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Everything posted by Alyxx Thorne
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Wish granted but it only dispenses unhealthy and highly caloric junk food, making you gain an insane amount of weight from using it. I wish we didn't have winters... <_<
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Lover of seducers
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Seduced Virgin
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The Remove-One-Letter-From-A-Title Thread
Alyxx Thorne replied to danielsangeo's topic in Forum Games
Bobshell Bob lives in a shell. -
Sequel that gets undeserved hate (I legit didn't find it that bad) Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
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6/10 Not gonna badmouth Lemmy. But Ace of Spades is better. qjWUIJ57WA4
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Granted but since i have no idea what the heck a Strelok is, I just put you in a silly latex costume and give you the power to look through women's clothing. I wish alcohol wasn't poisonous
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My dolls. I took them for walks and treated them like real babies. Shame I've never become a real mother. Repeat
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Gatherer of hentai
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Bad news: Socialism takes its place. Good news: Global warming is not a man made problem. In reality it's just all the cows in India farting too much.
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2908 - Alyxx is chosen as the mother of the human species
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During the development of Duke Nukem Forever, the creators came up with this idea of a female counterpart to Duke Nukem. A badass chick who could hold her own against the alien forces and join forces with the king to wipe them out. The idea unfortunately ended up being scrapped due to... reasons that are frankly unknown to me, even though I could guess it had something to do with it just not fitting for the game which ended up being entirely centered on Duke, so it wouldn't make much sense to have a secondary hero character steal his thunder. But when publisher 3D Realms and developer Interceptor Entertainment (now known as Slipgate Studios following a name change after the release of this game) were working on a Duke Nukem action RPG, and ended up in a legal battle with Gearbox Software, they lost the chance to make a Duke Nukem action RPG. However, from the ashes of this legal battle arose a new chance to bring this female badass, from deep within Duke Nukem Forever's endless vaults of cut content, to the front of her own game, and finally give her a franchise of her own. The end result is Bombshell, a top down isometric shooter RPG. And here are my thoughts on it. The 2015 reveal trailer featured an early draft of the character that left a bad taste in most people's mouths. Unfortunately I actually kinda liked it. In 2015, 3D Realms published a reveal trailer of their new game in development. The trailer featured a scantily clad female with a robot arm and a black sidecut hair that would make Skrillex jealous, drinking whiskey before grabbing a shotgun and getting on a bike. It encapsulated perfectly what the game was about but received a fair bit of backlash for its lackluster graphical fidelity and sexualized protagonist. And while I personally liked it and got hyped from it, I could see where people were coming from. Luckily, the trailer wasn't really representative of what was to come. Because Bombshell isn't really a game in the same league as Duke Nukem 3D or even Duke Nukem Forever if you ask me. While Shelly is clearly a badass protagonist, she feels entirely different as a character and never really ends up feeling like a simple genderswapped Duke Nukem. The first thing I've really noticed about Bombshell is that it kinda takes itself seriously. The story feels like something out of a b-movie of course. The president (who is a female in this game) is kidnapped by a cyborg villain known as Doctor Jadus Heskel (totally not Doctor Proton) and a badass chick with a robot arm goes on an intergalactic trip to an alien homeworld to save her. But it's not really played up in any way that makes it self-aware or self-referencing, as most of it is taken really seriously and most of the humor is kind of tucked away in the form of one-liners and references. And this is why it feels really different from a Duke Nukem game. Because while on paper the setup feels almost like a perfect setup for a Duke Nukem game, where a Duke Nukem game wouldn't really take itself TOO seriously, Bombshell goes for a very serious tone despite the somewhat ludicrous premise. For instance, Duke Nukem Forever did take itself somewhat seriously in terms of story but it never expected the player to take it seriously and always assumed the player would be in on the joke and understand that this was never meant to be taken seriously and that it was all in good fun. Bombshell completely lacks that self-awareness and thus always expects the player to not only take the story seriously but also be invested in it. The main problem with the story though is that it's not really written well enough to draw you into it and expects a little too much from the player to be invested in it. And it lacks enough humor to really offset the amount of seriousness. Most of the humor in Bombshell is derived from stuff like naming a weapon "Ion Maiden" (cause Iron Maiden... get it?) or "PMS" (which is basically on par with naming a town Morningwood). Or making a random NPC sound like a horrible impersonation of Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's never really humor that fully lands for me and while I can get a chuckle out of a few lines here and there, I would never really call the game comedic in tone, just kind of witty at times, and it kind of makes stuff like the weapon names feel a little out of place. You thought Duke Nukem Forever had a confused tone? This game struggles to even get a confused tone, it's a straight up disconnection between what you see on screen and what the game's story is doing. The final design of Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison pretty much nails who the character is meant to be. A serious and badass female with a robot arm and a zero bullshit tolerance. The game looks rather gorgeous though, especially for what is essentially an indie title. Interceptor is a fairly small development team, and they all work from different parts of the world, making it more of a virtual dev team than a physical one, which may explain a few things but we'll get back to that later. All of the levels in the game feel distinct from one another, with each sporting its own colour space and mood, ranging from a level over a deep underground lava pit, to a frozen ice level, to an industrial level with tons of awesome imagery. While none of the levels really end up feeling that original, they definitely all feel distinct enough to make clear and proper "chapters" in the game. I also rather like the cutscenes that are all done in-engine and feature some very cool animation. It's a huge step up from the comic book style cutscenes that most indie titles seem to do nowadays (even Interceptor was guilty of this with their Rise of the Triad remake, although in that game I felt it was a bit justified given it was a remake of an old game). Of course, as I mentioned, your enjoyment of these cutscenes will of course depend heavily on your investment into the story and whether you like it or not. But despite not being entirely into the story I still enjoyed the flair of the cutscenes and they do their job building up some drama between levels. The detail is also extremely high and the game allows you to zoom in on the action to take in the amount of detail on the textures. Especially Shelly herself has some rather awesome texture work done on her. With everything cranked to the max the game definitely looks rather good and runs really well too with no hitches or stuttering (bear in mind I am running the game on the latest patch), and you probably won't need any high end system to truly crank up the graphics, as running everything maxed out on 1080p granted me smooth and stable performance on an AMD Phenom II 3.2GHz CPU with an AMD R9 280X GPU. I can definitely appreciate the work put into the graphics in this game, and it is by far one of my favourite aspects about it. It deserves praise when an indie game manages to look this good. The game starts out on Earth sending you into the white house to rescue the president, which ends up taking you to the alien planet Kyrr. The game is a top down shooter despite it trying to sell itself as an action RPG. The RPG mechanics are extremely miniscule in this game. There is no real roleplaying involved as you don't play your own character, you cannot choose what to say, all of the levels are played in a linear fashion and in general the only RPG element is that you can choose which of Shelly's abilities to upgrade whenever you level up, and can choose between 2 upgrade paths on your weapons, with new upgrades unlocking as you level up. This is really not enough to warrant the game being called an RPG in my opinion and I think it's wrong to call it such as it gives the wrong expectations towards the game. The game is really just a simple isometric shooter. That being said, as a twin-stick shooter it is still fairly competent. The game features moving with the WASD keys and aiming with the mouse, or using dual analogue sticks on a gamepad. While I might have preferred the game being made as a first person or behind-the-shoulder third person shooter, it still plays well as what it is. The camera can be a little frustrating though as the angle can make it difficult to spot enemies approaching you (though the map mitigates this design flaw a little as it shows enemy locations as red dots). The weapons feel satisfying to use, especially if you get the right upgrades for them, such as upgrading the Maxigun to fire rockets (which feels pretty much exactly like it does in the new Doom game) or upgrading the Motherflakker (basically the game's shotgun) to fire explosive shells. It gives the weapons a whole new "oomph" and dimension and makes you feel crazy powerful. I wouldn't say there was any weapon I really didn't enjoy using with the exception of the Shellshock, which I couldn't really wrap my head around using. I mostly ended up using either the Maxigun or Motherflakker with the Ion Maiden being used for dispatching small pests and the PMS or Flamethrower being used for larger miniboss type enemies. While you can definitely tell there is some influence from Duke Nukem to these weapons, they truly end up feeling unique to the game and puts their own twist on familiar archetypes (except the Shellshock, I still have no idea what it's supposed to do lol). The game's currency can be picked up in the form of purple orbs. At times it ends up feeling like I'm playing a strange mix between Duke Nukem and Diablo. The level design is alright for the most part. The main gameplay rhythm mostly comprises of moving towards objectives, wiping out enemies, gathering ammo and currency, and rinse and repeat. You do get secondary objectives in some levels which you might wanna finish before moving on to the primary objective if you're a completionist, and a lot of the levels have secrets in them. A few issues I did notice though was that at times you are required to do platforming which can be tricky given the camera angle, and at times the level geometry can make it a bit tricky to move around. The aiming can also be a bit finnicky at times, requiring you to aim specifically at enemies rather in their general direction. The game also softlocked several times for me during certain quests, requiring me to restart the entire level. Not a huge deal but something you should be aware of. For instance, I never ended up getting the Electroshocker on my playthrough, despite picking it up. And I was stuck for hours when a quest bugged and leaving me unable to pick up a power crystal I needed to continue. So the game is far from perfect, but none of the bugs I encountered were outright gamebreaking and could typically be fixed with a level reset. The soundtrack is decent enough, if you love industrial metal. It's not really my cup of tea and most of it just ended up sounding like generic background noise to me and not really with enough synth to make it sound interesting. Just generic chugs and no real themes or memorable riffs. Andrew Hulshult is a decent musician but not a really strong songwriter in my opinion. Some stronger themes would really have helped the soundtrack come a long way as I couldn't really get into it. The main theme is repeated a few times but even that isn't really that memorable. I felt he did a much better job with his Rad Rodgers soundtrack in all honesty. The voice acting also leaves something to be desired. While Shelly herself does an alright job, it is true she kind of lacks impact. And some of the NPC voice actors straight up sound like they recorded their lines in their bedroom. Which they probably did given how Interceptor works. For the most part it's not too distracting but at times it was pretty cringe-worthy. Luckily the weapon sounds and general sound design is pretty good. The weapons sound beefy and loud and the ambience is also really good. I just couldn't really get behind the voice acting or music. Both sound a bit bland. At a few points the game will offer a turret section to break up the gameplay a bit. If you hate these though, do not fear. They are extremely underutilized. The turret does feature a slow-mo function though. So that kind of concludes everything I had to say about this game. While it's not really a bad game and definitely not as bad as some reviews make it out to be, it has a lot of missed potential. I feel with a stronger story that took itself less seriously, and with better voice acting and stronger music the game could be a real blast. Oh well, maybe Ion Maiden will prove to be a stronger experience given it's using the good old Build engine, the same tech which powered Duke Nukem 3D, the series from which Bombshell was born from? Time will tell. In the meantime, I would say Bombshell is worth giving a shot if you can find it on sale and crave a simple isometric shooter with a b-movie story and playing as a badass female with a robot arm. Because as mediocre as this game might be, Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison is still a hell of a gal and I really hope to see her in more games and watch her grow as a character. STORY: 5/10 GAMEPLAY: 8/10 GRAPHICS: 9/10 SOUND: 6/10 TOTAL SCORE: 7/10 Source: http://alyxxgameroom.blogspot.no/2018/03/pc-game-review-bombshell.html
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What's up, kids. Today I'm taking a look at Ion Maiden, a new oldschool FPS by Voidpoint, and published by 3D Realms. I wanna stress though that this is less of a review and more of a first impressions deal, and the game is in Early Access at the moment so it is subject to change in the future and might not necessarily reflect the final product and shit. Specifically what I'm looking at is the Preview Campaign that is available to early backers and owners of the Bombshell Digital Deluxe edition. So a couple of years ago, specifically 2016, 3D Realms released a little top down shooter called Bombshell, developed by Interceptor (a game I've been planning to review since 2016, so a review is coming, although delayed lol). Much like the team's previous effort, the 2013 remake of Rise Of The Triad, it received criticism for being generally buggy, unbalanced and lacking polish, though has received more support since its release, but is generally considered an average game. The game's main character, Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison was based on a character cut from Duke Nukem Forever that was intended to be a female sidekick to Duke. The plan was for Bombshell to earn her name together with greats such as Duke Nukem, Caleb and Lo Wang. And it seems that Ion Maiden has come along to do just that. Ion Maiden is technically a prequel to Bombshell, set in a futuristic cyberpunk-esque city called Neo DC. The setting heavily reminds me of Shrapnel City from Duke Nukem 1 and already I'm in love with the game. The level design and graphics ooze mid-90's charm and the level of detail is insane given it's using such an old engine. I especially love the colour palette of the game, which seems to focus on a mix of red and blue (possibly to symbolically reflect the heroine's police background). It's definitely on par if not surpassing the detail seen in Blood. The game also pulls some rather impressive scripted sequences that wouldn't look out of place in a Call of Duty game (albeit with the graphics of a mid-90's game engine), giving the game a very high explosive "Michael Bay" feel that I absolutely love. The streets of Neo D.C. Scope is really the key word of Ion Maiden. Instead of going for a linear "level to level" approach, the game is structured into multiple zones (with the preview campaign having only one zone) which could be considered the equivalent of an episode, except in this case you can go back and forth between the levels as you see fit, similar to games like Quake 2 and Half-Life. The game will warn you when you're about to enter a part of the zone that closes off the rest behind you though by warning you that there are still secrets left to find in the area if you haven't found all of them, a useful tip for OCD players like myself who want to find every secret before moving on and very much appreciated. This makes each zone feel like one big hub of levels, and given the size of some levels (especially level 2 of the preview campaign is an enormous level with impressively large buildings), it's safe to say the game's scope will be pretty big. The game's weapon selection consists of what you'd expect. A melee weapon (Shelly's electric baton), a revolver (the Loverboy), a shotgun (the Disperser) and an automatic SMG (the SMG-9000) in addition to Shelly's signature bowling bombs (essentially heat-seeking grenades). All of the weapons feel really satisfying to fire, and i don't really have any complaints about them. The sound effects are really good as well and give that "oomph" feeling that I love about oldschool shooters. Easter eggs and references galore The game definitely does a great job at feeling like a lost game from 1995 that's been polished up. Shelly's character portrait constantly sits in the lower left corner, looking left and right while also becoming increasingly bloody and damaged as you receive damage, similar to games like Doom and Quake, a small detail that further emphasizes the game's mid-90's tone. Her one-liners are cool and ooze confidence and charisma and I'm happy to see Shelly's voice actress from Bombshell return here and given she doesn't really have to do any dramatic acting, she does a great job just spouting one-liners, which I think fits the character more than the amount of dialogue she was given in Bombshell. Control-wise the game controls well, although some people have reported issues with the mouse aiming (a common issue with build engine games). If you have played other build engine games, you'll feel right at home in this game although interestingly the game does not have any inventory system like other Build games. You have an inventory for medkits but pretty much nothing else, which makes me wonder if there will be one in the full version. The soundtrack is done entirely as mod music, which explains the game's low file size, but is generally really well done, sounding somewhat industrial and techno'y and perfectly fits the game's aesthetic. Now to the negatives... the game is really unoptimized. Severely unoptimized even. Running in OpenGL mode, even with some of the performance tweaks the devs have listed on the Steam forums I ran into severe hitching/stuttering and the framerate going into slideshow territory repeatedly during gameplay, especially during heavily scripted sequences or just looking around certain parts of the levels (particurarily level 2). Running the game with the Classic renderer fixed most of these issues but the game still runs somewhat badly. I would attribute this to the fact the preview campaign is essentially a beta though and hope they will make it more stable in the full version. I also experienced the game crashing repeatedly on level 2 after playing for a while, though the devs are working on a fix for it. So that was my thoughts on Ion Maiden. It's definitely an excellent game so far and is shaping up to stand up with other Build engine classics. My only concern really is the lack of optimization and the stuttering problem, but other than that, this is definitely a game to look forward to. If you feel like supporting the development of this game or simply trying out the preview campaign for yourself, you can find the game on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/562860/Ion_Maiden Cheers~ <3 Source: http://alyxxgameroom.blogspot.no/2018/03/first-impression-ion-maiden-preview.html
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Bombshell Might hit NG+ now. Definitely gonna work on a review.
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Lara Croft (specifically the old one) Repeat question
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The Remove-One-Letter-From-A-Title Thread
Alyxx Thorne replied to danielsangeo's topic in Forum Games
Save Zero A Megaman spinoff. -
4/10 Again, I kinda suck at rating classic rock/heavy metal cause it's generally not music I enjoy or have any connection to so it's really difficult to rate... I mean it's alright, but it's not my cup of tea... kLfz2bbxxuM
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