MetalCaveman

Genaro Garcia Luna has been found guilty of receiving bribes from cartels and for drug trafficking. This is a HUGE blow to both PAN administrations, Fox and Calderón, as he was their big guy in terms of security, he was founder of AFI, Federal Investigation Agency, founder of the Federal Police, Secretary of Security, one of the architects of PAN's war on drugs strategy, etc. His most important positions were during the Calderón administration. During the trial Luna also mentioned that current president also received money from cartels, but by far, the biggest blow was against PAN. As Jefe Diego said "Calderón either knew, or he was an idiot". This is also a huge blow at all Mexican politics, yes, we know it's an open secret that all politicians are in the cartel pockets, but this was a public display of how rotten everything is.

Cyberpunk 2077 On one hand, this was really fun, enjoyed my time with it and some of the quests were pretty freaking cool, on the other hand, I wish I had waited until now to get it lol, got it when it came out and boy was it a mess back then. There's still some issues, but compared to what it was back then it's night and day. Played as a Nomad, specializing in wielding the biggest, loudest, deadliest guns, which meant that anything that required stealth or intelligence was quite the challenge. Thankfully I never ran into a hard stealth section, none of that insta-fail thing, though I'm sure I missed some rewards and bonuses, it was still nice that you were never seriously punished if you chose to build your character in a certain way. I didn't complete all of the side quests (sorry @toxicitizen lol), but I did play a bunch of them, some of them are really cool and lead to some interesting story stuff, others are just the usual, go somewhere -> get thing -> get reward, at the end I had a couple left on my journal, that I didn't bother with because the last main quest was ready and all of these side jobs were "wait until X happens/calls you", and I'm sure a bunch more would have unlocked later on, but by that point I was happy with my progress and wanted to see the end. My favourites: Sinnerman, that was quite the ending lol. Peralez, this was the best one, no doubt, really hope they explore more of it in Phantom Liberty. The Hunt (River Ward's story), wish he had gone through with the original plan but I can see why he made the choice he made. I also liked all of the Silverhand missions, those were pretty neat and showed a different side of Johnny, the rewards were neat too. Playing mostly blind (I did look up how to unlock certain cars and how to complete a certain romance route) I got the ending, which, after looking up some of the other endings, feels like one of the better ones. The messages you get during the credits were cool too. My biggest, non-bug related issue was that this is one of those games where the dialogue options you get have nothing to do with what your character actually says. Pick "nice ride", thinking V would actually praise the ride, he goes "nice piece of shit you have here, it fucking sucks, you suck, I fucking hate you" and I don't know whether to laugh or reload my save lol. Wish they'd just give you a list like: Aggressive response Friendly response Sarcastic response Or something like that, rather than dialogue choices which then don't reflect what the character actually ends up saying. In terms of bugs, I did have a bunch of issues with cars popping in and out of existence, sometimes right in front of my car, leading to some interesting traffic accidents. Also at some point I was stuck with the UI of a certain vehicle, had to close the game and reload to fix this, and finally V would sometimes just teleport out of the car, instead of getting out normally, this broke physics a couple of times, launching V into space. All in all, a fun ride, cool weapons, fun skills, and an interesting story, it's a shame that it was hilariously broken at launch. Also, shoutout to some of the best in-game radio stations, obviously Ritual FM was my favourite, but Royal Blue Radio was also excellent, and how could it be anything less, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, and Dexter Gordon in one radio station? HELL YEAH!! \m/ \m/ Need for Speed and Forza Horizon could learn a thing or two from this game. Grade: A+ \m/ \m/

Year of the bunny. Also, got the Anatomy for Sculptors book, saw an artist I follow on twitter recommend it, been going through it but it's going to be a while before it shows (if that ever happens lol).

Yup, you have Main Jobs, Side Jobs and some other stuff that shows up in the Journal (houses, cars, and other stuff), then gigs are on the map, these don't show up on the Journal, you have to track them via their map icons.

Ah gotcha, looking forward to that then. I finished quest line (or I think I did, hasn't called me in a while, though I did get some texts lol), which started with a story mission and then branched into its own thing, thought the Peralez stuff would be shorter since from the start it was just marked as a side job.

Is it? I did that last night.

I think Cyberpunk might be shorter than I expected? Been taking it easy, doing side jobs, gigs and other stuff in between main jobs, but I just noticed I'm 60% through the main story? That is, if I'm understanding the percentages that show up at the top of the character menu correctly.

Cyberpunk 2077 Got back to it after playing for a bit during launch, PS5 upgrade is pretty neat, beyond the graphics, which do look pretty cool, the way it uses the dualsense features is the best part IMO. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Been watching a bunch of Star Wars stuff on D+ so I got the itch to play this one, combat is fun, exploration is neat, but some of the platforming is killing me, 100% on me though, I just can't handle third person platforming. After a detour into hell I went to the planet I'm actually supposed to be in and it's much easier, still no purple lightsaber though .

Waifu Uncovered This went downhill fast. Played this one because I saw it on my library, though I have no recollection of when, how or why I bought it (I mean, I kinda know why, just not when lol). The first couple of stages are fun, a light shmup, more in the lines of Aero Fighters or Ninja Commando than the bullet hell stuff. Then the last two stages turn into hell, not even bullet hell, just hell. Upgrades are neat, and some of them are pretty cool, but they're few and far between, powerups and other pickups are similarly rare, and worst is that sometimes you'll move to pick an upgrade only to have an enemy spawn right under you, dealing a bunch of damage. Bomb pickups have a ridiculously low drop rate, specially considering that some ships can only carry one. You also only get one life, whether you're playing normal or arcade modes, that's it, die once and it's game over, which is one of my biggest issues with this game. The next issue is the difficulty spike, the last two stages just throw every enemy in the universe at you, if you haven't gotten the right upgrades and powerups you're toast. Bosses are also lame as hell, they're all the same in terms of attack, and what's worse is that while you can only shoot forward, bosses tend to spend a fair amount of time at the bottom of the screen, away from where you can shoot. Finally, the thing that really made me take several points off, Easy difficulty is locked behind paid DLC. Had all stages been challenging, with the difficulty slowly ramping up, it would have been fun, that, or at least give the player more lives, that alone would also make a huge difference. Or just make it easy as hell and let players unlock the gallery, arguably the main selling point for a game like this lol. Grade: F

Aeon's End Apparently based on a table-top game, though I don't know if that version is as rage-inducing and frustrating as this one. Even with a cheat sheet of what cards do what, what's best to play, how to get good spells on your deck, etc. It just feels impossible to win. Boss decks seem filled with "Fuck you, your base AND your HP!" cards. Hey you're one spell away from defeating the boss, and your base has 12 HP left! Neat! Fuck you, here's a card that automatically deals 8 damage to your base, removes one of the spells you have prepared and deals 4 HP damage to you, also that minion the boss played last turn? It deals 20 damage to your base! FUCK YOU! Hey! You have some pretty neat spells lined up, the boss has half HP and your base hasn't taken that much damage! Neat! FUCK YOU, the boss just played a minion that forces you to use your spells on it, deals damage to the base each time it gets hit and when defeated allows the boss to unleash it's special, destroying your base instantly!! FUCK YOU!! Well, in the words of R.J. MacReady: I don't think I've been this annoyed at a game in a while lol. It's a shame, I like the concept, and I do enjoy these types of games, but this one just seems ridiculously stacked against you, like one post on the steam forums said, the only way to ensure your base isn't destroyed is to not start a game in the first place.

Wish: Israfil Saga A simple, nice, relaxing match 3 type of game, with some... Special scenes (if you download the patch ). Originally I was going to give it a lower rating, since some stages are quite challenging and upgrades are fairly expensive (1300 gold and upwards), couple that with the fact that replaying a stage only gives you about 30-50 gold and I was sure it'd be hours of grinding, until I realized you can replay other character stages, and those give you 900 gold per re-run, so that improved things a fair bit. The story is... There, kinda. The concept itself is nothing new, evil emperor, small ragtag group of heroes band together to defeat said evil emperor, peace returns to the land, etc. The issue is that most of it reads like it was translated with the crappiest machine translation software in the world, and chapter 3 just reads like they threw random words in and called it a day. A certain character's name changes spelling every time, tons of typos, tons of sentences that don't make any sense, and my favourite, instead of using beastfolk or monster girls, it goes for... Furries, and that leads to some very, very funny lines. Still, all issues considered, for less than a buck, it's not bad. Grade: B+ (for gameplay, characters, and art style). F (for Fuck if I know what's going on with the story ).

Something different Kept the rough outline done with the brush I usually use for sketching, all color was done with the basic opacity brush, as opposed to relying on the colorize mask, shading was also done with that brush, could use some better/smoother blending, but for something I did in about an hour, it ain't that bad IMO.

Dragon's Crown Pro This is one gorgeous game, Vanillaware's art style is always most excellent! \m/ \m/ My only issue is that, while you can skip all of the early stuff when starting with a new character, the gate you use to get to the dungeons never gets fixed, and there's no way to get it to it's working state, so you're left with a gate that drops you in a random dungeon, or paying to use the stables, which increases in cost every time you use it, not a problem later on or in higher difficulties, but when starting with a new character this is kind of a pain. Grade: A+ (A for Amazon and Sorceress make the best party members )

RIP

Ghostbusters: The Videogame Remastered This was really fun, the different options available for the proton pack on top of the usual capture stream were cool, and having the original cast voice their characters was most excellent. Only issue for me were a couple of fights against flying books and skulls, those were kinda annoying as it was easy to get swarmed leading to several "deaths", only a couple game overs though, as most of the time you do have at least one other Ghostbuster with you who can pick you up. Later on, once you get the Meson Collider weapon these enemies become much easier to deal with. Your AI teammates and fellow ghostbusters actually do stuff, capture ghosts, send out traps, use different equipment, they're all really helpful, their lines reacting to certain things are a plus, during one section Ray suggested flanking some ghosts, after I went the same way he did on accident he said: "Flanking generally means I go one way, you go the other, we catch them in the middle, I know you're a rookie but this is basic stuff." The story was pretty good too, honestly feels way more like a sequel than Afterlife, which makes sense as it was written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. Overall, a fun TPS that changes things by being more about capturing ghosts and not just blasting them into oblivion, and a nice combination of humour and creepiness, also, you get to be a Ghostbuster, what more could you want? Grade: A+ (Bustin' makes me feel good!! )

Apparently they recaptured Ovidio Guzman, so, Culiacanazo 2.0 time. Except that this time they immediately took him away from Culiacan and into CDMX, supposedly there were USAF aircraft around Culiacan as well, but I don't think that's been confirmed, although given the precision and speed with which the whole thing was done, I wouldn't be surprised it this was another Black Swan. It's going to be interesting to hear what our president has to say, I'd imagine his next monthly meeting with Chapo's mom is going to be... heated lol.

Thought about getting some other stuff, but my backlog currently has a bunch of games I actually really want to play, so I'll be trying to get through some of those before buying anything else for a while (so I say lol, let's see how long that lasts ). Some of the games I want to try and finish: Dragon's Crown Pro Valkyria Chronicles (PC) Valkyria Chronicles 4 Metroid Dread Monster Monpiece Moero Crystal Seven Pirates H Cyberpunk 2077 Nier Automata Death Stranding Ghostbusters Ghostrunner Scarlet Nexus Sekiro Daemon X Machina And more... But those are the ones at the top of my list lol.

Pokémon Scarlet Holy cow that ending was cool, it legit brought tears to my eyes. Didn't expect that. The three different story paths, Titans, Team Star and the Pokémon league were all fun, granted, I cheesed the hell out of the titans (Nacli and Naclstack FTW!!! lol), but it was still neat, Team Star had a "Are We the Baddies?" kind of feel to it, until you realize Penny, Nemona and Arven are all fun characters, specially Nemona, I love how hyped she is about finally finding someone who can battle her at her full strength and still remain friends with her, win or lose. It was also interesting to see how The open world thing works well, yes, if you open the map, there's a bunch of icons, but they all mean something, it's not just pointless filler, you can see the tera raids available, the location of your next objectives, fast-travel points and Pokémon Centers, making it not feel cluttered. However, it also has some serious issues, textures have some fun shenanigans going on, popping in and out all over the place, even in the same area, if you take a couple of steps, textures and shadows disappear, reappear, and then disappear again. NPCs move at 5 FPS in certain areas and during cutscenes, tera raids run like they're drunk, an attack will empty the boss' HP, only for it to instantly go back to full, then half, then empty, even with an empty HP bar bosses get an attack in before instantly fainting, etc. The game also crashed a couple of times for me. That said, I still had a ton of fun with it, funny thing, I don't have that many Pokémon games (I checked, the only ones I own are Y, Sword and Scarlet), but every time I play one I have fun, makes me wonder why I don't buy them more often lol. If this had released in a... Less broken state I'd imagine it might be considered one of the best in the series, maybe. Grade: Most Excellent! (A+)

Another one of the Genkai Tokki series, been eyeing this one for a while, and it finally went on sale as part of the holiday sales.