Humble Choice

The Pegasus Expedition: Desperate Humans Wage War with Everything!

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When I pick a game for the monthly Blaugust Reviews Humble Choice, I try to pick something that I wouldn’t normally buy on it’s own or play. I’ve found some great games this way but sometimes I run into games that just don’t click with me. The Pegasus Expedition is one such game available in the January 2025 Humble Choice. I am not a 4X player but every once in a while I’ll give one a shot, just to see if my tastes have changes. What piqued my interest in The Pegasus Expedition was the story. Every other game in this genere that I’ve tried has been a sandbox experience. I tend to go through the tutorial and enjoy that. But once the training wheels come off, I struggle to figure out what to do next. I thought the story would provide some needed direction for me.

The story starts strong, with Earth in a losing war against and extraterrestrial threat, the Colossals. So humanity bands together, as they always do in these situations, to launch an expedition into another galaxy to look for an advantage against the threat at home. You play as the Director of the EU fleet and are the first to arrive in the Pegasus Galaxy. The fleet is immediately attacked by the locals. Because when a foreign ships shows up, unannounced, what else are you going to do? You attack back so that we can all have an excuse to do a combat tutorial.

You aren’t in direct control units in battle directly. You select the formation you want to use and position the battle groups. There’s a few additional options that provide buffs to your units, some of which are free while some consume resources.. Then you have to decide if you how you want to fight the battle. Do you take a neutral stance, do you try to fight with as little needless casualties as possible, or do you want to win at all costs. These options supposedly affect your diplomatic standing in the galaxy but I chose the win at all cost route many times and my standing didn’t go down. Then you watch your little blue dots do battle with the little red dots. Whoever runs out of dots firsts wins!

With the tutorial out of the way we get our first quest. In true human fashion, we’re going to exterminate the locals and take their territory….so Ai take my first system and – it’s on to the building tutorial. Systems contain buildable and habitable worlds that outposts can be built on that generate different resources. Only one outpost can be built on each planet, something I didn’t realize until I tried to build 3 different outposts on a single planet and my outpost kept getting replaced. Habitable planets can support people, and they’re much rarer than buildable planets so systems containing them are a high priority. I was tasked with taking systems from the locals, the Ror, in order to build up resources with the ulitmate goal of taking the Boh system which has their only habitable planet. We’re the good guys!

Every few turns, there are cutscenes to move the story along where you interact with your council of advisors. There seem to be dialogue options that seem like they might branch the story, but they all seemed to lead to pushing the Ror out of their systems.

The story also doesn’t take in to account the game state. I over extended my fleets before I realized that they were very low on health. I couldn’t figure out how to build more units, I don’t recall getting any information on that during the tutorial. I found an option to repair my fleets at a system with a Shipyard but that put my fleets on a 3 turn cool down where they couldn’t defend or attack. Before I knew it, the Ror destroyed my fleets, took all but two of my systems, and I was bleeding resources. My advisors kept commending me on how well we were doing! How my decisive wins have helped us strengthen our position!

I finally figured out how to build more units thanks to the in-game manual, but it was far too late. It also seems like some of them took too long. Some units I tried to build were going to take 5 turns to build, that’s basically forever! I went back to my only system with a shipyward to build some units and recruit some admirals to the cause. I slowly worked my way back into Ror space to retake some systems. By then I reached a point in the story where we encounter the Tamian Empire, who have ruled the Pegusus galaxy for a thousand years. So naturally, the humans hatch a plan to topple the empire. I tried to steer the story with a more diplomatic approach. We were in no state to start a another war, especially with an empire! It seemed to work for a turn or two but eventually I was given no choice but to invade their home planet to – get this – kidnap the Empress. Great plan guys, we’re just going to swoop down, scoop up the Empress, and leave. I’m surprised I got this far, with the sorry state of my military and my economy. But I did manage to get three fleets to their home world and kind of accidentally blew up the planet the empress was on..which lead to the breakup of the Tamian empire. So mission accomplished?

Maybe maybe not…

This is where the tutorial and tool tips end and the real game begins. I tried to play a few more turns but I was so far behind, it was not a fun for long. I couldn’t generate enough resources to build more ships and I couldn’t figure out what was using up my resources every turn. After a while I threw in the towel. I could start over with my new found knowledge but I didn’t want to have to go through the same story beats again. Maybe that’s a downside of a story in this type of game.

I think the tutorial could have explained more about building units but otherwise it was pretty good at onboarding a new player. I liked the story, while it seemed like my choices didn’t matter, I was engaged with it and wanted to know what was going to happen next. The only real complaint I have is that it’s hard to tell what buildings are in which system. I only had a few, and it was still annoying to have to click into each system to see what’s where, especially when looking for a Shipyard to park my wounded fleets at.

I want to reiterate that I am not a 4X player so most of the issues I have with the game are probably on me. The Steam reviews for The Pegasus Expedition are Mostly Positive and praise a story based 4X game that still has some depth to it. If you’re getting this month’s Humble Choice for another game, perhaps Against the Storm, it’s worth checking out!

Crime Bossin’ in Rockay City

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What drew me to pick Crime Boss: Rockay City – First Month Edition for this month’s Blaugust Reviews Humble Choice was the silly name. At first glance, it sounds like the name of a poorly translated JRPG. Even taking off First Month Edition, which refers to the extra DLCs included, it’s generic sounding enough to be anything from a browser game that wants you to annoy your friends with invites, to a mobile game, or a low budget indie game – probably made by one guy. So you can imagine my surprise when I actually clicked on the game and saw (from the trailers at least) what looked like a well polished Rouge-like FPS. And who’s that in the back of the splash screen…is that, Chuck Norris? It Is! In fact, the game features the voice talent and likeness of a whole slew of people you may recognize: Danny Trejo, Chuck Norris, Danny Glover, Vanilla Ice…

Now also imagine my surprise when I went to install it and saw a 90 GB download in my future. If something’s going to take up that much space it better be good or it’s not sticking around long!

I installed Crime Boss at the beginning of the month and played through the tutorial. My initial impressions were: it’s a heist game mixed a hero shooter and a dash of rouge-like. The tutorial was kind of fun, there was a good mix of stealth and gun fights but I had this nagging feeling that it would be better with friends. I started the first mission after the tutorial, spent 15 minutes wandering around looking for the objective, while my AI companions alerted all of the guards and got us all killed…I shelved the game with the thought I’d come back to it after a few days.

But days turned in to weeks and I was staring at the end of the month. Nothing quite motivates like a deadline right?

Jumping back in, I powered through the first mission and figure out how to control my companions so they didn’t wander into the sight line of the guards. I also found the objective, repelling gear to scale the building, fairly quickly. I’m not sure if I ran into a bug my first go round, I thought I thoroughly searched everywhere all while my handler was shouting “Find the bag!” and “They’re sending in reinforcements!” every few seconds over the comms.

That led to breaking in to a bank to steal some very large, very expensive statues, while having a shoot out with the police who kept crawling out of the vents. At one point, I needed to open some bank vaults with a drill and defend the area as it drilled through. Again, I feel like the whole thing would be a lot of fun with friends. To their credit though, the AI companions aim well and stay behind cover more than I do…

I did have one of them die on me. I was close to the extraction point when they went down. I thought it would be too much of a hassle to back track and get them up so I extracted without them. Only then was I informed that if they die, they don’t come back….this is a rouge-like after all!

With the first heist done, there’s actually a bit more of the tutorial to go. This one focusing on the obligatory 2D map that seems to be in every rouge-like – Turf War! See, you’re a Crime Boss and there are other Crime Bosses out there andeveryone wants to be the biggest, baddest, Crime Boss in Rockay City. To do that, you hire soldiers to either attack an opponents territory or defend your own territories. You pick how many soldiers to take with you and then enter a team death match style game mode and see who loses all their soldiers first. I found that sneaking around and flanking the enemy forces was a pretty good tactic and lead to some one man army situations. Once you take a territory, it generates income every day.

The Turf War map also has randomly placed missions for your team to go on. Your team is made up of four bosses (Wait, I thought I was the crime boss here. Maybe they’re lesser bosses.) which have their own unique set of weapons, perks, and equipment. Like I said, if they die during the missions they’re gone for good, so you can hire more. Each team member can go on one mission a day before needing to rest so I ended up with two teams. The more missions you do, the more Heat you generate which makes the police peruse you more aggressively.

The missions seem to range from busting up boxes in warehouses to steal loot, which takes a few minutes, to multi-step heist missions that take considerably longer. There are also some missions that move the story along. I’ve liked every mission type I’ve encountered so far except the pure stealth missions. I’m all for sneaking around, but I don’t like having one random bank employee look at me the wrong way and needing to start over.

At the end of each day, you gain your income from your territories, your Heat decreases, and Sheriff Norris gets a little closer to completing his investigation. There doesn’t seem to be a way to decrease the investigation level or I missed that information some where. When it reaches 100% there’s a final clash with the law as you try to escape the city. I did not escape, and ended up getting killed fairly quickly. So I’m not sure if the story goes on from here or not if you manage to flee.

My entire run lasted 10 in game days, just over 3 hours of play time. At the end of the run you get some stats showing how well you did and some permanent passive buffs. There seems to be enough variety in the missions that another run wouldn’t be too repetitive.

I’ve enjoyed my time with Crime Boss enough to complete a run. Even if that run ended in my death. It’s not a game I would have picked up outside of Humble Choice but it’s different enough from other games I’ve played to make the experience novel. It’s completely over the top, serious to the point of absurdaty, and reminds me of the types of games that I played on the PSP. It’s verified for the Steam Deck so I might just give it a whirl sometime to reminisce.

As a final note, according to the Steam reviews, if you like PayDay 2 you’ll like Crime Boss.

Jack Move Impressions

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Jack Move is the game I picked for this month’s Blaugust Reviews – Humble Choice. There were quite a few games in this month’s Humble Choice that piqued my interest, which hasn’t happened in a long time. What drew me to Jack Move was its cyberpunk setting, pretty pixel art, and a turn-based combat system, all wrapped up in a little RPG.

And I do mean little. How Long to Beat has the game clocked at 6 hours for the main story. Which is fine with me me. At the time of this writing I’m 2.5 hours in, just under the half way mark.

I may even *gasp* finish it! Haven’t done that in a while…

Jack Move takes place in post-apoctolyptic future where the world ended and society collapsed in 1997 due to a solar storm knocking out all electronic and radio signals. Eventually corporations stepped in to restore power and we end up in the classic dystopian cyberpunk future. Complete with hacking decks, slums, corporate overloards, and using random tech terms as slang. That’s terra-floppin’!

You play as Noa Solares, a sassy hacker as she tries to save her estranged father who has been kidnapped by the Monomind corporation because of some research he was working on. She’s assisted remotely by her tactical planner friend Ryder and sometimes her martini drinking, gentleman uncle, who happens to be an ex-corporate spy. It’s a small but fun cast of characters who synergize well together.

Like most turn based RPGs time is split between walking around and engaging with the story and sweet, sweet, turn based combat. The walking part is pretty standard, there are chests to open and side quests to complete. There’s also some tablets lying around with bits of lore on them that help to flesh out the world. So far, the world isn’t all that big so it’s easy to get around without getting lost. There are times when you need to leave town which is where the combat comes in.

Turn based RPGs can get a bit samey after you’ve played a bunch which is why I always appreciate when one tries to switch up the formula. The most unique aspect of Jack Move‘s combat is limiting your party size to a party of one. It’s just Noa up against, so far, two to three enemies. What I like about this is that it forces me to do a couple of things for each combat instance. I need to pay more attention to the turn order so I’m not taking a huge amount of damage from enemies who are attacking one after another. I need to remember which enemies I can either one shot or take out during my turn to force the turn order in my favor. On top of that, I need to remember which enemies are weak to which element, and sometimes switch out my skills mid battle to get an advantage.

The whole single character party also interesting because Noa can play any and all roles throughout combat. Rather than have a dedicated healer/buffer or damage dealer who take their own turns, I find keeping this balanced through a fight with one character to be a lot of fun. You can switch your equipped skills mid battle at the cost of a turn which adds another layer to combat as well. It’s a fun approach and, with the game being short, I don’t think it will wear out it’s welcome before the end.

I like Jack Move, a lot. I think it’s totally worth the price of admission for this month’s Humble Choice. It does everything it sets out to do well and I haven’t run into anything I didn’t like about it in play time so far.

P.S. It also runs great on Steam Deck if that’s something that’s important to you!

Fallout 76 Frustrations – February 2023 Humble Choice

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One of the reason’s I like Humble Choice is getting to try out games I wouldn’t have bought in the first place. I’ve found a couple games this way that, at first glance, didn’t look like my thing but turned out to be really fun. Sometimes those games just don’t click for me. Fallout 76 is one of those games this month.

I tend to reserve judgement on games that the wider internet labels as “bad” until I play them. I’ve found too many that have been fun for me over the years that didn’t appeal to the masses. I figured Fallout 76 would be one of those. I remember there being all sorts of drama around it’s launch 5 years ago and then the game seemed to fade away all together. No one I knew was playing it and I kind of just forgot about it until it appeared in this month’s choice. In the spirit of trying new things I decided to take this one for this month’s Blaugust community review.

Here’s my initial impressions after about 2 hours: If you want to play a Fallout game there are better options. If you want to play a survival game there are better options.If you want to play a multiplayer Fallout game this may be your only option.

I came away frustrated from those 2 hours of gameplay. For one, the game kept crashing on me. It crashed on startup, it crashed during character creation, it crashed to desktop while I was playing. Could it be something with my setup? Sure, but there sure was a lot of crashing going on. It didn’t make for a great experience.

Then there’s the inventory system. For a survival crafting game with a lot of materials and items to manage the inventory is beyond clunky. What I want for a survival game is to see my inventory at a glance and it is very hard to do that when your inventory is text based and in one long list. Not only that but in order to find anything you have to sort between the item category tabs. The keyboard and mouse controls don’t make that real intuitive. I get that a Fallout game needs the Pip-Boy in it but it just takes way to long to do anything in your inventory through that interface.

My hastily constructed base.

The whole game was clearly built for consoles and controllers in mind. The keyboard bindings are super weird without a lot of re-binds and even then they can still be awkward. The controls make the building system particularly clunky to use. Keyboard and mouse have awkward bindings and even with a controller it just feels like it takes forever to do anything. I’m not much of a builder in these games but I usually try to give it my best effort. This time I didn’t even attempt to make my base look nice.

It’s not all bad though. The few quests that I did had that signature Fallout style of writing. The combat feels solid and the exploration is fun. The map is large and it seems like a game with a lot to do if you can get past the awkward controls and interface. I can’t, or more accurately, I don’t want to so I’ll be leaving this one collecting dust in my library.

Is Fallout 76 worth buying this month’s choice for? It’s one of the “big” games this month after all. You can probably guess my answer…In my opinion, it’s not worth buying February’s Humble Choice for and, honestly, it’s not worth playing if you do pick up the bundle this month.

A Look at Blade Assault

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Blade Assault is 2D, action rouge-lite, platformer with an emphasis on action. It’s available in this month’s Humble Choice and it’s the game I’ve taken for a spin for UnwiseOwl’s communal monthly Humble Choice Review.

The first thing that drew me to Blade Assault was the flashy, fast paced combat featured in the trailer. The combat turned out to be just as satisfying as it looked and has kept me playing for five hours now. The main character, Kil, has three weapons to choose from before each run There are three other unique characters to unlock, each with their own weapon, which keeps things fresh between runs. So far, I’ve mainly played Kil but I’ve tried them all. I enjoyed the few run’s I’ve spent with Zett who has a shield and is much tankier than the other characters making things more forgiving.

Each run consists of a series of stages and bosses. The bosses appear to be in the same order every time with only the stages changing layouts between each run. Each stage consists of two waves of enemies to fight and a third wave, usually with stronger enemies, at the end of the stage. This third wave starts to fill up the threat meter depending on how long it takes to finish the wave. Each time the threat meter is filled up, the difficulty level increases and enemies get fun new modifiers to kill you with.

During the stages you’ll find chests to open that contain gear which applies passive bonuses. At the end of every stage, a core can be upgraded which adds different elemental effects to your primary weapon, sub-weapon, and dash. There are also some that provide passive bonuses like damage reduction, sheilds, crit damage and more. There are others that will enhance or add new effects to a characters active skill as well. The gear and cores are what you’ll make your build around each run. With the difficulty always increasing I’ve found there’s a fine balance between increasing your damage to deal with tankier enemies while also managing your damage reduction, health stat, and MP stat along the way.

Of course, with Blade Assault being a rouge-lite, each time you die you’re sent back to the beginning with currency you’ve obtained along the way to purchase permanent upgrades. There are three types of permanent currency that carry over from run to run, coins, chips, and dice. The coins are used for the character upgrade system. This allows you to purchase passive effects that make your character stronger from run to run. As your character levels up there are additional tiers of passive abilities that open up. I was surprised to find that there is one tree for all four characters so you don’t need to level them up individually. The chips are used to level up the passive abilities on your weapons and also purchase drones that provide additional benefits. The dice are used to increase your Friendship level with the various characters you’ll find throughout the world. These allow you to unlock the three additional characters, buy items from vendors at a cheaper cost, and add characters to your base that will provide more effects before each run. I’ve always liked this style of meta progression. It makes each run a learning experience with the added benefit of providing a reward of some sort every time you die.

I’ve been enjoying Blade Assault in short bursts. I’ve only made it as far as the third boss but each attempt only takes 15-20 minutes. This would be the perfect game to play on the Steam Deck but the text is just a bit too small where I’m straining my eyes to read each item’d description. Once I become familiar with all the items by their icons this will be an easy one to boot up on the Deck when I’m short on time.

So, is Blade Assault worth buying December’s Humble Choice for? Not on it’s own, as seems to be the case for most of the games I pick. Greedfall and Wasteland 3 sold me on this month’s choice but Blade Assault is a welcome addition.