T w e n t y S i d e d
This week I’ve been playing Lies of P. I was unsure about the game due to my only experience with Souls-likes was the first Dark Souls and it didn’t go very well, I think I’m having an easier time due to the game being more linear and with more quality of life stuff of a modern game. Other than that I also played some Raft, which I’m going back to after writing this.
What are you guys playing?
The Witch Watch
My first REAL published book, about a guy who comes back from the dead due to a misunderstanding.
Playstation 3
What was the problem with the Playstation 3 hardware and why did Sony build it that way?
Project Frontier
A programming project where I set out to make a gigantic and complex world from simple data.
The Brilliance of Mass Effect
What is "Domino Worldbuilding" and how did it help to make Mass Effect one of the most interesting settings in modern RPGs?
Steam Summer Blues
This mess of dross, confusion, and terrible UI design is the storefront the big publishers couldn't beat? Amazing.
Well, this was an eventful week, actually. I played A Little to the Left, a game you mentioned last week, and I was having good fun with it trying to figure out what the game wanted me to do, but then I was completely, 100% sure I had done a puzzle right but the game didn’t accept my solution. Begrudgingly, I looked up the solution in the game’s hint system only for it to show me it was exactly what I had done, only it decided not to register it for some reason. All the items were perfectly snapped to the invisible grid too. I moved the items back and forth a few times and then it chose to register it as solved.
This happened to me a couple more times, with the last one outright refusing to register it as solved no matter what I did. At that point I just rage quit and uninstalled. Yeah, I know the game has a “skip puzzle” feature, but it’s supposed to be there in case you can’t find a solution, not because the damn game refuses to acknowledge it when I did everything 100% correct. At this point I think they added that feature because they realized their game would bug out.
Well, I also played Planet of Lana, a puzzle platformer with a neat “Ghibli-like” art style. It’s a bit slow to start, but puzzles are generally satisfying. I read a lot of complaints about the game suddenly having a bunch of quick-time events in the second half, but thankfully I noticed an option to deactivate those before I even started the game, so they didn’t bother me (though I think just from a visual perspective I could figure out where the game would place them if I had left the option on). I finished that one, it was short enough.
I started playing Ace Attorney for the first time. Quite enjoyable. I’ve been avoiding those games because I thought they were mere visual novels, but they’re actually more involved than that. There’s some actual detective work involved and it’s not always easy to determine how the clues fit and how to poke holes in a witness’s statement.
I’m also playing through Figment. Not sure how to describe this one. It’s an isometric puzzle action adventure set apparently inside someone’s mind. The opening scene paints a grim picture of what this person is going through, so the somewhat whimsical nature of the rest of the game feels a bit at odds with it. I don’t know what direction this is gonna take, but the game is fun enough, if a bit heavy on backtracking.
It’s been a while but I remeber Figment being a perfectly fine game, I’m a bit meh about it having a very predictable conclusion but the gameplay was okay, the artstyle was nice and the soundtrack was very good.
Ace Attorney! I love those games. Now’s a better time than ever to get into them, because every canon game except two spinoffs are easily available on PC.
If you like Ace Attorney then you should check out Ghost Trick by the same people. It’s very, very good.
Still playing Tales of Berseria. New Game+ has gotten rude; had a boss get so fast with so much invincibility I had to switch out all my casters so he would stop close enough to me for me to hit him. And it turns out the Forced Loss fights are still Game Overs if you lose them too fast; there’s one that lasts about twenty seconds and the boss kept killing me at fifteen.
Balatro is still fun, though I had a lot of runs where I finally start to put something interesting together, only to discover I’m already on the last level. Also have no idea how anyone gets past Ante 11 on Endless Mode, the best hand I’ve ever put together only hit 10% of the requirement.
Just started Infinite Wealth, on the PS4. I’m astonished they’re still releasing new games for the PS4, the 5 has been out for three and a half years. Anyway, haven’t even left Japan yet, but there’s a few noticeable mechanical changes; they’ve added movement and ricochet attacks, so you can punch a guy into your ally behind you, who then punches them into their ally and damages them both. It’s a very sticky mechanic too, they’ll turn 45 degrees to crash into their buddies. Also they’ve reversed the stats for Job Ranks and Levels; in the first one Job Ranks gave big stats and Levels gave small ones, so switching Jobs meant a big stat hit. Now Levels give the big stats and Ranks give almost nothing, so it’s a smoother transition. I’m not sure I like that, I appreciate lumpy difficulty in my RPGs. Likewise the starting weapon shop no longer sells weapons that decatuple your damage out the gate.
If you play a few hands of Poker (in the building where you had the exams in the predecessor) you can buy Ichibans best weapon for the next 3 chapters. You have to wait until chapter 4 to unlock Job changing, so Ichiban is bound as a “Hero” with a bat for a very long time.
Interesting. I knew it was a good move to play Balatro.
Age of Wonders 4 just got a new Primal Fury update. The joke is it’s Primal Furry because it adds goat and wolf forms, and a bunch of animals.
You’d think with being off of work for a couple of weeks I’d have time to play some video games but, nope, that didn’t happen. So no Dark Age of Camelot and no Pool of Radiance, although while looking around I found my copy of the old Interplay Archives Silver Edition manual with has all the journals for the Forgotten Realms games, which will allow me to read them without having to find or open the electronic manuals, which is nice.
I did manage to get in a run of The Old Republic, finishing off Belsavis. Still enjoying this character, and am going to miss her when I finish this run off.
I’m playing DoubleFine’s The Cave in odd moments. And its a good sort of game for odd moments. I don’t normally like platform games, but I like puzzles, and this is a platform puzzler, so it’s working for me.