Playing two games: Dark Souls 2, and the recent Embers of Mana ROM hack.
After more than a decade, I’m finally feeling my groove with DS2, accepting its Harmony of Dissonance-esque nonsensical maximalist design. Turns out I’m good at this game, because I beat Darklurker with Dark magic, and solo-ed Sinh no problem
Embers of Mana is really cool, if not a bit confusing re: figuring out where to go next (I should probably try consulting the maps included in the patches’ zip folder). I’m a big Final Fantasy Game Boy Spin-Off head, really liking Adventure and Legend (1 and 2 specifically), so I’ll take any excuse to play more of it.
Finished up the main postgame run of challenges in Donkey Kong Bananza, it is nice to play a Nintendo game that doesn’t lock 50% of the game (usually the interesting part) behind a credits roll. Here you have access to pretty much all of the game, much of it optional, during the course of the actual playthrough with mainly just a set of post-game higher difficulty obstacle courses, a few additional small challenges plus whatever optional stuff you skipped to take care of afterwards if you choose. Anyways the game is good fun even if it stretches its end run out a bit on the long side with fakeouts.
I also saw an old puzzlescript game made by someone on a forum I used to frequent ages ago named Overrwyrld mentioned in the wild and played through it again. It is basically a puzzle game made out of an overworld (vaguely reminiscent of the original Zelda’s) where you keep picking up different abilities that allow you to interact with the world in different ways as you try to grab all the various bits placed around it. The thing is that the game was updated several times since I played it including an entirely different ending run, so it was an odd feeling where the game itself was a mix of things half-remembered and fuzzy that eventually unexpectedly just completely broke from said memories entirely. It also remains very good (could use an undo though), if one wanted to try a puzzlescript game that uses said engine in a pretty different way it’d be one of the first ones I’d recommend.
I don’t know if the hiding of the entrance to the castle cellar was supposed to be funny, but I sure thought it was. Unfortunately, the rain staff and sun stones didn’t instantly solve my problem so I’ve been running around a bit more. I went back to an area I wanted to explore when I was stronger and boom! Gwaelin! Now she loves me (and it’s a whole item). What a silly idea! But also I do kind of appreciate knowing how close I am to a level (not close).
I’m ripping up a higher tier of enemies and I’m 4/7ths of the way to the magic armor. I got kind of stumped on what was next so I read the manual in case something interesting was in there and, well. There was an entire area I hadn’t explored at all! So I went down there and found a few things. I want to go back to the ruined city, and there is stuff past that that definitely seems interesting but I’m not sure I have the information for, yet. Also the enemies there are absolutely nasty, but I can usually survive just long enough to run away, which is pretty nice! Can’t believe how much tougher the Wraith Knights are than any other enemy that is around where I can handle. Still hitting for up to 20 damage. I’m like, level 14 now! How dare they!
I also went back to Galin’s grave because something specifically said “push on a dark wall” but I didn’t see any dark walls. I mapped that thing pretty fully. Maybe I missed something? I dunno. If the southwest area doesn’t yield anything I can come back. Maybe I’ll pay those wraith knights a visit when I have the magic armor.
Booted up GT4 to compare to GT3 and I gotta say GT3 is a cozier, more of a comfort food kind of game. My memories of both are pretty ingrained into my brain and GT4 feels like a harsher experience? The lighting is a lot more realistic instead of the high contrast of GT3. It also has way more UI things for tire wear, fuel consumption, etc etc, to pay attention to.
The campaign is a bit uneven as pretty much every race you enter has one car that’s way faster than everyone else and it’s up to you to find something faster. I bought an MR2 as my starter car and wasn’t able to win all the MidEngined races in the beginner section because one car is always faster. Also: The New York track sucks. So many games from this era wanted to turn Times Square into a race track and it sucks so much. Forza had a Times Square track. It’s too flat and it’s all 90 degree turns or long straightaways, so you need a car with a lot of straight line speed to the exclusion of anything else.
The driving assists are also really heavy and you can tune these down to your liking, otherwise your car is literally slower as the game cuts power to the wheels on corner exit to prevent them from spinning at all.
Witcher 3 free owner`s upgrade from Switch 1 to 2 is weirdly a separate app instead of a straight upgrade. Needed to (refer to Reddit to learn how to) create a CD Projekt Red account, sign in on the Switch 1 version, resave my game, then sign in on the Switch 2 edition to transfer my cloud save file (which was on the same device). Switch 2/remastered version does look a lot nicer though.
Had time after that to wander around Novigrad for about 10 minutes. It was dead of night. Found my way to Dandelion’s pub, and… it felt like I was in a real bar with loud, live music. Like the NPCs were there to party. I could barely see or hear clearly past a few feet. Don’t remember this location being quite like that before this remastered version.
gonna give indika a bash, seems like it could be the shit
just finished case of the golden idol, which was over much more promptly than expected so i’m pretty much bound to get the dlc. it was very moreish and i dug how it did the worldbuilding a lot
Whereas I bounced off of Cloverpit quickly, a machanically similar game Dice of Kalma has managed to get its hooks into me. I think it’s because the latter is a little more pure, it doesn’t try to embody the player and the progression each run is a bit more straightforward.
It is however way more… mathy, and I’m doing my best to ignore that as I synergize my perks. Wtfdym I get a bonus if the product of the highest and smallest die is such and such, I don’t remember what a product is, on purpose!
Assassin’s Creed (360): was trying (kinda) to be patient and optimistic here, but all that went out the window right around the time i reached the first combat tutorial
Edit: this thing was released in two thousand and seven- how is the stealth worse than Metal Gear Solid?!
You can tell that something happened with the team between GT3 and GT4, they somehow lost their fun-loving spirit and started trying to be realistic™ — which sucked out so much air that the remaining product felt a bit thin, hollow or trying too hard:
The colorfulness (or rather: lack of it) is one aspect in GT4, everything looks drab and paintcolors didn’t pop anymore, racetracks became grey-green-brownish slogs of boredom that try to impress by gimmicks rather than entice you to take another spin and try to beat a laptime:
Take Grand Valley as an example, the first sector leading up to the tunnel section was a highlight in 3, with lush green grass up to the racetrack… where part four introduces graveltraps and brown’ish curbs reminiscent of trying to passing virtual FIA racetrack requirements. Trail Mountain - same. Where four feels more polished, has more technically showboat’ey bits, the fun of just doing it was lost in the process. Think of the wacky Pod Race in the Toyko Motorshow demo!
Ecco keeps locking up. I wonder if the console is kind of fucked up too, as there seem to be weird artifacts and jank on screen, though it’s unclear if that’s the game or the console. Anyway, I switched to Landstalker which I have never played. I still am planning on finishing Dragon Warrior but I want to make sure I have a good setup.
Finally got around to Pentiment, tore through it in one week, and it’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever played. Gonna be thinking about this one for forever.
