T w e n t y S i d e d
This week I’ve been playing Slay the Spire, with a few Next Fest games mixed in.
Slay the Spire is going well, I got to ascension ten with The Silent, and finally trying to play The Watcher better.
Aside from that, I played the demo for YapYap. A game that is pretty much the reverse of R.E.P.O. instead of collecting valuables you’re destroying them, and instead of robots you play as little wizards that can cast spells with voice commands. Unsurprisingly it’s a bit janky at times, and the UI can be unclear due to a complicated font. But it’s a good idea nonetheless, and I look forward to seeing what happens with it.
The other game I played was Tears of Metal. A rougelike with gameplay that feels a bit like Hades. But instead of playing as the son of Hades, you’re leading a Scottish battalion trying to take back your homeland. I like how many fodder enemies there are. I don’t know what else to say. It’s fun.
What’s everyone else up to?
Spec Ops: The Line
A videogame that judges its audience, criticizes its genre, and hates its premise. How did this thing get made?
Mass Effect Retrospective
A novel-sized analysis of the Mass Effect series that explains where it all went wrong. Spoiler: It was long before the ending.
How to Forum
Dear people of the internet: Please stop doing these horrible idiotic things when you talk to each other.
A Telltale Autopsy
What lessons can we learn from the abrupt demise of this once-impressive games studio?
Batman v. Superman Wasn't All Bad
It's not a good movie, but it was made with good intentions and if you look closely you can find a few interesting ideas.
In Atlas Fallen I reached the third and maybe the final but very big area. I switched from Mouse/Keyboard to controller. Somehow that is visually more clear. In most brawler games I have a better view controlling the camera with the mouse (Arkham/PoP series for example), not so in this game. The game is good but nothing comes of as extra ordinary good, just good.
In P5R I reached the third palace and unlocked the next Phantom Thief – Queen. Not the red head I thought will be the next member. As that read head is prominent on the cover, I have no doubt that she will join some time later. Somehow I still get new bonds (politician, high school detectiv, homeroom teacher, and finally Yosuke). Hard to say when the game let me have the time to develop those bonds.
Some of the dialog is hard to endure. Especially Sae and that high school detectiv (such a trope) jump to wild conclusions out of the left field. And I’m not sure which law they want to enforce? Even fantasy Japan will not have laws against “stealing someones heart”.
And when Sae verbally assaulted Queen for no good reason I thought: WTF? Are you totally drunk, lady? As that was a key moment to awaken Queen, the Awakening feels stale.I was fed up constantly overshooting in Snooker 2019 so I downloaded an iso of the PSP version of World Snooker Championship 2007 to play on my anbernic. I have the PSP game in my collection but no running PSP anymore. Much better game than 2019 even though the graphics are junk. Positional play is/was possible as you can adjust the power of a shot correctly. An 80 break was not that hard to accomplish, so a Century is just around the corner.
Coop still feature No Man’s Sky. Not much coop in this game, not much to do for myself at this moment.
I only played P5R once, but I think that by this point you should have some time to do bonds, unless you’re too busy building up your attributes (always a pain the first time through a modern Persona game). As I said before, you can’t go out in the evenings after doing a dungeon or I think Metaverse run, so if you are spending a lot of time doing those you will lose a lot of time to do other things and build bonds. And I’d recommend making building bonds a priority, because you get good bonuses in Persona fusing from advancing S-links and in the dungeons as well, especially from maxing them out. And, of course, some of them are really cool [grin].
As for Sae and the high school detective, the things you are seeing are indicative of deeper things. Remember that Sae and Makoto’s father was a police officer and that Sae is basically having to live up to him — and exceed him — and has also had to basically raise Makoto. There’s a reason that Makoto is so focused on success.
The redhead was added for the Royal part of P5R, and so won’t really join the party until the expansion part.
Clair Obscur Blockless continues smoothly. Just passed what I keep calling the end of Act 2, even though it’s only the halfway point of Act 2. I forgot that boss can just delete people from the fight if you don’t dodge, which since I’m deliberately not dodging meant I got to fight them with only two party members (and eventually only one). It also turns out that if they delete the whole team, the reserve team doesn’t get the chance to come in. But still cleared it on the second attempt. (The item that gives an extra 1000 defense may have something to do with that.) Still nothing in the main route that’s been a roadblock, though several optional bosses are still unwinnable even several dungeons later. Chromatic Abbest is a mean mean bean.
I’m noticing some more setting discrepancies this time through, which is unfortunate, but I suppose to be expected in as weird a setting as this. I also think I’ve gotten worse at the exploration in every run. Not great, considering that’s roughly half the game.
I should also probably stop taking advantage of the Thermal Bug; they’ve patched it out, but my computer hasn’t been online since then, so I still have the version of it that routinely gives massive AP plus free turns with no cost. But… I mean, it’s really, really strong this way, and I like being really, really strong.
Brotato. Nothing new.
The idea of playing Clair Obscur without dodging anything sounds uncanny to me.
I get that it’s probably easier on balance once you get a build optimized for it, but… ew, it feels so wrong.
I still feel kind of silly doing this for Clair Obscur when I never did it for Super Mario RPG in the nearly 30 years I’ve been playing it. But I also want to make sure it can be done, since this is my favorite RPG and dodging with good timing is more an action game thing.
I have checked out Blue Prince, and I am not yet convinced of the whole thing.
Blue Prince is excellent, but roguelite puzzle game is a pretty weird genre. Hopefully it clicks for you.
For the second week in a row, I didn’t get to play anything, mostly because I was “being Canadian” and watching curling and one game of the Blue Jays’ series that they won to get to the World Series. I am old enough to remember the two previous World Series wins — I was actually in Toronto at a debating tournament when they won one of them — but as I am older now can’t actually watch the games: they start for me at the time when I am usually starting to think about going to sleep.
Games-wise, this is a really good test of whether or not I can remember what was going on enough to play Suikoden with my normal schedule, and I should finish writing the TOR Diary entries for my Imperial Agent this week and so start the Trooper this weekend.
Now playing Assassin’s Creed Origins. I’ve grown tired of Ubisoft’s formula in the past, but it’s been now a few years since I played one of these so I’m kinda in the mood for it, and this one has been sitting in my library for ages after coming in a Humble Bundle. I’ve mentioned several times in the past that I like games that reward exploration and the issue with Ubisoft games is that they tend to overdo that to the point of tedium, so let’s see how it goes.
The gameplay is so far fun and I’m genuinely invested, though there’s something that gave me pause. At some point in your first town you eliminate a major target and you’re basically told you can leave town now or do some sidequesting. I, of course, went sidequesting. I did every sidequest I could around town save for one where the enemies were too high level for me (there are levels now in these games, it’s really been a while). I figured I did everything possible and went to talk to the NPC that let me leave town. I got a cutscene and showed up in a different part of the map, away from the town (or ANY town for that matter). I was level 8. The current story mission was level 10. Every sidequest, side area or lone enemy I ran into while I traveled to the site of the story mission was far over my level, until I reached a town in the middle where missions are from around my level or lower. I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening. Did I simply take a wrong turn somewhere? The way I looked at the map it seemed the only way to reach the low-level town without being assaulted by a bunch of high-level areas was to ignore the roads completely, which is counterintuitive (and certainly not the way your mount takes when you put it on “autopilot”. So I’m baffled a bit by this for a good while. I explore a bit and keep runnning into the same issue. It’s actually a few hours in where I realize that if you pull back on the map (which I rarely ever do) the game shows what level I should be to visit every area.
I am such a fucking idiot. Turns out there is a very clear delineated path if you follow each area’s level ceilings and I didn’t notice because I always keep the map zoomed in. Granted, it’s still counterintuitive to your mount, but it might just be an effect of its frankly awful pathfinding.
Side note: I killed the story target in the first town by accident. I was in the area while doing a few unrelated sidequests and I killed a guy I found sleeping while looting some treasure and then the game entered a cutscene, which is what made me realize I hit the target. Funny stuff.
I am wrapping up Origins about now, working through the second half of the second DLC. Most of the writing and plot in the game is abysmal (YMMV but imho par for the course in a Ubisoft game) but my main gripe is that the game ain’t “assassiny” enough. I’ve bumped up the difficulty to nightmare essentially to enforce stealth because on normal it was far too easy to just waltz into a camp and cut my way through everyone but there are SO many missions where the game just decides “now you walk out into the open and fight waves of dudes”…
Having said that there are some cool moments, the game is very pretty and the mechanics generally work well, I just wish it was more stealth focused. As I understand this is going to be the case with the whole of Origins-Odyssey-Valhalla trilogy.
Since I last posted, I had made the terrible error of starting a new planet in Territory Idle. I was already pretty weary of how repetitive it was getting, but was slowly closing in on two final achievements by hitting certain levels of a currency called Fame. The thing is, starting a new planet had two deeply negative effects:
1. My Fame reset to zero, and
2. It turned out that I would need to redo some of the more dragged-out, hamstrung, boring grinds of the early game.
I just rebelled. Totally fed up. I uninstalled the whole game, and immediately felt massively better. There are some games where I pride myself on enduring a bit of a slog for a completionist-type achievement, but this game just made it not worth the time, effort, or energy it would take.
Ironically, the next two games I played to clear my palate were also idlers: Tower Wizard and Magic Archery. The thing is, they’re both very short and respect your time instead of overstaying their welcome the way Territory Idle did. Tower Wizard took just a couple of days; Magic Archery just a single evening. It’s pretty clear that the latter was essentially a prototype, but the former especially had a really nice feel and took things in an interesting direction with its gameplay. Definitely a recommend.
After that things have been a little undirected. I’ve played some skirmishes in classic tactics freeware game Battle for Wesnoth, noodled around in space in Endless Sky (which is not part of the Endless Legend/Endless Space series, but rather a spiritual successor to the old Escape Velocity series), started a new world in Terraria, and filled out some puzzle mosaics by the same people (person?) who did the Proverbs puzzle. It feels really nice to actually be gaming in little bites during my free time again instead of being constantly pulled back to tend to Territory Idle’s all-too-limited automation.
I’ve also downloaded Inscryption, which I’ve had for a while but not gotten around to yet. We’ll see when that actually happens and how it goes when it does.
I remember enjoying Escape Velocity so I went to Steam to look up Endless Sky. Oh, it’s free? And—already in my library? Huh, okay. Yup, there it is installed on disk—and I already have 7.3 hours in it, apparently? I have no memory of any of this. Something fun to (re?)discover, I guess!
I’ve been going ham in Cyberpunk 2077. I quite like that the game does seem to specifically support a generalist style of play, with multiple synergies between basic level perks for different stats (or at least it seems like, one of those I think turned out not to work the way I’d thought), and various weapon specializations clearly being powerful if you invest enough in them but also not being necessary enough for me to bother when other stuff is available. I’m up to tier 4/4 (out of 5) on gear so I’m just about capped out on that, and most of the final tier perks are more involved than I actually want to deal with, lots of killstreak this or supermode that. Once the game actually gave me a tech rifle I turned the tech gun perks on and turns out those timings are perfectly easy to hit, so I’m a wallhax sniper now, with that side of brain wizard for turning off people’s eyes and legs and otherwise slapping damage on things as basically ‘free’ actions. And while this is completely unfair, the game also makes it clear you’re supposed to be unfair, as enemies also use smart weapons and superspeed etc against you (though their hacking is slow and I’m not sure I’ve ever been railgunned through a wall).
Running around rounding up cyberpsychos is a nice wide set of combat sidequests, with the tiny cop missions everywhere to fill space inbetween for building up cash. I’ve had a few other sidequests that I started and sometimes even finished and went nah, don’t need that one, but otherwise they’ve mostly been good. . . not that I can remember many compared to the one I did early on where I just wasted a whole three level building (because I had no stealth perks and they were all murderers anyway). Aside from the one for the cab company that moves the goalposts on how much skill you need, which is bogus, and made me just give up and take the ending I usually wouldn’t have to please an NPC instead.
Extremely mild conceptual spoilers? The main/ish quests though have started grating on me a bit, by complaining about my approach in a game that not only is clearly meant to allow all approaches but indeed forces you into a pure combat act 1 closer. Making a big point of doing recon and thus perfectly clear I could one-man army my way through the entire camp and then complaining like I need to stealth, is annoying. Having this happen right after a different mission where the NPC in charge is 1: an asshole and 2: keeps shouting “do not be seen!” like I’m going to auto-fail and the stealth is so easy you can just walk past what is clearly a boss fight yet by walking past everything I’ve gained almost no rewards or had any gameplay, not so much. Which is extra annoying because the one before that, I’d chosen myself that for roleplaying purposes yeah I really should try to ghost the op ’cause if they knew we were there it would logically fail, and did for the most part manage to do so (despite the recon telling me about an entryway that I could not actually find and me looping through the cameras only to find I had somehow missed several more cameras covering my entrypoint). Of course, they *could* actually make dynamic endings where you can finish the quest without but only get the good end via stealth (and I suppose it’s technically possible they did since I didn’t test, but I seriously doubt), but that would punish people for playing as they desire.
Spoiled version:
I apparently let NetWatch fry the Voodooboys, which was fine with me ’cause I couldn’t stand them and was not going to redo that entire Johnny sequence just so I could roll back to fight the Animals- in a perfect world or replay I would simply ignore their orders and kill everything, then betray them and kill everything. I found it particularly dumb how they go “oh there’s like 30 of them in there” and I’m like “oh so maybe 5-6 groups of 5 then? I can wipe that in 5 minutes,” with combat perks clearly expecting you to yeah run in and clear whole rooms full of guys like that. Panam’s followup quest to rescue Saul she acts like we have to stealth and sure if they had a gun on him that would make sense, but just like the other it’s a perfectly manageable amount of guys, some of whom can be blown up before entering, and Saul is in a cell alone. Meanwhile, before the Voodooboy quest I did the industrial park infiltration, a beautiful facility absolutely crawling with goons and cameras and mechs and turrets that yeah assaulting that would probably go badly and defeat the point of the mission anyway so I agree sneak good. . . which then shows the futility of actual sneak missions as you walk past all of that carefully placed content after admiring it for a bit.I continue to find the character bits meant to move, surprisingly moving. This is both somewhat tempered, and enhanced, by the way the game also decided to dump them all on me at once. Presumably because I’ve done the main quests out of order after a huge delay, I finish one main quest and suddenly all my friends are calling me up saying I need to come help them right now and I’m like bro I can only save one person at a time. So I hop on the motorcycle and go screaming though the streets (very nice driving around btw) to help the one, and then the next, and then the next, for a bit of a roleplay of haste even though I think I incidentally read that there’s only like one timed quest in the game or something.
I have also been warned about a certain conversation at the oilfields to not screw up, though I may have antagonized said character enough already to be a problem, we’ll see. The progression meters on the menu are reading 70/30/30 right now (though they move in huge fits and starts), I expect I’m at least half if not 2/3 through the game.
For the spooky season I have started Ghostwire:Tokyo. Having avoided spoilers I understood it as an anthology of myths and urban legends with some kind of overarching openworldy plot giving it structure and so far it is that but there are things that I have not expected. Firstly, it is much less scary than I thought it would be. I knew it wasn’t a jumpscare focused game, which I consider a good thing, but I thought I would get jumped at least every now and then but aside from some bening furniture rattling it’s mostly been creepy or sad rather than horrory so far, though I have not progressed the main quest a lot so it might escalate. Secondly, on the other hand it is much more collectathony than I thought it would be: there are literally hundreds of spirits, some 60+ shrines, as of yet undetermined numbers of notes, shapeshifted Tanuki and cultural artifact collectables to be found, and most of this stuff (except notes) gives some kind of mechanics relevant reward. There are some rough edges, I’d kill for some color coding on the spiritual sight, like highlighting enemies in red and collectables in green or gold, rather than drowning everything in a flood of blue and climbing is definitely a little bit unreliable but overall I like the game so far, it’s pretty, the city is fun to explore and the combat powers have an appropriate “oomph” to them, the lore mixes traditional Japanese haunts and spirits with more contemporary urban legends and “visitors” born of various mental and societal issues and what I’d consider a “soft” social commentary. We’ll see how it holds up further down the line. I will for sure not attempt to 100% it though.
Yeah, I abandoned this game when I realized just how many samey collecting sidequests there were. I don’t think it was ever labeled as horror, yet I also remember expecting more horror from it, but that was because I was confusing it with Slitterhead (maybe that was the case for you too?)
It is, after all, a Ubisoft game, and these are always very heavy on the map icon overfilling side of things. I am currently enjoying Assassin’s Creed: Origins, but at least its sidequests are a bit more varied than they were in Ghostwire.