Ramblings and Reflections

[roarrrgame]

It was so nice finding an extra copy of the original The Outer Worlds in my Steam library when it was only promised the other way around (free upgrade for original version), but of course gaming discourse was going to ruin it…

Also proves why Steam is still the superior storefront across all platforms, despite its persisting nazi and gambling problems.

But also I realised they aren't offering the soundtrack for the first game anymore, probably a rights issue. I got it on GOG along with the now delisted original game in the “Non-Mandatory Corporate-Sponsored Bundle” lol.

[roarrrgame]

Another episode of what in 40K looks gay to me, is the Ork Kommandos.

They could be biker gang boys, or they could be straight out of gay fetish porn.

Comms boy (last pic) looks like he's in charge of CBT

Using Joytoy’s photos because they did a great job recreating the minis. Hope they make more of different factions instead of just more SM (erm cool abbreviation for the occasion)

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Can’t believe I bought my Steam Deck OLED 1TB on a whim early this year - 4 years after release, and now that looks like a better decision every day.

I just thought I couldn't wait for the Steam Machine with their delays due to the GPU crisis. Now the Steam Machine will likely not be worth getting anymore considering its low specs.

Meanwhile, I have £200 sitting in my Steam account but have no new games I want to buy, while the games I’m waiting for have 5-10 years between announcement and launch, and then 1-2 additional years until they fix the bugs and balances and release a couple of DLCs.

So I'm just putting in hundreds of hours into some low cost low production value spreadsheet sims - you can even pirate them easily, but now it costs upwards of a thousand to own a machine to play them on.

Glad plastics are cheap so I can keep buying overpriced Warhammer minis at the same price point lol. Might even play games with people irl at this rate.

[roarrrgame]

Young Bond will never have as much rizz as Michael Thorton 🥵

[roarrrgame]

Got a JoyToy artist-proof Space Marine but realised it was so much smaller (12.8 cm) than my McFarlane artist-proof collection of a commissar, 2 guardsmen, a battle sister, and 3 Ultramarines (measured at ~18.5 cm).

A normal McFarlane Space Marine (7” scale) is roughly the same height as JoyToy’s Guilliman (6” scale), for reference. The weight is even greater. That was also the main reason why I returned a JoyToy Guilliman. Another reason was that the make of the Guilliman was not even near the quality of JoyToy’s 4.0 line, such as their Collector’s Edition Titus which I fortunately own. But mostly, I just thought it would be so awkward if my Guilliman was the same size as a normal Astarte.

Back to the topic, since I thought this little guy couldn’t join my collection, I decided I’d have fun with its paint job. I researched pride flag themes but eventually arrived at the canon faction of the Rainbow Warriors and happily went down a rabbit hole.

In short, I believe the Rainbow Warriors were inspired by the bombing of Greenpeace’s ship Rainbow Warrior, in an attempt by the French intelligence to stop Greenpeace’s protest against French nuclear bomb testing in the South Pacific.

You can learn more about the Rainbow Warriors of 40K from this video by Louise at Rogue Hobbies and her paint job (pic 1) is going to be my main reference.

These are excellent sources to learn more about the 1985 event:

- Attack on Greenpeace: France’s Nuclear Bomb (Ep 1) & (Ep 2) by The Rest is Classified

- BBC’s Docuseries Murder in the Pacific (2023)

I've only just started painting this one so I only have a photo of the disassembled figure to show (pic 2) (small note, the upper leg armour pieces could also be taken off, I later found), but hopefully I can post more photos later - if my ADHD brain could keep it together and not start a new project when I'm 85% finished with it.

[roarrrgame]

A detail in Duty Calls that I think says a lot about Ciaphas Cain’s inner workings is that Cain says when he rides transport for the Astartes (I forgot the specific vehicle type), he always feels a bit self-conscious because the seats are too tall for him.

But, in earlier volumes Amberley noted Ciaphas was just under 2 metres tall (like volleyball player height for other sports nerds)! He knows he always sticks out like a sore thumb when he’s with normal humans! Yet he still can’t help but compare himself to the genetically-altered warriors specifically known for their sizes.

However, what works so well for Cain is that he never makes his self-doubt a problem for others nor does he express it in a destructive way. Most notably his anxiety seems to make him more attentive to others. It’s very sweet that he not only understands Jurgen better than others and accommodates the way he works, he also always keeps note of how Jurgen’s doing wherever they go to make sure he’s comfortable.

[roarrrgame]

Omg just started Death or Glory. Cain’s portrayal on this cover looks so homoerotic. Like did his sleeves just get conveniently torn off to let out his impossibly large arms? Why can I see his armpit hair so clearly?

You tell me it doesn’t have a Tom of Finland aesthetic

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Finished my 4th Ciaphas Cain book The Traitor’s Hand, and at so many points I was rolling on the ground laughing. One detail I remember is when Cain repeatedly dreamed of Amberley, and in one of those dreams, Amberley was unfaithful to Ciaphas? Jurgen in the dream asked him about it, and Cain shut him down: “She can do whatever she wants she’s an Inquisitor.”

I found it so funny the reason Cain gave for giving dream “Amberley” a pass was that she was an Inquisitor - like her Emperor bestowed authorities included sleeping around as she saw fit. Or the implication was she had so much power by the Inquisition that Ciaphas wouldn’t dare think of doing shit about it 😂

Btw I cannot fucking believe the very first search result I got from Googling Amberley Vail was some Reddit post asking if she actually liked Ciaphas 🤣 No she was totally sleeping with him to get close to Jergen.

Oh nevermind below this someone also asked if Amberley and Ciaphas actually slept together. Leave it to Redditors to not be able to read any social situations while simultaneously being able to produce a 1000-word analysis of someone’s “body language” from a 3-second clip/interaction.

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Saw the update announcements for The Outer Worlds SCE on Steam - did Obsidian regain control of the game? I thought they didn’t have the rights. Don’t wanna read gaming news because of all the rage baits, but I’m assuming they/MS bought the game when Private Division’s assets were being sold.

Also I have the old version on GOG and Spacer’s Choice on Steam, so now I’m gonna have 3 copies of the game. Good for me, I guess? Haha.

[roarrrgame]

I honestly think that Action RPGs having a very large audience, many from non-RPG backgrounds, is one reason why they receive so much scrutiny from the gaming community.

RPGs are my favourite so I play an equal number of CRPGs and ARPGs and man the attention these ARPGs get is insane - everyone wants to chime in when an ARPG from a larger studio is mentioned - I don't even know if these people have played the game or not but everyone seems to have a strong opinion on the game and the opinion is often so generic and repetitive.

CRPGs of in my opinion, similar calibre just fly under the radar and receive much less scrutiny for similar issues/popular gripes, and many incredible CRPGs get no mention from the mainstream compared to ARPGs from the same era. CRPG fans usually only have praise for good CRPGs while mainstream gamers tend to express that they are boring and they can't get into them.

When the beta for The Expanse game opened, my YT front page was full of hours-long reviews of the 2-hour (?) beta for a couple of days. People seemed to overfocus on the albeit legitimate problems it had while not putting it into context that it’s just a beta which for Owlcat games is probably 2 years before the game fully matures.

I think Rogue Trader is the best WH40K game so far, and I'm often shocked and saddened by how little traction it gets from the general gaming population (I’m equally shocked how much more attention Space Marine 2 gets it’s pretty generic imo). If the studio you follow usually puts out this type of narrative focused games, it’s always jarring how much more engagement their more actiony games would suddenly get. This is why studios want to tap into this market, but the move also means a lot more headaches in this post-Epstein-4chan-Gamergate-grifter climate.

Anyways, I’ve finally started WotR after letting it gather dust in my library for years, and I'll just happily immerse myself in it as I patiently wait for the next Rogue Trader DLCs and several other games. I'll most likely play The Expanse at launch anyway unless Zafar turns out to be non-romancible lol.

[roarrrgame]

The Steam Controller is going to feature TMR sticks - the only thing I have complaints about regarding the Steam Deck controller.

Someone also said it’s large - which is great news considering most third-party controllers these days are tiny as fuck and have bad ergonomics.

Now the only thing I want to know is the price. I feel like it’s gonna be around £80 but maybe cheaper, down to around £60 since logistics is a bit simpler for them selling directly from their website?

But if it’s aiming at being a pro controller it’s gonna be at least £100 at which point I don't know how many they’ll sell, but Steam products are always gonna be niche anyway.

[roarrrgame]

The Steam Controller is leaked to be $99 so probably £90 after tax. Idk man I have 2 almost new premium controllers and I play on my Steam Deck undocked most of the time nowadays. Might only get it after a while when there’s a promotion for special editions or discount.

[roarrrgame]

£85 as announced. Even if I didn’t have 2 premium controllers already, I still might not get it at launch because:

A rant about the upcoming Steam Controller lol

1. I only use the touch pads on my Steam Deck as a mouse and I can just use my Bluetooth mouse to play k&m games.

2. The premium controller alternatives from those Chinese brands are more competitive price-wise for having similar features and great word of mouth. On the other hand, I was very disappointed by the build quality of the controller components on my SD OLED — the plastics felt cheap and a poor modelling job resulted in many parts being misaligned marginally - I had to sand down part of the back plate to get one trigger stop getting scratched by it.

The new controller is gonna have TMR sticks and possibly other higher-quality components, but those Chinese controllers are right there and have proven quality for their costs.

The Steam Controller is also gonna be easy for modding/repair but based on how much controllers evolve every year, I would expect a new controller to be problem-free for at least several years before I replace it with a new-gen one with better functionality. I don't have that confidence in the Steam Controller. I'm already planning on changing the triggers on my Steam Deck because both have become wobbly after half a year of use.

There are also other issues like incompatibilities with consoles, Windows OS and other PC storefronts (playing GOG games is gonna be so inconvenient). My Vader 4 Pro has all its functionalities intact on most systems through different input options. Without getting deep into the technical aspects, I can say it's not gonna be the case for the Steam Controller at all.

I do love Linux and controllers and innovation, and I don't like some of the business practices and even designs of the Chinese brands. But I feel like Valve is just trying to corner the PC gaming market even more and is putting out a “default” PC controller like how you'd usually just grab an Xbox controller for console and PC gaming if you didn't know anything about controllers. Nothing game-changing but an expanding-their-monopoly move is what I'm guessing.

[roarrrgame]

The Steam Controller is going to feature TMR sticks - the only thing I have complaints about regarding the Steam Deck controller.

Someone also said it’s large - which is great news considering most third-party controllers these days are tiny as fuck and have bad ergonomics.

Now the only thing I want to know is the price. I feel like it’s gonna be around £80 but maybe cheaper, down to around £60 since logistics is a bit simpler for them selling directly from their website?

But if it’s aiming at being a pro controller it’s gonna be at least £100 at which point I don't know how many they’ll sell, but Steam products are always gonna be niche anyway.

[roarrrgame]

The Steam Controller is leaked to be $99 so probably £90 after tax. Idk man I have 2 almost new premium controllers and I play on my Steam Deck undocked most of the time nowadays. Might only get it after a while when there’s a promotion for special editions or discount.

[roarrrgame]

The Steam Controller is going to feature TMR sticks - the only thing I have complaints about regarding the Steam Deck controller.

Someone also said it’s large - which is great news considering most third-party controllers these days are tiny as fuck and have bad ergonomics.

Now the only thing I want to know is the price. I feel like it’s gonna be around £80 but maybe cheaper, down to around £60 since logistics is a bit simpler for them selling directly from their website?

But if it’s aiming at being a pro controller it’s gonna be at least £100 at which point I don't know how many they’ll sell, but Steam products are always gonna be niche anyway.

[roarrrgame]

It's probably a trend outside of gaming too, but I've noticed besides the fact that a lot of games are treating 1.0 as early access nowadays, gaming consoles and accessories also seem to release an updated version with hardware problem fixes months to a couple years after the initial new gen launch.

I preordered the Flydigi Vader 5 Pro at launch but it had some glaring issues which their customer service refused to admit, so I refunded it. Now apparently they have stealthily updated the launch version with adjustments to its designs because of problems such as the ones I had.

I guess it’s a reminder to self to probably not buy the new Steam Controller at launch, because based on the build quality of the Steam Deck OLED, they might make slight adjustments to later batches too, even though they are more reliable than Flydigi.

[roarrrgame]

For my second playthrough of Rogue Trader, I chose to play a commissar who does politics more than battle and whose loyalty to the Emperor is mostly performative.

She hides behind her retinue and barriers during combat but emerges to take the final shot when they have the win halfway in their pocket.

Probably what Ciaphas Cain thinks he is.

The At All Cost ability is fucking fantastic and adds so much roleplaying fun to it. Basically you shoot one of your own with your pistol and that character or all other characters get buff depending on whether they go down following the shot or not.

When I learned about it in the beginning I was ecstatic, because that’s the most hilarious in-character gameplay feature, and I knew exactly who the tank was in my last playthrough who never went down and could now fulfil my roleplaying wishes/power fantasy.

So every combat I shoot Abelard in the back the first thing.

He would shout: “Where did you learn to fight like this?!”

I'm like: “At the commissarial school of course 😝😎”

Oh and I also have a crush on Abelard so that spices things up..

[roarrrgame]

My cousin (gamer) mentioned Pragmata with me and said the little girl had long wavy hair just like I have 💀

I know he is just woefully unaware of social dynamics at large, but god I hope this game turns out to be normal and invites conversation about healthy human relationships above anything else

[roarrrgame]

Got some artist-proof McFarlane 40K models and some cheap paints and got addicted to painting figures lol. You can put so much detail on the McFarlane ones because of their size, even though all they did was copy the original miniatures and made them 7 inches.

I want the GW Hell’s Last miniature set once I'm confident in my painting skills. What's next, finding a table and playing the tabletop game? Am I going to evolve into a sweaty Warhammer player, one of the final forms of a nerd?