Yeah this really was a baffling decision. The two other dungeons are harder and more interesting, but it just takes too long to get there.
I found paying back a huge debt very satisfying though
I’m playing Apex Legends again but on PC and I am actually getting wins compared to getting wrecked on PS4 all the time.
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No, I was talking about Claire. Actually, on further thought, I misperceived A Short Hike a bit because I projected that it was a clone even in the places where it was not. And I’m realizing now that it’s better than I gave it credit for right after playing it.
Mechanically of course it’s derivative of various Zeldas, in terms of theme and tone the other games I had in mind were Celeste and Night in the Woods. The distinction is that those are quite serious, weighty games with their protagonist in full existential crisis. In A Short Hike the protagonist is still a teenager and doesn’t have a care in the world yet.
One place I have to admit the game does something new is in the extreme casualness of the setup, where this is just one insignificant day in the grand scheme of things, or is it? The young adult NPCs are all having their own existential crises, whereas the children are happily constructing their own arbitrary meaning (“I want 15 shells!!”) and the older people, in their wisdom, have returned to valuing the small moments. Claire is at a threshold and subconsciously deciding what model to follow during this insignificant day. The superficially unambitious slice-of-life format lets the game end on a rich ambiguity as to her future.
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I mean, Claire’s mother was going through some kind of medical procedure and Claire was whisked away to try to get her mind off the situation. I’m not sure it’s entirely fair to call the day insignificant from her point of view, given that she embarks on her quest to climb to the top of the peak purely for the ability to get cell reception so she can check on her mom, who didn’t want her to worry.
Having gone through something very similar as a kid, right down to being shipped off to Maine for a week to visit an aunt who lived out in the country so I could “get away from the situation for a while” this resonated with me. The Bad Thing looms in the back of your mind but it is physically far away and it dulls the sense of powerlessness somehow because now it’s really clear there’s nothing for you to do. So you immerse yourself in something frivolous. I spent the week trying to get a good picture of the hummingbirds at the feeder with the crappy disposable camera I had on hand. I was almost exactly the same age, too. 14.
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I’m a hair’s width away from marrying Nanami and I’ve been putting it off forever so this is the motivation I need to finally reach the endgame
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restarted black mesa now it’s at 1.0, i’m not sure if it’s the game or the source engine or what but it still feels… dated and gordon freeman the stemlord fantasy sucks
the most interesting thing about mario odyssey so far is… how the loading times are really fast for a switch game???
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They probably needed to build really good streaming tech for the huge levels and then it comes as a side benefit that you don’t need to load as much of the level to get started
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This gels with other experiences I’ve heard. I feel like it’s not really a solid bet anymore, even for HL fans and I’ll probably give it a miss.
Interesting that nothing else stands out about Odyssey so far. What kingdom you at?
I’ve been putting off writing something about Massive Chalice or progressing my playthrough. I’m at Year 130 & have seen all the enemy types in non-advanced form. Here’s all the negative stuff I have so far:
- no fuck-up fixes, if you set up a keep with the wrong classes/region it takes 10-20 years to get another keep + 10 years to get someone suitable to move in. Having rewind points would help when you realise “oh that should have been over there” halfway through the game. On the plus side, buildings are pretty much the only thing you can screw up; if you mislevel someone, no problem, they’ll be dead after 2-3 missions anyway.
- ‘Balanced’ traits, for every Dexterous perk there’s a corresponding Clumsy flaw. It sounds dumb but regauging the stats so that the baseline is normal (previous clumsy), but some chars are nimble (previous average) and some more are graceful (previous dexterous) would feel way better than the baseline being the average. Every char with a trait taking them below-average feels like a loser, and I need winners on my team/sat in a keep until they die. It feels bad to look at my elite retinue of the best-of-the-best and see ranged units with accuracy penalties or melee with lowered mobility.
- Strategy layer stinks. Build OR research? The countdown to year 300 is the world’s worst progress bar, I dread returning to it because it brings the next terrible thing closer that I can’t prepare for and I feel all the agency drain out of me. There’s occasional events that look fun, “Alice and Bob want to raise funds for vunerable people, Approve/Forbid?” but every choice backs onto either a positive or negative outcome, and it’s chosen randomly. Your pro-strat is to know which choice has the worst potential downside, and avoid picking it. The main game loop feels so hollow, you want to engage each mission to extract the XP from the enemies so your retinue is leveled for the next mission, &c. There are no dramatic proactive actions for you to make a minor goal out of, you are constantly the underdog fighting against a stronger, unavoidable enemy. You can’t even decline to go on a mission!
- Tactical encounters are ok, mostly scouting in stealth and chess move to stun. No clocks so it’s fine to scout the map and wait for Cadence to randomly wander into an ambush. I didn’t know about stealth for the first 50 years and it was brutal. Then I tried it and found you can use it on every move & unlock armour to stealth to any position, so hello, alpha strikes. I think the combat would be more engaging if I was better at predicting what the Cadence would do/see, but I don’t understand their sight/move ranges. No injury system, so your chars are always fighting fit unless they lose their last hit point & die forever, so you’re best off taking ranged classes. Also, the basic ranged class is the stealth class, so why not take 4 or 5?
Here’s the current situation:
The big blue guys swap location with a character, and stun on hit. I can charge the upper left one to push them into the rocks & stun them, and use a knockback bomb on the lower right one as well. That will leave the other one to the right active, hopefully I can alpha strike them with the remaining 3 attacks and soak the hit from the Lapse on the left with someone I don’t mind losing XP. OR I can do nothing & hope they cluster up. - Marriage system, I expected Fire Emblem levels of horny but the rigid lifecycle for decent chars (in training, mission from 17 to mid-30s, trainer, die of old age) means you’re sending out teenaged randos with your 50+ group of fuckos who are too terrible to do anything else. There’s no battlefield dynamics, I have no idea who any of these people are despite making every significant life event choice for them, looking at them fills me with revulsion. Here’s one of my best melee chars:
Worst thing is, you have to retire a char from missions for them to become a parent, so there’s no way to field a Dad Squad/Take your Daughter to Smash the Cadence Day. - The fucking Chalice, why can’t I teleport trainers out on missions through the chalice, why did they put in all these terrible announcer lines, why do Double Fine think stale Monty Python riffs are humour
Would love to see this list if you can share it!
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sure, I wound up hating this top to bottom but I’ll find the old email!
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how do i install this i am very stupid
install this vpk from vitashell: https://github.com/theheroGAC/Autoplugin/releases
install dolcepolce from autoplugin
edit: actually i think you want 0syscall6 installed from there, dolcepolce is for antiblacklist
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thankee
you’re welcome, let me know if it works/you have trouble
do any of the vita online games still work? maybe we could play dynasty warriors co-op on there or some shit 
I’m bringing manifold garden and ff7 into the station at the same time, love to videogame
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Spent a couple hours today trying to eek out an extremely improbable victory in XCOM Chimera Squad that I have locked myself into because I am playing on Ironman. The scenario ends with a challenge to prevent enemies from standing in a highlighted area, where they will trigger a fail state if they aren’t killed or removed by their next turn, and I have had such narrow losses that I have been facing down total discouragement because of the frustration. I’ve thought I’m just gonna quit because I need so many exact dice rolls to get me through this, it’s almost absurd. It feels like living through some quantum farce, kick down the door take the shot kick down the door miss the shot kick down the door unkick the door. Gah!!
But I guess I’ll keep trying cause it is somehow still fun lol
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Sounds like X-Com alright. You slowly, asymptomically approach losing the game without ever quite losing it. A Zeno’s arrow of videogame despair
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Got this MW2 Mercenaries clone that, despite everything obviously being placeholder, is more “fun” to play than MechWarrior 5. i love the old-style “single room adventure game object interaction” for basic game functions in particular, brings me back.
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i need the name of this please.