MetalCaveman

April 6th, probably the 21st for the Netflix release?

Even now, there are some countries still hesitant on imposing more severe sanctions. How much more does Russia and Putin need to do before some countries decide "OK, now THAT'S too far"?

Elden Ring launch trailer:

Remnant From the Ashes One hell of an anticlimactic ending, had too look up whether or not that was the actual ending or if I had missed some bosses or secret quests, nah, that is really the ending. The DLC is supposed to add more to it, but not really in the mood to check it out right now. In general, it was quite a ride, my initial impressions were that this was a neat souls-like with guns, a fun take on the genre, then I learned that areas are procedurally generated, and that explained why certain areas looked the same (literally, had the exact same building appear twice in the first area lol). Around this point, my weapons didn't feel like they were doing much damage even though I had upgraded them a fair bit, and I learned about the annoying scaling system this game has, where essentially enemies are always one level above your highest upgraded gear, in your inventory, so if you have a +5 rifle and it's not equipped because you found a +2 shotgun... good luck, every enemy is going to be scaled to that +5 rifle. This also takes into account your armour, so yeah, things can be pretty annoying. At this point I was kinda getting ready to drop Remnant, the desert world having the most boring design didn't help, what stopped me is that I ran into a dungeon that looked really cool, sorta reminded me of the Necromongers from Riddick, really tough area, with swarming enemies that explode on death, but the aesthetic and combat kept me going, at the end, the reward was more than worth it, a rifle that shoots radioactive beams, add to that the fire shot mod and this thing melted enemies and bosses alike, a huge change from the more normal weapons I had before it. This thing made the game fun again, up until it vaporized the last boss, which probably contributed to how underwhelming it was. This thing is even better than some boss weapons, specially because you can change the mod attached to it, boss weapons have specific mods that can't be replaced. Even then, that weapon appears only in a specific dungeon, which may not even appear in your world given the procedurally generated element, the fact that this really cool weapon is restricted in such a way kinda sours the whole thing. Another issue I had is with upgrades, in spite of pushing for a balanced upgrade path, keeping everything at about the same level, there's a severe lack of resources, specially if you go for boss weapons, which require an extra item on top of the usual iron. Overall, there's a fun game here, and I'd love to see more games like this, not only souls-likes, but just games that combine this kind of fantasy (with a touch of sci-fi) stuff and normal third person shooter mechanics, without going full Destiny space-wizards lol. However, the issues it has make it hard to recommend, although chances are, some/most of you will already have it, as it was given for free in the Epic store lol.

NEW AMON AMARTH!!! HELL YEAH!!! \m/ \m/

*MetalCaveman used a Max Revive!* Been doing this one for a couple of weeks, pretty fun. Also been thinking about going for a fitness challenge with Elden Ring, maybe even start with Remnant From the Ashes to see how it goes, thinking something along the lines of: 3-5 Squats 3-5 Pike push-ups 5 Power ups 3-5 Pounding trunk lifts 6 Standing ab twists All per death, or maybe alternate sets between deaths. Though depending on how it goes it might be a bit too much (iirc one of the people who played the CNT said they died 20 times to one boss lol), still, given some recent issues I've kinda neglected my weight and general health a bit, so this seems like a good idea, might change my mind if I die too many times though.

In one of (iirc maybe even THE) deadliest countries for journalists in the world*, what does the president do? He wages a public war against journalists of course! https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/its-not-personal-mexican-president-names-critical-journalists-salary-2022-02-11/?utm_source=reddit.com Targetting Loret de Mola specifically because he revealed a huge conflict of interest in regards to some contracts PEMEX has with Baker and Hughes. In response, journalists from several different broadcasters, news agencies and more, came together to condemn the attack (minus TV Azteca which currently serves as the government's propaganda arm). The president responded: Saying he's going to keep pressuring INAI to reveal information not only about Loret, but also of any other journalists, because: "The fourth transformation must be protected" A journalist that was at that press conference corrected him, stating that INAI cannot reveal data about journalists, because they do not hold public office and INAI exists to provide transparency on those who do hold a public office, not the general population, the president fires back stating that this is a matter that concerns the public. *Looked it up, turns out we are in fact the deadliest country for journalists in the world, not only that, apparently 8 were murdered in 2020, and just in January of 2022, 4 journalists have been murdered, 2 more recently, bringing the total to 6, just in the first two months of the year. They way they've responded to the aforementioned conflict of interest, which involved the president's own son has been quite the show as well. Dude's trying to defend himself from a conflict of interest by confirming another, and potentially confessing to a crime in the US(?) Jose Ramon Lopez Beltran claimed that he was working as a legal advisor to KEI Partners, a construction company in Houston, except that apparently he doesn't have a license for the US, someone who knows more about this can tell how bad it is to be working as a legal advisor without a license or BAR exam... or anything else really, further, KEI Partners didn't really exist until the weekend, when the Jose Ramon announced he worked for them, all of a sudden, their website, seemingly abandoned for quite a while, sprung to life, with photos and videos of some of their projects... Most of them lifted from pinterest lol https://www.ejecentral.com.mx/el-domingo-que-kei-partners-se-volo-60-imagenes/ It was also revealed that this KEI Partners company is owned by the children of Daniel Chavez, close aide of the president, and one of the people involved in the already quite controversial Mayan Train project. Oh yeah, and there's that thing about corpses being left in some main streets in Zacatecas 10 in one street, 6 hanging from a bridge, Colima turning into a warzone, and Veracruz seems to be heading that way too. On that topic, I'm going to leave this gem here: The president, pointing at the first page of Reforma, which talks about 45 massacres in 2020: "There's your massacres hahahahaha" On a more international front, seems like Russia might be about to make a move on Ukraine? Or parts of it at least, things don't seem to be going too well over there. Oh and there's that thing about methane levels in the atmosphere reaching record highs https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00312-2 Potentially leading into a feedback loop, so yeah, fun times all around.

The biggest criticisms I've seen online and from friends are: It looks like absolute dogshit. The biggest franchise in gaming shouldn't be allowed to get by with simply a decent game. Not a graphics quality thing, but complaints about the art style lacking cohesion, certain things looking weird or out of place. Open world isn't really open. Having not played it myself I can't say how true these are, other than the fact that screenshots and videos I've seen from people playing look way better than some of the official trailers and screenshots. Overall, from what I've seen, it's definitively the kind of game I'd love to check out at some point. Hoping that they don't give up on this new style of games and continue to improve and expand on it.

HYPE!!!!!

God Eater 2 There's a huge disconnect between how some characters talk/feel about a certain other character and how I feel about said character. Makes sense, kinda Some characters mention how said character "has a place to go back to" or "is now working at HQ!" and they seem happy about it, meanwhile, I don't want to hear about this character again, unless it's to find out he got eaten by a monster. Remnant From the Ashes A fun Souls-like, with guns, so far it feels fairly balanced, not too frustrating, and the story is quite interesting, but I'm still at the start though, plenty of time for things to go south lol. Rainbow Six Extraction I assume the story was explained in R6 Siege? So far there isn't much in the way of a story. What are these things, are they aliens? Monsters? Mutants? Who knows! lol The MIA operator thing is very annoying though, long story short, if you "die" during a mission, that operator is out, you can't select them again until you launch a rescue mission. In order to actually rescue an operator, you have to find them in the level, then pull them out from some weird tree thing, as you do this, if you alerted enemies you'll have to deal with them, if not, you still have to deal with the tree itself, you have to hold a button to free the operator, depleting the tree's energy gauge, as you do this, energy spores will begin to move along some tendrils towards the tree, you have to shoot them or the operator will be dragged back in and you have to start again. After that, you have to take the operator to either an extraction zone, or the next zone gate, they will lose some XP, but you'll be able to send them back out. Kinda. This game really wants you to try all the operators, after every mission, operators don't recover their full health, you have to let them "rest" for a couple of missions while you take someone else. I don't know much about Siege, but I assume these are the same loadouts operators have in that game, I say this because none of the loadouts seem to be that useful against these creatures. Hearbeat detectors reveals nests, but don't do anything to detect enemies, mines just stun them, not that useful for certain areas where something that goes boom would be more useful, breaking walls and barricades doesn't seem that useful yet, etc. There's a weapon upgrade that burns the goop that slows you down and alerts enemies, but that one is locked behind the highest research level. In general though, not too bad, I see this as a game that's fun with friends, and kinda good in short bursts solo, just log in, complete a lvl 1 incursion, level up some operators, then play something else. The hype for Elden Ring is too much and I'm kinda going crazy looking for games to play to pass the time.

Spot has a 90 minute battery for when it's actually doing stuff, a couple more hours if it's on standby mode. I'd assume Ghost Robotics probably has something more beefy, or is working on something like that. https://support.bostondynamics.com/s/article/Introduction-to-the-Spot-battery-and-charger TIL: At some point, DARPA along with RTI and Cyclone Power worked on a robot that could consume biomass... Where have I seen this before? lol https://www.robotictechnologyinc.com/index.php/EATR They even had to release a statement mentioning their robot would NOT eat human flesh as part of its biomass... Seems like the idea was abandoned though.

This is pretty neat: Godot 4 now has a CharacterBody3D node, which comes with a 3D movement template script. Before you had to start from a KinematicBody3D and add all code on your own. Now, if we could get some boilerplate done for the camera node, that'd be sweet.

The premium edition looks so cool, but their store doesn't ship to Mexico. The launch edition some regions have is also pretty cool, but that's also limited to specific stores/regions. Edit because this ended up in a new page: Talking about Elden Ring.

In the anime sense of "cute, heart warming, happy, and generally devoid of blood, gore and otherwise dark elements in the story" yeah, I meant it 100% lol. HOWEVER, it's also true that these games are the key to a healthy life, even if it kills your gains*.

Duel Princess Not sure I would call this tower defence, for me that's more along the lines of Defense Grid, Arknights, etc. In this, you have your base on one side, the enemy base on the other and units just move in a straight line, you can't place defences, block lanes or anything like what I normally associate with TD games. That said, it was still pretty fun, the main strategy element comes from unit synergy, skills and balancing deployment costs. You have three classes, the game gives them specific names, but I find it easier to go with the Fate approach, so you have sabers, archers and lancers. Sabers beat archers, archers beat lancers and lancers beat sabers. Within those classes however, you have a pretty decent variety of units, and rarity levels, from common to legendary, the more rare the unit, the higher the deployment cost, thought hey usually have some neat skill or effect to make up for it, including archers that can attack the enemy base directly, lancers that restore mana when defeated, sabers that have shields protecting them, all that fun stuff. You start with a simple deck of units and can get more either by encountering a shop in the map and purchasing more units (assuming you have enough gold), or by completing battles or story events. Running out of cards and losing a battle this way is, thankfully, not a thing here, but having more units to choose form is always a good thing, there's also an overdrive mechanic, where you can fuse two copies of the same unit, increasing their power and HP, pretty useful when needing a strong start or to counter stronger units, specially because deployment cost doesn't increase from this. Further, each princess has their own unique units obtained via story events. Once you've completed a princess' story, their units are unlocked for purchase in the store. Each princess has their own skills too, with Karla IMO getting the short end of the stick, her skill just allows her to draw more cards, when other princesses have skills that poison enemy units, increase attack power and speed, grant invincibility, etc, Karla's skill just feels kinda useless. Specially as there's no increase in mana generation to complement the extra cards. There's player level and princess level, princess level increases the HP of your base as well as increasing the level of their skill, you gain levels by completing stages and story events, up to a maximum of 5, the increase in level is pretty noticeable when it comes to skills, at lvl 5 Dorothea's skill can almost wipe out the enemy base in one cast. Player level affects the level of your units, maxing out at 20, each princess story has a recommended level, ending with Zena at lvl 18. Going back to the first area with a max level army was pretty fun, just a couple of units can handle every fight. Princess level applies to each princess individually, so you have to go through their respective stories and events in order to max their skills, while player level carries through all campaigns, even if you lose a battle and choose to restart, you still get some XP towards your player level, that takes some of the frustration from the early stages. Speaking of princesses, there's quite the cast, the tsundere, the lonely princess that wants to make friends, the chuuni, the whole gang is here, still, they still stand on their own beyond the archetypes they're based on, and their interactions are pretty funny and wholesome (for the most part lol). Each of them also has their own unique design related to their kingdom, with Iris, the steampunk princess, being my favourite. \m/ \m/ The story, similarly, is pretty funny and wholesome, even though the whole thing is "gather the magic crests to defeat the Great Demon Lord" the actual focus is on the princesses and their interactions with each other, meeting other princesses for the first time, forging alliances, making friendships, in fact, and this was kind of disappointing for me at first, then it became a non-issue, Finally, there's the "punishment" mini-game. I thought this was going to be like Senran Kagura Reflexions but it ended up being a bit more simple, this will either be the main draw, or what makes you avoid this game like the plague, personally, I had fun with it but YMMV, however, do know you can skip it if you'd rather just play the rest of the game without worrying about this stuff. Your final score might decrease a bit, but this can be offset by going for as many elite enemies as possible. I suspect it was that part of the game along with the... suggestive voices that accompany it, that resulted in Duel Princess being removed from the eShop, AFAIK, Steam also rejected the game, you can now get it via Fakku or DLSite. Overall, I'd recommend it, fun, cute and wholesome story, a wide variety of characters, simple but entertaining gameplay, and a nice bonus with the punishment mini-game, if you're into games like SK Reflexions, this might be up your alley.

The two characters from this game also appear on Duel Princess, so now that it's on sale, thought I'd get it and maybe go through it before reaching their story in Duel Princess.

Didn't have any friends (that played) at the time, didn't play much of it. Didn't play Eternal Darkness so not much I can say about it, about Adventures, yeah, reading about it, it seems like one of the main criticisms is that it wasn't what people would expect/want from a Star Fox game.

Exclusives: StarFox Adventures StarFox Assault Wave Race: Blue Storm Super Mario Sunshine Third party: True Crime Streets of LA Def Jam Fight for NY Dead to Rights Misunderstood Gem: Digimon World 4 Only about a dozen people would buy this, but they'd be pretty happy... I hope. Edit: Replaced 1080° Avalanche with True Crime Streets of LA, after I remembered I played it first on GC.

Dark Souls 2 Scholar of the First Sin Still the weakest of the Soulsborne games for me, there's something about the combat that lacks the finesse and responsiveness of the other games, not to mention that the updates to enemy spawns means that before the game felt a tad too easy, now it can be downright frustrating to go through certain areas, ambushes, tons of enemies, really strong enemies in some of the early areas, all that plus weapons that break after a few swings can make for a very annoying experience, somewhat alleviated by the limited spawns enemies have, kill enough of them enough times and they stop spawning, still takes some time (and potentially many deaths) to do so. Then there's the world itself, the Black Gulch is hell, specially because in SotFS they made it so the stupid poison statues reset after using a bonfire, before you could do a run to get rid of those, heal, and go back to deal with just the enemies, now, they're back every time you rest. The petrifying rats in the pit and other areas are a nightmare to deal with too. In terms of the DLC, I kinda rushed through Crown of the Sunken King, as soon as I saw that everything was poison and that there were a lot of narrow walkways and bottomless pits, I just ran to the boss, went back later to explore a bit more, not a fan of this one. Crown of the Old Iron King was more fun, the Smelter Wedge and soul fragments were a nice mechanic, and of course, being able to get the Fume Ultra Greatsword was neat. I kept waiting for something to knock me to my death while traversing the giant chains that connect the towers, thankfully there was none of that. Finally, Crown of the Ivory King was my favourite, being able to explore an ancient ruined castle that's covered in ice and snow was the best part, a drastic change from the environments found in the other DLCs and in the base game, the boss fight for this one was also the best. In general, my favourite DLC, except for the Frigid Outskirts, that place can burn in hell, a constant blizzard that blocks your view, crystal reindeer that shoot lightning and always blindside you, not a single bonfire (that I could find), that place just sucks. Finally, the ending, the original DS2 ending was underwhelming, this one adds another ending that is much more satisfying, both because there's an actual choice to make and as the payoff if In spite of everything I didn't like about it, it's still an enjoyable game, kinda want to go and get the achievements I'm missing, iirc I'm missing some covenants and NPC equipment.

HELL YEAH!!!!! \m/ \m/

After a flood of art on my twitter timeline, I decided to check out My Dress-up Darling. Pretty cute and wholesome, enjoying it quite a bit. Short summary, super popular, super pretty girl in class turns out to be into anime, manga and VNs and super into cosplay, but can't make clothes at all, meets dude who stays away from everyone due to past trauma but who has an excellent talent and skill at making clothes, wigs, makeup etc due to his family's business (making Hina dolls ), she ends up asking him to make clothes for her cosplay and things snowball from there. Of note though, this series is super heavy on the fanservice, so YMMV.

Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin Offline only. This is certainly a change from the DS2 I remember (original vanilla), bunch of enemy placements have changed and now there are dragons where there used to be nothing, this is going to be a thing. One thing that took me by surprise, though I don't remember much from my original playthrough, was weapon durability always this bad? Kill a couple of knights and my sword is already half-broken, I know it's automatically repaired when using a bonfire but still, feels like you need to carry an entire arsenal to make up for how fast stuff breaks.