T w e n t y S i d e d
This week I’ve been unable to focus on just one game. I keep going in-between Rimworld, and Balatro.
Balatro is just good and fun, but Rimworld got an update for the unstable branch. It has a bunch of quality of life improvements. Color options for plans, basic shape options for plans and walls, and the ability to replace walls and some furniture with different materials without having to remove them first.
So, I’ve pretty much just been jumping between the two games, not getting anything else done.
What are you guys up to this week?
Programming Vexations
Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.
Why The Christmas Shopping Season is Worse Every Year
Everyone hates Black Friday sales. Even retailers! So why does it exist?
The Witch Watch
My first REAL published book, about a guy who comes back from the dead due to a misunderstanding.
Grand Theft Auto Retrospective
This series began as a cheap little 2D overhead game and grew into the most profitable entertainment product ever made. I have a love / hate relationship with the series.
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.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the best RPG I’ve ever played, which by default makes it my favorite game. Previously there were four or five titles shouldering for that position; Super Mario RPG was the frontrunner, but was closely followed by Chrono Trigger, Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass, and on a good day that longstanding wildcard Final Fantasy 8. Then there’s “experience” games, like Undertale and Nier Automata, which might win on theme and atmosphere while definitely losing on gameplay. But Clair is better than all of them, and with the exception of CT and SMRPG which have much more lighthearted tones, I’d say it’s STRICTLY better. The music, the artistry, the story, it beats all those games at their own strengths. Even Final Fantasy 8, the wildcard, alternately measured by what it is, or what it could have been; Clair IS what FF8 could have been. It’s phenomenal.
Not perfect: I especially could do without the game freezing every few hours. But its weaknesses are mostly in relation to its other strengths. Even the freezing isn’t that big a deal; the game autosaves after every event and every couple of minutes, so the freezes normally cost, like, seconds of progress.
I normally immediately start a New Game upon finishing an RPG, but I was not intending to replay Clair Obscur; the ending was as heavy as the rest of the game, and I wanted to preserve the finality of it. But, a day later, it was still weighing on me, and I decided the only solution was to start replaying. It’s going slow, but it’s going. (The length of the game is also great; my first run took a little over 40 hours, and that was with getting lost and doing side dungeons. And losing ten hours to trying to fight optional bosses. The Steam clock said 42 hours, the in-game clock said 32.)
I’ve been watching people play it, and am astonished at just how much of the game I never discovered. That’s what I loved about Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass; that game hides dungeons in other dungeons. Clair hasn’t gone quite that far, but they’re happy to hide bosses around near-invisible corners, and make the player actively find their secrets. I’m also reading comments about character builds I never considered, and seeing how unoptimized my own builds are. These are FF8’s full strengths as well, the part it got right; the mechanical variety, and methods to break the game once you know what you’re doing.
Clair has a “Challenge” setting in the postgame, where you can make the game harder by locking your maximum damage output to 999.999. They assume dealing a million damage in a single hit will be a LIMITATION.)I’m left wondering what kind of game could possible follow this. Like I said, even my all-time favorites like SMRPG feel inferior. (I’m morbidly tempted to go back to Tales of Zestiria, just to maximize that game’s failings.) But, just like FF8 followed FF7, I think the best followup to an ace, is a wildcard.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a game I’ve heard a lot of things about, both highly positive and highly negative, in a genre and setting I personally have mixed feelings about. It immediately lives up to its wildcard status by
having full frontal nudity on Character Creation. It follows it by allowing full frontal nudity during gameplay, but then follows that by suddenly adding censorship via underwear (bottom-only; breasts are still uncovered), but only upon reloading the game; before that, the inventory image gets censored but the in-game character stays nude. I assume this is an outdoors thing, but then the underwear remains when the character is alone at home, and forums confirm, this is a longstanding censorship.This only bothers me because there was full nudity before, but bothers me enough now to get me to look up a mod to remove it, the first mod I’ve ever installed on any game. This requires hooking the new computer back up to the Internet, which requires hauling it into the other room again. But that mod requires three other mods, and one of those mods requires two other mods, and all of them require me learning how to actually apply mods to videogames, which took far longer than necessary because I wasn’t looking in the right places to find out how they worked, and they may or may not require a previous version of the game, which is available but has to be loaded from scratch.But then it turned out the censorship was partially caused by my not scrolling down during character creation, and missing a nudity option thatA) defaults to Off despite the Title Screen Settings Only nudity option defaulting to On,
B) didn’t apply itself to the first area, presumably due to a coding oversight
C) can only be set during character creation despite having a “change your character’s appearance” option at the home base that covers most of the other character creation options.
So now I’ve got a new character, the in-game censorship option is turned off, I’m playing a previous version of the game, the uncensorship mod may or may not be installed correctly, and the nudity, while still somewhat inconsistent, is applied consistently enough that I can once again put clothes on the character and go back to treating Cyberpunk 2077 like a videogame.
This was not the wildness of card I was anticipating. But, considering
the first mission prominently features a full-frontal naked woman, and Character Creation allows you to customize the character’s pubic hair but not their starting clothes, I think this whole sideline tangent is in the spirit of the game.I have completed the first mission, and nothing else. I think the game is open-world? I haven’t made it that far.
Brotato was the actual follow-up game to Clair Obscur, but is such a casual game I don’t really count it. This week’s focus is Gangster, a character that lets you steal an item from the shop at the cost of being unable to lock shop items, and potentially summoning elites on waves that aren’t designed for them. The concept of the character is quite fun, but the lack of locking items and the overall increase in item cost means that so far, the Gangster comes out with WORSE items than the other characters. This feels unintentional, like they just flat-out got the character balance wrong. But, as an FF8 fan, the idea is more important than the execution, so this one’s getting more play than they probably deserve.
EDIT: (And now I learn that the spoiler tags here have to be set for each individual paragraph, or else it censors the first one and merely turns the rest orange.)
Maybe the Disgaea-Franchise is that wildcard. Broken by design is part of it, but it is a more classical JRPG without a lot of build-options.
I’ve finished a fair few of them already. I mostly consider them pure mechanics games (or possibly “pure number-go-up”), the plots and characters are too silly to take seriously. I think the most interesting one so far has been Soul Nomad and the World Eaters, but it still had a lot of silliness and it was more in the FF8 sphere where it starts a lot of interesting threads but can’t tie them together in the end. Not something that wants to be following Clair Obscur.
Hear, hear. While I’m not sure I’m ready to call Expedition 33 my favorite game of all time it’s definitely in the top five, and that’s the sort of statement I very rarely utter with absolute confidence these days. I played the game through completion on GamePass and then went and bought the deluxe edition at full price. 100% worth it.
Did you get to see both endings or are you saving the other one for the NG+? An interesting thing about this game is that if you care at all about gameplay and story integration you really have to do all the side content before the ending or
not do it at all since story-wise, and for entirely different reasons, each ending would make all those side areas unavailable forever.Only one so far, the one that leaned more toward New Game+. Not so much that I’m saving the other one as that I have no plan at all, the game has me rattled and I’m doing things at random.
I actually had something of a tangent when I started Cyberpunk 2077 myself! (This one is… a bit personal, also.)
At first, playing a woman and seeing the default underclothes (none) I just though “oh right, this is a European game isn’t it?” But then I got to the genital customization part, and as a trans woman got stuck on a tangent of “hmm, actually, what do I want down here?” that was probably rather more of an introspective moment than was really intended by the developers.Been playing a bunch of Halls of Torment, which is an arena horde survival game along the same lines as Vampire Survivors or Brotato. It does a good job of keeping the serotonins flowing with a continuous flow of levels (with perk choices) and a whole lot of little permanent progression quests to complete. Runs are 30 minutes long (plus any time you’re paused making a decision or whatever), which is pretty quick by roguelite standards. The various characters play reasonably differently – they decide your starting attack and some of your starting stats, and you will get to choose some more attacking abilities after that but they’re shared between everyone. The graphics are, well, not good, but they are generally good at providing the information you need to know. I wish the mouse pointer were more obvious, it decides what direction your starting attack goes and sometimes I lose track of it, but to be fair there’s a button you can press to have the game pick what direction you attack in (and a button to auto attack on cd rather than one click per, which I pretty much always enable). I’m liking it quite a bit, and it’s absolutely got me with “just one more” past the point where I should, perhaps, not do just one more.
I clobbered the new super centaur boss in Nightreign on like the second try. It’s cool, but not nearly as bogus with near-MMO battlefield conditions. The super centaur you can just tank like the normal version, if you’re playing the tank, which is what I do for that boss (because anytime I don’t play tank for that boss it’ll be a fail).
I’ve finished more of the story quests, just a couple left on the Raider, which are more fixed-level fixed-weapon duels, which I hate. Finished Executor (katana-man)’s with a very boring tactic
block two hits then spam dodge backwards, repeat until your skill is charged, use skill, goto 10, and the Duchess’s was comparatively quite easy (got it first try), but then she can just go invisible and take a free backstab and I’ve got a very endgame set of relics for her.As it was kinda a long weekend here — holiday on Tuesday — I got in a couple of runs at The Old Republic, playing my Imperial Agent. I really, really hate Kaliyo this time around, and my character is going to be thrilled now that she has Vector and can use him as the companion and send Kaliyo off doing Treasure Hunting missions and so technically not being around so much.
Also did get in another play of Conception Plus. The dungeons still aren’t thrilling, but I am getting at least some level ups in. I have my team of Star Children pretty much set, hence my only interest being in leveling up, but I am enjoying interacting with the Star Maidens and will try to work my way through their stories, but as I can only do six at a time — and can’t interact with the same maiden more than once in that period — it may take a while.
Sleeping Dogs is finished. It is a bit rushed at the end with characters set aside or killed off, but the game was fun as it lasted.
Right after that I bought Clair Obscure because of all the great reviews. Two hours in I turned the difficulty back to easy – which makes most encounters a walk in the park or are impossible with my current level. In normal difficulty I’m often convinced I nailed that counter timeframe to get hit anyway and often times, because of multiple hits a character or the entire group is down. I miss a middle ground between both difficulties. Normal damage but enhanced counter timeframes, I would like.
Then Monster Hunter: Rise. The first stampede mission is done and Hunter rank 3 is reached. Digital Wingspan: Expansion 3 with its Duel Mode is now tested as well. A new tactical component this card lucky game. For two players it is good, but then it misses the good stuff Wingspan gets in higher player counts. Pink birds are almost useless at two players.
On board games I learned Meadow. It’s not bad, but I expected better. Maybe I should have learned it before Apiary, a better game in my opinion.
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. It’s a mid-budget studio’s take on the Bethesda formula, and I’ve been enjoying it so far. The combat has been quite engaging, largely due to how your limited stamina affects how often you can attack; it’s not just a game of ‘slash until it’s dead’, but often requires forethought of when to attack, when to block, dodge, parry, etc. And even though I’ve never played a FromSoft game, playing this on the hardest difficulty sure feels like I have, given how much I’ve been dying. Worth it.
Rimworld continues. It’s probably going to be the only game I play for a long time, given that I’m completely engrossed and only have two of the five DLC so far – so if I do get bored, I’ll just get one of those and start again.
Or download mods to mix it up, of which there are…thousands?
The randomness continues to amuse me – one time a group of raiders attacked me via orbital drop pod and somehow chose to land en masse in a kids’ bedroom. 7 people, just dropping through the roof while she was sleeping.
Happily, she was able to set fire to the room, run outside and lock the door on the way out – all before before the raiders emerged from their pods, and they were forced to break through a stone wall in order to escape.
(Also, if you’re capable of launching orbital strikes, why are all your raiders equipped with rusty clubs? Surely you’ve at least heard of guns…)
I’m currently on a ‘mad science’ spree with the Biotech DLC, gathering all the different exotic genes and breeding hybrids from all the different genehanced people available. This quest has led me to reddit forums, because I have mostly female colonists and often need need to get…genetic material…from the pirates and raiders I capture.
The suggestion was using IVF: remotely fertilise ova, then implant them into a surrogate mother. The thing is, keeping and feeding slaves takes time and effort, so naturally you keep your ‘donors’ in cryotubes until their contribution is needed – before putting them back once it’s done.
Seems like good advice. I’m researching cryostasis now, and I look forward to seeing what new crimes the game drives me to.
This was actually a failed attempt to start an Interstellar Baseball League.
There are currently 5,599 mods on the Steam Workshop marked as compatible with the unstable-branch-only version 1.6, which officially releases on the 11th (it’s been in unstable for about three weeks now). For the current active version 1.5, there are 20,518 mods listed. :)
My son asked for Nine Sols for his birthday, and it was on sale at a reasonable discount, so I got it and he’s been putting 100% of his daily screen time allowance into playing it. It does seem well-made, and I might try it myself at some point, but it also seems sufficiently difficult and elaborately-plotted that I’d rather put it off until I can afford to put in enough time on it every day to actually make progress.
Meanwhile, also because it was cheap in the Steam Summer Sale, I picked up the gore-themed tower defense game Bella Wants Blood. I’m not super duper into the aesthetic and turned the sound off pretty quickly, but it’s solid and interesting enough as a tower defense game that I’m into it. Also each run takes 15~20 minutes, which makes it easy to fit in between real-world tasks.
Speaking of things that fit into the narrow spaces between real-world tasks, Territory Idle is still idling away. Not a lot to say about it… I’ve got a bit of a trip coming up, and that’ll probably be when I let it just do its own thing for a few days and chalk up most of the remaining achievements.
Still on my NG+ playthrough of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I was worried I’d be one-shotting every single battle in the game with my builds, but I’m glad it’s not the case. While certainly not as challenging as my first playthrough enemies have still been bulked up enough that many still offer a bit of a challenge. I’m still ridiculously overpowered, but the game hasn’t become boring. And there are options to up the challenge anyway if I feel it gets too easy.
Also still going through Lost in Random: The Eternal Die and, unfortunately, like it’s the case for me with most roguelikes, it’s starting to wear out its welcome. Progression is a bit too slow, so when I finally defeat a boss after numerous tries and advance to the second level and then get beaten by that level’s boss being pushed to the very beginning of the game and not to the beginning of that particular level hurts quite a bit. I know that’s how most of these games go, but that’s precisely why I bounce off them most of the time.
I remembered I own a Switch, so now I’m playing through Super Mario 3D World for the first time. It’s quite a fun game. Takes the fun but rather bland formula of 3D Land and improves it in nearly every aspect while also adding some much more needed variety.
I also played the just-launched Untitled Hand Game. Basically a 2D version of Surgeon Simulator (well, minus the actual “surgery” part), where the entire fun of the game relies on having to battle with deliberately cumbersome controls to perform what would ordinarily be entirely simple tasks (namely grabbing stuff and moving it elsewhere). It’s fun, but it’s plagued by a few bugs that run the experience. Sometimes the hand gets stuck in the scenery, making progress impossible and forcing a level restart. Sometimes the hand refuses to grab stuff after a while, also making progress impossible. It’s a very short game, so these bugs really hamper the experience. Though the stages are quite short, so it’s not such a huge deal, but it can still get very jarring.