I finally got Mario Kart World because a used copy was going for ¥2000 off.
It’s way better than people whined about it being but I think 8 Deluxe feels better to play.
The thing that annoys me the most is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to pull up the map during Free Roam? You have to exit free roam and then open the map??? Am I missing something?
Press Y
Have solved 22 puzzles in Picross S 9, and damn, I’m going to get SO GOOD at identifying bird and plant species in the wild, if they happen to be tiny and pixelated.
Every time I play a new Picross, and I get to and solve the clione (or sea angel) puzzle, it feels like coming home.
a week has gone by and i actually love kirby air ride now
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is very much one of the RPG style Assassin’s Creed games, which means I’m having to do my best to scout enemy locations in bases, cull the people I can take out, carefully isolate the stronger enemies, and most of the time just grab what I need and book it. If I get too greedy I get got.
I gotta stay my compulsion to tackle bases and stuff as I come by them, because already I’ve finished a quest before it even began by having looted a statue a guy wanted. Apparently you’ll come across guys in some fortresses that are enemies, but can be persuaded to switch sides if approached with that information. That doesn’t work out well for those quests if you already went in there and slit their throat.
I gotta put some more points into assassinations though…sucks to jump on a guy and shove a knife in their neck and they just sorta shrug it off. I dunno how tough you gotta be to do that, maybe samurai were just different like that…
Evil Tonight is one of the two games I bought for Black Friday that I hadn’t heard about before. Its main premise, it proclaims rather shamelessly, is “what if the original Resident Evil were a top-down pixel-based game?”. Half an hour in, I have to say it translates fairly well, when it comes to the atmosphere and walking-around-a-creepy-mansion-solving-oblique-puzzles elements. Where it’s less successful is the combat, which so far is way too easy and too awkward to be much fun. The easy part comes from the combat knife and back dash being way too effective, and ammo/healing being too plentiful. The awkward part comes from the game separating movement into two “stances”–the exploration stance, which allows you to interact with objects and do things like run, and the combat stance, which activates the game’s version of tank controls. While switching is only a matter of pressing a button, the difference between the two stances is too substantial, and the shifting so frequent, that it prevents the game from settling into an engaging groove. And while I could sort of understand this system as a way to translate the original RE’s fight-or-flight decision-making, it hasn’t really worked: so far, “fight” is always the correct answer.
I’ve been having a lot of fun this year picking up an RPG I dropped sometime ago 4 hours in. It is an ideal way to get into an RPG. Kicking your feet to stay above water, trying to figure out the battle system, what the hell you were even doing. And I am playing in Japanese. Caius just showed up and said a bunch of words I do not wakaru.
So yesterday was Final Fantasy XIII-2. After a whole day I still could not tell you what exactly I am doing. It is very difficult to understand progress. There is one area that is definitely Dragon Quest style, no boundaries just crossing a line then the enemies are brutal.
Every cutscene reestablishes the stakes: What is Caius doing? Sera wants to find Lightning. Noel is sad Yuru died, but there are many Yurus.
The pokemon/SMT monster raising I do not understand at all. Looking at user reviews it doesn’t matter.
It is a pretty comfy game to play for long stretches. I just click on a hexagon in the time stream and run around till they find an exit.
That the game under-explains is frequently you’ll have a side-quest you can start but not finish because you haven’t unlocked 1-2-3 alternate timelines of that location. Or a different location entirely!
Putting the black character from the first game behind Casino DLC is a choice, Square-Enix.
As I saw discussion about it elsewhere recently I started playing The End is Nigh and it seems fine so far. Was very hyped for it when announced as I was a big fan of Super Meat Boy, but the mostly muted reception it received plus a friend who considered a late game choice utterly terrible sorta scared me away from it for a long time.
That probably was for the best as it’s a pretty solid precision platformer, but if I approached it from a “follow up to the best precision platformer ever made” perspective (no Celeste yet when it released I believe) it would have been a big disappointment as it’s not on that level. Credit to trying something different with the choices it made (no wall jumps, no double jumps of any kind, heavy focus on collecting stuff) as it gives it a different flavor, as well as having some stages sort of fall apart or rearrange itself while you progress across it, but the best games in this genre of a joy of movement that this game lacks.
BTW got up to the gameplay choice that turned my friend off (at the act break it goes from an infinite lives game to one where you have a limited amount for the each entire area, one (or more) for each of the collectibles you picked up during act 1) and through the first area afterwards it isn’t a huge issue, but I also knew it was coming and played the earlier parts accordingly. I could see someone taking a more “direct” path to this point and it being a big problem.
Started Jedi Fallen Order and Prince of Persia The Lost Crown. Lots of climbing, lots of three hit combos.
Playing Heroes of Might and Magic III for some reason
Fffffffucking failed the harder Heavy Command Cruiser Ace Combat 6 mission where you have to take out the entire Strigon team and five huge planes. I finally managed to get all the fighters somehow and was picking off all the bombers, but I flew into the fucking ocean because I was trying to position myself to get a bunch of AA guns. this mission is incredibly tough and I don’t know how long it’s going to actually take.
Evil Tonight: So it turns out that first half hour isn’t quite representative, and that the action gets considerably better once you see more and tougher enemies, of the sort that are harder to take out with the knife. The surroundings are also playing a bigger role, with obstacles adding variety to the room and becoming a factor on how you approach them. The first boss was also quite good. So yeah, I’m enjoying this now!
The money I got from selling my car for scrap + birthday gift card from months ago + tax return meant I could get a Switch 2 so I’ve been playing a bit of Mario Kart World.
It’s pretty good fun but it feels kind of underwhelming. Might be how due to all the tracks needing to be linked together means they’re not as well designed, and the drive between tracks in GP mode gives that “weren’t we just here?” feeling a lot.
I think Nintendo have also refined the ‘leveled playing ground’ thing they do with these games so much down to an exact science that makes things feel a bit.. sterile maybe? Like boosts don’t really feel like they boost much and getting hit isn’t as punishing as previously. Drifting kind of feels like it actually makes you slower most of the time somehow but I could just be doing it wrong.
You should try Knockout Tour, it’s a much better use of the linked tracks than Grand Prix is.
Finally beat the Heavy Cruiser mission. I had 97% damage for the last half of it. very stressful!! I love ace combat
I don’t like Arc Raiders. I want to explore the ruins by myself and not have to worry if other players are going to snipe me immediately. Oh boy, another job game, make sure to play at least 10 hours a week so you have good enough gear to keep up with your friends!! Make sure you know the meta immediately! whatever you do dont play any other game ever!
