Last Light in the Darkness

I've had Metro:  Last Light sitting in my apartment pretty much since May unopened.  I'd preordered it, got it, and pretty much just forgot about it.  Until last week that is.  For the past week or so, during the evenings I've been getting some game time in and a couple days ago I managed to beat it.  I'd gotten the first game, Metro 2033 before I'd moved and beat it.  I really enjoyed it.  A genre I've found that I really enjoy is post apocalyptic fiction.   I don't know why, there's just something about that bleak, grimdark setting, the fight for survival that I really enjoy.  You also tend to get some pretty good character pieces out of these stories.  Now, lately, these kinds of stories have involved zombie apocalypses.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy these stories.  Hell, they usually tend to be very heavily character driven and frequently have some of the most realistic characters in them (when they're well written, anyway).  But, that does tend to get old pretty quickly.
Most post-apocalyptic videogames also tend to involve zombies in them.  Dead Space, Dead Rising, Fallout, Dead Island, the list goes on.  I'm sure that's the case because nobody really feels bad about crushing a zombie's skull with a 2x4 and they're a nice, dumb enemy that's easy to program.  The Metro games don't have zombies.  And you know what, they're actually kind of a breath of fresh air.
So what are these Metro games?  They're first person adventure/survival games set in post nuclear war Moscow.  The games take place both below ground, in the metro systems and tunnels and above ground in the ruined wasteland.  Here's a trailer for it.

You can get a slight feel for the games atmosphere, but there's another trailer out there that gives a closer feeling for what the game's overall tone is like.  This one's kind of violent though.

The game is bleak.  BLEAK.  The first game wasn't as bleak as this one is.  I will say, without spoiling the ending, that it does offer hope to humanity, but the tone through the whole thing is that humanity is pretty much doomed to repeat its mistakes and wipe itself out. 
This game isn't just about sneaking around in the dark, knifing Nazis (which you do), oh no.  This is a horror game, too.  Both games had quite a bit of supernatural stuff going on.  One of the characters in the first suggests that with humanity practically wiped out, the supernatural world has a chance to reassert itself.  Weird stuff happens in the tunnels.  Believe me.  One of the best stages in Last Light was a segment where Atryom, the player character has to take a shortcut to a peace conference by going over land.  To get to his destination, he has to go through a ruined apartment block.  This was easily one of the creepiest segments of the game.  Weird stuff happens there and there's glimpses of it in that first trailer.
There were a couple of interesting things that cropped up in the game.  One was nudity.  Wasn't expecting that at all.  The other was that Last Light explicitly says that there were other survivors besides those in the Moscow metro.  You overhear a conversation at one point where a character mentions that they finally made contact with another settlement.  I think they said they were near the Urals, but I don't quite recall.  They say that they still haven't been able to make contact with anyone else, but that one little tidbit I find interesting.  They never mention other survivors in the first game and in fact expressly point out several times that they've never been able to reach anyone else.  This makes me wonder if later entries in the series, either books or games might shift locations.

So, TL;DR:  I really enjoyed the game though over all.  I'm going to give it a break for a while, but I will eventually go back to it and play it in Ranger Mode.  What that is, is it's basically the hardcore mode.  No HUD, weapons do more damage, and items such as ammunition, money, health packs, and filters for your gas mask are extremely hard to find.  Sounds like it should be pretty fun.

On to some other things, how about some miniatures?

I've had this GW Cairn Wraith for a little while now, but I've been dreading actually painting the thing up.  It has a pretty dynamic pose and I felt I just couldn't do it justice.  I finally worked up the courage and went at it.  Here's the results.

Simple, but I think he actually turned out fairly well, despite my reservations about painting this guy.

I also got to work painting another of my Mantic Enforcers.  This guy is going to be the officer for my standard white-clad team.

I think I'm finally starting to get the hang on painting their colors.  I tried something different for his sword.  Rather than OSL, I tried blending instead.  This didn't turn out so well.  I suppose for a first try it looks okay, but it doesn't look anywhere near as good as it would if, say, I'd used an airbrush.  I think next time I'm going to do this, I'll try dry brushing it.

For the hell of it, I thought I'd try my hand and painting up a Black Legion Chaos Marine.  This guy was actually one of my initial Iron Warrior attempts that I stripped and redid.

Obviously not finished, but the technique is simple enough.  I actually used no black paint on this.  He's painted entirely in Black Grey and Glorious Gold, then hit with a black wash and his horns were painted white.  Simple enough and gives the impression that his armor is black, while also giving it a bit of depth.  I have a Chaos Motorcycle that I'll be painting up the same way eventually.

Lastly, I got in some orders today.  One of which was a recent order from Chapterhouse Studios.  When they had their lawsuit with GW, they basically had to put all new products on hold.  Now that it's been settled however, they can start releasing new things as long as it doesn't directly infringe on a GW product design.  So, something they had in development at least as far back as last year was a squad of replacement figures for the Eldar Howling Banshee unit.  While Howling Banshees are all female, this new unit is basically just an all male version of them.  The theme was also changed.  Rather than having their theme be a bunch of wailing banshees , they're based on wolves/dogs.  The original name for the unit was Howling Hounds, though I'd also seen them called Howling Wolves.  That's the name I'm going to use.  Chapterhouse calles them Warp Hunters now, but Howling Wolves sounds cooler.  So, I haven't done anything with them yet, but I did snap a couple of pictures of one of the troops.

I really like their designs.  For some reason, most of the people on Dakka Dakka really hated their designs.  I know one of the complaints was that they looked too bulky.  That's why I've got that second shot of one compared to one of my Fire Dragons.  As you can see, they're not bulky at all.  Pretty well proportioned and sized, I say.  The casting quality on them is very nice.  I haven't noticed any air bubbles, no miscast bits either.  There's a little warping on a couple of the weapons, but that can be fixed with some hot water.  There was some flash, too, but that's easily cleaned up.  The worst thing I found with their casting is that one guy had a fairly significant mold line on him.  It'll be difficult to clean up since it goes through that ribbing on the side of the guy's armor, but it isn't impossible.  I'd say they were worth the money, plus they're cheaper than the legit GW Banshees.

Mummies, Alive!

So, about mid-last week, my brother, his wife, and his daughter all came home from Japan.  It's been a while since we've seen them, so I took off a couple of days to extend my weekend.  That way I'd have some extra time to hang out with them.  I spent pretty much all of today with them and, even though we didn't really do anything, I still enjoyed being able to hang out with them.  After today, it's back to my usual daily grind.  Bleh.

My brother mentioned that I need more variety in my blog though.  He says it's too much about the miniatures.  Well, in that case, I did finally get around to watching all of Singham.  Singham is an Indian action movie that I'd heard was totally ridiculous and has some absolutely wacky stunts in it.  Here's the trailer for the movie.

So, Singham is like, the most awesomely, manliest badass who has ever walked the face of the Earth.  And for some reason, criminals seem to think that they can take him on.  Ha ha, silly criminals.  You cannot match the manliness of Bajirao Singham.  So, this movie does have ridiculously over the top action scenes and some great scenes of sheer badassary.  The action scenes and pretty much any scene in which Singham is doing his job are great.  The rest of the movie... eh.  I can't say this movie is perfect.  For one thing, it's over 2 and 1/2 hours.  A good chunk of that time is spent cramming as many other genres into this movie as the writers can fit, including romantic comedy, slapstick comedy, drama, and of course musical.  All of this is in addition to the action movie stuff.  Personally, I felt way too much time was spent on the romantic comedy parts.  On top of that, at times I couldn't tell if the movie was supposed to be serious or a parody.  It hit so many generic police action movie tropes, and played them all so over the top, it really felt like it was supposed to be a parody. 

So, in the end, my opinion on the movie is mixed.  It's too long, and too much time is spent on the boring stuff.  On the other hand, the acting was pretty good, the action scenes were over the top and generally pretty damn awesome and Singham's bouts of blatant police brutality are generally just plain fun to watch.  I mean, watch this clip.

The movie is on Netflix, btw.  Go ahead and watch it.

Now back to the boring stuff my brother doesn't care about:  MINIATURES!
Maybe you were wondering about that title for this post?  I wonder, could it have anything to do with mummies?

Why yes, yes it does.

The Kickstarter Bones figures have finally hit the local hobby shop and I had to buy them.  Seeing as my skeletons wound up getting trounced last time I used them in Song of Blades and Heroes, I figured I'd try something different.  I picked up most of the Bones mummy figures/sets.  I'm really only missing the wizard one.  I picked up the mummy captain

Mummy Warriors

And your generic run of the mill mummies.

The warriors and shambling types came in 3 packs.  I've so far got two of each pack finished.  I'll have the final pair of figures finished up fairly soon, I'm sure.  They're really easy to paint, so I can bang these guys out pretty quickly.  Hell, the basic mummies only take an hour or two at most.

I've picked up several other figures that I'm slowly working on.  I've got 3 female characters that I've dipped and need to finish up sometime later this week, a couple of hulking evil knights, a "strumpet,"a barmaid, an evil altar, and some flame tokens and several other types of undead including 2 armored skeletons and a clear wraith.  Unfortunately, none of the sci-fi stuff seems to be available yet.

Here's one of the 2 evil knights I have.  The other is not even close to being done yet.

I've also been working on camouflage techniques.  I learned recently how to do German pea-dot camo.  It's surprisingly easy to do and fairly adaptable.  Here's a figure I was using to practice it on.

Those pictures are pre-wash.  Unfortunately, the pics I did take of the figure after I added the wash did not turn out very good.  In the pictures, it winds up looking better pre-wash, but in person, it looks better post-wash.  Weird.  I guess it just doesn't photograph very well.