I think most human appendages get cut off at some point in that play.
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unrelated to games im currently playing but i like popping in here infrequently and seeing the same folks still doing their thing. yeso posts will never not make me smile:)
final fantasy ix
pokemon colosseum
i wanna start up patapon 2ā¦
will try to report back later 
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I think by this point I felt the story had trained me to be less curious about the things beyond the scope of what it was trying to show me.
I felt that the world of the game felt very small, just a few settlements, only in the United States, and they really donāt talk about anything beyond the scope of the places we visit. In the second game it seems they travel to more places like Seattle and California and such but those arenāt even mentioned here. My knee-jerk questions were things like ābut what about other countries? what about islands? shouldnāt there be more emergent pseudo-governments around the world? shouldnāt those have different societal structures?ā
Thereās one audio log that says ā60% of the worldās population has been wiped outā and thatās pretty much all the information the game gives us, so I figured that I should just take everything at face value, since thatās seemingly what the story wants me to do
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Just went back and looked at the cutscene where Joel finds out this is happening and Marlene just says Ellieās immune because of a mutation in the cordyceps that infected her, not anything to do with her body. Itās just that the cordyceps grows all over the brain and thereās no safe way to remove it without killing the host. I guess then theyād be able to propagate more and make vaccines from those?
As for the various logistic problems with distributing the vaccine, I guess itās not that hard for me to believe a desperate militia group trying to cure a zombie plague would want to roll the dice on it anyway. I mean what else are they gonna do, not do it?
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Brain biopsy is a thing. You donāt have to take the whole brain to get a sample. I would imagine a brain surgeon (Abbyās Daddy) would know this.
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Iāve still never played The Last of Us Part II but Iāve beaten the first one twice and if Abbyās dad was that smart then he surely would have known to stay the fuck out of my way
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I do give the game some slack with not elaborating on the rest of the world, let alone the country theyāre in. Itās a character story and world building would only bog it down, and probably wouldnāt be very interesting anyway.
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Iām playing Papa Mawio and da Thouthand Year Door, but no one mutht know.
Iāve been playing with a friend, swapping after each battle. Itās one of her favorite games, so itās been fun to have her share it with me. Itās charming.
The current part Iām at is a bit of a grind, but Iām almost through. Sheās really excited for chapter 4.
I really like the variety of character designs and stage presentation for battles.
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I did something similar with my sister back in ~summer 2005. I had already played the game so I just sat shotgun and answered questions while she played. I had such a good time
I had a thought about this the other day w.r.t. TTYDās stage, SMB3ās stage, and SM64ās lakituā¦ I donāt know if itās worth intellectualizing butā¦ thereās something there, maybe?
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I started playing Skin Deep and the immediate thing that struck me was a visceral reaction against the controls. Which is very unusual for a Quake 2 engine game that has fully rebindable controls.
Control rebinding canāt fix the strange groupings of actions on one button, or large amount of push-and-hold controls.
I could see myself playing a lot of it. But I could equally see myself immediately losing all muscle memory because I played a single other game for 5 minutes, and never playing it again.
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I beat South of Midnight aka Indika 2: Drakeās Fortune. Itās a strange combination of ideas but it actually works well and is great fun. I would recommend it to anyone, the magical realism, environments, art design, big band music, all of it is so well executed. I love a musical-inspired game, and the over the top lyrics during set pieces are good campy fun. In general, I love the way the game employs surrealism. As I mentioned above, the game also made me pensive about things outside of the game quite a bit, in a way that many others do not. Iām glad this game was made and wish it a ton of success, because the care and detail put into it is fantastic. Itās one Iāll be thinking about and want to return to again someday.
I think I might keep the Xbox momentum going and check out Le ExpƩdition Trente-trois next.
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The Witcher 3 is much more my speed than TLoU, itās about a morally ambiguous older guy who is kind of emotionally detached, and an extremely effective killer. He is trying to look out for his sort-of surrogate daughter.
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Nice! I loved your write-up on it.
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So far all he does is play cards tho.
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how dare you
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just played about an hour of HASTE.
to quote what i put on bluesky so i can expand on it afterward:
i would describe it as an SSX/Sonic Frontiers roguelike with a main character that is a human girl but looks a lot like Klonoa. i have to imagine this game is based on me. itās focused more on getting a very low-to-the-ground glide, whereas SSX rewards Big Air and Hangtime. in haste, you really want to be a stone skipping on water. that being said, it feels way more like SSX than the āspiritual successorā I see people talk about all the time, Tricky Madness, which feels horrible. that game is paper dolls sliding on ice. haste has weight, momentum, bounce, all those good motion feelings.
I have always been in love with the sense of momentum and hangtime and general vibes of SSX, so iām always on the lookout for something that will be As Good As SSX 3. haste isnāt exactly the same, but itās doing cool good Descenders-like stuff with more Sonicness about it. also how cute is that protagonist!! klonoa girl!!!
also, pretty generous demo, you get to complete up to a full run (which I have not yet)
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Played more of Skin Deep. The control issues are mostly tolerable, and āitās fineā.
My main issue is that everything feels to much like a āYou are now breathing manuallyā meme to actually enjoy the crazy stuff going on.
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Played Expedition 33 from 7 pm to 7 am the next day and finally got to the endgame. I really love this game, but iām also very aware that 90% of what it does has been done before in so so so so many JRPGās that i should be cynic about it and call this a bad game.
But I love the characters, the setting is amazing and the story is very different from your usual anime jrpg (except it kinda isnāt)
But i couldnāt help thinking āthis thing is so effign FFX i canāt believe it they want to get away with itā We have a literal Tidus character, we end the āpilgrimageā and win but not quite and now the world is open and i have the choice of playing like 30 hours exploring everything or just go and end this. Kinda want to end it and then see how new game+ works.
I like that i was able to play this game within the release window, it has been funny being part of the conversation, but man, iām too old to play games for a long time. Lucky iāve had some back to back free days + vacations.
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Iāve been thinking a bunch about what makes an (original flavour) Castlevania game lately, and trying to find other games that try to go for that same sort of construction, so I played Koumajou Remilia 1 and 2 after having heard about the first game years and years ago. Andā¦ they kinda stink! Actually, 1 definitely stinks, and while 2 improves somewhat on 1ās problems, it only does it so well. The animations of the player characters and some of the enemies are pretty good, but the setting is bland and boring, the number of moves the player character can pull off it so small, and the bullet hell nature of the frequent bosses doesnāt match well with the way the way the player controls. I guess if I was a big Touhou fan or something, or if we didnāt also have access to Castlevanias in everything but name like Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 1 and 2, I might be a little more forgiving but dang are these two bad games! I canāt remember the last time I was so disappointed by a game!
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