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[AlStar]

The Steel Federation had been conducting a string of successful campaigns - a small Precursor fleet outpost was wiped out with only minimal losses; a nest of Rakhas was wiped out in ground combat; and a primitive alien race with over a billion members was pacified and brought under colonial rule.

The technology of energy shields had recently been improved to the point that it was deemed ready for installation on the warships of the fleet - no longer would they be tanking damage directly with their armored hulls; instead a regenerating 85-point shield would deflect all but the most severe blows.

Thus, when a new Precursor base was discovered at 40 Eridani, the fleet was dispatched to great fanfare. Who were these soulless machines, that would think to deny the supremacy of the Human race?

During the approach to the planet that the Precursors had claimed, higher-than-expected resistance was encountered. Dozens of missiles were being fired in five minute intervals. The fleet's point defense systems engaged, but the Precursor missiles were devilishly devious, operating at high speed with multiple decoys. Nuclear flames rippled over the fleet; but the new shields proved true, and armor damage was minimal.

The Precursor base was nearly within range of the fleets large-bore laser weapons when they changed tactics - instead of the dozens of large anti-ship missiles every couple of minutes; they instead opened up with hundreds of tiny missiles every five seconds. Although each of the diminutive warheads inflicted negligible damage, there were so many that they overwhelmed shields, then sandpapered the hulls of targeted ships, digging to the vital systems below. Within 30 seconds, three fleet warships had exploded. An order to retreat was given; but before they finally managed to escape out of the range of the deadly stream of fire, three more ships had been blown to pieces.

The remaining fleet limped back to Sol, where they would be repaired. The great shipyards sprang to life, laying down the hulls of a dozen new vessels. The fleet would be back, stronger and more technologically advanced.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Aurora 4x

[Telgin]

Died 4 times to the omega pirate in Metroid Prime: Remastered.  More times there than the rest of the game put together.

Spoiler: Rant again (click to show/hide)

It's not even that hard of a fight once you figure it out, but it's extremely obnoxious dealing with the beam troopers.

Oh, what's that?  You're trying to find the invisible omega pirate to shoot him, but there are two new enemies that just spawned?  And you can't tell what they're vulnerable to without turning off X-ray mode?  Oh, and there's 2 different kinds, so you have to switch between beams to even hurt them?  And you have to be sure to shoot the omega pirate as much as you can while he's vulnerable because it's almost impossible to survive more than 3 rounds?

Ultimately I just learned to mostly ignore the beam troopers.  Mostly, since they'll still chew you up if you do ignore them totally.  I finally just got lucky on the spawns.

The omega pirate himself is also a massive pain.  I kept backpedaling into phazon while trying to get out of melee range, but he's faster than you so once he gets into melee it felt like there was almost nothing I could do to get away and stop taking hits for huge damage.  Then when he's got the beam absorbing thing going on, even missiles can't hit his left arm reliably to damage him anymore.

[Great Order]

Thought I'd identified the only turret in the room so I ran into a safe spot, only to realise that safe spot carried a second turret. Tried backtracking, only to trigger the first turret and wound up in a crossfire.

Receiver 2

[Telgin]

Died twice to the Metroid Prime.  I won't type up a long rant again, but I hope at least one other person in the world feels that the fight was needlessly long and tedious and that having to repeat the first phase was just a waste of time if you died.  10 minutes per attempt.  Not even a joke.

[Great Order]

God Providence down to 2000 health. Somewhere in the realm of 1/40th of his maximum HP.

Had he not landed a stun attack and then dropped about twenty of his target attacks on me, I'd have made it.

Risk of Rain

[Telgin]

Died to a failed quick time event to a giant flying robot snake thing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sonic Frontiers

This game feels uncanny in a lot of ways, and janky in a lot of other ways, but it's fun enough.  Running around feels good.

Anyway, the Super Sonic boss fights have been surprisingly frustrating.  I lost the first one several times before I farmed up 400 rings, since 100 was nowhere near enough.  The second boss took 3 tries because it springs a new QTE on you, and I thought I was supposed to hit Y rapidly like with the last boss's QTE.  Failed it again, repeating the fight for a third time, before I realized I had to time when I hit Y.

"Super Sonic doesn't take damage."  Uh huh.

Anyway, my brother said my commentary on the game sounds like it could be summed up with the sentence "I don't know what I'm doing wrong."  I don't have any other examples off the top of my head, but I was saying "Huh?", "What the?", "Why did that happen?", "I don't understand this mechanic," and so on quite a lot.  Some of it was just the camera or physics spazzing out though.  That's been a constant in Sonic games since Sonic Adventure.

[Akura]

Damn near ran out of booze, and it kept showing that it could not find any of the resources it needed. Took me far too long to realize why; the brewery was crammed with random ingredients for the different orders that it could not hold any more and it could not make any single thing. Apparently, buildings will try to load up resources for every queued order, regardless of priority, availability, or storage space.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hammerting, a GOG freebie a few weeks ago. It's... not bad but has some very glaring flaws. Notably, there's little in the way of handling priority tasks. There's *no* way to get dwarves to prioritize one of their professions, save for disabling every other profession. Marking professions as favorite only seems to affect what gear they'll auto-equip.

[Funk]

Laser blast of the undemocratic automaton scum.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Helldivers 2

[Akura]

The rollercoaster level.

Spoiler: To elaborate (click to show/hide)

The level is a several-minutes long sequence of frame-perfect button inputs that has to be done correctly in one go. There's no checkpoints as far as I can tell. And worse, you don't immediately fail if you don't get it just perfect. Rather, there's a thing chasing you throughout; when rounding a corner it slows down slightly(you need frame-perfect direction input to maintain speed), but along straightaways it moves faster than you. So if you're not absolutely perfect with your input timing, you'll find yourself in a spot where you cannot win, and have to start the entire level over.

There are no tricks or anything to make it easier, as far as I know. Looking at the map of the level, I think I got about 80% through it. There was a similar level in the original game that I was never able to beat either.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, which was released on the Switch's SNES emulator along with Killer Instinct and a few others a few days ago.

EDIT: Rematched Lily to train up a change in my lineup because I learned the hard way that the leader of the Brotherhood of the Eternal Pyre doesn't use a Fire-type Pal. It's {Electric/Dragon}. Then again, Lyleen is a Grass-type in a frozen hellhole, so what is logic? Would have beat Lily if my Pals were actually attacking her as often as they should have. Or if her hitbox wasn't terrible causing about half the bullets I was shooting at her to visibly pass right through her body.

Also discovered after multiple deaths that Cold-Resistant Metal Armor(which has +2 cold resist/+1 heat resist) and Fire-Resistant Underwear provides just enough heat resistance to travel around the volcano region during the day, except I was still burning to death because I started flying on my Vanwyrm. Having a Fire-type Pal out increases your body heat a little. "A little" was enough to die of heatstroke before I could figure out why; instead I was flying away desperately on a fire lizard hoping to reach a cooler climate not realizing that was killing me.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Palworld.