SleepingSilence

What shows/movies are you watching?

I haven't watched much media as of late. But I did convince my folks *not* to go see The Hunger Games prequel. So I consider that a win.

Instead, we saw Godzilla Minus One, and I think everyone enjoyed it. It clearly wants you to care about the characters first, and I think they handle those moments well. To the point that some of its more "convenient/cliché" storytelling didn't ruin the entertainment. Since it tried to explain or imply explanations for most of its more implausible beats. And some of the CGI shots (like one with fairly fake looking tanks) is still miles above most of Disney's 100 million dollar marvel movie CGI.

And it's going to be the best movie you'll get out of Godzilla for a while. No faith in pink Godzilla.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

Hey. The gaming thread was resurrected. Neat. Perfectly timed with the apparently lackluster game awards.

Well, I’m grateful that I’ve had a lot of games to keep me occupied. (Even more so than last year.) Because this year has otherwise been a pretty low point for general entertainment.

So without further ado, here’s some quick reviews.

Actual good games. (In the order that I played them.)

Dark Souls 3: This game is the closest to making the “challenging but fair” mantra accurate. And it’s easily the best paced Souls game in terms of what everyone is here for; fighting bosses. But it does have its own unique bugs, (teleporting enemies) bullshit gimmick bosses, (the giant killed my onion. :c), and moon logic (like needing to buy 4 random ass spells to be given the item that makes the jail area a cakewalk.) But I enjoyed my time throughout, and found nearly every bosses’ gimmick to be entertaining. (Quite the refreshing time after DS2/Bloodborne’s bosses kept disappointing me.)

Lies Of P: I’m surprised how much I enjoyed the music, characters, atmosphere and story of this game. (Especially after watching someone stream this, and immediately finding the King Of Riddles “Joker voice” grating.) And I think it’s excellent how the developers have continued to listen to its fans after release. (Like improving the readability of the enemies animations, and recently upgrading the dodge.) But my experience was kind of spoiled with how balancing worked. Because many bosses seemed borderline impossible without the overpowered summon, that made almost every boss feel unsatisfying to defeat. (Or they were bugged and easily exploitable. Like almost every miniboss that allowed you free roam and subsequently walk out of bounds of its aggro range.) And the last boss was an obnoxious endurance test that almost made me rage quit. So I’m conflicted in singing the praises of something that I found frustrating more often than not. But I am looking forward to what these devs do in the future.

Dark Souls: The interconnectivity and worldbuilding is easily the strongest part of this game. (No other Souls-like comes close to this.) And the characters also leave a strong impression on you. (In a sense that you don’t have to go out of your way to find them, and they seem to be doing their own thing.) But I do agree with the recent sentiment that the final four areas and bosses aren’t enjoyable to get through. And the Remastered version on PC had a frequent item pick up bug (made items a glowing bag on the floor that you couldn’t pick up) that forced me constantly restart the game and lose said items. So I enjoyed my time. But I take back what I said about this game being fair, because there’s a lot of bullsh*t in this game.

Remnant 2: So, I only recently got this. But this is certainly a more consistent quality product compared to its predecessor. With the gun gameplay feeling quick and snappy, (because the aim assist is incredibly generous.) The challenge being fairly easy and breezy throughout, aside from the generally awful hitboxes of large monsters and one-hit kill moves of bosses. (The cube maze boss is the worst.) But despite not having the same lows of the first Remnant. Parts make it feel like its “Remnant 1.5”, with worse AI generated level design, and stupider AI enemies that all only rush at you. (Unlike the gun mobs that run to take cover and flank you like the first game.) And it does make the same mistake of making its final boss a miserable experience. (For much worse reasons than Lies Of P.) Being an absolute unfair clusterfuck with three phases that basically requires me to grind out a 2nd subclass. A thing I’d be more willing to do, if the story itself didn’t completely suck. (But it was fun for twenty hours. Will finish at some point.)

Things I’m glad I didn’t pay for. (Just some of what I played through.)

South Park Stick Of Truth: I enjoyed this one for the most part. But it was starting to wear out its welcome, and ability to make more than a single joke in its 2nd half. To the point where I was glad it was over. (Much like Spiritfarer. Because holy hell did that game drag on relentlessly.)

Superliminal: Short and sweet. The puzzle aspect is debatable when the biggest challenge is getting the “perspective growing” to work properly.

Nioh: This game has three fucking tutorial sections, and its as strange as it sounds. But it does have some unique ideas that might’ve made a strong “non-souls” game. If the enemy design wasn’t so immediately repetitive. (Maybe I’ll try the sequel some day?)

Dragon’s Dogma: Despite a strong opening tutorial and story hook, this game’s exploration was frustrating and dull from the start. With the pawns truly never shutting the f*ck up. (Unless you turn off their dialogue in the menu.) (Maybe I’ll give it another shot later. Since it supposedly gets better.)

Sea Of Stars: The decent combat is on par with that paper-bug RPG. (In that you have to press a lot of buttons for a turn-based system, which some might enjoy for being more involved or find repetitive, depending on who you are.) But the characters might be the blandest cardboard cutouts I’ve ever experienced in an RPG. This is not comparable to Chrono Cross.

Roki: The main protagonist repeatedly throws rocks at birds, tricks strangers, complains about her younger sibling, and burns her house down with her sleeping father inside. Our hero everybody. But seriously, the gameplay is obtuse and not particularly engaging.

Uno: “Classic” Uno now has half-a-dozen stupid rules that you’ve never used in your life, and you can’t finish a game before someone disconnects. (You can’t seem to join fresh lobbies either. So you’re always starting in the middle of a game.)

Tetris Effect Connected: The input lag and god awful pop music somehow made playing Tetris undesirable. (It was legitimately impossible to clear levels on faster speeds.)

Other games and things I’m playing next:

BPM Bullets Per Minute: Since I enjoyed Hellsinger, I’m disappointed to say that this basically didn’t work on my PC. The visuals/audio wouldn’t sync properly and made this rhythm game unplayable for me.

Puzzle Agent 1 & 2: It’s unsurprising that there weren't six of these. When the first one was already pretty bloated and felt half finished & the second one had repeated puzzles, blatant visual bugs and hard crashed on me at least once.

Fortnite: "My gun is better than you're gun, so I win every time." = A recipe for the most popular game on planet earth, for some reason. (I don't get the appeal of playing this competitively/solo.)

Tales From The Borderlands: I liked this one overall. Though it doesn't top Telltale's 'The Walking Dead'. (For its predictable story.) It's a hell of a lot more enjoyable to experience than Borderlands 3's plot.

Deep Sky Derelicts: I think Steam's mixed reviews are unfair to this one. (Unless it's all related to a buggy launch.) As this one almost caught me off guard for how engaging it was. (And how closely it resembled a card/board game that I made as a child.) But I suppose it's a bit repetitive and unbalanced for a "rogue-lite". (And it doesn't really fit that genre either.) However the last few levels are absurdly difficult, and it was more annoying than fun to play through them.

Playstation Extra's library actually released a good batch of games. So I'll be playing several of those & whatever else that I buy for Steam's winter sale. (So I think I'll be perfectly content for some time.)

What Are You Listening To?

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

If I ever do get Baldurs Gate 3, it'll be when its released on the PS5. Just like Remnant 2, I've heard mixed things about the latter half of the game. (The last third of Remnant 1 is terrible, and was completely ignored by its early critics.) So I'm still playing through my backlog, and whatever else is in Playstation Extra's library.

Spiritfarer is a beautiful game, and it’s dialogue is pretty entertaining in places. Though the resource collection gameplay is incredibly repetitive, and it’s quite frustrating how obscure it is to find certain items. Cuz I’m not even close to finishing the game yet, (probably) and I already feel like it’s overstayed its welcome. As the initial cast is much more likable than the many snobs you get afterward. Though I’ll probably still finish it?

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Other games that I tried
Gloom: Another game that is not improved by being a rogue-lite. (But it’s competent for the 99 cents that I got it for.)

Roadwarden: Its beginning hours were kind of uninteresting, and I didn’t play long before wanting to try other games instead.

Endling Extinction Is Forever: Its beginning hours were kind of uninteresting, and I didn’t play long before wanting to try other games instead.

Kero Blaster: The ending boss(es) and its many phases was one too many. (Frankly, I had more fun with the game that was inspired by it.)

Rain World: Devs added a bunch of extra tutorials, and a few extra bells and whistles. Still really didn’t like the gameplay loop.

Yakuza 0: Entertaining mindless combat, and voice actors that elevate the game's numerous still cutscenes. But I personally didn't care for the random character switch. And the wasting time side quests, and sheer length of the game, made me put this one on pause to play something else.

Games that I finished
The Forgotten City: The plot became incredibly obvious, and its "horror combat" sections were bad enough that I rushed to complete the "almost good" ending. Cannot recommend this.

OneShot: I liked this one overall. (Helps that the meta narrative/puzzle aspect is something that I'm personally fond of.) And the main character is likable enough to carry you through its story twice. Even if the rest of the game feels lesser by comparison. Since I really didn't connect with the rest of its cast, and wanted a few more puzzles/gameplay sections. Versus the aimless wandering that comprises most of its run time. (But I'd probably recommend this, over the vast majority of other things that I've played recently.)

Highly Rated Shooters (Apparently.)
Doom Eternal: I can't even believe how bad this one felt to play. The platforming and sense of direction was horrid. (The mission markers didn't work.) The lack of ammo forces you to run around the stage, like a chicken with your head cut off. Plus, a monster got stuck in the floor terrain, and made me backtrack through the entire level just to progress. (And I didn't even get to listen to a good song either.)

The Ascent: This hard crashed on me twice. And it also made me repeat entire missions and their bosses from the very beginning three times, because the game failed to complete the mission. All in one session. (But at least it looks nice, right?)

The Surge 1 & 2
These are the exact same fucking game. Except one has a few extra bad decisions (and a better atmosphere). The camera is bad in both of them & neither compelled me to get past its bullshit design choices.

Broken Indies
Maki's Adventure: Doesn't have basic controller movement functionality for the 3D sections. (Sections that aren’t even shown on the store page.)

The Wolf Of Derevnya: Best chapter choice makes the game not continue further. (Their latest patch that claims to fix this exact issue, does not.)

Angel's Gear: Control scheme was made by aliens, and the game itself feels blatantly unfinished. (No control remapping.)

Talus: There's about twenty minutes of gameplay, and the Steam achievements don't work properly. (Game's audio was whisper quiet for no reason.)

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TLDR: A lot more misses than hits in gaming for me.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

I’ve likely spent way too much of my free time playing on my PS5. (Partly to justify buying the console in the first place.) So here’s a laundry list of my thoughts about most of the games that I’ve played.

Completed games

Dark Souls 2: This was an entirely miserable gameplay experience. But it’s not actually all that challenging, due to its completely broken healing system that allows you to purchase 99 life gems at all times. And I could not give you a single positive in its favor. Nor a solitary reason why I played it until I reached its end credits. (Besides the fact that I was playing it with someone else.)

Bloodborne: This game is heavily carried by its beautifully bleak art design, and the usually satisfying combat. But so many of the bosses in this game are far too easy and unsatisfying to defeat. (Especially compared to what you have to do to get to them.) The chalice dungeons absolutely suck. And the end game areas feel like a chore to get through. (I think Elden Ring does almost everything better. Even if I’ve played that game thrice as long, and still haven’t finished it yet.)

Dead Cells: This game makes me wish that other games had the same smooth and responsive combat that it has. “Hard but fair” might even describe this game better than most of the souls-likes. (And the updates only made this game better.) So…it makes me wonder if I’ll ever truly “get into” a roguelike, when my reward for beating the game is doing it all over again…

Titanfall 2 (Campaign): One of the best FPS campaigns that I’ve played. (Short of a list as that might be.) My only critique is that it’s a bit short, and its “plot” leaves room for a sequel that we’ll probably never see. (Its time travel gimmick was also something I’d have loved to see a whole game of.)

Monster Boy and The Cursed Kingdom: A surprisingly challenging experience that kept trying to “one-up” its difficulty (in the latter half) to the point of me being happy that it was finally over. But it still deserves an overall positive rating.

A Hat In Time: Collect-a-thons have never been a genre pick of mine. But I had a decent time throughout. The game had plenty of ideas to keep things from getting repetitive. (Though some levels were much less fun to play than others.) But the default camera was pretty bad in this one. (And even the zoomed-out one had its problems.)

Dust An Elysian Tail: It was a decent experience. Despite having an easily exploitable combat system, and a story that wasn’t particularly engaging. This felt nice to complete after it kept crashing on my PS4. (Though the f*cker still hard crashed on me after a near end game cutscene, and nearly soft-locked me when it respawned me inside of the floor.)

Carto: The 2nd half of this puzzle game was more challenging. (Usually through more obtuse trial and error.) But it also drags on for far too long, and there’s way too much uninteresting dialogue to sit through. This one wasn’t worth getting through.

Journey: I usually like walking simulators. (Like the next two games that were probably inspired by this.) But this one felt a bit dull and unsatisfying to play by the end credits. And the gimmick of ‘anonymous co-op’ felt fake to me. The music was nice though, I guess.

Spirit Of The North: I enjoyed my time with this one. Despite its clunky platforming controls and minimal puzzle gameplay. (With the added cute bonus of my cat watching the little barking fox that I was playing on screen.)

Omno: This one had a lot of charm. (With a lot of creatures roaming about through its stages and little cutscenes where you ride large ones to the next stage.) Though its conclusion feels half-baked and doesn’t have the same impact. (Since it feels like whatever the hell I was doing didn’t matter in the end.)

Games I tried

Journey To The Savage Planet: This ‘metroidvania’ platformer with oddball humor *almost* worked for me. (Even if half of the jokes are basically “boomers amirite”.) Though I only got about halfway through it, before the poor combat and awful fetch quests annoyed me too much.

Dodgeball Academa: A mix of modern cartoon antics and Pokemon sport battles that got way too repetitive for me to complete. And the “always trying to be funny” dialogue in this is pretty bad too. Stopped halfway through.

Ghostrunner: I want to like this game. It’s certainly not a bad one. But the default controls could not feel any less intuitive if it tried. And switching them only made me play long enough to wish that I had this on PC instead. (And I feel like the game isn’t quite tight and responsive enough to be so punishing.) Made the mistake of changing options in the middle of level 3, and it made me start all over again.

Momodora Reverie Under The Moonlight: I gave this one a longer try, and I still didn’t like much about it. The difficulty is all over the place, and the game not saving huge portions of map exploration on death was a huge pain in the ass.

Rogue Legacy 2: One of those games that I’m glad I played “for free”, instead of paying full price for it. The amount of contact damage you get from off-screen enemies is beyond cheap. But I didn’t want to simply “turn it off” in the house rules that it has. (Since it self claimed that it was a significant portion of its challenge. Or something to that effect.) Plus it felt worse to play than Dead Cells in basically every way.

COD Cold War (Multiplayer Zombies Mode only): The amount of grinding expected from you to unlock some of the basic functions of your game is a little outrageous. And I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a game with such a broken multiplayer/party function in recent memory. Closed parties don’t work properly, and the game will constantly reset your options on you. (For instance, I would limit my players to me and friend (2), and it would keep resetting it to four players no matter what I did.) And until I realized that I needed to use “private matches” specifically, it partied our newbie rank accounts with impossibly high level accounts that absolutely skewed and broke the game balance for us. So while it was fun to kill a health sponge boss with a friend, it’s vastly inferior to games like Warframe or Destiny 2.

Ghost Of Tsushima: The game is very pretty and all. But this is literally every single Ubisoft game that has ever existed. With a slightly more in-depth and challenging combat system, that I suppose *is* an improvement. Though I did not see the appeal to play this for fifty hours.

Immortal Fenyx Rising: The fact that this is lauded and compared positively to Breath Of The Wild is fucking hilarious to me. (And that’s coming from someone who feels no fondness for that game.) This game controls like dogs*t. The cutscenes and voice acting are laughably bad. And I was genuinely questioning my sanity when it introduced and encouraged me to find “points of interests” on a perch, and it had like a hundred fucking tiny objects for me to play “hot and cold” with. Probably one of the worst starts to a game that I’ve played this year.

Forager: Certainly addictive for a short period of time. But this is basically a mobile idle-clicker game, without any microtransactions.

Children Of Morta: Expected Diablo-like combat, and got an incredibly clunky roguelite instead.

Bloodstained Ritual Of The Night: Was getting “Ender Lilies” vibes from the bullshit encounter with the first boss, and I just decided to play something else.

Currently playing

Demon Souls (Remastered): Only a dozen or so plus hours into this, and I’m feeling the brick wall potential that “world tendency” is providing. The game is more enjoyable to play than Dark Souls 2. (Least as the OP-feeling mage class.) But it has a lot of the same flaws too. Though I haven’t given up yet, and I’m now in the “Guess I’ll grind” stage. (Though a lot of other games have been played instead. Even more than this list portrays.)

Kena Bridge Of Spirits: The cutscenes and dialogue in this would make it seem like this game is for babies. But the bosses (and basic enemies) will kill you in a few (usually two to four) hits. So I don’t know if pushing myself through this game, just to listen to more of these Minion-level cutscenes, would be worth the time investment.

The Forgotten City (Switch to my PS5): I was enjoying the intrigue that the narrative provided. But the load times for my PC were genuinely terrible. (Probably my own bad.) But it’s free on Extra, so I could always find out and redo my adventure from here.

And I still have all the games on Steam that I have yet to play any of. Too many games, too little time.

I really should get back to writing something too. And the fact that I want to do it again, proves I've taken far too long of a break...

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So how's everyone else's procrastination from writing going?

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

Played some Ship of Fools Co-Op, and that was a pretty good time.

Remnant: From The Ashes crashed and burned in its final third. So I'll give it 6.5. Obviously rushed in development, with the easiest levels and bosses appearing toward the game's conclusion. (Failing scaling to a degree that I'm not sure I've seen before.) But it also had several impossible/time-wasting puzzles, and one of the most tedious final boss fights that I've ever dealt with. It actually cramped my hand when I finally defeated the static health sponge.

I like the art style, and the morbid sense of humor. But Wytchwood is an absolute chore to play. Nothing but twelve long fetch quests that you do in batches of four at a time.

Shadow Of The Colossus’ camera and controls were beyond clunky. So it shocks me to hear that the remaster had supposedly ‘updated’ them. I refused to replay a boss fight due to me fighting the game itself, more than the actual colossi.

Went to my friend’s new house to play a bit of Cyberpunk 2077. Wasn’t something that I cared for. It’s quite linear-feeling and convoluted from the very outset. (And I supposedly picked the best introduction too.)

Now playing Vampyr for reasons. And it’s an interesting concept, with some incredibly obnoxious combat. But I’m sticking with it for the time being.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

Spiderman Miles Morales really made me feel like I was Electro. (The combat and exploration in this was a drastic downgrade.)

Scarlet Nexus’ plot and characters were incredibly stock, and the combat didn’t appeal to me. So I didn't get very far into it.

Control was absolute mediocrity squared. Boring characters. Awful quests. Unbalanced combat. A lousy map. Visual bugs. Got halfway through it, and I honestly couldn't be bothered to do another "timed quest". Not a moment of this was entertaining. (But if you like reading through/watching long video collectables, instead of playing an actual game. Have I got a recommendation for you...)

Prey has some clever worldbuilding, and moments where the immersive sim elements work to enhance the experience. But that's about all in terms of pure positives. The combat is repetitive. The (three) enemy types are braindead, and their attacks are unfair to compensate. The traversal gun is frustratingly inconsistent. And the "it was all a simulation" ending, is what you write when you're out of ideas.

Remnant: From The Ashes is a rollercoaster of quality, thus far. It has some pretty decent combat, and some above average AI (for the gunner enemies). But it also has plenty of bugs (both visual ones and things that get you killed), and other bullshit that makes it obvious that it was not designed for solo-play. But it might be the best game I’ve tried to play, from my Elden Ring break.

Free Steam game you'll never play (Until Jun 1.): store.steampowered.com/app/489630/War…

What shows/movies are you watching?

'Race To Survive: Alaska' may be the single most embarrassing reality competition show that I've EVER seen, and it's become my "so bad it's good" show to watch when I'm bored.

It would be like watching the Amazing Race, if almost every single team were comprised of children, decided to as little as possible to win, and still managed to completely fuck up every episode.

Made all the better, with the voiceover doing his best to make the challenge more thrilling than it really is. Yet the editing of the show almost always undermines what he describes.

>Voiceover: "In the scorching, burning, blazing heat of the sun, our contestants have the heat turned all the way up in this race."
>Shows a perfectly pleasant looking sunny day, and displays "70° F"

And this episode has someone fucking suffering A HEAT STROKE after walking a few hours in perfect weather, and she has to be carried away by a helicopter.

The next elimination is someone trips over a twig, and then quits because it made their foot sore.

It's so f*cking bad...

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

"HEY I WONDER IF YOU CAN FREEZE THE WATER AND MAKE IT GO SOMEWHERE ELSE".

@Fabricant451

It's great that you use this as the example. Because that phrase being said over and over again, is the part that I was watching someone else play.

I also find "games that put you in small wave-style combat arenas ad-nauseum" is my least favorite combat scenario to deal with. Because it's probably only done that way, to make up for the enemy AI's shortcomings.

I'm Team Bloodborne all the way still. Elden Ring has the most boss fatigue out of any of the games in its ilk, because of how many bosses are not unique or well designed.

@Fabricant451

I certainly do have my critiques of Elden Ring. (Like how the platforming is pretty terrible. And how jumping somewhere I shouldn't, is usually the reason I die. Or how finicky the camera/lock-on system can be at times. Or how the balancing is unsurprisingly all over the place. Or how much this game could use an NPC quest journal.)

But I'm 90 hours in Elden Ring (some of that being afk), and I keep finding new locations, enemies, NPCs with bits of lore, set pieces/cutscenes, equipment, and new boss variations. That it honestly puts most open world games that I've played to shame.

And yeah, it sort of does feel like this game will literally never end. But I guess I haven't gotten to a point where it's soured my overall experience. Because it's genuinely engrossing. (At least, for me.)

Though I plan to revisit both Bloodborne and Dark Souls at some point.

Jedi Survivor was good.

@Fabricant451

Insert "You actually got this game to work?" joke here.

Did you play Fallen Order? And is the sequel better? (I've heard that it's basically Fallen Order 2.0, in that the Pros and Cons are basically identical.)

And my experience with Fallen Order was a brief one. But it made me question the "PS5 load times are fast now", when I was waiting minutes on end for every loading screen to go away.

Anyway, I'm only a couple hours into Tears of the Kingdom, but I think the starting tutorial island is less good than the BOTW one because of how more blatantly linear it is.

@Fabricant451

I wonder sometimes if I didn't give Breath Of The Wild a fair chance. But this game really feels quite empty in its early areas. And I miss the original dungeons that make the Zelda games special.

And honestly, BOTW's start could've probably used a bit more linearity/direction. (Though I say this, knowing full well, that 'Nintendo direction' probably means "handholding, JRPG-level tutorializing".

Also, 'weapons breaking every few seconds' is a cancerous game mechanic.

Play or Manage?

@Dark Cloud Pft. Like I said, 20 to 1. You simply put yours on a long, long hiatus. :P