huh i did not expect void stranger to suddenly go anti-abortion
i was thoroughly enjoying the game but the way it closes itself leaving me with the foetus twist, i’m going to have to take a beat before i feel like opening it again.
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Ohh. Ehh…
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To be fair I doubt it becomes structural and it’s just an unpleasantly written plot twist*, but it’s the sort of sucker punch that’s going to make me very suspicious of the writing going forward.
*
You’re a stronk lady-in-waiting and you go through hell to rescue your surrogate daughter the princess who you love so much and were ready to sacrifice your life for. The satans tell you that you can only bring back one soul and can never visit again. It turns out the princess was impregnated by Evil Prince Griffith and there is now an embryo growing in her womb! What a ghastly dilemma!!! They tricked you!!! Fuck!!! You choose to bring back the embryo.
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FWIW it was at this exact point that I became very concerned that the writing in Void Stranger wasn’t paying attention to the details. I do not believe that fetus was even close to viable given how they drew it, that was an utterly wild decision for Gray to make given all we know of her characterization at this point, and while this is a spoiler for shortly after this point the detailed breastfeeding scene made me go “I know it is technically possible for women who were never pregnant to feed an infant this way in certain unusual cases… but I don’t have much faith the writer even pondered this for a second”.
Anyways I am seemingly at the very end game and big mechanical spoiler just learned that I can warp via the brand rooms, which if I’d have learned/stumbled upon earlier would have likely cut my playtime from 40ish hours to possibly less than 20 depending on when I learned it. I am not salty about this at all.
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Been playing a lot of Idol Champions recently which is interesting but kind of only good for particular times. I wish I had gotten it on epic instead of steam so I could have it on another computer through Parsec while playing other games. I can play other games that allow you to play offline, which is good because it is helping me get off of this bad crack.
So it’s back to souls games:
Elden Ring is still fun to explore but I think I messed up the character I spent so much time on so long ago. It’s funny, I got up to Mohg and found it way too hard for my INT/DEX caster build. When he starts chanting it just becomes an HP race. So when the DLC came out and I found out he is the gate I got really determined and simply have had no success and don’t seem to be making any progress. Most of the tips I find say you need your mimic but I hadn’t found it before the DLC and spent all the ash level up materials on other things.
So I’m doing the sneaky wizard thing through the capital. Incredible level layout.
Also started a new OG Dark Souls 2 playthrough for the first time on PC. They don’t make’em like this anymore.
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SUPER MEAT BOY
Continuing my trend of playing old indie games, it’s the sequel to Meat Boy.
This sure feels like a 2000s era Flash/ROM hack/GameMaker game but highly polished thanks to hefty funding!
Maybe that’s too dismissive, this is still a solid “masocore” game (or “rage” game as the kids say today). I bounced off it back in the day because I didn’t like how Meat Boy controls and I STILL DON’T. I hate how he sticks to walls, how slippery he is when you change direction, and how easy it is to overshoot him. The game is built around it so it doesn’t ruin the game or anything, but I would have enjoyed it more with tighter controls.
I don’t care much for Edmund’s gross-out edgy art style, but I’ll admit some of the cutscenes made me chuckle and the game definitely has its own personality for better or worse. And despite being edgy, it doesn’t punch down or anything so that was cool to see. The retro game homages are also cute, especially since they’re not overdone these days.
Anyway! The level design is solid and tight, and they throw in lots of new mechanics that are used well (even if they’re not too imaginative). I very much wanted to wrap it up by the penultimate world, so appreciate that they let you go to the boss without finishing every level.
Would it make the same splash if it came out today? Unlikely, a billion games like it have come out since, and there are a billion more indie platformers in general that are (in my opinion) more interesting. But you can’t ignore the context of its release… there wouldn’t be a billion games like it if it wasn’t the big success it was back in the day. And though it feels kinda quaint and basic design-wise compared to later games, I still had fun with it… but there are so many (again in my opinion) better games like it out there today so I wouldn’t recommend going back to it in a hurry.
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of the three Indie Game The Movie games i def think Super Meat Boy holds up the least well. it’s a perfectly fine masocore platformer but isn’t really exceptional beyond that.
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If you’re at Mohg & Leyndell I think you probably had to? do the boss that opens up respeccing, so your character can be whatever you want, you can un-mess it up
Are you looking for actual advice on Mohg? There’s a few ways to deal with his chant thing…
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I think “messed up my build” was an overstatement, I like my build a lot. Not having the mimic or any of my useful ashes for Mohg leveled up is my big issue.
I did find that I hadn’t cleared the Leyndell Capital yet so there could be some good stuff there. The perfumers set is a good find, if not necessarily useful for Mohg I could at least get some levels. Currently at 99 and this seems to be an ok area for that.
Actual advice for Mohg’s chant thing would be great. I did look up some videos but can’t remember any tips particular to that.
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I dunno, I think the Steam version’s level editor plus online hub (which is STILL UP TODAY!!! Thanks Tommy) really elevated it into something more than what it released as. I certainly feel a good bit more fondly towards it than Braid.
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this is a little ambiguous so i don’t know exactly what you’re saying but to clarify if you pay for it, you CAN play all previous seasonal content (and track of the days). when you stop paying for it you’ll still have access to any seasons and daily tracks that released WHILE you were subscribed. so it’s kind of like a season pass in that you “own” the content that released while you paid, but it’s also a like a subscription because you get access to all previous content too.
i do think free accounts used to be able to play the full campaign during the season it released, but would lose access to it once that season was done. now free accounts can only play the first 10 levels of a seasonal campaign.
they’re also doing something called “weekly shorts” right now that free players have access to too, but they’re not a great experience for free players bc the medals are way too easy and you don’t really get leaderboard access w/o paying, so there’s not much to do on them. like a lot of the time i’ll get author medals on them on my first or second run, where i struggle sometimes to get authors on the harder campaign maps.
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I did try some Action Henk (turns out I already had it in my Steam library) and was extremely bad at it, aka I tried to get gold on the very first level and kept fucking it up. I’ll try it again sometime…just hurts to see that little gold ghost lap me…
While pining for the days of yore of Trackmania Turbo I found it was on sale on Steam, so I went for it. There was one single lobby with 5 people playing…but it was password protected. C’mon. C’mon. 5 people on this entire planet playing the game and you’re gonna shut out someone wanting to join. Get real here.
Game still at least has a fantastic single player campaign. Gonna take me a bit to get my bearings back on it. Used to drift those corners with ease, but I’m rusty…
Capcom Fighting Collection 2 is finally out and that sucker is great. What a rush, to play the stuff I remember flipping out for when I got a Dreamcast in the “took my meager high school job paycheck to EB Games and walked out with an armful of games” era.
Keep seeing a lot of love online for Plasma Sword and I think I’m with them…it’s a game full of weirdos and I think we need more of that…
The one nice thing about playing Capcom vs. SNK 2 in 2025 rather than 2004 or whenever I got my Dreamcast copy is that I can point my phone at the win quotes and get a rough translation of all the good quotes that never got translated (until that fan translation a month ago, I know I know).
Vice using unsafe wrestling techniques is maybe the least surprising thing to learn about Vice…
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- You can kill him fast enough before he does the chant, lol. Which requires one of those “meta builds” that stack buffs for massive damage, if you’re into that.
- There’s a special item that lets you block the chant damage. It’s associated with an NPC questline. That’s all I’ll say, you can spoil it for yourself if you wish.
- You can just outheal it (this is what I did). You just have to set aside like 3-4 healing flasks to deal with the damage, which of course makes the fight harder because it’s a tax on your overall number of flasks, but it’s still doable this way.
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no big deal, just playing the demo of an insane deus ex tribute about “a federal agent tasked with investigating the surge of extremist violence in the United States” because “globalism has reached its zenith, and societal tensions have now approached a breaking point” named HARDSTRIKE: THE FALL and the entire thing runs on a vulkan fork of gzdoom for some reason. one can only imagine what the conspiracy in this one will turn out to be
the vibes are not really helped by the fact that this game inexplicably and disturbingly looks exactly like the 2003 neo-nazi first person shooter “white law” that was on like every abandonware site when I was a kid. easily the best part of this game is when a terrorist with tiktok ai voice yelled YOU CAN’T KILL ME!! I’M A MOTHERFUCKING GENIUS!!!
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Played a few more PS1 games on the 3DS.
Gran Turismo 2 seems to run but I failed to complete the first license test twice and got bored.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Plays very well. I played through the intro. I have finally experienced the meme directly. I also have a save file so I can have psycho mantis say I like Castlevania if I ever play Metal Gear Solid on here.
Tail Concerto. It has occasional stutter but I will probably play through it anyways just so I can say I beat both it and Solatorobo on the same console. It’s painfully cute. It broke through my defenses. Unfortunately, ACAB including officer Waffle.
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I took this screenshot of re4 remake because I was like damn this mf lookin like jigsaw on the slab in saw 3 but then daphny literally looked at it and was like IS THAT A SCREENSHOT OF SAW so now I figured I have to post it
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I am so ready to delete my account if I hear anything more about this travesty.
Leon’s fringe comes from a simpler time.
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I’ve stopped valuing my time and lost control of my life, so I spent 5 or so hours playing Immortals of Aveum
it’s Doom Eternal but worse
you’re welcome if you had any curiosity about the game. go play Eternal instead.
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i got excited for a second because i thought you mentioned avernum, a game series i would play through if i stopped valuing my time
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