T w e n t y S i d e d
This week was a bit more Slay the Spire, with a few other things on the side.
First off, I finally beat the game as the Watcher. I got a Pressure Point build going while also removing all of the attack cards, including Wrath. I also got Calipers early on, so I just focused on blocking with the occasional Pressure Point for damage.
I also attended the MTG Prerelease that Ethan posted about the other day. I think I finally have at least a lose grasp of the many, many intricacies and rules of Magic the Gathering. Which means that I have a better understanding of just how much more everyone knows than me. I think out of the 24 matches I played, I won 2. On the other hand, most of the people I played against were actually really nice, and willing to explain some of the more niche rules as they came up. Overall I had fun, and I might go to another Magic event sometime.
Lastly I’ve for some reason decided to play a bit of Half-life 2. I guess I’m just achievement hunting at this point, there’s a few achievements that I never bothered to get, and I don’t really have any other reason to play it.
So, How’s everyone else this week?
Project Octant
A programming project where I set out to make a Minecraft-style world so I can experiment with Octree data.
The Best of 2019
I called 2019 "The Year of corporate Dystopia". Here is a list of the games I thought were interesting or worth talking about that year.
Overused Words in Game Titles
I scoured the Steam database to figure out what words were the most commonly used in game titles.
What Does a Robot Want?
No, self-aware robots aren't going to turn on us, Skynet-style. Not unless we designed them to.
My Music
Do you like electronic music? Do you like free stuff? Are you okay with amateur music from someone who's learning? Yes? Because that's what this is.
Crypt Custodian seems to be a much longer game than I expected if the percentage of completion in the start screen is to be believed. Yeah, it could be taking into account side quests too, but part of the main quest is gathering 10 friends and after hours of play I only have 2. Don’t mind it, as the game is fun, but I sort of picked it because I expected it to be shorter.
Still playing a bit of High on Life here and there. It’s not trapping me, but it’s serviceable.
The one thing that’s trapping me, again is Bloons TD 6. I’ve played this game for hundreds of hours on PC and now I got it on mobile. As far as I know there’s no way to transfer progress, so I have to unlock everything again, which means more and more hours. As this game is extraordinarily addictive that consumes a lot of my day. It’s not my favorite Tower Defense game from a gameplay perspective (that’d be Defense Grid), but it is the most accessible and has the most amount of content than any other I’ve played.
Educational events hindered me to post the last two weeks. At least, now I can organize a workers council election and know how the EU defines what an AI is. It is not very precise, that definition.
In the meantime I completed Atlas Fallen – a fun Brawler/Action Adventure, that gives you a ton of different abilities from which I used exactly 4 to complete the game. But the Open-World busy-work led to those abilities, so the busy-work didn’t just give X percent of Y for Z amount of time, but actual gameplay changing stuff. I like that game design.
Then I completed Song of Nunu. Another Action-Adventure, but very short and very linear this time. It is set in the League of Legends Universe, somewhere up north. It was okay. Very light combat, some easy puzzles and clunky climbing/jumping passages due to clunky controls and the fact that it is very, very linear. Going back to areas where you might have missed a secret was often times impossible. And, as there is only one save slot that is just a checkpoint save slot without any way of manual saving, stepping into the next cutscene ended any exploration.
Now I started Hogwards Legacy. I have next to no experience with the Wizarding World. Looking around is a delight with tons of details Harry Potter fans might enjoy even more than me. My 10 year old PC in the recommended settings (High) had tons of framedrops. Middle setting run better but some effects – like markers for mission starting areas – are missing.
In P5R the Yakuza boss is down and now some “hackers” attack the Phantom thieves, who should openly disregard, that they are just – which makes no fucking sense at all. And all the characters around act very, very stupid and make assumption that are in no way backed by facts and the cat blocks that minimal gameplay again for no good reason – and I’m so short of letting that game rest again. This time for good.
I will say you’re well past the point I expect people to make up their mind on Persona 5. If you’re not on board for our plucky teenagers taking down Anonymous, well, it’s not getting better moving forward. Although the fourth palace is neat.