Let's Play Valkyria Chronicles 4! Chapter 3 - Rangers In The Storm

More backstory! Well, sort of. What we have here is some light-hearted squad hijinks that turn silly, plus some mandatory anime silliness between Claude and Riley. Then combat. Lots of combat.



The whole thing ends on a really tough note though, as we finally get some backstory on what happened between Riley and Claude when they were kids. It's the first time the story gets dark for a little bit, but it's not the last.

Remember, this is a war story. Not everyone gets a happy ending. Not everyone started with a happy beginning either.

Let's Play Wing Commander - McAuliffe System, Mission 1 - Don't Mine Me...

New system, new ship, new wingman. It was great to fly with Paladin on my wing, but to be honest, I could have done with the transfer into the Blue Devils. Nothing against the squadron itself, but like Iceman warned me, the Scimitar is a gun heavy slug. Oh well, the Colonel sets the squadrons, not me.



My first mission with Paladin was a simple four point patrol. We ran into some Dralthi at Nav 1 and made quick work of them. The Scim may not be artful, but against the flying bullseyes, burning in and dumping a full capacitator of mass driver shots is all the art you need.

The minefield at Nav 3 was another matter. I don't know Paladin managed to slice through that field the way he did, but I was dodging those damn magnetic mines the whole time, and praying my shields would hold up. At least I got to take my frustrations out on a wing of Salthi that were hanging around near Nav 4.

Paladin's a good wingman. You can always count on him to be right where he should be. He likes to let pilots learn by experience, and only intervene when he needs to. Part of me is surprised that he's not an academy IP, but having his experience embedded in the squadron is definitely a huge win for every one of us younger pilots who are willing to listen.

Lets Play Valkyria Chronicles 4 - Interlude: Origin Story

This game gets surprisingly deep sometimes. Squad E's origin story goes to some interesting places, and Claude is shown taking a very mature approach (mostly) to learning how to lead his new team.



Obviously Squad E has had some discipline issues, but Raz is going to improve as the story goes on. What happened to Kai though?

Around the Web - A Fallout 76 Review

Over at Marooners' Rock, my collegue Alex took on the task of reviewing Fallout 76.

Image via Marooners' Rock and Bethesda.

Despite the multitude of arguably offensive flaws, I am having a really good time with Fallout 76. Although, I must admit that I am a member of the game’s super specific target audience. Built on the framework established by Fallout 4, which was built on surprisingly old Creation Engine, Fallout 76 feels more like an ambitious mod or expansion than a new game. That aside, the setting of West Virginia, being able to traverse the Wasteland with friends, an abundance of new creatures to fight, and lots of items to collect keeps me coming back for more.

 Fallout 76 is a multiplayer survival title that focuses on a much smaller pool of players on a server rather than the framerate crashing masses found in an MMO. Imagine Fallout 4 with the ability for others to run around as well. When it works (we’ll get to the downsides shortly) playing Fallout with a group is pretty awesome. Firefights are easier to manage with more people and exploring with others can be extremely engaging. West Virginia is captured fairly well, focusing on the general outline than actual realism. This means that certain areas of the map have been shifted a bit and for those familiar with the state it can get a bit confusing. Either way, it is incredible to come upon the capitol building in Charleston or walk the remnants of the Morgantown Airport.

I'm glad Alex is having fun. The thing is, I'm a huge Fallout series fan too, but his negatives for Fallout 76 pretty well cover why I haven't bought the game yet. Pure and simple, I don't want a multiplayer Fallout game. Or maybe I might (actually, I'd love a true Fallout MMORPG), but I just don't want this multiplayer game. Certainly not in the state it's currently in. Maybe sometime next year, once Bethesda has worked all the bugs out, released their DLC, and decided to do their inevitable Game of the Year version, I'll pick it up. Until then, this is the first, and hopefully only, Fallout game where I'm content to just watch from the sidelines.

Let's Play Ash of Gods: Redemption - Everyone Together Now! - Chapter 8c

Thorn and his band finally arrive in Opacum. A brief happy reunion between Mact, Gleda, and their grandfather is in order, but the demands of the siege are on the top of everyone’s mind. Thorn must give an account of himself the king, then there’s a final banquet to attend before the siege.

Around the Web: The Crew 2 (Xbox One) Review

"What if someone made a racing game that threw almost every class anyone could think of into the mix and just let players race whatever?"

Fun with the livery creator. An MHI theme for this hovercraft seemed about right. Now if only I could add a .50 cal turret on the top.

That seems to have been the question that the designers of The Crew 2 started with, and were fortunate that Ubisoft allowed them creative freedom to do so. At least, that's my opinion in my review of The Crew 2, which is now up at Marooners' Rock.

GeeBee. Statue of Liberty. Party.

While the game overall has some polish issues that aren't present in competing open world racing games such as the Forza Horizon series, the overall package is fun enough to make up for the flaws. Racing Hovercraft, Jet Sprint boats, Monster trucks, aerobatics aircraft and more is more is so much fun that a lot of the "core" driving races feel pedestrian by comparison. It's certainly not an accurate, high-fidelity simulation of anything. Neither is the Ace Combat series. But when the games get hit the fun formula correctly, realism doesn't really matter.

Sadly, there's no helicopter racing category. Yet...

Monday Vlogging: Sometimes I Actually Finish Games

Maybe I'll get my play throughs done a little more frequently if I'm only focusing on one at a time...

Let's Play Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance - B5M5 - Save The Smugglers!

Uh-oh, someone leaked the location of the smugglers aiding the Rebel Alliance to the Empire. Now it's a race against time to try and save their shuttle from both rival smugglers and the Imperials.



Jump in an A-Wing and save the day!

Let's Play: Ash of Gods: Redemption, Chapter One

Ash of Gods: Redemption is a recent RPG with some interesting roguelike elements. The first game from indie developer AurumDust, it's got tons of replay value, solid world building, and a meaty story.

Let's dive in to Chapter One, shall we?



Tune in next week for Chapter Two. Same Blog Time, Same Blog Channel

Let's Play Light Fall, Act II

Continuing last week's adventure, here's Act II of Light Fall



There's only one act left. However, due to some patch issues, that video's going to have to wait a bit. Next will will have something a little different.

Let's Play Light Fall, Act I

Following up last week's Light Fall Prologue, here's Act I of my Light Fall playthrough.




One of the things I really enjoy about this game is that the difficulty ramps up at a very reasonable pace. Act I is reasonably more difficult than the Prologue, and introduces a couple of new concepts. Act II, as we'll see next week, follows a similar formula, while revealing more about the world and the big adventure therein.

Post PAX AAR Part 2 - Vlog 2018-16

A lot more thoughts on PAX East 2018. Definitely a lot of fun and, well, just watch the video.

Flying Tigers: Shadows Over China Game Review

I really wanted to like Flying Tigers: Shadows Over China (FTSOC). There simply aren't that many good, or even mediocre flight games anymore, and those that do come out tend to (understandably) focus on the European theatre, or maybe the Pacific. For new studio ACE MADDOX to make their first game focus on the China-Burma-India theatre was a bold move, even if they did hedge their bets by putting the focus squarely on one of the most famous "volunteer" fighting groups to ever exist.

Screenshot courtesy of Ace Maddox

The game definitely delivers on the AvGeek side. They even managed to include a couple of aircraft that I'd never heard of before, and I thought I pretty much knew every WWII aircraft at this point. Surprise! Unfortunately, as my full review on Marooner's Rock covers, there were a few other issues that I wish the devs had put as much focus into.

Still, it's a solid game, and a good choice for would be console aviators. I'll have videos coming out in the following weeks as I break down the campaign missions, and the aircraft used.

Let's Play: Minecraft: Story Mode Season 1, Episodes 2 & 3 - Get the Band Back Together

It's time to get the band back together in Minecraft: Story Mode! In an uncharacteristic decision, I chose brains over explosives, meaning that I got the Episode 2 quest to save the brainy mage, rather than the TNT obsessed troll.




Then things got weird...



I'm sure this will work out fine, and that the remaining five episodes are just happy fun times, right?

Let's Play Minecraft: Story Mode - Season One, Episode One - Blocked Out

Taking a break from the Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance vids for a bit, due to life complications. Houses and packing are work, y'all.

So here we are with Telltale Games' Minecraft: Story Mode series. I'm not a big Minecraft fan, but this series surprised me with how much I generally liked it. The characters are fun, the voice acting is solid, and the plot is good enough to draw me in, despite knowing next to nothing about Minecraft (other than that my kids are always yelling at each other about it). Here's Episode One.

Let's Play: Flicky

Finished this out a few weeks ago for Backlog Burndown #20, but the video took quite some time to edit. For a video LP that clocks in under thirty minutes, this took over three hours of gameplay time to get through.

This definitely isn't one of those games I'd recommend as a big classic playthrough, unless you have really fond memories of it from childhood. It's just sort of there. The art style is unique, but the gameplay is definitely more on the frustrating side of challenging.

The Book of Face helpfully* pointed me to a December article from PC Gamer for their Top 25 Best Space Games on PC. Not that I have too many issues with their choices (although how System Shock 2 didn't make the cut is beyond me) but man is it ever kind of depressing that the majority of the good space combat sims are all from the '90s.

Although I'm an original backer of Star Citizen, I wouldn't say it belongs on the list either. It's still too far from finished. Hopefully it's going to be a worthy successor to the Wing Commander throne someday...

This is the cockpit view that made me fall in love with space games.
Screenshot from gog.com

Independence War really belongs on there too. A game with full Newtonian physics more than fifteen years before Elite: Dangerous, and one of the few that really made you feel like you were captaining a bigger ship. Also, what's a list of space games without a single Star Trek game? Granted a lot of those have been hot garbage, but Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force was excellent, even if it did have a pretty weak source show to work with. At least it wasn't based on Enterprise.

I-War isn't all that complicated. Okay, it is.
Screenshot via gog.com

For my (admittedly biased) money though, I would have included Star Trek: Starfleet Academy as the representative for that franchise. Not the most polished space sim, but the only one that gave you the chance to stand on the bridge of a Federation ship and resolve conflicts with violence, or occasionally diplomacy. Also included a fair number of cameos from members of the original Trek cast.

That's your captain (on the right) and part of the crew though. You're
definitely more of a Kirk than a Picard.
Screenshot from gog.com

*Not actually helpful

PAX South 2017 AAR

This was my first year attending PAX South. While I've been to PAX West (formerly PAX Prime, and formerly just PAX before that), this was a totally different experience.

I saw a lot of great games, and wrote previews for the following games:
Dreadnought,
Lightspeed Frontier,
Semispheres,
Hello Neighbor,
Light Fall,
Mr Shifty, and
Streets of Rogue 

I also did some daily wrap-ups.
PAX South Day One
PAX South Day Two
PAX South Day Three

Great show, and I hope to be back next year!

New on Marooner's Rock: Backlog Burndown #011 - Not a Happy Ending?

Backlog Burndown takes on two games this week: The Sad Tale of Emmeline Burns and Kill The Plumber.

From The Sad Tale of Emmeline Burns. Definitely sad.

Super Thunder Blade Level 3 Playthrough on Youtube

New on Youtube, I'm getting back to my Backlog Burndown series with Level 3 of Super Thunder Blade.

The How Long To Beat on these old console shooters is turning out to be hopelessly optimistic, but it feels great when you finally knock one out. Finishing Level 3 puts me three quarters of the way there!