Still playing Shadow of Death…
While I’m still finding some aspects of the game annoying, I’m also learning how to tweak my character builds and employ strategy, and it’s paying off.
I’m highly tempted to try my hand at a more thorough write-up of the game in its own topic. Is there any interest in reading it? (It really is better than some of my n00b-frustration whinging made it sound like.)
I’m having a lot of trouble re-drawing the maps, because all my drawing software has blinding cursors, none of it works with my current accessibility fixes, I can’t see the screen if it’s firing blinding cursors, and I can’t work on the drawings if I can’t see the screen. Also, I get a migraine.
Debating whether to pick this up.
Game-play—the work of working a game—is fundamentally irritating, at least in comparison with other media forms.
Not compared to reading hot takes like this, it’s not.
It’s true, if you dislike the very action of playing games, you probably shouldn’t play this one. There are cute puzzles and you have to solve them when you could easily be watching someone else have fun with it on YouTube. I mean, I enjoyed it, but I like doing things on occasion.
Something about this game inspires weird reviews, I guess.
Yes… and no. The author is kinda overthinking it, but they’ve got a point.
Early in many games, leveling up is easy and fun, but the further you get, the harder it can be to get to the next stage, and yeah, it can feel like a grind. I’m hitting that point with SoD now. But IMHO, that’s more a comment on the structure of certain types of games than on the entire spectrum of gaming itself. Other types of games don’t work that way.
The other game I’m playing right now is I Love Hue. It’s a puzzle game: you’re shown a spectrum of color blocks, then the game scrambles some of the squares and players have to reassemble them in the correct order.
It’s a simple concept (though not always simple to do), and I love it. I especially like how the game congratulates you when you beat the world average number of moves with phrases like “you iridescent moonbeam!” or “you bright shining rainbow!” I only play a few puzzles at a time, but since I progress as I please it doesn’t feel like a grind at all.
So tl;dr, it’s a hot take… but there’s some truth to it.
good thread, but here’s the article.
I hope nobody tells him about Goat Simulator. 
too late
On “Indivisible”…
It turns out that there were two issues here. Issue #1 was that, no, I wasn’t understanding the block timing. In the action fights of this game, you get the best results by hitting the block button as close to the moment that an attack will hit as possible - holding the block too soon or too late will end up draining the power meter you use to get special moves out of your characters. Once I discovered this (and got used to the mechanic of figuring out which of your four characters is being attacked, which impacts which button you need to hit to block), I suddenly had a LOT more breathing room in fights and could start playing around with combos, special moves, and general tactics. The game almost became too easy after this clicked.
Issue #2 was that my gamepad, a Logitech F710, is a crappy controller that should be ashamed of how crappy it is. This is the one that doesn’t have Win10 drivers, the “workaround” is to make Windows see it as an xbox controller. I’ve also been noticing that something as simple as holding it in my lap instead of on my desk would seem to cut out the signal for it (from a receiver that, in that position, is under 3 feet away), and I’ve suspected that it’s been fouling my gameplay occasionally by being slow to detect or ignoring keypresses… but I’m not quick to discount that I could just suck. I’ve got two of these things, and both have acted similarly.
Long story short (too late?), I finally picked up an xbox controller, and it’s like night and day. I’m suddenly managing blocks consistently, platforming that was giving me huge amounts of trouble are suddenly easy… as much as I dislike Microsoft in general, I gotta say that the gamepad’s pretty decent.
Now, if only I could find a good USB replacement for my old MS Sidewinder 3D joystick so I could really get my Descent fix in again…
Yikes. I have a Logitech F310 controller. Maybe that, and not my CP, is why I suck at action games.
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In other news, I’ve been spending a bit of time on Mechwarrior Online lately. The initial learning curve is a bit steep, but once you get the basic knack of it there’s plenty of fun to be had.
I’ve got a few mechs, but I’m mostly knocking around in a Nova carrying triple AMS, an LRM15 and four heavy medium lasers. Hang out with the assault mechs in the early game, shielding them from missiles and throwing some missile harassment back in return, then use the lasers to finish off weakened opponents and/or chase down light mechs in the late game.
Bug Report #394392: The unlimited Stash box deletes all your items.
Resolution: The specs read “As a player, I want to put an unlimited number of items in my Stash box.”
Retrieving items was not specified as a requirement.Status: Closed - works as designed.
If they just hadn’t called it a Fallout game, I wouldn’t care about this at all. As it is, I am enjoying a hearty slice of schadenfreude pie every time I read these sorts of stories. 
I don’t know whether this would be wonderful or terrible…
The demo video just shows generic-barbarian outfits, but one of the play-casts has the players mangling one npc’s Gothic pronouns and names. (Si, ija, izos, izai, shouldn’t be si, izha, izos, izhai.) It’s designed around rival teenage mall cliques. With my disabilities, malls aren’t accessible, and the cliquishness isn’t either. And I got beaten up for being trans about the time this takes place.
I don’t know if it’ll inspire anyone to study the Gothic language.
Unfortunately the old “Gothic for Goths” videos are down.
No, the organizers are not currently calling for a boycott of Kickstarter.
I am enjoying Death is Coming.
On sale right now because Halloween I am guessing.
Become and agent of death and purge humanity of excess souls in grimly amusing ways.
Redrawing the maps for my Seattle WTO protest games. Yes, north is at an angle, so that the street grids aren’t.
Kerbal Space Program? I thought that only released a few years ago. That guy’s on track to get one of those jobs that requires 5+ years of experience in something just released this year.
hmm almost time for another EscapeRoom spook-tacular, but I’m not sure if I’ll have time to do one proper, so here’s just me rambling.
So I’ve been playing Valiant Force again and the developers dropped quite the doozy. Valiant Force goes offline 2019 December 12 ahead of the developer’s next game launch (different genre).
VF is a gacha tactics game, played on a 3x8 grid. In it, you choose up to five characters to deploy in turn-based combat. Your characters gain XP, and with each level, grow slightly stronger. When their level cap is hit, you can combine other spare/junk units into it, upgrading it and resetting the level cap.
Naturally, I scrapped all of them and fed them to just one single unit. Soon, I had a god-tier unit.
Oh. Yeah. If your unit isn’t a tank-class or caster - and lacks a 6* promote - it’s going to be trash.
I guess I’m a sucker for flawed games. So when Icons: Legacy Edition was announced, I immediately installed it.
~~
Icons wanted to be a Smash Bros for PC players. It had a promising heritage. And a 6 million dollar war chest. Originally built by a small team, the team grew to 25.
Naturally, it died in free-to-play early access just a week after closed beta ended.
As a low-tier smash player, I enjoyed it a lot. The new character archetypes added depth and new playstyles. The graphics, while basic, were cool. It used forward-thinking rollback netcode that was pretty darn good.
And uh, it’s back.
After the studio collapsed, the assets and rights were purchased by the first investor - Chris Kovalik. As of right now, the game has been re-released with an added mode, even better netcode, removed lootboxes, and no drm.
And it’s pretty damn good.
4.99 || Steam
FE: Heroes is the game I love to hate.
It has a well-polished core. I love it. Building solid units by mixing and matching skills and units is addictive. The rock-paper-scissors of the weapons triangle and different movement types add depth. The character catalogue spans checks notes 16 Fire Emblem games or 30 years of games.
I made an unkillable team of cat lads.
And a team of badass caster ladies.
But as of lately the shine has worn off, personally. After two years of daily play it feels more like a chore. Grinding daily quests for more characters? Meh - who needs more when you have perfection?
I guess I optimized the fun out it.
And yet, whenever a new chapter of story drops, I play it. When a new set of even more powerful characters appears, I complain - until I collect them.
Maybe I’ll just reset my FE:Heroes save and start fresh. At last count, new accounts can summon over 250 characters from story mode alone. That should keep me busy… for another two years.
