While everyone's getting all excited or angry about all these new GPUs, I'd just like to remind everyone that graphics settings exist - Related to like, is, tabletop, i'd, throne

Rally Point: Mega-mod Terror From The Void finally pushed me into loving Phoenix Point

This is The Rally Point, a regular column where the inimitable Sin Vega delves deep into strategy gaming.

I found Phoenix Point difficult to love. Despite wanting to. I didn't cover its original 2019 release at all, partly preferring to give something else positive coverage instead, and partly suspecting I'd attached hope to it in a way I seldom do. And was overreacting. Perhaps that was a disservice to you, The Reader. We ponder.

Its final form left me ambivalent, and hoping its new modding support might provide the leg up it still needed. Well. It did. Terror From The Void is a major overhaul that touches on just about all the problems I had, while preserving what worked. And after it consumed me for several months, I'm ready to call it the game that Phoenix Point was trying to be.

TFTV rewrites the story to centre on a new strain of the Pandoravirus that reduced the Earth to a wasteland dotted with occasional "havens". With its spread comes "oneiric delirium": a Lovecraftian madness presented on the strategic map as "Void omens". These impose worldwide curse-like restrictions like limited human perception, or a lower soldier-per-mission cap.

Delirium appears directly in tactical missions too, occasionally spawning incorporeal monsters from bodies. And piling up on soldiers exposed to its carrying mist. Low levels are easily mitigated by resting, but otherwise sap the Will Points that serve as both morale and fuel for special abilities. Cyborging or mutating your soldiers provides some optional protection, and investing more levelling juice into their Will Points buys time. You may find that by the time you research the best non-final medicine, you've already stockpiled enough resources to make it practically free... but even that treatment has side effects. It's a hint at what Phoenix Point's overall strategic dynamic should be - not to exterminate but to explore and seek a permanent solution.

Void omens and. Side effects are, candidly, more "gamey" than I like. I'd even say "roguelike-y", an unnecessarily distasteful expression, but that's more true of squads. Many side missions add a randomised twist to the enemy; idiosyncratic habits and specialties of the individual squad you're facing. You might fight scrappy bandits whose accuracy increases if they stick together, say, or New Jeric-holes who go berserk when you kill a high-ranking member. They're generally dispelled when you zap the leader, and a few can be a real pain. But they add a little unpredictability to the still quite limited mission set, and colour in the world a little.

More-common ambush missions discourage the previous strategy of minmaxing to a second dropship with one recruit exploring the globe solo. They double as resource scavenging sites too, incentivising prepared exploration. It's a measured, carrot-over-stick change, rather than the too-common habit of some mods and games to overcorrect for a minority of powergamers. Expansion is still vital and rewarding, but it's a more open question when and how. Allowing for more personal choice than the one obviously best answer.

Complementing this are changes to "Pandoran evolution". Phoenix Point's main villain became stronger over time, but by counter-intuitive means that contradict the premise - Pandorans got stronger the more you defeated them or sterilised their bases. That's all gone now, and most of their progress comes passively - the more of their strongholds remain intact. The faster they field stronger monsters with more varied abilities. They're harder to find too, as radar coverage now makes detection more likely, not certain.

Undiscovered NPC havens now broadcast an open SOS. Rather than quietly dying. Sure, they'll still be out of range sometimes, but now you know who you're letting down, where you should be stronger. The world feels more desperate, actively crying for your help. Since a colony anywhere generates enemy progress, you're naturally pressed to do what the setup implores - to defend the world, to root them out. The lower detection chance makes expansion more complex - a more distributed network plays the odds superior. It also hints, too, at the true path to victory - wiping them out is impossible. You must chase the marked plot missions and press the right research.

Managing their progress now feels more natural than being punished for success. Which only accelerated the tendency for the Pandorans to become near invulnerably-armoured damage sponges. That narrowed the range of viable strategies, and led even some reluctant players to the natural solution of puzzling out the most game-breaking perk combinations, which bluntly cheapened the experience.

TFTV requires the complete DLC set. Some of which was frankly pretty bad. But they're rearranged - their major side plots kick off later, instead of piling up almost immediately. Specific issues aside, the shared problem was that most of that DLC was additive, new weapons mostly countering their own additions rather than hooking together and. Punishing players who didn't know what was coming in advance. The air game in particular is still dissatisfying, but much less demanding. The evil robots and viral attacks are more manageable, and a rejig of vehicles and. Modules make them more useful and cost effective (especially in ambushes). The "Kaos Engines" marketplace of unique weapons is readily available, and sells faction research too. Normally, see, access to the best technology depends on allying with one or two of the bickering factions, or stealing it from their laboratories. Those are still true, but the marketplace offers a third, expensive way. You generally have more viable options and fewer mandatory resource sinks.

The most welcome changes, though, are to the class system. As before, a soldier's starting class grants weapon proficiencies (without which they're generally useless with a weapon), and seven perks to spend Skill Points on. Where the awkward perks formerly led to absurdities like heavies using their giant guns primarily to whack enemies over the head, or the ostensibly melee-oriented Berserker having almost no actual melee advantage, TFVT rebalances and redistributes so well that every class excels at its core designation, and. Dramatically increases the room for variety and personalisation.

My particular bugbear with Heavies is immediately improved by moving the Assault-only "return fire" ability to their easily-gained second level, and multiple damage-reducing options. Instead of a slow, inaccurate waste of space until leveling up enough to reach the silly "war cry" power that took away enemy action points (and still rarely getting to shoot anything), they're now natural tanks who run to the front line and. Counter-attack when a friendly is shot at. Stealth-specialised Infiltrators benefit from UI tweaks and bonus action points from far more effective sneak attacks to get them out of, or further into, trouble. High level snipers can access a huge "fire twice in overwatch" perk.

superior still, everyone gets a line of seven (formerly three, often underwhelming) "personal perks", reflecting their randomised background. Original faction, and guaranteeing access to a bonus weapon proficiency. They can still multiclass too, opening a potential 21 perks before even factoring in bionic and mutant augmentations. It's so much superior.

The infiltrator who can whip out a shotgun to finish off a newly-armourless target. The sniper who can double-fire a heavy cannon (with a 50% bonus to overwatch accuracy thanks to her faction background) at a charging crabman even before multiclassing. I have a Berserker who can, well, berserk - charge in for multiple taser attacks - and. Support with a light sniper rifle when the situation changes. The new perks can make even a single class soldier very capable - boosting raw stats instead is often just as useful. And there are still no prerequisites - you can skip or delay any unwanted perk.

If phrases like "axe medic" or "jetpack priest" aren't enough: it gives room to characterise them. I don't even change their lurid colour choices now, but try to find armour and. Tools that lean into their super speed or morale-sapping counter attacks. There are no doubt overpowered combinations, but between the fairer Pandoran progress and breadth of options. It's no longer necessary to seek them out just to keep up. Their skills generally feel less artificial too, more a product of scrappy post-apocalypse experience than magic and. Meta-knowledge about how many action points an Arthron needs.

There are some partial misfires. Acheron enemies are still too common and cover every map in absurd amounts of mist (which is wildly more demanding graphically than anything else, and plain annoying to see through). And the Revenants don't quite work for me. Dead soldiers can come back as mutants who bestow a special power on their pals, ostensibly one based on your established tactics. For example, my focus on single-shot attacks (apparently?) led to a revenant who halved the damage of all my first attacks on an enemy. It's an effort to realise PP's initial idea that the mutants would respond to your tactics over time, but. The brute force implementation feels too magical for my taste. But hey, it's a meetable challenge, and varies things a little.

Phoenix Point still has its limitations, but Terror From The Void has finally pushed it from mixed feelings to a recommendation. Albeit with a caveat or two based mostly in the need to approach it differently to its peers. It's been a long time since I played an overhaul mod that felt so much like an effective corrective procedure, and more than ever, I hope we get to see a follow-up that builds on its successes and ambitions.

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X-Men Join Dice Throne As Virtual Version Of The Tabletop Game Is Considered

Dice Throne is a tabletop game that utilizes both dice and cards to pit heroes against each other in fast-paced turn-based combat. With additional options to face off in teams or have everyone band together in a cooperative adventure. It's a remarkably quick (and fun!) game to set up and play, making it an ideal choice for folks who don't have hours to devote each week to D&D, Pathfinder. Or any system that similarly lends itself to a long-form adventure.

The Dice Throne team is set to soon release its long-awaited X-Men expansion, injecting more Marvel heroes to fight alongside Dice Throne's largely original cast of characters. This is the second expansion to add licensed characters to the game--Dice Throne added a bunch of non-mutant Marvel characters like Thor and. Black Panther to its roster in a previous add-on. Speaking to Dice Throne co-creator and lead game designer Nate Chatellier and CEO Casey Sershon, I asked how this "Magic: The Gathering meets Yahtzee" game approached adding licensed characters to a game and whether more IPs are being considered.

Pyromancer was one of Dice Throne's first characters.

"When we started Dice Throne. I created this five-year plan," Chatellier told me. "I love long-term planning, and the plan back then was season one, season two. A solo and co-op mode--which ended up being Dice Throne Adventures--and then a Marvel edition. I thought it was a five-year plan, it took six years to do it, but. We checked all the boxes, which I'm still very proud of. When we hit that Marvel edition, that was the end of the road map. It was like, 'Okay, where do we go from here and how do we feel about working with IP?'"

"Long-term. We'll continue to pursue both," Sershon mentioned. "We will be continuing to pursue original IP and licensed IP... Original IP is super cool. It's an open sandbox, but then that's also one of the fun things with working with licensed IP is it steers your vision [and] puts some constraints on it. It lets us narrow in on what is going to make this character feel right, and that opens our minds, all the developers, to [figuring out] what's this new mechanic we can add in to make it feel like [the fantasy of] this character."

"We don't want to be an IP business, like that's all that we do, but. We don't want to be a business that shies away from IP that we love, that we're passionate about that fits our system," Chatellier added. "We're not a business that's trying to just cash grab. We have to feel like we love this, we can do it justice, and it can become part of it. The more we talked about that, then it felt like adding X-Men to this world just made a lot of sense."

Prior to the X-Men, Dice Throne added several Marvel heroes and antiheroes to its roster.

In Dice Throne. You play as your chosen character, rolling six-sided dice on your turn to try and get specific patterns that allow you to use a hero's various abilities. You can also play cards to superior your odds, improve certain skills, or make things worse for opposing players. The Pyromancer is a fairly approachable hero who deals with opponents with explosive fireballs and high-damage flames, for example, while the somewhat complex Huntress commands a sabretooth tiger named Nyra to attack and defend for her, forcing a player to find ways to maintain that bond to boost the hero's capabilities.

"The goal is quick set up. Quick play, and longevity," Chatellier mentioned. "We joke [and] say, 'Dice Throne is the game that you'll actually play,' [but it's only] sort of a joke. [Jordan, you] talked about having 20 games that are coming out [that look interesting], and Dice Throne [stays competitive by] only taking 30 seconds to set up and 30 minutes to play a game, and. Once you read the short core rules of the game, you don't have to read another 20-page rule book. You already know how to play the game, you just learn new heroes."

Though initially designed as a dueling game, Dice Throne can be played with a more story-driven structure with one-shot Missions and. Longer Adventures. "If you like these long campaign-style games, Adventures is great and falls along that audience. Missions plays very similar to Adventures but it's not the long multi-night, multi-week campaign style. It's a single play through one night," Sershon mentioned.

The Outcasts expansion will add more monstrous heroes to Dice Throne.

"With Adventures. I made a game for me," Chatellier noted. "I love the long [story.] I do a lot of legacy games. I love the long, drawn-out thing. My wife and I do regular double dates where we play legacy games. I wanted that. The problem that I realized over time is not everybody has a long-term gaming group and if they do. Maybe not everybody wants that game to be the game that their gaming group plays. [Adventures] is more complex than classic Dice Throne, so even some people who like normal Dice Throne, felt like [it] is a little too complex. There were some things that were strengths to me as a game choice, but were weaknesses to others. With Missions, we swung the pendulum the other direction."

New Marvel-focused Missions that see you fighting against the likes of Mysterio, Mystique, Mister Sinister, and. Hela are coming but the bigger modification (or at least, the one I'm more excited for) is the new heroes. The X-Men expansion adds eight playable characters: Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, Rogue, Gambit, Psylocke, Iceman, and Jean Grey. "We have a massive spreadsheet with all of the Marvel heroes [and] all of the X-Men heroes, and. We evaluated them on tons of different metrics to try to decide which heroes we would choose in our game," Chatellier expressed. "It's not an easy decision, frankly. There are many metrics: how much do we love the hero, how popular is the hero in general, and. Then hero intrigue."

Chatellier described hero intrigue as how distinct a hero's abilities could be when translated into the mechanics of Dice Throne. With nearly 40 characters released or presented, the Dice Throne team needed to make sure they didn't add X-Men who would clash with an established hero's playstyle or any other X-Men. That's why only Miles Morales was added in the previous Marvel expansion and not Miles and Peter Parker, why Logan's Wolverine was included but not X-23. And why Jean Grey's addition meant characters like Professor Xavior and Emma Frost were omitted. Emma Frost made the cut as an NPC that players can encounter during Missions, though.

Several Dice Throne heroes have gotten updates over the years to account for the addition of Missions and Adventures.

"We have a lot of [women in the community] as well, including my daughters. And so I did want some powerful [women] in the game, it was significant to us," Chatellier revealed. "We knew that we were going to do Dice Throne Missions, so we separated the villains so that they could be reserved as villains in Missions rather than playable heroes. A lot of people have asked, 'Why can't we play [as] some of the villains?' That was why. Because we wanted Missions to be a thing. That was it."

"And Nate's just speaking to the character selection and the mechanic design," Sershon added, referring back to the process of who was included in the X-Men expansion and. The back-and-forth of designing each hero. "There's the whole visual design too that the art team had to go through about what era of costume they use--do we make original [designs] versus adhering to what they classically look like. There was just a lot of involvement from Marvel on that and a lot of collaboration between all the teams. In the end, it was a great result though. We're very happy with it."

With this X-Men expansion and the not long ago Kickstarted Outcasts expansion, Dice Throne's roster of playable heroes has nearly reached 40. And apparently, that's not enough. "If we hit a point where we say it's enough, it's because we are done coming up with new, refreshed content and. Frankly, we are nowhere near that," Chatellier noted. "We have, I don't know, 30 plus heroes in the hopper [that are] in various stages of development right now already. We have a great community on Facebook and Discord and other places where they create their own heroes, and. It's clear our fanbase is nowhere near feeling like this is enough heroes. They want more and more, and more. We can't keep up, really."

I still would have preferred Emma Frost over Jean Gray.

Previously the CEO, Chatellier passed the role to Sershon earlier this year to focus on developing various digital projects. Even exploring the possibility of a digital version Dice Throne for players who want to play together virtually. It's still not a foregone conclusion as to whether they'll take the project on (I'm hopeful since I play most tabletop games with friends over Discord), but. In the meantime, Chatellier is still the lead on game design of the physical tabletop game.

"We're eight years in [and our 10-year anniversary] feels a lot closer to us than you might think," Sershon noted. "We're already having the conversations about what it means and what our plans are--with the timelines of tabletop development, two years out is not that far."

You can grab Dice Throne Season 1 or Dice Throne Season 2 for $99 each, Dice Throne Adventures for $80. And Dice Throne Marvel for $109. Preorders for Dice Throne Marvel X-Men and Dice Throne Marvel Adventures are both open--the former is $109 while the latter is $70. Grabbing Season 1, Season 2, Marvel, or Marvel X-Men is all you need to get started; you don't need to own Season 1 to play the subsequent collections.

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While everyone's getting all excited or angry about all these new GPUs, I'd just like to remind everyone that graphics settings exist

Let me start by saying that I have been fascinated by GPUs since the late 1990s. Especially when I bought 3dfx Voodoo 2 12 MB cards to go with my Nvidia Riva TNT. Together, they made Quake 2 (and Quake 3 Arena), into lightning fast, gorgeous looking games. From there, I bought, sold, and tinkered with just about every GPU released by ATI (eventually AMD), Nvidia, and Matrox. I was obsessed with them; I couldn't wait to get the next generation GPU and wring every ounce of speed from it.

Times have changed as I have changed, and. These days, I only consider doing a GPU upgrade once every three to four years. I get a few here and there for testing purposes, but. My main gaming rig will be running with its RTX 4080 Super until at least 2029. And thanks to all the different game performance articles I've been working on in recent times, it may last even longer than that.

Not because I think today's GPUs are just too expensive (which they are) and not because I think the developments in ray tracing. Upscaling and frame generation aren't worth it (I believe they very much are). It's because I've noticed that an awful lot of games coming out lately actually look perfectly fine on relatively low quality settings.

Two such examples are Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and. Avowed. Both suffer from pretty heavy-handed pop-in of shadows and objects at low settings, but the textures, lighting. And overall geometry are still pretty good, even if you drop the quality right down. Both games are perfectly playable like this and it's possible to tweak them further to get a really nice balance between visuals and performance.

Not every game is like this. Of course. Monster Hunter Wilds doesn't look all that great, and like KCD2 and Avowed, there's not a wealth of difference between the lowest and highest setting. However, it doesn't run especially well. In fact, you absolutely need to use upscaling to get any reasonable frame rate, especially on mid-range or lower hardware. Only on high-end gear do things really zip along, but it's not the kind of game to make me want to rush out and upgrade my entire PC.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 | Asus ROG Ally X (17 W mode) | 1080p, Medium preset, FSR Balanced.

For the most part. Though, today's games are surprisingly scalable across a range of PC configurations, far more so than they used to be 20 or 30 years ago. That's partly because the performance bottleneck in games is almost entirely on the GPU, which makes it easier to scale for, but mostly because we've reached a point of diminishing returns in graphics fidelity.

As much of a fan of ray tracing as I am, I'm still more than happy to play games with less accurate lighting. Shadows, and reflections. The latter in KCD2 aren't all that impressive but that's fine, as everything else about the game overrides the wonky, wobbly nature of its reflections. Of course, if it had the option for even more effective reflections, I'd be even happier, but I don't mind because it'll run on a potato.

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Case in point: Indiana Jones and. The Great Circle. This is a game that looks fabulous on any hardware that can run it, from the lowest settings. Right up to the pixel-perfect path-traced maximum quality. However, the PC entry requirements to all of this loveliness are pretty steep: an RX 6600 or RTX 2060 Super. They're the minimum GPU specs and while they're a few years old now, KCD2 will run on a GTX 1060 and still look fine.

So although AMD and Nvidia would just love it if every PC gamer splashed out on a new RX 9070 or RTX 5070 Ti. I just want to remind everyone that graphics settings are there to be explored and played around with. Don't worry about not having multi-frame generation or cutting-edge ray tracing units—start with the lowest preset and work your way up from there. It won't take long to find a balance of looks and speed that you like, and best of all. It's completely free to do so.

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