Redwolf's Journal (continued)

I feel like the few things I can vent out of my mind recently are all spoilerish. How much should one protect people from spoilers, though, when they probably won't even see the source material? Hmm... Well, here there be potential spoilers, anyway. With some newish access to Netflix, I was easily able to get caught up on the latest (6th?)season of Voltron: Legendary Defender. I like the show and the development of the setting and characters for the most part. This season has some major ups and downs. On the one hand, it's getting to explaining and elaborating on a good number of things that were hinted at before. Lotor and Haggar's histories and perspectives lose some mystery. Keith and Krolia get to explore details of their past via (very convenient) time disruptions. We get a little bit of a love triangle going on. We find out what's up with Shiro. We get some Altean reveals. And even if it took up basically a whole episode, I enjoyed seeing the group playing Mon...

Let's see, what did I say already about The Forest ? Decent, but not outstanding, survival and building gameplay with horror aspects. Poor breadcrumb direction/story delivery. The story endgame gets very linear once you head through a cave at the bottom of a giant sinkhole/crater. I actually got into it before I planned to - I was trying to build stairs down, which was taking a very long time, but a misstep led to falling down. Hugging the edges, I managed to survive and creep down from ledge to ledge safely. Thankfully, I had collected the required items beforehand (climbing axe, rebreather, keycard) or I would have had to find my way back up rather than being able to just commit. This path feeds you some more information about what has been going on with the island. It's still only bits, but enough to piece things together. It leads to the missing son, a boss fight (which is extremely hard to kill compared to anything else in the game), and a choice that determines the endi...

I watched a playthrough of Agony , which... eh... the visual style and concept of a romp through "Hell" caught my eye, but seeing the game in action was beyond disappointing. The gory images become little more than a sea of red and black, the story has little heft to it, and the gameplay itself looked 99% dull and boring. I'm happy enough to skip that one myself. I've been playing The Forest , still on a bit of a survival kick. It mixes in horror-ish elements and generally looks good on paper. In practice, I find the challenges of the survival game format drag it down. Building is functional, but not great. Item crafting strikes me as counter-intuitive even after using it for a while. Mostly, though, the game is pretty terrible at motivating me forward. The player survives a plane crash on an island, seeing some native-type person take his son from the wreckage. Since then, after 20-or-so in-game days, I've seen a couple drawings that indicate the kid might sti...

*yawn* Dog sitting is okay. Having a cuddly pup (not that she's really a puppy anymore) around has a certain appeal, though I fret perhaps overly much about not understanding what is wanted at any given time. I could do without the seemingly-random barking at something at near 3 am and I'll be glad to sleep in my own bed, but it made for an interesting change of pace. And I got in some entertainments over the weekend. It's hard to avoid spoilers in some cases, but I try... Solo: A Star Wars Story was not a movie that I wanted or felt any need for. I kind of wrote it off early, though trailers got me thinking "this might be an okay action/heist movie in the Star Wars setting." That turns out to be a good summary in my book. It's fine. There's some good action and decent characters. Nothing truly transcends to greatness, but it's an enjoyable-enough ride of a movie. From my perspective, a lot of the worst bits of Star Wars stem from trying to "f...

Conan Exiles wasn't even on my radar as a possible game I'd pick up. I mean, sure, I appreciate the original movie, but I'm no huge fan of the property. And the idea of a multiplayer survival-ish game wasn't appealing. Then three things aligned. 1) I felt like I wanted to play a crafting/survival game. 2) I learned as it came out that it can be played single-player. 3) It released at a sub-AAA price point. So, I've been playing on-and-off as my Battletech playthrough wrapped up (at least for now), and... I'm reasonably happy with it. The survival elements are not oppressive, as you can get food and water without too much difficulty and the temperature extremes are pretty localized. There's a decent crafting ladder to climb, with multiple tiers of buildings and items. There are mechanics to capture NPCs and turn them into "thralls" to aid in crafting or serve as guards. The map is pretty large with some fair variety of desert, jungle, woodlands...

Having finished the campaign, my opinions haven't changed that much. The game overall is best if you're a fan, but good overall. The story is one of conflict among noble families, political interconnections, and cycles of revenge and rebellion. It is perfectly fitting the setting, though it does feel a little impersonal - both in how you're a mercenary aiding one side in the conflict and how the game is inherently limited in how it can present the story technically (via a few cut scenes and dialog along the way). Lostech features in a fairly satisfying way, though it's a piece of software that has a bit more impact on the story than the more advanced battlemechs. You get one SLDF mech partway through the campaign and another after the end (at which point, you can still run around doing non-story missions with the whole region map unlocked). They add an element of "special/cool stuff" without really upending anything. And if that gause rifle or those double...

I've noted before my history for Battletech and my fondness for the setting. It's easy to think of it as just giant robot battles. And... really, there is some truth in that. If you look at the setting and lore, though, it's sci-fi trappings around a story and setting that is a reflection of feudalism (in much the same way I see Star Wars as sci-fi trappings around what is, at its core, fantasy). That's what really gives the unique flavor. Certainly every match/battle is mostly about the giant robot combat, but in-universe, those robots represent the heavily armored mounted knights in the impact they have, the support they require, and their being fielded by wealthy nobles and resourceful mercenaries. So it makes sense that the story in the new Battletech game would involve strive among noble families and a battle to retake a nation. It just plays out over star systems rather than cities. I think it's fair to say this is the most faithful translation of the tablet...