Lies of p - absolutely fantastic. The first game I rate 10/10 since Mass effect 2 I think.
They took what is good in soulslikes and removed stupid fromsoftwareisms. The story is great and actually told, there are some indicators for npcs who have something for you, when an npc moves somewhere they leave a note etc.
The bosses are tough but fair, they don’t randomly recover from stagger into a one shot ability or heal off of hitting a shield, there’s no fake, game breaking, lazy difficulty like fromsoftware would do, you are not punished for doing something well.
The combat is great, no “rhythmic” parry spam, no dodge spam, you need to think about what to use, when you do the game can be rather easy for this genre.
There are 2 or 3 eldenringy bosses towards the end with ludicrous mobility and combo spam but most of the rest are really great.
If this is this devs first game I really want to see the next. First time in ages I’m doing ng+
Yes and yes. BB is a flawed masterpiece, some great things ruined by some of the worst fromsoftwareisms, a bit dated at this point too.
LoP has a better and more varied combat, 60fps, better bosses, better weapon system, many QoL improvements, better story(in part because it’s actually told :D), way better graphics, no grind, no long runbacks(the longest has like 3 enemies you need to fight, BB was made at a time FS still thought runbacks somehow add to the experience or maybe it was a cynical attempt at padding the game length).
In LoP, once you “git gut” it’s just so satisfying to get a few perfect blocks on a boss combo and break his weapon, never gets old.
In my utterly subjective opinion BB is 7.5/10, LoP 10/10 in 2023.
39.6% of players have beaten the final boss of Elden Ring. Considering how huge the game is, and how difficult it can be, I found that to be a surprisingly large number of people. I'm not sure how that compares to dark souls 3, but Dark Souls 2 has about 33% completion and dark souls 1 (prepare to die edition) has less than 25%
My kid has this problem too. So many games interrupt him mid level to force ads, its ridiculous.
But we’ve found a few games that arent total popup nightmares (that he enjoys):
-Two Dots, a beautiful puzzle game, very kid friendly
-Bad Piggies - a spin off of angry birds, Physics based building/puzzle game, very cartoony and fun gameplay. My kid loves this game, probably his favourite (its older so the ads arent too obnoxious. You can pay to disable them, also)
-Stumble Guys - massive multiplayer platformer like fallguys, loves this one (there are ads but you can pay to disable for 4.99)
We have the ios equivalent to play pass and it helped a lot, too.
When my kid was younger he had a “garbage games on tablet” phase as well. As others have said, paid games are the way to go (Play Pass sounds cool). Looking for indie games for Android, or PC games ported to Android gives some good results. Stardew Valley’s an obvious one. I haven’t played Ordia, but it looks gorgeous.
What worked really well for us was to teach him about some dark patterns in simple terms and spot them with him in the freemiums he was playing. “Fear of Missing Out” events/notifications and “Progression Paywalls” are typical ones. It made him realize the game wasn’t built to give him a good time as much as to frustrate him into endlessly spending real money in exchange for some phony currency. In the end he was happy to switch to saner games. It’s a good opportunity to work on their critical judgment basically.
Lemuroid is a great open source emulator. Vimm’s Lair is a great place to find games/ROMs. It’s difficult to play games though that require the bumper buttons on a touch screen. Maybe consider getting her a retro gaming handheld device. They can either run based on Linux, so an emulator, or Android which can operate like normal and then you can select an emulator to play. ETA Prime has lots of reviews of these devices.
Awesome, thanks! I’ve tried retro gaming before but they didn’t really like it, we also had a Wii for a couple of weeks, but perhaps I should try again.
One thing you might need to pay attention to is your daughter would want to play the same game as their friends do.
You may want to reject games base on your criteria, but if your daughter feels isolated because she can’t play with her friends, that could be a bigger problem.
I’m not too worried about that tbh. It’s the same thing that when she gets a mobile phone it will be very limited, only call, text and messaging. No social media until she’s 18. Thanks though for checking.
Good luck. We tried that rule too, it has led to so much stress and fighting. I’m certainly not suggesting to not try and hold the line. I’m just wishing you luck with it.
After watching The Social Dilemma and seeing that people who worked high up at eg Facebook also didn’t want their kids on there, I’m going to try to do the same.
That… seems a bit too extreme, I honestly don’t think you can achieve that… unless you get her a dumb phone and assuming she never gets her own by her own means.
Working with your kids to have a decent social media experience? That I can see!
Yes it may sound extreme but based on The Social Dilemma and presentations at our school from people who did a lot of research into this topic, I’m going to go with their recommendation to keep them off social media until 18. Probably won’t be easy indeed.
I am on the exact same boat as you. 9yo daughter keeps asking to download a bunch of crap with in app purchases or ads. The problem is that there’s so much crap for mobile. I almost never play anything on my phone, but her at her age and the current times of short attention span being bored for longer than a second seems.like a taboo, she needs to have stuff on her phone, even though we have a Switch at home with loads of good quality games.
I agree there’s a lot of crap, and it takes some time and conversation. Lots of tips in this topic as well. Eg Play Pass looks pretty cool so far, and I’m going to look at F Droid and installing an emulator.
I’m also explaining to her why I reject some apps. She seems to understand it better and better.
I’m also going to look at using Tasker to set it to airplane mode on all apps except Play Store and Chrome.
Dodgeball Academia. It’s an awesome little indie action RPG. I love the art, combat, and character designs. It reminds me a bit of Pokemon (though you don’t catch anything… besides dodgeballs). It’s a 9/10 so far!
Its a somewhat more story and gameplay focused than Cookie Clicker, but still pretty chill. I won’t say too much more, considering that it’d just spoil the fun of discovery.
Also I don't know anything about adblockers but I was lucky enough to have a device supported by www.divestos.org and I think the OS defaults to a DNS that ignores ads somehow. But I'm not sure! I just know I get WAY less spammy ads than friends do :P
bin.pol.social
Aktywne