A good portion of my failures in boss fights are due to getting the boss low and thinking, “I can just spam attack until he’s dead now” and then getting caught by attacks I was avoiding prior to that.
And a decent portion of the ones left after eliminating those ones are due to not being used to the attacks enough to avoid them consistently.
STALKER 2, and I haven’t felt this frightened to climb down into the basement of a decrepit waste processing station since the original trilogy. So in short, it hits just right.
I actually stood in my kitchen last night eating some yogurt and two Lucky Charms cereal bars just to procrastinate what I knew I had to do.
It functions well enough that I haven’t noticed anything off, save for maybe two occasions in 40+ hours where I was unlucky enough to have bandits spawn in near me. Once out in the woods, and one time they literally appeared sitting in chairs in the room I had just passed through, then attacked on my way back through it. You can’t help but laugh when it happens, but it’s nowhere near like it was on release.
I know that several of the squads I encounter in the wild have been artificially spawned in just outside of my exclusion radius, but they move organically enough that I’ve never had my immersion broken with the impression that these aren’t just stalkers on their own mission. Sure, if I reload a ways back and travel the same route, it may well be a different assortment of them, no one at all, or maybe bandits or mutants the next time, but rather than feeling tacky it keeps the Zone feeling unpredictable. Retracing my steps after reloading often results in a wildly different experience from Point A to Point B, so I can’t cheese my way through much of anything.
I’ve also encountered large, roaming packs of mutants who, when avoided, travel well outside of my exclusion radius and continue to be heard far off in the distance (Flesh are a good example) even though they’re no longer rendered on my screen. I’ve traveled in that direction a short time later just to run into the same pack having changed direction, so there definitely are some persistent A-Life doing their thing out there. It’s just sprinkled with some chance encounters.
All in all, the A-Life isn’t exactly where they/we want it to be, but they’ve taken enough corrective steps that I find it very enjoyable, and I say that as a long-term fan of the originals, as well as hardcore versions like Anomaly. Honestly, the only thing I truly dislike about STALKER 2 is the number of bloodsuckers. They’ve become a lot easier to dispatch with my better gear, but if I’m ever going to run into three bloodsuckers in the wild, it should be like one time. But there are times where I encounter packs of them several times per day, and on Veteran difficulty that is absolute bullshit.
As a father of a 8 month old baby, I have barely touched any of my gaming systems for the past year. Games need to be quickly accessible and possible to quit at any time for me to play. So mobile gaming is basically where I’m at.
Slay The Spire works perfectly well for Android. I’ve been playing that a ton.
Pokémon TCG Pocket is weirdly fun. Even though it’s encouraging microtransactions and subscriptions, it’s very much playable without making a single transaction. The TCG is decently interesting, though not without flaws. It’s still in a very early stage, so I’m interested to see how the game grows.
That’s a great point. I have a nintendo switch, but I have more or less played through the entirety of all the games I have been interested in before my child was born. I did pick up pokemon violet, but the game was very short and had some disgusting responsiveness and aestetics which discourages me from grinding the post game.
Maybe a handheld pc will be my next purchase. Thanks for the suggestion!
As a more portable and budget-friendly alternative, consider a small emulation console. I’m very happy with my Anbernic RG35XXSP. Since the screen folds like on the original GBA SP, it’s absolutely tiny and fits into any pocket - without having to worry that the screen might scratch. Configure it correctly and you can close the screen to suspend games.
This kind of system would also make for a great first gaming device once your kid is around five years old.
Yeah, I’m generally not fond of using AI, but that clip where June goes fucking crazy convinced me that it might actually be viable. Not to that level of craziness, but having them go on like SC2 casters throughout the entire game would fit in so much.
Since I just got my deck repaired and returned, I can continue Sonic Origins on there. Had to install it on my desktop temporarily.
I also just got the summon I wanted tonight in Fire Emblem Heroes: New Year’s Níðhöggr (Nithhoggr). As a casual I see strong unit like her and think I’m gonna be set for a long time (at least a new unit summoning banner or 2 from now hopefully), like when I got Heir to Openness Alphonse or Gatekeeper (even though he didn’t last long for me).
To be honest, I never got that feeling. I always feel catharsis finishing a game. However, with a huge exception on the Metal Gear Solid series, because Hideo Kojima always leaves more questions than answers at the end of the games. But without spoiling anything for those who haven’t played it yet, the exception in itself in the series is MGSV which completed the series full circle at the end.
The only time I felt empty after consuming a media is after the finale of Breaking Bad. Never have I felt so empty and lost on what to do after. Post-college life does not even beat it.
My grandfather died right around the release of psychonauts 2. I played that game nearly non-stop while I did a 100% completion. It got me through the start of that grieving period. I remember being mad it wasn’t longer because nothing else released at the time was nearly that good when it came to writing and gameplay. Amazing game to be honest. Definitely in my top 10 all time. But I might be biased because of it being exactly what I needed when I needed it.
Not anytime soon. Nvidia tried, and nobody liked it. LLMs still suck at creative writing and need a ton of RAM/VRAM just to work. They also often get confused or trail off in any discussion/roleplay.
The only game that sort of made it work was Suck Up!, where you’re a vampire that has to convince an AI to let you in their house so you can suck their blood. It’s a fun concept but even that game gets repetitive quick and the LLM is very stupid and random.
Tiny models only get stupid like that because you’re taking a general purpose model that knows everything in the world and compressing all that knowledge too much. If you start with a model that only knows basic english and info about a few hundred things in the game, it can be much smaller.
I tried to make a comment about this in a different thread. Only you can control how you wanna spend your energy every day. Stop giving it to being angry at them all day. Unless there is something you can do to take actual action its just ruining your day with no real change taking place.
My father has requested that the family only talk to him about politics if there is something he can do. A petition to sign. A protest to mount. Something. Otherwise he doesn’t want to hear what Trump and his lackey’s are up to because he knows he can’t do anything about it and letting it ruin his daily mental health does him no good.
It's hard not to when the man who just did two nazi salutes at the presidential inauguration is also trying to insert himself into our gaming spaces. We don't want nazis in our communities.
It’s not hard at all, you choose what you allow to take root in your mind. Additionally, I disagree that that’s what he did; his motion was not an actual heil, and I feel that labeling it as such without better evidence continues the unfortunate trend of dilution powerful words. I don’t think a conversation on this topic will yield anything meaningful, so I’m not going to elaborate further, but I wanted to present an opposing opinion.
Ok, you lost any credibility your original words had when you said it wasn’t a hitler salute. It clearly was. I wish I knew how to post video here. It’s a 2 second video, and it’s clearly a hitler salute.
They shouldn’t hold any credibility in the first place, I’m just some faceless username. I already saw the video, that’s what my opinion is based on. I say his hand’s angle and movement are quite different from a heil, but if you want to disagree, that’s fine as well.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne