Things be Crazy… – Hailing Frequencies for 11/29/17

Welcome to Wednesday as I write this on Tuesday y’all! I’m swamped y’all, so all my thoughts and all the news has backed the heck up, so this one is gonna be a doozie. It might be like this for a little while, as things are just insane this time of year at work and such, but they’ll hopefully slow down as we approach the end of the month and I can return to doing this weekdaily. Work has been crazy because I’ve been studying to take a PHP certification exam next week, while home has been crazy because of the holidays and so on.

We’re back on track with videos though, so let’s talk first about this week’s Game of the Week, Space Pirates and Zombies 2. This came out of early access a few weeks ago, and I’ve been having a blast with it. The combat is taking me a bit to get used to, but it’s fun and visceral and it has a mode called “Battlewagon” which aims your weapons for you, which is SUPER helpful right now as I am a terrible shot. ;) I love how the game mostly plays on a living map, with other captains doing their own thing, and factions doing also their own thing. It makes decision making really fun. Do I raid this scrap yard, or attack this raider, or do the arena at this station? It’s all great fun, and I am really enjoying it a LOT.

The next video of this week is the new Everspace expansion, Encounters. First off, let me apologize for the quality of this video. For some reason, OBS began using a TON of CPU resources as I recorded, which made the game stutter a bit, and I was not prepared for that, as it didn’t do that at ALL during the SPAZ 2 recordings. This was even after reinstalling OBS, which has solved the problem previously. I’ve asked on their forums for help, but so far no dice. I might try a completely clean installation to see if that fixes the problem. As for Everspace itself, Encounters is a great expansion, as it adds a new ship, new toys and new NPCs (which I sadly didn’t encounter). The new ship is fun! It’s a bit more fragile than the original ship, but has a LIGHTNING GUN that is damned fun to use.

The final video for this week is a preview of War Tech Fighters, a fast-paced mecha game that is a lot of fun. It feels a LOT more fun than, say, Strike Suit Zero, which felt like a chore to play more than an actual fun game. This one is super fast, with some mini games and some REALLLLLLY fun execution animations that I will NEVER get tired of. Definitely one to watch out for if you like mech games at ALL.

I also spent time this past Sunday with Star Wars Galaxies Legends. This time I had a complete stranger help me gain space XP, which was a ton of fun, and helped me gain several levels of space experience for my character. Now all I need to do is find a TIE Advanced.

As for non-blog gaming, I got a LOT in this past weekend because Nicole was out much of Saturday and Sunday playing at a local orchestra’s presentation of the Nutcracker.  On Friday evening, I download the trial version of Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 on Origin, since it was on sale. Twenty minutes later, I purchased the game. Holy. Crap you guys. This game is so good. SO GOOD. I’m shocked at how good it is, and how solo-player friendly it is. I did do some multiplayer during the weekend thanks to an ongoing holiday event, but much of my time was going through the game’s single-player campaigns and doing various rounds of gameplay modes in solo-play. It’s SO FUN.

Seriously, so much love and detail has been put into this game, it’s just so fun to play. Each character has varied skills which makes them all useful, and while I’ve not played every character yet, I’m having a blast with the characters I’ve played. It’s honestly disgustingly fun, and I can’t wait to play more. While many of the multiplayer players I encountered seemed super skilled and competitive, because it can be played solo, I can just play at my own pace and enjoy myself. The AI is really good too! When an AI teammate revived me without being told to or anything, I nearly cried.

I also spent more time with Parkitect (which is amazing) and Tooth and Tail (which I’m stuck in, but I don’t mind, it’s so fun). My other big game of the weekend though was AirMech Wastelands. I’ve never played an AirMech game before, but my buddy/podcast co-host Spaz really sold it to me. It’s basically a single-player or co-op mecha twin-stick shooter with various missions. While some of the missions are kicking my ass, I’m still having a great time with it. I rounded out the weekend with some Sproggiwood, which is just fantastic. I’ve another empty weekend this coming weekend too, so I’m looking forward to more GW2, seriously, so much. I just can’t get over how good it is.

Okay you guys, there’s a ton of newsiness to dive into, so let’s go!

• Battlestar Galactica Deadlock is getting some DLC/expansion pack love with their upcoming Reinforcement Pack!
• Diaspora Mass Exodus is a spacey MMO on Kickstarter that looks really great, and y’all should check it out.
• Starfighter: Infinity is another spacey MMO on Kickstarter that looks great.
• Star Fleet Armada: Rogue Adventures got a new patch which includes free DLC with officers!
• Endless Space 2 is having a modding contest y’all can enter!
• Astrox Imperium has a new devlog video to watch.
• Sunless Skies now has an improved procedural generation system, according to their latest devblog. Time to return to the game.
• Stellaris has a new dev update about their upcoming humanoid species pack.
• Infinity: Battlescape has a new devblog with tons of new pictures and details. And another one today as well!
• Stellar Tactics has another progress update for y’all to read and watch.
• Derek Smart has been busy (beyond slamming Star Citizen of course), as we have new stuff coming soon for All Aspect Warfare, Angle of Attack as well as a big patch for Galactic Command Echo Squad and a smaller one for Universal Combat! All of these games have also had their documentation updated, and you can find out how to get this new documentation on their Knowledgebase.
• Nimbatus has another stretch goal in mind after reaching 250% of their Kickstarter goal. Fantastic.
• XO has a new devblog about events in their game!
• Hellion has a new devblog about changes to degradation and more. And another on community art!
• Wayward Terran Frontier: Zero Falls will be getting a serious revamp soon.
• Stationeers has a new dev update talking engines and more.
• Dark Empire has an update about its upcoming release.
• OMG so many patches:
  • Angels Fall First (this is a huge one) and a hotfix
  • Space Tyrant (this includes a new skirmish mode!)
  • Star Traders: Frontiers, and another and one more
  • Starblast
  • Avalon: The Journey Begins
  • Istrolid
  • Go For Launch: Mercury
  • Voxel Interceptor
  • Interstellar Transport Company (this one is MASSIVE y’all)
  • Avorion and another!
  • Galactic Crew
  • Starpoint Gemini Warlords (this is also a big one)
  • Helium Rain
  • Celestial Command
  • Beyond the Void
  • Interplanetary: Enhanced Edition
  • Sunless Skies (this is a big one with a new trade system!), and another that adds better procedural generation as noted above!
  • Cosmoteer
  • Aequitas Orbis (big update adds a single player campaign)
  • Disputed Space
  • Space Rocks
• Finally, the Concept Ships blog has some new art from Pascal Blanché.

That’s it for today. I’ll likely do one more of these posts this week, if I can make the time, but if not, have a great weekend!