One For The Road

How ’bout them Game Awards? Guardians of the Galaxy taking home the surprise “Best Narrative” award. And It Takes Two taking home Game of the Year. Most impressive.

The wife and I plan to play this game on her Twitch channel during our couple’s gaming nights. (Typically Tuesdays). twitch.tv/cro0kedj. We played through Morkredd last time, and I have the VOD downloaded and plan on editing that into a fun “highlights” video for Youtube.

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What I’m Drawing
Speaking of the wife… she said I’m not allowed to draw anymore Gwen Stacy. And I see her point. 15 variations is a bit much. I’ll be sure to draw more next year though 😉 .

In the meantime, I drew Tracer, from the game Overwatch, to add to my collection of those characters. So far I’ve drawn Widowmaker, Moira, Brigitte, Mercy, Sombra, D.Va and now Tracer.

Colour version coming soon.

As I continually add and reference my art, I should probably just create a dedicated section for it. With proper folders. Project for the new year.

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What I’m Playing
Played Unpacking for the achievements. 1000G in about an hour. A little bit of Dirt 5. Rain on your Parade has DLC launching next week which I’ll be playing through. Played a little bit Halo Infinite Multiplayer, but have not tried the campaign yet, now that it has released. It’s on the short list but after recently starting up GTA 3 and Watch Dogs Legion, those two are my immediate priority before starting anything new.

Watch Dog has been pretty fun. It is definitely a nice looking game, and I’m getting the hang of the team setup, where you have multiple agents to pick from. Its kind neat actually because they all just roam around the city, and act almost like fast travel points if you don’t mind swapping.

In the co-op zone we’ve started up Borderlands 3. I’ve always loved the Borderlands games. Played 1 and 2 thoroughly, including the DLC. The Pre-Sequel I didn’t quite finish. But 3 has been been pretty fun so far in co-op.

And a huge bonus: it comes with a Photo Mode. And not just any photo mode. One that plays in-real time with your online co-op buddies.

Also tried out the Matrix Awaking Unreal Engine 5 tech demo that was announced at the game awards. It’s kind neat. An impressive showcase of what the new UE5 can do. Obviously limited in scope. Its an open world city where you can walk around and drive showing off the lighting and damage body engine, but not much beyond just looking pretty. The initially opening sequent is mostly just quick-time events to show off the particle effects and visuals, but it is all on rails to hide the limitations of the demo.

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What I’m Reading

Crossover #10
Dark Knights of Steel #2
Soul Plumber #3
The Walking Dead Deluxe #28


Quieter week this week on the comics front as I actually only got 2/4 of my expected pull due to Diamond delays getting the indie books in. Hopefully they’ll arrive for next week.

Achievement of the Week
Borderlands 3: Tips Appreciated (15G)
Tipped Moxxi

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More holiday shopping on the horizon, and a few more weeks of work. A couple more snowfalls and Spider-Man: No Way Home to look forward to as well. Festive times.

Happy Holidays.

G309,401
iRogan

WHAT i’M PLAYING – Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Halo 5, and WHAT i’M DRAWING

Over the weekend I started playing through Deus Ex Human Revolution again, to get caught up with the story before I pick up Deus Ex Mankind Divided this week.

I last played the game in 2011, and when I was going through the achievement list, I realized there were quite a few story related ones that I had missed the first time around, so I’m focusing on those this time.

Graphically the game still holds up – the faces are a bit polygonal and the facial animation is a bit off, but that could be choked up to the Xbox 360 emulation on the Xbox One.

I’m also playing through the original, and not the director’s cut. I had heard the DC adds the DLC and changes the boss fights dramatically, but I opted to not purchase the game again, since I’m just running through the story again. I’m also playing through it a bit quicker now; more of a run and gun play through, and less on the stealth side. Pistol and Tazer only though. See how this strategy holds up against the bosses.

Interesting things I’ve notices during this play through:

  • A lot of the time you’re climbing through vents to access closed off areas. These vents are kept very clean. Like, immaculate.
  • Many vehicles are parked on the side of the road, and in some of the dilapidated areas they are on fire. At no point is anyone driving these cars.
  • Nobody questions you when you move the man-hole cover and climb into the sewers, or when you are witnessed climbing scaffolding and jumping on air-conditioning vents to access the rooftops.
  • Turrets can still see you when you cross their line-of-sight, even when you’re squatting, carrying a crate to hide behind.
  • In The Hive night club in Shanghai, the bouncer won’t let you in, but you can access the building from the vent in the back. You exit the vent into the Women’s washroom. No one cares the slightest when you enter the club this way.
  • Also on this note, you can exit the club through the front door, and the bouncer doesn’t seem to notice, nor question how you got in the club in the first place.

More impressions as I progress further. I’m hoping to wrap up the game this week and pick up DE: Mankind Divided as soon as possible.


Last week I wrapped up Halo 5, which was a fun play through with ILLESTRADER. I’ll write more about that when I find the time.

I’m also trying to keep up with my drawing as much as possible, which limits my time for writing sadly. Hard to find time for 3 separate hobbies.

I recently completed a drawing of Widowmaker from the game Overwatch. She’s a sniper and I really liked her Noire skin, with the crazy techno dreadlocks. I haven’t played Overwatch. It’s an online only game with limited game modes, but lots of character types. I really like the character designs, so I’m going to make an attempt to draw a few more of the characters before moving on to new subjects.

I wasn’t entirely happy with the final product.  I initially only wanted to do black and white, but because her Noire suit is primarily black, so there wouldn’t be a lot of definition. So I decided to add some colour, but didn’t really want to spend a lot of time colouring and shading. So I stuck with the cross hatch black and white, with flat colours. Quickly dumped in a crappy background as well so the gun wasn’t floating, and voila.

I might go back and actually do a proper colouring job on this one. I know I can do better. And going forward, my goal is to try harder on backgrounds. I usually never do them, and with my comic book aspirations, they’d look pretty weird without backgrounds.

I had fun drawing her name though, with all the spider webs. 😉

You can check out more of my drawings in the arts page.

-iRogan