An explosively quick update.

Source.

The last few months have been an opportunity for businesses to reflect on some things. For non-FAANG companies, the question is, "how do I use AI to save/make money?". For FAANG, the question is been, "do I own the AI platform people will use to save/make money?". The real winner is the company that monopolizes data center AI, and it shows:


Dalle, Stable Diffusion, and the various GPT applications are pretty impressive but more limited than they would seem. Still, it's unfair to bundle AI's hype with that of blockchain, web3, the metaverse, and crypto.


Mom came down for a fun weekend of wheelbarrow rides and a GBES trip to Black Plague and Little Miss.


Having finished Gloomhaven, the office crew has completed a few Deep Rock boardgame drops. It's been pretty easy so far, but I like how they've captured important elements of the video game.


New to PUBG:

• Clans. Meh, but I created a lolbaters one because.
• Blue chips - grab the chip from your dead teammate and revive them at one of the towers sprinkled around the map. Kind of nice actually.

We almost pulled off a timed C4 detonation on a team driving across the bridge.

Source. I didn't have any original graphics for this post so I found some awesome stuff on the internet.

A few days ago I did an career panel for the ECE student association. The organizer provided some generic and student-asked questions in advance. Since writing one's thoughts is a great way to prepare for live Q&A (take that down), I did just that.

What are you looking for in an intern?

Some companies use interns for cheap labor - that isn't us. Other companies' intern programs are basically summer camp to attract promising candidates early - that isn't us either. We give interns projects that we can't dedicate FTEs to, primarily projects that are too speculative. For us, internships are an opportunity to try new ideas or see how newer technologies could impact our work.

So we look for candidates that can implement a hypothetical solution in a few months, understanding the domain and technologies required to accomplish their task. Beyond that, we want the code and documentation to be useful six or twelve months later when someone has bandwidth to adopt it.

We interview interns before projects are selected, so at interview time we are simply looking for someone who can write code (rather than having specific technologies in mind).

How do I get an interview?

Like most large companies, the entire hiring process is managed through our careers site. So start by creating a candidate profile.

You can apply to specific job reqs from the website, though as you may know from other candidate portals, this doesn't guarantee an interview. There are a few additional methods to improve your chances of getting an interview:

• Headhunters/recruiters reach out by email and LinkedIn and will typically get you in the interview pipeline.
• Most hiring portals lets employees put in recommendations, though it's not a guaranteed interview.
• I'm not sure how prevalent this is, but my group sometimes sponsors technical and diversity conferences. The hundreds of resumes from these events will get passed out to interviewers to thumbs up/thumbs down for a phone interview. The key here is that the resume is first seen by a technical person rather than a headhunter or recruiter.
• A successful internship will often result in an offer for a full time position.

Source. I wasn't sure if this was real or a parody, so I dug deeper. Results posted below.

Do you have any advice on resumes?

In most cases your resume will be read by (in this order):

1. Software
2. Non-technical people
3. Technical people

I'm the last of the three and don't know much about 1 and 2. In many cases, I don't see the resume until the interview is scheduled. In other cases (conferences), I see it first.

It's great if you're getting a postgraduate degree in a specific field or really know what you want to do in industry. It's also fine to take your core software knowledge and see what opportunities come. In the latter case, it's good to have different resume flavors targeting different types of positions. Everything relevant should be on there, but you can provide expanded information for more relevant positions. E.g. if you're sending me your embedded C resume, I'd rather see more about your robotics project and less about your database project.

Your resume typically sets the boundaries for an interview. That is, if you say you're good at C++ and terrible at SQL, I'm going to ask you to write C++ (unless it's a DBA position). So be sure that your resume signals to the interviewer what you think you should be interviewed on.

What are some things to be careful about in interviews?

The core of the interview process is the technical examination - coding questions, system design questions, take-home tests, etc. There's nothing to really be careful about here, just do your best.

The Q&A/behavioral portion of the interview is fairly insigificant unless you say something really bad, it's really all about passing the technical examination. In the case where two candidates have similar technical competency, we'll still lean toward a technical tiebreaker (experience in relevant technology, previous employers, etc.). The only thing that might break a very rare tie is genuine enthusiasm or an overall superior ability to communicate.

The most common issue I see in interviews that doesn't significantly impact my disposition (because, once again, technical question) is one of these:

• Undercommunicating. Saying so little about, for example, an item on your resume that I don't know if you worked on it at all.
• Overcommunicating. Having a canned spiel about your senior design project or machine learning internship that sounds well-practiced and completely inauthentic. It also ends with the life lessons so I don't have an opportunity to ask a follow-up about the technical aspects of the project.

The most important thing to keep in mind: expect to have bad interviews. Sometimes you won't perform well. Other times the position is not right for you. And often you'll pull an interviewer who has a terrible, terrible interview question (that he thinks is the greatest).

Source. One of the most important aspects of tech is something they don't teach you on college: corporate memphis.

How did school prepare you for your role?

The curriculum was good, though you don't realize it immediately - the first few months of employment is a firehose of platforms and practices. It all matters though - complexity analysis, multiprocessing, data structures, algorithms, operating systems.

Source.

How has ChatGPT changed your work?

Well there was the amusing moment when the lawyers lost their minds, hearing that engineers had been using an external, cloud-hosted query tool as a Stack Overflow replacement.

In a larger sense, LLMs can be quite useful for technical questions where you know Google results are going to be trash. Will they replace coders? Maybe the ones that write copy-pasted code soon, maybe everyone eventually. Except mission-critical systems.

How do you stay up to date?

Coworkers. Everybody has their pet interests and they're a great source for information and references to further troves of knowledge. Conferences and personal projects help too.

Source.

That website with the resume was a huge compendium of printable document templates. It's kind of a good idea, but also who is downloading your chore chart template?

This text offers a pattern resume format for the place of a pc science scholar. It provides details about roles and abilities required for the talked about Finest pc science resume examples - you possibly can obtain simply - Profession Abstract- A element oriented and hardworking skilled with exceptional analytical, logical Jobs within the pc area is growing. Whether or not you're a pc operator or a software program engineer, customise your resume selecting one from these pc resumes. Finest computer science resume samples and examples - you possibly can obtain simply - Profession objective- To safe a place the place I can effectively contribute my abilities and Sample Mphil Thesis In Computer Science Sample mphil thesis in pc science 117th Road, East zip 10035 trailer addict the starvation video games catching hearth month of Sample assertion of objective for college students excited about MS and PhD in Computer Science & Engineering .

Wat.

Scotty and Sophie came to town for the NOFX farewell show. I quite enjoyed seeing live music again, the first time since January 2020.



We finally replaced our sticky, floral, ancient entry door. The 42" single door (with sidelight) is a big improvement on the 30" double door. The new trim is thinner so we have some drywall and stucco touchup to do, but we're very happy with the outcome.


KO has been investigating electric motorbikes and rally-look Subarus (namely CrossTreks).


In my day, I'd grab the STI (or RalliArt or TRD or Nismo...) catalog and hit ebay. Apparently the Crosstrek has neither STI parts nor a wealth of aftermarket options. A search for rally CrossTreks doesn't have a lot to look at and, well, the few real rally cars aren't especially ostentatious. But I stumbled upon a rally-look Crosstrek in a parking garage:


Let's evaluate:

• Offroad tires and wheels with some offset. Tires amount to like 80% of the form and function of performance driving, so full marks here.
• Lower trim deletes, since ground-hugging plastic doesn't do well against rocks.
• Tow hook.
• Aftermarket grille.
• Bespoke skid plate. This is where STI could really help us out with something rugged, attractive, and drive-tested.
• Mud.
• The ride height doesn't look standard, but I didn't peek under the fenders.

The kilroy recommendations:

• If you're going to take the Dremel to the rear bumper, don't use the stock exhaust.
• A more serious roof rack, ideally with a full-size spare.
• Rallying is all about lights. Repositioned fog lamps aren't as good as grille-mounted lights and/or a light bar.
• Bedliner from the waist-down brings form and function though, full disclosure, this is more offroad-y than rally-y.

Sure you could do a roll cage and carbon body panels but that can get a little pricey.


Zac used Midjourney to generate an avatar for RyanButBetter. He's even reading a potato magazine. I updated my imagery from that weird cyber potato.


Weekends have mostly been yardwork - preparing to landscape the upper terrace. Dani saw a wheelbarrow full of dirt and characteristically said, "I could ride that". So the evolution of child transport continues:

1. Wrap/front carrier
2. Backpack
3. Shoulders
4. Wheelbarrow

After nearly five years, The Unnatural Ones finished the last of our Gloomhaven quests.

Controversies abound. F-16s to Ukraine? Wagner's casualties. Dominion and Tucker Carlson. And finally, what is the best Star Wars spacecraft?

Source.

The next installment of "why the US military-industrial complex owes Russia a gift basket" just dropped.

WhiskeyTigerFoxtrot

Lockheed Martin awarded USD7.8 billion for 126 F-35s The US F-35 Joint Program Office on 28 April awarded Lockheed Martin USD7.8 billion for 126 F-35 Lightning IIs. The deal exercises an option on a contract awarded in January for Lot 17 of F-35 production. The contract includes 81 conventional take-off and landing F-35As, 26 vertical take-off and landing F-35Bs, and 19 carrier-capable F-35Cs. ... the order also contains aircraft for eight different customers: eight As for Finland, seven As and two Bs for Italy, six As for the Netherlands, six As for Poland, four As and two Bs for Japan, four As for Belgium, three As for Denmark, and seven Bs for the UK. All the aircraft will be equipped with Technical Refresh 3, which upgrades processing power substantially with an L3Harris core processor, a new memory system, and an open mission systems architecture. The refresh also includes a new cockpit display. The first of the Lot 17 aircraft is scheduled for delivery in 2025. Lot 17 contains many aircraft for non-US customers, particularly in Europe. The F-35 has been increasingly popular since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. From Janes Defense Weekly today.

And that's without any F-35s actually in the conflict.

/u/BreaksFull Yeah, Tiktok feeds full of Javelins blowing up top of the line Russian tanks has been a pretty effective indirect marketing program.

/u/bloodthirsty_taco The war has been a great marketing tool for a lot of other weapons, too - HIMARS (GMLRS), Bayraktar drones, various SPGs.

Source.

There's an ongoing controversy about whether or not to send F-16s to Ukraine. It seems like an unapproachably-complicated issue, but an interesting one.

Korn-e-lus

Former F-16 pilot says he would not want to fly missions over Ukraine right now, arguing 'there is no fighting chance' [Link].

I'd mostly heard dialogue about whether it'd be escalatory, this was new. I mentally recapped what I (think I) know about the air war in Ukraine:

Source.

• There's no air superiority in this conflict. The Russian S-400 anti-aircraft system is really good. Likewise Ukraine has managed to keep the skies clear of fighters/bombers, save for glide bombs and munitions like the Khinzal that are fired from relative safety.
• Earlier in the war Ukraine began requesting JDAMs-ERs (extended range). JDAMs are glide bombs that can be released from high altitude or lobbed from a steep ascent (see above). Apparently the low approach profile is viable for the conflict.

Since Ukraine's MiG-29s have flown JDAM sorties, it seems trivial to say that an F-16 in the same role has a 'fighting chance' (to borrow the phrasing from the article).

I found a similar sentiment on /r/CredibleDefense:

ChornWork2

But what about in MiG-29 like they're doing today? Tone deaf commentary imho. Would his view change if a foreign power was slaughtering his countrymen and trying to take over his country? Lets ask a former MRAP or M113 crew what they think of wanting to take those out in an offensive against Russian entrenched defensive positions without airsupport. This has to be a politically motivated piece...

Huh, but I thought Business Insider was pretty left-leaning?

Business Insider

Fourth- and fourth-plus-generation fighter jets like the F-16 that lack stealth features are "completely outmatched in high-threat environments" because of advanced air-defense systems like Russia's S-400, argued Venable, a veteran and senior research fellow for defense policy at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.

Ohhh. Business Insider was reporting (uncritically) on a Heritage Foundation blog post. I checked out the original post from a former F-16 pilot.

Heritage Foundation

SBDs[sic] can be carried by F-16s and have small wings that unfold after they are released, allowing them to glide dozens of miles. The latest version (SDB II) can even acquire and hit mobile targets. The distance that SDBs can glide is determined by the altitude and speed at which they are released, and even at their longest range, a fourth-generation fighter attempting to employ them would be detected and engaged by S-400s long before it could release those munitions.

It's weird the author doesn't mention JDAMs since they're apparently already in use. The range of a winged SDB II (according to Wikipedia) is about the same as the JDAM-ER, for what it's worth.

Source.

I should point out that article asks and answers the question, "are F-16s a game changer for Ukraine". So strictly, since JDAMs are already being delivered by MiGs, lobbing them from an F-16 is more of an improvement than a game changer. Perhaps the phrasing of the question was deliberate.

/u/Freestyle7674754398 Is it me that's stupid? Like this guy is an F-16 pilot but seems to just miss or gloss over a number of points. Ukraine will run out of planes in the next couple of years, it will happen. And then they'll have nothing to use the literal JDAMs and HARMs that we have given them. We have seen through public domain images (HARM) and leaked documents (JDAM) that even in a contested environment these are being used and are working Surely F-16s would still be incredibly useful away from the frontline, and would reduce pressure on GBAD when it comes to drone and cruise missile attacks. Nobody is asking Ukraine to run SEAD and DEAD or drop JDAMs from 30k feet. Also just because he wouldn't want to fly missions over Ukraine doesn't mean Ukrainian pilots wouldn't - they are literally doing so right now in planes that are far worse than F-16s. I actually think that's an irresponsible and harmful article from this guy.

/u/osmik > Is it me that's stupid? You simply misunderstand the policy goal of the article (or interview). It's the Heritage Foundation. Their goal is to prevent the flow of weapons to Ukraine. If they can't achieve that, they aim to stop Biden from sending effective weapons. Failing both of those objectives, they'd like only a small number of weapons to be sent. If you approach the article/interview with that perspective in mind, everything falls into place.

In fairness to the author, he does advocate for the export of Predators, Reapers, anti-aircraft systems, and other support. In fairness to /u/osmik, this could just be lip service.

Source.

A few days ago Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin made headlines with a very public rant about being denied ammunition for his campaign in Bakhmut. The Wagner-MoD drama has been simmering for some time, but things took a severe turn with Prigozhin shouting at defense ministers from a field covered with dead mercenaries.

I don't know man, eighteen months ago we had the Taliban driving bumper cars, last month conservatives cancelled Budweiser, and now we have Putin's PMC guy calling his MoD guys a bunch of Marie Antoinettes. This timeline is getting less and less believable.

Surely this is some clever disinformation strategy from the ex-KGB mastermind of the 2016 election. Is Prigozhin's withdrawl deadline a ruse to bait Ukraine into Bakhmut? Is it just a way to make Kadyrov's entrance seem necessary? None of it seems worth the very public embarrassment.

Maybe it's exactly what it looks like; Wagner is inadequately supplied and they need to be rotated out anyway. But that's not a conversation that has to happen on Telegram so, once again, what the heck is going on here?


With recent assassination attempts on pro-war Russian milbloggers, there's a lot of fringe speculation about the factionalism being more than just angry words.

SaltyWihl

American/west desinformation is a sensitive subject that is rarley talked about but as seen from operation earnest voice and SA it does occurs. Has there been any signs that the west has been involved in creating or adding fuel to this crack between Ru MOD and Prigozhin? If not, western intelligence really have an open goal here.

Anyway, it's Victory Day over there, so we can look forward to a unified celebration of our collaborative defeat of the Nazis (Russia, Ukraine, and US alike). Almost guaranteed we'll have T-14s with their turrets spinning the whole time for whatever reason. And maybe we'll see an unauthorized drone landing.

Rob	F5 on r/Ukraine new tonight

In funny but uninteresting news, Fox settled with Dominion for a lot of money. The fallout was somewhat interesting though:

• A bunch Fox emails and texts were made public in discovery.
• Tucker Carlson, their main dude (succeeding Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity) terminated employment unexpectedly.
• Some of the emails and texts were obtained by journalists in their unredacted form. Here's one:

Tucker Carlson via NYT

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It's not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they'd hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn't good for me. I'm becoming something I don't want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I'm sure I'd hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn't gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don't care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?

The context of this was Tucker watching January 6th videos and texting his producer. The popular commentary was twofold:

1. "It's not how white men fight." I don't think anyone was surprised he'd say something like this.
2. He's more or less admitted his show's content is rage-bait. A couple years later he'd release exclusive footage that showed January 6th wasn't so bad.

Those items were digested and re-digested in the media because they had him dead to rights on two things everyone already knew. And so I didn't hear much discussion about Carlson's apparent realization that political anger can result in unjustified human suffering.

• The naive interpretation of this is that Carlson really is oblivious of the real world. That he was as shocked as Kevin McCarthy on January 6th and had a major gut check. And both have been won back over by power and money since then.
• Or was he trying to get in the head of the viewer? Was he working with his producer to come up with an angle on those events that wouldn't be repulsive to his audience? It'd be interesting to see the rest of the text chain.
• Did January 6th give Carlson a crisis of conscience? Was it his producers driving the ragebait content and Tucker was just an angry, confused face reading someone else's script? My recollection is that O'Reilly proudly ran his show and had the ratings to win any wrestling match with production staff.

New York Times

Writing to one of his producers after the assault on the Capitol, Mr. Carlson describes the president he championed on his show as a "demonic force" and a "destroyer."

Of course it's all theatre, that was the premise of the Dominion suit, but I wonder who was writing the script.



As we were talking about Mon Cal cruisers, Rob sent me a May (the) 4th post on /r/StarWars about the best spacecraft waifu.

/u/Worried_Surprise3908 Slave 1

/u/SirLagsABot Yes, absolutely marvelous ship. I loved stealing it in Jango's GameCube game. It's utterly stupid that Disney renamed it.

/u/CrazyRabbi THEY RENAMED IT WHAT

/u/Afrojive Unpaid Intern 1

/u/jjackson25 It's now the "Prisoners with Jobs 1"

/u/ProteusNihil Exploited Migrant Laborer Uno

/u/TheFlawlessCassandra They didnt really rename it, they just shy away from saying the name, referring to it by its owner or class instead.

/u/Mist_Rising No, several canon medias refer to it as slave 1.

There was a lot of love for Shadows of the Empire's Outrider. Probably too much love, since it was a ripoff (but reasonable in-universe) of the Millennium Falcon piloted by a ripoff of Han Solo. Also popular were each of the Rebel starfighters and the CR90 corvette.

Source.

/u/themakingsofmatt Moldy Crow

/u/MrMonkeyToes Cultured opinion

And I knew it was going to be there:

/u/SnowBound078 TIE Defender

/u/corpboy Why did I have to scroll so far down for this? TIE Defender rocks. Even if it was too expensive for mass production.

/u/noah_the_boi29 If the imps invested in defenders instead of death stars they would have won in weeks

Well, /u/corpboy, the reason you had to scroll so far down for this is because the TIE Defender was a bullshit OP fighter introduced in TIE Fighter because stupid casuals kept dying so much. There's a reason it wasn't in XvT or X-Wing Alliance and it was nerfed in X-Wing miniatures.

Video games:

• Fire Emblem Engage: tactical swords and dragons
• I Was A Teenage Exocolonist: Firewatch meets poker
• Fallout 76: MMOish survival in the postapocalypse
• XCOM: Chimera Squad: a tactical shooter
• Astro's Playground: Sony's Mario 64
• Gloomhaven: defeating the Gloom

The lastest Fire Emblem installment hit shelves earlier this year.


Engage's main gameplay mechanic is the ability to summon the spirit of a hero from past FE games. They emblem characters aren't allied units though, they give the player temporary stat buffs and special abilities. So it's basically an ult that's also a callback to an earlier FE story.

Having played most of the franchise, it's neat to see other protagonists make a reappearance, if only it didn't herald the MOBAfication of a tactics franchise. "But ults are tactical!" False.

And don't get me wrong, I like MOBAs, I just want them to stay in their lane.


Your character summons the heroes of other timelines with a corresponding 'emblem ring' which, I guess, only fits one finger (so one emblem buddy per combat). Luckily, other members of the squad can don emblem rings to gain the corresponding special attack.

Emblem rings summon heroes from past games, but their allies are not forgotten. You can equip 'bond rings' to give less-awesome traits linked to squadmates from other FE installments. That's actually quite good from a nostalgia perspective since, for a variety of reasons, the main characters were often far less interesting than his/her allies. On the minus side, the bond ring character art is sometimes laughably bad.


On the subject of shallow protagonists, in Engage the player character is the "chosen one/superhuman/dragon" who conveniently has amnesia from a centurieslong nap. How compelling. Bland and tropey are okay, but they tends to infect a lot of dialogue and plot progression.


Like most of the recent FE games, your character has a home base to do a variety of activities between battles. These include:

• Working out (to get temporary stat boosts).
• Raising animals.
• Donating to the allied nations to unlock... stuff.
• Increasing support levels with your party.
• Upgrading weapons.
• Buying weapons, armor, and consumables.
• Managing rings.
• Collecting rocks and oranges and stuff.
• Doing combat training.

Suffice it to say, the mindless clicking has gotten a little overwhelming. In fairness, a lot of it is probably not required to beat the game, but years of playing FE games on super hard mode makes it feel perilous to not grind out every item or upgrade. It's a shame they ditched the tower defense-lite aspect of Fates, Fire Emblem + Rampart would be way more fun than pressing X to do pushups.


The inter-battle chore time is preceded by post-battle open roaming where you can exchange generic words with villagers who might give you an orange or a carrot. Alas, this dialogue ("thank you for saving our village") is only barely shallower than the vapid plot development and support conversations with allies and enemies.

Speaking of characters, the female character models in this one are different. I can't quite put my finger on it...


What the hell, Intelligent Systems? You're better than this. The previous games had a busty character or two, but in this one every adult female character model looks like a transplant from Heavy Metal.


Combat, thankfully, is an iteration on the polished FE formula. There have been a few notable changes that aren't unprecedented, e.g. weapons no longer have durability. The main change to combat in FE Engage is the aforementioned emblem ring power. So while it's nice to have equippable unique actions, I'm hoping the series doesn't go too far down this path.


I'm not very far in the game so it's too early to make any firm judgments. But there are definitely annoyances and reasons to find this FE installment less compelling.


The post on /r/gamingsuggestions that led me to Shadowverse also recommended a (not really a) deckbuilder called I Was A Teenage Excolonist.


The first few minutes of the game has trigger warnings (oh no, "bodily harm and grossness") and character creation that ticks a lot of social justice boxes. I'm not trying to be critical of this (recall I very much enjoyed laughing at the people screeching about TLOU2's diversity), but I was initially worried that the game would be bland so as not to offend anyone. After all, an exocolony isn't going to be a safe space in any definition of the term.

Ultimately though, if the card game is good, dialogue is easy to skip - Shadowverse's meta game isn't exactly compelling.


IWATE gameplay amounts to this:

• Leveling your character by choosing attributes to improve.
• Wandering a small settlement.
• Having conversations.
• Advancing the plot.

It's a pretty tight gaming experience - there isn't a ton of strategy and there aren't too many options at any given point. On the sprawl scale of Firewatch (novella with a joystick) to Skyrim (ginormous), IWATE lands at at about TLOU: it's pretty on-rails with a lot of story.


IWATE is heavy on plot and character development. Your character grows from a kid to (presumably, still working through it) a teenager and has all the friendship-leveling mechanics of Fire Emblem: Three Houses.


The deckbuilding/cardplay element is, unfortunately, even simpler than Shadowverse. You try to max out points by playing cards with a value and a suit. There are a few bonuses for things like a flush and a straight, but it's nothing like Slay the Spire or Griftlands. It is neat that the cards (memories) are closely tied to plot events, but that doesn't make the challenge mechanic any less mediocre.


I mentioned that choices and plot events grant you new cards, you can also thin your deck and collect items that provided bonuses or can be expended on difficult challenges. This sounds good, but since any stage of a challenge has a (fairly obvious) best solution and cards have very little synergy, there's not much to tinker with.


Despite its colorful graphics and cartoony characters, IWATE's story consists of a dark mystery about the colony planet. There are wildlife attacks, strange spores, and unexplained deaths. It feels sinister and even more so when the grim, tight-lipped adults divulge very little to the young player character.

At this point, the IWATE story has all the makings of a neo-Roanoke with some elements of The Expanse and Star Trek. I'm hoping not to be disappointed.


For our short gaming sessions, me and J have been shooting and looting in Gunfire Reborn. For our longer sessions, we've been wandering the postapocalpytic wastelands of West Virginia.


For all the talk of FO76 being open world with adversarial elements, it sure plays like a co-op version of Fallout 4. That's a good thing (imho), the AAA Bethesda games just don't feel like they'd be very good for PvP. FO76's story content consists of a wealth of quests that send you to the edges of the Appalachian map and introduce you to humans, bots, and ghouls of all sorts.


I have to heavily-caveat my earlier comment about FO76 being co-op. The open world and side quests are 100% co-opable. Some of the more significant (main?) quests require that you and your buddy complete the area independently (though maybe not individually).

Also I should say that we're like level 15, so the endgame could be heavily PvP. Really, that's the best of both worlds - a full campaign experience and the gameplay variety of an MMO.


FO76 has the series's signature environment design style - dark humor, pop culture references, and corpses that tell a story.


Everything else is just like Fallout 4: combat, quests, inventory, crafting, hacking, lockpicking, shelters. The shelters are, of course, more important in FO76 since they act as storage/resupply stations. The quests all have unique narrative elements, but many amount to very obvious fetch quests. This works better in an immersive single player experience than it does in a co-op one where I'm not as invested in an unchanging world. Still, FO76 is fun. It has exciting combat and well-crafted environments to experience as you walk five miles to fetch three bloatfly eggs so that Mr. Larvy can make an insect repellant.

Story

My vague recollection of XCOM 2: an alliance of aliens (grey-likes, snakes, mutanty brutes, etc.) tries a soft-power conquest of Earth, resorting to violence when the heroes of XCOM expose their intentions. Chimera Squad takes place a little further down the timeline, when humans and xenos coexist somewhat peacefully.


Chimera Squad is basically Rainbow 6 in the XCOM universe; a crack team of commandos from everyone with a stake in peace. The game's story involves managing an assassination investigation and civil unrest in three main acts and (presumably) an endgame sequence.


XCOM: Chimera Squad largely uses the tried-and-true XCOM game elements: turn-based tactical combat scenarios strung across a narrative campaign. Combat takes the form of maneuvering your units between cover and objectives, using your two actions per turn to move, shoot, or use a special. Based on cover and character stats, shooting has a fixed percent chance of hit/graze/miss. Chimera Squad is true to the XCOM aesthetic of having 95% shots miss about half the time.

Combat

The XCOM: Chimera Squad HUD with callouts.

Chimera Squad's most notable gameplay additions come from the SWAT-like plot element; your objective for each deployment might be to clear enemies, stop a bomb from detonating, escort a VIP, prevent civilian casualties, etc. Each of the 1-3 engagements per mission begins with a breaching action where you select points of entry, initial targets, and bonus effects like tossing a flashbang or targeting drone.

These mechanics are largely just window dressing. It's nice variety, but it's still XCOM. Well, escort missions are never nice variety. All my homies hate escort missions.


In XCOM 2 you had human soldiers with different roles. They used guns and grenades and tech against aliens with cool special abilities like mind control and venomous bite. Chimera Squad, being set in a future of semi-peaceful coexistence, lets the player command a squad with very diverse abilities. A couple of examples:

• Verge, the greylike, uses mind control to stun enemies or make them attack each other. That's neat but not an uncommon support ability (in gaming), but there's one additional layer of complexity here. Any enemy Verge uses an ability on is added to his 'neural network'. This prevents him from re-stunning/bezerking them, but he also can do a small amount of unblocked damage to everyone in the network.
• Torque, the snake, can grab enemies from across the map and coil them until they suffocate in a turn or two. Since it's a long range, high accuracy attack, it's really nice for neutralizing those pesky ronins or dominators.

Campaign

The inter-combat HQ elements include the following:

• Recruit new units at certain intervals.
• Research and purchase upgrades, assigning dormant units to accelerate R&D.
• Select and equip your current combat squad.
• Heal wounded units or train them (stat upgrades or new abilities).

The city, meanwhile, creeps toward chaos like the XCOM board game or Pandemic. As the main plot develops, you have to send your squad to side deployments that prevent the city from falling into anarchy. Since there aren't a ton of options in this regard, the side deployment mechanic acts more like a timer than a strategic element.

The HQ sequences have the occasional dark/funny news broadcast and banter between squadmembers. Like XCOM 2, this adds a little bit of personality to the story/characters. Considering the narrative-heavy series backed by a couple of books, they certainly could have given the writers and voice actors a little more to do.

Final thoughts

Chimera Squad is fun, though the game mechanics get a bit stale midway through the third act. But it's neat to come back to an XCOM game after a few years.



The kid wanted to see a 'daddy game' so I fired up Astro's Playground, the game that ships with PS5. It's basically a mini-Mario 64 that shamelessly celebrates the back catalog of Playstation products.


A Party Has No Name entered the Void and vanquished the 117 hp Gloom with a Quartermaster, Doomstalker, and Beast Tyrant. There wasn't much to it, just wail on him and spread around the big attacks. Oh yeah, healing was necessary because the Void does damage every turn. Maybe curses would have helped block some attacks - I don't remember if he was immune to those, he's immune to just about everything.