primeideal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
primeideal) wrote2023-11-06 09:31 pm
primeideal) wrote2023-11-06 09:31 pm
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Into the Breach
Every once in a while I do something that's kind of self-parodically on brand, even for me. Like, "are you really that much of a nerd? Yes, yes I am exactly this much of a nerd."
So you have to realize that, unsurprisingly, I am the type of person who is very good at catching typos/copy-paste errors/etc. And at various churches I've been to over the years, I wind up being the volunteer bulletin proofreader. Because there's a lot that can go wrong and I'm probably going to catch it anyway, either in advance or rolling my eyes when I read it in the bulletin. So that's what I'm up to at the current place, as well.
When it comes to the lectionary readings for each Sunday, the Gospel readings are chosen to give a broad-scope set of "highlights" over a three-year cycle, and so are the New Testament readings. As far as the Old Testament readings and Psalms go, there's a set that sort of thematically matches the assigned Gospel reading for each week, but there's also an alternate set that gives a similar set of "Old Testament highlights" in order, with Psalms that complement them. This is what my church is doing right now, which I haven't seen very often before. Which is how we got a couple months of just Genesis and the patriarchs. Then Exodus. For proofreading purposes, the readings aren't that hard to screw up, because it's hopefully just copy-paste, but there's always the chance of weirdness with "consecutive paragraphs with opening quote but no close quote because that's how they format it and then they removed the spaces between paragraphs so now it looks wrong," so I try to read them anyway.
So a few weeks ago, the Old Testament reading was Moses and the Golden Calf. The Psalm was (excerpts from) Psalm 106, which is a very fitting match, because it's retelling the same story. The people sin, God gets angry, Moses talks God down from going total vengeance-mode.
What struck me is that there's an odd wording in the Psalm that doesn't correspond into the wording from Exodus, which is, "Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach." And like...what breach was Moses standing in? Was there a breach in the mountain? Is this a metaphor for the rupture between God and the people? And my brain being my brain, I was like, "lol, Moses was playing Into the Breach and smashing monsters with his robots."
Which made me want to play Into the Breach again after years (I had not downloaded it onto this computer, and there's new Advanced Edition content that wasn't there before). Because of course.
Into the Breach is designed by the same people who did "FTL," and it's similar in that it's a roguelike, fairly difficult (in my experience), and even if you don't win you can potentially unlock new squads to play next game. The "theme" is that there are bug-like monsters ("Vek") causing havoc, and you control a team of "mechs" from the future running around and beating them up. It's a bit more puzzle-y than FTL; each level is played on an 8x8 grid, and your mechs have different weapons/limits to how far they can move in a turn (but in practice I never internalize the move limits, just see what happens). The monsters will semi-randomly jump around and attack the buildings; if the buildings get damaged enough times, you lose. The monsters can also attack mechs, which isn't the end of the world (they have multiple HP). So the idea is that you take advantage of your mechs' powers and try to find ways to chain their moves together to eliminate the Vek before the map is overrun. There are four "islands" with different environmental themes; on each island, you have to save four (I think?) districts before the boss fight, which is harder. After you've completed at least two islands, you can move onto the final fight, which consists of two rounds (as opposed to FTL's three), but is very hard, I'd gotten to the last round several times back in the day but never won. (You can also go for a third or fourth island if you want to level up some more, in which case the final level may be correspondingly more difficult. But once you start an island, you have to finish it.)
I prefer FTL because I think its humor/theme/music are better. Bugs gross me out, even when they're giant alien bugs, who knew. Again, in both cases the "story" is pretty thin, here it consists of "some of the islands believe you're time travelers from the future come to save them, some are disdainful, your characters have witty one-liners but they get repetitive."
In FTL, unlocking new ships is rare and involves some random subquests that you may or may not get the chance to do. In ItB, it's more incremental; each squad has three potential achievements you can earn with them, plus various global achievements, some of which take your cumulative achievements over time into account and some of which are just "in this game you did XYZ." Unlocking a new squad costs three or four "achievement coins," so there's a feeling of goals/stuff to aim for even if I don't feel like I can win. Which is nice.
The squad that brought me success was the "Bombermechs:"
-one unit shoots through an intermediary unit (which can be friend or foe, or even a building) to damage a target behind it, which requires being colinear;
-one unit can launch a tiny "walking bomb" which is short-lived but does a small amount of damage when it explodes;
-the third unit can swap an adjacent unit with any other unit.
Despite the name, it took me way too long to realize that "walking bombs" can...walk. So not only can the launcher shoot them next to weak enemies (to blow up immediately), or intermediately between ranged enemies (to take the damage instead of the building that was going to be hit), they can move around a little to get into even better position.
You can also acquire "reactor cores" over the course of the game, and give them to mechs to upgrade their weapons. When the launcher mech is upgraded, they get to launch two bombs (in different directions), causing much more havoc especially to the 1-HP enemies. And when the swapper mech is upgraded, they get to heal allied and/or damage enemy units who are swapped. Even though it doesn't do any base damage, it's a very powerful "noncombatant" because it can potentially swap enemies whose attack lines are pointed in different directions, saving two buildings with one blow. And (especially on the final levels, but also some of the various environments), you can have an allied unit move onto a square that's about to get destroyed, then swap them with an enemy unit so the enemy takes the hit instead... :D
Anyway, I finally won, my first win after 79 hours (I am not sure if that is only the recent stint, or also my attempts on the old computer?) Will I play again at some point and try to unlock more achievements/squads? Probably. (It sounds like if you get very deep you can unlock a crossover with the FTL aliens!) But I don't think I'm going to be a completionist about it, we'll see.
Edit to add: Your characters can level up and you can keep one of them from game to game (...if they survive), and some of the unlockables are "special" pilots with inherent bonuses. Again, the "characterization" is very slim, just kind of different styles of one-liners. But for the last move I sacrificed Bethany, my experienced Exchange Mech pilot, and she had a line about "Mom, I'm coming to join you now" right before the win. D'aww?
Edit 2: Steam achievement tracker says I was mostly playing it in April/May 2020, which tracks with "needing something to do, but not forever."
So you have to realize that, unsurprisingly, I am the type of person who is very good at catching typos/copy-paste errors/etc. And at various churches I've been to over the years, I wind up being the volunteer bulletin proofreader. Because there's a lot that can go wrong and I'm probably going to catch it anyway, either in advance or rolling my eyes when I read it in the bulletin. So that's what I'm up to at the current place, as well.
When it comes to the lectionary readings for each Sunday, the Gospel readings are chosen to give a broad-scope set of "highlights" over a three-year cycle, and so are the New Testament readings. As far as the Old Testament readings and Psalms go, there's a set that sort of thematically matches the assigned Gospel reading for each week, but there's also an alternate set that gives a similar set of "Old Testament highlights" in order, with Psalms that complement them. This is what my church is doing right now, which I haven't seen very often before. Which is how we got a couple months of just Genesis and the patriarchs. Then Exodus. For proofreading purposes, the readings aren't that hard to screw up, because it's hopefully just copy-paste, but there's always the chance of weirdness with "consecutive paragraphs with opening quote but no close quote because that's how they format it and then they removed the spaces between paragraphs so now it looks wrong," so I try to read them anyway.
So a few weeks ago, the Old Testament reading was Moses and the Golden Calf. The Psalm was (excerpts from) Psalm 106, which is a very fitting match, because it's retelling the same story. The people sin, God gets angry, Moses talks God down from going total vengeance-mode.
What struck me is that there's an odd wording in the Psalm that doesn't correspond into the wording from Exodus, which is, "Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach." And like...what breach was Moses standing in? Was there a breach in the mountain? Is this a metaphor for the rupture between God and the people? And my brain being my brain, I was like, "lol, Moses was playing Into the Breach and smashing monsters with his robots."
Which made me want to play Into the Breach again after years (I had not downloaded it onto this computer, and there's new Advanced Edition content that wasn't there before). Because of course.
Into the Breach is designed by the same people who did "FTL," and it's similar in that it's a roguelike, fairly difficult (in my experience), and even if you don't win you can potentially unlock new squads to play next game. The "theme" is that there are bug-like monsters ("Vek") causing havoc, and you control a team of "mechs" from the future running around and beating them up. It's a bit more puzzle-y than FTL; each level is played on an 8x8 grid, and your mechs have different weapons/limits to how far they can move in a turn (but in practice I never internalize the move limits, just see what happens). The monsters will semi-randomly jump around and attack the buildings; if the buildings get damaged enough times, you lose. The monsters can also attack mechs, which isn't the end of the world (they have multiple HP). So the idea is that you take advantage of your mechs' powers and try to find ways to chain their moves together to eliminate the Vek before the map is overrun. There are four "islands" with different environmental themes; on each island, you have to save four (I think?) districts before the boss fight, which is harder. After you've completed at least two islands, you can move onto the final fight, which consists of two rounds (as opposed to FTL's three), but is very hard, I'd gotten to the last round several times back in the day but never won. (You can also go for a third or fourth island if you want to level up some more, in which case the final level may be correspondingly more difficult. But once you start an island, you have to finish it.)
I prefer FTL because I think its humor/theme/music are better. Bugs gross me out, even when they're giant alien bugs, who knew. Again, in both cases the "story" is pretty thin, here it consists of "some of the islands believe you're time travelers from the future come to save them, some are disdainful, your characters have witty one-liners but they get repetitive."
In FTL, unlocking new ships is rare and involves some random subquests that you may or may not get the chance to do. In ItB, it's more incremental; each squad has three potential achievements you can earn with them, plus various global achievements, some of which take your cumulative achievements over time into account and some of which are just "in this game you did XYZ." Unlocking a new squad costs three or four "achievement coins," so there's a feeling of goals/stuff to aim for even if I don't feel like I can win. Which is nice.
The squad that brought me success was the "Bombermechs:"
-one unit shoots through an intermediary unit (which can be friend or foe, or even a building) to damage a target behind it, which requires being colinear;
-one unit can launch a tiny "walking bomb" which is short-lived but does a small amount of damage when it explodes;
-the third unit can swap an adjacent unit with any other unit.
Despite the name, it took me way too long to realize that "walking bombs" can...walk. So not only can the launcher shoot them next to weak enemies (to blow up immediately), or intermediately between ranged enemies (to take the damage instead of the building that was going to be hit), they can move around a little to get into even better position.
You can also acquire "reactor cores" over the course of the game, and give them to mechs to upgrade their weapons. When the launcher mech is upgraded, they get to launch two bombs (in different directions), causing much more havoc especially to the 1-HP enemies. And when the swapper mech is upgraded, they get to heal allied and/or damage enemy units who are swapped. Even though it doesn't do any base damage, it's a very powerful "noncombatant" because it can potentially swap enemies whose attack lines are pointed in different directions, saving two buildings with one blow. And (especially on the final levels, but also some of the various environments), you can have an allied unit move onto a square that's about to get destroyed, then swap them with an enemy unit so the enemy takes the hit instead... :D
Anyway, I finally won, my first win after 79 hours (I am not sure if that is only the recent stint, or also my attempts on the old computer?) Will I play again at some point and try to unlock more achievements/squads? Probably. (It sounds like if you get very deep you can unlock a crossover with the FTL aliens!) But I don't think I'm going to be a completionist about it, we'll see.
Edit to add: Your characters can level up and you can keep one of them from game to game (...if they survive), and some of the unlockables are "special" pilots with inherent bonuses. Again, the "characterization" is very slim, just kind of different styles of one-liners. But for the last move I sacrificed Bethany, my experienced Exchange Mech pilot, and she had a line about "Mom, I'm coming to join you now" right before the win. D'aww?
Edit 2: Steam achievement tracker says I was mostly playing it in April/May 2020, which tracks with "needing something to do, but not forever."