Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

I am finally taking a break from Total War after almost a 2 year period of total immersion in the Warhammer series. I will certainly return for Total War Warhammer 3 but for now I am enjoying other games.  Harebrained scheme's excellent Battlemech has kept me entertained for the last few weeks. This turn based strategy with big stompy robots is fantastic but now that I have a stable of fully trained pilots and well equipped mechs much of the original challenge of the game has diminished. There are lots of ways to increase the difficulty but I am happy to play out the main campaign and move on.  Halo Master Chief collection has finally come to PC. I celebrated by replaying Reach, the only episode released so far. Still brilliant even though I played it as recently as last year on Xbox 360 during my Halo binge .  Gears of War: Pretty brainless and unoriginal third person cover shooter but a lot of fun none the less.  The Outer Worlds. This game is the re...

I am playing The Outer Planets thanks to the Xbox game pass (pc) €1 trial month. This is a great deal from Microsoft and a lot of gamers are signing up to it but I wouldn't be surprised if I and many others stay subbed after the trial period ends. Even though others like EA Origin Access have tried to push gaming as a service with a monthly sub for some years now I feel like this could just be beginning of a seismic shift in the way most people get games. I wouldn't be surprised if in five years time the majority of my games come this way. Twenty years ago I bought games in physical boxes that I proudly kept on display. I still have a bunch of them on the shelf in my office. Having a physical copy gives a real sense of ownership  and occasionally  I go back and play some old time favourites. But ... even when I do go back to play an older game I am more likely to play a Steam, GoG or Origin version than to physically insert a disk. It is just much more convenient so I have pic...

The October Humble Monthly bundle included the 2018 mech combat game Battletech . I have always loved big stompy robot games and I have very fond memories of playing  Battletech: Mechwarrior games from a quarter of a century ago when they vied with Metaltech: Earthseiege for the mech gaming crown. This latest Battletech game ticks a lot of boxes for me. It has a story based campaign set in the very rich lore of the Battletech  universe . Combat is turn based so no twitch shooting is required. The player controls a squad of mechs which are simulated down to the sub module level giving lots of of variables to play around with and control. All of this is right up my alley. Unfortunately my first couple of hours in the game tarnished this shiny picture some what. The game feels buggy and unoptimised. At times the action is jerky and have I experienced sound dropouts and a crash to desktop during combat. The crash happened as I was attempting the surprisingly challenging first ...

I am about three quarters of the way through a Dark Elf vortex campaign in Total Warhammer 2. Unlike previous campaigns I am deliberately limiting territorial expansion. I hold only three provinces and I am using diplomacy instead to secure borders. This slows down the game but it makes it much easier to defend against the random chaos armies that spawn during vortex rituals. With so few settlements it did take a while to get my economy off the ground but at this point some 150 turns in I am the strongest and richest faction and I have managed to disrupt the plans of my vortex rivals with expeditionary forces, allies and intervention armies.   Dark Elves are a very enjoyable faction to play with no obvious weaknesses and some very strong creatures and magic. The armour piercing crossbows of tier one Dark Shards mean that even early game Dark Elf armies can inflict serious damage. Dark Elves unique faction ability allows them to build black ark ships and use them as mobile...