GTFO: R6B1 - Hexahedrons (Main)

After beating R6A1, this level introduces fog mechanics - but thankfully its non-poisonous. Also while this facility seems pretty big and has multiple paths, there's actually only one path to go at any one time - so just lug around the Matter Wave Projector to the security door with the highest number you find and leave it there, even if you can't open it yet. Don't be afraid to just leave it behind too. Team loadout as before is:

DL: DMR/Sniper/Mines/Cudgel
Jim: Bullpup/HEL Gun/C-Foam/Hammer
Me: Pistol/Machinegun/Auto Sentry/Spear

You'll need a cell to open the next door so go West and defeat the Class IV alarm in your way. Mining the door and Jim going on c-foam duty to continuously ice while we did this makes it easy. Somewhere in here is the cell and also a SCOUT! Don't let those tentacles get you!

Quick scout recap: Snipe the head if its alone, or if you want to stealth kill it patiently wait around a corner for it to extend tentacles. When it retracts them, follow them back in while charging your melee strike and hit the scout in the head. Much easier with a spear now, but you still must abort your attack if the scout walks away OR if you start from the full extent of the tentacles (you simply can't walk up to him in time, hence you need a corner).

Most of the rest of the level follows suit. Explore, deal with sleepers, deal with scout, use mines and c-foam to beat class IV alarm doors, enjoy regular team scans, and especially enjoy the new checkpoint scans which soft saves your progress so if you die, you can start from that point. Just remember you don't need to visit EVERY room or kill EVERY thing. Stealth is actually an option if you are patient and have lock melters.

Checkpoint scans have a BUG: DO NOT be holding the Matter Wave Projector (or anything you didn't start the mission with) when standing in the scan or you'll be stuck holding it forever as I did if you need to reload.

Eventually you'll reach an awesome looking room where you need to plug the Matter Wave Projector in. Before doing so, deploy your remaining mines at around head height on the passage leading South back to the extraction point.

Once that's done, plug in the device, hike over to the terminal, type in the commands and quickly hide in one of the houses (lower one is better) before flying tentacle monsters come for you! Just save ammo and hide until you are teleported back to the facility.

Don't relax just yet, as you need to sprint back to the starting spot (or casually walk back if you bugged out like I did and were still carrying a matter projector) for the slow extract. The mines will help slow down these speedy pursuers. Also, learn from Rickon Stark and don't run in a straight line: they can't seem to hit you if you zig zag widely. Use the "drop box" as cover while holding them off (or take turns tanking) to eventually GTFO!

State of Decay 2: Odd Friends of Haven

[Part of the Diary of Zombies]

Hearing that Trumbull Valley is open again, Zeb, Hailey and Kraken from Hamlet Squad arrive to the radio welcome of Ray Santos, "the valley's protector", but find rumors of it being safe are false as it is home to plague hearts just like everywhere else. Luckily, since Kraken assisted an odd stranger named "Clutch pinya" (multiplayer for 15 minutes) she was gifted some godlike (definitely hacked) weaponry from him: a trio of automatic weapons with 999 bullets all in one clip!

Mmm, that looks legit...

Hailey and Zeb use these weapons and within the first day eliminate all the plague hearts around (standard difficulty only) and start doing jobs for bounty salesman Cash Beaumont and a group of scientists up in the mountains working on some computer gizmo called CLEO. This group includes Dr. Hoffman, IzzBee the hacker and reformed thug Mickey Wilkerson who comes along for some scavenging missions and find the grave of someone named Malik while doing so.

Taking the leadership position, Hailey decides to go recruit loner Al, gardener Poldo, sexter Raney, soldier Rhino, electician Buck, and lawman Anselmo to move from their checkpoint base to a Red Talon fort at the fairgrounds where ex-Red Talon Chavez and his buddy Beebo Bee assist in getting things running again and after over a week of helping the scientists they eventually them to visit the base to install CLEO's Haven defense protocol.

The zombies launch a siege during Haven's installation but are outmatched by the guns the team has. More so when the Haven finally activates as it boils the head of any zombie within safe zone distance to make their heads explode! Zombie sieges are now a thing of the past.

Insight: Haven is fueled by spare parts. LOTS if you don't have power and water. Only 25 per day if you do.

Wasteland 2: Darwin

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

After braving an irradiated valley the squad reaches Darwin City only to find it inhabited by zombie like ghoul-mutants! Slow but sturdy, these take a lot of bullets to put down - even with Provost's extra gun. Luckily Angela finds a small side street for the team to dodge most of the horde, and are led by Provost into a strange bunker. Inside, another ghoul - this one still friendly - stands among the remains of a robot man.

The ghoul says the robot deployed some sort of device on the lower floors, causing his kind to go mad and asks the Rangers to switch it off. Frances agrees. The basement is crawling with more zombie types though whom the team avoids via use of air ducts, but still have a shoot out against automated defense turrets guarding the cage of one peculiar green mutant dubbed "the Night Terror". Frances sets it free and it childishly decides to tag along.

It likes "candy"...

Eventually they find the corrupted generator and destroy it, freeing the zombies from their madness. One of the ghouls, Pizepi Joren, is so grateful she offers to join the team! She is accepted, as Provost stays behind to search for whatever it is he is looking for. With their task here complete, the squad heads back from the valley towards the Ranger HQ to rest and re-arm.

Insight: The Night Terror is an excellent bullet sponge, but doesn't help in any other way.

Wasteland 2: Wreck-It Ralphy

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

As the radio tower in the Ag Center had been crushed by a mutated tree, the team journeys elsewhere to find another tower - stopping by a diseased farm to cleanse and cure it. Eventually they reach the Rail Nomads camp, and save the boy Ralphy from drowning. Both he and the local drunk Scotchmo are interested in joining the Rangers, and are accepted.

It turns out the Rail Nomads are in the midst of a civil war with the track laborers using dirty guerilla tactics and mines against the oppressive and powerful train engineers whom Ralphy is a member of. Unfortunately Frances deems the engineers to be in the wrong and during a heated discussion between the two leaders, gets Scotchmo to lob a grenade at the engineer representatives  while the Rangers gun the rest down, basically winning the war for the laborers.

What every peace talk needs... a grenade thrown into the middle! HELL YEAH!

Ralphy cannot accept this and tries to then solo the entire team. Pump breaks his neck and stomps on his face. While the situation is resolved, the fighting destroyed the radio tower. Cursing under her breath, Frances consults her map again when a strange man called Provost approaches the team and talks at them in strange tongues. Glenda works out he is asking for an escort to some place called Darwin. Provost nods and points a finger at the map.

Insight: Giant Toads can eat the weapon you are holding. This can be annoying if you don't have a backup one ready.

Wasteland 2: Dam Choices

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

The squad finds Highpool under attack by a crew of Wreckers led by a woman with cybernetics. Despite the Wreckers holding superior numbers they are no match for the rangers as Malice kills the lead Wrecker with his auto rifle. Just for good measure, they also wipe out the Wreckers at their nearby camp to ensure no enemy reinforcements will arrive. Deth nearly takes down the whole place by herself!

Unfortunately explosives used during the battle have damaged the dam, so the team is sent in for quick pressure repairs while fighting off the overgrown roaches living within and once secure, they are allowed to install the repeater on the radio tower in town. Seeing the good they did, Vulture's Cry, a scout sniper offers to join the team. They accept.

Yuck! Those things grow big down here!

Frances then leads the team immediately to the Ag Center to find that a plague has been released causing the plants and fauna here have mutated into horrible man-eaters while other staff have been turned into monstrous and violent pod people. There are no civilian survivors. In a bid to contain the threat the Rangers cleanse the place with gun fire, finding and killing the cybernetic saboteur behind this outbreak and retrieving a few vials of "the cure" to put into the irrigation system.

Alas, during the fighting both Angela and Frances were infected by spores and in a few weeks will no doubt turn into pod people themselves if they don't drink the cure. Both refuse to until the outbreak is confirmed to be contained.

Insight: "Ambush" is like over watch. If an enemy walks into range you will fire - very handy!

Enderal: Bad Guys can't Jump

[Part of the Cursed story line]

As Ark is massive, I decide to explore its dark underbelly first where all the poor, sick and unwanted folk are. The city guards don't even patrol down here, leaving it up to the brutish enforcers of the Rhalata cult who happily extort beggars for money. Meh, I've seen worse.

They ignore me for the most part, and let me reach the deepest mine shafts beneath the city where I find some really tough bandits. Luckily there is a handy scaffolding I can jump to to snipe all of them down. Ah, jumping - the skill of heroes!

I suppose the Blind Miner classifies as a boss monster...

The mine shafts also lead to an ancient ruin filled with Lost Ones, but one in particular - "the Blind Miner" seems immune to everything I can throw at it so I'm forced to retreat back to the surface via teleport scroll as the elevator I used to come down has broken (as in bugged broken).

Insight: That elevator issue could have been a game ending bug. Make sure you have teleport scrolls handy - everyone seems to keep handing them to you anyway. Or look up the no clipping cheat so you can "fly" back up.

Fallout Tactics: Beastmaster

[Part of the Fallout Tactics story]

Despite providing batteries, the squad must still make do with whatever gear they can scrape together as they are next sent to deal with the Beastlords dominating the area. These cannibals some how can control animals, even the monstrous death claws.

After getting some intel from a liberated mayor and her daughter (sorry to the rest of that town), Frances and company find the Beastlord cave stronghold and easily fight their way in. A caged alpha deathclaw was the answer to their "magic power", and since the beast could parlay - it requested freedom so that it could take revenge on its captors.

Glad it could tell the difference.

Frances let it, and it did so very efficiently. With the beastlords wiped out Frances then ordered the remaining, injured deathclaws be put down as they were too dangerous to live. General Barnaky agreed with this decision and gave her a promotion for her actions. With this area secure it was time to pack up and head on to Bunker Gamma.

Fallout Tactics: Bugged

[Part of the Fallout Tactics story]

Frances replaces her fallen squaddies with females: the nurse Mandy, all rounder Ice, and her mechanic friend Jo who quickly gets to work repairing the hummer. Annoyingly, the Brotherhood Quartermaster is short on ammo to trade so the team is next sent out to collect batteries to power energy weapons.

Their destination is an abandoned bunker but they are pleasantly surprised to find a friendly but simple tribe living above it and barter a few things before descending into the labyrinth below. A labyrinth filled with radscorpions and radroaches! Yuck!

The boss roach is car sized. Eek!

The deeper areas are only accessible by turning on the power, which in also activates the defense turrets that the team must dodge past. They finally find the battery supply in the deepest area which is home to a giant roach. Jo is crippled by the beast before it is slain.

As they exit, they power down the turrets but find it is too late for the tribe topside as the turrets there also went live and melted over half the inhabitants. Back at the base, the injured Jo is replaced with female close quarter specialist Torn.

LEGO Lord of the Rings

Where one CAN simply walk into Mordor.

Following the events of the movie trilogy, this LEGO retelling is much more humorous despite using the same voiced lines. How much more humorous? Well, Strider managing to lock the Nazgul in the toilet in the Bree Tavern is a good example.

Who do you get to play during this? Well, everyone. In story mode you can switch between active party members at will, and will need to as different people have different skills. Sam can make plants grow, Gimli can smash rocks, Legolas can jump higher etc. It's also not too challenging, though some bugs towards the end might require a few mission restarts.

Had to replay the Black Gate battle a few times...

Speaking of bugs, I also needed to reduce the resolution to get it to run smoothly, but YMMV. This is definitely designed for collectors though, because after finishing all the story content I only had 33% completion. The rest is found in the open world "free play" which is both massive and for me, empty. Still, this was a fun and mostly relaxed way to relive the movies so I give it 3 rings out of 5.

Blogspot Blog List Tips

I had some serious issues with my blog list recently and most of the problem stemmed from bugs(?) in the blogspot process. I'm just posting this to remind myself and maybe even help others should they come across the same issues, should they still not be fixed.

Firstly, when adding new blogs from the reading list selecting "ALL" or any number greater than one will FAIL. You must add each new path individually.

Secondly, the list won't often update on its own. If you want to see the changes, edit the blog list and untick the icon option and save it. Then turn it back on and save it (or vice versa). That will refresh the listing.

That's it! Hope that's of use to someone! :)

Blogspot Header Issues

For some reason it seems blogger / BlogSpot has been screwing around with people's headers lately (mine included). If yours decided to do some funky things like, vanish, display vertically, or have a really slim width causing words to wrap then this fix (found on the help forums) will probably sort you out:

1 - Go to "Template Designer"
2 - Click 'Advanced'
3 - Scroll down to 'Add CSS' then in the box put the code below and hit return:

#header-inner {
    width: 1000px !important;
}

4- Save Changes (if it doesn't let you, add a space or press enter somewhere for the save button to activate).

Your header should then be back to normal, or at least closer to normal than it was previously! :)