Played about an hour of Outer Wilds last night. I’m really really bad at flying the spacecraft, had to use the Autopilot to actually land anywhere, which made me feel like a dweeb. Will have to sit down and try and figure out how it works.
I’m also grinding through River City Ransom on my Bittboy in between bouts of reading Pale Fire when I’m on the train. Lots of pretty mindless punching and kicking. Trying to get better at triggering jump-kicks, with the added difficulty of swaying around/getting nudged by other passengers (I’m always standing).
I went to the arcade (which is a pc gaming cafe thing that also has arcade machines) to play iidx and found out that the cia had rented it for the day to shoot a training film taking place in a “Chinese Internet cafe”
They were wrapping up production when I got there so I only had to wait like 20 minutes and then we were given the all clear to go in and play it whatever. So I’m playing iidx and I turn around and there’s an old dude with a boom mic obviously recording me so I ask him what’s up and he said he’s staying behind to record ambient noise from the place to have in the background of the training video. I got kinda heated about being recorded without my consent but ultimately I was like fuck it I’m just here to play games and this is an absurd story so whatever.
My furious rhythmic tapping will be the soundtrack to at least a portion of a video made by the CIA, which is not something I could have anticipated when I woke up this morning.
that’s cool because the FBI (who is across the street from us) rents out our theater to show their training films and I feel like there’s some overlap there (I know the last one I was involved in showing was a “don’t let the Chinese gaslight you into stupid shit you idiot” kind of deal)
Make sure you’re locking on to the celestial body you’re trying to go to. The relative velocity vectors are helpful in figuring out how you have to move.
Also remember: if you constantly accelerate towards a body, then you need to start decelerating halfway there, otherwise you’ll be going way too fast when you get there. You acceleration is constant whether you’re speeding up or slowing down. There’s no faster “brake” equivalent in space.
I’m finally playing Lost Odyssey! I meant to pick it up at release but had the story spoiled for me and lost all motivation to play it. It’s one of those games you can spoil in a single sentence. Anyway, I’m 6 hours in and this game is really cool so far! I wish I could have experienced it without already knowing the plot, but I’m enjoying its art direction, skill system, music, difficulty and how every boss is sort of a mini puzzle. A Thousand Years of Dreams is a really interesting way of giving the occasional respite from the JRPG gameplay.
man i could not beat that worm boss that comes back to life in the beginning, i use all my resources during his first life and when he comes back im tapped out. i want to play that game so bad, but i got stuck at that boss three times now
I’m not stavekoff but Rune Factory 4 in particular learns all the lessons of the previous games and condenses it into a tight action RPG package. There’s farming elements but they aren’t absolutely necessary to progress. In fact, a lot of the mechanics are like that; actions you can take will help in some fashion but if you don’t enjoy doing them you can just skip them. All weapon types are viable, it feels good to move and attack, and you can even rely on attack magic. Stamina limitations are such that you will feel it when you’re fighting your way through a dungeon but will not be hugely pressing doing chores. Especially when you can regain it and HP very easily through food!
It’s still anime as hell but toned down from the bonkers levels that was present in 3. In a surprise move the bachelors are generally more interesting than the bachelorettes!
The only big downer is that completing the third arc of the main plot depends on the random event system to start it off. Depending on how quickly you’ve progressed through the game this could mean it’s loaded down with other random events to choose from and it may take a lot of time before its turn (since I left the game that’s where I was stuck).
Was 3 the one where you had to manage the population of the harvest spirits and if you failed to do so you crops would all take like 21 days to grow. That’s the only entry I’ve played and it soured me badly I haven’t gone back
Nah that’s one of the Wii games, Rune Factory Frontier. 3’s the one where you’re secretly a sheep turned into a human and amnesia’d their way into living in a gigantic tree at the human village. One of the requirements for completing the plot is to get married; I’m terrible at deciding who’s the best and was a hard moment for me!
