Ray Donovan (the movie) and Fistful of Vengeance

Two movies that cap off their series?

Ray Donovan (the movie)

Basically a movie length episode which ties up the story of titular character, the "fixer" Ray Donovan (Liev Shrieber) and takes place immediately after season 7. It contains a surprising amount of flash backs, but this is fine in that it is both important to the story as it echoes current events AND explains more about the dynamic between Ray and his father Mickey (Jon Voight). It's also nice to get to see most of the other cast members one more time, but ultimately that is what will temper any recommendation from me. This movie is definitely only for people who have watched all of Ray Donovan the series, otherwise it's probably best you steer clear.

Fistful of Vengeance

If only the enemies were better with guns...

Unlike the above, Fistful of Vengeance doesn't need you to know anything about its little supernatural / martial arts series called Wu Assassins. It's not even in the title! Instead a quick intro catches people up and we get to see Wu Assassin Kai (Iko Uwais) and company wreak vengeance against... demigods and their minions or something? Story was never going to be the strong point here, but this is actually worse than what was in the series. Also worse is the actual fight scenes which is a bummer. I don't mind the wire work, but having pumped up techno music to seemingly slow combat only highlights the slowness? Again better in the series, which leaves me to say don't bother watching this one unless you really liked Wu Assassins.

Vampyr

"This is... despicable..."

It is 1918 and a new epidemic is spreading in London. As a doctor recently turned vampire it is up to you to save the city, or hurry it along to meet its demise. It's an interesting setup and exploring the map is great especially once you can unlock shortcut gates ala Dark Souls.

As to be expected the map is also peppered with enemies: other denizens of the night and a literal army of vampire hunters. Most importantly, if you play as a "good" doctor, they will constantly out level you. This is because combat nets you around 5xp per kill and doing little side quests gives you a few hundred while drinking a civilian can give you anywhere from 2000 to 6000 XP.  

Let me inspect your cold in that dark alley madam. Trust me, I'm a doctor.

Being out leveled is mainly a problem just at the start though, when you are a weak little vamp. Once you start improving your stamina (expect to dodge a lot) and get the blood shield skill (tip: improve stamina and get blood shield anyway) you can last longer in fights. Improve your weapons and you can start winning quicker.

Combat is a bit clunky and you probably never want to use the lock on feature but it is serviceable. You also will probably forget to use guns as I did, up until almost the end where they are super handy ("C" to toggle off hand) but  ultimately even finishing the game at level 26, I felt like an unstoppable powered up super vamp without killing a single innocent. Erm I mean civilian.

One of my favorite parts about the game is it goes out of the way to show you all the good and bad parts of many of the civilians. Do you actually slay the serial killer? The gang boss? The mother who abuses her daughter? The guy trying to kill himself?

Not killing any means you are "good" somehow which suffers a severe disconnect to the number of armed hunters and monsters I actually killed in the course of the game. I wasn't a fan of the violin music either and while the story is decent there are problems with it too. Still a fun game though and one I'd recommend to those interested in the subject matter of vampires.

GTFO: R6D2 - Crossways (Main)

It's been awhile since our last GTFO victory and since our fourth player was off in Elden Ring, we decided to bring a [BOT] instead which is a new feature in this rundown - you can bring up to three in place of people and if a live player hops in they just take that slot. If they jump out, a [BOT] AI can replace them with the load out the player had. While they are pretty good, immune to infection, undetectable in stealth and awesome on bio tracker they are clumsy when it comes to using c-foam, mines and shotgun type weapons - friendly fire WILL happen. They will also not stealth kill anything so that will all be up to you. Our winning load out ended up being:

DL: DMR/Sniper/Mines/Bat
Jim: Hel Revolver/Choke Mod Shotgun/Burst Sentry/Hammer
Me: Assault Rifle/Choke Mod Shotgun/C-Foam/Spear
[BOT]: DMR/Heavy Assault Rifle/Burst Sentry/Hammer

This level is also almost exclusively Charger territory. These spikey sleepers have no bonus head damage so make sure you melee them from behind while they nap. Once awake its almost always better to go loud as they can outrun you and are very dangerous up close. Against the giant versions (also present here) you'll want to go for limb destruction which forces them to stagger to buy you time. Lastly there are also lots of Charger scouts here that have the same behavior as a regular scout, except you can no longer one hit melee them to the face.

Instead it requires two full charged hammer or spear strikes to the back, or a single shot from a shotgun (all pellets must hit) or sniper rifle to the back  and by back I mean "your feet must be pointing in the same direction as its feet when you hit". If you aim at it's graphical back while its turned at a 45 degree angle away from you, you will not get the bonus damage / will not kill it / and it will summon chargers. If you are carrying a scatter gun, then you can just blow it away from any angle if you are close enough - just follow the tentacles in.

This level's main task of finding 9 terminals is harder than it first appears. Unfortunately I didn't get a good screen cap of the map, so I've made a very rough one instead (not to scale and it doesn't show the room separators for areas C - F) and will explain it like in a D&D manual. :P

Zones we visited in alphabetical order. Except for Z. That place sucks!

A - Entry Zone with one terminal and a few sleeping chargers. Door East (to H) is a regular team scan. Door West (to B) is also a regular scan, but the enemies inside will wake up after a few seconds to make your life hell. Door North (C) requires a power cell (from b1) and is a moving scan which goes in an ascending counter clockwise motion around the central structure. Once you finish the scan you'll be at the top most dark floor. I suggest jumping from the big opening in the South of it onto the second floor landing to the right then retreating downstairs back towards your starting position where you first deployed to finish off the wave.

B - contains babies AND a mother who will wake up after the door from A is opened. The method that worked for us is everyone hide just up the ladder right beside the entry door (in room A) and blast initial babies as they come up - then I'd show my face, mother would birth, repeat baby killing procedure and then everyone charge. We'd put both turrets pointing in prior to opening the door.

b1 - Blood door with babies and regular sleepers. Both turrets pointing at the door from the entryway and a low mine make this easy. Inside is a lot of supplies, the key to b2 and a cell for the Northern door of A. Another mission terminal is in here.

b2 - Blood door that spawns mostly giants and some regulars. Hybrids also come if they hear the mine at the door, otherwise they'll still be asleep inside. We setup at the SE corner of room B, giving a lot of space to shoot giants. There's a terminal down in the poison fog. If you don't crouch you don't need a fog repeller.

C - Sleeping chargers and supplies. The door to D is a checkpoint scan. The door to E is an error alarm that can only be turned off from g1. Don't let this error alarm scare you, it only summons 3 chargers every 1-2 minutes or so which makes it easy for 1 or 2 people to just hold off the wave while the others advance and loot.  

D - Right behind the checkpoint door is a charger scout, probably so you can get used to dealing with them. Lots of sleeping chargers in the rooms thereafter, especially the bulkhead control room. Follow the left door to get to the terminal here and ping the bulkhead key which moves around. Ideally you don't need to mess with the second charger scout near the end of the zone (the room right beside the terminal, but it also contains the bulkhead door for the Secondary task). Door to D1 requires the main bulkhead unlocked. Door to Z is a regular team scan BUT DON'T GO IN THERE. :P

d1 - This is the extraction zone and contains one charger scout and a bunch of supply cabinets. If you are lucky, you might get c-foam grenades. It's worth killing this one anyway and if you goof (which I did), hold inside this room against the wave of chargers.

E - Contains sleeping chargers you need to kill loudly thanks to the error alarm. Make sure you save the first regular door after the error alarm door. Once you have killed the sleepers AND the error wave, shut/mine/ice that door and go North to start the big cluster alarm door to F. There are LOTS of circles here, so after the initial team scan is done C-foam person must go on duty to hold the door for as long as possible. Highly likely enemies will break through before you finish the scan so fight well. Once you are back down to the error alarm spawn of 3, leave two people to continue to hold there while the others advance north.

e1 - Located in the South West corner of room E, this chamber has more sleeping chargers, possibly more gear and one mission terminal. Only visit this one after you've turned off the error alarm.

F - sleeping chargers, gear and one mission terminal (again leave it till error alarm is off).  This zone ends in a blood door to G that should be mined. Time it so that after an error alarm wave someone opens it and runs back. We also used the next regular door (close it as the blood door opener runs through) as a second mine spot.

G - four giant chargers sleep in this room. Someone needs to sneak past them and into the next chamber (g1) to turn off the alarm. Lots of gear in this zone too but be careful. If you don't feel like sneaking, one person should fire and run back to the big room in F where the others can wait to smash the four giant chargers down.

g1 - Has one charger scout. If you snuck past the giant chargers you'll need to close the door behind you before dealing with it. There is a terminal upstairs and to the left of the door when you enter. This is both a mission terminal and the terminal to deactivate alarms. Once the alarms are off, be sure to get codes from this terminal and the ones in F and e1 as you backtrack and look for any extra gear.

H - Contains poison fog which you need repellers for, as well as giant sleeping chargers. Shoot from outside (in zone A) to lure and kill the ones in H. Hopefully the fog turbine is in here. If not, its in h1. It is essential you find it. Now there are two doors to h1 - upstairs and downstairs. Leave the upstairs one closed and always enter from downstairs.

h1 - A few more giant sleepers, possibly more gear and lots of annoying screaming cancers on the walls. Again, fire from zone H into h1 to lure and kill the giants then enter the downstairs door, shut it, mine it, c-foam it and we placed both turrets from the door facing inwards (so things that broke the door and ran past would get shot in the back with the backstab bonus). It's worth looking for more supplies in here, just go slow and shine those damnable cancers. DL also put two mines on the tall staircase from the alarm door (to I) to the upstairs door between h1 and H.

Once ready, start the alarm door to I. As long as the upstairs door to H is closed, the charger army will only attempt to get through the downstairs door. Should a circle take you to the upstairs section (as ours did) let the mines do their work and then you can hop down onto some boxes to save some time getting to the last circle. Fog turbine person, be sure to drop it and provide cover fire to help the team. You have enough time to empty a clip or two before needing to pick it up again.

I - Important! If you've already done the other terminals (your quest goal is 7/9) then I advise sending someone back to d1 to wait for the extraction circle - and not C-foam carrier (give all remaining tools to him). This big room contains the final two terminals you need, one in the center of the room and one along the right wall hiding between some boxes. Among the towering pillars also walk 5+ charger scouts! I ended up C-foaming and spearing 3 to death so that DL and I could get the terminals, but Jim and [BOT] were ready to extract in case we goofed.

If you goof - rush the terminals and type in the code. You have just enough time to do this as the charger scouts scream. Getting 9/9 turns on the extraction circle to let you win the mission if someone is already waiting at d1... though whoever is in room I is probably screwed. :P

Turns out we didn't goof and could all GTFO! Huzzah!

Z - Much bigger than the tiny black box on my map, it is your "optional" path if you don't want to do the alarm scan and/or have no ammo. In this darkness there are three terminals hidden behind silent stealth scans. Each room also contains regular sleepers, charger scouts AND sleeping mothers! It's a horrible, horrible area that is much worse than the error alarm. If you are going to attempt it, bring loads of glow sticks.

What's in your Favorites?

Or what would you put there?

This question stems from my last free Steam games post, where I made a passing mention of my favorites which is actually a sub section available to all Steam users that I've only started using recently. I thought I'd share the 15 games that made it in there, my main criteria being "games I would play again". Obviously this doesn't cover any games outside of my steam library so maybe I'll do a bigger list later down the track.

It's currently a pretty short list.

Going over them really quickly in no particular order: Black Desert is a beautiful and interesting MMORPG, but it stopped letting me play (startup error) so I'm not sure if that's staying in here for much longer. I love the stealth mechanics in Thief, both Dishonored games which also have multiple ways to play, Skyrim which has tons of mods to enjoy (it also stole my name, arrrrgh *shakes fist*), and GTFO - my current regular multiplayer stealth horror.

Sleeping Dogs is just fun in a chaotic way while To the Moon and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice are both excellent game wise and in hitting me in the feels. The remaining six are all free games: A Raven Monologue and When the Past was Around: Prologue are more feels hitters, Dead Horizon is an excellent lesson in short story telling, and High Entropy Challenges, Gravitas and Liquidators are all good first person puzzlers featuring in the same order: stealth, humor, and Chernobyl. :P

But what of these do I consider the best you ask? That's not so hard to answer. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice wins easily.

What games do you have flagged as your favorites?

Legends of Andor 2 - Legend 7 - Find the Cartographer

[A board game session from The Legends of Andor]

This huge expansion to the base game sees heroes DL the warrior, Mom the archer, Rose the tracker, and Joe the guardian meet new hero Juris the -fisherman- sea warden who happens to have a vessel they can use to begin their journey across a new ocean map! The sea warden's ability is that he is able to push the ship one tile for free. For those wondering "what happened to Legend 6? Was that the Star Shield?" the answer to that is no, Legend 6 is some downloadable adventure we didn't do (because really, just include it in the box next time?) that tells the story of why the dwarf hero is no longer around at this point. *shrugs* Who cares!? We're on a boat!

Alas, the "Journey to the North" (title on the box) is not complete without a cartographer so we must find one (because no one else knows how to steer North apparently). We arrive at the sea of four islands at around midday (because the game is scum and makes you lose half a day) and set out to visit each isle to find a suitable candidate and kill a trio of gors that show up to ruin our reputation. You heard that right! The narrator/time limit is not as bad on this board as it only moves for every two enemies slain now but a new "doom" track takes the form of "fame" tracked by a bard who sings about us. Fame takes a big hit per monster on land and should that fame ever reach zero we instantly lose... because ... we get sad and ... stuff? It's very stupid.

We quickly split up to discover the islands: "ship builder land" where we can upgrade the ship and sell logs, "the city of will" which boosts you to 14 will power if you end there and the third is home to sea shell purchasing dwarves and their traveling merchant Garz (and in another example of bad game design, of the four shell tokens one is valued ZERO. That's just a big middle finger from the designers I think). On the last island which is just a ruin, a ghostly specter points us to a nearby shipwreck where Joe finds a barely alive cartographer named Merrik! If we save him, we can guilt trip him into slavery! Huzzah! But wait - that's not the end of the mission. Looming nearby is a giant that looks a lot like Thanos, and for some reason we need to survive long enough until we can track him down? What!

Thanos on a boat!

With mermen, sea trolls, and giant fish horrors called arrogs all marching (swimming?) onto the islands we quickly gather up on the boat and kill all the weak ones as a team - taking their fame which then gets taken away by the bigger horrors making it onto land. Sounds a lot like GRINDING!? BECAUSE IT IS! STUPID DESIGN! Fighting from the boat is almost like everyone having a bow, and best of all it can move pretty fast depending on the wind. It can also screw you up as we found out when Juris positioned the ship nicely at the end of the day for a planned slaughter of fish dudes only for a storm to put us on the opposite end of the board. WTF.

Finally we kill/survive long enough for the giant to appear and, after ditching the comatose cartographer with the sea shell dwarves, we go to ask it some questions with our boat-bows and pointy arrows. It's very difficult to even land a hit on this guy, but when we finally do the mission ends as the giant simply smiles at us and dives beneath the waves.

Not a great start to this expansion. The hole filled story combined with bad mechanics that seem over tuned to the point of "if you do not kill all those gors in the round they appear, sorry you've lost the game" leaves us hoping the next few missions will be better.

El Cid and World Without End

Two series set in medieval times.

El Cid

This Spanish series follows Ruy (Jaime Lorente, who you might better know as Denver on La Casa de Papel/Money Heist), who despite losing his father to King Ferdinand, works to become the very skilled squire of Prince Sanchio, Ferdinand's son. Mixed with sword fighting, back stabbing and politics is a healthy dose of drama where Ruy must often chose between what he wants and what is right. Good and entertaining story. There are two seasons of this thus far and I'm hoping there are more to come.

Just because he talks to birds doesn't make him crazy.

World Without End

This mini series is the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth and is set mostly in Kingsbridge once more, but don't worry if you haven't seen Pillars yet (though you should, it's very good) because this takes place 157 years later. In it the town is made to suffer by royalty and resident scum bags who are happy to be irredeemable "black hat" wearing villains and make the good characters, the people you root for, suffer ever episode. Excellent story telling, though my the same "people don't age" criticism I leveled at Pillars is the same here as principal characters don't change much appearance wise despite this story spanning several years. Still worth a watch though!

Pathfinder Kingmaker - Fairy Tale

[Part of the Cursed story line]

Aldori troops led by Lady Jamandi supported by Kesten's guardsmen and Jhod's faith push through the wild hunt forces giving an opening for Siegfried, Jaethal, Valerie, Bouquet, Arkemyr and Garret to reach the Lantern King (multi phased boss fight). Fortunately Nyrissa is here too and has enough strength to break her bonds and assist the heroes to defeat the annoying fireball who is banished like the weakling he is. Only the unimportant nameless extras and Jhod die in this final phase which is a resounding victory for the King.

Keeping his promise, Siegfried takes Nyrissa as his queen but also has a friends with benefits status with a young hot elf that looks like a younger version of her mother Jaethal. In fact Jaethal now wears her daughter as a living skin suit thanks to the ritual she learned earlier - making her both not-quite undead and also more evil than when she started. With a strong alliance to house Aldori, the untouchable ace Valerie remains as regent and lawman Kesten marries ex-bandit Bouquet while Archmage Arkemyr and thief Garrett return to their own lands wealthier than before.

Then Siegfried got more advisors through the cash shop?

That's it for Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Pretty cool game but also very long. The later periods of kingdom management are pretty tough with those super high difficulty checks, but not as tough/unfair as the later combats. Especially against swarms. I hate those things.