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The Last Federation by Mischief Maker 04/27/2020, 4:00pm PDT I'm getting seriously hooked on this game. It's the second-best selling game from Arcen, of "AI War" fame. It's like Crusader Kings in space, but you're not one of the kings, more of a Merlin the Magician figure using your powers to manipulate the warring factions of the solar system into forming a lasting peaceful union. They're playing a fully-fledged and super complex 4X, you're popping in here and there to lend assistance or cause sabotage to prevent any of them from becoming a dominant power and wiping the rest out. I love how each of the factions really does have its own different personality and way of doing business with you politically. It generates lots of "stories" like a good 4X game. Of particular interest to me is Last Federation's weird combat system. It's a turn-based arena shmup. You move by dragging a path in front of your ship that it will traverse over the next 5 seconds, then selecting what weapon will fire and what aiming priority. Rinse and repeat in 5 second increments. The twist is while your ship uses direct-aim weaponry, enemy ships fire in various danmaku patterns, from fountain sprays to X-shapes to L-curves and so on, forcing the player to maneuver through kaleidoscopic madness to keep yourself in firing range of your target without colliding with the thickest parts of the patterns and stripping your shields in moments. However you do have a limited-ammo supply of special powers from a super beam to launching fighters to causing enemy patterns to do friendly fire damage, and activating them also causes a local bullet-cancelling explosion like a shmup bomb. It's surprisingly fun once you get the hang of it. And once you're done with playing peacemaker, the DLCs add alternate victory methods, including one where you create your own faction and have the goal of wiping the rest out.

The Last Federation by Mischief Maker 04/27/2020, 4:00pm PDT     Also: by Mischief Maker 04/27/2020, 4:16pm PDT