Staying Warm and Defeating the Reaper

Daily Ramble 228: Staying Warm and Defeating the Reaper

Today I take a step back into my DC Rebirth reading. It’s been a while as I focused on Marvel for a while but I jumped back into the Justice League to see how they handle the changes to their line up. With a new Superman and 2 new Lanterns the team definitely need to figure out how to play in the same pool together. Beyond the League, I take a trip into the frigid wastes of Frostpunk and I think I’ve found a neat single player survival game to play around with.

Trying Out Frostpunk

Reading a review by SynCaine over at Hardcore Casual piqued my interest in a game I hadn’t heard of before – Frostpunk. So I had to give it a try…and it was a lot of fun. Sure, I made a bunch of mistakes in my first few hours of play but I just chalk that up to learning.

The whole idea, as far as I know from the bit of play I got in this weekend, is that something has caused an endless winter and has pretty much destroyed society. You are the leader of the last expedition to find a steam generator and you’re tasked with rebuilding civilization in a frigid wasteland.

Even though I played a few hours I think I was still kinda in the tutorial since the missions I was assigned kept showing me new aspects of the game…collect coal to get the generator started, research and build a beacon to draw lost wanderers to the city, dispatch scouts to explore areas looking for resources and people. It’s all pretty cool and enjoyable until I realized I built my medical tent too far from my generator.

You see, in addition to feeding people and gathering resources you gotta keep people warm in the frozen wasteland. The generator does a pretty decent job of that if things are close by. But as you build up your city, you have to expand further away, building streets and connecting things to the generator. That’ll give them power but the further you get from the center, the colder things are. And a medical tent is something that kinda needs some heat. Actually, if it gets too cold, it stops working no matter how many people you have working the building.

So I had to divert my research to study heaters so I could heat up individual buildings. But of course taking time away from critical research so early in the development of my city turned into a huge problem and things spiraled downward fast. In the time it took me to heat my medical tent, 10 people came down with serious illnesses which significantly cut into my resource gathering and production and things did not look good.

Now that I know a bit more about the game I’m sure my next session will be more successful but I will say the tightrope walk of keeping your city alive certainly provides enjoyment.

First Look at Justice League Rebirth

Fear the Reaper by Bryan Hitch, Daniel Henriques and Scott Hanna. Published by DC Comics in 2016.
In the aftermath of Superman’s recent death, the members of the Justice League try to come to grips with his passing while dealing with the latest threat to the world. Some huge bug like creature, calling itself a Reaper, has landed to begin “the harvest”. Trying to deal with people controlled by the Reaper walking to their doom and fighting the beast requires all the League including the new Green Lanterns and the new Superman.

It’s a good battle to see the whole team group up for the first time and they’re pretty formidable when they put their minds to defeating a foe. With large cinematic fight scenes and emotional flashbacks this is a full featured issue that feels a bit short considering it’s covering so many characters. But this is just the introduction to the team, I’m sure future Justice League issues will cover the cast in more detail.

Though it was a quick story I enjoyed it and rate it a B+.