Hailing Frequencies Open – 6/16/17 – Running on Empty

My god you guys, I am so tired. So. Tired. I phased out a bit just after writing that. Uhhhh boy. Seriously, sleep has been very elusive this past week, and I’m not even sure why. Sure, the upcoming wedding is a bit stressful, but we’ve got everything on track for that. I wonder if our bed is in need of replacement…….

Anyway, suffice it to say this entry might be a bit rambly. So last night, a few of us played Borderlands 2 for a couple of hours, and had a blast. We all went pretty much from levels three to eight, and killed so many things. So many things. In trying to be all snipery and what not, I barely realized how much ammo I was chewing through, which really left me in some precarious positions more than once. Thankfully, in leveling up and such, I was able to end the game with an actual sniper rifle, and three weapons instead of two, all of which use a different type of ammo. Honestly the exploding snipery shotgun thing is what really saved my ass more than once, so I’m not getting rid of that any time soon.

Beyond that, last night’s gaming involved…gasp…the Playstation Vita. I wanted something purely arcadey I could play while the night was winding down. While I love my 3DS, the purest arcade experience I have on it is the amazing Bangai-O Spirits, but that’s a bit complex, and I wanted something simpler, more visceral. I therefore decided to dive into the amazing TxK on the Vita, which is just an amazing experience. I’ve always loved Tempest, but never got to play Tempest 2000 on the Jaguar, so apparently this is the most refined version of the game to date. It’s kind of a shame it’s ONLY available on the Vita, but whuddyagonnado?

Anyway, onto videos! Today’s final entry of The Long Journey Home has us getting killed early on because we just haaaapppppened to pick up a slave, and this one race REALLY hates slaves. It’s not like we PLANNED it, nor could we jettison the poor fellow even if we wanted to, so we were kind of stuck, but it’s alright. Am I gonna keep playing this? When I find time, yes, because it’s got enough Starflight in its DNA to be awesome, despite how terrible I am at the orbital mechanics.

In the final Navalia video, I overcome the odds and take another resource system from some very nasty queens. It’s a rough battle there for a spell, but I’m VERY thankful I spent the time and resources to upgrade my ships because that really made all the difference, especially the longer-ranged lasers on the mothership. This is a surprisingly great game that I definitely intend to keep playing in order to at least unlock the sandbox mode, but also because it’s damned fun. :)

Finally, in our final Star Fleet Armada video, I spend much of the video striving to upgrade my ships, which means a lot of resource gathering not just on planets, but in suns and nebulae. This game is so god damned great. It harkens back to a time when games were harder just because they could be, and this game unabashedly old-school in so many ways. I can’t recommend it enough.

New releases seem to have stopped for the moment, which in a way is a relief. I love covering the classics too, which is why I’m glad to go back to 1995 this weekend with a dive into SSI’s Renegade: Battle for Jacob’s Star. I barely played this game when it was new because, if I recall, I got bored really quickly. I recall it was more memorable not only for its own soundtrack but for the fact that you could slip in your own CD while playing the game, a novel feature at the time. I hope to also slip in some time to record some Disputed Space and Impulse: Space Combat. Not sure if I’ll have the time though. If I do get a sliver of time to myself beyond that, it’ll likely go to LOGistICAL if anything.

Alright, now onto news, and for a Friday there’s quite a lot of it! Let’s dive in!

• Gangs of Space launched its alpha this morning…and then disabled invites due to a rocky start. Hopefully they get things back on track soon because I wanna try it.
• Astrox: Hostile Space Excavation got its first update in a long time, looking to fix save game locations. Apparently more updates are coming too, so yay!
• Starpoint Gemini Warlords announced that their DLC involving bounty hunting — entitled Deadly Dozen — will drop on June 20th! Can’t wait!
• Everspace got a small patch that fixed some crashing mission stuff.
• Star Sonata 2 has a dev blog about its new modification system.
• Stellaris has a massive patch to fix stuff after its last patch was pushed back into beta, oddly enough.
• Avorion launched a beta patch for its Alliances update which fixes a boatload of things.
• Star Fleet Armada Rogue Adventures has a lot of stuff incoming, according to this dev blog thingy, and also got a nice patch as well.
• Remnants of the Precursors is inviting folks to join the discussion on its next alpha.
• Wing Commander: Prophecy is featured in the CIC’s scan of a 1998 copy of EXTREME PC.
• The Infinite Black 2 launched its Kickstarter recently. I hate to admit I’d never heard of the original. :/
• Empyrean Frontier got a patch that adds Advanced Fighter Units, among other things.
• Finally, it’s not a space game, really, but we love it enough to mention that Offworld Trading Company got a hefty patch.

That’s it folks, have an awesome weekend!