Gaming

I've been back on a Battlefield 2042 'grind'. I don't think it deserves the hate it gets.

Popped in to Diablo 3: Season 33 for a little bit. Chose the Crusader this round, but I'm not feeling super motivated to get through the season quickly.

Finally got through the final boss in Quantum Break. I really wish there was a sequel. Beth deserves the best.

I'm not sure how canon Alan Wake's American Nightmare is for the overall Remedy Universe (the game itself says it's kind of a alt reality, like a dream within a dream), but, like with Quantum Break, there are references to it in Alan Wake 2, so here we are lol. Besides, it's a fun, short game, so why not. I was a little sad I couldn't re-pick up documents (as I've played this a couple times before), but going back through them there is a surprisingly large amount of lore that's dropped if you do consider this canon. Overall, I'm glad I played it.

Currently working through Control, and I've made a surprisingly large amount of progress story wise. It might be a bad idea that I am doing a replay, since I'll want to collect every single little thing again, and that might take a while, but I love this game, so I won't complain too much. Also, I absolutely forgot that they straight up mention Mr. Door. When I first played this game, it was before I played Quantum Break, so when "Mr. Door" popped up I was very confused, and by the time I got to Quantum Break I had forgotten the comment, I didn't make the Door/Hatch connection. So it was a cool light bulb moment that makes me glad I'm going through the Remedy games again.

I finished Prince of Persia The Lost Crown. It's good but some weird decisions by the devs. For example, you can buy treasure maps at the end, so you don't need a guide to find everything, just for some reason those maps to not actually show everything. I already mentioned the arbitrary limitation on the pictures you can take last week. Then, the whole game you're trained to use your parry, normal enemies or bosses, just so some of the later bosses can just spam attacks you can't parry.

I'm also done with Vampire Hunters. Beat all the stages, unlocked all the characters, but it just doesn't have a lot of variety. It's all just "normal" weapons, that shoot forward, nothing really crazy going on. Every level also plays the same, so it gets old relatively quick.

Then I tried HoloCure - Save the Fans!. This (F2P) game isn't just like Vampire Survivors, it is Vampire Survivors, but with a VTuber skin. Since it's copying the best in this genre, it's not bad, but I'd rather just play Vampire Survivors. I'd only recommend this, if you're a huge fan of VTubers, don't want or can't pay for Vampire Survivors, or have put in like a thousand hours into it and just want something a little bit different.

Next is Karate Survivor. Like the name suggests, another VS-like game. This one I'm not so sure about. The theme is 80s Martial Arts Movies, and you're playing as Jackie Chan from Wish. Instead of weapons, you're combining different fighting moves into a combo. It sounds neat, but the beginning is pretty rough. You can only run around, and your attacks basically all go forward. Since it's martial arts, your attacks also have a tiny range, so you're basically standing inside the enemies, so you can hit them. My first few runs weren't that fun, but you unlock new moves of course and also some movement-type abilities, like rolling over obstacles or sliding under tables. You can also kick or throw small objects at enemies, like bottles, buckets, etc. or use some objects as weapons, like a broom or baseball bat. These weapons are a bit lame though, since they all have the same attack animation. Later, you can also kick bigger stuff at your enemies, like pallets or motorcycles. Each of these unlocks make the game more fun, but the normal combat, still isn't my favorite. I'll stick with it a bit longer, but dunno how long.

Finally, a bit more Baldurs Gate 3 coop. Grymforge is cleared, there were no survivors (except our party). Next is the rest of the Underdark.

I'm still playing Triangle Strategy and played a bit of Granblue Fantasy Vs Rising, but I'm on pad as I didn't have my hitbox with me so I'm trying to relearn the controls.

I've been also playing a bit of Genshin Impact and while I don't like the monetization and think it hurts the game even if you don't interact with it, it's still enjoyable to play and the exploration is quite relaxing.

I've also been playing Etrian Odyssey which I had put on hold for a few months because I had gotten stuck on a certain floor, but now I figured out where to go. I am really enjoying it, it does feel a bit old, but it probably enhances how hostile the dungeon feels.

Just finished Battlefront 2 and am now playing the original Yakuza (Restored patch) for PS2 for the first time.

Started playing the first Watch Dogs for the first time in six years after learning about the wide variety of mods. As a Linux gamer I of course had to do a bit of tinkering. Ubisoft Connect would only make a black screen and take me to the login screen. I read that had something to do with Wayland and Proton not handling Electron apps really well. After switching to Wayland I could finally use Ubisoft Connect and download the game.

Performance-wise the game does well. After setting geometry and LoD levels to High instead of Ultra, the frame rate stays above 60 FPS. This may be mainly due to me using Linux and the game's optimization as hardware is well above the recommendations.

Modding is currently annoyingly janky, as I had to create an XML file for each zipped mod for Disrupt Manager. Still I couldn't get that working, as I got a weird error message. Interesting to know if that tool works all well on Windows. I resorted to installing The Worse Mod with Living City, so the game's graphics get overhauled and more randomness and chaos is added to the game world. The graphics get more closer to the infamous E3 2012 demo, but as a downside the depth of field effect is closer to the player, as if Aiden Pearce were near-sighted.

Finally playing Cyberpunk. That and Webfishing.

Puyo Puyo Champions - help me I'm relapsing

Riichi Mahjong - Been doing way too well in my IRL games all season. I think that means I'm due to lose this week. That's called like Gambler's Theorem or something, right?\

Blue Revolver: Double Action - This has been sitting in my Steam library and I saw it got a big update. Learning how to play a shmup is on my bucket list, but so far I cannot get any further than stage 4 on the lowest difficulty. Very fun though, and banger OST.

Also went down to Round 1 today, haven't been in years. Played a few rounds of Wacca, Chunithm, Arcana Heart, and Chaos Code.

Recent conversations with friends had me playing Star Fox 64 earlier last week, which has been very nostalgic.

Over the weekend, I was surprised to have a couple friends who I thought would never want to play an Arma title show interest in playing Arma Reforger with a group of friends I play with. I got to play a bunch with one of those newly-interested friends yesterday, and was super pleased that she enjoyed it.

Powered through Beastieball over the past week, a creature collector/"sports" game from the devs of Chicory and Wandersong. I had fairly high expectations because I enjoyed the devs previous work, but it turned out even better than expected. Lots of cool creature designs, music is Lena Raine's usual standout stuff, story kept my attention.

The sportsball system is surprisingly complex, if a little hard to learn. I went through multiple types of team setup and felt like a lot of different setups were viable in the end. Every match is a 2v2, every offensive turn is 3 actions worth, and you get a defensive turn too. You really have to build a team with good synergy between them and be smart about swapping in and out.

Only real downside is it's still early access and a decent chunk of creatures have placeholder art or don't have the full set of animation frames yet. Most are reasonably finished but there's a couple that are a little jarring.

Twinsen's Quest (Little Big Adventure 1 reamke) and Fallout London.

Twinsen's quest is great, but.... it has a lot of bugs that need fixing, the subtitles don't always match up to what is being said and in some places there is no indication of what needs to be done leaving the player (me) feeling and being stuck.

Fallout London is great but for some reason in some areas it just... crashes to the desktop without so much as a warning, just closes completely.

I've started playing through some classic SNES and GBA games.

Chrono Trigger -- Oh man, this one's good. The soundtrack is on fire, and the game does a good job at making you feel like your actions make a difference.

Metroid Fusion -- If you told me this was made in 2024, I'd probably believe you. It has a sense of pacing and suspense that I wasn't expecting for a metroidvania.

I haven't gotten very far in either, but so far it's looking like they've aged like wine.

Just "finished" Factorio's new Space Age expansion. Just a few more achievements to collect, but I need to start a couple new runs for those so I will be continuing on with that until Path of Exile 2's early access in December.