I met the developer of Wandersong the other day while I was helping to tear down the diner across the street, nice guy
9 Likes
I was able to identify him because he was wearing a mother 2 sukajan
9 Likes
as the lone idiot here stupid enough to claim the Back 4 Blood is good actually and because I went all in, Iām playing again because the first DLC expansion track pack dropped last week
ostensibly, the big draw are the zombie tunnels you can explore for loot and stuff. reading the short description they had provided leading up to the release of the content I was under the impression that 1. the tunnels were their own mode and 2. they would be some kind or ersatz roguelite experience with light procedural generation (thinking a lot of prefab rooms stitched together governed by an algorithm to keep things from not making sense)
so in reality, they are diversions you find in the campaigns themselves in non-finale maps and theyāre all pre-designed levels. now, these two things, in of themselves, arenāt bad.
however
the campaigns already have a problem where they can run long and inserting another 10-20 minute map half-to-three-quarters way of the map you were already on and then thereās a choice for even more loot by doing another 10 minute map on top of that and it just slows down a game that has pacing issues to begin with to a crawl. also they only shipped maybe 6 or 7 of the tunnels? I accidentally got the achievement for doing all of them (why would you keep track of this) over a few play sessions without realizing it
on the other hand, the new cards are hilarious so itās hard to say if the update is good or bad
4 Likes
I used to see Greg around a lot! Heās good people for sure. Fun fact: for Halloween he only dresses up as different characters who are named Greg
1 Like
oh phew I wanted to confirm his name was Greg after I got a text from that party that said āthis is Greg, nice to meet youā
2 Likes
No More Heroes 3 was great.
I quit the Metroid Dread demo after the 3rd time it made sure I didnāt have to think. Fucking Battlestar Gallacitca ass camera angles.
7 Likes
breath of fire dragon quarter is punishing, mysterious, hermetic. perfect atmosphere to share with your love on a crt in a cluttered dark bedroom with black walls and a droning air purifier, and filled with exciting design ideas. on my own iām playing umihara kawase shun, which is giving me that sense of kinesthetic pleasure that people who enjoy videogames are supposed to feel. iām terrible at it and iād need to put in sustained practice to wrap my head around any advanced movement tech but even just nailing simple stuff and swinging fluidly through the early fields feels so nice, especially given the rigid austerity of the fishing line physics in the first game. also just started threads of fate which is pretty and cute and simple and satisfies my bratty princess attitude needs. really funny to imagine the traumatized xenogears team making this.
18 Likes
Whoa.
1 Like
Started replaying Death Stranding because thereās not much new around in the first few months of this year (besides Elden Ring) thatās really grabbed me, to be honest!
This game is justā¦ itās got to be one of my favourites. My partner has heard all about it from me on multiple occasions as well as from the internet discourse but, after Iād been playing for a couple hours while they did other tasks and took a look occasionally, remarked āhey wait this is actually good, isnāt it?ā
Kojima has a well-earned reputation for being an idiosyncratic goof and the gameās love of endless hammy dialogue where he wants to tell you breathlessly about all his little ideas while periodically yelling āTHIS IS THE THEME ITāS THE THEME DID YOU GET THE THEME YETā, its wishy-washy boomer politics and endless tutorializing are all, well, obviously less than ideal.
BUT itās a really original, spooky and genuinely captivating little sci-fi setting ex nihilo, and despite Kojimaās love of casting celebrity friends (and then making extra sure you notice) and his love of belaboured cinematographic reference itās just so rare to see a big budget game thatās willing to go so far in creating its own little thing rather than just lazily stealing and then falling back on genre standards.
Plus, I mean, on release the biggest surprise being that it actually plays extremely well. Maybe that shouldnāt be a surprise on Kojima games but āa game about walkingā doesnāt sound nearly as interesting as it is in practice.
I dunno, itās just a good time, man. Plus it looks gorgeous in 4k on my beefy work PC. I wish all AAA games were this stupidly bold and boldly stupid.
21 Likes
Found āThe Italian Jobā on an abandonware site. Itās a driving game built around the Micheal Caine movie where they steal a bunch of gold using Mini Coopers. I played the PSX version a million years ago so Iām eager to play it in Hi Rez on pc. The movieās defining chase scene is recreated, shot for shot, within the gameās open world. A string of vignettes strung together spatially, which you get to drive through.
6 Likes
i am starting to become sekiro
16 Likes
next, become forum sekiro, and parry my post!!
14 Likes
i escaped hades.
no, i will not do it again.
12 Likes
since Iāve been obsessed with cricket recently, I was looking to see if there were any good cricket video games. there arenāt a ton - the latest is Big Antās title Cricket 22 (following up on their previous Cricket 19 and Ashes Cricket 17). As the Ashes heritage suggests, theyāre an Australian company and mostly have licenses for the Anglophone countries in the sport - England, New Zealand, Australia, West Indies etc. No India, Pakistan, etc licenses, although there is for example an āIndiaā team with AI-generated players and logos.
sports games in general arenāt a great market - theyāre a massive amount of work to make and super dependent on the ability to license, and licensing is a huge pain except for huge corporations like EA. Big Ant is fighting an uphill battle to even make these games, so (like my flight sim games) I donāt mind the price as much.
so anyway, I started playing Cricket 22 even tho a lot of reviews said it was a bit disappointing for the price tag (a hefty $45). what interests me is the career mode - you can create a cricketer and take him (or her, thereās also womenās cricket in the game) from the small club level, to the state level, to the international team. And you can get offers from T20 clubs as well (such as the Caribbean Premier League, no IPL license, altho thereās a set of asset creation tools and people have made them).
I really play sports games for the season-over-season narrative possibilities. Iāve created an all-rounder player ā heās a fast-medium swing bowler and traditional strokeplayer going by the extremely old-school Tamil name of VEERAPANDIAN VIJAY. iāve given him big biceps and a very formidable mustache. he bats wearing gold aviators and a sharp baseball cap instead of a helmet. my plan is to take him from the mean streets of Tirichirapalli to the Tamil Nadu team and eventually the Indian national team, where he will hopefully captain them to many Test match victories.
the career mode so far isā¦ pretty decent? licensing problems mean that altho Iāve created a South Indian cricketer, the clubs are just names of cities in the state with made-up logos and AI-generated cricketers. Iām a little impressed they did get the names of all these little cities in Tamil Nadu. you get a made-up league as well, including the same AI players who you get to face regularly. Iām playing for Tirichi and face off against Erode, Chennai, Coimbatore etc.
The AI players are a little sketchy on race to be honest, theyāre mostly the right skin color for folks from South India, but the faces arenāt super convincing and you can see when theyāre sort of reskinned white guys or black guys. Universal problem in the game industry I think. They donāt have very Tamil names which is a bit disappointing. Itās also kind of funny when you see an AI guy whose playstyle is modeled after a very unique real-life cricketer like Bumrah or Hasaranga. (Thereās one guy in my save whose bowling action is a spot-on version of South African Paul Adams - the āfrog in a blenderā. Look it up 
Absolutely miserable to play against.)
I wish they had put a little more effort into developing the Career mode narrative side - thereās a few cutscenes with your coach and stuff, but I wish there was like, newspaper clipping from the Sports pages or something like that. Especially to chart your playerās rise from the small club level. (The bar for this type of thing in sports games was really set by ESPN NFL 2k5 which gave you a weekly Sportscenter recap with Chris Berman commentating highlights around the league.) The in-game commentary is pretty dire and often incorrect to the actual action but that doesnāt bother me so much, Iām glad that itās there.
gameplay: itās pretty difficult the way Iāve set it up honestly. Iām playing on Medium difficulty and āClassic Proā settings, which means you have a lot more control over how you take on the ball as a batter, but also way more room for error. when batting, you have to judge the line and length of the ball (thereās a little marker indicating where it will bounce), then move your feet (left stick) and swing towards the field (right stick flick). If you donāt have the right footwork, timing, and shot selection, you will very likely get out. you can move your guy around before the ball is bowled, and also hold a button to select a batting approach (aggressive/precise/defensive/unorthodox). A precise shot will usually be a fast grounded shot, but the aggressive approach is more lofted, swing-for-the-fences type thing. Defensive is your standard cricket defense shot and is pretty lenient on the timing, compared to the others which are very precise.
I didnāt expect the level to which you have to adapt your approach to each bowler you face. Fast bowler with a lot of bouncers = defend fuller balls, and get on the backfoot to smash the bouncers to the leg side. Spin bowler with good length deliveries outside the off stump = wait for it, then dance down the pitch and hit it straight down the ground. (Press R3 to dance down the pitch!) Etc.
Also related to this, all three formats of the game are represented (20 Overs, 50 Overs, multiple-day aka Test matches). You have to adapt your batting approach to each one. True to life, the game is balanced so that risky shots are easier to take in the shorter formats, but the demands of scoring runs quickly also means that you donāt have as much game time to āget your eye inā and really read the bowlers - you need to start hitting right away. The Test matches are a lot more slow-paced and you can defend all day if you want to. But eventually you do need to start hitting the ball, unless you want to get carried to victory by AI teammates. Also, itās a lot more risky to play any kind of shot and itās easy to get out cheaply. However building a strong Test innings is super satisfying.
TL;DR I am averaging like 15 runs an inning at the lowest level of play which is really not what you want. Iām constantly hitting a couple of boundaries but then getting out before my 50 because I completely mistimed a hit, swung instead of defending, or pushed for a risky single. Itās really rewarding to actually hit the ball far though. Itās giving me a new appreciation for the IRL sport.
Bowling ā itās just not as fun to me, sadly. Iāve started just simulating the match anytime Iām up to bowl. (Robust set of mid-match sim options in this game thankfully.) Like with batting, the game gives you a lot of control and expects you to get it right. Choose your run up, select your type of pitch (standard/outswing/cutter/etc), select your length, time the Jump meter to determine your speed, time the Release meter to determine your accuracy, optionally you can choose the ballās seam direction, apply aftertouch with RS, add extra āeffortā by holding a triggerā¦ etc etc. Itās a little overwhelming. I really havenāt figured out how to make batters get out to me, but like real life I think itās a combination of varying your line and length to confuse the batters into playing a bad shot. Iāll have to look up a guide.
People online said spin bowling is much better in this game than fast bowling ā I created a spin bowler to see and honestly it didnāt feel a lot easier to get wickets. Spin bowling has a completely different set of controls (!) - select your ball, focus it on bounce or flight, hold the Spin joystick to maintain the spin, etc etcā¦
You can also choose to play your character when theyāre just standing around in the field - the fielding controls are pretty simple - but I just sim through all that stuff. occasionally I will get a caught-and-bowled or run out opportunity when I choose to bowl, and thatās enough for me.
there are of course Arcade controls to make everything easier, but whatās the fun in that? 
It reminds me a lot of my short time playing Pro Evolution Soccer - tons of focus on gameplay complexity to make up for licensing issues - I wasnāt willing to put in the effort for that game, but I am moreso for this one. Thereās a lot here to learn and improve at.
Iāll post an update if I get made captain, because thereās a pretty involved set of tactics possible when youāre a cricket captain - itās probably the captain role with the most responsibility in any team sport - and thatās all in the game as well.
Overall Iām actually quite enjoying it, on Sunday night I played it till the sun came up. Iām improving at batting and hoping the hints of gameplay depth I see in bowling are borne out by wickets.
19 Likes
Also I have learned from past attempts and will no longer be making a thread about my video game hyper fixation of the moment. that combat flight Sim thread still haunts meā¦ last post febā21ā¦ 
4 Likes
hi
Iām here as the sole horse pervert poster and the idiot keeping the genshin thread alive to tell you to keep that shit alive
11 Likes
Legend has that you become a true member of this forum only once youāve made a thread where itās mostly just you posting about a game only you are playing. You wonāt always get feedback or conversation on it, but people do read those things if youāre just trying to get your thoughts out there into the void.
20 Likes
Oh itās moreso I should learn that as with all hyperfixations it will peter out quickly 
if I could harness my adhd powers properly I would be such a polymath
6 Likes
itās true
I only do horse posting for the endorphin hit of easy blood potions
5 Likes
Doesnāt hurt to share in the moment! A thread is just a record in a database; donāt hesitate to make space because you never know whatāll strike a chord
9 Likes