Warhammer 40K: Boltgun (PC) Review

Originally this was not the game I had planned on playing next for First Person Fridays (one of my streams I do weekly for Extra Life), but things both good and bad changed those plans. On the downside, the publishers who sell the game I was originally goning play are now on my shit list for their behavior around a very public murder and for the foreseeable future you will not see anything by them being added to my work: stream or review. But on the upward swing, my buddy Max Powers sent this my way, and how could I say no to a buddy? Having put the game down, yeah it was a great time for the most part, if not a perfect one.

Thank you, but we are not done.... Extra Life 2025

UPDATE: It seems I posted this prematurely... because Extra Life itself had NOT posted the totals from the week... well now they have and you may want to sit down.

As a total for the year (so far) we have raised:

$10,552,585

EVERY GAMER who took part in game week and everyone who donated to help these sick kids should be PROUD OF THEMSELVES. Thank you all of you! Now back to the original post.

Hi everybody. How are you doing? Gameweek has just ended and while I am STILL tired 2 days later, I can honestly say it was a great time.

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, Extra Life did things a little different this year. Where as over it's long and storied history, the charity culminated in a single Game Day where gamers would play for 24 hours straight, this year a full week was dedicated so gamers could take full advantage and pick whatever day works best for them. You can see our event across several vods that currently live on our twitch page and will ultimately (for the most part) be moved to our Rumble channel so they can live for more then a week. (Yeah, that's a real issue... thanks twitch.)

But what is Extra Life, I hear some of you ask. Well to explain, lets set the way-back machine to a younger time when gaming websites were booming and I personally had found myself treating one as my online home called "Sarcastic Gamer." If you were there, it was exactly what you would have expected from a community site of the 2000s: it had a forum for gamers to talk, joke, share gaming discoveries, and it even had a podcast or two for weekly radio-style shows, and I absolutely loved all of it. But it was not always happy news. The founder, "Doc", was the one who would drop the biggest bombshell for as long as I was called it home... the day Victoria passed away. Who was Victoria? Well Doc was a friend to her family, so he knew her personally before she lost her fight with cancer in Texas Children's Cancer Center. I still remember driving into work and listening to that podcast as it had downloaded the night before, and those tears still haunt me.

But from this heartbreak came Extra Life, an event to give her legacy meaning and to thank the hospital for their efforts to help this girl in that fight. And of course the community took to it like fish to water. We would spend the next few weeks to raise money for the hospital, then do what we all do best to push it to the end: a 24 hour gaming marathon. I am still honored to be have been a part of that very first Extra Life in 08, but it wasn't enough for any of us. We would do it again in 09, an 2010, and so on... and here we are now. Sarcastic Gamer is gone, Doc has moved on to work with Children's Miracle Network directly, and the event itself has gone global through them... but we are still here, doing what we love and using that hobby to help the kids who need it most. 

And as I noted, at the very beginning, Gameweek for this wrapped up yesterday, Sunday November 16th. Personally I am grateful to be able to help out with this and to do my part. Personally I play for Boston Children's Hospital.

Looking back over the year, I can not say this was an easy one, though. I had to take roughly a month out of the situation due to medical reasons which frankly took me down hard enough, for two separate hospital stays, the latter ending with several days at my folks place to recover. Nor can I honestly say that was the only issue I've had this year... in fact I would argue 2025 was my year of Hell. BUT we still managed to bring in $400 ourselves for the event, no small amount for a small community like this. And I would like to thank you all for that.

But we are not done with this year. Extra Life takes donations year round, so if you would like to help us help the kids, we are still going through the end of the year.... you can expect the same twice-a-week Extra Life streams I've been doing for a while now... and we will be on Twitch for a little while longer since the Extra Life page will be active through December and links directly to the service. Thank you for any help you give now or in the future... the kids need it and I am humbled.

Thank you again - Megabyte: Head Archivist of the Red Sector

Extra Life 2025 October update

Hi everybody! The time is flying! Soon we will all see each other, getting together at friends' houses or at a local hobby shop or even just online. But the time is near for Extra-Life game.... week? Yeah, that's right. This year there isn't a single day but a whole week where gamers will choose to play, and we are no different.

But if you don't know what Extra-Life is, well perhaps we should start there. Extra-Life is an international charity event held every year where gamers pledge to play for 24 hours (straight if they can... in pieces if not) to help raise money for the hospitals of the Children's Miracle Network. We have been working all year to bring in what we can (or even donate ourselves). To help these kids, and each one of us have done so in the name and for one specific hospital in this network. I myself play for Boston Children's Hospital as I have for MOST years of the event. And I don't say "my history" for a reason that I am honored as Hell to be able to say: I've been here since the beginning. Since before this was a CMN event, but instead one held with only a few weeks notice by a single (sadly now defunct) gaming site who wanted to something special in the name of a young cancer victim to help their hospital help more kids in her situation. But the site does a much better job telling Victoria's story then I ever will so if you want to hear how all this started, you can check it out here.

So where does that lead us today? Today the event has gone international with gamers from all over signing up, selecting a local hospital where everything they raise will go, and playing like hell to help the kids who need it most. Seriously, how awesome is it to help out like this using our hobby? Truly one of the best things ever, which brings me to our own little related announcements for the big event around here. 

First and most important, our own marathon will happen on:

SATURDAY: NOVEMBER 15

As we said earlier in this post, we are just a few short weeks before things begin and gamers will be playing 24 hours for the kids during the week of November 8th through the 16th, and we have picked our day, too. For us, that Saturday, starting at 8 AM, we will be gaming nonstop until 8 AM the next morning. It's brutal every year, but rewarding and I can't wait to join you all there. And join is the word since I plan to have several online games ready to go, starting with a continuation of our current adventure in Phantasy Star Online! All are welcome to join, and I can't wait to see you all. I may also sneak a few extra streams Friday while we get ready before resting up for the big event.

And we will be doing so from Twitch for ONE LAST YEAR. You see, I've never really had strong faith in the platform, but it's been shaken all the more watching how much they clearly do not care for their own community over the MANY garbage stories content creators came back from at Twitchcon this year. To that end, I made a decision: I myself am leaving. I've already had to make a rumble channel for this page so the videos of our sessions to help kids AND celebrate the various franchises I personally cherish will live on instead of Twitch killing them in a week.

But when to leave was the real question. If you are on our Discord (and you can reach it either in the site socials above or right here, you might have noticed a poll where we asked our community if we should leave Twitch before or after the marathon this year, and the community wanted to stay. So for one last year we will do this on Twich and we hope to see you there. I will have a much shorter post the night before, so if you forget all this, don't worry.

But now we get to the big question for YOU. How can you get involved. Well, it's never too late to join in, so why not sign up now? Just go the extra life site and follow the directions to register for an account, then it's time to ask people to help you help the sick kids... easy as that.

Of course not everyone feels they want to play themselves, and none of us can do this without those who donate to help us help the kids, so doing that is always welcome too. If you look in the about section of my twitch page, there is a panel that will take you to my team page where you can pick anyone on the Red Sector team to donate under the name of. Any help you can give is more then welcome and we are more then thankful for it.

SO once again, thank you for joining me and I hope to see you on the big day! From all of us here at the Red Sector, thank you.

- Megabyte

Alone in the Dark 3 (PC) Review

And now we close the book on a classic PC game trilogy, but can we really call it all classic? Probably not, as I can not claim to have even really liked the previous title. Still the first absolutely was amazing, and I walked into this hoping to get close to those highs again... Well, I'm not sure we did that, but we definitely moved in the right direction for it.

PSYCHO-PASS: Mandatory Happiness (PC) Review

This game is an exceptionally moment for me. It was niether chosen because I was continuing a franchise, nor by the dice. Rather, this game was chosen by timing. In addition to my gaming hobby, I am also taking time to watch various shows and movies while I do my daily exercises, and this game takes place during the first season of the anime series Psycho-Pass. I have seen it before, but since I now have season 2, I chose to rewatch it, and this game would be played between seasons. I now put my mouse down and... well, I can't say I didn't enjoy the story, but I don't think everyone should bother with it.

Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium (PC) Review

As I put the controller down, we have reached a turning point of this franchise. For those of you who join me on Twitch, I have been on a campaign with this series, to both celebrate it in it's own right and raise money and awareness for Extra Life by playing literally EVERY US release of it. (I do this every Wednesday night.) And now we have finished the classic era.... and man did it go out with a BANG!

AI: The Somnium Files (PC) Reiview

Gonna be honest, this was not a game I was hyped for. I picked it up at some point as part of a steam sale which is how a lot of my backlog was built up. However it looked interesting enough so when the dice rolled it up, I was intrigued. Turns out, this was for good reason even if it comes with a bit of a downturn for the studio behind it. Come... step inside.