Rated T for Tanks

Blarg!

Been tearing about like a madman on World of Tanks again.  Even when I die like a moron, its an absolute blast.  The big trick to the game is really that death is just part of the game.  Its even reinforced by an achievement, This is World of Tanks, which you get by dying all alone as the last guy on your team.

I've also been tearing about in Final Fantasy VII.  It's still a fun game, even after all of these years.  FF7 is a particular favorite of mine; I actually owned a copy of it before I owned a Playstation!  I'm a little angry at the RNG right now.  Snagging certain skills can be a real bitch if the game isn't in a good mood.  I'll go back to it a day or so; controller throwing is a sign of idiocy.  Ol' Seph is in deep shit anyway.  He realizes that I'm back and prepared to shank a bitch, or bishie in his case.  Hell, it's both.

I'm still of the opinion that the real reason post-game Cloud is so damn emo because Seph up and poked Aerith with his sword before Cloud could.  That shit is Freudian as hell.

That's Treasure Hunter!

Hail to the Spambots!

Did a fair bit of shooting and looting today.  The World of Tanks highlight is when I was driving one of my VKs.  Everybody else charged up the left side, I took the right and did some sentry work to cover the arty.   After helping to lay waste to the Hetzers that came into my zone of control, I snuck off and around the map.  Blasted one arty piece, then some...person on my team decided it would be fun to block me from getting into the base cap.  After a whole three seconds, I gave up and just sniped the last arty, and won the game.  I repeat, I was being shoved around by some retard, and still managed to stick my gun over him and win the fucking game.  Got Reaper out of the deal too.

I wonder if they even figured out what happened.

In other news, I've been doing a fair bit of old-school rampaging and pillaging in Final Fantasy VI.  I do have my issues with the Game Boy version, mostly that some luminous soul decided that this is the one version that didn't need an official Strategy Guide.  ALL of the previous versions got one, along with every other FF released on the Game Boy Advance (I, II, IV, V, FFT Advance).  I have decided that all is now forgiven.  Some other, far more luminous soul decided to include alternate input commands for Blitz moves.  For the uninitiated, Blitz commands require input commands much like fighting games, with the best ones requiring circle motions.  I'm very bad at this, and the teeny d-pad on the GBA doesn't help at all.  These alternate inputs require directional tapping instead, which makes by life much easier, and the pixellated forces of badness are now in deeper shit than ever.  >:D

Set phasers to burninate!

Task Force Aflac

Blarg and Hail to the Spambots that "read" my yammerings.

The French tank line for World of Tanks is now out.  The consensus that they look so much like ducks that Wargaming really should hire Gilbert Godfrey to do the voice messages.  Prick or not, it really fits.

I've decided that I do like the new Ops system they got going, however.  Getting little goodies for actually playing the game helps keeps things fresh.  MOAR BITZ PLZ!

I've also been tearing about, working on some kooky concepts.  Some of the highlights include catapults that lob rocket powered grizzy bears at things I don't like, and a old wonko idea my old boss had, basically a home improvement store run by barbarians.  Crazy shit like orientation for new hires is that death mill scene from the first Conan movie, forklifts are powered by Brahma bulls.  Maybe some other stuff like instead of the usual DYI demos, you get things like the plumbing people showing the best way to kill stuff with an iron pipe, the lumber guys showing how to make an instant wood fort of doom, and hardware uses drills as trophy pikes.  Watch them heads spin!  Oh and instead of being tossed out, problem customers are ritually flung into a pit filled with angry Pomeranians.  Very slow, fuzzy, and yappy demise.

Yeah, I need to go away for now.

Live Oaks is Bad, And WG Should Feel Bad

I hate that damn map.  Dying with a face full of soggy wood does not make my day.


Been quietly considering getting back into 40k.  Some of those models look damn sweet, and to hell with the damn rules anyway.  The Dark Blood Templar Wolf-Smurfs will probably be back in action soon.  Deathwing Knights FTW!


Skyrim is going very well.  I no longer live in fear of bandit chiefs, while most everything else stopped being a threat long ago.  Looting dwarven ruins is still an absolute hoot, though.  Legate Wulfe the Unhinged is happily making those damn Gollum wannabes snarl for their mama and turning robots into shiny shiny bitz for the bitz can.  Windstad Manor AKA The Swag Shack, is finally fully operational, with materials kindly donated by idiotic bandits and the dumbest giants this side of New York.  The process had been accelerated greatly thanks to that guy in Morthal and the respawning vampire menace nearby.  Now if I could just get some damn general merchants or fences to move closer.


Oh, and they handed me explosive crossbow bolts.  Run my shiny chunks of XP, RUN!

If You Give A Mouse A Cookie...

Clear your browser cache, dumbass.


Anyway, been tearing about with the new tanks in WoT.  Came up with a funny concept.


Battlebrix, new from Hasbro.  Look in wonder as mighty heroes and vile villains struggle to reach speeds of THREE!  Gaze in awe while they pour milk on fresh fired shells and proceed to munch!  Behold in reverence as they throw tracks like a boss!


We could have special sets like the Churchill Brothers that guzzle tea and be all stiff upper lipped.  The Mighty TOG that has special steamtroller powers.  Make them mooks go squish!  These guys could even have limited runs painted in blue and including free jelly babies.


Then things like D.W. that delivers pain in 30 minutes or less or your money back! King Tiger, the first tank to attend a Furcon!


Hell even E6-X, with its supreme scare-the-locust-shitless powers.


Battlebrix!  Buy them today and watch them squash evil...eventually!

Invisible TOGs Rule The Base

Today I learned that you can ram people in World of Tanks and go undetected.  Pretty sure it was a glitch, but either way I know that someone out there on the webernets wound up with a severe case of OMGWTFBBQ syndrome.  Oh, and the 10.5mm German death cannon is still really great at making enemy tanks disappear in a puff of awesome.


In more Skyrim news, Legate Wulfe the Unhinged is still tearing about, making the forces of badness wish for their mamas.  Many Falmer have had close encounters with Tard Basher, my new custom Dwarven Mace of Energizing.  I've also acquired Nightingale equipment, and those weapons are really great at trolling things that annoy me.  The bow in particular is really great at killing dragons and allowing me to be all Shang Tsung of the Vikings. 


I'm currently planning to finally getting back to Dawnguard, smacking vampires and quoting Castlevania.  I'm really looking forward to the Divine Orbital Strike known as Auriel's Bow, combining that with Dawnbreaker to mow through the most undead seen this side of Plants Vs. Zombies.  Oh, and battle trolls.  I really need to see that in action.  "Bleh I'm all bloodsucky and emo!"  KRUMP!  "Blarg I'm a battle yeti, U Mad Bro?"

Ahab, Eat Your Heart Out

Things are coming around in their usual schizophrenic manner, but nicely for once. 


Been tearing about like a lunatic in World of Tanks some more.  The TOGII*  is still a frickin' hilarious bundle of death.  A buddy and I tore about and actually outmaneuvered people in these things, unleashing all sorts of lulzy doom.  Some highlights:


Actually managing to snipe British AT tanks and making them go boom.
Sidescraping a StuG III up against a wall, leaving it a sitting duck for our guns.
Letting some lights circle us and pretend it was going to work and being all "lol no" and making them go pop.


Also tried out the M7 tonight, realizing that there are very good reasons this thing never saw any action at all.  Damn thing just doesn't have what it takes.  Plus it has a badonkadonk.  Tanks should not have badonkadonks, dammit!


More randomness is forthcoming; too tired to write much right now.

The DW 2

After extensive research and much exploding, I have come up with an appropriate appellation for the tank in WoT officially known as the Durchbruchswagen 2.  It shall be henceforth known as the Pizza Box. 

The reasons for this are quite simple.  Its armor is made out of high-quality cardboard, and it is well suited for keeping the tankman sausage bits inside nice and toasty when somebody gives it an angry look.

So let it be written.

In other nerdy news, Legate Wulfe the Unhinged is still happily tearing about the countryside.  I'm now expecting a Google search for Draugr to come up with some damn bands; you can't tell me that fighting undead Vikings that can shout Force Push and shoot lightning isn't totally fucking metal.  This is pretty much Manowar the Video Game. 

The whole civil war baloney is total crap, however.  Maybe if some RTS looney made a hack for Total War with the Elder Scrolls it would be done justice.  Lobbing random mooks and redshirts in platoon-sized units (at most) with starter-level gear and no real 'boss' dudes up against a PC that usually combines CQC prowess, magical shenanigans, and frickin' Force Powers does not an epic war make.  The politics and background are interesting, the whole semi-Risk capture the hold thing is nice, but the damn nitty-gritty can be mechanically replicated by a lawnmower simulation.  Go here, mow some bermudagrass.  Go there, tell the boss the bermudagrass is looking kinda shaggy, mow that.  Go there, chase some gophers off, mow more bermudagrass.  Go way over there, mow some more damn bermudagrass and shank the dumbass peddling bags of bermudagrass seed.  Now the fescue empire shall rule over all!

Watching a dragon be all "I'm all scaly and immortal!  Suck it bitches!" at the College of Winterhold was frickin' funny, though.  It was like watching...hell, a random dumbass of your own choosing run up to a pack of Sith Lords and dropping their pants.  Hilarious, but lightning bolts are not comfortable there.

Chihuahua Pit Fights

They are bad, and you should feel bad for laughing at them.  Unless the losers wind up at the Chinese place down the road; then they're economically useful.

Been tearing about on World of Tanks some more.  Things took a turn for the zany with the August Tank-contest thingy.  Everybody got a free light tank.  It goes zip-zip-boom, no real surprise there.  Since we all got it, we all took it for a spin and wound up in matches with 20-odd of these things, which quickly devolved into some sort of hardcore bumper car deathmatch of terror, not unlike Star Wars Demolition from back in the day.  Much screaming of random obscenities and "AH'M INSAAANE!" ensued.

In other news, Skyrim is going on rather well.  Halls now resonate with tales of Legate Wulfe the Unhinged, Stabber of Trolls and Violent Advocate of Literacy and Shiny Things.  The Stormcloak heretics quake in fear that this terror will find them and introduce them to spontaneous combustion while screaming about spine tinglers and how Rarity is best (canon) pony. 

In slightly more serious news, I came up with a concept that I'll likely babble about shortly.  Before then, everybody out there think happy thoughts like how some dumbass parked his tank on a ferryboat and wound up with a Luchs to the face.  That is still hilarious.

Brain Barf

Now its Coward Killing Time!

The Soviet tanks have come, and they are awesome.  More trundling death is always welcome.

In any case, I realized a few things today.  My friends and I were discussing what would happen if a Halo Scorpion tank was included.  The consensus was that the obvious weak points (the driver is exposed and usually bright green, crew of two, can't handle high-end ballistic weapons worth a damn) would make it little more than a nice squishy novelty at best.

Realization 1:  A fictional tank in a grim dark future, a product of a ridiculous amount of time, resources, and research, can probably go squish to tank designs twice as old as the developers that created it.  Even worse, this can be deliberate, since the problems are actually gameplay decisions more than anything else.

Realization 2:   A group of grown men with grown men jobs and grown men lives and grown men problems were going on about whether a fictional space tank could handle a panzer.  Damn we're nerdy.

Realization 3:  Now I want WoT to release a Scorpion.  I'd want 40k tanks even more, though.

Emergency, Everyone To Get Off Of Street

Hello to the spambots that quasi-read this.

Been tearing about in World of Tanks for the Xbox.  Things are actually going well.  Wargaming is going to finally release the Soviet tech tree, so soon All Patriots will be able to bury the Imperialists in an avalanche of steel, lead, and Heavy quotes.

No, I'm reading up on my Marx and shit, just getting excited about having EVEN MOAR TANX to tear about and wreck things with.  Very excited.

In other news, a Wreckonomics post should be forthcoming within the week.  This time will be a very tough nut to crack, SaGa Frontier 2 for the PS1.  It's one of the hidden gems of the era, when Square wasn't covering everybody with belts.

I may as well talk some about that before the rant the post will require comes up.  It's actually a very good game with a challenging combat system with lots of surprises.  The graphics combine watercolor--but not cutesy--backgrounds with very distinct character sprites.  There are some pitfalls in the artwork, including the classic invisible walls, but overall its very well done.  The sprites are nice too, but the close-up version of one main character looks less like a badass and more like Ronald McDonald had one of Indiana Jones' many, many lovechildren.

The music is also very stunning; stunning enough that I hunted down the soundtrack years ago, and when a disc cracked (sob!) I hunted down a second copy.  If you're actually reading this, go on youtube and search for Freiluftmuzik and Zauberkraft for a good taste of it.  Oh yeah, the composer spent a good deal of time on Germany, so all the song titles are in German.  That gives us a soundtrack done by a Japanese dude (Masashi Hamauzu) with German names gushed over by a redneck-ish American guy.  Being provincial is for the weak!

The story is...well it's a SaGa game.  It's linear and convoluted at the same time, with many, many viewpoint characters.  You need to experience for yourself.  Suffice to say somebody managed to take late medieval history and politics, Lord of the Rings, the Darksword Trilogy, and more and managed to make this bizarre, but tasty, plot smoothie; and it works!

I'll get into the combat mechanics later for the Wreckonomics post, since they are intimately related to the ecomonic challenges of the itinerant dungeon looter.

Just remember, Coward Killing Time on set for June 3rd.  Come and let us give tanks!

Rumbling Death

Hail to the spambots that quasi-read this:

Been quietly busy laying armored death upon the unfortunate in World of Tanks.  While I've yet to achieve any real mastery of the finer points of the game, I have found a few things I'm good at.

One of the most fun is the tanker equivalent of skirmisher tactics.  If the stars align, you can actually do insane things like have friggin' car chases in tanks!  This game has lots of speedy li'l scout tanks that are capable of being all GTA in the enemy's face, and when two or more light tanks square off in an urban map, it turns into a lulzy doom-fest that combines high-speed maneuvers, explosive death, and crazy stunts.  It's like Pac-Man with guns!  WakkawakkawakkawakkaBLAM!

Oh, bumped into a guy going by Geshtahl of all things.  Soon an insane clown is going to rule the ExBawx from atop a mountain of recycled assets and various grimdark memes.  Will the Returners bring hope?

HMS Tank

Hail the Spambots!

Been a crazy month.  Now I'm busy with all sorts of fun explodey goodness, plus it looks as if my hardware job is now permanent.

In nerdy news, I have been tearing about in World of Tanks for the 360!  I've already made some fellow tankers fear the guy that's rampaging about screaming random quotes and making the other team go squish.

World of Tanks is a fun game, with just the right combination of tanks, cash, tanks, grinding for guns, tanks, proving your dominance over noob bitches, and tanks.  And they have tanks too.  Protip:  The Alecto (light British Tank Destroyer) is meant to shoot tanks to death, no ram them.  Whoever that was, thanks for the entertainment for me and the free kill for my teammate.

I've been grinding my way through the American and British lines, and honestly, some of these things are beasts.  Whoever stuck a howitzer on a Stuart is friggin' crazy awesome.  Not to be outdone is the British TOG II*.  It's a tank-boat that drives like a whale, looks like a whale, and hits like a whale.  I wanna paint mine white.  Beware Moby Tank!

Now to find my plushie and tear about some more.  The Sharp demands tanks and cake!