Inspector Shadow

Not sure how I stumbled upon this one, but so glad that I did. Gave me the laugh I needed today.

Slow Work and Thoughts

I must apologize for the lack of miniatures/photography updates. Not only has the usual things like my depression and anxiety issues caused troubles, but issues with work and the news that my Grandfather is dying of stomach cancer (given that he'd only just beaten prostate cancer) have ment an undesirable amount of problems. It's also ment I've had to do a lot of thinking.

Project wise, it's been difficult trying to motivate myself to paint. This would seem odd cause with the big heat here finally cooling down, my room is cool enough to handle the heat from the bright lights I use. I'm still stuck deciding between either working on the Inquisition or Empire, though I feel that I've left the Skaven on the back burner for far too long. While I know the idea for the Grey Seer Skratchnsniff costume might be good (or not), I still need to work on something techno-wizardy to really feel satisfied.

As for photography, I will get around to practicing some more but I also want to try my hand at a bit of voice recording and video editing, along with with some photo editing thrown in as well. I have considered taking up some study, but depression as usual has caused me to constantly struggle as to whether this is useless or not and so has ment holding off (seriously, it's ticking me off).

Given that I'm trying to get a new computer to replace my laptop, it will mean a complete reshuffle of my desk, so hopefully when I do that I'll finally get a better set-up to encourage me to get back to working on them. In the mean time I might try writing up a few articles, perhaps reviews or rants or whatever comes to me and see how it turns out.

Update: Yep, really thinking about that Skratchnsniff costume design. So far I'm looking at how difficult and expensive it'll be to make, but it's actually somewhat difficult to find some of the things I needed (apparently most places don't stock such items till around October - Halloween). As for miniature projects, I have begun work on Geegaw (my Dwarf Engineer I played back then on Warhammer Online) and am stuck on the back pack design. Still can't get out of my head that I should start designing some crazy Skaven device, but if I can't think of one soon, I may just go back to my plan of a Skryre built Warpfire Dragon.

Skratchnsniff Costume?

For a while now I've been thinking about whether it would be worth creating a costume/outfit, say like an Inquisitor cosplay for when I go to those big pop culture expo things (e.g. Supanova), since my normal cloths are rather lacking. It was during this that a thought occured: How come I never did a costume for that joke character I made, Grey Seer Skratchnsniff?

For those who don't know (I've placed a link above), Grey Seer Skratchnsniff was a funny little idea that I turned into a model and ended up using as an actual character in my Skaven Clan lore. To simply put it, he's an apprentice wizard who's research on the Skaven lore drove him insane, to the point he actually believes he is one. With his (rather badly) custom made disguise and bottle musk, he parades around as some long lost Grey Seer. So amused by this creature that the Forgemaster Skith Warpclaw took him in as his personal adviser (though jester would be more appropriate term). As such, Skratchnsniff is given free roam of clan territory and no Skaven can touch him of fear of the Forgmasters wrath.

So why make this costume? Well, for fun for starters, but also because I guess we could make a few funny videos. A chance to practice a bit of video recording and editing, with a little acting on the side. Heck, could even pretend that he's reviewing things like games/books/movies etc, through a farsqueeker to an audience of man-things, saying all sorts of crazy stuff. He is completely insane after all.

Wildstar Beta Short First Impressions

So after some small time playing the beta weekend and then discussing it with my brother (along with some net research to answer some of my questions), I feel ready enough to give my first impressions opinion on it. Yes, I do realise that it is still a beta and that it'll still be buggy, but given how close it is to release I'm going on an overall feel.

Character Creation:
For me the current options are good enough, though I suspect that people will be requesting more variations in the future. I guess that more work could be done in the fine tuning of your character, but I find that the current options are fine.

U.I.
I wont say much for this given that it keeps changing. Will wait for final release before going into any detail.

Gameplay:
This game relies more on aiming your attacks and dodging enemy attacks, so can prove difficult to do. I'm not really good at hotkeys and so do find that at times I do struggle with attacking on the move. That said, I am getting the hang of it slowly and once I unlock a few more mobile attacks I'll have more fun. What I will say is that dodging is more easier to do compared to Elder Scrolls Online due to the fact that it actually works. Tapping the keys makes you dodge, where in ESO you could reach the point of slamming your keyboard just to dodge. As such, this makes combat much more fluent.

Quests are somewhat a problem. Vocal work is limited to non existent, so if you were looking for that then I'm afraid it isn't here. It's funny, cause when I played ESO I found myself skipping the talking parts because I wasn't invested in the story, but with the Exiles story I was disappointed due to being invested, but no real voice work (save the cut-scenes). Some quests do use a communicator option (image of some satellite dish and the C button) which does save you from constantly going back all the time. Quest wise, I'm finding them ok, though I tend to get distracted sometimes by the constant challenge pop-ups or because of my chosen path (Explorer). By clicking on the quest though it does give you an arrow showing the direction it's located, so that's also nice.

My only real gripe is the fact that I haven't found the main city yet. I think it's because I either haven't got the quest or it's on that shuttle that I didn't bothered to test. I feel so lost...

Customization:
Given that to only two MMORPG games I've played with extra customization are World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online, It's no surprise that it's one of my favourite things to do. Sadly, I haven't been able to do much customizing, but this is mostly because I've been to low a level or because I still haven't been to the faction city. Trust me, I'm so looking forward in getting into this.

Tradeskills:
I haven't been able to try them yet, but this is because I haven't been to the city. Will update once I get some crafting done.

Update: Need to be level 10 before they are available, so I'm just off.

Sound:
Voice work is limited much in the same way old WoW was, with a few voice recordings for when that persons image appeared and a and proper recorded lines saved for things like cut-scenes/ following someone. So far I have enjoyed the music and have felt the mood based more on the blend of music and visuals.Some of the music can be found here.

PvP:
Haven't done it yet, but am really wanting to give it a go. I'll get my brothers opinion once he does a few more battles.

Overall:
For a beta, I've enjoyed it more then the released ESO. As a beta there are a few bugs I've seen and I'm more then happy to fill out those quest queries. I like it and am looking forward to finally giving one thing I'm really wanting to play: Warplots.

Angry Joe Review: Elder Scrolls Online

I sadly have to agree here. This game had so much potential and yet fell so short of expectation.

Music of Wildstar

While the game is about a month or two away, that doesn't mean I can't enjoy the game music.

Wildstar OST by Jeff Kurtenacker

I enjoyed most of the tracks, though my favourite was Enemy Territory. I liked that one because when I played the beta last weekend, this piece played during an assault on a Dominion position (an artillery position I believe), just after you saw the tragedy they had wrought and now you wanted revenge. Really got me in the gaming mood and as an action piece, this track really helped the image of it.

Storm Spear Cameo

So some time ago I entered a competition to have a character appear in a Doctor & Derpy comic and managed to get the runner up prize of having a character make a brief cameo (there were ten runners up), so imagine my surprise when this popped up today on the Ask Lovestruck Derpy tumblr page:

Woot, he made it as one of those shown getting into escape pods (read the story over on the tumblr page to find out more of that story). What he's doing there or even why is he there I still have no idea, but given his evolution beyond his own world, my guess he's probably on a mission of some sorts and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Future Gaming Plans

So as part of my practice for voice acting, I had heard from some that some Let's Plays were just one way of practicing. As such, I'm already got just enough for my brother to start building me a better computer soon (my current one is a laptop that's a few years old) and so will finally get to play some of the more modern PC games. But what am I really looking forward to play within the next year on it? Let's see....

Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare
Yep, so looking forward to this one. I've seen it played on the Youtube channel of ZackScottGames, so it's no surprise that it would draw my attention. Will it be any good as a PC port? I don't know, but if it works as well (or better) as it's Xbox Ones version, then I'll be happy.

Wildstar
I had trouble getting into mmorpg's since I left WoW and Warhammer Online shutdown. I mostly blame WoW for that and I have my reasons (which I may get too another time) and having played both Elder Scrolls Online and Wildstar beta's, I feel Wildstar is a good point to return too. I know that my main will be an Aurin Spellslinger (already have a design and profile made), probably a mix of damage and healing so I can enjoy the mixed aspects of the class. My brother wants to play Chua too so I'll also have a Chua Medic for when we feel like a bit of madness. Have to wait till the three day head start before I decide on which server to join.

Batman/Assassin's Creed
I have no plans on purchasing a next-gen console, so as such I'll be purchasing these ones for PC from now on.

Dungeon Defenders 2
I admit, I have no idea if this game will be released this year or next year, but I'll still keep it on the list simply because I love the series. I've said on this blog before that I'm a big fan of Dungeon Defenders (I play both a Summoner and a Ranger in our games) and so I wait with anticipation for the next game in the series.

Heroes of the Storm
As far as MOBA's are concerned, I've played League of Legends and classic DotA, though I'm not very good at the PvP aspect of the games. I tend to play more of a support character to better help my friends (who are better then me at these type of games) and am not very good at hero killing. Given what I've learned about Heroes of the Storm, I'm very keen to play it. The focus more on objectives over hero killing is something more to my style and I really would love to have a chance to play some of the characters on their current hero list.

There's probably a few more I've forgotten to add to the list, so if I have then I'll do an additional list later on.

Deathwatch Short Review

Warning: Contains spoilers.

This review is some-what different from the norm as I am looking at a book that was released last year. So why then? Well, it's because of a book I read that was released this year, Deathwatch: Xenos Hunters.

Deathwatch: Xenos Hunter is a book that contains a number of short stories about Deathwatch Kill-teams. Two such stories are about one such team, known as Talon team and their mysterious Inquisitor Lord master known only as Sigma. The two stories are actually really good and while I didn't need to know the back story of these characters to enjoy the story, it did make me curious about the deal between Inquisitors and Deathwatch space marines. On the back pages I saw the advert for a previously released book about Talon Squad, so thanks to Booktopia, I  managed to get a copy.

Deathwatch itself is the story of the forming of Talon Squad and their first mission against a mysterious Xenos threat. Yeah spoilers, it's a Genestealer cult. I sort of knew that from the adverts I saw, though the introduction just screams Tyranid. On the plus side, Genestealer cults are creepy and disturbing as you get further into the book, which is great because anything new on Genestealer  cults is few and far between.

It's really broken up into two main parts. The first is the introduction to our main character, the Death Spectres Librarian Lyandro Karras and his introduction and time spent in the Deathwatch training (and his own mysterious destiny) and the introduction to the other various Space Marines who will eventually become part of Talon Squad. At the same time we are introduced to the plot on the planet Chiaro, a mining world in which unusual things are happening. The Inquisition has sent in one operative to uncover what's going on, with the second sent in to deal with it. Things go wrong and that brings us to the second part.

With all the setting up done, the story now turns to Talon Squad and their mission to the planet on a rescue mission. I wont spoil it, but it's an enjoyable tail with a guessable twist involved in the plot. The book itself leaves itself well open to sequels. which is obviously where the two short stories in Deathwatch: Xenos Hunters come in. Still, there is much that needs to be explained, particularly with those additional questions that were thrown in so close to the end.

I must admit that I haven't read many 40K novels and really don't have much interest in reading many more, but I do admit that overall, this was an enjoyable read. I felt that the characters were well done (Zeed has to be my favourite) and the story itself was interesting. If your interested in Space Marines, Deathwatch or even Genestealer cults, then give this book (and Deathwatch: Xenos Hunters) a go.

New Store, Same Job

On the plus side, it's just right around the corner, so no more midnight train rides (I think that's a good thing).

Noah Trailer Parody

thoughtART

So yeah.....this was something that showed up on DeviantART and suggested you give it a go, so I did:

 Tales of Problems

So, this picture and title were generated. I would be very concerned if I actually took this seriously (because it's not ment to be, duh). However, given recent events in my life and my conditions, this whole thing has disturbed me. Look at it! This thing is bloody weird. I can feel it staring into my soul. AAGGHH!!

Digital Download - An Oz Problem

One of the main things within the gaming industry is the push for games to be done via digital downloads. What's the problem? Well, apart from that it'll effect game store sales, it is focused on the fact that you need to download the game. While in places like the USA this may not be a problem, in Australia it is.

For those who don't know the maximum speed most internet providers give is about 2mb/s (though I have heard of some with 3mb/s). This is due to Australia's technical infrastructure and just how out of date it is. Some may have heard about the National Broadband Network (the NBN as we call it) and that it would improve things. Well, that's not entirety true. Thing was that when it was first introduced it was to give Australians the speeds around 100mb/s. Then the Abbott government took over with their promise to get it out at a faster and more affordable rate, but at the reduced speed of around 25mb/s. Those that have it however, seem to only get speeds around 16mb/s and not only that, it will now take much longer for it to be set up nation wide.

So you see, a major majority of Australians will still be limited to the 2md/s limit (that is, when it works), with a number still limited on the amount able to be downloaded per month (between 12gb and 50gb limit) because they can't afford it. As such, the push for digital downloads may work in some countries, but not in my country (or many for that matter).





I won't bring up the complaint about Oceanic servers here because that's another issue entirety.