Last Game You Played

TheSameIdiot said:
I think she's a valuable voice to have in the gaming space, but I always take her with a grain of salt. She's angry in a way that would've made teenage me bristle, and I was constantly furious in my youth.

She's like Yahtzee in that her criticisms don't always feel fair. Sometimes it's a critique looking for a target rather than the inverse.

It lives in a similar space to Anthony's Customs, though at least Yahtzee and SS seem to enjoy their hobby.
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Exactly. Steph puts out the kind of reviews where I really need to think about whether I'm likely to be irritated by whatever her bugbear is. Yahtzee is the kind of review I put on to laugh at and -usually- it doesn't even inform whether I want to buy a game at all. In fact, I usually watch his stuff after I've already played whatever game he's reviewing.
 
Skate Story is one of those games 100% tailored for me.

Soundtrack.
Art.
Story.
Purple prose.
Skateboarding.

It has timed "boss battles", which are just score jams, really, but if you liked Abzu or Journey, it hits that note for me as well. When you are in the flow with those chill tracks. Man. Made me want to hop on a board right after.

What a delightful weird game with a top notch soundtrack by Blood Cultures.
 
Yeah, had a quick sesh on it last night, only done the first chapter but I love the vibe so far. Gonna eat all the moons, man.

I also picked up Unbeatable, which I have loved the look of since it was announced (rhythm action beat-em-up taking on the cops, hell yes). It does, however, have maybe the most annoyingly goddamn slow pain in the ass intro section of anything I've ever played. I just want dance and punch cops man, why the fuck is taking so long to get to the firework factory? Why does this maid have to give me a tour of the house? Why are walking halfway across town? AAAAAAAAAAH
 
Haven't heard of it, but I'll check it out. Agreed that I despise slow openers when I just wanna play their game.

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www.vice.com

Publisher Addresses Studio Shutdown After Game Was Canceled 24 Hours After Its Reveal

Goonswarm Games issues a statement admitting AI art slipped into promo assets, leading to the cancellation of POSTAL: Bullet Paradise.
www.vice.com www.vice.com

Publisher and Studio deny AI.

Tell people to eat shit and they are liars. No, truly. "Eat shit." "Anti AI is ruining art."

Publisher cuts ties.

Studio shuts down despite it "being a lie in the AI war".

Admits to it all days later.

Truly the real snowflakes of our generation.
 
Coming from Absolum and the prior Turtles game, I find Cosmic Invasion forgettable and uninteresting and cheap, and now that Marvel veneer has worn off, I regret the full price on it.
 
Finally picked up Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora now that they added the 3rd person mode, and I'm liking it well enough so far. I'm a sucker for some deep lore and a fully realized world, so being able to learn even more about the world and how it works is fun. It's far from perfect- a little repetitive, and some eye-rolling glitches, but mostly quite enjoyable. I really only get into Avatar mode every couple years for the new movies, but it's fun to envelop myself while it lasts. Love 'em or hate 'em, they still feel like events to me- nowhere near the level of how the prequel trilogy was as a kid, but similar.
 
Kingdom Come 2 log:

I have just left Suchdol, and have not yet seen Kuttenberg proper.

Is this the end of being blacked out, kidnapped, and reset? Everything up to here has been a ride, but I feel like I've had several false starts and prologues. Fun, just... Watch your back, Henry, jeez.

As a result I'm like 20 and a master thief and master swordsman and only now do I feel like I got to the Prancing Pony.

@Damien as a historical dude and this is your scene: why are people pronouncing Von Bergow and Lichtenstein different ways? It is consistent per character but Istvan calls him Bergow, most call him Bergoff, Bergov, and I heard another weird one from somebody

Is this all to do with the regions and languages of the era? Can't imagine they just let it slip and voice acting because everything in this game is so goddamn immaculately executed.
 
altcunningham said:
Is this the end of being blacked out, kidnapped, and reset? Everything up to here has been a ride, but I feel like I've had several false starts and prologues. Fun, just... Watch your back, Henry, jeez.
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Basically... yes? There was actually a glitch where you'd lose all of your stuff and have to re-equip everything if you traveled back to the old map after getting to Kuttenberg. Clearly, the intention was always for the second area to be the 'main game.' This is where they really consider it an open world. Which is so weird because the first map is fairly large and has tons to do. And the game basically never asks you to go back to the original area, which is also weird given how much work went into that region.

Anyway, the game is mostly done fucking with you now besides story moments and such where they don't want you to have access to certain items. But it's not as ham-fisted as 'you were knocked out and now you're naked and have to start over' and when that does happen you just have to go grab your stuff and get away.


altcunningham said:
As a result I'm like 20 and a master thief and master swordsman and only now do I feel like I got to the Prancing Pony.
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My biggest... criticism if not complaint, about this entire franchise is that they really want all the content except the main story to be optional. But if you don't do any of it you're going to be underpowered, and if you do all of it you're going to be a god among men very early in the story and it's fucking hilarious to watch some guy basically scream at you for OBVIOUSLY being a peasant when you're wearing armour valued higher than half the value of the country you're in.

You also basically trivialize a lot of later-game challenges by having maxed out all of your important skills and having the best armor and weapons. Legacy of the Forge, if you have that DLC, will make it even worse because a couple of those swords you can craft are insanely good.

But it IS hard to criticize this issue because it's a very general RPG issue that I don't think anyone has successfully solved.



altcunningham said:
@Damien as a historical dude and this is your scene: why are people pronouncing Von Bergow and Lichtenstein different ways? It is consistent per character but Istvan calls him Bergow, most call him Bergoff, Bergov, and I heard another weird one from somebody
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If you listen carefully, they actually pronounce a lot of things differently. Rattay is another one.
I think what this boils down to is the difficulty in getting VAs from different areas of the world to pronounce things the same. You can flavor it up by pointing out that they are in Bohemia. It's a small enough region to be heavily influenced by Poland, Germany, Austria, and even the French and Italians. There would certainly be a LOT of regional accents and even regional pronunciations.
So you can excuse it, but I haven't seen any convincing reason why they would have done it on purpose, unfortunately.
 
Cool. Yeah it's not a criticism. I just wasn't sure if maybe there were regional dialects or whatever with the amount of detail they have. I don't know much about this era and geography. It's pretty cool. Makes me want to read a book.
 
altcunningham said:
Cool. Yeah it's not a criticism. I just wasn't sure if maybe there were regional dialects or whatever with the amount of detail they have. I don't know much about this era and geography. It's pretty cool. Makes me want to read a book.
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Jan Zizka was a real guy and you should absolutely read about him. He's a local hero. Him being in this game as someone you work alongside is, for an American, the equivalent of playing in a video game fighting alongside Patton or Chuck Norris (before we all knew Chuck was a piece of shit).

Also... Bohemian/Czech medieval history is really cool. The Hussite Wars were nutter butters.

And no, it's a good thing to criticize even if you were being critical. Because they really should have policed it better for the sake of immersion.
 
Damien said:
Jan Zizka was a real guy and you should absolutely read about him. He's a local hero. Him being in this game as someone you work alongside is, for an American, the equivalent of playing in a video game fighting alongside Patton or Chuck Norris (before we all knew Chuck was a piece of shit).
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Damn, that's cool. Is his whole holy mission and that fort plotline taken from real history?
 
altcunningham said:
Damn, that's cool. Is his whole holy mission and that fort plotline taken from real history?
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Adapted from history, yeah. Zizka was a devout follower of Jan Hus. But KCD2 is set in 1403 or 1405, I believe. Hus was executed in 1415. So the Zizka we have in KCD2 is like... pre-hero Zizka. I think that's what's cool about him. We're getting to interact with him as he's sort of finding himself and becoming the feared warrior he was known as later on.

Off the top of my head, I don't think the fort plotline is a direct analogue of anything that actually happened. But I could be mistaken. Czech history is super interesting, but it's not what I'm strongest on so I'd have to do some digging.
 
I've had a relatively pitiful amount of time for hobbies over the last few weeks, but I have given a few Nintendo classics a look.

I haven't gone back to A Link to the Past because I was getting my ass whooped. We'll see if I ever do. I started Super Mario World instead.

My wife grew up with a Super Nintendo and apparently played an absurd amount of Super Mario World. Lucky for me, too, because there's no chance I could beat it alone. I find platformers frustrating because it's clear what you're supposed to do, but I can't synchronize my brain, eyes, and fingers. Super Mario World is even worse because the patterns are obvious. My fingers refuse to cooperate. My wife, who would say similar things about Halo or Assassin's Creed, is a Mario wizard. We got through the first world last night. I managed to beat one level. She beat the rest.

I've been on this gaming journey recently, beating either classics (Half-Life; Fallout 3; Dragon Age; Marvel's arcade classics) or games inspired by classics (Death's Door - 3D isometric Zelda; Tunic - 3D isometric Zelda; Expedition 33 - Final Fantasy; Dusk - OG DOOM). As with classic film, it's a trip to see something introduced that would be iterated on forever.

Super Mario World is like that. Outside of flying, I wouldn't say any of it has lit my world on fire, but it's obvious to see how it would've in 1990. Still, there's a lot of game left, and I know Nintendo tends to introduce new mechanics as you go. I'll keep you posted.

I also started Super Metroid. I really like Metroidvanias (Dead Cells is one of my top 25 games of all time), but I often struggle with the difficulty. Hollow Knight was like that. I finished about 65% of Ori and the Blind Forest before I hit a platforming section that I couldn't beat. Well, Super Metroid is my shit. It's tough for me (a retro-challenged gamer) without frustrating me. Samus is so badass.

The Nintendo Online program is wonderful. On a lark, my wife and I hit Super Tennis, F-Zero X (as a long-time Smash player, it's wild to see Captain Falcon's origin), Super Mario Kart, and Mario Kart 64. It was great to pop in and check these games out with no real commitment. I couldn't believe how similar the old Mario Kart games felt to the modern versions. F-Zero? Surprisingly fun.

Honestly, if I had more of a follow-through with old-ass games, this subscription would be worth the cost of a Switch on its own. There are so many famous—and infamous—games on the service that it could keep me entertained for years. Fire Emblem, EarthBound, Kirby, Battletoads, Fatal Fury, Mario Golf, Mega Man, Bionic Commando, Kid Icarus, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Punch-Out, GoldenEye, and countless others.

It's also amazing that I wasn't aware of this service until someone told me about it. I don't pay that much attention to Nintendo, but come on.
 
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