Games You Played Today: Actress Again: Current Code (Part 1)

it’s so funny, and really important in conveying tone and the diligence they expect

the lava pit one step in front of the very beginning in 4; the first thing almost every player does is burn to death

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Yknow, despite just saying 4 is my favorite the lava pit trap is probably my least favorite instance of that trick lol. It feels kinda cheap. Not that it’s a big deal since you just reload and don’t step on the wrong patch of ground next time, but compare with 2 where you at least can look down and go “ah, probably shouldn’t fall into the ocean”

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Playing Blood: Fresh Supply, its a functional port as far as I can tell. I forgot how incessantly the protagonist talks, he only seems to speak in horror movie quotes which doesn’t really feel as “cool” or appealing as it once probably did. The game itself is significantly harder than I remember, even basic enemies like tiny rats on the ground (which are nearly impossible to hit) can kill you in seconds if you’re not careful.
I played through the first half of ep1 so far and the level decorations are great, the map layouts themselves are fine and it’s about on par with Duke Nukem 3D or other classic Build engine games, but a lot more palatable to me bc its a lot less horny.
There’s a decent amount of interactables spread throughout the levels and lots of humor that has not aged well. Many of the interactive features of the levels such as powerups, switches, and props are made of voxels which looks very appealing in a chunky retro way. i didn’t know I needed to see a voxel tomb stone today but it hit the spot.





its cute how the pitchfork leaves 4 decals when you hit stuff


shame i had my immersion broken by being unable to electrocute myself by plugging the pitchfork into a light socket

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I played through Chicken Police: Paint it Red. It’s a noir-styled visual-novel/adventure game with silly animal people.

  • Slickly realized and cool looking graphics that still have a playful photoshoppy looseness.
  • I like the way the chickens look, they are funny looking.
  • The main guy has a fun voice.
  • The deco interiors are good.
  • Are you horny for animal people girls? This could be the dame game for you.
  • There are maybe five minutes total of perfunctory “twitch” “action” setpieces

I think the first interaction is maybe the weakest part of the game, and the interrogation ‘battle’ stand-ins are not very strong but there’s not very many and they are just thin not annoying, a little unclear reasoning-wise.

I liked it, a worthwhile play.

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Hatoful Boyfriend was ever so slightly funnier than I expected it to be and was mercifully brief. I got a sad ending.

Rayman Legends is very lush in terms of presentation and it seems like there’s a ton of content. Might be a little shallow mechanically, but I might plug away a level or two at a time for a while and see if it maintains any novelty.

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Maybe I’m just burnt out on the formula but I’m three missions deep into Death of the Outsider and I’m feeling little desire to press on. I was really looking forward to this one as a lot of folks have said it’s trimmed some of the extraneous bits of the previous entries in the series.

My favorite bit of this one is probably listening to the rats’ whispers.

If it helps any you’re basically at the halfway mark as there’s only two more missions after that one.

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I took advantage of that Stadia bundle promotion, and while I’m waiting for it to ship, I’ve been trying out last year’s Destiny 2 expansion in Stadia. When it works, it works surprisingly well, giving me an image comparable to base PS4 up close with minimal additional latency and running at twice the frame rate. The problems, as expected, are related to network consistency.

When I’m running it in Chrome, if something happens to the connection and Stadia cannot guarantee its usual image quality, the session just ends for me instead of lowering the stream resolution of bitrate temporarily. This comes up a lot in Destiny when there are a ton of particle effects on screen at once, like in seasonal public events. If I go to the Connection pane, it tells me my connection is great and that I can find quality-related settings in the Options pane, but there isn’t anything but audio settings in the Options pane, so I’m not sure what that’s about or if it’s only when playing on Chromecasts.

Player population seems pretty low. I waited forever trying to match with another player to play a strike, and the game eventually just sent me out on my own. I made it halfway through the strike before anyone else joined in progress. And this is a week after the launch of a new expansion?

Shadowkeep itself hasn’t really impressed me yet, but we’ll see I guess.

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I tried a few minutes of valorant b/c a friend was giving it a go and I basically couldn’t stand the way it felt, which led me to thinking “what’s the deal with riot games?”

but seriously, what’s the deal with riot games? they are a very creepy combination of tencent ownership + high-profile game design hires + utterly deadening approach to aesthetics and balance + more esports money than god. it weirds me out that they seem able to hire such well-respected people because as far as I can see, the level on which the work is theoretically interesting is either a) so hyper-focused for “fair” competition that it basically becomes a cottage industry inside of a cottage industry and you wonder who these people wind up talking to if not each other, or b) in fact not interesting.

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Well you can hit the use key on one and shock yourself IIRC. Unless I’m thinking of some other Build game.

In the last few days I needed a “relaxing” game, so I started playing Plague Tale Innocence.
i think it’s very nice. It’s a stealthing-puzzle game with really beautiful atmosphere, great European architecture and a world that looks solid. Saturated, warm, autumnilife colour balance.
it seems to me the closest thing to a 3D Heart of Darkness or Oddworld game.
It ain’t a masterpiece (but lately I have been spoiled by Bloodborne and Sekiro) but it is great time spent, and, for me, further elevated by playing the game in French (which I had studied in middle school), so it’s “edutainment”

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man that’s a lot of words to call Valorant Counterstrike

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With Valorant, essentially a redo of the Counterstrike-esque 2007 Shadowrun game (and FASA studio killer), Riot deliberately toned everything down, and it’s toned down next to Overwatch; it’s very much a play at high-level competition.

I think the appropriate way to look at them is a studio that has fully integrated the entertainment production of esports. The interesting problem they’re solving is, how do you keep a game alive for a decade-plus? And it’s a combination of the game itself and its expandability and the careful management of the scene around it; and Riot is indisputably better at managing League of Legends than anyone else has been in comparable positions.

Yeah, it has no appeal to me, either

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I meant to check Valorant out after recovering from RSI and I honestly forgot it existed. I assume it must have a large following since Riot have M.O.N.E.Y. but not sure where it’s at. I guess I should check it out given my professional curiosity in electronic sport entertainment generally. I do get the feeling I will not enjoy my time with it. It has that weird disconnect between content and intended meta that most of the biggest e-sports tend to have.

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I remember asking a design recruiter at a GDC one time about design positions and he asked me what rank I was at, so

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yeah, they modeled their hiring on Blizzard, only looking for super-fans

that’ll never have consequences, nope

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It weirds me out how many talented games people I follow on twitter all work for Riot now. I almost think it’s bleak, but I guess the job must pay well.

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not quite as bleak as 2010-2013 when everyone was joining Zynga

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yeah, this was what threw me

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Did you at least try telling them you stayed at a Holiday Inn last night and see how well that actually works?

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