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.

My Year(s) in Video Games

Well lets deal with the obvious.  I haven't posted here in what feels like an age.  Last post I made was about how I was excited about the Notorious High Tier Assassin Sorscha was being made into a new Warcaster matching my Favourite Theme of Steam Powered Heavy Armour Soldiers.

Sadly I've kinda fallen out of love with Warmachine through my lack of play and interest, feeling very "back in my day, we had fun with our game" about it since I really began lurking and watching from the sidelines, and wishing I could play the Iron Kingdoms RPG instead, mostly because I got a Humble Bundle Deal that got me about 99% of the RPG books for a song.

From that I made a bunch of cool characters, all with little back stories and parties they've formed together, loose motives for their future so that any DM's have something to fuel their own narrative.  Yes I realise that means I should DM my own campaign, but I have every excuse in the book that puts me off of that.

I actually thought about doing a Play By Mail campaign with people, but I just get myself overwhelmed by trying to find some definitive answers from the internet.  I've gotten very Anti-internet for a while and now my Facebook feed is pretty much just a continuing roll of memes and tags.

So I fill in my own time with Video Games, and the last few years have been pretty hit and miss for video games.

Like Xcom 2: War of the Chosen, a fantastic expansion to the game.  It added a bunch of new stuff, like new classes and enemies, new gameplay options, new maps, even a whole new enemy type which is more hassle than they're really worth, but hey you can't get everything right.  Especially when it comes to getting a port fully working.

For ages though I've had a want to make an Xcom Campaign, something more focused on an individual party and having a bunch of encounters based on the different mission types you'd normally encounter in the Grand Strategy games, just more in depth with characters and strategy.

The more I think of it though, the cooler I think it would be as a proper video game taking inspirations from a bunch of games, starting with Xcom: Apocalypse which is focused around a singular Megacity, to Nier Automata, which seems like a far stretch but bear with me, the inspiration comes from the gameplay mechanics which changes style as you go.

For example, one minute you could be fighting in a 3D open arena with enemies coming from all around, to a classic 2D platformer style as you progress through to other map regions.  So from that, I would like to take inspiration from other turn based games and implement them into minor missions or encounters.

The more I think about it though the more I realise I kinda would use features of Mutant Year Zero, a game I really enjoyed, as short lived as it was.  If I were to nitpick it, the tedium of silent takeouts was a little grating, but still it was fun.  It could have been a little more than what it was.

When two world collide
and really support each other

Speaking of games that were more than what was expected: DOOM.  Jesus Christ that was a good game.  The speed, the fun, the exhilaration, the ripping and tearing.  The sequel is coming out in a months time and I'm excited for it even though it looks extremely arcade like in its play.  Lots of double jumping, swing bars, and wall climbing.  I saw a Youtube Card of someones review with the words "Best Mario Game Not Made By Nintendo", which feels conflicting, but hey I'm still keen.

Speaking of Nintendo, Jenny got me a Switch Lite.  It's more or less like a Playstation Portable but bigger and lighter.  I still want to get a grip case for it, maybe something that extends its battery life as well, but that has to wait until I get back to work again before I make any more.

In the meantime I have a handful of games that came with the Xmas present.  Jenny had asked around and got me The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Civilization VI, Sonic Team Racing, Mario and Sonic Olympics, and Nickelodeon Kart Racing.  The two biggest ones I wanted to play though were Breath of the Wild and Civ6.

Civilization is a game I haven't really played much in my life until this point.  I had Civ 2 or 3 when I was in high school, my mum got it as a group package with Sim City 2000 and The Settlers 2: Veni, Vidi, Vici.  I faffed around with it a lot, but never really sat down with it to understand the rules.  I gave Civ a fair crack of the whip, but on top of the rather awkward UI on the small screen I still don't really know what it is I'm accomplishing.  I do need to spend more time with it though.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a very different kettle of fish.  I'm far from finished on it, having only accomplished one of the four mechanical beasts that help in the fight of Calamity Ganon and largely only explored the bottom half of the map between getting my arse served by a new high level monster that I happen to snag the attention of.  It's a good game, don't get me wrong, but I think once I get that grip case I will have a better time fighting thanks to more flexibility in my hands.

While we are on the subject of Nintendo I've been watching a series called Game Makers Toolkit.  My mate Andy pointed me in Mark Browns direction while we were talking about certain games and their mechanics.  Mr Brown had covered the subject quite well and since then I have the occasional playthrough of all his available Youtube videos (Sorry Mark, I can't spare the dosh for your Patreon) while I play a game or sleep.  He's very soothing.

But the ones that really stood out were the series on Metroid.  I have never played a Metroid game in my life.  I think there was a period where I was using a Gameboy emulator and I may have tried to start off one of the Metroid games available but never stuck with it.  His retrospective series gave me a really good insight into the games and piqued my interest into Hollow Knight.

Hollow Knight is about a small Bug Soldier exploring an ancient kingdom called Hollownest.  You explore this hive of networked environments, meeting insects and grubs, defeating rabid bosses, and discovering secrets and history of this fascinating and magical world.  I'm 77% of the way through according to the little meter in the corner of my inventory screen so I have plenty more to find and achieve.

My favourite part of the Remaster

The style of the game has me fascinated though.  The closest I can say that I've played to this is Wonder Boy: The Dragons Trap, which has a beautiful Remaster that threw me back to my Master System days so easily that when I turned on the Retro Visuals I almost thought it was a gag.  That was the closest I came to a Metroidvania game though, and I kinda want to get into more of that style of game now that I've dabbled into it.

Speaking of Re-something games, there was Sonic Mania.  Everyone and their Mother knows that I love Sonic the Hedgehog.  He's my favourite.  I want to get a Tattoo of the Sonic and Knuckles logo on my shoulder because Sonic 3 and Knuckles is my favourite game of all time.  I wouldn't be able to tell you how many hours I've sunk into it, but I know I've deleted and restarted all of those save slots until they were all 100% several times over.

Sonic Mania was really fun though.  I wasn't a big fan of some of the newer Zones, some of them stuck out as being out of place, but its still a really fun game.  I haven't been able to sit myself down to max out everything yet but I want to get a Genesis Controller for my Playstation just so I can really get back into how I used to play, which weirdly had my right hand turned over so I'm using my digits instead of my thumb to jump.

My other favourite game that came out was Borderlands 3.  A good game overall, but sadly their antagonists weren't particularly encapsulating, especially when they were following one of the best arseholes to kill off at the end of his story, Handsome Jack.

I keep seeing people on Reddit going "Bring back Handsome Jack!" which is depressing because that's really just beating a dead horse.  I love Handsome Jack, he's a great bastard to hate, and there are a few references to him, particularly in one side mission that really brings to light how malicious he can be, but he's done.  He has died in all but a Gun that plays voice clips of him.

The new Antagonists are nowhere near as hard hitting.  I said in an old post, that I'm going to redo an elaborate on one day, that there was a turning point.  That you have him playing in your ear and you don't really take him seriously until you reach a real turning point, and suddenly you have it in your heart that you need to take him down.  You need to go after him and really kill him off.

You can't go wrong with a Robot Beast Tamer

That doesn't really happen in 3.  It could be because they stumbled upon playing the same card as they did with Handsome Jack in 2, or because they just aren't that impressive, there just isn't that turning point in the story where you're motivated to stop them.

Thankfully they still have DLC coming out.  The first was a fun tribute to Handsome Jack's Stunt Double and Moxxi where you raid a Casino.  Good value.  The next one is going to be really fun as well, but I have no idea what that'll be.

Another game that really changed things up is Gears of War 5.  Or Gears 5, as they are want to go with now.  Largely, the game is still the same.  Cover based shooting and encroaching against Mutants that emerge from the ground, occasionally with a Gigantic Monster to accompany them.  But what I liked about it was the change from just straight mission after mission to a semi-open world setting, travelling on a Kite Sled between notable locations and regions that lead into missions.  Something a bit more freeform in play.

Which can be bad, such as the case of Wolfenstein Youngblood.  That was not a good game.  A lot of ideas going for it, but just so poorly executed.  A lot of cool stuff for it, the levels are pretty, the combat is fun, the super powers are always a fun addition, but... god everything else was as shallow as a Kiddy Pool.

John Carmack, one of the big Doom Guys, said "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important."  Well that's all well and good, but if you really treat it like that you get this game, where you have so little direction for your players to go that you flounder what you want them to do and encounter.

So that's what I mean by hit and miss.  There's been really good games and there have been really bad games.  I'm keen on what 2020 has to offer for games, but there's still the matter of all the games i"m yet to play.  Like Prey, Outer Worlds, and Dishonoured: Death of the Outsider.  And I haven't even finished talking about all the games I've played, really, but hey, I gotta stop this at some point.

Insert Token Self Deprecating Meme

Tower Defence with Friends

Hmm.  Not enough Dakka.

Ive made only a few memorable moments in video games, things that made everyone cheer me on for hours afterwards.  Like one time at The Bunker the boys and I were playing Dawn of War.  It was a map designed for an all out brawl over a Relic Point (I think thats right?) in the centre, with everyones base in each corner.  Scoot and Chase were against Aaron and I for the simple reason that Aaron and I played Orks, and Scoot and Chase played Space Morons and Imperial Gumbys.

Aaron was doing his best to fend off both Scoot and Chase, he was calling out to me, saying he was losing ground and needed more help than the one or two units of sluggas I had started the game with. It all changed when I waded into the fight to the immediate cry of "IS THAT A KILLA KAN?!"

The game ended quickly when there were a couple of Rage Quits, so while I may be very proud of my achievement, I didnt get to revelle in it by razing their base to the ground to the chant of ORKS ORKS ORKS!

The other big one I remember is Gears of War 3's Horde 2.0.  The boys and I again, fighting the fight of the century (REALLY), and we reached either wave 30 or 40, i cant remember.  What I can remember was the Lambent Berserker and the Ensuing Carnage.  We had all this gear set up, Scotty had gotten himself a Silverback and was mowing everything down with glee, Grubs were slogging through laser fences, and anyone who wasn't shooting straight into the spread eagled bastards was mounted up on turrets, pummelling everyone else.

Through poor situational awareness, or just picking the wrong guy to fight, everyone died and I was left alone.  Just me... And the big, glowy, tentacled, practically invulnerable, rock monster.

I ran and ran and dodgerolled and cried like a little bitch over the microphone as i took poorly timed, yet specifically planned, potshots at the She-Hulk as the frustration grew and grew on her until through either pure exhaustion, or an invisible health bar that was whittled down to nothing, she fell like a sack of bricks and victory was mine.  I put one foot on that gigantic glowing corpse and waited for the bulbs to flash, commemorating me into history.

Those were the glory days.  Then came Gears of War Judgement, a Spinoff following one of Gear's biggest douchebags, Baird, and the king of the ball game, the locomotive with the most-ive (come on, Meds), Cole Train.

It was a good story, and the gameplay changed a bit and turned it into a much more manic game than what it originally was.  Then there's the multiplayer.  They changed from the base defence style, to a class based survival called Overrun.

I played it a couple of times, running around like a chook with my head cut off, and didn't like it.  I felt it missed that feeling of being an enormous pillar against a torrential storm that I loved in Gears 3.  I'm not one to be against class based characters, but I don't want to rely on a Soldier dropping all the ammunition next to me while I'm scrambling away from some giant centipede nipping around my feet.

So looking ahead, I wonder what Gears 4 will accomplish when it comes to their Coop Survival mode.  Will they go back to the Horde 2.0?  Or will they bring back Overrun with some new Chemistry?  Because I'm really hoping to be able to save the day again.

Another exercise in literary spewing

Happy Birthday Scott 2011

I've been staring at this blank page for about 2 hours now and I originally planned to write about how I wanted to go to scotts birthday, well I'm going but what i wanted to do like get a keg of cider but couldn't find anything but one keg which disappoints me because even though Pear and Strawberry sounds like a good cider, it's the lack of options that disappoint me, and that's a big thing too because sometimes I just want to get just 5L of Bulmers Pear Cider because it's a nice cheap cider, and I like the pear flavour better though Kel says he doesn't like pear cider because it's too sweet, but I just find it easier to drink, but anyway, Scott's birthday is this weekend and it's going all weekend so with my other plans of going to Kel and Tash's to see Alex on friday and then my nephews birthday on saturday (it's a lunch/dinner at sizzler) I can work it all together very well so long as I can get back to my house before mum heads off to sizzler, then I can get back to Scotts to play Warmachine, or Dystopian Wars, or Talisman and all the various expansions scotty has for it which will be crazy fun though I reckon we'll have to make an effort to do something about getting to the top because it can be very easy to just circle around the centre and level up and then climb your way to the top, so we might try and get a relic from each end of the three corner expansions and then climb up the middle, whether it's the normal version or the alternate dragon options, but that's something to sort out when we get there, otherwise we can play our xbox's like Borderlands and maybe even Halo 4 though I think I'll have to share with scott because i don't have a copy of Halo 4 and naturally that makes things difficult, but we'll find other games to play I'm sure because there are plenty of games out there, heck we might even play Gears of War 3 and finally get me to that level 50 of Horde Mode, and hopefully take on a goddamn lambent berserker and have her chase me while I Torque Bow her to death and, well, that'll be fun all in it's entirety, and now I'm really starting to run out of things to talk about even with this mindless ramble that I have because it's all I've been thinking about except for my arcade cabinet which I really want to do but can't because without a job i haven't any money and also if I leave it here it'll probably just rot away because it'll be made of wood and the dust might even set fire inside the playstation 2 that I would have inside it and Mum wouldn't appreciate me burning the house down while i'm living with Jenny, so I have to put that on hold until I move back and get my own place with jenny, and having my own man cave with a sonic the hedgehog arcade machine in the corner.

Campaigning for fun

Now a month or two ago, I said about how I was going to play Gears of War 3 with my friends, playing through the wonderful campaign as a Four-player Cooperative rather than running around by myself. It's a lot more fun, especially if we all start off at the same point, then we all experience the same thing, achieve the same goals, save the same damsels, etcetera etcetera etcetera.

When I got my new Xbox and downloaded my Gamer profile, I found that I'm missing achievements for certain games, like Halo 3 and Gears of War 2. I ran through Gears of War 2 again alone because I didn't think of inviting anyone. But it wasn't as fun as with a friend. Not to say it wasn't a fun game, it was still as awesome as I remember it the first time, but I know it's better when you have someone playing with you, whether it's through the internet or sitting next to you laughing their heads off as you decapitate a couple of people with a hydraulic powered crossbow.

So in preparation to playing through the Halo 3 Campaign, I've asked my friends to gauge who would be interested in playing the Halo 3 Campaign with me. I've asked Scott and his only apprehension is the control scheme being so different to the Halo Reach scheme. It's rather different, but I'm thinking of adjusting my own settings to use the Green Thumb control scheme for all Halos upward of Halo 3.

Other games that I want to play Coop are Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One. I want to get that game and play with Scotty. I know he's waiting for me, but it's just a matter of picking up the game so we can start. Also, Portal 2 has an update for it's Cooperative Campaign, so we're going to get in on that at some point when I mention it to Scotty.



Next year, when Borderlands 2 comes out, we're going to dive into that one as well through the Xbox. Scotty was planning on getting it for PC, however it was put down to general consensus that we would all play on the Xbox. Which brings me to the subject of Cross-Platform gaming, but that's another blogpost that I've drafted away and haven't bothered to type in since I started it.

I was thinking of making a Blog for our escapades through whatever games together, somewhere we could organise times to play and such, but that seems a bit much. Though we could apply it as well for our Wargaming as well, if we decided to use as such if we were doing a campaign amongst ourselves. That would actually be really cool if we were, but we're not.

Actually I thought about running the old campaigns for Warmachine amongst friends, but haven't sat down with a copy of Escalation or Apotheosis and worked it out for MKII Settings. I don't know if there are any very good conversions out there, or even if there's one released from PPress, but I'm going to give it a crack. I'm really wanting to go with "Point Cost / 2, Rounded up" to determine Victory Points.

So wondering about whether or not I should do the blog or not. It wouldn't be interesting, I think it would mostly have notices for what and when we're next playing, unless we do a battle report for each of our campaign games, but I dunno about that.

Now I've completely lost track of what I was talking about.

Gears of War 3

I'm a fan of Gears of War, a game series that has one of the most intriguing semi-apocalyptic settings I've come across (Which aren't many, but still). And the game has worked its way up to it's third game, along with a small set of novels and graphic novels.

The games show primarily the story of two Gears (Soldiers), Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago, childhood friends fighting in the war for the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) against the Locust, humanoid creatures that began a genocide campaign against human life.

The Locust come in a variety of forms, from Simple drones, to Boomers, to Kantus, to Berserkers. Aptly named due to their short temper. On top of that, they have severe myopia, stronger than any Locust of it's size category, and to top it off: It's the Locust Female.

Yes. I know what you're thinking. And yes. Yes they do.

Anyway, I've been following the story as much as I can. I've picked up two of the novels which are brilliant reads, and I own at least one of the Gears of War games (pretty sure I only have #2, but I'll pick up #1 eventually). The downside is that my Xbox 360 is dead, so I can't exactly go back and reminisce about the good ol' days of Gears of war.

What else I like about the game is that it's control system hasn't changed in it's two iterations of the game and I don't think it will in the third. It's a good system and I'm glad the only changes that have been made have been to refine it.

The third game comes out on the 20th September. Three days before I head off to the US. So because my Xbox 360 has died in the arse, and I haven't bothered to get it fixed because it'll cost an arm and a leg since it's out of warranty, I also haven't bothered to pre-order the game.

Scotty, however, is a man who has a backlog of pre-ordered games that stretches past his arm, so naturally he has a pre-order of Gears of War 3. So after work, the day it comes out on the 20th, I'm going to go to Scottys place, sit down and log into my Xbox-Live account, and play the 4-player campaign with Aaron and possibly Richard. If not, it'll be Gavin, Scotts Brother.

But that's my mission. Only a few hours at a time (because we all have work in the mornings) and only a few days before I leave. So the weekend before, I'm going to pack all my clothes and all my gear for the trip to Jenny. And then that Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons/nights, I'm going to play my little heart out with Scotty and Co. Until I get kicked out of his house, of course.

Goddamn this is going to be awesome.

Gears of War Board game

[link]

I like Gears of War. The game is fun, and the story is fantastic. And to have a Board Game based on it is just too cool.

There's about 30 figures in the set, so that's a bunch of Locust and a handful of player characters. I hope there's a Carmine in there. Then again, he'll die so quickly.

If I got Aaron into playing it, then he'll run up to every enemy and try to chainsaw them in half.

Judging from the setup, I'm imagining that the game plays much like the D&D Board Games. You have a set of square tiles with various designs on them which the players pull out and place at random to create your ever growing map. With each tile placed, place down Locust determined by a deck of monster cards. As you kill each locust you gain a reward based on the rewards deck of cards.

Then depending on the scenario, particularly designed tiles are set within the randomly organised pile. So you will reach your destination, but at a randomly determined time. With each character having their own special abilities, it can either extend or reduce the time it takes, or change how easily they kill something, or how the enemy can retaliate.

It looks fun and I'm pretty excited about it. Though I still need to play the D&D board games with the fellas...

Some days, I just want to play Cribbage

Excitement boils inside me like an egg waiting to be chowed down with a Caesar Salad, and skewered using those tiny little forks that cost about $2.50 at any kitchenware store.

Being the nerd that I am, I enjoy a good video game. Recently, I have had no desire to play video games, whether by personal motivation or by social motivation.

Some games look interesting, but not interesting enough to play myself as they seem very monotonous. An example of this is Crackdown. Now, I enjoyed Grand Theft Auto. It's a fun game. However, it became monotonous by ending up as a game that just wanted you to shoot the shit out of everything you could see, and mini-missions that encouraged this. I'm all for video game violence. Nobody actually gets hurt, and I'm not one to be influenced by this sort of inanity. Heck, I played Sonic the Hedgehog a ridiculous amount as a child and teen, and I don't jump on people.

Now, where was I going with the lead to Crackdown? Well, it's that after seeing someone play Crackdown, it seems to be the same deal as GTA. Just a bunch of missions where you hunt people down and things blow up all around you while you try not to get hit yourself and maybe deflect a missile, throwing it into a building, knocking it over onto the car of the target you're hunting, causing them to drive off into the water and because they can't get out of the car, it explodes, killing them.

While the situation is entertaining, it's a rare event. Most likely, you'll run down the vehicle, pick it up and throw it into the water.

Which is not my idea of entertainment, as later on in the game one would come across another mission where a moment of Deja Vu will occur and the same thing will happen again, except maybe more missiles for you to practice your fly kicks.

It's a 'leave your brain at the door' game.

I'll give it credit, however. Within my friends, I generated a good tagline for the game: "Crackdown: It's bullshit and it fucking knows it". This also applies to Prototype, a game of similar lineage of Crackdown with an added twist: Mutations and Cannibalism.

Thats right, Cannibalism. He's not a bad guy. He's not a good guy either. He IS a strange version of a Cannibal.

Leading back to my point, the same shit with a different smell is not my idea of entertainment for extended periods of time.

Mind you, the comment about Sonic the Hedgehog as a child probably had something to do with it. I became uncannily good in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and while I'm a little rusty at the moment it still shows that I know most of the neccessary tricks and tidbits for completing the game.

So, in search of a game to entertain me, I recently bought a couple of games from EB the other week: Stalker, Shadow of Chernobyl, and Stormrise.

I bought Stalker because I have been in the mood for a First Person Shooter. Unfortunately, this hasn't had the same effect that I was hoping. I began play and after completing a mission or two, I became disinterested.

It is a Role Play game. Unfortunately, I'm not one for playing Role Play games these days. While this does provide a desire to actually use my intelligence to complete a mission, it is not the same receptors flashing away in my brain that I'm desiring.

Which leads me to play Stormrise, a Real Time Strategy game.

I enjoy a good RTS. I bought Warcraft III and Starcraft, along with their expansions, a long time ago because they are good RTS games. I've really enjoyed them, yet have grown a little tired of them. I've gotten into the habit of playing Dota on Warcraft III and not much compells me to play Starcraft at the moment.
I do patiently await Starcraft II. As mentioned, I do enjoy Starcraft, its world and its story. So I nibble on the little treats that are the rumours and Question batches taken from the development team, and the Battle Reports that I download and convert to play on my PSP.

Returning to Stormrise however, it requires Vista or later to play.

My beast of a computer, aptly named "Beast-09" by its builder, The Dick, coincidentally also a Warmachine Reference, still only runs on Windows XP.

What kind of developer makes a demand of it's player base to use an unpopular and dysfunctional Operating System just to play a game? Microsoft. The same company that knows that this OS is extremely buggy, and are halfway through development of the next OS Generation, "Windows 7".

This disappointed me.

Unfortunately, I can't return the games at full price, as it has been over a week. I may just trade it in for a new copy of Frozen throne, as my old copy has disappeared from the face of the earth, leaving me with a plastic Case with a near useless CD-key. I say Near useless as while the CD-key is valid, I receive another CD-key with the new copy.

A long time ago, I played Dawn of War as well. It was the same genre with a few little tweaks, mostly the currency and reinforcement options. The Currency format may have been done before, where you claim points on a map to increase your rate of requisition, then hold them off from your opponents as they batter against your forces. To keep the battle large and continuous, they have the reinforcement, where you spend requisition to add more members to your units over a small build time. Orks enjoy this because if you have more WAAAUGH! the faster they reinforce and the more they overwhelm the opponent.

Continuing on, I have bought Dawn of War 2. A similar system where you collect your points across a map to gain Requisition and Power to upgrade and spawn units. It was good. The single-player kept me entertained through its duration, although was a little monotonous with it's end missions where my squads were close to invulnerable with their Terminator Armour, Rally! ability used when someone is on low health, and Thunderhammers being able to tear apart a heavily armoured enemy in a few swings. Carnifex's, Killa Kans and Wraithlords have no chance of surviving when they are released onto the world.

A video game that is either in development, or soon to be released, I'm not entirely sure honestly, is Splinter Cell: Conviction. I have played the majority of the previous Console titles. I enjoyed them immensely, with Double Agent being quite well favoured. The meticulous execution of espionage in a variety of interesting settings really sets the game high in my favourites list.

The next addition to the series seems to kick it up a notch, speeding up the processes of the game for the player rather than sitting and waiting for a particular trigger to finish before moving on, repeating this process through the better part of the game. While triggers are still an occurrence, reflexes will be on demand more often.

But, that is for the future. For now, the only similarity I can find to this without repeating the previous games is to play World of Warcraft, playing a Rogue.

This is a game that grasps Monotony and expels it into an interesting spiderweb that will splatter across your face and leave a strangely salty taste in your mouth.

Now, I imagine that quite a few people are lacking a bit of iron in their diets, so I can't entirely blame them for the fact that it has taken over their lives. Anemia is a serious problem. But, I have reached close to the characters level limit with one character. I feel like calling myself Snowball Sally sometimes when I think about it. To make things a little more hypocritical, I've begun playing again with a friend. Mind you, I've started at a bad time as my schedule is rather cramped with birthday parties and other gaming events, but will be clear eventually, I'm sure.

Steering away from my occasional fetishes, we move onto the more fast paced games. Returning to the same developers of Splinter Cell, I present Rainbow Six. To date, I have only played the Las Vegas versions. These games are very entertaining with their fast paced action and Teamplay. While the computers are insufficiently intelligent to compliment your own skill, they do provide a good enough distraction here and there for you to take out your opponents. Overall, it keeps the mind at a rise and fall reminiscent of a drive through Brisbane's suburbs.

A few games match this. Gears of War and Army of Two come to mind. Both games that play a third person, cover-interactive style of shoot-em-up with a fast paced sense of mind.
Very entertaining games that had me enthralled all the way through. While Army of Two did lack that little bit of UMPH, a term I use for something inexplicable that reels in the barramundi of interest, it did still have its entertaining moments.

Gears of War did fantastically, keeping things interesting through the whole campaign. And, to top off the ice cream with a cherry, the sequel included an new cooperative option: Horde.

The basis of Horde is that you are a squad of humans taking on waves of Locust that become harder and harder to kill. While the enemies are somewhat set depending on what level you have, with generally easy enemies to start and then increasing to much more difficult enemies at level 10, they increase the difficulty of these enemies with simple things such as increasing damage, and health. It had kept myself and friends entertained for weeks, trying to reach the coveted level 50 where we were confident that enemies were near impossible to defeat and would kill you just by saying "CRUSH". Stupid Maulers.

Continuing through the first person Genre, another game that does enthrall me is Halo.

While being the Love Child of the Xbox franchise, it does stand as a very entertaining game with its setting and occasional aspects of gameplay.

There are only a few aspects that the games really lack, in my opinion.

Halo 1 and 2 suffered from repetitive level scenes. Whilst advancing, your sense of Deja Vu is only shattered by the enemies present in the area. Halo 2 did not suffer as much as the first, but lacked the UMPH.
Halo 3, truly the masterpiece of the set, only lacked from a short campaign. After returning home from EBGame's midnight release of Halo 3, cackling away with excitement with Aaron, we arrived home to play until the dawn with an only complaint that the flood levels were... Dissatisfying. Being that they were the final levels, it was a let down, but still very entertaining.

Which leads me to it's next addition to the family: ODST. ODST's are also known as HellJumpers due to their reckless and life risking entry into combat, dropping from orbit in specially designed pods to land in the midst of combat to disrupt aspects of the battlefield for quick missions.

The scene is different. You, of course, are an ODST. But you have been set off course, and have to make your way back to your squadron. This, to me, implied that it will have to be much more sneaky, maybe more like Splinter Cell. And with the setting of the Halo Universe, it would be very entertaining for an ODST to snap the neck of a Jackal that was in the wrong place, and the player would have to interact with cover alot more.

This is half true. The player will have to be sneaky. The player will have to interact with cover much more, however not with the ease of Splinter Cell, or even Gears of War.

No, the game is relatively much the same.

I'll still play, when it is released, but I may not be as enthralled as I would with my dreamt alternative.

So where does that leave me?

It leaves me waiting for the future. Starcraft II, Halo ODST, Army of Two: the 40th Day, Splinter Cell: Conviction... All very exciting, which is the aforementioned Egg.

What do i do in the mean time? I have World of Warcraft. Yes, it'll pass the time. But I won't be satisfied.
So what SHOULD I be doing? Painting. Painting my models for Gencon 09, in September. Only a few months away!

I play table top games. Warmachine and Hordes, specifically. I enjoy these games. The setting is entertaining, the system is interesting, and currently it works to be a fantastic mental stimulus.

I have lost quite a lot of interest in playing. My models are there, and they are collecting dust because I simply don't want to play. Heck, Vassal is on my computer and I don't even want to play that.

I will still attend the tournament events, of course. The only problem with that is that there haven't been any.
The regular get together I haven't attended due to a little bit of motivation, and a very disrupted sleep pattern. I still get myself into trouble for staying late at Fastbreak of a Tuesday night and waking up like a Zombie, so Wednesday Night I am a little apprehensive to attend.

Blind Pig is set at a good time. Fortnightly from the first Saturday of the month.

I don't attend because, frankly, if I can't wake up early enough to get there before the Sausages are on the BBQ, then it's not worth it. It's nothing against the players there, by far. I enjoy their company. They're all really good people. I'm just lazy.

But I have a mission for the next 2.5 months: Paint my Army of Skorne.

Where I was going with this blog, which has wasted the better part of todays worktime, I have no idea. But I have vented. I want Starcraft II now, to play in peace, to dabble in the intricacies of the Map Editor, and to get into an exciting game.

Update: Oh, yes, I do remember where I was going.

The intrigue that the mentioned games had is now, mostly, lost. I still have the hankering on the odd occasion to play them, but these new games coming out have me excited and anticipating their arrival, as they bring some of my favourite things and expand on them.

But, Time is still going. And I have no idea whether I can get the game any sooner. The game I look forward to most is Starcraft II. While it not only expands on the previous game, it also adds features in Warcraft III such as 3d graphics, and hero aspects. The hero aspect of Warcraft III was a very entertaining thing, because it added more character to the game.

Not to mention, it brought out DOTA. Dota, for those who are unaware, is a Hero-based melee map, where 5 players on each side choose a hero and then level up their characters, buying equipment to power themselves up, and eventually make their way to the opponents prized structure and destroy it, all the while defending their own prized structure. Three pathways, each with a set of 3 defensive towers, lead to these structures. It is one of the more popular Warcraft III: Frozen Throne maps, and is fully supported by the Blizzard Development Team.

Well, time will tell when the game is released.