T w e n t y S i d e d
This week, I don’t know.
I know I played a bit of Stardew valley. But this week was busy, so it’s kind of a blur.
Something of note is that I’ve been working on getting my GED. I’ve been enjoying learning math, most notably surface area and volume. Currently working on radicals, not as fun, but still interesting.
What’s everyone else doing?
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.
Dead Island
A stream-of-gameplay review of Dead Island. This game is a cavalcade of bugs and bad design choices.
Top 64 Videogames
Lists of 'best games ever' are dumb and annoying. But like a self-loathing hipster I made one anyway.
Resident Evil 4
Who is this imbecile and why is he wandering around Europe unsupervised?
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.
Brotato, surprise.
Slay The Spire 2. Got the Ironclad up to Ascension 9 now, pretty easily so far. Feels easier than the first game so far. Maybe I’ve just forgotten how the first game went.
Tales of Berseria got picked back up; turns out I dropped it for a year and change. Currently in the bit with the dragon, aka “the filler arc of the filler arc.” Back to trying to level up every piece of equipment, which now involves figuring out how much equipment is already leveled up (looks like I’m halfway through Amphibole equipment). I thought the evolved stuff got special item descriptions, but it looks like those don’t change; disappointing, but also very helpful for figuring out which pieces are evolutions of which pieces.
Game’s very easy, partly because that’s just the way the game is, and partly because I’m ludicrously overleveled from grinding up way more gear than I’m supposed to have.
Haven’t played anything since last week’s Darkest Dungeon 2, but that’s because I’ve been playing “Catch up on a bunch of Marvel stuff from the last X years.” /b Apparently the actual answer to what it would take to get me back in was “Have a new Spiderman movie coming out.”
Played through The Incident at Galley House. It’s a puzzle game where a bunch of people turned up dead in a house and you need to figure out what happened. To do this, you have a machine which can show you what happened if you can figure out exactly who was present in a given room at a given hour. The game gives you a few scenes to get you going and then you need to derive from there – maybe someone mentioned chatting to someone just now, or you can infer stuff other ways – people can only be in one place at once, sometimes you have reason to believe someone will stay in the same room, etc. You also need to figure out who everyone is. I enjoyed the puzzle elements and the story and I particularly liked the lead up to the end of the game. It’s kind of developed the same people as The Roottrees are Dead but mostly it is an adaptation of Type Help (with the help of the author of that game).
I also played through The Red Pearls of Borneo. It’s a puzzle game where a bunch of people turned up dead in a plantation in Borneo during WWII and you need to figure out what happened (given the starting info that they were not, in fact, all killed by the Japanese). To do this, you are a psychic who can see what happened if you can figure out exactly who was present in a given room at a given hour. Yes, the games are in fact pretty similar in premise. This one is free, and easily worth twice the cost! But really it was quite good, I do feel like I had to take more 50/50 shots than I did in Incident but it’s not like there’s a consequence for failure besides knowing that I am not a perfect puzzle solver. While I did enjoy it the epilogue is a bit odd because
it uses the same mechanics but with no actual puzzle to solve, so it’s a complicated way to just read stuff, which on the bright side was entertaining to read but it really did feel weird.I’ve been playing a bunch of Halls of Torment. It’s a Bullet Heaven type game with retro graphics, and I do think I prefer it to Vampire Survivors. I’d played it previously and felt like doing so again, which is a good sign for a game. There’s a new DLC coming this year with apparently some balance changes, which will hopefully be good for the game. I do wish it was better at surfacing some info, like it matters what attributes your starting weapon has and, while they’re generally pretty intuitive, they’re not actually visible except when you’re selecting a character, while the attributes for other abilities can be seen at any time. The game has a bunch of little achievements that unlock stuff (or give gold, the boring option), and I like that, but you can also only see those while in the starting area.
Finally I played the demo for Clever Girls. The premise is that a company managed to bring back dinosaurs, and give them sapience, and then decided they couldn’t make a profit on the project (I think they’re not very bright) and kind of abandoned it. So now the dinosaurs are on the run and you have turn based tactics stealth gameplay to take out the people chasing them. Except I don’t know how that’s going to play out in the full game because in the demo they’re pretending in a theater and it’s adorable. The gameplay in the demo is very, very easy (the enemies have very narrow vision and also they can’t hear an allosaurus (?) 3 feet behind them, nevermind the other dinos) and the character personalities are pretty one note, but I love the premise and the art is just so cute. And the title is perfect.
I played a bit more of Suikoden V, recruiting the tactician with a prison break. The dungeons are long and annoying and can use up a lot of health potions, but the story is still pretty good (the tactician is in prison because she was working for the family of the main villains and thought they were doing something wrong and betrayed them, and is willing to work with you despite the fact that your mother was the one who imprisoned her because the family wanted her executed instead and so imprisonment was indeed merciful, and she turns out to be the one who told your mother to take up the rune that drove her mad). I stopped at the next battle.
I played a little further in Knights of the Old Republic, playing Manaan. Got to the point where you have to use one of a few methods to break into the Sith base and decided I didn’t feel like doing that that day. I’ll get back to it sometime.
Surely this tactician who has previously betrayed everyone on both sides will be our loyal and steadfast ally moving forward.
I played this game already — a long time ago — and don’t recall a betrayal from her. There’s the expected betrayal and a completely unexpected — although justified — one later on. Although the lack of a betrayal there might be because she flat-out tells you that if you do something that she thinks is wrong, she’ll betray you, too, and asks if you’re okay with that before agreeing to join.
I’ve played no Suikodens, just thought it was an amusing explanation. I’m going to refer to this tactician as “Judith Iscariot” going forward.
Still playing modded Rimworld. I got my gravship down to the Propane Lakes, a unique biome located at the planetary poles: colder and more remote than Sea Ice. It was horrible.
-40 Degrees Celsius, no arable soil, eternal sunlight, the only plants growing were alien and had to be foraged (not cultivated) and of course, it’s miles and miles from any other faction camps.
So naturally a solitary nudist turned up to visit me. Stupid computer game logic and your randomly-generated events. They didn’t even make it to the gravship before they collapsed from hypothermia, and then they froze to death before I could rescue them.
Thankfully, with all that propane around it was relatively easy to refuel my ship and GTFO before the game generated too many more immersion-breaking things near me. That didn’t stop a trade caravan* entering the map as I was preparing to leave, however – they didn’t make it to the ship either, deciding to turn back and go…somewhere…because it was dangerously cold.
Anyway. Up next: the Feralisk-Infested Jungles.
*Presumably from the super-successful ‘Let’s Send Our Merchants To The Literal Ends Of The Planet To Trudge Around In The Snow Hoping To Find Customers’ Trading Company…
DiRT Rally 2.0 as always, and still juggling Murder By Numbers and SKALD: Against the Black Priory.
Started The Thaumaturge. It has a unique setting and atmosphere to it, and the writing doesn’t seem too bad. Along with the ‘investigation’ gameplay, I was really interested. And yet, that interest has already severely waned because I’m hardly doing anything on my own. Despite ostensibly being about uncovering secrets, the game doesn’t allow me to do it myself. I just wander around clicking on the dots and letting the game make the conclusions for me. I really was expecting something a bit more interactive, and I’m not getting it.
The only really interactive bit are the battles, and I’m finding them rather easy so far, even on the hardest difficulty.