Get Guarnateed DA50+ for %domain%

hi there

Get an amaazing Domain Authority score above 50 for your website and
increase sales and visibility in just 30 days
https://www.str8creative.co/product/moz-da-seo-plan/

Service is guaranteed

Regards
Mike
Str8 Creative
support@str8creative.co

re: I need to make a website`s ranks go down

hi

Yes, it is possible, with our service here
https://negativerseo.co/

for further information please email us here
support@negativerseo.co

thanks
Peter

Our most powerful SEO Ultimate Plan

hi there

Getting Top 10 Position in Search Engines is a Must for every Website if
you are really serious to do Online Business. If you@are not in top 10 it
means you are getting o#ly 5% of visitors for that particular keyword.


Please find more information on our plan here:
https://str8creative.co/product/seo-ultimate/


thanks
Moishe
support@str8creative.co

re: Rank top 5 in the Google maps

hi there

Did you know that when someone is looking for a search term on their
phones, the Gmaps listings its what pop up first in the results?

Stop losing all that visibility and let us boost your G listing into the
tops for local terms
https://www.str8creative.co/product/1500-gmaps-citations/

thanks and regards
Mike
support@str8creative.co

Guaranteed Domain Authority 50/100

hi there

Here is how we can do it
https://www.str8creative.co/product/moz-da-seo-plan/

Regards
Mike
Str8 Creative
support@str8creative.co

re: I need to make a website`s ranks go down

hi

Yes, it is possible, with our service here
https://negativerseo.co/

for further information please email us here
support@negativerseo.co

thanks
Peter

re: need unique domains backlinks

hi there

Do you mean that you want 1 backlinks from 1 domain? unique domains links
like this?

yes, we offer that here
https://str8creative.co/product/unique-domains-links/

thanks and regards
Mike
support@str8creative.co

Dragonfly Inspired Holiday Merch

Dragonfly Shirt

Buy Here - Dragonfly Christmas Tree

Did you know that a Dragonfly can fly both inside and out, drift, and make unexpected turns? With its fast dashing developments, the Dragonfly gives off an impression of being a living blaze of light. It is the state bug of Alaska since its flying is suggestive of the dexterous shrubbery pilots' moves. The Dragonfly is likewise an awesome image of progress and self-acknowledgment, bringing a feeling of happiness and daintiness to life.

Christmas Sweatshirt

This extraordinarily hand painted Christmas trinket ball is fastidiously planned with a delightful dragonfly and covered with leaves. This dragonfly knick-knack ball can be a pleasant expansion to your Christmas beautifications particularly on the off chance that you are into the nature topic.

The dragonfly christmas tree shirt represents change, and it has more force in its wings than different creepy crawlies. In the event that you have a companion or relative who has conquered snags, and changed to better themselves, this trimming can be a suggestion to your adored one of how solid you think they are.

There's nothing very like get-together 'round the Christmas tree to design with family. They include handcrafted plans for that valid and arrive in a reusable stockpiling holder for safety's sake. Deck the lobbies with seasonal happiness, and prepare for a Christmas you won't overlook! Bring a fly of shading and shine to your Christmas tree with this basic.

Stunning and loaded with breezy allure, our dimensional dragonflies in our luminous shade makes certain to carry gleam to your vacation tree.

You can utilize this adorable for a vacation or to embellish your place, it's certainly one of a kind and fabulous than others.

Biden Trolls Trump With We Just Did Merch

Here's the place where to purchase the 'we just did 46' hat that has Joe Biden fans inquisitive on Twitter. This is what it implies. There are shirts to purchase as well.

We Just Did 46 Hat Official - https://teechip.com/we-just-did-46-hat-official

The expectation was through the rooftop however the outcome was at last reached on Saturday, November seventh 2020.

Joe Biden has won the US official political decision and will be initiated as the 46th president on Wednesday, January twentieth 2021.

His allies were celebrating and running to online media to share their contemplations over the weekend and many have just communicated their high expectations.

As featured by CNN Politics, he gave a triumph discourse in his old neighborhood of Wilmington, Delaware, in any event, tending to the individuals who didn't cast a ballot him in: "I comprehend the failure today. I've lost multiple times myself. However, presently, how about we give each other a possibility. This is an ideal opportunity to recuperate in America."

For Shirts:

https://hoplix.com/we-just-did-46-shirt https://www.gearbubble.com/we-just-did-46 https://teespring.com/we-just-did-46-hat-official https://viralstyle.com/c/P9nYP1 https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/15935077-we-just-did-46 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/626704104392411647 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/626704104392411769 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/626704104392411803 https://www.pinterest.com/bulawon/we-just-did-46-official-merchandise/ https://trendingshirtsdesign.blogspot.com/2020/11/we-just-did-46-shirt-and-hat-official.html

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Importance of Water Softener in the House

Why Have A Water Softener?

A water softener is a whole-house filtration system that removes hardness-causing calcium and magnesium minerals from your water through a process called ion exchange. A water softener addresses one of the most prevalent and devastating water problems: hard water. Hard water wreaks havoc on the modern home. Scale builds up in your pipes, clogging them and decreasing water pressure. Scale dramatically shortens the lifespan of appliances like dishwashers, coffee makers and ice machines.

Water Softener Benefits

Without a water softener, laundry demands extra detergent to prevent it from looking dingy. Dishes will come out of your dishwasher streaked and stained. Filmy scum builds up on your shower curtains and your soap and shampoo will not lather. Bathing in hard water leaves your skin itchy and dry and your hair lifeless and sticky. The sheer amount of time, energy, and money required to clean up the detrimental side effects of hard water is dizzying. A whole house water softener is the solution to the scourge of water hardness.

Whole House Water System

Did you know that your water can be classified as "hard" if it contains at least 60mg of dissolved calcium and magnesium? In some areas, this number can go as high as 180mg. Defeating the hardness of water is not such a tough challenge but the rewards of it are simply great. You will be needing only one cool device and all those problems with ashy skin, stained dishes and spotty laundry will be gone.

 Sources:

https://thekurandosblog.blogspot.com/2020/11/best-water-treatment-system-brands-for.html
https://teampages.com/teams/1915312-Fleck-5600SXT-Water-Softener--other--team-website

http://jasonwatertestings.mystrikingly.com/blog/fleck-5600sxt-review

Domain Authority 50 for your website - Guaranteed Service

We`ll get your website to have Domain Authority 50 or we`ll refund you every
cent

for only 150 usd, you`ll have DA50 for your website, guaranteed

Order it today:
http://www.str8-creative.co/product/moz-da-seo-plan/

thanks
Alex Peters

re: I`m interested in your offer of Social Signals

hi
ezt-barmolast.htmlnoreply

Glad to hear that, here are the details below

More information here:
http://www.realsocialsignals.co/buy-social-signals/

For the best ranking results, buy Monthly basis Social signals, provided
daily, month after month:
http://www.realsocialsignals.co/custom-social-signals/


Regards
Anthony












http://www.realsocialsignals.co/unsubscribe/


2018-11-9, tr, 19:37 ezt-barmolast.htmlnoreply
<ezt-barmolast.htmlnoreply@blogger.com> raše:
Hi there, Please send me the Social signals offer @that we talked about
over the phone. I`m interested and I want to boost my SEO metrics with this
new SEO method. Thanks again, will wait your reply.

Domain Authority 50 for your website - Guaranteed Service

We`ll get your website to have Domain Authority 50 or we`ll refund you every
cent

for only 150 usd, you`ll have DA50 for your website, guaranteed

Order it today:
http://www.str8-creative.co/product/moz-da-seo-plan/

thanks
Alex Peters

ASOIAF: Rodrik Cassel 40Pt Army

Let's get down to business.

Winter has come.  While there are some people out there that prefer to go maneuver-heavy with Robb or face-smashy with Greatjon Umber, I like going Rodrik Cassel.  The reason why is because his tactics cards are absolutely bonkers and making units Vulnerable just makes a smashy faction even smashier.

First, let's take a look at Rodrik Cassel and see what he offers to our army:

A true soldier.

As you can see, Rodrik is a soldier who has an Order to make the opponent's unit Vulnerable after Attack dice are rolled.  The timing for this is exceptionally important because it's what Sworn Sword Captains have as well and it's considered one of the best 1-point attachments in the game.  Vulnerable is huge for someone like Rodrik because it unlocks his Tactics cards and skyrockets the damage potential of all your units.  Having Vulnerable on something after you charge it would mean you re-roll all hits and your opponent has to essentially re-roll all their successful saves.  It pretty much means the Stark army will obliterate units that have low saves or punch through tougher targets that can normally deflect their blows.  Peeling ranks off enemy units will also keep your units around longer as the enemies' damage potential will decrease.

Let's take a look at Rodrik's tactics cards:

All that martial goodness!

Martial Superiority is one of the best defensive tactics cards in the game.  It triggers off when the enemy unit attacks and that dice rolls less dice AND loses all abilities until the end of the turn.  Now, it isn't as powerful as some of the silences we've been before where it lasts until the end of the round, but this card doesn't need any conditionals like expending condition tokens or anything else.  You cast it, boom, and most of the opponent's plans are foiled.  This card is amazing at stopping something like Gregor + Flayed Men from rolling a unit while you set up for a counter-attack.  To make things even more interesting, if you're going after Rodrik's unit, good luck.  Having Weakened on top of this card pretty much means Rodrik's units going to stay around.  Combat Prowess is a great follow-up card when used with Rodrik's unit or with any unit under the influence of Vulnerable.  What if your opponent rolls poorly and you don't need to spend the Vulnerable token?  Guess like he's being silenced and unable to respond with any defensive tactics cards.  It's really fierce when used on the charge as there are fewer things in the game that interacts with that timing window than when a friendly unit attacks.  Lastly, we have Press the Advantage.  This is another one of those cards that trigger off the attack so you can't use a Sworn Sword Captain's Orders and then play this card because it escapes the window.  What this card does is kick your opponents when they're already down because of the Critical Blows on an already Vulnerable target.  That's why I have taken a unit of Tully Sworn Shields with Rodrik because it makes them one of the tankiest units in the game while giving them the opportunity to do bigger damage than their stats suggest.

Here's the list:

Faction: House Stark
Commander: Rodrik Cassel – Master–at–Arms
Points: 40 (4 Neutral)

Combat Units:
• Stark Sworn Swords (5)
  with Sworn Sword Captain (1)
• House Umber Greataxes (7)
  with Robb Stark – The Young Wolf (3)
• Grey Wind (0)
• House Tully Sworn Shields (7)
  with Rodrik Cassel – Master–at–Arms (0)
• Stark Outriders (7)
  with Brynden Tully – Vanguard Infiltrator (3)

Non-Combat Units:
• Sansa Stark – Little Bird (3)
• Petyr Baelish – Littlefinger (4)

Made with ASOIAFBuilder.com

Let me try and explain some of these choices super quick.  The Stark Sword Swords are simply one of the best offensive units in the game for the cost.  With Stark Fury and 8 dice on a 5-point unit and the ability to make someone Vulnerable, the damage potential for this unit is huge.  Great Axes deal a huge amount of damage and can definitely wreck heavy cavalry if they're already engaged with them.  Robb Stark as an attachment makes them regular infantry speed and gives you the ability to launch yourself out there on a Maneuver trigger on the tactics board.  This makes two units that can do it in the army and that will surprise your opponents a lot!  The fact that Robb (and Bran) come with their Dire Wolves is one of the best things about Starks.  These free wolves not only come with great abilities, but they're a free activation and deploy to be used in battle.  Grey Wind is especially good because he is able to apply Vulnerable onto a unit if already used, or apply it beforehand so it can be consumed using Rodrik's own ability or tactics cards.

I already explained a little bit about the Tully Sworn Shields above, but with Rodrik's tactics cards, this unit becomes a very jack-of-all-trades unit.  It's already super defensive with Shield Wall and 3+ save, but cards like Martial Superiority just takes it over the edge.  While the defensive stats normally lower damage expectations, Press the Advantage and Vulnerable tokens in general greatly increases its damage potential.  As for Stark Outriders, I think they're a great, solid unit at 7 points.  With Brynden Tully however, they can be one of the most annoying units in the game thanks for their great flanking ability and healing on retreat.  A lot of the Stark tactics cards play incredibly well with Outriders as well thanks to their unpredictable damage potential.  Just remember that with 7-point units, you can also decide to trade out the Sworn Shields for a unit of Berserkers if you want some more face-smash.

"And yet you betrayed me.."

As for NCUs, I really like Sansa Stark with Rodrik because of her ability to recycle or tutor for exactly what is needed right then and there.  While we all try and anticipate everything that is going to happen in a game, Sansa offers us extra insurance that if an opponent rolls a 6 for a long ass charge you didn't anticipate and is rolling in with crazy Tactics cards in support, you always have a way to Martial Superiority him into the ground.  For my next NCU, believe it or not, I think Littlefinger is a solid choice for the Starks.  It's just comical that I'm taking both Sansa and Littlefinger in the same list, but his ability to claim Combat/Maneuver that unlocks the secondary capabilities for your Stark tactics cards while still reaping the benefit of other unclaimed zones is amazing.

Try out the list and let me know how you fair!

Wooden Jigsaw Puzzles: A Comparison (Monday Musings 80)

I've decided to write as many posts as possible, and titling it Monday Musings from now on, to insure that I don't "fall behind" lol.

As another hobby to consider (to give your eyes much needed rest from all the blue light of video games) is jigsaw puzzles. I got into puzzles once again as my friend introduced me to the Wentworth wooden puzzles. I was so impressed with these puzzles because of the quality and the satisfying tactile feel when you put the pieces together, that I wanted to order some myself.

Upon visiting Wentworth's online site, my heart sank as the puzzles were rather pricey, though at $50 for a 250-piece puzzle, the cost/time is actually reasonable, as long as you do the puzzle a couple of times. Since I'm very slow, it takes about 2 hours, so if you do the puzzle 2 or 3 times, it's cheaper than going to the movies. So I thought of getting one, but then the shipping charges were astronomical, since it's shipping from the UK. However, I found out later that Wentworth often has free shipping to US! But not realizing that at the time, I decided to see if there are US manufacturers which will have lower shipping costs.

Therefore, I did more research and stumbled upon the ridiculous Stave puzzles (Barbara Bush-endorsed) at average price of $1000 (perhaps even $2000 as some are $15K), so this brand will not be reviewed. I then fell upon the much more affordable and reasonable Architect and Liberty puzzles.

I find that they are all equal to each other, so the puzzle manufacturer that is best for you is based really on your preferences and what you're looking for. I'll outline the differences between the three, in alphabetical order.

Artifact puzzles is the most creative of not just the pictures offered, but the many interesting puzzle shapes. I don't find the tired, drab images of known paintings, and boring, uninspired nature scenes, as compelling as the fantastical pictures including monsters, cartoon characters, and so forth that Artifact offers.

Although Artifact pieces are the most loose fitting of the three, the irregularly irregular pieces are significantly more bizarre and odd than the other brands, and therefore quite compelling. It's interesting to see how these weird pieces fit together, often leading to a lot of "Ah ha" moments. They're coming out with the new Ecru line which offers tighter fitting pieces with no glare design, but it's more costly of course. Further, the designs aren't as whimsical or fantastic as their regular line, so I have a feeling that I'd prefer the regular over the upcoming Ecru. Picture for me tends to be most important.

Artifact's Mechanical Griffin

Artifact tends to have the most whimsy pieces out of the three, meaning pieces that are shaped thematically. So a cat puzzle will have cat-shaped pieces.

The image quality on Artifact and Wentworth is better than Liberty in the sense that the images seem like it's actually painted on the wooden pieces. One of the Liberty puzzle pieces had a small peel, that can be glued, so I don't find this a deal breaker.

If interested in Artifact, I would recommend the Griffin that comes with a clever surprise (spoilers avoided here). 

All the Artifact puzzles I own are so completely different from each other (I have 4!). Other customers also noticed that any time you get a puzzle from Artifact, it's a whole new experience.

As for the Liberty Puzzle, it has the same thickness as Artifact (6.35 mm), but the fit of the pieces are much tighter, so in that sense the pieces are better quality than Artifact's regular line, only marred by the fact that a piece may (or may not) have some peeling (it seems like this would be a rare occurrence), unlike Artifact and Wentworth. 

Liberty does have a lot of whimsy pieces, not as much as the Artifact, but more so than the

Liberty's and Wentworth's An Exuberant Success

Wentworth. The pieces are more redundant than Artifact, tending to be more regularly irregular, rather than the irregularly irregular shapes of Artifact.

The Wentworth is made of considerably thinner wood than Artifact and Liberty, less than half the thickness (3 mm versus 6.35 mm). The thicker wood feels more luxurious, but because the Wentworth pieces are thinner, it's the best fitting of the three. The sensation of putting the pieces together in a satisfying click, so it  has the most pleasant sensory experience out of all three. There are whimsy pieces, but nowhere near as much as Artifact and Liberty, and more regular-shaped pieces than even the Liberty.

Wentworth includes a rather lovely felt bag to hold the pieces within its sturdy box. Sadly, Artifact and Liberty don't.

If you prefer unique pictures, and thicker, peculiar, odd and whimsical pieces, I'd recommend Artifact. If you prefer an equally thick cut with better fit, and you don't mind more regularly irregular shaped pieces, than I'd chose the Liberty. Finally, if you want that tactile, satisfying click feel with nice bag, and don't mind less creative shapes, then Wentworth is the puzzle for you. With these criteria in mind, Artifact is my favorite of the three due to the creativity aspects.

If none of these issues matter to you, I'd recommend ordering the designs that you find the most pleasing, because you can't go wrong with any of these puzzle manufacturers. They all cost around the same price, and Wentworth frequently has sales where shipping is free to the US.

For all three manufacturers, prices are cheaper ordering online at their websites:

Artifact Puzzles
Liberty Puzzles
Wentworth Puzzles

The How of Happiness Review

1500 google maps citations cheap

Rank the google maps top 5 for your money keywords, guaranteed

http://www.str8-creative.io/product/1500-gmaps-citations/

regards,
Str8 Creative

Goblyn Head Press News

   You may or may not know this, but I own a very small game publishing company. How small? Well... so far we have produced exactly three items for sale, and all of those have been released in the past month.

   To date, Goblyn Head has produced a supplement for D&D 5e, and adventure for 5e, and a generic map of a barrow mound that is free to download ("Pay What You Want"). All are available from DriveThruRPG here.

  Come check it out! Zeebs (our mischievous but friendly goblyn mascot) will show you how to go. And if you do pick up something, please leave a review!

SOMA - Two Years Later

It's over two years since we released SOMA, so it's time for another update on how things have been going.

First of all, let's talk about sales. As I've said many times before, sales are not straightforward to count, and the number you come up with is reliant on many different factors. For instance, SOMA was part of the Humble Monthly Bundle, which meant that everybody subscribing to that service was able to download a copy of SOMA. These are not really "sales", so should we count them? It's also worth noting that pricing differs a lot between different sales. A single unit sold at full price means more than one sold when the game is 75% off. I think it's important to think about these things, and remember you can't directly compare the sales of two games.

With all that said, what I'm going to do here is to basically take every single download of the game as a sale. Doing so gives us a total of 650 000 units, a 200 000 units increase since the the same time last year. This is a very good result.

It's interesting to compare how sales have changed across the two years for SOMA. The normal day-to-day income, when there are no discounts or anything, is 33% of what it was the same time last year. However, when the game is at a discount (such as a Steam summer sale), the generated income is about 75% of what similar events generated last year. This means that discount events are extra important this year.

Taken as a whole, the sales that we make from all our games will cover all our expenses every month, and even make us a profit. This is quite amazing. Given that we currently have about 16 people working with us full time, we have a pretty high burn rate, and to still be able to support all that on your ongoing sales is great.

This means that we still have a good buffer from our launch sales. While it will by no means last forever, it gives us peace of mind and lets us take the time we need. While we'll continue to generate income next year too, I'm not so sure it'll be enough to cover all our costs. This is when that initial buffer comes in handy, and will let us continue working on our projects without any monetary worries. To put things in perspective, it is worth noting that most companies start using up their buffer just a few months after release, so we are in no ways in a dire situation right now - quite the opposite!

However, this also makes it very clear that we need to be able to release games at a more regular rate. We were lucky that SOMA was a hit, and that the money is easily able to sustain us for the time we need to complete our next project. Had SOMA been a flop, the situation would have been a lot worse now. That's why we are focusing on becoming a two project studio, and the goal is to be able to release a game every two years. Had we managed to set that up prior to SOMA, we would be in the process of releasing a game right now. Needless to say, it would makes us a lot more financially stable, and able to handle a less successful release. In turn this should allow us to take greater risks, which I think is a key element in being able to create great games.

This leads me to another thing that's been on my mind. A few months back someone asked me: "How do you get people to buy your game?". This is a fairly basic question, but it really made me think. When it comes to sales made during launch, the answer feels quite self-evident. We generate a lot of buzz, there are reviews, let's plays and so on. There are a number of fairly obvious ways that people learn about our game.

But what about the customers that buy our game two years after release - why do they do it? That's a much harder question. I think most of this is via word-of-mouth recommendation. When the right circumstances arise (e.g.: "I feel like playing a game tonight") and when external influence (e.g.: "your friends said they liked our game") is strong enough, that's when a sale happens. I know that Steam and other stores have some forms of discovery tools, but I don't think they play a major factor. What really matters is not a single source, but the slow build-up of good will around a game - eventually this will make a player consider buying it. Discovery tools, such as "you might also like"-adverts, surely help, but they are just part of a much larger process [1].

Because of this, and considering the sheer number of games that are currently being released, I think the best strategy is to focus on unique experiences. You want to create the type of experience that is not only hard to get elsewhere, but also leaves a mark on those who play it. This is now a core philosophy here at Frictional. I guess we sort of always had it unconsciously, but we have now made it official. Our goal is to create games that are more than forgettable escapism. We want people to come out of their experiences feeling changed. A lofty goal? You bet. While it'll be impossible to make sure every single player has this type of experience, it feels like the perfect thing to strive for.

Now I will round of this post with a brief discussion on the status of our current projects.

The first project is in full production, and about 80% of the team is currently working on it. The focus for most of this year has been on creating the first few maps of the game to create a solid vertical slice based on our experiments last year. However, we recently came up with some new avenues that we wanted to explore. The stuff that has come out of this recent detour is feeling really great and I am certain it'll make the game feel very special. All of this came out of what I just discussed: our focus on making games that leaves a mark on the player. I'm not sure we would have gone down this route if we hadn't explicitly stated that goal, which makes me confident it's a really good way of thinking. I'm afraid I can't go into any details on this, other than to say that the project will be horrific in nature. There will be no release this year, but we hope to announce something during the first six months of next year.

As for the other project, that's also going well. We've been a bit delayed due to new tech taking longer than anticipated to develop [2]. The upside of that has been that the game has had  more time in pre-production than any of our previous games. This has been incredibly valuable, as the things we aim to tackle in this game are quite difficult, and allowing it all to brew for a bit has meant many of the basic aspects are clearer for us. This game will be less about direct, visceral horror, and more about the player gaining an understanding of different concepts. This can, as we know from working on SOMA, be quite tricky to get right and requires a slightly different approach than when working on a more direct horror game. Release for this game is quite far off though, so don't expect to hear any concrete details in the near future.

That's it for this update. I'm incredibly excited about the things that we have planned, and I'm very eager to give you all more updates. I also want to thank everybody for the support over the years, and rest assured that while we might not reply to every single mail, tweet, etc. that you send us, we make sure to read every single one!


Notes:
1) For games that are heavily based around online communities, such as a Rocket League, I think things work slightly differently. There is still a word-of-mouth zeitgeist going on, but a lot of it comes from your game become a habit for your players, something that they participate in on a daily basis. This forms a feedback loop that helps drives new buyers, which I think is quite different from how our games work.

2) We are currently working on the fourth iteration of our HPL engine for this game, and due to some of the things we need to be able to do for the game, we've been required to make some major adjustments. These things take time, but luckily we have most of it done now.

Domain Authority 50 for your website - Guaranteed Service

We`ll get your website to have Domain Authority 50 or we`ll refund you every
cent

for only 150 usd, you`ll have DA50 for your website, guaranteed

Order it today:
http://www.str8-creative.co/product/moz-da-seo-plan/

thanks
Alex Peters

Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed: Collapsing Choices

It doesn't make any difference.

         

I pressed ahead and won Matrix Cubed last weekend, because at some point it became clear that if I stopped, I probably wouldn't start again. The game managed to go from seeming like an improvement from its predecessor to "meh" to actively pissing me off. After overcoming the bias I had built against it in the last session, it lost almost all that good will in this one.

     

When I last wrote, the Venusian scientist Leander had agreed to oversee the Matrix Device project. Needing a high-gravity environment, he and the science team departed for a laboratory in the orbit of Jupiter. Meanwhile, my next step was to find a PURGE scientist named Dr. Jerod Malcoln, who had invented an explosive radioactive gas that we need. He was probably at PURGE headquarters on Santa Catalina. SCOTT.DOS, our ship's artificial intelligence, had also identified an electronics scientist on Luna named Dr. Coldor. Buck Rogers gave us a passcode to enter a building in Losangelorg and find an agent named Red Carrin so that he could tell us how to get to Santa Catalina.

      

Buck reminds us of our current tasks.

        

We returned to Losangelorg and poked around the downtown until we found the right building. Carrin was supposed to be in Suite 5403, so we took the elevator to the 54th floor and found his suite. (The game allows you to take the elevator to any floor between 1 and 85, but most of them are just generic hallways with no encounters.) On Carrin's door, we found a note saying that he'd be in the Sparkhouse Cafe on the 85th floor, but this was crossed out and replaced with "Smoking Gun Slots on the 13th floor."

    

The 13th floor had several rooms we could enter and gamble. We tried our luck at "One-card Monte," an unsophisticated game that consists of everyone drawing one card, making a round of bets, and awarding the pot to the person with the highest card. Somehow I won almost $5,000 with my queen of hearts.

       

"War" was too complicated for you fellows, huh?

        

Anyway, the crossed-out part of the note on Carrin's door was a ruse meant to lure unsuspecting victims into an ambush. A panhandler warned us of this after we gave him a few credits. We tripped the ambush anyway because no one ever earned experience for walking away from a fight.

    

After mopping the floor with the robbers, we went to the 85th floor and found Carrin in the cafe. After a brief conversation, he gave us a passcard that would allow us to take his boat from the docks. As we took the elevator back down, I couldn't help but think that in the 25th century, there ought to be some easier way for six people to get to an island twenty-six miles offshore.

      

I'd work for anyone, even the NEO, who could float me to my island dream.

         

We also, of course, pondered what calamity must have occurred to move Santa Catalina closer to the mainland, move it about forty miles north-northwest, enlarge it, and change its shape. 

    

Wilma Deering, Buck Rogers' girlfriend, approached the party as we landed, offering no explanation as to how she got to the island. It's a minor issue, but the phrase "offering no explanation" is going to become a big part of the Matrix Cubed narrative from now on, so we might as well ramp up. She said she'd been scouting the headquarters and had identified two ways inn: smooth talk the receptionist in the lobby and hack the security doors in the maintenance tunnel.

      

One also wonders why a secret island facility belonging to a terrorist organization needs a receptionist.

            

We chose to try the receptionist. Elias, who has the highest skills in persuasion, passed his skill check, and we got in. For a while, we wandered the first floor, listening in on PURGE conversations and meetings. In a conference room, some members were talking about broadcasting a subliminal message using a satellite signal. In another room, a printing press churned out PURGE brochures.

     

Eventually, we came across a PURGE Commander Sooth talking to a subordinate, and they recognized us as infiltrators. An alarm went off, and the game was on. We were attacked by a variety of PURGE forces in most rooms and intersections.

     

The beginning of another PURGE battle.

            

We continued to explore the base, eventually transitioning to a second floor. We rescued Dr. Romney, inventor of the Matrix Device, from a jail cell. We wiped out a squad in a control room and found evidence on a computer that a PURGE team was attacking a Desert Runner radio station near the edge of the desert. In Commander Sooth's office, we found a letter from Sid Refuge, the cyborg, indicating that he'd recovered from his defeat on Venus. A laboratory held evidence that PURGE had been experimenting with subliminal writing. Most important, a logbook described an "anti-personality" virus called Bug Nine created by PURGE engineers.

      

Every time I have to read something in the paper logbook, it feels like a little piece of my soul dies.

           

Finally, we wandered into a room and found Commander Sooth sitting in a chair with a bunch of electrodes stuck to his head. Technicians were transferring his consciousness into a computer, to make him an artificial personality like SCOT.DOS. They finished just as we arrived. After a few more battles, we came across Dr. Malcoln taking orders from Sooth's voice, coming out of a computer. Yet another battle ensued, in which we killed Dr. Malcoln.

     

This would be a good place to mention that battles from this point forward were fought almost entirely with explosives. I'd found enough rocket launchers, plasma-throwers, and grenade launchers during the last session that I didn't have to worry about scrimping. Since enemies all have explosives, too, it would have been irresponsible not to use them.

      

A rocket launcher blasts some technicians.

       

The problem is that you can only use these explosive devices once every two rounds. To operationalize this rule, the game makes the process of equipping the weapon take a full round, and it then un-equips it every time you use it. After combat, you have to remember to re-equip all the items or else you'll waste the first round of your next combat equipping them.

     

Combats soon fell into a predictable rhythm of all my characters blasting the hell out of the enemies in the first round, then mopping up what was left with regular weapons in the second round. In the few major battles in which a substantial number of enemies were left after the first round, I would usually have some characters throw explosive grenades. (You can only use the launcher, which has a much greater range, every two rounds, but you can throw as often as you want.) I still used chaff grenades occasionally, when facing a large number of enemies (particularly robots) with their own explosives, but for the most part the power of the explosive weapons made the game feel a lot less tactical, much like having eight or ten "Fireball" spells memorized ruins things in the Dungeons and Dragons Gold Box titles.
     
Anyway, we fought our way into a computer room, where Theta Sigma used his "Programming" skill to access the Bug Nine virus and send it after the newly-created SOOTH.DOP, killing the artificial intelligence in its first hour. (Given all the body parts in the rooms behind us, I don't know why this felt particularly mean, but it did.) With Sooth dead, we retrieved Dr. Malcon's notes about Efanite, the explosive gas needed for the Matrix Device.
   

Sooth is unfortunately wrong about both things.

        

This episode is the first of another trend that dogged me through the rest of the game: progress gated by skill checks. I don't know for sure that there's no way to finish this mission without someone with sufficient "Programming" skill, but I do know that I couldn't find one. I had to reload several times before Theta Sigma passed the necessary checks. Later in the game, I had even worse problems. Not only do many episodes require checks, many of the thresholds are quite high. Given all the skills that exist in the game, you'd have to have some prior knowledge that some of them were used at all before you would bother investing points into them.

    

The game makes the whole process difficult in a few other ways, too. First, you can only learn one new skill per level-up. So if you started the game with only, say, five skills, the most you'll ever get in Matrix is maybe ten, and you certainly wouldn't have time to build the last few to any reasonable level. Second, you can't choose skills for new characters; the game does that for you. So if you find yourself lacking in "Programming," you can't whip up a new temporary character with a massive focus in "Programming" to save the day. We'll see later moments were this issue got a lot worse.

      

A lot worse.

         

As we left the facility and took the boat back to the mainland, I decided to comprehensively explore the Losangelorg metro area to see if the PURGE raid in the Desert Runners' radio station was actually something we could intercept. I also wanted to see if there were any other encounters on the outdoor map. It turns out that there weren't many, but a slew of random encounters with various  "gennies" probably added one to our final levels by the end of the game.

     

This is feeling a lot like a Fallout game.

       

We did eventually find the radio station, run by a Desert Runner named "Bad Dog." PURGE forces had thrown him out and were using his equipment to broadcast their anti-gennie propaganda. Once again, I have to emphasize that I don't know why we're against this. We just killed a few hundred gennies in the desert right outside the radio station door. Who is pro-giant scorpion? But we still defeated the PURGE forces and yanked their agent off the air.

       

This is feeling even more like a Fallout game.

              

We returned to Salvation, where Buck Rogers thanked us and said he'd send the Efanite files to Leander. That left our only mission to find Dr. Coldor on Luna. The Moon, if I haven't already covered it, is actually not a part of the New Earth Organization, but rather an independent colony with strict isolationist tendencies. To get there, I had to launch my ship, fly one square away from Earth, fly one square back to Earth, and choose to land on either Tycho or Copernicus. (Incidentally, half the time that you're on approach to a planet like this, the solar system suddenly rotates out from under you, putting your destination an extra few squares in front of you or even behind you.) It turns out that Tycho is just a menu town--we stopped in just long enough to get thrown out of a bar--and Copernicus is the actual destination.

      

I can only land at one place on Earth, which is four times as large, but the moon is parceled out.

            

As we arrived at Copernicus, we received a notice that our ship was impounded and that we should report to a Lt. Jenner. As we made our way to the police station, we saw Dr. Coldor getting into a jetcar with the "Tsai Weaponry" logo. We tried to approach her, but she said that "NEO has her services" and told us to get lost before we could explain that we were NEO and that whoever had her services definitely was not.

 

At the police station, Lt. Jenner explained that Luna is filthy with corruption, and that the police chief, Senator Koi, and the CEO of Tsai Weaponry are involved in a major conspiracy. He promised that if we could collect enough evidence against them, he'd help us collect Dr. Coldor and get our ship back. He gave us fake police badges to assist.

      

That was easy.

         

The rest of the map was a bit tedious, as we ran around from building to building--the offices and houses of the three major players--collecting intelligence. The process was annoyingly linear. For instance, the first time we visited Chief McKay's house, we found nothing. But later, we found a computer entry that mentioned a logbook. When we returned and looked again, we found the logbook.

    

So we had to visit the various places in the right order, then call the suspects to tell them we had dirt on them so Jenner could raid the subsequent meeting. I got sick of the whole thing in the middle of it and tried to just force my way into Tsai Weaponry, but automated laser cannons kept doing scripted damage to the party as we tried to explore the complex. These cannons weren't there when we did things "honestly."

     

Way to facilitate role-playing, guys.

        

So we followed the game's chosen path and got the police chief, senator, and CEO arrested for conspiracy, and Lt. Jenner gave us a pass to get into Tsai. We explored their headquarters (another 16 x 16 map) long enough to find Dr. Coldor consorting with Sid Refuge from PURGE. What is it with this organization? No one had heard of them two weeks ago, and now they have a headquarters on an island and have tendrils into every faction in the solar system.

    

Coldor learned at this point that she had been working for a bunch of lunatics. Apparently, Tsai had been creating some kind of chemical (confusingly called a "mutagen") capable of killing genetically-engineered creatures. Refuge had a little speech about it:

       

NEO's propaganda has served PURGE well. I recruited this scientist on your reputation. The pap of genetic mongrels living in harmony with the pure race fools so many people. They are blind to the inevitability of conflict. Either the pure strain will survive unsullied, or humanity will revert to packs of mindless animals!

       

I'm more confused than ever about PURGE's philosophy. Does Refuge think that humans are mating with gennies? Even if that were biologically possible, I haven't seen any evidence of it. Anyway, Refuge took off with Coldor, forcing us to follow them through the base. At various points, we were menaced by "plant gennies" that were just the same graphic as Bits o' Moander from Pools of Darkness.

       

They arguably make more sense in this context.

            

It became clear that PURGE or Tsai was about to launch a rocket containing the mutagen, somehow causing it to spread throughout the galaxy. We burst into the launch pad just as it was preparing to launch. While the party fought a big group with Refuge and his commandos . . .

     

This, like all situations, seems like a good situation for a rocket launcher.

      

. . . Dr. Coldor sneaked aboard the rocket and overrode the automatic controls. As we watched Refuge's cyborg corpse somehow escape yet again, we receive word from SCOT.DOS that Coldor had joined NEO and was taking the equipment and mutagen to the Matrix Device project at Jupiter. The police arrived to sweep everything up, and Luna officials thanked us while simultaneously inviting us never to visit the moon again.

    

As we blasted off from Luna, an explosion rocked the Maelstrom Rider, and radiation levels began to increase. The computer reported a 98% chance that the ship would soon explode. We couldn't seem to do anything to fix it, and the game clearly wanted us to escape in a pod, so we reluctantly took that option.

    

We get the hint.

         

As the pod sailed away, the party was surprised to see that the ship didn't explode, and instead flew "gracefully out of sight." Meanwhile, our pod was picked up by a ship called Rogue, captained by someone named Killer Kane. I was obviously supposed to recognize him from the game's setting, so I took some time to read up on him, which left me more confused than ever, because in no version does he seem to be depicted as the roguish "frenemy" of Rogers as he does here.

         

Well, I'm surely not going to call you "Killer."

         

Kane proposed an exchange: He would set us free if we agreed to infiltrate and help destroy a RAM cruiser called Deimos, which was transporting a "high-level Mercurian official" to Mars. This reminded me that well into the game, "De Sade" hasn't made a return appearance, suggesting all the intrigue on Mercury at the beginning of the game had nothing to do with the plot. This would turn out to be true; I never heard from De Sade again. Even the whole issue with Mercurian forces invading Venus turned out to be a mystery.

     

The game offered me the option of accepting Kane's offer, and I was feeling ornery by this point, so I said no. Matrix is the most linear of the Gold Box series, much more so than Countdown, which let you visit the planets and asteroids in almost any order. Here, we've had the choice of which of two missions to do first and second, but that's about it. This extends to not even providing alternate ways to solve puzzles that require skill checks.

    

In response, Kane shoved us back into our escape pod and said, "Good luck drifting." Well, we hadn't been drifting long before we were picked up by . . . the RAM cruiser Deimos. On which Killer Kane was somehow also taken prisoner in the hour since we saw him last. So that turned out to be another Morton's Fork.

      

A whole hour! Noooooooooo.

        

In the Deimos's brig, we were contacted by a RAM agent named "Oiler" who let us out of the cell and gave us explosives to plant in the weapons control room. Deimos was five levels, all of them relatively small, but we had to backtrack a lot, finding a keycard in on one floor that would let us through a door on another floor, and so forth. If there were battles, I didn't bother to take any screen shots; my recollection is that RAM crew seemed easily fooled by our lack of outfits or any identifying insignia.

     

We placed the explosive charges in the right place, but I don't think they were ever set off. As we left the room, we found ourselves surrounded by RAM bots who offered us a choice of surrendering or not. Either answer (I reloaded to be sure) led to them blasting us with sonic stunners and us waking up in a prison on Mars, so that was another choice they need not have offered.

     

The sun being too bright is a good sign we're not actually on Mars.

        

We awoke in a prison cell. For the second time in the game--but not the last--we were stripped of all equipment. The cell was made to resemble the Martian surface and extended infinitely in all directions.

Buck Rogers soon appeared. He said that when our ship returned to Salvation empty, he blasted off in search of us, found our pod, but was knocked out by gas and similarly awoke in this cell. This story makes no sense, as Rogers is a commander and shouldn't be soloing on rescue missions, but nevertheless, there we were. Rogers had his .45 automatic because it's so old that our RAM captors hadn't even recognized it as a weapon. Moments after Rogers joined us, so did Killer Kane, whose appearance makes even less sense.

     

And we had no idea, when we rejected you, that we'd end up in the same party. Though in retrospect, maybe we should have.

       

After finding nothing in our lateral explorations, Rogers suggested that we explore vertically. We dug down and hit a metal floor. Rogers then suggested we try to reach the "ceiling" via a human pyramid, with him and Kane as the base and the most athletic person at the top. Unfortunately, my "most athletic" person lacked the "Climb" skill to make it to the top, plus the "Acrobatics" skill to make it from the top of the pyramid through a hatch on the ceiling.

     

Spoiler: he failed.

      

In multiple re-tries, he kept falling and taking damage, and because the game offers no way to heal characters except at the end of combats, I eventually had to stop trying and use my second-most-agile character instead. And so on from him to the third. After about 15 minutes of this, the game took pity on me and let me succeed. I know it did because the character who finally got through the hatch had no "Climb" or "Acrobatics" skill at all. Incidentally, Rogers and Kane both have decent skills at both, but they insisted they had to form the base of the pyramid.

     

It turned out that my problems were just beginning. On the top side of the hatch was a gennie guard dog with about 76 hit points, and all I had to fight him were my puny fists. Even Austin, who had the highest number of hit points and the best chance of succeeding at hand-to-hand combat, was unable to kill the creature. Defeat means the character gets kicked back down the hole, the pyramid collapses, and we have to start over again.

    

In case it's not clear, this is when the "actively pissing me off" stage began.

      

The obvious solution, which somehow didn't occur to me, was to take Rogers' handgun. But I later consulted several walkthroughs and videos, and none of them offered it as a solution, so I suspect Rogers won't give up the weapon. If I'm wrong and someone has done this, please tell me. Meanwhile, all the walkthroughs and videos offered the same solution that ultimately worked for me: lower the difficulty level so that the enemy hit points get lowered. I hated, hated, hated doing this, but the damned dog was simply mathematically unbeatable without it. I thought maybe a character who specialized in unarmed combat could do it, but later I checked and found that's not even an option.

      

With the difficultly lowered, Austin was able to defeat the creature and then drop a cable to haul everyone up. Our problems didn't end there, though. The two-level prison that ensued offered combats with more dogs, robots, and other prisoners, all of which we had to fight bare-handed except for Rogers' gun, which we no longer had after Rogers suggested that we "split up." Kane fled shortly after we got out of the cell.

    

Since you have the only weapon, that seems like a really bad idea.

        

This was the only area of the game that I mapped myself, and only long enough to test various paths and determine that they led to dead-ends, or unwinnable battles. We ultimately found our way to a storage room and our equipment. Shortly after, we freed a "Stormrider" named Natbakka. He had been an ambassador to the Amaltheans, but they sold him to RAM. This story sent me back to the logbook to remind myself about the backstory. Stormriders are supposedly genetically-modified humans (though they don't look much like it) who live in high-pressure cities above the moons of Jupiter. Amaltheans are humans living on one of Jupiter's moons; they created the Stormriders in the first place but are now hostile to them.

       

I shudder to think what my brain is overwriting in order to learn this lore.

      

We found a computer console that allowed us to reach SCOT.DOS, who told us that he had found evidence of a spy at the NEO. Then some virus started attacking him, and we had to try to stop it through some confusing menu process that I didn't understand, and for which Theta Sigma kept failing his "Programming" checks anyway. At the end of the process, SCOT.DOS was dead, which I'm not sure wasn't scripted. If so, they should have just made it seem like it was scripted instead of making it seem like a character failed a skill check.

        

To be honest, I only ever vaguely understood who he was.

       

Buck Rogers rejoined us; we fought one final battle against RAM forces; and a NEO ship dropped in to rescue us. Soon after, we were finally back at Salvation. I felt like I had been through so much that my entire team should be able to level up, but only one person could.

That gets us far enough that I should be able to cover the rest of the game in one entry. By this time, the false choices and linearity were getting annoying, the skill checks were getting infuriating, and the combat was getting boring. You can see why I just pushed through to the end.

     

Time so far: 21 hours