T w e n t y S i d e d
This week was the same as last week.
Baldur’s Gate 3Â is going well, just got into act 2 after doing pretty much everything worth doing, and with only a few deaths. My horde of enchanted items is ever growing, and the quantity of potions, arrows, and scrolls that I never use is immense. I should probably sell some of that stuff, but every time I think about it, I’m also thinking ‘but what if I need it’.
Megabonk is also going well. I’ve unlocked most of the characters and all of the weapons, but there’s still more stuff to unlock, so the game will still be a good time killer for me.
How’s everyone else this week? (also Happy new year)
id Software Coding Style
When the source code for Doom 3 was released, we got a look at some of the style conventions used by the developers. Here I analyze this style and explain what it all means.
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.
Overused Words in Game Titles
I scoured the Steam database to figure out what words were the most commonly used in game titles.
Charging More for a Worse Product
No, game prices don't "need" to go up. That's not how supply and demand works. Instead, the publishers need to be smarter about where they spend their money.
The Game That Ruined Me
Be careful what you learn with your muscle-memory, because it will be very hard to un-learn it.
I finished Metroid Prime 4. I had overall a good time with it. I think the hate for it is overblown. Yes, the companions are annoying at first, but they get more likable as you get to know them. Yes, the story is not very imaginative, but it’s a very small component of the experience. Yes, the desert area is bullshit (particularly the mechanic of gathering crystals, which is boring as hell), but the meat of the game is still in the actual playable areas. You can clearly see the game being pulled in different directions by two different development teams. It’s clear there was an attempt at making the franchise more accessible, which in turn ended up alienating long-time fans, but the damage was minimal. I hope the next entry is more focused.
In any case, I got in the mood for more Metroid, so now I’m playing Metroid Prime Remastered. I had already played the original, but I had yet to give the remastered version a go. I already know it’s a good game, but it’s been a while, so let’s see how it compares to the latest entry in the series.
Ideally I would have played this and the two other entries before I got into 4, but unfortunately they’re kinda hard to find these days and I feel Nintendo kinda dropped the ball into not making them more accessible. Knowing 2 and 3 were going to be hard to find I just jumped directly into 4. It’s not like the story matters that much in these games.
Still going through Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. I’m having an odd issue with this game and it’s that if I leave it for a couple of days I immediately forget all the controls and have to spend a few minutes getting used to them again. I don’t understand why it happens. If I don’t play literally every day when I come back I’m immediately killed by the first enemy I run into because I can’t remember any of my moves, and it’s not like they’re complicated. I cannot even blame the fact that I’m playing another metroidvania, because the Prime games are in first person and rely on gunplay, not swordplay, so it’s not like I’m getting the controls confused between games. I don’t know, it’s an odd thing. The game is still a lot of fun, it’s just this inexplicable thing that messes with my head.
Happy New Year, everyone!
I played Starvaders for a bit. It’s a roguelite deckbuilder where you’re controlling a mech on a grid and trying to stop enemies from getting to the bottom. The game is fun enough and the mech classes are pretty varied (one isn’t a mech at all and instead you’re a summoner) but I think I’m done with it after not that much time. Not entirely sure why. I got the “true” ending and the “ultimate” ending which… really didn’t seem different at all?
I also played through The Darkest Files. It’s a game where you’re playing as a prosecutor in 1950s Germany trying to convict people for crimes they did under the Nazi regime. Not the people are the top, but the grunts and civilians who just… thought they could get away with things (and did, mostly). It is not a super happy game. You interview a number of witnesses/suspects, which involves walking around the crime scene (via mind palace or whatever) while they tell their story of what happened. The stories don’t line up and the actual witness testimony isn’t actually that relevant to proving your case (it’s biased and these are memories from 10 years ago), but it gives you information on other documents to follow up on. Then at court you present your theory of how things happened and for each point you need to cross reference 3 documents to prove your point.
The game was pretty good but it does have a couple of issues. One is that a lot of the crime scene memory stuff is running around seeing what you can interact with – the main path forward is clearly indicated but the side stuff, some of which is quite important to working out what happened, is not, and the only way you can see if it matters is to walk up to it and try. Also, it only has two cases. The cases are each pretty decently sized – I ended up with 8 hours played – but it means that some mechanics just don’t have the exploration that they should. For example, you have an archives where you can look up cases by name, and it’s used exactly twice, one time for each case. In the second case you get to request one warrant and that’s the entire use of that mechanic.
The game is based on the activities of a real person (Fritz Bauer) and the cases are based on real events, though the names are changed and a bunch of details are modified for the sake of gameplay and stuff. So yeah there’s some really awful pieces of history on display here, and the fundamental idea that consequences are important.
Finally, I started Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a metroidvania soulslike (surprise!). I’ve never actually played a prince of persia game before. I set the difficulty to Impossible and I’m fairly sure that was a mistake but I’m too stubborn to back off now. Regular enemies are extremely lethal, the challenges seem frankly impossible, and bosses are… actually surprisingly reasonable, it’s weird, I wonder why. It does let you retry instantly from boss rooms, which is much more pleasant than having to run back. The feature where you can take screenshots and have them show up on your map is really cool from a metroidvania perspective. Movement feels good and I’m looking forward to what progression-based abilities it gives you.
BallxPit continues into New Game+, and flaws have become more prominent. I went into the first level with the Physicist, whose balls all fall upward, and the Tactician, who pauses the game for each shot in one-or-two-second increments. I forgot the first boss could only be hit from the back, meaning the Physicist rendered the fight impossible without piercing attacks; but it also turns out the Tactician’s time advancement includes both the boss’s wind up for their big attack, and the big attack itself, meaning you’re just going to get hit by that every time.
Also there’s a character called The Radical, whose power is they just flat out play the game for you. Turns the level into a fifteen-minute cutscene. I don’t understand the thinking. They already had one that chose power-ups for you, and they were useful for showing all the combos, but you still had to aim and fire yourself. The Radical aims and fires themselves, and also chooses all the upgrades.
Brotato is harder with the living room’s mouse setup, I can’t dodge as well and haven’t managed a complete run.
Slay the Spire got dusted off for a run, which ended quickly. Birds are very dangerous if your setup isn’t up and running.
…is that it? I guess that’s it.
After finishing off Suikoden, I was tempted to start playing Suikoden II, but then decided for the rest of my time off to just focus on other things and so left that time block free.
I did manage to continue with The Old Republic, with my Trooper which is the last class I need for my TOR Diary on the blog. I only have Corellia and the end game left, and then I plan to take a break from TOR for a while and maybe turn to Dark Age of Camelot or Star Trek Online for a while.
Death Howl. It’s a pixel art card battle game, and it’s been interesting. The battles have been pretty engaging and variable, the atmosphere is effectively melancholic, though I keep feeling like I would really like it to be much better than it is. It’s still fairly good, it’s just not quite scratching the itch in the ways I’d like it to, as if it’s really close but not quite. I’m still at it after two weeks of intermittent play, so I guess that’s good.
Noticed and successfully executed the tactic for beating the blood valkyries in Nightreign: big boom. The key is that unlike the original fight where they constantly teleport around and get rez’d when they all die, the blood valkyries do not. The game distracts you with the giant god-emperor style worm, but that’s not what you’re fighting, it’s the screeching harpies. And they no longer teleport, but instead just lurch toward you and stand back up where they fell a few seconds after death. This means they can be pulled into a clump and blasted with AoEs from the entire team (solo? lol). I noticed another player doing this with the Wylder, and after a couple tries got a team that had also figured it out while also getting a nice AoE on my weapon as Guardian. We basically two cycled it, second cycle did the remaining 2/3 of the health bar. Very satisfying, replay saved.
Now I’m just running the Deep of Night mode, where the main difficultly boost so far is bringing back “red phantoms” from previous games, where random enemies will be red-ified with way higher stats. I say random, but this also seems to include a preset number of bosses and significant foes like the ones with upgrade materials. So stuff you used to be able to go off and do solo sometimes is not. The lack of choice in which boss to hunt is kinda refreshing, ’cause it means I’m not blacking out half the list and then feeling like there’s no variety even though it’s my fault. And doubling the number of relic slots for making builds while also adding new class effects means that you get to add a new build to your existing builds, very nice. Game is definitely focusing on the new maps though, which is kindof annoying. Seems like it’s pretty forgiving on progress point loss though (I’m working through tier 2 of 5), didn’t lose anything after making it to the final night and failing.
Speaking of maps, the new Great Hollow map has *so* much more to it that people aren’t exploring, which is both hilarious and frustrating. People will naturally stick to the paths they know best, and it’s much easier to navigate the upper levels (the map is already half useless due to the verticality even when you’re not underground), but this means now that everyone’s figured out the basic crystal search and boss gauntlet tower, that’s all they’re willing to do. Even when the team is obviously not geared up well enough to fight the boss gauntlet, or it has taken far too long to find the crystals. But then you have people trying to do that route who clearly don’t even know how to navigate it entirely, spamming for you to follow them as they fail to find a way up there (via the directly adjacent superjump points) and instead run through half the underlevels, causing the entire team to spend half the time lost trying to catch up to one idiot. I still have no idea how to even reach the mines marked on the map, but at least I’ve figured out *how* to get to the tower that we shouldn’t actually be fighting right now.
But those underlevels? Dude, there’s one area that seems to have the undead dragon from Shadows of the Erdtree as a fixed spawn. Pretty sure there’s enough stuff to fight that you actually *never* have to go on the crystal hunt (which you do so that the crystal fort/boss rush tower is playable), just go clear out the underlevels and fight a zombie dragon and that should do plenty.
Surprisingly little Battle for Wesnoth recently, although I have done a couple skirmishes in the past couple of weeks.
A big chunk of my time was spent on Dungeons of Dredmor. It’s been pretty fun going back and trying out new builds (and finally beating the game — twice, on easy and medium difficulties, albeit with permadeath turned off), but I’m also starting to remember how much of the game is just inventory management, especially when one of your skills is crafting-related. I might look up a recipe list somewhere just so I can tell what things are worth hanging on to and what I can sell off to free up space. Or I might just hit a point where it’s not fun enough, uninstall it, and let it rest for a few years again.
The biggest development of all is that my son asked to spend his own allowance money on Silksong, and then asked me to play my own save of the game in tandem with his. In brief: it’s a masterpiece and I love the exploration and the little quests (“wishes”) and crests and other things that they’ve added to the system from the original Hollow Knight. But also: the big set-piece battles, both boss battles and “gauntlet rooms,” are significantly harder than what I’m really looking for in a game. I’m one of those people who, after finally winning a fight on the fifteenth try, feels exhaustion and vague relief tempered with anxiety about the next fight rather than a cathartic sense of victory. Add to this the fact that I’m native to at-your-own-pace “thinky” games like RPGs and Civ, and the way I’ve been sent back to the bench plenty of times simply because my “dash” finger twitched instead of my “attack” finger. Oh, and I’m not even done with Act I yet; my highest achievement is beating Widow. So yeah; I’m thinking I’ll put this one down when winter break is over and go back to less-stressful games that I can play for half an hour in the evening to unwind.
More Fallout. And it’s still both irritating and fascinating.
I think it’s best described in storytelling terms I think Shamus mught have used. Fallout New Vegas was an example of domino storytelling, where someone thought about why someone was where they were, doing what they did, and fit it together. Even when something seemed weird or out of place (like a gang of Elvis impersonators), someone thought about how it could be integrated into the world and what those Elvis impersonator would believably do in New Vegas.
The show, meanwhile, seem very much to run on ‘and then’ logic. Stuff just happens to keep the story going, mostly to fit in references to stuff from Fallout games and keep the action going.
This episode marks the second or third time that Lucy has just blindly wandered into a situation and made it much, much worse by failing to to ask basic, obvious questions of the people around her and then refusing to learn from it. I think it’s supposed to be funny that she’s still so clueless, but to me it’s profoundly irritating and I’m beginning to enjoy watching her suffer.
On the plus side, someone’s put in a LOT of effort to faithfully recreating locations from the game, and that’s oddly nice to see. I find myself thinking ‘yeah, that armor/weapon/whatever seems exactly the way the concept artist envisioned it originally’.
But that then puts the faithful recreations of the Fallout games in direct contrast to the shallower show versions:
The armour may be spot on, but apparently the Brotherhood of Steel are an undisciplined mob of gun jocks who just want to blow stuff up (including priceless old-world relics! That’s the BoS *I* remember). Plus they can just leave their base for unsactioned missions whenever and will…play with live grenades in crowded rooms, in front of superior officers, and aren’t punished for it?
Caesar’s Legion turn up and look great, but despite literally torturing or murdering someone in every scene they’re in, somehow manage come across as ineffectual and incompetent, which is the exact opposite of what they were in the game.
(That said, those two grenade-loving, sniggering BoS dimwits I mentioned are by far my new favorite characters – it’s like Beavis and Butthead joined the army. I’ll miss them when they inevitable blow themselves up.)
Also, more Rimworld. I’ve installed a mod that allows you to breed different types of bee, that eventually allows you to produce every resource in the game.
No, I don’t understand how *bees* make chunks of uranium, or plasteel, or glitterworld medicine either. But it’s still useful, and a decent challenge to acheive. Plus the art for the bees is super cute!