T w e n t y S i d e d
This week has been pretty simple. Mostly just watching YouTube, but since that isn’t enough input for my brain, I’m also playing Nova Drift. Just some good ole Rogue-Like fun. As a bonus, it has updated a bunch since I last played and now there’re a few more bosses to keep the runs interesting.
Aside from that not much. Even though I got over the food poisoning, I was feeling the effects of missing my meds, so I didn’t get much else done.
What are you guys doing this week?
From The Archives:
The Best of 2018
I called 2018 "The Year of Good News". Here is a list of the games I thought were interesting or worth talking about that year.
Skylines of the Future
Cities: Skylines is bound to have a sequel sooner or later. Where can this series go next, and what changes would I like to see?
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.
The Strange Evolution of OpenGL
Sometimes software is engineered. Sometimes it grows organically. And sometimes it's thrown together seemingly at random over two decades.
Quakecon 2012 Annotated
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Been playing Yakuza:Like a Dragon. One of relatively few recent games that aren’t bigoted against women with big boobs. You can have several body types in your pirate crew. Not much else aside from that but work.
I’m glad Nova Drift added more bosses, it got a bit samey.
I’ve been playing more Blue Prince, but it’s wearing on me. I’ve been looking up increasing amounts of answers as the stuff I know how to solve ends and I have to look at more obfuscated stuff. Also, some things require RNG, and some require either a perfect memory or that you take pictures of everything you find. And sometimes I’m not sure if I have enough information to solve something. There was one puzzle that only had 64 possible answers and fast iteration, so I brute forced it, but that doesn’t feel good.
And more Stellaris. They released a big patch yesterday but a) it doesn’t support old saves and b) it’s really buggy so I’m still playing the previous version, which at least is very easy to do through Steam. Also, the lategame gets kind of tedious – most of the techs I’m researching don’t actually help anymore, I can’t expand anymore, and my planets are all full so I’m just kind of passing time and hoping the AIs don’t decide that I’m the problem. And I absolutely am the problem, Becoming the Crisis is amusing, though I think it’s part of the staleness issue because it means there’s no actual Crisis. So I’m shoving a lot of people into my giant brain-based computer and every other civ has their rep of me lowered due to “Genocide”, but hey, some of them don’t mind as much as others.
Yeah, I started liking Blue Prince just fine but in the end it’s just like every other roguelike out there. It’s odd that a game can have so much randomness and so much repetition at the same time. I can genuinely only remember ONE roguelike I ever finished.
We’re playing Blue Prince as well. I like it, but early days; we just finished our third day. I could see repetition being an issue. We’ve only uncovered about half of the tiles but… we’re on day 3 and we’ve uncovered half of the tiles? Lots of things to still figure out, of course, but if you have to slog through the same rooms over-and-over to work on them…
Whereas as I’ve been continuing in Blue Prince the more I think this is the best puzzle game I’ve ever played. And I’ve played Myst, Riven, Witness, Antichamber, Obduction, Quern and probably a few others that aren’t coming to mind. Also Outer Wilds, which I’d consider a better game overall (still my favorite game in the last half decade), but Blue Prince may be better as a puzzle game.
What I’ve found is just a remarkable number of puzzles that have hit that perfect difficulty where the puzzles are difficult enough to feel very rewarding for solving them, but not so difficult that I feel like the solution was stupid. There’s been tons of “ah ha” moments where I’ve solved a puzzle and felt very clever. I don’t know that it’s really that the puzzles are perfectly calibrated for me so much is that there are *lots* of puzzles of different styles and difficulties.
People talk about the RNG, and there’s a few things that I have on my TODO list that are waiting for the right combination of rooms… but there’s just so much going on that I’ve never had an issue where I feel like I don’t have anything else to do. Inevitably I’ll hit that point eventually, but I’m probably 30-40 hours in at this point and haven’t gotten there.
I do still wish the game had an in-game note/photo functionality, and I definitely have some nitpicks here and there, but still, it’s been great overall.
Tales of Berseria is quite relaxing. I find it funny that my previous attempts to play non-Velvet characters never got very far, but now on this equipment run I’m playing them all, to unlock their extra equipment drop abilities. Two tiers of weapons finished*, and progressing into the Middle Muddle. Money stopped being a problem once I could kill wandering monsters, but suddenly has become one again, and I’m guessing will stay that way now.
*(mainline weapons. The game’s got two types, and the Uniques upgrades are locked behind an item that requires a component that only comes from equipment with no skills, which the team’s abilities have mostly eliminated from the pool. All those ones can wait until there’s a good way to grind that component.)
I have cast The Last Spell. Final boss battle was brutal, not helped by me accidentally killing one of my own guys (at least I got part of the way through before getting someone killed this time), leaving me with the two on that side who had already taken about 2/3 damage from one of the previous boss phases. As the spawns increased and the question of just how many more phases are there begin to raise itself, the crossbowman who had been holding his corner of the map without problem for the whole run was finally pushed back to the walls, where his turret buff would then be active. Just as I’m grimly looking forward to see just how much it will take to bring him down, an elite runner I hadn’t noticed dashes out of the crowd, with an extra double damage buff, and rips through his armor in one shot, never even gets to see the last phase show up. We’re in full rush the boss or die trying mode. Axelady on the south has no possible way she can get there in time, especially if there’s any more ridiculous tricks, but she starts running anyway. The druid I’d had patrolling northeast, makes a mad rush to try and get at least some damage on the boss, leaving himself completely open in the process: he dies on the next enemy move. Leaving only the two with the heavy wounds from earlier. And they goddamn march up there and swing with everything they’ve got, and they actually manage it, they take one down. And then next turn they’re still alive, and they march over there, and they take down the second, and that’s it. Boss is down, horde disappears, day is saved. I don’t believe it, those bastards actually pulled it off.
So now I’m just kinda durdling around grinding out weapon. . . upgrades? Each weapon has various materials or rankings, more of which unlock after you’ve used them enough, with the third and final tier being quite powerful and also removing the “rusty/novice” quality entirely. They also added one final unlock for after you’ve unlocked everything else, which lets you spend the meta currency on rerolling stuff on heroes mid-run, so you can try to fish for the perfect build. Which is why I have one guy chugging beers and throwing boomerangs trying to farm crits to hit the unlock that requires one hero to get *four hundred* crits in a single run. Most don’t even get 400 kills, let alone crits.
Killing your own guys in the Last Spell is a time-honored tradition. One time I chained lightning into my own guy, and that guy was totally fine, but the one who attacked turned into giblets because damage reflect is a heck of a thing and the health numbers between you and the enemies are not even.
At least the propagation skills don’t give you a warning icon- I looked and went yeah that hits everything and then while one half the brain went click the other half went noooooo but it was too late. On something intented as a Serious Run I would have brought the defy death omen, but this one had not been intended as such.
And it looks like I made it out just in time too: I was making extensive use of the changes to the Manual (defenses) Control perk and the seed defenses from the dlc, which basically gave you two free area attacks every turn by setting up a little “nest”. The manual boulder costs 2 action points, but the others were all free, and hey if it seems super strong I guess that’s just how good the old manual control was *supposed* to be right? Human ballista also gives you two free attacks every turn. But nope, first patch after the big update and they’ve added 1ap costs to all the manual seeds. Which honestly is probably quite fair, and still leaves the manual traps free, but is still a very clear nerf. Which I wasn’t expecting after all the talk of trying not to nerf anything, but these are new things rather than old things, and again, just brutally efficient when they’re free actions.
OK, so my GamePass subscription just ended but I’m still in the middle of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I am, once again, taking a couple days to debate if to renew my subscription for one month or to buy the game outright, just like it happened with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. I have a bit of an aversion to buying games at launch but this one, like Indiana Jones did, is truly worth it. Excellent gameplay, beautiful design, appealing characters, interesting story, looks and sounds great and I have yet to find even one bug or glitch. Very likely going to end up buying it in the next couple days.
Played a bit more of Conception Plus. The good news is that after beating the boss and opening up the other dungeons more of the enemies in the second set of five floors turned into weak ones that I can just run through, which makes grinding to get new Star Children up to speed a bit easier (and also lets you pick up potions and mana stones to heal yourself easier, although I have actually maxed out the number of full heals and so probably should use some of them). But grinding is still pretty boring, as there aren’t enough tactics in these games so you end up simply using your best abilities as much as you can and then restore your mana to do it again when they get too low. Also, leveling has slowed quite a bit for the MC, partly because if how I was grinding for Star Children, and new abilities aren’t coming in very quickly, so the MC seems a bit stagnant.
Also, it is not the case that the three specific themed dungeons are all the same level or that you can do them in any order. Aries is the first one you need to do and is said to have weaker monsters than the next two. At this point, though, I don’t have maxed out Star Children in the group and so plan to just start from there to see how far I can get. I keep using my bond points to produce Star Children and so haven’t used Mecunite yet, but we’ll see if that changes as it takes longer to max out my Star Children.
This session also introduced a new Star Maiden, who I think was added for this remastered version. She probably has the most interesting story so far, as she is a former Star Child — of the previous God’s Gift — who had immorality until you awaken her ability to Classmate with you. It will be interesting to see how that all plays out.
So far the game is okay, but I’m still pretty early in it and getting tired of the grinding. This is another game that can’t hold a candle to the Persona games, which is unfortunate. I’m still looking for a non-Persona game of that style that’s anywhere near as good.
I finished The Talos Principle II main quest and completed 2 out of 3 DLC campaigns. This game is just brilliant. It’s been ages, but it is finally a ego-puzzle game that is better than Portal 2 IMO. The only things necessary for that miracle were: multiple sympathetic and reasonable characters you can talk to (No dizz for Cave Johnson and Caroline but they were just Audio files and Talos II does that with Alexandra Drennan, Trevor and Lifanthir as well), a lively and reasonable world building, humor done right and in the right places, marvelous level design, challenging puzzles, that get new elements every once in a while, tons of content plus tons of optional content. And of course, philosophy about society, about creation, about grief, about love and art (DLC), that stays with you long after you closed the game. So pretty simple, eh! ;-)
What Croteam, the creators of Serious Sam, crafted with Talos Principle II is a masterpiece within masterpieces. Only in their iconic songs Portal has a slight leading edge.
Ooh! Loved Talos2, and wasn’t aware there is DLC. Thanks for the heads-up!