MetalCaveman

Best not to watch if you want to avoid spoilers. If you've watched it though

Elden Ring (PC) It's Elden Ring, it's awesome, not much more to say. Although I did run into a bunch of performance issues I didn't have on PS5, crashes, freezes, etc. Not enough to deduct points from it though. Grade: S Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree More Elden Ring, and I mean MORE, "about the size of Limgrave" yeah right, except it's the size of Limgrave, with another Limgrave underneath, a third Limgrave at the top and them another Limgrave next to it. It's MASSIVE. The new weapons are fun, at least the ones I used, even found what's one of the closest representations of Mjolnir in any game ever, made me wish we had gotten a new lightning ash of war. Didn't get to use some of the new dex weapons but they look cool. This expansion also had some of the best new armours, including one of my favourites not only in Elden Ring but across all Soulsborne games. In terms of difficulty, if you're the type of player that thinks that using summons, spirit ashes, buffs and shields is "kinda cheating" you'll hate this, unless you're also the kind of player that can do a NG+7 lvl 1 no hit run lol. This expansion really wants you to use the Scadutree Blessings, they make a HUGE difference, I went from being 2 hit by basic enemies to barely being tickled by them and that was with blessing lvl 10. Made a pretty big effort to find all of them lol, and it helped a ton for the final boss. Didn't get all of the spirit ash blessings but even without all of them mimic was able to do what I want it to do, draw aggro from me so I can heal. That said, there are some issues with the combat, specially with some heavy enemies that show up in different places, they hit like a tank, have infinite stamina and infinite poise, unless you play ranged, they're a nightmare to deal with, even at max blessings. Camera is still a huge issue with some boss fights, the arena is too small, the boss too big and so the camera becomes the real enemy and the reason for many, many deaths. I definitively see the last boss getting a nerf, not necessarily in a "this is impossibly difficult" kind of way, but more like Balteus from Armored Core 6, where it's perfectly doable with the right build (I went giant shield with poking stick lol) but with other builds it becomes a nightmare. Much like Balteus, its attacks have some insane tracking, way too ridiculous. The story and new lore revelations were cool, was not unexpected, but still cool to see how it affected certain NPCs. Learning more about what happened in the Land of Shadows also changed how I saw a certain character. The end was disappointing though, seriously disappointing it just felt pointless, a huge letdown. On the other hand, there's Igon, won't go into details but this dude was the MVP, not only of the DLC, but of all Elden Ring lol, Richard Lintern (I learned this was his first videogame VA job) did an amazing job and that monologue will go down in history. \m/ \m/ The whole thing was pretty cool, my favourite part of the DLC. There's also a serious issue with exploration rewards, some dungeons have 4 or 5 new weapons, others give you... Tier 4 upgrade stones, given the overall difficulty and which bosses you need to have defeated to make it here, the type and amount of upgrade stones you're given feels way too low to be worth it, I even ran into a bunch of tier 1 upgrade stones in a dungeon with 2 bosses lol. Overall though, I enjoyed the hell out of this, I wanted more Elden Ring and I got MORE Elden Ring. Grade: S

Next Steam sale I'm getting Deep Rock Galactic lol \m/ \m/

My only purchase for this Steam sale lol, wanted to finish Shadow of the Erdtree before buying anything, but after finding yet another massive underground area I realized it's going to take longer than expected so went ahead and got these two now.

The good news: NEW BEAST IN BLACK! \m/ \m/ The bad news: It's just a standalone single, no new album, for now.

IT'S HAPPENING!!

Bunch of outlets got to play 3 hours of the DLC, been watching some of them, looks like it's going to be awesome! The most negative one was from Iron Pineapple, not even that negative, just, that dude could get through the whole thing lvl 1 with no weapons so he thought 3 hours was too long since he got to do everything they had access to, and that some areas were too easy. There was also another critique, but one that IMO, is a strong point for FROM,

https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/like-a-dragon-yakuza-live-action-series-sega-game-prime-video-1236024275/ Like A Dragon Yakuza series coming to Prime this October. They did a pretty good job with the Fallout series so maybe this one will be cool.

So, after six years of violence, insecurity, economic collapse, unemployment, collapse of the healthcare system, poor management of the pandemic, corruption, and more, the country as a whole decided... We want six more years of this. Not only that, but last I saw, MORENA got majority in senate and congress, which means that their Plan C might be happening. Plan C involves disappearing the current Supreme Court, replacing it with judges that follow the will of the president, modifying the constitution to grant more power to the president, disappear things like INAI (freedom of information) and INE (Electoral Institute) so that future elections are all handled directly by the government, along with other changes and new laws meant to consolidate power on the president's office. Like Loret said during their live broadcast: "This means people, the country as a whole, saw what happened, what is happening and what will come, and agreed with it, the approved of it, they want more of it". What can you do or say then? Fuck everything I guess. Something funny out of all this, watching US media and social media sites reporting this as some great victory: "A "leftist" jewish woman became president! Glory! Hallelujah! Mexico will now be a utopia! Start Trek future here they come!" And the comments being filled with Mexicans pointing out how this is anything but a victory, with the occasional MORENA follower arguing that this is the bestest thing ever.

"[Insert band name here] just uses the same riff for every song!" Has been a recurring joke but this one is the most obvious example of it lol. The Apostate and The Sixth Day are pretty much perfect copies of Dies Irae and My Salvation.

Have the platinum on PS5, thought I'd go for it again on PC lol, also, doing the math, it was cheaper to get this edition on PC than buying the DLC + PS Plus for PS5.

HELL YEAH!!! \m/ \m/

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II One of the biggest shifts from one game to its sequel. No more fun RTS stuff, now it's more of a squad-based tactics game. Definitively one that I would have enjoyed more if it had another name. It's not bad, commanding the different squads, using their skills and moving them around the map was fun, but part of me still wanted more of the first Dawn of War lol. Also, certain units feel too squishy, the Dreadnought in particular, I understand it's due to balance reasons but still, feels like the dude was a bit too weak for what a Dreadnought is supposed to be. Devastators were also a bit weak but their main role is to suppress enemies allowing your other units to flank them so it's not that big of a deal. Mission results only count whether or not the squad leader fell, so it was kinda funny to get full stars for not losing a single squad in spite of several marines dying during the mission. Not what I wanted out of a sequel to Dawn of War but still pretty cool, looking forward to Chaos Rising and Retribution. Grade: B+

Think I'll wait for it to go on sale lol, I struggle a lot with the parry timings, though I might also try and finish Sekiro and use it as practice.

How Sekiro is it? Kinda hesitant to get Stellar Blade since I'm not a big fan of the combat parts of Sekiro, though I'm also not that far into it, Loved the sneaking around Tenchu style parts of it, but the combat hasn't clicked yet.

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War - Soulstorm The campaign is pretty similar to Dark Crusade, just with the addition of the Dark Eldar and the Sisters of Battle. Some of the stronghold missions were also closer to OG Dawn of War, with you having to use a small group of units that you have to maneuver around the map, completing some objectives with that small team, at least for the first half, then it's back to base building lol. This time the campaign takes place across a couple of planets so there's an added objective, you need to capture areas with a gate that allows you to move to other areas, each gate connects specific planets so you'll end up moving around a lot when trying to capture all strongholds. One thing I would have liked to see in this one and Dark Crusade is the AI actually eliminating other factions. They'll try to attack other zones but most of the time the attack fails, then next turn they'd try again, and fail, and so on, would have been cool to see an AI capture a bunch of strongholds for themselves, making it harder to get to theirs since you'd have to conquer a ton of areas to get to them, or maybe even grant them access to multiple strongholds if they manage to eliminate other factions, that kind of stuff would be neat. More Dawn of War is always good. Grade: A+

"Performance over patents" lmao

Been playing a lot of WH40K, so it was time for something more lighthearted and relaxing lol.

Warhammer 40K: Dawn Of War - Dark Crusade A most excellent RTS gets a most excellent expansion. Completed the Space Marine campaign, will def return for the other campaigns at some point, but for now I'm marking it as completed lol. The campaign plays like Conquer the World in Rise of Nations, the map is divided into different provinces, you start with one under your control, your stronghold, and the objective is to capture the other strongholds in order to remove the other factions from the map. You'll fight Tau, Necrons, Eldar, Orks, Chaos Marines and even the Imperial Guard. Some provinces will give you honour guard units, special units that you start each skirmish with, extremely useful for stronghold fights as you'll be attacked on all sides as soon as you start lol. Other provinces have special effects, like allowing you to start with more resources or being able to attack multiple times per turn. Each stronghold mission has its own gimmick, some will have you building generators to take control of a Titan('s arm lol), others require that you capture certain points and use them to reveal hidden enemy units, the Ork stronghold allows you to destroy ork banners and then watch as they all turn on their leader. Overall, a really fun expansion, the complete opposite of Winter Assault, a bit more straightforward compared to how puzzle like some missions were in WA and in base Dawn of War, but still an excellent time. On an unrelated note, I was sure this game had come out 10-ish years ago... turns out it's been almost 20 years since... Grade: A+

Dawn of War: Winter Assault I remember playing this one years ago, stopping thanks to a mission that was just frustrating as hell, and then not thinking about it for a while. Tried to go back to it after finishing Mechanicus, only to find that I had apparently beaten that mission, but the next one was even worse. This campaign just feels like frustrating mission after frustrating mission with little in between, super aggressive enemies, low resource acquisition, BS enemy spawns, too many timer missions (hold the line, move the base, wait until you can move the base again, wait for reinforcements, repeat x40000), overall, just not fun.