May 2025 In Review

 May 2025 has come and gone and with it so has 20 years since I started blogging!  And as is expected with this blog I am woefully behind getting to posting anything of merit to celebrate that 20 year mark.  Worry not dear reader for I am working on something that will be released.... sometime... soon... maybe.  In the interim let's take a look back at May.

The Blog

Blogger stats for April: 41,137 (note: below graph includes some June dates and is missing May dates)

 

In other metrics:

• Posts:
  
• Target: 2 (I've been posting less these days so was honest with myself; post April review and post about 20 years; so 2 posts was the target)
• Posted: 8
• Difference: +6
•  Search Trends
• This past month had some shakeups to some long standing search trends.  Battlefield related search results dropped off the list while some old Once Human and some new New World searches popped in.
• "once human end game" and similiar searches hit the top spot and drove visitors to my completely out of date post: End Game Thoughts on Once Human
• "motherwell wishers coin" lead the pack of unique New World searches and delivered searchers to this post: New World: Obtaining Motherwell Wisher's Coin
• I am sure there is some sort of patch change that brought interest to this unique round shield in the game; which I am not even sure can be obtained anymore even with the guide I posted. 
• "new world wispy spritz" was the next New World related search trend which coincides with the Springtide Bloom event coming back with the recent Season 8 patch.  Searchers were probably disapointed to find my post just complaining about the cost of the crafting recipe... Why New World! Why!?
• And poking around lower in the list of search trends I found "heartless 2012 game" climbing along with "heartless game"; my assumption is searchers first try "heartless game" and are confused when they end up on my blog so they go back and try the 2012 search only to wind up back here.  Oh well!

What I Played

May marks the end of school for my kids and thus our annual beach trip so blogging and gaming were both limited.  I did get some time to play New World Aeternum and shared my thoughts on the start of Season 8 here.

Honestly I am just buying time currently waiting for ARC Raiders to have another beta test OR more hopefully just shadow dropping after June 6th and Summer Games Fest! 

Years Ago

1 Year Ago

In May of 2025 we were all waiting for the "big June announcement" for New World so while waiting for that I was off trying other games.  One of them was Elder Scrolls Online which I picked up after having not played it for over 10 years!

Wayfinder announced it was moving to an "offline" game model which was an unfortunate move.

5 Years Ago

May 2020 featured no blog posts.

10 Years Ago

May of 2015 marked my blog's 10 year anniversary!

15 Years Ago

May of 2010 marked my blog's 5 year mark!

Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers (DotP) made it's way to PC and I suspect the success experienced with the DotP games lead to the eventual creation of Magic the Gathering Arena.

Frozen Synapse also launched in May of 2010 and to this day I still have fond memories of the game.  I especially liked the "publish to YouTube" feature of the game that automated recordings of games for easy publishing. 

20 Years Ago

I started blogging in May of 2005 and I owe y'all a longer exposition on the 20 year milestone, but if you are interested in how it all started you can read all of my posts from May 2005.  Enjoy the step back in time!

 

Frozen Synapse Launch

Just wanted to share some videos now that Frozen Synapse has been officially launched. This is a really well done game with some great "extra features" such as in-game recording and uploading to Youtube.

In this first game I dominate from the start (I'm GREEN in the video). The key to victory here was using cover while my opponent kept sending his guys into the clear. Also note how I ensure each of my guys covers the other once I have a numerical advantage.



More videos to come, but they are failing upload to Youtube for some reason.

Frozen Synapse is Fucking Brilliant

Since my son was born I've tried to cut back on my cussing.  Generally, I reserve using the F bomb in post titles for only momentous occasions (like Spore's DRM debacle).  Today however, I will gladly drop it in praise of Frozen Synapse, a game you need to see to understand.



Frozen Synapse fell into my email box as part of their "buy 1, get 1 free for a friend" campaign.  I had originally became interested in the game in part because of this Rock, Paper, Shotgun post.  Now that I've had some time with the game I have only one thing to say: this game is bloody brilliant. 

The basic premise is that players take turns moving soldiers around a battlefield. The catch is that its simultaneous turn-based: both players make their moves and then let the actions play out at the same time. This allows the game to be played over long periods of time or quickly in succession. Player A can make their move and submit it to the server whether Player B is online or not. Player B is free to return and make their move whenever they are free.

Once both players set their action (known as the planning stage) the outcome is played out. Various game modes determine the win conditions. Some are to destroy the enemy; while other modes focus on rescuing hostages or defending/attacking zones on the map.

As can be seen in the video above, the game is simplistic in it's graphical approach. This allows it to run on almost any set of hardware. My aging laptop that can barely play Torchlight in netbook mode can steam right through a match of Synapse.

My only gripe currently is the poor performance of the central server. However, that is due to over-popularity of the beta. Sometime this week a new server should be in place to help the issue.

This game is brilliant and I recommend it to anyone interested in the video. Oh, and just search Youtube for gameplay videos as beta testers can instantly upload games after they've been completed from the in-game menu. Pretty snazzy stuff.