Various Bits

Video Games:

Well I have completed Metroid Prime 3 (a week or two ago). This was a title, being a fan of Metroid and all, that I was quite eagerly awaiting to get ahold of, and in a fit of overwhelming generosity my wife gave me (along with Endless Ocean) for Father’s Day.

I’ve been a fan of Metroid ever since I first played one of the titles - tho to be fair I got my Metroid wings a little late - I didn’t start until Metroid Prime on the Gamecube. At this point I’ve completed that title, along with the two Metroid titles for the GBA, did most of Metroid Prime 2 (that one got shelved because I got sucked into World of Warcraft - and 3 years later I don’t have the motivation to go back and figure out where I left off), and have dabbled in some of the earlier releases. Overall a fantastic series - and the control setup on the Wii is top notch. Finally a more intuitive and sensitive way to shoot things than a tiny joystick :) Parts of the game were frustratingly “hard” - and by hard I mean “random shit you have no control over fucking up your plans”, but these areas (only one comes to mind, really) were refreshingly rare. I played through on Normal difficultly - and having done so I feel like I sort of cheated myself. The game was astonishingly easy, either because of my FPS experience in general or past Metroid titles in particular I don’t know.

On the flip side I can replay the game again on the hardest difficulty now - and I think all my scans remain associated with my save file, so I don’t have to run around with the scan visor on constantly and can instead enjoy the visuals :)

However I have three other titles sitting in front of me - Halo 2 (yes it’s old - but I didn’t get an XBox until very recently), Metal Gear Solid 4 (never played any of the others, but I’m told the plot is easy to catch up on, and the game itself is more a bunch of movies than anything), and Fallout 3, which I pre-orderd sight unseen because the first two were so awesome. Also I still debate constantly between buying GRID now and Gran Turismo 5 later, or just waiting for GT5 (no interest here in forking out $40 for a glorified demo via GT5 Prologue. I mean puhLEEZE.) Meanwhile Guitar Hero IV looms on the horizon.

Plus I want several other titles. So many games, so little time :) More recently I snagged Blast Factor via PS3 download just to have a nice shooter hanging around. Pure mindless entertainment. It’s important to have such things :) It was a toss up between that and Super Stardust HD, but Blast Factor looks a little better on my currently non-HD TV. Once we get the new TV I’ll probably end up with both of these games.

AND FINALLY: Much happiness ensued: STAR CONTROL 2. This game is bloody ancient - but man, it was fucking awesome back in the day. This game and its predecessor was a huge deal when I was a freshman - I recall walking down the hall one day and no less than seven dorm rooms had this thing going at the same time. This is old school beat the crap out of your buddy stuff - both folks playing ON THE SAME KEYBOARD, yessir, this is back before that fancy schmancy internet crap, might have even pre-dated the granddaddy of PC gaming networking, IPX. You could smell the sweat of your opponent as you crushed his fragile ego (hell, I remember doing exactly that - I was regarded as one of the better to best players on the floor at one point, and this upstart guy was touted as a contender. We went 3 games in a row with a huge audience, him dripping with confidence, me just looking for a challenge. I schooled the fuck out of him. Not only did I win all three games, I believe in the third one he was so frustrated he made stupid choices and I think I didn’t even lose a ship. Ah, the halcyon days of me being good at something). Well, now it’s been released in open source, there’s a Mac version, and I’m just a little happy retro gamer guy at the moment. They even added network support.

I miss Star Control 3 as well, but that one apparently is regarded as a bastard step child. Eh.


Hordes/Warmachine:

Between a 2 week family vacation and a shit pile of overtime at the office, I have managed to miss every single play night at the LGS for going on 6 weeks now, so I hope to hell I can make it this week.

I may have found some more opponents tho, which is good :) First, my daughter expressed interest in learning, and while it’s hard to judge as yet if she just wanted more Father/Daughter time or if she actually enjoys this particular hobby, she has been painting up my old miniatures like mad (I used to just paint, but not play, and I’ve had a pile of metal laying around for going on 12 years now) and said she really wanted to play the actual game.

So in the interest of testing that desire without blowing another $50 on a starter box, I bought some bases of various sizes and we played a game where she proxied a starter and we had at. She surprised me - retained focus for over half of the 3 hour game and even had a base strategy she was going for - run me to the edge of the table and then throw me off. I was rather impressed - she’s only 11, after all. So at this point we’ve played once, and we’re on again today to try again. If she maintains interest, while we can’t exactly afford to cover TWO of us playing this expensive hobby, we’ll look at getting her some initial pieces. On the convenient as all fuck front, she’s also interested in Circle Orboros - which means we can trade minis back and forth ad nauseum since that’s all I’m collecting for now.

Now that I have bases, I may also get another friend of mine lured in at least to try it - he doesn’t have the cash to buy his own models right now, but we can proxy him in with bases and copies of my cards, at least. As I pointed out, once PP releases a deck of Horde’s cards he could conceivably just proxy a whole frickin army on cheap ass bases. And then a bud down in San Antonio, I discovered, also plays! Has a huge retired Cygnar army to boot - he played for several years until the game became unfun when one of their group went crazy and bought everything - so that any game turned into which counter he was going to bring to the table instead of playing something comparable.

On the army front - last purchase was a copy of Hordes Evolution and a Blackclad Wayfarer. Plus a metal base to mount him to since he’s so blasted top heavy. He will be the first mini I assemble AFTER painting, since his huge staff thing will be a bit of an issue to paint behind, so that should serve as some useful experience. Next month comes the Woldwarden and then I’ll have my scrappy 500pt army.

After some 15+ hours I’m finally happy with my Shifting Stones paint job, so now they just need a coat of protective finish and I will have my first Hordes models completed. I had some trouble in places with these, but I learned some good things so I made the right choice as to first mini’s - with such an overall simple construction I could focus on technique more than coordination, in a sense, and hey, they’re just rocks so if they aren’t spot on awesome that’s ok. I tried to get fancy with the coloration of the glowing bits in the middle - one yellow, one orange, one red - and that ended up being a fine idea but difficult to implement consistently. I also was pleased to discover that I do actually have the coordination to paint AROUND the tiny little glowing runes, so my thoughts of having to dry brush in those flat parts and dealing with the time and luck of that turned out to be unnecessary. I watered down the paint a bit to paint the runes themselves, and did that first in the lighter color (of the “glow”), so that any smudges around the outside could just be covered up with the darker color. Creating a “glow” effect I sort of failed at, even with looking at the sample ones online, but hey, live and learn. I’m still pretty pleased with how they turned out - I even went back over the raised carvings on the surface of the stones with metallic silver, which created a nice subtle effect since it mostly blends in with the gray until you look at it from certain angles, when BAM the carvings just pop out at you.

If I get a chance this evening I think I’ll do the Argus’ next. I’m still debating painting them the same color, or different. I’m also going to try my hand at some shading on the musculature. We’ll see how that goes :)