T w e n t y S i d e d
After a six month waiting period, I’ve finally gotten in with a rheumatologist. Yay! Drugs! So many helpful drugs. Thank God for modern medicine.
But, this does mean a short transitional period. My hands feel like they’ve been run over by a train while I wait for this stuff to kick in. Next week, we explore Lorretta and Michael’s meeting. This week, what are you guys playing/watching/doing?
I’m currently introducing Elliot to Doctor Who and finally watching all the post-Tennant content I never touched. Good time to binge-watch something, but I have to admit, still not a Matt Smith fan.
The Middle Ages
Would you have survived in the middle ages?
Black Desert Online
This Korean title would be the greatest MMO ever made if not for the horrendous monetization system. And the embarrassing translation. And the terrible progression. And the developer's general apathy towards its western audience.
Overthinking Zombies
Let's ruin everyone's fun by listing all the ways in which zombies can't work, couldn't happen, and don't make sense.
The Opportunity Crunch
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
Charging More for a Worse Product
No, game prices don't "need" to go up. That's not how supply and demand works. Instead, the publishers need to be smarter about where they spend their money.
I wasn’t a fan of Smith at first (following Tennant is not an easy task) but after a while went to really like his run. Some of his episodes are real gems.
I hope the new medication work well for you.
I liked Smith’s run better on a rewatch, although he’s still not one of my favourite Doctors. It really helps when you understand that he’s probably the best Doctor at being funny, and that a lot of his scenes are aimed at that.
I liked Smith’s run, I see the arguments of people who claim the show jumped the shark during his Doctor but honestly I think shark acrobatics are kinda the name of the game at this point and it’s just a matter of at what point it becomes too much for you.
I’m also like one of the three people on the planet who actually like Riversong so make of that what you will.
I didn’t mind River Song, although the arc ended somewhat awkwardly as it pretty much had to. I don’t really consider her a companion, though, which helps for me.
Her reveal was very poorly handled. I stopped watching the series completely after it.
Smith was my favorite of the post reboot Doctors. I loved Tennant too. I liked Eccleston, but some of his post-who statements really rankled me, and I was never really able to separate them from his Doctor after that point.
Of course, for me, the Doctor will always be Tom Baker. (The 4th Doctor from the original run.)
Anyway, I stuck with it gamely, but it finally became too much going into Jody Whittaker’s second or third year. I like her as an actor, but I never felt or believed her as the Doctor. I kept waiting for that moment when she would take up the mantle… several times it came close, but she never quite slid into the role, and after a while, I got tired of waiting, and I had other, better things to do than watch and “I’ll get to it next week” became “Okay, I’ll binge the month’s shows when I have a free weekend” to “okay, I’m a season behind, but they’re going on a year break; I can catch back up” to “I’m just done. Maybe I’ll come back some day, but for right now, it’s just not happening.”
Hope the drugs are helping with whatever they’re meant to help with. Other stuff too, I guess; it’s fine if they help with stuff they’re not supposed to.
Found several turn-based squad-based games at once, and have been playing all of them; Symphony of War The Nephilim Saga, Soul Nomad and the World Eaters, and The Last Remnant. Also replayed Yakuza: Like A Dragon, and took another shot at Yakuza Kiwami 2.
Nephilim Saga is an indie game, seems to be doing the indie game thing of having a generic story and subverting the most cliche aspects. It’s fun; it’s got Shining Force 2 style battle animations, it’s got a morale system, it’s a good time. The biggest problem is mostly psychological; it feels like an indie game, so I’m expecting it to drop in quality, and that’s making me play it less.
Soul Nomad and the World Eaters is a Nippin Ichi game, the guys who make Disgaea, and has been winning out. It’s a lot more serious than their usual games, and actually pretty interesting worldbuilding wise, though the worldbuilding doesn’t really come together in the end. It’s also got a disturbingly evil New Game+ route, that still manages to be upbeat if you lose the final battle and get the “good” evil ending. Still got the Disgaea “problem” of being able to powerlevel one unit and ignore the whole strategy angle, but I’m actually pretty bad at strategy games and appreciate that kind of thing.
I’m dropping The Last Remnant again, for the same reasons as last time; the thing is utterly obtuse. It’s basically a squad-based SaGa game, with all their user-unfriendly nonsense. I still can’t believe they have a dedicated Quest Menu that ONLY shows your COMPLETED QUESTS. You can only check your progress on quests that have nothing left to progress. It’s insane. Likewise you can’t check anything about the main quest, and the thing is trying to be open world, so if you do like I did and put the game down long enough to forget the quest prompt you’re just going to have to rub your face against every NPC until you hit the right flag. The game is nowhere near fun enough to tolerate that.
Yakuza Like A Dragon remains excellent, probably even better than I remember it being; apart from being a grab bag of the best mechanics turn-based RPGs have to offer, the constant movement from all the characters off-turn is unique and important to how the battles play out. The first time I played it the targeting jank got to me*, but this time I barely noticed it. Not sure what the difference was. Maybe real life has gotten more janky so the game blends in better.
Yakuza Kiwami 2 is still not as fun as Yakuza 0; the combat system is merely tolerable. I nearly dropped it on the same fight I dropped it last time (the second boss is super annoying and I’m sure they’ll just get worse), but then I remembered how cheap health items are and beat him with the power of graceless hack attrition. Still not hooked, but still haven’t even hit the plot yet, so maybe it’ll improve. But it’s no Yakuza 0.
*(targeting is based on physical position, and everyone is constantly moving, so pressing up and then down won’t always take you back to where you started, and timing matters here so the targeting delay can throw off your plans.)
I finished The Nephilim Saga a few months ago (bought it as a good Steam Deck game). Mechanically, at least, I don’t think it falls off towards the end, though I found the story “meh” at best. I do like designing my own squads and seeing what combinations I can find that work against other combinations.
I dropped The Last Remnant for similar reasons, plus the battle system actively discourages Grinding and the animations look like everyone has serious spinal issues.
In games I have played this week, I have been running around in Terraria, working my way up the Hardmode bosses. I wanted to beat an optional boss out of sequence to get a specific summon weapon, but I have given up and will get better equipment before I try again.
I’ve been playing the Pharaoh remake
It lacks some features from the original, and the classic mechanics haven’t aged well, but I’m still enjoying it.
Had to look that up. A shame they didn’t remake Children of the Nile, made by the same developers but a much better game, IMO.
I’ve not watched much Dr. Who. One of the episodes I saw was https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Girl_in_the_Fireplace_(TV_story) and the sheer idiocy was so bad that it soured me on the entire thing.
For me modern Dr Who (not seen much classic DW) seems to end up being fairly engaging but so silly to the point that it’s like amateur dramatics. Not like The Prisoner, but almost like a self aware sitcom. It’s fascinating but also so bad! I usually get drawn in, enjoy it to some degree, but ultimately come away thinking gosh Dr Who is terrible. Much like watching a soap. But it has that kernel of interesting concepts and scenarios that can be tempting. It’s like one of those children’s programmes with child actors on morning children’s TV.
I’m playing a free total conversion mod for Doom – Ashes 2063.
It’s awesome – the esthethics, combined with the music make you feel as if you’re playing a Fallout (the O.G. one) movie directed by John Carpenter!
Such a nostalgic blast, while being a totally new thing to me, sprite based shooters really hit me in some special place in my brain.
Great DN3D vibes, but I’d say it’s easily better than that :)
That sounds very cool indeed. I did enjoy Dark Forces and need to get onto Jedi Knight.
I’ve been playing the new Need For Speed lately. The story’s very silly because it tries to portray the illegal street racers as artists, but it comes off sort of mocking with the characters’ myopia. Still, despite everyone being an absolute idiot and criminal that can’t see cops or commuters as people, they’re all pretty fun. As someone who loves characters who are affiliated with the Main Character, but don’t let said main character impede their own agency, I loved Yaz’ betrayal in the prologue.
The other games I’ve been playing are Team Ninja’s action games, especially Nioh 2 and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. The latter game has a fucking amazing protagonist that I think is what Forspoken and Atomic Hearts tried to do but failed. The dude calls bullshit on exposition he doesn’t want to believe, and walks off blasting Linkin Park. And spends the rest of the game trying to skip tedious and pretentious dialogue. As someone who grew up in the 2000s, I find him hilarious. “A Final Fantasy protagonist that hates that he’s in a Final Fantasy game”. Of course, I love the high-speed, high-aggression combat. Just wish the game’s itemization wasn’t the most atrocious combination ever of item level chasing, too many special effects, grinding for too many currencies for upgrades, and maintaining set bonuses.
I’m thinking of reinstalling Skyrim, but I think I’d rather play WoW, Guild Wars 2, or FFXIV
Have you tried Stranger co-op or only solo? I have a friend with whom we’re always looking for games that we can play through together and I’d be curious to hear your opinion if you did.
Also, urghh, tell me about it, I have a gigantic backlog but I’m thiiiis close to reinstalling Destiny 2 again (even if Lightfall reviews are mediocre at best so far)…
I’ve been playing Hare Brained Schemes BattleTech, again. I look at all the other games I have and enjoy, then go blow up more robots. Interestingly, trying to blow up robots is difficult with a quaker parrot crawling all over you wanting attention.
I’ve been on another retro/nostalgia binge of late. I’m currently replaying my way through Heroes of Might and Magic II, and I realized that I actually never got around to completing the expansion campaigns, so that was a nice discovery. :D
Gratz on meds! I really liked Matt Smith at the start, but over time the overarching story structure of the seasons really got to me. Every season just kept teasing further mysteries that were just underwhelming when revealed. I really started to miss how contained the David Tennant episodes and seasons felt. I still like Matt Smith, especially his later acting with Jenna Coleman, but gosh did those seasons feel incomplete.
I’m playing Fire Emblem Engage. Big fan of the series, so I’m enjoying it a lot, but still annoyed they haven’t returned the romance options from past games. But I’m glad they didn’t try the BS silent protagonist thing from the last game. That thing just did not work at all in it.
While I wait for the remake of your father’s favorite game, Resident Evil 4, I was thinking of trying Atomic Hearts, but everything I’ve seen and heard from it in terms of gameplay and story looks extraordinarily frustrating. Still waiting on my physical copy of Metroid Prime Remastered, but that’s not going to be here for a while. I have a gigantic backlog, so I’ll most likely end up picking something else at random to play.
I’m playing Dragon Age Origins. I’ve played it a number of times on console but am playing it on PC with all the DLC, including Shale. I’m playing as a Human Noble because that’s one of only two origins that I haven’t played with, and I wanted to make that character Queen by marrying Alistair. I also really do like Shale as a character but due to my party composition didn’t get the scene where Shale’s history is revealed. I’ll probably play through some of the DLC campaigns once I finish this — I’ve just finished the last treaty and so am at the end game — and then move on to Dragon Age 2.
I’m watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show as my main watch, with a special watch of the original Twilight Zone to analyze on my blog. I’m really liking the former and the latter is a bit hit or miss, because some of the stories are hard to fit in that format and that length.
I’m reading some Vampire the Masquerade novels that I started a while ago and never finished as my “for fun” reading, with a lot of King Arthur books and some philosophy of religion as my “accomplishments” books while I’m doing laundry.
Playing through Assassins Creed Origins right now – I’m starting to do paid DMing and it’s an ancient egypt inspired setting, so I thought it might give some good inspiration. Haven’t been into AC in a long, long time – Black Flag/Rogue was the last generation I played and I gave up on both of those halfway through when they just became too “videogamey” and grindy. I realized at some point that I was working towards a certain outfit “and then the rest can be fun again”… but I wasn’t enjoying the core gameplay, so why was I even trying? Even the best outfit won’t suddenly turn the game fun again. The artifice of AC games often just hangs too heavily on the game.
AC Origins seems alright. The leveling system is entirely useless as a mechanic, but at least it’s not as intrusive as it apparently is in the newer games. I am actually digging the main character a bit, he manages to not be one-note. He can be jovial and heartwarming (especially whenever he meets children), always becomes solemn and vengeful when innocents are harmed, correctly remarks when something is really absurd, and I find it really positive that the main character does have religious beliefs congruent with the setting that aren’t played ironically at all.
The one thing absolutely killing me is whenever they try to bring in the “ancient alien forerunners” thing. It always felt out of place, but they seemingly just don’t know what to do with it anymore, but can’t drop it. So occasionally you’ll do a fun tomb puzzle and end up with the “reward” of having to stand still for 5 minutes while an *extremely* pretentious dialogue rambles about something about as sensible, but far less entertaining than Time Cube. I normally never skip this kind of thing even if I don’t like it, I’ve always had a very strong urge to not “miss” anything of a narrative, but with these I feel entirely good just immediately teleporting away because they add nothing. Similarly, whenever they pull you out of the framing device and go “and now you have to play as the normal lady in modern times for 5 minutes” the only thought I have the entire time is “please get back in the animus, this is lame”.
What does keep giving it a bit of a bitter sting, though, is that the game was originally meant to feature Bayek’s wife, Aya, as the main character, which you can still sometimes feel when parts of the main quest’s narrative are clearly structured around her – her motivations and incentives are more diverse than his, so it sometimes feels like he really doesn’t have as much reason as her to do these quests. One of the old Guillemot vampires unfortunately decided that women are icky and don’t sell and forced them to change it.
I’ve been playing a lot of Pokémon: Infinite Fusion since I discovered it in January, a fangame whose gimmick is being able to take any two Pokémon and fuse them into a new one with combined stats, types, and movesets. There are default computer-generated sprite for each combination, and people have developed (tens of?) thousands more at this point which get steadily added to the game over time (there are 420 Pokémon in the game, for a bit under 176,000 unique fusions). I really enjoy the concept of fusing things together to make new things as it opens up a huge amount of parameter space for finding new cool things (like making your own cool type combination ‘mons, e.g. Fire/Water, Poison/Fairy, Ghost/Dark, etc.). It’s even inspired me to try my hand at pixel art in making some custom sprites of my own, which is not something I’ve ever really felt confident enough to try much before.
Oh boy, my (unironically) favourite wall of text time! I would also like to restate a gentle petition to have these “what have you been playing/watching/etc.” posts every once in a while. In no particular order I have in recent memory played:
Pathfinder:Wrath of the Righteous (I actually don’t remember if I talked about this one before) I liked it. Owlcat hit that sweet spot of tabletop conversion that really works for me where I can still fiddle with builds and the mechanics are sufficiently complex but the tedious calculations are offloaded to the computer. They also inject enough personality and choices in there to make it fun to play the character and I particularly like how this game is less bound to the good-evil axis than Kingmaker was. I ended up on the Trickster path, which was at times (not often enough) delightfully silly while the mechanics were delightfully broken and overall I enjoyed it a lot. It did feel like something that you shouldn’t take on the first playthrough (a bit like a Malkavian run of VotM:Bloodlines though less spoilery) but the game is so massive I’m glad I did because I probably won’t have it in me to do another playthrough for at least a number of years. Eagerly waiting for their W40k game.
Ctrl Alt Ego A very ambitious indie game, it’s basically a 1.5 person project but it tries to tap into gaming concepts of the likes of Prey with multiple viable playstyles and creative use of environments for things like ambushes or distractions. Be aware that the very floaty movement may cause some frustration. I was also a bit soured on the ambiguity of the ending but that is a particular pet peeve of mine and overall I admire the ambition.
Assassin’s Creed:Syndicate So… I came into this with the notion that this was “the good one”. After Unity nearly killed the franchise everybody was talking about how Syndicate was a return to form. I… don’t really see much of a difference? For the record, I only played Unity years after release so whatever little patching they did was in there and my PC is probably better than an average gaming machine way back then so that probably helped but overall… It’s a stupid story, with enjoyable gameplay, with a bloated collectathon so basically a standard AC game of the time? They clearly have no idea what to do with the whole “present day” narrative, the twins have potential for a good “odd couple” dynamic but it is then almost entirely shoved into the final sequence, the villain is a pile of confusion with a cherry of moustachetwirling on top… but the city is fun to run around and the grappling hook makes traversal smoother than ever*. I do take particular beef with the fact Ubisoft has bruteforce disabled the online component allowing the player to get their stupid helix currency in game through the special respawning collectables while at the same time 1) still having those collectables uselessly spawn in the gameworld (in fact they overlap with the normal “glitch” collectables making it unclear if you’ve picked them up already), 2) still locking some maps of collectable placement (and other tat) behind helix purchases rather than just giving them to the player for free, 3) either still maintaining the ability to buy the helix currency for real monies (oh, so we can afford to maintain that?) or still not patching the store out of the game (I have not tested if it works as I’ve paid for the game once and don’t intend to do so anymore), 4) at the same time being perfectly capable of patching in AC:Valhalla advertisement.
And right now I’m playing Heaven’s Vault. The overarching translation puzzle is excellent at making the player feel just the right amount of smart and the story story reveals kinda have me hooked (I’m nearing the end but not there yet, the only site I have access to is the
water moonwhich, as I understand, leads right into the endgame). At the same time it’s a bit of a mess regarding setting up the gameworld and while the game boasts of being non-linear and keeping track of what you’ve learned and done it occasionally seems to get confused about it, for example claiming that I’ve obtained some information from a person who specifically denied it to me or making connections that are tenuous at best (I’d go so far as to call them wild leaps of logic). I have it on some authority that getting the full context requires at least a NewGame+ playthrough and I’m generally not a fan of that kind of thing. Still, similarly to CtrlAltEgo it is ambitious and interesting and I’d rather see this than another AC iteration by the numbers. I just hope it delivers on the ending,*When checking something related to the game I’ve stumbled on a number of posts about how it supposedly “removed the skill requirement from the climbing gameplay”. Holding “up” for a minute occasionally moving left or right when the character stops climbing is not a skill.
I’ve started playing Mass Effect Andromeda this week.
It’s on PS4 and I haven’t connected the console to the internet so I have no patches or bug-fixes. I think I’ve been lucky so far that the only real glitch I’ve seen was Cora t-posing during a dramatic scene.
Since we’re discussing TV and this seems like a good place, curious about thoughts on The Last Of Us.
Only the end of the article on the front page, boss!
Smith’s run really suffers from Moffat’s writing being incredibly up itself. So does Capaldi’s, but he’s such a good actor that it makes up for it, he’s my favourite Doctor overall.
I’ve been playing Immortals: Fenyx Rising. It absolutely scratches the itch for a BotW style game, right down to the structure of 4 quests to power you up for facing the BBEG, and in some ways it’s notably better than BotW. Specifically the interactions between Zeus and Prometheus. They got the level of snark and silliness just right IMO.
I’ve also been replaying Banjo Kazooie: nuts and bolts. I know it wasn’t all that popular when it came out but I always liked the lego style building of your contraptions, and it’s always fun trying to work out how to get to a new crate of bits to make more and more silly vehicles. I think at some point when I first played it I hit a bit of a wall on progression in the main levels, so drifted away. We’ll see if the same thing happens again
I’ve been going back through Sunless Sea—it’s one of those bizarre games that’s full of flaws but pushes my particular buttons so perfectly. Being a ship captain on a sea in a giant underground cave filled with weird, spooky, and actually quite funny stuff. It’s got a lot of reading, and a lot of waiting around while the ship travels, but the atmosphere, mystery, and writing are just so perfect I keep coming back to it.
I am legitimately surprised by how invested I’ve gotten in the intergenerational family drama you’ve cooked up! I’d never have thought to use a house as the core prop for all that, but it works really well! Looking forward to the next step!