Here's a hint, if you decide you need one: If you can't get there from the Dark World, maybe you can get there from the Light World?
What are you currently playing?
- Thread starter Nick Calandra
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K I accidentally preordered the Soul Reaver remaster couplet a month early cos I misread the date on store page and thought it was out the next day lol. But that was like a whole month ago now, so it's out! Memory of first/last experience has been so lost to time it's almost nothing beyond the intro cutscene. I thought it was gonna be the usual low-FPS pre-renderd cinematic copy-pasted for the modern version but no, it runs seemingly in-game with 60fps and co. Will be attentively rediscovering this cult classic proto-edgelord curiosity. 
- Apr 1, 2009
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What are you even talking about?I thought it was gonna be the usual low-FPS pre-renderd cinematic copy-pasted for the modern version but no, it runs seemingly in-game with 60fps and co. Will be attentively rediscovering this cult classic proto-edgelord curiosity.
Tried playing Marvel Rivals;
It's been almost two years since I stopped playing PVP games. Before, I only played because my buddies would get on, and even then I was having a miserable time. My main issue was that with any pvp games, playing "casual" no one took the matches seriously. I was fine with people experimenting with new builds/heroes, but not even bothering to play the objective really made me angry.
On competitve/ranked matches, I couldn't handle the toxicity anymore. It really damaged my self-esteem, and I found myself having negative attitude, giving up, and feeling sorry for myself.
On top of that, these games usually had the worst type of monetization, which added all the more reasons for me to exit. I just couldn't handle it anymore, LOL, Valorant, Siege, Overwatch, Halo, I've left them all. Ever since then I went single-player/narrative-driven games only, and I've only felt peace. I slowly rebuild my damaged self-esteem, and began appreciating gaming as a hobby again.
Recently I have been feeling lonely, and thought to myself "Maybe I was being a bit dramatic? Should I get back into pvp games again?". So I tried Marvel Rivals.
I browsed the main menu screen for maybe 7 min, then I exited. I didn't even play the actual game. I couldn't do it. It started as a feeling of minor lump in my throat, but it kept getting worse. I could feel my heart starting to race, felt nauseating, and all those bad memories from other pvp games came rushing back. I had to turn it off.
It's been a day later, and I feel a lot better now, but the uneasy feeling is still there. I am now convinced I am fully incompatible with any pvp games. I am sure it's a fun game, and I can tell some people are enjoying the game. But I gotta prioritize my mental well-being, as well as avoid being a buzzkill during competitve.
It's been almost two years since I stopped playing PVP games. Before, I only played because my buddies would get on, and even then I was having a miserable time. My main issue was that with any pvp games, playing "casual" no one took the matches seriously. I was fine with people experimenting with new builds/heroes, but not even bothering to play the objective really made me angry.
On competitve/ranked matches, I couldn't handle the toxicity anymore. It really damaged my self-esteem, and I found myself having negative attitude, giving up, and feeling sorry for myself.
On top of that, these games usually had the worst type of monetization, which added all the more reasons for me to exit. I just couldn't handle it anymore, LOL, Valorant, Siege, Overwatch, Halo, I've left them all. Ever since then I went single-player/narrative-driven games only, and I've only felt peace. I slowly rebuild my damaged self-esteem, and began appreciating gaming as a hobby again.
Recently I have been feeling lonely, and thought to myself "Maybe I was being a bit dramatic? Should I get back into pvp games again?". So I tried Marvel Rivals.
I browsed the main menu screen for maybe 7 min, then I exited. I didn't even play the actual game. I couldn't do it. It started as a feeling of minor lump in my throat, but it kept getting worse. I could feel my heart starting to race, felt nauseating, and all those bad memories from other pvp games came rushing back. I had to turn it off.
It's been a day later, and I feel a lot better now, but the uneasy feeling is still there. I am now convinced I am fully incompatible with any pvp games. I am sure it's a fun game, and I can tell some people are enjoying the game. But I gotta prioritize my mental well-being, as well as avoid being a buzzkill during competitve.
- Apr 1, 2009
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So I played Rivals yesterday for the first time. I'm a competitive fighting game player but I am absolute trash in games like it. Mainly out of never really playing them. I never played overwatch for example, or fortnite or any of those other hero shooters like Valorant and so on. I kinda saw it as a new challenge more than anything.
But yeah I'm having a blast with this game. The char designs are just so awesome. I'm using Psylocke who is like a short range assassin in a shooting game. You'd think she wouldn't work ( and she has 5 star difficulty) but the thing is she's super mobile and fast and can even turn invisible which is really good.
You can't go on competitive right away, you first have to level your account to lvl 10, so I guess that's their way of making sure that total noobs who suck don't get thrown in with the sharks right off, and I tried doing players vs bots for a bit, but the AI is cheating and can see you when you're invisible so I just said screw it and went against people in casual match. As a total noob with a pretty good gaming sense and a competitive spirit I did...ok-ish? I got second place once, always got a positive kill ratio, usually 2x my deaths in fact. But this game just has so many little things you need to know and play around. There's nothing worse than trying to use your ultimate move and getting bonked in the head by Hulk which stuns you and makes you completely lose your ultimate XD.
I'd not worry too much and jump on, if I'm doing ok with 0 genre experience you should be fine. A thing I found useful in real life tournaments is always thinking of the other player as just another guy hitting buttons. Even if they're the favorite or are some popular competitor, you have no chance of winning if you even lose in your own head, so not putting other players on a pedestal goes a long way towards performing well. And this is fighters too where it's all on your shoulders, you don't have a team that can pick up your slack if you're still adjusting.
If you'd care to elaborate on where exactly my unserious rambling hurt your feelings, i can attemptt to then untangle the source of the misinterpretation.
- Apr 1, 2009
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Because when you say something like "I thought it was gonna be the usual low-FPS pre-renderd cinematic copy-pasted for the modern version but no, it runs seemingly in-game with 60fps and co." to me that means that a lot of remasters are... I don't even know, cause it seems like a lot of them are pretty good and well done. Feels like the ones that aren't are fewer then the ones that are. Mainly thanks to Nightdive.
That's wasn't intended to mean only remasters, I was talking about most videogames overall. Especially the grossly overfunded titles that come with compressed pre-rendered cutscenes at half the framerate of the gameplay, like COD as the most biggest example. It's even more disappointing when they look composed in engine yet are still trapped within the pre-rendered choppy framerate dimension lol
- Apr 1, 2009
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Did the new COD games do that? I do recall the occasional cinematic that wasn't quite up to the visual fidelity that the game was, but that is more because that was back when COD was mainly aimed at consoles and the limited amount of diskspace a bluray gives you and COD loves uncompressed audio.
I dunno how much competitive you tried to do, but in my experience, you have to play enough to break out of the low elo rank match to avoid the most toxicity, its usually the worst player who are the most toxic, and once you get above a certain threshold, most player just stay quiet.
Same thing with quick match, once you play enough to leave the low ranking, it usually get more or less fine.
... now that being said, I don't play these game anymore unless its with my regular group. Just turn off chat and play a couple of round without really thinking about other people outside of NPC.
You ever noticed the people who claim to be sick of Marvel were either never fans to begin with or want everything to be connected to the MCU in some fashion until it blew up right in their face? Be careful of what you wish for indeed.
Rivals I would be interested in. This is a game begging to be an action single player game or a brawler type game. To be fair, the melee and brawler characters work surprisingly great in this mp third person shooter.
MvCEX again. I might do one more arcade run and then stop for now.
I finished my run of Bare Knuckle III (Streets of Rage 3) English patch version. The game still holds up well, but it's not better than SOR2. It is still a great game. So long as you're not playing the butchered Western release. It still stands heads and shoulders above most SNES brawlers and more than a few 90s arcade brawlers from the 90s.
Finished Nine Sols. If I can beat the final boss within a couple of hours of studying it while drinking a gin and tonic it can't be that hard.
The problem with Nine Sols' final boss is that the game barely lets you get a good look at all her moves and how they're usually chained before you even attempt to actually fight her. Many of them look remarkably similar until the last second, when you're supposed to do the one thing that will save you from halving your life bar. It also becomes an endurance test of waiting for the one move that lets you get a hit in before you go back into the witness protection program for the next 7 minutes of unending, unfailing parrying.
And then of course she pulls out a second life bar, and then a third life bar. I believe every boss in the game (except one) has at least one surprise life bar, sometimes two, and it's always disheartening to see even if I try and imagine phase two initiating at 50% health. I know functionally it's the same but I cannot unfeel the hopelessness of the reveal every time.
The problem with Nine Sols' final boss is that the game barely lets you get a good look at all her moves and how they're usually chained before you even attempt to actually fight her. Many of them look remarkably similar until the last second, when you're supposed to do the one thing that will save you from halving your life bar. It also becomes an endurance test of waiting for the one move that lets you get a hit in before you go back into the witness protection program for the next 7 minutes of unending, unfailing parrying.
And then of course she pulls out a second life bar, and then a third life bar. I believe every boss in the game (except one) has at least one surprise life bar, sometimes two, and it's always disheartening to see even if I try and imagine phase two initiating at 50% health. I know functionally it's the same but I cannot unfeel the hopelessness of the reveal every time.
Great, now the indies copying Souls games are doing the "surprise second health bar" nonsense. Give me Suda's nonsense any day of the week over all that shit.
Posting this as a reply, after actually playing a few hours.
Indeed, Rivals do share some flaws of Concord; strange character design choices and being live-service, to think off the top of my head. However, Rivals do have some advantage
- It's actually free to play. And as much as aI hate live-service models, it makes sense for the game to be that way.
- The devs aren't hostile to the consumer base
- Each hero actually do have ults, unlike Concord where the very concept was abandoned for the sake of "equality"
- Rivals seemed to have better marketing
- I think this is rather debatable, since the hype generated around being a marvel game
- Both had rather sparse marketing, but I feel Concord should've tried harder
- After the Avengers game failing, Midnight Suns and Spider-man 2 being divisive, I guess people were looking for the next cool game from Marvel
That being said, Rivals would need to do something amazing to stay relevant and keep the playerbase, based on my impressions.
My Actual impressions:
After gathering the mental courage to play the game, I gotta say, it has potential. All playable characters have distinct play styles, despite branching off from the same category. I.E. Both Spidermand and Venom and swing around, but Spiderman is more of a glass cannon who needs to do damage and the GTFO, while Venom is supposed to stay there and soak in the damages. Both Mantis and Jeff the Landshark are healers, but Mantis heals and buffs allies while Jeff can move around quickly to heal allies.
I would say definitely play this with friends, because without them I would've quit within first few mins.
However, it also has your typical live-service elements. Battle passes, weekly stores, challenges, etc. And so far, this is the only means of progression. There are also limited number of skins, with some characters having the worse end of it. I do hope the devs adds more reasons to make progression, because I can tell this game is gonna die out soon if they don't change anything.
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- Apr 1, 2009
- 15,077
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- Whatever, just wash your hands.
Still playing a lot of Path of Exile 2, just got to act 3 after a really cool final for Act 2. Mainly playing my Ranger, but have done a bit with merc and sorc, and just a tiny bit with the witch. All of them are pretty fun in different ways, the only one I haven't liked was warrior since surviving in melee starts off pretty rough, but I'll bet it gets better with levels and gear.
