Get your game on!

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After months of delays from other stuff, I finally played through Life is Strange: True Colors. I absolutely loved the first game (and I gushed about it mightily at TOP). The general gist of the games they are narrative choice-driven stories involving young people with supernatural abilities, and naturally a bunch of really bad shit goes down. (Deep themes like racism, queerness, death, depression, suicide, etc run throughout as well - usually walking that thin line of not being exploitative.)

The second mainline LiS game was good, but the story didn’t really hit the same for me. A cross-country adventure with two brothers trying to escape the law just didn’t hit quite the same, I guess. (And it didn’t help that the player character in 2 wasn’t actually the person with the supernatural abilities - just more of a proxy.) It was still a good game and worth playing, but other than a couple very memorable moments I really don’t remember much about it.

I was excited for the third when it seemed to get back to its roots but this time with a slightly older character with a lot more baggage.

Anyway, it was pretty fucking good. Some really intense moments, great storytelling, and many paths to follow. As always, you are often faced with terrible choices and the one that feels “right” can often have consequences just as awful as doing the “wrong” thing. You can only try to do the best you can knowing there’s often no good outcomes. There’s 6 different endings but after getting my ending I didn’t feel a need to go back and play the others. (I watched the others but in the end they were 3 different variations on two major choices.)

I don’t want to give away too much because it’s really something best experienced blind so I will say if you’re into heavily story-focused games with a very deliberate pace and interesting characters it’s well worth it. A full play through will be 10-12 hours if you take your time to experience everything. It’s free to play with Xbox Game Pass, or can be purchased from the various services. It can be a bit pricey at its full $60 MSRP (especially given it’s short playtime and relative lack of replay value) but it’s often on sale for less.

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Time to get painting…

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Only half done, still some work to do.

This was much easier when I had better eyes and steadier hands. Still fun, though.

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I have a mate in Brisbane who I’ve managed to tempt into buying a copy for himself. Once that arrives, I might be able to get a remote game happening.

In the meantime, I’ve had a couple of short games against myself to refamilarise with the rules.

In tonight’s battle, we had a scenario where one big mech (Battlemaster) was trying to get across the map while three smaller mechs (Locust, Commando, Wolverine) tried to stop it.

The Battlemaster was doing well, largely by half-ignoring the attackers and just plowing on regardless [1]. In desperation, I sent the Wolverine in for a charge, hoping to slow the big mech by knocking it down.

The charge connected, did lotsa damage, and took out several of the Battlemaster’s weapons with a lucky critical. But, really, the whole point was to knock it down. However, the big mech made its piloting roll and remained standing.

Not so for the smaller attacker, which lost its footing and landed on its head, doing significant damage to the pilot. Who just barely held onto consciousness as the Battlemaster casually strolled off the end of the map to win.

Same old Battletech. :slightly_smiling_face:

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[1] With hindsight, the smaller mechs needed to stick one of their number in front as a roadblock; just harrying from behind wasn’t enough. Next time.

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Thomas the Timberwolf. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Oh, I’ve GOT to show that to my son - he was a TtTE fan as a child and still has some of the trains.

Not that he would take them apart to modify one of his action figures.

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I just got done showing these to my son and he thinks what you’re doing is cool.

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The miniatures have improved a bit since I first began playing…

image

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After one round:

Most of the initial shots missed, but the red Wolverine ate a PPC to the side torso from the green Awesome.

On turn two, both teams landed some solid hits, including a lucky shot to the Awesome’s head from the Thunderbolt’s LRMs. But now several of the red team mechs are beginning to overheat…

Turn three and it’s looking ugly for Team Red. Their Thunderbolt was knocked on its arse after eating two PPC bolts to the chest, while their Locust not only fell over, it then suffered the indignity of being stomped on by the Catapult, snapping a leg off.

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I have never played the tabletop version, or almost any version in general, but I have fond memories of playing Mechwarrior 2 on PC. I specifically remember building/configuring a mech that was stripped down to almost nothing and then loaded with as many PPCs as would fit. It would start overheating after only one or two shots, but if they connected, it would pretty much destroy the enemy. I seem to remember that it only worked well in one of the two game modes. Either it worked well in single-player but was absolute garbage in multi-player, or the other way around. Fun times.

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The Awesome is the classic Battletech PPC boat, but it also carries plenty of armour and enough cooling to cope.

There was a Mechwarrior Online meme build called the Direstar, that carried so many PPCs that it would shut down with every shot and destroy itself via overheating damage after a few volleys. But anything it hit was instantly vaporised. :slightly_smiling_face:

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For me it was Mechwarrior IV. The mechs you’d run in single-player campaign were completely different from what people would run in the multiplayer ruckuses.

However, some of the most fun I ever had in multiplayer was playing a Light, with maybe just rinky-dink machine guns, and running circles around the enemy chewing them to shreds while they couldn’t even get a solid shot on me.

And then if they did get a shot in, running off to nowhere, and they’d inevitably follow which left them wide open for the others on the team to tear 'em down, blasting 'em from the back.

Fun times.

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It was a very close-run thing, but the green team won after twenty turns.

Their only survivor was a Catapult with one arm and no ammo.

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Good news everybody! With the crypto crash, video cards are finally back on the market at MSRP!

The card I’d been wanting dropped from $650 to $400 just within this month. That’s a pretty big change.

I went ahead and ordered the upgrades I’ve been putting off. Unfortunately they’ll arrive just before I leave for a week, but it’ll be a good project for when I get back. And then I’ll finally get to play some of these games that’ve been gathering dust in their full glory.

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This game deserves better:

Thanks to the crypto crash, I now have a new RTX video card! And also a new M2 SSD!

But I haven’t seen fit yet to move my games or anything. It’ll be really cool when I do though.

Also, for some reason, my old keyboard doesn’t work, so I’m using my Mac keyboard, from my work computer. And it works really well. Which is good because I was getting tired of using the onscreen keyboard where you have to type with your mouse.

Back on topic, super looking forward to getting into these games. Can’t wait to see what Subnautica looks like now. It was a beauty before, but now it can be even better.

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Over 4 years later, but I’ve finally completed Okami. :smiley: I’d reached the ending portion of the game, and then something happened again, and, well… I finally picked it up again today, decided I couldn’t remember enough of what was going on to bother trying to be all completionist about the achievements, and started the end.

The final boss fights (there is a whole series of them) really dragged a bit. Most are ok because you can take them one at a time, put it down for a while and relax afterwards, and then pick back up for the next one. But the very end boss took SO LONG to finish off, and at one point I ended up stuck and spent ages just trying to figure out what you were supposed to do to hurt it.

But… Finished! Yay! Final time for the playthrough came out under 60 hours, but only just barely. And only four achievements that I may someday try to hunt down in the new game+ mode…

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(Small typo on the rule for the ORCS score, I believe that’s supposed to be “reaches 10” not “reaches 0”)

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