So I may be the biggest Star Wars fanboy you know. I have seen the 1st movie well over 400 times, I watched it every single day for over a year when we got it on VHS.

So when it comes to Star Wars content, I may be a wee bit bias.

I thought the EP1 – 3 trilogy was not that bad, I have watched all the animated series and loved every minute (well maybe not the Jar-Jar moments) and I am in the minority thinking the new trilogy thus far is outstanding.

So when it was announced that Star Wars Battlefront 2 was going to have a full story mode, I was more than thrilled. We may finally get some answers to what happened in the 20 years spanning Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.

What Star Wars: BF2 delivers is a great addition to the Star Wars universe, but sadly due to some seemingly dubious business practices of their publisher EA, many of you may have passed on this game.

I am here to tell you to go buy it anyway, not because I like EA, but because if you are a Star Wars fan in any way, you owe it to yourself to check this out, it really is that good.

The game was seriously revamped after the community backlash about loot boxes and level progression, and it is completely playable and most of all fair.

I will circle back to that at the end.

The game itself starts during the events of Return of the Jedi, with you as a rising star in the Empire.

The story is pretty great, it will take you to places only spoken in Star Wars lore, you will see why star destroyers are crashed on Jakku, how Kylo knew to go there to find the map to Luke, how Luke got the compass that lead him to exile island and many more bits to fill in the movies.

The game play itself is exemplary, this is a very well crafted shooter, controls feel very natural and the weapons powerful.

But where the game seriously shines is in the flight missions, bombing runs on star destroyers, flying down the gullet of a repair vessel destroying shield generators before blowing up a docked star destroyer, dog fighting over trade blockades in the Millennium Falcon.

It is all fantastic and definitely bows to the fanboys of the world.

The single player story is not terribly long and on hard can be about 10 hours long or so, but front to back it is very enjoyable and challenging at times.

Once this is complete you can move onto the multiplayer side of things which is really the heart of the game.

Long after the story fade you will be playing the MP online.

Now I hung up my controller many years ago for online multiplayer games, but for the first time in probably 5 years I dove in with both feet.

The mission are just so well crafted you can’t help but want to come back for more.

You have a few game modes to choose from, some better than others.

There is a Heroes vs Villains, which is just as it sounds, pick you favorite (unlocked) hero and jump in again other over powered villains.

There is a Starfighter mode, that is in my opinion one of the best. You fly objective based missions against the enemy, either attacking of defending. Things like breaking a blockade, then taking out the bases defenses, and finally attacking a power core to blow it all up. That is just one of the example of the 5 or 6 missions of this type.

There is also a ground war type battle of similar style, moving ahead, taking objectives, very mush like Battlefield Bad Company from many moons ago. These battles are huge though, with vehicles, heroes and 40 players (plus bots) thrown into the mix. The maps are large enough to accommodate this no problem.

You also have the typical team death-match games with 6v6, and a pseudo “ctf” sytle game as well.

All of which I never found to be unbalanced.

One of the big slams EA had was that progression seemed to be to weighted towards grind, and fans (and idiots) seemed to think that PLAYING the game was an unfair way of unlocking stuff, and God forbid they have to actually play more then 5 minutes to unlock everything.

So sadly EA bowed to these loudmouths and changed the game, so much so that in a single weekend I managed to unlock all the Heroes, something that previously would have taken weeks, was a simple walk in the park and WAY too easy. But hey, we are in the generation of trophies for all those who show up, and if you cannot get your immediate needs met, than said media is utter garbage.

It is unfortunate that those vocal minority have the loudest voices. Because they are a blight on this industry.

But I digress.

There was also the loot box controversy, a one two punch in the face for EA sadly. They set out to have loot boxes unlock abilities that would give you an edge in combat, an edge which mind you, you would have anyway through natural progression and unlocking things in time, but loot boxes doll out the new skills for each class.

Well considering you could buy the currency needed to open them (beyond what you earn through playing) people saw this as Pay to Win multiplayer and very unbalanced.

The part that people forget though, is natural skill plays a lot of winning a match, just because you have an uber rocket launcher skill, does not equate a win, not if you can’t hit the side of a barn with it.

But again, the whiny babies (who never even played the game yet) cried so hard and loud, that EA decided to pull the purchased credit aspect, so you could no longer buy the tokens needed to open a crate, and instead, had to play and earn credits to open them.

A win for the great unwashed, a loss for EA.

I think the most disturbing part is people do not realize the impact this has. Due to the failed success of Star Wars BF 2, we now may not get a BF3. Their collective pissing and moaning, may have forever changed what we get to play.

I would rather take a game made with nefarious business practice in mind, and play around that system, then to never have it at all. But that’s just me.

Lastly we have the visual presentation.

This game looks amazing… like jaw on the floor, holy crap how did they make endor look so real, amazing.

The game truly shine in it’s HDR presentation, with colors popping off the screen and the inky blackness of space forming a canvass for some epic space scenes, debris almost feels 3d in floating junk yards, and the sheer amount of moving particles is staggering.

It really makes the game feel alive.

The sound presentation here is top notch as well, with ships zipping overhead with DTS:X enabled, to the amazing WhirrrrrrBOOOM of Jango Fett’s mines rattling your teeth with LFE, the first time I dropped one and heard it I was grinning to myself ear to ear.

Visually and sonically, it doesn’t get much better than this.

All in all, the game was fantastic, front to back great, online and single player.

I know this review is in the minority here, but I am giving it a solid 9/10 and a must play for anyone who loves Star Wars.

So I am a rather big fan of sci-fi horror, dating as far back to the 70’s when Alien was released, and through my life I am always on the hunt for a good space horror.

This hit a pinnacle for me with 3 games in the last decade, Dead Space 1 and 2 and Alien: Isolation, three of the best sci-horror games ever made. And since Alien: Isolation was released, there has honestly been nothing to fill the void.

That is, until now.

Prey take a lot from its brothers and sisters in the genre, and adds in its own flair.

While not edge of your seat nail biting like Dead Space was, it still manages to keep you on edge from start to finish.

You have a choice when starting to play either a male or female character, which is an odd choice for a game in this genre and the first of its kind I believe. Whichever you choose will dictate some of your email communications, as they are written from the other sibling.

The set up is simple, and been done many times before, you are on a space station, things have gone south, the place is breaking down and seemingly abandoned, and you need to put the pieces together and find out what happened to everyone.

Where the game really shines though is through the skill tree advancement and combat.

Once you progress far enough, you can start to acquire alien abilities through neuro mods. Thinks like telekinesis, mind control and shape shifting to name a few.

This really adds to the first person shooter combat. It is not a mere run and gun, you need to play strategically, you have to plan each encounter (on hard at least) or you will be splattered all over the walls in no time.

The enemies themselves are what really adds to the tension here, as they are a race of shape-shifting chameleons. The can become any item in the environment. The coffee cup on a desk could be a mimic in waiting, ready to pounce if you get close enough.

This keeps you constantly on edge when entering new locations, as you never really know where they are hiding.

In addition to the usual FPS combat, there area few zero G segments of the game as well, this brings a whole new level of complexity into the fights.

Prey was also surprisingly large, for a shooter this game clocked in at about 28 hours for me on Hard mode, the space station itself is incredibly huge, and while you will be back tracking from time to time, it is typically in different segments of a previous area, add in the free space outside the base and it is simply massive.

The only real complaint I have about the games as a whole is, compared to modern day shooters, Prey feels rather dated.

This could be due to the troubled development of it, it was originally meant to be a true sequel to the original Prey game from the Xbox 360, that saw marginal success.

It came as a bit of a shock that a game that did not do too well was actually getting a sequel.

They debuted it at E3 many years ago, and it was suppose to have a completely fresh take on FPS, as you were going to be a bounty hunter of sorts.

After that initial reveal the game seemingly disappeared off the radar, only to emerge a couple years ;later at E3 again as a space horror.

And I think this is where the game kinda stumbled, much like Duke Nuken Forever, this started development years and years ago, and I think they must have carried forward some of the core engine, because things like animation, lighting, etc, feels like something from around 2010-2012. The way NPCs move, and such, just feels older for no good reason.

Not that it is bad, but just not what you make expect from a game from 2017.

All in all Prey was a fun game to play, and on Hard mode it did add a real challenge, with many many deaths ensuing. This is really in my mind the only way horror games should be played, on as hard as possible, as it really adds to the survival type feeling, and every encounter becomes a struggle to survive.

While not ground breaking, Prey gets a solid 8/10, and a recommendation to all the sci-horror fans out there.

So after my time with the Medical Frigate MOC I was pretty leery about picking up another MOC set, but the draw of the massive 6500+ piece Republic Cruiser was just too huge.

This was the largest set available from Lepin until this years Millennium Falcon was released, and due to the nature of the Lepin sets, and MOC in general, this was a big problem.

As you can see, this is a 10 ft dining room table. 6+ feet are covered in bricks. There was almost no room to build.

Clocking in at over 130 individual bags, it took over 2 hours just to open everything up and try to get some semblance of order.

I found having a pile of old containers on hand really help, all the smaller elements went into containers so I could have some extra room to breath.

With everything sorted it was time to dive into the massive manual.

The core of the ship went together like any other regular star wars ship, it is really well built and solid, and it would have to be as the ship itself is over 20lbs, so a good strong base is a must.

On top of this, much like the UCS Star Destroyer, the actual stand is built directly to the frame.

 

This is a bit of a mixed bag for me.

While I appreciate WHY this is done, it still tends to look less than attractive, especially if you set is up as high as eye level (like mine is)

Now, much like the Medical Frigate, this sets design leave a lot to be desired.

There is a pile of guesswork to be done.

First and foremost is the entire bottom of the ship.

Lepin left out how any of this was to be connected, the main under plate just hangs off the ship and rests on the surface it is on. It is suppose to be attached to the plate above it.

This took some real annoying rework as I was expecting this to be addressed in a later step, and was not, so now I had a near complete (and fragile build) that needed to be carefully tweaked to make it work.

So after an hour or so of messing around, and multiple curses later, the issues was fixed.

Next up, and the most atrocious of the entire build is the 4 massive panels on the ship.

Now they assembled just fine, but installation is completely impossible by the book.

#1, the magnets you get are about 1 million times more powerful than a Lego magnet. So the second you try to place them, the magnetic pull rips them right off the panels.

To add insult to injury, the placement of the magnets is completely wrong. so even if you manage to get them to not pull off the base, they leave the panels all skewed and looking pretty uneven.

I had to heavily rework the interior system to fix this, and there was no way it could be done without krazy glue.

Above Pic is a complete custom fix on my part, and had to be glued in to work properly.

Magnet elements 100% need to be glued to work.

It took me almost 4 hours and constant frustration with pieces falling off to fix this.

Lastly, the giant missing panel… This section pictured should have a cover to hide the gaping hole in the top of the ship.

This area is not included… No rhyme or reason.

From what I have read it used to included be back in the day, and suddenly it just stopped, it is no longer in the manual, and the bricks are just not there.

Luckily I have enough spares from other sets that I was able to swap out parts from elsewhere to steal what was needed for the exterior finish.

Instruction were found in the original MOC instruction book (which I highly recommend buying if you get this set)

So all in all, it is an amazing finished product, but it is such a nightmare to finish it is hard to say if it was worth it.

There is little worse than getting to the last mile in a set, and the finish is so terrible it negates all the good thoughts you have about a set.

That is where I am left with the Republic Cruiser.

While it is one of my fave ships in my collection, I am hard pressed to think positively about building it again if I had to.

If you are a die hard Star Wars fan, then it is a no brainer, as it does look damn great when built. But if will cost you some hair from the pulling, and it may go a bit grey too.

A 10/10 for the finished product, but a paltry 6/10 for the actual getting there.

One last thing, this is the pile of spare bits that were left, quite a bit considering a lot of folks claim they have no spares and are missing parts.

So I took a diversion from all my Lepin building to go back to my brick roots.

I picked up the USC Snow Speeder from Lego.com.

They had a pretty good deal at the time for bonus VIP points, so it made sense to jump in.

After coming off multiple Lepin MOC builds it was glorious to get a real Lego set with actually good instructions and no guess work.

This is actually a remake of one of my all time favorite ships, second only to the Millennium Falcon.

Lego has started to slowly reboot their most popular sets from 15 years ago, and it is a welcome surprise, as the used market for these sets can bee staggering, coming in at thousands of dollars often.

So to have a viable legit option to get some of these old sets again is welcomed.

This remake comes in at 1703 pieces, a whole 250 pieces larger than the 2003 model which had 1445 elements.

It has unfortunately been so long since I built the 2003 model it is hard to recall what is different.

The set itself is very well made, it is one of the more solid UCS builds out there, right up there with the UCS Slave 1 which is a tank.

That is the trade off with these “model” like sets, you oft sacrifice that amazing build quality Lego is known for in lieu of a set that looks like what it is trying to reproduce.

The new UCS Snowspeeder nails this balance to a T though.

With a solid construction, and the most accurate Lego reproduction of the ship yet.

The core of the build is pretty slick, it adds a mechanism that allows you to turn it and the wing flaps will raise and lower. This is just one of the details that makes Lego so cool.

They did not have to have a working module like this, but they tried to go above and beyond.

The guns on the wings are very ell detailed here, as well as the rear tail canon. Which coincidentally also employs a method in which it is moved by the internal control stick.

The cockpit design is beautiful as well, capturing the claustrophobic nature of what these ships entailed.

Control panels and display are clustered together nicely in the cramped quarters.

The build is not particularly challenging, very straight forward from start to finish.

Another nice little addition with the new UCS sets is giving you a mini figure or two to go along with the model, this helps tie it all to the world, even if they are not to scale.

This set comes with 2 generic snow speeder pilots.

All in all a great build and a solid recommendation for all Star Wars Lego fans.

A near perfect 9/10

 

 

 

So one of the coolest additions to Star Wars universe was the great little droid BB-8.

Roughly taking the place of R2-D2 in terms of cheeky droid banter, BB-8 and his personality won over fans instantly.

So when Lego announced they would be making a UCS BB-8 I was instantly sold.

On September 1st, Star Wars Force Friday II, BB-8 was released for pre-sale and he arrived early October as the actual release date was October 1st.

This set comes in at just over 1100 pieces, most of which are rather small, so there is a lot packed into this tiny little droid.

Lego had a challenge ahead of them, how do you make a round ball out of square parts.

Well with modern ingenuity and an amazing design team, they did a pretty great job.

The build itself added a few cool designs that they didn’t need to.

One of the best scenes in The Force Awakens with BB-8 is an exchange with Finn on the Millennium Falcon, where the cute little droid extends a arm with a lighter to give our wayward hero a thumbs up.

Well Lego managed to include a mechanism to extend an arm with a faux-flame.

It is a little kitschy, and it does not look 100% right, but it is a nice inclusion.

The core of the set is like most Technic sets, with a solid frame:

The unit itself is surrounded with 4 panels that make out the rounded appearance.

There is a second mechanism that allows the BB Units head to move around and rotate.

Both of these mechanisms are concealed under flat panels on adjacent sides.

Once complete, the BB unit sits on a black stand that is unique to this droid.

Additionally the set comes with a BB-8 Minifig that is just adorable.

Lego also did a good job of nailing the scale, when places next to R2-D2 they match up perfectly. BB is about 60% of the size of R2 and they go together perfectly on display.

All in all a great Star Wars set and a welcome addition to the collection.

A solid 8/10

 

The Lego UCS Xwing was one of the first UCS sets ever made back in 1999 when Lego took possession of the Star Wars license.

I used to have this set way back then, but sold it off about 5 years ago now and presumed I would never see it again as the used price is about $1000.

In the meantime Lego actually re released the Xwing in 2013 with some minor changes to the look, the Lepin 05039 UCS X-wing is based on the 2013 redesign.

The set comes in at 1586 pieces and is a very straight forward build.

Much like their other sets there is no real numbering system to the bags, so sorting becomes a bit of a challenge.

I have found that the best Lepin sets so far are the ones directly based on Lego set, as the instructions are typically 1 to 1 and there is little to no difference, this makes things a lot simpler as the MOC sets leave a lot to be up to interpretation.

The set goes together in a traditional manner, the body is assembled first, then all 4 wings.

The fuselage has some cool designs elements, there is a mechanism that will retract or open the wings by the turn of a dial on the rear of the ship. There is a gear like mechanism concealed in the rear of the ship that does this.

The cockpit itself is well designed as well, with the addition of the tactical HUD that retracts.

The wing design is a little bit flimsy, not by any fault of Lepin, it is just the overall design of making something so long that has very little support.

The only real downside to the Lepin set is the weird sticker design for the cockpit canopy.

Now I am not sure if this is the same for the Lego version, but on the Lepin set there is a thin film like sticker that needs to be applied.

Now the issues is these stickers are a cheap as cheap gets, it is like trying to appli a sticky piece of Seran-wrap, it is very very flimsy and prone to bubbles and picking up finger prints if you touch it in any way.

Additionally you have to actually use scissors to cut them to proper size.

All in all it ended up less than perfect.

The finished model does look nice despite the cockpit glass.

It is a nice addition to the collection and hindsight being 20/20, I would suggest just leaving the glass clear.

A 7 / 10 only due to the shoddy stickers.

So just wrapped up Call of Duty World War II last night.

This is the the 14th Call of Duty game in the pivotal franchise and it is a huge step back to it roots.

When CoD came on the scene back in 2003 it was on of the first WWII FPS games to come on the scene. With 3 other WWII games to follow in coming year, after which the franchise went into a more modern direction.

Call of Duty: WWII is a welcomed game in a sea of modern shooters now, and returning to their roots feels pretty right.

The only downside is, it really brings nothing new to the fray.

Good or bad, CoD has not changed much over the last 14 years. It is a formulaic shooter. Insert crisis, insert rough neck boots on the ground, and insert scripted action scenes. Rinse / repeat.

How well it works is pretty subjective.

I personally love the franchise, even some of the lesser received games like Advance and Infinite Warfare.

No one quite does action set pieces like Call of Duty, you are pulled into the time and space the games transpire, and feel like you are part of the war effort. Making a difference in turning the tide of the entire war, it is all on your shoulders private “your name here”.

The game play in WWII is very good, controls are pretty much exactly what you come to expect with modern console shooters, they are tight and responsive and you never feel like you deaths are due to poor controls.

What WWII does stand out in for the first time in the franchise is some pretty great first person sneaking missions, where you have to take out a pile of guards with silenced weapons as you eke your way to the next objective.

This is quite the challenge on the Veteran difficulty, because failure to remain unseen typically ends in an instant death by swarm of Nazi soldiers.

But other than the couple stealth mission of the 11 missions available, there is really nothing you have not played here before.

There is a fantastic epilogue mission that really drives home the cost of war, and it did serve to make me uncomfortable in the content, which is no small feat.

All in all the game looks and sounds amazing.

If is the first CoD to support 4k / HDR on the XB1X and PS4 Pro.

The visuals were stunning with HDR enabled, light now becomes ultra realistic, as clouds break and the sun comes out it is near blinding. Shooting down enemy planes becomes a real challenge with the sun at their backs.

Sounds design is top notch as well, but does suffer from a small game play flaw. When a squad mate gets clipped and goes down, you can sometimes drag them to safety.

Well the entire time they are down they complain and whine that they need help, and it comes in louder than the bombs and bullets going off in the area.

I only mention it because it did get the the point of distraction.

Here you are in a huge firefight for you life, and Bob is crying out to be helped. “Just a bloody minute, I am trying not to die here!” And to make matter worst, when you are dragging your comrade to safety, you are completely venerable and a bullet magnet.

Every time I did go to save someone (mostly to shut them up) I died in a few seconds. No shocker, if Bob was in the open and got hosed, now I was too with a big red flag and a guy screaming to ensure he draws ALL the attention of the enemy. By the way… Bob is a real dick….

But, when Bob is not crying for help, the audio is top shelf. With DTS:Neo X taking a major advantage of the Atmos channels. Bullets whizzing overhead, bombs dropping, trees and mortar fire exploding all around you, it is a pleasure on the ears.

One thing I did not dive into however was the multiplayer. I have not been big on MP for a long time now, with Destiny 2 being a brief stint in PvP that while enjoyable, is still not my preferred type of gaming.

I play for story and I won’t be getting any of that out of online MP.

Story mode took about 8 hours to play through on Veteran, and in 2 instances I had to drop the difficulty down to Hardened.

There was 2 scenarios that in true CoD style screwed me over on a checkpoint.

One of the flaws in the checkpoint system is that after you complete a certain unforeseen task (like walk past X point in the game, or blow up a tank) the game auto saves. So if you die you respawn at that point.

Well in 2 instances the game did this while I was surrounded by Nazi and die almost immediately upon respawn.

After 45 mins of trying to sprint away in a million different directions I had not choice but to dial things back (effectively screwing up my Vet trophy) just so I could move forward.

At the end of the day, CoD: WWII will not change your impression of FPS games or WWII games, but if you are a fan like I am, of a good scripted shooter, then this is just what the doctor ordered.

A decent 7/10.

 

So next up on the Lepin line is the amazing Nebula Medical Frigate from the Star Wars universe.

Seen breifly in Empire and in Return of the Jedi at the Battle of Endor.

Now this is one of the biggest draw about Lepin, not that they make block-offs of regular Lego sets, it is that they make some sets that Lego decided to pass on from Cusoo or just fan MOC of popular ships (like the UCS Republic Cruiser)

So set 05083 was my first, and almost my last MOC purchase.

In all my years building Lego I have come to expect a certain level of quality in a build. Seldom are you left scratching your head as to how the heck something goes together.

Well sadly that is just par for the course when it comes to MOC sets.

As they were not designed by Lego engineers, and just some Lego enthusiast in his basement, quality goes right out the friggen window.

There were multiple times in the build that making connection were just no logical.

Pieces simply could not be put together in the order the instruction stated.

Additionally things can be incredibly flimsy.

The entire center of the ship will snap right off if it was not for the stand, and getting it to stay together while you mount it, well that is almost a 2 person job as well.

So what the is the flip side to all this aggravation?

One of the coolest looking ships in my collection.

Sure it was taxing at times, but all in all it was a fun build when the instructions made sense.

Truth be told there was only about 3-4 times that you have to guess how to make things fit, and to sit back and think through an alternate coupling solution.

Coming in at 1736 pieces and only $70usd, this set seems like a steal.

Shipping was fast and I had it in my hands about 10 days after ordering from AliExpress seller “Lepin Brick Store”

It is available from a lot of others as well, but I have no complaints about them at all. They are fast and responsive to questions.

This build is a hard on to rate, on one hand it is a 6/10 for frustration factor, but as a finished product, it is a 10/10 in my books.

Highly recommended if you are looking for something unique and brick-like from the Star Wars universe.