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Spider-Gwen

My girl Gwen Stacy has come a long way from Earth-65, and now it’s her time to shine in a battle of the best. Let’s face it. We all love Spider-Gwen. She’s got style, awesome moves, and no Spider-Verse team is complete without her. And if you think this Spider-Woman (That’s right, Spider-Woman. Wtf is a Ghost Spider?) is just another webhead, then you haven’t been paying attention. Y’all fucking with a symbiote. My girl can go full Gwenom when she wants to. I’m talking full-on talons, Miles Morales style camouflage, the ability to make hundreds of tiny symbiote spiders, plus all the traditional powers of your friendly neighborhood Spider hero. Sure, some of the other combatants might be “more powerful” but truthfully the modus operandi of any spider is taking down enemies bigger than them on the daily.

Ahsoka Tano

REAL JEDI’S KNOW THAT AHSOKA IS THAT CHICK!!! Y’all better not play no games with my girl. Them pretty white dual lightsabers don’t come to play. You think anybody on this roster scares Ahsoka? My Jedi? My wandering warrior? She trained under two legendary Jedi, the best in the game. My girl has stood toe to toe with the all-time Sith hall of fame. Darth Vader, General Grievous, and Asajj Ventress. Let me repeat. She fought Darth Vader during his peak to a standstill. She bodied Darth Maul amongst the fall of Mandalore. She told the Jedi Order they can kick rocks, imma do my own thing. Monsters, bounty hunters, droids. There’s nothing you can throw that she hasn’t seen. Ahsoka Tano is one of the best Jedi of all time, and it’s time you put some respect on her name.

Samus Aran

Samus Aran is the greatest bounty hunter of all time. Yeah, I said it. THE. GREATEST. BOUNTY. HUNTER. OF. ALL.TIME. I don’t care what you got to say about anybody else. Don’t you dare even bring up Boba Fett – it’s time y’all realize that man is hot trash. Samus is my heavy hitter in this game of multiversal femme fatales. I mean, c’mon folks. Your girl fights space dragons on the daily basis. The Varia suit is packing enough power to put damn near half of Tony Stark’s Iron Man suits to shame, including:

• A screw attack that is ripping anything caught in its path to shreds. 
• A power beam that can cave anyone’s chest in. 
• Regular missiles, heat-seeking missiles, ice missiles.
• Speed booster that lets her run at supersonic speeds
• The ability to turn into a frickin ball.

Let’s not forget that last part. Turning into a ball might not seem all that great but when she can leave a powerbomb that decimates an entire room, you’re screwed. Even without the suit, Samus has enough enhanced strength to take anyone. So send your Valkyries, your assassins, your 30-foot tall pirates. Samus is taking this game to the finals baby. 

Chell

Everyone needs a ringer, and I’m picking someone with enough creativity and intelligence to outsmart a homicidal AI. Chell is here to take your strongest fighter and confuse the living hell out of them. You see, the portal gun gives Chell an unexpected advantage. Whatever game plan you have goes to the wayside when you’ve got a portal underneath you and you’re suddenly falling 50 feet from the air. Oh, you’re flying at her? A quick dodge out the way and suddenly your flying straight into a portal that has a vat of lava on the other side. Chell’s no stranger to danger either. She has taken on some of the most dangerous tests filled with lasers, bullets, and death traps. Hell, she’s crafty enough to survive several explosions, being shot at by machine guns, and falling from great heights thanks to her boots. Every other opponent in this match is just another test for Chell, and she hasn’t met one yet that she couldn’t beat.

Click here to check out the other teams in the March Multimedia Madness 2021!

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The post March Multimedia Madness 2021: Team Bad Batch appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.

Charisma Check

A wise old man once said, “Only a game designed by nerds would have charisma as a fantasy power.” Grunkle Stan from Gravity Falls wasn’t wrong, but who wouldn’t want that ability? It’s a feeling scattered through moments big and small in our lives, when saying the right thing would have meant everything. Talking past or at someone instead of with them is much more common in reality. 

The appeal of games that offer dialogue participation is that fantasy of having ever-present charisma. Give or take reloading a previous save, there’s almost always an option for the right words said the right way. Unfortunately, this tends to turn conversations into transactions. So when a game like Signs of the Sojourner pushes against the pass/fail binary of talking in video games, what is it trying to say?

Dora the Explorer, Meet Climate Change

The first of Signs of the Sojourner’s many exchanges places the player in the role of a cat-eared kid tasked with that childhood rite-of-passage: to convince a friend to get in trouble with them. When the situation gets heated, the protagonist’s mother steps in to mediate. All this is expressed through the game’s primary mechanic. By alternately laying down cards, the player is dynamically positioned as a collaborator in the conversation. 

Glyphs of Gab

Each card has symbols on its left and right edges representing the ‘tone’ of the talk. Empathetic circles, logical triangles, and other icons must be matched from left to right to complete a successful stage in the dialogue. Once enough stages have been successfully completed, both characters come away from the conversation satisfied. A mismatched set isn’t the end of the world, either.

Even if all the conversational stages are failed, you may yet get a chance to make things right in a future conversation. Signs of the Sojourner knows that the real challenge is carrying on after words fail. As if to prove this, the next moment after the tutorial is a flash forward to the present-day of the player character’s adulthood. The protagonist’s mother has recently passed, leaving the management of the family business behind.

Signs of the Sojourner’s Mom Doing Her Best ‘Nanny from Muppet Babies’ Impression

Said family business was Mom journeying to nearby towns and trading for merchandise. Stocking these goods in the store she ran whenever she was home was the only thing that kept the player’s small hometown of Bartow on the map. Now, that’s the player’s responsibility. Supplying the shop adds urgency to every exchange in the game, and make no mistake — success or fail, there are exchanges being made in every conversation.

Roaming Charges

Cards may seem a limited resource to encapsulate communication, but Signs of the Sojourner very cleverly turns this into a double-edged sword. Talking to someone requires you forfeit a card from your finite deck to swap with one of theirs. Clinging to your old cards means losing out on connections you need to keep your hometown alive. Too many new cards, and you’ll struggle to talk to the folks back home who you’re trying to save. 

Real Millennial Vibes: Having to Set a Calendar Countdown to Potential Eviction

Other variables complicate this in fascinating ways. Some cards come with skills of their own. Abilities like ‘Reconsider’, ‘Clarify’, and ‘Chatter’ allow for altering or anticipating upcoming plays. ‘Fatigue’ cards can build up in the player’s deck the longer they’re out on the road. By not matching up to any card, these recreate the sensation of simply being too tired to make sense when you open your mouth. 

All this is to say nothing of the random events that can happen during a given playthrough. The road to saving your mother’s memory has endings as varied as stoically going down with her hometown or getting out while the getting’s good. Everything you do seems to have unforeseen consequences. The seeming lack of control may frustrate some, but personally speaking, I’ve never played a game that I’ve enjoyed being bad at more than Signs of the Sojourner.

You can play Signs of the Sojourner on Switch or Steam.

Check out our other video game reviews here.

8.3 Out Of 10 Unplanned Roadside Stops

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The post ‘Signs of the Sojourner’ Speaks an Uncommon Tongue appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.

By Kimberly Wilson ·

The post Heal, Pray, Love: How To Plan The Costa Rica Vacation Of Your Dreams appeared first on Essence.