congratulations, gravelord invasions are notoriously busted & rare to actually see personally. i’ve gotten the incidental “gravelord servant was defeated” message many times but ive never seen one of their signs
edit: or more accurately ive seen their signs like twice & then they failed to connect & disappeared both times
4 Likes
While stuck in bed with an allergy attack that left me unable to do absolutely anything I sat around and played through Link Between Worlds. @AutomaticTiger is right I think for it being low key one of the best. The dungeons are consistently clever and make me to aha. The swamp dungeon sucks and I think I once again saved it for last on accident.
It’s a good time though feel like they ran out of time for the final dungeon which is just bits and pieces of other dungeons they couldn’t fit anywhere else.
The little bonus puzzle rooms were my favorite part. Probably time for me to actually enjoy Steal Princess.
13 Likes
Oh! I thought that was somebody’s name or something. ; D Hmm yeah weird stuff indeed, now that I’ve looked it up! ( https://darksouls.wiki.fextralife.com/Gravelord+Servant ) I’d even delayed accepting the challenge for 20 minutes or so while I ran off to gather my dropped Souls. But the target was in the high traffic area around the Bonfire in Burg so I think they wanted to be found.
4 Likes
‘River City Girls Zero’ is such a misnomer, it’s kinda funny and obviously shameless marketing tactic from WayForward. The girls don’t really even show up until partway in and it usually feels like a liability to use them because their health goes down much quicker.
I like that Kunio and Riki kinda look a bit like a couple of young Moe Szyslaks. Every thug is a gangsta who’s come to diss their flygirls.
I almost gave up at the Shinji boss fight in the amusement park, but I managed it eventually by exploiting the vertical spacing. Now I am up to the second fight with this guy but it’s a level with only a single plane so I dunno how I will deal with this one. Wasn’t expecting it to be so plot heavy, but it’s cool so far.
13 Likes
was spending a weekend over at a friend to celebrate his birthday, and checked out some games while there:
Dave, Zat Diver:
made me groaaaaannnn a lot. Cocoon really clicks more w/ me, that I learned.
Vampire Survivor:
aaand ACTION. 
some 2D rpg-lite:
forgot about most of it already, aside from being mildly bored.
GT7 the newest update:
that was a squishy handling (stock) C7 ZR1 on Bathurst, but GT3s supposedly are better now
6 Likes
stranger of paradise - i’m on a mission to kill chaos
dead space remake - oh yeah that re4 trickle down dna
callisto protocol - wait it’s like dead space but worse
persona 3 reload - i’ve never played any of these. the music is nice
monster energy supercross 6 - best one of these yet, addictive…
ghostwire: tokyo - the combat just really doesn’t feel too good, does it
13 Likes
Started up Empire of the Ants and it’s a lot more chill than I thought it’d be.
It alternates between a very basic rock-paper-scissors RTS (more like tower defense really) with mild base/ability upgrades and what I’d describe as a Flower like platformer where you just run and jump around and only water can harm you. These latter sections would make a good prestige indie game by itself and the RTS side of things feels like a genre obligation from people brainstorming ‘ANTS’ on a whiteboard. Ants - real ants - don’t really have that many unit types in reality and eusocial insects mostly just practice swarm warfare so you just bonk ant crowds together until your ant crowds are the least dead. They introduce ‘gunners’ as a class to round out the RPS but it’s just those butt-spraying ants. It’s not like you’re constructing howitzers and ballistas to siege the termites.
The game presents you as a mostly realistic red wood ant in a wood somewhere near Paris but then gives you a bunch of abilities that stretch the abstraction and anthropomorphisation quite far. You have a charge jump to get around more easily but to my knowledge not many ants, and certainly not this species, can jump. You also have a run button which makes me smile because it’s not a separate sprint animation it just multiplies your movement speed by like 3 and you just run so fast you start ramping to airborne off of errant geometry.
Your ant is called 103,683rd and everyone is named by number. Your society is loosely characterised as a tribal sorority, federation, or state government depending on how the writer is feeling. Ants talk through text dialogue and use lots of terms that raise a lot of questions.
‘If only we could sign a peace treaty with the termites’
You are the only ant who can jump which is probably why you get put in charge of a lot of expansionist projects, defending turf, and setting up bases around the forest. The fiction stretches a lot of plausibility as an entomophile but I’m happy just to be a little ant in a pretty nice-looking rendering of the woodland floor. You get a good scale-feel when you go up to any species larger than you and ride it or climb a twig like it’s an Assassin’s Creed tower.
I’m playing the PS5 version which doesn’t seem to allow manual saves. This might explain why certain trophies in the trophy list have such low completion percentages where replaying a certain mission is required. Likewise, very few people have completed the game which might be an ill omen. So far it plays OK though. Minimal jank and they get the climbing on any surface thing down without the camera being screwy. The sense of which direction to press relative to your position on the underside of something is fairly intuitive which I think they must’ve spent a lot of time on. Good so far but I think you have to be pretty into ants/nature to make it worth a go.
15 Likes
turns out it’s some dev build
9 Likes
lol, people are getting around denuvo in funny ways lately. for metaphor refantazio the demo had the full game in it and they just figured out how to unlock the rest of it
16 Likes
So there are two non-ant units you can get. One is Aphids which act as support and are infamously farmed/milked by ants. The other is Dor Beetles of all things. The Dor Beetles are also the best unit in the game, ignoring the RPS and just wrecking anything they touch. I cannot find anything on the connection between Dor Beetles and ants and can’t recall there ever being something that links them. The rest of the game usually gives shallow but accurate trivia about most species but the Dor Beetle thing is never explained and I am reeling. I cannot find an explanation. The official site says
Dor Beetles – These larger insects are more resource-intensive but worth it. Their tough shells are immune to acid, making them an ideal defensive line.
Why did you choose Dor Beetles? I must know!
I also learnt about the Paussus, an ant mimic which the game includes as a recurring character in each hub zone you visit.
10 Likes
just started up ffx remaster on a whim and my gf was watching and we both completely forgot everything or what day or time it was and that’s the kind of gameplay experience that keeps you coming back for more
11 Likes
Snake Eater 3ds
5 Likes
Titan Souls, I agree with all the critic reviews try to against it but somehow the gameplay perfectly fits my void purpose to open it
4 Likes
I had the SimAnt strategy guide (manual? memory unclear) as a kid which was just basically a litany of incredible ant facts like this and I read it about 100x more than I played the game
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I took that shit to the library to look for the cited sources.
13 Likes
I have all the achievements in Armored Core 6 now except for all S rank and the all achievements achievement. Might go for it. I actually like the game enough that I feel like I could justify it to myself. Plus 100%ing a From Software game would be a flex, even if it is the easiest one.
6 Likes
Replaying FF7Remake on the PC. Constantly weighing if I’m interested enough to finish this again. I wanted to play it for the Intergrade stuff, but just noticed like 12 hours in that you can skip directly to that from the menu. I’m anticipating Rebirth on PC next year, so I’m really not replaying this for the sake of the game itself.
3 Likes
Romancing Saga 2: Revenge of the Seven Demo (PS5) - damn, this rules. it’s like the Dragon Quest VIII of SaGa games somehow. something about the art style and vibe and orchestrated music…
5 Likes
Spent pretty much all day today (it’s my day off and I’m sick, I’m allowed I think…) playing Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake and have had a really good time with it.
It’s been a while (a year? Or so?) since I played Dragon Quest 2 and I was very happy to rediscover why I liked that game and DQ1 so much - there’s just a lot of really fun moments, some good pathos bits, the works. I think I’ve laughed out loud a handful of times in the 12 hours or so I played today, which is better than I can say of most games that try to be funny.
I can absolutely see why folks don’t care for the HD-2D aesthetic, but it looks alright here, I guess.
Anyway, looking forward to being a sicko and replaying DQ1 and DQ2 when those remakes hit. Royal cousins gonna hit the road again…
Just gotta figure out how I’m going to play IV when I get around to it. Seen people say the party chat that’s absent from the US DS release is essential, but that’s only in the mobile version, and I dunno…I guess I could play it on my phone. Seems wrong.
6 Likes