Good luck with the mods! I only dabbled a bit with Witcher 3 mods and it can be very frustrating when they don't play nice.
What are you currently playing?
- Thread starter Nick Calandra
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And with some more unexpected free time on my hands yesterday evening, Isshin falls to my blade after another thousand or so attempts. The neighbors may not have been pleased with my cries of victory, but the Dragon power has been expunged from Japan, or whatever the plot is.
I'm especially pleased that one of my goals for this play-through came around full circle. There is a prosthetic tool called Mist Raven which I never understood or cared about when I played it before. I set out to learn it and use it this time- its whole thing is that you activate it when you're about to get hit and it warps you behing the enemy! Sounds great but I didn't find a lot of use for it because the whole point of the combat is knowing when you're about to get hit in the first place! Like, if I already know what's coming, I can deflect or dodge or whatever.
But in the first phase of Isshin's fight, his moves are very confusing to me. Two of the devastating attacks seem to have the same starting charging animation, and another two also do that. Even after watching youtube videos and such I couldn't get all the attacks down, there are so many! So I remembered my Mist Raven and that gave me that little bit of extra help- when I found myself about to freeze in terror at what's coming I would use that to avoid getting hit. Each of the other phases were manageable- it's scary at first when he pulls out more weapons but I found those attacks way easier to read.
And that is why I replayed this game- that kind of intense giving a shit about some entertainment is something that only video games offer, especially FromSoftware when it comes to individual battles like these.
I'm especially pleased that one of my goals for this play-through came around full circle. There is a prosthetic tool called Mist Raven which I never understood or cared about when I played it before. I set out to learn it and use it this time- its whole thing is that you activate it when you're about to get hit and it warps you behing the enemy! Sounds great but I didn't find a lot of use for it because the whole point of the combat is knowing when you're about to get hit in the first place! Like, if I already know what's coming, I can deflect or dodge or whatever.
But in the first phase of Isshin's fight, his moves are very confusing to me. Two of the devastating attacks seem to have the same starting charging animation, and another two also do that. Even after watching youtube videos and such I couldn't get all the attacks down, there are so many! So I remembered my Mist Raven and that gave me that little bit of extra help- when I found myself about to freeze in terror at what's coming I would use that to avoid getting hit. Each of the other phases were manageable- it's scary at first when he pulls out more weapons but I found those attacks way easier to read.
And that is why I replayed this game- that kind of intense giving a shit about some entertainment is something that only video games offer, especially FromSoftware when it comes to individual battles like these.
My assumption (and hope) is that the instability of the game was more about the way I'd installed the mods rather than their innate conflict. Some of the mods I'd installed by just unpacking a file into the data directory, some I'd installed through the Nexus Mod Manager, which had turned into Vortex. More complexity is added when some mods require certain other mods to work, and those other mods require other mods to work. You can also update mods through Vortex, but with some mods you have to pick the files manually from the website, and older versions of mods can clash with newer versions of other mods and it goes on and on like that.
I have bought Slay the Spire 3 time.
I have it on my PC
I have it on my Switch
I have even bought the mobile version
One more run, wherever I am.
I finished up a recent playthrough of Arkham Asylum, which I started last year.
I've played this game about 5 or 6 times over the years, and it has aged pretty well.
I was going to stop after Asylum, but Whitelight just released a 3 hour video about Arkham City, and I guess my finger must have slipped on the Download button on Steam...
I swore to myself that I would try harder to play mostly new (to me) games this year, and I already feel that promise to myself slipping away.
Im just finding it really difficult to justify new experiences, now that I have increasingly little time in my adult life. I could spend a few hours playing a game from my 200+ game backlog, and maybe have a good time, or I could just replay one of the dozens of games that I already love, that I haven't touched in years, and know that I will have a good time.
Sometimes I just feel like all of the good games are already out, and have been for a few years. Every now and again, something cool and genuinely great comes out, but more often than not, I end up being a little let down, and I end up feeling that something that I have already played has done whatever this game is doing, but better. I mean, I could play Mass Effect Andromeda, and finally put a tick next to that game, or I could just replay the Mass Effect trilogy again, and have an infinitely better time.
Its the same with movies or TV shows, too. I could watch some new, middling TV show or movie, or I could just rewatch Avatar The Last Airbender for the umpteenth time, and have an absolute blast.
I've played this game about 5 or 6 times over the years, and it has aged pretty well.
I was going to stop after Asylum, but Whitelight just released a 3 hour video about Arkham City, and I guess my finger must have slipped on the Download button on Steam...
I swore to myself that I would try harder to play mostly new (to me) games this year, and I already feel that promise to myself slipping away.
Im just finding it really difficult to justify new experiences, now that I have increasingly little time in my adult life. I could spend a few hours playing a game from my 200+ game backlog, and maybe have a good time, or I could just replay one of the dozens of games that I already love, that I haven't touched in years, and know that I will have a good time.
Sometimes I just feel like all of the good games are already out, and have been for a few years. Every now and again, something cool and genuinely great comes out, but more often than not, I end up being a little let down, and I end up feeling that something that I have already played has done whatever this game is doing, but better. I mean, I could play Mass Effect Andromeda, and finally put a tick next to that game, or I could just replay the Mass Effect trilogy again, and have an infinitely better time.
Its the same with movies or TV shows, too. I could watch some new, middling TV show or movie, or I could just rewatch Avatar The Last Airbender for the umpteenth time, and have an absolute blast.
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It's on mobile?
Ah shit, here we go again.
The early months of 2020 will forever be etched into my mind as "the time I played Slay the Spire and nothing else". I was unemployed at the time and had basically jack squat to do all day, so I racked up over 200 hours in a couple of months. That game is pure crack, and I beat the final boss with just 1 character. Post Malone's "Hollywood's Bleeding" album will be inseparable from those memories until the day I die.
Overboard(Inkle Studios)
So after playing Heaven's Vault and having played 80 days and enjoying them both, I decided to check out Overboard from the same studio, which came out last year.
It's a simple concept: It's 1935 and former West End Actress Veronica and her Husband Malcom are crossing the Atlantic from England to New York on the steamship SS Hook. The night before reaching New York, they go up deck and Veronica, having decided their marriage just isn't working out, pushes her husband overboard, killing him.
The game starts the next morning playing as Veronica. The boat reaches New York in 8 (in game) hours(which will take roughly an hour of real time) and others people are bound to notice Malcolm is missing. You need to scour the boat for evidence, talk to the tight cast of characters and cover your tracks to avoid being escorted off the boat directly to jail, and the clock is always ticking. At 4 pm, you're hauled into a room(Agatha Christie style) with everyone else where you'll probably be accused of murder with everyone pointing out stuff that either doesn't make sense or makes you look guilty, and the choices you've made up till that point will either damn or exonerate you.
Yeah, it's a reverse whodunnit because you're trying to get away with the crime. A game takes maybe an hour because everything you do advances the clock somehow, so those 8 in game hour go by quick and you feel the tension as your time runs low(you can easily spend an hour or two chatting someone up for clues). The small cast of characters means each one is quite developed and you have to figure out the best way to deal with each one and yes, it's possible to murder every single one of them, which may or may not make things worse because now you have numerous murders to cover up. The boat is also small enough to limit the number of locations to what it strictly needed(and it takes time to move between them so moving is always a consideration, not to mention people move around as well).
I haven't beat it but I've run through it twice, getting arrested at the end both times. I made mistakes on the first run, fixed most of them on the 2nd but that still wasn't enough, so there's a lot of replayability. It also helps that after finishing a run you get checklist of suggestions of how to help on the next run. You also have QoL features like being able to skip a scene with the all the same choices made if you've already done it before, seeing your previous choices(mostly dialogue choices), being able to restart an entire scene(once per scene) and being able to rewind to the beginning of the day to start over if you think you've botched things. But really playing through mistakes is viable because you can try to avoid those mistakes in the next run. So in a way it's like a roguelite meets an adventure game? Or maybe a time loop game that doesn't advertise itself that way?
Anyway, it's pretty fun and I'm enjoying trying to figure out the correct way to survive the trip by trying different things, not to mention each time i learn more about the people on the ship(such as the guy with a stowaway in his cabin, who is implied to be a Jewish German refugee fleeing from the Nazis) and apparently there's a number of different endings depending on your choices. It's on a number of platforms such as PC and Switch but I'm playing on Mobile because it's easy to pick up and put down.
So after playing Heaven's Vault and having played 80 days and enjoying them both, I decided to check out Overboard from the same studio, which came out last year.
It's a simple concept: It's 1935 and former West End Actress Veronica and her Husband Malcom are crossing the Atlantic from England to New York on the steamship SS Hook. The night before reaching New York, they go up deck and Veronica, having decided their marriage just isn't working out, pushes her husband overboard, killing him.
The game starts the next morning playing as Veronica. The boat reaches New York in 8 (in game) hours(which will take roughly an hour of real time) and others people are bound to notice Malcolm is missing. You need to scour the boat for evidence, talk to the tight cast of characters and cover your tracks to avoid being escorted off the boat directly to jail, and the clock is always ticking. At 4 pm, you're hauled into a room(Agatha Christie style) with everyone else where you'll probably be accused of murder with everyone pointing out stuff that either doesn't make sense or makes you look guilty, and the choices you've made up till that point will either damn or exonerate you.
Yeah, it's a reverse whodunnit because you're trying to get away with the crime. A game takes maybe an hour because everything you do advances the clock somehow, so those 8 in game hour go by quick and you feel the tension as your time runs low(you can easily spend an hour or two chatting someone up for clues). The small cast of characters means each one is quite developed and you have to figure out the best way to deal with each one and yes, it's possible to murder every single one of them, which may or may not make things worse because now you have numerous murders to cover up. The boat is also small enough to limit the number of locations to what it strictly needed(and it takes time to move between them so moving is always a consideration, not to mention people move around as well).
I haven't beat it but I've run through it twice, getting arrested at the end both times. I made mistakes on the first run, fixed most of them on the 2nd but that still wasn't enough, so there's a lot of replayability. It also helps that after finishing a run you get checklist of suggestions of how to help on the next run. You also have QoL features like being able to skip a scene with the all the same choices made if you've already done it before, seeing your previous choices(mostly dialogue choices), being able to restart an entire scene(once per scene) and being able to rewind to the beginning of the day to start over if you think you've botched things. But really playing through mistakes is viable because you can try to avoid those mistakes in the next run. So in a way it's like a roguelite meets an adventure game? Or maybe a time loop game that doesn't advertise itself that way?
Anyway, it's pretty fun and I'm enjoying trying to figure out the correct way to survive the trip by trying different things, not to mention each time i learn more about the people on the ship(such as the guy with a stowaway in his cabin, who is implied to be a Jewish German refugee fleeing from the Nazis) and apparently there's a number of different endings depending on your choices. It's on a number of platforms such as PC and Switch but I'm playing on Mobile because it's easy to pick up and put down.
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Last weekend I started playing Unsighted. It's kind of a smorgasbord, innit? The topdown view and dungeons with puzzles capped by a boss structure of Zelda, but the interconnectedness and ability-based progression of a metroidvania, topped off with the stamina management and souls/bonfire equivalent mechanic of a soulslike (and some of that difficulty too). It's good stuff. I especially like how there is not a single progression route through the game, but that you can break sequence with some creative use of your tools.
For example, the intended way to cross bodies of water too wide to jump is to use ice grenades to make platforms, which you get in the third dungeon. But in the 2nd dungeon you get the Spinner, a sort of top you can ride on, mostly used to break stone blocks, and which also has an attack that let's you bounce across a surface. The game does not explicitly tell you this, but that surface does not need to be solid. The timing on water is much tighter, but with a little practice you can repeatedly bounce to 'skip' across water, which not only lets you enter areas much earlier, but is also much faster than the grenades. Found a couple more ways to get off the beaten path like that, tho granted, usually only figured it out after I could've used it the earliest.
But the thing that really stands out to me is how bleak this game can get. You see, all characters in the game are living on a timer. That includes all shopkeepers. Or this game's Navi proxy, who actually has one of the shorter timers out of all the important characters. Even you yourself. Time up? They die. Permanently, taking all services they provide with them. Every time you return to town after a dungeon, it's a little emptier. The only way to extend the timers is with a rare item found in chests across the map, and they don't really extend it all that much. There's not enough to go around, people will die, and the ones whose life your extend will still eventually die if you do poorly. Just later. Including yourself.
For example, the intended way to cross bodies of water too wide to jump is to use ice grenades to make platforms, which you get in the third dungeon. But in the 2nd dungeon you get the Spinner, a sort of top you can ride on, mostly used to break stone blocks, and which also has an attack that let's you bounce across a surface. The game does not explicitly tell you this, but that surface does not need to be solid. The timing on water is much tighter, but with a little practice you can repeatedly bounce to 'skip' across water, which not only lets you enter areas much earlier, but is also much faster than the grenades. Found a couple more ways to get off the beaten path like that, tho granted, usually only figured it out after I could've used it the earliest.
But the thing that really stands out to me is how bleak this game can get. You see, all characters in the game are living on a timer. That includes all shopkeepers. Or this game's Navi proxy, who actually has one of the shorter timers out of all the important characters. Even you yourself. Time up? They die. Permanently, taking all services they provide with them. Every time you return to town after a dungeon, it's a little emptier. The only way to extend the timers is with a rare item found in chests across the map, and they don't really extend it all that much. There's not enough to go around, people will die, and the ones whose life your extend will still eventually die if you do poorly. Just later. Including yourself.
You are not wrong for doing so. The reason why it's harder than getting a newer stuff, because most of the games aren't worth the price there demanding for. At this point, most of these games are $60 to $70 shovelware games. A lot of new good stuff are either from smaller developers, publishers, or from the Indie crowd. I still check out some new stuff, but I don't mind playing old stuff that's fun. Why do you think I got the Crysis remastered trilogy? I've only ever played the second game. I didn't have a PC powerful enough to run the first game, and I lost interest when three came out at the time. I was just in the other things. Sometimes it's fun going back to old games you haven't played in a long time or never played before. Especially when they're that good, fun, or just lack all the
with most AAA games today. No mtxs, no loot boxes, no NFTS. Just a game that does what it's supposed to do.
Dirt 4
*Screaming as I once again turn my Lancia Delta into a fucking missile by going up to a corner too quickly*
*Screaming as I once again turn my Lancia Delta into a fucking missile by going up to a corner too quickly*
Completed the latest DLC for Blasphemous (Wounds of Eventide), which required another playthrough from scratch to get the new ending.
The new bosses are great fun, particularly the new second phase for Crisanta.
And it was free! And ends with a tease for Blasphemous 2 in 2023! Great all round model for how DLC should be.
The new bosses are great fun, particularly the new second phase for Crisanta.
And it was free! And ends with a tease for Blasphemous 2 in 2023! Great all round model for how DLC should be.
Oh dear Shadowman aged not as gracefully as I was hoping. They do say "dark souls" enough to turn it into a drinking game though. Yet something urges me to push through the unflattering controls, possibly helped by the way the voice actor emphatically roars "I...am the lord of Deadside!" every time he opens a magic purpleberry-powered meat gate.
The Dwarf mining game free with PS plus this month is surprisingly well made at least. And got The Art of Rally, which is like the previous dev's game, Drift: Zen Edition, however with a clear passion for the history of Rally. It's no less disorienting that it looks like an arcade micro-machines game but controls like a serious big-bois racer.
The Dwarf mining game free with PS plus this month is surprisingly well made at least. And got The Art of Rally, which is like the previous dev's game, Drift: Zen Edition, however with a clear passion for the history of Rally. It's no less disorienting that it looks like an arcade micro-machines game but controls like a serious big-bois racer.
When I found out Id have to replay the game to get the DLC content and the new ending I decided to take a break and wait until we're closer to Blasphemous 2 releasing because I wasn't ready for more penance just yet.
I started playing Rayman Legends again, after not touching the game in a long while. I am playing the PS4 version I got for free through PS+. I beat the game on 360, but not on this version. I forgot how many worlds I unlocked so early. It's still best to do the stages in order so you can collect the Teensies and unlock more stages and characters. That said, the character you do unlock are glorified palette and costume swaps of characters you already have. Just add a hat, change a color, be given a different costume, or all of the above.
After coming off Kaze, I still find Rayman Legends better. It does multiple checkpoints, but is still challenging without being overbearing. I have not forgotten how much fun Legends can be. The level variety is off the charts, the music is on point, and the music running levels are super challenging, yet fun when you have everything memorized. I know some people say this is the best 2D Sonic game ever made. I somewhat disagree, but I do like Rayman Legends more than Sonic Mania.
This the last great Ubisoft game. Fuck you assholes for screwing the developers over by delaying the game and have it compete with GTAV. That turned out so well! The good news is this game you can find on nearly any platform now. The game is dirt cheap too.
After coming off Kaze, I still find Rayman Legends better. It does multiple checkpoints, but is still challenging without being overbearing. I have not forgotten how much fun Legends can be. The level variety is off the charts, the music is on point, and the music running levels are super challenging, yet fun when you have everything memorized. I know some people say this is the best 2D Sonic game ever made. I somewhat disagree, but I do like Rayman Legends more than Sonic Mania.
This the last great Ubisoft game. Fuck you assholes for screwing the developers over by delaying the game and have it compete with GTAV. That turned out so well! The good news is this game you can find on nearly any platform now. The game is dirt cheap too.
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Shadowman is kind of funny with the main character constantly waxing poetic like some Lit Major dropout... and he is one.
Jedi Fallen Order is on a hefty discount and yet I find myself dragging my feet. I haven't played a video game properly in almost half a year. Anyone wanna vouch for the game? The combat looks a little clunky, although after Witcher 3 and God of War I probably wouldn't mind.
I couldn't get in to the game's combat and stopped playing after 1/3 of the way in. Why they chose semi-Dark Souls combat and level design (some of which goes back to PS2 era with the puzzle solving included) is beyond me. They should have just followed the design template of The Force Unleashed. Try it you want, but proceed with caution.
I also quit the game at roughly the same point. I have been meaning to give it another whirl, but I've never clicked with soulslike games, so its a bit of an uphill battle for me.