We here at Set Side B are about computers, and we’re about games, and we’re about the intersection between the two, which happens by accident to include Northwoods Radio Sleep Baseball, available as individual files, and also through Google and Apple‘s podcast systems.
People have remarked about the powerful soporific effects of having a baseball game playing on the radio when you’re trying to fall asleep at night. But there are several difficulties with using baseball for sleep-producing: there’s not always a game on, when the game’s over there could be any loud thing on afterward, and there’s always the chance something exciting might happen that would rouse you from your repose and briefly cause you to care.
Sleep Baseball solves all of these issues. The games played are not on a radio but on your phone or computer, as audio files. The Sleep Baseball league is entirely fictional, so there is no actual drama. And the announcer is pretty relaxed and low-key, as are all the ads (for fake products and businesses), so you don’t have to worry about sudden bursts of interest.
If you’ve followed Sleep Baseball before, you should know now that they have recorded their third game, and have recorded some new ads. If you had gotten tired of the same game and events between the Big Rapids Timbers and the Cadillac Cars, it might be of interest to you to give the new recordings a try. Sweet dreams!
In addition to the ZX Spectrum, Nintendo mascot Mario, née Jumpman, also turns 40 this year.
I’ve actually seen people claim that Mario is the perfect mascot, like he were destined towards super-stardom. He was nothing of the sort! Only a vaguely ethnic stereotype at first, although purposely a bit ugly in his original incarnation, he’s a working-class kind of guy. It seems prescient now, but it was the 80s at the time of his creation. Who picks a carpenter (his original occupation) to be their hero? Shigeru Miyamoto does. That’s really the secret of Mario’s success: he was created by one of the most successful game designers of all time, as part of his first project.
The New Yorker, which, it’s a fact, publishes humor other than cartoons, has a pretty funny bit of short fiction in tribute to Nintendo’s plumber and his advancing age by Simon Rich, even if it posits a version of Mario who’s a bit seemy, and worries that he’s-a gonna be cancelled. But it ends on a happy note, with Mario finally getting that back surgery he’s been needing for so long. Wait, what? Also he gets scammed by Wario.
The New Yorker is one of those publications that throws up a paywall at times, probably related to how many articles you’ve seen this month, so be warned.
And I know what you’re-a thinking: “How does Super Mario go broke? You collected entire rooms of coins! What happened?” And the answer is-a simple: I trusted a close personal friend to manage-a my money. And I can’t say too much about what happened, because the lawsuit is-a ongoing, but essentially, all those years I thought that I was riding Yoshi, it was the other way around.
Well that certainly is a wholesome activity we all can approve of!
It’s almost a tradition by this point, to take some preexisting game and give it the roguelike treatment. We’ve seen MetroidRL, CastlevaniaRL, MegamanRL, ZeldaRL and others. Those in this list were all made by Slashie, a prolific developer in this sphere.
Well, his most recent experiment in this mode is SpelunkyRL, taking concepts that Spelunkly itself borrowed from roguelikes and borrowing them right back. What the game gains is a strong emphasis on situations and using what’s at hand. You only have five health points, and they don’t heal naturally. Most enemies move only every other turn, but if you attack them they get a counter-attack. You have a gun with six bullets that does high damage, but it’s a good idea to save your shots for when they might be needed.
You can pick up pots, corpses and even stunned enemies, which don’t go into your inventory, but remain in hand and can be thrown at attackers. Instead of food, there’s a “DooM” counter to keep you moving. There are also altars for sacrificing enemies to Kali, which work in a NetHack/ADOM kind of style. And there’s even some atmospheric music and sound effects so you don’t have to smack bats and snakes in silence.
It is an interesting thing to play around with, and on subsequent games you can start with alternate character classes Rogue (extra health and bow) or Tourist (bad at fighting but has a camera and 2000-gold line of credit). It will be a reasonably entertaining use of your time, I’d say.
Shadow Warrior has come a long way since its original release in the 90’s, and then a reboot in the 2010’s. Violent, over-the-top, and crude, are some of the words you could describe the series. When studio Flying Wild Hog took over development, we saw games that attempted to mirror the FPS at the time. Shadow Warrior 2 felt like an extension of the looter shooter aspect of Borderlands and for me was an underrated hit. Now with Shadow Warrior 3 we have a great, albeit not that memorable third game in the trilogy.
Wang Chung
Our story finds the infamous loudmouth Lo Wang depressed after freeing a dragon at the end of the second game that has led to the apocalypse. Without any other option, he must team up with his nemesis Zilla to make one last play at saving the earth, and making as many references, “wang” jokes, and cursing as possible.
Right off the bat, there is good and bad news about Shadow Warrior 3. With this iteration, the developers clearly have been playing Doom Eternal and studied the idea of “push forward” combat. Wang is as agile as ever with the ability to dash, wall-run, and double jump around arenas. There is only one ammo type and whatever gun you are currently holding will get pickups. Shooting enemies will make them drop health, using your katana to kill them will make them drop ammo. You can also use your chi blast to send enemies into obstacles.
The idea of turning combat encounters into playgrounds of death has been made fully realized in Shadow Warrior 3. There are always explosive barrels ready to be shot at to cause area damage. Many areas feature environmental hazards like buzzsaws that can be turned on to deliver quick kills to even the strongest of enemies.
Like Doom, you can perform glory kills on enemies to instantly kill them, but there are two differences. Your ability to finish off enemies must be charged up by collecting orbs off other enemies, and there are three tiers of charge that correspond to the different enemy types. When you finish off a larger enemy, you get the same cutscene each time and get a limited-time exclusive weapon that you can use to turn the tide of combat. The gunplay in Shadow Warrior 3 is on point, with every weapon sounding meaty, delivering all manner of death, and can be upgraded using upgrade orbs found or unlocked by completing challenges.
This all sounds great and would put Shadow Warrior 3 on equal footing with some of the better FPS released in the last few years, however, there are a few things missing that could be a dealbreaker.
Sliced Away Systems
One of the major aspects that made Shadow Warrior 2 so different was the integration of looter-shooter aspects from games like Borderlands, and it turned the game into an almost FPS Action RPG. I found it compelling, not without some missteps in terms of itemization, but something I wanted to see the developers iterate on. Unfortunately, all those systems have been removed from Shadow Warrior 3 and the game feels more in line with the first game.
Gone are the variety of weapons, larger and more open areas, multiple upgrade routes, and quests. Instead, you’re going to get a linear 5–8-hour long game. Don’t get me wrong, the gunplay here is fantastic with a lot of entertaining arenas, but it comes at the removal of so many systems. If you didn’t like Shadow Warrior 2 for being filled with too many elements, then you’re going to enjoy this one.
One thing that is clearly different is the writing and may leave old and new fans a bit polarized.
#writing
One of the common criticisms of Shadow Warrior as a brand has been its depiction of Asian stereotypes and the low-brow humor, with of course the main character being named “Lo Wang.” For the third game, the developers are trying to square that circle by trying to keep the humor and remove the stereotypes. To wit, they have replaced the voice actor of the previous games with Mike Moh and the writing has been cleaned up of some of the lower hanging jokes from previous games.
Mike does a good job, but the updated writing I feel fails him. Instead of finding new jokes, the game really leans into toilet humor and dated references a lot more than I remember from Shadow Warrior 2. The quips Lo makes during combat get recycled fast. The game does have its heartwarming moments, but if you are offended/annoyed by toilet humor, you’re not going to like this game. Part of the problem is that there are fewer characters for Lo to interact with this time around, so the idea of having a “Dante-like” protagonist is lost when most of Lo’s conversations are with himself.
Shadow Dancing
Shadow Warrior 3 is an FPS that works with great gunplay, but I feel that this is a game that doesn’t do enough to stand out from the crowd and may be largely forgotten by the end of the year. You’re not going to be playing this one for a sprawling multi-hour epic, but a bite-sized thrill ride of guns, gore, profanity, and slashing. While not as ambitious as 2, Shadow Warrior 3 is a great weekend game for those looking to get their Doom Eternal fix with a more vocal hero.
This was played with a press key provided by the developer.
Owner of Game Wisdom with more than a decade of experience writing and talking about game design and the industry. I’m also the author of the “Game Design Deep Dive” series and “20 Essential Games to Study”
