i’ll differ here and say i really enjoyed considering appropriate tactics for so many of the bosses in sekiro - it’s one of my favorite elements of the game. it wasn’t always a matter of just getting better at what i already knew how to do, but instead getting me to really consider my fundamental approach until i found one that i could hone into victory.
the only misstep for me was the aforementioned really aggressive (and yeah, kinda misleading at times) tutorializing. i feel like if you ignore/skim most of the tutorialization and focus on learning all your mechanical options it’s just extremely rewarding. still have rarely had as much fun with any game as i did when playing through sekiro for the first time
The discussion of tactical games in that other thread reminds me that neither I nor anyone else on SB seems to have yet mentioned how good SteamWorld Heist 2 is.
I can’t help thinking the developers must sometimes want to branch out and try another theme with a different type of characters, but I guess this one works just fine for what they are trying to do.
While I liked their Dig games, I think Heist was their best work and the sequel expands and improves on it in every way.
yeah, I’m not trying to come across like my take on it is “final destination no items, just let me duel everything,” but rather that the early game should’ve been at least 50% more like that to make the deviations more fun and interesting rather than mystifying
I don’t actually like hard souls bosses that much and imo genichiro is a relatively easy and extremely fun boss because it’s the point at which the game has finally successfully taught you how to do all the fun stuff you can do. if he’s difficult, I think that’s because the early game is a mess
might be heresy but i think the smallest tweak to Sekiro that would make the early game smoother is just make it a tiny bit easier lol. like the game is doing a weird mix of aggressive tutorializing but also encouraging you to experiment, and it’s hard to get into the right mindset because you are the amazing rice paper man and a fight can be over for you in seconds flat. start him at like the 1st prayer bead HP bar, at least one more hit.
The ogre is really a lot of the sticking point. Hes there to teach you 1. to dodge grabs 2. that you can deflect anything thats not a perilous attack (and you can deflect even those, if theyre a thrust) 3. how to exploit weaknesses (red eyes hate fire). but his grabs are kinda bullshit to dodge and a probable instakill, and a new player wont have gotten confident with deflects yet so hes likely to smash through your posture. and the flame blast helps but isn’t a win button. Awkward fight for the first mandatory boss
the worst thing about Sekiro imo is the skill trees, so many of the skills you have to buy are boring yet practical moves that should just be part of your default verbs. the Ashina Arts “tree” (its basically a straight line) is straight up stat upgrades to your posture damage/defense, it just makes everything easier. Im surprised ADP haters dont kvetch about this!
Tactical Breach Wizards does almost everything right imo… I really like the design of the combat, the tone and the way it tells its story, the challenge level and the open endedness (at least when playing on hard while trying to get the optional objectives)… very purely enjoyable for me
Still playing Arkham City instead of all the other games I could be playing.
For a long time I’ve held that Asylum was better than City, being tighter and more focused, but coming back around to this again…nah. This is certainly better. In visuals, in writing (casual misogyny aside), and certainly way snappier combat.
Probably, if I think about it, City > Origins > Asylum > Knight.
Knight could have been good! It’s got some moments! But it also has all the Batmobile shit, and tank fights and whatnot that just drag it way down. Origins I’ll have to revisit, I think the story is pretty good, but the reheated (or frozen, I guess) Arkham City map is kinda iffy, and the game is buggy as shit. Mostly fun as “the Contrarian’s Pick.”
a fun way i was playing Gungeon: do a Rainbow Run (pick 1 from a selection of weapons/items each floor, all other treasures are removed) → reroll until i get the Casey bat → BATTER UP
you use the Casey by holding the trigger to wind it up, releasing to do a deceptively far reaching swing that makes a VERY satisfying noise, and “reload” by twirling the bat. a direct strike with the tip can knock dudes flying (potentially into eachother!) for crazy damage and it can knock back any projectiles for pretty good damage.
Its really fuckin fun and pretty effective, if you completely change your approach to every encounter. On a normal run it’s a great way to get killed quickly. i figured this would just be a funny gimmick and not viable HOWEVER
All other treasure in a rainbow run is sealed off cuz you cant open non-rainbow chests (the guy who enables the mode sits on the lid of all of them), but you can still smash them and claim any Junk you find. so i got 7 pieces of Junk and then found my boy Ser Junkan, who gets stronger with each piece of Junk up to +7, and it turned into a rly easy and funny victory
i also got the most badass kit of items my Convict was wielding a bat with nails in it and wearing an eye patch & angel wings. fuckin sick mental image make that a tattoo
Recently picked up Dark Souls 3 again, became mildly obsessed and beat it with the broken sword which was really fun.
The poor reach means you have to get up close and play more aggressively. The low damage forces you to learn the full movement of the boss which was wild for Soul of Cinder and Pontiff.
Might try and actually beat the Ellden Ring base game now. I fell off it after burning out hard on release.
Playstation has an extremely generous demo for Rise of Ronin and with Playstation Plus I didn’t even need to find 109 Gigs to fit on the harddrive. I could just stream it. Probably not great for the counterattack timing but oh well.
I played demo for three hours which was about 90 minutes of linear story missions and an hour of open world and 30 minutes fucking with the character creator. All of it was competent and good for video game.
I walked around HonMoku and thought to myself “I eat hamburgers here.” Right when I got to Yokohama proper it told me to buy the real game.
It’s a video game with crafting and loot and Ubisoft towers and dark souls bonfires and consumables and side quests. All the gear is visible and you can really go wild with the character creator.
The parry/counterattack is weird because you hit Heavy Attack not block to activate it. It has very extensive accessiblity options. Putting the hold button to action as low as possible felt great.
It’s a big video game where they made Matthew Perry Anime. Playing it back to back with Ghost of Tsushima: Tsushima is a stunning game: This is much more Real To Japan. They don’t say honor ever fifteen seconds and have an inherit bond with nature because shinto or something. Most people are just people.
It’s a big B game and if I need a video game and see it for 3,000 yen I’ll pick it up so I can run around Yokohama and see famous Historical Figures.
Deliberately avoiding the demo for fear of being sold but I’m tempted.
Speaking of Yokohama. The back half of Infinite Wealth continues to be a much better payoff than the promises of the first half. I’m tempted to do a lot of sidestuff despite feeling like I need to move on to another game. I highly recommend overlevelling early to get all the boss encounters to a trivial state so you can maximise time on the side. Everyone has every job now and the move lists are getting dangerously large. At least this time you can choose what skills you inherit from other classes but it does mean everyone ends up with a very similar moveset, basically regen, line tackle, AOE damage, self-buffing attack. Every other ability is simply an amusement.
Me: “Oh, the current Warframe Nightwave is ending. Think i’ll get caught up on that. Hey, an easy 7k point challenge, that just involves beating the final boss of a Plains of Duviri run. This’ll be quick.”
also, the fact that this is unity when not many games are anymore suggests to me that there’s been a significant design penalty from trying to move away from it over the last couple years… as problematic as it is from both a technical and a licensing perspective, the unity era was still much, much better for games with this approximate scope than before or since
Played Joust 2 until it hung in the 121st stage, after burning through close to 1000 lives (the 40 stage layouts repeat w/ diff enemies at stage 41, then at 81 it apparently indefinitely runs a loop of 10 stages; “Wave” numbering restarts at “0” at stage 100). ^ _^ Midway Arcade Origins’ pause menu still worked, as did RPCS3’s, and Joust 2’s music kept playing, but nothing moved onscreen:
A scorpion-tailed rider had hatched in a tunnel with a “pulverizer” in it; its mount came but wouldn’t enter the tunnel; the hang occurred shortly after that as I was burning through my remaining lives leaping repeatedly into lava, having decided to quit when I reached 2M points.
Game is brutal but apparently I like masochistically difficult action games as long as you can still make progress bit by bit so I guess I sort of started to like it by the end. = o Probably not going to play it again any time soon though. ; D I enjoyed Joust 2 a bit more–or was frustrated by it a bit less–once I realized I had a ton of stages to get through, gave up trying to survive, and just went for killing the enemies as quickly as possible.
The hang doesn’t appear to have been a “kill screen” or anything as I can’t find anything online about Joust 2 hanging–but there were also ZERO lengthy videos of the game on YouTube, at least as far as I could get its search algorithm to show me. Could have been something in Origins or RPCS3 of course, or even something to do with any modifications they may have made to whatever version of the arcade ROM Origins uses.
I kept calling the flying horse into which you can transform your default ostrich a “manticore” or “griffon” instead of “Pegasus,” oops. ; DD It’s very slow and can barely stay aloft but owns anything walking on the ground, which is handy because the enemy riders holding out their lances while waiting for their mounts to arrive will just straight murder your ostrich unless you dive bomb them just so.
Playing Lies of P right now, and I am loving my time with it. It’s more linear than Fromsoft Souls but in the other end this makes remembering paths less stressful. The game has strong esthetics and lots of personality. The weapon upgrade system is great. The bosses are super cool are more manageable than your average Souls, thanks to the Specter usage and its own power ups. The level of polish is incredible. I can understand why it’s been considered inspired to Bloodborn especially, but they are actually pretty different in atmosphere. Honestly, Bloodborne is the From Souls I liked less (not having played Dks3), and while I still consider it a very good game, I think I prefer Lies of P to it. It’s really a cool game.
It’s funny that, while the game is not easy, I am breezing through it compared to how I struggled on Elden Ring dlc.
This also has a very generous demo that teaches you the whole game then has A Real Level just to show you. Kunitsu is literally Shinto Dance. So you help guide a priestess to Tori gates while doing light tower defense and basic but very good Capcom action combat. I basically hate all tower defense or micro-management stuff but they made it bearable for me so I can tell it is of extremely high quality. I find management decisions extremely stressful.
Unlike about a dozen other games I’ve looked at lately I thought the monsters looked cool. There’s this gross flesh door that opens up and they pore out of.
It is extremely confidently the game they wanted to make. I am tempted to buy it just go “Great Job Capcom.” Everything about it is like the Best and Right Decision outside of no one is going to buy this. I have to keep checking that I am getting the name right.
It’s Game Of The Year I Won’t Play
Bonus if you search Kunitsu you get a bunch of cool Shinto Music.
Something possessed me to set up a Switch emulator and grab a ROM for Tears of the Kingdom. I have a physical switch but I think I’m actually more inclined to play games on my nice big computer monitor, at my computer desk. Just much more convenient. If this was an indie game I’d probably bother to buy it officially, but it’s not, so I don’t care.
I can’t possibly say anything novel or interesting about the game it’s self. I’ll just say that it’s a departure from my usual of playing stressful, toxic multiplayer games, action packed single player where I’m struggling to push my limits, and quick mindless single player bullshit; in a way that I didn’t realize how much I needed until I started. It’s been a mega long time since I just sat and played a chill, long form adventure game.
(pick 1 from a selection of weapons/items each floor, all other treasures are removed) → reroll until i get the Casey bat → BATTER UP
