As predicted....

...I forgot about this blog.

But then, given the name of the blog, that's probably expected!   Recently, I received Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 and R.U.S.E. for my birthday, and purchased DoW2: Retribution and Homefront for myself with my own money.  So I have had a lot to play over Feb and continue to have tons to play over Mar, to say the least.

R6V2 is a wonderful procedural shooter, although not as complex a shooter as SWAT 4 it makes up for it by not being as brain-bustingly hard and yet still retains replayability.  Its character customization is awesome, and I really regret not getting this game in its prime.  But to be fair, I have the first Rainbow 6, and it sucked more than a black hole crackwhore on a money run, so I had good reason to shy away from everything Tom Clancy.  That said, the gameplay well above adequate and the storyline continues from the first Rainbow 6 to a very good twist at the end, which I won't spoil for you (but then if you're interested in the game you probably already have it anyway).

R.U.S.E. is a very well done RTS game, with a somewhat simplistic approach to units and control, but it's made up for by the use of intelligence and the titular ruses.  Things like switching units on the radar so infantry appears like tanks and tanks appear like infantry in a sector, or putting camo netting on buildings for a sector, a fake (and completely free) tank assault force in which to distract the enemy by making them think you're massing in a certain sector or simply to hide actual tank units in.  Despite its apparent simplicity, it has complexity through its ruses and intelligence scheme.   It does have its issues though, the factions don't appear at all balanced, but that might just be me.  I haven't gone to the forums since the beta to see what the overall opinion on balance is, so I'm not gonna dwell too much on that.

Dawn of War 2: Retribution is the second expansion to the second installment of Relic's 40k license for RTS games, and it improves on the series even more than Chaos Rising (the first expansion) did.  With the addition of the Imperial Guard, the game actually feels semi-complete as far as forces go (the four remaining factions being somewhat niche, despite the fact that I like most of them at least in concept).  The Guard are done extremely well, and truly feel different from the other factions with their weak and cheap shooty units, supported by excellent vehicles and auxiliary units such as Ogryns.  The campaign picks up ten years after Chaos Rising's campaign, with the Ordo Malleus (Order of the Hammer-- the daemon hunters) arm of the Inquisition deciding they've had just about enough of the daemonic/heretic infestation in the sector after well over ten years of constant uprising and daemonic infestations, and so they're just going to destroy every habitable world in the sector, and your faction is, for whatever reasons, attempting to stop it.

Homefront hasn't come out yet, but I will try to remember to write a review of it when I get it on the fifteenth.

Good day to y'all :)