T w e n t y S i d e d
This week is just Balders Gate 3.
Only a bit into act three so far, I don’t think we’ve gotten into the city properly. So far we’ve fought a clown, I angered a genie and got teleported to a jungle full of dinosaurs, and helped solve a murder.
We didn’t actually get that far, because we also started an honor mode playthrough, so no loading if there’s a mess up and if the whole party dies it’s over. To make things easier we’ve kept one party member at camp to resurrect everyone if there’s a party wipeout. It does cost money to res people and it obviously has the drawback of only three characters in a fight instead of four. We’re currently in the underdark, and about to finish the first half of it. The biggest challenge so far was getting to level four. There are a lot of fights that are too dangerous to do at level three on this difficulty, but needed to be done to get that level.
What’s everyone up to this week?
Philosophy of Moderation
The comments on most sites are a sewer of hate, because we're moderating with the wrong goals in mind.
Rage 2
The game was a dud, and I'm convinced a big part of that is due to the way the game leaned into its story. Its terrible, cringe-inducing story.
Silent Hill Turbo HD II
I was trying to make fun of how Silent Hill had lost its way but I ended up making fun of fighting games. Whatever.
A Telltale Autopsy
What lessons can we learn from the abrupt demise of this once-impressive games studio?
The Disappointment Engine
No Man's Sky is a game seemingly engineered to create a cycle of anticipation and disappointment.
Still going with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I’m on Act III now, so I can finally reach the new DLC content, but man, I’m seriously underleveled. In my two previous playthroughs whenever I reached this part I could breeze through some of the optional bosses but now they’re kicking my ass. This is probably because I raced through the first two acts, leaving a lot of the optional content behind, so now I’m gonna have to do some of that stuff before. I’m told some of the new fights are a bit brutal, so I don’t want to go there until I reach at least a certain level.
Getting a bit frustrated with Metroid Prime Remastered. I had issues with the 4th title, but it’s clear there’s a lot of design choices made here that have been streamlined there. It’s possible to reach a certain area in this game before you have the necessary powerups, but backtracking through it is nearly impossible, so now I have to take the long route to reach where I was before or else I just cannot proceed. And by God the controls for using the map are impossible to get used to. I feel someone with a normal Switch can have a better time by simply swapping joycons when looking at the map, but I cannot do that with my Switch Lite. I don’t understand why Nintendo couldn’t do a normal map movement for this game. It’s a remaster, not a port. There are a bunch of control options for the actual game, but the map is painfully unintuitive.
Some small progress in Kingdom Come Deliverance, moving a little forward in the Madonna of Sasau-questline.
Finally got back into OW: Echoes of the Eye, and… while I really want to like the DLC, I’m having a hard time to do so. There’s so, so much backtracking to ever the same places, and while the realisations still give the same happy juice as in the base game, the stealth sections SUCK and so do the navigational challenges. Grmpf. Gonna see if I want to chew through it in the end.
I have also dabbled in Hollow Knight. PlayFrame’s Silksong run had the winter-Katamari-break, I started watching the HK-playlist and remembered that I have that on the PS. (Have I said that last time already? I feel like I’ve typed this before…) Anyway, things went fine, and then I spend half an hour getting wrecked by the big bug in the upper right of the Forgotten Crossroads, and I still have no idea how Dan made that look SO EASY xD
I restarted Girl Genius – Adventures in Castle Heterodyne and I think I’m close to the end already, as the fight against Zola was the end of the Castle Arc in the comic, followed by the Siege of Mechanisburg. And in the game I’m at the boss fight against Zola – where I do minimal damage. I think I have to find some secrets I left behind in that old school Zelda-esque game.
Master Duel has an event running limiting the power level significantly. Without Ash Blossom and Nibiru even Luna Light do have a chance. A double-attacking 3800 Towers with a quick effect nuke is not easy to overthrow. But in regular the way to get to that would be interrupted easily leaving me open without a good plan B. Luna Lights do not follow the YGO-Meme:
Player 2: It’s my turn now.
Player 1: Hush, It’s our turn.
In coop we tried to start StarRupture, a new factory building game with an exploding Star every so often. Problem It’s early, early, early access. The game crashed 3 times within 40 minutes, freezing up my PC, so that Ctrl-Alt-Del Log-Off was the only way to escape. Do not press Esc in blueprint-mode! So we opted out for Everdell, Race for the Galaxy and Dominion for now. Today we’ll switch hosts and hope for improvements.