Sins of a Solar Empire Beta Impressions

I have not played the multiplayer yet, but I look forward to it.

So Stardock said I can chat and post stuff about the Sins Rebellion beta on the Internet because they’re awesome (I asked on twitter).

I think it’s too similar for how different the marketing tries to make it seem. It looks almost exactly the same, and for the most part, plays the same too.

Additions (at this time):
-There’s at least one type of new planet, a moon like thing that is somewhere inbetween a dead asteroid and a normal asteroid. I don’t think it really changes much, but maybe if you mess around in galaxy forge, you’ll love it.

-Supposedly loyalists can train capital ships passively while they’re in a controlled gravity well, but I haven’t noticed this (I haven’t played a full loyalist game).
-TEC Rebels are supposed to be able to get pirates to join them, but I haven’t noticed this, I just kill them all.

-The two titans, Ankylon and Ragnarov for the TEC, I don’t know anything about the Advent or Vasari titans really. Building a titan is like having a mobile starbase, maybe two. They can destroy almost everything in their path easily (besides other titans). I assume the TEC loyalists can defend against it as I heard they can double up on starbases on planets, but aside from that, if your opponent has a titan, you better build one quick, or be destroyed. There are a lot of prerequisites to building one, but if you really try, you can rush them pretty quick.
–The rebel Ragnarov fits my play style perfectly, and I don’t think I could be nearly as effective if I tried to play withe the Ankylon instead. It’s a ship built to be tanked. Alone, it can destroy almost any other ship, and in my limited experience, including other titans. It just does so much damage.
–Loyalists get the short side of the bargan with the Ankylon, in my opinion. It provides some buffs, but you can’t really use it as an attack vessel so much, which is what I like my large ships to be. You can spread the Ankylon’s shields out to the surrounding vessels and cool down skills for a whole well and stuff, but really, it’s not nearly as useful as a Ragnarov in a battle, unless heavily supported.

-New TEC capital ship, a troop transport: This is actually kind of interesting, and probably my favorite addition so far. It’s a support ship that can fire boarding crew onto friendly ships and enemy vessels. It can’t turn the tide of battles very often, and is far from the strongest support cap ship, but you can take strong enemy vessels as you advance through a system and build a decent following. If you’re assaulting a heavily defended planet, such as a pirate world, you might even take some gauss turrets. It can also send crews to friendly vessels to boost their damage and stuff.
-The corvette: I didn’t use this ship often, and the times that I did, it really didn’t seem that useful. They have a very small cost and supply, so maybe if you want something like a single fighter squadron, but 50 of then didn’t take down a starbase’s shield or destroy any of the three or so surrounding gauss turrets.

-New research: It really isn’t that much, maybe four abilities. I wish they did more to distinguish the loyalist vs. the rebels, but they new techs are small passive gains. I haven’t checked out the loyalist abilities yet.

-There are now pretty cool shadows on ships, if you zoom in all the way. That, and bloom on suns is now turned up to 11, are the only two differences in graphics I could discern. Oh, also warping looks different, and when a titan warps in, there’s a cool looking shockwave.

-New victory conditions/game types: There’s a koth style game, played with a singular planet that is heavily fortified by a neutral faction. Also, now you can set it to end a game when a capitol planet is lost. There’s another condition, but I forget it.

Things I want:
-I would like a separate tech tree all-together for the loyalist and rebel factions. The current tech doesn’t make they play different enough. They seems like almost mirror images with very small differences, aside from the titans.
-Maybe a second new cap ship? That’d be pretty cool, make it feel a bit fresher. Maybe one build to specifically take down titans or fortifications, like the torpedo ship for TEC does with starbases.
-A new cruiser, seriously. It would be nice, and that’s the only tier of ship that hasn’t been updated.
-Some new worlds, because I’m kind of tired of knowing all the types already.
-More artifacts to discover. They haven’t added any, and this kind of irks me.
-If they’re going to continue talking about how the graphics are different/better, they better make them look better. I’m playing on highest, and it looks almost exactly the same. Most people probably couldn’t tell them apart. It doesn’t help that Sins is rather old to begin with.

In the end, I know I’m getting my money’s worth, and if you really liked Sins, you probably will be too. It’s a great jumping off point if you have been interested in Sins before, but don’t go in expecting something very new. For the most part, this is the same game. If you have Trinity/Diplomacy, I might recommend continuing playing it. Titans destroy the balance I thought was struck with starbases and cap ships. 90% of the game feels unchanged. I know this is a beta, and I really want to like it, but unless they add quite a bit of content, or change some major things, like the power of normal ships and cap ships vs titans, I can’t recommend this to people who really liked Trinity. Right now it feels like half an expansion. There’s still a lot of down time in games, too. I’m sure that turns a lot of people off, but I like to do other things while I play, so it isn’t that much of problem for me. This isn’t the dramatic revitalization of the Sins series that it was made out to be, at least not yet, but I’m still having fun playing it.

Also it crashes sometime, being in beta and all. Plus normal, which I found more challenging in previous games, seems to be a cake walk now.

This is all based on the beta and not indicative of the final product’s quality.

You can checkout the game here, it activates on Steam, and you automatically get in the beta if you preorder: http://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/store#rebellion

Space Wallpapers 2

Hey. So once again I found a ton of awesome Space wallpapers again. Check ‘em.

Dropbox link:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12039097/space%20stuff%20for%20shack/space%20folder%20of%20rad%202%20-%20too%20cool%20edition%20volume%203%20collector%27s%20edition.zip

Imgur albums:

http://imgur.com/a/D4EQ8#0
http://imgur.com/a/eKrNX#0
http://imgur.com/a/XF2FP#0
http://imgur.com/a/gUDpV#0
http://imgur.com/a/5t19n#0
http://imgur.com/a/18BIC#50
http://imgur.com/a/BxSOO#0
http://imgur.com/a/qjTft#0
http://imgur.com/a/7Eo90#0

If you want the old stuff, check here:

http://countfenring.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/some-awesome-space-stuff/

Some awesome space stuff

Long time no see.

Today I went on a great search on the Internet to find some awesome olden style Science-Fiction pictures and I was quite successful.

Here are two imgur albums of the best, and largest, pictures I found. Most of them are pretty futuristic and kind of landscape-y.

http://imgur.com/a/YhG3p/all#0

http://imgur.com/a/FA7gD/all#0

Here’s a .zip file for all those pictures.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12039097/space%20stuff%20for%20shack/awesome%20space.zip

After those, I still had some less awesome, and much smaller pictures left. Here those are.

http://imgur.com/a/fgLuk

Download link here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12039097/space%20stuff%20for%20shack/random%20space.zip

While discovering these, I found an awesome site. It specializes in concept art for spaceships and other futuristic things.

http://conceptships.blogspot.com/

Also I found this pretty rad video slideshow series of some old Science-Ficion pictures from the “Golden Age of Sci-Fi.” It has five parts and is quite rad.

Enjoy!

Games I beat this year

I beat a few games last week, so I thought I’d type this up. A few hours later and I had this. I’m not to happy with it, but w/e. Have fun reading it.

Fable 3 and Understone and Traitor’s Keep – 360

This was the first game I beat this year. I don’t think it deserves all the hate it gets. I came looking for a fun, casual RPG, and that’s what I got. Fable’s humor is still great o[(An example being this quest: http://fable.wikia.com/wiki/The_Final_Insult )]o. The combat was easy, but I had fun and I wasn’t looking for any super complicated at the time. The only real problem I had with the game was the lead up to the end. I wanted the perfect ending, so to have enough money, I had to wait for a long time while I got enough money. The Understone DLC  is probably a pass. It’s fun and looks cool, but that’s really it. It’s way to short for the price, and doesn’t add much to the game. Traitor’s Keep, on the other hand, is well worth the price. There’s a few quests, a couple new areas, and a o[really predictable twist]o. Understone is pretty much more of the same, and luckily up the same level of quality as the rest of Fable 3.

Epic Dungeon – XBLIG

Everyone should try this. It’s just a dollar, and one of the great Xbox Indie games. You go through dungeons and fight mobs for gold and treasure. It’s a bit a of a throwback to the original Gauntlet style of play. Seriously, you should try out the trial, this is an amazing game.

Darksiders – 360

I had fun with this for one of the same reasons I liked Fable 3, namely, the combat. Most of the time, it’s fun, easy, and doesn’t require that much skill. Towards the end it gets harder, but only a little and I could stick to a few good combos and do well. As Darksiders uses the Zelda formula, the real stars of the show are the puzzles. They’re fun, but as with the rest of Darksiders, aren’t that hard. This game is easy to recommend, especially as it tends to go for really cheap.

Bayonetta – 360

I played Bayonetta back to back with Darksiders, which really highlights how much better the combat in Bayonetta is. Bayonetta, is an excellent fighting game, but I never really liked it too much due to how Japanese it is. The combat is fun, but man, everything else about that game made me not want to play it. If you can get through the first chapter, you’re good for the rest of the game, but if you can’t stand it, skip.

Just Cause 2 – 360

I got this from my White Elephant! It’s a great sandbox game, however, once you’ve seen a sixth of the stuff that’s in the game, it feels like you’ve seen everything. Yeah, it’s fun to blow stuff up and parachute around, but I felt like the game didn’t really have anything left to offer at about the six-hour mark. After mindlessly exploring and blowing stuff up, the story missions are a nice palate cleanser, but aren’t that good alone. It’s fun if you want to blow stuff up and have fun flying around in jets and awesome helicopters, but that’s really it.

Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena – 360

The Riddick games feel like a better controlling but less enjoyable version of the Condemned game, albeit with totally rad stealth stuff. If you have the chance, get the version with both games. Escape from Butcher Bay is clearly the superior game, but Dark Athena is really good too. Once you’ve played Butcher Bay, you’ve seen the best the Riddick series has to offer. Everything in Butcher Bay feels good, the missions are varied, the areas are interesting, and the whole idea is pretty cool. None of these things can be said to the same extent of Dark Athena. All the missions feel the same, the areas start to feel recycled quickly, and I really couldn’t give a shit about the Dark Athena as an area. At least the o[parts down on the planet are really fun.]o

The Darkness – 360

Uhg. This game may have been good for a launch game, but now it just feels terribly dated. It looks… odd, aiming feels bad, you move too slowly, and the darkness powers are over powered (specifically the tentacles things which I ended up using more than my guns). The story is cool, but it didn’t make up for everything else. This game is just a product of its time, but if you’re willing to forgive that and work through the shitty World War 1 levels, the game is pretty okay.

Breath of Death VII – XBLIG

This is a game for people who like the old Final Fantasy style JRPGs, which I never got into. BoD7 is funny, and it’s short enough you should just play through it based on the comedy alone. Some of the jokes fall a bit flat, but most are pretty good. The combat is quite wrote, which is what BoD is going for, but after a while it just gets boring. BoD is cheap and you should buy it.

Serious Same HD: TSE – 360

This is one of those games I think everyone should play; it’s the pinnacle of old school run-and-gun shooters. It’s a bit hard at parts on console, but it’s completely playable with a console. This game is freaking amazing. The huge fight o[in front of the keep]o is easily one the most intense moments in a game I’ve played this year. Great game.

Alan Wake and The Signal and The Writer – 360

For something I bought on Amazon for $3.74, this was an amazing purchase. I’ve heard some people really didn’t like the shooting for felt it was repetitive, but I didn’t have a problem with it, and the story is great. The game has some really memorable moments o[(driving to the lake when the shit is hitting the fan, fighting all the crows, anytime Barney is on screen, the band stage)]o, but more importantly, the whole game felt like it took place in an actual area. Maybe that’s just because I live in basically the same area and that’s why, but it really felt immersive to me. Characters can look funny, but the environments look very detailed, and the lighting is AMAZING. Play this!!!! The Signal, while important to the story, feels a bit offensive in how product placement-y it is in the beginning. Luckily that ends about halfway through and it shapes up pretty well. The Writer has a great ending, and is very good. If you didn’t need to play The Signal to understand what is happening, I would recommend skipping it and going straight to The Writer.

Dead Rising 2: Case Zero – 360

I really liked Dead Rising 1, and Case Zero was definitely not as fun. In two run throughs, I had fully completed the game, and that’s okay. Case Zero is worth $5, but not too much more. There’s nothing bad about it, and a lot of things are done right, but it’s just very short. If you have Dead Rising 2, I’d stick to that.

Aliens vs. Predator (2010) – PC

The only good thing about this game is that it looks really good running at 1080p off my laptop and worked well with a controller. _[Everything]_ about this game is boring. The areas feel generic, none of the combat is very fun, and the story sucks. BOOOOOOOOOO

Mirror’s Edge – PC

I’m curious as to why so many people like this game. Personally, I think it’s kind of terrible. There were a few times I had fun running through a level, but a lot of the time I felt it was either too easy, or the level design was hindering me from doing what I should be doing. The ship level is particularly terrible. There’s a room where you have to climb up a wall, run back to the rear of the room, then run forward and wall run and jump to a far balcony. Now, if you fall at any point here, you go back to the floor and start over. This is particularly annoying as getting to the final wall run part is easy, it just take a looong time. I have to wait for Faith to slowly work her way along pipes to get to the wall, and climb up the wall before I can even try the wall run again. There are a number of other areas where similar problems exist, and they really made me dislike the whole experience.

Mass Effect 2: The Arrival – 360

I liked ME2, not as much as ME1, but it was still fun. The Arrival (which sounds like a chapter in Alan Wake), being the final piece of DLC for ME2 doesn’t so much as continue the story as set up the battle in ME3. It has a few cool parts, Renegade options are still badass, and the combat is still fun. If you want to play ME3 and have a good idea of what’s going on in the beginning, this would be the thing to play.

Dragon Age: Origins & the Golem DLC thing – 360

This game is kinda really boring. Everything feels generic, I didn’t really care about what happened to anyone, and I just generally wasn’t interested by anything in Dragon Age to the level I was in say, Fallout 3. The combat seemed a bit too easy until the final boss, where it became all about endurance. I really didn’t have much fun with this. Morrigan was cool.

Wolfenstein (2010) – 360

If Serious Sam had all the best parts of older shooters, Wolfenstein feels like it has the bad ones. The game is still pretty fun, thanks to some cool enemies and good controls, but everything else is rote. The levels feel very corridor-y, and the hub world can get annoying due to respawning enemies. Upgrading guns is fun, and the being able to choose which missions you go on is a nice change, but some bad bosses ruin a lot of the fun.

BioShock 2 – 360

I liked BioShock, in spite of its gameplay, I like BioShock 2 in spite of how similar it is to the first. If you already know the story of the original BioShock, BioShock 2 is the version you should play to have fun with plasmids and stuff. The story is above average, but not nearly as good as the first. You might as well be playing as the character from the first, but with a drill on his hand. Plasmids are still fun, and yeah. Also the ending sucks, o[having my essence as my daughter’s conscience is just dumb.]o

Fallout 3 and The Pitt, Operation Anchorage, Mothership Zeta, Point Lookout, and Broken Steel – 360

I started playing Fallout 3 back when it came out, but I never really got hooked and moved on. I have no idea why, this game is awesome! It doesn’t feel as deep or intricate as Oblivion or Morrowind, but everything in Fallout is fun. The shooting isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough and VATS can be badass. The only real problem I have is I wish there were a ton more quests. I’m not sure if Fallout actually has fewer quests than Oblivion, but it felt like it did. I really liked how quests weren’t all based in cities, but rather most were spread out in the Wastland. CAN’T WAIT FOR SKYRIM@!!!!! The Pitt was okay, It’s just more of the same, as is Point Lookout, but The Pitt feels more in line with the rest of Fallout 3 than Point Lookout does. Operation Anchorage was good and it was interesting, but not as fun as the main game. Mothership Zeta was really cool because of how different it is from the rest of Fallout, and it’s pretty good, but some of the combat in the later half just rubs me the wrong way. Broken Steel is, again, more of the same. If you liked Fallout 3 you should buy all of the DLC.

Star Wars: Republic Commando – On 360 with backwards compatabilty

This is Halo meets Star Wars. It’s one of those games that came out just as the last generation of consoles was winding down and feels like current gen game. The game is really short, which is odd as in my experience most games from last gen went on far too long. The second mission, which takes place in a missing Republic Star Destroyer, or whatever they were called back then, has an excellent tone for the first couple parts. You’re alone with your team in this ship, the level is dark, you’ll find isolated enemies, and there’s this great mysterious feeling. It’s kind of creepy and very cool.

Mafia 2 – 360

This, like Fable 3, gets a lot of hate I don’t think it deserves. It’s a really cool, interesting game that most people should play (since it’s like $7.50 every other week somewhere). Mafia’s story is really good, like one of my favorite game stories. The driving did get a bit old, but this really is an amazing game. Also some of the dialogue is hilarious.

Section 8: Prejudice – 360

I haven’t yet tried the multiplayer, which I hear is amazing and I’m looking forward to it. The singleplayer is okay. I’d put it at about the same quality level as the original Battlefield: Bad Company campaign, without any of the comedy. It’s fun, controls a bit odd, but you go to cool places and use some cool weapons. Fun game, probably not for $15.

Fruit Gushers Review

Today I’m going to review Fruit Gushers. For those who don’t know, Fruit Gushers are a fruit snack which is unique due to a small amount of flavored syrup in the middle of ever snack. In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit I haven’t had a Fruit Gusher in a few years.

As mentioned earlier, every Gusher is composed of two parts, a syrup center and an outer layer which is not dissimilar to Fruit-By-The-Foot or any generic fruit leather. The outer layer is nothing special. It’s sweet, and has a vaguely fruity flavor, but nothing to write home about. The center, on the other hand, is pretty amazing as far as fruit snacks go. The engineering of the snack is ingenious. The middle is just big enough to offer enough flavor to override the inferior taste of the outer layer, but the outer layer is still thick enough to give you a taste of the fruit leathery flavor to make the center seem better by comparison.

One of the problems that plagues Fruit Gushers is the structural integrity of the snack. In a perfect world, the walls of fruit leather would keep the gooey center contained until you bit into it. Sadly, this is rarely the case. Most of the time the snacks burst open in the package, which while making the entire snack taste the same, makes eating a very sticky affair. Fruit Gushers are caught in a catch-22, they can either make the walls bigger, reducing the best part of the snack, leave it the way it is and subject users to sticky hands, or make the whole snack bigger, which would increase the caloric value of the snack as a whole.

Fruit Gushers are an above average snack, but are not free from problems. They make a great treat for that seven year old in your life or your inner child, but can’t beat the fun of a Fruit-By-The-Foot snack. Eat with care.

Adjustment BORED.

I guess 2011 is the year of the cash in, what with James Cameron’s new movie “Sanctum” being billed as the next great 3D movie, and now “Adjustment Bureau” attempting to be the next “Inception.” Sadly, it’s a failed attempt. “Adjustment Bureau,” in my opinion, is possibly the worst movie to come out this year.

For those who don’t know the backstory, “Adjustment Bureau” is the film adaptation of the short story “Adjustment Board,” by the late Phillip K. Dick. As far as I can tell, the only reason the title was changed was to make the “adjusters” seem like a larger organization, rather than a small group of people.

Before going into this movie, you should know one thing. “Adjustment Bureau” is nothing like the previews. The previews make the movie look like an action-packed adventure movie. Don’t be fooled. First off, “Adjustment Bureau” is more of a romance movie with some elements of action and psychological thrills. Secondly, every part of it is sub-par. There are no real standout scenes, because they’re all terrible. The key to making an engaging romantic movie is to have the audience care about the characters, and I can’t see anyone doing that. Matt Damon comes off as bland and a bit of a jerk, and Emily Blunt at first seems like a fun character, but soon becomes boring and more than a tad pretentious.

If the romantic parts of the movie were the only bad sections, “Adjustment Bureau” would still be a fun movie, just with some drawbacks; however, the rest is just as bad. Any attempt the film makes at becoming a psychological thriller is squandered as it all ends up being thrown away (spoilers) to shoehorn in a happy ending, which completely ruins any semblance of tone “Adjustment Bureau” may have had. The film tries for an oppressive and slightly depressing tone of fatalism up until that point, but quickly tosses it out seemingly on a whim. The screenwriter might as well have had the main characters find the magic power inside themselves to fly away to a magical wonderland. It’s that bad.

Some parts of the action can be fun, and although the film looks like it’s going to pick up pace, it never really does. Scenes with any sort of action are over before any tension can be created, and most don’t have very much at stake, so the outcome doesn’t actually matter that much.

In trying to appeal to a large group of people, “Adjustment Bureau” ends up appealing to no one. It teeters on the edge of becoming so bad you’re able to laugh at it, but ends up being just flat out bad. There really isn’t a good reason to see this; “Adjustment Board” is one of the worst films currently in theaters.

More Mint, Less Thin

Now is the time for a blog post, because it is Girl Scout Cookie Season.

Everyone knows Thin Mints are the best Girl Scout Cookies, and I’ll get some hate for this, but they could be much better. How you ask? They need more mint and less thin.

Imagine a Thin Mint, but with more cookie. Doesn’t that sound better? Eat a thin mint, now just think, if there was 1.5 times as much cookie, wouldn’t that satisfy you more? Thin Mints sell because you can eat so many without realizing it. A thicker cookie would not only provide more taste, but also people would eat less since they wouldn’t see every cookie as an insubstantial snack making a box of cookies last much longer.

My main complaint about Thin Mints is the dearth of mint. Thin Mints’ name is deceiving, they have mint in their name, yet chocolate is the predominant flavor and mint is barely noticeable. The best way to remedy this situation would be to increase the chocolate-to-mint flavoring ratio, and how better to do that than adding a layer of mint crème (much like that found in York Peppermint Patties)? If we take the already thickened Thin Mints and add a layer of mint crème coated in chocolate on the top, WE WOULD HAVE A NEARLY PERFECT COOKIE.

Nothing is perfect, especially cookies, there is always room for improvement, and occasionally it is very obvious. When the Thin Mint is so clearly flawed, and only purchasable from one source during one time of the year, the market is perfect for a new cookie selling competitor to step in and snatch the Thin Mint market from the Girl Scouts with a far superior cookie. Time is a-wastin’, and I want me some good cookies.