console – MRAAKTAGON

Unicorn Overlord – first GOTY candidate for 2024? Yeah.

Vanillaware are naughty, naughty sumkas to be sure, with their cute but sexy Odin’s Sphere leading into their side scrolling answer to Diablo, Dragon’s Crown, with the largest breasts on record for a playable character. You’d think a studio so obsessed with giant barbarian woman’s thighs wouldn’t be able to crank out such good games time and time again, but they certainly have in the past and have done it again!

Before I gush all over Unicorn Overlord, I would be remiss if I did not mention that I did not like Vanillaware’s last game, 13 Sentinels, and wished I had never bought it. The story was Soul Nomad and The World Eaters level confusing with the difference being that the story parts completely got in the way of the combat. The early game the sequences where you run around as various characters in frustrating side-scrolling puzzles were so long and arduous as to negate the fun of the tactical mech combat once you eventually got to it, and even then, it was far to short in the mech, and way to long out of it. Even my kids that tend to like those sorts of games on the Switch just won’t bother with 13 Sentinels. Luckily, that is the past as we now have a game from Vanillaware that does the exact opposite: has a story and it gets the fuck out of the way for the joy of the tactical combat!

Unicorn Overlord, for those that may have never heard about it yet, is a modern Ogre Battle, which means it is an RPG with tons of different characters that are organized into battle units. Each of these units ends up having different capabilities in tactical as well as strategic contexts. Characters level up and have light item management (nothing like Dragon’s Crown/ Diablo though) and also grow affinity with their different combat groups over time. Choosing the right battle group for the right job at the right time is critical to success and building out those ‘right’ battle groups is half the fun of the game, the other half is the slaughter parts.

There are so many games around to put time into, why play this over other games? First, it’s absolutely gorgeous. For a tactical battle game, the art, character design and animation is over the top. Player’s have an option to skip battle animations but I almost NEVER do, just to see my plucky characters in all their animated glory.

Second, the core gameplay loop is done extremely well. You unlock new characters during the story and can combine them with existing units, form new ones and then try them out vs enemies or in practice. The strategic aspects of positioning, blocking, the action point economy and special leader/member powers on the strategic map is all just superbly done. As a fan of Ogre Battle/Soul Nomad and the World Eaters style games, I’m going to hazard to say that this is probably already my favorite in the genre.

Lastly: Tits. Everyone loves them. Every man, woman and child on earth. Vanillaware knows this.

Negatives, and there are a few, consist of a bit of chaos and confusion during the real-time strategic portion of the game, where, especially on the Switch, it can be hard to see what unit is next to another unit. I did get into a forever loop situation where two units, both out of action points, were constantly going to fight each other and neither could harm on another. One unit was up against the side of the map so the loser could not be pushed back. Lastly, while this is minor, the main character and his best friend are the most GENERIC anime fantasy characters imaginable, which is odd since Vanillaware typically has such cool designs for the main characters in other games.

While I haven’t finished the game yet (it’s long), I already highly recommend the game to everyone that likes this style at all.

Tactical view of a battle

Some basic tips

Do not line characters up in a row where possible, they will get hit by attacks that effect everything in the row, and your soft-bosom’d witches will get dropped in one shot, and we can’t have that!
Use the 20th level horse guy to help level up your weak dudes. He pounds ass early game– use him.
Restoration deliveries to harbors allow access to islands that have neat stuff on them.
Do not rest if you can help it on the strategic map. Units can defend with 1 Action Point FOREVER, so you can just sit there and get attacked all you want. If your unit is in a resting state when attacked it’s fucked.
Do not set the difficulty to Normal. Go to Tactical at least.

This is only out on consoles (Switch/PS5) and not the PC. Looking for something like this on the PC? Check out Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga.

BURGER LAN 2023

We used to LAN a lot, like once a month. Now it’s once per year only BUT there are some advantages in comparison:

There is more alcohol than everyone can consume during the weekend
Food is in abundance beyond imagining
Instead of a flop house style weekend with everyone sleeping on the floor under their computers, it’s in a real house with actual real rooms.
Weed items are effectively legal and plentiful, but no one smokes

It’s fucking great to play with EVERYTHING painted for once. GODDAMIT!

We started out with some various board games, but when everyone was in attendance we threw down the 2nd annual 7-man Talisman game which was, again, EPIC. Last year I had taken tooooo many mg in gummies so I was fucked up and just wanted to lie on the couch hence was quite glad when my character was killed off. This year I was BEER fueled and tried to go for the win, but my only claim to fame was killing off the hated PROPHETESS before she could bust out onto the scene and become unstoppable.

In the end, the Vampiress racked up the kills and destroyed everyone. I’m not sure anyone even went to the middle region, let alone the center. This is a very fun way to play with lots of players who don’t mind getting eliminated (to go play other stuff together after). It is very random though, but buy the Talisman ticket, take the fucnk ride.

We didn’t get many other board games except a good round of Dungeon Degenerates which degenerated into a TOTAL PARTY KILL about half way through the adventure. We were up against 6 monsters and didn’t use some of the items that could have put us in the W column, totally underestimating the enemies and getting destroyed. Great game and one that should get some more plays. The psychedelic board is a world of wonders.

The LAN type games were again dominated by Counter Strike and CSGO as it should be. We had old ass laptops and that’s about all they could run, so we took advantage of having 7 of them and had a blast co-op vs the bots with bots added (manually) every time we won a round until it was a proverbial SWARM. I preferred the CSGo with the more refined weapons and physics (let alone the graphics). Even on these old laptops, that ran just fine.

We did play QUAKE which was eye-bleedingly awesome but my skills at least were real rusty compared to other people (if they had skills in the first place that is). My loss at Q3A though was real bad. The verdict was that I had played too much Virtua Fighter and not enough Quake over the last year. My issue is I have to keep my skills up for VF because I have punk kids that I play in that, not so much with Quake.

For console stuff, we got in some great sessions of Tobal 2, always an amazing game to play and re-learn. It still holds up after all these years and for me at least, blows Tekken away. In Virtua Fighter 5 though, as noted above, I ran the jewels on the other players just from often playing and having timing down. It’s the anti-button masher, so you have to know when it’s your turn and not your turn or you get transanaled. I’m not sure the other players had all that much fun getting beatdowns when I chose random characters… We did get some DOA for the fanservice boob bounces and while DOA 6 is fun, it’s just so much slop compared to VF. Next year I want to have some type of fighting game tournament with something just stupid nuts like My Hero One Justice or Brawlhalla.

Keneda brought some chicken fight game that could handle 4 players + but I think I was drunk when we started and just threw the controller down and yelled at the TV and left to go play Donkey Kong in the basement region. I got some folks to play Dragon’s Crown and you just really cannot appreciate the largest breasts in a video game without actually seeing them in motion. It’s a great game, but I’m not sure even those sweet lovin thighs or sorceress’s breasts could hold people’s attention away from Counterstrike.

Despite the fact that after a series of 60-70 degree days there was a massive snowstorm and only Matt and I got out of there in time, I believe in my heart it was a successful OLD PERSON LAN.

fubar

Dark Souls on the Switch – it’s good*

Right after Elden Ring came out I had to take a trip and was away from my PC. I grabbed the Switch for my kids but remembered I had Dark Souls on it. The Switch, from many, many hours of whatever the fuck the kids play on there was messed up with a really bad drift-stick on one of the sticks that made DS nearly unplayable. Somewhere at some random Walmart in Indiana, I found a HORI Split Pad Pro and not only did that solve the drift-stick, it made Dark Souls a far better experience to play without the stock controllers. Very much recommended for everything unless you are worried about it fitting inside your little case (like if you have to shove it up your ass when you are sent to prison), otherwise the HORI sticks make everything play better.

Build

I was mulling over the build to use but when Pinwheel dropped the DAD mask (1/3rd chance), I knew what had to be done– Giant Dad with a fucking Chaos Zweihander. It’s a LOT of work to get all the pieces, and for new players of Dark Souls it is NOT worth it, just get the rest of the stuff and do a lightning Zweihander instead. Why? The Chaos Zwei scales off HUMANITY which means you have to run around with 5-10 humanity all the time. If you drop your souls and can’t get them back, you are farming fucking RATS in the depths for hours and hours to get what you need to hit hard enough to win.

Rings: Havel’s Ring, Wolf’s Ring

Armor: Giants + the Dad mask

Shield: Grass Crest

Weapon: Chaos Zwiehander, a bitch to create, and a bitch to use but hit’s so hard…

Bosses

This is my second time all the way through the game so I was familiar with just about all the bosses I fought. Most of the bosses I thought were scary the first time were pushovers and some I thought were easy earlier were challenging.

Fatty Demon: Easy, but punishing later versions make me still hate this guy (like the Erdtrees)

Taurus Demon: Super easy.

Capra Demon: STILL a bitch to defeat, took me a lot of tries, not because of the Capra, but because of the dogs

Insideout Dragon : a tough fight, but the first real “boss” in the game so it better be. I lost a lot of souls during this battle for sure.

Bell Gargoyles: this was really easy, and I remember emotionally suffering in my initial playthrough.

Iron Giant: Not too bad but took me a lot of tries.

Queelag the topless: I used the summon because that one is so silly (a lady with a cleaver with a sack over her head) and she wasn’t too hard. Took me a few tries for sure and of course, that’s after Blighttown so you are always emotionally drained before fighting her, but at least there’s cleavage.

Ceaseless Discharge: this is a trick boss, so really doesn’t count. He’s easy if you know what to do and just a sad sack of fiery shit really.

Smough and Orenstein: Well… I summoned the Sunbro for help and followed the basics: Kill Orenstein first, don’t get hit by Smough and it worked out. This took me countless tries the first time through so I made sure I was good and ready for this battle, including walking in there with 10 Humanity so the Zwei was hitting hard. Big risk, big reward of the beautiful chest ahead.

NITO: one of my favorite bosses in the end game because he’s pretty easy and also scary. Advice I got was to not go in the room to trigger the big skellingtons. Getting to NITO was terrible for me though…. ugh, Tomb of Giants was worse than Blightown this time.

SEATH: This one was tough, but I just stayed near his leg and kept circling and took him down. I had forgotten the whole prison thing so that was again a surprise!

FOUR KINGS: Super easy. I remember having a ton of trouble with these guys the first play through. Just hit them again and again.

hey I’m one of the good guys right? right? …

Demon Firesage: what an asshole. I kept getting the RNG on his AOE and it just killed me over and over and over. This boss I didn’t like too much because it felt ALMOST unfair.

Fire Centipeed: I lost 10 humanity the first time fighting this jerk, but summoned Sunbro again and we took her down.

BED OF CHAOS: this is my least favorite fight in Dark Souls. Just being constantly pushed off a cliff is not great fun. You can’t do anything but just suffer through this one and get it over with.

SIF: funny doggy. Not a tough fight. Maybe he’s the only good guy among all these bosses and you’re the bad guy.

Gwyn Lord of Cinder: For the final boss, he seems intimidating at first even for my second play through the game, but after playing Bloodborne where you MUST parry as part of normal play, this was a very easy fight that took only two tries! I just parried him over and over and had enough health to tank the shots I missed on… and the chaos zwei with 10 Humanity.

Final verdict

The Switch version of Dark Souls is excellent, plays great, performance is fantastic. It’s all there and right in the palm of your hand and really good if you get the Hori controllers. If they work well with DS, they will work well with Breath of the Wild and everything else.

Guilty Gear Strive, I give you, the KANCHO FACES of old.

One of the good Dr.’s special moves is the kancho. Here’s how the rest of the cast reacted in the last Guilty Gear.

the two main characters aren’t looking too happy about it.

not too sure about GATO as his body is dead right?

1000 year old vampire takes it like a champ and who knows about pool boy…

the fastest character and the slowest, neither very happy.

Superhero BEATINGS

We had a tournament with all 22 characters from My Hero One’s Justice last weekend. We only had three players, so we had to switch off and play different characters and even sometimes play each other’s mains when two of a player’s characters got into the same bracket.

We seeded them based on this tier ranking, which I now feel is pretty out of date and maybe is only for what my kids would call ‘try hard’ players and not for dirty, dirty casuls like us, actually, reading other stuff online, it’s just out of date, by a LOT.

A brief description of the game: MHOJ is an arena fighter like Naruto Ultimate Storm, and some of the DBZ games but with strange hyper-Japanese superheroes rather than ninja or… uhhh whatever the DBZ guys are. Basically, you can run all over the fighting area, which is usually inside a big cube or rectangle that looks like a city street or a park or a classroom (!). There are standard attacks, counter attacks and unblockables (most are grabs, but many are something else). Counter attacks give you super armor (like Hulk in MVC2) so you cannot be hit out of your attack animation, but you still take damage. All characters have two ‘quirk’ attacks that are specials unique to just them and are part of the normal move set (as in, you can constantly do them). All characters also have a meter that increases during the matches like most other fighters of any type. When full the characters can pull off Ultra attacks which go into a cinematic if it connects. Usually I hate these cinematic moves due to one of Budokan 3 on the PS2, which constantly had these super looonnnggg cinematic attacks where you could get up and take a piss during. Luckily, the MHOJ’s Ultras are short (for the most part) and rarely occur as meter takes a long time to build up.

You also get to pick two team mates from the roster that you can call to help you either break or extend combos a bit like KOF 2013 and again like MVC2. I thought it was a 3v3 fighter at first, and was like huh.. I can’t play as all these guys? But with play, I really enjoy the team assists.

There is normal movement on the map which seems to make the game slow as shit, but the game has dashing which makes you pretty vulnerable but speeds the game up crazy. Basic cancelling is typically done with the dash button mid combo, leading obviously to some crazy combos like every other game with a specific move for a cancel rather than cancelling normals into supers and stuff like that (which you can also do).

Because it’s a superhero game, you can knock people across the maps, and even knock them into the walls so they get stuck and you get a free attack (which usually leads into the truly huge combos). The game is remorseless about characters with ranged attacks–firing off constant fireballs is not a punishable offense and can be done with the press of a single button. The first time you play against one of the ranged characters (like Todoroki or Dabi), you will be like WTF sort of game is this?! as they seem uber over-powered. Most of the ranged/zone characters are weak close in, so there is some balance. However, a few are good at range and close up, which makes it very difficult to win against them at any time.

Even as n00bs with very few matches under our belts, the tournament was quite a bit of fun and there were some intense match ups, and some matches that people just sloughed off in apathy around the characters. Since he’s brutal at range and close up, everyone expected Shoto Todoroki to dominate, and he was logically placed at the highest seed. Yet, in a chilling upset in the semi finals, he was taken down –not by my well-practiced Momo (practiced for a couple hours that is) –but by a button mashing MUSCULAR who went on to win the final vs All Might.

Here are the winners and the runners up:

Muscular
All Might
Todoroki
Jiro

Semi finals (in no particular order)

Momo
Deku Shoot Style
Shigenaki
Kaminari Deki

In the final 8, we have three hardcore zone characters (read as ‘fucking annoying’) with Todoroki, Jiro and Deki and all the rest are either close-in combo characters or weird AoE types (Momo and Shigenaki). It was very annoying to go up against Dabi, Endevour and Ihasa the wind dude, but in the end, all the zone characters had their tickets punched by the large fists of Muscular and All Might.

All that said, I really, really like the fighting engine in this game and I’m very surprised by this. My first ‘arena’ fighter was Ehrgiez and the last one I really liked was Urban Reign by Namco. I played a couple of the Dragonballs games but the characters are just not my cup of tea at all. What I like most is that the dash cancels (and therefore combos) are easy to figure out and timing is relatively easy (we play on Manual mode). With the support characters, there’s just a ton of shit going on in the game yet it’s all very tactical, despite the fact that a few of the characters can beat you down with the press of a couple buttons if you don’t know what you are doing. All of the 22 characters feel very different from each other and some have radically different quirks including one that can become the other character they are fighting during the match, and one that can use his powers so much that he stuns himself and leaves himself open for a massive beating.

MHOJ is also surprisingly good since Superhero fighting games usually suck. You have Marvel vs Capcom 2, which is incredible, but since then: what is there? Many tries, but not much that’s good. The new Marvel vs Capcom games are lackluster at best, especially without the Xmen: I mean, why bother? Injustice is a SNOOZE fest, especially for a superhero game. MVC2 pulled it off because it was completely insane and the Marvel universe does not have a Superman/Supreme/Saitama/Marvelman (Miracleman) to defy the canon by placing them in a fighter where they would normally destroy all foes easily. When I see Superman standing there punching batman in a 2-d fighter, it just seems very stupid. Granted, these types of games are very difficult to make in the first place. You have crazy ass powers, some of which only tangentially work in a fight, and certainly any characters that can fly or really jump high are ridiculous to try to model. MVC2 pulled it off, and MHOJ has also.

While we wait for the Kill la Kill game, and the One-Punch Man game has just been announced, there are more ‘super’ arena fighters right around the corner. Meanwhile, My Hero One’s Justice is excellent fun, even for plebian filth casuls. With it’s stupid name and severely unbalanced roster, so far, MHOJ seems like the best super hero fighting game that I’ve played outside of MVC2.

Monster Hunter World beta impressions

TL/DR: Good, possibly very good.

It’s been a LONG time since Monster Hunter has been on the consoles and we’ve been relegated to the DS to play it. It is an excellent series on the level of Torchlight and Diablo for it’s item management, customization and level of skill needed to play well. The game was obviously a huge influence on Dark Souls (both at their core are boss-battle games) and the new version looks poised to bring everything that was great about the 3DS version into the modern graphic world of the PC and PS4.

First play was to kill off a fatty lizard thing. I was interesting only because it puked all over the place when you got a knock down on it. I was not able to get it mounted for more fun. The map this fatty is on has a winged T-rex thing wandering around, and if you draw aggro with both, you are going to be in trouble. I was not able to take down both of them in one go (killed the fatty lizard first and ended the scenario).

The second beasty is a rock lizard thing. It has a transform into some sort of bull-type creature and then retreats to a muddy area, and this is where things got good. Instead of swampy stuff just being poison, the mud area was very interesting as it had not only places that slowed you down, but places where you would actually get stuck and have to struggle out.

I’ve seen some other really cool things, like swinging on vines, monsters fighting each other, swinging with a grappling hook and somehow my Palico tied down one of the monsters for me to beat on. The environments are awesome and they still have the same FEEL as different ‘areas’ but there is no loading or break in between them. You can follow the monsters as they run away without hitting the loads, and that’s fantastic.

The game has a unique way of tracking the monsters with some sort of glowing flies that point you to clues where the monster is, such as footprints or ass-wipes on the ground. When you put attention to a clue, the flies point to the next one and when you get enough, they can point right to the monster. I thought this was fucking handholding at first because in the old game you had to hit the monsters with paintballs to track them when they fled, but it seems fairly decent. It is fun to track, but it’s also a bit more fun to get in the fights…

I didn’t see any mechanics yet for bombs or trapping monsters, but I’m sure that’s in there. Also you can’t really craft in the beta just yet– that’s a whole huge ball of complexity I still don’t fully understand in the old game anyway.

Color me impressed. I was hoping for a new version for the 3DS, but this is FAR better because I can play it with my friends on more common consoles and with these graphics? YEAH. Lots of impressive stuff to look at here. When this is out for PC, holy shit.

No Man’s Sky: TITS or GTFO

gaymers everywhere have wanted the top to come off No Man’s Sky ever since the game was teased back in 2013 at the VGX extended night of game commercials and press jacking off ‘awards’. a PERFECT tease. have you experienced a perfect tease before? something that gets your cock/clit hard as steel? that feeling of INTENSE anticipation? YEP that feeling is what happened all the fucking way back in 2013 for me and many other gamers for No Man’s Sky. fuck i bought a PS4 because for a time it was suggested that Sony had scooped up NMS as a exclusive for the console, though originally it was going to be PC, or some shit but then it was going to be PS4 first then at some later time PC, fuckitall now it’s on PS4 3 days before the PC release. i digress, NMS launches TOFUCKINGMORROW.

okay, you don’t give 3 fucks about NMS because as you keep telling everyone, based on the trailers of the game you’ve seen NMS looks like a fucking boring gayme. that’s fine, stick to your CoD or macho Dark Souls masturbations, you’re not part of the target audience. trolling rock hard NMS fans is easy as slapping a child for making too much direct eye contact with the disabled.

NMS does not appear to be the work of jesus or peter molonyx. thankfully on the later. the devs of NMS have offered details about the game in a mostly restrained fashion, never over promising about the reality of what you can do in the game. the devs have hinted at things without spoiling what could prove to be a fun learn as you go exploration situation. the devs of NMS hinted that the game world of NMS is large (procedural generated galaxy or universe) but never did they say horse shit crazy stuff like pete molonyx is notorious for(and always failing to deliver). thank you devs of NMS, i think you should be honored for not overhyping your product. the fans are doing all that shit for you as they will/should.

a “big” game made by like 12 or so people, hyped to the MOON by fans. NMS releases tomorrow and i will give some daily reports on what the game is like. i will let you know from my hands on impressions from playing 2-3 hours night, how a middle aged married man with child plays games.

OH, fuck i almost forgot, the devs to my knowledge have said ZERO about DLC for No Man’s Sky. how? is it because they will offer that shit at a later date? the devs have said they plan on bringing more content and features, though they said it in a way so that one thinks it will be at no additional cost. hurray for that if that turns out to be the case. perhaps Sony will be paying them to keep players buying PS4s to play the game. who knows. a game coming out in today’s DLC assraping market which has no day one DLC announcements is a fucking winner.

don’t think you can customize the sex of your character in the No Man’s Sky. shit. who knows for sure.

The Gaming of 2013

ahhh… the unlucky ’13 year was quite a year for games– or, dare I say, it should have been. We had some MASSIVE releases last year with the culmination in some cases of decades of work for some development teams. Yet for all their glory, the massive budget games were not the ones that I played and enjoyed, with a few exceptions.

Let’s run down the releases I got to play. Now I’m an ancient person with familial and work duties so there’s no chance in a given year that I’ll be able to play even close to everything that’s good. I have to make choices– very difficult choices with my budget of TIME.

Here we have the list of stuff I played or was seriously considering in order:
Anarchy Reigns: This was the first game I bought in 2013 and it was…not great. The price tag was good at 25$ or so, but I couldn’t get through the single player and the multiplayer, while interesting, just didn’t hold my attention. The key issue was the core of the combat system– it just wasn’t all that great. Compared to the AMAZING Urban Reign for the PS2, which is quite similar, it was a vast disappointment and from the ex-Clover team, that was sad.

Crysis 3: I am a huge Far Cry fan and though it pissed in my mouth with Far Cry 2, I still like the original developers a lot and I picked up the original Crysis and it was great fun. I haven’t bitten on 2 or 3 yet but probably will in the future. I guess what did it for me was continued play of Battlefield 3. Crysis 3 just seemed redundant and I didn’t buy it.

Hotline Miami: The first indy game of the year I picked up. The ad campaign for this one was so incredible it was a must buy. I never finished it — to be truthful after the school shooting last year I just couldn’t play it anymore– but I got a long way into the game before moving on to other games. It was awesome.

Hear of the Swarm: Ok, for all it’s polish, Starcraft 2 is not fun for me to play. The single player is quite boring and the actual storyline EXECUTION is just shit (the ideas are really cool though, just executed poorly and all tongue and cheek with the shitty-accent space rednecks and trying to be serious at the same time plus romance? what a space pissery!), the multiplayer, the meat of the game, feels like a fucking chore to me. Plus, it’s a terrible annoyance to have to use Blizzard’s version of steam and ALWAYS BE ONLINE. I figured out finally that as much as I love RTS games and Warcraft 3, I’m just not a Starcraft player so I skipped this one and will likely never play Starcraft 2 in any form again because it’s jsut goddamn tiresome.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger: This was an impulse buy and I didn’t get through it but played it a bit and was impressed. It’s essentially a rail shooter with a CRAZY story integrating with just about every Old West hero in the late era (think Jesse James/Butch Cassidy). If this is cheap, pick it up, you won’t be disappointed even if you get like 3-4 hours of play only.

The Last of Us: Ok so this was a PS3 exclusive and I had no chance to play it. Apparently this is a great game for the story as it integrates stuff from the hugely influential THE ROAD into a zombie shooter. I just wanted to note that if this had come out on other consoles, it would have sold a LOT more copies, especially PC. Plus this has that short lady that’s in all the fucking movies these days that is always talking too much on screen.

Xcom: Enemy Within: This is a follow up to Xcom: Enemy Unknown from 2012 and I just didn’t bother with it despite my love for the first game. I hope this combat engine sees more life as it’s great. I will pick this up eventually…

Company of Heroes 2: Ok so here is a sequel to one of my favorite RTS games. COH, along with Warcraft 3, redefined what I wanted out of an RTS, and they did it in very different ways. Unfortunately, the ENTIRE COH team left Relic Games long before COH 2 was started and I read so many bad things about the game that I didn’t pick it up. The comments from Russians about the game is pretty crazy if you check metacritic– I guess they forgot that Stalin was a murderous dictator that was able to save the country from another murderous dictator?

Rogue Legacy: While I don’t have a controller to hook up to my PC, I gave this one a shot and it was pretty interesting. It’s not Battle Block Theater though.. no sir. Hence, I had problems playing it for very long.

Dota 2: 2013 IS the year of DOTA2, hands down. The game came out of beta and everyone was playing it before, and everyone and their MOTHER is playing it now. It is the best game of 2013, no question about it. Obviously it’s a game that doesn’t appeal to everyone and it’s a very very deep rabbit hole to get into (and you have to practice) but I think this was a huge release for the year. It’s tough to say it was the best when you want to give it to something new– since the game is getting close to 10 years old from it’s first incarnations, but DOTA 2 is by far the most important and best game of 2013.

Saints Row IV: I loved Saint’s Row 3. Loved it and played the shit out of it. IV is excellent— except I can’t play it anymore. Whether it’s my configuration (unlikely) or a patch I can’t tell, but the game will no longer run on my computer. I got 20 hours in and then simply had to stop playing after one of the patches hit. I uninstalled, reinstalled, check the interweb tubes for a solution which ended up being “wait for the next patch” which I don’t even think ever came. Sad that they didn’t take their PC users seriously this time around.

Diablo 3 (consoles): The monumental failure of a game that is Diablo 3 hit consoles in 2013 and they did a good job. Unfortunately, the game is fundamentally flawed and cannot be ‘fixed’ with the removal of the real money auction house. This is what happens when you spend 12 years and millions of dollars on what amounts to a PAY TO PLAY iPHONE GAME.

Total War Rome 2: How the mighty have fallen. This was my fucking BIGGEST disappointment of the year. I warned my wife and wee children that I would be huddled in the basement for MONTHS on this fucker, but I put in 40 hours of frustration and was done. Rome 1 was my second choice for game of the DECADE from 00 to 10 only second to the almighty Warcraft 3. What the fuck happened? 1) Too large of a budget 2) Too short of a timeline 3) crappy battle engine. This series is dead to me. Shogun 2’s battles sucked despite EVERYTHING else about the game being excellent. The design choices + the battles being shit tanked this game forever. Warhammer Fantasy Battle Total War will suck.

Path of Exile: Another Diablo 3 killer, I did not get a chance to play this and probably won’t. It’s been on my radar for a long time, but — I just want to keep playing Torchlight 2– like forever.

Battlefield 4: Why come out so soon? I still feel like I didn’t have the time to get into BF3 and ALREADY there’s a new BF game out? And it’s not an offshoot like Bad Company or 2142, it’s the full on thing… why? I just didn’t want this and saw no reason to buy it. This does not need to come out every 2 years…

And for all that– it’s still just the year of DOTA 2.

HALO 4 REVIEWED

console FPS. that phrase will make some people gag and puke, like a saturday night drunk. i clearly remember the first time i played halo 2 on xbox. it was horrifying trying to make a microsoft console controller do what i knew a mouse/keyboard could do so much better. i was playing a fucking FPS with a console controller, it was terrible, it was 2003 or 2004 i think. there were two HUGE BLACK xboxs linked with a cable of some kind and it was 4 v 4 on two tvs in separate rooms in one house. 4 players on one tv, a tv screen split 4 ways. that layout was HORRIBLE in comparison to the MANY LAN parties i had attended where each player had there own computer, monitor and mouse/keyboard. YA I GOT FUCKING HOUSED by these console FPSers most of the time because of my console controller problems, but my PC FPS tactics did translate pretty well and I was able to hold my own after an hour of play all the while hating the controller and most of the people i was playing with. console FPS people are different from computer FPS people.

in 2006 i picked up a xbox360 for gears of war because you could take a chainsaw gun and cut bad guys in half. some time later i picked up halo 3 and played that some, it was okay nothing great and the controls sucked in comparison to mouse/keyboard. i played it because i had a friend that was NOT a pc gamer and he wanted to multiplay that shit up. so we did.

in 2008 i played COD4 on the xbox360 and finally went full on gay for FPS on consoles. so easy to just play mutliplayer game after game, the console made the multiplayer portion of the game so easy that going back to PC networking options looked completely archaic. so ya FPS can work fine/better on a console in some respects though M/K control on the PC will always be more accurate/brutal.

oh ya, HALO 4 REVIEWED. i guess i would call HALO 4 the best the xbox 360 has to offer in the halo bag. BUT LET’S BREAK DOWN THE OFFICAL KEY FEATURES OF HALO 4 ACCORDING TO AMAZON.COM!

Key Features

– The Reclaimer Saga Begins: Experience the dawn of an epic new Halo adventure, solo or split screen with up to three friends.

yep, sure like me some options playing the ENTIRE store co-op. but uh, the story is not very epic. it’s a linear who the fuck care’s affair where you are just ushers from shooting gallery to shooting gallery. why i love it so much worries me, i do love it but i know in my heart it’s pretty mindless. i think it works so well for coop because it’s so simple.

-Go Beyond the Story: Halo 4’s Infinity Multiplayer features a vastly expanded suite of multiplayer modes, weapons, vehicles, armor abilities, a new loadout and Spartan-IV player progression system.

CALL OF HALO’D. yes the multiplayer mode is your industry standard xp/upgrade slog. i’ve played about 4-5 hours of it not nearly enough to dig into all the customization options and i most likely never will play long enough to experience all of the “player progression system”. that sounds pretty geyh. yet again what i’ve played of multi is giggle inducing fun. i like the crazy vehicular combat, dude getting mowed down from heavy turret fire or run the FUCK over. it’s all easy to understand and less of a gawddamnedclusterfuck like in the BattleField games. what i mean to say here is a suck at battlefield games and with little or no effort i do well in halo 4. you tell me what that fuckin means about the games.

– Spartan Ops: Extend your campaign experience in a massive-scale adventure that builds upon the “Halo 4” Campaign. Receive a weekly series of cinematic episodes on Xbox LIVE followed by new gameplay missions, played solo or cooperatively with up to three friends – effectively delivering two campaign experiences in one game!* (*Online multiplayer and Spartan Ops missions require Xbox LIVE Gold membership (sold separately). System requirements forthcoming. See www.halo4.com)

sure sure sure, i like this part. i’ve played about 3hrs with my friend and it was nice easy fun blasting shit up all over the place. it works well and there is a metric shit ton of content being released, 5 new maps every week for fuck if i know how many weeks. it will take months of playing 2hrs a week with my friend to get through it all. massive-scale? no so much it’s bigger but not fucking massive, perhaps has massive as the xbox360 can produce without shitalloveritself. two campaigns? they reuse some/all of the maps from the main campaign in spartan ops so this is kinda a fucking lie but only internet assburger dickjags complain about that misleading key feature.

– War Games: Battle the competition in fresh, immersive new game modes and strategies.

this is pure marketing asspeak. nothing in this game is that fresh/new. it’s very HALOY which MOST of the internet halo geeks are happy to smoke.

– Track your groups, stats and scores on HaloWaypoint.com

stats. fine sure stats. my e-penis is larger then your internet butt hole will accommodate, see! see right here! this e-dick is much too massive and would split your brown starfish into uneven pieces. surgery may be required.

– Edge-of-your-seat Entertainment: Immerse yourself in Halo 4’s graphics, sound and epic game play including a mysterious and deadly new class of enemies* (*Online multiplayer and Spartan Ops missions require Xbox LIVE Gold membership (sold separately). System requirements forthcoming. See www.halo4.com)

graphics are TOP notch. this can and will not be fucking understated. the shit looks like doom3+rage with a solid FPS. okay you PC GAMING CUNTS halo 4 is not as good looking as current PC games played on 1500$ computers, but shit the xbox is 200$ and old and fuck and halo 4 rides the xbox like a FUCKING CHAM-PEE-YOEN! we are seeing GREAT PROGRAMING AT WORK and should be happy some nerdgod programmers are still milking that sweet xbox teet for me. i have multiple times stopped during single player to have a slack jawed look around like a cleatus, marveling at the graphics. i’m pretty sure the designers are paying homage to doom3 with some of the spaceship interiors and rage with some of the air landscapes, that is OKAY BY ME.

NOW LISTEN HERE PEOPLE! so you bought a xbox360. you are a poor person so you didn’t get a hard drive with your xbox. you are poor and you pay for xbox live gold access every year. you are poor and bought a 60$ xbox game and now you want to play this $60 game on your $200 xbox that has a internet connection, at least another $40 bucks a month and use your $60 a year xbox live gold access for some multiplayer HALO 4! oh you are too poor you cunt, you can’t play multiplayer HALO 4 on the xbox without installing the second DVD to the xbox hard drive which you are too POOR to purchase. on the back of the HALO 4 case you are told about this in the smallest possible writing. (you can now use any 8 or 16GB usb 2.0 flash drive instead of a offical xbox hard drive for game installs so you have to be too poor to buy this even). i’m sure some poor xbox players got pissed the fuck off when they could not play multi on the day they bought HALO 4 because they couldn’t install disc2. WHAT THE FUCKALL EVER! if you have a xbox360 with no harddrive you should not even be spending money on xbox shit at all. just stop breathing now.

HALO 4 is a great xbox360 game and one that should be owned by all xbox360 peeps.

HALO 4 is a 1 on said official binary scale.