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.