Just finished The First Berserker: Khazan earlier today. For some reason, the final boss was extremely hyped up in the game’s subreddit, and it ended up just being alright. Overall a good game, I had fun with the combat, but the story is trash and the characters are nothing, not even cardboard cutouts.
I had an amazing run going earlier on Dungeon Clawler using Toxicarl and the kiddo pets. I could stack millions of stacks of poison on the enemies. Got to somewhere like floor 70 or so before dying.
Other than that, I have been on and off with most every other game I’ve attempted to play due to me finding them more boring nowadays.
The exception being a pokemon fangame: Pokemon Decay, which is kinda cool. Whole thing of the region you are in is the result of the first 4 regions being smashed together due to a decade prior the 3 legendary Hoenn creatures causing things to go chaotic and causing lots of chaos. Has new forms of pokemon, new evolutions for some, and for the most part they all look like well designed sprites.
Take my opinion with a grain of salt, for the most part, I’ve mostly enjoyed games released in the third generation and didn’t touch anything past the seventh. The increasing amount of handholding turned me off and degrading mega evolutions from the once advertised evolution of the gameplay formular to a mere gimmick broke the last straw.
That being said: The Gamecube games hands down. The intro cutscene to Colosseum has more story than some generations did in their entirety and instead of you just stumbling into the plot you are actually an integral part of it. As an added bonus, both games feature final bosses that actually fight back. I think Colosseum is the only Pokemon game I ever struggled in.
Of course, taking everything Pokemon into account, Mystery Dungeon is the only true answer, but I wanted to go with an traditional RPG first.
If you insist on mainline games, you’re probably right about the fifth generation. These games have everything you would need, but the execution itself is fumbled - and it has to be, since they questioned their own franchise at its core. Logically speaking, N is right and everyone else is wrong.
There are some interesting things in other generations, but it usually feels tacked on and isn’t actually relevant for 95% of the game. Like, the sixth generation had some nice ideas - but they are mostly implied or retold, without you having any urgency in the matter. Once again why I chose the GC games, two of the few games with you being part of the plot. In the early mainline games, you mostly happen to be there when story happens, in the later games, you sometimes only get told that story happens somewhere.
I finished Blasphemous. I didn’t go through the DLC as I apparently missed the chance for the True Ending by not doing it early anyway, so I couldn’t be bothered as I wasn’t really enjoying the game that much. Also I’ve heard it’s even more annoying. I’ll save it for a hypothetical second playthrough. I did beat the one optional DLC boss I had access to - Isidora - and the difference between the main game and the DLC is staggering. I first tried the last two bosses in the main game, but Isidora took me probably 50ish attempts. And I’m not sure it was “fun difficult” either, that second phase sure was something.
My notes remain the same: terrible platforming (and an overabundance of it) and design elements that are deliberately meant to waste your time and/or piss you off hold back what could otherwise have been a great game. I respect the artistic vision, I just didn’t have a lot of fun playing it.
As a palate cleanser I played through LIMBO, which I bought solely because it is supposedly an indie darling and was being delisted on GOG. I was assured by somebody on here that it wasn’t really “that bad” as puzzle platformers go (I hate platformers) and that it was “mostly vibes”. That was a lie - this is clearly a puzzle platformer. And it didn’t feel like a particularly good one either. Fortunately it was only a couple of hours long or I would never have been able to force myself to finish it. YMMV but it’s a solid 5.5-6/10 for me, I’m glad I only paid a dollar for it. I hope INSIDE is better as I foolishly bought both.
I participated in a local Unreal Tournament competition and won $3k. Was $75 buy in and I think I got somewhat lucky in my match placement. Was allowed to do this solo at 14 🤣.
Lots of terrible players in my bracket while I watched the best pick each other off on the other half. Took second honestly by sitting back and picking off kills from others engagements 🤷♂️.
I did CAL P on in the CS1.6 era with middling success.
I barely can get high in the mid tier leagues today. Too much specialization, meta, guns, characters, and the playing field is literally thousands of times bigger.
It’s mostly meta and effort. Your reflexes don’t decline THAT until your 60s. Sure you might not be able to be a top 1% but beyond that it’s mostly just practice and giving fucks lol.
I’m not reading patch notes, I’m playing builds I want and ignoring meta, and I’d rather pop 2 off in the noggin than seek out and practice with better players.
OTOH I’m turning the fastest laps of my life with my auto racing and am chasing a win!
Grain of salt, as i havent played the mystery dungeon games or Colosseum, but Platinum had a great amount of story, and a decent amount of post-game content that wasn’t just min-maxing to win.
Everything post-B2/W2 is just too hand-holdy to me.
Don’t knock the Ranger games either, they were fun adventures.
Ah yes, the “it’s been 3000 years” guy, genuinely one of the series best moments.
What else was there? The villain? Whack. The champ? Whack. The prof? Whack. The 5 rivals? Whack. I don’t think 2 great scenes make a good story, no matter how elaborate the lore.
Thank you for your input, but I won’t leave my mountain to fight you on your hill.
The premise was really great. The “Pokemon is just dogfighting for kids” argument is a long-standing argument, and I was so stoked that they took it on.
And then they just bait-and-switched it to “The team doesn’t actually want to stop dogfighting, they just want to be the only ones with dogs to fight everyone else”. It was the laziest cop-out possible.
Killmonger syndrome. The “villain” has a point, but rather than engage with it, they’ve gotta bomb a school or something.
I recently caught Shaymin in Arceus and it made me uncomfortable. The quest is helping a woman find a Pokémon that helped her in the past, and then immediately after I threw poke balls at it. It escaped every time, so eventually I had to force it into a fight, beat it until it was too weak to escape me. I had just done a quest which acknowledged that some ‘mons don’t like fighting too…
This could have been a great “difficult choice” moment. But Pokemon games don’t do these. If you want to 100% the game, you gotta catch em all. I haven’t played Arceus, but I’m quite sure the game never acknowledges whether you caught the Shaymin or not. And with no stakes on the line, there is no “difficult choice” moment.
I think most would consider PMD Explorers of Sky to have the the best story overall.
For mainline, Platinum is the way to go. Team galactic has a strong presence and compelling motivation, beyond: we want money/power. I love how you can physically see the evidence of their evil effecting the world - in a couple instances. I also like it’s balancing: it will pressure you without being to much of a grind(big improvement over Diamond/Pearl); and it doesn’t really hold your hand at all, once you reach Eterna City.
Lot’s of interesting side areas as well, and I like the lore surrounding the god pokemon.
It was so annoying, because me and my friend tried to do PvP on my Steam Deck with a pair of controllers one day and were disappointed to find out it doesn’t work
I just finished Far Cry 5…Seemed like a fitting time for some cult destruction.
Overall it wasn’t too bad. Maybe a 6 or 7 out of 10. I found it getting repetitive after halfway through the second (of three) regions. The side stories weren’t very interesting any more, so it was just a little grindy to the end.
I will say, this was one of the few games that got me on the disgust (not sure that’s really the right word for it) meter a couple times. No spoilers, but the story Jess Black shares about the cult’s doings is quite revolting.
Probably on to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 next for me.
E: One thing I just remembered that was quite well done that I don’t often (literally) hear in other games was the quality of sounds coming from afar. A commotion in the distance actually sounded like it was in the distance, and not just a less quiet sound. Some mushed directionality while a little bit of reverb and reflection really made it sound realistic.
And the people responsible were fired, right? Right?
No?
Well there’s your problem right there. That’s how common sense dies unlives on the altar of corporate profits.
Why do you think that firing someone over this is the correct response? I’m sorry but that is a really stupid mindset.
You learn and train/educate your employees so that it doesn’t happen again.
“Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?”
It’s an offense that can’t be easily fixed by teaching, seeing as how that employee could have looked at a map at any time and verified that the account holder wasn’t lying. Unwillingness to access information likely cannot be fixed with forced exposure to the information they were unwilling to access.
You are simply guessing. With no way to verify your claim. For all we know, the customer support person DID google “Fort Gay VW”, and was presented with pornography. Perhaps that person should have used a dedicated map instead of a simple search. Perhaps that’s an adjustment that can be made without making someone lose their job and potentially livelihood.
You don’t just fire someone for a mistake. It’s ok to make an honest mistakes. The important part is that you learn from them.
Why would something stop being a mistake just because of post-incident actions from a third party? How does that make any sense?
Xbox Live chief enforcement officer Stephen Toulouse acknowledges the agent reviewing a fellow gamer’s complaint against Moore made a mistake.
He says keeping up with slang and policing Xbox Live for offensive language is challenging, but mistakes in judgment are rare.
Toulouse says training has since been updated.
That’s from the source Wikipedia cites.
They made a mistake, eventually it was recognized, and they claim they’ve since updated their training to prevent similar incidents in the future. Isn’t that a good outcome? The guy got his account back. And Xbox apologized and took steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again. What else do you want?
Honestly the greater issue I have is with developers that haven’t touched enough grass to realize that some people are named Gaylord or live in Cunthorpe or whatever.
That, and the stupid culture which insists that baby must only see baby words, not mean old grownup words.
The people in charge of those decisions just shouldn’t have such power. And if a user names themselves removedHater1995 you can still intervene based on reports from others.
Are devs supposes to know every single weird old name in existence beforehand and add that to a giant exception array?
They just can’t ever do anything right then.
If they do, do something. Someone fell through the cracks and Xbox sucks and devs needs to be fired.
If they don’t do anything, then the Xbox sucks because they enable racism, homophobia, harassment, etc. And devs needs to be fired.
What do you want? Besides firing everyone involved apparently. The problem got fixed. They updated their training to ensure customer support handle these cases better in the future.
This was in 2010. Have there been more of those incidents since then?
somebody who repeatedly chooses to remain ignorant, not do their job, and not look into this is NOT somebody that can be trained. they will just revert to their ways soon after trying to address it and maybe showing improvement
source: my anecdotal evidence of very single poor performer I have trained
Why imagine? It wasn’t, and if it had been, they would have been right to uphold the ban.
But making that distinction is the job and they failed to do it right. Quite possibly, as others here have suggested, out of willful ignorance. One of the worst traits I can personally imagine a person to have, and one that by now, mainstream American culture is built upon. can’t hear you
And how do you know it was a person and not an automated system?
The answer is, you don’t. You’re just guessing. You’re being outraged over an assumption you have, without any way of verifying if that is the case. Do you think that’s a healthy mindset to have?
Probably because kids would use gay as part of some random homophobic insult in their location field lol
The road to hell is paved with good intentions and the main (still sadly all too relevant) problem here is customer support not just reacting and fixing it.
So therefore the dev(s) who wrote the system should get fired? All because they enacted on tickets to stop people from using what they thought were slurs in their location tag?
What part of that do I need to think twice about? You really want this to be about some ban happy dev (that you assume is the case) that you completely skip over the real problem of customer support not managing to solve what should have been an easy fix.
If you read the sources on the wiki. You’ll see Xbox apologized and updated their training to ensure it doesn’t happen again. That sure sounds like the best outcome to what we know happened.
I appreciate the sentiment, I really do. And yes, the problem is more of a systemic one. But we need real people to personally feel the consequences of this idiocy if we want things to change for the better. Otherwise, everyone will just keep on pretending everything is fine. this is fine
Who’s to say they didn’t receive any consequences? But that consequence doesn’t mean you have to lose your job over what easily could have been an honest mistake. Bear in mind, the person (if it even was a person) that terminated the account, and the people in customer support are most likely different people. I’m not saying that customer support couldn’t have handled it better. But calling for someone to be fired as the first resort is simply not a good mindset.
I’m finally playing Celeste and honestly it’s living up to the hype. The art style is amazing, great soundtrack, solid platforming mechanics, and just the perfect balance of challenging and rewarding. The storyline is really endearing too, I have a huge crush on Theo.
I’ve also started Cyberpunk 2077. It’s the first big AAA game I’ve played in a while, and I’m honestly kinda overwhelmed by the scope of the game. 7 hours in and I still felt like I was going through a tutorial. GTA-style open worlds aren’t usually my fav kind of games but I really dig the cyberpunk setting so far.
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