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Phigs posted:The Kalm flashback in FF7 is the reason I never replayed that game over the decades. I got up to it once on a replay attempt and couldn't get through it. Then every time I thought to replay it thoughts of Kalm put me off. It’s not that bad buddy, kalm down.
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Jun 22, 2022 00:35
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oldkalmless
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Jun 22, 2022 03:11
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Jun 22, 2022 11:49
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Did monster train ever address the thing where you had all of half a dozen monsters and maybe a single useful spell, none of which does any good against the three dozen enemies that can just stroll past all your incredibly weak defenses and go straight to hitting your HP? Cause that loving sucked and I have no idea how anyone enjoyed it enough for it to make a full release.
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Jun 22, 2022 17:41
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You have to actually play the monsters and spells to make them do stuff. It's a stumbling block for many new players.
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Jun 22, 2022 21:26
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Ocarina of time 3D: I ran out of bombs during the Fire Temple, so I went back to Goron City to buy more.
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Jun 23, 2022 02:07
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Oblivion check-up: - The lockpicking minigame finally got to me. Thankfully right at the point where I got access to the dude in the Thieves Den add-on that sells a hundred picks at a time, followed by getting pointed to Nocturnal's shrine for that sweet, sweet Skeleton Key (which I have modded to not gently caress with Security skill-ups). I actually kind of liked it as a change of pace from the now largely-standardized Fallout-style head-on two paperclips and twist minigame, but it got to be too much. The main pain point is something I've already complained about - the dungeon pacing. The short of it is that I ran into a too few many dungeons in a short span where EVERY SINGLE CHEST was locked, which necessitated going through the whole process, and of course once again only getting leveled gold and maybe some bonus treasure. An added wrinkle is that much like other parts of the game, level scaling is also a factor. So regardless of whether or not it's a tiny poo poo box three seconds into a random hole in the ground or a grand treasure chest guarded by wailing banshees it's almost always going to be Hard difficulty or higher because that's where I'm at in the scaling. But ironically, it's double bad because the minigame is timing based and once you grok how it works and know the trick to getting a set pin 85% of the time or so, you come to rely on a certain speed. Except the pins move slower in lower difficulty locks, which ostensibly might help you pick them easier if you're playing the minigame strictly as intended, but it completely and totally throws off my sense of timing so easier locks are often harder anyway.  - Magic. Hoo boy. I'll complain in order from worst to "best". Enchanting, the main type of magic I usually care about (my characters are always smiths and magic equipment is the next step up from baseline gear) sucks rear end in Oblivion. Nothing about it is good. For starters, it runs off the bizarre soul gem system which has always been one of those Weird Elder Scrolls Things. See, it's considered a ghastly crime against nature to use the souls of sapient beings to fuel your magic, but this breaks down in Oblivion real fast because you can trap the souls of skeletons, zombies, wraiths, and liches...all of which have at least one example where they are very literally "former people" and you're playing games with their soul one way or another but they still just count as mindless monsters so all's good! The biggest problem is that in order to get the most powerful enchantments you need high level souls, which break down into two groups: One, the aforementioned "unforgivable sin" of soul trapping actual people, even shithead bandits who jump you in the woods. In order to do this, you need Black Soul Gems. Unfortunately, the only way to reliably get black gems is to specifically seek out necromancy altars, wait for a specific day in the week (actually an 8 day cycle, so you have to math out the schedule, because gently caress you) where they get touched by the heavens, and then convert a bunch of grand gems in black ones. This is a giant pain in the rear end and I will never, ever bother doing this because it's a ridiculous hassle. Black gems are also, like every other normal gem type, one use only. So your other option are Grand Soul Gems, which are the highest non-evil type and otherwise have the same value as black ones. Except, you can count the enemy types that have grand-level souls on one hand. Literally just four, in the entire game. Come the gently caress on. How are you going to get easy access to grand souls then? Well, there's literally a loading screen tip that spills the beans on how to overcome this idiotic bottleneck: Just summon one of those rare few creatures using magic, then trap its soul. This is obviously perfectly ethical, especially trapping the Xivilai which AFAIK are lesser yet still intelligent Daedra but don't worry about it, okay? There is, of course, also Azura's Star which is an infinitely reusable grand soul gem. This helps, but not as much as you might think. See, all of that bullshit was just getting your foot in the door. In order to actually enchant something you need: A filled soul gem, the level of soul controlling how powerful the enchantment(s) will be AND ALSO you need to already be able to cast some version of the effect you want to apply to your items.  Now, there are some ways around this problem, as any form of an effect counts - you've got a racial power that gives +strength? Cool you just have access to +strength and also any other +attribute effect for good measure. Even the babiest of baby destruction magic will let you dump tons of elemental damage onto a weapon. Cool. Unfortunately, a lot of other exotic effects only exist via specific spells, and those spells belong to specific classes of magic. Your skill in those classes controls the mana cost of those spells as well as there being hard boundaries between different ranks of spells. So a high level spell might require 75 skill points but also be too expensive to cast by default even if you make it to 75. The end result is that you need to be an omni-directional magic savant in order to get the most out of the system, oh but also some effects just aren't allowed to be enchanted onto items of any kind for no reason other than vague balance concerns, but like gently caress is the game going to tell you that and no I definitely didn't grind out a bunch of magic skills in order to figure out half the poo poo I was trying to enchant on isn't possible.  And the end result after all of that? Every single enchantment type I *could* actually make is vastly weaker than the existing enchantments I have via randomly-found gear. Barring a one in a million lucky drop where the exact same enchantment shows up on the exact same type of armor, but a tier better, I'm not liable to upgrade any time soon. To say nothing of all the unique items that carry multiple enchantments stacked on top of each other, something you can't replicate at all. Weapons? That's a smidge better, you can slap bonus damage of various kinds onto a weapon to help you get ahead of the combat curve. The problem here is that such magical effects have a limited number of charges with the balance point being the more bullshit your weapon can do in a single hit, the fewer times you can do it before needing to recharge. Recharge using souls, so yup, we're back to that bottleneck. Now, you can use any old soul to top up your charges which helps a whole hell of a lot, but...that also just adds an extra layer of bullshit and maintenance onto your weapons. In a game where you already need to mash repair hammers into your gear after every couple of fights. And if the game throws nothing but humanoid enemies at you, well Azura's Star aint gonna do poo poo, so it's back to summoning demons from hell to use their souls to power your weapon that can only hit something 20 times total before being exhausted in a game where the jank rear end level scaling makes every enemy take at least 5~ hits on average.  Alchemy is usually something I dabble in, because it makes the loot game a little more interesting. Ingredients being useful instead of clutter keeps scavenging and traipsing through the countryside a little more interesting. Overall, I'd say this is the most balanced of the magic disciplines. Potions can do some crazy stuff, but it takes high level equipment, the right ingredients, and a proper understanding of how to blend stuff together. Plus inventory room for all the poo poo required. They did throw in a really annoying hard limit of only being able to drink four potions at a time (with a few workarounds to double that number) though. The crafting "minigame" such as it is, that's a bit clunky, but I don't think it's too bad. There are also some staggeringly dumb bits of jank around the edges, like how potion weight is determined by an averaging of ingredient weight and that weight is then locked in for that potion type forever, regardless of what ingredients you use to make it in the future. This can be gotten around by renaming potions, but the fact that you can be punished for brewing a pumpkin and some troll fat together or whatever at the start of the game is bizarre and dumb. Unfortunately, both Enchanting and Alchemy alike pale in comparison to regular ole Magic, which is fundamentally stupid and broken. The game very much follows in the footsteps of D&D where the spell effects available cover literally every possible aspect of the game, top to bottom, even ones that don't really make sense or have much use, and also overlap with literally every other thing you could be doing. Why even bother with that stupid lockpicking minigame when you can cast an Open Lock spell? Get a load of this idiot wasting time training in Sneak when as a mage you can just turn yourself invisible at will. Every single effect available in alchemy (with maybe the exception of super high level poisons and directly restoring your mana pool) is easily matched or surpassed with magic, so that 100 pounds of your carry weight being taken up by glass bottles is actually a waste of space. Same with all those arrows for your bow, since you can just shoot fireballs at things. Oh, you bothered to try and get good at speechcraft and even put points into your Personality attribute like a weirdo? Gandalf over here can just wave his loving hands and every shopkeeper is ready to kiss his fuckin' feet, and for some assinine reason this isn't considered a hostile action. Don't need torches when Light exists. Don't need to play games with peasant forms of magic or lifting weight to haul all your poo poo around when you have Feather available at a snap of your gingers. Oh, you actually want to hit things in melee for whatever reason? Summon a full suit of armor and a weapon into your hand and have at it! Why bother though when you can summon buddies to do the tanking for you? Enemy mage got you down? Use your magic to un-magic their magic! I think the only thing not actually covered directly is repairing your gear; there is no repair spell. But of course, you could just boost your Armorer skill using magic and fix things that way... Silence is the one and only thing that will shut your poo poo right down with no immediate magical recourse...so just have some other kind of Dispel effect handy, like a pre-made staff of haha gently caress your silence.  And all of this is just describing the vanilla magic system! Once you start getting into custom spells, all hell breaks loose and you can snap the game in half in all manner of ways. Why even gently caress around trying to enchant lackluster bonuses onto your gear when you can instead stack mana bonuses as high as possible so you can freely cast your 1000 mana cost spell that makes everyone in an entire city your best friend and then makes their heads explode? The things you can do aren't even usually creative or clever in the usual sense, the stuff people come up with tends to be flat out exploitative nonsense that removes aggro from enemies so they can be killed effortlessly and the like. It's just infuriating how badly lopsided the balance is. If I could cleave Tamriel in half with some busted nonsense enchanted uber weapon or drink booze to become a god, it'd still be broken and silly but at least I could have some of the same fun that those fuckin' nerds get to have. 
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Jun 24, 2022 20:19
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Obra Dinn was a neat game and I definitely enjoyed it but Jesus Christ some of that stuff you would need a magnifying glass to notice and the low-res monochrome environment doesn’t do it any favors. I feel like I would have had more fun with it playing in a group of people than by myself.
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Jun 24, 2022 20:22
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Frank Frank posted:Obra Dinn was a neat game and I definitely enjoyed it but Jesus Christ some of that stuff you would need a magnifying glass to notice and the low-res monochrome environment doesn’t do it any favors. I feel like I would have had more fun with it playing in a group of people than by myself. I also thought some of the "ways to die" were kind of similar. Like I see what happened to this guy, but does the game want me to say that he was "clawed" or "torn apart" or what? Am I not getting the answer correct in the book because I actually have something wrong or because I need to try some different terms?
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Jun 24, 2022 20:44
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gohuskies posted:I also thought some of the "ways to die" were kind of similar. Like I see what happened to this guy, but does the game want me to say that he was "clawed" or "torn apart" or what? Am I not getting the answer correct in the book because I actually have something wrong or because I need to try some different terms? I'm not sure there are any cases where it's ambiguous and the book doesn't accept both answers.
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Jun 24, 2022 20:45
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Thing dragging Obra Dinn down is that there isn't more Obra Dinn
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Jun 24, 2022 20:50
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gohuskies posted:I also thought some of the "ways to die" were kind of similar. Like I see what happened to this guy, but does the game want me to say that he was "clawed" or "torn apart" or what? Am I not getting the answer correct in the book because I actually have something wrong or because I need to try some different terms? The weird part was - the game is super forgiving for some deaths where you can use burned/electrocuted or drowned/dismembered interchangeably but there are some where ONLY one answer is correct that I had a hell of a time figuring out either because A) the cause of death wasn't clear The guy in the boat who burnt his arm off knifes another guy before he dies and it's not clear that's what happened in the vignette or B) because I just chose the wrong thing because the correct option wasn't available Captain slits one guy's throat with a spear. "Speared" does not work. You have to choose "knifed" kazil posted:Thing dragging Obra Dinn down is that there isn't more Obra Dinn Tenebrais posted:I'm not sure there are any cases where it's ambiguous and the book doesn't accept both answers. See above. Edit: It's nice that there are some red herring death methods that are never used including poisoned and most notably, "died of old age" lol Frank Frank has a new favorite as of 20:55 on Jun 24, 2022 |
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Jun 24, 2022 20:51
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The one part I didn't like was the unknown fate sections. It really doesn't do a good job preparing you for them.
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Jun 24, 2022 21:26
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Identifying the artist by selecting his signature on the portrait of the crew/passengers was absolutely brilliant, though. Also, I felt like a smarty-pants because apparently a lot of people got hung up on the guy with the Maori tattoos, when he was the first one I identified. 
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Jun 24, 2022 22:04
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Read After Burning posted:Identifying the artist by selecting his signature on the portrait of the crew/passengers was absolutely brilliant, though. Yeah the amount of information you could glean just by paying attention to things like accents and dress was fantastic
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Jun 24, 2022 22:27
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Kit Walker posted:Yeah the amount of information you could glean just by paying attention to things like accents and dress was fantastic Also everyone is numbered and for lower ranked crewmembers the numbers match up to their berths.
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Jun 24, 2022 22:30
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muscles like this! posted:Also everyone is numbered and for lower ranked crewmembers the numbers match up to their berths. Which was useful except for the few that were shrouded in shadow fortunately, you could then use a process of elimination thanks to their different shoes
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Jun 24, 2022 23:49
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RGX posted:If it's something super important I agree, but I've played enough games recently where I've spotted a hidden chest, spent 15 minutes jumping off pipes and scouting for hidden ledges and been rewarded by.... Some ammo. Or a wooden spoon. Or three gold. If it's actually secret loot that you wouldn't realize is there then it's not great to put big important stuff in it (depending on the game and how much it emphasizes exploring out of the way), but if it's like "ooh here's a big tempting shiny chest that you can't reach, can you figure out the trick to get it" then it makes a lot more sense to put big stuff there since players will clearly know there is some kinda loot there even if they can't figure out how to get it.
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Jun 25, 2022 06:28
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Starting playing Bloodstained. Boy, the shortcut menu rewards are a really loving bad reward.
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Jun 25, 2022 06:49
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Yeah, in theory having more slots is kinda nice since you’re constantly equipping different stuff so you can laser teleport/giant hand/“swim”/teleport as needed, but since there’s no option to go back to the last thing you had equipped it just gets way worse than just pausing/unpausing for whatever or remembering to always update your quickchange slots to the “default” set. Also, a minor gripe about Sekiro is that it has by far the most “pause the game to explain something” tutorials in the From “series” (which is fine in and of itself, Sekiro is a much different gameplay experience since it’s Samurai Punch-Out with some Souls idiosyncrasies) but there’s no tutorial to mention “hey, this one blue mini boss pierces your defense so only dodging or perfectly timed parties work” so you just get to die to figure it out. Also goddam does Blazing Bull suck, he sucks so much, and it’s a shame that he sucks because the only real problem with him is that he’s an animal boss so he’s hard to deflect read but ALSO failing to do deflects means damage/Burn buildup, because you can see why fighting a coked up bull would be a cool change of pace otherwise.
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Jun 25, 2022 09:12
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Last Celebration posted:the only real problem with him is that he’s an animal boss so he’s hard to deflect read but ALSO failing to do deflects means damage/Burn buildup, because you can see why fighting a coked up bull would be a cool change of pace otherwise. Far too many games have this problem, they design the systems and animations around fighting humanoids and then they keep throwing animals in your way which you can't really fight effectively. Just finished Star Wars Fallen Order which did that to such an extent I just started running past all non-human encounters. It also made enemies retreat faster than you could run after them, so unless you had the sprint attack they could just gently caress off whenever they wanted. Every other option requires the force, which only charges when you hit enemies, so you could be left there until the AI decided to let you play again.
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Jun 25, 2022 09:53
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Last Celebration posted:Also goddam does Blazing Bull suck, he sucks so much, and it’s a shame that he sucks because the only real problem with him is that he’s an animal boss so he’s hard to deflect read but ALSO failing to do deflects means damage/Burn buildup, because you can see why fighting a coked up bull would be a cool change of pace otherwise. And then they reuse the boss with a different element later.
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Jun 25, 2022 11:04
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Hel posted:Far too many games have this problem, they design the systems and animations around fighting humanoids and then they keep throwing animals in your way which you can't really fight effectively. I love me some animal grabbing me and shaking my screen while my character tries to break away. Bonus points if it's a spam button QTE. loving peak of video games right there.
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Jun 25, 2022 12:12
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If video games insist on making you fight animals then you should be able to parry them, I don't care how nonsensical it is.
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Jun 25, 2022 14:08
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exquisite tea posted:If video games insist on making you fight animals then you should be able to parry them, I don't care how nonsensical it is. But you can absolutely parry the animals in Sekiro
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Jun 25, 2022 14:12
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exquisite tea posted:If video games insist on making you fight animals then you should be able to parry them, I don't care how nonsensical it is. Fallen Order let you parry a lot of the animals (though not all of their attacks) but unfortunately it wasn't enough to make them fun fights.
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Jun 25, 2022 14:14
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kazil posted:But you can absolutely parry the animals in Sekiro Yeah, you can parry pretty much anything that isn't a sweep, grab, or environmental hazard. It is a lot harder to judge the timing when it's an animal thrashing at your rather than a sword, though.
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Jun 25, 2022 14:28
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The Moon Monster posted:Yeah, you can parry pretty much anything that isn't a sweep, grab, or environmental hazard. It is a lot harder to judge the timing when it's an animal thrashing at your rather than a sword, though. Sure, but parrying the blazing bull's charge is satisfying as gently caress and the dumb fucker stumbles after it giving you free hits
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Jun 25, 2022 14:33
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Read After Burning posted:Identifying the artist by selecting his signature on the portrait of the crew/passengers was absolutely brilliant, though. Yeah I didn't get him until near the end and mostly by process of elimination. I also like that it starts off at a slow boil like, "Ok, a few guys got in a fight and some folks got shot, one guy killed himself" and then suddenly kraken out of nowhere and you go "Ohhhh ok so it's gonna be that sort of game". Frank Frank has a new favorite as of 14:52 on Jun 25, 2022 |
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Jun 25, 2022 14:49
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Last Celebration posted:Also goddam does Blazing Bull suck, he sucks so much, and it’s a shame that he sucks because the only real problem with him is that he’s an animal boss so he’s hard to deflect read but ALSO failing to do deflects means damage/Burn buildup, because you can see why fighting a coked up bull would be a cool change of pace otherwise. The firecrackers help a lot. Animals really don’t like firecrackers so it’s easy to stagger them and lay on the damage
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Jun 25, 2022 15:11
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Minor gripe, but it's been 12 years since super meat boy came out, and it's stupid that games like Neon White don't have a one button restart. If I'm going to iterate on the best time and the restart after the smallest mistake, restart shouldn't take me back out to the 'play this level?' menu. Just make it a single button push!
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Jun 25, 2022 16:21
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Waste of Breath posted:Minor gripe, but it's been 12 years since super meat boy came out, and it's stupid that games like Neon White don't have a one button restart. If I'm going to iterate on the best time and the restart after the smallest mistake, restart shouldn't take me back out to the 'play this level?' menu. Just make it a single button push! That reminds me. A few years back I took a video of my then 9 year-old kid doing the final boss of SMB and was absolutely in awe of her reflexes. It's wild how much your game skills degrade over time
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Jun 25, 2022 17:22
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Come on AI Somnium Files 2, why is Tama so goddamn horny all the time. She's an AI!
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Jun 25, 2022 17:32
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Waste of Breath posted:Minor gripe, but it's been 12 years since super meat boy came out, and it's stupid that games like Neon White don't have a one button restart. If I'm going to iterate on the best time and the restart after the smallest mistake, restart shouldn't take me back out to the 'play this level?' menu. Just make it a single button push! I tend to burn out really fast on those kinds of speedrun/execution type games and side modes so generally avoid them, but not having instant restart means I'll burn out like 10x as fast.
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Jun 25, 2022 18:53
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I've started playing the ps2 The Hobbit game by Sierra and while it's fun that one level on the mountain with the giants throwing rocks at you can go gently caress itself. At least I'm past that bit now.
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Jun 25, 2022 19:20
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Morpheus posted:Come on AI Somnium Files 2, why is Tama so goddamn horny all the time. She's an AI! Because it’s funny. Have you ever heard of comedy
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Jun 25, 2022 19:39
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An Actual Princess posted:Because it’s funny. Have you ever heard of comedy I mean, it's not really. Like sure the first couple times maybe but hearing 'ho ho ho like a penis get it' the twentieth time gets a little tiring.
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Jun 25, 2022 19:53
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wrong bitch. Tama rules.
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Jun 25, 2022 19:55
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An Actual Princess posted:wrong bitch. Tama rules. 
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Jun 25, 2022 20:39
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An Actual Princess posted:wrong bitch. Tama rules. Eh to each their own. I didn't mind Date being a horny idiot because he was called out on it by literally everyone, but only one person hears Tama and pushes back against it. I do enjoy Tama otherwise, including her overly...enthusiastic desire to recreate crime scenes.
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Jun 25, 2022 22:00
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