Tactical-o-banana-rama

"I Got a tactic for you.  It's called
a Rocket Propelled Grenade."

Lately Ive been watching clips for Gears Tactics and its gotten me super pumped for it.  There are so many things about it that are just Pro Gamer and just super fun about it.

I love Gears games, the simple fun of running between cover and snapping over to pummel someone with Lancer Rounds before rushing in to curbstomp them.  Even better is the satisfaction of using a Torque Bow and getting a headshot, which is an instant kill on most enemies, but then to penetrate and hit someone else with the explosive bolt is amazing.

For the longest time though I'm thinking to myself that this would make a great tactics game.  The movement between cover, the layouts of all the levels, the different methods of attack each enemy has... it's basically a tactics game in itself.

Gladly someone somewhere has the same mindset.  They've kept the majority of the game the same, giving you the same sort of feeling of overwhelming power and fear on equal measure.

The game is set 10 years before the first Gears game, throwing back to a point where the grubs are really getting a roll and bringing out their bigger and better monstrosities.  Urdak is the boss and he is making things like Brumaks mounted with gigantic machine guns and rocket salvos, and Corpsers with armour plating over their several limbs, both familiar enemies and big pains in the arses.

The interesting things come from their own innovations.  Compared to a game like XCOM, Gears Tactics changes things by dropping the "one shot a turn" for "shoot for each action you have".  Then you have an extra action to go with that which makes your options become exponential, especially if you want to run in for an execution which provides the whole squad an additional action.

Then quality of life improvements are great, particularly the Locust "practically instant turn", where they all kinda move and shoot at the same time, staggering out some actions just so that you can track what's happened and how it affects you.

After that, it sounds like a tonne of fun and I can't wait to get my hands on it once it comes to console.

"My Soldier has no nose."
"How does he smell?"
"Terrible."

Speaking of XCOM, they just announced their own spinoff game: Chimera Squad.

What's funny is that I've been brainstorming a very similar idea over the last few months, having a small cast of characters that the player can follow and fight with over the course of a series of story missions.

I had characters based on different classes, with cameos from all sources.  My favourite character was Damien Santiago, a character based on the survivor of the XCOM: Enemy Unknown Tutorial.  He would appear as a Heavy Soldier who lives out his days on a Resistance base and joins the main characters on their journey.  He would be wearing his old XCOM uniform, worn and torn after years of use, and his old squads Dog Tags sewn into the opposite breast, though he has to recollect the dog tags throughout the game.

He even had his own mission where he has a flashback of Operation Devils Moon, recreating that mission and then expanding it out into a longer term story, telling more of a canon experience of when his boots his the ground and started that fight in Germany, and how his team worked their way through town fending off aliens.

Chimera Squad is a bit more free form like the mainline games, having a more diverse cast of alien hybrid characters, and a gameplay more similar to a police raid than stealth ambush.  Largely the game seems to be a reboot of XCOM: Apocalypse, kinda the direction that they were leaning towards with the Multicultural Cityscape, just with a pared down cast of characters.  Though I thought I heard there was room for a Character Pool, so there may be room for my own characters as well.

A pig and a rock lady start walking out of a restaurant.
They turn to the duck and say "He's got the bill."

Part of my inspiration came from another game, Mutant Year Zero.  A very good game about a post apocalyptic setting where your main characters are Stalkers, soldier-like characters who traverse the local area to scavenge for materials, and cull down threats to the Ark, a society full of people trying to survive.

You play the Mutant Stalkers who learn all sorts of different abilities that the player can take advantage of, from sprouting wings to gain a height advantage, to being able to ram into someone and knocking them flat on their arse for a turn or two while everyone pumps ammunition into them.

The parts I really liked was the stealth mechanic.  You don't move everyone individually turn after turn.  You choose a leader and tell your team of 3 to follow you around the map as you explore, scavenge, and choose a starting point for your ambush.  You pick off enemies with your silenced weapon, and once you feel like you're down to a managable point you can go loud and hose down the boss of the level.  Given the different abilities you earn and the limited number of them that you can equip, you can have great fun just working your way through the game.

"I can't see my face when I'm with you"

The developers created a second game using the same mechanics with a different setting, telling a story about a divided United States and countering a group using highly Augmented Anonymous Soldiers, an aspect that kinda lets the game down.

Everything else about it was really good, using the same combat mechanics as Mutant Year Zero with a few minor tweaks allowing the troopers to be modified to the players preference and creating some good combinations for combat.

But aside from that, the story feels a little flat and your place in it is rather... inconsequential.  You perform all these missions, saving VIP's and Infiltrating outposts all over, while the story kinda happens around you and the consequences of your actions really affecting you.   So if the developers create an expansion for Corruption 2029, I'm hoping they really kick up the gears and focus on their story and motives.

That's neither here or there.  I'm talking inspiration here.  And with all these really good, really entertaining tactics games roaming about, I'm hoping that a certain other company with a video game based from their tabletop game actually take some notes and start making their own Video Game RPG.

I'm talking Iron Kingdoms here, guys.  I know they have a Warmachine Tactics Video game, but to see a story drawn out from that RPG with all that gorgeous art and styling, it'd be fantastic, especially with a Cameo or two here and there.

As it stands though, I'm very excited to see Gears Tactics and XCOM: Chimera Squad to come to consoles.  They're coming to PC at the end of the month but likely going to Console by the end of the year, and that's what I'm really keen on.  The only question is how long can I wait before I start watching playthroughs and spoiling the game for myself?

Can't wait, won't wait, probably ruining it for myself.

Getting Down on Paper

Probably one of the more redeeming characters

Im having trouble getting down things I want to say, getting em down into a focused post, so I'm going to work with whats worked before: Big Fugoff Rant.

Where the fuck to start?  Borderlands 3 was a... reasonably good game.  It's got some big problems, the biggest of which is that it's taken the Loot Shooter aspect a little too far.  You get a gun, pick it up, and either sell it or use it if it's good enough.  That can be fun, but the levels are all pretty ordinary especially when they have added all this Parkour to it with Kicksliding, Mantling, and Power Slams.  I don't find they add much to combat, even with the artifacts that add to them, but the puzzles, THE PUZZLES!  There's some really basic environment stuff that focuses on those, a few climbing spots mostly, but after that it's just really underutilized in my opinion, so theres just a bunch of rather bland levels.

Otherwise there's the same problems everyone else has, the story is very safe and ordinary, and draws WAY too much from the previous games.  The DLC's are doing a good job in that, but the main story just whiffs significantly.

Then there's the big flops over the last 18 months.  I wanna talk about them, how Rage 2 had some good aspects to it but just really really really was a vapid game.  There was literally 8 main missions, and that was it.  After that you had to make your own fun.

Don't get me wrong, I love a supersuit story.  Crysis is one of my favourite series and to be running around a massive map with that sounds like a fucking fun game.  It was my hope for Crysis 3, in fact, but you'd be roaming about New York under a Dome and fulfilling whatever Psycho needed you to do.  It wasn't bad as it was, but I was a little let down by that.

Rage 2 however just seriously underdelivered.  If they make a Rage 3, I hope they either fix what they did wrong, or they just do something completely different.

Same goes with Fallout 76.  The game had potential, they have this massive intricate map with a veritable tonne of different landmarks and events, but it just didn't have any real impact on anything and hardly made it worth playing.

Then the marketting.  Holy shit what a scumjob that was.  Right now you can purchase a subscription which allows you to play it as a single player game, even though you already paid full price for the game, and you still have to be able to access it online.  If you're on console you need your online subscription on top of that which can double the price.  I was at least hoping I could just roam about by myself the other day, but I was shut down pretty quickly on that.

You'll notice that all these games were big Bethesda releases, and to add to that list of disappointment was Wolfenstein: Youngblood.  Yes, you can have a friend or random join you as you roam Nazi 80's Paris.  But if all you're doing is just fetch missions or destroy missions with little to no purpose behind it, you're just playing with yourself at that point.

The credit to those three games is that they are very cool looking.  They have gorgeous landscapes and art, a lot of real character behind them, and the potential to even be more characterful given the right writers and direction.

Two seconds before they became Red Mist (TM)

Doom Eternal was at least a really fun game.  It is fast paced, it is cathartic (my word of the month), and just really satisfying when you outsmart a bunch of demons that are scrambling around trying to kill you.  Sure, it's a little goofy looking with giant glowing powerups around and not fitting into the areas and makes it look like you're playing Spyro the Dragon, or Mario Bros, but it's still really fun to run and gun, especially around these really well crafted maps.  It's a game that Borderlands 3 could have taken a lot of note from.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is Warmachine.  I know I said I've not been wanting to play it, but that doesn't mean I don't want to have myself an awesome army to pick up and adjust when I want it.

And that army is definitely my classic 4th Assault Legion, last known as the Legs Eleven.  That army has significantly built out under its theme of "Armoured Corps".  I've got a gripe with having to play under themes now, but I'm foregoing it for the sake of this army.

It starts of with Kommandant Sorscha Kratikoff, a character that I previously didn't like for her assassin playstyle and considered too easy, but loved her character.  I still think her first form is still too easy, even with all her nerfs and such, but her Second and Third Incarnations are signficantly riskier and more fun for all parties.

Naturally, she has to take Beast-09 with her.  I love pairing Casters with their Personal Warjacks, and just about everyone has a pairing at this point.  Battle Mechanics, Bombardiers, Demo Corps, and Shocktroopers each have their own Command Attachments.  The Demo Corps have a character who romps around with a pair of hammers to lay the beatdown on whoever's in front of him.

The Solos have expanded out as well, accompanying the Drakhun and Kovnik are the Forge Seers, basically Greylords in Man-O-War Armour, and Tankers: Man-O-War the size of Warjacks.

Now, just because they're the same size as a Khadoran Warjack, doesn't mean they're quite as tough.  They have about a third of the health and almost as much armour, which they make up for with a pair of shields, but they still do a good job of playing Glass Fuggoff Cannons.

The Units are all paired up with Officers now, the Bombardier adding to an already fun unit, and the Shocktrooper giving them everything they every need and resemble: an encroaching Wall of Iron.  Almost completely immovable from their places.

The Demolition Corps, aka: Big Blokes with Fuggoff And Chill Hammers (tm), have their own Sergeant attachment in the form of Dragos Dragadovich.  If it wasn't awesome enough that they attack out of turn, he also romps around with two Fuggoff And Chill Hammers (tm) to bang about like a Salvation Army Drum.

Not just any cannon, a VULCAN Cannon

Then, the creme de la creme: The Battle Engines.  It sounds really awesome when you say Battle Engine, but then you feel differently about a bloke in power armour behind a mounted Cannon while his Chariot is being pulled by two Clydesdales plated to the rim.

It really is a fantastic army to even consider.  Add in a few mercenaries of similar stock, like an Ogrun Bokur or Steelhead Ironhead, maybe even Herne and Jonne to add more AOE's to the Bombardiers, and you're good as Gold.

That's the ideal list.  Just tankly upon tankly, themed out the wazoo, and a fun list to play all around.

Thats one of the things that I fell in love with when it came to Warmachine.  Blokes in pressure cookers beating down infantry with Halberds and stuff.  That's why I want to get part of it as my Gaming Tattoo.  I mocked up a Heraldry with a modified Shocktrooper Shield, Sorscha's Frostfang Hammer, and the Shocktroopers Annihilator Blade.  It's not a great image but at least if I give it to a proper artist I can give a few pointers and say "This is what I want", explain it more, and go on from there.

Couple that with the Sonic 3 and Knuckles logo, the Ghost in the Machine Logo, and Death riding a motorcycle (from the cover of Terry Pratchetts Soul Music) and you have my ideal gaming arm tattoo.

I've looked into a lot of tattoos, toying with the idea of "If I were to get this" and google comes back with a tonne of awesome results.  One time I just went on a binge of "What if I got a beer tattoo?" and after looking at a bunch of different beer tatts, I remembered that I don't like beer and prefer Cider, so I went searching for Cider tattoos.

I didn't realise how old the cider culture actually was.  I was originally thinking about getting the Magners Irish Cider logo on there but it was pretty ordinary, nothing like the Guinness stuff.  Then I found out about the German stuff and that was really cool, the traditional glasses and the Bembels that Germany uses, there is a lot of cool stuff.

I have an idea I want for other tattoos, but they're all ideas, nothing too serious.  Kinda like my want to get a Datsun and a Motorbike.  I toy with the ideas of getting a Motorcycle because it's cheap and cool, two things I can really enjoy.  But because Im a wuss and am already pretty convinced that I would end up A over T before I know it, I want to get one with a sidecar.  Then I could take my lady love for a drive.

A friend of mine pointed me to Ural, a Russian company that specialises in bikes with sidecars, and I kinda fell in love.  I love the style of bikes from the War time era, kinda bare bones and everything.  Ural kinda has that look with a few modern amenities, so if I were to get a brand new bike I would definitely be looking these guys up.

Imagine being this close and
not being able to justify it

The Datsun would be a passion project, an old car that I could learn to fix up and then take out for a cruise on weekends.  I figure it's a two-birds-one-stone idea, but with our living situation I don't have anywhere to keep it, let alone anyone to teach me.

To dream of having that one day though, to be cruising down the old highways of the US, enjoying the scenery, some awesome music playing as we stop at different places and try new foods or experiences... well that's the dream.

I got more inspiration from when we went to Florida.  I found I kinda inherited my dads ability to drive at night with little hassles in exhaustion.  Really, my only problem was my leg cramping up a bit, but that's more than likely from sitting in one place for 6+ hours at a time coupled with a bit of dehydration.

The inspiration is the Outrun theme.  In my mind I'm thinking Turbo Outrun, a game I played on the Sega Mega Drive where you drove from New York to Los Angeles, also known as The Cannonball Run.  But when I look it up in Ye Olde Searche Engine-e, I find out that it's a theme around neons and sunset/sunrises.

I began following the r/Outrun subreddit and since then gotten buckets of more inspiration.  Simple things, like gentle glowing interior outlines and console colours, and even a pair of pictures to put on the rear panels of the car mixing the Outrun Sun with the Datsun logo, then just making it a little cheesier by having the right hand side the Japanese Logo and styled like a sunrise, and the left hand side the English Logo styled with a sunset, and bob's your mothers brother you have something cool.

Again though, it's all dreams and Pixie Dust.  Maybe one day in the future, but in the mean time I'll keep that in my pocket in case the opportunity crops up again.

In Mother Russia, Bear Run Over YOU