Borderlands 3: Tannis Power

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

Clay is very capable for the task at hand: starting a revolt against the COV, slaying their witch who makes midgets regular size, and finding a hidden key piece aboard a crashed spaceship out in the dinosaur infested wilds which thanks to some crazy and now deceased scientists, is also home to smart, gun toting giant monkeys and lazertech fused dinos. After he manages to ice the local Calypso leadership, he finds the remaining key components and hands them all over to the Crimson Raiders as to give Eden-6 a chance at no longer being involved with this conflict.

Dr. Tannis and Moze open up the vault and after the mech warrior defeats the giant within (those holes in the floor are super handy for when it tilts the platform), Tannis does some sciencey stuff to make it that Tyreen can no longer absorb its power, like she did with the previous vault monster. Annoyed at this, the twins kidnap Tannis instead and back on Pandora, Vaughn sees an ad over the echoNET that Dr. Tannis is going to be sacrificed at Carnivora, so he hijacks an appropriate golden ride to gain entry to the carnival which apparently is on a giant motorized vehicle itself!

That's one way to make a mobile circus!

After disabling and boarding it, he fights through swarms of COV before freeing Tannis who reveals that she too is a siren now and probably didn't need rescuing. What she does need is her research materials at her secret lab in a shuttered mine so Vaughn heads on over, makes his way past the varkid colony that's taken up residence, defeats a demon, and collects the material the good doctor requires: mainly stuff involving Handsome Jack's daughter Angel.

Voidstar: Angel vs Eidolon

[Part of the Voidstar: Warframe-128 story]

Nihil watched the battles with great interest until a loud voice called out to him. "Ai yo! You call that a sword? You should see Hok's masterpiece!" yelled the self-referencing Ostron as he drew out his favourite Zaw. With a sigh, Nihil swatted him away with a gentle swipe of his Vitrica. Unfortunately there were equally mismatched encounters here as Mutalist Alad V could do little to Nef Anyo's Razorback, nor could the Wolf of Saturn Six throw his hammer hard enough to prevent himself being obliterated by the Balor fomorian.

Similarly Clem could only lightly injure Archon Boreal and M-W.A.M. did the same with Archon Nira before being crushed. Meanwhile inside the wreckage of a Grineer galleon Derim Zahn made good use of his turrets and relocator beacons to defeat the J3-Golem, and Teshin was wounded when dismantling Frohd Bek's Ambulas. On a lower floor, Sister Vala Glarios came face to face against the Lich Worm Queen. With both combatants equally injured and equally driven it came down to their weapons to decide this outcome, and since Liches have the superior guns this was the end of Vala's continuity. [I'm basing that off internet reviews and not experience, because the internet is always right - right?]

As an aside: the Zariman is currently my favourite map.

Despite being far from the surface, the Lich Worm Queen heard the shrill shriek of the Void Angel on the surface as it engaged the Hydrolyst eidolon with flight slams, powerful energy orbs and void spikes seriously damaging the giant creature and breaking many of its sydonias as it fought back with its own seeking projectiles, ground stomps, acid rain and giant gun that eventually damaged the angel enough to retreat into the void to recover. As eidolons are simple creatures, the Hydrolyst proceeded to ignore it which turned out to be a fatal flaw once the fully recovered void angel returned to finish it off.

God's Trigger

Angels and demons... with guns.

In this top down shooter, a fallen angel teams up with a wayward devil to hunt down the four horsemen and save the world! While it certainly starts slow, the cool tunes, art and actually ok storyline got me hooked right away.

Playing solo you can switch between both characters to make the best use of their abilities (angel strikes in a short arc, devil in a long line etc) and you can also pick up temporary weapons dropped by your enemies!

The bullet hell theme is appropriate at least.

What use do they have of a gun though? The same use everyone else does! This is because most things (including you) will die as soon as you take one hit, so there's also an element of stealth required at times.

A slew of checkpoints will help you along too which makes this bearable, and for collector/adventurer types there are a bunch of dirty magazines lying around waiting to be found.

Turned out to be a fun afternoon getting through this game, so I do recommend it if you like top down shooters and give it three sultry models out of five.

Insight: Some rooms are hidden from the map and you'll need to dash/blink through walls to find them.

The Cursed: Symm Haximus

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Meanwhile in Thay...

Arzang is again one of the last standing (hiding) in round sixteen facing six fallen devas (just one step down from planetar) while Symm wins it for them somehow using insta-kill moves. Not to be outdone Hort and Dragonbait get their chance to shine against twin demi liches whose penchant for mazing doesn't work on enraged berserkers.

One of the hardest fights!

Still, it is Symm who is taken for the last two fights: the first against a trio of dragons and the second against two Bhaalspawn, one of whom goes into slayer form both made really easy as he insta-kills the "boss" creatures easily. Upon returning to the pens, they learn that the Planar Hunters are out - making this the most opportune time to escape.

As the gladiators make their way to the meeting point, Party Girl asks Symm one more time if he wants to escape with them. He flatly refuses, saying they all should get used to being gladiators and returns to the training area. Why are the strongest always so stubborn?

Insight: Don't take Symm into battles where he can get charmed or confused. Obviously his axe has an equal chance to insta-kill your party members!

The Originals

"Always and forever."

This show follows the titular Original vampire family in New Orleans, and how despite their best intentions, they seem to pick the worst ways to go about their plots. For near immortal type characters who are even above regular vampires, they can be quite stupid at times.

Did he just call us stupid?

Still, this is a step up from the show they spawned from - the Vampire Diaries, which is great. They do continue the trend of bringing back dead characters, but I guess old habits die hard.

Alas unlike that show the ending here is a bit of a let down, with each season seeming to be worse than the previous one. Recommended for Vampire Diaries fans, vampire aficionados, or even Buffy/Angel fans. For everyone else, your milage may vary.

Dark Souls III: Panic Power

Tales from Dark Souls - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

After dealing with the angels I find a giant pit where two large flaming demons await. I don't get very far on my own, but luckily I am able to enlist Lapp and "the not yet dead afterall" Slave Knight Gael to assist in handling the aggro and defeating the phase 2, laser blasting demon prince that spawns from the corpse of one of the dead bosses.

Axe-ing open some demon noggin!

One familiar demon transportation ride later I am taken to the very awesome looking Ringed City and encounter its first guardian, an undead giant who summons an army of ghost archers! At the same time I am invaded by Juliet of Astora who uses these unmoving ghosts to slay a Blue Sentinel who comes to my aid. Knowing my lack of PvP experience I withdraw back behind some cover a top a spiraling stair where Juliet knows I'm planning a trap - but cannot see me, so resorts to gesture insults, one benefit of no in game chat I guess.

I wait till she's close and with two hands on my axe I run out early, timing it as she is coming up, which elicits the panic response I am hoping for. I manage to nick her too with my wild swinging but her own dodge is what ends her as it sends her off the broken stair and plummeting to a messy, insta death. Not what I had planned, but I'll take it! Using timing, a calm approach and the supplied cover lets me get through the ghost firing squad and survive attacks from a handful of weak assassins beyond. The next bonfire is right there.

Good thing those ghost arrows can't go through solid stone. Lol!

Dark Souls III: Laser Angels

Tales from Dark Souls - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Disorientation gives way to a familiar, spiraling landscape of cities crumbling in on each other as an angry black sun looks down. Looks like I'm back here, on the field of flowers where I had once defeated the Soul of Cinder. After shaking loose the cobwebs in my mind and muscles I found a new bonfire, one that leads me to the top of the Dreg Heap and offering one of the best views of the spiraling chaos anyone could ask for.

Something calls me forth, and I begin my descent through the familiar yet different, gravitationally warped locales and while the numerous undead here are quite manageable with funneling tactics I soon encounter a most curious and dangerous adversary - evil angels. These flying laser turrets are the bane of my exploration in this region, especially once I reach the mired swamp that everything seems to be pooling at.

Dodging that is pretty tough.

I meet the amnesiac knight Lapp, on this journey as well as Zoey the desert pyromancer who I best by kicking off a high ledge. Well technically, she actually dodged off and killed herself. It's the ever watchful eyes of the angels that pin me down here for a long time, until I finally find their weakness... hidden cocoon zombies who are individually quite helpless. Killing one insta kills the angel they control so I make it a point to find them and slay them all out of spite.

Noah (2014)

Really not like the version you'd probably know.

During the time when the children of Cain were plenty and doing naughty stuff, a man named Noah was chosen by "the creator" to save the innocent while everything else perished with a cleansing flood. While this movie certainly has the tale of Noah's Ark in it, a lot of liberties were added too such as fallen angels (who turned out to be pretty cool) and Noah being a violent and somewhat cold hearted vegetarian who has no problem in -directly- killing people (much like Bale's Moses).

One angry man with an axe.

I didn't really mind that part, since he was going to drown them anyway and was the grandson of a man who once slew an entire army single handedly. Other things I quite liked were the silhouette scenes and how they portrayed the passage of time. Speaking of, apparently Jennifer Connelly's character is the only one immune to aging. That's nothing compared to the other problems though. Like wouldn't the combined animal poop make the ship explode with that many torches? Just kidding.

Ham, the middle son. WTF was going through his head? He remains unsure of everything all the way to the end. I also found it funny that Noah gets an instant-magic forest, but an ark? Oh you'll need to work for that. Lastly the third act was... unpleasant? After the awesome climax of "act 2", making Noah into a villain was... different. I'll give it that, but trying to then redeem him in what seemed to be ten minutes? Nope. Bad script right there. BAD! Have some conviction writers. After what you did to him, it would have been more satisfying had he been executed at that point. Executed slowly.

Much like the animals that boarded his ark in pairs, I give Noah two fiery swords out of five.

League of Angels

Much like Blood and Jade, this is a 2D based free to play (pay to win) browser based MMO which is really designed to sink its hooks into players through ease and accessibility. Basically it is an improved version of Blood and Jade without all the Eastern themes. Still present are the auto-pilot questing on a railroaded quest path, auto-combat systems but with more polish, and more musical tracks (pretty decent ones too) based on what you are doing at the time as opposed to the steady drone of the one track in the previous game. As a bonus though you can play both at the same time. Actually, you can let them play by themselves while you do something else! :P

Of course it still has the scantily clad hot chicks.

They added gaining EXP and gold through a variety of unlockable mini games, including fishing using a gun turret, a version of bejewelled, enslaving other players, and fighting other players in arena or domination modes (indirectly, you only fight their parties without actual player interaction). You also can gain gold from congratulating people on your friend list when they hit specific achievements and if that's still too hard you can literally stand still and just leave it alone and still gain EXP. Yep, it rewards you for just being logged in even if you aren't playing!

The best improvement though is the addition of a player "party". Other than your hero you can bring along up to 5 NPCs (once you reach high enough rank) who complement each other in various ways. Well, when I say "various" I actually mean "one", and it's usually a combo attack of some sort. It's easy to work out which units work best together, and throwing the various blessings of your guardian angel on top it can alter your party strategy. Usually though, you just pick the strongest of what's available to you and run with that.

All in all it IS a better game than Blood and Jade, but as a stand alone it is still pretty weak. You'll most likely find yourself to be grinding just shy of level 40 while trying to reach Dracula. Yerp, there were enough mini games to keep me busy up to that level! Anywho I give it a 2 out of 5 sexy angels, and it is definitely better enjoyed while playing Blood and Jade in a second browser window so you can alternate between the cool downs of the two. Or you know, you could just go play a real MMO. :P