New products, and other musings

First yet another apology for a lack of updates, there have been a few things in my life sucking up my free time, in no particular order they are:

Borderlands 2 (great game, I cheat so am getting bored)
X-Com (not nearly as good as previous incarnations)
Planetside 2 Beta (awesome)
A cyberboard game of Federation and Empire (ongoing)
Strike Legion Designer (nearly done)

Before that I was spending some time in the Mechwarrior Online beta.  I got bored with it really fast and regret blowing $120 for it as I really doubt I'll ever play it.  The game is horrible.  Defenders say its a beta, and will get better, but I have never seen a game in a beta state get *completely* redone, and without starting over from scratch, well, it sucks.  Some people are fans anyway, and love it, but there are also still fans of Doom playing it, so take that with a grain of salt.

World of Warplanes sucked ass too, it has promise, but the free to play model makes it a worse grind than WOW ever thought about being, and WOW at least has depth.

I stopped playing Tribes Ascend.  I put a lot of money and time into it, but now every time I log in it seems every other player is just a childish asshole, so it has turned me off to playing it.  The free to play model there got excessive too.  I put over $100 into the game, didn't have everything, and then they release the cool voices for yet more money, ugh.

I played Hawken too.  This game is with mechs, but feels much more like a FPS.  The graphics are pretty cool, the game play nifty, my only real complaint was the maps made all the fighters REALLY close up.  It has a lot of potential, and if you really want a mech game it blows MWO away already.

Ok, now onto Battletech stuff!

3 new PDF releases this week, WOOT!  I wish they'd scatter em about a bit so we don't have so long between releases, but any new releases are great.  Quick review!

Dossiers Bounty Hunter.  Like the other dossiers products, with history of the Dread Pirate Roberts Bounty Hunter, all his mechs (most of which we have seen before).  If your interested at all in the Bounty Hunter (who isn't?), pick it up.

Historical Turning Points Antallos:  Like all the rest basically.  I get the HTPs for the maps, planet data, and occasional record sheets (this only has a combat version of the Buccaneer dropship).

And the XTRO Phantoms.  I didn't know what this was going to be, and now that I see it I'm quite unimpressed.  Basically take a dozen units, add some mixed tech, and there you go.  Its an XTRO, and worth the $5 for the history.  Some unique units.  I didn't notice as many issues in this one as some previous ones which was a nice relief.  There were a few interesting units like a Grand Titan with a Thumper, and an IS Tornado PA(L) that moves 7 with clan VTOL equipment.

Handbook House Kurita will probably come out by spring of next year.  Once it does, I'll go back and update my mapping programs since we'll FINALLY have complete maps of various eras.

Don't ask me how I know, but I know what the hold up is with Interstellar Operations.  Hopefully they can work through it and get at least some rules out for us to playtest soon.

Oh, I added all the new units to the BattleTech Encyclopedia, so feel free to peruse.

And speaking of, yes, I said I was working on it, and I am... partially.  Playing F&E over cyberboard plus other things listed have killed any real progress with it.  I am going to try to get my Strike Legion designer out TODAY.  After that I'll still waste my weekdays playing cyberboard, but my weekends will be devoted to the Encyclopedia.

Again, I apologize for the lack of any progress, but it isn't like ya'll keep commenting "when will you update the BTE?!?!?!" to keep me on top of my game either ;)