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[Imic]

Finally playing half life 2. Got it ages ago in a steam along with every other half life game, expansion, spinoff, and flavour of novelty hand soap ever released. It was a steam sale, and the whole bundle cost like a fiver. Never got very far in any of them, though. I’m running out of things to use for procrastinating when I could be learning to sketch properly at last, so this is my last resort.

[xaritscin]

longest campaign with DWU, sandbox mode to see how does one grow from a pre-FTL empire and so on. lategame was reachable but man there's so many pirates, and then that fallen empire/extragalactic crysis ravaging the whole cluster. yup, i guess i wasnt ready to play Stellaris either. Serucan is an interesting race tho (all party, not much war but still, Feudalism exists and i can handle the regular piracy)

[nenjin]

Finally playing Hollow Knight because I got a free key.

Had avoided this one for a while, because the vaguely cute art style really didn't do it for me. Neither did the idea it's about bugs.

But after 8 hours it's won me over. It's the combination of the Dark Souls-esqe story and world, the excellence of the Metroidvania design and just the general execution, mostly music.

Having now played many of the big name 2d Soulslike Metroidvanias, Salt & Sanctuary, Blashphemous, Bloodstained Ritual of the Night (to a lesser extent) and this.....I think Hollow Knight is one of the most well rounded of the group. Thematically I certainly enjoy Blasphemous more. And Salt & Sanctuary has better gearing options.....but for what it does, HK does it well.

Levels _almost_ overstay their welcome sometimes, and I can't say I enjoy the platforming sections because of how far you'll end up running back if you die.

But what I really like is the exploration tension. You DELVE in HK, and because travel points are so few and far between, there's real tension in trying to stay alive, deciding when to head back, and all that. It also really, really makes you use your money which I love. I hate games where you can just grind cash and buy out everything you can see super easily, leaving the rest for purposefully overpriced stuff. HK makes money feel like it matters, so you have a reason to keep slaying baddies.

There's also just so much side content, and tons of backtracking due to unlocks. Every other screen it feels like has some backtracking loot, or a hidden secret or something.

The world is even starting to grow on me a little bit. HK takes the melancholy to 11, but also gives me that Super Metroid "wandering through a buried ancient civilization" vibe.

If I have one gripe it's that they over did the after effects. The whole screen shake/sound muting when you get hit is over way over the top. The gas explosions and what not, the weird floaty shit in certain areas of the game, and the overall additional "stuff" used to enhance the visuals, while generally good, more than often goes too far over the top and becomes a distraction.

That's a pretty minor gripe overall though. Really enjoying it, glad I finally gave it a chance.

[delphonso]

Yeah, Hollow Knight really hit a stride on its own, I think. Salt and Sanctuary was solid mechanically, but I really disliked its whole "this is Dark Souls. Did you play Dark Souls? Remember Dark Souls?" feeling.

[MCreeper]

Installed Far Cry 5. Disabled aim assist and motion blur. Killed first enemy, grabbed a bat, swung the bat. Uninstalled Far Cry 5. Game caeselessly insulting the player, being dead-railroaded and being barely not utter junk is a standart for ubisoft and was expected, but i'm not gonna tolerate settings doing nothing. 

[Yoink]

The Outer Worlds.
I've only just bought it and haven't played enough to get a feel for it, but I plan on changing that this morning. Time to make a new, more entertaining character and start fresh! Still tryna decide what kind of build to go for, though.   



Edit: I think I like this game! At first there was a definitely a moment of "oh jeez what did I just spend sixty bucks on" but no, now I'm getting into it and it is quite nice. There's plenty of surprisingly enjoyable dialogue, I'm starting to like a lot of the characters, and of course there's a fair bit of lovely scenery.

Still wish there were more options when it comes to quests, though. Like, I find a missing person, they're fine, I'd expect to go tell folks there's no cause for alarm (or, better yet, tell 'em I found said missing person's corpse), but instead the game expects me to do a whole pain-in-the-arse runaround to convince them to go back to their previous, even shittier living situation? Pass.
Instead I guess I'll just start killing people, starting with the biggest pain in my posterior and working my way down from there until that part of the quest breaks and the survivors can get on with their lives. At least this game lets you take that approach to problem-solving, unlike pretty much any Bethesda game I'm aware of!   

[Fire and Glory]

A Bastard's Tale

Picture:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's a side scrolling game about a knight(?) with a big sword determinedly walking to the right and fencing with whatever gets in his way, including peasants, cows, other knights, and desert hobos with sticks.

You can parry block up, left, or right and attack in those same directions as well as roll backwards. Somewhere in the level is a potion to heal your 5 or so hitpoints to full. Good luck.

It's difficult although not that difficult as I've reached level 3 of 5 in the span of one or two hours. Still, there's a lot of dying and doing the level again and the game has hit me with at least one cheap shot*. It also feels somewhat unreasonably difficult to tell if an enemy is attack left or right. Still, I'm enjoying it more or less, especially for the price. (1.79 NZD, cheaper for Americans.)

One of the reasons I bought the game was that I was curious why we're killing random peasants and farmyard animals in the demo. I've no answer at the moment but perhaps it'll become clear in the end. Or maybe the reason is just that we're a Bastard?

It's on sale and it has a demo so some of you might enjoy it a bit too eh?

*Certain enemies will fling their weapon up into the air when dying, at least one's weapon will hurt you if it makes contact when it comes down.

Finished the game, it was pretty alright. Had a bit of ambiguous plot stuff to think about too. I don't regret dropping two dollars on it.

[Rince Wind]

Did you find out why you had to fight peasants and their animals?

[nenjin]

Been in the mood for something grindy and mindless after Hollow Knight, so I've returned to Inquisitor: Martyr for a while. Just in time for a month-long event.

At this point in the game's lifespan, there's about 14 different ways to all reach the same end goal: max out your character level and get the sickest gear possible. There's a strange inequality between activities, where no one activity can totally meet all your needs (credits, because high end upgrading is fairly random and so mind bogglingly expensive, Fate in case you still don't own all the DLC or are spending it routinely on fat loot chests and cosmetics, Influence because unless you methodically cleared each system there are gaps in older areas you've leveled past, and gear. Because of the repeatable missions with loot crates vs. random drops, regular missions end up being less profitable on the credits and gear front by comparison.)

So you bounce around to a lot of different kinds of activities in Martyr. Then you mix in the Tarot cards to further tweak what you want to get out of missions.

My psyker has ascended to new levels of brokenness as I've started filling out all his gear with sockets and putting Pslam Doctrines together. Gear is a little harder to find real upgrades for now (and expensive as hell to tailor to your needs), so Pslams and Shards make up the real upgrades for me right now. And I'm a little annoyed that Archeotech and Ancient Relics are actually often sub-optimal compared to just regular relics. You wait all this time to find a new sexy drop and it turns out to be so marginally better in some areas while objectively weaker in others, and can range from "can't re-roll the big special stat" to "can't be re-rolled at all" so....you just shard it. Wah wah.

All in all though, still enjoying it despite the grindiness. Mostly because I'm so disgustingly OP and have not yet found the ceiling on that.

[Fire and Glory]

Did you find out why you had to fight peasants and their animals?

Nothing definitive but it does give you a few possible reasons. The story is only told through a picture you're given at the end of every level and most of these pictures aren't centered on the Bastard so it's hard to know what's going on.

[nenjin]

Not really me playing but....

In these really trying times, I think I felt the need for some really quality nostalgia.

I have a good friend who I've played games with since we were kids, and I asked him "Have you ever played Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines?" And he was like "no." (We basically played the last 1/3rd of Hollow Knight together.)

He has a mixed relationship with the World of Darkness. A lot of it he likes. But the rules system, the tone and the players have always been a huge turn off for him. He's not goth, he hates anything remotely mopey, and he hates getting shit on by NPCs. All of which are kinda features of VtM.

I've always generally liked it, for many reasons, even though I have my own reservations about the WoD in general. Some of which I share with him.

Which is why I've always like Bloodlines so much. For me it was everything I like about WoD with just enough humor and absurdity to stop it from being completely melodramatic and up its own ass, with "Interview with a Vampire" levels of "woe is me."

So I invited my friend to play through it. He wanted to switch off but differing control schemes and and the fact I've beaten it like 3 times, made me just want to let him drive while I provided as much context, explanation and guidance as I thought was fun. I didn't want to spoil anything for him or drive him toward what I'd do in every instance.

Anyways, he's really been enjoying it. It's gratifying as a fan of the video game, and as a fan of the table top, it's nice to see him find an appreciate for WoD that isn't totally smothered by his dislikes. It doesn't do anything for his actual problems of the ruleset or tone or w/e of the table top, but it's a delivery of WoD he can appreciate and that brings him closer to the setting instead of being an instant turn off.

He went with a Ventrue which, on reflection, is basically easy mode as far as the roleplaying portion of it is concerned. Need someone to do something? *DOMINATE* Problem solved. It's interesting watching him play it how sections I thought were enormous are actually kinda small. (Although the fucking Hollywood sewers were still a massive slog as always.) I feel like he's also had the experience that the game generally gets better the deeper in to it you get. Fresh things, novelty and variety.

Anyways, just kind of a warm fuzzy to see someone get in to a game you've always cherished.

[Iduno]

But the rules system, the tone and the players have always been a huge turn off for him. He's not goth, he hates anything remotely mopey, and he hates getting shit on by NPCs.

If he's going to pick problems with WoD, he kind of hit all of the big ones.

[nenjin]

Just bought Hades, put about 30 minutes in to it.

Seems like a pretty solid Roguelike. I enjoyed Bastion but never finished it, less because of the combat and more because of the aesthetic. Didn't play Transistor because the theme and art didn't grab me, and I'd already played RUINER which seemed like almost exactly the same thing.

Hades looks pretty quality though. Almost 10 gigs big, which guaranteed is almost all voice acting. The art is lovely, the game handles pretty snappily and there's oodles and oodles of roguelike unlockable goodness to be had. Along with lots of just flavorful dialog. It's a nice take on the whole "Die and Fight Again" theme. You're a god of the underworld and so can't die for real. Some allusions to Dark Souls-esqe challenge from some of the NPCs.

Gonna enjoy the hell out of this, might play it hot seat with a friend.

[Telgin]

Just beat Mario Odyssey, and I have to admit I was irrationally happy that I could bounce on Bowser's body after defeating him.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game.  The bosses were all pretty easy, but that's okay, I was using the game as a means of relaxing anyway.  I'm curious to see what some of the post game content is like, and expect that some of it will probably be very challenging since it's optional.

[Sergius]

I just started a run of Wizardry 8 after watching Sseth's EXTREME ROLEPLAYING video.

Having a fun time, I must say, even tho combat takes forever, even tho I have it accelerated to 25x speed.

Also, Bethesda games has nothing on W8 regarding leveled enemies. Levels are so meaningless and enemies are always your levelą1, and your skills go up without leveling, so the more you level the harder it gets for no apparent gain, other than spells having level AND skill requirements. OTOH you CAN choose not to level.