Why You Should Allow Backseat Gaming (Monday Musings 81)

FuzzyJCats Twitch Channel

Almost all streamers I've met and have immense respect are really against backseat gaming, so this post is to explore reasons why you should reconsider.

I invite backseat gaming enthusiastically because I do need help in games and I don't care if someone says to watch out for x and y even if I'm aware of those particular issues, as well as for other reasons as will be explored below.

Albeit, I don't like story spoilers because other viewers may not know what happens in the end and you really don't want to spoil things. Unfortunately, I've made mistakes during stream where I inadvertently divulged which I then have to apologize.

Of course, I'm not talking about allowing toxic backseat gaming where your viewers are saying that you're a complete loser and waste of space because you missed a secret in game, or other hateful statements. 

Rather, I'm talking about the kind of backseat gaming when your viewers are very excited and enthusiastic about the game and offer tips and suggestions, which then spark a discussion in the community about best weapons, best builds and other gaming matters. This may lead to much needed conversational threads and sense of camaraderie amongst your viewers, since dead air is a death knell.

When new viewers come in and see friendly exchanges about the game in chat, they see that the stream is active and "not dead", and might even join in the lively conversation because they may feel compelled to put in their own two cents.

Now, if you're streaming just for the hobby and you don't care at all about viewers or streaming income, and you absolutely can't stand back seating, by all means, do prohibit it in your streams and ban/timeout anyone who doesn't follow your rules.

However, if you're interested in growing your channel and wanting to get some pocket money from your streaming endeavors, I would consider not just allowing backseat gaming, but perhaps even encouraging.

The key objection to backseat gaming is that it spoils the experience for you as a streamer, but the point is, you're streaming for your audience, not for yourself! Recall that streaming is a form of entertainment.

Another reason is that subconsciously, the streamer wants to figure things out which will make them seem clever to the community to stroke your own ego, but who cares? I found by listening and understanding others (rather than trying to impress by seeming clever and accomplished), people have found me "fun".

I'm emphatically not being a home body, but because I spend hours asking questions about their favorite subjects, such as their children (even as my eyes glaze over, I hate to admit), they enjoy talking to me.

That's not to compliment myself, because the reality is, people want to be seen and heard, and if you give them the platform, they find you absolutely charming.

Next time at a party of strangers, just listen and ask pertinent questions, that person will find you riveting and will talk to you for hours if you let them - they will never make a questionable excuse that they have to go home and feed their cats. Don't be surprised if that person tells their friend that they would like to get to know you better.

Why do people backseat game? There are many reasons, but the main one is because they're very enthusiastic about the game and want to show how much they know, as people want to be seen as intelligent, knowledgeable and helpful, even as backseat gaming grates on almost everyone's nerves. People love to show off and/or share their knowledge and expertise.

Next, what is the purpose of entertaining an audience, of which streaming is a form? People engage in entertainment to have fun and feel good. What better way to do that by allowing your audience to actively participate, and hence feeling good about themselves for being smart, helpful and capable!

Often, when I ask my community what to do in a particular situation or how to get to a certain location due to my horrific sense of directions, they always give me superb advice which adds to chat content.

By telling your viewers how helpful and intelligent they are - and you're not lying because they are exceedingly astute since they also play these games, often spending hundreds to thousands of hours - they feel good about themselves and a sense of accomplishment. Though I think I exhausted some of my viewers when they were giving me directions, so perhaps something I have to dial down in the future. But in general, viewers do enjoy being seen as smart.

The exciting thing is that through the power of backseat gaming, my community literally pushed me through half of Borderlands 2, which is no small feat, given I never succeeded in any FPS! At that time, I could complete Borderlands 2 but it was too mentally exhausting for me to stream since I was inexperienced. Even so, I know I can beat the game off-stream (or even while streaming when I gain more experience) thanks to my lovely community.

The other good thing about allowing backseat gaming is that no one likes to follow rules - freedom here is the key - so if you have a long list of don'ts, it can led to a sense of suffocation. Then there's the inevitable backlash where they do exactly what you don't want them too.

So often, when you hear someone say "Whatever you do, don't touch that",  you're going to want to touch said offensive object, even if in one million years, you'd never think of touching it.

As for objections, I'm sure streamers feel that if they allow backseat gaming, everyone will tell the streamer what to do and the chat will be a chaotic mess. This is actually good since Twitch specifically looks for engaged and active chats! This is Partnership material!

However, don't get excited, because the reverse is true. There are times when I'm practically begging chat to help me find a way, but because they're used to the general etiquette of backseat gaming = bad, they only relent after quite a lengthy period of time, when I'm tearing out my hair.

The other objection I can see is that other viewers might be annoyed with the advice and tips, but at the same time, they can ignore reading the chat comments. They're not forced to be glued to their seats, eyes trained on your chat box.

However, if your community is reasonable, another one of your viewers (maybe a new one) will invariably chime in that there is yet another way to get there, as well as tease you for bad sense of directions. The dialogue tends to go into other intricacies of the game that foster further comments, which is a must if you want to obtain partnership.

Another reasonable objection is that by stumbling about and the community seeing you figure out things your own way could be entertaining, so backseat gaming will prevent that. Again, because the ethos is backseat gaming = bad, even as I'm encouraging my chat to tell me what to do, crickets are chirping until I flounder for up to 30 minutes, maybe for even longer.

Even so, you can thank the viewer and mention that's very smart, but then mention, you'll try it this other way. This is where you can be clever, by finding another solution then what is recommended, in effect showing off your creativity!

The last objection I can think of is what if your viewers are toxic about backseat gaming? Well, timeout or ban said viewer, exactly as you do for any other type of toxic comments on chat, whether it's bigoted remarks, insulting others, or what not.

I can't think of any further issues or problems in empowering your community to give out advice and tips, only positive ones.

What about you? Do you agree, or do you see pitfalls?

The How of Happiness Review

Missed Classic: Trinity - Is This The 50S? Or 1999?

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back! Last time out, I explored the strange mushroom forest that I was dropped into after the end of the world. This "wabe", as I think it is called, is a strange place set in the shadow of a gigantic sundial and includes giant bees, an impossible flower garden, a cottage with game design notes, and a half-dozen mushrooms with little doors. But this isn't The Smurfs: each mushroom appears to have been created by a nuclear detonation. As I closed out last time, I finally worked out how to control the movement of the "sun" overhead to drop shadows on each of the doors. I opened the first door and was dropped back into reality, somewhere and somewhen.

This game remains difficult to write about. My usual style is a bit flippant and just not appropriate for the subject matter, but I also cannot help to be quippy. I'll try to keep the tone light as much as I can, but this is a difficult game with difficult themes and some of the scenes in this session are disturbing. I had to step away from the game at one point for a few days. Fair warning, but on with the show.

Ray Palmer seems like such a nice guy.

When I walked through the mushroom door in my previous post, I arrived in a rickety room filled with equipment that I do not understand. The white door remains open and I can use it to return to the mesa in the wabe, but then it closes immediately after. No amount of resetting the sundial opens the door again so I assume there is no way back. Will I only get one shot at each doorway? Is there a way to know what order I have to take the doors? I hope Mr. Moriarty won't be too evil about this, but I am prepared for a lot of saving and reloading.

The equipment that I stand next to is radioactive and obviously a nuclear bomb, but I'm not positive which bomb it is. Climbing down the scaffolding, I find myself in a large room with aircraft hangar-style doors. They are too heavy to open, but there's a button nearby so it's not much of a puzzle. A second button activates an intercom speaker and a voice informs anyone listening that it is six minutes to detonation. I'd better hurry! I open the doors and head out onto a tropical island. Thanks to the manual's history lesson, I guess that this is the H-Bomb explosion in 1952. The documentation just says a "remote island in the South Pacific" and I was fairly certain that was Bikini Atoll, but a quick Wikipedia search informs me that the first test was actually on nearby Enewetak Atoll.

Focusing on the present, I notice that the tide is coming in. That voice in my ear sniggers that "Gnomon can tether tide or time." Whoever he is, he's less clever than he thinks he is. We start exploring from our vantage point on the south of the island. To the west is a second island with a single coconut tree. Thanks to a mob of attacking crabs, there is no way to get to that island or its lone tree. To the north is an "extension" of wood leading off the island, described as being like a six-foot in diameter drinking straw connecting the facility to someplace offshore. It's too high up to climb and I do not see a way to access it from the hangar shed. While exploring, a shark follows me around the island, but when I reach the eastern shore he reveals himself to actually be a friendly dolphin! That's cute, but… er… he's going to die pretty soon.

R.I.P Flipper. None under sea were smarter than he.

Beyond that, there doesn't seem to be much to do here. After a time, I notice that the western island has sunk under the tide and only a single coconut remains floating in the water. There is no obvious way to fetch it but it screams "puzzle" and must be important for something. I eventually work out that the dolphin is actually incredibly intelligent and fetches the coconut for me when I ask. I break it open with my axe but find only coconut milk inside. What did I expect? A priceless gem? The "milk" leaks out quickly and I restore so as not to lose it. Could that be "good enough" for the potion at the cottage? The magpie said that we needed milk, honey, garlic, and a lizard. Surely, this vegan substitute for milk isn't "good enough" for a magic potion, is it? With nothing else to do and the timer ticking down, I leave my paradise to its fate and return through the white door.

I do some fast Googling to learn that the island was called Elugelab; the blast destroyed it utterly, leaving only a 15-story deep crater in the ocean bed where an island once had been. The wooden "straw" led to the nearby Teiter Island which survived the blast. There doesn't seem to be any real-world counterpart to the tiny island with the coconuts; as a tidal island it's not likely to have appeared on any maps and Moriarty may have just made it up.

When I return to the "wabe", I immediately try the coconut milk in the potion and it seems to work! I'm not sure how that counts, but I have three ingredients now. I need to find a lizard.

Princess Peach has seen better.

The Mushroom Kingdom

With my first trip out of the way and the knowledge of how to open the doors, I take stock of the rest of the portal toadstools:

• The first is in the meadow where I started. It doesn't open again now but presumably led to Kensington Gardens.
• The second is the toadstool at the waterfall.
• I cannot find the third. I suspect that it is near the boy blowing bubbles and possibly somewhere I need to fly to if I can work out how to gain altitude. Or perhaps the boy is sitting on it?
• The fourth is the one that I just explored on the mesa.
• The fifth is in the garden behind the magpie's cottage.
• The sixth door is on the moor far to the east of the map.
• I cannot find the seventh, but I expect that it is probably wherever the ferryman takes you.

My guess is that Mr. Moriarty is clever and has made each of the toadstools independent so that you can take them in any order. I therefore try the second one next and am immediately proven wrong: it leads out into Earth orbit with no spacesuit and nearly instant death. Nukes in space? There must be a way to survive there to do whatever I need to do, but I'm pretty sure I don't have the means yet.

The death scene at least offers some hints as we arrive, dead, at the ferryman's river. This time, we have a coin and use it to board the boat to the great beyond. Other than that, I don't glean any further hints how to cross without dying so I restore and try the next mushroom.

As a kid, I visited the Psygnosis offices in Cambridge. It was amazing. By coincidence, I later worked in the exact same office long after they had moved out.

Mother Russia

I take the fifth door next and arrive in what appears to be an elevated shack on the Siberian steppe. It's cold and gray and someone is speaking in Russian on the loudspeaker. Google fails me and has no idea what "dyevianatsat minut" means, but Infocom was likely using either a nonstandard (or simply outdated now) romanization. My guess is that they meant "devyatnadtsat' minut" (девятнадцать минут) or nineteen minutes. Plenty of time, right?

I climb down from the shack and immediately step on a rodent underfoot. In fact, the ground is mobbed by hundreds or thousands of creatures all racing to the northeast. They "look something like hamsters, with long brown fur and beady eyes". Should I follow them? Or see where they came from? I try heading "upstream" against the tide of creatures, but Russian guards kill me so that's not the way. I follow them instead to discover a cliff edge where the rodents are jumping off in apparent mass-suicide. Only then does the game tell me what you already figured out: they are lemmings! Of course, lemmings don't actually jump off of cliffs, right? That's just an urban legend spread by an old (faked) Disney documentary?

At the cliff, I discover a single trapped lemming in a fissure. I rescue it but it quickly bites my hand and disappears into the mass. If I release the magpie, I can grab it and then stick it in the cage. Is that a good trade? Do I need the magpie for anything? Remembering back last week, I did not get any points for it (only for the cage) so maybe not? Also, lemmings are not lizards even if they have the same starting letter, and even if the potion took coconut milk instead of cow's milk, that would be too much of a stretch. I find nothing else of interest on the tundra. I even jump off the cliff once but just drown in the frigid Arctic water. Once there is nothing left to do and the countdown is presumably getting close, I head back through the door.

Doing some real-world research, I learn that I wasn't on the Russian steppe after all: the Soviets did their nuclear testing at a site in Kazakhstan. I was close enough though since that was part of the Soviet Union until 1991 and Moriarty would likely not have seen it as a separate country. The test site was 100 miles west of Semipalatinsk (now called Semey) and the region sees many health problems thanks to all of the tests performed there. There doesn't seem to be any real-world analogue to the cliffs as the nearest bodies of water I can find to the test site are frozen lakes around 25 miles to the northeast according to Google Earth. Am I looking too deeply at this? Absolutely. I'm procrastinating writing the next section.

A spoonful of sugar helps the deep existential dread go down?

Hiroshima

The sixth door is my only remaining choice, located on the moor just north of the ferryman's river. Stepping through, we find ourselves in midair and falling fast. Unlike in the space section, we have a few turns to experiment before we land with a splat and I have an idea what to do: open the umbrella! Doing so slows our descent enough that we land safely in a children's sandbox. Writing this section is choking me up, so I'm going to pause by just giving you the room description:

Playground, in a sandpile

A set of children's swings move back and forth in the humid breeze. Behind them stands a long building, its windows hung with flowers and birds folded from colored paper.

Mounds of dirt are heaped around a dark opening to the east. It appears to be a shelter of some kind.

Several small children are happily chasing dragonflies north of the swing set. Turning south, you see a group of adults (schoolteachers, by the looks of them), wearily digging another shelter like the first.

Somewhat shaken, you rise to your feet in a child's sandpile. In the pile, you see an umbrella, an axe, and a birdcage.

We know what's about to happen and it's devastating. I gather together my things and discover that I can really only move east towards the shelter without being caught. Inside is a disgusting and rough hewn bomb shelter, filthy and smelling of urine from the people that had to relieve themselves while waiting out the terror outside. It's an awful thought. There's a spade on the ground which I pick up, but otherwise there's nothing else to do.

I leave and discover that a girl is now playing in the sandpit. She spots me and nearly runs to her teacher, but then she spots my umbrella and her curiosity gets the best of her. I can tell that she wants it, so I hand it to her and she runs off into the shelter to play. Could she be the scarred woman in London? Do I even want to consider that?

There is still nowhere else that I can go safely, but seeing folded paper cranes in a nearby school window gives me a thought. I follow her into the shelter and hand the girl my unfolded origami crane from the beginning of the game, the one that gave me the message to go to the Long Water by 4 PM. She folds it back into its original crane shape and I gain three points. It glows with a strange energy. I return outside and the crane grows into a giant living paper bird. I climb on its back and it takes me up to just outside the white door, still suspended in midair, where I can leap off and through. Whew!

From a game perspective, that was an interesting segment and very much "on rails". If I had not brought the paper or umbrella with me, I could not have progressed, plus it was really only two rooms that I had to move back and forth between to advance story segments. More than any other section of the game except perhaps the first near-future in London, this paints a human face on the misery of the bomb. Honestly, this section wrecked me and I needed to take some time off from the game. I'm really not cut out for reviewing this type of emotional experience. This game hurts. I don't even care that I don't know if that was Hiroshima or Nagasaki, I'm done and need to move on.

"You can either look at things in a brutal, truthful way that's depressing, or you can screw around and have fun." - David Spade

Calling a Spade, a Spade

With no more toadstool doors to explore-- I haven't found the third or seventh and the second one kills me immediately-- I resolve find places in the wabe where my new items might be useful. I still have up a spade, a lemming, and an open coconut. It takes some experimentation, but I'll skip my failures and move straight to the good part: I can open the crypt in the cemetery!

Using the spade, we pry off the lid to see the corpse of the "Wabewalker" (me?). This was well-hinted since I was told earlier that I needed more "leverage" to move the lid and a spade is certainly leverage. I had hoped the grave would be empty, but instead I look down at a "great missionary or explorer" in his final rest. I hope this game does not go all Infidel on me. The corpse is wearing a burial shroud, a bandage around his head, and two strangely colored boots: one red and one green. Like any good tomb raider, I strip the corpse and take all of his stuff. His mouth hangs open once the bandage is removed and I discover a silver coin inside. Fare for the ferryman? The boots each have a strange (but empty) recess at the tip of the toes. Do I have to hide something in them? With the corpse thoroughly desecrated, I'm nearly halfway through the game: 49 points!

While exploring, I also get the brilliant idea to float the Bubble Boy's bubble out through the "space" doorway. Amazingly, it fits! The bubble immediately freezes to create a protective shell and that somehow keeps us from dying in the cold vacuum of space. Unfortunately, there is no way to control the bubble and the white door drifts rapidly away from us. After a time, a satellite comes closer and then departs again without letting us do whatever we are supposed to do. There is briefly a Star Wars-style laser destruction of a missile, but nothing to do except wait it out and die. There are still things that I am missing before I can conquer outer space.

What happened to the other five stories?

Desert Island Decameron

I wear all of my burial clothes and the ferryman lets me on the boat! He takes the silver coin as payment (but not the London 20p one) and deposits me across the river. There is no entrance to Hades or two-headed dogs, but there is a small island with the expected toadstool on it. When I arrive with the seventh symbol set on the sundial, I emerge into another rickety shack next to a large metal ball covered with wires.

There are voices outside and if I leave prematurely, I am killed-- more on that in a minute. But if I explore the room first the voices eventually leave. I use that time to try to open the bomb via an access panel that I discover on the side, but no dice without a screwdriver. I even try using the London coin, but it doesn't fit. A book sits discarded on the floor, the Desert Island Decameron. Doing some Googling, I discover that it is an "unconventional anthology of humor"... a strange thing to find in a room with a giant bomb, but perhaps one of the guards needed a little light reading while he considered the hellscape that he was potentially helping to create. Inside is a bookmark with a poem on one side and a diagram scrawled on the other. I get four points for reading it so it must be important, but the only part we can "see" in text is the legend: "RD=DET, BL=POS, ST=INF, WH=GND". My guess is that we are looking at a wiring diagram and an explanation on how to defuse the bomb. In any event, it's useless without the panel being opened.

Once the voices are gone, I exit and climb down the ladder. At the bottom is a padlocked box… and our friend the roadrunner! He's finally back in his natural habitat and seems happy to see me. He even drops the ruby at my feet! I pick it up to gain a few more points and from this moment the roadrunner follows me around. I cannot open the padlocked panel, even when I try to smash it with the axe or spade. Letting the lemming go doesn't help either and I do not see any lizards here.

I'm going to pass on delving too deeply into my explorations of the New Mexico desert for now, except to say that we only get a few turns before we die and even with successive restores I do not find much of interest. I suspect that I am here before I am ready; maybe I find a way to slow down time? Maybe by defusing the bomb at the beginning, the test is delayed by a few minutes and I can explore further before dying?

Perhaps more importantly, this is the message that I get when I inevitably die:

All at once, the desert around you disappears in a flash of startling brilliance! You jam your hands over your eyes in the awful glare; never see the fireball closing in at many times the speed of sound; and never feel the stellar hear that annihilates much of the state of New Mexico.

The real Trinity test, which I am certain is where this gate has taken us, did not nuke the state of New Mexico. It was relatively modest as far as later bombs were concerned and so something must have happened to change history. Have I finally stumbled on the plot of the game? Did someone or something interfere with the Trinity test to make it even deadlier than before? It's a great twist if that's what happened and I am eager to see how the game continues.

For now however, I am stuck and have a few open problems to solve:

• I have yet to find the third toadstool. I thought it was by the Bubble Boy, but since we use the bubble to go to space I was probably mistaken. I will have to search for it since there's something I missed someplace.
• I do not know what to do with the wight, either to help it or kill it. Could the crypt's skeleton key by the solution to the lock in New Mexico?
• I do not know what to do in space.
• I do not know what to do with the magnetic meteorite.
• I do not know where to find a lizard. It seems most likely to be in New Mexico, but I doubt it given that even if we find a way to reopen the doors, I don't seem to have a path back across the river to the main part of the wabe.

I did manage to get 70 points, but I've reloaded now to before crossing the ferry so I will have to get some of those again.

Time played: 2 hr 15 min
Total time: 7 hr 25 min

Inventory: bag of crumbs, small coin (20p), silver coin, red boot, blue boot, bandage, burial shroud, credit card, wristwatch, birdcage with lemming, broken coconut, and silver axe. (Not all being carried at once.)
Score: 70 of 100

Small Things Come In Good Packages

I was drawn to the Kickstarter campaign for Deadwood 1876 by its terrific artwork and simple, elegant graphic design, so let's talk about that first.

It is a great looking game. It comes packaged (like all of the games in the "dark city" series from Facade Games) in a box designed to look like an old leather bound book with a magnetic lid. All the game components other than the cards are made of wood (no plastic) and beautifully designed, especially the three engraved discs that represent the locations in the game. The artwork on the cards is very well-rendered, in a style that is just cartoony enough to be expressive but without looking silly.

The game's design is also very minimal, which appeals to me as a respite from the current trend towards overproduced Kickstarter games with hundreds of plastic miniatures and overdone, hard to read boards and rulebooks. Finally something simple and (hopefully) easy to play.

Or is it?

The rules and mechanics of the game are simple enough. The game consists of Safe cards, Deadwood cards, and three locations at the center of the table. Each player starts with two face down safe cards in front of them, and there is a stack of three more in the center; Safe cards consist mainly of gold in various denominations, with a few guns and other items sprinkled in.

Players also start with a hand of Deadwood cards that represent items used to perform actions: guns for fighting, horses for movement, and various bits of leatherwork such as hats and holsters for manipulating the cards in various ways. Player pawns are randomly distributed among the three locations (more on this in a moment).

The goal of the game is to be in the location whose occupants collectively have the most gold (depicted on their face down Safe cards) at the end of the game. Once the winning location has been determined, the occupants of that location use their remaining weapon cards to fight it out to see who the final winner is.

Play consists of each player playing one Deadwood card from their hand. A card can be played as a weapon to attack another player, in order to either take one of their safes, or to switch places with another player's pawn or force them to leave your location. Weapons have variable strengths but use dice to determine the outcome of combat, so a lower card isn't necessarily a lost cause. Or, it can be played for another effect such as moving between locations (if there's room, each location is limited to a certain number of player pawns), peeking at face down Safe cards, or drawing extra Deadwood cards from the deck.

After each player has had a turn to play a card, there is a heist round, where players use weapon cards to fight it out for one of the safes in the middle of the table. Then another round of play begins, and so on, until all the safes in the center have been claimed. At that point there is one final round, and then the winning location is determined and the final showdown happens.

It sounds like there's a lot going on, and there is, but there is one critical problem. A key strategy to the game is figuring out who has the high value safes, so you can either steal them or make sure you're at the location with the most gold at the end. It's supposed to be a "game of shifting alliances" where you side with the others in your location to make sure you collectively have the most gold, and then backstab them in the final showdown. The problem is that with only four turns per player before the final showdown, you just don't have enough time for the amount of social deduction or level of strategy that the game calls for.

Because of the amount of bluffing and secret information involved, the game relies on all the players having a roughly equal understanding of the rules and especially the strategy, which makes it very difficult to teach. This is a major problem for a game that, like any "shifting alliances" game, needs a large number of players to be interesting.

On the other hand, I think there is a fun game here somewhere, and the gorgeous design and components make me want to keep trying to make it work.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) Too much social deduction for a board game, or perhaps too much structure for a social deduction game, but the game is beautiful to look at.

• Deadwood 1876 official website
• Deadwood 1876 on Board Game Geek

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Soulcalibur 6 | Review, Release Date, Gameplay, & More...| Pro-GamersArena

Soulcalibur 6 | Review, Gameplay, & more...



Following a six-year absence from the 3D battling scene, Soulcalibur makes a triumphant return in its seventh passage in the principle series. The following in Bandai Namco's line of arcade battling games holds consistent with its extraordinary image of weapon-based battle while sprinkling in simply the appropriate measure of new mechanics. The mix separates it from its predecessors, as well as keeps it aggressive against all others in its class.

SoulCalibur is, at its center, a straightforward game. You just have three assault buttons – flat and vertical assaults and a kick – and in addition a button to block. There's a substantially more prominent accentuation on 3D development in SoulCalibur – dividing is vital, yet in addition position, as a few moves will hit avoiding rivals and Ring Outs are much more incessant in SC than some other battling game and a critical piece of triumph. You have to consider where you are consistently and attempt to make the best course of the move.

The story returns to its foundations, retelling the occasions of the first Soulcalibur, and gives two altogether different however similarly advantageous story modes that tissue out the story of swords and spirits in a way that is more digestible than any other time in recent memory. 

Be that as it may, regardless of anything else, Soulcalibur 6 is super fun game. It's enjoyable to play, amusing to learn, amusing to watch, and even when some dated introduction issues raise their heads, they do almost no to discolor Soulcalibur 6's shine.



Recent Article: Anthem | Review, Gameplay, News & more...


Quick Facts:

• Release Date: October 19, 2018
• Genre: Fighting
• Developer: Project Soul
• Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC

New to the series is a mechanics called Reversal Edge, which puts your character in a position that enables them to assimilate a few hits previously conveying their own strike. This assault starts a stone/paper/scissors-like minigame to choose who bargains the following hit and recoups the energy of the battle. 

At first glance, this may appear as though a good fortune constructed a speculating game with respect to best of a duel of aptitude, however, once you truly delve into it, it opens the entryway for some extremely precarious personality games.

Each character currently additionally has a Soul Charge. Players can fabricate meter via landing assaults, at that point at the expense of a bar of meter, give themselves an interesting buff and access to new intense moves and combos. It's an incredible option that adds distinction between characters. What's more, Soul Charges include a decision for players when spending their meter: Either dump a bar of meter on one immense move that arrangements harm in advance, or utilize a Soul Charge to possibly bargain more harm over a more extended timeframe. 

Whatever is left of Soulcalibur 6's mechanics feel like a refinement of an effectively awesome battle framework. I'm appreciative protect impacts never again cost meter. I cherish that deadly hits are new "super" counters that are fundamentally the same as pound counters in Street Fighter 5. Furthermore, even with all the new mechanics that could entangle Soulcalibur 6, it's as yet one of the most effortless battling game to hop into, begin hammering button and still have an awesome time.

Soulcalibur: ' The Libra Of Soul '

The real attraction is the other story, called 'the Libra of Soul'. Here you make a custom character from a genuinely hearty suite, enabling you to make everything from a normal knight in sparkling shield to some extremely ignorant stuff.

Libra of Souls begins moderate with a story introduced on the whole without voice acting or cutscenes. Be that as it may, following two or three hours, it rapidly wound up one of my most loved story modes I've ever played in a battling game. Libra is testing, its main goal assortment works admirably of keeping the battle new, and it constrained me to investigate movesets in manners I generally wouldn't have. There's likewise an extraordinary feeling of movement on account of the RPG components and adroitly composed weapon overhaul framework that kept me returning. 

Shockingly, that absence of voice acting and those static screens mean the plot can get somewhat dry now and again. Be that as it may, its general account kept me contributed enough to need to see it all the way to the finish, with experiences with different characters including a pleasant dosage of setting to the next story mode, Soul Chronicle.





What is 'Chronicles Of Soul? '

Soul Chronicle is the fundamental story that runs parallel to Libra of Souls. Its completely voice-acted offering is the more customary single player Soulcalibur story encounter including the reviled sword Soul Edge as it pursues the principal trio of Kilik, Maxi, and Xianghua, and their quest for Nightmare. You can likewise choose every individual character and experience a brisk smaller than expected battle that spotlights on what they're doing at a particular period on the course of events. Fundamentally, it takes the individual character accounts of an arcade mode, lays them full scale helpfully on a course of events, and gives you a chance to handle them in any request you need. It's an extraordinary expansion and ties the character program together in an exceptionally strong manner.


The Verdict.

In spite of some minor issues, the spirit of Soulcalibur 6 is strong to the point that it feels like a genuine continuation of SoulCalibur 2, in a way that none of the others oversaw. The new Reversal Edge and Soul Charge mechanics include new layers of technique and mind games while the one-two punch of Libra of Soul and Soul Chronicle will give a long time of phenomenal single-player content. Despite that Soulcalibur 6 is only straight up a good time for players of any expertise level.

That's all about for Soulcalibur 6 for now, but as soon as Pro-GamersArena get some new info, we will let you know, till then keep loving and sharing, And be in touch with "Pro-GamersArena", "THE PRO-BROS ARENA"

Missed Classic 81: The Growing Pains Of Adrian Mole (1987)

By Ilmari

Let the year 2020 begin!

I considered saving my take on this game as an April's Fool post. I would have pulled a trick on you readers and published my previous Adrian Mole -post second time, with just some necessary modifications. It would have been a faithful reflection of my own feeling of dejavu, after playing this game, and reading the book the game is based upon, and watching the TV series based upon the same book.

To start with the book - well, it's a bit of rehash. Sure, the historical events have progressed somewhat - instead of Charles and Diana wedding, it's all about Falkland wars - but otherwise, nothing of real relevance in the main character dynamics has changed. Adrian is still in love with Pandora, manages to bungle their relationship and then in a couple of pages they are back together. The Mole family is again in a shambles, because the escapades of Mr. and Mrs. Mole in the previous book result in birth of two babies with uncertain parentage. This time the roles are reversed - it is Adrian's dad who moves away, while his mother has to be the single parent with insufficient economic means.

Adrian is again an insufferable person, and his constant moaning for sex is just pathetic - especially as his main motive is his spotty back, which would, he assumes, greatly benefit from a proper release of hormones. The most cringeworthy episode in Adrian's life is the last, which coincidentally is also the most original. It all begins rather innocently, when Adrian writes a poem on the wall of school bathroom, is immediately recognised as the author and suspended from the school. During his suspension, he starts to spend time with the local gang - because he thinks it is a good expression of his existential nihilism. Pandora doesn't like this turn of events and leaves him (booooring) - and Adrian decides to run away and see the world. When he eventually returns home, he is apparently taken over by depression, although you are never sure whether Adrian is really disturbed or whether this is just another attempt to follow existential nihilism to its final conclusion.

Once again, the TV series manages to make the best of what the book has to offer, and the only criticism I can think of is that in the first few episodes the camera occasionally pans disturbingly close to the cleavage of young actresses - I get it that they are trying to show Adrian's hormone-induced mindset, but these are minors we are talking about. Despite these leering shots, it is incredible that the TV Adrian is actually quite a likable character. Just take the final episode I just described. It is quite clear in the series that Adrian is truly disturbed by everything that has been happening around him, and while the words of the book Adrian seem just oblivious about all the surrounding family drama, the acting of TV Adrian reveals his tender mindset.

And it's not just drama. The series manages to make throwaway lines of the book into brilliant comedy. The fight of Mrs. Mole with the British bureaucracy in her quest to get social security is a specially delightful scene.

Once again, the game, produced by Level 9 and published by Mosaic Publishing, manages to be the most worthless of all the incarnations of the story. There's really not that much to tell about it, since it's again a retelling of the book in a Choose Your Story -format, and the only major difference from the previous gaming experience was that this time my copy of the game wasn't faulty and I could see all the four sections. Onward to PISSED-rating!

Puzzles and Solvability

The puzzles, if one can really use the word here, are again nothing but simple CYOAs. A particular problem is that it is usually way too easy to pick the correct answer - just try to be as helpful and considerate as possible. The few times the choice is not obvious, it happens to be obtuse.

No matter what your mom says, she wants to have a gift

Score 1.

Interface and Inventory

As far as I see, interface has changed in no way from the simple 1, 2, 3 of the first Adrian Mole. I didn't like the interface then, because of its overt simplicity, and my feelings haven't changed.

Score: 1

Story and Setting

When reading the second book of Adrian Mole series, I noticed that Level 9 had borrowed some events from it to their first game, which just adds up to the feeling of first game being a mess of not so well connected events. The second game, I feel, follows the chronology of the second book more faithfully, which at least adds some kind of coherence to proceedings.

Although the coherence of the plot might raise the score, the unoriginality surely lowers it. While in the first game the additions to the material from the books were farcical, here they are mainly humdrum.

Like this one, where Adrian takes an American visitor to an amusement park

Score: 2

Sound and Graphics

I congratulated the previous Adrian Mole game for being a bit more creative than a regular Level 9 game in describing more the current theme than just any room. In principle the same thing could be said of this game, but somehow I felt that the dog motive in each picture is just droll.

Score: 3.

Environment and Atmosphere

The main fault of the game is that you get higher scores by keeping Adrian away from troubles, while the charm of the original - and even more of the TV series - is that Adrian runs into troubles, no matter how intelligent he imagines himself to be. The outcome of this design choice is that while you seemingly do better in guiding Adrian through life, there's no interesting results to be expected storywise. Of course, this is quite realistic - a childhood with just school work and no silly escapades is not bestseller material - but you'd expect something else from a game trying to entertain the player.

If you want to aim for a high score, you don't want to run away from your parents...

...especially if you don't want to spend the rest of your life with your conservative grandparents.

Score 1.

Dialogue and Acting

I really don't know what I should add to what I said about the previous game, so I'll just bow to the inevitable and quote myself: "Considering that lot of the game's text has been taken directly from Sue Townsend, it cannot be that awful. Then again, I cannot give very high credit for copying someone else's witticism, especially as the text provided by Level 9 doesn't compare well with the text from book."

Score 4.

(1 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 4)/.6 = 12/.6 = 20.

Well, it was a new low for Level 9. Fortunately for myself, I've heard that from this point onward Level 9 games changed radically for the better.

Music From The Lost Realm

Music – the thing we listen to while we drive the car, exercise, walk around, meet with friends, live. Music makes us dance, it keeps us on our toes, it makes us cry and sing along. It enhances and sometimes manipulates our feelings until we feel part of the story being told, or actually until we really feel there, side by side with our favorite heroes.

Video games abide by this rule too – players need to know that the fate of the world depends on what they're going to do next. How we underline their actions, especially with music, has big repercussions on the feelings a game can evoke.

In November we met with Kalle Ylitalo, composer of Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm, to discuss what fans can expect from the new soundtrack. Kalle had already worked on the Oceanhorn: Monster of the Uncharted Seas original soundtrack, alongside Japanese legends such as Nobuo Uematsu and Kenji Ito. When we met, Kalle was taking a small break with Arttu Jauhiainen, flutist, one of the six talented musicians attached to the project.

"One aspect that makes composing for Oceanhorn so pleasant, is that I can concentrate on creating beautiful melodies which often have a hint of Finnish folk music in them," says Ylitalo. "This is something that comes very intuitively for me, so composing music for both the new title and the previous has felt very natural. These melodies have their roots in my early childhood when my mom used to sing a lot of Finnish folk songs to me and my brother."

His involvement in the project has roots in the past: "I've been a friend of Heikki (Repo, Cornfox & Brothers Creative Director and Co-founder) for a long time. Back then, as a teenager, he was already developing games. I don't think I helped him out with the music at that time, but I am now!"

Kalle is currently composing the Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm soundtrack in a new direction. "I feel that the first game was more of a classic adventure, and the soundtrack reflected that. Oceanhorn 2 has more diverse elements, and I've been trying to create musical traditions for each of the cultures in the game." The Pirta theme is a good example of that. There's a shakuhachi flute there, and steam-pipes sounds. "I'm really happy with those tracks because they sound like no existing music culture that I know of," adds Ylitalo. "The role of the real instruments and musicians here is to really make the score come alive. Everyone can hear the difference it makes when a talented professional interprets a melody, compared to a midi-instrument."

Arttu has worked on many different projects, but this is the first game he works on. "I haven't had a chance to play the game yet, but can't wait to try it when the music is implemented, can't be anything other than great!"

Along with Arttu (Flute, Piccolo, Alto Flute), the game's score features Lauri Sallinen (Clarinet, Bass clarinet), Sanna Niemikunnas (Oboe, English horn), Rista Tuura (Violin), Anna Grundström (Cello), and József Hárs (Horn).

"In the first game, there was this flute theme played by the protagonist's father", said Kalle when we asked about how's the main team shaping up. "It was an excellent melody, so I decided to base the main theme on it. That is the only melody in Oceanhorn 2 we have used in multiple tracks. I can't say anything more, or it would be a spoiler!"

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Brave Browser the Best privacy-focused product of 2020

Out of all the privacy-focused products and apps available on the market, Brave has been voted the best. Other winners of Product Hunt's Golden Kitty awards showed that there was a huge interest in privacy-enhancing products and apps such as chats, maps, and other collaboration tools.

An extremely productive year for Brave

Last year has been a pivotal one for the crypto industry, but few companies managed to see the kind of success Brave did. Almost every day of the year has been packed witch action, as the company managed to officially launch its browser, get its Basic Attention Token out, and onboard hundreds of thousands of verified publishers on its rewards platform.

Luckily, the effort Brave has been putting into its product hasn't gone unnoticed.

The company's revolutionary browser has been voted the best privacy-focused product of 2019, for which it received a Golden Kitty award. The awards, hosted by Product Hunt, were given to the most popular products across 23 different product categories.

Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt said:

"Our annual Golden Kitty awards celebrate all the great products that makers have launched throughout the year"

Brave's win is important for the company—with this year seeing the most user votes ever, it's a clear indicator of the browser's rapidly rising popularity.

Privacy and blockchain are the strongest forces in tech right now

If reaching 10 million monthly active users in December was Brave's crown achievement, then the Product Hunt award was the cherry on top.

The recognition Brave got from Product Hunt users shows that a market for privacy-focused apps is thriving. All of the apps and products that got a Golden Kitty award from Product Hunt users focused heavily on data protection. Everything from automatic investment apps and remote collaboration tools to smart home products emphasized their privacy.

AI and machine learning rose as another note-worthy trend, but blockchain seemed to be the most dominating force in app development. Blockchain-based messaging apps and maps were hugely popular with Product Hunt users, who seem to value innovation and security.

For those users, Brave is a perfect platform. The company's research and development team has recently debuted its privacy-preserving distributed VPN, which could potentially bring even more security to the user than its already existing Tor extension.

Brave's effort to revolutionize the advertising industry has also been recognized by some of the biggest names in publishing—major publications such as The Washington Post, The Guardian, NDTV, NPR, and Qz have all joined the platform. Some of the highest-ranking websites in the world, including Wikipedia, WikiHow, Vimeo, Internet Archive, and DuckDuckGo, are also among Brave's 390,000 verified publishers.

Earn Basic Attention Token (BAT) with Brave Web Browser

Try Brave Browser

Get $5 in free BAT to donate to the websites of your choice.