Played a bit of The Outer Worlds last night and so far, so Fallout. This is of no surprise to anyone, but here is what’s different. It’s more colorful, which is nice. It’s maybe a little better written. There’s no real auto targeting V.A.T.S. system, just bullet time which sort of allows you to debuff badguys depending what body parts you shoot. So it seems dice rolls are completely gone. For example, with speech challenges, you either have more options available to you based on your skills, or you don’t. No percentage to succeed or anything like that, so I’ve been getting by a lot of situations just by lying to people which has been kinda fun/funny.
I’ll probably keep playing this in chunks but maybe I’m not going to put 100 hours into this like I did with Fallout 3
paper mario is pretty cool. the soundtrack is weird. they were deep into the dynamic music technology where parts come in and out depending on context, and sometimes the entire harmonic profile of the piece gets wild, e.g. walk into Merlon’s house in Toad Town to hear some wacky juxtaposition
also the writing/dialogue is really really good, and the pacing is starting to pick up
err, what? i mean, the fucking game is loosely based on a Chinese novel. If you’re going to lodge any complaint at its apparently “racist” music, it would be that there’s too much classical European-style music vs what you claim to be “racist Chinese […] music” in a video game based on a Chinese novel from 600 years ago.
also, suikoden and shenmue’s music are both incredible.
I can’t actually find the song I was thinking of at the moment so I’m gonna assume I mixed it up with a much shittier PS1 JRPG. It is early in the morning and I am a fool. Sorry everyone!!
I watched a video this week about how Suikoden is only based on the novel because the creator thought his boss wouldn’t get the manga he was inspired by at the time and if he had the choice he would’ve made a shmup instead lmao
been playing probably too much Eternal Card Game as I’m busy spiralling and losing everything
on one claw, for the sake of deckbuilder project research, it’s super interesting to compare as a direct successor to Magic. only a few years in, it’s got piles of divergent-timeline takes on a wide number of core mechanics: stuff like making first strike offensive-only, deciduous landfall, picking up HS player-weapons, their exalted as reverse bestow, etc. personally tend to absolutely devour particulars degree of staggering possibility space with tangible forward momentum (thus the roguelike devpoint), and 've never figured out how to pick apart that as comfort food compared to standard sb muse nostalgia. Eternal, while still inheriting potential mana screw / flood / goldfishing out boardstalls, fulfills this decently once after figuring out exchanges to draft and crafting uncommons for casual Dimir looting-heavy fliers midrange. it’s hyper generous on granting cards compared to almost any other card game economy, but making anything besides value piles runs into a wall, so it might not have much lifespan in terms of distinct new decks…
on that other claw, god, this is one of the least inspired settings 've ever spent time with. the long tutorial campaign has a standard spiel of fantasy geopolitics lacking culture or ideology, and this bleeds down hard onto forgettable locales foregrounded for mostly humanoid units. the sparing divergences of cowboys, dinosaurs, and gremlin robots / yetis pales compared to Ixalan, much less Ravnica’s murderguilds / Kaladesh environs / creature horrorstyles of Lorwyn elementals / Kamigawa spirits / phyrexian anything. colour identity feels distinctly opaque and thus much less interesting in design because everything gets most keywords and the power balance make every deck feign midrange, too. drifting away from Magic, Spire has a far more concentrated & lineage’d enemy set, Shadowverse has more talking & upgrades & absurdism, and Nowhere Prophet has an strong overlying specific culture + tone. comfort food for me is also heavily grounded in being able to find story meaning, and 'll probably forget most of this game for the next new game once this notetaking’s done.
really, I probably should take a break from cards / rogues and just go play dks2 for the first time just to try and do anything as absurd as when I oneshot Kalameet blind
I think Suikoden 1, 3, and 4 all had good OSTs. 3 and 4 feel a bit more restrained, but they’re still enjoyable. I like all of the Suikoden games (except for 2), though, I haven’t played too many hours of V, but everybody says it’s one of the best. I still think 1 is the pinnacle of the series – excellent music, a really cool story, cool characters, cool designs, very brisk, for the most part, respects your time (except for trying to get that fucking Urn or whatever it was that’s needed to recruit a character). It’s the one that feels the most Michael Moorcock or something.
I love La Mer, there’s another version coba released that I had an MP3 of maybe a decade or so ago, and it was really cool, but I’ve never been able to find it again, just the Suikoden version.
Himekami is excellent. I really love Kamigami no Uta, I wish it had been used for Suikoden 5’s theme instead of that generic piece of shit they went with.
Guess I’ll keep the spoilblur. Were you just Red Tearstone and Pyro ready? Been ages since I touched DaS1, aside from any other new or odd strats that’s the only kind of way I can imagine this.
Completed the Halloween event in Warframe today. Twice, in fact. Once with my brother, and then ran through again with a significant other joining us. Overall it was a nice change of pace, and enjoyable to have something to poke at and figure out the best way of managing it.
Got the new bat ephemera and figured I’d put together a new cosmetic scheme for Harrow using it and his deluxe skin. Haven’t really found too many looks I like for this skin so far, but I’m becoming quite partial to this one.
If anyone needs a hand with it on PC over the next week or so, holler at me and we’ll figure out a time to run the event.
Kinda glad to see the Catchmoon nerfs (finally) on the horizon. Only took the gun accounting for 30-50% of used sidearms from around mid-ranked players to the highest ranks to get it looked at. Think of the charge shot from Megaman X, big ol’ ball of plasma-y death. Good stuff. That’s what this fires. Has infinite punch through against enemies, massive damage per shot, no damage dropoff, pretty solid rate of fire, and the projectiles are around most of a hallway’s width. Oh yeah, and you can make it so each enemy you kill spawns 4 homing projectiles that’ll do at least as much, or likely more, damage than the shot itself. It’s silly, and pretty terrible to be in a mission where allies have it, so hopefully it’ll end up a bit more niche.
It also seems to be inline with the devs moving (slowly) towards overhauling their elemental system, though that’s still a fair bit over the horizon. I doubt they’d ever commit to reigning in player defenses, though. It’s so damn easy to have 90% DR for the better part of always, and the energy economy is such a trainwreck it doesn’t serve as a way to moderate power use in the slightest. On the rare chance it does work, the players cry bloody murder, even if the power is something like “Turn every enemy in a 60 degree FOV cone in front of me into statues for the next 30 seconds, causing them to take double damage and have the timers on applied status effects suspend.”
I guess it’s a loop that’s part of some instrument library.
Kind of like this from Okage: Shadow King:
That little riff that keeps looping throughout is likewise from some instrument library, and you may have heard it in a car commercial a decade or so ago
