A Ninja And His Dog

If there is one thing I have learned from Shadow Dancer, it's that the only thing cooler than ninjas is ninjas with dogs. And because of that, Shadow Dancer has always been one of my favourite Shinobi games. It's also the easiest Shinobi game by far, which is a plus in my book, because I like winning.

Dog! ♥

And since they've added "Kubrows" to Warframe, which are really just fancy Sci-Fi canines, the game has become twice as fun. Well... sometimes it's twice as fun. When the fucking Kubrow behaves as intended. Also, mine finally grew up and didn't end up looking like a fucking poodle!

Aww! He must never know that I put his 11 siblings into cry-stasis, because they were hideous and/or worthless.

I'd love to share a video with you guys that shows this happy little guy racing through a starship, jumping at bad guys to tear their throats out or to literally rip them in half. Seriously, Warframe has some of the most violent, gruesome deaths you'll ever see in a game. Cut a guy in half and you'll see the guts and the ribcage and the spine and all that cool shit. Problem is, the server has been dead for hours and nobody is fixing it, because it's Sunday and most of the devs are at San Diego Comic-Con. Boo!

The problem with Kubrows is that they're not familiar with the internet, so nobody told them to never go full retard. And they go full retard a lot! There are moments where Space-Doggie does what it says on the tin and jumps enemies and rips them to shreds and everyone is happy, but from one moment to the next the AI might just go on vacation. The Kubrow just stands there. I'm getting shot by a dozen enemies and he just stands there and watches, not a care in the world. A bad guy might walk up right in front of him, punch him in the face a bit, he'll stand there and take it and bleed all over the place and not fight back.

So what does Warframe do in a situation like that? Reset the dog, give you an option to restart the AI or maybe order your companion to attack stuff? MUCH BETTER! It will fucking crash. Warframe is currently chain-crashing for lots of people, though it usually waits until you've collected a ton of super rare loot and farmed up a ton of experience points (sorry, "affinity") before doing so, in order to ruin the most amount of playtime possible.

You're just waiting to extract? Better go crash Warframe!

Sooo... it's all far from perfect, but we're getting there. It'll be pretty awesome once it all works the way it's supposed to.

On the plus side, downtime on Warframe means more time for TESO. I've reached the veteran version of the Alik'r desert now and it's pretty... pretty.

They've dumbed down veteran-gameplay adjusted veteran-difficulty a lot, so I can just walk around and kill stuff and feel like a badass, which is usually fun for a while. Still, I can only enjoy the pve for so long until the repetition gets to me. The ever-same circular dungeons are becoming increasingly lame and the "decisions" you make during quests are utterly meaningless, as they never have any real consequences. You might get a slightly different dialogue or cut-scene depending on what you choose, but the reward, the game world, the story, everything stays the same, so I usually just click random shit in dialogues to get it over with.

In other news, it has been revealed that the Warcraft movie will focus on Anduin Lothar and Durotan and the whole Orcs vs Humans crap. It's an origins story, supposed to draw people into the whole setting, even if they're unfamiliar with the lore. You know, like they did with Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. I would have preferred to see Azeroth the way I know it from WoW, with naked people dancing on mailboxes and people shouting anal jokes across the badlands, so I guess I'm gonna have to wait for the next film or five.

On the plus side, Lothar was pretty badass, hanging with the prince and his buddy Medivh until he eventually ends up in charge of Stormwind's army and then he fights the invading orcs until he gets locked up in the deadmines for 20 months and finds that Medivh has betrayed them when he comes back, so he grabs his buddy Khadgar, who stabs Medivh in the heart in Karazhan and then Lothar chops his head off and they still lose to the Horde and retreat to Lordaeron and team up with the dwarves and gnomes and high elves (I think?) to fight the Horde some more, but then Lothar gets tricked by a bunch of ogres and trolls and they break his greatsword and crush his skull with a hammer... Doomsomethingorother... and then Lothar's second in command whose name I forgot destroys the dark portal and they kick the Horde out of Stormwind and now you won't have to watch the first Warcraft movie or three, because that's probably what they're gonna cover there.

Or you can be all smug and go to the movies and tell people who are unfamiliar with the story that Lothar dies in the end. Yay!

Also, my son is coming for a visit. Not today or tomorrow, because going to a different country requires time and money and planning ahead and all that, but maybe in a few months. I should buy toast.

-Cat