XCOM's cousin: The Bureau

Last week, Steam gave a discount to a science fiction shooter The Bureau: X-COM Declassified. The game is a spin-off from the X-COM series. Unlike X-COM, The Bureau is a action shooter where you lead a special team against alien forces who are ravaging the earth.

Scary silhouette

Starbound Adventures

Hello Internet, I bring more tales of galactic conquest and experience where no man has done before (quote from Star Trek). So far Starbound has been updated a few times a week, either to fix errors, adjust balancing or to add new features. The latest update was to improve balancing to make the game easier for advancement. There are new crafting recipes to try out and a new boss to defeat. In order for you to unlock more advance crafting recipes, you have to craft certain items to proceed. The main ingredients for them are all boss drops, which mean you have to defeat bosses in order to get better tools and armor.

Some planets you explore may have settlements. These places allow you to shop for their cultural garments and clothing blueprints for you to craft later. There are also new food recipes to discover. The settlement I discovered is shown in the pic above. It was an avian settlement that I found while exploring a magma planet. Explore the houses, found some pixel, some books for the codex and shops selling weapons, and armor. Oh, equipping weapons in public is a no no. Do so and the guards will keep watch. Know that killing one of the settlers or guards will immediately deem you a hostile and killed on sight. It was nice to see the cultural difference in these settlements. Avian building use lots of wood and clay, Apex buildings are more modern and Glitch buildings are medieval.

The pic above shows a building with a sign in front that says USCM penal colony. I have no idea what that means but when I entered I was attacked by people who look like convicts. They were wearing orange jumpers and attempted to kill me. As I explored the area, the building was actually a prison with its bar doors and cells. Looked around found some pixels and weapons in the cupboards and crates.

Yes, I have found a tentacle planet. As you can see it looks creepy from the space ship. When I went down, it was pretty average. Just another planets with its flesh soil (it was red and as I dug it out it had a squishy sound) and tentacles sticking out of the ground. When chopped one tentacle, it dropped wood. That was unexpected; I hope to find a piece of the tentacle.

Here I was fighting the newly added boss, the Jelly King and its babies (think it was its babies). I got it stuck in my trap. It can’t reach thus it can’t kill me, not even with its babies. I simply built a small platform and attacked from there. It was so easy; it shot me a few times but nothing serious. When it defeated it, it dropped an endorphin jelly as an ingredient for new upgrades and thus unlocking new crafting recipes.

My thoughts on State of Decay

There is a trend in the video game market for survival games where players have to survive a hostile environment, especially from zombies. Not sure what started the trend but I believe it is largely influenced from the Walking Dead TV series. Average people trying live in world of constant danger; the show is heavily dramatized and has some shocking climatic scenes. Average people, not military trained soldiers, not equipped with high-tech weaponry, just you’re everyday people.

I would like to introduce to you another zombie survival game, State of Decay. Apparently it is a based on another game (not sure). You start in the middle of park discovering for the first time the zombies that roam the game world. The controls are immersive, the character movements decently fluid and pacing is little faster than realistic. Combat is easy to get into; you can go melee with your weapon or shoot with your gun (if you have one). The game works like an RPG, equip your character in the inventory screen and killing zombies increases your fighting experiences. Collecting XP lets you choose your skills and upgrade your current ones.

Incoming zombie

Rome 2, One of the Best Strategy Games of 2013

Hello Internet, back for more gaming stories. This time I would like to mention a certain video game of which in my opinion captures some of the most epic scenes done in movies. A game which attempts to emulate the glory of battle. A game which creates an opportunity for players to set plans for world domination. That game... is Rome 2 Total War.

British Confederation vs. Gallic Confederation

Starbound Day 4

A toilet on the moon?

Hello Internet, its the fourth day into Starbound and I found a toilet on a moon. Strange thing to find it on a barren moon and even stranger what was in hole. Do you see the ladder on the image above? I went down to see what was down there and I found a poop monster... You know the universal symbol of poop? A dark brown pyramid shaped thing, except the one I discovered had big eyes and a smile on its face. Oh, it tried to kill me but I killed it first. Imagine the shame, be defeated by a poop.

This is just a small adventure I went through on a moon, there are still other worlds to explore and more adventure to experience. What great about? The game is still in beta, which more stuff to come. More bosses, crafting recipes, and other types of worlds to discovered. I checked out the Starbound wiki and apparently there is a tentacle planet. The idea of a planet with tentacles is both scary and interesting. What sort of treasures are there on such a planet?

Let's Start Over Again

Hello Internet, it has been some time since my last post. Busy with school and stuff (mostly gaming). Its December holiday for me now and I intend to put some time into this blog.

To put something out there, I have been playing Starbound, an open-ended sandbox game where you can explore planets across the galaxy. Its still in beta (still being developed) but the game is great. I've defeated the first boss, a UFO piloted by a penguin (didn't see that coming). Its day 3 into the game and my save got wiped due to update to add new stuff and to fix game balancing.

I will show pics next time to show what the game looks and here's a hint, it in pixel.

COMING BACK SOON

Currently working on the blog. I,Max, will soon be posting about games, anime, and software.

We

Shall

Return

Brunei Cyber Games III

Pump your guns, it's time to rumble. They are now bringing in the Third Generation consoles (And definitely we're refering to the PS3) and it is a very interesting choice of games. With Guitar Hero 3 out of the picture (boohoo T_T), we have some big hit titles to be set for the challenge.


You will find the registration desk at the Mall cineplex next to Westreet and ETA games, and of course Max and I already signed up for some Modern Warfare. (thought we'd put our names before anyone else but aiyah.. one guy beat us to it.

Registration is about $15 and if you're up to it there are some really tempting prizes. First Prize is an ETA games voucher for $300 (woot!), Second prize is another ETA games voucher for $100 (woot!) and Third prize will be sponsored by QQstore (woo...what?). Believe it or not, Ziggy and Max will divide and conquer for those prizes and we will definitely practice like crazy until the day of our destined battle (bwhahaha).

Readers! Let everyone know ROCK BAND is ON! And of course who wouldn't wanna miss PES 2009 on the PS3 (trust me, this one is preeety smooth).

Playstation@Home

While Max goes at it in a game of online pool, I'm writing about our recently attained Playstation@Home. It just popped up in the Xmediabar above the PS-store all of a sudden so we got all excited to try it out and downloaded it immediately (after trying out the MGS4 demo of course ^^)


Max's HomeSpace, "Call MTV! My new crib is awesome!"
It took us the next morning just to get in Home due to a busy server but we're glad that we made it. After fixing Max's avatar (even trying to match his current look, heheeh), the first awesome thing we got to see is the HomeSpace which is one pad we would want to have for ourselves. Being at Home, however, is like being on a vacation in some hot pacific tourist resort. Outside the space we see boats lined up and palm trees everywhere (that reminds me we never tried out Sentosa Island. Too bad ^^)