What are y'all playing? ver 2.0

#862

Look at this beautiful world

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The last thing I want to do in that world is stare at 500 variations of this fucking box, which takes up your whole screen and takes patience, but not much else, to solve.

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It is like getting the “real” ending in Stanley Parable, wandering around in the “real world” and coming to the conclusion once again that all you are doing is pushing the buttons the game tells you in a drab square with simple paths and corridors. It’s inverse Stanley, and one which wields the exact same key to victory. Quitting. It’s a shame it wasn’t fun in offering you the path to that conclusion.

#863

Curious how far you got, what areas you solved?

Many puzzles are very much extensions of the environment, or the environment is the puzzle or solution to a puzzle itself.

I actually appreciate the consistent and constrained method for puzzles, and they provide interesting layers that build on each other. The simplicity of the puzzle visuals is important for how they work and how they build on each other. There are also some puzzles that directly interface with the world and control equipment that interestingly match the environment.

Ultimately The Witness is a game of puzzles in an interesting and beautiful world. You could technically omit the world and still make most of the puzzles work, but you’d lose a lot of the mystery and exploration. Not to mention the ability to walk away from a puzzle that you can’t solve now and find another one to figure out.

My take from the game is that the enjoyment is in the journey, not the destination. For me I enjoy the puzzle solving, the process of learning and exploring. I don’t think there is anything more to it than that.

Outside of the tutorial panels, most puzzles are not solvable without understanding the rules of them. Some obviously could be brute force solved, but you are only doing yourself a disservice by doing that. Every puzzle has an obvious rule or solution that you have to learn/uncover.

#864

Ok, i am enjoying Arkham Knight a lot more on its second half. I’m finally getting used to the controls and items and combat and stuff. I can finally appreciate the game and what it’s trying to do.

It’s ridiculously good looking! There are unique assets everyfuckingwhere, not to mention the puzzles and hidden content. Like holy crap. I mean it’s not like Rocksteady is small or anything, but it’s still impressive how tightly everything is put together. Rocksteady continues to be really impressive. The writing is really impressive too! Joker is pretty hilarious and the acting is top notch.

So yeah. Liking it, finally.

#865

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I finally managed to escape from flat earth with the entire crew!

#866

Started a Hero mode playthrough of A Link Between Worlds, it’s rather tough. Four times as much damage is no joke! You can’t even take two hits of the weakest enemies before getting the first heart.

#867

I thought the game was fairly challenging on normal mode. Brutal difficulty is not my thing.

I’ve reached the last mission in the first Company of Heroes campaign. This is where I gave up the last time. Securing the bridges is easy but once you cross into enemy territory you will be attacked from every direction.

#868

I remember that mission. What I wound up doing was setting up killzones with MGs, mortars, MG emplacements, and AT guns on the three approaches. I chewed up their attacks until I got the manpower and fuel up to start armor columns, at which point I then went on the offensive and knocked out each HQ in succession.

#869

I already have three tanks so I should be able to take their HQ if I’m carefully with my approach. When I tried it this morning I got caught between a tank and an AT gun. That northern road might be a better alternative.

#870

I always enjoy second quests in Zelda games. OoT Master Quest is imo even better than the original! I was bummed when they announced that Majora’s Mask 3D wouldn’t have something of that nature.

#871

So aside from playing the usual games like Theatrhythm Final Fantasy and Nintendogs, I’ve continued with Infinite Undiscovery again.

Infinite Undiscovery

It was two days ago that I continued with this…and there are a lot of things that I dislike about the game…

  1. The exaggerated and dramatic voice acting (mostly with the female characters)

  2. The way the main character is treated.

  3. Capell’s personality with most women he encounters (main character)

  4. The lack of administration and clunky menu

  5. The chaotic battle system

  • The battle system and how it appears to have no impact

  • The parry system

  1. Optional quests that are easily missable.

1 has a lot to do with 2. The main character is treated like shit most of the time. He gets bossed around like no tomorrow and he gets insulted way too often. And that’s why he gets yelled at too quickly with these exaggerated voices, while he’s just being calm. When reading those points, they are common with other Jrpgs, but I feel they went too far with it here. It’s not funny to watch every single time.

3 is also something that you see in Jrpgs, but almost every woman you encounter? And all dialogue revolve around implied sex or how the boobs of one woman feels good? I found it more creepy than funny.

4…by lack of administration…I mean how things work with the menu and how that is very tedious with the game due to its playable 10+ characters. Characters can create objects, weapons, armour etc. But every character has certain traits…so every character can create specific things. In order to do that, you need to have that character in your party. You can’t create certain armour because you don’t play with that character currently. It is also very hard to check which items you can create that you are able to buy, then you have to walk all the way back to the character to check for sure. Items require many ingredients or materials to make. There are many items you can get in the game. It would have been handy to be able to have a sort of encyclopedia with all the items and monsters that drop them for instance. That would make crafting items more effective and easier to do.

5, 6 and 7. The chaotic battle system has to do with the amount of playable characters on screen and how many subgroups there are with the characters that are not in your party. This is a very good idea in paper but it doesn’t seem to be very balanced. Most enemies die with an instant and there doesn’t seem to be much room for strategy due to how fast things go. Also…there are magic users in my party that have handy magic against certain enemies. The problem is, you can’t control other characters besides Capell and you can’t give them orders (besides through connect). At least not yet after 9 hours…And the battle system…I’m not feeling it due to all kinds of factors. It appears that when you attack enemies, it has no impact on them whatsover. There is no stun or delay animation. They just attack you while you’re attacking, leaving most combos unfinished. I also still don’t understand how the parry command work…I haven´t been able to use it.

Point 8 is something very common with older Jrpgs. This game has TONS of optional quests you can miss. This matter is made worse when you have optional quests that only show up when you connect with a certain character and have him follow you the whole time.

All this tediousness makes me not want to care about trying to seriously do the side quests, collect things or invest time with the crafting system for instance. The things I dislike about it might belong to how Jrpgs were back then…but I also feel that it does have issues. Weirdly though, I still want to continue and hope things get better.

#872

Finished Arkham Knight, i liked the endgame a whole lot. I never really understood why folks were complaining about the game overusing the Batmobile, i suppose they didn’t like the car in the first place but i liked it a lot actually. Probably because you can spin around in the tunnels. That’s always fun.

Haven’t tackled some of the side content and i’m pretty sure i’m not going too, not that interested in the true ending to be honest. And regardless i still have places to explore in The Witcher 3. It never ends!!

#873

Firewatch is short - it’s astonishingly pretty and really well written (and performed) as well.

#874

The concept is more interesting than the execution. I would’ve preferred a less-defined or a more interpretative type of ending. All of that paranoia and they tie it up with too neat of a bow, leaving you feeling like that’s it? That’s how it ends?

#875

XCOM 2 is life

#876

But is it love?

#877

I watched a few streamers, and that is who I feel as well. Very anti-climactic. I’m curious to know is what they want you to feel.

#878

It’s being finger-banged behind the bike shed kind of love.

The best kind.

#879

I loved Firewatch, but I think the way they tied the mystery element together was a bit too sudden for my liking. Needed a bit more room to breathe.

#880

Not doing much of gaming for the past 3 weeks since work. The only game that I’ve been playing consistently is a couple of songs with Theatrhythm FF.

I’ve played once with Infinite Undiscovery and have new things to say about that for another time.

#881

Today I played with Infinite Undiscovery again and the story took a very different turn. Maybe others saw this coming, but it totally took me by surprise. It also shocked me how the characters dealt with it or how the story was presented after that. The death of the liberator Sigmund and how Capell decided to take his place and fool everyone in order to give the people hope and finish the job that was started. Some of the party members didn’t accept this and one of them left the party after Sigmund’s death. Due to this change…it has become very interesting watching Capell deal with it and how NPC’s interact with him.

When it comes to the gameplay…things started getting interesting before reaching Vesplume Tower. There were puzzles in the tower and the party members were divided in 3 groups. Sometimes they had to help each other out in order for other groups to progress. I liked all of this.

The battle system got better…or maybe it’s rather that I got more used to it? I was wrong about enemies not getting stunned with attacks. That does happen, but it doesn’t always happen. It depends on the monsters and how strong they are for instance. I figured out how to use the parry system, it actually paralyzes an enemy when it’s executed right.

And the crafting system…while I’m still bothered about not being able to craft freely without the party members around, it is a good system. I found out that Michelle makes healing items (super handy) and materials that can be used by other party members to craft.

In conclusion…my main issue with the story and how the main character was treated is kind of resolved. I’m curious to see where the story goes from here and how the characters are going to interact with each other. Despite still being annoyed by certain flaws…I’m starting to enjoy the game more, getting used to it or the positives are now enough to deal with the negatives.