There was a time, back in the late 90s and early 2000s, where I played quite a lot of FPS games. Somehow, a franchise that has always passed me by is Serious Sam.
Until now, that is.

Just got done going through the First Encounter with Scoob, and what a chaotic mess of bullets and rockets it was. Graphically, it was very similar to other games of that era like the original Unreal. The gameplay was also kind of similar, except that there was no alternate fire for the weapons, and the enemies attacked in massive waves.

Other than that, I'm not sure what to say about it. It was fun enough, but we were really starting to get fatigue near the end. Those monsters seemed damn near never ending.

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Out of the blue back in April, I had a hankering for some more Saints Row action. Scoob was happy to jump back into Saints Row The Third with me to start a second play through.

We probably aren't even half way through it yet, but this thing is still just as fun, and just as jank, as ever. It really is something we will have to get back to at some point.

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As luck would have it, while we were replaying Saints Row The Third, GOG released Saints Row IV on us. I quickly bought and downloaded it so we could get cracking.

Unfortunately, we don't like this game anywhere near as much as the previous installment. It didn't help that the original GOG build had problems preventing the autosaves working, and would not remember any changes we made in the options menus. Though they have now fixed those issues, we haven't yet gone back to it. If we do go back, I think it will be just to go through the story missions, rather than go through all the extra stuff, which in this game seems boring and far too numerous.

The problems we have with it when compared to the previous game are mostly to do with the gun action. I know super powers are in this one, but they've really nerfed the guns, and we love shooting the bad guys. They just do less damage, take longer to reload, and take longer to level up to get some of that power back.
I also don't like how cars are pointless, as I enjoyed collecting and modding the cars in the last game. Worst thing of all: THERE'S NO HOT PIZZA SONG!!!

The two computers also sometimes disconnect from each other, which is something that has never happened when playing The Third. It was even more of a bitch at the time because autosave wasn't working. Hopefully they've fixed the network stability in the updated version, but I doubt it.

Recently had a bash at two games that were all about the Goblins. Up first was Trine 2 with Scoob, where the main enemies throughout the game were Goblin runts. Then, when we got to the end, I did not realise my version of the game also came with the add on, The Goblin Menace. So we ended up going through several more levels, culminating in a big fight with the Goblin boss riding some big mechanical thingy.

So how was this one? To be honest, pretty much have the same feelings about it as the first one. I mean, it's essentially the same game with a few different skills. One thing we didn't like was how all the skills were reset. It might make sense from a gaming stand point, but did the characters just forget all the things they could do before?

Once again, a lot of the platforming elements were weird. Sometimes you could jump up to a ledge, and then a few moments later you could do the same jump again and you wouldn't make it. Stuff like that just kept pissing us off. A lot of the puzzles were also awkward, especially if you try to get all the little skill pickups. Quite a few of them we only managed because there were two of us, and it left us wondering how the hell you got them when playing solo. I guess maybe you can go back after finishing it when you've got more skills, but I don't know why anyone would want to.

An advantage over the first one was probably the addition of more combat. Both the main game and expansion have boss battles, whereas the original end fight was in a cutscene.

But we weren't all that fond of what they did to chests and the inventory in this game. If I remember right, in the first one, chests contained extra skills or items that boosted your characters. But in this, there were no items at all, and chests only contain little collectibles like pictures or poems. Pfft.

Overall, it's a playable game that's fun in parts, and annoying in others.

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The second game I had a go at recently, which I completely failed to finish, was Gobliins 2. I'd wanted to try and get through this for ages, ever since playing the first part of the game on my Amiga years ago. I think it was a demo on a cover disk, or maybe someone had got a dodgy copy which would only allow you to play the first area. Whichever it was, I have vague memories of quite enjoying it back in my teens. I even named my Goblin on WoW Fingus after one of the characters from this.

Fast forward to now, and holy shit what a drag. Stupid, awkward controls, especially the inventory, and the ridiculous moon logic, made this totally unplayable. Add in to the mix the fact that the sound kept throwing up stupid beeps and fart noises. These were obviously errors in the ScummVM emulator and made me mute the game, taking away the silly noises of the characters which was one of the best things about it.

It was also janky as hell. Often, if I told both Goblins to do things, whoever I ordered first would forget what he was supposed to be doing after I ordered the second one. And it crashed. A lot. I've literally just given up on it, I think after getting around half way through, after it crashed once more, pissing me off too much to bother continuing.

Didn't help that, as soon as I got through the first area, I no longer felt any nostalgia for it whatsoever.

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Here's some info about some decisions and stuff:
In the course of creating entries for this blog, I've forced myself to play games that I've not really been into. Some of them, such as Gobliins 2, are old games I don't necessarily want to play. I just feel this sense of needing to finish them because I played them when I was younger. I've pushed through games like this such as Heroquest and even Rome Total War, but I'm probably not going to bother from now on, as games I don't enjoy just become a chore.
Add in that most of the good-looking games I've got are all single player, which I don't find as much time to play. I spend most of my gaming time with Scoob on multiplayer games, but we're really struggling to find good ones that we both want to try. This is even more true for games with coop compaigns, which are very few and far between.
So to be honest, computer gaming updates are probably going to become quite rare from here on, as I still only want to do updates when I complete games.

Compared to this time last year, there's barely been any tabletop gaming going on, which is unfortunate. The only real movement has been on the Blood Bowl front, where we continue to slowly push on with our little league.

We managed to squeeze in three games over Christmas, during which my performances got a bit better. First, my lizards put up a good fight against the top-of-the-league dwarves, who also had a deathroller for the first time, but still went down 1-0. Then I won with the lizards for the first time against Gareth's orcs which was another close 1-0 game. The touchdown came after a couple of turns of crazy errors which saw players from both sides falling over after failing go for it rolls. Then I used the human team against Scooby's wood elves, and after going 2-0 down managed to pull it back to 2-2.
In the most recent game I used amazons once again, against the wood elves. Scoob needed to win to keep pressure on the dwarves at the top, while my lizards had a chance to scrape second if the amazons could pull off a shock win. Alas, it was not to be. Though I think the amazons had the best of the play for the first time in any of their games, two bits of quick and agile play saw the elves win 2-0. Once again, the 'zons just didn't have anything to punch through a defensive line, not even an elf one. They're probably not going to get used much ever again after this league is over.

Speaking of the amazons, finally got them finished recently. Not a fan of painting white, as I couldn't get it right at all. But happy they are done.
I'm pretty sure I've not varnished any models at all since before I finished my Khorne epic army all the way back in 2009. As we're using the Blood Bowl models kind-of regularly, I got all my painted players out to give them a once over. I'll have to get around to spraying all the epic and 40K models I've finished in the last 8 years at some other time...

And my latest brush-based action has been to get my skaven team out and begin working on them. They've not been used in any games at all yet, but I've been hesitant as their mostly-converted nature makes it a little hard to pick out the positionals. A little paint will help tell who's who, and they can get on the field at last.

After some sporadic attempts to get this game done, Scoob and I finally finished Broforce today. What a strange little game, full of chaotic action, explosions, and screen shake. For me, it was fun and frustrating in roughly equal amounts. It's a shame, as the developers could have added some simple options which would have made the game much more playable for me.

First, I found it annoying that you had to keep playing as random characters. I guess it made us play the entire roster, but there were some characters that were just totally pointless, and we hated using them. When you rescue someone, it should have shown you who it was, and given you the option of swapping.
There should definitely have been an option to turn off the screen shake as well. That shit got annoying quick.

There were a few other problems, like the annoying zoom out when fighting the last boss, so you could barely see where your teeny tiny characters were. There were also one or two bugs here and there, but the biggest problem was the length of the final hell level. We played through most of it a week or two back, then when we came to finish the game it put us right back at the start of hell, and we had to do the whole thing all over again. Totally stupid, to not at least put in some checkpoints.

Overall it was worth playing though, as it gave us a few laughs.

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Back in January I logged into Tera for the first time in several months. I made a new character, the brawler Kallisto Blaze, just to mess around and give the game one more chance to win me over. Alas, it was not to be, and it has now been uninstalled.