Just a little bit more of Red Dead 2. Not much to say about it. I've mostly been spending my time watching movies or playing with a Discord tabletop group; haven't been thinking much about any games.
What are you currently playing?
- Thread starter Nick Calandra
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I got back from one shitty stressful job and went right into another one as a contractor desperately tries to accelerate a project so that the big C doesn't absolutely fuck them, so I decided to go the chill route and follow all those crazy kids and their equally crazy streamers.
Valheim is pretty fun, its kind of like 3D Terraria. You wander around punching trees, make a house, go find a boss, kill the boss, get cool stuff, build a bigger house, and repeat. I think its a little odd that they decided to lock farming behind the first boss, but all in all the progression is kind of nice. They pace you out pretty well as you just sort of do your own thing and then eventually get to the point where you have a sharp enough stick to kill a prey species, and then kill the King of Prey Species.
Only complaint I really have is they hide recipes behind what materials you have discovered, which could be reasonable but there's a certain amount of stuff you may never consider busting in to because you wouldn't recognize them as things that would give you new materials. I cut down a pine tree as a joke to see if I could hit a troll in the head with it, and after I was finished having my ass beat by a troll who did not laugh, I got back to find a pile of "core wood" sitting on my corpse which unlocked a bunch of stuff.
Currently as a proud viking warrior who has been killed by multiple prey species I'm mostly just enjoying building up my home and quietly farming to the sound of delightful calm music.
Valheim is pretty fun, its kind of like 3D Terraria. You wander around punching trees, make a house, go find a boss, kill the boss, get cool stuff, build a bigger house, and repeat. I think its a little odd that they decided to lock farming behind the first boss, but all in all the progression is kind of nice. They pace you out pretty well as you just sort of do your own thing and then eventually get to the point where you have a sharp enough stick to kill a prey species, and then kill the King of Prey Species.
Only complaint I really have is they hide recipes behind what materials you have discovered, which could be reasonable but there's a certain amount of stuff you may never consider busting in to because you wouldn't recognize them as things that would give you new materials. I cut down a pine tree as a joke to see if I could hit a troll in the head with it, and after I was finished having my ass beat by a troll who did not laugh, I got back to find a pile of "core wood" sitting on my corpse which unlocked a bunch of stuff.
Currently as a proud viking warrior who has been killed by multiple prey species I'm mostly just enjoying building up my home and quietly farming to the sound of delightful calm music.
I will play more 3D World tomorrow. Just not in the mood tonight. I've been bouncing back between SOR4, DmC: DE, and Ninja Saviors. I managed to get the S Rank for Cherry in the Y Tower and Y Island on Mania. I beat my old high score on Mission 20 in DmC, with a score 13, 796, 416 style points (SSS in every category) on Gods Must Die Mode. The score puts me in 15th place.
Now to say some nice things about Days Gone.
Scenery is pretty, if not particularly varied. Not to harp too much on the comparison but RDR2 has an entire Mario ecosystem for a map. Days Gone is just the forest world.
The hordes are pretty impressive and challenging to deal with.
The bike mechanic is pretty cool and about the only thing that gives an edge to "survival". You will never run out of fuel if a mission needs it but out in the open it can get tense when you're running low.
I'm liking photo mode. Probably my favorite after RDR2, HZD and Spider-Man.
Deacon is fine. There's nothing to much like about him but the actor does a good job at making him seem human at least and not just Protagonist Man.
Scenery is pretty, if not particularly varied. Not to harp too much on the comparison but RDR2 has an entire Mario ecosystem for a map. Days Gone is just the forest world.
The hordes are pretty impressive and challenging to deal with.
The bike mechanic is pretty cool and about the only thing that gives an edge to "survival". You will never run out of fuel if a mission needs it but out in the open it can get tense when you're running low.
I'm liking photo mode. Probably my favorite after RDR2, HZD and Spider-Man.
Deacon is fine. There's nothing to much like about him but the actor does a good job at making him seem human at least and not just Protagonist Man.
Woo! Finished Commander Keen ep1 without cheating. Had the game for aaages, in that it's old and shareware, but never finished without cheating until 5 minutes ago.
Took me a few tries, something about the controls or the movement just seems a little off.
Took me a few tries, something about the controls or the movement just seems a little off.
Playing more MK11 in anticipation of the movie. I’ve never messed around with kustom variations but it’s pretty liberating that they’re available to use now in any capacity. I have one Mileena preset using only sais for enhanced zoning and the other two are geared towards maximum offense potential. Just recently learned about how to get double krushing blow combos with her so it’s been interesting trying out some of those.
I’ve maxed out Skarlet’s character tower rewards and will now go for Mileena’s. After her’s idk...maybe go back to finish Kabal’s since I’ve gotten nearly everything else for him too. I am partial to mostly the female cast overall though. It’s more interesting to me watching badass chics fight, at least in videogames.
I’ve maxed out Skarlet’s character tower rewards and will now go for Mileena’s. After her’s idk...maybe go back to finish Kabal’s since I’ve gotten nearly everything else for him too. I am partial to mostly the female cast overall though. It’s more interesting to me watching badass chics fight, at least in videogames.
Yeah Deacon as a character did get grating for me. How most of his dialogue is bitter and snippy quips, and the disinterested behavior kind of typical of dudebro protagonists. It can get a bit jarring, especially when he does things that seem to contradict this attitude, implying it's literally a front he's putting up or something. I love Sam Witwer as an actor, and as a star wars roleplaying nerd, but that character....isn't great. I don't think it's due to his performance, as I think he does a good job acting him out. I think they just gave him some lame dialogue to work with, and a character structure that feels a bit grating. I honestly really enjoyed the rest of the cast more. As you do each side character's story missions, they get a lot of development and nuance. More than I'm used to seeing in these kind of games. I will say Deacon gets better near the end, as some events happen that change a few things for him. But early Deacon, yeah he can be annoying.
This might be me but it's especially annoying how he has to say the name of the person he's talking to in every line of dialogue.
"Hey, Boozeman? How's your arm, Boozer? We have to go North once it heals, Boozer. And another thing, Boozer: we need supplies. Boozer, we just don't have enough yet. *sigh* I guess I'll have to do it myself, you're in no shape, Boozer. Tell you what, Boozer, you sit tight while I *yawn* go do this thing, 'k?"
I'm pretty sure I'm at the final boss for The Surge. Running into a few annoyances with the combat system and fighting his first phase. But it's nothing too bad. It's mostly just problems with the lock on system not really working well on large scale enemies. It's really strange, as it's clearly a problem when the target is scaled up beyond humanoid/car sized robot. In a nutshell, if the boss were a giant pie in the middle of the arena, and I've locked onto a slice of that pie at say, 215degrees, and the targeting dot clearly is highlighting the part of the pie at that spot, when I leap in with a lunging attack, for whatever reason, it more often makes me lunge at the 180degree spot, mostly aiming at the dead center of the pie. I then have to manually fiddle my guy closer to the spot, to actually be in range of the part to hit it. Despite using controls that, with a lockon system, should've been making me move directly towards the weak point anyway.
And in the time it takes me to do this adjustment, the enemy has already started attacking...which forces me to disengage and dodge out of the way. And then I have to dash back in, and the problem repeats.
As an overall game, it's fine I guess. It's definitely held my attention much longer than Dark Souls did. I do find the bog standard scifi plot to be eye rolling. I'm going to name some details of the plot, and tell me what you expect to be the overall theme:
1. Megacorporation run by a Steve Jobs/Elon Musk-esque CEO
2. New project designed to save earth from humanity's folly with the environment.
3. Groundbreaking technology to push the boundaries of science.
If you said that they probably went with "Plot about a CEO that goes crazy, running a secretly sinister company, that has "Tampered in God's Domain" and "Through our hubris, have unleashed the wrath of our own design" while simultaneously have religous delusions of grandeur, sprinkled with some Sinister Atheist trope about Killing God and We Are the Gods Now bullshit, well *ding ding ding*! Congrats! You too can apparently script the plot for a video game plot. I mean they aren't even subtle about it. From the opening sequence, they hammer home how good and noble CREO's goals are, and how you are "helping to build a better tomorrow!" , which of course means it's exactly the opposite going on. Even before you get the exosuit drilled into your bones at the start.
I find it incredibly lazy worldbuilding, and some of the most heavy handed motivations for the various characters. Some of them have a bit more nuance, and you can see this in some of the audiofiles, as they talk about why they are doing what they are doing. Some of them are sincere, but "let their ambition blind them" or "we flew to close to the sun, and dabbled in god's domain" shit, but of course, at that point, the horrible thing they created, has been unleashed, and is part of the problem now dooming humanity. I did find one character rather interesting. This isn't a spoiler, as you encounter her pretty much immediately, but the person you talk to on the intercom system, who points you in the right direction for the plot, is constantly telling you that you need to hurry, as time is of the essence. And while I'm not going to say why she needs you to hurry, when you learn what the ticking clock was....it's presented in a very interesting way. I was genuinely surprised, and impressed by that one.
I find the implant system in the game interesting, as you can tailor some interesting combinations of abilities, to make whatever type of fighter you want. I fell in love with a set of implants, that let you store the energy you build up when hitting people, to fuel your abilities, so that it persists between fights, up to a % of capacity. I have it capped at around 70% or so, and coupled it with other implants, that make you do more Impact damage, boost attack speed, and stamina regeneration, while your energy is high. So the first few kills just fill up the tank, and after that, I'm much faster, hit harder, and hit for longer, in subsequent fights. I also am wearing an outfit, that makes it where if I'm at full energy capacity, I heal per hit on an enemy, and the outfit makes using energy to heal (instead of healing injections), cheaper, and more effective. So I'm all about high energy to unlock multiple other things. But you could just as easily build for massive health and injections, and just blunt force your way through stuff. In fact, using those high energy = more impact (and thus stagger), coupled with a massive weapon, could be pretty rude. I went for the speed build, which is still enough impact to permastun most enemies.
So, since I'm pretty much done with it, my final thoughts, pre killing the final boss at least, are that it's a decent game, with some decent writing for some characters, but a very cliche scifi plot overall. That gets a bit more mileage out of me personally, as I prefer scifi to fantasy, but it's still a negative mark. I did enjoy it enough to pick up Surge 2, so I'll probably start that this weekend, as I plan on beating the boss tonight if possible.
And in the time it takes me to do this adjustment, the enemy has already started attacking...which forces me to disengage and dodge out of the way. And then I have to dash back in, and the problem repeats.
As an overall game, it's fine I guess. It's definitely held my attention much longer than Dark Souls did. I do find the bog standard scifi plot to be eye rolling. I'm going to name some details of the plot, and tell me what you expect to be the overall theme:
1. Megacorporation run by a Steve Jobs/Elon Musk-esque CEO
2. New project designed to save earth from humanity's folly with the environment.
3. Groundbreaking technology to push the boundaries of science.
If you said that they probably went with "Plot about a CEO that goes crazy, running a secretly sinister company, that has "Tampered in God's Domain" and "Through our hubris, have unleashed the wrath of our own design" while simultaneously have religous delusions of grandeur, sprinkled with some Sinister Atheist trope about Killing God and We Are the Gods Now bullshit, well *ding ding ding*! Congrats! You too can apparently script the plot for a video game plot. I mean they aren't even subtle about it. From the opening sequence, they hammer home how good and noble CREO's goals are, and how you are "helping to build a better tomorrow!" , which of course means it's exactly the opposite going on. Even before you get the exosuit drilled into your bones at the start.
I find it incredibly lazy worldbuilding, and some of the most heavy handed motivations for the various characters. Some of them have a bit more nuance, and you can see this in some of the audiofiles, as they talk about why they are doing what they are doing. Some of them are sincere, but "let their ambition blind them" or "we flew to close to the sun, and dabbled in god's domain" shit, but of course, at that point, the horrible thing they created, has been unleashed, and is part of the problem now dooming humanity. I did find one character rather interesting. This isn't a spoiler, as you encounter her pretty much immediately, but the person you talk to on the intercom system, who points you in the right direction for the plot, is constantly telling you that you need to hurry, as time is of the essence. And while I'm not going to say why she needs you to hurry, when you learn what the ticking clock was....it's presented in a very interesting way. I was genuinely surprised, and impressed by that one.
I find the implant system in the game interesting, as you can tailor some interesting combinations of abilities, to make whatever type of fighter you want. I fell in love with a set of implants, that let you store the energy you build up when hitting people, to fuel your abilities, so that it persists between fights, up to a % of capacity. I have it capped at around 70% or so, and coupled it with other implants, that make you do more Impact damage, boost attack speed, and stamina regeneration, while your energy is high. So the first few kills just fill up the tank, and after that, I'm much faster, hit harder, and hit for longer, in subsequent fights. I also am wearing an outfit, that makes it where if I'm at full energy capacity, I heal per hit on an enemy, and the outfit makes using energy to heal (instead of healing injections), cheaper, and more effective. So I'm all about high energy to unlock multiple other things. But you could just as easily build for massive health and injections, and just blunt force your way through stuff. In fact, using those high energy = more impact (and thus stagger), coupled with a massive weapon, could be pretty rude. I went for the speed build, which is still enough impact to permastun most enemies.
So, since I'm pretty much done with it, my final thoughts, pre killing the final boss at least, are that it's a decent game, with some decent writing for some characters, but a very cliche scifi plot overall. That gets a bit more mileage out of me personally, as I prefer scifi to fantasy, but it's still a negative mark. I did enjoy it enough to pick up Surge 2, so I'll probably start that this weekend, as I plan on beating the boss tonight if possible.
Now that you mention it yeah he does do that a lot. It didn't really bother me though. I assume that's an artifact of the recording process, when he was just saying the various lines off a list, and they would be randomly inserted, independent of any other context, so they had to have him audibly state who the line was for? *shrugs*
The one that annoyed me the most, was whenever that one conspiracy theory 'murica first dude who runs the first community you link to, does one of his alex jones-esque radio rants, and Deacon invariably cusses him out and gets angry at what he's saying....but still goes to work for him. I mean, I agree with what Deacon was saying about how the guy is full of shit, but it became so predictable, that I would stop my bike riding and let the two dialogue sequences play out.
But again, for me at least, I liked the overall chemistry he had with the various supporting cast, and felt some of them had more depth than I was expecting them to have. So I could mostly ignore Deacon's "angry, grizzled survivalist" trope demeanor, as Sam acted it well. Like, I didn't feel like he was faking it, and did a good job with the material given. I would've preferred a different flavor of "wounded survivalist" personality though.
I got to the theme park area where you get the eagle suit. I got kinda stuck because I needed to upgrade my gear but I couldn't find some parts that apparently were only in the beginning level which is difficult to access from the theme park unless I'm doing something wrong. That was last year. I think I'd like to give it another shot, but I'd probably just start from the beginning. It's funny, I found the radio in the medbay really annoying until after you get a point where you're excited to find the next medbay and I found myself humming that song even when I'm not playing.
Yeah....I don't need that song in a YT video. It's been stuck in my head for weeks now. I wouldn't mind the music in the OPS really, if it was more than just that ONE song, on constant repeat. I mean, a few instrumental songs mixed in, or just exclusively instrumental, so you don't have annoying dialogue worm it's way into your brain, and I'd be fine. The soundtrack for Hardspace: Shipbreaker has the same scifi/country feel as Prisoner, but it's just so much more repeatable(plus just better quality music IMO). I ENJOY having that in my ears constantly. And I do mean constantly, as that game it's always playing. Prisoner, I only hear when I'm in OPS, and it's still more nerve grating.
And regarding the gear upgrades, yeah I ran into a similar problem with a late game outfit I got, and fell in love with. I didn't have any of the Mk2 components to upgrade it. Which did require a trip back to the starting zone to farm for parts. Which honestly wasn't too bad, as it let me explore for new areas I could unlock with my drone, and any Overcharge spots I didn't have the core level for. I made a point to just farm that level stuff for a long while, so I had spares, in case I ran into another outfit I liked as well. Spoilers: I did, so it was a good call.
The constant PSA videos when you are running around an open area where there is lots of combat, could get annoying. Earlier zones, it wasn't too bad, as the video screens were located in a spot where you'd only hear it for a short time, maybe a fight or 2 at most, before you moved out of earshot. But a later zone, the entire first area of that zone, has multiple levels, multiple passages in and out, multiple fights, AND it's where the OPS is, and there is a massive Jumbotron, playing a constant video/audio clip, that you can hear everywhere. So that got annoying fast. I don't mind the "it's on repeat because the system is broken" but holy shit can you PLEASE put a delay on that shit?! Constant loop is psychological torture. When I can recall what zone I'm in from hearing the dialogue of their PR guy, I've heard it too many times.
So been doing a ton more DS2, this helpful bird took me to the prison area straight from the forest of the giants and while it was a bit of slow going for a while (mainly cause I tried to jump through too many walls that were not actually accessible) I ended up clearing the prison before stepping a foot in the tower of fire and the bandit pirate camp areas, took me a couple days to wrap the prison area up but after doing that I was so powerful that I breezed through the bosses in the tower and camps yesterday, I was using this fire sword you fire near the salamander at first then switched to the flying knight greatsword and FINALLY I found the Guts golden age greatsword with all its nicks and chips in the bandit camp so now I'm rocking this baby.
People keep saying DS2 is harder than DS1 but I honestly don't feel that, it may be my playstyle which is more about killing things fast than about letting em do things and dodging em and then killing em but like...I was in the prison area and there was this part where a horde of royal swordsmen, like 10 of em are in this tiny room, and I was felling two or three of em with 2 hits at a time. Felt super powerful. I can see that being called cheap because if you get surrounded you're screwed but if you just line em up properly and have a good enough weapon it's not that bad. Also the healing items the game gives you are super over the top. Not only you have the regen ring which negates the need for miracles on non-cleric builds but those little gems the game showers you with feel almost endless. I did the whole entire bandit camp area excluding the boss without resting on a bonefire once and I don't even think I used any healing prior to running into those horrors with the long arms that cause bleading like a mofo. (was saving my torch timer so I was fighting em in the dark lol) cause I was 1shotting almost everything and the healing ring was doing all the healing you need.
So yeah things going super smoothly, now I think I'll de-petrify some asshole, maybe the one near where those poison mutants are.
People keep saying DS2 is harder than DS1 but I honestly don't feel that, it may be my playstyle which is more about killing things fast than about letting em do things and dodging em and then killing em but like...I was in the prison area and there was this part where a horde of royal swordsmen, like 10 of em are in this tiny room, and I was felling two or three of em with 2 hits at a time. Felt super powerful. I can see that being called cheap because if you get surrounded you're screwed but if you just line em up properly and have a good enough weapon it's not that bad. Also the healing items the game gives you are super over the top. Not only you have the regen ring which negates the need for miracles on non-cleric builds but those little gems the game showers you with feel almost endless. I did the whole entire bandit camp area excluding the boss without resting on a bonefire once and I don't even think I used any healing prior to running into those horrors with the long arms that cause bleading like a mofo. (was saving my torch timer so I was fighting em in the dark lol) cause I was 1shotting almost everything and the healing ring was doing all the healing you need.
So yeah things going super smoothly, now I think I'll de-petrify some asshole, maybe the one near where those poison mutants are.
After playing through and Platinum’ing Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls I was still highly intimidated going into DS2, especially augmented with the Scholar of the First Sin changes. The initial couple areas (Heide’s Tower and Blue Cathedral) were really the biggest adjustment until the DLC, and that mostly boiled down to adaptability being low. For all its criticisms of level design, hit boxes, ganking, etc. I still really ended up enjoying the sheer variety it offered throughout even the base game, let alone the mostly incredible Crown expansions. I even ended up taking advantage of going full hollow with the Forlorn GS infused with bleed. Ended up pretty decent on top of being one of the best looking weapons in the series IMO.
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I recently played a bit of Scholar of the First Sin for the first time and really didn't like it. I finished the original Dark Souls 2 4 or 5 times, but picking it up this time just felt bad. Everything felt slow and sluggish just felt off. I kept plugging away at it and then like 12 hours in I remembered that Adaptability was a thing. By that point though I really didn't feel like continuing to play even though I knew what the problem was and how to fix it.
DS2 really shit the bed in a few regards. The life gem system is terrible, and the adaptability stat makes the beginning a huge chore until you dump like 20 levels into it.
Yeah those are certainly valid points, and they might’ve weighed heavier for me if the game was smaller, oddly enough. It just happened to be one of those rare cases where a kitchen sink design formula had enough going for it IMO to warrant overlooking its flaws. If I hadn’t played through Demon’s first with its smorgasbord of grasses I suppose the life gems might’ve bothered me more too. Hell, even Sekiro had this issue with the pellets which were mostly useless.
Did another co-op session in SOR4. I played as Adam and the other player was Cherry. We did an arcade run on Hard mode and got the S Rank.The person playing with me was decent, but did not know how to use Cherry to her full under certain circumstances. The pogo attack ability she has, my partner barely used. Seemed to forgot that Cherry can do that. They were down to their last life on the final stage. They had plenty of Lee Roy Jenkins moments.
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The pellets in Sekiro aren't an issue since you can only carry 3. The lifegems are a problem because you can carry 99 of each type meaning you can always heal between every fight. If they wanted you to do that when what was the point of only giving you one estus flask to start with? It completely undercuts the entire design of the early game.
The pellets in Sekiro are a crutch for learning the combat. If you had a bad engagement you get another mostly free try at it without having to waste a full heal, but you get a limited number per attempt. Lifegems on the other hand let you ignore any and all damage taken on the way to a boss.
It's a significant problem in Demon's Souls as well, which is why the remake limits you to how much grass you can carry, but also Demon's Souls is in general a much more forgiving game.
I don’t recall ever having more than perhaps a dozen life gems at any one time, mostly because they were either hard to come by or I wasn’t going to waste time farming them (if that was possible idk). I only really used them whenever I ran out of estus, and they sometimes helped out in a pinch between bonfires.
Decided to Plat Kingdom Hearts for my 5,000th trophy so that means speedrunning it (and not fiddling with the equipment tab). 1 hour 45 minutes in, just reached Agrabah. It's hard to gauge percentage since there's a lot of mandatory busywork in between worlds and there's also the possibility of having to grind at some point, but I think I'm making good time.