Hey y’all, happy Friday (sorry I missed y’all yesterday, just been swamped)! The weekend is FINALLY here aaaaaannndd I’m not gonna get much gaming in at all due to a wedding on Saturday that’s gonna eat up my whole day. No, not mine, that’s August. Regardless, I hope to get in at least enough time to cover After the Empire this weekend to cover it in one go, but we’ll see how wiped Saturday makes me. Beyond that, I’ll likely get some gaming in on my 3DS, since Nicole and I have to get to the wedding super early since SHE’S playing some of the music for it (she’s a professional violinist if y’all didn’t know, among other things), so that’ll likely entail Baigai-O Spirits and Pokemon Conquest. I really love the DS’s library. I also HAVE to get some god damned Starfleet Academy in in preparation for next week’s podcast. Guh, why do I do this to myself? Oh yeah, your amusement. Got it.
Last night’s 8-Bit Invaders stream was a lot of fun. I’m a fan of classic RTS gameplay, and those games hit all the right notes. Seriously, they’re gorgeous, gun and fast-paced, as a good RTS should be, and they just have tons of content. I then played a little bit more Wolfenstein, which was fun! Until I got to the part where you can jump in a side dimension that has the giant floating ticks hanging about. At least they look like ticks to me. As someone who hates spiders and ticks, and actually got Lyme Disease a long while back from a tick, I was mildly freaked, and miiiiiiiight not be able to play it again. Seriously. I’ll try again, because it’s fun, but if I feel even the slightest bit freaked, I’ll move onto finish Singularity, the other big single player FPS I’m trying to finish.
Since a likely Spring Steam Sale is coming up, I hope to pick up DOOM and the next two Wolfenstein games (New Order, Old Blood) to keep the story-based FPSfest going if they’re cheap enough. Ohh, I need to finish Shadow Warrior 2 as well! Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is also on sale on the Humble store, and while I’m tempted, I don’t feel tempted enough to actually bite at its price.
The night before, I got some time in Titanfall 2, which I am still loving. I tested the Action! recording software with it, and honestly I’m not sure I like it (Action!, not Titanfall). Action! has some usability issues I find problematic, like forcing itself to stay on my primary monitor even when I moved it to my smaller secondary monitor. I also don’t like the lack of any preview functionality, and I couldn’t find a way to add an overlay like those Discord allows me to use with OBS. I mean, it apparently allows overlays, but it wants it as a FILE, not as a URL, so ugh. So far I’m not super impressed, but I’ll try a bit more with it. I think I also have to fiddle with the sound settings as I think it’s bringing in the audio twice. Titanfall 2 was a blast though, as always.
So we’re approaching our next Monthly MMO Meetup, and I have to admit, I’m a bit torn. On the one hand, the poll I ran showed that people were more interested in Mechwarrior: Living Legends than Allegiance (heck, no one voted for Allegiance), but on the other hand, Hunter’s poll shows a definite interest in Freelancer-based mods such as the amazing Discovery or Freeworlds. I played a little Discovery the other night, and was reminded how awesome it was. I have to admit, the reason I’d chosen Mechwarrior for my poll is that it was fresh in my mind, and I’d honestly forgotten about the aforementioned Freelancer mods. However, Freelancer is definitely more in-line with what our site is about, and Discovery is pretty damned awesome, but I’d still love to give Mechwarrior some more love and attention.
What I think I might do is try to do both. For the Sunday meetups, I’ll replace Allegiance with Discovery Freelancer for the next few months, and then, when I have available time on the weekends, I’ll join the Chaos March in Mechwarrior and stream that, so hopefully everyone is happy. I have to ruminate on this in my head a little bit, but if I were to just go with my gut, we’d be doing Freelancer. I’ll let’cha all know soon.
Now, in terms of news, plenty has happened. The big news is that Stellaris: Utopia is out, and it seems to be a big deal. I’ve barely touched the game since my own videos a while back — because I HATED sectors. HATED — but I’ll be diving back in shortly. The folks at new site Strategy Gamer — which is an offshoot of an old favorite of mine, Wargamer — already have a review up. Others do too, but I wanted to give these guys a shoutout since I have a special place in my heart for Wargamer. Speaking of Stellaris, that and a lot of Paradox stuff is on sale this weekend on Steam.
Back to news, Dual Universe has a new dev diary that shows off some fun stuff, and they reached a new funding milestone, so yay for them! Offworld Trading Company has a new patch that adds back in the beloved voiceovers from early access. Personal favorite 3030 Deathwar Redux has a small patch that brings it closer to 1.0. Fractured Space adds a new ship and larger areas, and finally, you can now add Wing Commander 1 ships to the Saga total conversion. Neat!
That should do it for today and for this week folks! Have a great weekend, and I hope to see y’all next week! Thanks for reading!
