MetalCaveman

343i Is no more, now they're Halo Studios, also, they're moving to the Unreal Engine.

At 51:50, that demo of their new MegaLight system is pretty cool, nanite for lights, running on PS5 (not Pro, base PS5), nanite for skeletal meshes is pretty cool too, some interesting features, though they're experimental for now so def not ready for production work. On the not so positive side, with Fab (their new marketplace), access to megascans stuff is no longer free for UE5 users, supposedly you'll be able to claim some stuff for free when Fab launches but I'm not sure how much of it will be available. Fab has some other issues, written reviews, Q&A and other stuff will not be available on the new store either. Don't know if they'll also keep doing the "free for the month" thing.

Space Marine 2 COURAGE AND HONOR This was really cool, saw a bunch of reviews refer to this as "feeling like a 360 game, in a good way" and I agree, it does feel like a game from that era. Here's a weapon, a ton of enemies, and a relatively simple story, now go and have fun. And fun I had, a lot in fact, mowing down hordes of Tyranids was really cool, seeing a swarm move in the distance and then realizing that they had changed direction and were now heading towards you was really pretty neat, iirc the same devs worked on a WWZ game which had similar horde mechanics. Seeing a ton of tyranids bunching up together trying to climb a wall, throwing a grenade at them and then watching the bodies fly never gets old. Customization is pretty neat too, though only available for operations, you have access to a fair amount of stuff, yes, it takes forever to unlock some things, but it's better than having everything locked behind paywalls. The story was cool, I'd definitively recommend playing the first one given how connected they are, though there's also a bunch of stuff that was told in other places specially regarding how Titus ended up where he is at the start of the game. GOTY right there lol. There's also another returning character from the first game, I was surprised to see him but also it made sense Don't know if there will be a Space Marine 3 or story DLC but I'd like to see what happens with that thing at the end That said I did have some issues, some were addressed with the latest patch, some still remain. Ammo is a huge issue, given the enemies you face and how many there are, it always feels like you never have enough ammo, increasing the max you can carry would help a lot. AI teammates weren't the best, though many of my issues are now fixed (mostly), most of the campaign was spent with my two teammates ignoring most/all aerial enemies and just standing there doing nothing when enemies were staggered. Enemy AI also seems pretty happy to ignore your teammates, focusing only on you. Last boss was also kind of annoying. None of these issues were that bad overall though, I would still recommend this if you like WH40K, or if you're looking for a fun game to play in coop, both story and operations have 3 player coop options. TL;DR: Really cool, really fun, tons of customization options, with some issues, though recent patches have fixed some of them. Grade: A+

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https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-merrick-b-garland-statement-arrests-alleged-leaders-sinaloa-cartel-ismael https://www.yahoo.com/news/mexican-drug-lord-el-mayo-230745994.html This is BIG, like BIG BIG, Mayo had evaded capture for decades, equally big is that he wasn't alone, he was arrested along with Joaquin Guzman, both of them basically hated each other so the fact that the two of them were together (and seemingly turned themselves in together) is quite the event. News here are theorizing a bunch of things, some say that this happened due to Trump's comments on how his strategy would be to send in troops to kill cartel leaders, authorize missile/drone strikes and in general, hunt them down without mercy, others say that they were set up by their own. However, more recent reports mention that in the prison system records, Ovidio now appears as "released" so it could be part of a deal?

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.