I totally forgor to post this yesterday. I hope all my fellow Americans had a good Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I watched plenty of football and played some Binding of Isaac and Command and Conquer on the side. Have a good week everyone
I’ve been playing Dark Souls for a couple weeks on and off. First time playing any game like that. Took me a long time to get any idea what I should be doing, but I’m getting the hang of it. I think I’m in the mid game now.
That game is obtuse af. It gives off a vibe similar to a difficult, shoddy, cryptic retro game sometimes, but a lot of it is obviously designed with excellent attention to detail. So is all of that intentional? I don’t know. Even if all or most of it is intentional, I’m not sure it’s actually good design.
I do like it though.
There’s an interview somewhere for Demons’ Souls IIRC where Miyazaki said that he was inspired by when he read english fantasy novels but couldn’t understand all the words. Obviously that extends to the dialogue, but I think it’s also intended for the levelling up and weapon upgrade systems to be deliberately obtuse.
I’ve been playing ttrpgs all weekend. Did a session of an ongoing Forbidden Lands campaign on Saturday where I’m playing a halfling rogue who wants to abolish halfling/goblin apartheid. On Sunday I played an elf wanting to spread wisdom to the humans dropping into my friend’s ongoing Torchbearer game and then started a two person co-op game of Starbound where we shot some cops and freed their patrol ship’s shackled AI and got it to join the party.
I’ve not really played TTRPGs before but I GM’d my first ever game of Blades In The Dark last week. Shooting cops, freeing AI, and ending Goblin apartheid sounds rad. I didn’t force it at all, but the people I play with really wanted to to fuck over a violent gang of soul-deadened butchers who are now trying to strike break on behalf of the bosses, and decided the best way to do that was to break into the pens where they keep the animals for their animal fighting pits and free them all.
In the Forbidden Lands session, we found a group of little gremlin-looking guys that the game’s sourcebook describes primarily as a food source, but we talked to them and decided to help the orcs they hired fight some humans who were trying to eat them.
Finished stalker SoC and clear sky and starting call of pripyat. CoP is the only one i still haven’t finished mostly because i just found the level design really boring even if it is mechanically superior to the previous two games.
Funny how COP is the game in the series that’s the most modded, probably for the reason why you described though.
CoP is the only one I beat, just felt like the missions were more interesting
can i introduce you to Anomaly
I started Ultima, the very first, the OG, to see where the series started. It’s a good game for 1985 but for 2024 it really doesn’t pass the sniff test. Namely to even really begin and set forth on the adventure to kill the evil wizard you need to grind, and a lot, to get max level and hit points. Then there’s like 4 real “quests” (go to a dungeon, any dungeon, reach floor x and kill y creature) you do to get the key items to progress and face the final boss. Do that, reach space, time travel, and fight the baddie and you win.
I had much the same problem with Wizardry 1, in that there’s no real meat on the bone in the game once you know you can power level on floor one then warp to the end and kill the final boss in a few hits.
Like I said I can see how this would have been groundbreaking in 1985 but I’m spoiled in 2024.
Ultima 3 and 4 were so groundbreaking for the commodore 64. No Ultima= no final fantasy etc
Indeed, FF DQ all took heavy inspiration from Ultima. Now that I’ve cleared the opening slog of the game it gets more fun when you get a boat (or spaceship, this fantasy game has space travel, foreshadowing Richard Garriott’s astronaut forays).
It’s too bad there’s no real depth to the gameplay though in this first installment. There’s races and classes but they’re all essentially the same and you can max your stats out anyway pretty easily. I’m hoping by Ultima 4 there’s some more variation in these classes since the D&D staples are all here (fighter, cleric, magic user).
Ultima 4 got me into philosophy. It’s got depth
Looking forward to it then! From what I gather off the wiki it seems like it’s more fleshed out and Garriott and co had more an idea of what they wanted these games to become at the time.
very regrettably, i booted up EU4 for the first time in fuck knows how long
got a good Inca run going though
Tiny Tina’s, Deadlock, and Mechabellum while I wait for POE 2 to release.
FYI, be sure to set a FPS limit on deadlock or it’ll try and run w 250+ fps which made my cpu get too hot
Spent a good chunk of Thanksgiving week beating the original 1994 XCOM again. It’s amazing how well that game’s held up over so many years.
My only problem with xcom is it doesn’t show what you rolled. If there were onscreen dice it would be so satisfying. At least the illusion of chance lol. I mean, you’re right in front of a guy with a shotgun and somehow it’s a miss? What was the roll?
you’re right in front of a guy with a shotgun and somehow it’s a miss?
The quintessential XCOM experience
Currently playing Sulfur when I do play, which isn’t often. Haven’t gotten very far but it is alright so far.
Got it gifted for my birthday by an aquaintance who knows the devs. Kind of a cute/grotesque boomer shooter roguelike.
Super fun, I love it’s sense of humor and the soundtrack is surprisingly strong. Only complaint is how punishing the early game can be, once you get your bearings though it’s pretty good.
Back on Sims 3 again. I swear to god I play the same 3 or 4 games in rotation, switching between them every few months. I’ve been spending more time troubleshooting this game than playing it though. EA fucking sucks and I can’t wait for all the other life simulators due out soon so I can drop this fucking game once and for all.
I have a longstanding love-hate-meh-love relationship with the Sims 4 so I kinda feel you.
I have been playing Witcher 3. I started it a few years ago but decided to take another run at it on my steamdeck. I feel like it has the winter vibes I need right now haha
I bounced off that game so hard the first time I played it. Terrible inventory system, terrible onboarding, not my kind of fictional world (medieval fantasy). It took my partner sitting me down weeks later and saying we were gonna play the first six hours or so together one weekend for me to fall for it. But I did. Hard.
Yeah me too. I returned to it after having it in inventory for a year. So glad I did. It really is exceptional
I’ve definitely been playing nothing at all…
FE: The Morrow’s Golden Country. It’s such a good game, and it’s only been getting better. At this point I don’t know how I’m going to go back to some of the official Fire Emblem games, these romhacks are just more fun and made so well.
I also played through TMGC about a month ago. There are ONES of US on Hexbear.
I had a lot of fun, though I did do my Fire Emblem thing of getting a few chapters away from the end then taking like a month break. Extremely solid and I continue to love GBA Fire Emblem, but I think I did burn myself out on it for a little while on it. Maybe not burn out, more like scratched the itch?
I like that supports are rewarding.
Ghost of Tsushima is very pretty, I got it during the recent sale. The lethal difficulty is fun, I probably should have started on the an intended difficulty level rather than the gimmick level but I’m afraid to change it.
Played a little bit of Echo Point Nova, a… movement based first person shooter with a (small) open world level design? Highly recommend it, I 100%ed it in 8 hours and go back every now and then. The dev also did Severed Steel, which had some pretty decent post launch support and game types, and the dev seems to be shooting for the stars with additional content.
Trying to 100% achievements for Dragon’s Dogma Dark Arisen after getting it in DD2, and did it on the Xbox years ago. Trying to kill Death pre max level sure is something. Doing it max level without items is already a pain. Losing interest in continuing, but I gotta see it through eventually.
Got Space Marine II to play with friends eventually, it just seems ok. The defensive quick time events don’t seem to be very responsive? I’ll have to try it with a controller sometime.
I’m almost done with Ghost of Tsushima and absolutely love it but after many hours I’m an now DLC and it is getting a bit samey… still a great game though
started playing both Ultrakill and Fields of Mistria, which feels like two completely opposite ends of the spectrum lmao
I got alien isolation on steam sale so playing that on the deck. It is scary oven on a tiny screen lol. Desktop is baldurs gate 3.
I just finished a Half-Life 2 Hard run. I have tons of nostalgia for the Half-Life series, and the game mostly holds up except two major bugs. The end sequence in the Citadel is still as satisfying as ever.
bug rant
- There is a bug in Nova Prospekt teleportation that prevents the player (or Alyx) from entering the teleporter except through jank. Super frustrating as it locks progress and you will die. I also tried getting in first, but then Alyx bugs out and dances right in front of the teleporter until I leave. I had to lean a turret against Alyx and climb on her head to trigger the teleport sequence. Worse is you can be shot from this position.
- Barney does not follow the player while storming the Suppressor building. He will go from assigned section to section (activating terminals, etc) but then remain in place, which often isolates him from the player and prone to dying via Combine when any of the three generators are taken out. While it doesn’t prevent progress, the whole building is a slog because of this.
