finally got lil hunter, the corpse is under the laser sight there, in one of the many grenade craters
i’m compelled to get good at this game lately and suddenly the load screen messages are like “make sure to hydrate” “take a 15 minute break for every 45 minutes you play” and one time “read a book” two loading screens in a row
I’m going to play more Gran Turismo 3 tonight. I need to figure out what car is optimal for the Amateur level races and then start making progress to 100%ing them. I’ve already finished Rally races and Beginner races. I will probably never finish Endurance because I am just too old to spend 8 hours a day playing Gran Turismo 3.
“Ass-Core”
One observation I’ve made is that very few modern videogames actually require much in the way of fast reflex reactions, even the ones with a reputation for needing them. You can almost always learn to observe earlier “tells” for enemy attacks, or follow a strategy that avoids getting into situations where you would be forced to react instantly.
Except that is, for Nuclear Throne. If you ever react more slowly than a twitchy cocaine-addled robot perfectly processing the trajectory of new enemies and bullets within a split second of when they appear onscreen, you die instantly
Tried to play Sin and Punishment but the N64 emulator seems to be screaming the whole time and by the time I got to the second level I was like “yanno…maybe not” sorry Treasure fans this one aiin’t for me.
wtf
at one time, back when people were still making half-life mods, i had great reflexes, but now my nuclear throne strategy relies on trying to mitigate the need for them. i stack mutations that improve the character’s durability and by the time i get to midgame, like the junkyard and the snowfield, i prefer to engage enemies with the grenade launcher or whatever from the far side of the screen, or even off the screen. little hunter fucks this up by teleporting around and throwing out big, dangerous bullet patterns, giving you basically no time for conscious tactical decision making or to carve out a safe area in a level that’s probably packed with other dangerous enemies. my challenge there is avoiding making dumb moves out of a misguided impulse to flee to safety
i still relish the moments where i’m playing the game correctly faster than i can consciously process it, which only ever lasts for a span of a few seconds.
another note, i found a golden wrench for steroid lately, meaning that the character who can use two weapons at once can start with a melee weapon, which are fairly rare but whose hurtboxes can deflect enemy bullets. if the rng blesses with a second wrench, you stop having to worry about melee cooldowns as much and can strut around the battlefield with confidence. i would love to explore a melee-focused nuclear thronelike
Played a bit of TP2 after my friend bought me a copy. I thought it was an exciting idea whereon the first mission you have this big area to explore, and your NPC companions start walking in completely different directions, keeping you updated on what they’re seeing out of view via video stream. (My tiny backseat designer brain wonders what GSC Game World could do borrowing this idea for Stalker 3.)
Something did bug me about the Buzzfeed quiz-style conversations where you pick between choices like “Do you like to dream of adventure? Or do you like organization?” Admittedly I’ve not seen enough of the game to know how this all pans out…
I got to floor 16 in Let it Die so I unlocked some of the 3-star fighters. I got blueprints for the Butterfly Knife, Jungle Machete, and the AR-1 or whatever it’s called, so I’ve been focusing on those (as well as maxed the masteries out on those except for the gun), though, I prefer the machete because I have more reach than the butterfly knife (you have to like, rush into them otherwise your reach is shit), but the Butterfly Knife seemed to do more damage and crticical’d/countered a ton (though, I also have a decal that increases how often I critical and how much damage my critical attacks do).
I also got blueprints for the Priest’s Leggings, Knight’s Leggings, and and like, Sengoku Leggings, but the Priest Leggings had fewer weaknesses, so they won out. I also got blueprints for the Knight’s Armor and the Priest’s Cowl but I went with the Knight’s Armor because I think it had better slashing resistance? The Dark Ryback armor I’ve been wearing is better for the floors with all of the gun dudes, though, they don’t hit me often, so 
I really like how long the feet parts are on the Priest’s Leggings. It’s very creepy.
Rain World is such a classic! I adore all those lil creachers, including the ones that eat me…
I found out you can cheat most of the special stage turns by just riding the outside of the wall like a slingshot
I kind of like Assassin’s Creed now that I am in the video game. None of it feels great (the jump is particularly bad.) the color pallette is non-existent. But when I rode in on my horse and a loading screen into Damascus and saw the city I uttered, “woah.” They do an excellent job of it feeling like a place in a movie. I just kind of wondered the streets for about 15 minutes taking in they did a pretty good job on 30 seconds of atmosphere. Then a NPC beggar woman started screaming at full volume from somewhere.
See the Japanese DUB at least all the voice samples are mixed at the same volume and almost always center mix. So this Beggar woman, 20 feet below me, just won’t stop yelling at full volume. Also makes everyone’s dying screams a bit much. I said I wandered around the city. Actually I stabbed six cops and then snuck in. You kill so many dudes in this game! Then have to debate killing the main bad. I hate that stuff.
Then the game settles in. There is a bunch of talking that doesn’t matter then you do little tasks that have constant help-bars telling you how to do stuff because it is 2007 and controls aren’t standardized yet. Then I guess you stab a guy in the street and he monologues in your arms as he lays dying. Then you are another guy who is like “I would like to leave my hotel room.” And the evil scientist goes “More Memories!”
The Japanese dub is easily the worst part. Judging it on full effort it’s a great 7/10 that probably shouldn’t have been judged as a 9/10. Which is why I never played it! I’ll probably give it one more session because I’m at the point that it would take absolutely too long to restart in English so guess I am stuck with the Japanese dub where I am absolutely not paying attention.
Oh and because this is a 2007 game there is a miserable unskippable unhelpful tutorial. I just actually unlocked counters so the combat is almost…fun? Arkam Asylum really did show how to do this.
Imho the trilogy following this game is where the series hit its stride and after that the series kind of lost the plot (narratively and otherwise) which is also where I checked out. Sometimes I think about dipping back in with selected titles though
I remember Acre being a particularly interesting environment. Uncommon location in games; architecture meaningfully ramps up difficulty since rooftops are more hostile to parkour; rare early depiction of the presence of Christianity in the middle east, a place which wasn’t exactly well-represented in media of the time. I think the first still ranks high in the series for having the most experimental energy.
I’ve played up through 3 when the “Desmond” story seems to end. Do they somehow keep the current day meta-narrative thing going? That was always my favorite part.
i think in black flag you play as some schmuck accessing the high seas through desmond’s dna sample, iirc from watching my brothers play. my belief is that they gave up on the framing story after that but don’t quote me
Origins definitely had some modern day stuff but it felt like I had to read 4 tie-in novels to know why I should care about the stakes
They do, with the modern day Animus users ranging between both employees of Abstergo to other assassins etc. Idk if any of the games have let you do the full-blown assassin thing in the modern day (there’s a chase sequence in one of the Desmond episodes but I can’t remember if it ends with you actually killing the guy)
To me the ideal game in the series now would be, plop the player in a city with some rich history (e.g., Prague), do some interludes in the past to gain insights into where to dig up the McGuffins in the present day, with the challenge stemming from reconciling the ancient and modern maps, dealing with necessarily trespassing on modern day private property and dealing with omnipresent surveillance thus also requiring a lot more of the “Social Stealth” which basically disappeared from the series after the first installment
The Social Stuff is so hilariously video gamey (again difficult to take at all seriously.) The game wants you to stab cops, constantly and then immediately start praying for the newly arrived cops to not notice the pile of bodies.
