tuesday treviews

Review of TV Show and Game

== DEEP SPACE NOIN ==

I've just finished season 2 and this is the perfect sequel to TNG, so far.
TNG showed the federation at its best. Meeting new civilizations, showing their idealism, promoting peace and non-interference wherever possible. It shows humanity at it's best, a humanity that has shed most of its horrible tendencies and is even working to bring peace with age old foes like the Klingons and maybe eventually the Romulans.

Deep Space 9 takes these ideals and tests them. A space station doesn't have the luxury of going to a new planet every week. So, they have to deal with the Cardassians all the time. While the federation has a treaty with them, the terms are steep and the Cardassians seem intent to push the boundaries of the treaty all the time. Is it worth keeping a peace if it still causes people to suffer? What are the terms of peace worth? How does the federation deal with its neighbors that hate it?

It's also very serialized. Lots of recurring characters, themes and situations just build on each other. But it never completely gives up standalone episodes either, which I really appreciate. Over the course of the season, it builds up little bits of lore in each episode, but outside of the 2-parters, none of them end with some stupid mystery box or cliffhanger. It really helps draw you in with each story, understanding a little bit more about the delicate balance of power in their part of space.

Captain Sisko, in a recent episode, has a great line that basically sums up the show:
"You look out the window of Starfleet Headquarters and you see paradise. Well, it's easy to be a saint in paradise, but the Maquis do not live in paradise. Out there in the Demilitarized Zone, all the problems haven't been solved yet. Out there, there are no saints — just people."

It's a show that has the same federation ideals for the main cast, but is showing how they have to deal with all the problems out there that *still exist*. Earth might have solved its own internal problems, but there's still powers out there that want war -- issues that are very morally grey with no easy solutions. How can the federation deal with a war without losing its idealism?
It's a darker Star Trek, sure, but so far it's been handled with lots of respect and great characters. And it hasn't turned the federation into a bunch of renegade militarists to do so.

DS9 has also made me better understand my problems with Discovery. Discovery takes a very similar situation, a federation at war, and deals with it completely wrong. Everyone's suddenly a jerk in the federation, willing to do "whatever it takes" to win the war, regardless of the federation's values. It's shockingly grimdark in the worst way. Everyone's ready to murder at the drop of a hat.

So far, it's great! I hope it stays this great all the way to the end.

Here's some stand out episodes so far from season 2:

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Duet_(episode)
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Wire_(episode)
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Cardassians_(episode)
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Whispers_(episode)

Not 2-parter about the Maquis, which was done very well.

== DON'T STARVE TOGETHER ==

I enjoyed this game but I think it doesn't live up to its full potential. It's definitely fun to try to rise to all of the unique seasonal environmental challenges, but it tries to force way too much of its bad combat mechanics on you. Not to mention that it needs to allow a little more time to breathe after seasons like Summer. Also, it needs to do a *much* better job of explaining how mechanics work. I guess trying to work them out *could* be fun, but there's a literal ticking clock. And in multiplayer, you don't get to pause or save, so experimenting is much harder to do.

Basically, the game goes AUTUMN -> WINTER -> SPRING -> SUMMER.

The first Autumn is nice and easy. You explore, food is rather plentiful, you find a good spot to settle, and start trying to build up a base. You have to prepare lots of stuff for winter, after all.

In Winter, your character will freeze and take lots of damage if you venture away from your fire without proper protection. Also, no plants grow and only some animals stay available. Also, the hounds that chase you become ice hounds, which are a lot stronger. This is also where the giants come into play. Late in winter, a giant Deerclops spawns right near you and just starts wrecking your base. This isn't bad by itself, but the only way to make it go away for good is to kill it. And you will have almost no chance to kill it your first winter. But, totally survivable, it goes away after it destroys enough stuff, and if you leave it alone you can just repair and pick up the pieces afterwards. Not too bad.

In Spring, everything thaws and the rains start. This wouldn't be bad if it was easy to understand how rain works. We almost wiped on the 2nd day of Spring from constant rain draining our sanity, with no way to stop it. After managing to barely stabilized, we managed to build umbrellas and everything was fine. We start building up our food and preparing for summer, Spring is actually pretty fine, I have no major problems with it. Nice season that is kind of dangerous but allows recovery from the Deerclops and Winter shortages.

In Summer, another bad mechanic rears its head. Things will randomly catch fire. There is nothing you can do to prevent this outright. We tried building endothermic (cold) fires all over the base to keep things cool -- but apparently those only work for players, not structures. So, unless you get lots of gears (we literally raided the entirety of the world during Spring but weren't able to find any more), someone has to sit in base at all times and put out fires. Not fun, just annoying. Otherwise, keeping cool is challenging but fair, the other new summer unique things are fine, it's not too bad.

And then we get to Autumn again. After dealing with a long summer, your stuff catching fire, almost running out of food (since its too hot to grow things in summer), you're just ready to rebuild, repair, and try some mechanics you didn't have time to try in the mad rush for survival in the first year. I, personally, wanted to play around with beehives and pig houses. But no. The 2nd Autumn for some reason is a "screw you" season, immediately after the "screw you" season of Summer!!!

A giant Bear-badger (Bearger) walks up to your base on the first day, eats all your food, and DOESN'T LEAVE. He just sits there in your base.

This is basically when we decided to quit. Apparently in single-player you can satisfy him with enough honey and he'll go away, but this doesn't work in multi-player. So you have to kill him or just leave.

So we tried to fight, but the combat sucks and we died. I think we were about finished anyways, though.

I would have liked to understand things better and spend year 2 setting up to actually try to FIGHT the giants, but screw it. All the strategies in the wiki just recommend cheesing it down with boring tactics anyways, or some sort of obnoxious kiting thing.

It was fun, but it could have been great with some more care given to some of its mechanics.