[blog] TheAutisticGamer's Behemoth Backlog

If you're looking for some fun old-school boomer shooters, I do recommend Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, and Shadow Warrior Classic Redux. These were made some time back on the build engine, and are still quite a bit of fun today. I do warn you though, the humor is pretty crass and not entirely PC by today's standards, so take that in mind if you are interested in these games.

If you're looking for some fun old-school boomer shooters, I do recommend Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, and Shadow Warrior Classic Redux. These were made some time back on the build engine, and are still quite a bit of fun today. I do warn you though, the humor is pretty crass and not entirely PC by today's standards, so take that in mind if you are interested in these games.

I definitely want to give Blood a shot. I remember playing a bit of Blood 2 (when I could get it running) and I really enjoyed it despite popular opinion of it, but never played the original Blood. That's definitely one on my list. I tried a bit of Shadow Warrior Classic Redux and Duke Nukem 3D and I'll have to try them again so those are on my list. I'm not too worried about the humor in them so it shouldn't bother me too much. All I'm looking is great FPS gameplay in them and I'm sure these three will deliver!

I see you enjoyed Chasm The Rift so i recommend checking out Perilous Warp when you can. Perilous Warp is a modern 3D version or should i say rather a modern homage to Chasm The Rift. Its about the same length as Chasm The Rift around 2,3 hours.

Thanks you for the kind words! With Chasm, I was really impressed with the fact that the game had an actual story to go with it when so many Old School Shooters of the era didn't have one. It wasn't mind blowing or anything but I thought it was interesting. Funny thing, the guy who is your superior officer in the game for most of it after the commander dies looks a hell of a lot like Steven Spielberg. Maybe it's just me but if you saw pictures of the guy in the cutscenes there's an uncanny resemblance. If only the game didn't have that huge amount of death traps I think it would have been bumped up to an 8/10, but I still liked it even with the flaws I mentioned.

I'm always looking for Old School Shooters/Boomer Shooters to play. I've been disappointed with a couple Boomer Shooters, feeling Turbo Overkill was hugely overpraised with tons of issues (the difficulty) plus Wrath: Aeon of Ruin and Project Warlock I didn't care for. But there's been a couple of very promising ones coming out like Phantom Fury (Ion Fury's sequel), ASKE and Shoot to Kill (the latter two I played demos for). If you have any Boomer Shooters to suggest or even Old School Shooters tell me, I'm always looking for new things to play.

Indeed - I think it's one of the earliest examples of a game that does.

I found Project Warlock a bit disappointing too. I played through it but can't see myself ever returning to it.

A lot of the suggestions I would've made have already been made, but if it's not too cliche I'd suggest Dusk if you haven't already tried it - I played through it earlier in the year and really enjoyed it. Has a real Blood vibe about it too.

Oh, and also, that hardback copy of Lord of the Rings you have is stunning!

Indeed - I think it's one of the earliest examples of a game that does.

I found Project Warlock a bit disappointing too. I played through it but can't see myself ever returning to it.

A lot of the suggestions I would've made have already been made, but if it's not too cliche I'd suggest Dusk if you haven't already tried it - I played through it earlier in the year and really enjoyed it. Has a real Blood vibe about it too.

Oh, and also, that hardback copy of Lord of the Rings you have is stunning!

I've already played DUSK which is one of the best FPS Games I've played in my eyes. Everything about it is great and there's a good reason that the term and subgenre of "Boomer Shooter" exists. I do want to spend time on Gloomwood's early access build but the way the save system in that game works is not as smooth as I would have liked. I'm pretty much waiting for the lower difficulty to be added so I can quick save as a convenience. I have a couple on my list I need to try: ULTRAKILL, Dread Templar, Arthurian Legends, HEDON, Nightmare Reaper, Fashion Police Squad and CULTIC are all on my list to try. I'm just waiting however for ULTRAKILL and Dread Templar to get released fully before I play them.

Yeah! This is apparently a 60th Anniversary Edition released in 2014 by HarperCollins. I'm very happy that I got it a couple of Christmases ago so I'm really looking forward to reading it and seeing all the illustrations that are inside. The Extended Film Trilogy is my all time favorite for films and I try to watch them every year. The book on the other hand is probably something I could read every couple of years since it's very dense, but I still love the book even with my gripes for some parts of it, it's a very rewarding experience overall.

Singularity
System: PC
Developer: Raven Software
Publisher: Activision
Genre: FPS, Modern Shooter, Science Fiction
Rating: 8/10



-Introduction-

Welcome back! Silly me, it seems since I started my new blogging format this year I made an era with my banner for The Main Review! It wasn't "The Main Review with The Autistic Gamer" it was "The Main Review with the The Autistic Gamer". I changed that into something much more eye catching, so I hope you like the new banner! I know it's not gaming related, but dragons these days are my life and blood, especially with my writings now.

This last week has been me finishing this pretty great FPS Game here. I haven't played an FPS Game with a great story in a long time, but this one has one of the best stories I've come across in a shooter recently and it's over a decade old! Many compared it to Bioshock and Half-Life 2 and I must say that a lot of people are correct in their assumptions, it's a very derivative game in terms of it's mechanics and setting but what makes this game tick is it's story. Today we're talking Singularity, Raven's last game before they started helping on Call of Duty. If you haven't heard of this game, lets change that, because it's well worth playing for many reasons.

-Summary-

Singularity is an FPS Game that takes place in the year 2010. The game follows Captain Nathanial Renko, a Marine who goes to investigate a Russian Island called Katorga-12. After crash landing on the island due to mysterious reasons, Renko ends up exploring it and the effects of E-99, a powerful and dangerous substance has altered the island and caused the creation of infected creatures of it's radiation. He is pushed back in time to 1955 where he saves a Russian Scientist named Demichev and just as he is swung back to the present, BOOM. Time has changed and the Russians have ruled the world. With the help of a woman named Kathryn and a good Russian Scientist named Dr. Barisov, Renko is thrust into an adventure to restore time the way it was... OR DOES HE?

You get a couple of weapons, a magnum, assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, energy rifle, chaingun and grenade launcher while you can pick up a gun that you can control the bullets with and a rocket launcher. You also use a TMD (Time Manipulation Device) to use in combat and solve puzzles such as phase things into existence, deteriorating and restoring items and gravitating items like the Gravity Gun in Half-Life 2. The game has a perk system to make your character stronger and a Weapon Upgrade system. Weapon Upgrades are picked up throughout the game and Perks can be used with E-99 Tech, a currency that can be easily found through the game. The game will have you jumping forwards and backwards through time to help you on your journey. Enemies also include mutants and stock Russian soldiers.

-Positives-

Well, Singularity is really great and there's tons of reasons why, but I've talked about the most obvious one so far.

-The Story in Singularity is fantastic. From the moment it opens to the whole set up of the game I was blown away by how cool and stunning the story was going to be. It's a well written and engaging story filled with tons of environmental lore to read. Dr. Barisov is great character and you truly care what's happening around you. You can read notes, listen to audio tapes, watch film archives and look at projected recordings to really sink into the huge depth this world has. Even though I got tired of the tapes and notes near the end, I can't help but appreciate the game for really diving deep into this. Doom 3 I felt did this wrong by having all the notes and logs collected in your PDA collecting dust, here they're done well since you have to pick them up and can't carry them or have to listen to them in the room you're in. I feel this design gives me more incentive to listen and understand things rather than not at all. So overall, the story is engaging and it's truly one of the best I've seen recently for myself.

-Singularity's Gunplay is also a highlight. It's thanks to some gnarly kills and some fun gore that the gunplay is satisfying for most of it. I warmed up to much of it in the latter half of the game when I realized it wasn't average, it was actually quite nicely done. The chaingun is easily one of the best weapons in the game if not the best, you can demolish enemies in seconds and if you upgrade this thing fully it's a beast. The Sniper Rifle and Shotgun are also really killer weapons so those are some of the best guns the game offers.

-The setting of Singularity is also one of the strong points. I was heavily intrigued by the time travel/time paradox storyline of course but this setting is honestly great. Some of the moments reading about the lore had me unsettled as kids write notes talking about how they're getting sick from E-99 but don't know it and how people are becoming mutants and have to escape the island. This dark, dystopian setting really is great for this game.

-The Perk System in this game can really make you a real threat in this game. As said, you spend huge amounts of E-99 upgrading yourself so during the entire game at certain points when you find a perk station the changes your character has really makes a difference to when he's in the beginning of the game. He goes from competent to an absolute slayer, if you spend all your E-99 on getting less gun damage on you, you're pretty much invincible. I was playing on Easy Difficulty however since it's my preferred way of playing FPS Games but still, your character at the end compared to your character at the beginning really becomes more powerful, which is always a good feeling.

-The game also gives you a choice for 3 Endings. I will give spoilers to the ending I got so be aware of that. At the end, you have to either shoot Demichev, shoot Barisov or Shoot Both of Them. I ended up shooting Demichev and went back in time to kill Renko, who actually warned us not to save Demichev during the beginning. The game restarts itself and it turns out you ended up helping Barisov put his dominance on the island. Now, I'm not sure if this meant he took over the world, or that he used his power to make things better so that Russia wasn't trying anything suspicious, but I'd like to believe that he used his powers for good. This is by far the best ending possible. I was pretty satisfied with the ending I got but it was interesting enough for me wanting to go back and check out the other possible endings.

-Negatives-

The game is solid, but there are some cracks throughout the game.

-Graphically, the game is very poor for it's time. Modern Warfare 2 looks a lot better than this, but the main issue is that this was during the Dull Brown era of video games where everything had to be gritty and colorless. It looks muddy and unappealing. Some color would have been nice and I get that this is a dystopian setting but the problem is it doesn't seem to stand out over other games of it's time. To not contradict myself, I must stress that I like the setting a lot, at least the idea and execution of it and not necessarily the art style which is a shame since the end credits concept art looks really good!

-The main villain is weak. He barely appears throughout the game and only makes vital appearances during the beginning and end of the entire thing. I can't stand when games hide away their villains because it doesn't make you think "Oh! I wonder how much of a threat he is." instead it makes you annoyed and wonder "Where the hell is this guy?!" He's not a threat, he's barely present throughout the game and even with killing him in the "Good" ending it's not satisfying. So bad villain.

-The TMD Device has good ideas behind it especially in combat, but for puzzle solving it's a real chore. It wasn't fun to solve puzzles because things didn't click with me in the environment on what I was supposed to do. At one point, I was stumped because I had no clue how to progress. When I realized there was a broken ladder atop of me, I was rather frustrated I didn't find it since they hid it so well. Controlling objects with gravity is not fun and in general it's a pain to use.

-I also don't like that the use button is also set to the reload button ("R"), I don't think I can change it because that would mean rebinding reload, so this was rather annoying that they didn't put it as E.

-Weapon management in the game is non existent. This is because the Assault Rifle, The Shotgun, The Sniper Rifle and the Chaingun are the best weapons you get. Everything either is too inaccurate or doesn't feel right to use. So for most of the game you'll want the Chaingun and Shotgun (and Sniper at some points). You will pick up other guns like the Seeker and Rocket Launcher but those are limited ammo and they don't go into your inventory.

-A pet peeve of mine is when Russian Characters in games like this don't speak Russian but English, and this game does exactly that. I get that this is a very dialogue heavy game at points with loads of exposition dumps and world building, but couldn't they have at least had Russian Dialogue for the world building aspects like the notes and audio tapes and then have the characters speak English to you?

-You might ask why they didn't do that, well, there's a reason. The game has no subtitle options. Are you shitting me? This game came out in 2010. You're telling me that every Call of Duty up to that point had subtitles but this game doesn't?! This sucks, because I usually nowadays like having subtitles on to listen to what people are saying, so if I missed anything important because of frantic combat situations (which does happen to me sometimes in games) I wouldn't know what's going on unless I looked up a video, a synopsis or reset my checkpoint! Bottom Line: GIVE PLAYERS SUBTITLES. It's called accessibility! There's no excuse for not having subtitles in a 2010 game.

-Final Verdict-

So yeah, Singularity is great! There's tons to love here, from it's excellent story, great setting, loads of world building, it's fun gunplay, I really enjoyed it! It's been a long time since I played a FPS game with a solid story but this is one of the best I've played recently. It was a hugely engaging experience and I would love to go back and try to get the other two endings. If you haven't played it, I suggest you do! For Raven's last game, they did a really nice job. It's certainly a step up from Soldier of Fortune that's for sure. Thanks for reading again! I'll talk with you all later.

-TheAutisticGamer

Hello everyone! Now, this post will mark an Early End to what I'm considering "Season One" of my Blog. I started Season One back on January 1st of this year and overall I've said many times but 2022 was a terrible year for me in general. From my mom having to go through surgery and chemotherapy to me having tons of depressions spouts throughout the year I really couldn't stand this year as everything seemed terrible for me. But December has proven to be the happiest month I've had since then. 2023 feels like it will be a much more promising year this time and in this blog, I'll be talking about my stats for the year, talking briefly about the big game I'm playing right now, talking about my favorite completions this year and talking about my future plans for next year in terms of gaming for me. Without further ado, lets start out this post!

First, I want to talk about a game I've been really immersed in recently. This released I think last year but just got released as part of PS Plus's Free Games of the month. So far, this game has been just great fun to play and I've been very much enjoying it throughout.



Biomutant has been a game I've been really wanting to play ever since it came out. But considering there was no PS5 version of the game at first (and seemingly no way to play the Series X Version of Biomutant Digitally from the Xbox Store from what I found) I waited for a long time to see if the price would drop to something favorable. Thankfully, PS Plus released the game for it's December Lineup and I've been just really enjoying the game a lot so far. It's an Action RPG in an Open World where you play as some furry little creature who either will save the world or destroy it. Nothing too fancy, but there's tons of things I really love about the game. For one, the entirely anthropomorphic world that it's set in. I'm a sucker for games with all animal characters so this really is something that appealed to me. Second, the atmosphere is super chill and relaxing. It helps me immerse myself in the world a lot more and the graphics are pretty nice with all that lush green around the environment. Finally, gameplay has been just tons of fun doing all the side quests, tribe takeover missions and just exploring the world to find even better gear. I'm about 5-7 hours into the game so far and it's been just a pretty pleasant experience. It's nothing too complex or deep so I'm enjoying myself.

If you do play this however, TURN OFF THE NARRATOR VOICE. The game has a Narrator that's a bargain bin version of Stephen Fry from Little Big Planet and narrates EVERY SINGLE piece of dialogue in the game. He often speaks WAY too much and often ruins the immersion of the game. Thankfully, the narrator voice can be turned off. So turn it off, keep subtitles on for his narration and have the gibberish the characters speak front and center. Trust me, you'll enjoy the game much more if you do this. Otherwise, great game so far! Last time I got so much high quality loot it was insane. So call me a fan of this one.

Now, lets get to the main meat of the post. I want to show you all my stats for this year. I know we're 9 days away from the end of the year but I thought I'd show you them now since Biomutant probably won't be finished by the end of the year. This also shows my stats from 2018 (The year I joined), 2019, 2020 and 2021 to compare.



While I doubt I can beat my record of 63 games in 2019 due to the length of many games I play and also balancing writing and other life things, I did in fact beat 1 Game more this year than I did last year. A lot of the reason for the high 2019 and 2020 completions was the fact that I think I played a lot more shorter games around that time and logged in a lot of replays. 9 of the 25 Games I played this year were logged in as Replays (including 1 DLC). So overall, I played 16 New Games this year. Although if we look at 2021, 8 of the 24 Games were replays.

Another thing that changed this year was the quality of my completions. I only gave one 10/10 score this year to Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem. Nowadays I feel I don't give that many generous 10/10 scores, but considering Serious Sam is a series I love to death it was easy to see why I rated it so highly in the first place. However, this is not even the best game I played this year. But going back to the ratings, 6 out of the 25 games I played were rated below 7/10. Funny thing, two of those games are Raven Software titles (Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force and Soldier of Fortune) so maybe the year 2000 wasn't good for them. Compared to last year, 3 of the 24 Games were rated 6/10 or below. I try to avoid games I think I'm going to hate, so that's another big reason. It also has to do if the game interests me or not.

Overall, my gaming year has been quite weird. I also wanted to play a lot of games that would just keep me in a good mood for my mental health. Most of the higher scored games I played came around August in terms of consistency with the rating. So yeah, with that out of the way, lets talk about my Top 5 Completions this year. It was hard to decide which would fill in the 5th Spot, but I managed to get a game in there I thought was worthy.



Number 5: Singularity

Without a doubt probably my favorite story in a game this year. From the moment Singularity starts it makes you go "OMG!". It's a high concept dystopian science fiction FPS with interesting worldbuilding, tons of lore, unsettling moments, really fun gunplay and never really feels predictable in any sort of way that I found. If only the villain were more of a threat and more present, The Russians actually spoke Russian and if only the weapon management was better, this would easily be up to Number 3. I really enjoyed this game and I will definitely be playing it again in the future.



Number 4: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)

After falling off the COD Bandwagon until I played tons of Cold War multiplayer when it came out, this was my first dive back into a COD Campaign since Infinite Warfare and this is a triumphant return for Captain Price and Call of Duty as a franchise. So many great things about this game. Excellent Graphics, Phenomenal sound design, Superb Voice Acting from the entire cast, extremely likeable characters that are filled with depth and personality, a really damn good story to go alongside it, callbacks to the franchise that made me squeal with joy alongside mind blowing cameos from other characters from the series, I had a great time with this one. If it weren't for the technical issues I faced when playing this on PS5 this would be up a slot higher.



Number 3: Prodeus

In Late 2020, I finished the Early Access Build of Prodeus and now we're finally at the full release of the game two years later. And I got to say it hasn't disappointed in the slightest. It's by far my favorite Boomer Shooter I've played since DUSK. Not only because of it's fantastic gameplay, some of the best level design I've played in years for an FPS Game and another killer Andrew Hulshult soundtrack, but the game has a level editor and there's been tons of mods and levels made for this game. Because of that, it's gonna live on for a long time. Just a gorgeous game as well. The only disappointing aspect to me is there's basically no ending to the game. Otherwise, I highly recommend it.



Number 2: Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem

Was an obvious GOTY Contender for me at the beginning of the year but Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem on first impressions had become my favorite game in the entire franchise. It's a radical improvement over SS4 in every way and makes an already great game even better. There are still tons of moments where Sam is humanized which makes him really likeable in the first place, the new weapons were a blast to play, the graphics are really impressive for a Serious Sam game and the multiverse aspect that was in Serious Sam 4 continues to be used here as well, making for an extremely memorable ending after one emotional high for a finale. As a fan, this is everything I could have hoped for and here's hoping Croteam's new side team Timelock Studios continues to make Serious Sam games in the coming future. I can't wait for the next entry so lets hope it doesn't take another decade for Sam to make his return to the FPS Spotlight.



Number 1: Prey (2006)

Out of all the games I've played this year, this is by far the most memorable I have played. I've never played a game like Prey before and I don't think I ever will again in my lifetime since it's such a unique experience. EVEN with it's incredibly unlikeable and selfish main protagonist, this is one of the best FPS Games of the mid-2000's. It features superb guns that feel original and new, it has incredible graphics on the Doom 3 Engine making it the best looking game of all the ones developed for it, exploring the Sphere was so much fun and I constantly felt like I was on an incredible adventure throughout the entire game. Not to mention how technically groundbreaking the game is, doing things that Portal would do a full year later. Hell, I was crying during the end credits of this game. I rarely do that when I play a game! Prey is just so incredible. It does things that are so insane and so good that I cannot praise it enough. Every time I think about this game it just makes me think how much of a fulfilling and amazing experience this was to play it. I cannot recommend this game enough. Prey can still be bought on Xbox Backwards Compatibility so if you have an Xbox One/Series X or S and want to play one of the best FPS Games of it's time, be my guest and play it. It's fantastic.

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Finally, lets talk about my plans for 2023 in terms of gaming. Now, I mentioned at the beginning of the post I'm playing Biomutant right now and I hope to finish it up in January or by Early February. I'm planning to play a lot more longer games next year and play things that are more ambitious and out of my comfort range. Because I am enjoying Biomutant so much I hope to finish up or play a bunch of games that I've been wanting to play for a long time. Some of these are shorter games, but a lot of them will be more ambitious and lengthy for what I play. Here's some examples of what I will try to play although some I will probably not get to:

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning (Finish)
Yakuza Kiwami (Finish)
God of War (2005)
Blue Dragon
Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix
Ghost of Tsushima
Borderlands 2 (Finish)
Dishonored
Far Cry 2
Torchlight 3
Diablo II: Resurrected
System Shock 2
Deus Ex

Because of the length of some games, completions next year might be even lower than this year in total. Although, I expect to go and enjoy these games at a steady pace. The games I'm really looking forward to playing are Ghost of Tsushima, Blue Dragon and finishing up Yakuza Kiwami and Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning (FINALLY!). We'll see how 2023 ends up going, but I just wanted to say thanks everyone for again reading the blog this year! I'll be posting a Season Two Hub post later in the coming days hopefully (If I come up with something as creative as last year) so again, Thank you all! You've been very kind and supportive during this extremely rough year for me and again, I'm still convinced How Long to Beat is one of the best gaming communities out there.

Have a great Christmas everyone and I will talk with you all next year! CHEERS!

-TheAutisticGamer

Everyone, I got a little surprise for you, a little introduction to "Season Two" of my Backlog Blog. I came up with a little story that continues off where my Season One Hub Post started, hope you enjoy!

The Behemoth Backlog Season One Finale

WHEN WE LAST LEFT OUR HERO...

After a journey back to the past, our beloved hero, TheAutisticGamer, known to many as TAG or AG, returns home, hoping to get some rest after a huge adventure. One that has not gone well. After suffering through many pitfalls, many traps, many backstabs and just overall just having a crap time in all honesty, he finally is nearing home. "No more!" he says. "I can't stand this crap year, nothing can make it worse can it? I'm already at the bloody end of it."

Oh, what poor choice of words. As he's crossing the street, our hero turns to the left and in a matter of seconds, *SLAM!*. Without knowing what has happened, he blacks out. In reality, a bus that has lost it's brakes had been speeding down the street and had hit our hero. It was the end for TAG.

But it actually wasn't.

TAG awoke as the sun blinded his eyes. He stood up, unsure of where he was. But when he rubbed his head, it felt different. It felt... furry.

"What the hell?" he swore. There was a piece of glass shard on the ground. he went to it and picked it up and looked at himself. He was in a for a god damn shock. Not only did he seem to survive that bus that hit him, but it somehow managed to change his appearance. He looked at himself in the shard and almost screamed.



"WHAT THE F-" he nearly screamed, he recognized this creature as a type of race in a game he had heard of. He had no clue what had happened or how he turned into this furry little creature or how he got here, but something hit him. That feeling, that realization he has seen this situation before, that he had somehow watched numerous people go through it, it excited him as much as it frightened him. That realization hit.

"Out of all the ways I thought I'd die, I didn't know It would be in the way of Isekai." He said to himself. "Now what? I don't think I'm an overpowered anime protagonist, what the hell am I going to do?"

"You got hit by a bus too huh?"

TAG turned around and found himself in the presence of a human warrior. Despite looking very threatening, wearing a kind of demonic helm and being heavily armored in plate mail, he walked cautiously towards him. TAG felt self cautious. After all, he had been turned into a small furry little creature when his height in the real world was much taller.

"That happens a lot around here. A bit overkill if you ask me. I'm assuming you would like some help?" The heavily armored warrior said kindly.

"Uhm..." TAG chuckled. "Yeah, I guess."

"You're nervous. I get it."

"Well, kind of. It's all new to me."

The human warrior nodded. He took out a scroll and opened it up. He showed it to TAG, who took it in his tiny hands. It had the following print on it: CONTRACT: Biomutant. The Tree of Life must be saved! Reward for completion will be 1500 Jewels! So that's why I turned into this little furry creature... he thought. He understood now that he had turned into the last character he had played. Yeah, he got it. It was starting to make a bit of sense now. At least he thought so.

"Contracts are the way we get credit here. Complete a contract and you'll be rewarded greatly." The warrior said. "After the contract's done, I'll take you to the guild, they have tons of contracts waiting to be finished. You up for it?"

"What's your name?" TAG asked.

"High-Glin"



TAG looked out at the world, for the first time in a while, he felt optimistic. A new year? A new start? He couldn't say no. He had a feeling things were gonna get better and now that he was in a new place, he felt he could accomplish anything. He didn't understand why he felt this way. He just died, he probably wasn't going to see the real world ever again, but the area he was around comforted him.

He smiled.

"I think I'm going to like it here. Wherever here is."

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Join TheAutisticGamer as he delves into new worlds and completes contracts big and small. Where he faces numerous threats, finds new allies and quite possibly finding newfound happiness in a world, or worlds unlike his own!



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I hope you enjoyed the little epilogue to Season One of the Backlog Blog. I'm really excited about the future of my gaming life coming up, so stay tuned shortly for another post detailing my goals!

Welcome to The Overkill Saga! Season Two of TheAutisticGamer's Behemoth Backlog!

I thought I would create this little hub here to welcome you all to a new season of The Behemoth Backlog. Another year, more games, excitement awaits! I'm doing things a little bit differently this year for this season. So I would like to explain a bit to you what I'm planning to do in 2023 for my gaming life.

First off, in the finale to Season One/Introduction to Season Two, I mentioned in the story something called Contracts. Basically, contracts equals completing a game (With Biomutant, it's to either Save the Tree of Life or Destroy It). These new reviews that I will be doing will be called "Contracts", which will kind of go in style with the story I told in the Season Two introduction story. These will be of course my regular reviews, but observations as well. I thought it would be interesting to spice things up. I'm looking for a Contract completion image right now to put whenever I write a review but unfortunately none of them seem actually transparent so I don't know what I'll be doing for that, but for now I just wanted to tell you about this nifty little idea I had.

When talking about DLCs or Expansions, these will be part of the same contracts. So say I beat something like Borderlands 2 and there's an expansion to it and it's the 5th Game I beat this year. The contract will say for one of the DLCs Contract 5.1 or Contract 5.2, depending on how it many DLCs there are. If these are standalone expansions, they will be part of separate contracts.

My goal this year is to play much more ambitious, longer games. With me loving Biomutant, I'm really up for playing more different games this year aside from FPS Games, but I will continue to play FPS Games still, you'll see reviews on different games hopefully like some RPGs I've been meaning to play and some other smaller games like Lil Gator Game and the like. I wanted to try something different and get through more of my backlog, but we'll see how the year goes. Anyways, I hope you enjoy the new season! There will be lots of things to talk about in 2023 so I hope my thoughts continue to intrigue you!

Contract Board:

Contract #1: CULTIC (PC, 01/02, 9/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/21#post101427

Contract #2: Amalgam (PC, 01/26, 7/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/21#post102062

Contract #3: Evacuation (PC, 02/03, 8/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/21#post102339

Contract #4: Dread Templar (PC, 02/06, 7/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/21#post102447

Contract #5: Kuru Kuru Kururin (NS, 03/29, 8/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/22#post103820

Contract #6: Half-Life 2 (PC, 04/20, 8/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/22#post104378

Contract #7: Biomutant (PS5, 04/23, 8/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/22#post104472

Contract #8: Half-Life 2: Episode One (PC, 04/28, 7/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/22#post104585

Contract #9: Half-Life 2: Episode Two (PC, 05/04, 6/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/22#post104799

Contract #10: Maximum Action (PC, 05/18, 5/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/22#post105112

Contract #11: Lil Gator Game (PC, 05/30, 10/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/22#post105371

Contract #12: Slayers X *Insert Clunky Overlong Title Here* (PC, 06/06/ 7/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/22#post105599

Contract #13: Smushi Come Home (NS, 06/29, 6/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/22#post106209

Contract #14: Killzone 2 (PS3, 08/19, 6/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/22#post107407

Contract #15: Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros 3 (NSO, 08/24, 7/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/22#post107535

Contract #16 + 16.1 and 16.2: Quake II + The Reckoning + Ground Zero (PC, 08/28-09/04, 7/10, 8/10 and 6/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/23#post107804

Contract #16.3 + 16.4: Quake II 64 + Call of the Machine (PC, 09/06-09/11, 8/10 and 7/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/23#post107968

Contract #17: Deadpool (PS3, 10/01, 8/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/23#post108469

Contract #18: LEGO Marvel Super Heroes (Switch, 10/17, 6/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/23#post108807

Contract #19: Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Switch, 11/06, 9/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/23#post109118

Contract #20-23: Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery (Xbox Series X, 11/13, 8/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/23#post109272

Contract #24-28: Siactro 5 Game Showdown (PC, 10/24-11/17, 5/10 to 8/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/23#post109364

Contract #29: Mail Time (PC, 11/18, 4/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/23#post109392

Contract #30: A Short Hike (PC, 11/23, 9/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/23#post109502

Contract #31: AMID EVIL (PC, 12/05, 8/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/23#post109839

Contract #31.1 AMID EVIL: The Black Labyrinth (PC, 12/18, 9/10)
https://howlongtobeat.com/forum/thread/1729/23#post110124

CULTIC (Episode One)
System: PC
Developer: Jasozz Games
Publisher: 3D Relams
Genre: FPS, Boomer Shooter
Rating 9/10



-Introduction-

Hello one and all! Welcome to my very first review (or contract) of the year! I managed to beat another Boomer Shooter that isn't even fully complete yet, but I gotta be honest, it started out pretty rough. I didn't think I would enjoy it but once I learned some nifty tricks and got into the swing of things, I enjoyed this so much more than I thought. Hell, you know what? I even loved the whole thing and I'm already excited for more of the planned episodes to come. So lets talk about this awesome new Boomer Shooter that's on the market right now, CULTIC!

-Summary/Contract-

CULTIC is a Boomer Shooter developed by a one man team called Jasozz Games, formed by Jason Smith. The game is heavily influenced by the old school shooter Blood. The story is about a detective (I think?) who investigates a town that has been taken over by a cult. There are notes to read, but I was so enthused with the action I didn't bother. The main point of the game is to defeat this cult and stop them from doing whatever they're doing (and they're doing something big. HOLY SHIT). CULTIC has you fighting cultists and other demonic beasts with many weapons. These include a hatchet, a Luger Pistol, a Lever Aciton Rifle, a Sawed off Shotgun, a Machine Gun, a Grenade Launcher, molotovs and dynamite, a Sniper Rifle and a Flamethrower. They can be upgraded by getting weapon parts to use on weapon benches, improving damage or accuracy or fire rate. There are also hidden secrets throughout the game that can be tough to find but rewarding to get if you know what you're doing. The game features quick save and load and manual saving and auto saving as well, so you get the full package for saving your game.

-Positives-

My praises are high for this one, so lets get right into it.

-One of CULTIC's greatest achievements is it's level design. I'm a sucker for an FPS Game that makes you feel like you're going on a huge quest or a big adventure and CULTIC is no different. There's tons of fantastic levels in the game. One that sticks out is a battle at a Chapel that ends with you fighting a tank. It's ridiculous, from the cultists, beasts and then a tank comes out of nowhere to blow you up. The levels in this game are insane. My favorites are the mining town, the grounds to the Asylum, the mines, there's a lot to talk about, but it's masterfully designed and just tons of fun to explore.

-Gunplay in CULTIC is crisp and sharp. All the guns are beefy and powerful and most of the time you'll be blowing people's faces off which makes it even more satisfying. Each gun felt good to use but I mostly stuck with the Lever Action Rifle, the Sawed off Shotgun and the Machine Gun for most of the game. The flamethrower is an absolute beast of a weapon, you'll know what I mean when you play this.

-CULTIC is also pretty unsettling and scary sometimes. I jumped out of my seat once or twice because the atmosphere was so creepy that I was actually getting frightened by what was around me. There is one effective jump scare in a hedge maze in the Asylum grounds level. You follow a trail of blood to get a key and BOOM! Two Chainsaw Wielding Enemies come after you. It's honestly quite scary and got me good. There's tons of moments that made me feel frightened in CULTIC and it's definitely one of it's strongest aspects as well.

-I will talk about the graphics as well in my negatives, but overall I feel after you turn off all the fancy effects the game looks rather nice! It's obviously going for a Build Engine look to it all but there are definitely some more modern aspects to it like a fully 3D Final Boss, but the sprites for the enemies look good and the game overall just is really appealing to look at if you turn off certain options in the game.

-The music as well is also awesome. There's tons of tracks that get you pumped up to fight enemies all around you. Early on, there's a moment where you ride on a mine cart down a hill shooting at enemies and it's just spectacular fun and the music helps situations like these be all the more exciting. I'll be buying the soundtrack off Steam as it's honestly one of the best soundtracks to a Boomer Shooter I've heard in a long time.

-Weapon management is also understood greatly in this game. It helps that there are different situations to use your weapons in whether it's crowds of enemies or just one tough bad guy who just won't die. I felt like I was changing weapons more and more once I acquired the rest of my arsenal which is always a plus when it comes to FPS Games. You need to have a reason to use each weapon and CULTIC gets it.

-I think my biggest praise however is that the entire game feels like a complete package despite there being more episodes planned. The ending of CULTIC got me super pumped up as this detective guy went from investigating a town to being a total badass and going into a portal to what is assumingly hell while loading his sawed off shotgun as the title screen slams onto the screen with a black background. What an ending! I cannot wait for more.

-Another thing I have to say is that the challenge was pretty decent throughout most of it. Despite running out of ballistic armor for most of the game, it never felt like I was puny and managed to survive easily with the health I had and once I got more permanent health increases I felt better. Still, there's some challenging encounters which makes the game really fast paced. I advise turning Always Run on to make your life better.

-Negatives-

There are a couple of rough spots in CULTIC however, but they seem so minor once you get past them.

-For one, the game started out rough. You waste ammo really quickly and finding it felt more scarce. Thankfully, you do get more ammo in the long run especially at the beginning of later levels. What helped was that I used the hatchet to kill most enemies which was easy enough and I got more ammo by just saving it up and using my hatchet. There will be a point where you won't use your hatchet for anything else other than breaking boxes, but it's rewarding at least once you get past this hurdle.

-The graphics I mentioned were nice, but that's once you turn off all the ugly settings that makes the game look like hideous rust. Seriously, the game looks terrible if you have these settings on. I feel if I were to complain about this people would say it's intentional, but there are other shooters of this type like DUSK that has the grimy and horror themed setting look much more pleasing in it's graphics than CULTIC does. Bottom line, turn off some of the settings in the video menu and you'll be good to go.

-If I were to nitpick, it would be that some enemies were a pain in the ass to kill at first. There is one enemy that levitates and stops you if you're on the ground and damages you. If you don't pick up that he does that, you'll be in for some real hell on earth. Another enemy was the guy with the flamethrower you get. Seriously, the guy's a bullet sponge tank and not even 4 Grenade Launcher shots would get him downed plus he does hellish amounts of damage to you so he's a pain to deal with as well. But once you prioritize these enemies so they won't kick your ass, you won't have much of a difficult time playing this game.

Most of my negatives in general are just general hurdles to overcome at first, so there's not truly any real negatives I have which is shocking, but these are things to take into account when going into it for the first time.

-Final Verdict-

Overall, I loved CULTIC. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the game and it just felt super pleasant in terms of everything I praised. The level design is adventurous and awesome, the gunplay is meaty and powerful, the music kicks ass, the graphics once you turn off some settings are nice to look at, the ending made me want more but most of all it felt like an already complete game in my eyes. CULTIC rules, you need to play this. I cannot wait to see what Jason Smith does with this game. He gets it. He knows what makes these types of games work. Thanks again everyone for reading! 2023 is off to a great start with my completions so hopefully it will continue to be like that for the rest of the year!

-TheAutisticGamer

Hi Everyone! So I thought I would do another post since we're already nearly two weeks into the year so far and the last post I did was on CULTIC, which was a pretty excellent game. I do want to address something I was mistaken by. There is only going to be one other episode planned for the game and it will be a paid expansion around the same price as the base game. I recently watched a review by a person who is very knowledgeable in the Boomer Shooter area, Kirk Collects, who actually did research on the thing. I like his channel, but he seems like a total shill at points, overpraising a couple games in what is a quantity over quality market, but his channel is interesting if you're wanting to get the know on Boomer Shooters coming out right now.

Another warning I need to say before I begin is that on Wednesday the 18th, I'll be taking my computer in for upgrades! FINALLY! I'm planning on rocking an AMD Ryzen 5 7600, 16 GB Ram, a new AM5 Gigabyte or MSI Motherboard (hopefully Gigabyte), a new installation of Windows 11 and a 2 TB and 1 TB SSD to replace my 500 GB SSD and 2 TB Hard Drive that's on the way out. So at last, I can finally play Unreal Engine 4 games without any problems. So for a couple of days, maybe even a week, I won't have my computer to post updates. It also needs it's water cooler to be replaced since it's not working properly, so it will be worth it. It's not as much as I thought it would be, going around $1400-1500 dollars (I calculated it with a Sales Tax Calculator and Installation Fees) so I was pleasantly surprised I didn't have to pay too much for it. My family is helping pay the remaining costs so that's going to be my birthday present this year. I'll have $1000 dollars by that time so that will go up from $700 to $1000 after I put 300 in my savings again.

So, since the year began I've been pretty crappy. January is usually not a very good month for me and it's been hitting worse than it has been the past few years. It didn't help that on Sunday, I went to see a film and experienced THREE consecutive incidents in a row. First off, the first two involved seeing a couple people possibly overdosed and lifeless on the ground or struggling, one at the New West Skytrain Station and the other under an escalator at Metrotown. But to top it all off, before the previews for the film began, a guy got arrested in my theater for apparently stealing stuff that they were trying to get back. At that point I was freaking out because it just seemed like bad things were happening all around me and wanted to get out, but thankfully, I ended up staying to watch a film known as M3GAN, which I definitely recommend, it's a funny social satire slasher film that is very smartly written and deals with it's themes satisfyingly.

Yeah, these last few days were absolute ass, but things were better last night when I went out for an Early Birthday Dinner with one of my best friends. It felt like secondary counselling talking with him, so it was overall a pleasant and fun night. My birthday is coming up on the 21st of January and I'll be turning 26, so this year I'm hoping to drop down to 200 Pounds and finally start making actual progress on the Light of the Dragon-kin novel. And finally as well get working at a place!

So, lets get into the swing of things. I've been reading again recently and I finally picked up a novel from an author I was very excited to read again.



I've been reading Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. I'm around 90 pages into it and I'm really enjoying it so far. Although, I will admit I'm not too big of a fan of Vin so far. She's a very pessimistic character for obvious reasons because of abuse but I feel after I get over that hurdle where she learns to emote more, love herself and trust more people, it will easily be a much more enjoyable book. My problem is I feel there's only one or two ways to write characters like that growing to be better and it frustrates and upsets me reading someone be abused which I try to avoid as much as possible in any sort of media, So it's not very fun to read about her right now. However, Kelsier, Dockson and the rest of the characters are great and the whole magic system is interesting. Drinking Metal Flakes is a pretty neat idea to have magic powers and the whole idea behind this heist to take down the government sounds insane. I'll be reading more in the coming days, but overall I'm liking pretty much everything right now except Vin, but I know deep down that's going to change quickly in the next 100 or 130 pages.

In terms of games, I've been continuing to play some things that I'm trying to get done, but I also played some things that I'm dropping for now since I don't feel I can really go through with them.



My biggest enjoyment has come from playing Biomutant. It's essentially has become a comfort game that I can play and not be stressed out by things that are happening in my life. It's taken over my life and it's a game I love more than others. I started the game late December and since then I've put 12 Hours into the entire thing. I'm really loving Biomutant because the world is just comfortable to be in, the setting is cool, the atmosphere and music is calming and relaxing, crafting is super fun in this game since it's simple and to the point, combat is really great and the Dualsense features on PS5 enhance it, graphics are awesome, this is a pretty looking game and I've dabbled in Photo Mode a couple times since, I love it. I know it wasn't well received back when it first came out but I found this game to be just a joy to play. It's a perfect piece of escapism I need right now. I'll update you more on it soon, but so far I haven't even progressed through the main story that much. After uniting the first of the tribes in this game, I pretty much exclusively have done side content. I haven't even taken out the four great beasts yet in this game since I need a environmental suit in order to get to the first one.

If you haven't played this, I really advise you to check it out. It was free on PS Plus last month, so if you managed to pick it up there I highly recommend it. I love this game and it's just what I need now.



I've also been replaying Borderlands, since it's just another comfort game I love to play. Not much to say here, but I still stand by most of my issues in this game from it's weak villain who appears only three times and you don't even get to fight (I'm going to call this continuing trend in games "Steele Syndrome"), constant uninspired quest design, uninteresting NPC characters that are not part of the plot, awful soundtrack and so on and so forth, but the addictive gameplay, cel shaded art style, certain memorable characters, interesting intrigue towards the mystery of the vault and the huge replayability from second playthroughs to starting from scratch always makes this an easy pick up. I feel it's also more simpler in terms of later Borderlands games which is a huge plus. It's a game I hold close and once I finish this playthrough of it again I will have hit 100 hours on Steam with this game. I'll be finally finishing Borderlands 2 this year as well, so hopefully that will go well when the time comes.



I was playing this one as well, but dropped it since I wasn't in the mood to play this so it will be on the backburner for now. But White Hell is another cool little Boomer Shooter that takes place in Post Apocalyptic Finland. What's interesting is that there's no armor pickups. In order to get armor, you use special powers you get from killing enemies to build up your armor. It's a really cool little gameplay mechanic that makes this interesting. It's a crusty looking game, the MIDI soundtrack rocks, the graphics are fine, the sound design is fine, the gameplay is fine aside from the cool armor mechanic, I don't know, it's fine? I found myself getting lost and not knowing where to go a lot of the time so that was annoying, but overall the game is nearly finished from Early Access and is worth a shot. It's fine, not much to say here. But I will get back to this later in the year hopefully.

Anyways, that's all I have to say for now. It's not been great recently but I'm hoping by my birthday things really start to look up. January is always a crap month for me so I'm hoping it will go by quickly. Again, I will have my computer in shop next week so I won't be posting anything for a while but I'll come back soon to give you an update on how I've been doing. So thanks again everyone for reading! I think I'll hop on Biomutant before I go to bed. Hope you're all doing well so far this month!

-TheAutisticGamer

Hi Everyone! So I thought I would do another post since we're already nearly two weeks into the year so far and the last post I did was on CULTIC, which was a pretty excellent game. I do want to address something I was mistaken by. There is only going to be one other episode planned for the game and it will be a paid expansion around the same price as the base game. I recently watched a review by a person who is very knowledgeable in the Boomer Shooter area, Kirk Collects, who actually did research on the thing. I like his channel, but he seems like a total shill at points, overpraising a couple games in what is a quantity over quality market, but his channel is interesting if you're wanting to get the know on Boomer Shooters coming out right now.

Another warning I need to say before I begin is that on Wednesday the 18th, I'll be taking my computer in for upgrades! FINALLY! I'm planning on rocking an AMD Ryzen 5 7600, 16 GB Ram, a new AM5 Gigabyte or MSI Motherboard (hopefully Gigabyte), a new installation of Windows 11 and a 2 TB and 1 TB SSD to replace my 500 GB SSD and 2 TB Hard Drive that's on the way out. So at last, I can finally play Unreal Engine 4 games without any problems. So for a couple of days, maybe even a week, I won't have my computer to post updates. It also needs it's water cooler to be replaced since it's not working properly, so it will be worth it. It's not as much as I thought it would be, going around $1400-1500 dollars (I calculated it with a Sales Tax Calculator and Installation Fees) so I was pleasantly surprised I didn't have to pay too much for it. My family is helping pay the remaining costs so that's going to be my birthday present this year. I'll have $1000 dollars by that time so that will go up from $700 to $1000 after I put 300 in my savings again.

So, since the year began I've been pretty crappy. January is usually not a very good month for me and it's been hitting worse than it has been the past few years. It didn't help that on Sunday, I went to see a film and experienced THREE consecutive incidents in a row. First off, the first two involved seeing a couple people possibly overdosed and lifeless on the ground or struggling, one at the New West Skytrain Station and the other under an escalator at Metrotown. But to top it all off, before the previews for the film began, a guy got arrested in my theater for apparently stealing stuff that they were trying to get back. At that point I was freaking out because it just seemed like bad things were happening all around me and wanted to get out, but thankfully, I ended up staying to watch a film known as M3GAN, which I definitely recommend, it's a funny social satire slasher film that is very smartly written and deals with it's themes satisfyingly.

Yeah, these last few days were absolute ass, but things were better last night when I went out for an Early Birthday Dinner with one of my best friends. It felt like secondary counselling talking with him, so it was overall a pleasant and fun night. My birthday is coming up on the 21st of January and I'll be turning 26, so this year I'm hoping to drop down to 200 Pounds and finally start making actual progress on the Light of the Dragon-kin novel. And finally as well get working at a place!

So, lets get into the swing of things. I've been reading again recently and I finally picked up a novel from an author I was very excited to read again.



I've been reading Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. I'm around 90 pages into it and I'm really enjoying it so far. Although, I will admit I'm not too big of a fan of Vin so far. She's a very pessimistic character for obvious reasons because of abuse but I feel after I get over that hurdle where she learns to emote more, love herself and trust more people, it will easily be a much more enjoyable book. My problem is I feel there's only one or two ways to write characters like that growing to be better and it frustrates and upsets me reading someone be abused which I try to avoid as much as possible in any sort of media, So it's not very fun to read about her right now. However, Kelsier, Dockson and the rest of the characters are great and the whole magic system is interesting. Drinking Metal Flakes is a pretty neat idea to have magic powers and the whole idea behind this heist to take down the government sounds insane. I'll be reading more in the coming days, but overall I'm liking pretty much everything right now except Vin, but I know deep down that's going to change quickly in the next 100 or 130 pages.

In terms of games, I've been continuing to play some things that I'm trying to get done, but I also played some things that I'm dropping for now since I don't feel I can really go through with them.



My biggest enjoyment has come from playing Biomutant. It's essentially has become a comfort game that I can play and not be stressed out by things that are happening in my life. It's taken over my life and it's a game I love more than others. I started the game late December and since then I've put 12 Hours into the entire thing. I'm really loving Biomutant because the world is just comfortable to be in, the setting is cool, the atmosphere and music is calming and relaxing, crafting is super fun in this game since it's simple and to the point, combat is really great and the Dualsense features on PS5 enhance it, graphics are awesome, this is a pretty looking game and I've dabbled in Photo Mode a couple times since, I love it. I know it wasn't well received back when it first came out but I found this game to be just a joy to play. It's a perfect piece of escapism I need right now. I'll update you more on it soon, but so far I haven't even progressed through the main story that much. After uniting the first of the tribes in this game, I pretty much exclusively have done side content. I haven't even taken out the four great beasts yet in this game since I need a environmental suit in order to get to the first one.

If you haven't played this, I really advise you to check it out. It was free on PS Plus last month, so if you managed to pick it up there I highly recommend it. I love this game and it's just what I need now.



I've also been replaying Borderlands, since it's just another comfort game I love to play. Not much to say here, but I still stand by most of my issues in this game from it's weak villain who appears only three times and you don't even get to fight (I'm going to call this continuing trend in games "Steele Syndrome"), constant uninspired quest design, uninteresting NPC characters that are not part of the plot, awful soundtrack and so on and so forth, but the addictive gameplay, cel shaded art style, certain memorable characters, interesting intrigue towards the mystery of the vault and the huge replayability from second playthroughs to starting from scratch always makes this an easy pick up. I feel it's also more simpler in terms of later Borderlands games which is a huge plus. It's a game I hold close and once I finish this playthrough of it again I will have hit 100 hours on Steam with this game. I'll be finally finishing Borderlands 2 this year as well, so hopefully that will go well when the time comes.



I was playing this one as well, but dropped it since I wasn't in the mood to play this so it will be on the backburner for now. But White Hell is another cool little Boomer Shooter that takes place in Post Apocalyptic Finland. What's interesting is that there's no armor pickups. In order to get armor, you use special powers you get from killing enemies to build up your armor. It's a really cool little gameplay mechanic that makes this interesting. It's a crusty looking game, the MIDI soundtrack rocks, the graphics are fine, the sound design is fine, the gameplay is fine aside from the cool armor mechanic, I don't know, it's fine? I found myself getting lost and not knowing where to go a lot of the time so that was annoying, but overall the game is nearly finished from Early Access and is worth a shot. It's fine, not much to say here. But I will get back to this later in the year hopefully.

Anyways, that's all I have to say for now. It's not been great recently but I'm hoping by my birthday things really start to look up. January is always a crap month for me so I'm hoping it will go by quickly. Again, I will have my computer in shop next week so I won't be posting anything for a while but I'll come back soon to give you an update on how I've been doing. So thanks again everyone for reading! I think I'll hop on Biomutant before I go to bed. Hope you're all doing well so far this month!

-TheAutisticGamer

Yeah, Vin does have a traumatic past. It does make the awesome moments worth it. I agree that Kelsier is awesome.

Yeah, Vin does have a traumatic past. It does make the awesome moments worth it. I agree that Kelsier is awesome.

Yeah, despite that I'm still really intrigued by what's happening in the story and I can't wait to see what's next. I know this series will be worth it in the long run since Brandon rarely has disappointed me. He's just one of those writers that are very fun and easy to read in general. I've also been loving his Youtube Content which is just lots of fun to watch. His podcast with Dan Wells is one of my favorites to listen to while I'm in the tub soaking a bit. I also saw a bit of his Lost Metal release party which was pretty fun to see. I don't know, I just love watching Brandon. Seems so cool and fun to be around. He's one of the most refreshing people to watch and his Writing Fantasy/Sci Fi lessons are great and I've been taking notes on them for my own writing.

Yeah, despite that I'm still really intrigued by what's happening in the story and I can't wait to see what's next. I know this series will be worth it in the long run since Brandon rarely has disappointed me. He's just one of those writers that are very fun and easy to read in general. I've also been loving his Youtube Content which is just lots of fun to watch. His podcast with Dan Wells is one of my favorites to listen to while I'm in the tub soaking a bit. I also saw a bit of his Lost Metal release party which was pretty fun to see. I don't know, I just love watching Brandon. Seems so cool and fun to be around. He's one of the most refreshing people to watch and his Writing Fantasy/Sci Fi lessons are great and I've been taking notes on them for my own writing.

Yes, he's definitely an approachable fountain of wisdom and knowledge in the fantasy field. I hope to meet him someday to discuss my own fantasy ideas, and ALSO ask a very... interesting question regarding the Cosmere

Yes! I am back again! Hi everyone, so I have big news today. This post will be mostly brief but I did want to bring up something exciting that happened. As I said last week, I was taking my computer in for Upgrades, which basically meant having to rebuild the entire thing besides my current RTX 2070 card I have installed in it. This was mostly a birthday present since I've been dying to do this for ages, but I finally got my PC back. So, what does this new device look like? Well, why don't I show you all?



I apologize for the messy desk, it's not easy to clean up sometimes, but this beast right here is my new PC. So, what does this come with? Well, in terms of the important specs, it's liquid cooled for one thing since I prefer my PCs to be quiet (we'll get to that in a moment). But the important parts are my current RTX 2070, 32 GB DDR5 RAM, an AMD Ryzen 5 7600x and a 2TB and 1TB Kingston M2 Drives. There's tons of improvements here. For one thing, I finally have bluetooth installed on this thing! So now I can easily hook up Xbox Controllers while playing games that work best with a controller. The other thing I have to mention is performance in games is MUCH better now for some titles.

I've talked about how Serious Sam 4 runs like ass on my old system, but after playing a few minutes of a later level into the game, it worked flawlessly. Now the framerate is at around 40-50 FPS on 1440p with high settings on DX11. Teardown, a game I also play as a stress reliever also runs better. Sure, it runs at like 11 FPS when there's too much destruction laying around, but the game works much better thanks to the parts in this PC. The only thing that is problematic here is downloading games. Not that it has a problem with it, but seriously, my PC gets LOUD when it downloads stuff from Steam. I like to jokingly call it the Hurricane System just because of how noisy it is. Otherwise it's quiet. But overall, I'm very satisfied with my new PC so far. Windows 11 is not an easy thing to get used to though, but overall I feel this is going to play many games great. Now all I need is for Nvidia to announce a regular RTX 4070 so I can put that in my machine. This overall cost me around $1700-1800 but man I'm just glad I finally upgraded it.

In terms of gaming, I haven't done much over the past while except for Biomutant. I did get Gotham Knights on PS5 as a birthday present (My birthday was on the 21st last Saturday as I turned 26, now I feel older than I did the last few birthdays I had) but I don't know when I'll be getting to that.



What I have been playing since I got it back and will be reviewing hopefully shortly is a mod called Amalgam, another Half-Life 2 mod. While the mod is not doing anything new, I do think it's quite enjoyable for what it is. Plus the voice acting isn't half-bad in this! I was going to talk about Logistique Act 1, but it's actually quite terrible so I won't be bothering with that in the future. Surprisingly, the game wouldn't boot properly on my last system, but now it works perfectly with this new machine. So yeah! This is a pretty decent mod from what I played of it and I'll hopefully talk more about it soon although I don't know if I can say anything really deep about it in the review.

Anyways, that's all I've been really doing. I'm also hoping to start Dread Templar tomorrow which ends up leaving Early Access finally so I'll have the full game at my hands. This year, I'm also hoping for Trepang2 to finally release whenever that is, as it's by far one of my most anticipated games this year (hopefully) and also, Phantom Fury I'm also kind of excited for as it's a sequel to the pretty good Ion Fury, but we'll see when that arrives so a replay of Ion Fury will have to be done soon. I'm just rambling at this point, but I'm excited for a number of releases this year. Forza Motorsport, Starfield, Redfall, Like a Dragon: Ishin, Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe, the Megaman Battle Network Collection, Diablo IV, Final Fantasy XVI, Suikoden 1 and 2's remasters and Warhammer 40K: Boltgun being some of my most anticipated titles this year. When I'll get to these titles if they release this year is uncertain, but I'm overall really hyped up. This looks to be an exciting gaming year.

Thanks for reading everyone! Just wanted to give a quick update on what's happening on my end. I'll talk with you all soon in hopefully a review of Amalgam!

-TheAutisticGamer

Amalgam
System: PC
Developer: Troiz
Publisher: Troiz, Valve
Genre: FPS, Old School Shooter, Half-Life 2 Mod
Completed in 1:05:50
Rating: 7/10



-Introduction-

Well, as promised I'm here again to talk about a mod I ended up finishing today! I will admit though, I do feel extremely conflicted whether I should put my rating lower down to a 6/10, but you'll see why in a second. But thankfully I have my PC back and can continue gaming on it while working on my writing projects, so lets not waste any more time and get down to the nitty gritty and talk about another Half-Life 2 mod that got released on Steam a couple years ago!

-Contract-

Amalgam is a Half-Life 2 Mod released on Steam officially. It is a short, 5 Level campaign you can complete in a little over an hour. You play as Gordon Freeman as the G-Man sends you to help the rebels in their fight against the combine yet again. The game has you destroying a communications relay the Combine has alongside destroying a Beacon in a Combine fortress. The game has custom voice acting and an original soundtrack. All the guns you'd expect from Half-Life 2 and it's episodes are here and play just as you would expect. There isn't much to say about this mod in general that's unique.

-Positives-

There are a couple of positives here. I'm not going to talk about gameplay as it's what you would expect from Half-Life 2, so that will be ignored since it's still fun.

-Amalgam goes for a gritty, desaturated look to it's graphics. Unlike most HL2 mods that are bright in imagery, Amalgam looks gloomy and gritty in a lot of it's interior scenes. This could be a criticism as this was a huge cliche back in the mid-late 2000's of having every level look like dull rust, with over exaggerated browns, greys and blacks, but this is actually quite a nice choice for the game as it stands out over most Half-Life 2 mods.

-Amalgam features an original soundtrack which is basically just dark ambience. I've always liked the music in the Half-Life games and the modder here has a good soundtrack overall. Just the style of music fits Half-Life so well and there are some really good battle tunes here and there.

-Surprisingly this mod features some really decent voice acting! The person playing the G-Man was excellent, I was literally fooled at the beginning thinking it was actually the real voice actor but no! It's just a community member voice him! The rebels also have some good voice acting as well and they do give it their best shot.

-One of the things about Amalgam is that the levels are interestingly designed. Unlike some mods where it has the most basic fights, the way levels are designed in Amalgam make for some intense fights. Combines were throwing grenades more frequently I noticed but I was unsure if this was just how their AI normally works since it's been a long time since I played Half-Life 2. There was also a moment where an energy ball was chasing me while I was being sniped at, so that was an interesting challenge to get through. Overall, it has some pretty decent levels.

-Negatives-

There is really only one negative I have with Amalgam, but it's the biggest one that detracts from a lot of the game.

-Amalgam is one of the most bare bones, basic, by the books mods I've ever played in the Half-Life 2 modding community. It does literally nothing new, doesn't take any risks, fails to be absolutely unique for most of it and feels like it's going through the motions. At points by the end I was thinking this mod was getting tiresome and stale because it was showing me nothing new that I haven't already seen before. It uses the same template of Gordon Freeman helping the rebels, pleasing G-Man with his work, fighting the Combine, completing the objective and then going back into stasis. You've seen this before because this is exactly what Half-Life 2 did. Despite me liking the mod, it felt like I was just not doing anything unique or cool. It's the biggest downfall of the mod. Never once did I truly feel excited or go "Hey, that's cool!" or smile. I forgot to mention, if I'm smiling while playing something or watching something, that means I'm having a great time and enjoying myself. This didn't do it.

-Final Verdict-

Amalgam overall, despite it's tiresome by the books nature is still a decent Half-Life 2 mod. It's inoffensive, it's not doing anything new, but if you want something familiar then it's an alright choice. However, there are so many better mods for Half-Life 2 and Half-Life in general. I can definitely recommend you some that I've enjoyed. First, look at Minerva: Metastasis, it's on Steam but it's good from what I remembered and did unique things with it's narrative. Next, Half-Life: CAGED which is a cool mix of Prison Escape and Neon Synth Soundtrack that is surprisingly fun to play. My biggest recommendation would be Half-Life: Echoes and Entropy: Zero 2 which I have to finish the latter, but Echoes is a fantastic mod for Half-Life 1 and Entropy: Zero 2 is a massive improvement to what I found to be a pretty unbearable mod altogether. If you are desperate for more and have already played those ones I mentioned, this isn't a terrible choice.

Thanks for reading again! I'll be back soon with some more stuff to talk about!

-TheAutisticGamer

Evacuation
System: PC
Developer: Evac Dev. Team
Publisher: SMRC, Valve
Genre: Half-Life 2 Mod, FPS, Old School Shooter
Rating: 8/10



-Introduction-

Welcome back! So a friend of mine on Steam a month ago told me about another Half-Life 2 mod that I didn't even know existed. I guess he noticed I'm into those types of games and decided to recommend me this knowing it would fit perfectly with my tastes. After playing this, I thanked him on his profile since he was right. It did fit with what I like! Today I'll be talking about Evacuation, a new Half-Life 2 mod that just recently came out last month and is by far one of my favorites I've played from this community in a long time. So, lets get to it right now!

-Contract-

Evacuation is a mod for Half-Life 2, focusing on a rebel soldier whose chopper has crashed and must find a way to get out of the forest he crashed in. You communicate with another rebel on a walkie-talkie who tells you your objectives. Compared to many other Half-Life 2 mods, the mod has had a face lift in terms of gameplay. The aside from having a the usual Half-Life 2 weapons also has a rifle which can be extremely powerful to use, changing up the gameplay alongside different feeling guns thanks to unique sound effects. The game has you fighting the usual zombies and combine, but also bandits. The game like tons of Half-Life 2 mods has some puzzles to solve. You can also heal with a first aid kit to give a good chunk of health back while you can only carry one weapon in your separate weapon slots at time.

-Positives-

With Evacuation, I can actually talk about the gameplay because there is enough difference to mention it!

-Evacuation does something great. It tweaks the weapons of Half-Life 2 and adds new ones in for good measure. You get an old rifle halfway through the game and it's a beast at long range. But the familiar guns also got a facelift. They're more powerful than ever before and feel great to use thanks to some new sound effects for them. There is also new animations for when you're walking and sprinting with the guns which is a nice touch. They've made Half-Life 2 a lot more fun thanks to this and the developers did a great job at this.

-The voice acting is also pretty decent for a Half-Life 2 mod. Many of these mods voice acting are terrible since it's usually the modders or their friends or the community voicing characters which isn't particularly good since they're so inexperienced with voice acting, but here you can tell everyone is giving an effort to do the best they can. The main voice actor has an Arnold Schwarzenegger thing going on making it fun to imagine yourself as a 80's/90's action hero which is great since the weapons are powerful. I will admit though, there is one moment where one of them screamed "DAMMIT!" and it peaked really loudly and it hurt my ears, but other than that, the voice acting is better than most mods.

-One of the interesting things they've added is the ability to pick up first aid kits and use them on yourself to heal a good chunk of health. This is actually quite a nice change, since if there's no armor anywhere and you're low on health, you'll easily have a couple of them to use on yourself which is always a good bet. It's something I wouldn't mind Valve incorporating when they eventually do get to Half-Life 3 after Half-Life: Alyx continued the story in some way. I mean, it's a great idea!

-The addition of bandits is also a cool idea. I love when modders give us lots of world building elements in Half-Life 2 mods to expand the universe of this series and although this is minor and is basically just a skin and AI change to the rebels, it's still a neat idea and adds some character to the mod itself.

-One of the best things however is the addition of a firing range. The firing range is one of the best things here since you can play it before the main mod and test out the new guns and see how they are. I loved this aspect, it takes note from later Sniper Elite games which is a huge plus since you get to play around with the new and updated batch of weapons here.

-Negatives-

Only a couple of minor negatives here, but they are issues I had personally.

-The biggest issue here is a part of a level which requires you to be on a lift while dodging a sniper and getting over there to kill him while the lift moves slowly. This sucks, since the lift is so small and you can easily get knocked off by one sniper bullet and kill yourself which is extremely cheap. If this was an open area like how Half-Life 2 does stuff like this, fine. But don't expect me to throw grenades at a sniper nest in this cramped zone above the ground which will result in my death. It's annoying, but it's the only issue I had with level design here.

-So you know how in every other Half-Life 2 mod you can carry two weapons in most slots like the base game? While, you can't here. You can only carry one gun at a time in each individual weapon slot. Why they did this I don't know, but this is a shortcoming I feel just destroys some of the experience. Why wouldn't you want to carry all the weapons? There's no reason not to. I never used the revolver in this because it wouldn't let me carry multiple weapons. The change is unnecessary and didn't need to exist.

-Just when the mod starts to get good, it ends abruptly. I know mods are very short but I would have loved to see this go on for at least 3 Hours since I was having so much fun in general with the mod.

-Final Verdict-

So yeah, Evacuation is a really good Half-Life 2 mod and is one of the best ones I've played recently. It's a breath of fresh air after playing a couple of samey and sometimes uninteresting and unoriginal mods that do nothing new. At least here, the developers tweaked everything in a good way for most of it and made it an enjoyable experience to play. I highly recommend it. It's on Steam for free and is really worth playing. But other than that, I have nothing else to say. Thanks everyone for reading again! I hope you do eventually give this one a try if you're into HL2 mods. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

-TheAutisticGamer

Dread Templar
System: PC
Developer: T19 Games
Publisher: Fulqrum Publishing
Genre: FPS, Boomer Shooter
Rating: 7/10



-Introduction-

Welcome back! I'm doing something a bit different today. Most of this review has been pre-written before going up, so I can avoid getting distracted when trying to write very long reviews like I usually do if something does happen. That way, it will be easier on my fingers (and my keyboard) so that I can just post the stuff I need to do and get it done quickly! However, the introduction and final verdict sections are actually being written in real time as I wanted to at least do some real writing before posting and just entirely copy and paste the entire thing. So hopefully this will be easier in future when writing reviews!

Oh? What's that you say? TAG completed another boomer shooter? Well, yes! Of course I did. Despite my problems with this market as I've stated in so many other reviews, I still want to see this sub genre succeed and do new things. Today's game does nothing new, but instead improves upon tons of things that it's peers did either successfully or not so much. We're talking about a shooter developed mostly by one person, a boomer shooter known as Dread Templar, formerly known as Hell Hunt! (Which I think is a much better title that actually gives a better idea of what this game is about) So lets get started by talking about this!

-Contract-

Dread Templar is a Boomer Shooter starring the titular main hero who goes into hell to fight off demons after joining a group in the midst of the death of his grandpa. The Templar at the beginning of every new episode will show information of how he came to be. The game has you fighting off demons and nightmarish creatures and bosses through five episodes. You get a solid array of guns, from pistols, SMGs, a shotgun and a super shotgun, a black bow, a trap launcher that stuns enemies, an explosive launcher, a powerful revolver and a gauntlet that is the equivalent of the BFG. You can dash and slow down time, although the dash requires a brief cooldown like the black bow (which can use 4 shots before needed to recharge) and you need to kill enemies to refill the gauge to slow down time again.

There is an upgrade system which is very diverse, needing blood gems in order to unlock certain sockets for weapons. These can change how fast the guns fire, how much ammo you can carry, how much damage it does, etc. You can stack up similar upgrades for a bigger boost as well. There are also golden upgrades which unlock more powerful versions of guns and can change the way the guns work in gameplay. At the end of every episode you fight bosses that will give you a good challenge. Two types of secrets can be found, regular and super, the latter being more harder and obscure to find. There are side areas you can go into as well in order to get better upgrades and more ammo and armor and health. The game has fixed save points and an autosave feature with no manual save, although there are plenty of save points throughout the game so it doesn't feel unfair at all.

-Positives-

Thankfully, Dread Templar comes with loads of pros thanks to it being very competent.

-The graphics in Dread Templar are some of the better I've seen in this sub genre. They don't just feel overly generic and without any personality and actually does a great job at replicating the design of early 3D Shooters like Quake. The levels in general look great and never become a sight for sore eyes. That said, even though it's not overly generic it's doing the copy and paste of other graphics styles of the past, something the Boomer Shooter market is guilty of, but we'll get to that when I get into the negatives.

-The game features probably the best weapon management I've ever seen in a Boomer Shooter. Every weapon is useful for one situation or another. The right click also makes you switch weapons for your pistols, SMGs, and two shotguns which is an absolutely helps thanks to the game's frantic speed. No gun goes to waste, unless you count the katanas which I found to be really useless in general for any combat situation late into the game.

-One of the best parts of the game is it's upgrade system. This might another thing it does better than a lot of shooters, even Doom Eternal. Not only is there's tons of upgrades, but they can also be stacked to double it's effects which is great. Also, it gives the player tons of choice to figure out how to deal with situations. If something not's working for you, try some different upgrades and see if that fits. I found myself changing a couple during the game when some situations were too rough.

-Dread Templar is another hardcore shooter in the style of Doom Eternal. This could have been another Turbo Overkill situation where they made the game overly difficult for no reason other than they thought it they should. But Dread Templar has great difficulty balance. Playing on Easy felt like playing I'm Too Young To Die on Doom Eternal and the game felt fast and challenging, but at the same time it didn't feel like they went overkill on how hard to make it.

-Speaking of which, the boss fights in this game are also very challenging. Thankfully, the game gives you enough supplies before you take on each boss which means you're always prepared if the worst happens. This is great game design! Refueling yourself before a challenging finale to the episode you're playing on.

-The side areas are also really fun. During the first three episodes most I found were combat oriented but in Episode 4 the side areas became much better. One involved having to use your pistols and bow in a mine cart you're in to stop from crashing (annoying at first but once you get it, it's really easy) and another involved moving up a slope as boulders were falling down. Still, the combat ones are not too bad and the rewards are worth it.

-This game also features a pretty kick ass soundtrack. It doesn't sound like generic metal mush and has some different styles of metal for each episode. Some involved Egyptian sounding metal while others involved pirate rock, all interesting with tons of personality.

-Negatives-

A lot of my negatives mostly are common criticisms of the boomer shooter sub genre in general.

-I'm very much a person who takes immersion seriously. If something is off, then it just takes me out of it. Unfortunately, the character sound effects are very inconsistent. Your jump has a higher pitched sound the Templar makes but when getting hit it's more deeper in pitch. I know this might sound like a nitpick but I honestly couldn't stand it most of the time as it's distracting and not consistent with even the Templar's real voice actor.

-Like all Boomer Shooters these days, the story is absolute hot garbage. It's trying so hard to be edgy and by that, it's what an emo goth teen thinks is edgy, or in this case, what the fanfic My Immortal thinks is edgy. It's so laughable yet annoying that the cut scenes are worth skipping because of this alone.

-And speaking of, the voice actor for the Templar is also awful. It sounds like Postal Dude if he was trying too hard to sound really cool and deep and edgy and meaningful. Geez, when are we going to get a boomer shooter with a half-decent story?!

-My only negative about any of the episodes was Episode 4. It was very easy compared to the first three as they just gave you tons of armor and put you in overly open areas where it felt like I was in no danger at all. Some tweaking could make this as challenging as the other levels.

-The game can be beat within six and a half to seven hours. This might be a positive since it's much more lengthier than the FPS Games I usually play, but I felt the game at the end overstayed it's welcome and I just wanted it to end at this point. Then again, this might not be a bad thing if people are really enjoying the game and are very into it. I would have preferred a sturdier 4-5 Hour Campaign that cuts down on some of the fat.

-I think my other problem here is that like so many of these boomer shooters, nothing here is original. It's taking things from different games and mostly improving upon everything those games did. That's fine, but I don't come here to play Boomer Shooters to be fed the same stuff over and over again. The reason I love games like DUSK, Ion Fury and Cultic is because I want new areas and worlds with unique aesthetics, I want to go on huge adventures shooting bad guys in exciting fights and I want to see things I haven't seen before. I think that's why now that I think about it, this game kind of falters after a while. But it's not a bad game at all because of this, but my rating would have gone up if it did something unique and new for this sub genre.

-Final Verdict-

So that's that! Dread Templar does bring up one of my main criticisms of the Boomer Shooter market: the fact that everything feels unoriginal and not unique. The game itself is decent, don't get me wrong. I enjoyed it and very much liked the improvements made to a lot of the mechanics seen in other games. But overall I never felt like I did when playing a much better Boomer Shooter recently, Cultic, which is by far one of the better Boomer Shooters I've played. Still, I hope more people look towards this game and take the mechanics here and implement some of them in other Boomer Shooters if it's right for them. I wouldn't mind seeing the upgrade system in the next Doom game (whenever that will be done) use Dread Templar's version of it.

Anyways, that's it for now. If you'll excuse me, I'll be checking out Steam Next Fest and seeing if there's any new Boomer Shooter demos that catch my eye. Thanks for reading everyone!

-TheAutisticGamer

Welcome back everyone! I'm still continuing contracts as usual, but it seems my appearance has changed since you last saw me. It seems I have awoken from being the furry little rodent (Biomutant) to a gunslinging dragonborn. I'm still getting used to it, but I'm continuing to do my best as I venture forth. It's been a while, so lets talk about some stuff that's been happening in my life, while also discussing another game I started!

So in reality, I ended up changing my profile picture and banner for Moving Forward. It again goes in with the theme of Dragons and Dragonborn, which I'm continuing to write in my Light of the Dragon-kin story template, which I have good news as well! So far, I've written 229 Pages total for the template. I might have mentioned I've been outlining in script form since it's easier for me to visualize things and so far, I'm on Part 4 of 6 of the template. The story is being split into 6 Parts, including a Prologue and Epilogue, so technically 8 Parts. But so far, I've written about 25 pages in the last couple of days. It's been insane, but not only that, I've also started to write another story in the meantime, one I've put off for two years.

I might have mentioned a character called Awesome Man and if I haven't, he's a Canadian on the Autistic Spectrum, who leads a band of misfits to take down the dystopian government of The Trout Empire and reunite with his sister Scarlet. It's a story I've been developing for the past decade and has gone through many changes, but overall I'm excited to continue writing it finally. The genre is hard to say, it's a mix of dystopian, urban fantasy, a modern day epic, action adventure, comedy, romance, science fiction, you name it. It's an odd blend of genres. I don't have a title for this novel yet, but I will eventually come up with one when I feel I got one right. It's one of my best story ideas which is why I kept it for so many years in the backburner. I've written around 2500 Words thus far for Chapter 1, so I'm very happy with it. Lets hope I stay that way considering I'm very critical of what I complete afterwards.

In terms of what's happening in my life, it's been okay. The blues of January are pretty much gone but there is still some stressful things happening. I'm on my last free counselling session on Wednesday and me and my counsellor are trying to to get more free sessions if I qualify, but if not, I'll be paying at a reduced fee to continue seeing them which is nice. Although I mistakenly thought it was a guarantee for more free sessions which is my fault, but it shouldn't be too much of a hurt on my wallet since I see them bi-weekly. I saw some of my friends on the weekend which was good, it was nice to see them again and I appreciated them helping me after a stressful day on Thursday. It was just a bad day altogether but the thing that scared me the most was some kids were smashing plates onto the ground when I was walking off the bridge back to my home and they were causing trouble. Literally thought I was in danger so I booked it to home immediately. I know, I'm kind of paranoid when going out but the thing is I feel mostly safe in Queensborough. Vancouver on the other hand, I try to stay away from as much as possible unless I really have to go there.

And on Saturday, I'm going on my three day binge to the Vancouver Fan Expo for the first time! I got a three day pass and I'll hopefully get a chance to meet Sean Astin of Lord of the Rings fame. I can't tell you how excited I am despite my fears of Vancouver. It's a good chance to go to some panels, see some famous people, look at some cool cosplay and look at other things as well. The voice actor for Ash Ketchum will be there, Matthew Lewis from Harry Potter will also be there as well alongside a couple other notable stars. So if there's anything notable, I'll do another post soon! Otherwise, life's been okay, but that's just how it's been for the last little while. My mental health is balanced and my new computer is keeping me occupied especially with writing.

Lets talk about the game I'm playing right now though, because I do have some things to say about it.



I'm taking a bit of a break from Biomutant, but right now before I start playing Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe next week, I'm starting Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends Definitive Edition. Setting up the controls was a bit of a pain in the ass since I realized pause was bound to nothing on the controller so I had to figure out how to do so (WHY IS IT F1!?) so after binding the keys to match more what Dynasty Warriors 8: Xtreme Legends is like on PC, I felt much more comfortable playing it. I do have my issues with how the stories and characters are presented though compared to DW8 (which I haven't completed yet) First off, the color grading is awful. It's like a Zack Snyder DC film and it looks murky and ugly. This goes into the tone of the game. The characters are more cynical than they were in DW8, but considering I'm just starting the game I'm not sure if that is just something that changes later on. It's also pretty humorless, although I did get some good smiles and laughs at points due to some awesomeness of seeing the characters again.

I'm playing as the Wei first since I do have a fondness for the characters like Cao Cao, Xiahou Dun, Xiahou Yuan and the others. Although I do enjoy the other characters as well especially when you get to the Shu characters like Liu Bei and the like. Gameplay is a bit... clunky? I mean, hitting enemies is smooth but movement while fighting just doesn't feel good. Not to mention the nightmare of having to set up my controls, having to continuously press F12 (the screenshot key on Steam) to remove my mistakes in my bindings and trying to find a good setup. So yeah, it's extremely convoluted when setting up controls in this game to a controller, but overall once I got that done I found myself eventually enjoying what I played so far. It's a Warriors Game! Of course I'm going to eventually like it. I love hack and slashing hundreds of enemies. Musou is my guilty pleasure genre. I'm not far in, probably under an hour in all honesty, but I will hopefully be continuing it if my motivation stays with me. Otherwise, I've just not had the motivation to play much recently. It's not a long game either, 10 Hours it says on the site for the main story, but we'll see how long it really is since I usually beat games under the average time. Especially when it comes to FPS Games.

Also, I want to thank you all for the results of recommending me games with Anthropomorphic Characters on my previous thread a while back! I'll be playing some of them including the Klonoa remasters, Frog Detective, New Super Lucky's Tale, Bugsnax, Bug Fables and Maneater just to name a few. I know it might seem out of the blue, but I wanted to cleanse my palette from playing so many games with human characters. Playing as animal/anthropomorphic characters always peaked my interest as you can do so much with them and make their move set or combat so interesting. Of course, I have the obvious ones on my list like Sonic Frontiers, Solasta: Crown of the Magister (Dragonborn DLC Pack), Ratchet and Clank 2016 and Rift Apart and Kitaria Fables, so hopefully I'll enjoy those too!

That's it though for the blog post. I won't be beating anything soon unless I somehow finish Kirby this month, but considering I'd only have about 4 Days to complete it in this month since it comes out on the 24th, I don't think that's happening especially with my motivation going towards my writing. But I wanted to give an update considering it's been a while and I wanted to tell you all how I'm doing. I'm always around checking out other posts, seeing what games people have completed, seeing other blogs and the like. Although I don't post too much on other blogs or threads nowadays, I'm always acknowledging this community and checking them out! Also, I got locked out of my Discord Account so I had to make a new account so I'll hopefully be back on Discord later to check out other people's posts there as well. I'll be under TheOfficialTAG once I get back on the Discord Group.

Thanks everyone! Hope you're doing well!

-TheAutisticGamer

Hello all! Thought I'd do another Moving Forward post considering I have some huge news. There's been tons of stuff that has been occurring over the week, a lot of it stressful but some of it really good. So before I get into any gaming stuff, lets talk about what's been happening with me recently this past week.

First off, some news about my experience at the Fan Expo in Vancouver. It did not go well at all. It turns out unsurprisingly, my fear of Vancouver, being in huge convention centers were you can barely move is stressful and not very fun! I only went on the first day and ended up not going the other two. So my stress level was high, especially because of some news I got on Friday which I will talk about in the next paragraph or so. So for the next few days, I ended up going to see the new MCU Film, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania which I surprisingly liked a lot considering my feelings towards Marvel nowadays and me leaning towards DC films. My mom's birthday was yesterday, so we had some Pizza and Cake to celebrate. I also gave her $200 to fund her trip to Harrison Hot Springs which she loves going to as her birthday present. My mom has also become a gamer in the past while! She's been playing tons of Animal Crossing on Switch which she is enjoying. She hasn't played any of the other games we got her yet, but I'm hoping she delves into them soon.

Now, onto the good news! I managed to get... *DRUM ROLL*... A Job Interview! Yes! Finally, I'm getting interviewed at Coquitlam Public Library this Friday but it's at a very early time so I'll have to wake up at 5:30 AM which I'm not used to. I was extremely nervous about this during the weekend, but after doing a mock/practice interview on Tuesday I can say I'm more confident and really am trying to be more determined. I seriously want this job considering this seems perfect. It will be a Page Position job, meaning sorting out library books. It's also two Skytrain Rides to Coquitlam where it's beside one of the stations. I really want to do my best so I'm going in with a good mindset and not trying to be as nervous as I was the past weekend about it. Wish me luck everyone!

In terms of writing, I wrote 3-4 more pages of the Light of the Dragon-kin Story Template while also finishing Chapter 1 of the Untitled Awesome Man Book, which I think I have a title for it. I'm probably going to end up calling it "The House of Hiroshi" for very specific reasons. Whether this will be an official name for this so called entourage the main character will work with is unknown at this point, but I'm very happy with what I wrote. However, I'm not very descriptive with environments since I like to focus on the story and characters and the actions they are doing which I feel is one of my weaknesses. I'll have to improve that eventually. Overall, Chapter 1 was around 5000 Words which is a good start!

That's all for life stuff. In terms of gaming, it's been a slow past week. I've not been very motivated to play anything at all, but I do have some things I'm still continuing. First, I'm not about 24-25 Hours into Biomutant. I'm not sure if I mentioned that in the last post but I am making more progress in the side quest side of things. But overall, lets talk about some other things as well.



Again am still playing Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends Definitive Edition and now I feel it's not seemingly as clunky as I thought it was. I'm getting very used to the gameplay which is a good sign. I'm still on the Wei storyline as I just literally played my second session today. But there's tons of things I still love in the story. This next bit of text is spoilers, so read at your own risk: Dian Wei's death at the hands of Jia Xu was probably my favorite part of the story thus far. Cao Cao has this badass scene after he defeats him saying he is going to force him to work with him and that if he is no use he'll kill him. I bet that shocked Xiahou Dun real good. It's one of the strongest character moments in the entire game so far besides the cutscene of the main Wei team just being together and Xu Zhu being happy.

Right now, I'm on the level where Cao Cao teams up with Liu Bei and friends to take down Lu Bu once and for all. Too bad it wasn't until DW8XL that we got to play as Lu Bu. But one things for sure. Lu Bu is much easier to defeat in battles in this game than it was in DW8XL. I'm on Beginner Difficulty so I can have that true power fantasy experience, but there were some surprisingly difficult areas in the level where Dian Wei dies. Still good stuff and it doesn't feel as cynical as I previously thought at the beginning of my playthrough.

Oh, and here's some other stuff I'm getting this week in terms of gaming:



I'm finally going to actually be playing my Switch for the first time since I replayed Kirby Star Allies to play Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe. I'm very excited about this one since I never played this game before on the Wii, so it will be a perfect opportunity to play the game on Switch with a Pro Controller. I've said many times that Kirby is my favorite Nintendo character and his games are perfect gateways into gaming for young gamers which is why they're all mostly easy. Kirby rules and I'm super hyped to pick up this game on Friday after the job interview. But that's not the only thing I'm picking up this week, because there is one other game I'm super hyped about.



I'm really looking forward to finally playing Like a Dragon: Ishin which is one of my most anticipated games of this year. It's been a while since I completed a Yakuza game but I'm just really excited about this one in general. After seeing the opening movie for it years ago, I knew this would be something I would have to play. And since Yakuza is now big in the west, we're finally getting the spin off games! This game sounds really dope, A Yakuza Samurai game? Of course I want to play it! I am really excited about playing this one, but I won't get to it until probably a couple of months later. Until I finish Biomutant or more likely when I finish DW7XL I will jump into this. Kirby will be the first thing on my plate next month and then we'll see what happens. Although I know I will be completing Ishin this year for sure because it's on my priority list.

That's all for now I guess. I'm very determined to ace this interview on Friday, so hopefully I will be able to get this job and finally start working again! Things are hopefully looking up for me this week so wish me all the best of luck! Thanks again for reading everyone! I won't post until the beginning of March, but I hope you guys had a great February. My heart believes I will get this job deep down, so I am going to try my absolute best to get it. See you all later!

-TheAutisticGamer

Hello all! Thought I'd do another Moving Forward post considering I have some huge news. There's been tons of stuff that has been occurring over the week, a lot of it stressful but some of it really good. So before I get into any gaming stuff, lets talk about what's been happening with me recently this past week.

First off, some news about my experience at the Fan Expo in Vancouver. It did not go well at all. It turns out unsurprisingly, my fear of Vancouver, being in huge convention centers were you can barely move is stressful and not very fun! I only went on the first day and ended up not going the other two. So my stress level was high, especially because of some news I got on Friday which I will talk about in the next paragraph or so. So for the next few days, I ended up going to see the new MCU Film, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania which I surprisingly liked a lot considering my feelings towards Marvel nowadays and me leaning towards DC films. My mom's birthday was yesterday, so we had some Pizza and Cake to celebrate. I also gave her $200 to fund her trip to Harrison Hot Springs which she loves going to as her birthday present. My mom has also become a gamer in the past while! She's been playing tons of Animal Crossing on Switch which she is enjoying. She hasn't played any of the other games we got her yet, but I'm hoping she delves into them soon.

Now, onto the good news! I managed to get... *DRUM ROLL*... A Job Interview! Yes! Finally, I'm getting interviewed at Coquitlam Public Library this Friday but it's at a very early time so I'll have to wake up at 5:30 AM which I'm not used to. I was extremely nervous about this during the weekend, but after doing a mock/practice interview on Tuesday I can say I'm more confident and really am trying to be more determined. I seriously want this job considering this seems perfect. It will be a Page Position job, meaning sorting out library books. It's also two Skytrain Rides to Coquitlam where it's beside one of the stations. I really want to do my best so I'm going in with a good mindset and not trying to be as nervous as I was the past weekend about it. Wish me luck everyone!

In terms of writing, I wrote 3-4 more pages of the Light of the Dragon-kin Story Template while also finishing Chapter 1 of the Untitled Awesome Man Book, which I think I have a title for it. I'm probably going to end up calling it "The House of Hiroshi" for very specific reasons. Whether this will be an official name for this so called entourage the main character will work with is unknown at this point, but I'm very happy with what I wrote. However, I'm not very descriptive with environments since I like to focus on the story and characters and the actions they are doing which I feel is one of my weaknesses. I'll have to improve that eventually. Overall, Chapter 1 was around 5000 Words which is a good start!

That's all for life stuff. In terms of gaming, it's been a slow past week. I've not been very motivated to play anything at all, but I do have some things I'm still continuing. First, I'm not about 24-25 Hours into Biomutant. I'm not sure if I mentioned that in the last post but I am making more progress in the side quest side of things. But overall, lets talk about some other things as well.



Again am still playing Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends Definitive Edition and now I feel it's not seemingly as clunky as I thought it was. I'm getting very used to the gameplay which is a good sign. I'm still on the Wei storyline as I just literally played my second session today. But there's tons of things I still love in the story. This next bit of text is spoilers, so read at your own risk: Dian Wei's death at the hands of Jia Xu was probably my favorite part of the story thus far. Cao Cao has this badass scene after he defeats him saying he is going to force him to work with him and that if he is no use he'll kill him. I bet that shocked Xiahou Dun real good. It's one of the strongest character moments in the entire game so far besides the cutscene of the main Wei team just being together and Xu Zhu being happy.

Right now, I'm on the level where Cao Cao teams up with Liu Bei and friends to take down Lu Bu once and for all. Too bad it wasn't until DW8XL that we got to play as Lu Bu. But one things for sure. Lu Bu is much easier to defeat in battles in this game than it was in DW8XL. I'm on Beginner Difficulty so I can have that true power fantasy experience, but there were some surprisingly difficult areas in the level where Dian Wei dies. Still good stuff and it doesn't feel as cynical as I previously thought at the beginning of my playthrough.

Oh, and here's some other stuff I'm getting this week in terms of gaming:



I'm finally going to actually be playing my Switch for the first time since I replayed Kirby Star Allies to play Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe. I'm very excited about this one since I never played this game before on the Wii, so it will be a perfect opportunity to play the game on Switch with a Pro Controller. I've said many times that Kirby is my favorite Nintendo character and his games are perfect gateways into gaming for young gamers which is why they're all mostly easy. Kirby rules and I'm super hyped to pick up this game on Friday after the job interview. But that's not the only thing I'm picking up this week, because there is one other game I'm super hyped about.



I'm really looking forward to finally playing Like a Dragon: Ishin which is one of my most anticipated games of this year. It's been a while since I completed a Yakuza game but I'm just really excited about this one in general. After seeing the opening movie for it years ago, I knew this would be something I would have to play. And since Yakuza is now big in the west, we're finally getting the spin off games! This game sounds really dope, A Yakuza Samurai game? Of course I want to play it! I am really excited about playing this one, but I won't get to it until probably a couple of months later. Until I finish Biomutant or more likely when I finish DW7XL I will jump into this. Kirby will be the first thing on my plate next month and then we'll see what happens. Although I know I will be completing Ishin this year for sure because it's on my priority list.

That's all for now I guess. I'm very determined to ace this interview on Friday, so hopefully I will be able to get this job and finally start working again! Things are hopefully looking up for me this week so wish me all the best of luck! Thanks again for reading everyone! I won't post until the beginning of March, but I hope you guys had a great February. My heart believes I will get this job deep down, so I am going to try my absolute best to get it. See you all later!

-TheAutisticGamer

I actually need to start playing the Dynasty Warriors games. Who knows, I might do a crazy binge of them at some stage in the future o.O

I actually need to start playing the Dynasty Warriors games. Who knows, I might do a crazy binge of them at some stage in the future o.O

I've only beaten one of them, mainly Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition. It was a good one, but I do want to eventually complete DW8XL and DW7XL as well later on. I ended up switching games yet again because Kirby came out and Half-Life 2 replay is also happening right now, but Dynasty Warriors is a great series. Warriors in general is a lot of fun! Maybe if I'm committed I'll finish up DW8XL on Switch. It doesn't have the end HOTEI song when you complete the stories in that version on Switch, but playing while I'm lying down on the couch or in bed is a convenience.

There's tons of Warriors games so I don't know where you should start, but if you like anime I would recommend One Piece Pirate Warriors 3. For Dynasty Warriors, DW8XL (Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Complete Edition), For Samurai Warriors, Samurai Warriors 4 or 4-II (They're the same game basically but 4-II has more content), the Nintendo based ones I'd recommend Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition. I didn't care much for Fire Emblem Warriors due to the absolutely garbage writing which even with Japanese Voices doesn't help too much and it yet again is the thousandth Warriors game recently where it's a giant crossover with other characters in said IP (which has become a cliche in that series I don't care for too much, but Warriors All Stars seems very interesting regardless of that due to it's bizarre premise) As for the other games, I didn't try much of the Berserk one and Dragon Quest Heroes I'd recommend when you're more experienced with the Warriors series in general, and I don't know about Warriors Orochi at all or the Empires subseries, but there's plenty to choose from.

Definitely give them a shot! Hopefully you'll play them soon as they're great mindless fun.

Welcome back! Boy do I have some great news for you guys as well as some other gaming stuff as well. I want to get right into it because holy crap I didn't expect this. So a couple Fridays ago, I went for a Job Interview at Coquitlam Public Library which is very easy to get to and is literally across the street from one of the Skytrain stations. I thought I did great but there were so many people looking to get this job so I wasn't sure if I was going to get it at all. I had to wait until Thursday, which was actually last Friday in order to figure out if I got it.

Lets just say I'M NOT UNEMPLOYED ANYMORE!!! WOOOO!!!!!

I ended up getting the job! I was shocked but I've been so happy recently which is great. This is easily the best thing that's happened to me in a long time. I'm starting work on the 15th of March, so next Wednesday, but holy shit am I in such a good mood right now. I'm doing fantastic and I wanted to share it with you all. My job will be as a page position, so assorting books. It's part time, 8 Hours a week and Two Shifts to start with (maybe more shifts as I go along) and since I work for the City the pay is REALLY good from what I hear. So I'm really excited to finally be working again as it will be good for me and my writing in general.

Another good thing is that I am going to continue counselling tomorrow as well. I'm doing it at a reduced rate which is nice since all my free sessions have basically came and went, but I'm just happy to have a great counsellor who understands me. I always look forward to talking with them, so it's really great that I'm continuing to do so. Other than that, on Tuesday I was kind of hungover because I was with some friends and we went out to a pub where I somehow got a free drink by accident, so I was sipping both on a Bourbon Cocktail and this really great beer and then we went to another pub like place and got shots, so even though I drank lots of water afterwards I got up VERY late unfortunately. I don't drink much because I'm on medication, but I think this was the most I had to drink in a while. I didn't even finish my beer there as I stopped halfway. But yeah, that was a bit not great, but seeing my friends again really was nice.

Anyways, I don't have much else to say that's happening in life right now. My story template for the novel Light of the Dragon-kin has reached over 260 pages, so that's good. I'm like 2/3 done writing it, so I'm hoping to get it done either by the end of this month or in April. I don't know what will happen, but then It'll be off to writing the novel (AKA Story Draft 4). I found I made a crucial mistake regarding one character's gender preference, as it turns out "She" was actually a "They" (for those unaware, these characters are based off D&D creations my friends and I made) I realized when my friends told me when I went out with them and I felt super embarrassed by it considering I forgot this, but I will be correcting this mistake in the Novel Draft AKA Story Draft 4. The character will definitely have a bit of an overhaul in the next draft.

Lets talk about games shall we? Because I have lots to talk about!



I'm now 28 Hours into Biomutant! I actually have been doing some main story stuff finally since there's very little side quests I need to do now, but I realized something really shocking. This is kind of spoiler related, so I'll keep the spoilers tagged here: There is a spaceship called the Ark and apparently at the end of the game once you've saved or destroyed the Tree of Life, you actually leave the planet to start a new life somewhere. This will be sad when I get to it, considering I love the world of Biomutant so much, but I ended up choosing 4 Ark members to come and join me. Some declined but the ones I picked were good choices, especially Mito who is by far the best candidate to go on the Ark. I should have chosen Nova but I didn't find her until after I had chosen the Ark Candidates, so oh well. So that's some of the stuff I was doing. Apparently, the next big main story mission is to defeat Lupa Lupin, the guy that killed your family and destroyed your home. But I don't think the game ends there at all considering 1: I have to defeat all the world eaters still and 2: There's tribe conquest stuff that still needs to be completed. Not to mention I had to check if this was the end of the game, but apparently it's not.

Right now, I'm trying to focus on Lobo's quest since it allows me to finally fly over to the Northern Islands covered by a sea of oil via a blimp, so that should be useful. And I was doing some tribe conquest stuff on the side as well as defeating World Eater 2, which was annoying in his first phase but his second and final phase wasn't bad. Thank god for the Automaton Health Injector! So I'll half and half focus on main story, tribe conquest and side stuff, so we'll see how it goes. I'm nearly 30 Hours into the game and unfortunately the game I think is starting to break a bit. Battle music wouldn't play at points and would just play the ambient relaxing music while exploring, so I had to exit out and go back in to fix it. But on the other hand, the mutation customization finally works after 28 Hours when it didn't before! I also got loads of trophies on my last session, so I'm very happy about that. It's still going strong and I might actually be able to finish it by the end of the month if I keep this up.



I've also been playing Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe! I'm really enjoying the game so far as it's Classic Kirby action at it's finest. So far, I'm on the second half of the game, mainly focusing on Magolor's home world which I have yet to start, but even then I have to also play the Epilogue after I finish the main game, so a review won't be coming out until I do that, but this is really good. I was so happy to see this game runs at 60 FPS which compared to other mainline Kirby games was so refreshing to see. It makes the action so much smoother. I also am finding this game to be WAY more difficult than other Kirby games. This isn't an issue, but it definitely was a surprise and took me a while to adjust to it. It feels like I keep getting hit more, but I don't know if that's because I'm just bad or the game is actually more challenging, but most of the time I'm at half health and trying to search for food items. I'm just very happy with it so far. The game runs great, it's beautiful looking, the game design is smart, especially when players know when to swap abilities to get Energy Spheres, it's really great! A review of this will be coming soon so stay tuned! I will be finishing it this month so stick around.



Last but not least, I'm replaying Half-Life 2 for the first time in about 4 or so years. My former reaction to the game shockingly was that it was completely overrated and the first Half-Life is a much better game. Now? I don't really think that, but I still think the first Half-Life I prefer more due to nostalgia reasons since I don't often play Half-Life 2 as much. Actually, I'm beginning to see why Half-Life 2 is really DAMN good. With me taking my time to play it, there's tons of things I love. No game looked like this in 2004 and Source is one of the best game engines still to this day. The weapon management is better all around and the level design is excellent. Like, there's just moments where you can walk off the beaten path and go into houses and caves and other minor areas to explore them briefly, like it makes going through the game that much more interesting! So there's tons of stuff I like, especially playing with the Gravity Gun more often than I did on previous playthroughs.

I do have issues though. I'm not liking Highway 17 too much. I like the idea but the execution is all over the place. I FREAKING HATE ANTLIONS JESUS CHRIST! I also think while the characters are likeable they don't have much depth I feel and in all honesty compared to some of the side characters in Halo during this time I feel the writing for some of them could be better. I do love Father Grigori though, he rules. I'm really enjoying it and I will be going on a binge through the Episodes afterwards, so we'll see how those hold up. But I'm glad I really am taking my time to play it again, I guess I was wrong! Although I do feel in terms of just immersion Half-Life is the superior game, but that doesn't mean this game ain't immersive at all!

Anyways, that's all for now. Wanted to take my time writing this as there's tons of stuff happening right now in terms of my life and gaming. But again, thanks for reading and I'll be back with some more posts soon! Hopefully my review of Kirby will come out either next week or the week after, but I'll honestly have to see especially if I end up beating Half-Life 2 again earlier if that happens.

-TheAutisticGamer

AN UPDATE!

Hey everyone, this week will be insanely busy for me so I might not be able to do another Moving Forward post until the week is over. I just wanted to let you know that progress in much of my games has become stagnant but another Moving Forward Post will be coming! With work and counselling and all this stuff happening this week there's not much I can post, but I will be posting again soon. I just wanted to quickly mention I'm playing Medal of Honor (2010) which didn't start off on a good note but ended up surprising me with it's slower gameplay for a mainstream military shooter. I will talk more about that later though! Hope you're all doing well!

-TheAutisticGamer

My Journey Through Biomutant (Thus Far)

Hello everyone! I thought I'd give you a new little post since the busy week is done! So as you know, I've been playing a game that I got from PS Plus back in December and I now have around 31 or so hours on it. You've heard me talk about it some, but I wanted to give you a look at my Journey through this game because the game has a fantastic photo mode that I absolutely love using. That game is Biomutant!

Before I get to the photos, you might ask what this game is. Well, it's an Open World Action RPG set in a world of anthropomorphic animals after pollution mutated them into humanoid beings. It's a mix of gun and melee combat, a save the world story, gorgeous visuals and excellent crafting. This game has been kind of an addiction for the last little while and I'm not nearly done it. I might have thought so before, but then I realized there was lots more to play still, including finishing the Tribe Conquest stuff and killing the other two World Eaters.

I'm in love with this game, although it's not perfect. But I have been heavily enjoying the game for since December and have fallen in love with the vast gorgeous world, relaxing music, incredibly fun combat, amazing and easy crafting and exploring this world that needs saving. These photos have all been taken in the game's photo mode, so I hope you enjoy seeing what I have cooked up so far on my journey!



I started off with taking a photo on my old mount against the sunset. Always a good opportunity to take beautiful photos.



This one is one of my lesser photos, but I did think it was good enough to add to the collection.



Another sunset photo. I really do love taking these types of photos in this game.



My character in combat. I have a couple photos like this, but this one is probably the least impressive of the bunch.



Thought this was one of the prettier photos I took. Especially with the blossoms in the tree.



This combat photo is better than the last one I took, but overall I think the ones I took later on are much better.



Was my desktop background for a while, but I thought it would be impressive to show the scale of your character from this giant lighthouse.



This is easily one of my favorite photos I took. I love the sinister dark look to everything here.



Praying to Alters is a big thing in this game, but this is the only photo I managed to take of this.



Now this is easily one of my favorite combat images I took. Especially with how good the Anti Heat suit on my character looks.



The most action packed photo I took during this game. Thought it was one of the best photos I have.



This is my current Gear Setup. I love just running through this world.



And we'll wrap up with this awesome image after doing side quests for these Aurora Alters. Now that is a sight to behold!

I took 20 Photos in total, but overall I left out some because I don't want this post to be clogged to the brim. So that's all you're going to get for now! Overall, I'm still loving this game and will continue playing it tonight. I hope you all were intrigued by the photos I took and hopefully I gave a good demonstration of how gorgeous this game looks considering it's a Team of 20 or so people who made it. A Moving Forward Post will hopefully be coming soon! Thanks everyone for stopping by!

-TheAutisticGamer