I'm enjoying the updated Ch14 of FFXV. The expanded Insomnia is great. Hope they give this treatment to other areas of the game and make them bigger.

Sachi wrote:Is that 27% of the acheivements? Did you only do the story? The hunts make up quite a bit of the sidequests, and then there's collecting all the espers.

Yes I completed the story. I did some of the hunts, but not all of them. I guess that makes sense. It's a good game though.

-Just finished up on the Secret of Mana remake on PS4. Frequent crashing aside (though the autosave helps), this is a decent 1:1 remake. The RNG on some of those late-game drops (equipment/weapon orbs) was a right pain in the ass, but I managed to get the platinum trophy. Good times.
-Picked back up on Bloodborne, seeing as it was a free game this month (I already own a physical copy, but whatever). Still a tossup on whether this or DS3 is my favorite of the Soulsborne games, but I think I like this game's aesthetics more. I like the higher focus on aggression, too.
EDIT: Add on Far Cry 5 and Dark Souls III: The Fire Fades Edition to that list, too. Both have had me and Ash hooked (again, in my case, for DS3) for the last week or so.

Axiom Verge: Bought this for PS4 for a cheap price with high expectations and they were kind of met? The game play is fun, by the the end of the game you can basically fly through the map, which is super satisfying, the soundtrack is this fun electronic sound and the story is unobtrusive, but satisfying.
Still, the bosses are a joke, they're very pretty, some of the best visual of the game are in the bosses, but they have just a couple of attacks that are easy to dodge...until you get near the end, where super fast dodging suddenly becomes a necessity. There's no difficulty curve at all. It's even more jarring because the rest of the game isn't like this at all. It's hard to believe the same guy did everything. I also don't know how to feel about the aesthetics. It's very Metroid, probably? As a kid I only played Castlevanias, so these weird alien environments are new to me, and I don't know how much I really like it.

These minor complaints can't sour what is ultimately a wonderful Metroidvania experience in an age where those sorts of games aren't all that common anymore.

I've been playing Tekken 7 almost religiously on PS4 since launch last year. Sadly, somehow it's become corrupt on my profile after a power outage incident. I've tried reinstalling the game completely a couple times, scrapping my save file(s), everything, save reformatting the entire machine from scratch, which I'm reticent to do as everything else works fine. So, I got a Steam/Windows copy. The only hitch; my laptop is a piece of shit and even had a hard time trying to run Medieval II: Total War not long ago...

The solution: Drastic modification to the scalability.ini



Tekken 7 with Tekken 3 style graphics at a steady 40-60fps online play

That's a pretty fuckin radical avatar, Blue Monday. I should really finish Cowboy Bebop one of these days.

Right now I'm very slowly working my way through the campaign of Anarchy Reigns [this is like the one time I prefer a US localized name to the original Japanese one, both because it's cooler and it works as an oxymoron]. I've never played Madworld but I might have to find myself a copy if Anarchy Reigns' ridiculously fun combat is anything to go off of. It's taking me so long to progress because you have to essentially grind points by doing side missions to unlock story missions to advance, but also because even once I have all three story missions in an area unlocked, I still want to keep running around and chainsawing dudes in half because it's just so fun and satisfying. This is one of those games like Super Mario Odyssey or Sonic Adventure where even just moving around in the world with no real objective is fun because of how tight and responsive the controls are, and how they work with the area design to give everything a feeling of flow.

Started a Half-Life marathon recently upon getting a new laptop that can actually run things, and "finished" Source last night. I never beat the original Half-Life despite owning it since I hated the combat, but upon turning on godmode, my enjoyment skyrocketed. Nihilanth was still annoying as hell, I have no idea how you'd even survive Xen without godmode. I'm currently watching a playthrough of the unavailable demo, Half-Life: Uplink, and will start Blue Shift tonight, this time really trying to get through without godmode.

Hey, I just replayed Half-Life 2 only a few weeks ago

It's only the second time I've gone through it but I find that game really peaceful; just the ambience, the world, the vibe. It's all pretty cozy. It really is an "ambient shooter". I'll have to get around to playing Episode One and Episode Two sometime soon as well.

I sincerely hope the fan project to create Marc Laidlaw's version of Episode Three in Unreal Engine 4 gains traction, because I honestly believe we may never seen a continuation/finish to the story otherwise. I don't know why they don't just use Source Engine though, it'd be quicker and fool-proof, seeing as it's more common, been around longer and knowledge of it is more widespread.

AdamMalkovitch wrote:That's a pretty fuckin radical avatar, Blue Monday.

Thanks, yeah it's a good'un

So right now I'm sort of past the mid point of the Half Life 2 saga, like, I'm in Chapter 4 of Episode One. Vanilla HL2 is fuckin amazing, it's currently my favorite Valve game, tied with Portal 2. Episode One is good so far, but nowhere near as engrossing and compelling as HL2. It seems to be much more focused on gameplay than story, which I would likely be totally down with if I were more of an FPS guy, but as can be seen with my less than 20 hours combined time from both Half-Life Source and Blue Shift (both of which I got less than halfway in before saying fuck it and permanently turning on godmode). I remember I watched a let's play of the HL2 saga a few years ago but I don't remember anything from Episode One, I may have accidentally skipped it because of Valve's shit, Kingdom Hearts-esque naming scheme for the games. I'm glad though, because that means this is the first time I'm experiencing everything in a Valve game unspoiled by myself. For every other game I stupidly watched playthroughs because "Hurr durr I'll never have a computer powerful enough to run these games guhurrn"

On a side note, I'm currently watching Shammy's An Actual Review of The Surge, and I'm surprised that no one is pointing out the similarities to the Half-Life 2 saga; you begin riding on a train into a new place where you see a video of a representative of a big conglomerate who's definitely NOT evil being run by a man who shows up on broadcast screens throughout the game in prerecorded messages to 'subtly' deliver exposition and backstory on the fucked over post-apocalyptic but still tech-filled Blade Runner esque world and the plan that definitely DOES NOT involve causing humanity's extinction.

I'm the same with Episode One actually; I can't remember anything of it, if at all. I can recall only the one battle sequence where you're with Alyx underground, it's almost pitch-black and wave after wave of headcrab zombies attack you. That's seriously about all I can remember, whereas Episode Two is still freshly engraved on my memory, i.e. the open vistas and forests, the buggy, the battles, Combine Hunters, the buildings and villages, the mines, so on, so forth. Dang, I need to get around to playing them again.

So I recently finished Episode Two and I'm still a bit fucked up over it. I had forgotten just how visceral and cold death is.

I got both Fahrenheit Indigo Prophecy Remastered and Deus Ex on Steam a few days ago in a sale. I tried to start Fahrenheit but it was just too damn depressing for right now in my life. I'll definitely revisit it at some point, but I don't feel like sending myself down that life-draining rabbit hole during my last few days of senior year and my first steps into the real world.

I did start playing The Desolate Room last night, and I'm really enjoying it. It's insanely impressive for a clearly amateur project made by one guy. Of course, the holes shine through here and there, most blatantly with the patched together landmasses making up the island, and with just how much damn grinding is straight up required, but the music, aesthetics, story, and atmosphere especially are all fantastic. I plan to start The Desolate Hope after I finish TDR, and I really hope The Desolate Abandon is returned to one day once Mr.Cawthon has drained the FNaF cow dry. Pizzeria Simulator was clearly the end of the story arc, wrapping everything up and finally , so it's definitely possible he's done with the series (although I doubt he'll stop production on merch, the man is too smart to just let so much money go).

I'm playing Mega Man 9 on MM Legacy Collection 2. It's a lot of fun but it's hard as shit and I don't feel like some of these deaths are fair. In particular the hitboxes on spikes seems to extend farther than it should and it seems like I get sucked in and killed without actually touching the thing.

Finished Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon completely. All trophies and endings. All in Veteran mode, naturally, my pride wouldn't let me pick the lower difficulty. That said, even at it's hardest moments, it still can't compare in difficulty to the old Castlevania games. What a great game, I'm sure it'll join the classics soon enough.
And the music, man, this game screams Castlevania in every aspect!

Only complaint I have is in regard to character graphics, they're nice, but feel a little simple compared to the wild bosses and environments. I guess I'd prefer Symphony of the Night style graphics over this NES style stuff.

10/10

Can't wait for the main Bloodstained game, even with its awkward 3d graphics.

I and four of my friends have been kinda addicted to Dead Cells for the past week or so. Can't wait for the full release in August!

Playing Nioh. This game is fucking hard and I love it. Just made it to the Kansai region. Favourite part so far is fighting/duelling Revenants.

I’m playing a mobile game called AzureLane because a weird, tasteless pseudo-retelling of Pearl Harbor with anime girl warships (some of whom are cat girls and fox girls) is the funniest fucking thing I’ve seen this year.

I am currently in the middle of a very fierce session of Elevator Action Returns for the Sega Saturn. I am also immersing myself in the colorful world of Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age which is an absolute treat for an old school gamer such as myself.

Next, I plan on replaying the classic Tactical Espionage Action: Metal Gear Solid: a Hideo Kojima Game, which I have not played for many long and lonesome years.