@CharlesReed@kbin.social

CharlesReed

@CharlesReed@kbin.social

PI currently working out of Oakmont, Massachusetts.

Alt account on https://kbin.run/u/CharlesReed

Profil ze zdalnego serwera może być niekompletny. Zobacz więcej na oryginalnej instancji.

CharlesReed,

I've been with a company that when things were down, they didn't layoff anyone but just stopped hiring and higher management took pay cuts. I've also been with a company that would do a round of layoffs almost every time they were in the red. Guess which company I enjoyed working for more and had more positive morale overall.

CharlesReed,

Diablo 3: Season 30 - Gave up on the new Monk build since it had very precise stats that I'm currently too lazy to works towards. I'm still progressing with my current build, so I'll keep it for now.

Diablo 4: Season 3 - Played around with the Lunar event that started this week. It was surprisingly easy, and I got through all the rewards in a couple nights.

Vampyr - I forgot how long this game is.

CharlesReed,

Oregon Trail on Apple IIGS.
We also had Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, but I wasn't as interested in that as much.

CharlesReed,

I'm really hoping Code Veronica is one. I tried to play the original, but I am just not made for those old school tank controls.

CharlesReed,

Diablo 3: Season 30 - Still working on the Destroyer chapter. Thinking about trying out a different build for my Monk, so I'm farming Nephalem Rifts and gambling blood shards at Kadala for specific legendary items.

Alan Wake 2 - Finally finished The Final Draft aka new game plus. Very happy that I replayed it immediately, because the ending made it worth it. Even with all the problems this game has, I'm eager to see what comes next. There's been a patch that just came out that apparently fixes a lot of bugs, but I finished the game too soon to see any of it.

Diablo 4: Season 3 - Working on Chapter 4 of the season journey and my endgame Barbarian build. Finally moved myself to World Tier 3 because things were getting too easy. I did have a little trouble until I got better gear, and now things are back to being easy again lol. If I get too comfortable, I might have to attempt the capstone dungeon for World Tier 4 to humble myself. Either that or face one of the endgame bosses on my own.

Vampyr - Been having a shit couple days and decided the best way to combat it was by being a moody vampire doctor running around London.

CharlesReed, (edited )

Man, I was looking forward to this and Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2, but after seeing both gameplay trailers today, I'm just... not anymore. Like wtf is this.

CharlesReed,

The licenses referenced likely have to do with the game’s music. During the The Line’s menu screen, Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” can be heard while the game’s soundtrack includes Martha and The Vandellas’ “Nowhere to Run.”

The same thing happened to the first Alan Wake before they worked something out to get it back (even though it took almost a decade). Consequently, that's also one of the reasons they wrote original songs for the sequel. It's very much a gamble these days to license music for games. More or less puts it on a timeline to be removed at some point.

CharlesReed, (edited )

If you have time for some reading, here's a really great article from a few years ago that talks about licensing in video games and how complicated it can be (the first half of the article is really the only relevant part). Depending on what exactly you want to do with the music in/with the game, a developer could be looking at having to deal with more than one license. I imagine it could get expensive very easily.

CharlesReed,

Diablo 3: Season 30 - Already working on the Destroyer chapter.

Alan Wake 2 - I'm trying to be extra careful because I know there's a few extra things in ng+, and I'm starting to have a lot of questions about a couple loose ends that also showed up in the first playthrough. I'm hoping maybe the ng+ ending will explain some of them. I'm only a few chapters away from the end, so I'm hoping I finish it in the next 2 or 3 days.

Diablo 4: Season 3 - Chose a Barbarian for this round. Not sure I like my current build, but I'm hoping once I get some more legendary items I can look into a better one. I like the "story" for this season a lot better than last season's, but that might be because Zoltun Kulle is one of my favorite Diablo 3 characters. My lil construct companion is kinda kickin' ass too. Just wish it would also pick up gold for me lol. As far as the season journey goes, I'm glad they took out the PvP objectives. I actually feel like I might be able to get all of them done this season.

CharlesReed, (edited )

If they are planning to I imagine they're waiting a little bit to introduce them. I try not to compare the two games too much, but iirc it was a few years before D3 even got pets.
If they're not planning on it, at the very least increasing the pickup radius would be nice, since it's fairly small as it stands now.

CharlesReed,

BioShock Infinite. Mostly because I hated all of the characters, with the exception of the Luteces, and even they were on thin ice, mostly because of Rosalind. And Elizabeth as a NPC companion? I would prefer Ashley from Resident Evil 4 over Elizabeth any day. It didn't help that every time I tried to listen to a voxophone, she'd start talking about some bs, so I'd wait for her to finish and start the voxophone over, only to have her start talking again. When it happened 4 times with one vox, I had to take a break from the game. I just wanted to listen to the damn recording.
Gameplay is great though. I'll play the heck out of the Clash in the Clouds dlc. I get the fun action, and none of Booker and Elizabeth's constant whining.

CharlesReed, (edited )

My friend who loves the game praises the multiverse aspect of the game the most, and to me it just doesn't make sense, exactly for the reasons you gave. And having Elizabeth be there at the beginning of Rapture's downfall (and actively taking part in it, even if she was blackmailed iirc) didn't really sit right for me, but maybe that's just because I didn't like her lol.
I had totally forgot about the slavery aspect of the game. They absolutely could have handled it better. Like there's a million other ways they could have had an opposing faction who's also not 100% in the right, and that's the one you wanted to go with? Come on. Even BioShock 2 did that concept better with Ryan vs Lamb.

“The only difference between Daisy Fitzroy and Zachary Comstock is how you spell their name!” - Booker DeWiit proving he is the dumbest man alive!

Me every time Booker or Elizabeth open their mouths.

CharlesReed,

Yep, the moment this acquisition was in talks, you could see this coming from a mile away.

CharlesReed,

Diablo 4: Season 2 - Completed the Season Journey thanks to some nice randoms hanging out outside of Duriel's dungeon. That is one thing that I do like about playing D4, there's always someone hanging around somewhere to help you out. And if the end of the first two seasons are anything to go by, I'll definitely be needing those someones towards the end of every season.

Diablo 3: Season 30 - Finished Chapter 1-3. Working on Chapter 4.

Firewatch - I picked up this game on GamePass because I needed a little break before I started a new game plus run of Alan Wake 2 and wanted something that wouldn't take me more than one night. I knew going into this game that it was going to be "solving" a mystery, but I did not expect it to play out the way it did, or it to be such a story driven game. Even starting out in the first 10ish minutes I didn't expect the game to go in the direction that it did. It was a bit of a slow burn (wink wink nudge nudge), but it was a lot of fun, especially since it's one of those games where you come up with a theory of what's going on and then second guess yourself over and over. Plus the whole time I was walking around from objective to objective, I kept having the thought of how cool it would be to just roam around without a looming goal hanging over my head, and lo and behold, after I finished the game, a free roam setting was unlocked.

Alan Wake 2 - Gave in and started a new game plus. This game has got me in a chokehold right now, even with its many, many problems that keep popping up. Kind of wish some more was changed based on the events of the first playthrough, and I'm not a big fan of how they treated ng+ inventory or some gameplay decisions that Remedy made, but I'm still having fun.

CharlesReed,

Even complete with a cast that you normally only see in Hollywood movies.

CharlesReed,

Unless they change it with the upcoming season, there's no downtime between seasons for Diablo 4 like there is with 3, but they do give you the whole season to sort through your inventory in the eternal realm instead of just 30 days.

CharlesReed,

Diablo 4: Season 2 - Nightmare dungeons galore.

Diablo 3: Season 30 - Season 30 started this week, so I've been working on leveling up my monk and completing Chapter 1 objectives.

Alan Wake 2 - Finished the game, and now I'm debating on going thru again on The Final Draft (aka new game plus) instead of moving on to Dead Space. I heard the beginning and end were slightly different and that there were extra manuscripts and videos to be found, plus I only have two achievements left, so why not go for 100%? Besides, I loved it. Remedy has been building a universe, and I can't wait to see what they come up with next. There's nothing that I've played from them that I haven't loved so far.
::: spoiler 🔦💥
There is a bit towards the end where you play as Alan and you're going through the forest and it had the original music from the first game. I didn't think this game would make me tear up, but it did during that section. I would love to see the original Alan Wake overhauled with the new engine. It would be phenomenal.
:::

CharlesReed,

Yeah I'm not a huge fan of the Nightmare Dungeons myself; the only reason to go through them is get glyph upgrades. It seems they rotate which dungeons become Nightmare ones each season, so I've been slowly working on a list of which I can go through the fastest so I can focus on other stuff.
iirc the Tree of Whispers is a guaranteed drop for sigils, but from what I've found they're usually lower tiered then what I want so I end up salvaging them anyway.

CharlesReed,

I miss the rebirth feature as well. I've heard whispers and rumors that the devs may add it in the future since it's requested so much, but that's just hearsay.

CharlesReed, (edited )

I spent way more time than I should have playing Dice in Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
Edit: I also just remembered the hacking system in BioShock had a very mini-game feel to it. I had a lot of fun with those too.

CharlesReed,

If I picked Wolfenstein: The New Order back up today, I'd probably have a better time with it, since it's been a decade since I touched it last and my gaming abilities have improved since then, but for whatever reason this game was ridiculously difficult for me, even on the easiest setting. It finally came to a point where I just couldn't finish it, and I'm not sure if I ever will.

Many players have become "patient gamers". What are games people might miss out on by waiting for sales? angielski

Sales follow the tradition of supply and demand. Products come out at their highest price because of expectations and hype. Then, as interest wanes, the publisher continues to make some sales by reducing price to tempt the less interested parties....

CharlesReed,

It would be interesting to see how many 'patient gamers' are actually into multiplayer games at all because of this reason. I wouldn't call myself one per se, but I probably fit the criteria, and most of the games I wait to come on sale are single player campaign.

CharlesReed,

I feel like if this was truly an accident because the character was overlooked, then wouldn't they just not have any voice at all? Even copy/pasting dialogue into some (free, according to the article) software and then inserting it into the game takes some effort.

CharlesReed,

The lags and stuttering could possibly also be a hardware issue too, depending on what platform you're playing on. When I first started playing Diablo 4 a little after it first came out, it was on Xbox One, and I had terrible lag around legion events and word bosses, like you do. But when I finally upgraded to the Series X, I noticed that the game greatly improved, and I rarely have any lag problems anymore, so I'm sure an upgrade in specs helped.

CharlesReed, (edited )

Diablo 4: Season 2 - Got all the items for Midwinter Blight, so now I'm back to working on season objectives. I only have 2 more to complete in order to get all the rewards. Right now my focus is on upgrading 5 glyphs to level 21. So far I've completed 3.

Diablo 3 - Logged in to do the Darkening of Tristram anniversary event for fun and realized I was missing a reward for a challenge I have never got around to completing, so I'm currently working on killing all the unique monsters for the event for the classic demon portrait. I'm only missing two and it seems like those bastards are just refusing to spawn.

Alan Wake 2 - I still haven't finished this, and it's mostly because I keep getting sidetracked with exploring and trying to find every little thing. But I am loving every second of the story, I don't even know how to describe it. I've been having so many emotions seeing characters from the first game being what they are now. I'm also starting to run into some visual bugs that are weird, but nothing game breaking. I feel like I'm toward the end of the game, so I've been backtracking a lot to find things that I may have missed. I'm kind of hoping I get it done this week, because I would love to get to the Dead Space remake.

As for what I'm looking forward to in 2024, I'm really hoping Outlast Trials gets out of Early Access. I love the Outlast series, but don't really like jumping into games when they haven't been 'officially' released.
I think Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is supposed to come out this year (hopefully), but I don't think I've seen an official release date yet.

CharlesReed, (edited )

Control is amazing! Probably one of my favorite games. I'd also recommend Quantum Break since it seems like Alan Wake 2 also references it in some roundabout ways (and Quantum Break has a couple neat little Alan Wake easter eggs). And I definitely agree, the game is a trip.

CharlesReed,

I'm sorry, the what?

CharlesReed,

Diablo 4: Season 2 - Still working on farming for Midwinter Blight. But I finally hit level 100 in doing so, so I'm pretty happy about that.

Slender: The Arrival - Apparently I got around to this just in time for the 10th year anniversary update, and I must say I was super impressed with the overhauled graphics. There were a few areas that I wished hadn't been very chase heavy, because I would have loved to explore the surroundings more. I guess they also added a chapter or two. It wasn't a bad play overall, and there was some great tension and scares, even if a few of them were cheap jumpscares. I've read that the devs will be expanding on it over the next year with new DLCs and multiplayer (of all things, after ten years lol), so I'll have to keep my eye out for whenever those drop.

Today for Christmas I finally got an Xbox Series X, so I have a nice little line up of games that I've been nearly dying to play. Right now I'm trying to decide between playing Alan Wake 2 or the Dead Space remake first. Dead Space is one of my favorite franchises, but I also adore the first Alan Wake game. Either way, I think I'll be looking at a good time this week.

CharlesReed,

Dang, I was really hoping this wasn't true. I was just talking with a friend a couple days ago about how great and iconic James is as Max Payne.

CharlesReed,

I didn't have too much time for gaming this week, except for my usual Diablo bs lol.

Diablo 3: Season 29 - Finally completed the season journey. I've got my pretty wings and a new pet. D3 is now going to the back burner until the Darkening of Tristram event in January.

Diablo 4: Season 2 - The Midwinter Blight event started this week, so my focus has been temporarily on that. Well, that and farming Forgotten Souls in Helltide, bleh.

CharlesReed,

These are two that might be well known, but I don't really hear people talking about:

  • I use Map Genie quite a bit. It's just a bunch of interactive maps for a lot of different games, but it's really helpful when looking for that one item you're missing, or waypoints in general. It's mostly geared towards open world games.
  • I also use How Long To Beat if I looking to play a new game but don't really want to spend over a certain amount of hours playing. (Although I'm a bit of a slow player, so whatever completion times are listed I have to multiply by 2).

The other reference sites I use like NeoSeeker and Game FAQs are pretty well known and have been around for ages.

Players who don't like survival games as a genre: Which survival games are your personal exceptions, which ones have you enjoyed nonetheless and why? angielski

Personally, I really don’t like most of these games due to the tedium and frustration that comes with hunger/thirst mechanics. Most of the exceptions that I do actually like either make up for it through something else that elevates the experience enough - or they either don’t have these mechanics or allow for players to...

CharlesReed,

I always have fun with Don't Starve until the winter season/section comes along. Then unless I very closely follow a guide or customize the world heavily in my favor at the beginning of the game, I always end up dying.

CharlesReed, (edited )

Diablo 3: Season 29 - Completed the Guardian chapter! Now I have only one more objective/conquest to finish out the season. I was going to try to go for the one of completing the campaign under 1 hour, but I quickly realized I would not be good at that by any means. So I'm working on the one for going through a level 55 greater rift with 6 different set bonuses. Sounds easy enough, but since I usually only use one character per season, I'm having to level up another for their set run.

Diablo 4: Season 2 - Still working on reaching level 90.

Gray Dawn - I've played my fair share of bizarre games, but I'm not sure if I've ever said "wtf" so many times while playing a game. So much so that I just kind of gave up on trying to figure things out about halfway through and was there for the ride. Before I actually started it, I read it described as a "priest simulator", and that it did seem to be at times. I'm not really into structured religion, so there were probably a lot of symbolism that went over my head and/or didn't make sense. (I also got a strange feeling towards the end that I wasn't actually the target audience? Like this was a horror game, but not for people like me.)
Apparently I got the "good" ending, which didn't really seem that good at all, so I went and got the bad ending... which was just as much 'meh' as the other ending was. Overall, the pacing was a little slow and at times it seemed to drag on at times. Some of the voice acting also left something to be desired, but it wasn't horrible, and the main redeeming factor is that the imagery was really cool.
::: spoiler Rant
Even though some of the imagery isn't explained? Like there is what looks like a bloody wax child with one eye in a glass case in this dude's library, and it's just... never talked about? I mean there's a lot of things in this game where it's just, oh something spooky! Satan's out to get you! Blood and guts, bleh! But like I was sitting there wondering, is this dude just not going to mention it? Has it always been there? If it has, why? If it hasn't, why isn't he saying anything about it!
Also there's a lot of Latin in this game that whenever I tried to look it up it just ended up being lyrics to old metal songs, which in itself is kind of hilarious to me, given the subject and themes of the game.
:::

I also did a quick run through the original Dead Space (2008) since I'll be jumping into the remake soon. I've only heard good things, but I'm eager to see for myself how the new one compares, since it's one of my favorite franchises. I'm stoked that they brought back Isaac's voice actor from 2 and 3. I can't imagine anyone else but Gunner Wright as Isaac Clarke.

CharlesReed,

Diablo 3: Season 29 - Working on stocking up on Torment 16 bounty caches for the Avarice conquest (completing a 50,000,000 gold streak). It's taking me longer than I anticipated, but then again, I keep getting distracted by the Visions of Enmity. I really need to start ignoring those portals.

Diablo 4: Season 2 - Snagged the Razorplate chest armor with around 15,000 Thorns and a level 925 bow, so I've been kicking ass and actually surviving Helltides. My current goal is reaching level 90.

No one lives under the lighthouse - This was the first time I played this game, and it was amazing. It's been sitting in my Steam library since this past spring, and I didn't really know a lot about it going in except that is was more or less atmospheric horror. It was not what I was expecting, and in a good way. It was way more horrifying and lightly Lovecraftian than I thought it would be, since I was expecting something more similar to Dear Esther or What Remains of Edith Finch where I just kind of walk around while learning the story, so I was pleasantly surprised when I actually had work to do lol. I thought I'd get sick of the pixel art graphics, but it held up pretty well, and I even got some nice screenshots out of it. The only parts that were relatively frustrating were two weird chase scenes, but luckily the game gave me the choice to skip them after dying so many times. I've read that there's multiple endings, but I was satisfied with the one that I got (whichever one it is), since it was pretty much like a light bulb going off in my head and made sense with the story as I understood it. Parts of it felt very Amnesia-like as well, which is always a plus for me. I don't plan on 100% it any time soon, because it's definitely one of those games I like to finish in one go, but I think I'll have fun whenever I do.

CharlesReed,

The end of LA Noire got to me. I still can't play the last case without tearing up.

CharlesReed,

Thanksgiving and family visiting kinda threw me for a loop as far as gaming goes, but for Diablo 4: Season 2 I managed to move into the Champion chapter at the beginning of the week before anyone showed up. I'm finally in World Tier 4, so I'll be working on that when I have more time.

CharlesReed, (edited )

I haven't been playing as much since I've been prepping for Thanksgiving, but I still had some time for Diablo 3: Season 29. I spent nearly all week looking for a Treasure Goblin to open a portal to The Vault so I could slay Greed for one of the Conqueror chapter tasks. I came across quite a few of those lil guys, but they kept being stingy with the portal. Then I finally found a Puzzle Ring, surprisingly the first one I've found all season. Popped it into Kanai's Cube and finally got into The Vault. Now I'm back to working on Rifts, honing my time down to below four minutes for Torment 13. I've also hit that point where it feels like I'm leveling up suuuupppppeeerrr slowly, so, uh, that's fun.
Haven't done too much with Diablo 4 this week, but I'm hoping to get a few tasks done between family visits this coming week.

CharlesReed,

Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi - This has been sitting in my Steam library for a few years, and I finally decide to try and give it a go. I'm usually a sucker for vampire games, but I'm not sure how I feel about this one. There's so much backtracking, and not in a fun, Resident Evil kind of way. And I guess some of the deaths are either on a timer or scripted? Either way, because I didn't really "know" anything about any of the characters, I didn't have that sense of urgency to get to them so quickly. Like who even are these people to me besides just my relatives? I didn't end up finishing it, but I think I'm going to try to give it another go before putting it in my 'meh' pile.

Diablo 3: Season 29 - Finished the Destroyer chapter! The conquest that finished it out ended up being to complete a level 45 rift with no set pieces. Now I'm taking a little break from it before I start working on the Conqueror chapter.

Diablo 4: Season 2 - I am despising Helltides right now and trying to get Living Steel. That is all.

CharlesReed, (edited )

Dishonored is amazing! I love that even though the story is pretty linear (and a great story it is), there's so many ways to go about to achieve the objectives. It's a fun time.
I played Dishonored 2 once, but I couldn't really get into it because, one, I didn't like the changes they made to the Outsider, and two, for whatever reason it felt kinda depressing to play. It was pretty cool you could choose who to play as though. I've thought about revisiting it at least once more to play as Corvo, since I picked Emily the first time.

CharlesReed,

Very nice to see The Sinking City included so many times. There was so much weirdness surrounding its release that I feel like it gets swept under the rug a lot. It's incredibly underrated in my opinion, and while not the greatest, it has interesting characters and story.

CharlesReed,

Mad Max - Played for a couple days this week, taking down camps and gathering scrap, and I think I got it out of my system. For now.
Metro: Last Light - Finally got around to finishing the playthrough that I started a few weeks ago, plus ran through all the DLCs. I had a lot of fun with them, except for Heavy Squad and The Tower. Haven't quite got the hang of those two yet. The Developer pack was pretty cool with the 'museum' and shooting range/arena. I liked the little challenges.
Diablo 3: Season 29 - Working on the conquests for this season. Completing one will finish the Destroyer chapter for me, but it's taking a little time.

CharlesReed,

Diablo 4 - I feel like I talk about this game every week, but I've been playing it every week, so... working on Season 2. Doing pretty good, already on Slayer chapter, and I'm happy to see a change up in the season journey objectives from last season. Feeling apprehensive but optimistic about completing all them this round, except for the PvP objective. There's like nobody in the PvP areas every time I'm there.
Diablo 3 - season 29. Trying to improve my wizard for Greater Rifts. It's going... meh. I feel like I've hit a plateau in progressing, even though I'm still leveling up like crazy.
Mad Max - I hadn't finished a previous playthrough of this game and was kind of having a shitty week, so I've been revisiting this favorite of mine. Ended up finishing the story while chatting with a friend, so now I'm just driving around in the Interceptor finishing up side quests and taking down camps.

CharlesReed,

Definitely underrated in my opinion, and it still holds up graphically today.

CharlesReed,

I don't know, I had fun playing it, and I really like the build your own weapon aspect of it. The story definitely needed a rework though. The ending left the whole series on a bit of a sour note imo.

CharlesReed,

Diablo 4's Season 2 started this week, and I'm having a lot more fun playing with my rogue this round than I did with my druid in Season 1. They made it a lot easier to level up, which is nice. I could have done without the story though. It was super short and the new character Erys was not likeable at all.

What is something (feature, modes, settings...) you would like to see become a standard in video games? angielski

I’ve been thinking about making this thread for a few days. Sometimes, I play a game and it has some very basic features that are just not in every other game and I think to myself: Why is this not standard?! and I wanted to know what were yours....

CharlesReed,

Bit of an older game, but Don't Starve was great at this. At the beginning of a game you could set and customize the entire world/map that you were going to be dropped into, including how little or lot of each and every resource individually (eg, you could have a lot of trees, but few rocks, some carrots, but no berries, etc). IIRC you could also pick the world size, how much the land branched out into 'islands', weather patterns, the day length, stuff like that. It's essentially creating your own difficulty.

CharlesReed,

There's only 4 games that I've bought that I've paid over $55 for. Over the 10 years I've apparently been on Steam, I would have thought there'd be more in that price range, but I guess I've been pretty good at taking advantage of sales.

CharlesReed,

The original Dead Space (along with the two sequels and Ignition) is already on Game Pass, so it'd have to be the remake.

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