Keyrock

I'm going to take a break from Chinatown Detective Agency, or as I like to call it Where in Singapore is Carmen Sandiego? It's a fun game and I kind of like having to break out a piece of paper and a pen to figure out a cipher or my phone to do some research. This will surely alienate some players, but I grew up on drawing maps on graph paper for dungeon crawlers, so this is old hat. The game has some bugs, though. There are some major sound balancing issues and other minor annoyances. I'll wait for a patch and go back to Elex 2 in the meantime.

After the prelude you have to choose 1 of 3 people to work with. I chose the Rupert Zhou path which has me infiltrating an international ring of art thieves. The first task was pedestrian enough. The second... Led me to a secret sex dungeon.

Valleys are played out. When are we going to get a game about an isthmus?

Impressive.

I uploaded the image to Imgur rather than linking straight to the Microsoft Cloud or wherever tge xXxBOxXx sends captures. Hopefully it loads faster this way.

I'm also hoping they're not Too Shy to throw in a Kajagoogoo reference. No need to get up, I'll show myself out.

They better include a reference to Dead or Alive - You Spin Me Round eventually. Otherwise, what's even the point?

I looked it up. It was DoW 2 Retribution. Playable were Imperial Guard, Blood Ravens Space Marines, Black Legion Chaos Marines, Ork Freebooterz, Alaitoc Eldar, and Tyranids. The campaign story wasn't as good as the base game because it needed to be generic enough to work with any faction, but getting to play as chaos or xenos more than made up for that.

DoW 2 had an expansion, I forget what it was called. You could play as one of 2 or 3 boring space marine legions, as per usual, but you could also play through the campaign as some of the Xenos. You could be Orks, Eldar, Tyranids... I don't remember if Tau were playable. Anyway, I played as Orks, obviously. I had a blast because Orks have the wackiest units, when you upgrade them they just slap another gun on to their gun for more dakka, and their banter was hilarious. The cherry on top was that the Ork captain just wanted the lady's hat at the end because he was into hats. Good times. Edit: I think Chaos Marines were playable also.

There have been a billion games where you play as one legion or another of the boring space marines. Where's my Evil Sunz combat racing game? Seriously, can we get basically Twisted Metal but 40K? Obviously I'm playing Evil Sunz because the red uns go faster.

I'm playing Chinatown Detective Agency. I had never heard of this game before but I was in the mood for a point n click and this serendipitously popped up on Game Pass. The game plays like something halfway between Beneath a Steel Sky and Where in ****** is Carmen Sandiego? You are sometimes required to figure things out outside of the game, either from your own knowledge of history, geography, folklore, et cetera, or via Alt-Tabbing to a browser, using your phone, or whatever method of information gathering via internet. I mean, you could probably also phone a friend or go to the library, but the internet will likely be faster. Point is, you do detective work outside the game from clues found within the game.

RIP comedian Gilbert Gottfried.

Some more thoughts on Weird West now that I've done 2 out of 5 stories: Of the previous Raphael Colantonio games, this most reminds me of Arx Fatalis. I'm not sure why, there is definitely Dishonored and Prey DNA in the game, but I rarely get reminded of those games while I play it, meanwhile I'm reminded of Arx Fatalis somewhat frequently. It might just be that it's rough around the edges like Arx Fatalis, while Dishonored was polished and Prey was really polished, too polished, if that's possible. The rest of my thoughts are theories about the overarching story, hence I will spoiler tag them.

I finished the Pigman story. I did a whole lot more murderin' with him than I did with Jane. I got a legendary revolver and from that point on I was an unstoppable killing machine. I'll probably take a break from Weird West for a bit. I need to get back to Elex 2, though I also want to play something that's not a RPG, perhaps a point n click.

It almost happened:

Plot Twist: Laura Dern plays Admiral Holdo in the new David Lynch movie.

My hooptie project, a 1974 Honda Civic. Stock: The idea of supercharged V8 in this car sounded so preposterous that naturally I had to do it. I'm not much of an artist but I did my best to make it look like it's rusted with scratches and paint flaking off. The only thing better than leaving a million dollar hypercar in the dust in a 1974 Civic is doing it in a 1974 Civic that's falling apart.

I'm probably roughly halfway through Pigman's story, if Jane Bell's story is anything to go by. I still do a lot of sneaking to thin the herd, but when I see an opportunity with a bunch of baddies bunched up I let the dynamite fly. I have the Demolitionist perk maxed out, meaning I do double damage with dynamite. On the off chance that anything survives the explosion I got a sharp blade and an itchin' for some slicin'. The game hands out too many Golden Aces, provided you are as diligent as I am in picking areas clean. At the rate I'm finding them I may max every perk out before all is said and done.

Brisco County - EP9 Brisco For The Defense Brisco is pulled back into his old job as a lawyer when a friend is accused of murder. This is a good old fashioned murder mystery episode and not in any way related to the main story. Brisco and Socrates are the only regulars to appear. I'm always sad when Bowler doesn't appear, but it wouldn't have made sense for him to be there. This was sort of like an episode of Law & Order, except entertaining. The good thing about not having watched this show in nearly 30 years is that I had no recollection of who had done the deed. I thought I had the murderer figured out about halfway through. I was sort of right since said person wound up being an accomplice.

Will the Max Payne remakes include shark cards and a subscription service?

@BartimaeusI think I saw smoke coming out of my phone as it tried to load those gifs.

Brisco County - EP8 Senior Spirit John Bly kidnaps professor Wickwire and one of the robber barons' sons. Brisco gets some help from beyond the grave to confront his nemesis. This is the least comedic and most serious episode yet. This is also where it is revealed that there is more than one orb. Bly is great as usual as the soft spoken evil manipulator.

I think the XBOX Elite controllers are also fully remappable, but they're so freakin' expensive.