Hack and slash through dungeons in Crimson Alliance, but don’t pick up loot

I gave up trying to beat Barrett in Deus Ex: Human Revolution last night well after my twenty-fifth save reload and decided to scour the Xbox Live games marketplace for anything else, to see what was new, to find an easier experience that would get me muttering or wringing controllers’ necks. And I found it relatively quickly with Crimson Alliance, a new downloadable game that gives off a Diablo/Torchlight vibe, but with a co-op slant.

And it is that. It’s totally a Diablo/Torchlight clone. Minus the great loot. There’s little loot to speak of. More on that in a moment.

Actually, the main reason I downloaded Crimson Alliance was not because it looked like a simple, mindless hack n’ slasher–one that would not get me even more worked up inside–but because it was FREE. That’s right. It’s a free game. Says so on the tin. Well, maybe. The lines between free game, trial, and demo are significantly blurred here, and I’m sure this is all just a big trick being played on consumers by Microsoft Studios and Certain Affinity to get folks in for an appetizer and then staying for dinner. To add even more words to the mix, if one purchased all Summer of Arcade games this year–Bastion, From Dust, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, Fruit Ninja Kinect, and Toy Soldiers: Cold War–then one definitely got a free–and full–version of Crimson Alliance.

So, I downloaded this free game as a storm began brewing outside. Rain and lightning and rumbling thunder. Wonderfully atmospheric gaming sounds, so long as the power doesn’t cut out. Upon starting up, I was given the choice of one of three characters: the mercenary Gnox, the wizard Direwolf, and the assassin Moonshade. I went with her, and the game informed me that if I wanted access to all things Moonshade, I’d have to buy her. See, you can either buy the game completely, purchase classes individually, or, uh, play the free version with little to no fanfare to speak of. And it seems like you can play about the entire first level, a little bit of a shop, and a smidgen into the second level before being booted back to the main menu. The game constantly reminds you that, hey, you can unlock the full game if you want, just press here to do so. You want Achievements or better equipment or the nudity code? Unlock full version here.

Speaking of Achievements, for some reason, I now have Crimson Alliance added to my list of owned games. This means I can look at the list of 12 Achievements, something you don’t get to do with game demos, and see what there is to unlock. However, can’t unlock anything. Gotta upgrade for that sweetness. Which leaves me no choice but to delete the game from my hard-drive and hopefully permanently remove it from my owned games list. Cause I’m not interested in owning it, and that’s mainly because it’s more Gauntlet than Torchlight, and I’m all about the loot over social beatdowns. There’s less focus on loot and RPG elements here and more on slashing at waves of enemies and solving room puzzles with a partner.

That said, the game has some striking still art, strong narration, and an easy-to-get-into feel. Just a lack of crazy cool gear. Not for me, but your mileage may vary.

Achievements of the Week – The Zippily Squat Edition

As predicted during last week’s Achievements of the Week, I did not get to play any Xbox 360 this week. Strangely, it was not just due to not getting Internet set up in our new home, but more of the blame goes to Hurricane Irene, who flooded our basement and restricted us from having power restored. Meaning we couldn’t live in our new home unless we liked staring at the walls and sitting in the dark and drinking lukewarm water. Even today, nearly a week later, power has yet to come back to Grimmauld Place, and that makes me sad, frustrated, and a host of other adjectives that I will refrain from spewing on Grinding Down. Especially considering that there’s an untouched copy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution in my messenger’s bag just begging to get some attention. Soon, my dearie. Soon…

I guess I did unknowingly unlock this little zinger:

Hurricane’s a Big Ol’ Pain (0G): Survived Hurricane Irene in 2011, but had to live without your Xbox 360 for like a week straight.

It’s something. Next week’s edition should hopefully feature a ton of cyberpunk-themed Achievements. If not, I’m blowing up the universe. If I can’t have power, none of y’all can.

What have you guys and girls unlocked during these past seven days? Speak up in the comments section below!

Achievements of the Week – The Legend of the Boar Edition

Posting this very early on this bright and sunny Friday as I’ll be spending it mostly moving, sweating, and moving and sweating at the same time. And who knows when we’ll have Internet again. Pray for Tara and I’s well-being as we leave the attic known as the Leaky Cauldron and head to the house in the woods, which she calls Godric’s Hollow and I call Grimmauld Place. Should be a crazy time…

Anyways, this week, I unlocked two Achievements with legend in their title and then sat idly on a boar for five minutes while checking my email. This is the very definition of excitement, I know.

From Fallout: New Vegas…

The Legend of the Star (20G): Completed The Legend of the Star.

Not going to say too much about this here as I am working on a big boy blog post, as this quest was a bit demanding, and I obviously didn’t ping this baby until my third character, wherein I really had to concentrate and pay attention to the fact that these Sunset Sarsaparilla star bottle caps were not gonna find themselves. Also, the quest’s reward is nothing great. Oi. Regardless, glad this one’s done as it was the last Achievements left for sidequests.

Caravan Master (30G): Won 30 games of Caravan.

Way back in June 2011, I wrote a rather informative blog post about how to play Caravan; you’d think, with that knowledge, that I’d have knocked this Achievement out a lot sooner than this. The problem is that the game got patched shortly after that, and the patch did things to Caravan. Cruel, nasty things. They made it so that opposing players could play cards such as kings, queens, and jacks against your own stacks, thus ruining your hard work to 26. The guy near Gun Runners was impossible, doing this every other turn. Fed up, I went back to my old staple of NCR ambassador Dennis Crocker, and while he occasionally messed up a stack of mine, it was less frequent. Six won games later, and there ya go.

Tara said,”Wham, bam, Caravan!” when I unlocked this. Love that dork.

From Nier…

The Book of Legend (20G): Grimoire Weiss joined your party.

All Aboared! (10G): You rode a boar for at least five minutes.

One of the early sidequests in Nier, given to you by some no-name villager, involves taking down a wild boar terrorizing…uh, sheep. Or people. It doesn’t matter. You just need to go kill a boar. After you do that, it seems other boars have heard of Nier’s horrible deed and are now tame around him, ready for riding. The Achievement’s descriptions says to ride the boar for five minutes, but I merely climbed on its back, put the controller down, checked what was up with Gmail and Twitter, peed, and came back to that oh-so-sweet pinging sound. All aboared indeed.

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And that’s it. Depending on our Internet status at the new house, there may or may not be an Achievements of the Week for next week. We’ll see.

Unlock any good ones lately, Grinding Down readers? Tell me in the comments below.

Achievements of the Week – The Medal to the Pedal Edition

I was kind of hoping that by voicing my Achievements goals last week that I’d be more aware of them and into, y’know, getting things done. Alas, this was another mindtrip of a week, and I spent a good amount of it in a serious funk, a place where concentration is unwanted. Games with stories and things to constantly pay attention to were not my speed currently, and all I kind of was capable of doing was button mashing and going through the motions. Let’s take a trip down Memory Lane and recall what I wanted to get done this week:

My goals for this upcoming week are to beat Bastion, grind LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean to completion, and maybe give the extremely silly Nier a few more minutes of my time.

So, did I do any of that? Nope. Instead, I played a lot of Street Fighter IV.

From Street Fighter IV…

Medal Hunter (10G): Collect 500 Medals.

Medals Gets! (30G): Collect all Medal types.

The Road to Battle (10G): Play 100 Xbox LIVE battles. (Ranked match or player match)

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I’ve never been great at fighting games, and I think that’s because I try to hard to learn combos and special moves instead of relying on good ol’ cheap tactics, like sweeping kicks and cornering opponents to death. In the Tekken franchise, I just wanted to learn all the special throw moves, as I thought the animations for them was awesome. Especially when watching a giant bear hug an old man to death.

Throws are less important in Street Fighter IV, as quick combos and projectiles and ultra combo finishes are the name of the game. I’m not amazing at these things, except projectiles, but throwing Hadoken after Hadoken after Hadoken is tiring. So earning medals after each match was a slow grind, as I would only get two to three per fight, given that I constantly got low grades. Out of the 100 Xbox LIVE battles played, I’ve won around 34. Not a terribly impressive amount.

But yeah, Street Fighter IV. Seems like the only Achievements left that I could probably unlock involve playing more online battles. The trial, survival, and challenge modes are brutal and hard, unless you cheat with Zangief’s Lariat move, which I have been doing, little by little, but it’s gonna take some time. Will let y’all know when I’ve collected 1,000 medals and played 200 Xbox LIVE battles. Probably will happen some time next year.

Not gonna bother trying to voice any Achievements goals this time around. Pretty sure it’s gonna be another crappy week. Just K.O. me now, please.

Achievements of the Week – The Police School of Philosophy Edition

Ahhh…another week of posts at Grinding Down comes to a close, and we have another round-up of earned Achievements. Alas, this was a light week. Extremely light. I mean, I did earnestly try for some Achievements in Fallout: New Vegas over the last couple of nights, but between getting distracted within the game and it freezing on me…it was all for naught. Besides, both Caravan Master and The Legend of the Star are time-heavy deals, frustratingly slow and methodic, and I’m inching closer, I swears, but nothing’s popped yet. Just need a few more Sunset Sarsaparilla Star Caps (41/50) and a few more Caravan wins (24/30).

That said, here’s my only two unlocked Achievements this week:

From L.A. Noire…

The Brass (30G): Achieve maximum rank.

The Long Arm Of The Law (30G): Complete all street crime cases.

I wrote about this one over here.

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And that’s it! Boo.

My goals for this upcoming week are to beat Bastion, grind LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean to completion, and maybe give the extremely silly Nier a few more minutes of my time. We’ll see what gets done. I’m kind of teetering on my depression between wanting to do lots of comic work and not, so it all depends on the state of my headspace. If comics take the reins this week, most likely gaming gets pushed to the back-burner. Plus, there’s going to be even more moving and things to do this weekend. Really looking forward to stay-in weekends once Tara and I get into our new place, as the coming and going really does mess up my passion and trivial scheduling. Okay, sorry about that. The mind, it speaks what it wants…

Okay, Grinding Down readers. What’s your favorite Achievement unlocked this week?

Changing discs and stopping crimes in L.A. Noire

Last night, as I progressed towards reaching the highest law rank and stopping all street crime cases in L.A. Noire, I found myself constantly changing game discs and wondering if I had somehow slipped through a tear in the universe and traveled back to the days of massively epic RPGs on the original PlayStation. Nope. I checked my computer. It was 2011, it was the age of industry, and I was playing a game on the Xbox 360. I didn’t count, but I’d venture a guess that I got up from my comfy armchair to change game discs at least more than five times–within a ten-minute timeframe. Let me explain the why though.

See, I’ve already beaten L.A. Noire, but wanted to go back and finish up all the street crime cases that I skipped during my intense, focused playthrough. I did a few of these petty crime cases in the beginning, but as the main story cases got more crazy and Cole began to lose himself in his work, so did I, letting many of these appetizers fall to the background. Thankfully, via the main menu screen, you can go back to each desk’s respective section and free roam in that world, gaining the chance to find locations, golden film reels, and stop criminals in quick, bite-sized side missions.

The problem is that since L.A. Noire on the Xbox 360 is so huge, it had to be expanded onto three separate discs, with the different desks divided up like so: Patrol and Traffic on disc one, Homicide on disc two, and Vice and Arson on disc three. My quest forward began with me popping in disc three and doing some street crimes from the Arson desk; once those were done, and the map was seemingly empty of red markers, I went to the Vice desk to do the same thing. A message popped up that said I had finished all the street crimes for this desk. Cool, thanks for that. Off to the second disc then, to play the Homicide desk. Did a few more crime missions, creeping closer to all 40 completed. No more markers on the map, but no message like before had popped up either. Oh well. Off to see what I missed during Cole’s time on the Traffic desk (Patrol has no “free roam” option). Upon starting free roam for Traffic, I got that message indicating all street crimes were complete for this desk. All right. Back to Arson desk then, switching the discs out. Load up free roam and can’t find any red markers on the map that highlight available street crime cases. I drive around for a bit and the police radio chatter cranks up, alerting me to a nearby crime in progress. Off I go…only to discover it’s a street crime case I had already completed. Grrr. Okay, maybe I missed something on the Homicide desk. Same thing happened, with no map markers, but getting called to a mission I had previously done. At this point, I only need to finish up two more street crimes to brush them all under the rug, and this is driving me mad. TO THE INTERNET, ROY EARLE! YOU CAN DRIVE.

…

Oh. Duhhh. Discovered that some street crime missions are only available at specific times of the day during each desk, meaning some during daylight and some at night. I had no way of knowing that.

Asdfghjkl!

ASDFGHJKL!

ASDFGHJKL!

Basically, for the Homicide and Arson desks, I had to drive around for a good amount of in-game time, waiting for the sun to set/rise, and then–and only then–did the last two street crimes become available. They were easy ones, a car chase and a hand-to-hand brawl. I just wish that there had been a better way of keeping track of completed street crimes in the game. Like, why not have the stats printed next to the “free roam” option in the respective case folders so we wouldn’t have to load and switch out discs so much? Makes sense to me. Unfortunately, this experience does not instill me with a sense of excitement towards chasing down that final newspaper, the remaining 25+ cars, and, uh, 49 golden film reels. Yes, forty-nine. Throughout my entire L.A. Noire experience, I only stumbled across one out of those fifty collectibles.

Anyways, here’s my reward for all the back and forth disc-changing madness:

The Long Arm Of The Law (30G): Complete all street crime cases.

Achievements of the Week – The Burning Love Edition

Here we are for the second stab at rounding up all of those juicy Achievements unlocked during the last week. Don’t expect the naming convention of these posts to be conventional; they are born on a whim, on a phrase, on a wild brain-bite, with most often the first Achievement listed acting as the muse. Okay, let’s do this!

From Team Fortress 2…

Flamethrower (5G): Set five enemies on fire in 30 seconds.

I was trying so hard for this Achievement, managing to set three enemies on fire before a turret took me out. Was bummed. But then, after respawning, I quickly shuffled back to the warzone, lit two more dudes on fire, and ping. Glad to see that it didn’t have to be all five on one life. I have to imagine though, that since it took me about 10 seconds to respawn and five or so more to get over to the fighting, that it was down to the wire.

Nemesis (5G): Get five revenge kills.

Revenge is a dish best served BOILING HOT, YA BUNCH OF SNIPING SNOTHEADS. This one also tied in with the above Achievement, in case you couldn’t figure that out on your own.

I actually unlocked several more Achievements for Team Fortress 2, but I did them in a whoring kind of way and am not terribly proud of my actions. We’ll leave them unmentioned this week.

From Half-Life 2…

Hot PotatOwned (10G): Kill a Combine soldier with his own grenade.

Ha, funny.

From L.A. Noire…

Johnny On The Spot (30G): Respond to 20 street crime cases.

Petty crooks and ruffians are no match for the mighty Cole Phelps. I also unlocked the Miles On The Clock Achievement, which gets some coverage here. Closing in on a few more, such as The Long Arm Of The Law and The Brass. Maybe they’ll ping this weekend. Maybe they won’t. I’m no fortune-teller.

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And that’s it. Been a slow week for Achievements, mainly because I was focusing more on other projects, like journal comics and Supertown comics. Writing up a crazy review of Minecraft. Watching some old Shark Week stuff on Netflix to make up for the fact that I don’t have the Discovery Channel currently. Oh, and moving. Always with the moving. Wish I could get Achievements for packing boxes and carrying them to my car, over and over and over again. Something like this, perhaps:

Professional Boxer (100G): Packed five consecutive W.B. Mason boxes, carried them down two flights of stairs, loaded them into your car, and broke a sweat.

Hells yeah.

Putting miles on the clock in L.A. Noire

I beat L.A. Noire a couple weeks ago, but I’m not going to be talking about the game as a whole or its ending just yet or all the things I loved slash hated. That will all have to wait until I get to it on my 2011 Completed Games list. In the meantime, I’ve dipped back into the game to play clean up for Achievements, as well as just drive around Los Angeles without the constant pressure of finding clues, undermining suspects, and closing cases. It’s been really nice.

Team Bondi and Rockstar’s 1940s Los Angeles is bland in terms of things to do other than driving from point A to point B, but brimming with beauty and buildings to look at, observe, eye hump, and be amazed with. Aesthetics is the name of the game here, and hoping into a car, tuning in to Billie Holiday, and driving down busy city streets is a little like time-traveling. It’s also quite relaxing because, unlike Grand Theft Auto IV, bumping into a car or accidentally swerving over to the sidewalk does not get the black and white chasing after you; in fact, you’re the black and white, and the game does quietly reprimand you for reckless driving, but never enough to put the fear in you to drive as straight and narrow as they come.

I do try to drive safe and civilian-like, but sometimes I get sleepy and veer into another car. Or some dinkhead begins to turn, but suddenly decides to stop in the middle of the road; that seems to happen a lot. No worries. Cole and his partner are always fine, never thrown from there car or anything, and the cars don’t ever explode like they would in Liberty City. Crash a car, find another, and so on. The developers have made it extremely easy to stay in the game, to keep exploring and listening to those snazzy, jazzy tunes, and that’s pretty amazing as most open-world games get boring real fast. Die a few times in The Saboteur or Grand Theft Auto IV, and seeing that I’d have to re-drive (or re-walk) all the way back to where I was is more frustration than I need, and off goes the system. However, with L.A. Noire, there’s none of that. The only pain, I guess, is having to switch out between three different discs to “free roam” certain crime desks.

Anyways, last night, as the heat and sleepiness wore me down, I found out that I’d been driving a whole lot so far, unlocking this fun Achievement:

Miles on the Clock (15G): Drive more than 194.7 miles.

Obviously, this took some considerable time, especially since I reveled in the fact that, during the game’s main missions, you could totally make your partner drive to the desired location without fear of ruining your car or losing your way or simply getting distracted. However, doing so did not count towards your total mileage for this Achievement. Post-game, finding hidden cars and completing more street crime cases definitely helped with this. I think I was mindlessly driving around near the Hollywood sign though when this nugget pinged. Vroom vroom.

I still have a few more somewhat attainable Achievements to go after, meaning I’ll be spending more time in the glitz and glamor of L.A. That sounds fine to me. Locations, newspapers, more street crimes, hidden cars, golden film reels–here I come!

Achievements of the Week – The Correct Party Position Edition

Well, here’s a new Grinding Down segment that I am going to strive to make a thing. Every Friday, when I remember or care or feel like it is necessary, I’ll round up some of my favorite Achievements that I unlocked during the week. Not all of them, mind you. Just the fun ones, the ones with some story to them, the questionable. Alas, there might be some weeks where I unlock zero Achievements, with the blame either on my gaming skills or lack of playing time or me spontaneously combusting. Yup, you read that right. I don’t want to get all predictable on y’all…

From Portal…

Partygoer (5G): Make the correct party escort submission position decision.

Terminal Velocity (5G): Fall 30,000 feet.

It’s a little after one in the morning, and I have to use the bathroom. I’m currently playing Portal in total darkness, the ceiling fan humming overhead, dulling GLaDOS and hypnotizing me towards sleep. In a tiny alcove, I create a blue portal overhead and an orange portal on the floor, and then I fall–I fall continuously, gaining speed and momentum, turning my TV screen into a seizure-inducing weapon. I leave the room for some quiet time on the throne, and when I return, I’ve unlocked the above Achievement.

From Half-Life 2…

Bone Breaker (5G): Kill 30 enemies with thrown physics objects.

I’m still not really that good with the Gravity Gun, but every now and then I am able to pick up discarded saw blades with it, and those slice through Combine like warm knives through walking sticks of butter. Um…what? Forget it. Used that method a few more times, and ping, Achievement unlocked.

From Fallout: New Vegas…

Make Up Your Mind (20G): Made up your mind… about your brain.

Not to spoil too much about this, but the conversation leading up to this Achievement is simply fantastic. Like nothing before. Really exemplary of how great this add-on is for the Fallout franchise. If only all DLC could be as strong as this old boy. I’m guessing this Achievement can’t be missed, no matter what your decision is.

From Bastion…

Pet Sitter (10G): Get four different domesticated creatures in the Bastion.

I unlocked a few other Achievements in Bastion, but they are all tied to the story and are pretty spoilerific, so I won’t broadcast ’em here. I’m getting closer to completing the game, and might even try for a full 200 here. We’ll see. I always end up getting distracted or losing interest (am I right, Torchlight?).

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And thanks to all these Achievements, here’s a nice little surprise:

Nifty. Sure, it’s not a palindrome or a nice, solid round number with lots of zeroes, but I’ll take it for its uniqueness nonetheless.

That’s it for our very first Achievements of the Week! What do y’all think of this feature? Stunned silence will be interpreted as glorious, panty-throwing praise. And please share below in the comments your favorite unlocked Achievement from the week.

Meet The Sink’s numerous personality modules from Fallout: New Vegas

Without a doubt, Old World Blues is the best DLC add-on for Fallout: New Vegas so far. It has stellar writing, wonderful voice acting, memorable characters, and a decently sized map to explore as you please. It stands a fraction taller than Point Lookout for delivering a great, bite-sized Fallout experience, even if at times it could be a little too chatty, a little too difficult, and a little too reliant on energy weapons for success. Thankfully, my current character Kapture was already a 100 in the Energy Weapons skill before heading over to Big Mountain to be swarmed by Roboscorpions and frenzied Securitrons. One might also want to consider a character high in Speech, as there are a lot of, um, things to speak with, and yes, I said things, not people. Let’s get into that.

All My Friends Have Off Switches is a faux main story quest in Old World Blues; it doesn’t necessarily have to be completed, but I feel like many gamers will go after it, and it mostly runs parallel with the true main story quest, making it easier to pick up some–not all–of the personality modules as they go mucking about the Big Empty. You are basically tasked with finding holotapes that contain personalities for specific items in The Sink, which is your home-away-from-home for now. Installing these personalities will bring the items to life, and after much talking, you’ll learn what benefits they can offer. There are 10 personalities to unearth, as you’ll soon see below:

#1 – The Sink Central Intelligence Unit is a human-accessible computer responsible for Big MT’s data storage. It can repair your weapons and armor up to 100, switch off/on the other personalities in The Sink, and act as a traveling merchant, with a decent stock of items. It has a thin British accent.

#2 – The Sink’s Sink is a nice, if a bit OCD sink. Obsessed with cleanliness, the Sink is also upgradable, allowing the Courier to bottle his or her own water if they happen to have empty bottles. I never took advantage of this, but I bet it’s great for players on Hardcore difficulty.

#3 – This Auto-Doc is actually a prototype built by Dr. Mobius many moons ago. It seems to have a military-like personality, and it can provide the Courier with the following benefits: a haircut, facial reconstruction, implants of varying price, switch out brains, spines, and hearts, and change the player’s traits (only once).

#4 – This personality is a little creepy. Or should I say…seedy? The Biological Research Station is a computer mainframe that is capable of cloning and planting dried seeds that will harvest after three days. It also refers to the Courier as “baby” and makes way too many sexual references. Tara was especially perturbed.

#5 – Blind Diode Jefferson is The Sink’s talking jukebox, but don’t expect much music outta it. You might even say it’s got the blues…the old world blues. By finding special holotapes, Blind Diode Jefferson can update the Sonic Emitter with new traits and bonuses.

#6 – The Book Chute likes to eradicate sedition. What does that mean? Well, bring it lots of pre-war books, and the chute will wipe them clean, readying them for…um, that I didn’t get to discover. Checking online tells me that you’ll be able to make your own skill books with the right amount of blank books and specific items. That’s neat!

#7 – Light Switch 01 is a very seductive light switch that, while appearing to be sentient, is actually not. There seems to be some conflict between it and the light switch in the other room.

 

#8 – Not much different from Light Switch 01, but a few special dialogue options come up with Light Switch 02 if you’ve got the right perks on ya.

 

#9 – Oh, Muggy! You make yourself so hard to love, and yet you are so lovable. It is a neurotic, miniature Securitron that is obsessed with collecting coffee mugs. I get that. I suffer from the very same diseases. Basically, Muggy can turn coffee mugs, tin plates, and coffee pots into miscellaneous items perfect for using at the crafting bench. It also loves to curse. Swoon.

#10 – Last, but certainly not least, is The Sink’s evil-minded Toaster. This thing wants to burn more than just sliced bread, and it’s not afraid to tell you that. It’s special perk is that it can heat up any weapons composed of space-age Saturnite material, as well as help make extra small energy cells and microfusion cells. This very same toaster was originally cut from Fallout 2.

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Whew. That’s a lot of ‘bots. I whole-heartedly recommend you speak with them often and deeply, exhausting as much of their dialogue options as you can. They are all very unique, and given that each (save for the light switches, I guess) offer some kind of benefit or bonus, it’s worth the effort. I found The Sink to be a wonderful, personified hub for my time spent in the Big Empty, and maybe now even for a main playthrough, as it features plenty of storage space, reloading and crafting benches, and helpful robots at arms’ length. For playthrough #4, I’m definitely going to try to do Old World Blues as early as possible (though the game itself warns the Courier that it is meant only for players level 15 and higher, and I struggled at times even at level 28 through 30, so, uh, eep) just to get such a kick-ass base. It definitely trumps Lucky 38 or Victor’s shack.

But there ya go. Hope you liked this little rundown of the ten robotic personality modules you’ll install in The Sink. Good luck finding all their holotapes!