Death From Above

Things you find on Tiktok: random all female Japanese metal bands. This goes hard. Lovebites - Hammer of Wrath https://youtu.be/otJZPUCwyOM?si=nB50hBNFN5skG42c

Honestly you lucked out gettting temperatures that good in February which is often a complete doom month here.

We had less snow this winter in central Alberta than I've seen in my 42 years on earth, and by our standards it was a very mild one temperature wise as well. I'm sure it's nothing, hahaha ha ha ha. Ha.

Also I have absolutely zero doubt Darby will make it to the top of Everest. It's how he's getting down I'm worried about because there's like a 50/50 shot he just coffin drops off the thing wearing a go pro.

It's honestly buck wild we're so desensitised to how much good free wrestling we get that it barely registers that we're getting Kingston vs Okada on a non PPV show and it barely makes people blink now. Mercedes' debut was solid enough but I do kinda agree the lack of hype up AEW does for their own big debuts is counter productive. I have nothing but love for Samoa Joe but I really wanted more from a Joe/Wardlow clash. It was fine but goddamn you just feel there's something special there.

Are you on console or PC? I've been having a lot of rando crashes on PC but I just power through.

Years ago there was a thread about proposing your dream video game, and I went into a bunch of detail about why I think most of the "survive zombie hordes" games haven't got where I want them to. And one of the things I proposed* that they weren't doing was a city-scape version of what Helldivers 2 does with the galaxy map where you have literal live updates on player and alien progress in every corner of the galaxy. It's a really good way of making even average players feel like they're a part of something way bigger and that your contribution matters on some level, and I'm really mystified why more games haven't done it because it's such a simple looking tool that has done a lot to bring a community into your world. Then you also have the galaxy wide orders, and the sense there's a real evolving world out there with the content ads. Honestly on a sheer gameplay design level I'm so impressed with Helldivers 2 as a game because it just checks so many boxes. (*I also wanted real time destructible and rebuildable environments that felt more organic, which we now have the tech for. I also asked for a game where you had separate skill trees from the human and zombie side and could play as either, and still I'm fucking waiting on that one come on man.)

Sekiro really doesn't play like any of FromSoft's other games, and it's absolutely fantastic.

Helldivers 2 still has too many crashes and glitches, but the fact I still thoroughly enjoy the game despite that says a lot. It also gives me newfound respect for Warframe and how in the year I dumped so much free time into it, that game basically never crashed at all. Honestly once Helldivers 2 sorts out some of the common issues there's nothing standing in the way of it being multiplayer game of the year, at all. The amount of action you get out of a single session especially on the higher difficulties is almost an overwhelming amount of stimulus.

I think I actually played like maybe 2 dozen matches in Fire Pro and booked/watched about 1000. So in other words a pretty normal Fire Pro experience.

Honestly I think "Elden Ring might be too large" is a pretty legit critique. When I first played it I commented several times that you could put Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, and Bloodborne in their entirety inside it and still have room left over. On one hand, I am in awe it actually exists and I don't understand quite how they held my attention for all of that. But on the other as much as I think it's a masterpiece I find it much more difficult to think about replaying it casually than those other games just because of the sheer scale of the damn thing. Like, I've played DS 1-3 enough that I can rip those out really quickly, but Elden Ring? Not a chance by comparison so I've pretty much had it shelved for a while waiting for the DLC when I'll really dive back in for probably like another 100 hours.

Honestly this feels like an incredibly thin year for AAA games I give a hoot about. I'll play Elden Ring again when the DLC drops, I assume Starfield might actually get some new content at some point, and until then... Helldivers 2 kinda came out of the blue, between that and my backlog (new Dead Space, I have a few Resident Evils to play, I bought Monster Hunter World once and never played it lol) I'm good for a while.

Max Caster's been an obvious piece of shit from day 1. But Coach K loves him for some reason unlike other, not as well liked pieces of shit like Janella for whatever reason.

Hell they did everything Punk wanted and he still did nothing but a Shawn Michaels On Coke impression the whole time he was there

I was a huge proponent of Miro to AEW but even I'd admit, it just didn't feel right almost from the start. Sometimes we're wrong. I think AEW needs another charismatic top woman more than it needs another top male star so in this case I can definitely see good things.

The missiles are really good against the heavy bugs for sure. The machine gun makes a joke out of bug breach. If the mech blows up you instantly die, because Helldivers. Having them for free as part of the debut definitely tilts the scales.

For all the shit you can throw at Jake Paul, his undercards have generally been... actually pretty decent exposure for some good fighters? It's a weird proposition for sure.

I don't know if there's anyone in AEW I give less of a fuck about than Hook and his stupid anime fuckboy haircut. Tazz being like "HE HAS A LACROSSE BACKGROUND" isn't helping. Fuck Hook and his one match. Christian stealing a car he's so desperate to get away from Edge and then taunting him by holding up the title out the window as he drives away is some top level Batman villain shit.

I keep Facebook solely because living in a small town it's the main place for community events. But I don't actually use Facebook myself and I've never liked it.

I deleted my twitter a while ago and it honestly did me some mental health favours. Doomscrolling was always real but that site has gone in the shitter so hard post-Elon that it might as well be Truth Social 2.

I managed to finally do a Kill Everyone run in Hitman on Colorado, master difficulty. I don't want to admit how much time I invested into that one.

Honestly I don't think Sting's send off could have gone much better. Won't lie, his suprisie AEW debut may have been the last time I genuinely marked out like a little kid, and it's good and right to see him ride off into the sunset as the conquering hero.

A few very general pointers: - You have to play understanding your character is an expendable grunt. You're not Master Chief, you're one of the rando scrubs that gets dropped into an XCOM mission. Unless you are a genuinely exceptional player, running around like a solo hero tends to not do as much good for the team as sticking together and working as a unit. When in doubt just follow whoever you think is the strongest player and back them up. - As you go up in difficulties it becomes more important to focus down bug holes and robot production facilities. Get in there and practice throwing your grenades because every hole you plug prevents a lot of spawns, on top of earning experience for clearing sub-objectives. - Early on get the Expendable Anti-Tank weapon which will help with large targets until you can eventually upgrade to something like the Railgun or Autocannon or whatever down the line. - Don't bother with the minefield upgrades, spend elsewhere. - You don't have to engage everything you see, and in fact it becomes detrimental to do so on the higher difficulties. If a rando patrol seems to have not spotted you it's totally fine to let it be. Enemies get stronger in an area the closer the mission timer ticks towards 0 so eventually spending a ton of time fighting for no reason isn't actually helping you that much. - If a mission timer is going to hit zero before you extract, make sure to throw out every stratagem you have since you're going to lose access to them anyway. Might as well spend your skills while you can even if it seems suboptimal or uneccessary at the moment.

I've never understood the love for the series. None of the games hold up to the slightest amount of critical eye.

I've made it to the 7th of the 9 Helldivers difficulties, "Suicide Mission". This is the best game I've played in years for just popping in for an hour, getting adrenaline injected straight into my body, and then logging off for the day.