Recent Gaming Stuffs

God I've gotten lazy with this blog.

Anyway, so this will mostly be about Warhammer 40,000 Eternal Crusade and DOOM 2016, my two most anticipated games this year.

ETERNAL CRUSADE

You can check out my current lineup of Eternal Crusade videos here. The game is still in Early Access, and will be for some time, but you can get it and start playing as Space Marines or Chaos Space Marines for $40. Eldar will be added in a future patch, though we're not sure when exactly that will be. Orks will not arrive until after the game goes into full release, as this is a partially free-to-play faction and they want to service the paying customers first. Note that these will be free updates.

There are 4 subfactions for both Space Marines and Chaos: Space Marines can be Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, or Imperial Fists (Space Wolves are still in development much to my dismay), while Chaos can be Black Legion, Alpha Legion (yay!), Word Bearers, or Night Lords (Iron Warriors still in development).

It will eventually be open world a la Planetside 2, and they have a world map now to remind everyone of that, though it's still essentially Space Marine with more weapons.

The graphics are nothing spectacular, but serviceable, and will hopefully improve as the game is updated. It runs Unreal Engine 4 so there is plenty of potential. The menu screen really needs to add more options, however, and do away with the simple slider as it means nothing.

I did notice a 1.7 GB download update this morning, so hopefully there will be some nice goodies next time I play. (Notes indicate plasma pistols and CHAINAXES!!!!)

Still trying to talk mysterysquick to get it, but he is determined to hold out until Eldar become playable.

DOOM 2016

Open Beta started (officially) today. It is currently setting Steam on fire I think, as a lot of people are extremely negative about it. My thoughts:

Graphics are good but not great. Gameplay (Multiplayer-only, I should mention) feels fast, with elements from new and old shooters.

Customization is a nice feature, leading to some delightfully garish paint jobs on both armor and weapons. Silly to have however, as only team-based multiplayer is available, so everyone is forced to wear the same colors anyway (weaposns still keep their paint jobs I think; and during the team set up and victory screens you can see the custom armor).

Weapons feel underpowered, particularly the rocket launcher and super shotgun, which should border on one-hit-kill levels of damage. Damage numbers instead of chunky salsa is head-scratching.

Loadouts are fine, but I would prefer to run around picking up weapons as I go.

Demon transformation adds a nice wrinkle to the game.

Overall I am enjoying it, though it will not become THE GREATEST FPS EVER, which seems to be what some people were expecting. It's worth a look.

OTHER THOUGHTS

I will eventually get a video up for Smite, though probably on the Redshirt Brigade channel as I will mostly likely be playing with JollyChaos and ChaosReaperXD when I do so.

Of course, the MOBA I was most looking forward to was Warhammer 40,000 Dark Nexus Arena. it closed on March 31, having never made it out of Early Access due to underwhelming support. This particularly sucks for anyone who actually spent money on the game, i.e. purchased skins and such.

I suppose now the game I most want is Warhammer 40,000 Battlefleet Gothic Armada, followed by Tower of Guns. Hopefully there are some Steam cards in my future.

Wii U

Christmas has come and gone, and hopefully we all got some new gaming toys.

This year's big surprise is my wife getting me a Wii U. I'm an old school Nintendo fan, and most of what I can get on PS4 and Xbox 1 are available on PC, so the Wii U seemed logical.

She got me the Smash Bros./Splatoon bundle. I have only played Splatoon once so far, and I can say the controls will take some getting used to. Smash, on the other hand, is the Smash we all know and love.

I already knew I had to have Smash for Wii U once it was announced Mega Man would be a playable character. Ironically, while I have not played a lot of Mega Man games, I am a big fan (mysterysquick is the big Mega Man guy, though). We already have the unlockable characters, well, unlocked, so now it's a matter of getting the DLC characters we want (Ryu from Street Fighter and Cloud from Final Fantasy VII) as well as costumes for Mii Fighters (Mega Man X for my gunner).

Yep, you can create fighters in Smash using your Mii. There are 3 styles available: Brawler, Swordsman, and Gunner. You can choose what equipment they use (affecting whether they are Speedy, Defensive, Strong, or some combination of the 3) and what their Special moves are (B button) and costume. More equipment and costumes are unlocked through the various single player modes. Equipment can also be used to customize existing fighters.

My youngest son also got Lego Jurassic World from his brother, who got a pile of GameStop cards for Christmas (he got a PS4 so I wanted to make sure he had money to start a library). I don't think he's really played it yet though. And this week we got Disney Infinity 3.0. I was very "meh" on the game when it was first released and featured Disney and Disney/Pixar characters, then 2.0 came out with Marvel Comics characters, which got my attention. Finally, 3.0 came out, adding Star Wars, and the part of my brain that wants all things Star Wars lit up like Times Square. So, using gift cards we got for Target, we purchased the Wii U Starter Set, which includes Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano, and the Twilight of the Republic playset. Prequel characters are unacceptable, so I also snagged Darth Vader. Later, I picked up the Frozen boxed set (comes with Anna and Elsa) for my daughter (who is 19 months and obviously isn't playing yet, but she loves Frozen and so will probably still find it entertaining), then my sons picked out Kylo Ren and Hulkbuster Iron Man. JollyChaos is slightly addicted to the game now. He wants to get it for PS4 but doesn't really have anyone to play with, so he's apparently OK just playing at my place.

So looks like I'll be spending a lot of time on Smash and Disney Infinity. Since I can play in the living room it's a bit easier than gaming on my PC right now I'm afraid.

World Of Warcraft: Part 2

So where did I leave off. Oh yes, Endless Nightmares. After Mortality went down a guild called Endless Nightmares was recruiting new members for their raid group. I had switched my hunter's spec from Marksmanship (which I had leveled with, bad idea at the time) to Beast Mastery. Oddly enough, my wife's hunter had been Beast Mastery, but ended up switching to Marksmanship when she joined Endless Nightmares.

Thus began our time as raiders in WoW. This was probably the most fun period for me (my wife not so much, not sure if the guild leadership didn't like her or what, but there were times she was left out of raids that left us scratching our heads).

Anyway, my first raid with them was temporary. One of the members (a warlock), was running late, so I filled in for a couple of bosses in Karazhan. The first boss, Attumen the Huntsman, dropped the schematic (engineering recipe) for the best scope in the game at the time (attaches to a bow, crossbow or gun for I think extra crit). The warlock was an engineer at max skill, so he could make it, but of course, was not in the group. I was the only other engineer, so even though my skill was still too low, I got the pattern. What was funny, this was only my second time on this boss. The lock player was understandably annoyed, as he was at Exalted reputation with the faction that deals with Kara (The Violet Eye, I think) and had never seen it drop (he got it the next week though). That provided me with motivation to level my engineering skill, which also yielded the schematic for the second best scope, although I had no reason to make that one.

This would prove to be the height of my WoW powers, though we only barely got into tier 5 content by the end. We raided Karazhan weekly, and eventually had enough people for 2 groups (it was a 10-person raid), one for members who needed gear, and one more as a speed run (by this point, I was in the latter). Typically there was a competition of sorts among the damage classes to see who would top the damage meter. Usually our mage would come in first, while second place would go back and fourth between my hunter and the warlock.

Finally we had enough people to start 25-man content (Vanilla WoW raids were 10, 25, or 40 player raids. TBC had a couple of 10 player raids but most were 25 players). Gruul's Lair came first. I think we actually got through the first boss just fine (more or less). It was actually 5 bosses at once and required a fair amount of coordination. This is where my wife and I could really shine. One of these bosses was ideal for paired hunters to tank. He had only ranged attacks, and would polymorph whoever was highest on his threat meter, so two hunters stacking damage and trading polymorphs was one of the recommended ways to tank him (the other option is to have a Balance druid in Moonkin form tank him solo, as transformed druids are immune to polymorph). I remember we screwed up once, as the call went out for all DPS to move to another boss, so, being hunters, we just kind of went and started on that boss before our assigned target was down. Oops. Other than that, having my wife and I tank this thing was a great way to go.  Gruul gave us a lot of trouble, though strangely, once we got him down he was practically on farm.

Magtheridon's Lair came next. Interesting fact: I never got to be straight DPS on this guy. First time playing it was in a pug (our guild leader was in the pug and they needed more players so a few of us got invited), and I was assigned as a cube clicker. He has some kind of overpowered nuke, and 5 players in the raid had to click on these cubes in the room to banish him and prevent him from casting it. I was perpetually a cube clicker after that. I seem to remember him being fairly easy. Not sure we ever wiped actually.

To be continued...

World Of Warcraft

I started playing World of Warcraft back in January 2007. It's not the first MMO I've played and I doubt it would be the last, but it's probably the best, at least so far. Most of the fun was in the early years; admittedly it eventually became a grind and I don't think I'm getting back into it any time soon.

Back in 2006, around, April-May or so, I started a club in Dark Jedi Organization called United Marine Brigades, supporting Battlefield 2 and the Special Forces expansion, eventually adding Battlefield 2142 as well. My wife joined as well and (after I stepped down as overall commander) moved up to second-in-command. Ultimately, World Of Warcraft brought this club down. We had become somewhat bored with BF2 and didn't see another multiplayer shooter on the horizon to help reinvigorate the club.

Virtually all of my officers ended up moving on to WoW. One of them convinced my wife to download the trial (at the time, I think it was a 14-day trial). After taking a look while she was playing, I decided to give it a shot. Then my friend and neighbor (he lived upstairs from us at the time and kept his laptop in our apartment since he pretty much always played with us) decided to try it as well. Next thing I know, we're buying WoW and signing up for subscriptions.

The Burning Crusade era

We began not long after the first expansion was released (sorry, we can't wax nostalgic over vanilla WoW, because we weren't there). I initially created an Orc warrior named Axisomega, but by level 12 decided I wanted a hunter, which was a bad idea since my wife was playing one. Hers is an Orc, mine is a Tauren initially named Axisomicron. We joined our friend's guild (named Awesome Squad) on the lightning's Blade PVP realm (bad plan) and began the quest to level 70. My neighbor played a Tauren warrior (named Brenyeto) but ended up falling way behind, as he kept selling his quest greens and buying vendor gear. So our main players consisted of two hunters, an enhancement shaman (Shadowmurk), a shadow priest (Geekranger) and a rogue (forget his name; we called him Slicer but I don't remember for sure if that was the name of his toon). We later added a warlock (Oddun) and a holy paladin (Jiir), and a balance druid (forgot his name tho). See our problem? No tanks! We knew an Orc warrior named Ragrim who occasionally tanked for us, but he had guild obligations and eventually quit. Once we got to level 70 and wanted to get ready to start raiding we were in trouble. Jiir was willing to tank but Shadowmurk was adamant he would never heal. Brenyeto was way behind for a while and I was still too far behind on my paladin. So we had to pug tanks for a time. Eventually Brenyeto got caught up, and we set about to getting him tank gear, which involved me smelting lots of felsteel (I was mining/engineering) and then tracking down a blacksmith, who made him the felsteel armor set and charged him way too much for the service (usually it's a small fee or even free if you provide your own materials; this guy charged some 250 gold). He never really got the hang of tanking though. I think he still plays but he mostly plays hunters now.

Anyway, during this time some of us started Alliance characters on the Duskwood realm. All Night Elves too somehow. Shadowmurk rolled a warrior, my wife a priest, and myself a druid. Smart! We had a healer, and a tank, and someone who could do whatever was needed (Shadowmurk needed more help with tanking than my wife did with healing, quite the opposite of what was expected). We initially joined a guild called Ozrael's Dominion, which was part of DJO. Eventually we decided we liked things better on the Horde, and transferred our toons to Duskwood (my hunter and paladin, my wife's hunter and warrior). We initially joined a guild called Mortality, but they lasted less than a week.

Eventually we joined a guild called Endless Nightmares, and that's when we finally took to raiding.

(To be continued)

DOOM: The Wishlist

As many of you know, there is a DOOM reboot in the works being developed by Bethesda Softworks. If memory serves it reboots the original DOOM and DOOM 2 (ignoring DOOM 3) and is to feature a more old-school gameplay experience, which I would question had Wolfenstein: The New Order not delivered just such a promise (or so I've heard at least; tough getting a lot of new games when you have a family to support after all).

So here's a list of what I want to see: my favorite thing about shooters. THE WEAPONS. Basically, revamped versions of the classic DOOM weapons, not so much new weapons. Anyway, here's my list.

CHAINSAW: Really, not much to change about it. it's a chainsaw. Unless they want to make it a chainSWORD, which will probably run into legal issues.

PISTOL: While I wouldn't mind seeing the pistol go away (see below), revamping it into a futuristic version of the Colt 1911 .45 ACP pistol would be fine. It's a last-resort weapon anyway. Alt-Fire: Probably none. Maybe it can be a melee attack (HUMILIATION)

ASSAULT RIFLE: Borrowing from the fantastic Brutal DOOM mod, the pistol would no longer be the (only) starting weapon. Marines are typically equipped with some kind of assault rifle, so a futuristic version of the M16 or maybe F2000 would be appropriate. Perhaps limit it to 3-round burst mode. Alt-Fire: Semi-auto I guess.

SHOTGUN: And not the old backwoods wood-stock shotty from the old game, a proper tactical pump-action shotgun, though it would essentially function the same. Whether it will still be Ol' Reliable like the old days remains to be seen. For those not in the know, the shotgun was your best friend in DOOM. Most of the weaker enemies could be killed in 1-2 hits, if all the pellets hit, and had a reliable fire rate. 50 rounds of ammo was not much but shotgun shells tended to be plentiful. Alt-fire: Hold down to keep the barrel pointed while racking and firing maybe?

SUPER SHOTGUN: Introduced in DOOM 2, presented as an upgraded shotgun. For the price of 2 shells instead of one, it dealt 3 times the damage (slightly more than a rocket) if all of the pellets hit. It was debatable how much it was worth using over the standard shotgun, however, as it had a much slower reload time. Anyway, I want to see Quake 2's massive super shotgun return for this one. Alt-Fire: Primary fire is both barrels, so maybe alt-fire can be fire them alternately, creating a rapid fire effect at the cost of some damage.

CHAINGUN: Let's face it, DOOM's chaingun was underwhelming. It was essentially a full-auto pistol. It used the same ammo, and dealt the same damage if I recall. We can do better. Quake 2's chaingun had the right idea, it spun faster the longer you kept shooting. Admittedly both had limitations due to the technologies of the day, but that's not the case any more. Let's do a proper man-portable minigun. .30-caliber ammo firing about 3,000 rounds per minute. There would be a firing delay while the barrels get up to speed, and would  run out of its belt-fed ammo in a few seconds of sustained fire (and the barrels would probably be pretty hot, but we don't care about that), but the carnage would be GLORIOUS. Most enemies would be ripped (AND TORN) to shreds. Alt-Fire: Spin the barrels without firing, like The Heavy in TF2.

ROCKET LAUNCHER: If alt-fire modes are possible, I would like to see this modeled after the rocket launcher in Unreal Tournament. Primary fire is the standard "launch a rocket and watch something explode" more, while alt fire is effectively a grenade launcher. Maybe even keep the UT version's ability to simultaneously launch multiple rockets!

PLASMA GUN: I'm iffy on this one. While I'm OK with it being an energy assault rifle (like the old days), I also wouldn't mind if this became a proper beam weapon. OK, so here are my options: It fires "laser projectiles" (encapsulated plasma) on full auto that explode on impact. The beam could be an alt-fire mode (so I get both wishes) that's basically a laser flamethrower (probably at a cost of quicker ammo consumption).

THUNDERBOLT: Returning from the original Quake. It's a really cool weapon, seeing as how it throws lightning at monsters. Can be used (and I think even Quake allowed this) to fry a bunch of enemies if they are standing in water or swimming. Not sure what an alt-fire mode could be...

BFG 9000 10k: Yes, I am deferring to Quake 2 here. I love DOOM, and the BFG was an amazing ultimate weapon for its day, but I think Quake 2's BFG was sooooo much better. While the BFG 9000 would fire a single massive burst that would kill several enemies at once, the 10k could clear entire rooms. Perhaps an upgraded version could be made: The primary fire is a large burst useful for taking down bosses, while the alt-fire mode is a wide dispersal that can clear roomfuls of smaller monsters.

More Gran Turismo

I apologize for the lack of videos. it's not just parenting; it gets really hot on the second floor of my house, which is where my PC is located. So when I get a chance to play it's much more comfortable to do so downstairs in the living room on the PS3. I could play on my wife's computer, but it's not set up to record video of my games.

So it's been all about Gran Turismo 5. I am glad that I don't have to go crazy getting the game's various licenses, as it's a pain in the ass and takes away from the actual racing (I'm sure there are benefits to acquiring the licenses; perhaps access to certain races or cars that otherwise can't be acquired, and certainly 100% completion).

I finally have a car that I want to use for the Gran Turismo World Championship race series. I had originally planned to use my 2010 Camaro SS with the racing modification, but that car will not be sufficient. Instead I will be using a racing modified 2009 Corvette ZR-1. I ran the first race with the ZR-1 I bought for JollyChaos and won handily, despite the fact that it had serious issues with understeer (sheer power won the day). So I bought another ZR-1 (a 185k credit high-end sports car) and applied the racing mod (another 385k credits, ouch! But it includes some upgrades, such as the full customization transmission and suspension) and then the remaining upgrades to make this an 880-horsepower monster.

Racing modifications add some performance upgrades, reduce weight (more so than the typical weight reduction upgrades), and repaint the car to make it look like a professional race car; it's only available on a fairly limited number of models. As I have a preference for American cars with a muscle car heritage (the 2010 Camaro SS, 1969 Camaro Z28, 1970 Challenger R/T, and several Corvettes are eligible), I went with the 'vette.

Lucky for me, there haven't been any cars in the used lot that I really wanted (almost bit on a 1998 Ford Escort rally car, but I generally stick to classic muscle cars), so I was able to just focus on making money and upgrading the Corvette.

JollyChaos' ZR-1 actually came about when I planned to buy him the Lamborghini Aventador, but turns out that that car is paid DLC which is no longer available (I imagine you can still get it if you buy the XL Edition, I have the standard edition). After some consideration he chose the ZR-1, which then led me to decide that I needed one myself (I could easily with the GT championship with my GT-R or R8, but without the racing mod they would look rather out of place).

On another note, Redshirt Brigade is back for Extra Life, but we will be live streaming the weekend after Extra Life Day due to the recently-married mysterysquick going on his honeymoon. We will be broadcasting on his Twitch channel starting at 8 AM on November 14. For the first time we will actually be at his (new) apartment, so there will be some logistics that need to be worked out (previous years have been at my house).

Finally, a new update!

OK, four months between updates is bad.

I mentioned on one of my videos that my daughter (now 1) is very active, so I can't really just leave her to go jump on my computer. My 6-year-old son can keep an eye on her, but he's not always great about it and working the overnight shift means I have very little energy. I may be going through a shift change in the near future so we'll see how that affects things.

Anyhow, when I have been playing it's been Grand Theft Auto V, as evidenced by my last several videos. Twitch has a new direct export to YouTube feature, which is why the live streams I uploaded lack my usual intro. The annoyance being that it wasn't able to upload it all at once, hence the 15 minute bits.

I recently acquired Gran Turismo 5 for PS3, as anyone who follows my Facebook page knows. God I forgot how much I loved that series (though I probably could have just read my old blog post about it as a reminder). It was rather funny trying to drive a car in GT5 (a fairly accurate simulator) after spending so much time playing GTA V (and its arcade-y driving model). But I made the necessary adjustments. I am by no means a great driver, but I'm better than I used to be.

One of my missions in Gran Turismo is to collect every classic muscle car possible. Here is my list so far:

1969 Chevy Camaro Z28
1970 Dodge Challenger R/T
1970 Dodge Charger 440 R/T
1970 Plymouth Superbird
1970 Chevy Chevelle SS 454
1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1
1966 Shelby Cobra 427
1962 Buick Special

Of course, old school muscle cars have a tendency to be very poor track cars (though they get better with tuning and upgrades) so for races outside the confines of 1979 and earlier, I have a few favorites:

2010 Chevy Camaro SS (700 hp, all upgrades)
2010 Subaru Impreza WRX STi (508 hp)
2009 Nissan GT-R SpecV (850 hp, all upgrades)

Recently I also purchased a 2009 Audi R8 5.2L FSI Quattro for races requiring German makes. I'm not fond of it as the rear mounted engine gives it a certain quirkiness at times (i.e. I spin the hell out on it a lot, not easy to do on an AWD vehicle). It's mostly upgraded (870+ hp) needing only the weight reduction and chassis reinforcement upgrades..

The Camaro was really my go-to vehicle for quite some time, up until I reached the Expert series races. There's a series for turbo-powered cars with a race on the High Speed Ring track (very easy) that rakes in $36k for a win, against cars in the 300+ hp range. The Camaro is a normally aspirated vehicle (albeit with a supercharger) that's ineligible, while my modestly upgraded WRX sedan was already running over 400 hp. I made sure to upgrade the suspension and transmission (the full customize transmission is one of the most important upgrades for your vehicle; for money I took my Camaro to the Supercar championship race on Daytona. $17k per win!) and went nuts. This was around the time I decided to get the GT-R, as it's one of the best cars for the money imo.

At some point I'll tackle the Gran Turismo and Polyphony Digital championships, but I haven't decided what car to run yet. I want one with a racing modification, or at least a full-on race car, but we'll see what unfolds. I need to stop blowing money on muscle cars for a while though.