Usually I’d be making this post from my main account, cod, but for some reason I’ve tried posting multiple times today and it hasn’t let me, it keeps giving me an error. So here we go! Weekly post from a different account this week. Hopefully next week I can go back to my main again.
Started on Prince of Persia: Sands of Time this Easter weekend; no particular reason beyond just a nostalgic yearning.
Thankfully, it still holds up!
Voices of the Void.
Honestly, the game slaps HARD for it being free.
Hopefully Last Epoch’s latest patch. I recently migrated to Linux though, so getting it running has proven to be a bit of a bugbear.
Hades
I didn’t realize that the “God Mode” setting doesn’t do what it does in every other game. It essentially makes the game easier with each death. It’s been a lot easier to pick it up and put it down than when I played it in the past
Transport Fever 2, again. Still in the “where the f is my money” stage with this playthrough, dreaming of buying a whole entire train. Watching little horsecarts take 3 years to travel from A to B. I might be a bit too patient.
Not much time spent playing this week so just a few short sessions on Skate 3 when I have a spare 20 minutes. I normally just find some realistic spots and make some clips.
It’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for me. I wasn’t sure I would like it for the first hour or so—I don’t like big penalties for death, and losing half my xp and money felt rough. But now that I figured out some loss mitigation strategies and started getting better at parrying, I’m really liking it.
That’s one of my all-time favourite games. How far are you? I’m jealous you get to experience it for the first time.
Started Cyberpunk 2077 the other week and I honestly didn’t think it would be that good. A little over 30 hours played by now and I’m nowhere near half finished yet.
Same, only I’ve had to reinstall it four times now. The furthest I’ve gotten was the beginning of the Silverhand mission/arc, but that save got corrupted and I’ve not passed the first broker mission since… 😭🤦🏼♂️
Jumped back into Baldur’s Gate 3 after the new patch dropped to try out the new subclasses. Giant barb is fun! My Tav is a relatively boring diviner, but I realized I haven’t played a wizard face character before and some of the dialogue options have also been interesting. I rolled a Zariel tiefling so it’s also been amusing to use Intimidate checks as a cloth-wearer. Got a Death cleric that’s been not quite as exciting (planning on replacing with Circle of Stars druid a little later) and my crit build martial character I’ve run half a dozen times before will be trying the notorious Hexblade dip.
Side note, I play on Honour difficulty and I’ve run into a few bugs/blips already, more than usual. Frustrating as hell, though I guess I could always dig into my file system if I really wanted to load a save for a (legit?) reason.
This is my plan too - going to use the Easter break to kick off a new playthrough of BG3, can’t wait!
Finally picked up Cassette Beasts when it went on sale and my kids and I are really enjoying it.
I’m still neck-deep in solving the mysteries of Blue Prince. Hopefully it’s permissible to talk about here as it’s hardly the most patient of gaming I’ve done (I bought it on release day). It did have a release week 10% sale though so technically I didn’t pay full price?
The game is absolutely great and it’s extremely hard to talk about without spoilers, which would ruin your experience. It’s a half-roguelite/half-puzzle game and it’s so well made and so intricate. It will take you a little while to start peeling back the layers, but once you start getting into it you realise just how much depth there is under the surface.
If you have any interest in puzzles you should play this game. Like right now. It’s cheap too, not even €30 full price. It’ll probably be a GOTY candidate and it’s definitely the best new game I’ve played in quite a while. Absolutely beautiful distinctive art style too, which meshes perfectly with the themes of the game.
I’m right there with ya! I didn’t even know it was a thing until I just happened to be looking through the PS Plus catalog for something new on release day. Such a crazy coincidence.
Absolutely beautiful, wonderful game!
The hidden depths and secrets are just completely insane. I’m loving piecing together the narrative, but every time I think I have seen (though not completed!) all the puzzles a new hidden layer opens up with new objectives and challenges.
Amazing game!
Asura’s Wrath? I’m pleased to find it’s more than a playable anime, but I’m playing on hard and so far it feels easy? If the main draw is the story and visuals, I probably won’t end up liking it.
Still playing P4AU: one combo away from beating all Ken’s combo callenges! Super fun fighting game—I think I like it more than Under Night In-Birth now.
Finished Hi-Fi Rush over the week. A fantastic, innovative, extremely charming game that lived up to every bit of hype I heard, and more. Made me even more mad over everything that happened to Tango Gameworks (and, frankly, the game industry for the past decade or so)
Hi-Fi Rush really is a nearly perfect game. Everything from the gameplay to the art style to the animation to the writing is just… *chef’s kiss*
Made me even more mad over everything that happened to Tango Gameworks (and, frankly, the game industry for the past decade or so)
Fortunately for Tango Gameworks, they did find a buyer (Krafton) after Microsoft cut them loose, and they kept the IP and plan for more Hi-Fi Rush content.
Let’s hope the new owners treat them better.
But I’m paying Microsoft if I buy it now, right? I wonder how Tango feel about that. Like, I wanna buy it, but I cannot justify giving money to Microsoft.
Yeah, Microsoft kept the publishing rights to the first game and Tango gets nothing if you buy it.
I don’t know if they still do it, but Microsoft used to give a free month of Game Pass to entice new signups. If that offer’s still open, you could grab it and play the game without giving them a cent.
The X-Com series because of the state of the world, if you like working on your own temper while you game, of course.
That series is one of the few in existence that entirely requires a trainer. “90%” my ass.
I hope future installments steal from some of their competitors. A few of them (I think Jagged Alliance 3 and some Valkyria game on consoles?) have a system where aiming is done in first person using a reticle that displays a large circle the shot is guaranteed to land within and a smaller circle with an x% chance of it landing within.
It doesn’t make the game any easier in most situations, but it feels a million times better when you can visualize the exact odds and see how you could possibly miss before you commit, plus you no longer need to worry about missing point-blank shots just because the RNG hates you.
Can’t wait to play the new Star Wars game from XCom devs and miss a 90% as a freaking Jedi 😒
Stormtroopers show sub-5% stats squad-wide… Immediately headshot & insta-kill three of yours, including the quest-critical NPC… out of LoS… under heavy cover… across the fucking map…
Ah, classic XCOM. 🥴
More expensive than flicking yourself in the dick, but mama didn’t raise no cheapskate. 🥳
Hear hear, I missed a 96% shot and had to leave the game last night.
FWIW, it’s “Hear, hear” from the olden times when town criers delivered all the news fit to be yelled. 🤓🙇🏽♂️
Much obliged Otter, gracias.
This is the only reason I don’t play Xcom/Shadowrun. I love the worlds/concepts, but I refuse to waste time negotiating with RNG.
As an OG who grew up with “real” video games having to be entered by hand from the pages of a cherished magazine (like the mail-order seamonkeys/X-Ray glasses/etc. fad before it), please hear me when I say:
If the game you’re playing isn’t doing it for ya, alter/mod it until it is. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a noob, a child, afraid of judgment by “everyone”, or all of the above.
Do you just love the way your latest/favorite game does combat, but somehow the dialogue/narration is a drag? You’re in luck! The latter are almost always “skippable” right outta the box! But, should you instead for whatever reason prefer to not fritter away your very finite and completely unknowable number of remaining heartbeats on a slog of fetch-quests… You have your own permission to upgrade your experience until you’re happy. Full stop.
Fuck the haters (fwiw, the doubters in your head aren’t real people), play your single-player games however you want. The real “cheating” is depriving yourself of that sacred, cherished happiness because of “peer” pressure manufactured by faceless “culture”. 🤘🏼🤓
Been playing Remnant 2 and its so bad I genuinely wish I never bought it. Archetypes locked behind world triggers that just don’t want to trigger, level design that is the same in each world, bosses that just spam the arena with summons and AOE attacks or have shitty gimmicks, enemies with shitty hitboxes, boringly repetitive enemy placement.
Some of those things were there from the start but were put in the “it’ll get better column” (it didn’t) and others weren’t apparent until later in the game.
I’m at the point where it’s shitty enemy swarm after shitty enemy swarm followed by shitty boss fights and I’m just done with it.
The Remnant games are a completionist’s nightmare. Want a specific weapon or bit of kit for your build? You need to hope the right world shows up early (three of the worlds switch their order around each playthrough, so based on luck a specific world could be the first you go to after the tutorial, or it could only show up right before endgame), hope the right main quest for that world is picked (each world has two mutually exclusive storylines), hope the side quest and/or dungeon that drops that item is generated, hope the tile it spawns in is placed on the map (usually but not always guaranteed), hope you don’t miss it entirely due to 90% of the world looking identical… and if it’s dropped by an optional boss, you even have to hope that boss is picked from the pool of choices. It’s insane how random it all is.
And it’s not just gear. As you noted, the archetypes (your character classes) are also gated this way, plus have absolutely ridiculous unlock criteria to boot. Have fun finding the archetype that requires a leap of faith off a random border of a specific map into an opaque cloud of poison, then a second blind drop immediately after to grab another item before you choke to death! Don’t worry if you didn’t know about it, it’s only the best archetype for fighting bosses as a solo player. Better hope that world showed up early in your playthrough and you are the type of player who’s okay dying repeatedly while exploring - which, as this is a Souls-like, revives the dozens of enemies between the last checkpoint and the spot you died*.
One of the archetypes was only found through data mining, the unlock criteria was so obscure. I shouldn’t need out-of-game knowledge and to pass several dice rolls in a row just to have a chance at getting to content I enjoy.
It’s telling that the class dedicated to exploration and level grinding is unlocked by beating the game. You’re expected to play through the campaign several times to see everything, but since it’s all random you’re just as likely to roll stuff you’ve already done. Which the developers clearly realized since you can roll individual worlds as side adventures.
* Though at least one thing that sets it apart from other Souls-likes is that you don’t drop or lose anything on death. However, they compensated for that by making currency drops a miniscule fraction of what they are in other games in the genre, necessitating even more grinding.
Edit: and I actually like Remnant 1 and 2. The gameplay and story are good, the worlds are gorgeous, and the voice acting is phenomenal, but it’s all dragged down by the random generation mechanics. At least 2 is a solid upgrade on that front - the first game felt far more empty and lifeless.
Wow, I knew a decent chunk of the game relied on RNG but I didn’t know it was that extensive.
I got pretty lucky by getting the Nebula gun in my first world. It makes getting through trash mobs a lot easier. Its good even up to boss enemies since I can squirt them and duck under cover while the acid kills them.
I’m on Root Earth which I assume is near endgame and I’ve only unlocked one other archetype and found like three new traits. I was starting to wonder what I was doing wrong but it seems being a pain in the ass is just how the game is designed. I haven’t even found new armor yet! (I know there are two sets you can buy in Ward 13)
I’m in the middle of a playthrough right now, and while I’m enjoying it (I originally came to this thread to post about Remnant 2, then read your comment and realized I agreed with every single thing you said), it’s frustrating how they chose to design things. The games had great intentions held back by poor implementation.
They wanted to make the game replayable, but they did so by artificially limiting what you could encounter in a single playthrough. For completionists this is torture. For one-and-done players it could be a deal breaker.
They wanted endless exploration, but the random maps make exploring unrewarding. I lost count of the number of interesting map features that ended up being completely empty aside from common enemies and some smashable pots (which are empty 90% of the time and drop a paltry amount of basic currency when they aren’t). Remnant 2 is at least way better about this than the first, where the maps were a chore to get through.
They knew one of people’s favorite things about Souls games is piecing things together from obscure clues, so designed the game in a way that the entire playerbase would work together to learn how to unlock everything. The downside is that obtaining many basic things like classes and gear requires ARG-level shenanigans (plus a hefty dose of luck), and if you don’t use a wiki you’ll miss some of the game’s best content.
And the constant hordes you mentioned are a result of the game needing to drip-feed ammo drops to the player since most guns can burn through your entire reserve in under a minute of fighting, especially against the bullet sponge bosses. That Engineer archetype I linked to in my first comment has a mechanic where it regenerates ammo for its special weapons over time when they’re not in use - something like that (or the first Mass Effect’s heat mechanics) would have been preferable if they wanted to force players to swap weapons from time to time rather than get complacent. They clearly played with these ideas during development since there are a few weapon mods and archetype powers that work like that.
I love the gameplay, the lore, the characters, the visual and sound design, hell nearly everything save the parts I complained about, but I’m left with the unpleasant suspicion that these games would have been significantly better if they dropped half of what made them unique in the first place.
