MetalCaveman

Seed of the Dead: Sweet Home Holy mother of improvements Batman! Yes, the first game didn't exactly set a high bar, in fact the bar was pretty much underground, but still, this is the biggest leap in quality I've seen from one game to the next. The gameplay is way better, it's actually fun to play now! Weapon variety increased, now there's a fair amount of weapons including some sci-fi stuff and even magic swords, best of all, all of them are actually viable now, yes, some are still better than others, but all can still be used without issues. Enemy variety also increased a fair bit, several new mutants and different zombie models, so you don't run into just the same one over and over (and over and over and over and over) again. The last boss was awesome from a design perspective, super creepy and cool as hell, wouldn't look out of place in Dead Space. Levels are bigger and more varied, each level being unique, there's no more going back and forth the same area a bunch of times, levels now have side quests too, like protecting supply crates, holding back a zombie horde while the girls rock out on stage, etc. Fun stuff all around. Characters now level up, improving their stats, and in the case of the player character, you can also unlock skills, things like more health, more ammo, more stamina, the usual stuff, along with other skills that replace the basic pistol with a revolver and, eventually, a laser pistol. The story also improved, it's still far from good, REALLY far, but it's fun, parts of it were like a low budget Resident Evil, each of the characters also has some extra story chapters for themselves, expanding on their personality, role in the new survivor city and other fun things. There's now a base that you go back after each stage, you can collect materials during the levels and then use those to improve the base, unlocking more areas and character events. That stuff can also be turned off now if you want. Not to say there aren't issues though. Character models improved, but there still rough around the edges, now that there's a base with NPCs walking around, the art style of the main characters sticks out even more than before. Certain animations are still pretty awkward, some reloads make it look like your characters arms are made of spaghetti, The last boss was a bit of a disappointment, though given that weapon spawns are random, maybe I just got really lucky, the rocket launcher wiped it out in a couple of shots lol. However, as much as I enjoyed it, it's still hard to recommend, if only because of the character designs, along some of the content which is most certainly not for everyone. If you've ever wanted a Highschool of the Dead game though, this one's for you. Apparently they're already working on a third one, hopefully they'll continue with the improvements. Looking forward to it. TL;DR: A huge improvement over the first one, in all aspects, though I still wouldn't recommend it to most people. Grade: B-

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Hero By Chance A tower defense game, looks and plays like old flash games lol, still kinda fun though. Grade: C Warlord by Chance A sequel to Hero, some improvements to gameplay, character art, unit variety, etc. Both are pretty cheap, so they got that going for them, but if you were to be in the market for a game of this style, I'd recommend Duel Princess instead, way better all around. Grade: C+ Mortal Shell A fun Soulslike that has some interesting gimmicks. For starters, you can't customize your character or make builds, instead, the game has the shell system. There are four shells, your characters, they each have different stats and skills, so one is the all around jack of all trades, one has a ton of HP but almost no stamina, one has a ton of stamina but almost no HP, one is specialized on using skills. The shell mechanic also plays into death in this game, dying doesn't send you back to the last checkpoint, instead, you're kicked out of your shell, revealing your true form, in this form, a single hit kills you, but if you can get back to your shell you can continue, there's even a shell that allows you to unleash an explosion when recovering your shell. Normally you can only do this once per checkpoint, but there are skills that allow you to regain this ability after defeating some enemies. There are items that allow you to change between shells whenever, though this items are consumable so best use them with care. There's only four melee weapons, but each have a couple of upgrades that unlock skills, the mace was my favourite, skill 1 covers it with fire, dealing damage over time, while skill 2 does a powerful attack that explodes and damages all enemies around you. There's also one range weapon, the ballistazooka, a fun weapon that's pretty useful for dealing with enemies from a distance, but that takes forever to reload. Then there's the Harden mechanic, you can't block in this game, not in the normal way at least, instead, you use a skill called harden, which turns your body into stone, allowing you to block one attack. This can be used defensively, but I found more use offensively, attack an enemy, harden when they're about to hit you, continue attacking. The problem is that it takes a bit of time to get used to the timing and the cooldown. One of the shells can be built around using harden more often, the others sorta need to work around the limitations. There's also a parry, but the timing is hard to get down. The highlight for me however, is the soundtrack, or rather, the soundtrack pack that's available for free. This replaces boss tracks with songs from Rotting Christ. Not to say that the base OST is bad, it's just, kinda bland IMO, the Rotting Christ stuff is way better and still fits with the theme and atmosphere of the game, there's only one boss were I would replace Ze Nigmar with something like Demonon Vrosis or P'unchaw Kachun-Tuta Kachun. The usage of for the last boss was awesome. There were some issues though, some enemies are really annoying, specially the crossbow dudes, I had some bugs including one which forced me to restart the game. Some enemies would sometimes skip their getting up animation and instead just automatically teleport and hit me, other enemies would sometimes freeze after blocking with harden and the biggest issue I had, this game makes my GPU fans run at almost 100%, even after lowering a bunch of settings, fans still ramped up a ton. The hub area is also a mess to navigate, even a map doesn't help that much since everything looks the same and it's all a labyrinth. TL;DR: Fun Soulslike that's a bit rough around the edges but still worth it, Rotting Christ should appear in more games. Grade: B+

Seed of the Dead Man this is a thing. I like the concept, more shooters (FPS or TPS) with an anime art style would be most excellent, however, in this case, the execution is a mess. Not to mention the healing gimmick and some of the more... questionable content it has. Gameplay is pretty janky, most guns feel useless, any of the auto rifles are so inaccurate the safest place during combat is standing right in front of them, trying to aim down sight doesn't really help either. The only cool weapon that actually sorta does work is the non-copyright infringing lightsaber. One of the biggest issues is that this game is mostly made up of assets, nothing against assets, but the devs didn't bother to try and find stuff that worked well together, or that even made sense, so you'll go from a neon-lit city stage, to a hospital that looks right out of Outlast, to a "laboratory" that for some reason has demonic statues with fire coming out of them, it's all just a mishmash of different art styles, settings, textures, etc. This extends to enemies and the main characters, there's a limited amount of monsters, including one enemy that's a giant dickhead (literally and metaphorically ), the main enemies are zombies, or zombie as it were, as there's only one model, enemy variety is practically nonexistent. The main characters meanwhile, stick out like a sore thumb, the art for them is kinda nice, their models, not so much, animations are also pretty awkward. Then there's the healing gimmick, instead of using health kits or whatever, characters here take this song very literally: Yes, the way you heal during combat is This is a rhythm mini-game, and completing it heals both characters and gives you a shield. The length of this and the awkward animations make this quite the annoying mechanic. So yeah, this was a thing, don't recommend, can't recommend, even for me, this was a bit much lol. That said, I've been playing the sequel, and that one is quite the improvement in every category, though it also has a bunch of issues. I hope Snowbreak is good, after Hoyoverse cancelled the TPS they were working on, I want more and better shooters with an anime art style, this, most certainly, is not it. TL;DR: Not good, avoid, stay away, menu screen art is the only good thing about this game. Grade: F (0/10) Daemon X Machina This one was pretty good. Basically, this is to Armored Core what Code Vein was to Dark Souls, in short, this is anime Armored Core, cheesy melodramatic story included. Gameplay was pretty neat, close to AC4/ACFA in terms of speed, with some enemies just zipping around the battlefield at Mach 666. You can equip three weapons, two in each arm and one shoulder weapon, there's also pylon weapons, you can swap between your currently equipped arm weapons and weapons stored in your pylons whenever, which gives you some freedom in terms of strategy and equipment. You also have support weapons, this range from extra boosters, to grenades and healing items. The main thing here is Femto energy, you can use this for a couple of different things, normally it acts as a bit of a shield, but you can also choose to redirect it to increase boost speed, or weapon damage. The damage boost is super useful and was my most used ability. Weapon variety is nice, there's a lot of weapons that are just upgrades of basic ones (so assault rifle, assault rifle 2, assault rifle 3 etc.) but there's still a bunch of stuff to choose from, including variations of some weapons that have an autofire mode, which means they will automatically fire on any enemy in range. Not really useful as they don't deal as much damage as manual weapons but it's neat that they're there. Enemy variety is somewhat limited, but for a game like this it doesn't really bother me, the fights against the other characters were the highlight, much more fun and challenging than just wiping out normal enemies. Boss fights on the other hand can be a bit annoying, specially the first one, since you won't have weapons that are strong enough by the time you face it, so it's just firing at a bullet sponge, occasionally going after the weaker enemies that spawn and that are there to help you recover ammo and energy. I did have a couple of issues while playing though, during one mission, enemies bugged out and became immortal, I was sure I was doing something wrong and there was some strategy to dealing with them until I looked up a guide and realized it wasn't supposed to be like that. During another mission and enemy glitched through the ground, making it impossible to deal with them, which meant that I had to restart the mission. There was also an unwinnable mission that I restarted a couple of times before realizing you're not supposed to win, learned this after reducing the enemy's health to about 20% and then noticing that no matter how many times I hit them, their health didn't go down any further. Finally, the last boss was the biggest annoyance. A long level where you have to fight two of the strongest enemies, followed by a really annoying boss that's incredibly hard to hit as it doesn't zip around so much as it just teleports around the arena. Then finally the actual last boss, which is the bullet sponge to end all bullet sponges, insane resistance to all attack types, some really annoying attacks, including one that just outright steals your weapons from you and an arena that isn't really suited for that kind of fight. Thankfully you don't have to go through the whole thing when retrying, otherwise I doubt I'd have bothered to finish the game. Story was kinda cool though, although the silent protagonist thing doesn't work here. Characters will talk to you: "We need you in the briefing, we could use your opinion" "What do you think about this?" "What is your answer?" "Are you ready?" And other stuff, and yet your character never responds, not even in text, even during cutscenes, your actual character (outside of your mech) only shows up a couple of times. This leads to some rather awkward moments were certain characters might as well be talking to themselves. All in all, I'd highly recommend it if you're interested in this kind of game, specially with AC VI coming out soon, bonus, if you've been claiming the free games on the Epic store, chances are, you already have it. TL;DR: Anime armored core, really cool, annoying last boss, but overall, highly recommended. Grade: B+

NEW DETHKLOK!!!!! \m/ \m/

Finally used all the D'Addario strings I had, so it was time to go back to ol' reliable lol. D'Addario XLs ended up being a disappointment, two strings snapped when changing them, they rusted super quickly, and couldn't stay in tune for more than a couple of days. These are already a huge improvement, installed them last Friday and they're still in tune.

Question about TotK

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild That was MOST EXCELLENT. Though I did have some issues. Weapon durability is insane, ridiculously so, this one was almost a deal breaker. Horses, taming a horse isn't so bad, took me a while to get the hang of it but eventually I got it, problem is, even at max bond, sometimes the horse just does whatever it wants, specially dangerous when crossing a bridge and your horse just decides it wants to walk off to your death. Another annoyance, not being able to call it from wherever, DLC does add a solution, but it's still super annoying. Ragdoll, anything that knocks down Link can be instant death depending on where you are, this was a huge issue when exploring certain areas. Other than that though, I really liked it, pretty much all of the positive stuff you've heard about this game, I can confirm. Elden Ring is still the king of open world games for me though. Grade: A+ Think I'm going to play some other stuff before jumping on TotK. Might go back to Daemon X Machina, now that a sequel has been announced lol.

If you want to make it less depressing, there is (or was, don't know if it's still available) a Serious Sam DLC, replaces With Serious Sam lol I should go back and finish it, played a bunch, made some progress and then stopped because some of the puzzles were melting my brain lol.

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First one was pretty fun, second was meh, this one looks cool. \m/ \m/

New PC is out of commission, has been for a while lol, been using my old PC and I'm surprised at how well it holds up, up until now I used it mainly as a streaming PC for Netflix, Spotify and other stuff, rarely using it for more than a couple of hours, but now that it's my daily driver again I'm happy to see how well it still runs. Main issue has been that it has Pop!_OS installed and this thing did not play nice with my speakers, true to its name, it had some really REALLY loud pops every once in a while. It's fixed now, kinda, still pops, but now it's a quiet pop whenever I start a new video or change songs, but nothing like before. I could have just moved the GPU from this one into the other one, but I decided to try and use it as is, good chance to test this Linux distro as a daily driver too.

Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles A sequel to Umbrella Chronicles, this time including retellings of RE2 and Code Veronica, alongside a new chapter covering Operation Javier (aka, that thing that made Krauser join Wesker's side). In some ways a better game, in some ways a worse game than Umbrella Chronicles. The story is more linear, or feels like that, in UC, after every chapter, you went back to the chapter selection menu, where you could customize your guns, read unlocked archives and choose the next chapter you wanted to play, you could continue with the next chapter, play extra chapters or replay ones you had already completed. Here, after every chapter, instead of a chapter selection menu, you get a simplified menu where you can still do most of the things you could before, except instead of choosing which chapter to play (or replay) next, you're just taken to the next one if you choose the "chronicles" option. If you want to replay chapters, you have to go back to the main menu. The Operation Javier stuff was neat, though I don't know if its canon has changed now with RE4R. You even get a secret chapter, which is a replay of the last chapter, but from Krauser's point of view, with inner monologue revealing why he made the choice to join Wesker. Like with UC, some elements were changed in RE2 in order to justify the coop stuff, now Claire and Leon go through the whole thing together, not once splitting up. In Code Veronica, once you get Chris as your partner, also, for Code Veronica, role is minimal, in fact, dude's there for only a few seconds during the final cutscene. In terms of gameplay, it's a rail shooter, so that part is mostly the same, the changes come from things like guns and healing. Now you can change guns while playing, instead of having to complete the chapter, you can also store green herbs, in UC they were automatically used. Guns are now upgraded similar to how it works in RE4, you can choose which stat to focus on, damage, capacity, reload, etc. You can even upgrade your basic handgun, which is pretty neat since that's the one with infinite ammo. Also, you use gold now, which is way easier to get than stars. The biggest change is that now you can actually see your partner, in UC you only see your character and teammate during checkpoints and cutscenes, now, your partner is more present during gameplay and even has their own healthbar, you'll actually see them walk in front of you, open doors, interact with the environment, it's much more natural than the disembodied voice from UC. This also means that you'll have to save them occasionally, and you'll also need to use healing resources on them when needed. Another big change, this one for worse, is the camera, UC had a fairly straightforward camera, you moved from room to room, there were quick turns, and some jumps but nothing too major. This one however, actually made me sick a couple of times. The camera jumps around all the time, every time your character jumps, gets hit, is taken by surprise by an enemy, rolls, ducks, dodges, etc, the camera moves all over the place, sometimes it's annoying, making you miss a magnum shot, sometimes it's so excessive it can be physically uncomfortable. This is one I wish they'd tone down. Grade: B- (game's an A, but the camera stuff brings the grade down several notches) Since I forgot during that post: Umbrella Chronicles Grade: A+

Oh, that's what you meant! Well, in that case, since I'm not going to be playing RE4R anytime soon I wanted to play some of the other versions, that's why I got the last trophy in RE4 HD for PC, and I also wanted to play the Wii version, which has been sitting there for aeons lol, then I remembered that there were two RE rail shooters for the Wii, one thing led to another and I ended up playing Umbrella Chronicles instead of RE4.

Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles A rail shooter for the Wii, story is a re-telling of RE0, RE, and RE3, with a new chapter dealing with the fall of Umbrella. There's also extra chapters for other characters like Rebecca, Ada and HUNK, plus a couple of chapters that explore the events of RE1 and fall of Umbrella from Wesker's perspective. Really fun, if you like the House of the Dead series you'll be right at home here. There's a fair variety of weapons, though unfortunately, the handcannon is unlocked with the last chapter, you can go back and replay previous chapters with all current weapons and upgrades, but it's still disappointing that you don't get the cool magnum until the end. Best part is that this is Resident Evil in all its cheesy glory, Wesker's voice is hilariously evil, characters crack jokes, make fun of enemies, etc, all the good stuff is here. Just listen to Wesker saying zombies, from the opening cutscene: Love it. Also, OG RE3 Jill best Jill, I like her look in the remake, but OG is still best.

HELL YEAH!!!! Turns out getting all rings offline wasn't that hard with a new character and proper planning on which areas to get to PBWT first, which to save for later and which to use Ephemeral Eyes on. Hardest part was the farming needed for two of the rings lol.

https://vroid.com/en/studio That's a pretty neat and easy way to make custom characters for your games, I think it's meant to be used for VTubers and VR Chat stuff, but there's a bunch of plugins you can use to import VRM into a bunch of different engines. Played with it for a bit and I'm happy with how easy it is to use, and how easy it was to set up in UE5 with the retargeter, a fun surprise once I checked some of the animations, vroid characters include... physics. Only downside is that this only works if you're going for that anime style.