Nostalgia for Sudden Strike

As usual, it was in the evening… I was scrolling through the list of my games on Steam and came across Sudden Strike. It came to me along with the fourth game in the series, which I bought on pre-order. And nostalgia came over me. For the first time this game came into my hands in a “wild” Russian localization called “Confrontation 3” (I still don’t know why this is) in 2004 or 2005. After the complex and overloaded strategies from Paradox, the game was something simpler and more understandable for a preschool child. And as I remember now, I was drawn in then, and the first Crusader Kings waited for its moment for quite a long time. And now, in 2019, I decided to play the game from 2000.

==What’s wrong with it??==

Yes, that’s all! Sudden Strike and Fireglow did not gain worldwide fame either in strategy circles, or, especially, throughout the world, as happened with Creative Assembly and Paradox Interactive. However, in my opinion, the game turned out to be very good for its time.

When talking about strategies in the world https://metaspinscasino.co.uk/withdrawal/ of computer games, everyone immediately thinks of Sid Meier’s Civilization, Total War from Creative Assembly, EU4 or HOI4 from Paradox. All of them belong to a fairly large genre of global strategies. Politics, trade, economics, development, war are an integral part of such games. In Sudden Strike there is only war. World War II. And the developers replaced everything else with other mechanics, which makes it unique and sets it apart from the huge list of games in the genre.

Sudden Strike features three campaigns: for the USSR, for the Allies and for the Reich. There are 10 missions in the Soviet campaign, 12 in the other two. The player controls the operation: having a limited number of troops (you can’t count on reinforcements), you must complete all mission objectives. Most often this is the capture or defense of important strategic objects. And how you will do this is entirely your concern: you can go through with a minimum of losses, carefully look for enemies as an infantryman and destroy them from afar with fire from all weapons, or you can throw everyone into the attack and lose half of the fighters, if not more.

The decision is up to the player – you will not be convicted, you will not be sent to court, but you will not be given the Order of the Red Banner (Iron Cross or Order of the Bath) either. It is the mechanics added instead of trade, politics and other things that give the player the opportunity to choose. The task is to occupy the opposite bank? We will break through the only bridge, if it is not blown up, and occupy the other side of the river. What if they blow it up?? Well, if you have soldiers from the construction battalion, they will restore the crossing. What if they are destroyed?? We will use large weapons – tanks and cannons, if we have them – and fire at the enemy preemptively. You can also build a pontoon bridge using the same construction battalion and go to the enemy’s flank.

Eventually you will reach your goal. But remember, the more enemy soldiers are destroyed and the fewer people you lose, the more points you will be awarded for the mission. Yes, there is still a system for evaluating your actions, but it is more aesthetic and motivating than something more worthwhile.

==Well, what if there is something more serious than a bridge on my way, and I only have infantry?==

Well, that means somewhere around the corner, in the bushes, someone miraculously left a piano. Sorry, no joke. If you only have infantry, you can be sure that in the “fog of war” there is a cannon, then suddenly you will find a lonely supply vehicle with a crew or a truck with a driver. In perfect condition. And then you can fire at the tank from a cannon. And if you shoot carefully, you can knock it out, shoot the crew who got out to repair the car, repair it with the help of a supply vehicle, put your infantrymen in it (yes, even officers here know how to drive a tank and shoot from it) and continue moving towards the goal.

Much to the disappointment of many, the game is indeed scripted inside and out. The appearance of your unit in a certain place on the map makes the AI ​​want to maneuver in a given direction. And nothing will stop him. And of course, the very presence of “grand pianos” in the form of guns, trucks, and tanks arranged in turn raises many questions. But for the sake of pleasant memories, you can forgive the graphics of the last century, and the scripts, and the absurdity of the placement of units.

Nintendo 3DS – Fire Emblem Fates

I decided to write about this game for many reasons: firstly, in my previous blogs I was asked to talk about how I feel about Fire Emblem, secondly, there was a proposal to expand the article about suitable tactical games and, thirdly, this is simply a good game on pocket consoles, which became a kind of result of all the experience that the developers of the series have accumulated. Thus, we kill a school of birds with one machine-gun burst.

To date, Fire Emblem Fates is the last full-fledged tactical game in the series (not counting an incomprehensible game based on Warriors, a version on mobile and remakes of old games), it was released on 3DS and is one of the best parts, and for good reason.
I bet now you’re expecting me to list story, gameplay, or maybe tactics as the main advantage, but no. I consider the main achievement of the developers to be primarily convenience. When I started playing, I almost had a gaming orgasm from how finely you can customize the gameplay, turning animation on and off, right down to the animation of an individual unit, sounds, camera, as well as all sorts of nuances for oldfags and newfags. The gameplay itself does not force you to wait for half an hour for your turn, the enemy moves quickly and clearly and, it would seem, such a trifle as the announcement of a move lasts about one second, but this is really short compared to similar games. No matter how hard I tried (and my computer opponent tried even harder), I didn’t feel any discomfort while playing, although at some point I specifically tried to find shortcomings here.

The enemy horseman made a serious mistake by attacking our heavy spearman, it looks like he will soon give up his hooves.

But the plot of the game took on all the negativity. The developers made an interesting move and divided the game into three parts, or rather two plus DLC, and in fact the name of the game in the die is not complete, but depends on which part you will play. As the story progresses, we will be given the opportunity to choose sides of the conflict, of which there are two, or to tell everyone to go to hell, after which the Fire Emblem Fates prefix will appear and we can continue our journey.

You ask: “Why is everything so serious, this is a normal branching of the plot?». But in addition to a completely different plot, even the gameplay changes here. The basics, of course, will remain, but the experience you get from playing through varies greatly, so much so that serious gaming portals give a separate rating for each option. And it seems like the idea is good and needs to be supported by an excellent story, but, alas, it didn’t work out. The plot itself and its presentation here are at a rather low level, and the only revelation you will find is perhaps in the title of the DLC. Its essence lies in the fact that the main character finds himself in a difficult situation: two countries are waging a bloody war between themselves and we are part of the ruling family of one of the parties to the conflict. And everything would be fine, but as a result of certain events we find ourselves among our enemies and find out that they are our real family and in fact our hero was kidnapped. Now we have a choice: either we play for the foster family who raised us and treated us well, or we help blood relatives, or we go our own way. This is where all the interesting things end, because no matter what path we choose, we will always have the same goal – ending the war, and even the global scenario will coincide at key points. And this is doubly offensive when you see quite kosher videos that you want to watch again and again, and the music didn’t let us down.

Fighting in the city is https://duckyluckcasino.co.uk/withdrawal/ the most enjoyable: you can set up an ambush here literally on every corner.

We read about the plot and have already decided not to play? Not everything is so bad in our kingdom, or rather in the fort. Yes, yes, the hero will have his own fort, where you can build almost an entire city with shops, baths, a prison and a crowd of evil golems that will guard our settlement. Here you can buy weapons, chat with characters and even romance someone, get married, have children and enlist them in your army. Moreover, by “romance” I meant not only the hero, but also all your companions with other companions. If you want, you can marry almost everyone, but before that you need to raise their relationship to the required level. In general, for lovers of such things, this is a real paradise and expanse.
But enough beating around the bush, many people probably want to know about the main thing, what’s going on with the tactics. One of the most famous tactical series simply cannot be bad. And I’ll immediately spoiler: this particular part is good in terms of tactics and sacred cows will not go under the knife today.
I have already said about convenience, it is beyond praise, the interface provides you with all the necessary information, you can find out about the enemy’s progress by literally pressing one button, you can change the speed of battle and animation. Nothing to complain about.
As for the cards, everything is far from perfect. The terrain seems to be able to influence the movement and increase the stats of the characters, but in reality it only interferes or irritates, because it is implemented extremely poorly: the terrain is visually practically indistinguishable from each other and, even if you distinguish one from the other, it is not at all a fact that it will give you an advantage, and if it does, it will be so insignificant that it practically does not affect the battle, so when planning your actions, it is easier to score on most types of surfaces. In addition to everything, dragon veins can be scattered across the map – these are special points that can be used by local Dovahkiin, those who have the blood of dragons and they are needed mainly to change the landscape. Of course, you can use them for your maneuvers, but they are made more as crutches than as a serious tactical solution. The maps themselves are quite boring, but even among them there are nuggets with unique mechanics, mobile platforms and teleports. I didn’t take these features into account and half of your army went to another part of the map, leaving your partners without cover in the face of evil and unfriendly enemies.

To the delight of the LGBT community* there are same-sex relationships.

By the way, about opponents and their ability to resist. Artificial intelligence can see the weaknesses of characters and hit them, unfortunately, this is the only thing the iron brains of our enemies are capable of. He is not trained to cover long-range units and simply showers us with meat or stands and waits until they come within striking distance of him, and if you don’t disturb the standing ones for several turns, they will run to the player themselves. I’m not even talking about teleports and platforms that they are not able to handle. This is not so much the problem with this game, but with the entire series as a whole, and bosses who cannot move and take beatings from ranged classes are the norm.
Having defeated the enemy’s intellect, let’s move on to why the game is not bad as a tactic. All thanks to simply inexhaustible tactical capabilities. The game, like the entire series, is based on the mechanics of rock-paper-scissors, complementing it with a magician.attacks and physical.attacks and defenses against them. In addition, each character has perks or passive abilities that can greatly influence the outcome of the battle, and of course, a combat assistance system.

The combat assistance system is quite an interesting thing. A character standing nearby can help his neighbor in battle and even influence him with his perks, and if something happens, they can occupy one cell together, working as a single squad and adding certain stats to each other. Are you afraid that the magician will prescribe bream for your knight?? Your pristik can join a knight’s squad and increase his magic defense. For each help in battle, the relationship between the characters improves, they can increase the level of relationships and even fall in love with each other. In the fort you can watch the development of their intimate life in the form of dialogues. Quite an elegant and plausible way for the social component, I must say.

A variety of classes that can be upgraded to upgrades once you reach level 10 and flying units round out this list of tactical brilliance. It is very difficult to take into account so many parameters when playing, but if you succeed, enemies will fly off in batches even at serious difficulty levels. However, in this barrel of honey there is a fly in the ointment. The fact is that as you progress through the game, new characters will constantly join you and many of them are either imbas tearing mobs at the British flag, or very low-level ones who need to be pumped up. There will always be outsiders on the team who are bad in everything, and their fate is to sit in the fort and wait for evil to win.
A little should be said about complexity. There are three difficulty levels and three modes, the latter affect what will happen to the character if he is killed: he can die completely, leaves the battle, but does not die, or is reborn on the next turn. Yes, you read correctly, he just stupidly respawns with full HP and, if I’m not mistaken, this feature is present only in this part, so now you can’t even reprimand the developers for not thinking about casual players.
The difficulty level here clearly describes what awaits you in the game, so I warn those who are used to taking the second difficulty out of three, here it is called hard and it is really an ass-crushing hard, at least for beginners who are not yet accustomed to the mechanics and have not figured everything out. And don’t say later that I didn’t warn you.

Our fort. Everything you see can be customized, including various decorations and statues for your loved one.

So what do we have in the end?. I seemed to be throwing lightning bolts of anger left and right, talking about the shortcomings of which there are plenty, but nevertheless I recommended the game for passing. Yes, the game is not ideal, but there is only one ideal and sometimes you need to play something not ideal, but good, and our game fits this definition. It has a place where real tactics will be deployed, turning the complexity up higher, there is a place to grow daikons and cross casual partners. This game is the first game to play if you want to get into the Fire Emblem series, and it’s definitely worth playing through.

Nintendo requires 40 evergreens for the first branch of the passage and 20 bucks for the rest, so the entire game will cost you $80. Actually, why am I writing this, so that when you buy, you understand exactly what you want (just complete the game or see all the plot options) and whether you are willing to pay for it. The passage takes only 30 hours for each part and for complete pleasure I would recommend all three branches.

For those who want to play on an emulator, I inform you that at the moment the game runs with errors and freezes some time after visiting your home or after changing the character class, but it can be solved. You just need to save and reboot after these actions.
www.reddit.com/r/Citra/comments/87p9ia/is_fire_emblem_fates_fully_playable_now/

* The activities of the international LGBT social movement are recognized as extremist and prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation

Nihilist?

Nihilism is a worldview position expressed in the denial of the meaningfulness of human existence and the significance of generally accepted moral and cultural values; non-recognition of any authorities.

It may also have the following varieties:
– a philosophical position that states that existence has no objective meaning, reason, truth or value;
– the philosophical position according to which objects consisting of parts do not exist;
– a philosophical theory according to which the existence of objects in reality is not necessary;
– denial of knowledge;
– the idea that nothing is moral or immoral.

Bodily characteristics (restraint and tension) and characteristics such as constant smiling, dismissive, ironic and defiant behavior are remnants of very strong defense mechanisms in the past that have become separated from their original situations and turned into permanent character traits. They manifest themselves as “character neurosis”, one of the reasons for which is the action of the defense mechanism – nihilism.
“Character neurosis” is a type of neurosis in which a defensive conflict is expressed in individual character traits, modes of behavior, etc.e. in the pathological organization of personality as a whole.

I’m interested: nihilism is a https://river-belle-casino.uk/mobile-app/ pathology?
If yes, what kind: physical, social?
If not, why not??
And maybe there are some bloggers who share the philosophy of nihilism?
Any interesting stories?

I will not open a new continent if I say that the state needs a brainless crowd in order for it, the state, to live comfortably; and nihilists, I think, for the most part are nonconformists => they represent some kind of threat to anything. Starting from the calmness of other people and ending with something especially epic (you can think of it yourself).

In turn, as a nihilist with quite a bit of experience, I think that nihilism is normal (I wish I had said something else).
Moreover: nihilism sometimes allows you to look at things more realistically, because, again, this phenomenon also includes cynicism, which is guaranteed to cast doubt on many things in this world.
Of course, I think it’s difficult to deny everything. No, let’s put it this way: deny and argue, because just stupidly denying is just that easy.

The only pity is that many people (judging from my own experience) do not accept dissent at all.
Someone said to love your neighbor – they love.
Someone said that green is in fashion today – they wear.
Someone said that the system that exists now is a necessity, that humanity cannot survive without a state, an economy, connections – that’s how they live.
But those who go against the flow usually encounter many obstacles.
Misunderstanding, contempt, fingers to the temple – all this has already become natural. And it seems to me that this is all because people sometimes do not want to simply look at the issue from a different angle. People don’t want look from a different angle – they more comfortable live as is customary.
This is some kind of narrow-mindedness (no offense to anyone, of course, I say) – you think that only your point of view is correct, and even listen you don’t want anyone who has a different opinion.

In any case, I think there is still room for thought to be developed, and I hope we will develop it together.

– He who is attacked by his time is not yet sufficiently ahead of it or not sufficiently behind it.

No one is forgotten. Nothing is Forgotten – «Following the Tiger’s Tail»

In this section, I continue to highlight films that are little known among most modern players, which have not lost their relevance to this day and, most likely, will never lose it. This time we will talk about a small but remote masterpiece of Japanese cinema.

year: 1945
country: Japan
director: Akira Kurosawa
scenario: Anonymous(!), Akira Kurosawa, Gohei Namiki
operator: Takeo Ito
composer: Tadashi Hattori
artist: Katsuo Kubo
time: 59 min.
Starring: Denjir? ?k?chi, Susumu Fujita, Kenichi Enomoto, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura, Akitake Kono, Yoshio Kosugi, Hanshiro Iwai, Dekao Yoko, Yasu Hisamatsu..

Japan. 1185. The arrogant https://magical-casino.co.uk/withdrawal/ Hacks are broken at sea. Their conqueror Minomoto Yoshitsune must return to the capital after his valiant exploits. But Minomoto Yerimoto, known for his suspicion, believed the slander of the vassal Cinnabar and decided to kill Yoshitsune, his younger brother. Outlawed throughout Japan, Yoshitsune and six of his loyal vassals, disguised as monks, make their way to the north of the Fujiwara Kidihiro province. Approaching the hostile outpost of Ataka, they decided to cross the pass..

Seven people. One conductor. And an enemy outpost is on the way. The film is as short as haiku. Introduction – introduction to the characters. Climax – passing the outpost. The denouement is a chain of people “following the tail of the tiger”.

The beginning surprises us first of all with the extraordinary facial expressions of the porter, who grimaces like a person participating in a pantomime. And also by strict framing. The black and white color scheme does not interfere at all.

Climax is a masterful psychological duel. A duel when a twitching facial muscle can reveal you. And the porter constantly emphasizes what is happening with the expression of his face. The tension will not let you go throughout the entire fight – it is so amazingly constructed.

Denouement The tension has subsided and we are catching our breath together with the members of the small detachment. Let’s go with them and feel how their the song echoes in our hearts. The screen goes blank. I can’t believe that the pass has been crossed and we have parted with our companions.

Nostalgia-Stream by Fen. Lost Heaven of Mafia. [OFFLINE, recording inside]

Aaaand, hello everyone! Almost since mid-December I have been tormented by a desire that will come true tonight! I will broadcast Mafeya!(those who remember my FIRST broadcast will understand that this is all for a reason)

Broadcast format: not very adequate passage of the mode of free running around the city, accompanied by memories and some parallel nostalgic nonsense. You shouldn’t expect any crazy ACTION, I warn you right away. Although there will definitely be CHASES and SHOOTINGS.

Co-host: DES13, aka Vladimir Ivanov.

The video is being uploaded and will https://horseshoecasino.co.uk/withdrawal/ be processed later, so don’t panic in the comments.

PS: Today or tomorrow there will be the beginning of a story about my personal gang of orcs. Then, as I paint further, I’ll add more, but it’s important to start already :3

PPS: If the broadcast is great, then during the holidays I will stream the lion’s share of games, which essentially instilled in me a love for games and shaped, so to speak, my gaming preferences (Fallout 2, Insane, Freelancer and something else I need to remember)

Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven

Best comments

I’m not sure about this joke, it didn’t work out. Produce in a race without rules! I. Take a “Bolt” car (any). II. Go straight to Salieri, then to Ralph, then to Lucas, to Yellow Pete and finally to Sarah. III. Stand near her house for about three minutes, she will tell the police on the radio that Tom wants to work as a police officer. The policeman will say "OK". IV. Go to the first policeman you come across, talk to him, shoot him! V. Lose your ponytail in 2 minutes! VI.Drive up to Sarah again and wait near the house for a minute. VII. Go to the ship that was in the mission "Happy Birthday"!"(he won’t be there). VIII. Turn left and run 100 meters. IX. Wait 15 minutes. X. Enjoy the sight of sex at the port. Sara and Luigi will have sex for 25 minutes.

You need to jump off the middle of the Giuliani Bridge at exactly 12 o’clock at night in clear weather, while looking strictly northwest. If at this time 23 pigeons fly to your right, it means the direction of the jump was chosen correctly. At this time, below you will be a ship from a mission in which it was necessary to kill an adviser on it while he was making a speech. After landing on the ship, you need to get to the uppermost deck in the cabin where the adviser was located in the main game, and remove the key to the garage from his skeleton in the working quarter, not far from the exit from the city, in the garage is the treasured motorcycle. After returning to the shore, there is no need to rush and go to the garage, you need to wait until morning and get to the garage by truck, if you have waited the required time, the garage will be highlighted on the map and you will understand exactly where to go. The most important catch in completing this mission is that not even all developers know about the presence of this mission in the game, and you only need to act in the order described above, that is, if you counted not 23, but only 22 pigeons, then you will have to start all over again. But for a motorcycle like this it’s worth trying. I was in debt.

Considering that approximately half of the time I spent in the first Mafia (and I completed it either 3 or 4 times in total) I spent in the “Walk” mode – there is definitely something to do there) Although sometimes it’s a stubborn drug addiction, yes.