T w e n t y S i d e d
This week I’ve been playing more Deep Rock Galactic, and R.E.P.O.
R.E.P.O. continues to be fun. I’ve been having fun tumble launching myself at enemies to stun them. then I am promptly killed by that enemy, while my sibling try’s to collect the recourses to revive me. I’ve also realized you can stun the duck by flushing it in the toilet.
Deep Rock Galactic, on the other hand is mostly just me farming for levels so I promote all the dwarfs. Engineer and Scout are already promoted and I’m currently working on the Driller. He’s fine but I miss having my grapple hook or the turrets, maybe I’ll miss his equipment when I move on to the Gunner.
What’s everyone else doing this week?
Playstation 3
What was the problem with the Playstation 3 hardware and why did Sony build it that way?
Grand Theft Railroad
Grand Theft Auto is a lousy, cheating jerk of a game.
TitleWhat’s Inside Skinner’s Box?
What is a skinner box, how does it interact with neurotransmitters, and what does it have to do with shooting people in the face for rare loot?
Lost Laughs in Leisure Suit Larry
Why was this classic adventure game so funny in the 80's, and why did it stop being funny?
Quakecon Keynote 2013 Annotated
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Done with Broforce. It was quite a lot of fun. Simple to just pick up and play for a few stages and the difficulty is though but fair. Though considering in the majority of the stages what character you play as is entirely random and some of them are considerably more suited for the task at hand in any given stage some retries are unavoidable. Not interested in chasing achievements for this one. I can tell just by taking a glance at the list that a few of them are entirely luck-based, so no thanks.
Playing through Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and I’m having a fantastic time with it. This is one of those “I really wish I had played this earlier” sort of game. The gameplay is fun, the writing is great and the visual style is really good without going into hyperrealistic mode. It also borrows heavily from the comics while paying homage to the movies instead of the other way around like these games usually do. This is almost the Arkham Asylum of this franchise. I’m loving most of it, but I’m not a fan of the game’s extensive use of dream sequences. Sure, some of them are just memories and they help develop the story and characters, but others are just the classic “play through this obvious hallucination and die for real if you lose” nonsense. I’m sorry, but I kinda hate this concept whenever it shows up in fiction, and it’s particularly annoying in videogames.
Started playing Crypt Custodian. It’s a metroidvania where you’re in an afterlife for animals. This means that the various characters you meet have cute backstories (with, y’know, sad endings). It’s pretty fun overall. One thing is that there’s really no reason to fight enemies at all, except when arenas force you to. They give you junk but so do bags on the ground. I guess that’s not really a problem.
Finished Nier Autumata. Then finished the next section, and then the next, all the way to the ‘proper’ ending. An mostly I’m left with…angry disappointment. Probably quite predictable.
It reminds me, most oddly, of The Last Jedi: you set up a simple, predictable-yet-effective plot with a clear message in the start. Then, instead of just following through on that setup, a load of nonsense happens that undermines what came before, then what happens next, then it starts to undermine itself; so that by the end of the game you’re left with…nothing.
Everyone’s dead, it was all pointless, the game went out of its way to show you the war was pointless and why, the characters knew it was pointless, and then everyone died fighting it and each other anyway. Presumably because, um…nihilism?But the thing most like TLJ is that there’s a particular plot twist that’s really, really good – it changes the context of a lot of the previous game. And it’s revealed in one line of dialogue at the very end.
(
2B was so scared of growing close to 9S because part of her purpose was to kill him. He’s a competent hacker and would inevitably find out the truth of the YoRHa programme over and over; meaning she’d have to stop the truth getting out. She’d already done it several times before the game started, he just never, ever remembers.)Just…make that your story, game! That’s amazing! Set that up properly, give the characters and the players a chance to discover it organically, make the story about overcoming the cycle of pointless violence…would have been 100 times better than the bullshit nonsense that actually happened.
But no, just like in TLJ when we learn
Rey’s family aren’t special, aren’t coming back for her; they were just deadbeat nobodies who abandoned her on a desert planet and never looked backit’s just something someone says to her during a scene of something far less interesting happening.(Also, yeah, I know in the next film that
they changed the story of Rey’s family origin, but I humbly submit to you that that film was garbage – partly for this very reason – and you should feel bad for bringing it up.)Anyway. added to several gameplay sections that embody the worst aspect of the phrase ‘Failure Is Forbidden Until It Is Mandatory’ there’s a real sense of wasted potential.
It’s frustrating to see the outline of a much better, more simple story/game, that feels like it was deliberately avoided in favour of…
…[shrugs].
I dunno. I think I might just hate JRPGs.
If you haven’t played the modern Persona games, it’s probably too early for you to conclude that [grin]. I kinda got hooked on JRPGs way back in the PS2 days, but have drifted away from them a bit except for the Persona games due to not paying as much attention anymore.
Managed to get in a run of The Old Republic, working on Corellia, but Corellia is a bit of a slog — especially at the end if you do the planetary story — and I was a bit tired, so I stopped in the middle and will try to finish everything off this week. A shifting schedule and the aforementioned tiredness also discouraged me from playing The Age of Decadence. This weekend will either be one where I have a lot more time or a lot less, depending on the weather and the impact that has on other things.
Part of the reason I was tired is because that morning I had pushed through the final battle to finish Ring Fit Adventure for the sixth or seventh time. The next day I started over. There’s a New Game but the first time I tried it I got stuck at one of the “finish it in less than X steps” and since I hate those things I decided to just start over. I’ve been running through it for a number of years now, and so it was definitely worth the price and has likely made me more fit than I would have been without it.
I have finished Buttcreed Origins, including the DLCs. I am… I don’t want to say I am not impressed, especially the Curse of the Pharaohs was very good, but it did not really have An Ending? You just Do Everything And That’s It?
I dunno. It’s a Buttcreed. It plays solidly. I had fun. I am still somewhat underwhelmed.
Right after I have started Ghost of Tsushima, which is off to a pretty good start. Let’s see how it goes on.
Next to that I am playing Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop, where I am currently too stoopid to get past a lethal event. Which would be fine, had you not to start over and do the ever-same set of repairs again. Ah well.
I revisited Transcendence, an indie space roguelike that’s over two decades old at this point, and discovered that it’s gotten a massive glow-up since I last played it in high school. Most ships and stations got new graphics, the UI for ships and stations is much cleaner, and all of the story content I’ve seen so far has gotten heavily redesigned. The Centauri Warlords now have trading stations, Battle Arena Maximus now has actual characters and a plot, the Sung Slavers got new lore, the Sisters of Domina have new lore, it’s all great.
Unfortunately, I picked Easy difficulty (since I remember it being hard as balls) and that’s turned out to be way too easy – enemies go pop in a few shots and I haven’t taken armor damage once. I even saved the Korolov base in Charon, which is a mission that’s supposed to be almost impossible.
I. . . don’t think I played anything at all in the last week, which is part of why it sucked (which I intend to fix today). But I main Driller in DRG so I’ll wax poetic about that:
The thing about the Driller’s drills, is that it’s the most versatile of the “mobility gear.” Granted, it can only subtract, but being that you are always surrounded by rock, there’s always something to subtract from. Back in the day it was quite common and indeed almost necessary on the higher difficulties to build bunkers, which aren’t actually built- they’re dug. The Driller can at any time just turn to a wall and make a tunnel, and if there’s not stuff immediately on them can then make a widened chamber at the end of that tunnel. But Bulks and Opressors you say? Those did not exist, and even now they’re only so bad. Oppressor can in fact be killed from the front by flamethrowers and cryo cannons, and in either case you can simply drill away once you hear the audio cues. Sure an Engineer can spend a bunch of upgrades and a huge amount of ammo and time trying to make a small wall, but without drills you have very little control over the environment.
Even ignoring bunkers, the drills are the best up/down mobility item, because they create a permanent path. Granted, a Scout doesn’t need that, and a whole team of Scouts won’t, but the rest? Jumping down on to platforms is nice, but you still need a way back up for extraction, and jumping up platform ladders while under attack can go badly. Ziplines are even worse since you fall off when hit. But a nice side ramp or direct tunnel that you can sprint up or down without breaking stride? That’s just a highway to the pod, or back out of the death pit at least. They’re not great at grabbing ceiling minerals, sure (unless you learn the plasma gun trick), but they can still get there.
I had a friend who would say that Driller was the least needed class and Gunner was the most necessary, and every time I was like dude, that’s cause either they don’t know how to drill or you can’t be bothered to use what they drill. Shields are nice, but finite, short of duration, and long in cooldown, while favorable terrain lasts until someone destroys it. Of course, with the Engineer getting their ridiculous plasma cutter, the Driller’s specific base niche of armor bypassing AoE damage is mightily infringed, so even if you do get people in the bunker or have a nice tunnel to light up, the spam-happy engineers steal all the kills anyway.
I’ve just been playing single player, so some of the usefulness of the drills has been lost, since Bosco can get most of the minerals that I would normally need to dig for. That being said, I have been getting more attached to the drills over time, and haven’t tried making a bunker before, so I will probably end up missing the drills when I eventually move on to the Gunner.
PUBG continues. I don’t like that all the guns have, like… gun… names. I’m picking between the SKS and the VSS and the M16A4 and the M24 and they all blend together into a melting pot of “gun”.
Borderlands 1. I’m playing the “enhanced” edition, the main enhancement being “actually runs”. It’s okay. I dropped it barely out of the starting area a long time ago, and having just unlocked the vehicle this time I’m already getting that feeling again. Still, it’s better than 2.
Nuclear Throne has somehow gotten much harder to aim in. But I’m remembering how much I like Chicken. Pretty sure Chicken is the second-worst character, but it’s worth it to throw weapons at things, and then not be able to fire the weapon anymore and die. Ah, memories.
Slay the Spire. Why is Ascension 20 so hard. Is it me? …No.
…oh right, Stranger of Paradise. After completing every* map of the game on Chaos difficulty, after unlocking Level 300 equipment, I still can’t beat the first boss of the game without dying dozens and dozens of times.
*(I don’t think I completed the Boss Rush sidequest, mostly because I’m unwilling to drop the difficulty to a reasonable level.)
Finally finished my SOS 2 run in RimWorld by upgrading my archotech spore into a full-blown archotech and ending the game. Excited to move on to the next colony idea that’s been burning a hole in my brain, a colony of pollution-immune custome xenotypes who get bonuses from pollution and whose long-term goal is to pollute the entire planet, but are genetically incapable of wearing armor and will have to weather the many raids that spreading that much pollution with incite over the years. (It’ll have sped-up aging so I can actually get multiple generations over time, and I’m planning on a books-only research stipulation which should slow things down.)
Oh, and some more TF2. Still haven’t gotten tired of fighting buffed Engineer bots.