T w e n t y S i d e d
This week I am about to move out of my mom’s house. I’m playing Roblox and Cookie Clicker in my spare time, but I don’t know when my computer setup is getting packed up yet, so I’m not committing to anything.
What are you guys up to?
Internet News is All Wrong
Why is internet news so bad, why do people prefer celebrity fluff, and how could it be made better?
Overthinking Zombies
Let's ruin everyone's fun by listing all the ways in which zombies can't work, couldn't happen, and don't make sense.
Another PC Golden Age?
Is it real? Is PC gaming returning to its former glory? Sort of. It's complicated.
The Best of 2019
I called 2019 "The Year of corporate Dystopia". Here is a list of the games I thought were interesting or worth talking about that year.
The Disappointment Engine
No Man's Sky is a game seemingly engineered to create a cycle of anticipation and disappointment.
Still Lies of P. Definitely been enjoying it, currently fighting a really tough boss who is generally fair. Til they flame rush me and attack 10 times in a row, but I think I’ll manage it.
A lot of Baldur’s Gate 3. Husband and I are one run down and doing a second origin character evil run, plus we both have a Dark Urge run on the side. May have also started a naked brutality ice sheet start in Rimworld as well because it always looks fun when I see people do it lol
Played some Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos with a couple of friends which was great fun. I got it free with an Amazon Prime trial via Amazon Gaming. A really fun dungeon crawler / village builder type thing with up to 4-player local (and presumably online) co-op. It went a bit odd when my gf went to work and two of us carried on playing without her character, when my friend left later and I resumed with my gf in 2-player we kept all our items and upgrades but noticed that the whole town had been reset in terms of buildings.
Other than that, a little Core Keeper, online 2-player. It’s sort of co-op but really when not playing on the same screen it gets a bit disparate on the huge map, each doing his own thing unless specifically collaborating and talking a lot.
Delightful little games! I’ve played both with my husband. Core Keeper is actually up to 4 players as well, we’ve played that one with friends. It’s great fun.
Core Keeper’s depth keeps surprising me – electrics and logic gates! It’s got a bit overwhelming actually, coming back to it after many months and realising how many things need to be done to progress things. But it’s one of the few games where I’ve decided to cave to the “online multiplayer only” and bought my own copy. She plays on the laptop and I play on the TV.
Tales of Berseria is holding up better than my last impression, probably because I know exactly where the padding is. On the other hand, Kamoana is still terrible; a hentai-design little girl with the voice of a twenty-something man who cries in every scene.
Final Fantasy 8 has hit full insane. I remembered going to space out of the blue, but I didn’t remember that they fired you out of a curved-barrel revolver cannon and then didn’t tell the space station beforehand. And there’s still no reason to be up there. Jam it in sideways.
Played a single mission of Yakuza Kiwami 2, which holds up better now that I’m comparing it to Tales of Berseria instead of Yakuza 0. But still just has human enemies instead of the ol’ fantasy smorgasbord. Will get back to it… eventually.
Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure continues to be a cakewalk through a palette-swapped maze, but the latest boss featured a gimmick of having to kill it in a certain round, which apparently meant one particular character had to land the killing blow that round. And if you mess up you have to walk all the way out of the dungeon and all the way back in to try again. But, they managed to have a song that actually advanced the plot, so… call it a wash?
Played one more round of The Last Spell, the horde defense game. Was as stressful as I was imagining when I dropped it. Back in several months I guess.
Slay the Spire continues to kill me, I should really look up the good builds at this point.
Chess is bugged, my pieces can’t block attacks anymore. Might have to look into some DLC upgrades.
Was this before or after the moon vomits an army of monsters onto the world?
…or maybe even why…?
I think it’s… during. And… possibly why? I’m not sure exactly who is pulling off the moon vomit, but we totally brought an enemy sleeper agent to space.
I didn’t manage to find the time to play anything this week. At least part of the issue is that I’m still trying to figure out what to do next after finishing Dragon Age 2. I’d go back to Dragon Age Origins and finish off Awakenings and Witch Hunt, but that’s installed on a laptop that I have set up in the living room without speakers and so I have to leave the TV off or on mute, which is why I bailed on them in the first place. Then again, the baseball playoffs are coming up and so there might be things to have on mute while playing. The other option is to jump ahead to Dragon Age Inquisition, but I’d need to set things up through the Dragon Age Keep again for that and I don’t have the time or feel like doing that right now. I still might not get time for Dragon Age anything this week anyway, so I have some time, especially like a long vacation coming up in December.
More Hollow Knight. Found the Path of Pain area yesterday, started going through it but didn’t finish. It was initially frustrating but ended up being oddly meditative, makes me want to try out some precision platformers once I’m done with hollow knight
Finished Syberia 3, it mostly sucked. Marginally competent point and click puzzles, but a pretty boring story that felt like they just wanted to pump out a sequel, not that they had anything to say worth bringing a 15-year-old franchise back from the dead.
Needed something casual for a while after a few recent heavy games (3rd quarter saw me tackle Pillars 2 and XCOM EU/EW), so I am currently full time playing restaurant sim Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3. Loved the first game, hated the second. The third game is pretty good, goes back to the first in spirit and doesn’t overcomplicate things. It does have kinda weird difficulty, in that it lets you pick your own menu for every level with very little oversight, so they functionally put me in charge of balancing their game and I’m not sure I’m qualified for that job. I’m trying to keep learning new recipes but that usually means I fail to score gold and have to do it again, when I could have easily passed the level if I just ran back some dishes I already won past levels with. Weird incentives at play. But still very fun.
Ah man Syberia!
The first game is still a favourite in terms of atmosphere and storytelling (especially the valadilene stuff) and it can be blamed for my passion of adventure games.
I remember the second being… Ok. something was missing but I couldn’t quite put my hand on it. So when the third came out I didn’t really bother, I was excited but reviews were lukewarm and the second had essentially wrapped up the story (well the first had really done that).
I’m saddened to find out I was right and happy to have experienced the best of the series (truly lightning in a bottle!)
Funny enough “the longest journey” was a similar experience… First one was incredible (story wise, don’t get me started on the duck puzzle!). The other two… Increasingly less so, like I could see what they wanted to do but by the time we got to game three… The magic was gone (quite ironically)
I also really love the first game (first played it in 2020, and despite the age it still comes through as very charming, adventurous, and fun). I stuck with the series after taking some time off to avoid burnout, and I definitely hoped to find some of that magic, but I didn’t in either 2 or 3. “Lightning in a bottle” is a great descriptor, there really was something special about Syberia’s spirit that didn’t make it into the sequels.
Well, I did a couple of playthroughs of Separate Ways, the DLC for the Resident Evil 4 Remake, and I enjoyed it immensely. Lots of stuff to unlock but just like in the main campaign I’m not sure I’ll be able to get it all. Unlocks depend on how fast you do a playthrough, what level of difficulty you’re playing in, how precise your shots are, how good you are at avoiding damage, how many times you save (and/or reload), whether you’re playing on NG+ or not and if you use or not any of the unlockable stronger weapons.
I enjoy the core gameplay well enough that I’m willing to do several playthroughs, learn all the bits and bobs and expedite my way through the game but I still don’t have the patience and skill to do the hardest difficulty level in the smallest amount of time while hitting every shot, not receiving much damage, on a starting/non NG+ game and without the help of the better weapons. I’m sure I probably could if I put more time into it but at that point it really starts to feel like a chore and I like to play games for fun, not as an obligation.
I think the only of the Resident Evil remakes I’ve been able to 100% was 3 and that’s because it allowed you to use any unlockable weapons to complete the hardest challenges.
Titan Quest. I saw a video talking about a build I decided that I wanted to try out, so I started a new game. I did pretty well as a Runes/Dream melee fighter for most of the game… then I thought that I would try to actually use one of the Scrolls I’ve been carrying around for no reason in the fight with the Aesir, and got my dumb ass oneshotted while I was messing around in the inventory. That was my first death of the run, too, so I missed out on the achievement for completing the game with zero deaths. *sigh*
I think I’m a bit underleveled; Surt was about level sixty where I have yet to breach fifty, but I don’t really have the patience to stop and grind. Maybe later, in the second playthrough.
My broken arm has recovered enough to restart Baldur’s Gate 3, and I’ve just gotten what I’d consider all the important gear for my character (barring a set of clothes for me and some gloves and a ring for the cleric).
Been playing Armored Core VI – I have a long history of bouncing off Fromsoft games, so I don’t know why I picked it up, but I’ve been absolutely sucked in by it. I’ve finished two playthroughs already, and am midway through to the third and final ending, and I’ve been having a lot of fun messing around with different mech designs than I’ve been using in my previous runs.
Finished Blacksad: Under the Skin. Generally satisfying as a detective/Telltale-style game, though there is still one major plot thread that hasn’t been answered! I think I know what happened, but the game didn’t make it explicit. Did I miss a conclusion somewhere, I wonder? Maybe it bears a replay, but I’m not sure how much variability there would be a second time through.
Lots of Baldur’s Gate 3, like a lot of people. Just had Lae’zel’s big story moment:
going to a Githyanki Creche in order to get ‘cured’……only for them to just try and kill her, over and over again – while lying to her face about about everything she believes in.There’s something very real about watching her come undone – I imagine it’s like watching a cultist (a real-life cultist, not your average mind-controlled fantasy mook) slowly come to terms with what was done to them.
Couldn’t have happened to someone more deserving.
So yeah, like others, I like the game. The writing is good, a lot better than I expected from a fantasy game set in D&D’s most well-known setting. Definitely don’t remember Neverwinter Nights being this well-written. Well, maaaybe Mask of the Betrayer?
I just got a new one-shot module for D&D. Just gotta spruce it up for my players to fit my setting when we play this weekend.
Last week, I had them hunting Gnolls in a really intricate forest map with complex elevation and lines of sight. Unfortunately, it devolved into a brawl in the one open area, but everyone had fun anyway.
I picked up Sunless Sea again, and found it a little less annoying than I remembered. The main thing that stops it from being fun is the glacial speed of your starter ship, but on a repeat playthrough I remembered enough about the game that I could make some quick money early. And the soundtrack is still pretty great.