7th bottle from the Advent Calendar.
I hate when whiskey producers come up with those witty names. How am I supposed to search for whisky called “the one”?
In any case, whiskey is not just about taste, but also about price. This is a blended whiskey, but at least it’s 46% ABV, and it costs just 35GBP, which is quite impressive for what it delivers.
Completed RoboCop Rogue City .
You have to deal with the walking tanks twice more, but they are more of a joke at long distances. Still bullet sponges, though.
After a disastrous first boss, I’m surprised how well the final boss came out. It has phases, clear weak spots and attack telegraphs, just overall very enjoyable.
The story is bolder than I expected. I thought they’d pull a W40K, leaving everything were it was, but they actually got rid of some of the key characters.
It’s a blend of Robocop 1 and Robocop 2 stories, leading straight into Japanese arc of Robocop 3, but then, this is what’s expected. OCP corporation controlling Detroit police force, and sabotaging it at the same time, in hopes to make the city uninhabitable and rebuild it from scratch. OCP CEO, literally called Old Man, is afraid of death, so he tries to use psychologist send to Robocop to properly digitalize himself for the afterlife (Robocop is the only success ever, after all). The interesting twist is that the main antagonist, who introduced himself as the brother of villain from Robocop 1, is actually a fraud, and his real name never revealed, because who cares?!
I decided to take a break from painting Warhammer to painting an alternative model, picking Mousin Weasel Sprint printed by someone from Etsy. Those can be printed in multiple sizes, I went with 100mm.
The problem with 100mm started pretty quickly, as there’s a single spoke that attaches the weasel to the base, and it’s quite heavy, so after gluing, that spoke just broke off and stayed stuck in the base. I’ll need to figure out how to attach it to the base safely later.
The same happened with the mouse tail. But after a couple of attempts, I managed to glue it back together.
Priming it was surprisingly easy. Maybe because it is a larger model, or diffirent plastic that the one Games Workshop uses, but one coat of Abaddon Black was enough. Shading a larger model is tiresome, though. Or maybe I needed a larger dry brush.
One mechanic I don’t remember seeing much in other games is competing with allies. Robocop would compete with the walking tank ED-209, or a SWAT team, and if you kill more criminals than they do, you get extra XP.
The fight with ED-209 was surprisingly annoying. Because otherwise, the game is quite the pleasure. Robocop moves slowly, and the robot is accurate, so you end up dying to chip damage. And despite the hint that it has a weak spot at the front, it still feels like a bullet sponge.
While there are plenty of weapons to pick from enemies, including some of the all-time favorites like Barrett sniper rifle, G11 assault rifle and SPAS-12 shotgun, most of the time you’ll be using Robocop’s siderarm. Because it has infinite ammo (I’m not sure if it’s a nod to 90’s action movies mentality or just convenience) and with it burst fire mode is good enough for most situations. You can also customize it, by finding alternative PCBs and playing a simple puzzle game: turning it full auto or single-action Magnum style, or adding a belt feeding mechanism so you don’t ever need to reload it again.
Over New Year I finished my Lego McLaren P1. As I predicted, two wrong pieces in bag 11 came to haunt me in bag 23, the last bag, as the engine lid wouldn’t close properly.
Luckily, Lego has a piece delivery system, which doesn’t even require receipts. You just specify which set you are doing and what pieces you are missing.
I’m glad that I submitted the request on the 1st of January, because I received the items only a couple days ago.
But now it’s finally complete. Took 23 sittings, per number of bags, and around 15 hours in total. I didn’t try to rush it, though, had no reason to.
Next, I’ll give CaDA a try.
As I said about Resident Evil 2 Remake, 20 years ago I wouldn’t believe something like that would be possible. Actually, I wouldn’t believe something like that would be possible even now, as they clearly got so many things right: Lewis, Robocop’s partner, and Murphy’s own hallucinations.
It plays like Bioshock 2. You’re this hulking monster, sturdy, but slow. And with a nice enemy highlight. You can pick enemy weapons, but for the first part, the default gun is more than enough. It’s accurate, and has burst fire. All accompanied by good old ultraviolence: heads pop, bodies fly, like it’s 2000 again.
Also like Bioshock, you can actually upgrade Robocop, it has 8 different skills, each with its perks. I think one of the Mass Effects used a similar linear system.
There are areas where the lack of budget is obvious, though. Mostly lack of facial animations of second-tier NPCs.
I keep going back to this game, because let’s be honest, it’s ridiculous. It has some of the best shooting mechanics.
Balistics, firing modes, silencers, the feedback from the weapons is simply amazing. Take their approach for “heavies”, for example. It still takes just two headshots to down them, they don’t become some bullet sponges like in some other games.
Then there’s the hardcore mechanics. Like you don’t regenerate your health fully until you bandage your wounds, and how you limp while wounded, or how you can camouflage yourself while lying down, and that you have to change ammo by magazines, and probably tons of other mechanics I don’t even know exist.
Didn’t know the original creator of Fire Emblem series released a Fire Emblem knock-off called TearRing Saga on PSX:
Started listening to this book after the failure that was “King and Conqueror”.
The way Morris managed to capture the ambiguity of history is quite fascinating. He often compares multiple chroniclers, as some were writing literally a hundred years after the events, and most of them were partisan one way or the other (or in other words, some were Anglo Saxon monks, and some were Norman monks).
He also has a lot of humorous observations: like how Henry the 2nd was considered to be “return to Anglo Saxon roots”, while he was born in France, died in France, spend most of his life fighting in France, and was 1/8 or even 1/16 Anglo Saxon at best.
Or how William the Conqueror at his death was so fat he didn’t fit into his own sarcophagus.
But I digress. Great book, very glad I got to read it.
Dark Alliance has always been my guilty pleasure. There is something to the simplicity of this game. And how sexualized every female character is.
Turns out I even finished the first episode some 15 years ago in coop, but barely remember anything of it.
The game is surprisingly brutal. Every ARPG can be viewed as economy game: you need to bring more money from the dungeon than you spend. In that sense, Dark Alliance is very close to break even. If you play as Archer, your weapons do very little damage. So you need flame arrows, which require mana, and the arrows themselves, which don’t drop in enough quantities. And you need healing potions, because despite having some regeneration, it’s not nearly enough. The drops aren’t very generous, I might have gotten a +1 gloves, but was better off with buying a leather armor from the vendor. There are “town portals” for shopping trips, but those aren’t cheap either. So you’re basically paying for the great privilege of cleaning the dungeons. At some point in the sewers the only way I managed to bean both the rat miniboss (of course there’s a rat miniboss) and the bugbear boss only by surrounding myself with some crates that they couldn’t navigate, and making a pincushion out of both.
I started the game on original Xbox, then remembered it was ported to Switch, so I switched to it.
Although I must say I probably prefer the low-res look of the original.
The main problem with the game: it’s quite boring in single-player. You don’t get experience quickly enough, so you’re stuck with just one skill for a long, long time, and not enough motivation to continue.
I’m not a fan of sours, but this one, which resided in my fridge for at least a year, was actually pretty good. So much strawberry I couldn’t believe it didn’t have any additives to it. Overall, great one, as expected from Vault City.
Also, let’s just appreciate for a moment this peach color.
5th bottle is Kavalan Triple Sherry Cask. I’m familiar with Kavalan through their Concermaster, and Triple Cask is no different. It is sweet, if I’d prefer it to be at least 46% instead of 40%. The problem is that this bottle costs 81GBP. For that price, you can get yourself a nice sherried Cask Strength.
6th bottle is Uncle Nearest 1884. It’s a bourbon. You can taste the corn, and it has a surprising afterwarmth to it. But not something I would buy, despite a reasonable price of 55GBP (when available).
Half a year ago I sold my “unhackable” Playstation 4 Pro 11.52 for 110GBP. And did I miscalculate.
Two things happened. First, now those are hackable up to 12.52. And second, the RAM price hike drove all the console prices up, even the older ones. Go figure.
In any case, if I wanted to get Playstation 4 Pro now, I would pay at least 150GBP.
Not that I need it. Or not that I can’t afford the price difference. But it is still quite wild.
Over Christmas, completed my Scabbik’s Plaguepack.
I was preparing so much to glue them, only to discover those are push models. Well, I’m not one to complain about that.
The real challenge if those Skaven models, in addition to regular warpstones, and the tails, are the plumes of smoke that come from their censers.
I tried drybrushing metal, but it mostly got thrown away.
Pleased how pink parts worked, with Bugman Glow, then strangely enough Berserker Bloodshade, then highlight with Bugman Glow again.
I’ve never seen bones/horns done in blue (I don’t remember this particular contrast paint, maybe Kroxigor Scales), but I did it for contrast mostly.
One thing I plainly lack is the discipline to photo the process under the same light all the time.
It’s a movie that requires prior knowledge, as it doesn’t explain a lot. Hard to discern who’s in Navy and who’s in the Army. But it also doesn’t matter much. I thought that it would be a story of heroic stand, or of some struggle, but it is mostly just a collection of anecdotes, without any moral judgement.
It’s an interesting movie, but not a movie you supposed to enjoy, as there is no rhyme or reason to it. Passing of time is convoluted, it is not clear if the siege of the island took a week or a month, the only indications is that at some point they say that they spend 5 days before the final assault.
There is some irony, like the story of the lieutenant that wanted to blow himself with a tank, didn’t find any tanks, and eventually survived. But there isn’t much.
It’s like two movies rolled into one. First is a school drama about female teacher dating her student, quite badly written. Second is a fenomenal air combat action.
The most interesting aspect is that Val Kilmer is supposed to be the antagonist, but he’s actually the sanest person.
Meg Ryan also surprised me in this one, because I always remembered her as this quite plain pretty face, while here she actually delivers.
4th taster is from Finland. I’ve had rye whiskey before in New York, and it tastes quite similar, like a rye toasted bread. Not my favourite taste. At 47 ABV it leaves plenty of pleasant warmth, though.
Completed Alone in the Dark New Nightmare.
Not sure if the second disc was less play tested, or I just started loosing patience with this game.
The circle of stones stumbled me. Carnby says you need to call Eileen to decipher the inscriptions, but when you do, nothing happens. I thought that maybe the game glitched out on me. Looked into the guide.
But for some reason you need to decide what one of the inscriptions means. Was I supposed to know it somehow?
Then the statue in the greenhouse. I thought I should push it, tried a couple of times, and figured out I must be on the wrong track. Turns out, it needs to be pushed from a perfect angle .
The last part, when you meet with Eileen and run in the caves together is nice, albeit pointless, because soon Edward gets sucked into World of Darkness, all alone again.
At first I thought it’s some Gigerian dimension. But radio with Eileen still works, so it must be just the caves beneath the island. You are given a lighting gun with plenty of ammo to find and what looks like endless enemies. Not exactly “survival horror”.
This entire episode is bizarre, as they rendered a lot of those unique backgrounds. For what? You run through those rooms as fast as possible, just not to fight endless enemies.
You fight Alan who turned into some kind of a gaunt zombie. When you damage him enough, you can grab a spear, which I don’t think was ever mentioned, and stab him to death. Because what is stronger than a rocket launcher? A spear, of course!
I have zero motivation to play the second scenario, which is a shame, really. It does seem like Eileen playthrough would be significantly different. Not only she has a radically different starting point, but also Edward never visits the fort or meets Obed, the less evil brother, for that matter. So some events, like Obed’s transformation, are never explained.
What gave me a real pause was the Library boss. Wasted all my ammo on in on the first try. Then I thought that maybe I’m not supposed to fight it yet, but no, the doors are locked. It does this slomo attack from time to time, but it’s not clear what the game expects me to do. Dodge? After looking in a guide, learned that this is when I’m supposed to counter. Tried it again. Wasted all my ammo again. Finally found a YouTube video that explains that the boss is bugged, and you need to hit it in a particular frame.
Previously I mentioned how ammo in the game is abundant. That’s not exactly true. It just isn’t spread evenly. By the time I got out of the mansion an to the second disc, I was running dry on almost everything.
Speaking of second disc, on GDEmu it’s a bit of a pain. The game only lets you load from the 1st disc, then you need to swap discs, which is done by pressing a button on GDEmu, which doesn’t always work, and if it doesn’t, then you have to reboot, and watch the unskippable sequence again.
This one surprised me a lot. Not only because, unlike “For a Fistful of Dollars” it doesn’t repeat any story I know. But because of its characters. First, I’d say Clint Eastwood isn’t the main hero of that story, it’s Colonel Mortimer. He’s introduced first, has far more agency, and a revenge arc. You can argue that Eastwood’s character goes through a development as well, but not as significant. It’s almost bait’n’switch, I’d say: you came for Eastwood, but stayed for Van Cleef.
The second surprise is how diabolically evil Indio is. The last such unapologetically evil character I can remember was Henry Drax played by Farrel in “North Water”. Indio orders family of the man he betrayed shot, and then challenges him to a duel. Here I thought that after the duel, they’ll be shown alive, as just giving more motivation, but no.
Then Indio is showing shooting another woman’s fiance, then raping her. And I thought there will be some story of how she rejected him because he was Mexican or something, but no. He just decided to burglar into someone’s house.
The movie is long, almost two hours, and not entirely for good reasons. Some of the scenes are too long.