MetalCaveman

It's happening!!! \m/ \m/

https://www.propublica.org/article/mexico-amlo-lopez-obrador-campaign-drug-cartels TL;DR: During his 2006 campaign, current president AMLO received funds from drug cartels, DEA had evidence of his officials participating and had an operation ready, but canceled it after the Fast and Furious fiasco and after Peña Nieto went in with a different approach, walking back many agreements and collaborations established under the Calderón administration. There's a bunch of interesting stuff there, including how, back in 2006, after Calderón won, cartels had a plan to kidnap the president of the electoral tribunal and force him to change the results. Also apparently a bunch of people in the DEA and other agencies are all "well, anything we do is pointless when the Mexican government itself protects the criminals we're trying to stop". It also answers the question of how AMLO managed to remain active for years without any clear source of income, and confirms what we all know, most of the people who show up at his rallies are paid to be there. One thing I'd like to point out though, Proceso isn't really an investigative magazine, they're a propaganda mouthpiece. "This week on Proceso: Learn how TV Azteca illegally benefited from deals with neoliberal governments, their corruption, exposed!" *Salinas (owner of TV Azteca) makes a deal with the president* "This week on Proceso: See how the brave men and women of TV Azteca fight the good fight against the neoliberal conspirators, enemies of the state!" Of course after this was published, AMLO went on the offensive, accusing ProPublica and Tim Golden of being at the service of his enemies and the enemies of the 4T, he even went as far as saying that Tim Golden is worse than Loret de Mola, who for years has been public enemy #1 in the eyes of AMLO, being one of the few big name journalists to call him out on his BS. ProPublica responded: https://www.propublica.org/article/mexican-president-lopez-obrador-called-our-story-slander-and-our-reporter-a-pawn-here-are-some-facts

Back when the RE4 Remake came out, qureate's CEO said it made him want to make a zombie game, so of course, they went full qureate style on it lol. Thought it would be like Seed of the Dead, but it looks more like Vampire Survivors but with maids and zombies.

I can see 1 being somewhat true, the roadmap they released did state they would focus on bug fixes and other issues before adding more content, people who've already done what's there right now might drop the game entirely, don't know how long it'll take them, but devs did mention they would add more pals, PvP (somewhat concerning, a Sphere that can catch pals owned by other players is in the game right now, just not fully implemented yet), plus there's a thing in the story that's not yet accessible, maybe those big patches will renew interest(?). It's going to be interesting to see how long they can keep this momentum going, iirc they're hiring new people (or so Google translate says lol). 2 Def feels like a "if it was to happen it would've already happened" kind of thing, like the Pokémon mod was nuked in less than a day iirc, meanwhile the announcement trailer is from two years ago, if Nintendo saw any reason to take down Palworld they would have done it long ago IMO.

Excellent! \m/ \m/

The amount of attention to detail in a game like this is insane lol, and then there's the backwards rocket launcher. I mentioned this in the Games You Beat thread, but one of the biggest accomplishments of this game is the creature design, derivative/rip-off call it whatever, I loved them, way better than most other creature collecting games.

Palworld First things first, I played a version I stumbled upon while sailing the high seas lol. That out of the way, I was super surprised with this game, first of all, this is more Ark than Pokémon. Normally, I'm not a fan of crafting/survival games, too much resource management, too much not being able to do fun stuff because you have to build or gather resources, too much worrying about your character's food/water/whatever, etc. This manages to do away with most of that... For a while at least. Pals are able to gather stuff, move it around and even help you build and craft things, on top of that, early resources, like stone and wood can be obtained from structures you can build, as opposed to constantly having to look for them around the world. You can also get some items which help with your character's food needs, all you need is to have something in there and automatically, your character and pals in your party will eat when needed, no need to worry about water or sleep either. You can even build bases where pals handle pretty much everything, all you have to do is occasionally pop in and select a crafting recipe, then go on your way as your pals handle the rest, you get a notification when the stuff you wanted done is completed. Eventually however, you do reach a point where the usual issues pop up, gathering late/end-game resources takes forever, building certain items takes a ton of resources, some stuff can't be efficiently farmed, certain resources are better bought than farmed, but that takes a bunch of gold, though there are some relatively easy ways to deal this, crafting nails and selling them makes you a decent amount of money. This is where custom settings can help, a really neat thing, you can change a ton of things, like XP multipliers, catch rate, pal spawns, day/night duration, player damage, pal damage, stamina usage, you can even disable raids, which can be annoying in the early game. All of this is of course, just part of the game, the other part is the pal catching and collecting. I was also pretty surprised with this. Yes, as has been mentioned many of the pal designs are pretty much just Pokémon with some slight changes, as well as some that, like chikipi, are just a chicken, or other animal lol. That said, I think that's precisely why this works, I've seen some other creature collecting games being mentioned, but this is one of the few with creature designs that I actually like, they're fun, cute and cool, in ways that IMO, only Pokémon and Digimon have been able to manage. In fact, unlike every Pokémon game, this is the first time I actually give nicknames to my main party. Being able to actually fight alongside them was also pretty neat. While the trailers and discussion were all about "Pokémon with guns! Enslave pals and force them to work until they die! Have them live in miserable conditions as you build your empire!" I found that this is up to the player entirely. Yes, you can overwork your pals and force them to make stuff for you, or you can treat them with care. I built high quality beds, hot springs and made the best food for my pals before I even had a bed lol. That said, there are some issues. Some to do with the early access nature of the game, others to do with some design choices. Pals have some serious AI issues, they'll get stuck on stuff all the time, sometimes you'll fast travel back to your base and find one of your pals is hanging out on the roof of your house, how they get there? Who knows lol. Other times they'll just stay in one corner, unable to do anything, getting stressed and hungry because they can't find their way out. You'll find them sleeping on top of furnaces, crafting tables and other areas instead of their beds. There's no easy way to set them to a specific task too, some pals have different abilities, like mining, crafting, kindling, etc. And there's no easy way to tell them "hey, mine this thing" instead, they'll just sorta do whatever. You can, in theory, lift a pal and carry it to the thing you want it to do, but this is janky as hell. Building is also a nightmare, there's so many issues and things that don't make sense. Stairs can't be connected to anything, some platforms will whine about "not being connected" or "not being on the ground" until you angle the cursor just the right way for it to work, no easy way to build certain things, placing down your base marker makes it impossible to build certain things around it. On a more personal nitpick, I wish metal structures were less industrial/prison style and more along the lines of the pal armour you can get. Maybe allow you to choose which you want, a prison, or a Star Trek style future city. Bosses also have a ridiculous amount of HP, def feels like they're made with 4 player co-op in mind. I enjoyed my time with it, and hope that more devs will try and make fun creature collecting games like this, with creature designs that actually make you want to capture, raise, care for and battle alongside them, wouldn't mind doing away with the survival crafting stuff though. TL;DR: It can be summed up with this exchange between Josh and Cotton from RageGamingVideos: Josh "I can't get over how well made this game is, I was convinced it would just be a giant meme" Cotton "I think it still is, but it can also be good" Josh "It's a well made giant meme" Grade: A

Bullet Girls Phantasia Senran Kagura meets EDF. You fight against hordes of orcs, slimes and dragons using a variety of guns (some characters have swords, but why use them when gun do job good ). There's also clothes damage, a changing room and... Intensive drilling, which is a thing lol, this game takes the fanservice from SK and turns it to 11 lol. There's multiple outfits choices and while all of them are obviously fanservice oriented, they also have different armour stats, not a concern for normal difficulty, but something you'll want to keep an eye on for higher difficulties, were enemies do a ton more damage. Gameplay is a bit janky, specially when it comes to how the game handles auto aim/aim assist, which can be a bit annoying at times. The way dodging works can also be annoying, since, trying to aim after dodging makes your character take this aiming stance where you can't move, and that's sort of the opposite thing you want if you're in a situation where dodging becomes necessary. Even so, it's a fun game, there's plenty of weapon variety, missions are on the short side so you can play for a bit and then do other stuff, characters are funny and varied, the story was also pretty fun, among the sea of this type of "people transported to a fantasy land" stories, this one stands out for moving away from the grimdark, and just embracing the silliness lol, specially with how characters, instead of gaining some OP magic ability, bring their guns with them, "oh that's a cool sword you have there, here, let me introduce you to my boomstick!" The twist was unexpected, and while a little too convenient, it fits with the rest of the story and its tone, so no big deal there. Grade: A+

The Typing of the Dead: Overkill House of the Dead, but you type words to kill zombies. This is also the silliest, cheesiest the HotD series has ever been lol, they went full Tarantino with the presentation. It also probably has the record for most uses of the word "fuck" (and all it's variations) in any game ever lol. Custom dictionaries are fun too, there's even one that's basically a cheat, as it replaces all word with X (dictionary aptly called, Press X To Not Die lol), I played with an Iron Maiden one, with word frequency at 50%, the game does warn you that this is not the best in terms of narrative, but it is quite fun. Grade: A+

Occasionally the youtube algorithm can lead to some gold, this was one of those times lol

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation A fun RTS, on a bigger scale than any other RTS I've played lol, seriously, some of these armies are ridiculous. Story is kinda fun, wish they expanded more on the thing that Also that thing with Lots of questions lol. Gameplay wise, for someone used to StarCraft, it took me a bit to get used to the way economy works here*, but once you get into the rhythm of things and learn some of the shortcuts, it was way easier to start building armies and clearing missions. Main issue is that some missions felt way too hard, you start with a tiny base, and have to, somehow, build enough defenses and upgrades to deal with a giant enemy army with high tier units that's rapidly approaching your base, at least Easy difficulty starts you with a bunch of units, not too many, but enough to handle the early stages without a panic attack. *It's easier, because you don't need to have workers gathering stuff, but you do need to balance capturing and holding resource points and moving forward with the mission. A minor nitpick though, and I get why, but some units take way too long to build. Yay! I got a juggernaut, it will be active for about five seconds before the rest of my army finishes dealing with the enemy nexus! On one of the campaigns, you had an ability that sped up build times, that was useful, wish all factions had something like that. Grade: A

Taboo Trial This is a rogue... lite? Like? Rogue adjacent? Which is the one where when you die you lose everything you got that run but also get a currency to buy permanent upgrades? Point is, each run is different, after clearing a stage you can get a buff for that run, defeating bosses gives you items that can be used to buy permanent upgrades for your character, and buffs for your next run, you also get items which can be given to other characters in the main hub to allow you to play as those characters, although the change is purely cosmetic. The Viking mythology meets sci-fi shenanigans thing is pretty neat, though enemy designs are pretty basic and don't change much throughout the game (other than they'll be red in Muspelheim, white in Niflheim and stuff like that) they still look cool, best design by far though, is Mimir, that whole stage is pretty cool, though really short too. A cool thing is that, while all playable characters are female, you don't play as a Valkyrie, instead, you're one of the Einherjar. The "twist" at the end and how it connects to the gameplay aspect of doing multiple runs was cool too. The run where I finally managed to clear the game was fun, basically got lucky enough to get buffs and skills that made my character essentially immortal, damage reduction, turn damage into HP, restore HP with each kill, etc. After being wiped out in the first stage a couple of times, it was fun to make it to the last boss without worrying about HP. I did have some issues with performance and translations though, it would sometimes spike GPU usage to 100%, had to manually restrict FPS in order to keep things under control. In terms of translations, some descriptions don't make sense and some skills are referred to by different names, sometimes it doesn't make much difference, like unlocking Mjolnir and then getting a buff for Hammer of Thor, other times it can be a bit confusing, unlock skill Illusory Stranger but get a buff for Mysterious Illusion and stuff like that. Overall, a fun game, def see myself going back to try more runs, though I doubt I'll be as lucky as my last one. Grade: A

Onechanbara Z2: Chaos A hefty change from previous entries, the gameplay has been revamped and improved a fair bit, though with some issues. The biggest change is that the level up system is gone, instead, you buy skills, rings, items and upgrade weapons, using yellow orbs, which used to be the EXP that you used to level up. Weapon variety is cool, and the descriptions are fun, there's one that's a reference to the God of War series, one that says "this is a failed weapon, but its designer refuses to admit to it", it's neat. Further, you can upgrade weapons and buy skills during each chapter, by using the goddess statues found in each area. The downside is that now character HP is fixed, for the most part, you can buy items that temporarily increase HP and there's a ring that does the same, however, you can only get each ring once, so you have to choose which character gets the extra HP. Another issue with this system is that, while buying items is straightforward, open store, select item, select amount, buy, done, weapons and skills work by allocating points into each, which confused me at first since I thought you'd have to finish the game before being able to upgrade stuff, turns out, you have to select a weapon/skill and then use the d-pad to allocate points into it until unlocked. Another big change, you can now call in the other characters to fight alongside you, and, unlike previous entries, which allowed you to bring only two characters, now you can bring four, which means you can bring the entire cast and have everyone fighting at the same time. This is pretty cool and makes some arena and boss fights much more manageable, the downside being that the other characters will basically use the exact same attacks you use, except for skills, so when using a skill the rest of them just stand there doing nothing. Enemies are also much more aggressive this time, you actually have to combine attacks, skills, and dodges in order to clear each area. Bosses are also more aggressive and require some (admittedly extremely simple) QTEs in order to defeat them. In terms of story... It's a thing lol, technically this is a sequel to Z Kagura, which never got an English release, had to go on youtube and watch a translated playthrough there lol, biggest thing is that now there's another duo, vampire sisters Sayaa and Kagura, and that zombies now come from another dimension lol. The two new characters are really fun, Kagura is loud, arrogant, jumping into action before even looking or thinking about what's in front of her, constantly trying to pick a fight with Aya and Saki, meanwhile Sayaa is pretty much the only one with common sense of the group lol, unfortunately she's also a bit shy, so as much as she tries to think of how best to approach a situation, in between trying stop everyone from trying to kill each other, she rarely succeeds. Both characters are voiced in JP by Miyuki Sawashiro (Mordred in the Fate series) and she flexes her range with Kagura being loud, arrogant and throwing random English phrases here and there while Sayaa is quiet, meek, with a more cutesy voice tone. Pretty cool stuff. All in all, a neat improvement over the previous entries. Fun characters, silly, cheesy story, cool music, most excellent character designs , good stuff all around. Grade: A+

Onechanbara Z2 Chaos, it really does change things up lol, previous games you could just mash buttons and win without issues, outside of the blood mist enemies, which required a Cool Combo, this time around, you do have to be much more careful, enemies are more varied and aggressive, bosses deal a ton of damage and can take a while to beat. There's a bunch of other changes too, overall, a much better game than before. \m/ \m/

We have the overall GOTY, but figured we could also use one for our personal game of the year. For me the answer is easy: Armored Core 6 It delivered everything I wanted in a new AC game, biggest issue I had was with the new focus on more traditional boss fights, which were a bit annoying, although, currently playing on PS5, with the latest patch, and so far they're much better now, first boss was a tad too easy, but the rest have been much more fun. If you dropped the game due to boss fights in the first patch, I'd recommend giving it another try now. One thing I'd like to see them try is allowing you to play with different versions, in ACFA, you could choose which patch you wanted to play with, although for online you had to use the most recent, it allowed them to do fun things with some patches like an infinite energy patch, and (iirc) 1.4, AKA the missile patch. I really, REALLY hope it did well enough that we don't have to wait 10 years for a sequel or expansion. Runner up: Alan Wake 2 Any other year and this would have been my GOTY, if Alan had a giant robot that could reduce the dark place to rubble, it would have been the best game ever lol. Still, it was pretty close, both are awesome games that I love, and both came out after about a decade from the previous ones (though I guess AW had the remastered and American Nightmare in between lol), also, both were worth the wait.

Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad After finishing Zombie Slayers, I wanted to go back and play this one, found out it is backwards compatible so I played on by XOne lol. My first reaction was "this looks way better than I expected" obviously the Wii was never a graphics powerhouse, but I still thought this one would look along those lines, given that the series isn't known for cutting edge graphics, even so, I was pleasantly surprised with how good it has aged. Also, I did remember right, this game has a zombie whale boss. Another thing that surprised me, since I did not remember this one, was Reiko's character arc, in Zombie Slayers she has this redemption arc and acts more calm and more science/research/save the world oriented, while in this one she's just another one of the evil organization's minions. The last boss was also a surprise lol Overall, it was fun to see this game hold up so well, my biggest issue was that in Zombie Slayers you could use guns to deal with some bosses and enemies that would normally block all sword attacks, while in this one bosses can guard against gun attacks too. Grade: A+ Looking at some of the other games I'm playing, I'm fairly sure this will be the last one I finish this year, so, my list for 2023: Pokémon Scarlet Ghostbusters: The Videogame Remastered Dragon's Crown Pro Wish: Ishrafil Saga Waifu Uncovered Cyberpunk 2077 Moero Crystal H Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Seven Pirates H Bioshock Remastered Bioshock 2 Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild Seed of the Dead Daemon X Machina Hero by Chance Warlord by Chance Mortal Shell Seed of the Dead Sweet Home Wolfenstein Old Blood Prey (PC) God Eater 3 Lords of the Fallen (2014) Alan Wake 2 Armored Core 6 Resident Evil 4 (Wii) Onechanbara Bikini Zombie Slayers Onechanbara Bikini Samurai Squad 29 Games, not bad! A good mix of new, old and everything in between lol. Looking at my list from last year, I'm up by 14!! Granted, a lot of these were fairly short, but still, a decent list.