XFL and USFL announced some of its rules recently, which give an insight into how the league's managers are approaching the sport. And it isn't good.

Easily the single best idea that the XFL implemented was its lower-risk kickoff rules. This rule lined the kickoff coverage team at the receiving team's 35 and the kick return team at their own 30 -- only 5 yards apart from each other. The only 2 players not lined up on these yard markers are the kicker (who kicks the ball from his own 30), and the returner (who lines up around his own 10). No return blocker or coverage player may move until the ball has been fielded by the returner or has bounced no the ground. This rule put all of the players only a few yards apart from each other, instead of staggering the blockers across the half the length of the field. This eliminates the high speed collisions that resulted from coverage players running into blockers or the returner at a full sprint, and was expected to dramatically reduce major kickoff injuries (the kickoff being one of the most dangerous plays in all of football).

There has been talk over the years of eliminating kickoffs from football entirely, because of the danger inherent to the high speeds on the play. But the XFL rule provided perhaps the best opportunity to save the kickoff. It was such a smart idea, that both the NCAA and the NFL have considered adopting the XFL's kickoff. Neither has done so yet, but they should. If kickoffs are going to stay in football, I think this is how it will be done.

The XFL's old kickoff rule should be the standard for all football leagues -- but apparently not the UFL.

But the UFL apparently doesn't think so, as the UFL's rules managers are apparently opting to ditch the XFL kickoff rule in favor of the traditional, higher-speed, kickoff.

The UFL is claiming that the XFL kickoff did not result in a significant reduction in injuries, but I'm skeptical of that claim. The league only operated for 2 seasons, and teams didn't play more than 10 games in either of those 2 seasons. That's not a whole lot of time to establish long-term trends. It's not like major injuries are happening in NFL kickoffs every single game. It would take years to establish whether the rate of injuries is actually lower than the NFL, or if it is substantially higher than on any other football play from scrimmage.

Other than a flimsy excuse that the XFL kickoffs didn't apparently reduce injuries in the highly limited sample size that was available, the league's head of football operations, Daryl Johnston, said "the stationary kickoff [...] just didn't look like football.". So the XFL rule is at least as safe as the NFL rule, but the UFL provided no justification (that I could find) based on fair competition -- only a superficial preference that the traditional kickoff "looks better".

In fact, the UFL is actually moving the spot of the kick back to the kicking team's 20 yard line (instead of the 35 yard line in the NFL, or the 30 yard line in the XFL). This is their attempt to eliminate touchbacks and force more returns. This means that the UFL's kickoff rule will likely end up being more dangerous than the NFL's kickoff rule because the UFL will have a higher rate of kickoffs being fielded and returned, which means a higher rate of players running into each other at a full sprint and risking major injuries.

The XFL's kickoff, by the way, had more than a 90% return rate. So it also successfully resulted in almost all kickoffs being returned.

If this lack of forward-thinking is going to be common in the rationale that the operators of the UFL are using to create their rules, then I have zero faith in their ability to run a successful football league.

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A gamer's thoughts

Welcome to Mega Bears Fan's blog, and thanks for visiting! This blog is mostly dedicated to game reviews, strategies, and analysis of my favorite games. I also talk about my other interests, like football, science and technology, movies, and so on. Feel free to read more about the blog.

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