T w e n t y S i d e d
This week I’m getting back into Borderlands 2.
Bay has been playing it with me, they inherited Dad’s Steam account and found a gun he left in the shared item locker in the game. So, suffice it to say that’s never getting sold or put down ever again. Weird, someone’s cutting invisible onions.
What are you guys up to?
PC Hardware is Toast
This is why shopping for graphics cards is so stupid and miserable.
DM of the Rings
Both a celebration and an evisceration of tabletop roleplaying games, by twisting the Lord of the Rings films into a D&D game.
Batman: Arkham City
A look back at one of my favorite games. The gameplay was stellar, but the underlying story was clumsy and oddly constructed.
Crash Dot Com
Back in 1999, I rode the dot-com bubble. Got rich. Worked hard. Went crazy. Turned poor. It was fun.
D&D Campaign
WAY back in 2005, I wrote about a D&D campaign I was running. The campaign is still there, in the bottom-most strata of the archives.
I’ve been playing Cassette Beasts. It’s a very nice pokemon-like game, but generally I’m coming to the conclusion that the Pokemon genre isn’t really for me. I wanted to try some more of them after really liking Monster Sanctuary but I guess it was an exception.
Phantom Doctrine was on 90% sale few days ago, so decided to give it a go.
Should one dig through the mindboggling need to manually add exception to internet connection in order to block two .exe files from interacting with the internet in order to have the game actually run (and apparently devs never considered this as a problem to be fixed) it’s a very pleasant (if SLOW) stealth-based game with slow-burn, but overally fairly well written plot.
There are some obvious simplifications due to turn based mechanics and fields of view, or occasionall utter goofs like picture of gen. Kiszczak (at the time member of PZPR Central Committee in Poland) speaking at a Party rally as a “head of Polish anticommunist opposition”, but those are minor details that don’t spoil the fun.
It has had crazy discounts on the Nintendo Switch eStore over the last few years, so it’s on my list to pick back up, only played a little while but it was interesting.
Well, I finished Trek to Yomi. Turns out people were 100% right about the combat. It really is repetitive, imprecise and buggy to the point where it bogs down what would otherwise be an amazing experience. At the end I was just relieved of reaching the end rather than satisfied. There are a few dialogue options in the last third or so of the game that implies there might be some branching paths in the story, but I doubt I’ll ever play it again. Combat would need a major overhaul for me to regain interest.
In a casual mood, so I’m playing Mega Mall Story. I’m really not big in management games, but the Kairosoft ones really hit the spot for me. They’re simple enough without requiring too much micromanagement and they all follow a basic formula that is varied enough through their games that they don’t feel repetitive. Their pixel art style is very appealing, and while clearly thought for mobile they work well on PC (and despite their mobile origins they don’t involve microtransactions). They also have a bunch of their games on sale in a few bundles on Steam for dirt cheap, so I picked up a few more.
Made the mistake of starting to play Vampire Survivors to see what all the fuzz was about. Damn this thing is addictive as hell. It has been a long time since I had picked up a game that consumed hours of my time without me noticing. Thank God I didn’t go for the Switch version or else playing this game would be the only thing I’d be doing all day long.
Finished Final Fantasy 8 for the first time in forever. Man that end cutscene doesn’t make a lot of sense. I guess that’s where the “Rinoa is Ultimecia” thing came from? Anyway, I’ve been trying to take screenshots of every line that can be interpreted as a character saying “I don’t understand what’s happening”, and I count 185. Now a few of those are cheats because I named Rinoa “My Word” or otherwise am ignoring context, but I also didn’t start until Disc 2. They’re still happening in the end sequence. This game is such a treasure.
Tales of Berseria continues. I really like the control scheme of “face button for Light Attack, right shoulder button for Heavy Attack”, so much so that I remapped Hades to work that way when I played it. Wasn’t sure why I did that at the time but replaying ToB finally made it click. Hope the scheme catches on, and replaces the Dark Souls “Every attack comes from the shoulder buttons” trend. Although probably not, since Tales of Arise reversed it so Light Attack is shoulder and Heavy Attack is face buttons. Much less convenient, that.
Slay the Spire continues to hand me my own face.
Did you get GF Eden? You know, the most powerful summon in the game, that you have to earn by spending an hour working your way through old ruined castle, in two groups, to fight a comically overpowered boss who you could draw the GF from?
(I think his basic attack was a sword blow that did 9998 damage to the entire party?)
…all so you can then sit through the same 2-minute animation every time you summoned Eden!
also, from what I remember of the ending of FF8, was there just a load of Squall running around a white void? Presumably shouting ‘My Word” over and over again?
Nah, the old ruined castle is a different superboss, you get Eden by playing with steam and then Level Downing about a hundred enemies in a row, and then fighting the superboss with the piddly 9999 single target attack as you draw Eden and 300 Ultimas. Cakewalk. Did you know Eden pierces armor? I used it on the guy with all the armor and it did 16000 damage, and the armor was like “That GF was a waste of time!” and I’m chuckling at just how untrue that is.
Everyone’s in the white void except Squall. Squall’s in a black void. Totally different void. And then he watches Rinoa melt and warp and flicker in and out of existence like a hundred times, interspersed with shots of space and Seifer and Ultimecia. It’s… it’s weird. I don’t even know what they were going for.
Got in a session of The Old Republic, doing Belsavis with my Bounty Hunter. I was reminded this time how much easier things are now than they were in the beginning. In the old days, it used to take me a three hour session to finish one section of a planet, with my needing to do all the class, planet and general quests to get enough XP to be leveled enough to take on the tougher enemies. Now, with Rest XP, Major Experience Boosts, and the lower difficulty level available I can get through an entire planet in that time (as a subscriber) which makes things a lot easier.
Also played Dragon Age Awakening, finishing off at least the first set of quests in Amaranthine. Going back to this from Dragon Age 2 REALLY reminds me of why I like DA2’s quest structure better, as it’s more addictive, while DAO’s is more like a set of jobs that I need to seek out and do.
My PC is in maintenance and waiting for a new graphic card so I can finally play Cyberpunk 2077 with the latest patch and the expansion.
Before that, though, I’m going to get to the end of Sea of Stars. I’m not sure when I’m gonna do these things, considering my packed schedule, but I will.
I dug out Shenzhen I/O, which I watched Shamus play through years ago. I wanted it for the brain exercise and the feeling of making something. Aside from that it’s been Beat Saber and Pistol Whip.
If you ever get the chance, play the VR version of Borderlands 2. It’s not perfect, but it’s incredibly immersive anyway and I love it. I was quite disappointed they didn’t do one for Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands.
Baldur’s Gate 3
Watched Yahtzee Crowshaw’s video on Baldur’s Gate 3’s Romances recently, and it really nailed what I’ve been feeling about it.
There really is something perfunctory about this kind of romance system. There’s a party scene at the end of Act 1, where every party member that you’ve got enough Friendship Points with hits on you, and you can pick which one you spend the night with. It doesn’t matter whether your PC is male or female, nor does it matter what race or class you are. All the NPCs are interested in you, regardless.
On the one hand, Great, a victory for inclusion! I can see that. And on the other, it makes every single PC that bit more bland. Since one half of this relationship can be literally anyone, none of it feels real.
Gale doesn’t like me because he sees a female gnomish sorcerer with a similar experience of the Weave of Magic; he’d happily have almost identical courtship scenes with a male half-orc barbarian.
Lae’zel…you know, I have no clue why Lae’zel was interested in me. She made it clear that she didn’t like the way I helped people in need, so I left her in camp and forgot about her. And now she’s talking about my determination and how she wants to taste me?
It’s so notable because other interactions with the games NPCs are so often nuanced, interesting, compelling, believable, etc, etc. It really highlights how noticably clunky and generic the romances are.
This is probably a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. If developers were to carefully craft the romance system to make it more deep and realistic you’d end up with a bunch of characters you just can’t romance in any capacity, and this would inevitably result in people protesting that they can’t romance the characters they want.
Absolutely this, it doesn’t help that “the appetite grows as you eat”. I remember the days when any gay romance was a cause for celebration, or we took it when people modded a game so that the romance ignored the gender flag and let us have a romance even if the dialogues used the wrong one. Nowadays we want choice in our minority romances!
Honestly though, I’ll take Larian’s “everyone is pansexual” although I would not be against characters having some other criteria, like at least your ideological bent (Lae’zel coming onto me is as puzzling to me as it is to BlueHorus).
At the risk of looking like someone who constantly talks about Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age 2 made it so that pretty much every companion could be a romance option regardless of the main character’s gender (except for Varric and obviously the sibling), but you still had to build the relationship with them and, in fact, actually try the romance options on them before they would consider you in a relationship. This meant that the first time through you might not notice that each companion’s orientation was pretty much just to the MC, although you likely would on a replay.
As far as I’m concerned we can talk about DA2 all day! I won’t lie for the longest time I was certain that DA2 Anders was gay only, because some people were screaming from the rooftops about him coming onto male Hawke and he had an ex boyfriend pop up in the story. Having said that it makes perfect sense he’d be at least bisexual considering he clearly talks about wanting to get on with the ladies back in Awakening.
In fact there is a straight only romance and that’s Sebastian, the DLC character (and nothing of value was lost far as I’m concerned).
I’ll agree that the ‘everyone is pansexual’ is probably the best option, especially if you’re going to give players a choice.
Though the Witcher 3 did it pretty well in my opinion, by defining Geralt more. It’s not inclusive for Geralt to be only into women, and only…deeply…interested in two specific women, but it fit Geralt.
You got why he’d like both Triss and Yennifer, and there was a choice of sorts…
I can’t recall many calls for Geralt to be gay? I’m sure there were some…
Oh there were. Doubly so since the netflix series. Having said that I’m going to say the source material rather firmly establishes Geralt as straight and I don’t have a particular problem with that, heck I’m firmly in the Yennefer camp because to me that’s the canon romance and I tend to side with canon*. I generaly don’t have a problem playing a straight character in game though I appreciate the option to be gay if being straight is not somehow crucially relevant to the story, particularly if we’re talking about a more or less blank slate or a cipher.
*While firmly believing that even wildly out of character fanfiction is valid as long as we agree that it’s fanfiction.
Mass Effect 3 was the one that stood out for me in this regard. Already in ME1 Ashley thought we were in a relationship which came out of nowhere, but then in ME3 apparently Kaiden did too?! That was totally out of the blue, we’d not had any conversation with any hint of anything over the last two games, or up to that point in the 3rd game. But I agree, the ones where everyone is interested does somehow make it blander. If everyone were also interested in everyone else as well, then at least it would make a bit more sense. More suited to a game where the main point in the gameplay is the respective conquests, or at least the player feels like there are obstacles to overcome to try to engender a relationship with most or at least some of the people, not just time spent together.
You could add that “everyone interested in everyone else” element fairly simply too, by having some (not even necessarily all) of the characters you turn down go “oh well, think I’ll go chat up [other party member] instead then,” maybe even throw in “unless you were already?”
Edit too slow:
Have some of them be playboys that might proposition you every time and/or turn to a new person every time, some only interested in you, and some with “true pairings” that will “play out” in the background if you don’t glom onto either of the participants. The important thing there being that not *every* party member pairs off or that you have material for everyone x everyone, but just that each party member feels different in their own background stuff if the PC isn’t interested, and thus even though technically everyone wants the PC, they all seem like it for different reasons.
Ah yes, Mass Effect, where Ashley and Liara cornered me at one point and demand that I choose between them.
I said I wasn’t interested in either of them.
Which somehow didn’t stop Liara coming to my cabin and trying to kiss me near the end of the game.
Hey C-SEC, how do I apply for a restraining order?
More Loop Hero and Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3. It feels like I am not all that far from breaking through to the ending of Loop Hero, but it’s a pretty slow process to claw out any progression. While I think this is a super great game concept, I have a bad feeling that I’m going to look back on it with a sour taste due to how damn much time investment it demands, much of which is spent doing the same basic gameplay … err … loop.
Very cool!
I’ve been playing Dishonored and its sequel.
I very much remember and have been influenced by Shamus’ opinions on them, particularly how they treat player choice. In retrospect, I think he was a little hard on the series, especially because I felt the second improved on a lot of his complaints. But they remain pretty apt and if the developers thought more like he did, they indeed would have been better games.
My daughter had her first steps this week and I’ve been playing my old comfort game Heroes of Might and Magic III.
Then my sister had to be an asshole to me again and ruin my week.
Sigh…
Congrats! Musta been a joy seeing her take those steps without tumbling down.
Heros of Might n Magic 3, why is that your comfort game? Just your history with it or the gameplay was your favorite? I know there were hella of em in its hayday, but know fudge all about em.
I don’t know why specifically it is @RCN’s comfort game, but I can declare that it has most wonderful gameplay (IMO).
The enemy AI is much more aggressive than in later iterations of the series, so your skills matter a lot more. Also, its closest competitor in the series (Heroes V) has a skill system that is way to complicated and RNG based for its own good, and sets off my gaming OCD fiercely.
(I have just now remembered that RCN’s avatar is Sandro from Heroes of Might and Magic III).
Anyway, you can’t go wrong with any of the Heroes games from I to V (even IV has some merit) but III is definitely the best.
I love almost every might and magic game. Even Heroes VII, since I can see what they were going for and see where they stumbled, like in IV.
II is my actual ultimate comfort game. Once when I played it again in my late teens I heard the grasslands theme and literally cried because it was a song I was hearing in my dreams but didn’t think it was coming from somewhere in my memory lane.
Heroes II is the first game I played extensively and I did it with my brother. Since when our father put us to play in his computer we didn’t have much time so we went for some small easy maps. One of our favorite was one where every player starts with a couple of their top tier creatures. Because we were so bad we almost never got to even see them. Heck, I remember a map I played with Warlock (because they had dragons) and I got all the way up to Black Dragons and was amassing them. Then I got attacked by wizard with Titans and got obliterated, realizing there was something stronger than dragons (though I was also only buying 2 dragons and only that every week).
But there are some campaigns from III and IV I just can’t stop smiling throughout them because they are so fun. I especially like the Dragonslayer Campaign from Armageddon Blade.
It is my history with it. It is probably the first game I “finished” fairly. That is, without cheats (remember those?). Even though I didn’t understand almost anything of English.
Heroes II is the game that made me a gamer. Heroes III is the game that made gaming my passion.
I nearly platinumed Sea of Stars. Yeah im glazing this game hard, but thats cause it has been a breath of fresh air media wise for me and OOZES passion between every pixel. From finishing watching the acid trip of a show Legion with my sister to clobbering through 3 open-world multi-tens of hours games, I needed a more heartfelt and straightforward game.
All the annoying time consuming aspects of JRPGs that turn me off like a light switch, are nearly gone in this game. Story lets you keep rolling forward and the side quest aren’t meandering goose chases. Backtracking is easy and takes no time to traverse, the combat is turn based yet always asking you to interact/pay attention, and who doesnt love to cook?? The cherry ontop is lore, building greatly off The Messenger but as a prequel. And once i finished i can jump into the developers discord to talk lore speculation with others.
Now? Time to finish Hyper Light Drifter, since im just chillin at the final boss. And then will slog through Hollow Knight. My friend is playing through HK so i wanna finish it to talk shop, but im picky about games I actually finish and HK didnt grip me my first trial of it. I played Symphony of the knight and Super Metroid very willingly, but all these modern metroidvanias dont really jazz my johns…Gunbrella did come out and im a sucker for guns, so maybe thatll snag my attention.