MetalCaveman

First raid now available, also a ton of other stuff, most importantly (imo): An ore camp!! No more sacrificing a base slot to mine ore! The ability to allow/disallow certain work for base pals, this one is huge lol

Maid of the Dead Vampire Survivors, but with maids and zombies. Gameplay is fun, each character has their own unique weapon (melee and ranged) and their own skills, they also have a sub-skill triggered every five levels, some increase damage, others restore HP, there's a decent amount of variety in their setups, though the best one IMO is Otoha, her gun takes a while to fire, but it fires the most bullets out of all the characters, her melee also hits twice and covers all angles, perfect for when zombies surround you. The story is OK, basically Resident Evil if Spencer was into maid cafes and Wesker was a hot anime lady. Zombie virus is discovered, scientist lady wants to use it to cure people, even "curing" death, then evil scientist lady discovers that some of the infected don't turn into monsters, but instead gain superhuman strength and healing powers, decides to create stronger version of virus and create a new world for the "ascended", virus gets released, everything goes to hell, the usual stuff. Overall a fun game, just wish there was a more infinite survival mode as opposed to the 30 minute one that's currently available, there's also some translation issues, specially with weapon upgrades, there's one stat that's called "auto aim" but upgrading it does nothing for aiming, instead it increases the amount of bullets fired each attack. There's also a couple of typos here and there, but nothing too bad. Being a qureate game, the art is obviously most excellent. \m/ \m/ Grade: A+

Love that as soon as Ezra was back, the silly videos returned.

Borderlands 3, feels weird to go from Handsome Jack to what looks to be a pair of glorified streamers (or whatever the Borderlands equivalent of a streamer is lol), there's also a bunch of characters I don't recognize but they're apparently supposed to be pretty important, and from what I've seen, they're from Tales from the Borderlands, so I guess that's now required reading playing? New Claptrap is also very annoying, more than usual, during a mission: "Hey! You're there, climb the tower to get the thing!" "Did you know you can climb the tower? Try it!" "Have you tried climbing that tower? Bet it'd be fun!" "Guess we need a tutorial, press this button and then this button and you'll be able to climb!" All in a really short amount of time, can't even look around or fight enemies without repeatedly being told what to do. Even Navi wasn't this annoying lol. It looks and plays way better than the previous two though, so that's neat.

Borderlands 2 In terms of gameplay, way better than the first, the story has some issues though. My main gripe is that your character is pretty much non-existent during most story sections, there's a couple of times were the vault hunter is mentioned but other than that you don't really interact with anyone beyond being told "go here, do thing, come back/go somewhere else" and yet the game acts as though the people of Sanctuary are your best friends, brothers and sisters in arms, people you would move heaven and earth and hell and pandora to help. A couple of voice lines or missions like the Claptrap birthday party for the other characters would have gone a long way to improve this IMO. "We must get you to your friends!" "Your friends need you!" "I will kill your friends!" Meanwhile I just imagine my character being all "My interactions with these people have been limited to being told where to go, what to kill and where to claim my reward, I would hardly call that friendship, but yeah, OK, as long as I get paid I'll call them whatever you want" . Handsome Jack was a cool villain, in a "I hate this guy and would have liked to follow Brick's plan instead of just ending it with a slap" kind of way. Also finished the Tiny Tina D&D DLC, that was fun. Everyone: "Let's talk to this dude" Brick: "I punch him!" The ending gave much more depth to Tina's character too, that was really bittersweet.

Borderlands GOTY Enhanced Thanks to the movie trailer, I thought I'd go back to this series lol. Been a while since I played this one, and I never did get around to the DLC so this was my first time going through it (sorta, I did start Zombie Island once lol), base game is still fun, though BL2 definitively improves on a bunch of stuff. Thought about completing all missions but I couldn't be bothered to deal with Crazy Earl, dude makes me wish we could just go full bandit on him lol. Specially his first mission, "I have enough weapons and ammo to blow up this entire planet, why can't I just bust open the door and get the thing I need? Why do I have to go around doing stuff for this asshole?!" Enhanced edition adds golden chests and shift keys, which give some decent loot. It does have a memory leak issue when playing cutscenes though, so if you're playing through the story you'll have to quit and restart the game a couple of times. DLC was OK, Zombie Island has some fun things, but the whole "we're poking fun at this trope while also engaging in it" gets annoying quick, it really likes making you fight waves of zombies while waiting for an elevator/bridge/transport. Armoury had a cool concept but the execution fell short IMO, new vehicles were cool, but the fact that after setting up the armoury thing and telling you you'd get all the stuff there, it only gives you a couple of minutes before everything is destroyed really drags this DLC down. Never went against the secret boss, it was lvl 61 and I was lvl 40 at the time, no point in trying lol. Robolution could've been better, bringing back old bosses as Claptrap versions was a good idea but I feel they could have done more with it instead of just "fight boss again, now fight them again again", Knoxx was the best part of it though, dude just can't get a break. Moxxi DLC is just an arena thing, fight waves of enemies, get a reward, you don't get any XP from enemies though, so not that worth it. All DLCs have some serious issues though, first is the collect-a-thon missions, all DLCs have one, and the thing is, even if you collect a bunch of whatever item it asks of you, it doesn't actually count towards the mission until you unlock it, or unlock its next tier depending on how far you are. In Zombie Island, zombies drop brains, which you get a mission to collect, even if you already have a 100 of them, by the time you start the mission it's back to 0 and you have to collect them all again. At least the cores in the Armoury DLC give you a buff when collecting them so there's a reason to pick them up, Zombie Island and Robolution stuff doesn't really do anything lol. I didn't bother with these missions, too long and too annoying. The next issue is that none of the DLCs have fast travel, so you have to walk/drive to and from each area each time. Zombie Island is somewhat small and there's shortcuts you can open so it's not as bad, but Robolution and specially Armoury are incredibly annoying to move through. If they had a couple of fast travel points I might have gone for all missions, but I got tired of going back through each area several times so in the end I just did the story missions lol. Moxxi's is the only DLC without this fast travel issue, because it's just one room with doors that take you to each of the arenas, so fast travel isn't necessary. Grade: B+

Whether it was on purpose or not, the noise, having a ball that made that little noise would have been a godsend for me as a kid lol, also, being airless means not worrying about air, I have a ball that won't inflate anymore and one that has a sizable bump on it that prevents it from bouncing normally, something like this airless ball would take care of those issues, though durability might be a problem, it might not have to deal with air, but if it doesn't last as long as a normal ball, then all that is irrelevant. Though I think this is more of a "we do it because we can" and not because they were trying to solve some kind of specific issue lol.

June 21st!!! \m/ \m/

First prototype was used in last year's dunk contest, now Gen 1 is available, or was available, only 150 were made and they're all sold out, which, at $2500 per ball is quite the feat lol. I'd be interested in trying it out when/if it ever gets cheaper lol, be interesting to see how it survives outdoor use.

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+