T w e n t y S i d e d
This week I’ve played some Balatro.
I just beat black stakes difficulty, and I’m still trying to unlock some jokers.
I also got into playing a bit of Rainbow Six Siege. It’s just me, trying to play as trapper, even when I’m an on attack.
The only other thing I’ve done is play a few random Itch.io horror games. Nothing standout that I can remember but still good fun.
What’s everyone else doing this week?
Megatextures
A video discussing Megatexture technology. Why we needed it, what it was supposed to do, and why it maybe didn't totally work.
Shamus Plays WOW
Ever wondered what's in all those quest boxes you've never bothered to read? Get ready: They're more insane than you might expect.
This Scene Breaks a Character
Small changes to the animations can have a huge impact on how the audience interprets a scene.
Twelve Years
Even allegedly smart people can make life-changing blunders that seem very, very obvious in retrospect.
Project Button Masher
I teach myself music composition by imitating the style of various videogame soundtracks. How did it turn out? Listen for yourself.
I had wanted to get in two runs at The Old Republic, but due to circumstances only got in the one, finishing Voss but not finishing off Corellia and so not finishing off my Agent. I’ll hope to do that this week or next week.
It’s really hard to get in a run at Conception Plus in the evenings during the week, but I’ve been playing it on weekends, including in the time set aside for longer games, mostly because it’s kinda nice to have something shorter — I can only tolerate the game at this point for about two hours at a time — which leaves me time to do other things at the end of that timeslot. I’m also now to the point where my levels are high enough that on the first floor of the last dungeon if I use skills I can survive battles without taking too much damage, but I still want to run through the easier dungeons to build up potions and the like while I work my way through the Star Maiden stories. I have played for over 70 hours now according to the save file and am definitely feeling like that was too long for this game. If they had given more interactions with the Star Maidens or the ability to recharge them through actions, that would have worked better. Yes, you can just “rest” for a week and push through, but levels are important so there’s no reason not to grind the dungeons while you’re waiting to grind the Star Maiden encounters, which extends the game.
Clair Obscur continues. Beaten two of “the three superbosses”, plus a bunch of other optional bosses. I’m strong enough to one-round a lot of them, but still not strong enough to one-round the big fights; I managed about half health on the two supers with a lucky Roulette. I don’t think that’s just because it’s New Game+, I think my build is missing something. But, I guess I’ll find that out in the future. Just one superboss left, but I still haven’t found their dungeon, despite watching other people play through it. I keep finding dungeons I didn’t know existed, and not finding ones I do. Game has a lot of secrets.
Brotato continues, whittling down the uncleared characters. Pretty sure I said I wasn’t going to bother to do that, but I’m clearly going to do that. I really need a game to replace this one. Some low-stress thing that fits inside a lunch break.
Clair Obscure endgame content. I bailed out of fighting Clea for now. I can beat her to second stage right now, but in the second stage she changes attack patterns I did not learn yet – and if I miss those she instantly heals herself for 600k. Back to stage one.
Monster Hunter: Rise The Mitzuzune is down and were are Hunter rank 6. So: Hunting rank six monsters now.
And I attended Mittelalter Phantasie Spectakulum last weekend. The biggest medieval fair I know. Lots of fun bands singing folk, rock and shanty. The fair itself was great, but camping was atrociously expensive, as they wanted money per day instead of per night. Which makes no sense at all. Also bailed and camped in “the wild”.
I read that as “Metal Gear Phantasy Speculum” and thought “…that tracks. Sounds like a Metal Gear project.”
It translates to Medieval Fantasy Spectacle. I’m torn apart, if I want to know, what inspiration Hideo Kojima would get, if he would attend it. :-)
Just finished Chants of Sennaar. Cute little puzzle adventure game where you have to decipher languages from context. Brought down marginally by an irritating stealth mechanic, but that’s barely present and mostly easily ignored. I really enjoyed it.
Entirely done with Terminator: Resistance. Finished the DLC campaign and then tried Infiltration mode where you basically play a Terminator and have to go through several Resistance bases until you find enough data to figure out where a Resistance Commander is so you can eliminate him. The trick is that you have to do this in one life. You have ways to repair yourself if you’re severely wounded, but if you die you have to restart from the very beginning. I found enough info early on to go and kill my goal, but still decided to go and clean up the entire map before going there. Few close calls, but I managed to clean every human base and post. I reach the last base to get my goal, breach the door open and throw a grenade inside, but I throw it wrong and it bounces back to me, killing myself like a dumbass. You know what? Screw it, I reached the end and consider the whole thing done.
Still going with Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Things have started to pick up considerably once I realized how to maximize my gathering.
Post Trauma is kicking my ass because I keep forgetting to save every time I can. I have three weapons at the moment: a sledgehammer, a pistol and a shotgun. The sledgehammer is considerably the stronger weapon for some reason, but also the one that demands you to get closer to an enemy. I emptied a full 8 bullets clip on an enemy and then it took two more sledgehammer hits to kill after that. For reference, three sledgehammer hits would have killed the same enemy. So yeah.
Started Ori and the Will of the Wisps. I played the first game some time ago and really enjoyed it, so going through the sequel now. So far so good.
” I reach the last base to get my goal, breach the door open and throw a grenade inside, but I throw it wrong and it bounces back to me, killing myself like a dumbass. ”
Comedy gold, but you win.
Territory Idle continues to grind along at its own pace. Nothing new there.
My free time has decreased with an onset of work, but I’ve managed some runs of Spelunky 2 and Battle for Wesnoth. The former is fun in its own right, but I’m also still vaguely achievement hunting (stopped trying for Low Scorer and started trying for Millionaire). The latter is just a really excellent, and completely free, tactical skirmish game that I play purely for pleasure every few days or so.
My son, meanwhile, has actively beaten Nine Sols. He’s started a second playthrough (still on standard difficulty) just to pick up some achievements he missed the first time around, and messed around in the boss battle arena a bit. He’s definitely proud of the accomplishment, and he liked it a lot, but I don’t know if he intends to pursue the more difficult ending. We’ll see.