#max is honestly one of the most popular people on the grid

[fcb-mv33]

Okay quick recap;

Carlos, Daniel, Pierre, Alex; his past teammates, all got along well with Max and are still very close friends with him

Charles; childhood rival to emotional support rival, enough said

Nyck; friends for years, Max helped him get an F1 seat and rescued him from Merc

Nando; this man has adored Max from day 1 as has Jenson

Lando; his bestie let's be real

Mick; childhood friends who grew up going on vacations together. Literally had their own language because they couldn't understand each other but wanted to be friends.

Yuki; they're hilarious together, it's clear to see that they have a laugh together

Nico H also gets along well with and has a laugh with Max

Nico Rosberg despite being terrified of Max when they were racing each other (I believe deep in my soul that, outside of the Brocedes narrative which ofc played it's part, that this man saw Max at red bull for one year and thought FUCK THIS SHIT I'M OUT because he was reminded of when he was teammates with Michael Schumacher and he saw the writing on the wall), is one of his biggest defenders when sky sports tries to spread bullshit

Antonio has talked about how he's been friends with Max especially since they were in f3 and how Max was one of the first to reach out when he lost his seat

Kimi and Max also got along well

You said it all about Seb and were absolutely correct

For fuck sake even Esteban gets along well with Max and he was the one driver Max clashed with. They were friends growing up, shit happened on and off track, they've moved past it and are friends again because it was five freaking years ago and they've known each other far longer than that but the anti max girlies love to ignore that.

Max might be painted as the villain of F1 like Seb and Schumi before him, but that doesn't make him a villain to the drivers on and off the grid who actually know him. Shock horror he's actually one of the drivers who is loved the most in the paddock.

Max is truly adored by most of the drivers on the grid no matter how hard people want to act like he’s this big bad wolf. He is honestly one of the most popular drivers on the grid with these drivers because of just how he is…he’s sweet and is always looking to talk to all the drivers😭😭

He’s just a little lion who wants to Maxsplain and have fun😭🧡

(Nico getting ptsd of Max being like Michael😭😭😭stop😭)

[shitapril]

very often see posts about how the one direction fans grew up to be formula one fans, and the more I think of it, the more it makes sense. putting aside the fact that almost all my f1 friends were 1d fans (were ? are lol), it makes sense that a fandom who's fuel was hyperfixating on boys living out their dreams shifted from one form of it to another.

tha being said, it got me thinking - how do the girlies translate to f1 ? and by girlies i mean what your kpop fan would call a "bias". for example, if i was a niall girl - who's my favourite now ?

so here's a silly little non-sensical analysis and comparison that should not be taken seriously at all :

firstly, the zayn malik girlies are definitely lewis hamilton girlies. both zayn and lewis come from humble backgrounds, were subject to vile, inhumane racial discrimination and hate - all while being arguably the most talented in their respective fields (I mean, you've heard zayn's high note in you & I, and seen lewis' 7 world championships). they're hardworking, pet-loving, very fashionable men who stay out of unnecessary spotlight for the most part, and step out once in a while to remind the world they're drop-dead gorgeous. the zayn girls are safe with lewis.

next comes liam payne - and here on you'll have to hear me out with my comparison of every racer and bandmate. liam and george russell are both aggressively british, unapologetically goofy and true to themselves (and i'm talking about liam in 1d not the one on logan paul's podcast). they're both very talented, highly regarded in their boss' eyes (toto wolff and simon cowell - this post is going to be interesting wow) and still somehow not an immediate fan favourite. this comparison also goes wonderfully well with the whole ziam and britcedes parallels.

thirdly, louis tomlinson. easy peasy. max verstappen. both incredibly blunt, dry humour, pr nightmares, do not give two single hecks. people either love them, or hate them - no in between. both incredibly talented individuals (louis wrote majority of 1d's discography, max has 3 world championships under his belt) and yet are discredited ("louis is only famous cuz of his bandmates and the band itself" and "max just had a good car"). the zayn and louis fued also parallels abu dhabi 2021 quite well aye ? (i'm going insane)

harry styles, no debate. charles leclerc - regarded as the pretty boys (the prettiest, their fans would insist i'm sure) and the most popular, the well-liked. both extremely talented without a doubt, but a little bit overrated, and victimised to glorify and support fan narratives. i know i sound like a hater - forgive me, not my intention. i like them both as individuals - their fans on the other hand (and no, not all, i know) are so blind-sided, so insane and cause so much unpleasantness on the internet. almost ironic, how the most amicable ones have the least liked fans lol. that aside though, if you were a harry girl, chances are you went from one fan-favourite to the other. i also just realised - this supports the larry and lestappen narratives - am i genuinely, honestly onto something here ? (i absolutely am not)

lastly, niall horan. now this one i'm sure will divide you all, but here you go anyway. lando norris. both babied immensely by their fans and bandmates/teammates alike - churchboy persona. the moment they shed the insecurity, suddenly bam everyone hates them (niall's mofo t-shirts, lando's frat boy tendencies, and saying things that the internet will not find funny), promising at a young age, yet somehow grew up to be called overrated. their fans are stubbornly loyal to them, defending them through all their rights, and wrongs. it makes sense to me. one smiley boy to another.

this probably makes no sense - but feel free to add your own comparisons, theories, and notes ! there's 5 of them and 20 on the grid, obviosuly disparity for me to go on and on and on about (for example, I see a little zayn girls to carlos girls pipeline, louis to fernando - oldest boy syndrome and all that) so let me know ! let's yap :)

[itsblasttothepast]

wait, checo is paired with other drivers beside max?

Oh yes, even when the main Checo pairing right now is Max, he has been paired with a few drivers:

With Lewis Hamilton (Chewis):

This has the seniority right now, they have been cozy since 2012, and even with their ups and downs, still mantain a friendly relationship which give us delusional fans hope.

With Fernando Alonso (ChecoNano or Perlonso):

I personally don't ship them, feel too brotherly for me, but they have been close since the time Checo entered F1, both hispanics, Checo was lighthearted than most of the hispanics drivers back then, so Alonso clicked very well with him. And Alonso has this very pansexual vibre with all the drivers, honestly, he's just sex on legs. With Checo, people think they would be good together, but I think Alonso is spoken for (Lanceeee).

With Nico Hulkenberg (Hulkenrez):

Sorry to put more images here, but they have history. They were together in the GP2 Series, then teammates in Force India. Hulkenberg speaks fondly of Checo, but honestly, he is a little shit. I love him, but it's true. I feel he's the one pulling pigtails on the people he likes, and in this case, with Checo, was pranking him, making jokes boderline racists (but he didn't mean them like that, he was just being Nico) and just flirting with him. They are still friendly, but now with KMag, they have lost their mojo. If Checo goes to Audi, maybe they would relink the romance.

With Esteban Ocon (no pairing name as far as I know):

Hate sex, anyone? Yes, that's why most of the fans started pairing them. I can say they sometimes had nice interactions, when they weren't trying to destroy each other, but I personally don't feel the vibe most of the people pairing them feel. Too much drama.

With Charles Leclerc (Checlerc):

This one baffles me, to be honest. When they interact, they say he's thirdwheeling Max and Charles, but yep, people ship them, and I guess I can see the appeal, Charles seems like a nice guy, they have chemistry, but I'm not sure why they pair them (Charlos makes more sense).

With Carlos Sainz Jr. (Cherlos):

Well, I can't see it, and now even less with their divorce, and I don't know if they ship them because they are hispanics, or because they look cute together. Carlos seems too hotheaded for Checo, and since Checo's teammate is Max, that's saying something.

With Lance Stroll (no idea of the ship name):

When they were teammates, they had this incredible chemistry, and were really, REALLY close, that's why Lance is still one of Checo's friends in the grid. But to me, they're more like brothers, nothing romantic as Lance focus all his romantic energy on Alonso. But I can see why people ship them.

He's also paired with Daniel Ricciardo, Pierre Gasly and even Oscar Piastri, but those are rare (like one or two fic rare), I think these guys are the most popular pairings for Checo (also it tickes me off when they ship him with Lando, come on! LANDO!).

Wow, sorry about the long rant, anon!

[f1-disaster-bi]

for the writer asks E, M (M), Y :)

I love it!

E: What character do you identify with most?  Is there a certain fic of yours that captures these qualities particularly well?

I guess out of the fics I write, I probably relate to Lando and the way I write him? Especially in fics where I talk about mental health struggles and such. I draw from real life for certain aspects of fics, and how I write him. I don't think there is any one fic where the qualities I see in Lando I see in myself. There's definitely moments where I see my own actions in him but there's not one fic or standing moment that I go "oh yes that is me"

M: What’s the weirdest AU scenario you’ve ever come up with?  Did it turn into a story?

I think that has to go to the bet in the third (and a little in the second) fic of my Unexpected au. It came from a joke with my friend @princelancey about Lance and Lando having a bet on who Seb's husband is. If Lance looses he has to shave his beard, and when trying to come up with something for Lando, we joked about Lando having to dress as a grid girl which actually became a stand alone fic and also involved Max and Daniel 😅

Y: What are your thoughts on your personal satisfaction with something you’ve written vs. the popularity of your stories?  Do you tend to be most satisfied with your most popular stories?  

I honestly don't look at how popular they are. I write a lot of pairings that can be considered rare pairs. I know not a lot of people will be reading them or commenting on them.

Really I base my satisfaction with them off how I feel sending them out into the world. Sometimes I rush to get them published because I feel like they're a failure, and other times I'm excited to post them. I never rely on views or comments because sadly now days, I don't get that many comments on fics and if I counted on that.....I'd probably stop posting them 😅

Fanfic Writer Ask Meme

[urnooboo]

LIFELINES AND LEGACIES - A D&D inspired TS4 Legacy Challenge

By me, @urnooboo!

Even though I’m not active, I wanted to start another legacy challenge, but I didn’t want to do a normal one. Since my friends and I play D&D and love it, why not take inspiration from there? And so here is the culmination of that little brainstorm! It’s my first time making a challenge like this, so hopefully it won’t be that bad. :D It’s a legacy challenge based on the Dungeons and Dragons classes!

If you want to try this challenge out, please use the tags #L&L challenge or #ts4 L&L ! I’d really appreciate it if anyone tries this out just for fun! 

Bit of a warning, this challenge gets a bit chaotic in the middle because...honestly, I dunno,,,,

Rules and requirements under the cut!!

Pack Requirements: All the EPs and GPs except for Star Wars (ew), but you can always skip some requirements if you don’t have the packs for them

You can choose to do this on normal lifespan, but playing on long is allowed too.

So, how do you want to do this?

GENERATION 1: Fighter

You don’t have much right now, but you’re determined to build yourself from the ground up and start a family. You have a strong will to fight when needed and you’re quite athletic. You don’t have to be completely alone at the start of this journey, however, and a long time best friend of yours can be part of your party.

RULES:

Must have Active trait

Fight/”Friendly Spar” with at least 3 different sims and 1 occult sim

Complete Successful Lineage aspiration

Starting funds must be less than 20,000 simoleons after buying a house

Get a job in either the Fitness career or the Military career

OPTIONAL: Can have another sim in the household when starting out, and must be friends with them. They can be your family, childhood friend,existing lover, or just some random roommate. (Also yes, you’re allowed to romance them. Unless if they’re your family, yikes)

GENERATION 2: Druid

Your family may not have had the best financial state starting out, but you don’t let things like money phase you. You’ve always loved nature and going out, and dreamed of wanting to do more for the environment as an adult. You like to take things a bit slowly, and love to lounge around. 

RULES:

Must have Vegetarian, Lazy, and Loves Outdoors traits

Lot must be off-the-grid

Have a green eco footprint

Marry in adulthood instead of young adulthood

Meet and become friends with the hermit in Granite Falls

Max out the Gardening skill and grow your own food

Optional: You must only have one lover and you must woo them with bees

GENERATION 3: Artificer

You’re dissatisfied at how your family lounges around most of the time, and you’re quite the workaholic compared to them. Your career is your life, and you happen to be both ambitious and gifted. Though you love your child but you have absolutely no idea how to be a parent. So you might end up being a bit of a helicopter parent… 

RULES:

Must have Ambitious and Genius traits

Graduate college on a scholarship

Get a job in the Scientist career

Have at least level 6 Robotics skill

Have only one child, born from a one night stand/fling

Never get married

Only do strict parenting interactions with your child

OPTIONAL: Complete the element collection

GENERATION 4: Wizard

You grew up in a house with high expectations, and always wanted to please your family. You worked hard in your studies and in the end- it paid off. But at the cost of you not having much of a social life. However, that really isn’t your priority. Instead, you chose to start learning the magic arts, enthralled by its mystic ways. You were always good at school, so why not start getting good at magic now? As long as you put your mind to it, it shouldn’t be that hard...right? 

RULES:

Must have Perfectionist and Loner traits

Have less than 5 friends

Must finish Whiz Kid child aspiration

Become an “A” student in both grade school and high school

Must have “Responsible” trait when you reach Young Adulthood (via high responsibility value)

Graduate college with a distinguished degree

Become a spellcaster

OPTIONAL: Take the teaching or doctor career

GENERATION 5: Sorcerer

You were born with a magical bloodline, and you love to show it off. You want the whole world to see that you’re a cool prodigal spellcaster. You’re the complete opposite of your parent; loud, outgoing, quick to make friends. You’ve even developed a knack for acting in order to impress people, and you dream of becoming a famous star in order to show those who wronged you before that you’re the best thing on earth. 

RULES:

Must have Self-Absorbed and Erratic trait

Must have weak bloodline trait from parent and become a spellcaster

Reach the Adept, Master, or Virtuoso rank 

Become at least a B-Lister

Get to level 7 of the Actor career

Have some sort of rival

Must have “Good Manners” trait when reaching Young Adulthood (via high manners value)

Must have good reputation

Optional: Be the leader of a popular club and have the Insider trait

GENERATION 6: Bard

You’ve got it all. Rich and famous family, a magical bloodline, musical skill, lots of friends...but something inside you just feels...missing. Thanks to this, you started going around looking for lovers, carelessly tossing aside those who happened to not meet your indecisive standards. It would probably take you years before you calm down and settle with someone you truly care about, but all the heartbreak you’ve caused before that is quite impressive, to say the least. 

RULES:

Must have Romantic, Music Lover and Non-Committal traits

This sim has to be the hottest generation. Go all out yo!!!!

Must have strong bloodline trait but cannot be a spellcaster

Complete the Serial Romantic Aspiration

Work in the Entertainer career as a musician

Have as many affairs as you want and have illegitimate kids BUT…

Your heir must be the result of an affair with an occult sim that isn’t a spellcaster. See rules for next generation below

OPTIONAL: Only get married in late adulthood or elder life stage. You can’t have kids with this person.

GENERATION 7: Warlock

You never really had a close relationship with your “famous” parent, and spent more time with your occult family, making you pretty close with each other. Your half siblings don’t like you because you inherited a part of your famous parent’s fortune, despite being...you know...a paranormal freak? To get around this, you developed quite a skillful tongue, and you know your way around words. Now you’re looking for someone to get some more money from... 

RULES:

Must have bloodline trait AND be part of an occult race that isn't a spellcaster. Like, you could be a mermaid, vampire, or alien with the bloodline trait, or even a half alien or half vampire.

Have a high relationship with your occult parent

Reach level 10 charisma skill and get yourself a sugar daddy/mommy. :D

Now, your path for this generation will differ depending on whether your parent is an alien, vampire, or mermaid, and is based on some of the D&D warlock patrons. However, this divergence is completely optional. and you can just focus on finding a sugar daddy/mommy only

ALIEN PARENT (Great Old One patron) You can be either a full alien or half alien for this one.

Get a job in the Astronaut career and visit Sixam

Max out your Logic skill

If you’re a full alien, memory wipe at least one person who you had a high relationship with if they find out you’re an alien.

Must have Insensitive trait when you reach Young Adulthood (comes from having low empathy)

VAMPIRE PARENT (Undying patron) You can be either a full vampire or half-vampire for this one.

Max out your vampire lore skill

Own a cowplant for as long as possible

If full vampire, turn at least one person into a vampire

Become friends with the Grim Reaper, by any means necessary :)

MERMAID PARENT (Kraken/Lurker in the Deep patron) (UA) You can only be a full mermaid for this one.

Max out your fishing skill

Try to have one child with Sulani Mana trait

Collect 5 rare fishes

Die from polar bear plunge (jumping into a pool outside when it’s freezing cold)

GENERATION 8: Cleric

The generation before was…chaotic, to say the least. You may have occult blood in you but you’re gonna try to set things straight for future generations. How are you gonna do that? BY GETTING RICH, OF COURSE! SPREAD THE WORD OF CAPITALISM AROUND BY STARTING YOUR OWN RETAIL STORE! Or a restaurant, that works too. The most prominent thing that you’ve inherited from your parents is your love of money, and you’re constantly coming up with schemes to get more. Gods may not exist in The Sims, but you might as well worship something that’s powerful. And money is power.

RULES: 

Must have Materialistic trait

Have a job in the Business career, Politics career, or Civil Designer career (Civic Planner) and bop bop bop, bop to the top

Own at least one retail store/restaurant with a rating of at least three stars

Complete the Fabulously Wealthy Aspiration

Eventually move to a penthouse OR one of the big apartments in the business district in San Myshuno

Have only one child

Fall in love with someone from work, then divorce them after having a fight

GENERATION 9: Paladin

Despite the unique circumstances that happened before your birth, you grew up...pretty normal. There’s not much to say about you since your magical bloodline and occult genes are probably dwindling from here, and sooner or later your family legacy will go back to being humans. You’ve always wanted to protect this world and be the one to bring justice to it, so you take up a job in the police force. You and your lover unfortunately had a kid, and even though your lover may have wanted it deep down you actually hate kids. You’ve heard about strange events going on in a town called Strangerville, and you’ve been itching to investigate… 

RULES:

Must be close with Generation 8 sim

Must have Hates Children trait

Have a job in the Police career

Complete the Strangerville Aspiration and become the Hero of Strangerville

Have the “Mediator” trait when reaching Young Adulthood (from high conflict resolution)

Stay in the penthouse/apartment your parent got

OPTIONAL: Complete the “Rambunctious Scamp” child aspiration and get “Physically Gifted” trait

GENERATION 10: Rogue

Ironically, despite your upbringing, you ended up becoming a deviant that has constant run-ins with the law. Your relationship with your family isn’t great, but you’re determined to make a name for yourself as a slippery troublemaker. Your true dream however, is to find your one true lover, since you’re a secret hopeless romantic. Your flirting skills are laughable though, and you tense up whenever you have to do something romantic. How are you gonna find love like this? 

RULES:

Have bad relationship with Generation 9 sim

Must have Kleptomaniac, Gloomy, and Unflirty traits

Reach the top of the criminal career

Complete both the Soulmate aspiration

Whenever you visit another sim’s lot, steal something from their house

Have up to two exes before finally settling on the one you wanna marry

Get friendzoned at least once

Move out of your parents’ penthouse/apartment and into a small 20x15 lot

OPTIONAL: Have negative reputation

OPTIONAL: Be BFFs with your other parent

You can end the challenge here, but there are still some more D&D classes left to do, so here they are, the optional generations!

GENERATION 11: Barbarian

You take after your parent a lot, and you’re skilled in making people absolutely hate you. Your emotions are just as stable as Philippine wifi, and you have this terrible habit of getting into fights a lot. But just because people don’t like you doesn’t mean you can’t go out and have fun. In fact, you’re quite infamous for going out to parties and starting bar fights. 

RULES:

Must have Hot-headed and Mean traits

Must have “Uncontrolled Emotions” trait when aging up into Young Adulthood (from low emotional control)

Fight as many people as possible, make lots of enemies

Throw a lot of parties and go to lots of bar nights and events

Complete Public Enemy aspiration

OPTIONAL: Die from cardiac arrest

GENERATION 12: Monk

For someone with a public nuisance for a parent, you’re pretty chill. You love to make stuff, and your way of life is quite tranquil, to say the least. You’re handy and artistic, and love to do things yourself, even if it does give off the impression that you’re super cheap. You’ve always got a gift for someone during christmas, and your inventory is full of stuff that you’ve made, or components to make stuff with. The world is cool with you, and you’re cool with the world. You’re not the type of person who could hold down a regular job though...

RULES:

Max out the Wellness skill

Must have Maker trait

Be at least level 4 in the all following skills: Handiness, Fabrication, Painting, Writing, Flower Arranging, and any instrument skill. (Also Knitting, if you have it)

Always change jobs when you reach level 4 in them, and your only truly stable source of income is from selling the stuff you’ve made

Live on an off-the-grid lot, preferably somewhere near the water or near a forest

Have twins for kids and only those twins (you can cheat to get this ahhaha)

Elope only, cause weddings aint your style

Explore Selvadorada with your family at least once

GENERATION 13: Ranger

After you and your family went on a vacation to Selvadorada, you decided that you’d travel the world, no matter what! Your twin sibling was originally gonna help you complete this dream, but unfortunately they died due to mysterious circumstances. While you mourned away your sorrows, you came across a stray animal that reminded you of your late sibling and decided to take it in. Once you got yourself together out of your slump, you decided to pack your bags and start travelling around the world for realsies.

RULES: 

Be BFFs with your twin

Twin sibling must die during their teenage/early young adult years

Adopt at least one pet after that (yeah, you can have more)

Complete Friend of the Animals aspiration

Visit all the vacation worlds at least once in your lifetime

Discover all the secret lots except Sixam

Visit at least one lot in each normal world with your pet

Move household at least once

Don’t have children

And that’s it! I hope you guys enjoy this challenge!! I’ll try to play this too, though I might be even more inactive since school is finally starting hnnng you guys are free to tweak some requirements to better suit your gameplay so just have fun and enjoy!!!

[formula-what]

Team Principal Crash Course

I know someone’s probably done one of these, and I’m sure they are much prettier than mine. I’m going through a divorce with PowerPoint rn

But I’ve always wanted to do one of these!!! Also I needed an excuse to not sleep / do any actual productive work

This is for @landobviously and any new people to f1, although I’m not sure this is actually very helpful

Mercedes: Toto Wolff

Team principal and CEO

low key hot, has the floofiest hair.

His name is actually Torger Christian Wolff which I love even more than Toto.

Austria business man who personally owns 30% of Mercedes stock?? He originally owned shares for Williams but has sold them all :(

I think he’s pretty much unproblematic? But I’m a Mercedes Hoe so probably biased.

He’s married to Susie Wolff who used to be a racing driver. She did DTM, Formula Renault + F3 and was also a development/test driver for Williams (becoming the second woman to ever take part in an f1 weekend, 22 years after the first) She is now the team principle of a Formula-E team, Venturi Racing which is co-founded by Leonardo DiCaprio??

RedBull : Christian Horner

This is the fucker they interview All. Of. The. Fricking. Time.

Someone will breathe and they be like “let’s go to the pit lane to get Christians thoughts on this”

But he’s pretty funny and all of the other guys tend to shy away from the cameras so I’m not that pissed about it but like, sky Sports love him.

Has donkeys named after Max and Daniel

He fell in love with Sebastian Vettel and is still low key pissed that he abandoned them. Also his daughters favourite driver is Seb

Has major beef with Cyril (Renault team principal)

Married a Spice Girl, some of the RedBull boys go with him sometimes to her concerts and they wear her merch

Okay usually I would go Ferrari next, but they’re a midfielder now so..

McLaren: Zak Brown

Gets treated like team principal but is actually CEO

American, says duuuude a lot

Used to be a professional driver and I think he was actually good?? But idk

I hated him at first but honestly he seems pretty chill?

Gives the biggest bear hugs

Andreas Seidl

Is actually Team Principal

Falls under the radar

Just kinda hangs around looking judgy all the time

When he does speak I can never understand a word he says

Renault: Cyril Abiteboul

The Frenchiest French guy to ever French

Sacked Hulk for Ocon (who’s French) although that’s completely unfair of me since Hulk has entered 179 gps and yet has never gotten a podium (which is a record by the way!!!)

Will find beef in anything, and then yell at you for it. Or give you evil eyes from across the room

Cyril fuckers do not deserve rights you know who you are

Got scammed by Daniel Ricciardo

Hates Christian Horner

Brought Alonso back??

Doesn’t deserve to have any junior drivers

Renault Lotus used to be a pretty popular engine supplier in f1 but aftee this year they will be the only ones on the grid using it. Yeah this isn’t about Cyril at all but it makes him yell which makes me laugh so

Racing Point: Lawrence Stroll

Part owner of Racing Point, and invested £182m in Aston Martin?? Hence the name change next year

Pretty sure he owns a private island, put I have zero proof

Bought the team when it’s owner went to jail for fraud and the team went into debt. But for whatever reason they couldn’t actually buy the shares so instead they just had to rename it and pretend they’re a new constructor. Midway through the season.

Daddy Stroll but NOT because of his looks. He’s just rich as fuck and promoted his kid Lance Stroll into one of the seats (who is actually a pretty good driver and doesn’t deserve any hate at all)

Otmar Szafnauer

Team Principal

Low key thought he was the one that went to jail so... yeah I know nothing about this guy

apparently he is litterally in the Hall Of Fame

Ferrari: Mattia Binotto

Fun fact, he actually used to run a circus I’m kidding.

he runs one now though

Looks like an older and more permanently confused Chal Lelerc

Last year was his first season as a team principal and boy can you tell

Is the parent that says he doesn’t have favourites but then always takes the youngest’s side and thinks that they’re an angel child that can never do anything wrong

Alpha Tauri: Franz Tost

Looks so soft

I know nothing about him, but I’m pretty sure he’s in love with Seb

Ummm I don’t think he’s problematic? But it’s red bull so who knows

Has the exact same vibes as beans and sausages on toast and I will not expand on that it’s probably because of the name tbh

Haas: Guenther Steiner

Is the 🤬 emoji personified, every second word that comes out of his mouth is a swear

“We look like a bunch of fucking wankers”

I’m not exaggerating when I say I’m scared of him

Literally the most terrifying man alive

Will yell ALL THE TIME about literally ANYTHING

Keeps putting KMag and Romain together even though they spend more time crashing into each other than actually racing?? And yet is equally surprised everytime???

“We’ve got two fucking idiots driving for us” and have done for FOUR YEARS. Haas have only been a team for five years, and they’ve only ever had one other driver

But I love them both

Fell for whatever the fuck Rich Energy was

Alfa Romeo: Frédéric Vasseur

Team Principal and CEO

I’ve never seen this man in my life

Used to be team Principle of Renault???2016-2017??? Whaaaa????

Williams: Sir Frank Williams

Founder and team principal

Old as fuck

a big name in motor sport

Used to be a long distance runner, now has a wheel chair because he got into a car accident on the way to a fun run :(

Literally built Williams from the ground up (and they used to be very good I swear)

Claire Williams

Deputy team Principal (but actually does all of the stuff)

the only important woman

Doesn’t deserve any of the hate she gets (and she gets a lot)

She’s trying her best okay

The ‘this is fine’ meme personified

[bikeforlife]

Bike Tour Blog

I honestly can’t believe I made it from the Pacific to Atlantic.   This morning I woke up in my own bed for the first time since early February.  Oh my god it felt so good.  If a mattress maker wanted a testimonial, today would definitely be the day to get one from me.   After 45 days straight of being on a bike it feels really good to be home. 

On the first week we made from San Diego to Tucson Arizona.  This section had some significant climbs through places like Alpine CA  and  Pine Valley CA and lots of desert riding in eastern tip of California and the state of Arizona.  We camped in San Dunes CA where ATV’s are very popular and in places like desert view towers that had insane views of the Ko-Pah mountains.   We also slept in a town park in small town in Arizona called Welton.  I did snap my chain in Pine Valley but Tone was right there to help out.  It was also the first time I rode my bike on the interstate and the first time I ever had rode a bike 10 miles straight downhill from the Ko Pah Mountains to Ocatillo California. 

The next few week would take us through New Mexico and the beginning of Texas.  The highlight of this section was the climb through the Gila National Forest on our way to Emory Pass.  This section had absolutely breathtaking views and an abundance of nature.  We climbed to over 8200 feet of elevation at the peak and went through awesome towns like Silver City NM and Hillsboro, NM.  A couple days later we crossed the border into Texas at El Paso. This mammoth state would be approximately 1/3rd of the total miles we would cover.  Many parts of the Us but especially Texas  had recently experience significant weather event with snow, freezing conditions, and a failure of the local power grid.  Fortunately we got to the state about a week after the weather had passed.   

In Eastern Texas a significant portion of our miles would be on US highway 90.  This would feature some awesome small towns like Marathon and Sierra Blanca Texas. The route also had remote areas  of riding where there wouldn’t even be a gas station for 80+ miles.  I found myself having more to think and unwind than at any part of my adult life.   It was also during this stretch that we stayed at some great state parks.  Seminole Canyon State Park and Lost Maples State Park in particular stood out to me.    There is something magical about looking at the stars on a clear night without light pollution.  

Eventually we went through Austin, Texas and I got to reconnect with my friends Jason and Max. After so much time pedaling through remote areas it feels really good to see friends and be in a city.   Austin as a city has grown so much since I was there last.  I ate great food during our off day and found an amazing bike mechanic that help me resolve a derailleur issue that had been lingering since San Diego.  

We would hit a few more state parks on the eastern half of Texas and eventually crossed into Louisiana.  After being in a very dry part of Texas the swamps of Louisiana offered a very different riding experience.  For the most part the terrain was flat and the roads were in good condition.  This part of the tour was special to me because of the amazing friends we made.  During one week we stayed with Mandy in Deritter, LA and Perry in Jackson, LA.  These amazing people took us into their homes and did everything they could to be helpful and make us feel at home.  We were able to take a day off in New Orleans which was awesome.  My friend Chris and his friend Bobby came down from from Jackson Miss and we all got a chance to hang.   It was great to see Chris again after almost a decade of not seeing him.  Hopefully I’ll make it to Mississippi at some point 

The final stretch would have us riding through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida.   During this time we met even more incredible hosts.   Kellie/Mason in Bay Saint Louis and Dave/Stacy in Bagdad, Fl were both incredibly kind and generous.  Thank you for everything.  The ride took us through places like Dalphin Island, Alabama.  I never knew there were islands in Alabama . They are absolutely gorgeous.  

We stayed in a couple more awesome state parks in this stretch.   In Bainbridge Georgia we stayed in the east bank campground operated by the army core of engineers.  They gave us a site right by the water and it was a pretty magical experience.  The final section of the tour featured a massive uptick in the number of bugs in these parks.   I found that during camping were almost always under attack from mosquitoes or being visited by either argentine ants, caterpillars , or bees.  Bug spray can help but sometimes you just have to cover every single bit of skin on your body. 

During the final day push to the ocean Tone and I split up.  The original route that we were using had us going through Jacksonville to Saint Augustine Florida. He wanted to stick to the route while  I made a decision to go directly to Jacksonville which was more direct to the Atlantic Ocean.  For me the final day was filled with a range of emotions and thoughts.  Admittedly even 10 years later I still have some anxiety of my past medical condition.  As i’m riding i’m feeling a huge sense of accomplishment and simultaneous release of anxiety/stress. To be able to survive a full coast to coast tour of the United States on a bike is the kind of proof that the only limitations are the ones I place on myself.  I think about my life with Riana over the past 10 years and how fortunate we’ve been to be able to experience living in larger cities, traveling abroad, and getting to start our own business.  

I think about how grateful I am to Tony for doing this tour with me.  I’ve known him for 15 years and he’s always pushed me to do things outside my comfort zone.  From helping me get first passport stamp, to hosting great events, to now riding through the US on a bike.  Particularly on this tour he went above and beyond.  He help me with mechanical issues which i’m not particularly good at, he lead our route navigation almost every day, he found places for us to stay, and helped lead us through all kinds of unique day to day challenges.  

My tour came to a strange end.  I was on my way to stay at my friends Stephanie’s house in jacksonville when I stopped at a convenience store.  When I came out my bike and all of my gear was stolen.  This included my passport, clothes, tent, sleeping bag, paneers, bike tools, food, journal, and more.  I tried my best to look through the neighborhood and called the police but no luck in recovering any of it.  As unfortunate as this situation is, I'm grateful it happened on the final day of the tour just a couple of miles from my friends house.  I won’t let that person take away my memories and diminish the experience.   They are worth infinitely more than the material value of the bike and my belongings.  

As i’ve had a couple of days to relax before going back to work  i’ve been reflecting on the experience more.  I absolutely would recommend doing something like this to anyone I know for a few reasons.   It’s a great way to decompress.  You have time to actively think and it helps your focus significantly.  The riding is tough but manageable.  I only rode my bike on a couple training rides beforehand.  I was also asked a ton of questions from people about my experience. So I wanted to answer them one by one below.  

What did you eat?  

Being a vegan on a bike tour has its challenges.  I ate a lot of clif bars, peanut butter banana burritos, trail mix, , Fritos chips, subway Veggie Delights without cheese and Impossible burgers from Burger Kings.   Honestly a lot of days on tour it was challenging to find vegan friendly dishes.  Thankfully our hosts made some really nice home cooked vegan meals and every large city we visited had great vegan options.  

Where did you sleep?  

It was a mix of hotels, backyards , rv parks, state parks, town parks , and then random wild camping.   On nights where it was too cold to camp we opted for hotel most of the time.  

What gear did you have?    This was my packing list before the bike was stolen. 

Tools Bag

Park tool Allen key Hand pump Kevlar spoke Back up derailleur  Baby wipes Chain scrubber Degreaser Spare tube x2 3 tire lever adjustable wrench Poncho Hand warmer Head lamp

Food Bag Varies but generally 3 portable camp meals  Clif bars 

Back paneer 1

Extra water plastic jug - Nalgene Sleeping bag (40 degrees) Sleeping bag liner. (10-15 degree etc) Micro fiber Towel Waterproof socks Large winter gloves Small gloves Zip ties

Back paneer 2 Short tech shirts (red and green) Socks (long wool, short cotton Medium wool Blue t shirt

-Toiletries bag

Deodorant dr Bonner liquid and bar soap, bug spray toothbrush toothpaste back up Masks Hand sanitizer

Electronics bag Solar charger Headphone and charger Cell charger Extra water container - 3 liter emergency

Duffle Sleeping pad Wind pants Under armour Long sleeve shirts (grey , black , blue yellow winter Jacket

What was the hardest part?    I suspect every single rider will have a different answer to this .  For me there were two things that probably equally as challenging.  First and foremost there are large portions where people are not wearing masks.  It was very demoralizing to be in situations constantly where people have made a conscious decision to disregard the health of others.  Since the services were so spread out I found myself having to get food from places that have anti mask propaganda on their front door.  

Secondly this tour really taught me that I am more comfortable in cities and around people.  It was charming to spend  days riding our bikes through  farm country in remote roads but eventually it began to wear on me and I found myself crave cities.  Also in cities the percentage of people wearing masks shot up significantly.  

What was your favorite small town?  

I really enjoyed Silver City New Mexico.   It was a quirky mountain with good architecture and really nice people.  There was also a very helpful bike shop, great co-op,  nice motel, and the town was filled with cool art.    

What was the weather like?  

For the most part we had good weather.   I would say were typically 50-60’s during the day on the first half but colder at night.   We were able to avoid some of the extreme weather that hit Texas but still found ourselves that was a little too cold to camp in.    Most of the biggest issue that would we would face would be consistent headwinds.  After a first week full of tailwinds the rest of the tour would almost always deal us 10-25 mph headwinds.   

How many issues did you have with your bike?  

There are always some day to day issues but the most common were flat tires ( I think i had 5 throughout the trip), My front derailleur was a consistent issue.   The fenders on the bike were kind of a pain.   However for an old 80’s bike with an older drive train it held up pretty well.   I would recommend to anyone thinking about touring to consider customizing their bike to their own needs as opposed to buying a brand new touring bike.   There will always be maintenance.    

 How did your body hold up?   

For the most part I wasn’t in a lot of pain on this tour.   Everyone’s body is different.  I found that if I got a majority of my miles during the morning I would do much better.   However on days where we were riding until close to sun down i found myself in a lot of pain near the end of the day.   Most commonly knees, butt, lower back, quads.   Occasionally my hands would be numb on long riding days.   

How long did it take?  

45 days coast to coast.   During that period we took 3 full days off and had a number of short days (30-40 miles).    I’m told that this was a very quick trip as many folks take between 60-70 days to complete this route.  

What would you recommend to someone doing this?  

There are a million things but i’ll try to summarize here.  

If you’re touring with other people try to have honest conversations in advance about things like how many miles you want to shoot for a day.   How early in the morning do you want to start pedaling.   Where you are you comfortable staying.  What kind of timeline you’re under with work?    What food you’re comfortable sharing.   If you’re comfortable deviating off the route to save miles/time.       Ultimately the more you and your riding partners discuss this in advance the less confusion you’ll have day to day.  

With your work I would communicate to co-workers honestly how involved you want to be while away.   Some have traditional jobs that allow them to totally leave work and decompress.  In my case as an entrepreneur I found myself involved on almost daily basis with work.   For me that was comfortable but for others it might take away from their experience.   

I would also make sure that you have a good instinct for eating food even when you’re not hungry.  I had to learn this throughout the tour as my food options were limited with a vegan diet.  

I would recommend that you try to do some level of training in advance.  On my first bike tour I did almost no training and I was in pain almost right away.  On this one I did some cross training and some scheduled rides.  It made all of the difference in the world as far as my day pain levels.   

Would you do it again? 

I don’t personally know if I would do a tour of this length again.   While I enjoyed the experience and the bucket list aspect of it I found myself going through the motions on a lot of days.    I think I would enjoy much more doing a tour of a 7-14 days.   Possibly if I’m ever retired I may feel differently but the looming pressure of my career was a bit hard to get through mentally.   

[pixelgrotto]

The horrific Resident Evil playthrough, interlude three

I just finished watching all of the Resident Evil movies I could get my hands on. When I told people I was doing this as the last part of my great year-long playthrough, they all let out groans and said something along the lines of, “Ugh, don’t you wanna end on a good note?” Undaunted by these words and fueled by my ability to tolerate crappy cinema, I moved forward, courageously making it through nine of these suckers...which, to be fair, ranged from surprisingly enjoyable to just as terrible as everyone warned me about. 

Before I begin, it’s important to note that we’re dealing with two separate film series here. There’s director Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil Hollywood films, which are the ones that most people know about. Then there are three Japanese-made CG movies that are canon and co-exist alongside the stories of the games. The Anderson movies are...mostly ass. The Japanese ones are okay. 

Let us start with the ass first. 

Resident Evil - The first RE film came out in 2002, which means that what little CG it has is laughably dated and it’s refreshingly small-scale when compared to its sequels. The movie’s a fan fiction remix of some themes from Resident Evil 1, except with none of the characters from the games present. Instead, we have Paul W.S. Anderson’s wife Milla Jovovich taking center stage as Alice, the former head of Umbrella security in a secret base called the Hive that goes to hell when some dude tries to steal viruses. The entirety of the action takes place in the Hive, and we get a surprisingly tiny number of monsters, with just your garden variety zombies, a few Cerberus and a single Licker showing up. Even though she does run up a wall and kick a Cerberus in the face, Alice is at her most realistic here (she turns into a dual wielding mutant with the ability to make the camera go into slow-motion whenever she wants in all the other films), there’s a nifty laser grid scene that all the sequels keep referencing when they want you to feel nostalgic, and the Hive’s sentient AI, the Red Queen, is compelling enough that Capcom eventually stuck her in Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. Aside from this movie being full of British actors who do REALLY awful American accents, sounding like they all have mouths full of sausages, Paul W.S. Anderson’s first take on Resident Evil is probably the most watchable one he made. 

Resident Evil: Apocalypse - Okay, this one is watchable too, but in more of a popcorn-munching “lol, this shit is dumb” way. It steals the general plot of Resident Evils 2 and 3, with Raccoon City getting infected, but ups the cheese by a hundred. Alice is now a thirteen-year-old boy’s version of a BADAZZ woman, with lots of guns and a bare midriff, and she teams up with Jill Valentine, who resembles her game self in looks but not exactly in personality. Together, they’ve gotta escape Raccoon City along with Carlos Oliveira, who is possibly the only character from the games who is done a great service in these Anderson movies, which make him much more likable even if they couldn’t find an actual Hispanic actor to portray him and had to settle for an Israeli instead. Oh, and Nemesis shows up, because one of the dudes from the first movie who accompanied Alice into the Hive gets experimented on and turned into what honestly looks like someone’s Halloween costume. The writers commit a cardinal sin at the end of the flick by humanizing him, having him suddenly remember his TRUE SELF and help the good guys, but aside from that screw-up I admit that I had a goofy grin on my face throughout several parts of this movie. After Nemesis blows up the Raccoon City station and murmurs his one line of dialogue- “STARRRRRSSSS” - I even kinda felt like clapping. So yeah, Apocalpyse is idiotic fun.

Resident Evil: Extinction - Here’s where the movies stop being mildly entertaining and become varying degrees of either “meh” or just plain bad. Extinction’s biggest problem is that it makes the weird decision of having the entire PLANET be wiped nearly completely clean by Umbrella’s virus, giving the franchise the most generic setting imaginable for a zombie flick - a post-apocalyptic world. And even though this film features Claire Redfield and actually has Alice fight a Tyrant that looks the part, I feel that by turning the environment into Mad Max the filmmakers missed the entire point of the franchise. Resident Evil isn’t really about a “what if” scenario with mankind dying and zombies taking over the world. Instead, it’s about how humanity manages to cope in a time where zombies are used by corporations for terrorism purposes - hence the franchise’s “bio-organic weapon” catch-phrase for its creatures. It’s about how brave people live on in an era that just happens to feature biopunk monsters as a deadly fact of life. It’s about the evil that resides within a world that is pretty shitty, but hasn’t completely gone to shit. By turning the whole planet into the same ol’ zombie playground that we see in most popular fiction starring these workman-like horror tropes, Extinction - which probably thought it was upping the stakes - instead just feels sorta dull, and anyone who views the film today is probably going to see it as a weaker version of The Walking Dead. Oh, and it ends with Alice discovering clones of herself, which will only serve to screw with the loose continuity of these movies as they go on. 

Resident Evil: Afterlife - This one starts with Alice’s clones raiding the Umbrella facility in Tokyo, and the whole sequence - which feels like it should be the finale - is reduced to a few minutes of special effects in the beginning. (This is foreshadowing for the next two films, which both end with hints of giant, climatic battles that mostly happen off-screen, if at all.) The first thing that I noticed when watching this was how slow-mo kicked in every five minutes and how the camera seemed to linger on bullets, and I eventually remembered that this film was released during Hollywood’s obsession with 3D during the early 2010s. This explains Afterlife’s IN-YOUR-FACE-IN-THREE-DIMENSIONS action scenes, which are initially pretty in a music video sort of way but become overdone and tiresome as the movie goes on, kinda like a Zack Snyder film. (I place Paul W.S. Anderson in the same “style over substance” category of director as both Zack Snyder and Michael Bay, by the way.) Anyway, Afterlife deals with Alice teaming up with more survivors to try to find a secret ship haven free of zombies. Along the way she runs into Chris Redfield, who looks more like a janitor than the jacked BSAA agent that he is in the games, and Chris and Claire Redfield have a quick sibling reunion and fight Wesker in a scene with choreography shamelessly stolen from Resident Evil 5. It’s pandering fan service and sort of diverting, but ultimately none of it matters. Chris disappears after this movie and is never seen again, and Afterlife is more interesting as a specimen of 2010 3D excess than it is as an actual narrative.

Resident Evil: Retribution - Retribution amps the pandering fan service that Afterlife dabbled in to new levels. Ada Wong is here, played by Li Bingbing but dubbed by her original voice actress, Sally Cahill, probably because Li’s English isn’t that great. Leon Kennedy and Barry frickin’ Burton show up, both looking pretty much like their in-game counterparts. Even Michelle Rodriguez and a few other faces from Paul W.S. Anderson’s first Resident Evil flick make an appearance, thanks to the fact that this movie has clones up the wazoo and uses them to handwave away any series inconsistencies you could think of. So you’re got fan service for the people who like the games and fan service for the folks who liked the first movie, and on top of it all the film has the extreme 3D that its predecessor possessed and a buttload of battles because it all takes place in a giant Umbrella simulation facility full of stuff that can easily be wrecked. By now the plot to these things has gotten more scrambled than my eggs in the morning, but I will say that thanks to its inclusion of classic characters, Retribution is more or less tolerable. There’s even a bit of characterization this time around, thanks to a little hearing-impaired clone girl who Alice takes under her wing and begins to care for, and the movie ends on an okay cliffhanger in a Washington DC under siege, promising epic things to come in the next movie. Unfortunately... Resident Evil: The Final Chapter - I really did not enjoy The Final Chapter for a myriad of reasons. First of all, the Washington battle promised at the end of Retribution never happens. Instead, we fast forward to several months later, when Alice is (big surprise) the only survivor, and EVERYONE she was with in the last flick - Ada, Leon, the little deaf girl - is gone and never mentioned ever again. Wesker, who Alice was working with in Retribution, is back to being a bad guy for poorly explained reasons. Another bad scientist dude that Alice killed in Extinction also returns for even worse reasons, because supposedly Alice only offed his clone three movies ago. But wait, this “real” bad scientist dude is also revealed to be a clone as the TRUE bad scientist dude shows up in the movie’s last act! AND THE ULTIMATE TWIST (look away now if you actually care about spoilers) is that Alice is HERSELF a clone of the original daughter of the Umbrella corporation’s founder who died of a degenerative disease and served as the basis for the Red Queen AI. The idiotic thing is that this daughter was said to be the progeny of Dr. Charles Ashford in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, but this movie retcons her to be the spawn of Dr. James Marcus. The Final Chapter, in fact, screws with continuity to a degree I have rarely seen before in a long-running film franchise. Yeah, the framework tying this series together got weird as soon as clones were introduced, but previously it seemed that Paul W.S. Anderson at least cared about his own messy fan fiction. Here? It’s like he forgot what he’d spent the last 15 years building up to and ended on one sloppy fart. If this weren’t bad enough, The Final Chapter is edited in that god awful “shaky cam, lots of fast cuts” way that I hate. In fact, I counted something like twenty cuts in a scene of a few seconds when Alice is attacked by a creature, which means that this film won’t just baffle you with its disregard for continuity - it’ll give you a headache too. 

Resident Evil: Degeneration - After watching an array of live-action flicks that took random Resident Evil threads and mashed them together with the elegance of a splattered turd, it did feel good to switch things up and move to the CG movies that were actually put out by Capcom. This 2008 offering takes place in between Resident Evils 4 and 5, stars Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy, and deals with a virus breakout in an airport and some of the pharmaceutical company backstabbing that occurred in the aftermath of Umbrella’s destruction. It’s all stuff that feels like it could have come from a lesser gaiden game - perhaps in the same vein as the first Revelations title - and it kinda gives off that “so-so anime movie” vibe, especially because the dubbing always sounds a tad off. Nevertheless, Degeneration’s still a breath of fresh air compared to the Anderson series, and there’s a nice gag where Claire’s searching for a weapon in the airport, someone hands her a physical umbrella, and she looks at it and is like, “Hm, didn’t see this coming.” (Lollerskates.) The main issue I have with Degeneration is how “plasticky” everyone looks - it’s hard to realize how far computer animation has advanced in the last decade until you look at Degeneration’s stiff visuals and compare them to the other CG films. Also, Leon’s characterization is terrible. He’s meant to be a super serious badass, I guess, but he mostly just looks like someone rammed a Samurai Edge up his sphincter. I prefer my Leon Kennedy to be the “Don’t worry Ashley, I’m comin’ for ya!” version from Resident Evil 4, or at least a dude with a little sass to him. The guy in Degeneration is about as interesting as a board.  Resident Evil: Damnation - Damnation is a noticeable step above Degeneration, both in computer animation, which really got better from 2008 to 2012, and in all-around presentation. The dubbing’s still somewhat wonky with that same anime movie vibe, but the characterization is on point, and Leon, who’s taking center stage once more, is just like his RE6 self. Speaking of RE6, this movie channels that game’s themes of international terrorism with a plot that involves rebels in a made-up Eastern European country using Lickers and Las Plagas in an effort to fight for their freedom, only to learn that lo and behold, the nefarious female president who’s seized control of their nation has her own B.O.W.s - in the form of Tyrants - at her disposal. Leon’s caught in the middle of this mess and ends up befriending some of the rebels, and Ada Wong’s also infiltrated the country to manipulate the president. Ada and Leon’s interactions are as insubstantial as they’ve been in pretty much every game that isn’t the recent RE2make, but we do get a cool fight between Ada and the president, who for some reason knows substantial knife fu. There’s an even better battle between Tyrants and Lickers in a city hall square, and Leon gets throw against pillars, regularly takes hits that would kill a normal person and pilots a tank alongside one of the rebels who looks a lot like Chris Redfield but isn’t Chris Redfield. This dude serves as the film’s sympathetic character - a guy torn from his peaceful existence thanks to political wrangling and is tricked into using B.O.W.s to try to achieve a brighter future. It ends with the fella severely injured but learning how to live and move forward in a world infected with nefarious bioweapons, which is the very theme that the Anderson flicks ditched around movie number three. So good work for side-stepping previous failures and recognizing what Resident Evil is all about, Damnation. 

Resident Evil: Vendetta - If Degeneration’s a so-so anime movie, and Damnation a good anime movie, then Vendetta is just a good movie in general, with no “anime” distinction needed. The dubbing’s finally pretty decent, for one, and the story takes place in between RE6 and RE7, teaming Leon and Chris Redfield up with - HOLY CRAP - Rebecca Chambers, who’s been AWOL since Resident Evil Zero. They’ve gotta stop an arms dealer from bio-nuking New York and doing nasty things to Rebecca, who resembles his dead wife, and along the way Leon pilots a motorcycle on the freeway with his feet while shooting at Cerebrus with his hands. Nearly all of the movie’s considerable action segments are punctuated with rapid fire John Wick-style gunplay, and it works. It’s like the folks who made this film realized that the coolest part of Resident Evil 6 was the point where Leon and Chris point their guns at each other for a few seconds before deciding that they need to put their differences aside and cooperate, and even though you could conceivably fault Vendetta for leaning heavily towards the “action” side of Resident Evil rather than the “horror” side, it’s a well-paced film that finally gives us a substantial interaction between two series mainstays beyond the one minute they shared with each other in RE6. Also, people are still posting GIFs from Vendetta’s action sequences all across Tumblr and forums whenever arguments break out over whether Chris or Leon is TEH COoLER Resident Evil protagonist, so Capcom obviously did something right. If we get another computer animated film, I imagine it’ll lean more heavily towards horror since that’s where the series has gone recently...but hopefully the path of improvement that we’ve seen from Degeneration to Damnation to Vendetta won’t be broken. 

And with that, whew, I’m done with RE movies, at least until the rumored Hollywood reboot that’s supposedly drawing inspiration from Resident Evil 7 comes out. (It can’t be worse than The Final Chapter, I suppose.) I can’t say that my friends were wrong when they warned me that half of these would be shite, but I also can’t say that I ended on a bad note, because Vendetta was pretty good.

After all this, my grand playthrough and consumption of all Resident Evil media is about to finish Next post I make will be a last look at the franchise as a whole...and what a year’s worth of zombie headshots taught me.  All screencaps taken by me. 

[terryblount]

Anno 1800 Review: A Quality Copy of Itself

Anno 1800 is an engrossing and fantastic mix of city building, economic simulation, and real-time strategy. It’s so easy to get sucked in to the whole affair, as the hours fly by and your empire slowly expands. Granted, there’s much micro-management required, and the game strongly favors those of us with a patient dedication to detail. Still, there’s a soothing rhythm to it all if you can find the groove hiding within the various complex systems.

What is Anno Gameplay?

If you’ve never played an Anno game before, let me try to summarize what you actually do. Starting with an empty island, you place houses and production buildings thereupon, connecting everything together with roads. As your population grows their needs increase, which are fulfilled by newly unlocked buildings.

Our cities grow up so quickly! Fine craftsmanship, here we come!

After fulfilling all the current needs of your populace, you can upgrade their houses to unlock even more needs. Anno is basically a game of ever-expanding needs fulfillment—they once longed for fish and schnapps but soon will require sausage, bread, beer, and oh so much more!

Eventually you’ll have to expand to new islands because your people will demand more goods not available on your first location. This leads to the need for ships and trade routes, and soon enough you’ll have a huge fleet all for the purpose of meeting those pesky population needs.

There’s a pleasant ebb and flow to Anno. At times you’re perplexed as to your people’s desires, trying to set up new production chains and deliver the goods. Then a short while later everyone is content, and you can sit back and watch the gold roll in. Of course you can’t relax for long because there’s others who also are trying to seize islands and produce goods—the rival players, be they actual humans in the multiplayer mode or AI characters.

The diplomacy screen helps you try to make nice with others…or be a big jerk!

The complex interaction between building up your cities, producing goods, and dealing with other characters leads to an intense and intellectual challenge that has defined the Anno series for over two decades. Speaking of the series, let me explain the history of the Anno franchise because learning is fun!

An Anno Anthology

Anno began in the year 1602. Wait, no. What I mean to say is the first game in the series was called Anno 1602 and came out way back in 1998, created by a now-defunct company called Max Design. It was a 2D isometric city-builder with goods-based management systems and some real-time strategy elements, and it became quite popular, especially in its home region of Austria/Germany.

Just a pretty screenshot of a ship at sea. Anno 1800 is a very nice looking game!

The inevitable sequel, Anno 1503, was released in 2003, also created by Max Design. It, too, was well-received even if it was very similar to the first game. 2006 saw a big jump in the series with Anno 1701, featuring charming 3D graphics and excellent gameplay depth, winning over many new fans the world over. This new generation of Anno was created by Related Designs, a German studio new to the series. They would go on to develop all the rest of the main Anno games, although they were merged into Ubisoft Blue Byte a while back.

Three years later saw the culmination of years of fine-tuning with Anno 1404. Many consider this 2009 game to be the pinnacle of the series (at least until now, debatably). It was (and is) a brilliant mix of charm and complexity merged with polished 3D graphics, excellent gameplay, and much replayability.

This Anno gives you back the complex trade routes system from the prior Anno games.

Then developers opted to go where no Anno game had gone before: the future. 2011 saw Anno 2070, and 2015 saw Anno 2205. Confused yet? Both titles were disappointments to long-time Anno fans. It wasn’t the futuristic setting that was the problem per se—it was the dumbing down of the gameplay and extreme cuts to content.

Both futuristic titles saw traditional story campaigns mostly cut out. Proper AI enemies were lacking. Combat was contrived, and trading was overly-simplified. The games felt a bit soulless. Oh, and the games became “always online” and “games as a service” through Ubisoft’s frustrating Uplay system and other DRM schemes. In short, Anno’s future was a big letdown!

Anno in 2019: Copy & Paste

The prior history of Anno is necessary to understand Anno 1800. It’s an intentional return to the roots of the series: charming historical simulation with robust gameplay features. If you read between the lines of the marketing, the message has been clear: Anno 1800 is a good Anno game again with a story, proper AI, and all the beloved features from the Anno’s of old!

And they’re not kidding about this game including the features of the old games. They’ve recreated Anno 1404’s gameplay to such an extreme degree. Seriously, this game plays identically to Anno 1404 in all the significant elements. It’s not a stretch to say it’s basically the same game as the ten-year-old Anno 1404, and this is the game’s biggest strength and disappointment.

There’s a secret first-person mode (Ctrl-Shift-R). You can get some nice shots with it.

Being an Anno 1404 clone is wonderful because, as noted, the 2009 Anno is charming, expansive, and a joy to play, even to this day. However, it’s disappointing because long-time Anno fans have already been there and done that since 2009.

Therefore, your feelings on Anno 1800 will largely be guided by your experience with the series. If you’ve never played Anno 1404 then you’re likely to be quite mesmerized by Anno 1800’s creative spirit and whimsical world, never knowing it was already done in the same fashion a decade ago.

For me, though, I have played Anno 1404, and I’m honestly uncertain if I’d rather play the new, shiny Anno 1800 or the tried and true (and very inexpensive) Anno 1404. Read on to find out why I’m torn.

My Anno Experience

I began playing Anno with Anno 1701, but it was Anno 1404 that made me fall in love with the series. I spent several years putting over 400 hours into Anno 1404, and I even made the unofficial patch for the game, which fixes literally thousands of issues (it took a lot of effort!). In fact, the developers even contacted me years ago about including my fixes in a planned new version of the game, but that project was canceled sadly.

Back on topic, besides playing extensively I have a serious understanding of how these games work under the hood. This is why I was taken aback to see this modern Anno 1800 be programmed to function in virtually the same way as Anno 1404, including some of the same UI issues and quest bugs!

OCD players will find much to obsess about. I must build with symmetry! I must!!

Hence, I found it fairly amusing to read some of the developer blogs about AI, supply chains, and other gameplay features. They’d talk about creating the systems for this game, and I couldn’t help but chuckle because the systems are copied from Anno 1404!

I guess it’s not stealing if you’re stealing from your own prior game…but let’s not act like this stuff is new! Although Anno 1800 does include new features, to be fair. Let’s discuss the new stuff.

Anno 1800’s New Features

This latest entry does provide some excellent additions to the Anno formula, including concepts such as Workforce, Influence, Propaganda, Expeditions, and Electricity. We’ll tackle each one in turn.

Workforce requires you to carefully balance your population between a pyramid of classes, starting with Farmers and Workers, and moving up to Artisans and Engineers and beyond. The trick is only certain population classes can perform certain jobs, and managing this system is a rewarding challenge.

Influence is a new (and controversial) feature that grows with your population and must be used for various tasks such as military and trade expansion. It’s not explained well in the game, sadly. However, after understanding the system, it does feel like a nice addition to the game to guide you into specializations based on your gameplay goals.

The Influence system menu. It’s quite confusing at first, but it’s a nice system overall.

Propaganda is controlled by your newspaper, which is pops up every so often in your game, requiring you to choose to spend Influence to alter the news (‘alternative’ facts). It’s a fun system that adds a bit of flavor to the game experience, helping you see recent events or issues in your game world. Although, after playing for dozens of hours it becomes a bit of a chore to have to review the newspaper over and over. An option to auto-select certain Propaganda would been nice.

The newspaper screen. Notice my use of propaganda on the far right. Important news!

Expeditions are Anno 1800’s take on text-based ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ stories. You send out ships on long journeys, and if you equip the right supplies and items and fortune favors you, you might survive long enough to find treasures and return home safely. It’s a fun system to be sure, and it helps break up the typical gameplay loop. I really enjoyed finding all the different options and results from the various text-stories presented.

Fun text adventures! Notice my ship is ultra-powerful. I have a 195% chance to win. Good!

Electricity is a wonderful historical addition, given the industrial revolution setting of the game. After many hours of playing and building your empire, you’ll eventually unlock the potential to generate electricity to turbo-boost your production capabilities and allow you to attract the most lucrative population class to your cities. Figuring out how to lay railroad and manage your power grid is a challenging but fun late-game activity.

Building Culture: Museums and Zoos

Do you like collecting animals and artifacts? Of course you do! Anno 1800 knows this and includes two extremely enjoyable new module-style buildings: the museum and zoo. Both give nice benefits to your city, such as helping to attract visitors. There’s a very strong ‘gotta collect ’em all’ impulse that makes this gameplay element very addictive.

An expedition gives me some nifty sea creatures for my zoo! It’ll be zootopia soon!

How do you get these fascinating animals and artifacts, you ask? Several ways! Expeditions are a great source, but later you’ll get help from the World’s Fair. Speaking of which…

End-Game Fun: World’s Fair Exhibitions!

Another new and excellent addition is the ultimate end-game goal: building and operating a world’s fair. This is a very cool historical theme since the first world’s fair was held in 1851 in real life. Reaching this point is basically the equivalent of a raid or bonus dungeon in other games—it’s the final end-game goal.

Here is the World Fair building being built. It’s a very complex process to create such a place!

To put it into perspective, it took me about 80 hours to finally build the World’s Fair, and it felt really good to finally hold the biggest and best world’s fair ‘exhibition’ possible after about 90 hours of hard work building my empire. The reason this review is so late is because I wanted to ensure I’d experienced this final goal, and I can report to you that it’s gloriously good times!

The Rest of the Review: Issues

I really do love Anno 1800. However, the game does have a lot of issues. Much of my frustration is that they copied Anno 1404 so much but didn’t go the extra step of solving some of the problems the series has had for so many years. Hence, the rest of this review is going to be a whole bunch of criticisms and problems with the game, even though I do love playing it.

The Campaign: Weak!

I’ve gone this far in the review and haven’t even mentioned the campaign. I suppose that’s fitting because the campaign is nothing more than a glorified tutorial that plays out over some 8 to 10 hours (longer on higher difficulties).

The campaign has some cutscenes with voiced characters. It’s…decent, but not great.

The storytelling is weak but semi-adequate, giving a modest investment in characters and happenings. However, the story ends very abruptly and without much resolution. I also experienced a glitch wherein the final battle failed to happen and I won without completing the final quests, which was anticlimactic.

Also unfortunate is the lack of tutorial quests for certain key features. The game never bothers to explain trade routes, despite these being absolutely essential to grow your civilization and finish the campaign. A bizarre oversight.

Overall, the campaign is lame. It needed to go on a lot longer, with a proper plot and resolution.

Questing & Bugs

Anno 1800 features a virtually identical quest system from Anno 1404, although a few new types of quests have been added. Random residents will offer various quests from time to time. Trading partners and NPCs will also give quests such as escort, destroy, deliver, and photograph. Overall, there’s hundreds of these.

Sadly some of these quest types that are as maddening as they were 10 years ago, such as puzzle quests where you have to find and click on very tiny little objects in your massive cities. Then again, you can delete any non-story quest at any time.

There’s fun multi-part quests in the game. The 2nd part of this one is bugged though…

Unfortunately, a fair amount of quests are bugged. I find this pretty funny since many of the quest issues are literally the exact same XML programming errors that I fixed all those years ago in Anno 1404. Maybe they’ll fix the issues in future patches…of course they never did for Anno 1404 (see my unofficial patch for that game).

Old World, New World Blues

Another gameplay change from Anno 1404 is the two distinct world spaces. In Anno 1404, you played a single world space with the upper half representing Europe (Occident) and the lower half representing the Middle/Far East (Orient). In Anno 1800, the game splits the spaces into two unique “sessions” (Old World, New World).

Here’s the world map screen. You almost never use this view, but it’s pretty!

It’s true that it’s more realistic to have separate spaces for the different geography, and the concept is excellent. However, the execution gets a bit obnoxious and invasive to the play experience.

The simple fact is we humans can only focus on one screen at a time, so having two different game maps playing out with one always hidden means constant interruptions and unknown events occurring. Fighting a war on two different screens, for example, simply isn’t fun.

This is very much like trying to play two games of speed-chess at the same time. It sounds interesting in theory, but unless you’re a strategy god, the split-attention results in a lesser experience on both sides.

A Huge Fail: Missing Profile Tracking

One hallmark of the Anno series is robust tracking of your game accomplishments tied to your universal player profile. Anno 1404 is the gold standard in this regard. It features over 300+ tracked accomplishments and 25 special medals. Moreover, there were very fun unlocks as you progressed, letting you get new city ornaments, portraits, titles, and more. A huge joy for fans (called Annoholics) was to slowly make progress toward the fabled 100% complete player profile. It was a badge of honor to know and share your profile progress.

Anno 1800 lacks all of this. All you get is barely 40 Uplay achievements, and some boring ‘Club rewards’ you spend Uplay points to unlock. This is very unfortunate since the game has literally all the same features as Anno 1404 that beg to be recorded and bragged about.

Also strange is how there’s a photograph feature in the game, but it’s only used for quests. There is no photo gallery or showcase or anything like that. This is another missed opportunity to let players showcase their cities in a more permanent player profile fashion.

This is me taking a photograph for a quest, nothing more. There is no photo gallery.

In regard to quests, there are many extensive multi-part quests, but unlike Anno 1404, Anno 1800 doesn’t have any tracking system to prove you’ve befriended the AI and learned their back stories. And the new Expeditions feature would be perfect for tracking all the different outcomes. But alas, the developers couldn’t be bothered with all this.

To summarize, for a game that copies Anno 1404 in nearly every single way, it’s an epic fail to remove the amazingly fun tracking system that kept players motivated for hundreds of hours across dozens of playthroughs and scenarios. Bad developers!

Where are the Scenarios?

Speaking of scenarios, another totally absent feature in this modern game is custom challenges, known as scenarios in Anno 1404. In that game you could take on special modes requiring you to build a monument in so many hours or begin in great debt on a unique island.

Anno 1800 has zero scenarios and only has one game mode: the sandbox. I say this because even the story campaign takes place in a sandbox environment, opening up to an unguided sandbox mode after only about 10 hours.

At least you can select your difficulty and customize the game options. Expert is quite hard.

So let’s review. Anno 1800 copies Anno 1404’s gameplay in nearly every way, but it removes all scenarios, which added dozens and dozens of hours of diverse gameplay challenges. Epic fail.

DirectX 12 Crashing!

Note that many players, including myself, get constant crashes when using the DX12 renderer. I had dozens of crashes and two hard locks requiring a manual restart of my computer. Even after two patches, the crashes still occur. Fortunately, switching to DX11 completely eliminated the crashes for me, but the framerate is slower—a sad but necessary tradeoff.

Ubisoft Store, Epic Store, No Steam

There’s also the controversy with the way the game is sold. It was yet another title to be yanked off Steam shortly before its release. Now you can only buy it from Ubisoft directly or from the Epic Store (possibly). The good news is Anno 1404 is on Steam (it goes by ‘Dawn of Discovery’ in North America).

Other Various Concerns

The gameplay UI is great in some ways but horrible in others. The trade routes interface is especially obnoxious, with the ‘delete’ button overlapping other buttons at times. Some UI buttons simply don’t work, such as some ‘jump to event’ notifications. Overall, the UI is very workable, but it’s not ideal.

The game also features an Attractiveness system for each city. Honestly though, I mostly ignored it all because the game doesn’t do enough to show you the benefits of the system.

Here’s the Attractiveness system. Most players will likely ignore it though…

Despite a robust keyboard customization menu, certain commands can’t be bound to keys for no apparent reason. It would have been nice to have quick shortcuts for every building option, much like how most Windows applications have shortcuts to open Edit->Cut and this type of thing.

There’s also an unfortunate lack of statistics and charts to help you understand where you money is going and how to more efficiently manage your empire. Fortunately, the developers have promised to add a building in a future patch (first featured in the Anno 1404 expansion from 2010, ironically), so hopefully soon we’ll have more tools to manage our empire.

Conclusion: A Gorgeous, Great Game

I loved playing Anno 1800. Yes, the core gameplay is in many cases identical to Anno 1404, but an updated version of such a beloved Anno game isn’t a bad thing. The same engrossing ‘just one more hour’ gameplay draws the player into the world, testing the dedication, intellect, and patience of the player through cunning planning and strategies.

It’s an easy game to pick up and play, making some progress each gameplay session. Soon enough the narrator will say, ‘Warning: you’ve been playing for two hours,’ and you won’t even realize the time has flown by. Over weeks and months you can watch your empire expand, eventually reaching the end-game and proving your Anno-worth.

It’s too bad they’ve ripped out nearly all the player profile tracking and failed to include special gameplay scenarios. It’s also unfortunate online co-op isn’t ready yet and may take many more months to be included. The bugs and other issues also drag down the experience.

Here’s a screenshot showcasing Anno 1800’s beauty and charm after 80+ hours.

Ultimately, Anno 1800 is the smoothest Anno experience available, with some excellent new features to keep you hooked for a long while. So if you want to play the latest and semi-greatest, go for Anno 1800.

However, picking up Anno 1404 Gold Edition for super-cheap is also a very viable and excellent choice since it gives you the same fundamentally excellent gameplay with more actual content. …Just make sure you use my unofficial patch if you do play Anno 1404. And no, I ain’t going to make one for Anno 1800. The developers should have learned to fix their own darn Anno bugs by now!

Gorgeous city building

Engrossing management

Soothing ebb and flow

Expedition diversions

Museums and zoos

Late-game electricity

End-game world’s fair

Old/New world concept

Lame, short campaign

No scenarios (sandbox only)

Few achievements/tracking

Quest bugs, UI issues

DX12 crashes, locks

Lacks statistics/charts

So much like Anno 1404

Old/New world execution

Playtime: 100 hours total. Nick spent 10 hours finishing the story (tutorial). Another 10 hours were spent reaching 20,000 inhabitants. Another 20 hours allowed Nick to reach the ‘Engineer’ population level, with two nicely built cities. Then 10 hours was spent wiping out the remaining AI players and seizing their lands. So at 50 hours in, Nick had conquered all and could begin building his perfect empire, free from distractions. It took another 15 hours to reach ‘Investors,’ the game’s highest population level. At 80 hours, Nick ultimately reached his objective of unlocking all buildings and providing all goods to his people, with a final population count of 90,000. Many world’s fair exhibitions were held. The galaxy was at peace.

Computer Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using an Intel i7-3930k CPU, 32GB of memory, and a nVidia GTX 980 Ti graphics card.

Also read the Anno 1800 PC Performance Analysis.

Anno 1800 Review: A Quality Copy of Itself published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

[fcb-mv33]

Every single team has a number 1 and number 2, with Mclaren they aren’t wanting Daniel out if the points each weekend…and yes maybe they are giving Lando the number 1 preferred strategies but it means nothing to them if Daniel cant get in the points, so I couldn’t see why they would sabotage him?? But they aren’t giving him good ones…and I really don’t know why unless it just them genuinely fucking up…./

First off I don’t like Zak either. I think it’s because he’s so intent on getting an American driver or someone from the Indy 500 and he makes it out it’s all for the American popularity. Might be being misquoted or it comes across differently than what he means but you need a good driver and not just based on popularity. Shouldn’t pick a driver for that reason only for one… and there are still plenty of talented drivers in the formula series that deserve a chance so maybe don’t pick purely on nationalities/popularity Zak… he has two of the most popularity drivers on the grid currently but they weren’t given a chance purely to win a popularity contest 🙃 I know some people will argue with me on this and I’m sure the drivers rumoured to be in co tension for a seat are good but this is how I feel about the situation.

Secondly, i reckon Mclaren are the kind of team that come up with one really good strategy and struggle for a second one. It’s like a school project where you’re brainstorming and after 1 good idea, your mind goes blank. That’s how I view their strategies meetings for Daniel tbh. But Mclaren have to be careful as despite all the hate Daniel is getting he is still a really popular driver and I’ve seen plenty of fans getting annoyed at what’s happening… and you might be right, Daniel will potentially leave after next season which will be sad… and f1 will definitely see a drop in popularity after that in Australia (my friends lives there and says the majority only watch it for him) 😬

Honestly I feel like Zak is so concerned about keeping Mclaren in the spot light. Like tbh Zak tries to keep in the media, bitching about Max with DTS, bitching about Red Bulls young driver program, bitching about Christian having a number 1 driver. He wants to shove all the ‘good vibes’ out into social media…thats what he wants. I do think its a good thing f1 getting into the American market but honestly he is pushing the ‘American driver’ on everyone way too much, especially when he has Daniel till 2023. I think its a slap in the face to Daniel who is one of the most popular drivers on the grid.

If they cant stop fucking up his strategies then they need to employ more people…like I agree I think they focus on the best strategy and then give the left overs to the other driver ie Daniel. Look I’ll be sad when Daniel leave but….im excited to start seeing new drivers on the grid and also imagine how DTS is going to do without Daniel💀

[terryblount]

Anno 1800 Review: A Quality Copy of Itself

Anno 1800 is an engrossing and fantastic mix of city building, economic simulation, and real-time strategy. It’s so easy to get sucked in to the whole affair, as the hours fly by and your empire slowly expands. Granted, there’s much micro-management required, and the game strongly favors those of us with a patient dedication to detail. Still, there’s a soothing rhythm to it all if you can find the groove hiding within the various complex systems.

What is Anno Gameplay?

If you’ve never played an Anno game before, let me try to summarize what you actually do. Starting with an empty island, you place houses and production buildings thereupon, connecting everything together with roads. As your population grows their needs increase, which are fulfilled by newly unlocked buildings.

Our cities grow up so quickly! Fine craftsmanship, here we come!

After fulfilling all the current needs of your populace, you can upgrade their houses to unlock even more needs. Anno is basically a game of ever-expanding needs fulfillment—they once longed for fish and schnapps but soon will require sausage, bread, beer, and oh so much more!

Eventually you’ll have to expand to new islands because your people will demand more goods not available on your first location. This leads to the need for ships and trade routes, and soon enough you’ll have a huge fleet all for the purpose of meeting those pesky population needs.

There’s a pleasant ebb and flow to Anno. At times you’re perplexed as to your people’s desires, trying to set up new production chains and deliver the goods. Then a short while later everyone is content, and you can sit back and watch the gold roll in. Of course you can’t relax for long because there’s others who also are trying to seize islands and produce goods—the rival players, be they actual humans in the multiplayer mode or AI characters.

The diplomacy screen helps you try to make nice with others…or be a big jerk!

The complex interaction between building up your cities, producing goods, and dealing with other characters leads to an intense and intellectual challenge that has defined the Anno series for over two decades. Speaking of the series, let me explain the history of the Anno franchise because learning is fun!

An Anno Anthology

Anno began in the year 1602. Wait, no. What I mean to say is the first game in the series was called Anno 1602 and came out way back in 1998, created by a now-defunct company called Max Design. It was a 2D isometric city-builder with goods-based management systems and some real-time strategy elements, and it became quite popular, especially in its home region of Austria/Germany.

Just a pretty screenshot of a ship at sea. Anno 1800 is a very nice looking game!

The inevitable sequel, Anno 1503, was released in 2003, also created by Max Design. It, too, was well-received even if it was very similar to the first game. 2006 saw a big jump in the series with Anno 1701, featuring charming 3D graphics and excellent gameplay depth, winning over many new fans the world over. This new generation of Anno was created by Related Designs, a German studio new to the series. They would go on to develop all the rest of the main Anno games, although they were merged into Ubisoft Blue Byte a while back.

Three years later saw the culmination of years of fine-tuning with Anno 1404. Many consider this 2009 game to be the pinnacle of the series (at least until now, debatably). It was (and is) a brilliant mix of charm and complexity merged with polished 3D graphics, excellent gameplay, and much replayability.

This Anno gives you back the complex trade routes system from the prior Anno games.

Then developers opted to go where no Anno game had gone before: the future. 2011 saw Anno 2070, and 2015 saw Anno 2205. Confused yet? Both titles were disappointments to long-time Anno fans. It wasn’t the futuristic setting that was the problem per se—it was the dumbing down of the gameplay and extreme cuts to content.

Both futuristic titles saw traditional story campaigns mostly cut out. Proper AI enemies were lacking. Combat was contrived, and trading was overly-simplified. The games felt a bit soulless. Oh, and the games became “always online” and “games as a service” through Ubisoft’s frustrating Uplay system and other DRM schemes. In short, Anno’s future was a big letdown!

Anno in 2019: Copy & Paste

The prior history of Anno is necessary to understand Anno 1800. It’s an intentional return to the roots of the series: charming historical simulation with robust gameplay features. If you read between the lines of the marketing, the message has been clear: Anno 1800 is a good Anno game again with a story, proper AI, and all the beloved features from the Anno’s of old!

And they’re not kidding about this game including the features of the old games. They’ve recreated Anno 1404’s gameplay to such an extreme degree. Seriously, this game plays identically to Anno 1404 in all the significant elements. It’s not a stretch to say it’s basically the same game as the ten-year-old Anno 1404, and this is the game’s biggest strength and disappointment.

There’s a secret first-person mode (Ctrl-Shift-R). You can get some nice shots with it.

Being an Anno 1404 clone is wonderful because, as noted, the 2009 Anno is charming, expansive, and a joy to play, even to this day. However, it’s disappointing because long-time Anno fans have already been there and done that since 2009.

Therefore, your feelings on Anno 1800 will largely be guided by your experience with the series. If you’ve never played Anno 1404 then you’re likely to be quite mesmerized by Anno 1800’s creative spirit and whimsical world, never knowing it was already done in the same fashion a decade ago.

For me, though, I have played Anno 1404, and I’m honestly uncertain if I’d rather play the new, shiny Anno 1800 or the tried and true (and very inexpensive) Anno 1404. Read on to find out why I’m torn.

My Anno Experience

I began playing Anno with Anno 1701, but it was Anno 1404 that made me fall in love with the series. I spent several years putting over 400 hours into Anno 1404, and I even made the unofficial patch for the game, which fixes literally thousands of issues (it took a lot of effort!). In fact, the developers even contacted me years ago about including my fixes in a planned new version of the game, but that project was canceled sadly.

Back on topic, besides playing extensively I have a serious understanding of how these games work under the hood. This is why I was taken aback to see this modern Anno 1800 be programmed to function in virtually the same way as Anno 1404, including some of the same UI issues and quest bugs!

OCD players will find much to obsess about. I must build with symmetry! I must!!

Hence, I found it fairly amusing to read some of the developer blogs about AI, supply chains, and other gameplay features. They’d talk about creating the systems for this game, and I couldn’t help but chuckle because the systems are copied from Anno 1404!

I guess it’s not stealing if you’re stealing from your own prior game…but let’s not act like this stuff is new! Although Anno 1800 does include new features, to be fair. Let’s discuss the new stuff.

Anno 1800’s New Features

This latest entry does provide some excellent additions to the Anno formula, including concepts such as Workforce, Influence, Propaganda, Expeditions, and Electricity. We’ll tackle each one in turn.

Workforce requires you to carefully balance your population between a pyramid of classes, starting with Farmers and Workers, and moving up to Artisans and Engineers and beyond. The trick is only certain population classes can perform certain jobs, and managing this system is a rewarding challenge.

Influence is a new (and controversial) feature that grows with your population and must be used for various tasks such as military and trade expansion. It’s not explained well in the game, sadly. However, after understanding the system, it does feel like a nice addition to the game to guide you into specializations based on your gameplay goals.

The Influence system menu. It’s quite confusing at first, but it’s a nice system overall.

Propaganda is controlled by your newspaper, which is pops up every so often in your game, requiring you to choose to spend Influence to alter the news (‘alternative’ facts). It’s a fun system that adds a bit of flavor to the game experience, helping you see recent events or issues in your game world. Although, after playing for dozens of hours it becomes a bit of a chore to have to review the newspaper over and over. An option to auto-select certain Propaganda would been nice.

The newspaper screen. Notice my use of propaganda on the far right. Important news!

Expeditions are Anno 1800’s take on text-based ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ stories. You send out ships on long journeys, and if you equip the right supplies and items and fortune favors you, you might survive long enough to find treasures and return home safely. It’s a fun system to be sure, and it helps break up the typical gameplay loop. I really enjoyed finding all the different options and results from the various text-stories presented.

Fun text adventures! Notice my ship is ultra-powerful. I have a 195% chance to win. Good!

Electricity is a wonderful historical addition, given the industrial revolution setting of the game. After many hours of playing and building your empire, you’ll eventually unlock the potential to generate electricity to turbo-boost your production capabilities and allow you to attract the most lucrative population class to your cities. Figuring out how to lay railroad and manage your power grid is a challenging but fun late-game activity.

Building Culture: Museums and Zoos

Do you like collecting animals and artifacts? Of course you do! Anno 1800 knows this and includes two extremely enjoyable new module-style buildings: the museum and zoo. Both give nice benefits to your city, such as helping to attract visitors. There’s a very strong ‘gotta collect ’em all’ impulse that makes this gameplay element very addictive.

An expedition gives me some nifty sea creatures for my zoo! It’ll be zootopia soon!

How do you get these fascinating animals and artifacts, you ask? Several ways! Expeditions are a great source, but later you’ll get help from the World’s Fair. Speaking of which…

End-Game Fun: World’s Fair Exhibitions!

Another new and excellent addition is the ultimate end-game goal: building and operating a world’s fair. This is a very cool historical theme since the first world’s fair was held in 1851 in real life. Reaching this point is basically the equivalent of a raid or bonus dungeon in other games—it’s the final end-game goal.

Here is the World Fair building being built. It’s a very complex process to create such a place!

To put it into perspective, it took me about 80 hours to finally build the World’s Fair, and it felt really good to finally hold the biggest and best world’s fair ‘exhibition’ possible after about 90 hours of hard work building my empire. The reason this review is so late is because I wanted to ensure I’d experienced this final goal, and I can report to you that it’s gloriously good times!

The Rest of the Review: Issues

I really do love Anno 1800. However, the game does have a lot of issues. Much of my frustration is that they copied Anno 1404 so much but didn’t go the extra step of solving some of the problems the series has had for so many years. Hence, the rest of this review is going to be a whole bunch of criticisms and problems with the game, even though I do love playing it.

The Campaign: Weak!

I’ve gone this far in the review and haven’t even mentioned the campaign. I suppose that’s fitting because the campaign is nothing more than a glorified tutorial that plays out over some 8 to 10 hours (longer on higher difficulties).

The campaign has some cutscenes with voiced characters. It’s…decent, but not great.

The storytelling is weak but semi-adequate, giving a modest investment in characters and happenings. However, the story ends very abruptly and without much resolution. I also experienced a glitch wherein the final battle failed to happen and I won without completing the final quests, which was anticlimactic.

Also unfortunate is the lack of tutorial quests for certain key features. The game never bothers to explain trade routes, despite these being absolutely essential to grow your civilization and finish the campaign. A bizarre oversight.

Overall, the campaign is lame. It needed to go on a lot longer, with a proper plot and resolution.

Questing & Bugs

Anno 1800 features a virtually identical quest system from Anno 1404, although a few new types of quests have been added. Random residents will offer various quests from time to time. Trading partners and NPCs will also give quests such as escort, destroy, deliver, and photograph. Overall, there’s hundreds of these.

Sadly some of these quest types that are as maddening as they were 10 years ago, such as puzzle quests where you have to find and click on very tiny little objects in your massive cities. Then again, you can delete any non-story quest at any time.

There’s fun multi-part quests in the game. The 2nd part of this one is bugged though…

Unfortunately, a fair amount of quests are bugged. I find this pretty funny since many of the quest issues are literally the exact same XML programming errors that I fixed all those years ago in Anno 1404. Maybe they’ll fix the issues in future patches…of course they never did for Anno 1404 (see my unofficial patch for that game).

Old World, New World Blues

Another gameplay change from Anno 1404 is the two distinct world spaces. In Anno 1404, you played a single world space with the upper half representing Europe (Occident) and the lower half representing the Middle/Far East (Orient). In Anno 1800, the game splits the spaces into two unique “sessions” (Old World, New World).

Here’s the world map screen. You almost never use this view, but it’s pretty!

It’s true that it’s more realistic to have separate spaces for the different geography, and the concept is excellent. However, the execution gets a bit obnoxious and invasive to the play experience.

The simple fact is we humans can only focus on one screen at a time, so having two different game maps playing out with one always hidden means constant interruptions and unknown events occurring. Fighting a war on two different screens, for example, simply isn’t fun.

This is very much like trying to play two games of speed-chess at the same time. It sounds interesting in theory, but unless you’re a strategy god, the split-attention results in a lesser experience on both sides.

A Huge Fail: Missing Profile Tracking

One hallmark of the Anno series is robust tracking of your game accomplishments tied to your universal player profile. Anno 1404 is the gold standard in this regard. It features over 300+ tracked accomplishments and 25 special medals. Moreover, there were very fun unlocks as you progressed, letting you get new city ornaments, portraits, titles, and more. A huge joy for fans (called Annoholics) was to slowly make progress toward the fabled 100% complete player profile. It was a badge of honor to know and share your profile progress.

Anno 1800 lacks all of this. All you get is barely 40 Uplay achievements, and some boring ‘Club rewards’ you spend Uplay points to unlock. This is very unfortunate since the game has literally all the same features as Anno 1404 that beg to be recorded and bragged about.

Also strange is how there’s a photograph feature in the game, but it’s only used for quests. There is no photo gallery or showcase or anything like that. This is another missed opportunity to let players showcase their cities in a more permanent player profile fashion.

This is me taking a photograph for a quest, nothing more. There is no photo gallery.

In regard to quests, there are many extensive multi-part quests, but unlike Anno 1404, Anno 1800 doesn’t have any tracking system to prove you’ve befriended the AI and learned their back stories. And the new Expeditions feature would be perfect for tracking all the different outcomes. But alas, the developers couldn’t be bothered with all this.

To summarize, for a game that copies Anno 1404 in nearly every single way, it’s an epic fail to remove the amazingly fun tracking system that kept players motivated for hundreds of hours across dozens of playthroughs and scenarios. Bad developers!

Where are the Scenarios?

Speaking of scenarios, another totally absent feature in this modern game is custom challenges, known as scenarios in Anno 1404. In that game you could take on special modes requiring you to build a monument in so many hours or begin in great debt on a unique island.

Anno 1800 has zero scenarios and only has one game mode: the sandbox. I say this because even the story campaign takes place in a sandbox environment, opening up to an unguided sandbox mode after only about 10 hours.

At least you can select your difficulty and customize the game options. Expert is quite hard.

So let’s review. Anno 1800 copies Anno 1404’s gameplay in nearly every way, but it removes all scenarios, which added dozens and dozens of hours of diverse gameplay challenges. Epic fail.

DirectX 12 Crashing!

Note that many players, including myself, get constant crashes when using the DX12 renderer. I had dozens of crashes and two hard locks requiring a manual restart of my computer. Even after two patches, the crashes still occur. Fortunately, switching to DX11 completely eliminated the crashes for me, but the framerate is slower—a sad but necessary tradeoff.

Ubisoft Store, Epic Store, No Steam

There’s also the controversy with the way the game is sold. It was yet another title to be yanked off Steam shortly before its release. Now you can only buy it from Ubisoft directly or from the Epic Store (possibly). The good news is Anno 1404 is on Steam (it goes by ‘Dawn of Discovery’ in North America).

Other Various Concerns

The gameplay UI is great in some ways but horrible in others. The trade routes interface is especially obnoxious, with the ‘delete’ button overlapping other buttons at times. Some UI buttons simply don’t work, such as some ‘jump to event’ notifications. Overall, the UI is very workable, but it’s not ideal.

The game also features an Attractiveness system for each city. Honestly though, I mostly ignored it all because the game doesn’t do enough to show you the benefits of the system.

Here’s the Attractiveness system. Most players will likely ignore it though…

Despite a robust keyboard customization menu, certain commands can’t be bound to keys for no apparent reason. It would have been nice to have quick shortcuts for every building option, much like how most Windows applications have shortcuts to open Edit->Cut and this type of thing.

There’s also an unfortunate lack of statistics and charts to help you understand where you money is going and how to more efficiently manage your empire. Fortunately, the developers have promised to add a building in a future patch (first featured in the Anno 1404 expansion from 2010, ironically), so hopefully soon we’ll have more tools to manage our empire.

Conclusion: A Gorgeous, Great Game

I loved playing Anno 1800. Yes, the core gameplay is in many cases identical to Anno 1404, but an updated version of such a beloved Anno game isn’t a bad thing. The same engrossing ‘just one more hour’ gameplay draws the player into the world, testing the dedication, intellect, and patience of the player through cunning planning and strategies.

It’s an easy game to pick up and play, making some progress each gameplay session. Soon enough the narrator will say, ‘Warning: you’ve been playing for two hours,’ and you won’t even realize the time has flown by. Over weeks and months you can watch your empire expand, eventually reaching the end-game and proving your Anno-worth.

It’s too bad they’ve ripped out nearly all the player profile tracking and failed to include special gameplay scenarios. It’s also unfortunate online co-op isn’t ready yet and may take many more months to be included. The bugs and other issues also drag down the experience.

Here’s a screenshot showcasing Anno 1800’s beauty and charm after 80+ hours.

Ultimately, Anno 1800 is the smoothest Anno experience available, with some excellent new features to keep you hooked for a long while. So if you want to play the latest and semi-greatest, go for Anno 1800.

However, picking up Anno 1404 Gold Edition for super-cheap is also a very viable and excellent choice since it gives you the same fundamentally excellent gameplay with more actual content. …Just make sure you use my unofficial patch if you do play Anno 1404. And no, I ain’t going to make one for Anno 1800. The developers should have learned to fix their own darn Anno bugs by now!

Gorgeous city building

Engrossing management

Soothing ebb and flow

Expedition diversions

Museums and zoos

Late-game electricity

End-game world’s fair

Old/New world concept

Lame, short campaign

No scenarios (sandbox only)

Few achievements/tracking

Quest bugs, UI issues

DX12 crashes, locks

Lacks statistics/charts

So much like Anno 1404

Old/New world execution

Playtime: 100 hours total. Nick spent 10 hours finishing the story (tutorial). Another 10 hours were spent reaching 20,000 inhabitants. Another 20 hours allowed Nick to reach the ‘Engineer’ population level, with two nicely built cities. Then 10 hours was spent wiping out the remaining AI players and seizing their lands. So at 50 hours in, Nick had conquered all and could begin building his perfect empire, free from distractions. It took another 15 hours to reach ‘Investors,’ the game’s highest population level. At 80 hours, Nick ultimately reached his objective of unlocking all buildings and providing all goods to his people, with a final population count of 90,000. Many world’s fair exhibitions were held. The galaxy was at peace.

Computer Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using an Intel i7-3930k CPU, 32GB of memory, and a nVidia GTX 980 Ti graphics card.

Also read the Anno 1800 PC Performance Analysis.

Anno 1800 Review: A Quality Copy of Itself published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/