GTFO: R6B2 - Contaminant (Secondary)

We've come back upstairs to do the Secondary goal of this map, to do two terminal uplinks, which thankfully is a lot easier than the previous hell we were in. Archer was available for this run so our loadouts were as follows:

Jim: Hel Revolver/Choke Mod Shotgun/C-Foam/Hammer
Archer: Carbine/Scatter Gun/Burst Sentry/Hammer
DL: DMR/Sniper/Mines/Bat
Me: Assault Rifle/Shotgun/Burst Sentry/Spear

For those not familiar with GTFO, doing Secondary or Extreme goals are optional - but if you do them or not you must always also complete the main objective to win the mission! This means you can just follow my previous write up, up until the point where you get the bulkhead key and plug it into the controller (second last paragraph). Instead of picking MAIN this time you will need to all stand on the SECONDARY scan which unlocks the bulkhead to the North which is a checkpoint scan (yay) so gear up before triggering it.

Explore inside keeping in mind you need to save doors. You will soon come across a large hallway with a blood door to the West and a blood door to the East. We did West first and only used one mine and sentry while firing from the open little door. Clear the zone past it to find your first terminal right beside a large door. Jim perma-iced this while both sentries waited outside while Archer and DL covered the smaller Northern door, which was also closed and mined.

Note that for terminal scans, enemies will spawn one ROOM away (instead of one ZONE like most alarm scans) so they will attack from both doors. One person (me in our case) is stuck on the terminal, after entering UPLINK_CONNECT [ip address] begins the enemy spawn. In this mission each terminal will need 4 verification keys. Terminal person must type UPLINK_VERIFY xxxx (where xxxx is a code that matches on the HUD - it will be among a number available). So if it says Verify X04 and your HUD says X04-TOOL then you would type UPLINK_VERIFY TOOL.

There is a delay while the machine verifies each of these so expect to hold for a minute or two (especially if like me, you make typos). Once all four codes are done, the waves stop and you can regroup and resupply. Then head over to the East blood door and this time we used both sentries and mines AND mined an extra door to get through. In this zone the terminal room has three doors. We mined all and had sentries inside pointing to the ones further from the door (iced too), and stationed one person per door with me on the terminal.

This time the enemies came from those doors with the turrets and the team held while the codes were typed. Note the team can also help verbally since they can see the codes on the HUD so terminal person should call out the required code. Once that is done, congratulations - that's the end of the secondary objective. You'll find a bulkhead key while doing these terminals, so use that to unlock the main bulkhead door to complete the rest of the mission.

As a reminder, this one is an alarm scan and will send circles into the fog below. Now that the enemies have multiple paths into this room because the secondary bulkhead is open, we stationed Jim and Archer as mobile guards to fight the waves while DL and I did circles. Once unlocked, just follow my previous guide from the second last paragraph to find the HSU and GTFO. :)

Criminal and Spine of the Night

Two mental movies.

Criminal (2016)

Jericho (Kevin Costner) is a bad man with mental issues, but these same mental issues make him a prime candidate for the memory transference of a secret agent who has a mission to save the world. Dubious science aside, this is a decent action thriller with some good actors but it would have been better if the cops didn't make so many stupid mistakes and hasty judgement calls. Still worth a watch, and this is one I'd watch again.

Spine of the Night

Some interesting fashion choices.

 
This animated fantasy is all about a flower that both gives you power and makes you trip balls, but the story spans across centuries and is told by literally having one character tell another what happened. Ugh! It also doesn't help that the story isn't that strong and that there are filler scenes/stories that didn't need to be there. Art wise the back grounds are great despite clashing with the fantastic frame by frame but shadowless style of the characters. I do have to say its like they were too proud of their art and made all the combat slow though. Anyway, only attempt watching this if you want something really out there.

Forgotten Waters: Spoils of the Damned

[A board game session from Forgotten Waters]

The destruction of the Grand Pirate Council led to the surviving pirates ransacking of their stuff and discovering a map pointing to the ghost island of Captain Lees, which was rumored to be full of treasure! And undead! As usual, greed got the best of the raiders who tore up the map in the scuffle and left with only portions of the map.

One of these map pieces makes its way to the perpetually angry and thirsty Captain Swift, who is intent on finding ghost island for personal reasons. Among her crew are Charles Vane who looks like a magically animated skeleton, Bonnie Lass the thespian, safety inspector Astrahan and One Eye Crochet - an adoptive mother looking for her lost son.

With three good leads on other map parts they set sail for a nearby pair but are quickly ambushed by Tortualos! That is, Pirate Ninja Turtles, who are unstoppable in their lightning raid which depletes the ship of a lot of supplies! Fighting another vessel right after is a risky affair but they succeed and claim a second map piece followed by Bonnie Lass getting another and the diary of Captain Lees from a cave on the island the second ship is patrolling.

The TMNT crew actually did do that.

Storms and Astrahan's cautious driving slow progress to a crawl as they make their way back to the starting port to resupply so Captain Swift takes matters into her own hands and uses the crews treasure to simply buy another map fragment from a rival captain. Now with enough information to pin point the location of ghost island, Charles Vane takes the wheel and powers the ship there in short order.

Captain Lees and his zombie crew welcomes them and reward them with treasure, but as yet another storm forces them to stay on the island it becomes clear all of them are also turning into zombies! "Zombies soon to be under my command!" laughs Captain Lees. "But the curse will be undone if you die," Captain Swift retorts - quickly leading her crew against him in an epic fight where Charles Vane resists numerous mind control attempts while fighting in melee while the rest man the cannons (Lees focuses on increasing discontent rather than doing direct damage).

Eventually Lees is defeated and all his zombie crew drop dead - their spirits rising freely. It turns out Captain Swift was an undead too, and having broken his curse also has her spirit freed with the others leaving her crew to decide what to do with themselves. Vane, Bonnie and Crochet all retire from the pirate life, with Vane finding a cure for his see through skin condition.  

Crochet never does find her missing boy, instead becoming a go-go dancer while Bonnie Lass returns to being an actress who then, in a play where she portrays a pirate, is arrested for piracy! Astrahan is eventually abandoned at port by the remaining crew, too annoyed at his safe measures. Just as well since soon after the ship sinks, because they had no safety inspector on board.

Strike Back

The mission comes first.

This 8 season action series is a strange beast, but it always focuses on the members of Section 20 a British military intelligence unit that's often deployed against an array of terrorist threats. Without fail some of those threats are usually in Section 20 itself and there's a rotating door for cast members as they get killed off quite regularly.

There are plenty of action scenes which seem to improve per season, and its nice to see little things like bullet holes and weapon knowledge from the cast. From season two there is also loads of soft porn injected in between all the action segments which slowly reduces as the seasons go by, but hey - I'm all for violence and eye candy so that gets a tick from me.

Our favorite character in the last few seasons.

Story wise - well, it's fine. Nothing overly mind blowing, and in fact it is somewhat repetitive (stop the terrorist), but that's not why you'd be watching this anyway. For those who share my taste of bullets, bombs and boobs you should definitely put this on your radar. Recommended!

Europa Universalis IV Among Us

Both aren't for me.

Europa Universalis IV

Everything is shinier in this iteration of Europa Universalis - better graphics, better music, and better controls... wait, nope - definitely not better controls! For all the additions this is still as user unfriendly as the last one I tried and you will still bombarded by popups while trying to figure out just what it is you are meant to be doing. Sorry, Europa Universalis. A polished turd is still a turd.

Among Us

Don't be fooled by the cartoony graphics of this very popular social deduction game. In it, around 7-15 players are on board a space ship and must do mundane tasks to fill up the "goal" bar - should that happen, they win! Except 1-3 of them are actually traitors who are both sabotaging the ship AND murdering crew. Whenever someone sounds the alarm upon finding a body or simply pressing the emergency meeting button the "game" is paused and so begins the discussions and voting to decide who among you is a traitor.

 

Expect to die a lot!

While nothing happens with a tie, if you get the most votes you get booted out the airlock. Don't worry though, as a ghost you can still try do tasks to win the game for the good guys (most people just quit on death though) but you can no longer talk or vote. Not that you could talk much anyway. All conversations are chosen from a dialogue wheel and while there are a number options to pick from, most of the time it'll just be something like "Who?", "[Player 1]", "No [Player 2]".

Strangely, the stupid tasks are the fun part of the game for me but they are always interrupted by the voting which seems to be what most servers I've tried really lean into. Unless you have the unlikely event of peaceful traitors, the good crew will never win by completing tasks and instead it will always come down to booting the correct folks out of the airlock. That part is not really my thing but for those who enjoy it, this game is for you as it happens regularly.

Cursed Dragon's Dogma (Netflix)

Two Fantasy Series on Netflix.

Cursed

A tale set in the Arthurian age, this focuses on a young woman named Nimue (Katherine Langford) who is shunned by her village for being "cursed". She also quickly gains a legendary sword and soon becomes a leader to those who oppose murderous zealots trying to eradicate their kind. Weak acting and a weak plot that manages to butcher a few other Arthurian characters is a good reason why this only lasted one season. Not really worth watching.

The action scenes aren't very strong either.

Dragon's Dogma

A dark fantasy animated adventure loosely based on the game of the same name, this seven episode series follows a man seeking revenge on a dragon (also a main plot point in the game). Decent animation and action, but don't expect the same story as the game at all here. While the accents were a bit odd at first I ended up enjoying it and do recommend it for fans of this genre. Just don't expect any overly complicated story arcs.

Centipede, Black Widow and Death Coming

Three silly pixel games.

Black Widow: Recharged and Centipede: Recharged

These two top down arcade shooters could almost be the same game. In Black Widow you play a spider on a web that shoots a machine gun against incoming mosquitoes and bees to get points, while in Centipede you play just as a gun that fires at a variety of bugs, but mostly decapitation resistant centipedes who moves akin to the space invaders, only this time they have cover - not you. Not great games by any means. I suppose they might be more fun in co-op but with so many better games to co-op the question remains... why?

Death Coming

Does it pay well?

As death's apprentice, you must kill as many people as you can in the time allotted using the many death traps lying around each isometric map - and you get a bonus for killing three specific people too. "Death traps" is used loosely, because these could be anything from changing traffic lights when they shouldn't to summoning alien invaders. It's morbidly fun but quickly repetitive and is only made worse when angels show up to make your job more difficult. Not a bad game, but there are certainly better ones.