My and some pals did a co-op run of DOOM 1 the other night spread across PC, Xbox, and Switch and it was a breeze to set up. We had to do voice chat on Discord, but otherwise, that cross play is maybe the most important thing this new remaster brings to the table. Never though I would get to play co-op like that. At the low (possibly free price point) it seems like a perfect time to play some casual co-op DOOM.
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I’ve been doing this a lot, actually. Death Stranding is very much the ying to RDR2’s yang. When you boil down Death Stranding you find mundanity gamified. Your pathing, what you build, if you walk or take a vehicle, how much you decide to pack on your back; all of this IS the game. Small, typically superfluous tasks in most video games become the game as you play, and it does an amazing job of making those decisions interesting, and most importantly, fun.
On the other hand, RDR2 makes gameplay mundane. On paper, you’re doing more traditionally “exciting” things in RDR2: Robbing, shooting, fist fighting, cool cowboy shit. But all of this feels like check-listing. I’m not brushing my horse cause I want my horse to be happy and clean, I’m brushing my horse because it gets a stamina debuff if I don’t. Now I’m engaging in this mechanic every 15 minutes and getting frustrated cause I can only brush the horses neck. If you’re going to coerce me to engage with a mundane, silly mechanic, at least let me brush the dang horse’s behind too. Elden Ring had me giving treats to Torrent every time she got even a little hurt, or if I felt like she did a good job at a task. At first, I was concerned that there was a secret Torrent world tendency or something and how I treated her would affect the end of the game, but eventually I was just endeared to her. RDR2 on the other hand tells you immediately that you should own several horses and they’re completely replaceable. There’s been several missions already in my playthrough where the game forces me to ride some random ass horse.
In a nutshell, RDR2 is constantly pulling rugs, whereas Death Stranding is slowly sneaking a rug underneath your feet.
It’s really hard to engage with massive AAA games because gamers a loud as shit and never shut up. There’s not a great way to avoid this, but typically I just wait a really long time for the dust to settle so I can do my very best to engage with it in a vacuum.
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I’m continuing to hang in there with Octopath Traveler (I) and having a blast, which… maybe I should use a different phrasing than ‘hanging in there’? How about: having a blast. I have any number of critiques to offer, like how there’s clearly a sort of post processing used to accomplish at least part of the animation on the enemy sprites that makes a bunch of the UI ‘wiggle’ ever so slightly-- I’m not sure if the entirety of the animation is done this way (I suspect not) and I’m probably being nitpicky! Also, I still don’t really love the gigantic shelf in suggested level between all the chapters, especially between the first and second chapters for everyone! To some extent I know that the battle system is well done and they want you to use it, but pretty much requiring grinding in a game from 2018 feels awfully regressive! And it’s not that I can’t win battles at this point while underleveled-- for the most part, all it does is stretch the fights out ludicrously, which isn’t much fun. There are even a bunch of battles, like Olberic’s chapter 2 final boss, where it still took forever even though I was appropriately levelled for it. A lot of this is just classic SNES era RPG tuning, where the game ends up lasting longer because every enemy is tuned to be damage sponge.
But this probably seems like I’m not enjoying it, which is far from the truth! I love it quite a bit, and I’m having a blast playing it, although I’m also eager to move on the OTII, which I suspect addresses a bunch of my issues with the first game (I think? I don’t really remember from my last playthrough).
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I played cat quest 3 over the weekend. I love almost any action RPG even when they’re bad. This series isn’t bad, it’s scaled back and pared down to be overly simple. What I want out of any RPG are interesting systems and these games are lacking. They’re fine and if they come out with another, I’m a sucker and will probably play it but I’m going to forget everything about this game like I did with the other 2.
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So my son spent the entirety of his infant-to-toddler birthday party passed out cold on the bathroom floor. And he got no candles because I couldn’t figure out how to put candles on a cake. (UI-inflicted inconveniences seems to be a part of this game. I didn’t have a wedding cake either.) Oh well, at least the game assures me he has turned out okay:
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Rolling credits on Nine Sols now. It is funny how exactly this mimicked my experience of playing hollow knight, in that I binged it in about 72 hours and never want to touch it again. They certainly were aiming for Hollow knight, and congrats guys it even gave me the same 2 AM migraine.
Fascinating how alongside 1000xResist we get two games about losing your sense of self in a Chinese diaspora in the same year within months of each other. Game feels very uniquely Taiwanese, we are on a spaceship island where the motherland is rendered uninhabitable, I mean come on. Some of the more esoteric stuff is lost on me but it sure is pretty to read. I had a ball!
I do think the final boss was a singularly frustrating experience, it took me about 6 hours probably? And most of that was just to beat the third phase. I think I came in pretty undergeared, I hadn’t maxed the skill tree and all the walkthrough vids had a few more flasks than me, I wish you could backtrack just a little, I don’t understand why if we’re doing the sekiro thing I can’t backtrack and get a few more flasks, I know the game warns you but still.
That said, as pointed out above when you beat the thing it feels like jazz.
Gonna finish FFX now I’m at Seymour 2 and looking forward to having it off my plate.
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Mother 3 is really cool.
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it took me a couple days and I do wish final boss difficulty spikes of this severity were not apparently en vogue these days, but nine sols gets a pass for me just because of how natural and engaging it felt to actually beat her. it never felt cartoonishly overwhelming like sherdtree’s final boss, the patterns are readable, and thankfully the normal parry window is really generous and internal damage can’t kill you as long as you are consistent. the thing about eigong is the hyper-parry mechanic being so effective against her and it’s easily the most finicky mechanic in the game. there’s a jade that lets you chain them and I would have never beat her without it
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Yeah. I think I would’ve played the game differently, I used the water talisman all game, so it took me absolutely forever to beat each phase compared to videos I watched. A real death by a thousand cuts so I had to play a lot more perfectly than I ended up liking.
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did we ever get an answer to this
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God is bigger than the boogieman.
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I’ve been enjoying Nine Sols quite a lot and it was looking like a GOTY contender. Top five at least.
… But it just suddenly put me in a forced stealth section where I lose all my combat abilities and now I’m yelling at the game like Obi-Wan.
Hopefully this part is over soon. Certified banger, otherwise.
EDIT: Never mind, it’s very short and has a cool boss at the end. I’m sorry for doubting you, Red Candle Games.
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Last night, I started Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord on the Switch. I have no idea what I’m doing, so I made a basic party: one person of every class, at least one representative of every ancestry. I mostly used the enhanced rules, except for rolling my own stats for two characters. (…I wanted a samurai.)
I managed to get to the second combat before someone died. I’m not sure yet whether I should check every wall for hidden passages or how detailed notes to keep yet. I also haven’t interacted with the shop yet.
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I played Hollow Knight years ago and actually finished it (played it from start to finish) for the first time this year. No way am I trying for any of the other endings. I was also surprised I could use a leverless fightstick for the entire thing, I really thought I’d get sick of it, but it was actually a really fun way to do it.
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LMAO.
I had the exact same experience earlier in this thread.
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At first I was confused by Bethesda dropping this DOOM I + II combo out of nowhere when we already have completely wonderful versions of DOOM and DOOM II sitting right here, but I hit that free download because it’s free (if you already bought the previous versions – $10 if you didn’t I think), and HOT DAMN playing the DOOMs with this reorchestrated Andrew Hulshult soundtrack is really something to behold. Eminently smokeable. I can’t find good gameplay footage, but imagine playing DOOM at all the resolutions and frames per second you’d ever want while listening to this – (full OST is at the link):
What a gift. I mean, the mods, expansions, artwork archives and all that stuff is a gift too, but I’m about to replay two games front to back for a soundtrack alone
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