Having a nostalgia trip with Rayman 2: The Great Escape ^^

Still playing Torneko: The Last Hope.

I think I broke the game. For the Warrior, Disappear (makes you invisible, but promotes hunger) + Bread Drop (forces an enemy to drop bread which, of course, makes you less hungry) basically makes you invincible.

(Of course, in dungeons that don't let you take in equipment there's still the small problem of actually finding a sword that can use Bread Drop and a shield (any type works).)

I just finished the first mission of Velvet Assassin. Not as bad as some say, not great. I like the setting.

I'll be playing lots of F.E.A.R., I'm afraid. I might even be afraid in the game or at least slightly on edge or unnerved.

One thing is for certain, it will have better gun mechanics than Darksiders 2, which I stopped playing partially because it insisted that I use the angel gun (and because of grindy enemies and unfun bosses). That gun makes you slow and clumsy and you have to drop it to be able to use another weapon. Bad design choice.

Finished MEA in the 90-ish percent range in 77 hours. I probably could've cut a few hours if it wasn't for all those unskippable transition animations, space-faring as well as landing and take-off. As said, it ain't perfect, but I enjoyed my time with it, warts and all.

...and rather than doing some silly "New Game+" I started ME 1 right after – I think it’s only my second playthrough of that game ever, roughly 10 years after the first – which makes for some interesting comparison points. I’m actually planning to play the whole trilogy in order – ME overkill! I actually bought the trilogy for a decently low price a couple of years ago or so, but haven't played any of them. My previous playthroughs were all on console: ME 1 on Xbox 360, and ME 2&3 on PS3.

ME 1 is good at setting up the ME universe, but it doesn’t have terribly good flow or writing. Thinking of how MEA is criticized for simplistic crew relationship and dialog, ME 1 is in fact worse than that in most places, especially when first putting together the crew. “Oh, hey, you alien I just met five seconds ago about whom I know nothing: Welcome aboard!” When I talk to them on the ship they’re little more than information dispensers. Everything is also presented in overly dramatic tones. Rah! Rah! Shep must be on a testosterone high because he sounds too aggressive in a lot of conversations.

Technically, it definitely shows its age, but I actually like some of the gameplay elements better:
– Having much easier and direct control over my squadmates in pause view.
– An easy and quick inventory system in which weapon mods transfer from gun to gun; selling items is a mess though with no filter option
– A quick and dirty stats screen with no stinking folders everywhere
– Weapon heat system; I’ve always thought it was a shame they got rid of it for standard ammo afterwards. It can make combat definitely more interesting and intense, and not having to run around from ammo box to ammo box is a definite plus. I also really like the remote-detonated grenades.
– There’s friendly fire, which I first noticed when I accidentally knocked out Tali with my assault rifle.
– Fire fights seem to be much more intense, and while the cover system is a bit awkward positioning is way more essential
– Eye movements may be bit more subdued and automated-looking, but they certainly don’t do some of herpy derp stuff I encountered in MEA
– Roaming planet-side may be a bit samey and the Mako is one of the bounciest vehicles ever, but blowing shit up with my cannon is so satisfying

So yeah, ME 1 is definitely dated – not to mention the texture issues of the PC version – and has a number flaws of its own, but it’s still quite good fun. It’ll be interesting to see how ME 2 & 3 compare in the overall picture. I haven’t played either one of those in years either.

I finished Ori and Blind forest definitive edition and Oxenfree. My next game to play on PC is Shadowrun:Dragonfall, 1954 Alcatraz., Planescape Torment, Fallout 4, Wasteland 2, Divinity Original sin, Titan quest, Grim dawn, Hard west, Hard reset redux, or Shadow warrior (2013). All those games i have played but are still unfinished.

Still playing through Nioh right now (might finish it today).

Edit: Finally completed Nioh (finished the main missions on normal difficulty, but still a few side missions left that were added in a recent patch). The enemy and environment variety (outside of bosses) was pretty bad at times, the music (while not bad by any means) was kind of...there in certain chapters (not to mention certain tracks were repeated a bunch), and the Diablo style loot system started to annoy me quite a bit. Still, I loved everything else the game had to offer, and had a blast playing through it despite its shortcomings.

Now trying to decide if I should play through the new Dark Souls 3 DLC with a new character or one I already have. Did a new character (played as a mage) when the 1st DLC came out.

Shovel Knight, in preparation for the second expansion that's due to be released this week.

Last time I played it, I got stuck in the beginning. The game gave me a choice of two levels:
- one a natural difficulty ramp exacerbated by a darkness effect (since this is a retro pixel art* game, adjusting gamma doesn't help -- the screen is black, good luck dodging invincible, invisible enemies over bottomless pits)
- the other vanilla, marginally harder than the intro, but ending with a surprise "git gud" section of timed jumps above, yep, bottomless pits.

So over the weekend I took the time to get better and found out the game is awesome. Really, really awesome.

The UX has been polished to pretty much supernova levels. Challenges are fair, hitboxes are generous, every new element has an environmental mini-tutorial, save points and health refills appear immediately before each boss, terrain extends beyond the screen borders to allow for dramatic brushes with death in various timed sequences, there are quality of life improvements to help new players learn the game without compromising level design. No scarcity and no spirals of death: money is infinite and levels can be replayed to train, look for collectables, try for achievements, earn cash, and test newly acquired items.

Small details are especially impressive: for example, collectables are turned in in bulk (to save player time), but the collectables menu highlights new items and allows rereading the associated flavor text and npc reaction. There's an important partially randomized battle, and the scene of the aftermath of said battle, with custom graphics, takes this randomization into account.

After two days, I reached the final boss of the main campaign. Looks doable, I just need to figure out how to reliably apply shovel to face.

*inb4 "meh pixel art": there's a scene in which a character swirls a wine glass. Humanities can pack up and go home, art is finished.

Gothic 2. Good game so far (much better imo than Gothic 1), but seems to be incredibly huge...I'm only at the beginning of the third of six chapters, and I've already played more than 40 hours.

I finished Mass Effect 1 yesterday. It's still decent, but I don't think I'll ever play it again. Age and some of the awkward designs just don't do the game any favors - roving multi-colored, mostly barren, and copy-pasted planets and installations is still as mind-numbing as ever. It's good for setting up the franchise's world, but that's about it.

Now I'm already hours into Mass Effect 2 - my third (fourth?) time playing through the game. Playing the games back to back makes the leap in quality very noticeable. The voice acting/direction is miles better, the writing feels a bit more natural, and the overall production values are quite a bit better. Yet they may have ended up streamlining it a bit too much with few powers and limited weaponry. That said, controlling my teammates and their own behavior is quite an improvement from the original as they do a much better job at finding advantageous cover positions when not directed as well as attacking enemies. Good times ahead. ;)

Probably Propeller Knight and flying jellyfishes. I think it counts as a tutorial: it's the very first room and the very first element in the room, so the level can be restarted with no harm done. (I didn't die there because Propeller was my last level and platforms wouldn't have been evil enough.)

One thing that isn't explained and matters a lot is the fact that rainbow fountains can't fall into pits. There's a sequence in (I think) Tower Ascent which requires traversing several screens of pit with sorcerers, samurai, and fires. And then there are two windfarters who appear seemingly out of nowhere and blow me off the fountain. So I ran the fountain into a wall and hid in between until the enemy got into shovel range, rinse and repeat.

I'm now trying for the no deaths achievement in another save slot, just to see how far I can take it (obviously, not past the airship: that last stage with the wind and spikes is brutal). When I get stuck, I'll clone the save and spin it off into "destroy every checkpoint". I think it should work if I destroy them one by one in several playthroughs of the same level.

Mass Effect Andromeda MP - gotta love the shorter games now compared to ME3 MP and combat is just as fun thanks to the jetpack and some new skills. Made a new character(FemRyder) for SP but still not in the zone for another playthrough(not until some patches land) .

Trine Trilogy - Well, need to replay this just for the sake of the narrator and the graphics though also want to get out of my comfort zone so what better way than with platformer.

I've been playing Final Fantasy VII. Figured after 20 years it was time to see what all the fuss was about :p

F.E.A.R. and its expansion Extraction Point are now unbacklogged and I'm now feeling quite tired of going through corridors. There's too much not-fun gameplay between the fun firefights, so I won't play the second expansion or F.E.A.R. 2/3 any time soon. Instead, a need for open worlds has arisen, i.e. Risen 2.

In the first Risen, I especially liked the combat and ability to climb things and safely jump off high places (hehe, shortcut) via the Acrobatics skill. You definitely don't have that freedom of movement in the F.E.A.R. games or most other games.

Reading about the differences between the games, I'll probably also play Risen 3 at some point.