the mission, the nightmares, finally over

 long story short, it's been one year since my house burned down

i have not given much attention or care to this blog. 

if it wasn't already obvious, this blog is dead until further notice.

i want to put more effort into things that will be fun instead of fake journalism..

so i'm putting work into my youtube channel, making memes.

The Trains13 - YouTube

Hey bungie, i've seen better servers out of CSGO when they were 32 tick

stop feeding the destiny 2 servers bad yogurt, or bad dragon toys, whichever

Far cry 6, cheers!

So I'm a new fan to Far Cry,
I played blood dragon, I'm getting through 5, new dawn and 3 are on my list (yes yes, I know it's heresy to play 5 without playing 3 first.
But let me say what excites me (or at least interests me) about being involved with Francesco di Ravello, I mean, El Sueno, I mean, El Presidente. you know what i mean, dictator removal specialists.

Can I first say how I'm impressed how we are slowly getting more and more villains that not only have the voice but also likeness of their actors? Like video game characters are slowly becoming more like casting for a movie.


With that out of the way


There are three kinds of game philosophies
1: Here's what you CAN do
2: Here's what you MUST do
3: What do you WANT to do?

The first kind usually encapsulates an overload of choice for open world games, ubisoft actually surprised me when it took them until far cry 5 to implement this design style where it had been plaguing Watch_dogs, Assassins creed, and Ghost recon.

The second kind usually is involved with some PvP games but only specific ones. Like Overwatch has trouble avoiding telling their players what to do. Destiny 2 often gives the illusion of choice for a while before going "uh oh, these things going byebye, better not MISS OUT ON THEM"

The third kind tends to show up with more chatoic or freeform games. Borderlands is one of said titles. R6 Siege is this in a curated fashion (yes there's  "counterpicking" but really the amount of approaches that can be focused on by either team ensures there's no one right way to play.

What does this have to do with far cry?
The first category often splits into two sub categories
1"Well, whattya gonna do?"
2" HOW do you want to do this?" and that makes all the difference
You could say "isn't that just 'type 3'?"
And here's what I say back

Far Cry has often had a lot of "here's what you can do" gameplay, often hinting at all the various new and cool toys they give you. And they ask "how do you want to do this?" like I ask my D&D players when they finish a monster off.

So Far cry 6 has me wonder a few things.
Active revolutions aren't quiet so how quiet will the open world be?
Will we have to kill the poor indoctrinated kid?
How many guns can I use creatively with this?

Because despite there being a "best way"  to do things. Far Cry makes you feel like "I want this gun, this gun, and load the rest into my semi that I'm about to plow through a hut with." The games destruction is almost creative in a way. having you wonder "Well that felt great but what can make a bigger explosion?". Far Cry tended to be about surviving in the early games, but there was still that want to see just how interesting you could make it.

So as Parvos Garnum has been saying "What do you desire?"

Oh, I also like that opening credits despite feeling like using red dust in cinematic artistry is overdone.
But I like how they've been keeping this weird theme of each game having a color since 5
5 had white
New dawn had pink
and 6 has red

Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, why

JASEM
(just another shooter with electronic music)
Is good in everything but one major flaw
which decimates the entire gameplay
YOU CAN'T CONTROL IT VERY WELL
yes kb+m has good directional control for a tank shoot-em-up
but you go so fast you have the possibility of falling off each area and each bridge between the area.
Combine that with certain bugs or issues that ruin a flawless run for the "triple letter achievements" and you get a letdown
I wanted to like this and get every achievement before writing this but it's just, painful to play.

319/1000 (at least marvel vs capcom was a full game no matter how little value it had)

Hello!

So a few things incoming
One, I am back at college full-time (I know, pretty absurd of me)
Two, I'm working on longer reviews of bigger games I love (Xenoblade Definitive Edition and the like.)
Three, Next immediate review is on a little gem of a game I found called JASEM (Just Another Shooter with Electronic Music)

Enjoy your summer! (I'm still not in phase 3)

If you want bite-sized reviews...

check what I review on steam!
(this does not exclude these games from getting full posts in the future)

BRINGER OF CHAOS! (ULTIMATE LIGHTNING FURY SLASH NOT MY PICTURE!!!!)

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198429587059/recommended/

X Morph Defense avoids a lot of problems with the Tower Defense genre.

Greetings from Quarantine!
This one is pretty short and sweet
kind of
this game is really good at several things.
One, engaging gameplay:
instead of it being something you will set to auto advance and set up your phone in class on your desk; you will play it.
Two, Uniqueness in a very stable or stagnant genre.
And three: Having the level of polish and design to make it A: look worth its price and B: justify being a PC game as opposed to being just a pc port of a mobile game kind of like Bloons TD.

Now the first, and only barrier to entry, it has a hefty price tag for what you would think a TD game should have.
However this isn't some cheap 2d flash player game that is only worth a "heh, fun" on the toilet. When I sit down to play X Morph Defense, I am ready to GAME.

Let's begin with the first thing you see. The look of the logo and menu.

So the first thing you are drawn to is the honestly pretty cool logo that reminds me a bit of Xenoblade Chronicles X's logo. The immediate next thing you notice is the somewhat generic "techy" edges and mildly uninspired font. but DO NOT let that discourage you, this game is not defined by its theme it is most certainly the gameplay. Other TD games with a Sci-fi theme only set themselves apart by their themes. I'll stop reiterating that point

The next thing you wonder about is the story. It's simple. You are on a conquest to help your race conquer the earth and convert it for harvesting. After landing, you blow the Sh*t out of some civilians. The Military mobilizes and every mission is you defending against these vehicles.

Gameplay structure:

You actively participate as you are in a small fighter ship that assists the towers you place. 

The vehicles don't self destruct upon reaching the core. You don't have a set amount of "lives". The Base has a health bar and vehicles begin firing upon it once reaching the center and will continue firing until destroyed. In addition to the vehicles that follow the paths there are support vehicles that will fire upon you as their primary goal. After each long wave (6 or 7 waves max to a mission as opposed to 40-80 of other games) the base will regenerate some health

The next thing about the game is its two sub-genres

Bullet Hell and Sandbox. 

The vehicles approaching the base will fire on you as well, every vehicle will spray bullets just like a shoot-em-up. New enemy types will constantly appear and mix in with the waves in a way that's like "oh, i gotta watch out, there's a few Anti-air tanks in this horde" as opposed to, "Here comes a break in the combat and here comes the heavy unit squad." then there's the constant peppering of unique side squads of the light units or aerial units which decide to strafe your ship. If your ship gets blown up it will be rebuilt but take a few seconds which could be used to get tanks off of your base. There's (in the main campaign) a few waves of a few missions that involve a boss vehicle of some sort, and these seem to have the strongest shoot-em-up roots like they were from a Japanese arcade game like Crimson Clover WORLD IGNITION

Crimson Clover World Ignition is available on PC (not my photo)

Don't take the word "Sandbox" the wrong way, this isn't an easy game on it's normal difficulty. The entirety of the maps are not simple, there's multiple paths for the enemies to take. The Towers have the Laser Fence ability which allows you to block and redirect certain paths of the enemies to make it longer for the attackers. To counter some of this, certain units can hop laser fences (usually weaker ground units which are usually countered by tower types that would be there anyways). 

Your ship comes equipped with (after upgrades) many different types of abilities.

Your basic gameplay loop is to choose the tool that fits your situation best. You can switch to ghost mode to build a tower and get out of the heat. You can switch between the 4 types of primary fire. which have certain strengths and weaknesses. There are also the auxillary weapons that come with each type that have cooldowns but are powerful bursts. one can even be used to bring buildings down on enemy paths to block them!

Bringing down a building to redirect enemy paths.

The strategy also extends to choice of weapons and towers. You actively change your ship weapons and tower type throughout the waves. Tower costs are dictated in bars of resources instead of set cash amounts. You gather scrap from defeating enemies which will fill up the bars. The basic tower costs 1 bar and any upgrade for it costs an additional bar. you can reconfigure the tower between upgrades or downgrade it to get refunded costs. There's a further level of upgrades that can branch off to make 3 bar cost towers. These, like ship weapons, have certain effectiveness against certain enemy types.

There's the vanilla blaster and turret which are overall ok (I found myself using it more during the late game even though I now had more options.) The missiles and anti air which are especially effective against air units, helicopters are the most noticeable one. (fun thing is most towers and weapon types work against air AND ground, bypassing the usual problem with towers.) Laser tower and weapon are great to focus down high health targets one at a time and melt their armor. and lastly the bombs and mortars which are best for groups of ground enemies.

There is one more type of tower which is the infantry type which is flamethrower/thumper. I wasn't a fan.

Each weapon you have active on your ship comes with a defensive perk (like intercepting projectiles while charging or firing) and a sub-weapon (like the antimatter bomb and black hole generator.) 

Now what this also comes with is high scoring to encourage replays with new strategies at new difficulties, also there's co-op where you can go through the entire campaign in local two player gameplay with a separate save. Then there's also an onslaught mode called survival where you play wave after wave and see how long you can last!

This game is a great option for intensity and strategy at the same time.

My rating (before finishing the DLC) 963/1000

I'm bad at keeping my ideas in my head, I wrote a huge portion of this and then forgot about this because I had college stuff (almost done cause finals are next week). so I come back to this and i'm like "what else did I want to write? eh forget it i'll probably remember" so TA DA!

Greetings from quarantine!

long story short, working on a review for X-morph Defense.
it's almost done but while you wait check out some solutions I designed in Opus Magnum (now on humble choice) which I thought was pretty cool.

Join me!

So since i'm busy working on some in depth reviews, and Warlords of New York is out.
The Division 2 is on sale! for like a third of the price (10$) if you want to play with me and get a crash course into the very deep and fun game and environment. (please) use my referral link so you, me, and our characters can get rewards (including an XP boost while we play together)

This is the link
https://thedivision2.com/referral?refid=UcHMOujr9UWOfbwfwPAW_A
if you want to play let me know, I can use discord to talk to you too!

Types of Survivors, Cursed Legacy

Here's the thing about Yui Kimura, she has no players. all Yui players are just meg mains waiting to get her teachables. 

But when playing Yui they do act differently.

Difference 1: they will actually try to tank a protection hit (wacky I know!) and will often overdo it with breakout, camaderie, and other perks that basically turn her into a don't touch me or my friends. This makes them especially vunerable to mad grit.

Difference 2: they run flashlights more often but never use them at slammed pallets because they want to pick them up later, because gimmick.

Difference 3:

they use lucky break

and try to do sort of 

a dive bombing

strategy like a 

mettle of man ash 

would.

and lastly

Difference 4:

they suck at all of the above-

so RIP ruin and doctor....

Marvel VS Capcom Infinite is a 40$ quarter arcade game

Do me a favor and just don't buy it.

This is me after doing one and one half chapters of the story and 10 regular fights.

THERE IS NO NUANCE TO THE FIGHTING.

what's in the fighting system is less than button mashing (because button mashing doesn't reward you)

there's no difficulty, and the story sucks.

my score: 329/1000 (some decent fun ideas come from the roster selection, dante, megaman x, monster hunter.)

how i would tweak Deathgarden to balance it while maintaining the identity of the characters

welp, time to cancel this post because the game is going goodbye

Types of Survivors Addendum: stranger plays

This took me a little too long to write but this is types of Dead by Daylight survivors who play the Stranger Things characters.

The Hair

Steve players are loners, always running the autoheal perk of course.

But Steves will show up in multiple ways. Often times if they're a squad of four, you will see them migrate together. Not necessarily genrushing, these flocks often scatter and reform as a blob of protecting each other until they can scurry into the loops.

The other type of Steve is basically the replacement Bill. Often times like some Bills, you will find them only after triggering a special cutscene. In Order to unlock the guardian Steve you must first chase and injure one other survivor, then the survivor needs to be enough of an idiot to return to the spot once or twice more (usually a gen or an unsafe loop) after being healed up. Once these conditions are met the Guardian Steve will appear the next time you decide to punish the foolish survivor. Much like their Bill counterparts, they will act as a "try to chase me" bait as much as possible. Unlike Bills, they are actually catch-able once they try to loop you. Bills just tend to loop you as long as they want to until they activate their console command that gives them  (for some reason) the ability to completely escape killers and turn invisible, or so I'm told.

Big scream little face

Nancies are somehow the more annoying kind and its never due to the perks they run (aside from TOTH now becoming a viable option to run against nancy squads like you would run sloppy with anyone else.)

Wild Nancy players often will seek out the weakest, babyest, clearly SWF'ed their way to rank 10, survivor and begin to orbit them at all times. Do not attempt to harm their host planet, Nancies will teleport into your blade and take the hit. They tend to run flashlights and will flash you breaking pallets their host slammed down. Take down the nancy first before thinking of harming their host. The host can be any random, any survivor, does not have to be in their very clear SWF group.

Lastly Nancy players are either rank 15 or rank 8 and no in between, unless they're the rank 1-6 carrying the rank 12 kids into a rank 10 game.

 (seriously fix matchmaking, for every bad rank 6 I kill at rank 10, another rank 15 escapes to get boosted to rank 6 and think they are any good.)

With the killer list (since it tends to affect pickrate) I will focus more on what ranks the players tend to be.

but that's all folks!

Dead By Daylight: Types of Survivors

Ah, survivor mains, 

the players with power in this asymmetrical game. So somehow when they die due to their mistakes they complain. Everyone loves our salty little entitled sacrifices. So let's go through the stereotypes!

This list is based on popular opinion as well as personal experience as of Patch 3.1.0 "The New Nightmare"

Dwight FairLocker

So given the fact that Dwight has some pretty good by the numbers teachables you'd expect him to be paired up as much as possible on generators right? and with leader he'd want to take a hit to help his team so they can heal him faster?

Welp

More often than not you'll find the type of player based on what cosmetics they wear, if (when you finally find him in a locker) he's got default clothes on; It's a locker Dwight. But if they wear the Dwearder, see me now cap and one of the red shirts, or the pizza delivery guy outfit; They're here to sweat. Often times you'll find them jumping off generators hoping you'll chase their teammates at all costs. If there's multiple Dwights in a game, it's a Survive with friends group and will likely have synchronized cosmetics. You'll rarely ever run into a baby Dwight unless they're in a locker because most of the newbies are busy playing........

Megthgarden

MegHead players tend to be the failed bait. From my experience Meg is a really good stealth survivor for quick dash ins and dash outs. But more often than not, Meg is out in the open leaving all the scratch marks, leading the killer to all her friends, botching hook rescues by ensuring they both go down. stuff like that. They fall into two categories, running premonition instead of spine chill so they dash out too early and reveal themselves (or more often after they mess a skill check), or running Nea teachables. Oh also they tend to go for the hatch at all costs (I've been guilty of this) "Scavenger out of bounds, Scavenger death."

Blendette

Claudette seems to be played by the most scummy and toxic players that are pulled in from far and wide. After all, her unique perks are usable on every survivor so who would play Claudette? Claudettes tend to run

in general

they just run between survivors, run to gens, run to killers begging to be followed so they can use self care. Then they think they can disappear in tall grass by crouching. They're often Ochido wannabes which is ironic cause they'll tell you to enjoy the ban when they're the ones holding the team back with Mcdonalds wifi. Like very few people think the majority of Claudettes are not chaotic evil.

Jake Farrel or Jake from Statefarm

xwing first edition reference

Jakes are quick and sneaky like an a-wing pilot (Ok I'm done referencing)

Jake's perks tend to be not very useful except for rare situations. Jakes fall under two categories: they either really don't want to be seen so they'll duck in and out like a meg; Or they're trying to run saboteur, and always get the hooks that wont be visited because his team is on the other side of the map. Overall on the spectrum of how scummy they play Jakes aren't too bad. Assuming you ever see them.

TOXIC NOOB3 KARLSSON

so, jokes about her looks aside, 

Nea has great teachables that can be used on almost any playstyle just like self care.

So often when you see a Nea, they want trouble. They want your toxic tears no matter what side you're on, the idea is one thing and one thing only:

FOLLOW ME KILLER DO IT I DARE YOU

Neas want to do what they can to piss off the killer, even if it means that gets her teammates killed so no gens get done while she's baiting the clown again. 

Neas tend to be the lowest kind of player, just "omg so stealthy" to "HEY OVER HERE" in two seconds flat.

And they still divide into two types! Either they're a god at looping and running so they constantly try to get you to follow them at all costs; or they suck.

The former will often get triggered when you don't follow them so they'll teabag flashspam loud noise spam, they want the attention they don't get at home. 

and the latter will type gg ez after being sacrificed

It's hilarious because cosmetics don't even determine which type they are.

Not my picture but it's hilarious

Laurie Decisive Strike

Now you don't see licensed survivors that often anymore unless they're an Ash.
Ever since the change to DS you don't see Lauries a lot

It used to be they would yell at you for dribbling even though they always have DS equipped. And they'd use Object of Obsession so hard that it would result in them not getting away, ever.
But your main job was not to touch them because DS unless you dribbled.
Now Lauries are still running the usual perks, but now their team is a SWF of Decisive Strikes.
Now if you see a Laurie without a SWF group, they're kinda fun.

Ace "search chests only" Vinaigrette

Aces fall into one of two categories, default clothes means they think they can play like any other survivor.

but the ones wearing the smoking robes and cosmetics like that? they're here to have fun, and while that does sometimes mean pallet looping. It usually means running a luck or chest offering and just going around with the most RNG things, like dodging skill checks, getting hooks, searching chests, and especially trying to unhook themselves. You don't see Aces that often, they're pretty cool.

Selling painted Bill's hat for 2 buds

How do I put this (welcome to consoles finally) There are some people who shouldn't touch bill with a 10 foot pole. You can see a few types of Bills out there. One type are clearly fans of Bill because Left 4 Dead, so they'll either be really good, or suck. Then there's the people who want him for the teachable, so Borrowed Time and usually Unbreakable (but left behind sucks so....) and will often go for the dumbest hook rescues to get both of them killed. Then there's the people who shouldn't be playing Bill. You can recognize them because they act like they're trying to be a mettle of man ash or something scummier, like a claud-meg-nea-dwearder fusion of toxic bois from all the realm. They stay in the open, never try to evade the killer effectively. and often get the death they deserve, which is detrimental to the team, that bill wouldn't be any different if he disconnected.

Feng and Bone

Feng players are interesting because they seen to be lawful good 99.99% of the time. It's rare to run into a scummy Feng. Usually they'll win just because they're good not because they need to cheese with adrenaline or any other crutch perks. The teachables usually separate them into two or three playstyles. A good Feng will almost always run Lithe as it's just good.

There's stealth jockey, you might see them run Poised or Disruption, and they'll use Technician and probably Stakeout, all gens and no sightings.

Then there's locator Feng; Alert, Dark sense, Detective's hunch likely and Spine Chill. These Fengs want to know where the killer and their goodies are at all times.

overall Fengs are respectable players. unlike....

not my picture but dang is it funny

David Dead Hard

Do I even need to explain a David King Player to you?

Quentin got the heroin

excuse me, who?

Double Tapp

If you ever see a Tapp without a generator, then you aren't looking hard enough. All Tapps are loyal to generators so much so that you can see they wear mini generator earrings. The hairdo is in the shape of a gen, his lungs are a generator. So being such generator huggers, Tapps are actual respectable players (and that's not just because I play him). And they're good to boot! they'll often do the best for the team, and run any perks that fit their playstyle, not that are "good". I respect Tapps enough to TRY to hook them LAST of all the survivors.

Kate Dance with me

Kates are surprisingly the good kind of "chase me pls" player, you'll often see them run an obsession perk for some reason (likely DS) and they just tend be out in the open ready to dart at any point. They're surprisingly fun to play with and you rarely will find a  BAD Kate.

Francis from Left 4 Dead

(We miss you Etika)

Now these Adams are an interesting type. Because they tend to Gen Jockey but don't want any consequences for being bad. So they'll stay as far away from you as they can, forget distraction, and do what they can to make sure they don't get hooked first (deliverance). But as a killer you'll always make sure an Adam gets hooked first. 

They don't bring much else to the table, and since they're rare-ish I don't even know what else they run, not autodidact or distraction for sure.

Fat Jesus

come on you've thought that too

Jeff's tend to be the Claudette that actually is never seen. You'll play against a Jeff or two that is the non scummy replacement for the altruistic member of the team. They'll be hard to find and you'll only catch one near the hook. However if you get their scent, they're hard to lose. Now if you see them with like makeup or some other cosmetic, they're a Claudette player that thought they could disguise as a good person.

Jane Thiccero

Jane's are always found when you play as a survivor, but when you play as a killer you'll rarely encounter a Jane. I can guarantee that they're running head on for sure. 

But Poised and Solidarity are actually really good. If they're running Solidarity they're running We'll Make It and are constantly going for hook rescues. But often you'll find two stacks of them for some reason, as well as some other survivor always tailing them.

Ash wins the hand

No that's not just a pun.

Ash players are all the rage right now.

They're as common as a Dwight,  you just cant stop finding them.

Always running Mettle of Man, and almost always buckle up. They just want you to hit them. They're your very own 300 bloodpoint farm.

Occasionally you'll probably see someone running Ashy Slashy with Flip flop, Unbreakable, and Tenacity, probably Boil Over too.

But most of the time, Ash's are kinda boring as they all play the same. At least Ashes are probably decent enough to take care of themselves, running a medkit or a deadly accurate flashlight.

And that's everything! next up will be the killers of course.