2018-02-22 20:37:00

This is another interactive gameboook from choiceofgames see Their db page here.
It can be played on their own website at www.choiceofgames.com, on Ios or Android through the respective ap stores or on steam for those who want to bother with it.

I will confess this is the first game I've seen in the Cog lineup that is of absolutely %0 interest to me and likely the first game I will categorically not buy since I doubt I'd ever play it.

Then again I freely admit I am not interested in even the major sports we have in the Uk like football and cricket so  a game about sports we do not have, sports which moreover each seem to have their own very complex language game and set of cultural baggage to go along with them would not appeal to me at all.

Still manifestly this isn't the case for everyone so here is the info:

The Fielder's Choice
We’re proud to announce that The Fielder’s Choice, the latest in our popular “Choice of Games” line of multiple-choice interactive-fiction games, is now available for Steam, iOS, and Android. It’s 25% off until March 1st!
Grab a glove and pitch your way to the top of the major leagues! Baseball season is back and you’re on the mound. Starting your career as a rookie pitcher, you’ll develop your repertoire and navigate clubhouse politics in the big leagues. Over eight seasons, you’ll use your talent and charisma to win on—and off—the field.
The Fielder’s Choice is a 115,000-word interactive baseball novel by Nathaniel Edwards. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
Your talented arm will take you places you’ve never seen, and introduce you to some of the most driven athletes on the planet. Do you have the massive dedication to succeed in the big leagues, or will you resort to a little bit of cheating? Will you be baseball’s biggest stat geek or the master of hustle and grit? Will you develop an on-field persona that terrifies hitters or a cuddly exterior that lulls them to sleep? Will you go down in history as a Hall of Fame ace or a live arm that fizzled on the big stage? When your lifelong baseball dreams come true, someone else may have to lose everything they’ve ever worked toward.
• Play as male, female, or non-binary; gay or straight
• Play as left- or right-handed
• Choose your pitching style and develop the perfect repertoire to rack up strikeouts
• Perfect a fastball, slider, or curveball
• Find friends, foes, or potential lifelong partners among your teammates
• Pitch in the United States, Japan, or unlock the opportunity to explore a new frontier for baseball
• Use statistical analysis to perfect your game, or #RiseAndGrind to out-hustle your opponents
• Discover the quirky secret behind baseball’s most successful agent
What pitch will you throw when the game is on the line? In that moment, it’s the Fielder’s Choice.
We hope you enjoy playing The Fielder’s Choice. We encourage you to tell your friends about it, and recommend the game on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Don’t forget: our initial download rate determines our ranking on the App Store. The more times you download in the first week, the better our games will rank.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-02-23 03:25:00

lol In stark opposition to Dark, I am a pretty big baseball fan. I bought this game. Three bucks? Why not.

Here's what I can tell you.

1. It's not nearly as deep as, say, Heart of the House or even Choice of the Cat
2. It's got a lot of baseball stuff in it. If you're a fan of the game, you'll probably like it. If you aren't, you probably won't.
3. There are still a good number of options and choices even though the game is perhaps not as robust as some others I've seen.
4. The game does seem a little random at times. This is fine in and of itself; baseball, too, has a good deal of randomness in it. But there are some achievements which are probably going to come down to luck rather than skill or ingenuity to snag.

I wasn't blown away by this, but it wasn't bad, either. Played it three times and have unlocked 13 of 23 achievements. I wish those achievements actually did things, but oh well.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2018-02-24 00:57:36

Everything I've seen from this company is bland and generic, I haven't tried it out much but if you're looking for some rich storygames and don't even pay money for it chooseyourstory has some seriously good authors.

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2018-02-24 05:48:32

Hmmm even though I've not tried as many of their games as some the last word I'd use to describe games like mecha ace or choice of zombies is bland and generic, even choice of robots and hero's rise had their moments, and the last monster master I found so difficult to play I wound up giving in since I always felt it very personally if I took a choice which upset my monsters big_smile.

I've played some good games on chooseyourstory, but also unfortunately lots of drek that sounded as if it was written by a ten year old.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-02-24 11:22:23

They've increased their quality plenty. There're still bad stories around but basically unless you aren't at least trying you get thrown out the window.
Needless to say Endmaster is my favourite author on there big_smile
And interesting, please make a list of the best choice of games because I really need entertainment. I'll def check those mentioned out.

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2018-02-24 19:52:58

Is Endmaster the one who did dead man walking? I did enjoy that one myself, one of the better takes on interactive zombie fiction I've played.

Also remember when talking in terms of the cog titles you also have the hg games to consider, that is the hosted games which are games made with the choice script  BUT FOR some reason differ enough from the Cog output to be marketed under  under another banner.

These can very much range in quality, with best efforts that are truly amazing and worst efforts that  rather dire.

Some of my favourite Hg titles have included fatehaven, zombie exodus, the samurai hyuga games and apex patrol (any game that lets you punt a villain into a captive star has to get my vote), though I will be the first to admit there are lots! of games I haven't played both under the cog and hg banners, including many that have got significant amounts of praise such as the sabres and guns of infinity series which are by the same author as mecha ace, which was all around awesome if you like giant robots big_smile.

Suffice it to say if you judged all Cog titles by choice of the dragon, which is pretty much just an extende extended demo and not really an ambicious one (albeit it made me laugh a few times), your definitely missing the full range of what is on offer.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-02-24 19:57:00

Oops yeah I think I might've played the  choice of the *insert fantasy creature here* ... a few of them.

No Endmaster are responsible for most of the top stories such as Eternal (my absolute favourite), Necromancer, Ground 0 and Susy's strange saga as well as other small works.

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2018-02-24 23:37:39

Tried the free trial, I like it so far but what the crap, a slider pitcher with a fastball?

Also I had to laugh at the Bulls, given they are a real minor league team, though the Bulls being down 6-1 is accurate.

Alright, Jade, feel like gifting me a copy on Steam? I'm interested enough and I'd be greatful if you sleipped a copy my way

Oh also had to laugh darkly at the arm injry part, reminds me of a certain Dodgers pitcher. Also, last also, strikeouts feel so satisfying in this but I do find pounding the same pitch to be too simple, in real baseball if you just throw four or five fastballs the batter's gonna get good at timing them, unless they're actually being thown to different locations and that's not being stated. Still, how, how exactly does a slider bounce to the plate, yeesh.....didn't know my guy was THAT awful....

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2018-02-24 23:42:02

Speaking of Mecha Ace, I got a massive Mechwarrior/Battletech vibe from that, which was awesomely good, though I could do without the long wordy descriptions in Mech and let me blow more stuff up, yeahhhh

Slammed is another good one too by the way, also Congress Wolf is oddly addicting, plus the one about being a hitman too...don't recall the name, Killing Time or something like that was good, didn't see that twist coming until it hit, I was going along with the rest of the team

I'll admit I've yet to play all of the ones in that $100 or so mega bundle I got ages ago

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2018-02-26 00:19:34

Couple of things here:

Ground Zero has some pretty atrocious writing. I love all of the options, and one ending for Ground Zero is actually really bittersweet. But if we're going to talk about writing/story quality, I'm sorry, but let's be real here. If nothing else, Choiceofgames seems to have a better handle on its quality control There are few to no spelling and grammar issues, if nothing else, and no juvenile dialogue. Choice of the Cat, in fact, was written quite well, just as one example.

As far as a slider pitcher having a fastball? Virtually all pitchers except dedicated knuckleballers can and do throw fastballs. It might not be their bread and butter pitch, but they're still apt to throw it.

And yes, pounding the same pitch over and over is going to lower the chance that it's a strike; that just makes sense, as the tutorial itself said. Exact pitch location isn't gotten into, as that would've been pretty freaking difficult to manage.

It's still a neat little game though.

And sorry, but no, I'm afraid there'll be no gifting from me. I don't have steam, among other things.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2018-02-26 05:30:10

I love choice of the cat.

It's probably the largest one they have currently, 600000 words or something.

All the others I saw had only 100000 to 200000 words.

No matter what you do in choice of the cat, you always end up adopted.

I can get it so one of them doesn't like you, but the other still ends up signing the form to adopt you.

What do I have to do for the family not to want me?

There is also an achievement where you find out how that tomcat next door lost his eye.

I haven't managed that one yet.

Every time I play, I usually find something new, even if it is something small.

2018-02-26 06:24:26

I'm afraid I disagree completely JaceK about the battle descriptions in Mecha ace.
After all if your not going to describe a battle what is the point in having one? they gave a real sense of the world and I was totally in it while reading, considering options carefully and really bothered about myself and the people under my command.
Then  again since once upon a time I did try to novelize the playstation rpg xenogears, I probably have a soft spot for battles between giant robots big_smile.

MEcha ace had More of  a Gundam seed vibe for me than battletech or mech warrior, since battletech is far more about a distant future society where mechs are a part of the culture, where as like Gundam mecha ace happens in a rebellion of earth colonies against an authoritarian earth, also like Gundam there are heroes and villains on both sides and a lot of ideals about battle and honour, though not with the cultural stratification and formal duelling codes that battletech had.

Btw, I'm still! waiting for tthat  mech fighting audiogame big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-02-26 15:08:56

Well actually the Battletech/FASA games had full on RPGs back in the DOS days, not the action games currently, so if anything Mecha Ace felt more like an old old Battletech 80s DOS game to me, and it didn't stand up IMHO too  the Crescent Hawk games Battletech licensed. That being said it was a fun game, not denying that but I still think it lacked a little something....
Emperion was one I really enjoyed though, the setting and world just grabbed me and sucked me in, and Congress Wolf was very, very intriguing. That being said, Killling Time was also very, VERY good. Come to think of it yes there's bad CoG/HG stuff out there but I disagree on them being bland and generic.

Then we get to Fielder's Choice. I'm a huge baseball fan. I like it, but I do feel the core mechanic, the actual pitching, feels too stat reliant. I don't actually like how it says Fastball 50% strike 40% ball 10% in play. That to me makes it too easy to pick the pitch that'll get you an out. If that was hidden, I feel it'd be better.

That being said I liked the randomness of the pitching parts but I felt like I didn't have as much control as I expected over the story as a whole compared to other games, it felt like it got off track and lost its focus after a certain (spoiler: Picking your team) point. If it'd have given you the stay with your team for story reasons but give you a range of salaries to negotiate over...I'd have felt better about that personally.

That being said I don't feel the stats matter as much as you think, I've had pitches go down to 30 or 35% strike and stilll got 3 strikes in a row with the same pitch.....so I do feel something's a little unbalanced there.

That being said it's inspired me to start writing a CoG type game in their script, so assuming I get a little bit out.....I may throw it up here so you guys can check it out.. Not even started it yet though.


Is TFC worth the $? Yes, because it's $2. If it were $5 or $10 I'd say no.

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2018-02-26 16:54:57

Hi,
Here are my COG/HG favourites:
It's killing time: a Story about being an assassin, with lots of interesting twists and good Action
Slammed: Wrestling Story, has awesome writing and a very good Story

I found that The Last Monster Master was kinda weird because I always got the same ending, no matter what I did.

Happy gaming.

Julian

Greetings and happy gaming, Julian

If you say you never lie, you're a liar.
Oh, and #freeGCW

2018-02-27 08:47:12

BerkaZerka did Dead Man Walking, and from the half-hour I played, I am not sure if I'll go back. I found something like twenty-seven typos, sometimes more than one on a page, plus some...rather questionable dialogue. Maybe this is one of those games, like Ground Zero, where you have to plough through mediocre writing for a good overall story. I dunno.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2018-02-28 01:16:21

I do recall some typos in dead man walking, but they didn't spoil the game for me, I liked the different paths and how things worked out, particularly with how your character didn't have to be an idiot, although a few sections were a bit pulpy for my liking, ---- e.g finding your wife gagged and tied up by an escaped prisoner in your house who you then had to fight off.

Still I did finish the game, got a good ending and liked the lack  random deathtrapes and the descriptions of various monstrous zombie types.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-02-28 08:07:08

I've spotted a few in Choice of the Cat, when I'm not laughing my way through the story, and a few here and there in Mecha Ace and Killing time but on the whole I'd say the writing is mostly good to very good across their own games, the hosted are a diffferent story.

Also whoever said Slammed up there originally, yes, go play that if you want a fun wrestling tale. It even got on Rock Paper Shotgun when it was released.

Also I'll give a nod to.....the Deathless series, those are fantastic ones. Oh and also NOLA is Burning, simply because that has a fascinating setting.

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively