Odd News: Man Wielded 6-inch Game Weapon Replica In Public, Got Arrested

According to report in Kotaku, a gentleman in England was observed by CCTV to be holding what appears to be a bladed weapon and walking down the street, leading to his arrest by the local constabulary. The man was surprised, claiming the "weapon" was sheathed, and was a miniature replica of a fictional sword, specifically, the Master Sword from Legend of Zelda. And he bought it as a fidget toy. 

Cosplayer dressed as Link wielding Master Sword and Hylian Shield
NY Comic Con 2013 by Richie S, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia

Unfortunately, the item does have a measurable blade length of 6 inches, and the allowable blade size in public as per UK law is 3 inches. For this offense, he was sentenced to 4 months in prison. 

Hmmm... Apparently, he made a couple mistakes. One can get a toy with 3 inch or smaller "blade", and one can keep such item in his pocket while fidgeting with it. He did neither. 

Takeaway: Big Brother is Watching in UK

State of My Games (2021/03/28)

 Let's see... been replaying some games... Actually, mostly one game: Hardspace Shipbreaker

The game is actually pretty simple: you basically sold your life to Lynx Salvage for a job off  Earth... Now with a BILLION credits in debt, you need to make enough money to pay for your expenses (which amounts to half a million a day) but that includes equipment rental that you can make MILLIONS by taking apart ships that Lynx towed in for whatever reasons, and dropping the pieces you took off and dumping them into the furnace (raw materials), processor (processed material), or barge (reusable components) respectively. But each ship has tricks to take apart properly. If you do it wrong, you'll get hurt, or even worse, die and be charged a resurrection fee, or you'll lose so much salvage you'll not make enough to pay your expenses. You also have to pay for consumables like explosives, tethers, fuel, oxygen, repair kits, and so on. But you'll also discover the story hidden in the universe... Will you ever pay off your debt? Then what? In regular mode your "workday" is limited to 15 minutes. Let's just say even a simple ship will take you 40+. A complicated ship can easily take 2+ hours. 

Also "finished" Criminal Girls: Invite Only, which is a sorta hentai game, but self-censored by the publisher as to be more PG-13 than R or even X rated. It's all tease, but no actual exposure, unless you download mods and whatnot. Visually, it's cute, but looks like it came out of the 80's or 90's as if it's on SNES, as you get both the regular and the Kawai version of the girls, 7 in all, with two bonus girls as sorta secret content. The "suggestive" poses don't actually expose anything but the writing at least is a little more than the zero-plot Hentai game writing. 

Just getting started on Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts, where your job is to take out targets in Siberia. Enemies have drones, and lots and lots of soldiers. You can shoot from any direction that you can reach. There are also a lot of secondary objectives. Some are timed though, so don't dawdle. Graphics are good, and you get bonus if you do things a certain way (challenges). Earn tokens with achievements, and tokens can be used to unlock more weapons and gadgets. So who hired you, and what do they REALLY want? Does it even matter? 

Played a bit of Rise of Industry, a supply chain game, but the complexity, the lack of Quality of Life UI stuff (you are given what the cities want, but you can't see the tech tree or supply chain for such) makes the game less enjoyable than it should be. 

Tried a few hours in Deadliest Catch, the game, but it felt a bit like busy work. As one of the rookie captains, you have to outfit your vessel, hire a crew, prep the deck, and go find crabs. You also have to do the typical deckhand work: unload the bait, process the bait, load the pot, fit the pot with floats and bait, drop the pot, then when the pot's soaked long enough, do the reverse: throw the hook, grab the pot, load it on the crane, drag the pot, dump the crab onto the sort tray, stow the pot, stow the stuff (bait bit and floats), then sort the crab, dump the crabs you can't use, drop the rest into the hold, repeat as needed. Fortunately, your crew is supposed to do some of that, but they may not be very good at it. You get to run around on the crab boat, but the layout is not that simple. I don't know if they do mechanical emergencies like on the show, or injuries that require help, or man overboard, but let's just say, crabbing is kinda boring. 

Will probably do a few more ships in Hardspace Shipbreaker, as I haven't reached rank 10 yet, and the game promised to have a story mode as well. And I want to learn how to break cat 6 ships. After that, will probably do Space Engineers. 

State of My Games (2021/03/05)

Played quite a bit of Battlevoid Sector Siege (RTS tower defense / ship attack) where you are surrounded by six different alien races all wanted to annihilate you, but fortunately, you are very good at attack and defense. I've conquered like 6+ sectors (each enemy only has like 5-6 sectors) but at level 2 or 3 things are getting hectic as you don't produce enough to afford losing any ships, yet you have to send ships out to explore to grab planets, and enemies have automatic warp ships that drop in when you arppoach, THEN periodic "fleets" that sweep through and your defense have to accommodate both. In later waves they started throwing marine boarding ships at you, and things become a bit desperate, even as defenders, they often have enough numerical superiority to capture your ship and/or defense station, unless you have one of those marine-heavy stations. 

Played a bit of Little Big Workshop, where the challenge seems to NOT accept the challenge missions when it was first offered, but ONLY when you get the right equipment so you can work on it. 

Played a little bit of Raiden V, sequel to all the Raiden shoot'em-ups, and it's... okay, but having only 1/3rd of the screen for combat is really "meh". 

Went back to Afterburn for about 30 minutes, but got a bit frustrated as I keep dying. But did get a daily #2 on the leaderboard. :) 

Need to keep on trying other games though. I'm cleaning out my backlog and I realized I have about 8 months of Humble Bundle games I need to give away or play. :D

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Next on the schedule: more Little Big Workshop, Rise of Industry, AutoMaChef, Industry Giant II, Angel Wings, maybe go back to Everspace. 

State of My Games (2020/02/27)

Plane Mechanic Simulator pretty much bored me, so I left it and didn't play it again. 

Did try Everspace, and it was not bad. Some of the interface does take a bit of getting used to, but every game is a little different, as things are randomly generated. That time pressure feeling is nice, as you can't always dawdle in the area. Will keep playing. 

Tried one game in Total Tank Simulator, which is like a parody version of World of Tanks where you setup two armies using X number of points, (from hyper-heavy down to infantry). Not sure if I want to try again. It's kinda underwhelming even in tutorial mode. I think it's because the game decided to flip on and/off no-harm mode even though it's a shooter. 

Started playing PC Building Simulator and couldn't stop, and ended up playing like 3-4 days straight. You play a guy who just took over your uncle's PC repair shop and if you do well you can buy out his stake in it. Had to learn the intricacies of the game, even though I am a computer engineer and probably knew PCs better than most. :D  

Tried the demo "WH40K Dakka Squadron" where you pilot an Ork fighter and fight other Orks. I didn't like the gamepad interface, and IMHO, it's a bit difficult. 

Tried Mindustry, where Factorio (factory assembly line) meets tower defense. You are one ship dropped onto an alien planet with just one home hub. You need to setup mines to get yourself more resources to build things, setup defenses to protect your area from enemy attack waves, and so on. It gets a lot more complicated due to multiple types of resources, processing plants to convert them, and expanding tech tree that you need to unlock by making new materials. It's complicated, and it's interesting, if a bit exasperating due to lack of a good tutorial mode. 

Playing Battlevoid Harbinger, a rogue-lite in space where you, commanding your warship, needs to travel the local cluster of systems, survive, destroy enemy bases, help local bases with their missions, and generally, destroy an alien mothership or base in the area. But you can't do it immediately, as you need to build up your own ship, get 2 other companion ships, and improve your weapon loadout, by taking on enemies and getting loot and upgrade points. It's more difficult than it seems. 

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What's next? Probably going back to PC Building Sim, Everspace, try the other Battlevoid game: Battlevoid Sector Siege, where you need to command your starbase and its defensive network against an invading horde of enemy ships. Between that, try some games I owned but never played, like Little Big Workshop, Automachef, and Angel Wings. 

State of My Games (20201/02/16)

Wow, it's been two weeks since I've updated state of my games. 

Finished Crying Suns, and tried multiple ships for the first two chapters. On Rookie mode it wasn't too hard. Though they definitely are different. 

Tried to play Hotel Giant, but it appears the creators's HD Update didn't quite work. It doesn't quite run right on my Win10 / RTX2070 dual monitor setup, even when restricted to 1 monitor only. 

Finished Detective Di and the Silk Rose Murders. Pretty good localization to English, though some of the verbiage feels a bit too modern or contemporary. I have a series of videos showing me completing the game. It's not that long, a couple hours at most. 

Giving up on Aeronautica Imeprialis: Flight Command (aka WH40K Flight Command). Played the human campaign, but the planes are kinda lame, the encyclopedia entries severely lacking (there is no explanation on which planes are bombers, which planes are fighters, neither friendly or ally) and the viewpoint jumping around makes for a VERY confusing view where you don't know what killed your guys, who killed the enemy, and basically an overall tactical situation. It's just not good. Did finish some scenarios, but I guess I *could* have played the Ork side too. Nah. 

Finished Aven Colony, a colony manager where you need to keep in balance a TON of factors... power, food, shelter, water, growth, mining, construction, defense, crime, expansion, trade, and so on. Add exploration and combat, health, and morale, and you have a micro-manager's dream... but probably a regular gamer's nightmare. 

Played AFTERBURN, which is an arcade game with you the lone plane with unlimited weapons, have clear the sky and ground of various enemies, and you will be overwhelmed by dozens of targets at a time. Actually did finish Mission 6 (final mission) which was VERY long and VERY difficult to survive. I think I tried about dozen times and only managed to finish it once. But it was fun. 

Re-trying Islanders, a very calm colony building sim that's about creating the best combinations, though the naunces are escaping me. 

Re-trying Molek-Syntez, the chemical composition game from Zachtronics, and managed to solve yet another puzzle. They are getting hard. 

Playing Plane Mechanic Simulator, where you fix up iconic war planes of WW2 on the eve of Battle of Britain. Leave the hint mode on, as you need to figure out where certain things from before you know how to disassemble it, And some of the engine parts are really detailed (read: tedious), like piston ring and head gasket. 

I think I want to try Mainlining, Everspace, and Hardspace Shipbreaker. 

State of My Games (2021/01/30)

 Finished Book of Demons (Diablo clone), review is on Steam. 

Decided to try Zombie Army Trilogy, which is a recast of Sniper Elite V2 into a survival shooter similar to Left 4 Dead series. It is extremely difficult.

Went back to Human Resource Machine a bit, and found I am NOT much in optimizing for speed. :D  I can solve the problems quite easily, but often doing more steps than the program liked. 

Played chapter 2 in Crying Suns, and it was interesting alright, as different starting ships require very different strategies. Using a scrapper ship means you need to spam the enemy with as many squadrons as you can, as your squadrons are your fodder. Wonder what new ship will I get for chapter 3? Probably the church ship. 

Found PuzzleTronics for like 50 cents. It is a "swap the tiles" type puzzle where you try to assemble an electronic circuit properly to get the LED(s) to light up. There are 50 puzzles, and each should only take a few seconds, but it's pretty good clean fun. I think I'm on 25. 

Speaking of cheap, I also got Plane Mechanic Simulator, will be trying that soon. 

I am not sure if I want to go back to Wasteland 2 (Director's Cut). It is basically Fallout 1 and 2, as it was made by the same guy. 

I sorta want to go back to Phantom Doctrine, and sort of don't. 

Did finish Zombie Army Trilogy, which is basically Sniper Elite V2 turned into a zombie survival shooter where you need to defeat you know who after he unleashed Plan Z (Zombies) upon the world, hoping for mutual destruction, as this clearly can't be victory... Let's just say, even with unlimited ammo cheat and unlimited health cheat, I STILL died about 7 times, mostly during the final fight. 

State of My Games (2021/01/24)

 What has happened in my gaming? 

Have to give up on Vector Thrust (again). I was reminded why I didn't play the game that long: it won't recognize my bone standard Xbox 360 controller (wireless). And playing on a keyboard is a no-no. 

I'm at the point in Warstone TD I'm trying to come up with Mithril, but you only get those as mission rewards, and I ran out of missions to play as I don't play online. So that's that.  There are DLCs, but I don't feel like playing those at the moment.  

Played Trailmakers to the end, got enough to make the spaceship and left the planet. Did record a video of me trying to get 2-3 more items mainly as a demo. It's on my Youtube channel already and should be on my Steam feed soon. I do recommend it. 

Tried Duskers. This is one of those games I probably will never finish due to it just being... extremely hard, but extremely atmospheric. Basically, you woke from your cryogenic sleep to find you alone in the universe... every space ship or space depot you find was derelict or abandoned, no one alive anywhere, just a bunch old patrol bots, turrets, and nasties like the swarm, leapers, or the slime. All you have are a couple drones: you can remote control them, or you can issue them simple orders via the remote interface. But video feed could fail. Their equipment can malfunction. And your drones cannot fight the enemy. Best you can do is to contain them by locking them in other rooms. But your motion sensor may give inconclusive results. Should you take the chance? Can you live with the consequences? What happened to the universe? Will you be able to find out before your equipment fail? Or will you find another ship before yours fail altogether? 

Tried Forged Battalion, which is like Command & Conquer albeit on steroids. The plot is your typical underdog vs oppressive regime. The graphics are nice, but not spectacular. The main trick here is the extensive tech tree and the ability to customize your units based on the tech tree you unlock. Unlock treads instead of wheels? Your chassis got heavier and you get more armor and thus more HP. Unlock heavy barrel? Now you can equip your units with armor piercing (AP) rounds. Unlock armor? Make armored versions of your units. Combine the upgrades, but keep in mind your economy is still fixed and these new units would be more expensive and take longer to produce. Otherwise, this is still the same: make more units and crush the enemy base real-time strategy (RTS) game where you need to build the right number of structures to power your factories, produce the units, and so on. The fixed scenarios have pretty big maps and each has a twist or two. On the third mission you're already fighting against TWO enemies AND protecting an installation. And there are like 15 missions. Due to differences in tech tree things be hectic. I am not sure I want to play all 15 missions, as I know what the game's about now. 

Trying RAM pressure, which is a game in the style of XCOM, but with a global server so it's closer in spirit to MMO's like The Division, but it's still turn-based tactical combat. Alien ship and fragments have landed on Earth, and you, as a mercenary unit working for (US, Russia, or China) will attempt to wipe out anyone at the landing site and secure it for your side. Other mercs are doing the same. So you may be against generic PvE (play vs environment) enemies, or you may be facing other players in a much tougher fight. You may even be fighting the aliens too. Use the money you earned to upgrade your equipment and HQ, assign skills and perks to your operators, hire new operators as necessary to round out your team, and advance the plot: are there survivors? Can first contact be made peacefully? Or was all this just a warning of things to come?  Early access game is free, but you can support the devs by "buying" additional equipment in the game with real money. 

Right now, my reaction is a bit mixed. I'll put it in a different post. 

Some thoughts about Tower Defense Game Genre, and how MarZ could have been better

I would not say I am a tower defense game guru, but I can hold my own generally unless the game expects me to somehow figure out a tactic no one ever hinted at me before. I can perform a deep dive when I had to, and I did so for the game Defense Grid. 

If I play in easy mode, I don't expect to breeze through EVERY mission, but I don't expect to repeat the third mission multiple times and getting no hint on why I am not succeeding. This points to a problem in game design... bad difficulty curve, lack of hint system, or expecting the player to read the minds of the mission makers. And as it turned out, it was one of two major flaws in MarZ. 

So I decided to look for some help. After watching someone who aced the mission (no casualties, no damage to lander), he did it by fighting one or two fronts at a time, NOT mining resources if not needed. In other words, he's very quick in selling off his towers (or even refinery) to concentrate on a different front. You need the 100% refund perk to make this work though. Normal sell price is a 20% loss, and you need to continue mining to make up for that.  

This is where I also noticed I did NOT pick my perks... or used my slo-mo, and pause button. But really, how was I supposed to notice? If they want us to pick a perk, they should just tell us. And also with the "sell everything and rebuild it in a different direction". This could have been easily fixed by adding a few bits of scripted dialog between the levels, like "they are coming from the northeast!" and "Commander, sell off the towers and rebuild them to the northeast!" and so on. 

You can even make it reactive. If you hadn't rebuild the towers, make the dialog go "Commander! Build the towers toward the northeast! Hurry! Sell off the existing towers if you have to! You have the perk! Use it!"  Though I guess the perk doesn't fit into "reality". 

Which brings us to the other problem of MarZ... lack of alternate strategies and/or tactics. 

Most tower defenses ended up being "puzzles" instead of wargames... Albeit with very flexible solutions. You can often achieve the same results with a variety of mix of towers, depending on your specific tower defense genre: fixed path, or grid-based. Fixed-path TD basically have you spam the path with as many towers as possible, or if you can't make the towers as powerful as possible. Grid-based TD lets you force the enemy into longer runs so they have to go past your towers multiple times and get hit multiple times. 

MarZ, by limiting the number of overall towers available (through the use of "hubs"), rather than let resources be the overall limit of towers, basically limited the number of overall solutions available, since there are only 2 upgrade levels (the third one, "specialization", what I call the "plus upgrade", adds very little and is only useful for uber swarms near endgame and only for certain towers, and since tower damage doesn't happen that often, having a repair drone just automates repairs, not enhance combat power). Given that there only are like 5 towers in the game, that's a bit limited. 

MG -- your regular gun tower, the upgrade adds more guns for heavier enemies. Plus upgrade turns the triple cannon into a Gatling gun for super zombie gibbing action. No minimum range. 

Rocket  -- explosive warhead, proximity kills, the upgrade adds additional shots before reload. Plus upgrade adds a mortar for light damage at long range. Has a minimum range. 

Laser -- long-range focus on a single enemy, the upgrade adds more power and range. Plus upgrade adds prism, basically cascades onto multiple enemies for slightly less damage, but makes more kills. Has a minimum range.  

Tesla -- slows enemies down, and pops tesla bubbles, the upgrade adds range and damage. Plus upgrade adds teleporter: sends one enemy back out of range. No minimum range.  

Drone -- sends drones out to engage any enemies, usually one at a time. Upgrade adds drones to the swarm, and each does more damage. Plus upgrade adds minefields. No minimum range. 

IMHO, the plus upgrades (or as the game designers call them, "specializations") are not all worth it. The only ones that are truly worth it, IMHO, would be laser, and drone. Tesla's upgrade, teleport, doesn't seem to work on bosses or minibosses, and you'd never want it to be this near anyway. Rocket's upgrade, mortar, doesn't fire often enough to be useful and is often landing in the wrong spot for faster enemies, IMHO. MG's minigun upgrade seems to be a bit too little too late. My credits and tower slot can be better used by one of the other weapons with more range or damage. 

When there are "obvious" choices in terms of tactics, tower mix, upgrades, and so on, the design is not as balanced as it could be. 

Let us compare it to two pretty classic tower defense games: FieldRunners, and Warstone TD. 

Fieldrunners is a grid-based TD with no tower limit. It only has four towers: gun, goo/ice, missile, tesla/laser. But there is no limit on the number of towers you can build, and it's a "build a rat maze" type tower defense game. So you can have a lot of different combinations and path designs. The extended mode adds two more tower types, but still the same game. 

Warstone TD has 5 unit types, But you are limited to how many units you can deploy limited to the number of "warstones" you own (and thus can plop down next to enemy's path). You only have 5 units types, but 2 of the units can have different upgrades: peasant > mercenary > knight / witcher > knight templar / inquisitor; and archer > amazon > shieldmaiden / assassin > valkyrie / ninja. So depending on how you upgrade your units, they can do very different things to enemy units. Thus, the tactics will be different depending on your upgrade path, even if you can only place so many units on screen. 

MarZ has limited number of towers, AND limited tower choices (with no specialization like Warstone), not path choices like Fieldrunners. So the tactics you can deploy is limited: just build up max towers you can build and max upgrade, and that's about it. No wonder it feels so... limiting. 

State of My Games (2021/1/18)

 "Finished" Warstone TD, Treasure Hunter Simulator (all achievements), and started on Crying Suns and finished Chapter 1. You can read about my overall reactions to THS in a previous blogpost. 

Right now I will go back and continue Crying Suns, as well as try some things in Warstone, basically trying the harder variations on the missions for Warstone TD, trying to get extra starts in the various battles, as it is an interesting tactical puzzle trying to fulfill the requirements, such as use only X unit types, or not use a certain spell. 

Since you *can* take some resources with you into each battle in Warstone (with the "backpack") you can sorta cheat by bringing some bonus damage items, extra spell scrolls, bigger mana reserve, more potions, and so on, but given you only have 6 slots, it is still a challenge. 

For example, one of the scenario requirements is "do not use Amazons". Since archers upgrade to Amazon, this basically asks you to stick with melee only, or archer only, no upgraded archers. And this can get dicey when enemies come in droves. But if you brought more than a few fireball spells... Hmmm...

Another was "let peasants make 75 kills", which basically requires you to put peasants, the weakest melee unit, all over the place, as there was only like 100 enemies total, and do NOT put up any archers, only use your spells to deal with the flyers. 

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Next is probably Detective Di, maybe go back and try Vector Thrust, do a couple more puzzles in Molek Syntez, or Human Resource Machine. 

Or I can start a new game in Duskers or Aven Colony. 

The Failure of "Treasure Hunter Simulator": how it trivializes archaeology and turned it into an unbalanced, buggy, hiking and metal detecting game

Treasure Hunter Simulator (THS) is supposed to be an archaeology game: go to different maps and try to locate historically significant artifacts. In reality, the gameplay was a mess, logically it made no sense, and programmatically it's a buggy mess. It was a failure in every sense of the word. The only good points are it has a relaxing pace, and when you turn up the graphics, the Unreal Engine makes the levels quite pretty. 

You can read my full review on Steam here. But we're here to talk about the failures. 

Gameplay Problems

THS can be accurately retitled as "hiking and metal detecting simulator", since all you do, except for the few "side jobs", is to hiking around the map, and use metal detectors all over the place, then dig holes all over the place finding the "treasures", which often turned out to be junk, like old nails, soda can tabs, etc. Only occasionally you will find something worth a little more. An old sawblade may be worth $10. A good condition Medieval helmet may be worth 350. But usually you find lame stuff like old medallions, old doorstop, old buttons that may be worth $5 on a good day. 

You will need TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS to afford the best metal detectors, which doesn't quite work the way you expect them to. You'd think detecting large objects is easier, but not in this game. Detecting large objects is only reserved for upgraded detectors. Your default model can only detect shallow and SMALL objects. Huh? 

Frankly, with the amount of random junk lying about, there really is no sense of discovery, but drudge work, as you "grind" your way through more junk to find the few treasures in order to afford the better stuff. Having an artificial "delay" for "identification" when it's an object you've seen only the 100th time does not help with the immersion at all. And since most of the time you are looking DOWN at the ground to get the detection right, the beautiful vista and level design are wasted, except for the few who appreciate the graphical touches and take screenshots. 

It also really makes no sense for some maps to charge an entrance fee... to a supposed archaeologist! 

The job pays are also absurdly low. For example, one of the jobs on the Syrian Temple map, pays $380. However, the entrance fee to the map is $300!  So your net pay is $80! And since they only give you one job at a time, you can't even queue them together, and thus save on the entrance fee! They had to be paid each and every time! 

State of My Games: January 13th, 2021

Finished MarZ, as mentioned in a previous post. 

Tried Greed Corp, a turn-based tactical combat game, decided while interesting, it didn't quite grab me. 

Played 80 hours on StarCralwers, leveled all 8 classes to level 30 (level cap) (or very close to it) and did one ending. Did not feel like playing New Game Plus, which is MOTS. So that's that. 

Finished Radio Commander, which has you giving orders to your units on a battlefield, but since all you have is a radio, fog of war is extremely heavy and thus, tension is extremely high. But there are only 9 missions plus quick battles. On the other hand, the game has two more things going for it... relatively low price, and ability to give commands via microphone and voice recognition for full immersion. 

Also finished Unheard, turns out I had ONE case left, and that was a bit of fun. Voice acting was a bit over-the-top, but it's an intriguing game where you try to piece together the puzzle based on full-audio surveillance of every room on the premises. There is a DLC, but I'm not sure I want to play it. :D

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Will probably move onto Detective Di, Warstone TD, Crying Suns

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Other games I've tried? Hmmm... 

Within the Warhammer 40K series, I've tried: 

Deathwatch -- a squad of five space marines against a whole Tyranid invasion. Think XCOM-lite, and mobile port... and boring grind

Kill Team -- action game where you take TWO space marines through an Ork invasion

Mechanicus -- turn-based tactical combat where you are taking controls of the Adeptus Mechanicus against a planet full of Necrons, and figure out how to upgrade your tech-priests so they survive the fights. And you're fighting against a timer. If the Necrons achieve full awakening, you won't be able to stop them. 

Space Marine -- take control of Captain Titus, Ultramarines chapter, and a seasoned veteran. You're sent to stop the Ork invasion, but you end up fighting against a lot more other enemies of the Imperium as well in order to secure the Imperial Forge World. A third-person shooter with melee weapons. 

Space Wolf --the Space Wolf chapter ship was ambushed by the Chaos Marines of the Word Bearers and crashed on the world of Kanak, a feral world full of barbarians, vile creatures, and chaos marines. You will emerge victorious, by conducting turn-based card-based combat against all foes, obtaining more cards, merging them for upgrades, and fight off all comers. Not bad, as they are still giving free loot as promo codes every week.  And there are PvP multiplayer as well. DLCs add additional shorter campaigns. 

Battlefleet Gothic Armada -- fleet combat in Warhammer 40K, take your fleet against the chaos forces.

I also have

Vermintide (regular Warhammer, not 40K) -- a multiplayer PvE shooter where you need to go, with your friends, as one of the many classes available, to fight the "end times" horde of vermins. 

Warhammer Quest -- choose your own adventure with die-roll combat

These I'm not too keen on. Fantasy doesn't really grip me.  

Can You Get Free Games on Steam? Sort of...

As a gamer, who had built up a huge collection (close to 1400 games, and probably about 100 unredeemed keys...) it is important to save money. So when someone asked, is there a way to get free games? I can answer that. 

Yes, but there are some... caveats. 

1) Demos and Previews and Prologues

There are many games on Steam in early access where they just want some reactions from gamers. The game is incomplete or has other problems, or just get some hype going. Public Alphas are also possible. 

Two such games I found in December 2020 were Learning Factory Alpha, and Fights in Tight Spaces Prologue, both of which are free previews. 

2) SteamGifts.com 

SteamGifts.com allows people with extra game keys to give them away for other gamers to enjoy Many people buy bundles at a great discount, but end up with games they would never play. And many people would choose to gift them to friends and family, or to complete strangers via SteamGifts. While the name is familiar, this is NOT affiliated with Steam, a Valve service. I've given out over 100 games from here in the past month or two so I know this works. On the other hand, with each giveaway gathering hundreds, perhaps thousands of entries within 24 hours, chances of winning is quite small. But at least someone is a winner, right? 

3) Keep track of give-aways. Many distribution platforms (UbiSoft, Steam, GOG, Origin, etc.) give away games as promotion for another game in the series or tied to specific events. You just need to go claim it when it happens. 

Do you know other legitimate sources of free games? Leave a comment below! (No hacks, pirate sites, or illegal / unethical tricks please, such as "fake being influencer and beg developer for eval key")

State of My Games: January 5th, 2021

No change from previous update, still playing MarZ, as it takes an hour or two to play each mission properly. 

Mission 15 is kicking my arse as the landslide keeps catching my soldiers, despite what I thought was enough time to evac. 

So instead, today will be about games I've found that look interesting, or have rediscovered that I actually have keys to (with over 1300 games on Steam, and more keys every month from Humble Bundle and Fanatical, there are many games I did not redeem... yet) 

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NOTE: These I have NOT played yet, but want to get into. Actually there are dozens of games I want to try, but never seem to find enough time. 

Ram Pressure -- Imagine a game similar to XCOM the original in scope, but with graphics engine of the remake... and multiplayer. Meteors rained down on Earth, many of them alien ships or fragments thereof. Rather than panicking the population, the government instead contracted various mercenary outfits to scout and acquire the alien sites... and eliminate witnesses. You are the commander of one of the mercenary outfits. Your job is to secure the site, first-contact any survivors if they are friendly (but shoot them dead if they are hostile), secure any alien technology, intelligence, or weapons, against all comers... and aliens themselves. You may be facing other mercenaries... or something even more sinister. And you may have to make a moral choice, once the veil has been lifted. Twelve classes of soldiers, ten categories of weapons, procedurally generated deformable terrain (blow down the wall for the sniper to shoot in)... This can be interesting, but initial feedback isn't that great. Worth a try? 

Warstone TD -- tower defense with a mix of strategy, RPG, and city building, help people raise an army and defeat the evil chieftain bent on world domination, explore the land, contact allies, etc. Cute comic art style, Actually quite old. 

Greed Corp -- turn-based strategy that require you to keep a balance between max exploitation of the land (and causing environmental disasters)... or fall behind on your production and research and be conquered by your rivals. Have up to 4 players (3 of which can be AI or online), across 3 dozen maps, and separate single player campaign, 4 separate factions... Overharvesting of resources results in total collapse of terrain, which can be used as a strategy... or just scorched earth denial. How would you battle your enemies? 

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Previously Played...

Choplifter HD -- the original choplifter on the 8-bit computers was a revelation on how even a simple game can be amazing and fun. This version is a remake, and while it kept most of the same mechanics, and used a modern graphics engine, it also tried to go a bit far by making a lot of the helos DLCs (for extra $$$$) and some bits of it a bit too hard, as you have fuel for boost, weapons to shoot, rockets to blast... even as you try to survive against all sorts of threats. They even added zombies to some levels. 

Her Story -- you are given access to various interviews by police questioning a British woman about the disappearance of her husband. By entering keywords, you can find additional relevant footage. Can you piece together her story... and why you are there? 

Driver San Francisco -- Tanner had finally arrested Jericho, crime kingpin, at the end of Driv3r in San Francisco, and Tanner, along with his partner Jones, was going to escort the prison convoy to the courthouse. But on the way, Jericho somehow escaped and took over the prison van, Tanner gave chase, but soon the table was turned, and Tanner ended up in a serious collision and fell into a coma... Then suddenly, he found himself driving with Jones, and gained the ability to shift to other drivers... Can he locate Jericho this way? Then what? What were Jericho's plans? 

NOTE: The game "went out of print" in 2016, even from Ubisoft's own store, probably due to license issues. 

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Will continue to play MarZ to the end. 

State of My Games: New Year's Eve Edition

(This used to be called PC Games I'm Playing, but I figure this sounds better)

Currently playing MarZ, Trident's Wake, and Train Mechanic Simulator (2017). 

MarZ: Tactical Base Defense has a somewhat new concept... Zombies on Mars! Apparently they were the victims of an older Soviet secret experiment in the 1960's! Now that humans have landed on Mars, the zombies are coming back out for blood! You are limited in the way your base is setup, as your central base can only support so many "hubs", and each hub can only support so many structures which includes mines and turrets. And you will have to ugpradea  LOT to survive. What's really intriguing is the level editor though. I've just finished level 3 after having to learn a new tactic. I'll give it another run in an hour or so. 

Trident's Wake is an isometric shooter where you try to reconquer humanity's last hope, the Trident, after the Phage took over Earth, yet when Trident launched, it was immediately hijacked by other aliens. Now, the Sentinel, bot bodies inhabited by digitized beings known as ECHOs, must team up and form strike teams to retake the Trident, bit by bit, and retake the ship, or Humanity would be ended. In practice, the shooter, is extremely stingy on ammo, and is designed as a 4p coop shooter, with NO bot support. The weapons don't seem to match the type of enemies we're fighting, and all in all just feels clunky, the sentinels don't feel that different, If you have a group, it may be worth trying. But there are better shooters out there. Not recommended. 

Train Mechanic Simulator 2017 is from PlayWay, the folks who had previously brought all the other mechanic sims like car mechanic, plane mechanic, even tank mechanic. You repair trains, diesel, electric, or steam, with plenty of different parts to dismantle and reinstall. What's different here: you also get to go out into the world and basically play in someone's model train setup, where you have to drive around and look for disabled train, sometimes even off the track, which you have to retrieve with your crane and put back on the track, and take it back to the right depot (one each for diesel, steam, and electric) so you can conduct repairs. The interface is both strange and familiar. The standard way of using "rust" or "dirt" to represent a damage part is here, but was a bit too subtle to be instantly recognizable. And it's obvious this is a set, not a real-world, since none of the pieces aside from the player's train actually ever move, and the time never changes. And tracks have elevation changes that would never exist on a real train track. It can only be a model train set, but it is still fun! Recommended. 

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Other games I've played in the past

Battletech (with all three DLCs, and at least one mod) -- the best Battletech experience so far. It's not perfect, but it's intriguing nonetheless. Build up your mercenary team after the entire planet was betrayed, and participate in the reconquest, while being employed by anyone and everyone... if you care to accept their contract... yes, even pirates. But don't burn your bridges... You may need access to black market later... Add random events like flashpoints, crew decisions, and plenty of battles against enemies plus occasional surprises, and dozens of mechs of all classes, including the ECM platform Raven, and more, and each mech can be customized with weapons and armor to fit your mechwarrior's fighting style, even as you take damage and crew get killed or wounded in battle, the company must go on... Highly recommended if you like turn-based tactical combat. 

Unheard -- a very interesting audio detective game where you need to solve a case and a new technology was able to reconstruct sound from ANYWHERE within the structure, so you can listen to everybody's dialog. But are they lying, or telling the truth? And there are several different cases, from sabotage to bombing. The game was originally NOT in English, but the sound talent is excellent. I haven't finished all the cases yet, and I really need to get back to it.  There's a free extra case, and some extra Chinese content available as well. 

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (no longer on Steam?) A VERY pretty turn and turn aerial combat game with a TON of aircraft available, with a storyline by a well-known technothriller author, this is NOT a sim by any means, but it is VERY pretty and loads of fun to play, if a little frustrating at first. 

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Will probably continue with MarZ, Train Mechanic, and probably go back to Unheard, then starton Detective Di. 

PC Games I Played Recently: Post-Christmas Edition

Some play progress on Skyhill, Damnation, and Learning Factory. 

Learning Factory Alpha Test --  tries to teach AI and machine learning with factory assembly line game. Admirable, but I can finetune the production line without any AI price optimization. It kinda makes sense, and kinda don't. If you want factory game, get Satisfactory, Factorio, or Shapez.io. I'm a bit of "meh" about this one so far. 

Skyhill -- had this game forever, only started playing. It's interesting, as you are meant to explore the various alternate endings. Basically, you are the only real survivor of WW3 when a bio-bomb was unleashed on your city. You're stuck in the VIP room, level 100 of Skyhill Condo. Staff and guests have been turned into blood-thirsty mutants, and you're running out of food. Can you survive your way down to 1st floor and get out? Or will you die along the way? What secrets will you discover along the way? You will die plenty of times, as the rooms are randomized. 

Damnation -- shooter with acrobatics, weird combination, alternate history where Union and Confederacy have destroyed each other, and in its vacuum, an evil industrialist has turned US into a slave labor camp with promise of "liberation" with ultimate goal of world domination. And only a few rebel are in his way of his army...  Think Matrix gunplay (without bullet time) combined with a bit of Mario wall-jumping in 3D, plus a few bits of vehicular action that features horrible visibility due to being 3rd person. :-P

UPDATE: Abandoning game. Generally I tried to finish games, but this one is turning into "why won't this jump". I somehow can no longer effectively wall jump It just won't do it. ARGH. I think I am about 3/4 through the game. Too frustrating. 

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Now about some games I've played previously... 

Molek-Syntez -- a different kind of chemistry assembly puzzler... Spacechem was also about chemicals, but that's on a regular grid. This one is from the same guy, but it's on a hex grid, with 6 manipulators to push ions and stuff around. And the idea is to synthesize the required chemical in the shortest amount of time using your basic building blocks by manipulating bonds and electrons and the ions and molecules. It's more complicated than it sounds, yet simple to understand. Interesting puzzler. 

Metal Dead -- a humorous trip through the zombie apocalypse... standard point-and-click adventure game about making choices, combining and using items, with a lot of humor. 

Race the Sun -- an "infinite flyer" where your objective is to not crash, and make sure you outpace the sun setting in front of you. Good luck. 

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I'm going to finish Damnation, then try Trident's Wake, MarZ, and Detective Di. 

PC games I played recently, Christmas 2020 edition

 In the last week or two, I've been playing:

Genesis Alpha One -- a first person game where you are the leader of a starship assigned to explore the Alpha One sector for a planet that humans can settle and start Genesis, thus the name. You need to jump from system to system, salvage wreckage, harvest minerals and plant life on planets, but also shoot hostile aliens (over a dozen species) that will invade your ship (brought in or up as hitchhikers), attack your landing party, and more. And you need to plan your defenses with energy barriers and autoturrets, and periodically go on bughunts yourself to make sure the enemies don't destroy your ship from within. Keep in mind that space is hazardous, asteroid fields, solar storms, cosmic spores, and worse. And there are rogue captains who decided to not report back and attack any newcomers... What's really interesting is you play this in first person. And you can even raid the derelict vessels... or even LIVE enemy vessels. 

Not to say this game is perfect, as it has some problems. Like while your crew can chase down enemies in the corridors, it can't control the critters if they escaped into the access tunnels. The world is procedurally generated so it is random, and moving around does give you a feeling of exploration, but also a bit of boredom, unless you want to just fly around and explore the place and use that to outfit your ship.  

Rover Mechanic Simulator --  In this new "Mechanic" sim, you are a mechanic on Mars ready to fix all the components on various Mars rovers as a part of the Martian colony. The rovers used to be NASA, but now there are quite a few more of them and you need to fix them all, from the simple Sojourner class to the medium Spirit and Opportunity (The "Twins") , to the big boy Curiosity (size of a small car). Learn to take them apart, replace the parts necessary, fix circuit boards, 3D print replacement parts, and if you want, do it under a time limit. 

After a while, after you mastered all three classes of rovers, it does get a bit boring. 

The Pit: Infinity -- an old 2D survival dungeon game with procedurally generated levels, with a sci-fi twist, gets turned into a full 3D first-person shooter with multiplayer support (up to 4 total) so visuals are interesting, Can you survive all 20 levels of the Pit in order to secure the cure? 

The game is EXTREMELY difficult and should probably be played multiplayer as one person can't solve all the problems alone. 

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Games I've played in the past, but deserves a mention

Wasteland 2 (Director's Cut)  -- Think 3rd person Fallout, where the desert rangers deal out justice against wrong-doers... but the commander's a radio away... You can be as good... or evil as you want. And there is not really a "right or wrong" decision... Director's cut is an improved version with a few extra features not available in the original 2014 version. 

Eterium -- basically a Wing Commander remake without the sync'mouth tech, and characters that look like they came out of anime. 

Stable Orbit -- you are in charge of a new private space station with a backing of a couple hundred million bucks. Keep the operation going by building lab modules in order to conduct research projects to earn big money, but you also need to keep the station in good repair, all the astronauts supplied with oxygen, food, and water, the lab supplied with power via solar panels and batteries, nobody overheats via radiators, and only expand at a rate you can sustain without overreaching (sorry, no loan here). 

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I think I'll try these games next:

Learning Factory (demo) -- assembly line / AI learning game

Damnation -- 3D adventure shooter

Skyhill -- 2D survival horror