As a first-time Civilization player, I had no idea what I was walking in to. Civ VI might be the most addictive game I've ever played.

If you've been enjoying almost any type of strategy game on Xbox One, such as Stellaris, Surviving Mars, or even more action-oriented games like XCOM, Halo Wars, or Mutant Year Zero, Civilization VI combines the best of several types of strategy gameplay styles at a pace almost anyone can enjoy.

Here's another game for the gamer dads out there; Civ 6 is now on the Xbox One. A turn based strategy game that you can pause anytime, which makes it perfect to play around toddlers.

Does your kid want cookies or milk or yogurt? No problem. Since it is turn based, you don't even really have to pause the game while you go about fulfilling your duties as a dad.

I'm trying to summon all my willpower right now to stop myself from buying this game. I've already bought Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, at full price, just last week. And I don't normally buy games at full price anymore. In fact, SWJFO is the only video game I bought this year at full price. This one might be too good to pass up though. It will complement XCOM2 nicely as another turn based strategy game in my video game library.

Hmmm... maybe I can get the wife to buy it for me?

Link: Civilization VI Xbox One review: So addictive it should carry a warning label

Tags: #VideoGames

I'm looking forward to playing this game tonight. The reviews for this game are stellar. It is supposedly one of the best western-style RPG adventure games around. I don't know how good it is until I play it, but it sounds promising.

All I've been wanting to play lately is a game similar to Icewind Dale. An RPG adventure game that I can play solo, offline, with a party of heroes and an isometric view turn based combat system. Divinity: Original Sin 2 seems to be a modern take on an old-school RPG game. Like I said, I'm very much looking forward to it.

Side note: My Xbox Game Pass trial is ending soon, so I'm going to be moving on from Wasteland 2 to this game. I still think Wasteland 2 is a good game for old-school RPG fans, but I think it is best to play it on the PC, not on the Xbox One.

Tags: #Videogames #DivinityOriginalSin2

The graphics are kinda outdated, but to be fair, it is a rather old game. The camera is rather annoying to control on the Xbox One. The gameplay is so good though you just forget about the issues with the graphics and camera.

The turn based combat is great! I am a little biased though because turn based combat games are my thing. There is shooting and there is melee action. There is a cover system and an ambush action, similar to the overwatch action in XCOM. The encounters are challenging enough to make you have to think things through, so you have to be more tactical, which makes it fun for me.

The sound is okay. The voice acting and recorded audio conversations are nicely done.

The story is very similar to the early Fallout games, or rather the world or setting in the game is very much similar to early Fallout games. I haven’t played enough to uncover the story so I will not comment on that. Suffice it to say that the story is interesting enough for me to keep playing.

Tags: #Videogames

I was in the second Transfer Window of the current season in Master League. The Sports Director was saying that I should renew some of the contracts of my players to avoid excessive salary demands in the future. Makes sense. So I went ahead and tried renewing their contracts. For some reason, renewing the contracts for some players did not give the option of extending the number of years in their contracts. I thought it was odd, but went ahead with it anyway. I guess I sort of just expected the contract years to automatically extend. Nope, didn't happen. So now I ended up increasing my player's salaries while their contracts would still expire in the same amount of time as before. What a waste of the team's salary budget!

Thankfully when I realized this grave mistake, the game hasn't done any autosaves yet. So I was able to force close the game, then resume from an earlier save point. Lesson learned, or you could say, lesson re-learned; save your game folks!

Tags: #VideoGames #ProEvolutionSoccer2019 #GameLog

I used to play the game in a rush. I was rushing to get the ball to the other side, rushing to pass, rushing to shoot, rushing to clear the ball off the opposing player. All that made my team vulnerable to counter attacks from the opposing team. So after a streak of games where the best I could manage was a draw, I took a step back to evaluate what I was doing wrong. Sort of like investigating an application that is performing poorly, as far as programming goes.

First thing I looked at was, did I have the right players playing for the proper position in my lineup? I mostly had it right, except for a couple mistakes.

• I was playing Giorza as a Left-back when he is actually right footed. So I moved him over the other side to play as a Right-back.
• Now I had to find someone to play the Left-back position. I initially tried a couple of Left-back specific players, but they were all slow and couldn’t really help in defense. Then I found Canning at the bottom of the list. His preferred playing position is Center midfielder, but he was left footed, so when I moved him to the Left-back position, it showed that he could play that position to his fullest potential. So that’s settled.

This is how my formation looks. I run what the game calls a 4-1-3-2 formation, but I like to call it a 4-4-2 diamond formation.

Another thing I did was evaluate the Attacking and Defensive Instructions I have set for the team.

• As mentioned in a previous post, I switched from the “Counter-attack” tactic to the “Possesion Game” tactic. This seems to work better because my two strikers, Goios and Arcas aren’t fast players. They could beat defenders on a well timed pass, but could not hold on to the ball long enough to get a better shot. The switch to “Possesion Game” allowed me to hang on to the ball long enough, that I could actually make better through passes that led to scoring opportunities for both strikers.
• While I didn’t change it, I tried to understand how the “All-out Defense” tactic was supposed to work. This taught me that I should hang back and keep the opposing player in check, until other players got back on defense. This change alone to defending, helped my team avoid conceding goals on counter attacks. Previously I used to rush the opposing player with my Center-back trying to disposes them, which left me vulnerable to the 1-2 pass.

Another change I made was to decrease the number of crosses I played and instead focused on feeding the ball to the center with ground passes. The reason for this change is because Goios and Arcas aren’t particularly strong with their headers. In fact they suck at headers (or I do), either way I could barely score goals off headers from crosses and this was reflected in the monthly performance reports that I was getting from my assistant coach. The only cross I now consider using is the low cross, which is something that both strikers can capitalize on. I only use the low cross if I have either striker one on one against the defender with some space between them.

Lastly, my substitution strategy goes like this.

• At around the 60 minute mark, I move Arcas from his SS position to AMF, then replace Casteldine with Hervey, who has the Super-sub trait/skill. This allowed me to keep the pressure on the opposing defenders with a fresh striker in Hervey. This allowed Arcas to stretch his legs in the AMF position and let’s him use his ball control skills to feed balls to Goios and Hervey, or score goals himself.
• For the other two subs, I bring in Vrany to play the LMF position and for the last sub, I replace whoever is running out of stamina with preferably a defensive minded player.

Looks like this post ended up longer than it was supposed to be so I’ll end here. I am loving PES 2019 on the Xbox One except, for its inability to accept option files that add licensed teams and kits.

Tags: #VideoGames #ProEvolutionSoccer2019 #GameLog