Xenonauts: Dreadnought

[Part of the Xenonauts story]

The time has come to use the plan to end the aliens for good and the old Commander leads Parker Sanctuary, Stray Cat Brandon, Dr. Tygan, Captain Logan, Straggler Rachel, Straggler Rashida, Carol Hattier, Timeflies Stomachio and Billy Bob O'Reagan with hover tank support onto the alien dreadnought to immediately waste the initial lizardmen guards and charge forward to the upper temple.

En route, Billy Bob is flanked and killed by terminators while martian men with big guns and good aim destroy the hovertank from far away - the explosion catching and killing the commander, painting his pieces along the metal walls. Dr. Tygan is sniped by a jetpack guy as he locates the High Praetor whom Rashida snipes. Brandon also falls to plasma fire while the team uploads the virus and clear out the remaining enemy shooters.

Alas, the escape pods aren't working - they have to back track to activate them but to their horror discover a swarm of (never ending) reapers pouring in after them. Establishing a firing line they put down dozens of the reapers before finally a round of bad shooting and reloading lets one get the drop on Logan. They are overrun, impregnated into zombie bitches and then are autowarped by the virus to who knows where. The entire squad is lost but no one cares because it is VICTORY FOR THE PLANET! YEAAHHHHHHH! Once again the Earth is saved.

The Xenonauts last stand.

Decluttering Day 25: Xenonaut rough journal, since this story is done! :)

Xenonauts: Based

[Part of the Xenonauts story]

As aliens also dislike being called stupid they send strike cruisers to attack both Hopecenter and Eagle bases but are severely crippled or outright destroyed in the latter case thanks to the defenses long established in them. Eventually the Xenonaut air force manages to down a battle ship UFO on land (as opposed to the ocean which makes it worthless), and a Praetor is found within - except it's dead so that's no good. Lucky there is data about another Praetor hiding in an alien fortress down in Australia.

A corner and some cattle prods are all we need!

Xenonauts fight through the terminators guarding him, losing the scimitar tank and time traveling Sir Igwane on the way to taze that bastard into captivity and clear out the remaining hostiles. Despite the victory, Australiasia also now pulls out of the funding committee after realizing the aliens were better leaders than their own government I guess but it doesn't matter. The Xenonaut scientists use torture science to extract information from the captive Praetor to formulate a plan to win the war.

In involves baiting their mothership dreadnaught, killing their god the High Praetor, and using a virus thingy to warp devices and make the entire alien fleet basically warp into each other / the sun / a black hole. It doesn't really matter. Basically it will fall upon a small team to get this uploaded within a time limit and escape annihilation. A super hovertank and brand new dropship that can carry even more soldiers are developed to aid in this final mission. All that's left is to assemble the best soldiers and do it!

Decluttering Day 24: Small whistle.

Xenonauts: Tarantula

[Part of the Xenonauts story]

With the 60 scientists keen on getting their hands on live captives samples, the soldiers are equipped with gas grenades which they use to nab a lizardman grunt at the cost of Ray Santos and Lily Shen as you need to be kinda close to throw said grenades. Alas the grunt knows very little so a second base "Tarantula" is established South America just in time to shoot down an alien corvette!

This one is literally inhabited by bullet resistant terminator robots and odd floating disc drones that kill Commander's old buddy, Central as well as Sherrif Val and Brenda Catatonic. It's only at this point that I realize corpses can be looted for potentially superior firepower! Also, to combat this new metal threat the Xenonauts now deploy a hunter car during away missions. This machine gun mounted killing machine takes the slots of two soldiers but it is well worth it as now the squad just sits tight until the car clears the map while locating the UFO. Pity it can't capture it though.

It's worth the two soldier slots on the drop ship.

The aliens response is to conduct a terror raid at Paramaribo, led by lizardmen who are now joined by reapers (who are basically XCOM Chrysalids) who move quick, kill in melee and turn their kills into impregnated zombies. Once the zombie is killed a new reaper pops out of it. It's a vicious cycle! Thanks to the hunter car (which runs out of ammo) and a good firing line the Xenonauts triumph and even manage to capture a lizardman leader!

Decluttering Day 21: "Hitman" duck.

Rimworld: Killer Robots

[Part of the Adventures in Space journal]

A call from Wroughtfield leads to a visit from friendly the colonists of the Northwest Histheberium, his old crew, who provide much needed medicines for Rattlesnake in exchange for Syn's huskies. Syn is understanding but unhappy at this. Silverlight is also feeling down as her cheating advances towards El Duce while her husband is still in recovery is rebuffed. This affects her shooting when a scout of Vladinas Porcupines attacks. Luckily, Rudy saves her with his trusty club.

Within a few days a trade caravan from the Abanqueiro of the Ocean also arrives, with more medicines and furs for the coming winter. It is a busy time at the homestead, and in that moment Rudy breaks through a mechanical wall in the nearby mine - releasing killer robots that slaughter him! The machines then advance to the settlement in an attempt to kill everyone with their blades and guns.

It's like Skynet was just waiting!

Fortunately they are severely out numbered and only manage to kill three Abanqueiro tribesmen and one of their alpacas before being destroyed. Silverlight thanks them all personally as they groups depart for the journey home. The robot scrap and gear on the corpses (lots on the alpaca) are left for the Marauders, as are the advanced meds and drugs in the robot's den. Also present are three cryocaskets. Unfortunately those only contain more corpses.

Insight: I sort of had to lure the robots into the allies for them to take part in the battle. The Marauders on their own would have had no chance.

Terminator: Dark Fate

You can sort of change the future, except when you can't.

Linda Hamilton is back as Sarah Connor to actively retcon a few of the previous Terminator movies, and to stop yet another "unstoppable" threat from the future who seems to be following a similar plot to Terminator 2. There's decent violence and a mandatory chase scene and almost everything plays out just like you might guess it will, especially if you've seen the rest of the franchise.

I'm going to say not breaking out of the mold is one of the biggest weaknesses of this franchise, which is why Terminator 1 and 2 are hard to top. The first one introduced a fresh concept while the second one makes the previous bad guy a good guy and improves the things that worked in the first film. After that it's mostly a rehash of Terminator 2 all the time - which is what we have here.

Basically its Terminator with girl power...

Acting wise, Linda Hamilton and Mackenzie Davis (Grace) are great. Almost everyone else is passable, but unfortunately the one person most lacking in depth is Natalia Reyes' Dani, who gets a lot of screen time but not a lot of agency. All up it's another OK outing that I give three drapes out of five. Will Terminator be back for round 7? We'll have to wait and see.

The Last Witch Hunter

By iron and fire!

Vin Diesel cannot die. Not just because he's the hero, but because he is "cursed". Man, I wouldn't mind having a curse like that! Through the centuries he's been keeping the witch population in check. Violently.

Thankfully the curse, while gimmicky, actually works into the story somewhat, and it's good to see a whole bunch of familiar faces as the supporting cast: the likes of Michael Caine, Frodo Elijah Wood, and Ygritte "You know nothing, Jon Snow" Rose Leslie.

Flaming swords are cool!

Effects and action wise is really good too, with a particularly interesting take on a bone golem. Amazingly there are more plot holes here than in Terminator: Genisys, but again it's a fun ride and surprisingly one I wouldn't mind watching again. I give it three flaming swords out of five.

Terminator: Genisys

He's back. Again.

This is what happens when the protagonists of the first terminator movie become genre savvy. As expected in the one-up-manship game of time travel, an event occurs to alter the time line and finally break the chain of "fate" that all the previous movies had followed.

Fans are treated to some pieces of Terminator 1 and 2 in the first third/half of the movie and I don't mind Danaerys Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor, nor Varro Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese. Arnie is still spouting his one liners which I quite enjoy. I do question the casting of John Connor, but he's passable enough.

Absolutely Terminating.

Action and effects wise everything is great, though I feel they went a little overboard with the number and types of chase sequences in the movie... like helicopter vs helicopter, really? Also there's a lot of shooting projectors near the end which I found equally silly. Still it's worth at least one watch for action fans and I give it three time machines out of five.

Just not sure where the franchise is going to go from here, but hey - anything is possible with time machines!

Kill all Robots! Transformers: Extinction and Chappie

 Transformers: Extinction

Less explosions and better story.

If you haven't seen any of the previous Transformers movies, rejoice! There is no requirement to do so for this film as most of the previous protagonists were scrubbed / killed off during a time skip. Speaking of time skips this movie certainly begins with a few! Fortunately once it gets back on the rails it does a pretty good job of telling its tale, that of how the humans decided to kill all these metallic alien bastards known as either Autobots (goodies) or Decepticons (baddies). For some reason, Optimus Prime (the good guy leader) is number one on the hit list.

Ok, good things first: Mark Wahlberg is a good lead, better than -all- the army guys previously. He plays the part of overprotective father / skilled enough inventor pretty well and I rather enjoyed that he could take on lesser bots by himself. The CGI is outstanding as always, and those cars the robots transform into are -really nice-! There are less explosions than the previous movie (I think) but it also has a better story. Quite liked all the sponsor shots too.

Not sure -why- a robot would make a weapon that size but whatever.

Negatives include: Bits where humans should definitely have died, the "daughter" character is hot but incredibly stupid (oh, let me take a nap beside this giant alien space ship which the authorities are hunting down!), the samurai bot forgets he can turn into a helicopter after using it once(?), all the "extra" bots talk way too much in combat and for some reason there exists stupid "comedy" bots that serve no purpose other than to get laughs. Think carefully as to why the hell you would create such a thing.

The main negative though is that the film feels long. It reached the third act and it just began introducing new characters, what? Anyway, all up I give it two and a half transformium cubes out of five but have no real desire to watch the whole thing again.

~~~

Chappie

Featuring the least secure defense company ever.

In this film, South Africa has an almost fully automated police force with "Scout" robots being the new front line all the bad guys have to deal with. Yah, F-U Robocop! While profitable for his company, the creator of the robots is unhappy because he still wants to create a robot that is more than just a machine - he wants a robot that is self aware (possibly because he's never seen any Terminator movie ever), and through exploiting the really, really weak security measures of his work place (which is meant to be a multi million defense contractor) he gets his wish. Unfortunately the bot falls into the hands of scumbag gangsters thanks again to security flaws, and they end up having to raise the bot as one of their own.

Aww, cute doggie!

Alright, good stuff first - CG is great, how they make Chappie be cute also gets the thumbs up from me. Hugh Jackman (who rocks a mullet and speaks in his native Australian accent here) plays the antagonist and is fantastic. Not only does he stand for the "opposing church view" of requiring to destroy all godless constructs but also highlights the very, very flawed security of the defense company by carrying a gun everywhere he goes. Even pointing it at colleagues in the office. The action scenes are great and the body count is high: both positives in my book.

On to the dumb stuff: I think I've harped on enough about a defense company having moronically lax security, lacking something as basic as monitored video cameras but that's just one of many plot holes. Such as bad guys letting people that know where their base is, and people forgetting they have advanced tech and time to prepare it. Also, the gangsters who become the main focus of the film were unlikable and as the robot slowly but surely took on their traits it also became unlikable. I was really hoping for a "and then they all died" ending but it wasn't to be. I was definitely cheering for Hugh's character at the finale. 

Anyway, it's an entertaining ride if you don't mind the holes but it's not one I'd like to take again unless there's an alternate ending option I don't know about. All up I give it two and a half broken robots out of five.

Today I Smiled: Over the Limit

I've been having internet slowness of late and I am glad to learn that the reason for it is simply because for the first time ever, I've exceeded my monthly allowed download. This is partially thanks to all the downloading of Christmas present games but more so this pretty impressive app I was introduced to called XBMC. I suggest you google it up to see if what it does interests you.

My guild has also decided to give external voice chat programs a try, since many of the coop games just don't offer it nor do we really want someone hosting a voice server that will impair their performance. We did try Teamspeak first but since setting up a server was too messy we went with Mumble instead and that has been performing admirably so far. The text to voice chat does sound like a funny robot though. Not as cool as Arnie as a robot in the upcoming Terminator reboot though.

Also good to learn some interest exists to revive the old Wizardry Online. Not so good to hear of Elder Scrolls Online's performance though, but hey - if it goes free to play then I can finally play it again (I did run about in the Beta). As usual I also have some tunes for you, the first is one suggested by guildmate Carbon called AMV Psycho Pop. If that is too psycho or pop for your liking then maybe you'll instead enjoy the piano soloist, Jon Schmidt and his song, All of Me.

Lastly almost everyone has been dishing out the hate on early access zombie game H1Z1, yet in the sea of Steam reviews saying "Not Recommended", this one made me laugh:

That's it for now! Hope you all have a wonderful day! :)

Tales of the Blight: I'll be Back

[Part of my Dragon Age: Origins play through. Spoilers ahead!]

Back at Orzammar we have to execute a few of Jarvia's supporters before finding our way back to the Deep Roads. Thankfully with most of the darkspawn heading topside, nothing here has respawned and it is just a simple task of jogging all the way back to that Brood Mother who stopped us last time. She has no such luck now as we are higher level, better equipped, and literally are exploding with health potions. Morrigan even has a group healing spell now so that fat tentacled thing is toast in no time!

Eventually we find Paragon Branka who is still alive, having spend all this time using her own clan to test the traps Paragon Caridin left to guard the Anvil of the Void, which Branka is obsessed about. She forcefully enlists us too, and after fighting through a ton more darkspawn (because that's not getting old *ironic voice*) I finally reach the easily disarmable traps (for our level) and find said anvil and Paragon Caridin who has now had his soul put into a golem.

For the Emperor?

Turns out this anvil requires the death of dwarves to be put into golems and that doesn't sit well with Caridin or myself, which makes us ally against Branka when she comes bouncing along to try claim it for herself. After she is killed by her ex-husband Oghren, I help caridin to destroy the device by... hammering it? Um. Ok. But not before he fashions a fancy crown to help me sort out the dwarf king issue back at the city. Caridin then offs himself by jumping into some lava. Very terminator.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

[My thirteenth post of the Blaugust Challenge!]

Arnie is back from the future to once again save John Connor from a Skynet time travelling killer in the form of Kristanna Loken. Let's just ignore the huge plot holes of time travel (I'm sure you can think up of a few) and focus on the rest of the movie. Acting wise Claire Danes is great and everyone else is ok. Arnie does well as a machine and his humor works half the time which isn't bad. This incarnation of John Connor is passable too especially if you haven't seen any of the other Terminator movies for awhile.

Kristanna Loken doesn't really get a lot of lines and doesn't give off the threatening vibe but hey, as an assassin that might actually make sense. Convenient that the cops chose to ignore chasing her too, despite her killing one (I assume she did, or he got super lucky?) a few minutes after her arrival. My two favorite scenes are where we get to see the original, dinky looking terminators and a chase scene that involves a ton of property damage.

Ok, make that three favorite scenes. :P

All up it's a pretty fun action movie as long as you don't poke holes into the plot's thin fabric of space time. I give it three bullets out of five.

Blaugust Bonus: Hmm, since I'm running into writer's block I think I'll pick up one of Belghast's suggested topics today - If you were an NPC in a video game, what type of NPC would you be? I would be a rare, wandering boss type monster that is incredibly difficult to defeat. Possibly harder than the instanced bosses available. Warframe's "Stalker" opponent would be a pretty good example. He hunts down players who have recently killed a boss, can show up on any mission you do, will be 15 levels higher than the mission ranking and has a ton of cheap tricks (a mix of powers from different warframes) that can wipe out a team pretty easily. Also, you can never actually kill him.

Hurt him enough and he will vanish. The same if he defeats all the players once (ticking them off his list). Best of all is his intro. Since he's also a space ninja the only warning you get is flickering lights on the HUD and a change of music. If this happens in quick succession then you'd better pull your team together into a defensive position. Basically he is the Terminator of space! That "oh shit" moment is awesome, and one I'd like "NPC me" to emulate

Dead Island Riptide: The Glory of Destruction

[Part of the Dead Island Diary]

Dr. Kessler failed to mention that the church was in the middle of the damned swamp and teeming with zombies. Maybe they were religious zombies? Anyway, after doing what we do best the rest of the team (minus a few who decided to stay at the fishing village) showed up to accompany us through the horrible tunnels. Only there was a slight hitch - the tunnels were flooded. Fortunately one of the guys knew of where to get a mud pump to clear that out. The mud pump was in a distant workshop, obviously overrun by the walking dead.

Luckily Juris joined us at this point and while he was seriously underlevelled the extra hand came in extremely handy since the game decided to trip some balls at this point with disconnects. In the end I found myself alone, marching through the swamp while the others delivered the pump and helped some french guy with some fuel cans. Ofcourse the french guy tried to pull a fast one on us after we helped him out, but we "convinced" him of the error of his ways. By suffocating him.

Back at the church the pump was put in place but the noise of the machinery would attract a lot of unwanted attention, so we were first sent by Colonel Hardy to get some supplies from a downed chopper nearby - specifically a crates full of mines and a pair of miniguns. Juris was pleased. Once our very significant defenses were up the pump was activated and the zombies began streaming in... or trying to. Between the explosions, flying body parts, burning corpses, and heavy gatling fire the reanimated were soon put back into the marsh in tiny pieces. It was glorious.

"Hasta la Vista, baby."