It can take a long time for your cities in Old World to finish whatever they’re doing. Whether you’re producing a worker, a scout, a military unit, walls, a treasury, or a gardener for your...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/07/24/old-world-so-youre-in-a-hurry/
Families aren’t a discrete system in Old World. They’re also not something you can easily relate to other games you’ve played. They’re not like combat, or income, or technology, or cu...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/07/06/old-world-family-isnt-a-word-its-a-sentence/
Mohawk Games’ Old World is finally out of early access today. And if you’re like me and you’ve been waiting for the full release, I should warn you that it might be a bumpy ride. Brace your...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/07/01/bringing-new-eyes-to-old-world/
After forty turns of searching for the Psi-Fish I’m supposed to defeat, and whose dwellings are supposed to be abundant, and with whom I’m supposed to be at war, I have found no Psi-Fish. I...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/03/30/planetfall-the-death-of-trust/
Psi-Fish owned sectors are Abundant! Psi-Fish make more Demands! Psi-Fish start at War with you! So said the intel briefing for Angelus, a planet supposedly lousy with psionic extradimensional ...
By order of the Wasila Combine — heck, let’s go ahead and make this a religious thing as well — and by the will of the Promethean god, we’re going to uncork our PyrX refineries (pictured)...
Okay, I know I said we’d be home by the Dvar equivalent of Christmas. I might have even said turn 50. And here it is, turn 68, we’ve wiped out our fifth hopperhound hive, and we’re stil...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/03/15/planetfall-mission-creep-more-like-mission-pounce/
I’m occasionally surprised to hear people who play sci-fi strategy games complain that they don’t want to build their own ships. Since Master of Orion, this has been a fundamental part of t...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/03/09/planetfall-we-need-to-talk-about-the-m-word/
In the years since Civilization VI was released by Firaxis, you could say it’s gotten a ton of post-release support. If you consider “support” adding stuff rather than fixing things that ...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/03/04/planetfall-jewal-gruvich-and-the-virginia-cull/
And thus ends a month of rivals mode! Every day, right after breakfast, I booted up Project Cars 3 and spent time playing whatever rivals mode had on offer. And this morning, I was greeted wi...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/03/01/project-cars-3-need-to-know-basis/
The current weekly event in rivals mode encapsulates everything that’s right and everything that’s wrong with Project Cars 3. It is Slightly Mad Studio’s genius and failing played out in ...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/02/23/project-cars-3-forget-it-jake/
The career progression in most racing games is linear. You start out with pokey road cars and gradually unlock events for increasingly powerful cars. One day, you’ll get to hypercars and su...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/02/19/project-cars-3-new-or-used/
Today’s rivals event is a breakout layout on Monza, using a lime green doorstop with a bunch of random stickers slapped on it. I am amazed at how gaudy actual races look, with stickers all ov...
Today I learned about the revolutionary cooling system in a 1989 Sauber C9 Mercedes-Benz, which is the fancy racecar you drive around a canyon track in today’s rivals event. Wait, don’t go!...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/02/14/project-cars-3-youve-never-seen-a-car-that-can-do-this/
Today’s rivals event puts you behind the wheel of an unremarkable Toyota Supra. But then it adds the dramatic stuff. There’s a rainstorm. It’s night. You’re on a track with plenty...
I’ve driven some weird vehicles in my day. Once you get into the Badlands in Red Faction: Guerilla, you’ll find some real doozies. The Batmobile has its share of idiosyncrasies. Some of...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/02/11/project-cars-3-linda-ronstadt-should-get-this-car/
Project Cars 3 doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. It’s a serious game, obsessed with cars and tracks and uninterested in silly party games. That’s the next door down. You can’t ...
The last couple of daily rivals events have been forgettable. Generically overpowered cars on generic racetracks. But the current weekly challenge has shaken up my game a bit. It’s been e...
Like most colonies, Australia was built from its coasts inward. If you go inland from Sydney, you can’t get very far without bumping into the Blue Mountains. But just beyond the Blue Mounta...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/02/07/project-cars-3-the-corkscrew-of-the-antipodes/
Are Rivals events like New York Times crossword puzzles? Is Saturday the day for sadistic challenges? Why else would I be driving Project Cars 3’s most powerful car in the rain? Why else ...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/02/06/project-cars-3-shame-and-loathing-at-1190-horsepower/
It might surprise you to know this, but I’m no car expert. Everything I know about cars I Googled and then forgot ten minutes later. When I go to the mechanic, I make a great show of noddin...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/02/05/project-cars-3-how-not-to-make-a-car/
Today’s daily event was a lap around Donington Park, which is a real-world track in Leicestershire, England. The track is named after a nearby castle, which I probably climbed around on while...
One of the multiplayer modes in Project Cars 3 is called Rivals. It consists of month-long seasons. Each month, there is a single event which you can drive as often as you like to improve you...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2021/02/03/project-cars-3-a-month-of-rivals-mode/
In all the RPGs I’ve ever played, you cast Fireball and it does whatever d6s of damage it’s going to do, along with whatever damage-over-time fire inflicts. Easy as you please. Okay, maybe th...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2018/09/05/divinity-original-sin-2-earn-this/
The first was during a misunderstanding with another group of survivors. Russell was one of the first four people in our group. He was our soldier. You could tell he was military, and not just be...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2018/05/16/state-of-decay-2-the-first-four/
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. This is what I say out loud. I’ll mutter things from time to time. But this I say. Out loud enough that the cat mewls because he thinks I’m talking to him. Yes, I tel...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2018/03/25/kingdom-death-monster-a-lion-in-summer/
After you get past gluing together teensy bits of plastic and then receiving your mauling at the claws of what should have been a tutorial, Kingdom Death: Monster finally shows you what it really...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2018/03/18/kingdom-death-monster-you-cant-stop-whats-coming/
Blood shoots from your femoral artery at an alarming rate, killing you in seconds. The title “Blood Geyser” precedes the text in boldface type. It’s what happens when you take a severe inju...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2018/03/09/kingdom-death-monster-red-in-tooth-and-claw/
Well, now there’s this. In order to win this mission, you have to satisfy several victory conditions. Among them is the following: “At least one active US soldier is in any hex of the heights...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2018/03/09/ambush-maybe-i-was-wrong-about-this-game/
So far I’ve spent a ton of time singing the praises of this game. But what’s actually been going on in my playthrough? Honestly, not a ton. After the jump, a die roll too far. I split my squa...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2018/03/08/ambush-oh-yeah-im-actually-playing-it/
I may or may not have been alive in 1983, and if I was, I was certainly far too young to play wargames. But it seems to me that Ambush! is an absolute masterpiece of game design for that era. Com...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2018/03/07/ambush-moving-parts/
There are a lot of things Ambush! gets absolutely right, including one thing you might not expect a solitaire hex-based WWII board game to even include, let alone nail. The writing. After the jum...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2018/03/06/ambush-war-words/
For a while, I went through an “acquire solitaire board games” phase. This phase was motivated by the fear that, someday, an apocalypse might take out the electrical grid, and all my friends ...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2018/03/05/ambush-steamy-sex-games/
Jason and Ian are both like little devils on my shoulder. They’re not doing it right. Isn’t one of them supposed to be the angel? They’re telling me about this super expensive game that I h...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2018/03/02/kingdom-death-monster-assembly-required/
Mission 21: Operation Chastise (critical mission). I’m really proud of fishpockets. He used his star-navigation skills perfectly, and got us to the target without ever having to go to low altit...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/12/23/bomber-crew-mission-21/
Mission 19: Bouncing Bomb Test Run. We’re out of special bonuses, so we decide it’s time for the test mission. There shouldn’t be any enemy fighters over Cornwall, but because we have a pro...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/12/22/bomber-crew-missions-19-20/
Mission 16: Ammo Dump at Bruges: I have been told that in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. I suspect this is a small taste of that, since we are going to bomb Bruges again ...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/12/22/bomber-crew-missions-16-18/
Mission 12: Operation Hydra (the second critical mission) is the second outright failure of the campaign. We knew something was up when Biggins walked into the briefing hut with a stern look on h...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/12/20/bomber-crew-missions-12-15/
Mission 8: Doodlebug Blitz brings us our first outright failure. The mission, as stated by Wing Commander Biggins, was to bomb five V1 rocket launch sites before eight V1 rockets had been launche...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/12/19/bomber-crew-missions-8-11/
Mission 1: Motor Factory at Zeebrugge. This almost ends in disaster as both the electrical and hydraulic systems go out pretty much on takeoff, then I get so absorbed in fixing them that I tag th...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/12/18/bomber-crew-missions-1-7/
The Avro Lancaster had seven crew. The Boeing B-17 had ten. Keep this in mind when anticipating the price point of the inevitable B-17 DLC or standalone expansion. Since I’m flying this crate, ...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/12/17/bomber-crew-meet-crew/
The last Xenoblade Chronicles — it was numbered X, but it was really number 2, which makes this number 3, although it’s technically number 2 — built up to and was eventually based on a simp...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/12/03/xenoblade-chronicles-2-waifu/
(This is the third entry in a weekly (or so) game diary by Bruce Geryk and Patrick Mullen about the boardgame Vietnam 1965-1975. The series starts here.) For this American former fourteen-year ol...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2016/12/01/vietnam-1965-1975-building-history/
(This is the second entry in a weekly (or so) game diary about the boardgame Vietnam 1965-1975. The series starts here.) A few years ago, I wrote a game diary on this site that turned into an ong...
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2016/11/21/vietnam-1965-1975-definitive-cardboard-expressions/