MetalCaveman

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.

Warhammer 40000: Mechanicus A turn based strategy game, sorta XCOM style, but without base building. The Adeptus Mechanicus find a planet full of Necron tombs, set out to explore/burn/purge/research each of them. The presentation is really cool, exploring the tombs is shown as the Magos (lead dude) looking at a holographic display as your units move from room to room. The animation and details of each of the unit is really detailed, the dodge animation being kinda funny, in a good way. Music is great too, all around a good time, kinda. It does suffer from the same issues other games like these have, sudden ambushes feeling unfair, missed attacks that should have hit, enemies that have shields or other gimmicks that make them a pain in the butt to deal with, etc. There's also the fact that this is basically Risk vs Reward: The Game, pretty much every action has to be calculated in that way, as you explore tombs, moving from room to room you'll run into a couple of different event types: Story events, something like "in this room a Necron artifact sits atop a pedestal" then you can decide whether to ignore it, destroy it, take it with you or other stuff depending on what's going on. You might get rewards or trigger a trap, losing HP. Glyphs, choose a symbol, get random result, sometimes it's HP regeneration, sometimes it's lose HP, or other stuff. Fights, pretty straightforward, just defeat some enemies and move on. Each of these moves the awakening gauge further, in tombs, this means that enemies get different kinds of buffs, like faster healing, more enemies per battle, more HP, etc. In the overall game, at the end of your exploration, the number in the gauge gets added to the total awakening percentage, once it reaches 100% you have to leave the planet and the game is over. You can also finish the game by defeating the last boss, but this is pretty hard, I managed because I used custom settings to make the game easier lol, it does disable achievements, but who cares about Epic achievements lol. During battle all of your attacks require cognition, which you collect from specific points on the map, through skills or through defeating enemies. If you don't have enough, you can't do anything, deploying certain units also requires cognition, so it's a balancing game of whether to deploy more units, perform more attacks/skills with your current units or risk being ambushed but getting a lot of cognition from one of the supply points on the map. It also has a fair amount of humour, there's two characters that are constantly at odds with each other, and one of them always quotes the scriptures, at one point bragging about having more than 500K tomes in his memory banks, with another character pointing out they didn't even know there were that many lol. The other one always speaks in pseudo-code like: if acquisition = true, You = welcomed as brother Process 1: Acquire, 2: Study, 3: GOTO 1 There's also a mission that is a reference to the tabletop game, with you exploring a tomb to collect a miniature version of that tomb, along the way finding and collecting several miniatures of each of the different enemy units, with your units wondering why would they have something like that. One thing I learned after finishing the game is that there are different endings depending on which missions you take, my ending seemed fitting though, with the lead dude basically going "I didn't side with either of them, screw that, I'm too tired for that" TL;DR: Cool game, neat presentation, excellent music, some issues but still overall a fun time, specially if you're a Warhammer 40K fan. Grade: B+

I like that they introduced it by having it stand up in the most horrifying way possible lol

Warhammer 40000: Gladius Kinda, completed the Space Marine story quests, there's no real story mode, you just set up a game, pick your faction and then complete the quests that pop up as you play through the skirmish. A simplified Civ style game with no diplomacy because THERE IS ONLY WAR. Getting familiar with the mechanics, specially resource management was a pain, really frustrating since it's super easy to fall into a doom spiral of: "Don't have enough loyalty so everything is slowing down but I also can't build the stuff that gives me loyalty because I need more of this other stuff that I can't get because of the penalty for not having enough loyalty" Given how long it takes to build stuff, gather resources and how much it cost to create units plus upkeep costs, you kinda have to think several turns ahead when deciding what to build and what units to make. It also doesn't help that the game doesn't tell you certain things, like how units heal faster when in your city, combine this with a UI that can get extremely confusing if you're new to the genre and it was quite a trip lol. That said, once you get into a nice rhythm it's pretty fun, and you can easily find yourself going "One more turn, just one more turn, OK next turn will be the last" for hours lol. The story was cool, in that 40K kind of way. Grade: B-

Borderlands 3 This was a thing lol. Best gameplay of the series, best weapon designs, best environments, best graphics... The absolute worst story and characters. The gameplay has been improved, movement in particular, you can now slide, climb over obstacles and there's even a stomp attack. Weapon designs are a cool continuation from 2, where each manufacturer has their own unique style, but this time there's also a ton of new weapons, even normal ones look really cool, you'll find rifles that look like someone shoved a pistol grip up the butt of some weird alien monster, one of my favourites was an Atlas rifle that looks like a spaceship. All of the guns look cool this time around. I loved this Tediore SMG that when reloaded transformed into a brain with robot legs that was also a turret. However, my favourite guns were the Jakobs, there's something about running around a spaceship wielding a revolver that looks straight out of a western. The environments were also a huge improvement, there's now multiple planets, each with their own style, Eden-6 is a jungle planet, forgot the name of it, but the Atlas planet is a more urban place, Pandora is still Pandora. Having played the other two recently, I was actually really surprised by how good it looks, OG Borderlands still holds up thanks to the art style, but even then, this looks so much better in pretty much every way, except for some character faces which look a bit weird, like they're disproportionate to their bodies. Everything else though, looks great. The story however, is where it all falls apart. The main antagonists are just lame, Handsome Jack could be annoying as hell, but he also was the kind of villain that made you take him seriously, sure he's mocking and taunting you for a good chunk of the game, but it's also clear that when push comes to shove, he's someone you don't want to underestimate. The twins however, were just... lame. Their jokes are lame, their whole streamer thing comes across as a very "how do you do fellow kids" kind of thing, even when facing them they never felt like a real threat. There was also the sibling rivalry thing that could have led to some interesting things but ultimately goes nowhere, and don't even get me started on Ava lol. Wouldn't be surprised if Borderlands 4 opened with "And then Ava got everyone killed, so here's some new characters!" There were however, some things I did enjoy. Balex and Clay are awesome, and though it was just a still during the credits, was really cool. TL;DR: Great gameplay, terrible story. Grade: B-

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/