******pssssst. The Tropico 5 DLC is on sale today on Steam!******
The last couple weeks have been rough, spending most of my time dealing with a personal tragedy. I haven’t been gaming or posting much or following the gaming news, but I have played a few DLCs for Tropico 5 and the Hearthstone Expansion: Goblins Vs. Gnomes.
Goblins Vs. Gnomes
I like Hearthstone. I enjoy having competitive decks (yes, I’ll spend a wee bit of money). I like the rush when a perfect combo comes together for you to unleash on an unwitting opponent. I enjoy that it has multiplayer play with no talking so I can avoid the assholes. But the game doesn’t pull me like some games do. I’m not interested enough in wins or rank for that to push me through, nor do I want to strategize about how to make synergistic decks that surprise and destroy my opponent. I’d rather build things, amass resources, and strategically place defenses to face a wave of NPC enemies.
That said, you don’t have to be madly in love with a game to find it enjoyable. And I like firing up the Battle.net launcher every few days to play a couple hands. I guess it’s like my solitaire. I was super excited for the expansion because my favorite part of the game is having the best cards. Right at launch I bought 2 $20 packs. I was very underwhelmed. I got one trash legend and that was really it. I know I had to but around $120-$150 worth of original HS cards to have a satisfactory array of legends, but still. One? So I couldn’t build any of the decent GvG decks online. I put one together and just substituted the GvG legends for original mainstays that are always helpful to have. I ended up doing fairly well once I got the hang of it. The synergy of Mech cards seem extremely overpowered to me, but hey I can’t complain too much when the power is in my hands.
In future expansions, I hope they keep allowing you to buy cards from specific expansions. I liked that I knew I wouldn’t be wasting money one yet another Angry Chicken. I also hope they come out with some levels to play through like they did with the Naxx expansion. I really liked the RPG PVE style. It was frustrating, but rewarding. In the end, I’d advise anyone to throw in $20 on cards and see what happens. It’s worth it.
Tropico 5 DLC
I also played through 3 of the DLC for one of my favorite games, Tropico 5. I’ll go through them one by one so you can decide which to buy.
1. Joint Venture
In Joint Venture you try to beat the clock by making more profits form Fast Food joints than the “Slow Foods” company. Of course there are many setbacks and things along the way that make this difficult. This was my least favorite of all the DLC simply because I beat it on the first run through. With Generalissimo I played for 2 days on and off and with The Big Cheese it took even longer. I immensely enjoyed the mission, but it went by too quickly. If you buy the expansion, you will have the fast food joint available to you in all future missions/campaigns, but it really isn’t super useful. It takes precious electricity from your grid and it seems like there are better options for increasing entertainment. However, it’s possible you make a decent amount of money from them in the long run. I haven’t played throught the entire campaign again with the new buildings. I’d say that this expansion is OK, but don’t buy it if you’re only going to try one.
Generalissimo
This expansion was fun, which is saying something considering the war/diplomacy aspect of the game is the least interesting to me. In this scenario you have to fend off wave after wave of foreign invasions, each getting more powerful, as well as deal with a rising rebel threat from within your own boarders. I lost this one several times, I think mainly because I was so focused on building military buildings that I would lose elections. In the end I broke through, though, by making so much money that I could outspend the enemy invasion force. The new building you get with this is pretty worthless, but the scenario itself is fun and challenging.
The Big Cheese
The Big Cheese is my favorite scenario. This took me the longest to beat, for many reasons, but it also give you perhaps the single best building in the game: The Creamery. In this scenario you’re competing to make the world’s best cheese. There are several goofy challenges that come along with this one, such as deciding who to give your experimental coffee cheese to (this sparks an international incident, btw). I really liked this expansion the best, which came at a good time since I’ve been lukewarm about most of my games lately. If you like the Tropico franchise, I definitely suggest you pick up this DLC.
