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astarion
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Apr 20, 2024 10:22
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Very strange way to spell Wyll
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Apr 20, 2024 10:35
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TACD posted:Well now I’m wracking my brain trying to figure out who this could be But yeah, wasn't a fan of Wyll. He starts out strong but I think his plotline is the weakest of them all. On the other hand, Karlach starts out kinda cringey but her actress sells it and she absolutely shines towards the end (similar with Gale. Glad there are no jut outright joke companions)
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Apr 20, 2024 10:53
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At just under 100 hours I just beat Baldur's Gate 3 myself and really loved the game. I really struggled with learning the mechanics and even into act 3 I was looking things up. That said I loved almost all the characters and how much there was to do in the game. I'll definitely replay it but it'll be some time before I do.
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Apr 20, 2024 15:58
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Just beat Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League I went into this game with basically no expectations of quality. Everything I had heard was that it was a Frankenstein's monster of an undercooked single-player narrative and the worst elements of live service game development, but I was interested in the story and needed a game rental that would fill a short gap between other releases, so I rented it. And to my surprise, I had a lot of fun with this game. Don't get me wrong, the live service stuff is bad, but it's also something that you can completely ignore until the post-game. The actual structure of the game is much more traditional open world fare: you have side characters for whom you do quests in order to gain access to their higher-tier offerings (Penguin crafts and upgrades gear, Toyman lets you add modifiers, Poison Ivy gives you access to elemental attacks, that kind of thing), and then you have main story quests that you can do at your leisure. You can switch characters at any time, and while there was much criticism around how all four characters are functionally identical in combat, they are quite different in terms of how they move around the map. I played almost exclusively as Deadshot just because his jetpack felt the most comfortable to me, but looking online there are a lot of people who prefer Boomerang's traversal method which I could absolutely never get the hang of. And the traversal really takes center stage because Metropolis is a huge, beautifully-realized city, and with no real fast travel options you'll be criss-crossing it many many times. The characters are all written pretty well, and the performances are really good, in service of a story that kept me interested throughout. And as samey as it might feel between characters at times, the combat is also genuinely pretty fun, especially once you unlock all the tools at your disposal. The loot element is pretty mild and on par with just about any RPG you'll play. Complete a mission or kill a big enemy, you get some new gear oriented for the character you're playing as, which may or may not be an improvement over what you already have. I got a pretty great sniper rifle early on and it literally carried me through the endgame with no upgrades or anything, just from doing side quests. Unfortunately it's the endgame and post-game where the worst of the live service elements appear. The story is generally quite good throughout and it does give you an ending, but it really feels like they were told late in the process that they needed to make this a "play forever" kind of game and so they just added a bit at the end to justify it. And once you're past the main story it really does just turn into a grind loop of gameplay (with a hilariously-optimistic roadmap built into the game that seems to indicate plans for 12 seasons of additional content). Even so, I found myself having a pretty good time running that loop for a while in the vain hope of getting more trophies, before ultimately burning out for the time being. I am not someone who plays online multiplayer games. I'm a single-player game type of guy through and through, so I wasn't really sure what I would get from Suicide Squad. That being said, you can (and I did) very easily play this game as a completely single-player experience. On that scale it's much more logically structured than the Avengers game, and probably even more than Gotham Knights. It's not a game I can recommend for full price, but if it ever comes to PS+ I'll happily claim it and probably dip back in to try for some of those remaining trophies.
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Apr 20, 2024 19:33
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I just finished Final Fantasy 16 - Rising Tides dlc (leviathan) It's really good. It feels just as good as any of the content in the main game. Gonna clean up a few trophies in it and then start Dave the Diver!
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Apr 21, 2024 16:56
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I finally played and finished Death Stranding. Absolutely incredible experience Ill never forget. Some clunky stuff here and there, mostly the boss fights, but a truly unique game. Although why oh why did Kojima make me sit through the credits three times. I really truly loved the ending so much but my god did that make it drag. Very excited for DS2 now.
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Apr 21, 2024 18:42
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I beat Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom last night. It's a collectathon platformer, so in this case "beat" means "saw credits;" I only have 140/250 gears and a handful of the secret bunny collectables. Took about 8 hours. I was really charmed by the demo a few weeks ago and it certainly followed through on the demo's promise. The demo's still up and I highly recommend it if you're a platformer fan. That said, I'm not sure I'll be coming back for all the collectables. Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is a 3D platformer, except instead of running and jumping, you're a taxi driving around. Your only special move is a dash forward, which takes a second to charge. During that charge, you can cancel the dash into a Mario 64-style backflip by pressing reverse, which gives you a big pop of height. As most modern 3D platformers have, there's a little bit of extra movement tech to be found, but nothing game-changing. The thing is, describing the movement as "a taxi driving around" is kind of a misnomer. Yes, you hold RT to accelerate and LT to brake/reverse, but you start/stop almost instantaneously. You also can pivot in place - it is extremely rare in this game to actually turn without coming to a complete stop first. It ends up having a very odd feel I think some people are going to hate, especially if you come in expecting a "driving" feel. It's a lot of lining up very precise angles, doing a dash/flip, stopping on the next platform, and lining up the next move. It's quite finicky and technical, in a way that I think works for 7 hours of game, but doesn't really feel great when you start getting into the hard optional challenges. The level design and music is pretty great. It has a lot of the highs and lows you'd expect of this genre: some tricky and satisfying collection challenges, some gimmicky sections that don't feel very well-thought-out that leave a bad taste in your mouth (why does this taxi driving game have a stealth sequence), and a terrible trial-and-error final boss with unpleasant fixed-perspective camera angles. You know, like you'd expect of a retro collectathon 3D platformer. I'm sure that this game has some wild speedrun tech and will have a community around it, but I do wonder if they could have focused on having "smoother" movement for everyone. It doesn't cohere in the way that, say, a Pseudoregalia does - you don't really ever feel mastery of this game's movement, or at least, I didn't. That said, it is far more approachable and pick-up-and -play than some platformers that focus too hard on trying to reward "smooth movement" - looking at you, Penny's Big Breakaway - and I still had a lot of fun with it.
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Apr 22, 2024 18:35
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I finished the base set of levels for Escape Academy. I don't know that I have too much insightful to say about it - it does pretty well at replicating the feel of an escape room but in virtual form, both in terms of the general feel of looking around for items/clues but also a suspiciously high number of those puzzles translating into 3 digit codes to put into tumbler locks to get the next piece of a puzzle. A couple of puzzles had me thinking for a bit as to what the solution was, and on one or two of the levels I came pretty close to a time over but I made it through the game without failing anything or having to resort to hints or a guide. There does look to be a built-in hint system though which is always nice to see. The story premise is engaging enough though there's very few character interactions or background elements and as a result the entire Academy seems to consist of like, 3 faculty members, a groundskeeper, one (1) other student, and you. The only sin I think the game really commits is that it was released in the year of our lord 2022 and has a loving Tower of Hanoi puzzle in it. All of this probably comes across as me being more down on this game than I actually am. I'm glad I played it on Game Pass, but it was a pretty fun way to pass an evening.
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Apr 23, 2024 14:08
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Just beat Super Castlevania 4. Dracula remains a big nerd who still owes me money
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Apr 23, 2024 15:06
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I just finished davidspackage's great Let's Play of SOMA and I have a question and I have no other place to ask it: how did Simon's brain scan get to the Pathos-II in the first place? Was his scan the brain equivalent of HeLa cells and anything AI-related starts with his scan as a template?
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Apr 24, 2024 01:24
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I brought my Drake posted:I just finished davidspackage's great Let's Play of SOMA and I have a question and I have no other place to ask it: how did Simon's brain scan get to the Pathos-II in the first place? Was his scan the brain equivalent of HeLa cells and anything AI-related starts with his scan as a template? i think its more that he was one of if not the first person to get a full scan as opposed to his brain being special. so his scan was widespread anywhere the tech was used
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Apr 24, 2024 02:36
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Finally finished BG3. I had a rather miserable time in the first half of the game, but it thankfully got better once we reached the titular city. If it wasn't for Karlach and Scratch, I probably would have quit before then.
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Apr 24, 2024 02:46
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Stexils posted:i think its more that he was one of if not the first person to get a full scan as opposed to his brain being special. so his scan was widespread anywhere the tech was used So more like preloaded basic software on industry hardware? Like HELLO WORLD written in plain text? The thought of some megacorp deploying AI infrastructure with Simon's scan preloaded makes my skin crawl.
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Apr 24, 2024 03:15
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Just finished Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Wow, what a great Metroidvania. All the pieces are there: power creep, mobility upgrades, warping. The platforming is especially good; Ori feels so smooth and is fun to control. Combat actually manages to be challenging for the first half of the game, and when it gets easy they rely on more and more challenging platforming for friction. 9/10
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Apr 24, 2024 05:17
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I brought my Drake posted:So more like preloaded basic software on industry hardware? Like HELLO WORLD written in plain text? The thought of some megacorp deploying AI infrastructure with Simon's scan preloaded makes my skin crawl. That's exactly why I delete it on every play through.
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Apr 24, 2024 05:48
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I brought my Drake posted:So more like preloaded basic software on industry hardware? Like HELLO WORLD written in plain text? The thought of some megacorp deploying AI infrastructure with Simon's scan preloaded makes my skin crawl. If you're not familiar with it I recommend reading this short story: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
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Apr 24, 2024 07:19
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Actually the whole Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories anthology is extremely worth reading.
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Apr 24, 2024 07:21
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I just beat Kirby and the Forgotten Land, I liked it a lot on the whole. For the most part, it's a pretty easy platformer with a fair number of challenge stages and minigames mixed in, with the only real difficulty coming in some of the late game challenges and bosses. It's generally more focused on having fun getting through the stages and finding secrets than being difficult. The power-up abilities were a lot of fun, and the devs kept things fresh by constantly letting you upgrade them, some to absurdly OP levels. I don't know if this was the first fully 3D platformer in the series, but it was the first one I've played, and I thought it translated really well. There were a few times where aiming and shooting things felt a bit finicky, but overall it felt really nice and I appreciated the increased scope compared to the 2D games. A big gimmick I enjoyed was Kirby kind of ballooning himself over larger objects (cars, vending machines, stairs, etc) and taking control of them to do various puzzles and gameplay sequences. It let the designers switch from regular platforming to things like car races and shoot-em-up sequences, which made for some nice variety. My main frustration was the final boss run. It's made up of several different fights in a row - they weren't terrible, but they just dragged on too long, especially when I had to exit and start over to bring better power-ups along with me. The last fight in particular felt kind of tedious, like it veered too far from the more casual early game. But I got through it, and between the challenges I have left to do and the postgame content that opened up, I'll still be playing it for a while. It's not going on my all time favorites list or anything, but it's been very solid as a pretty casual game to pop into regularly over the last couple weeks, and I'd definitely recommend it from that perspective.
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Apr 24, 2024 20:32
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Finally got around to finishing Grand Theft Auto V, and followed it up with Grand Theft Auto IV. GTAV is clearly technically much better, with a lot more to do, while GTAIV has hilarious jelly-physics driving and is astonishingly desaturated almost the entire time. But I still think IV is more fun, though? Partly because the AI affords more random interactions that don’t seem to occur in V (people stealing back their cars / hanging on and being dragged away, people fighting each other and getting arrested, police helping out / causing chaos in missions), but also because losing the police is a much more reasonable affair in IV which makes me much more open to goofing around. In V I felt like fun was punished and the smallest infraction got the police after me, who were much harder to shake. Oh, did I say I finished IV? No, I didn’t, because the “Complete Edition” has a bug in the very last mission that prevents finishing it that Rockstar have never bothered to patch because why would they, they’re absolute assholes. It’s an incredible feat; both games are bags of fun and yet so frustrating (not even mentioning the cursed loving launcher) that I can’t really say I’m looking forward to VI.
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Apr 24, 2024 22:48
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Just recently beat Jusant and it twas a very beautiful and captivating climbing game set in this Mad Max-esque desert world, minus the crazy paint-huffing bandits and all that. As a rock climber myself I loved a lot of what this game did, and overall the gameplay was very reminiscent of something like Journey, so for fans of games like that, it's a big recommend from me. Apart from the obvious gorgeous presentation and vibes the game gives off, I think the best part of the game to me was how deep and interesting the climbing mechanics got and how it kept introducing new elements at a steady pace to keep things interesting. Typically with these types of, shall we say, 'art' games, I get worried as the game practically plays itself from me just holding forward and feels like all style over substance, and I'm glad to see that this thrashed that expectation. No, it isn't Celeste or Getting Over It levels of challenge, but it did enough to hit that sweet spot of being an engaging experience with some moments that make me ponder or work out a solution while still technically being a smooth trip without many actual failures or trial-and-error. I feel a bit bad because I played this on GamePass, and if I were to be honest, that's probably the only way I would've played this game in the first place. Yes, I do think this game is lovely and worth the money, and I'm trying to be more open nowadays to purchasing games like this, but very short and artistic games like this can be a hard sell when stupid brain worms make you think you can comparatively get more bang for your buck by getting an infinitely replayable action roguelike or huge RPG. Just something to think about in this new world of subscriptions and such: I suppose it's a blessing that games like this have more of a chance to get played through GamePass, but I also wish they could be loved more directly without GamePass.
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Apr 26, 2024 05:40
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I cleared my first run of 30XX, the Megaman roguelike. What a game. I can't say it was much of an accomplishment tho because I found a completely broken set of augments that gave nearly unlimited HP and armor. I think I had like 300 hp and 360 armor points in the final boss. Now the game unlocked a bunch of stuff like difficulty modifiers and boss rush. Thats neat. Edit: ahah I forgot I had turned on assist mode for my kid. My gamer cred is ruined WaltherFeng fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Apr 27, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 19:32
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I just beat Tales of Kenzera: Zau, and I really wish I liked it more. It was fine. It's a perfectly fine and basic metroidvania. Most of the time. But there are a couple of issues that dragged it down. First, while the movement feels good most of the time, there are a few spots where the game suddenly demands some precision and quick use of different skills. This shouldn't be a problem, but the game itself isn't really capable of giving you the precision it's asking for. It struggles to keep up with quick jumps and dashes in a row. Sometimes my inputs felt like they just weren't registering. I had to stop and check my controller on a different game a few times just to make sure it was still working properly. This feels especially bad during the two long chase sequences that barely have any checkpoints. And the camera always feels like it's trying to keep up with you. If you go too fast you'll move off screen, and probably die to some spikes. Second, the combat gets tedious very quickly. You have two forms, and can level them up a bit, but they feel mostly the same from the beginning to the end. The only thing that changes is that the game throws more shielded enemies at you as you get further. You never really get the tools to do much more damage so you just have to do the basics a few more times. And even with a leveled up ranged form, certain flying enemies are always a pain. I ended up skipping a bunch of fighting where I could as I got closer to the end, but most of the time you get trapped in a screen and have to kill everything to move on. After the second boss, about halfway through the game, I was already done with the combat. The action also gets hard to parse when there are more than 2 or 3 enemies close at you as well. Did I dodge that? Dunno, just keep mashing attack and heal! The game also loves to put insta-death floors at the bottom of big fights in the latter half. Lastly, and this is just personal preference, but the game doesn't let you use the Dpad. Only the Left Stick. Boo. But I liked the world design and art style. The boss fights were all decent enough. The story was mostly fine, though I don't think the framing device was really needed. Zau's story worked well enough on its own without the added layer of ANOTHER son coping with the death of his father. Yes, I get what the story was going for (and those aren't spoilers, it's all setup at the beginning) but I think it would have been more effective to stick with one main character. Overall, a decent game that I would probably be way harsher on if it weren't "free" with PS Plus. Took me 8 hours to beat, and now I'm going to go back and get the rest of the collectibles for the platinum. Hopefully that will only take another 2 or 3 hours max. We'll see.
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Apr 26, 2024 19:35
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I've been watching Jeff Gerstmann play NES games so I've decided to try and find some I've not seen yet. While some of them are just complete assholes, I have beaten a few: 1. Super Spy Hunter I wanted to love this game so much. I wanted to sing it praises. Super Spy Hunter is a vehicular shmup with some really great weapons and upgrades as well as set pieces. Yes, indeed, this NES game has set pieces. It pushes the tech to the limit and is one of the games that makes you feel straight-up badass. It's first stages are a joy, letting you adjust the speed to your liking so it almost feels like a modern character action game: you can move fast and look cool, or play slow, but look pretty bad. It all falls apart in last 2 stages. While the penultimate stage offers a new cool gimmick, it overstays its welcome with both grueling boss and a long stage with the most boring background of them all. I can't overstate how gorgeous this game can be. I have no idea what trickery they use, but at times it feels like it uses SNES tricks as opposed to NES' hardware. To see it pretty much drop every trick for the final confrontations was very sad. Before the final stage I wanted to commend this game for being a shmup that's accessible to new players: you have a healthbar, and the upgrade system is fairly generous. However, the final level features some jank, gotcha traps, and a boss gauntlet featuring final boss firing a one-hit KO beam with no warning. God, I wanted to love this game, but its end is some grade A NES bullshit that feels like Gradius and doesn't even feature anything as cool as the first few stages did. 2. Big Nose the Caveman Another NES game, courtesy of CodeMasters. While an unlicensed title, I have been familiar with their work on Dizzy games, one of which I owned as a kid. Big Nose is another one in a long series of prehistoric games and it takes a lot from Adventure Island (2 in particular): you level up your weapon to a ranged one and travel through several islands with few short levels in each.Although while time limit is present, it's not as much of an obstacle. It's a simple game, and I wouldn't say it controls well. Your character is way too slippery, and much like Adventure Islands, levels start repeating big chunks towards the end. There is, however, one thing that pleasantly surprised me: this game has RPG-like upgrade system. Your main collectible, bones, can be exchanged for one-time spells and straight-up power-ups in shops you will visit every few levels (or find in levels themselves). This made the fairly boring trek much more interesting as I was experimenting with spells and tried not to lose my power-ups. It made for a fun time as by the end I was nearly indestructible. Pretty fun little game, another one that can be beaten in an afternoon, and this time a fairly easy one, but the one that has a bit more to it than your standard NES side-scroller. I just wish the levels were more distinct.
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Apr 26, 2024 20:29
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Vookatos posted:
If you're trying to get into NES games, and the look is important to you, and you could get through the hell that is super spy hunter ; You've really got to try out Little Samson. It has a stupid name because of the localization for English speakers, but drat if it doesn't have some of the most beautiful sprite work on the system. It also has much more fair combat systems then super spy Hunter.   I also recommend playing the famicom version, because the bosses and levels were mixed up according to what Nintendo executives in the '80s thought Americans would want. It's a slightly better story the way the programmers intended. oxyrosis fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Apr 26, 2024 |
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Apr 26, 2024 21:47
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oxyrosis posted:If you're trying to get into NES games, and the look is important to you, and you could get through the hell that is super spy hunter ; You've really got to try out Little Samson. I've certainly played Little Samson but remember nothing about it so will give it a try.
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Apr 26, 2024 23:11
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Rolled credits on the base game of Nioh, the remastered edition. I first played this around five years ago, but bounced off it due to its high difficulty. Since then, I played Nioh 2, Wo Long, and a number of other soulslike, and I finally decided to give the original Nioh another try. Turns out, I might have actually managed to git reasonably gud in the last five years, because I had a fairly easy time with it this second time around. The bosses of the first two main missions were huge roadblocks on my first playthrough (in fact, I don't think I made it past the second boss before throwing in the towel), but this time I beat both on my first try with heals to spare. After that, I kept waiting for the difficulty to ramp up, but it never really did. Most main bosses went down in five tries or less, and I remember only one that took more than ten tries (the final boss of the Sekigahara mission, if you're curious). Even the final trio of bosses ended up being disappointingly easy, both Nioh 2 and Wo Long had far better and more challenging finales. It could be that the difficulty does spike in the DLC missions and/or NG+ – both of which I plan to tackle after a short break – but so far I'd rank this well below its sequel in terms of difficulty. A large part of that might be lack of those glowing red parry-only attacks that were in both Nioh 2 and Wo Long; as someone who sucks at parry timing, their absence removed my personal number one reason of flubs, and made the combat far more straightforward as a result. As for the rest of the game: The story is complete garbage, but that's par for the course for Team Ninja games; the loot system is a nightmare, but I learned from Nioh 2 that you can simply ignore it on your first playthrough and use whatever random find gives you the best stats; the level design is fairly unremarkable aside from a few low points (that loving ninja funhouse, ugh); performance is flawless on PS5 in the remastered edition. Overall, I had a great time with this, though I think Nioh 2 might be the better game.
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Apr 27, 2024 09:06
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The first two bosses of Nioh are notorious boogeymen that the rest of the game never quite lives up to, yeah.
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Apr 27, 2024 12:57
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I think the only way Nioh surpasses Nioh 2 is in having a character with a defined personality and dialogue, because William is delightful. Both games are great though.
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Apr 27, 2024 18:18
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