| Still playing me some Payday 2

Had a run on the new map "Cook Off" where you basically play the first level of "Rats" in perpetuity.. taking over a meth house, then finding materials to cook meth, then defending said meth against waves of enemies while you run the bags back to a getaway van... as many times as you and your crew want, up to something insane like 100 bags (which would take hours).

So anyway, log into a crew, start playing, get about 3 bags in and notice there are no enemies and there's one of our guys standing at the back of the van throwing in a continuous rainbow of bags in the van... oh lawd, a hacker. But not just any hacker. Maybe the most ridiculous hacker run I've ever seen.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Payday 2.. a very well run, near maximum difficulty mission taking 3 days with no margin for failure on any of the days (Pro Jobs you don't get to restart the mission.. if you fail a stage, the entire thing is scrapped and you get nothing)... you might see upwards of $3M in cash as your split and around 1M in XP. And that's perfect run.

Back to our Cook Off Hacker.. he takes a minute or two to dump in however many bags. We get the 'mission success' and debrief... $623M in cash as my share and something stupid like 150M in xp. I couldn't do anything about having received that XP.. except to reset my character back from the now maxed out level 100 back to level 0 (and gain a level of infamy, which confers some small perks), and then NOT keep any of my cash on reset. With his hack, it would be possible, in the span of maybe an hour or two, to go from absolute infamy/level zero to maxed out infamy of 25 and level 100... that's just nuts.

Additionally, I got to thinking.. it really takes the fun out of the game to just instantly have everything. I don't relate to the hacker mindset I guess. I'd rather be presented with a set of challenges/puzzles and have to solve my way through them, and/or earn skills and grind up to being able to solve them with a mixture of game elements and my own player skill / thought.

| *tumbleweed rolls by...*

Eric invites me to his blog, and then never posts again...

It is awfully quiet around here.

In case you need your dose of nerd, here's my Kings of War 6mm Demons of the Abyss army.  So when are we actually going to play, guys?

Guys?

| *Taps Mic*

Is this thing on? lol

So Sunless Sea! I've been playing it a bit.. pretty fun. It's very text-story heavy, with a semi-random map.. lots of exploration and really the heart of the game is resource management. Making sure you have enough fuel and supplies to make it from point A to B to C and back home to port without running out of gas is pretty much the core of what you do.. and along the way try to work through the various story lines, deliver X cargo to Y location for a Z% chance of what you need to further the story. I'm no where near the end of it (it's pretty rouge-ishly brutal).. the story pretty much tells you right off the bat your first few captains are going to probably die a horrible death, and they'd be right. Heh. I find myself starting to keep hand written journal/notes about places visited, which shops offer which supplies.. who wants certain goods/services and will pay a premium (or offer a discount).. so in that regard it sort of combines old school RPG gaming with the video game experience. Dig it.

Darkest Dungeon! Did I already pump this one enough? I can't get over how much fun it is. A very differently packaged dungeon crawler / character building system. I love how the prevailing theme is how fear and dungeon crawling will slowly break even the sturdiest of adventurers without enough care/mental health maintenance back at home. The voice overs are just absolutely perfect. The combat is compelling and interesting, and the dev's are still cranking out tons of free updates. I think it's technically still an 'early access' game but it plays like a polished, finished product. Highly recommend.

Otherwise, hope all is well with you and yours. :) I'm coming up on my summer vacation at work... yay 17 days off! Very much looking forward to some respite and mental health recovery myself. Hard to believe I'll be there a year and a half soon. Crazy! It's never boring, that's for sure. And getting paid hourly is something I am now getting very accustomed to. lol. Yay for overtime and double time pay!

On that note, time to get ready for my swing shift today. Lates!

| Zombo Apocalypse & Comic Con LV 2015

Went to this place called Zombie Apocalyse the other day and thought you guys might enjoy it if you are here in town with the kids.  They converted a paintball field on the weekdays, and made it into a Zombie infested city.  Then you have to run from safe-point to safe-point away from all the zombies armed with a shotgun with 12 paintball shells.  It was creepy!

It's totally awesome dawesome for little kids I would imagine.  But afterawhile you comprehend that the zombies can't "touch you" so then it takes a lot of the fear out.

It reminded me a lot like "true dungeon" except TD was probably more interactive and challenging for adults and less frightening.

Also went to comic con, but other than the Street fighter II machine that was free to play, it was okay.  There wasn't a load of people, it looked really empty and not as many scantily clad heroine costumes as would have hoped for.

| Sunless Sea ?

Anyone else play this? I see it on sale in STEAMZZZZ for the next while and it looks intriguing.

SUNLESS SEA TRAILER VID

Semi-related, saw the X-COM "The Bureau" expansion on sale for $3 so I grabbed that... pretty excited to have a new environment/new toys/mechanics to play with in the X-COM game-verse... but.. instead of being a turn-based tactical strategy game.. they turned it into just another FPS clone? Whaaaaat. I don't hate it, but it's just so.. uninspiring. It FEELS like a knock off of other uber-linear shooters, but without the pinache of, say, Mass Effect.

It was awesome.

It's nothing like Borderlands. There are real stakes.

So Mad Max Fury Road is getting crazy good reviews (99% on rotten tomatoes right now), so maybe I'll eat my hat and go see it.  The preview made it look absolutely over-the-top awful (yea, I've played that video game with the midgets too...) but hey.  Maybe I'm just a grouchy old man that just needs a good action flick to calm me down?

NERRRRRD!

Heh heh, Grand Moff Tarkin is playing Battle Masters.  Awresome.

This is so good!

It is a lot weirder and more operatic for sure, but... have you seen Road Warrior lately? It is pretty bonkers.

Plus it's mostly practical effects! I'm in for that alone!

I hate to be that guy.  Maybe old age makes you jaded, but I think I played this in Borderlands 2.  I was seriously expecting the midget psychos with hockey masks to come out.

| I mean, seriously

What the fuck is this shit?

| World War Great: The Great War

Interesting  Kickstarter out of UK for a new Command & Colors game (Memoir 44, etc). If you buy a retailer 6-pack, it works out to $56 bucks a person. iJawn is seeing if there's enough people interested!

Kickstarter Page
BGG Page

| Dungeon!

So there I was, at my local mexican place (the only legit mexican food I've found up here so far), and I see a Tacoma Games store has opened next door! While they were making our delicious take out food, I took the kiddos over there and went to see what was what... tons of table top games! Yay! Found a copy of Dungeon! on the shelf and was surprised to find it was exactly the same game, just with different box art. Brought it home and the kiddos and I have been playing every night the last three nights. So far, Bennett, Haylee and I have all won a game. It feels awesome to share some of the love of gaming with the kiddos and pass that on, even more so with a game that I loved as a wee lad. Glad to see that my remembrance wasn't overly romanticized... still a very fun game! 3 down, 97 to go? :D