3 Body Problem (Season 1) and Fallout (Season 1)

Sci-Fi gets weird(er).

3 Body Problem (Season 1)

Half of this series focuses on a poorly treated woman in China during the 1960's while the other half focuses on a group of friends who all happen to be super smart science types in the modern age right when the Earth's leading scientists start going crazy and either start killing themselves or stop working. I do like that as the mystery reveals itself there are more problems to solve, but this was all up quite high on the level of strangeness for me - and my tolerance for strange is pretty high! With few exceptions the general level of special effects seem "cheap" and I also felt that hopping between the 1960's segment and modern age was freaking annoying and would have much rather they just mostly focused on one or the other per episode. That didn't stop us from finishing the season though, and will probably watch Season 2 whenever it rolls out.

Fallout (Season 1)

Based on the excellent game series this currently single season show focuses on a vault dweller (played by Ella Purnell) who makes her way out into the wasteland and encounters a lot of the terrible and funny stuff all the players have to deal with. Ok that's not entirely true, there are actually three people the story follows but the vault dweller is the centrifical force that ties the narrative together. Excellent props and set design (though some reused places) and a good deal of gory violence get the thumbs up from me, but the story is... let's just say its like the game plots where things just happen right? "Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every damned time" rings very true. :P

Xenonauts: It's like XCOM with more letters

While not on par with the modern XCOM games in terms of graphics and music, Xenonauts delivers a very similar game play of racing your R&D to outpace the aliens and tactical, strategic squad based combat with a few nuances that I feel are an improvement over XCOM. Is it better than XCOM though? Mmm hard to say. Let's see how this play through goes first!

Chapters:
1 - Hopecenter
2 - Tarantula
3 - Eagle
4 - Dili
5 - Based
6 - Dreadnought

This story has finished, thanks for reading! And no, XCOM is still better. :P

Greenland and Violent Night

Things from the sky.

Greenland

When a comet is set to crash into Earth, every man John (played by Gerard Butler) must do everything he can to get his family to safety, just like the dinosaurs did..? To make it more challenging, his family are dumber than dinosaurs in multiple parts of the film but this is offset by the portrayal of the military who are all amazing people apparently. There are interesting ideas tangled with dumb decisions to push the plot every which way, not helped by the weak CGI. Not recommended.

Violent Night

This comedy features a unique version of Santa (played by David Harbour) who decides to try fix a hostage situation and things get very bloody as naughty people get their gory gifts. While the violence is the big selling point it's also what might turn you off from this film - its definitely not for kids. That said I enjoyed it quite a lot as it had decent action, an ok story, a high body count and very good use of music. If you ever wanted to see Santa toss people into a wood chipper then this is the movie for you.

XCOM 2: Defending the Earth, Again

Because the aliens didn't give up, they made XCOM2 which is quite similar to the original with only a few changes. Firstly the strategy game is a bit easier since you don't need to worry about countries panic level, and the inclusion of concealment during the tactical part mitigates some of the "the aliens always get first turn once discovered", but they sure added a lot more unfair units to deal with.

Basically if you liked the original you probably should try this. Here is how I went, and as usual - spoilers ahead:

Chapters:
1 - Avenger
2 - Blacksite 
3 - Skulljack
4 - Arms Race
5 - Facilities
6 - Avatar

That's the end of my run through of this game. I hope you enjoyed it! 

Absurd Game Ideas - Wind of Hero

[Part of the Absurd Game Ideas folder]

Many game bloggers, including myself, usually talk about our ideal games or how to improve the games we currently play. Well I thought it would be fun to flip the script and share our most absurd and silly game or game mod ideas! You are invited to blog your own crazy ideas too! :)

For today I give you...

Wind of Hero

Aliens have attacked the Earth and every nation has been brought to their knees against the advanced technology the invaders posses, but the aliens didn't count on one thing... flatulence. In this action RPG, players take the role of "Hero", a fully customizable cow who must save the world by farting the aliens to death.

To do this you must to graze on various combinations of plants that can make your farts stronger, denser, wider, more lasting, reach farther, refract lasers better, be more silent, be more deadly and so forth while eluding enemy patrols or luring them into close quarter ambushes. This game also supports co-op drop ins, adding more cows to the mix. The time has come to stink out the alien invaders and to make everyone smell the Wind of Hero!

Old TV Reviews: Firefly - Above and Beyond

A continuation of my old TV show reviews.

Space: Above and Beyond  (Cancelled)

Focused on a war against aliens, this series follows the Wild Cards (squadron) formation and numerous deployments over the course of the season. Despite the name, half the episodes were planet / interior based which is a good way to save CGI, though the sets could have been better too. I guess the Earth forces were running low on troops given their fighter pilots often needed to do "boots on the ground" missions.

Guys, did anyone remember the guns?

I suppose it left itself with nowhere to go at the end as *spoiler the aliens were surrendering spoiler*. It still has one of the most memorable endings that I've seen though. Come get some!

Firefly (Cancelled)

A space show which followed Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his motley crew just trying to make a buck. Despite a good script, entertaining characters, and unsolved mysteries this show ended rather abruptly (on a regular episode) which is a damn shame. Fortunately the crew managed to get together for one last ride in the movie: Serenity.

Revolvers and shotguns are still useful in the future!

Command and Conquer

Where engineers are your most deadly weapon!

You'd think that the Earth being invaded by alien fauna called Tiberium might unite mankind but no, this game is all about the war between the Global Defense Force Initiative (GDI) and brotherhood of Nod terrorists (or just Nod) and you get to play commander for their forces.

Now, I'm terrible at RTS games so I found this really challenging from the get go. There are no difficulty options either, just a slowly expanding arsenal array to build and deal with on the field. Really, it's more like a puzzle game because if you don't do the "right" moves fast enough, then you are put into an unrecoverable losing state.

I really hate those obelisks.

While it's easy enough to load when you find yourself there, the AI doesn't ever surrender - meaning even it will try waste as much of your time as possible with its last unit/building before you get a "Mission Accomplished".

Other than that, game play wise is mostly fine (though I don't get why aircraft can't scout). It has an easy to understand HUD, entertaining (though poorly acted) mission briefing videos and music track, and delivers good challenges. Good to see that the commandos are also almost as OP as the guy in Renegade.

The Command and Conquer: The Covert Operations expansion just adds more missions for each side rather than story, and feels like they just wanted to have more skirmishes with both sides accessing their full tech trees which in the original game only happens right at the last 2-3 missions.

While I did finish the original GDI campaign, I couldn't fight through the expansion as I got tired of being nuked. Only so much fun can be had from loading a saved game after all. :P

That's my big problem with it. It's fun but only to a certain degree due to the required repetition to get things "just right". I give it 2 engineer rushes out of 5 and can only recommend it to RTS fanatics.

Sacred: I Hate Drow

[Part of the Sacred Journey.]

The element of Earth was my next goal, but before reaching it came across Bravewall Village which was having some drow, spider, vandalism and poisoning issues which were all pretty easily solved. Once done I continued, sprinting past the many drow forces fighting the undead scum in the region, some of whom were mounted. I still managed to avoid most of the fights and saved some time by jumping up sheer cliff faces with combat jump until I finally reached their fortress mine.

This place was bloody huge, dark, and crawling with enemies and traps of the poison variety. Some of the drow also have that paralysation spell that I absolutely hate as it really slows everything down. Eventually I found and defeated their priestess and their medusa guardian, reached the bridges over the abyss and found the Element of Earth and reached level 30. This one paragraph represents hours of gameplay. >_<

Almost like this.

Thankfully there was a gate out to the entrance which saved me from having to navigate my way back out, so I immediately began making my way to the final element of water which was pretty close by which I got to by jumping down the mountain. Alas the entryway to the temple was flooded, and I was informed by the local NPC that I'd have to go back up the mountain to fiddle with the dam (which is accessible via more drow mines) to gain access to it. Peeved off at this turn of events I decided to make a detour to the nearby Highmarsh Village to restock and do tasks that don't involve those damnable drow for a bit.

XCOM: Defenders of the Earth

With the very stylish DmC done and dusted I've moved on to a strategy game involving aliens invading the Earth. There's a special task force for that, and it's called XCOM. Furthermore it looks like something I can have fun blogging about, given that this agency had the really -bad- idea of making me the commander! :P

For those interested this is my first game, set on Classic difficulty and with all second wave options active. Spoilers ahead!

Chapters:
1.   Close Encounters of the Third Kind
2.   Recover Miss Sing Person
3.   Scrambled Eggs... from Space
4.   Le Le Le Le Le Le Bombe!
5.   Valkyrie Squad
6.   Raiders of the Downed UFOs
7.   Alien Necromancy
8.   My Churro, Your Taco
9.   A Little Bit of Conversation
10. All Your Base!
11. Second Wave
12. That Didn't go Well
13. I Respect you as a Fighter
14. Out of Options
15. Authority Equals Asskicking
16. The Titan Project 
17. They have MECHS!?
18. Walk like an Egyptian
19. Total Annihilation
20. UFO Assault 101
21. A Nasty Surprise
22. Future Combat
23. Back to how it all Began
24. Saviour of the World 
25. Final Score

This story has finished! Thanks for reading! :)