Gaming thoughts, bite-size chewables - new orange flavor!

[NervousEnergy]

2 hour Beat Saber session. I am a literal puddle. Send help.

2 hours! Impressive. The most I've ever done is 45 minutes at a time.

This game and it's titanic library of custom songs has totally changed how much activity I typically get a night. I've got a set of songs I play all the time (Some Nights, Mortal Kombat, Dragula, Avenged Sevenfold (all of them), etc.) that takes about 35 to 40 minutes, then I play a selection of new or seldom played songs to keep my sight reading up. It's almost always 90 minutes to 2 hours.

The only drawback is having to stop ever 2-3 songs and wipe up all the sweat and clean the lenses on the Odyssey. They need to mount small 10mm chipset cooling fans in there. I'm sure in 10 years we'll look back at these bulky monstrosities and laugh that we ever strapped them to our face, but I'm loving every minute of it so far. And I didn't think I'd use the controllers at all... bought it mainly for flight sims.

 

[NervousEnergy]

I broke my Xbox One controller this past week It was rumbling due to bleeding out in PUBG (I wasn't playing with it, it was just plugged in) and it rumbled itself right off the desk and onto the hardwood floor. It must've landed perfectly on the cable that connected it to the computer, as it bent the fuck out of the plug that goes into the controller, as well as the receptor for said plug inside the controller itself. It is now relegated to Xbox One duty as a purely wireless controller.

I do want that sexy black/red fade color that they offer. It'd go real nice with my PC Case.

Does it not work with the wireless dongle? I still use a 360 controller with it's acommpanying USB wireless dongle. I'd assumed that it would also work with an XBOne controller, or that there was an equivalent dongle if not. Is that not the case?

 

[NervousEnergy]

According to my Motiv, I burned over 1500 calories playing Beat Saber on Saturday for 2.5 hours. Normally I don't play that long in a session, but I was determined to master Chop Suey - System of a Down in E+. Great song and map, but very fast and unforgiving. Finally got an A score.

The downside? Couldn't hardly move my shoulders later. Definitely overdid it, and they still hurt today. When constantly flinging your arms about as fast as you can starts to send bad feedback/twinges, you really need to stop no matter how much you want to nail the map.

 

[NervousEnergy]

Control was amazing. Definitely needs a sequel that also unifies and completes Allan Wake.

 

[NervousEnergy]

Bought Death Stranding for $13 in the Epic store sale. Started playing it today. Absolutely beautiful (playing in 21x9, 3440x1440, on a 3090 with every option maxxed), smooth, stylish... and I have no effin idea WTF is going on 2 hours in.

Oh yeah... the opening credit roll told me like 4 times it was a Hideo Kojima game. Nevermind. That means after I complete it I may not ever completely understand just what happened.... but man will it look beautiful.

Also, Control is *free* right now on the Epic store. Anyone who doesn't have it should pick it up at that price, since it's... well... free. It's a fantastic game that I enjoyed end-to-end.

 

[NervousEnergy]

I'm tempted by the new Call of duty. I'm not sure why since I usually play mostly SP with a handful of MP but it looks real good. I just know the story will be 4-5 hours again though which is, imo, low for a $70 price tag.

Been playing the hell out of it the past several days. Forums and Reddit are filled with various complaints about it, of course, but coming from Battlefield it's an amazing game. Ground War is what BF used to be when it was great. Engine seems to work pretty well. 9 times out of 10 when I lose a fight I know exactly why.

This is the first CoD I've played in something like 15 years, and first I've ever played seriously in MP. For FPS fun I've usually played BF, but it's been slowly going in directions I've not been a huge fan of since BF4. The highest point to me was BF3 - great territory-hold mechanics, and when you want furious quick play it had the Close Quarters map pack.

The original CoD back in 2003 was one of the Great FPS story experiences, with the 'holding the bridge' scene still fresh in my memory after nearly 20 years. I've played maybe half of the campaign in MW2, and it's... it's there. Some of the set pieces are great, but the story makes no sense at all. I wish they'd go back to re-creating some of the historical battles where your character was just one amongst many.

 

[NervousEnergy]

They're very different. Alan Wake is a slow-burning suspense/horror game that has more in common with Survival Horror than the action of Control. It's an excellent game and probably the best Stephen King story ever put into a video game (being not an actual Stephen King story, of course).

Loved Alan Wake, but the ending is a bit... mysterious. It actually makes more sense after playing Control. AW has one of the best side characters I've ever had the pleasure of interacting with in a video game: "I'm like the Flaming Eye of Mordor!"

 

[NervousEnergy]

Subjectively, playing Doom 2016 made me feel like a badass Slayer. Playing Doom Eternal made me feel like I was a rookie Battlemech pilot. Many keys miss-pressed, grenades wasted, alt-fires misused in my time in that came.

This is so dead-on. Haven't finished DE yet due to this feel.

Just picked up Spiderman Remastered for PC. Only done the intro mission sequence, and I'm not sure I've really grasped the essence of the swinging-based movement model. Beautiful game, though.

 

[NervousEnergy]

Totally entranced with God of War over the last two weeks of Christmas vacation. What an incredibly entertaining game. Gave it a pass for a long while as I didn't really get into the first games at all, but holy hell this one is fun. After it's done I'll be sad the sequel is out but only on console - similar to the situation with HZD. Loved that one on PC too. Good thing I can't just click a button on Amazon and buy a PS5 at retail or I'd have likely already done it.

 

[NervousEnergy]

Just finished God of War on PC, and it may be in my top 5 story-driven games of all time. A magnificent work of gaming art. Finger is hovering over a PS5 GoW bundle purchase.

The last PlayStation I owned was a 3 - bought specifically to play 'Last of Us', and it was worth every penny for that one game. I enjoyed HZD on PC enough that I may have considered a PS5 for HZFW, but they weren't available at the time without way more effort than I was willing to put in.

 

[NervousEnergy]

That game doesn't punish you, it reacts correctly to your actions. If you want to mass-murder people, you can do that, but don't expect the good outcome if you do.

Yes, the dark killing powers are more fun. That's the point. The Outsider is tempting you to wreak havoc and chaos. In most games, the dialog says, "The Devil tempts you! Do you resist?" And you type Y, and the game compliments your incredible willpower, tells you what a great person you are, and gives you a cookie.

In Dishonored, you are actually tempted and have to actually resist. All those flashy powers that kill people are trying to pull you to the dark side. If, instead, you're willing to play patiently and non-lethally, not murdering the people that are supposed to be working for you, the story goes better.

I've talked about this with other people, and one reaction was, "but they're not real people, it doesn't matter if I kill them." It was an impressive example of cognitive dissonance, where the guards weren't real, so it was okay to slaughter them, but then the story was real, and it was supposed to give you the best cookie for doing that. If the guards aren't real, neither is the story, but that one person just couldn't see their own contradictory beliefs. They didn't want to believe that they were tempted into evil. Apparently, by definition any choice they made was not evil, so the game was wrong.

I agree with your analysis and that was a very cool game and story mechanic, but I thought it was mis-applied for the latter half of the game. I remember this so clearly when playing it that I had to respond to this post, despite it being over a decade since I played the first game.

The first half or so of the game where the characters you're sneaking by (or have the option of killing) are, for the most part, just guards doing their job, the 'temptation' mechanic works really well, and I studiously avoided killing anyone I could (and eventually got the good ending.) I liked this, as it made the game harder yet much more rewarding. The second half, though, when you went after Daud (IIRC? It's been a while) and his band of assassins? That's where I got my own case of cognitive dissonance with the game mechanic. It should have reversed, and allowed you to put points into lethal mechanics and use them, and penalize you for leaving them alive. They're assassins and agents of chaos in the city - leaving them alive furthered the Outsider's aims.

You can enable both kinds of gameplay with good story aims. Overall Dishonored (and the sequel) were fantastic games, but that flaw (IMHO) bothered me with the first one enough that I remember it after all this time.

 

[NervousEnergy]

You come across all sorts of things you forgot about when moving. Found this at the back of the t-shirt drawer.

 

[NervousEnergy]

BONK!
Was that official merch from Valve or some fanmade version?

I think it was official - the shirt is much higher quality than you usually get with bootleg or fan made. I've slept since then, though. That shirt has got to be... what... 12 or 13 years old? Had to have come out right after the Meet the Scout vid, which was 2009.

I thought it was CTS

Meet the Scout from TF2. "Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother... I hurt people."

 

[NervousEnergy]

Another Late to the Party post, but have to post it. Just finished God of War: Ragnarök. (And yes, spell correct made me put that ö in.) That was what a tentpole game should be. Writing, VA, game mechanics, engine... the first GoW reboot was excellent - the sequel was sublime. And it took some chances on the story and narrative that were amazing

Spoiler

(no, you don't get to know what the question that answers '42' is, despite the game-long build up.)

.

The delivery and timing of "That's what's next." was... Oscar worthy.

I sincerely hope there will be another. The God of War is also the God of Money, so I'm pretty sure it'll happen, but you never know.

(Watched the end credits and was flabbergasted that Milana Vayntrub voiced Lunda.)

 

[NervousEnergy]

Stories like this is what intrigues me so much about Stellaris. I have it but I haven't felt like I've had time to sit down and really understand how to play the game, lol.

The first time I played Stellaris seriously, I'd advance the world a few turns and then spend 20 minutes reading blogs and discussions about the new elements that presented themselves as the game opened up (first planets, first encounters, exploration strategies, then endless discussions about how to develop the economy vs military.) I think I spent 10 hours or more to do the first 10 years in game. It was all fascinating.

Counterpoint: Playing as Atreus.
(I loved the game too, but fuck me I couldn't wait for those segments to end)

Yeah... he didn't have much in the way of gameplay. His sections were generally pretty quick, though, and much more about the story with little (and very easy) combat play. The pacing was a bit off in a few sections, though, I'll absolutely admit. I enjoyed the Ironwood section but it lasted too long.

 

[NervousEnergy]

Just finished Stellar Blade. Fantastic game. Smooth, fun open world, incredible visuals and world size. Interesting concept and plot. Very, very tight gameplay, and unlike most Soulslikes it can be adjusted to be somewhat less punishing. Story Mode without the slow-time button press option was just right for me. Challenging for my less than perfect reflexes, but not terribly frustrating. Beat most bosses on the first or second try.

Negatives would be the few times it tried to be a platformer (the engine isn't good at that), and some of the voice acting is... rough. Eve's VA is excellent, fortunately, but some of the other cast... coming off of the tour-de-force of voice acting in Expedition 33 it was a bit jarring.

And yes, the costumes (especially some of them from Nexus Mods) are... well. yeah.

 

[NervousEnergy]

What a devious game - connects to the internet on its own, downloads mods from Nexus Mods, only to embarrass unsuspecting people with revealing costumes...

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

 

[NervousEnergy]

So I have to preface anything I say about Arknights: Endfield with a simple and powerful disclaimer: the gacha in this game is awful. If you are susceptible to the pull to spend money, stay far away from this game. If you can resist, though, there's things to be said about this game, although again starting with the fact that most of your free pulls are given hours into the game so it's harder to justify trashing your account to pull again. Dupes don't matter much, thankfully, so if you're going for a free account you just need a 6* that fits into a strategy and that is most of the standard ones. I pulled Pog and that shoves me into a physical team which is fine, I already have all the other pieces by default.

However, the gameplay of this game has to be praised. They have managed to stitch a factory builder into a Genshin-esque world with a battle system that pulls from Punishing: Grey Raven in its combos (but not in the difficult ways those shift around, you have the same rhythm every fight). And it works very well, it feels as smooth as butter and there's so many things you can do to gain progression in every way except for the gacha part of course. Which has limited banners that DO NOT enter the Standard pool, so again you have to avoid the temptation to spend. As an F2P you're going to have to pick and choose and probably have 120 pulls which is an enormous amount of currency. But the game itself feels freaking great, and I have to commend them for a system that's just fun to play around in.

Had to do a search to see if anyone was talking about this game as there was no thread - glad I did. I'm very, very taken with it and have played it a few hours most every day for the past week.

Preface - I've NEVER played a 'gatcha' game. I was very intrigued by the story and characters of Genshin, but that game remains the only big-budget game I've ever encountered personally that doesn't allow Y axis invert on mouse control. Absolutely gobsmacking that the devs would exclude such a significant player base, but it is what it is.

I had to look up a lot of the terminology used in forums and reddit posts as I've learned about the game systems, as there's this huge vocabulary which only serves gatcha games - very bemusing, and it seems somewhat overwrought at times. I bought the $5 monthly pass once I realized I liked the game enough to keep playing it just to signal my approval of this thing they've built to the devs, but it seems totally unnecessary. I have two of the 6-star characters and several equivalent weapons all from the free stuff, and it looks like you can build a team to tackle any of the games content out of not only free stuff, but the default free stuff. I guess the monetization appeals to the Pokemon temptation in all of us to 'catch 'em all'. Certainly not necessary, though I appreciate that it allows them to build such a fantastic game I can play without spending a thing.

The base building is very addicting, and the combat part is approachable but a bit manic - it's still easy for me to lose track of what's going on regarding the various combinations. Gives it some skill upside, though, and the game certainly isn't hard. Voice acting for English is quite good, if not nearly up to Blizzard's level. The game world is pretty huge so far. Performance is top notch.

TLDR - An action JRPG with Factorio base building. It really works, and is very, very entertaining. You can totally ignore the gatcha if you want and just play for free and it doesn't affect it at all.

 

[NervousEnergy]

I'm not sure if the Inverted Axis thing is sarcasm or not. I feel like the age of inverted axis has been dead for 20 years, as joysticks went from flight-sim centric to shooter centric in the mid 00s.

...and I'm equally not sure if this post is sarcasm or not. The thought of trying to re-program 30+ years of mental and muscle memory for one Action RPG is beyond ludicrous. Various polls show ~20% of players, mostly older (like me) invert the Y axis. In my circle of players in the mid-90s playing fairly high-level competitive Quake (Capture the Keys!) up through Q2 RACTF and Q3 almost all were inverted - we grew up in the Atari era. Even if it dwindles to 1%, not providing that control option in a game with millions of players means cutting off easily 6 figures of income if not 7. That's a lot of money sacrificed for not coding a checkbox. The Genshin forums when I looked up why it wasn't there had many posts with people asking the same thing, and providing links to things like kernel-level drivers you could use to invoke inverted Windows mouse input with a hotkey. Way more effort than I was willing to put out.

Gachas are generally not the hardest games - but people love to throw money at their favorite characters. Maxing them out is seen a a sign of prestige and that you are a "true fan". I'm not sure about Arknights, but Genshin is around $2700 per character to get maxed out if you are very unlucky. Then there's the weapon banner which is a little more generous (fewer pulls to guaranteed pull), but still can set you back over a thousand dollars at average rates.

That is mind-blowing. Maybe I need to invest in Gatcha game companies...

 

[NervousEnergy]

It's an easy enough setting to add that I agree, there's no reason for Inverted Y to not exist. Their target audience is players with poor impulse control and access to more money than sense, however.

Ehh... there's plenty of folks in my age bracket 20 years older than you who'll happily throw money at the goofiest crap, especially if it's cute. And they tend to have that money to throw. Excluding us because we grew up in the flight sim / Atari / GoldenEye era is just setting money on fire.

 

[NervousEnergy]

For various historical reasons inverted-Y and inverted-X are both popular in Japan still, so it's unlikely to go away anytime soon. It's also not rare over here at all, if a game skips it (console games never do, it's in the certification requirements for all 3 platforms) you can bet one of the top complaints will be "where's invert Y" until it's added, you can see that in action on a lot of indie and early access games.

I didn't know it was in the cert requirements, and that does explain some things. Genshin Impact allows reversing the Y axis on a controller, but it's missing for the mouse. It's the only major game I've ever encountered where that feature is missing, and it's demonstrably costing them money.

 

[NervousEnergy]

Really enjoyed Stellar Blade last year, and the teaser trailer for the sequel (Stellar Blade: Blood Rain) looks like more of the same but more immersive environments. Looking forward to this one.

 

[NervousEnergy]

Are they upping the jiggle physics?

2:48 of the trailer.

They've added... curvature subtlety.

 

[NervousEnergy]

I sorta agree with you, but Dishonored is less about thievery and more about target elimination (plus magic powers).

Magic Assassins Creed. Well... more magic.

I quite enjoyed the game and the sequel. Somewhat surprised that the franchise IP hasn't been revisited.

 

[NervousEnergy]

Rhythm games more broadly are very stable as a genre, and have had some unusually good new IP's such as Rift of the Necrodancer and Rhythm Doctor. Also the currently Steam-exclusive Beatblock and the gameplay in UNBEATABLE. The behemoths also still have stable releases supported by Japan's arcade scene in particular.

Specifically guitar-centric entries are a lot rarer, as mentioned above.

Beat Saber is, IMHO, the ultimate gold standard for rhythm games in general. Though I also miss the jam out days of Guitar and Band Hero. Still have a pristine BH Keyboard under a cabinet somewhere...

Not really sure why instrument-based games declined in popularity to virtually disappear. I would have bet on it being a very persistent genre, as there's never been any shortage of people playing air guitar and pretending to be the one up on the stage.

It's also not like AI magically replaces creativity. It's getting pretty damn good at doing what you tell it to do, but at best it's an entry level dev following instructions. If you want something really unique and original then you need to put a lot more effort into getting that out of it.

I'd say it's dramatically lowered the bar for entry, though. Ten years ago turning a sketch into a detailed, 3D animated model was the work of uber-talented artists and animators. Now you just ask the machine to give you 500 variations of a catgirl with a sword and they're all perfectly shaded, detailed, and readily converted into an articulate 3D model. Iterate further on the ones you like. It's a game of prompt engineering more than skill with a Waycom tablet and Maya.