Space Hulk Deathwing, Dawn of War III and August painting progress
The end of July and beginning of August has been busy, but I managed to squeeze some time to play and even paint. I'm slowly shifting towards more painting and less playing but summer vacations mean no painting either. Anyway this is what I've mostly been doing (apart from farming Zelda components to max out almost all clothing):
I'm playing again Space Hulk Deathwing main campaign, and I have to test the cooperative mode now that has been improved. The game came out a bit unpolished and I paid the hype price, but still the atmosphere it's impressive and I'm enjoying the second run (with graphic options almost maxed out as framerate is better).
I bought Dawn of War III with a heavy discount, and how lucky I was, because the game has been somewhat a dissapointment... The multiplayer component is great, even skirmishes against the computer. You have three elites who level up, three battle doctrines (modifiers for unit types or special general weapons) and basically looks like the best representation of Warhammer 40,000: Big battles with dozens of units (a lot more than DoW 2 and also more than the original DoW), amazing graphics, imperial Knights and the Eldar & ork equivalents (well, almost, a Gorkanaut instead of a Stompa... meh, sounds like a GW-imposed choice), bases and many, many nice looking and intense battles. On that regard it is a great game, and with a decent graphics card it looks amazing, just like the miniatures. But on the other hand the campaign is... a waste of time and effort. It is a forced, badly written and dumb story that looks made only to let you know how every unit of the game works of the three factions. And even that is in my opinion wrongly executed, as you forcibly have to switch faction on every mission (each mission is tied to a faction, that is), and some of the missions are really boring. Combined with decent voice acting but poor dialogs (between predictable, silly and sometimes absurd) and some nasty gameplay bugs that force you to repeat the level if you encounter one... For the first time in the franchise I haven't finish the campaign, as I got tired when I hit another bug just in the final level. It is too uninteresting. It is a pity because it could have really had been great, and after the previous games I can only guess that there were budget constraints on the development because it looks only really polished on the multiplayer part, and there are almost no NPC factions/units (on the later levels it is quite noticeable they even reused 3D models instead of adding more variety). I don't regret the buy as I already poured in around 20h and will probably play some CPU skirmishes in the future, but it is a wasted opportunity of delivering a great game, bringing instead a "just nice" one. Still, some of the videos have really cool images:
And finally, apart from small progress on painting Nagash (I'm on the 3rd layer of bone colouring, and I expect at least one or two more), I grabbed two of the Betrayal at Calth models and did some dark washing on them to prepare to paint them. I'm not going to go for anything really hard so will just highlight with Mephiston Red and maybe some touches of orange. And I should definetly finish the basing of my Imperial Knight, it is only missing that and the decals to be finished...
Comic Book Review: Warhammer 40000: Will of Iron
Between breaks from latest Zelda videogame, I got my hands on all numbers from Warhammer 40,000 latest comic,Will of Iron. Counting the free issue that came with White Dwarf it's 5 issues. Dark Angels versus chaos with the Inquisition in between is a classic in the WH 40k lore but could result in an engaging tale. Sadly, it falls behind on this wish.
The story is lacking more thrill, more action. The plot advances but not much, and while the artwork is really great (including the alternative covers), pretty comics aren't everything when overall it feels like a bottle half-filled with air. Even reading all the issues together, I get the feeling they copied the main idea of comics of delaying by splitting action in many issues, when here should fit better a graphic novel, where story advances at a faster pacing. I've read lots of mini-series (e.g. Alien and/or Predator) and here just feels things were hacked out for the future.
Dialogs are not bad but just mentioning 2-3 classic Dark Angel topics (pretty much everyone knows now about The Fallen) feels like exploiting once and again the distinctive mark of this Space Marines chapter, instead of exploring something different. There are some known characters here and there but as satellite pieces.
Not bad but I'd say to wait until there is a second "season" so the story really progresses.
Tags: Comic Book Warhammer 40000
Space Hulk Deathwing, Deus Ex Mankind Divided & Fallout 4
I'm lagging behind my proposal of painting more, but I cannot fight arriving tired from work. Tired enough to prefer not to paint, but not so exhausted to leave the computer out, so I've been playing some videogames as of lately. Related with this blog usual topics (RPGs, Warhammer, etcetera.), I've played three games.
First and most interesting to me, Space Hulk: Deathwing, an FPS in the line of Left4Dead or Warhammer: Vermintide, both with singleplayer and cooperative play. This has been the big revelation for me: I preordered it due to a discount, and while it is true that performance-wise it needs some fine-tunning (lags when there are too many enemies at once even with a high end 3D card), it still looks awesome and the developers and designers must be fans of Warhammer 40,000 because the scenarios, lore and details of the maps are simply amazing. It won't please everybody, but I loved it and just finished the campaign, so I'll now try multiplayer before another pass to try to obtain all relics and read all logs.
Then, I also recently finished Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, new entry in this saga and the second game since Square Enix reboot. I did loved the previous game (Deus Ex: Human Revolution) because of how much it redefined the original game in such a pleasing way, so maybe I had too high hopes for this new entry. While certainly it is a good game, it has two issues for me:
- It is very very similar to previous one. This is good but also bad, as there are not many surprises here
- The story and some secondary characters sometimes feel cut, uncomplete, as if fragments were left for DLCs/expansions. I don't own any DLC so is just a theory, but I felt when I finished there were a bunch of unclosed or unsatisfying "branches"
It is also very demanding regarding 3D power, and while the scenarios are soo beautiful and insanely detailed cyberpunk cities, sometimes really gets sluggish.
And lastly, my most mixed feelings go to Fallout 4. After more than 70 hours on Fallout 3, all its DLCs and some custom mods, I was so happy to have a new entry and truth be old, I've grown tired of it even before finishing the main story arc. Yes it has settlements and NPCs inhabiting them; yes you build from furniture and food to weapon and armor modifications; yes the map is big and more detailed and alive and full of missions; yes everything is prettier and more realistic. But it all feels yet quite similar to Fallout 3, as a mixture of mods with a graphics bump and some (a bit dull so far) story of a lost child and you of course frozen in a vault for some years and then waking up. I will come back to it in the future to play more and try to finish the plot, but it broke my expectations on the wrong side.
Maybe I'm just growing tired of playing same sagas and need to switch to new IPs with unkown settings and new lore, but it's getting dissapointing playing new entries of existing game worlds...
Tags: Videogames Warhammer 40000
Thousand sons, Ahriman and Magnus the red arrive
It seems that all rumours and analysis of the teasers were right, and we have a big Thousand Sons update! More especifically:
- Magnus the red, as previously seen over the internet
- Ahriman new awesome mini (on the flying disk!)
- Rubric marines AND terminators
- Exalted sorcerers
- Tzaangors
- Wrath of Magnus book, another narrative campaign like Curse of the Wulfen
- New paints (2) and sprays (5)
- Thousand sons dice
As can all be seen in this "summary" trade poster official image (click on the image to open it full-size):
September 2016 Status Update
This past months I've been publishing almost only comic and book reviews, but I am actually doing more things related with miniatures and RPGs. First of all, I've been playing videogames more frequently; Steam sales and offers plus some awaited releases made me spend most spare time either reading or playing. Now that I've finished some games, I'm slowing the pace as I want to do more things, but my currently installed games say a lot about what I'll focus on. As can be seen in the following picture, I bought from an offer the Warmachine Tactics videogame, I was curious and I always welcome turn-based strategy games... but I haven't yet tried it so can't say how good or bad it is.
I still have some games pending finishing, including some really long ones like Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2 and Grim Dawn, but no need to hurry. I'm focusing one or two non-GW games at a time only, and sometimes I throw into the mix an arcade or console game. Lately Games Workshop is doing a great job on PC regarding licenses, and I've deleted from my PC classics like Space Marine or Dawn of War II, both of which I've finished multiple times, to not overflow, but I really like having so many options to play digitally. I've also preordered the incoming Space Hulk: Deathwing and will do the same with Dawn of War III as soon as it is possible. Exciting times ahead!
Regarding miniatures, I've assembled every pending miniature I had and base primed a lot, but didn't painted much until recently. Now I am painting, mostly:
- Imperial Knight: Only remains a few details and the base decoration (dead chaos space marine bits) and the decals
- Rogue Trader era Space Marine: I found this miniature ordering an old box. While it is hard to highlight it with my crappy skils and the mini's lack of detail, I'm working on it
- Nagash: A while after it came out, I bought the new awesome Nagash figure plus some undead warriors to decorate the base, but it was waiting (not even fully assembled) for me to decide to paint it. I started last week by priming it and right now I'm paiting the spirits, but my goal is to focus on fully painting it before starting with another mini. And without taking months to do it.
I might also retake painting Necrons, as they are quite easy and fast to do, but not until the lord of the undead is done. And about other miniatures than Games Workshop's, I finished painting two small lead witches as a small gift for my girlfriend, one green and one violet. Nothing impressive but was good for a change.
And that's mostly all, I keep reading but right now still going through a lot of pending comics before retaking Horus Heresy novels.
- ← Newer Articles Page 4 / 25 Older Articles →