1.0 World of Tanks

Tags

World of Tanks

For the new graphical update WoT went ahead and moved to an official 1.0 release, after years of making literal millions of dollars.   But the update deserves some interesting version number so it makes sense.

The new garage, with XVM installed.

The old maps are gone, and in their place are new ones in keeping with the spirit of the old maps, but with a lot of important differences.    This is not unexpected in a game where knowing the correct spot to park is so important.

The new Mountain Pass map

My first battle here reveals no major changes; I followed the 1-2 line and tried to support the T6’s but we were wiped out pretty speedily.

New “Presets” for graphics

The screenshot above, obviously, is the High Contrast filter.   You can also select others; I had used “1940s cine” for the other screenshot.    The differences are subtle but really nice.

I have a tough enough computer to still select “Maximum” in the graphics mode, so your mileage may vary.   It still looks pretty nice on Low mode, which gave me a fantastic FPS of 240 as compared to 40 for maximum.

I am enjoying having a week of premium.   I have NO CREDITS, and so am running as many premiums as I can to stack them up.   Premium vehicles are only good when used with premium account, in the sense of getting a lot of credits – otherwise you are better off letting them trickle in while you do matches for other reasons.

My tank playing is rejuvenated for the moment, even as I do the usual and go after the latest mission – collect 100 tokens for some Tier 3 premium.

 

World of Weekend

Tags

World of Tanks, World of Warplanes, World of Warships

Courtesy of a free week of premium from World of Warplanes, I decided to “dive in” and try out some WWII simulation from Wargaming.

World of Warplanes

The game is pretty different.    There are a group of bases that start out as neutral, and you need to capture them by destroying buildings and defending aircraft.    I had a lot of fun strafing until the bases turned blue.

Next, you need to destroy enemy aircraft until their points are depleted.   You can ignore the bases, but the more bases that your side has under control, the more points you get for destroying enemy aircraft.   I get the sense that each side has a lot of AI players – you can recognize them by their callsigns, like “Arthur” instead of “I_****ed_Your_Mom” or something charming like that.

I do get some interest in progression in the game.   I have always like the P-38 Lightning, the ME 262, and the big bombers – Germany has a few of those.    Strangely, none of the American bombers like B-52 or B-17 are in the game; they will come “in a future update” which probably means “Ha, never, nobody plays this game”.   But I’ll try and unlock the P-38 American branch, and move on to the German planes, and see if that can satisfy my interest.

I have a lot of premium aircraft, and a very few “standard” ones.   It seems I have 5 slots available for new aircraft.

Thanks for the free week of premium Wowp; which carries over to World of Tanks, along with the gold.   I like the game, at least a little bit, but my usual problem is not finding a new game it’s finding time for the others I already play.

World of Warships

This game does not tie in with the others, still, for either gold or free XP which is very disappointing.   I have no doubloons, but almost 7m in silver, and a premium account active though.

The New Port

The port seems to be new, but the rest is as expected; a grind up from one ship to the next.   The battles are a lot of fun, even if I clearly suck at playing the game.   It’s not exactly a noob friendly kind of thing.

I bought a new destroyer (Half off!) and tried assisting by blasting away with torpedos.   I found out that my torpedos fire broadside, but thankfully I was able to sink one ship with an errant set of torpedos.

World of Tanks got a monstrously big update, so I’ll put in a separate post for that.

The End of 2017

Tags

Idle Heroes, Ingress, World of Tanks

On a personal level, I’m glad 2017 is over.   2018 is looking good.   But we’re here for gaming, aren’t we ?

Ingress

Retirement is going well.    Some ways yes, some ways no.    Things that have changed :

• I am not driving to random places to get that key portal.
• I do not have to hack every day.
• Not charging portals on a constant and mentally ill basis.
• I have viewed the Intel map maybe 6 times in the past two months.   Not daily.

Things that aren’t going so well :

• War for Downtown Burbank.   Supposedly I was going to quit this.
• Wandering an unfamiliar area and Ingressing.    This really is so much fun, despite the time required.
• Niantic did some kind of “audit” on my Operation Portal Recon contributions.   I am now rated poor; I have to do reviews in the hope of climbing out of poor rating, and none of my reviews count towards the badge because I’m poor.   This means I’m pretty much done with OPR.    I might work for free, but not for no rewards whatsoever.   I’m also irritated in that I spent a ton of time on it and I’m rated “Poor”.   Well get bent then !.

Ingress 2.0 has been announced with a 2018 go live date.    Given 1) The state of the software industry in general, and 2) Niantic’s history as a company, and 3) Harry Potter AR game announced previously,  I expect perhaps December 2018 and no sooner.    Harry Potter will probably happen sometime in 2018 but I don’t feel like guessing that one.

Idle Heroes

This is really a fun little diversion.   So fun, I have opened up 3 servers for play.   That takes all the time I can throw at it, so I’m pretty done looking for phone games.

On server #1, I am about to finish the Nightmare mode of the campaign.   Campaigns have four modes – normal, nightmare, hell, and death.   Sounds like Doom 1.    My team is strong and deadly, but I am level – locked.

They have a strange levelling mechanic in the game for no good reason I can see.   All it does is lock you out of some activities until you have spent a certain amount of time in the game.   You can’t even spend your way past it.  Pretty annoying.   I will hit level 125 today, after which I’ll move on to hell mode.   Until I hit (in a couple of stages) the level limit there.

I have lots of good heroes and am only really waiting until “fodder” heroes pop up.   You have to sacrifice heroes in order to move up from one level to another.

Server #2 sports the recent addition of an unqualified god-tier hero (Barea) who has helped me progress through the campaign at a lightning pace…… until hitting the level cap.

World of Tanks

The 2010 game you still can play today, I have jumped back into World of Tanks.   I am now in a semi-serious guild with a bunch of guys who do battles together daily.   The stronghold play is a way to earn some kind of power points towards your clan structures.   I really don’t pay any attention to it, but I do get a clan logo on my tank and people to ask questions to so that works well.

The 50 battle challenge continues in full swing.   I want to have 50 battles in every vehicle that I own, or I’ll sell it.   I am approaching the point where I can see the end of “the list” – except it doesn’t include any of the tanks I have not yet driven.

So far I’ve only sold two – something Japanese and the Russian A-20 which I had rebought for some stupid reason, and hated all over again.   But I have an insanely big account – 190 tanks owned, with 15 vacant slots.   Not much reason to sell tanks unless I really hate them, and I’m a generally forgiving kind of guy.

Looking forward to accumulating credits again for another big sale.   I blew 10 million credits on equipment and tanks with the last sale, and have very few unlocked tanks which I have not purchased.    If I can hold onto a bunch of credits again I may actually start playing the Tier 9’s and unlock some additional tier 10’s.    All my free XP is being saved so that I never have to redrive the VK4502B despite its major upgrade – I hate that tank.   But I need just shy of 200k free XP to purchase the Tier 10 PZ VII; 80k is sitting in my account.

Happy new year !

Playing the Endgame, Everywhere

Tags

Ingress, Marvel Heroes, Vikings, World of Tanks

I was watching the Super Bowl, and not amused by the commercials.   And then something really dumb, but attention catching came on :

Which reminded me that I hadn’t played World of Tanks in – I dunno, years – so I loaded it up and found myself involved in no less than four games now, at the “Endgame”.

Ingress

I am currently dialing it back from Ingress a bit.    No big operations being planned – it’s all I can do to get out to slightly out-of-the-way portals for various reasons.    I am working towards platinum Mind Controller badge – only 1,400 more fields until I earn that one – especially since this badge is perfect for anyone microfielding the Downtown Burbank area.   I crossed the 50 million AP threshhold this weekend.

Vikings

With a level 21 town halfway completed, and working on late game knowledge, this game creeps along.    Creeps is the right word.   I recently started a knowledge upgrade that had 27 weeks on the clock at the beginning.    You can wait for that time to pass, or you can use the time boosters that you acquire in various methods.   I burned all of them up, and am currently waiting to tick down the 10 weeks remaining for this one.   And then start another one nearly exactly the same.

Marvel Heroes

Nerfs to Story XP are annoying, but not nearly as annoying as the impossible Cosmic Trial.    Still can’t pass it with Captain America.    Of course I have the Cosmic modes unlocked with him anyway, but I’m not playing Cosmic Patrols until I can pass the Trial.   I so miss the old Cosmic Trial, which you could pass after gaining enough power.    Probably the only thing more annoying than that, is most players insistence that the trial is “Easy”.

42 heroes unlocked and finishing the story, alphabetically.   Human Torch is my hero today.    And the story grinding continues to move me forward with Infinity points, although the creeping upwards of XP requirements is getting bad – about 290 million for the next point.

World of Tanks

The game has a new Intro movie which is pretty well done –

Standard with the game now is two rows of tanks, not just one, along with view range circles and a drawable minimap.   You can sketch out what you want your teammates to do.   Chat with the enemy is gone, leaving your teammates only able to rage at how stupidly you play, which they do – the socially inept will lash out at anything.   I miss enemy chat.

Random platoons during gameplay is constant, giving you the chance to actually pass these missions that require platooning.    I’m getting in the habit of always being in a platoon due to the personal reserves that I’m earning for the privilege, plus the chance to knock out some of those tank missions.

The XVM mod is still going strong and has tweaked the statistics in the garage very nicely –

Left side – a Tier indicator, along with the laurel leaves that tell you if the tank is elited or not.

Highest level of mastery earned.

Average damage.

Right side – Did you get your daily double/triple/quintuple ?

Count of battles played.

Win rate in %

Despite my earlier statements that I was done adding tanks to my account, I reneged, and bought a bunch of additional slots along with more tanks on sale.    There’s no reason not to spend that gold I bought years ago.    Now waiting for a crew training sale to add a 100% crew to my Tier VIII German arty that I bought.

And so I grind along in the game with the usual goals – padding my battle counts, earning silver, creeping crew training along, and earning mastery badges.    Ace tanker is elusive, often.   With over 100 battles I still can’t earn it for the Medium Mk II, a tier II pig tank that I had figured I could get it with **someday**.   I gave up, and am moving along a list of low tier tanks until I actually have some silver again.

Silver is elusive if you collect tanks and mods constantly.   I am beginning to wonder if the smart thing to do is simply take equipment off tanks I’m not currently running (costs 10 gold each time) and add it to the ones that I am.   Probably makes a bit more sense than grinding to add it at 500k per piece typically.   And currently I’m trying to get another 700k silver so I have enough to buy yet another new tank.

 

Statistics, Feb 2016 month-end

Tags

AdVenture Capitalist, Ingress, Marvel Heroes, World of Tanks

With a mammoth case of writers block, I figured I’d toss out where the stats have me in various games I’m playing.

AdVenture Capitalist –

• 850 Untrigintillion angels on Earth (Mobile)
• 649 quattordecillion angels on the Moon (Mobile)
• 12.5 quintrigintillion angels on Earth (PC)
• 2 quindecillion angels on the Moon (PC)

The next real hurdle is getting to 2,880 Oxygen Bars.    Quite a ways to go, considering costs – I have 2,654 in my current mobile game, and 2,671 on the PC.

Ingress

• 21,755,000 AP earned, still Level 14
• 2 Onyx badges (Guardian, Recharger)
• 5,914 of 25,000 links for platinum.
• 3,771 fields of 10,000 for platinum.
• 45,659 of 50,000 glyphing points.
• 1,533,000 MU scored of 4 million for Onyx
• 4,782 of 5,000 for gold Engineer.   Getting close.
• 21,600 of 30,000 for gold Purifier
• 28,000 of 30,000 for gold Builder
• 4,192 of 5,000 for gold Liberator

I’m taking a different approach to the game now.   Instead of trying to help cover Southern California, I’m more hyperlocal in a few select areas.   If you quit worrying about big operations, that changes the game a lot, as well as taking the pressure off of playing all the time.   Downtown Burbank is of course the main focus.    And wherever I travel, I keep Ingress in mind.

Pt Mugu has a neat little campground I was not aware of, and it also contains four portals in various spots – one being behind an “Hours of Operation” barrier.   The Malibu guys seem to want to link to it to keep a block up, so I’m holding the keys I own and charging that portal.    Sometimes, it’s the little things.

Marvel Heroes

Not feeling a lot of interest.  Get in, play for a little bit, and log off.   I’m moving Black Panther along and he’s almost 50; he’ll make my 18th Level 60.   Still collecting items for Level 69 unique crafting.    It’s fun playing in Hightown with the guaranteed unique from every boss wave, this is helping me move forward with the “Completion” of relic stacks.    Once I have 1,000 of some of them, I can start giving them to the unfortunate later heroes who don’t get any yet.

World of Tanks

No particular end to this game in sight.   One single empty tank slot, and 159 filled (!).   I have vague desires to :

• Unlock every tank
• Ace mastery for all tanks (39 so far)
• Finish one nation – buy all the tanks.
• Finish more lines.

In a sense I’ve finished one line given that I have the Maus; the German TD line ending in JPE 100 still contains one TD I never bought and thus isn’t “Finished”.    Sitting on 5 million credits waiting for something to happen worth spending on, and currently saving above that mark for the Tier X STI gun.

I’ve been playing two low tiers in the hope of Aceing them.   Skills keep going up, so it’s hopefully a matter of time and good luck.   And I’ve got four TD’s I’m grinding up as well.

Gaming in 2016 ?

Tags

AdVenture Capitalist, Armored Warfare, Ingress, Marvel Heroes, Master of Orion, Pokemon Go, World of Tanks, World of Warships

What will gaming bring me in 2016 ?   I’m not sure, but here are my guesses :

Games I’m Playing Right Now :

Ingress – At some point I’m going to be completely done with the game and cease to log in.    Changes in game mechanics might tweak that.   For instance, better key mechanics, such as unlimited key storage or use of keys inside the capsules you’ve purchased; or real defense, that actually stops an attacker flat, or server priority for defense instead of offense.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a fantastic game, but it just looks like for me, Doc Burbank, I’m done.

Marvel Heroes – A name change is coming in a few days and it will magically be Marvel Heroes 2016 !    This amuses me, because you usually associate name changes with big feature changes.   I’m aware of nothing new coming besides the changed name and the usual game tweaks.

But Gazillion is impressive.   They apparently took a total turd at launch time, and much like Everquest 2, improved it over time until it’s becoming a real gem.    Achievements.   Danger Room.   More heroes.   Midtown Madness.    Cosmic Levels.    More currencies than you can shake a stick at, which after a while, you get used to and enjoy having.    I really like this game, although my interest waxed and waned over the last several months.

Best guess is this will get played to some degree all year.   It’ll probably cost me money for something – Heroes, Bank Slots, or Costumes.   God help me if I start buying costumes, you could blow hundreds of dollars on that stuff.    I remain about $40 invested in the game, but I’m tempted to buy more.

World of Warships – This is fun, but I’m very low on ship slots and not that interested in spending more money.     And so this killed the game for me.    I haven’t logged in for a month or so…. but I’d like to.     Unified accounts (like were originally promised) would probably revive my interest and convince me to spend “Wargaming Gold” on new ship slots and continue playing.

And the other reason I don’t play this is because, simply put, I’d rather play tanks.

World of Tanks – More tanks to play and unlock.    Marvel shouldered this one aside again and I assume I’ll be putting in matches once again soon, after the Marvel winter event.    Best guess is this gets playtime in chunks throughout 2016.

Adventure Capitalist – This barely counts as something played, but oh well.   I enjoy accumulating my quattorquindecillion’s worth of money.    But given the low level of daily play (1 minute?) I will probably continue logging in for the entire year.

Games On My Radar :

My Steam Library – Just like the rest of nerd gaming-dom, I have a large library of games I’ve lightly or never played on Steam.    I was not the slightest bit tempted to buy anything over the Holiday sale.   Far too much has been purchased and not played, and yet, odd as it is, it was enjoyable to search out all those bargains and buy them.   If I never play them, I got some amusement out of the whole process and learned something new – the joy of buying things for its own sake.   (My wife knows all about this phenomenon….)

Star Ruler 2 comes to mind, along with Wasteland 2 and Dino D-Day (Ridiculous idea !  Fun as hell !   Will the game match up at all?)  as games I’ve not played for any good reason.    Cities : Skylines is the one I want to play the most, and yet, I’ve never logged in and played the game.   City builders have been so dissapointing over the years after Simcity 4’s massive goodness – and irritating problems – and yet the premise still seems fun.

Regicide sounds interesting as I continue to wait for a Battle Chess game to pass across my radar, but I was after a sub $10 price point.   It’s at $10 during the Steam sale.

Star Wars : SWTOR – this has gone free-to-play, and I admit, I’ve read very little about it.   But I am intrigued enough to perhaps try it out in the free-to-play world.   If I had to pay for it like at release time it would be a definite no go.

Armored Warfare should get another try.    Maybe they can improve the queueing time to the point I’d actually like to play.   I don’t know.

Games To Be Released :

Pokemon Go – This sounds like it might be fun.    Travel to different spots in Meatspace, and collect various Pokemon.    Fight virtual battles.   Level up your Pokemon at a Gym, and acquire powers.    Trade with other players, not a very exciting concept, since in practice this usually doesn’t work that well and ruins a game.   Maybe this will be different.   Expected release date is “2016”

Master of Orion – Can Wargaming move forward and publish this one well ?    Did they pick the right studio to develop with NGD ?   Time will tell.    The real question is, was it just the first really good 4X in space so it’s remembered fondly, or is there something about the experience that will stand out during a remake ?   I really, really hope it’s the latter, although I’m enough of a fanboy that I bet I’m buying the thing on release day no matter what.  No release date is hinted at.   Hopefully it’s 2016 sometime but you never know.

Now, I can look back next year and see how well these ideas stacked up with whatever happens during the year.

Lack of Some Things

Tags

Ingress, World of Tanks

I seem to be suffering from a motivation to blog, given that my gaming lately has been

1. Lacking in anything to write about, and
2. Lacking in ability to write when I have something cool going on.

I’ve started up Adventure Capitalist again – if you can call a five minute gaming session true nerd-gaming – still trying to own the entire Earth.    I’ve pretty much quit playing Warships and Warplanes.    Warplanes suffers from a lack of interesting gameplay – it’s best features are the tie-in with Tanks.   Warships seems to suffer from not having the gold economy tied in with Tanks.    I want to buy more ships, but all my slots are full, and I’m not motivated to spend when I have just under 10k in gold on Tanks.

World of Tanks is getting a lot of play.  I own a tank in every slot, and still find the lower and mid tiers the most fun to play in.   I continue to do some of my favorite things when playing tanks –

1. Playing the list.   Currently moving up from the bottom.   All of my owned tanks should have several matches in them so they aren’t “on the bottom” of the games played chart.    Yes, I am aware this is only of interest to me.

Still playing two of these tanks, but the rest have all been sold.

2.  Unlocking more tanks and grinding through the credits.    The equipment sale saw me buy about 6 million worth of equipment items for the monstrous tank fleet I own, and I’m now trying to play and gather enough credits for whatever new things I decide to purchase.    Sitting on 3 million credits along with a bunch of junk I’ll sell from my consumables collection.

3.  Thinking about trying to get Class 1 or Ace on every tank I own.   I’m trying to make the pig that is the Medium II into an Ace but so far it’s just a grind with a lousy tank.   The Grant, on the other hand, has had four Ace games and hopefully more before the next unlock.   The Toaster is really discouraging me, map changes have made the Stealth TD’s much harder to play, but I have managed a Class 2 in the thing.   And the list goes on.

Ingress is starting to lose it’s lustre.    I like the Sand Castle analogy for the game – we just go around and kick each other’s Sand Castles down.    Not one to give up easily, I’m still getting in game time, but quite a bit less.

I had quite the day in Vancouver British Columbia, roving across the town and picking up a lot of uniques.    The city was a shambles while I visited, everything torn down and just small bits of fields in play for either side, and I did what I could while sightseeing.

I think the new key capsules are a failure.   They should have done something simpler.    Trying to figure out which capsule I have what key in, is a huge pain in the ass and probably part of the reason the game is less fun.   Ah, well.

And as always, gaming goes on, for gaming is life.

 

Gaming Update – So Many Games

Tags

Ingress, World of Tanks, World of Warplanes, World of Warships

Gaming progress for the last week includes :

Ingress : Double AP until December 1 is being very kind to me.   Sometime this weekend I hope to make Level 14, and an important fellow agent just made 16 with the boost.

• 1.5 million MU captured
• 40k Translator (Glyphing) points, means 10,000 to go until the way is clear to 16.

I enjoyed making this field, 2K MU, but it was just such a long and large blocking field as well.

Warplanes : Hawk 75M purchased and fully upgraded, and continuing to accrue the XP for the F2A.   All other aircraft (Tier I mostly) are elited.   I am avoiding purchasing more stuff until I know more about the grind, or elite one of those two aircraft.

Warships : My fleet includes the Dresden and Hermelin (German II and I) ships.   I like the Germans for some reason I haven’t carefully analyzed.   The Americans are the tree I’m planning to fully explore, and I own 5 ships there, mostly working to elite the St Louis cruiser.

I figured out how to play the Sampson destroyer after a lot of false starts.   The torpedos have a tiny range, so you have to sneak up on other ships or wait for them to move near, fire torpedos, and take evasive action.   Generating smoke helps keep you hidden.   Most of the time when I get near a ship, they fired torpedos at me, and had a good kill rate.   I don’t think Destroyers are my kind of ship, but who knows.  I did manage to elite it, but I’m not buying the next one immediately at least.

I haven’t played my starter Battleship (South Carolina) yet.

Tanks : AT2 elited and removed from the grind list.   That is a TD very much my style.    Still grinding away otherwise.   E-75 (German Heavy), The Toaster (German TD), AMX 46 (French TD), Chi-Nu (Japanese Medium), and the B1 (French Heavy) round out the list.    I’m kind of afraid to play the E-75 since I lose 10k credits every match, usually.   Still need more than 100k XP for the E-100 unlock.   I must not play the AMX 46 very well since I often lose credits, and I’m still playing this thing after such a long time.

The B1 is hysterical to play as a stock tank.  It can’t pen ANYTHING at all.   Not a Tier 3 scout from the rear.   Enemies were nervous about me until they realized I was stock and then chewed me up and spit me out.   But I persevered, did not spend free XP, and managed to get all the gear upgrades and am now working on the next tank.   I don’t know – I might end up enjoying this one.   We’ll see.   56% crew means there’s nowhere to go but up.

The weekend special is 50% off Tier 4-5 heavy tanks (none for me), and 30% of Tier 6-7.  For me, this means the KV-85 is on sale.   Bought, and stocked away.

What’s Wargaming been up to ?

Tags

Armored Warfare, World of Tanks, World of Warships

I’ve not really kept up with Wargaming since traveling to Ingress – obviously.  I missed the launch of Warships for crying out loud – so over the last day I’ve been digging around.

World of Tanks, Nov 2015

A lot of the game is the same old, same old.    This is good and bad, and a few things really jump out at me :

• Premium accounts are ridiculous.
• Paying $50 for a tank is ridiculous.
• Individual matches never get old.
• The default skins are sooooo boring.
• The game’s graphics are just beyond fantastic.

I seem to have bought too many tank slots.   Somewhere between ?10? for a new account, and 153 which is my current total (12 slots free), is a more sweet spot.    I loaded up the game and decided to continue with my Churchill GC (everyone hates it, me included more or less, but I’m still going to unlock that last gun) and my AT-2 (I can’t pen you but you can’t pen me !).

The maps appear to have gone through another round of tweaks, and the next patch of 9.11 is coming soon.   There seems to have been some controversy around version 10, but I haven’t penetrated the problem.   Doesn’t matter – this is still a fine, fantastic game.

The problem I have with how I tried to play World of Tanks was trying to unlock every tank.    That is never going to happen if you stay as a sane person.    Premium giving you a 50% XP boost, means, 150% of never is still never – and it costs you a minimum of $10 a month along with tying you to the game.    Now, playing a match or two a night – or even all night – that’s much more doable, and just enjoy the sensation of progression rather than feeling the need to be controlled by it.

I look at the small sums I’ve spent for other games – $40 per title, $10 for Ingress, maybe $40 for Marvel Heroes – and I compare that to blowing over $300 on World of Tanks.    Yeah, that was probably not wise, and I doubt I’m doing that again.

That’s what I’m saying today, anyway.   See what I end up saying at month end.

 

World of Warships

The vision of the unified account came true only 1/3 of the way.    Sure, all of Wargaming’s big titles have gold, free xp, and credits; but the gold does not transfer over to Warships.   This is a real irritant, given that I have a ton of gold on my World of Tanks account.   Guess I’m going to be able to train/retrain crew members for quite awhile.    On the other hand, I’d buy full price ship slots right at this moment, but I can’t unless I buy doubloons.

Free XP does not transfer either, but the premium time does.   Yay.   I can be “locked in” to Wargaming’s three premier titles.   I’m not going down that path, thanks very much, but I have to admit the idea of owning additional ship slots will probably get me buying doubloons.    This leaves me with an interesting question on free XP in Tanks – do I spend it already (90k hoarded) or continue to hoard it and perhaps never use it.

The gameplay is fantastic, as good as I remember from closed beta.   After one night, I’ve reached the exalted tier of III with a St Louis cruiser, which I’ve yet to take for a spin – I want to unlock the destroyers first and try that gameplay out.   I’ll have to try and get a game with my buddy going, as well – they do have platoons in the game, I hope.

World of Warplanes

I’m not patching that turd to see if it still stinks.    Reports are, it stinks, so I’ll not dive back in there.

Armored Warfare

HZero has apparently been playing this one, although like me, his blogging seems to have gotten light.   I downloaded the installer and will have to try this one out, at least.

But first – time to unlock the American Destroyer tree.

Trying many titles, Very Old to Old

Tags

Spore, Steam, World of Tanks, Xenonauts

GAME 1 : Xenonauts

Xenonauts game continues and has reached February 1980.     I have several countries at maximum funding, along with four bases each having four interception aircraft.

I decided to add another dropship, so I bought a Charlie and enough recruits in North America to crew it up.    They do not have good gear, given that everything I’m making takes forever and goes to the African crew; but they were started on moving up the ladder in ranks and abilities.

Then the Terror mission hit me in Panama City.

Thanks to being on easy mode and having the ability to save and reload, I managed to get through this one after perhaps a dozen false starts.     Go one way, and the Reapers eat your squad and wipe you out.    Maybe I should go this way instead ?    Reapers wipe me out.    Let’s head down the center instead.    Sebilisians shoot us to death, leaving the last two guys cowering under cover – where the Reapers found them and ate them.

I finally got a decent start and managed to lose a single squaddie – only the third guy killed in the game.    Matt Damon sprinted through the streets of Panama to spot the Lizards and take one out.    As he slipped the full auto clip for his rifle to “on”, he spotted a second Lizard and his anxiety increased; he ran past the bastard as he emptied his clip into the beastie, dropping it with a death rattle.

The second Lizard he’d spotted was taken down by his squadmates as the covered him.   Squatting down, he barely has time to react before finding out there were three Lizards standing next to each other, as the survivor clips him and he knows no more.

The survivors managed to slowly work their way across the map and wipe out the aliens.

Getting to this point took almost a week.    I was frustrated enough that I found myself playing additional games instead.

GAME 2 : World of Tanks

You don’t HAVE to play the game like a completely obsessed ADHD-driven teenager with Aspbergers.  (But it does help…..)     Instead, taking advantage of the new log in and get credits feature (50,000 per day!) makes me happy to move forward towards the usual holding amount of 8 million credits (just 400,000 to go), and I get in a match or three before logging off.

The M3 Stuart from China is now elited and also my best “Spotter” having gotten two games in a row with the special medal.

GAME 3 : Spore

Spore got a bad rap when it came out.     The game’s team didn’t manage gamers expectations very well and led the rabid-fan segment to believe there’d be much more to the game.   The truncated release version spurred tons of “But you promised!” comments.   Add in nasty DRM with a splash of EA-hating, and people just didn’t like this title at all.

I played a complete game again over the last few days.     Other than getting it confirmed to me that yes, the Galactic Adventures Add-on sucks, I completely enjoyed the game once again.

Now, EA is not yet done having problems with this title.   My username, for whatever reason, could not log in to the game’s servers.    Surprisingly, creating a new one was a matter of filling out the web form – no need to tie a key in to EA’s servers, probably because this title is so old – and I’m up and running again.  All my creatures are still sitting on one of my PC’s, but really, I don’t care that much, to find them and reintegrate them into the game.    The only nagging problem here is those achievements don’t mean much given this being the fourth time I’ve reset them.

But it’s a lot of fund to play through all the stages.   Even though the details are very wrong, I love playing the story of Evolution, and on towards a simple yet engaging future of space exploration.    Will Wright’s last game remains bittersweet.

“GAME” 4 : Steam

Having raced tanks to the top of my charts in World of Tanks, naturally I end up doing the same thing with Steam.    I keep buying $3 games and trying out other things, but I’ve moved Spore into my top ten games played which it deserves, and keep trying out whatever is fun (Carmageddon) and what isn’t (Age of Wonders III).

We may soon have three Steam accounts in the house – Dad, Son, Daughter.    My daughter is making videos with Garry’s Mod, which at the moment consist of slide shows set to music.   She’s doing a good job with them, and she’s trying to figure out how to animate characters and what not.   I haven’t looked at this stuff at all however.    Then my son is fascinated with Beam.NRG Drive and can’t wait until it comes out.    I’m thinking that each of them should have separate accounts instead of sharing one, even if they have to share a computer at the moment.   I don’t know.     I don’t have to decide until Beam.NRG Drive is available for purchase at least.

And for the moment, Dad’s still working on his Steam Game Backlog.