umbraroze

umbraroze, 5 days ago

You know, I was mildly ambivalent about Ubisoft recently (just burned out by their games and not wanting to buy them until I’ve slept for ages) but… Really? This is the hill they want to die on? Well that does say a lot about them, now doesn’t it?

umbraroze, 7 days ago (edited 7 days ago)

This initiative sure would make things more complicated for the game publishers, yes.

Because they’re currently not doing the bare minimum.

If they weren’t so accustomed to not doing the bare minimum, maybe they would have different opinions! Just saying.

Edit: Just signed the petition. Didn’t think this was necessary before because, as soon as I heard of it, Finland was already top of the list percentage wise. But I did sign it, just for the hell yeah of it.

umbraroze, 25 days ago

Ok, so what is the current alternative nice option for SkyrimSE mods?

Preferably one with a mod manager/download client. Vortex is kind of janky but it did the job. I’d prefer not to manage any of this stuff manually, like cavemen. it’s been decades you shouldn’t need to do that

umbraroze, 25 days ago

Oh, thank you! MO2 seems a lot more clean and simple than Vortex.

…and in related news, now that I’m redownloading everything for funsies anyway, I have graduated from trying to keep my mod lists on a website to scribbling a list down in Joplin. With links and everything. In case these mods I’m using decide to move from Nexus or something.

umbraroze, 27 days ago

Every Halloween, I play this Xbox 360 (I think it’s also on PC now) game called Bullet Witch.

Basically a third-person shooter with postapocalyptic supernatural horror theme. You play as a witch who shoots zombies and weird creatures with a magic machine gun broom thing. Also you get spells. Some are bloody awesome.

This game is peak Xbox 360 to the core. The distinct memorable thing about it is that I can actually list good and bad things about it. Level design varies between meh and decent. Some of the particular setpieces are pretty awesome though. (You get to fight at an airport, and you get to do a boss fight at the top of the plane mid-flight!) Spells are fun. The mega-spells are hella fun. (Just call up lightning and watch stuff explode.) Shooting is kinda jank but it works. Jank is explained by lore. (Why is friendly fire not a thing? Well, you see, this is a magic machine gun broom thing, so bullets dodge the civilians and allies by magic.) Enemy designs are nothing to write home about at first glance, but are actually kinda memorable. (You first meet up the zombies and hey, they’re talking zombies. With military helmets and guns. Like, what? You don’t see this every day.) There are some things that seem just not very well designed, like there’s these gigantic enemies that serve as minibosses and they’re a lot less scary when you note the AI is probably bugged and they often just decide to stand at place for a while and eat a lot of bullets.

I got this thing in the bargain bin. It’s a zombie shooty game that’s perfect for Halloween so that’s what I use it for. That’s all it does. That’s all I could ask it for. And it’s fine at it.

umbraroze, 27 days ago

Neverwinter Nights is the best PC game I’ve played, all thanks to the custom content the players made.

Bioware made the toolset and modding support a big part of the prerelease interviews and live demos. The message to the tabletop RPG crowd was “hey, you can finally build and run your D&D modules as a real DM-led multiplayer group experience online”. Probably the only problem with that marketing was that making modules from scratch was still an involved process and making usually needed scripting skill, so maybe the TTRPG crowd didn’t end up as enthusiastic as they could. But people still ended up making boatloads of great singleplayer and multiplayer-capable adventure modules! And the multiplayer persistent worlds were essentially like MMOs but in small scale.

I think the built-in campaign was more of a hindrance in retrospect, because if you hadn’t heard this, you probably expected another game like Baldur’s Gate 1/2. A lot of people went in thinking that the official NWN campaign was the main offering. The campaign was incredibly mediocre by Bioware standards because Wizards of the Coast was incredibly needy. They wanted high level of control, and essentially only approved a committee-built pile-of-meh plot, leaving Bioware to build something around that.

This, by the way, led to Bioware swearing they’d not work with needy licensors anymore and ended up designing Dragon Age instead.

(And if anyone is saying “wait, didn’t this just happen again with Baldur’s Gate 3?” Yes. Yes it did. WotC is basically impossible to work with.)

umbraroze, 27 days ago

Wizards of the Coast spent lots of time in meetings with Bioware to make sure every damn detail of D&D 3e was implemented according to the book. And even longer time micromanaging the campaign design. A lot of the scenarios are essentially repeats of the others - “do these four smaller thingies and then go kick the main baddie” - because getting that approved by WotC was easier.

Why are there so few D&D games these days? Why do video game dev houses want to make their own RPG systems instead? Well, they don’t want the headache of dealing with WotC.

umbraroze, 28 days ago

The first Call of Duty game I played was Ghosts, and it may have coloured my perception of what the series is about. Bombastic popcorn munching action that goes in one ear and straight out of the other. I was like “eeeeh it’s okay”. After playing some older ones I was like “well I’m sure it was groundbreaking at the time”. (Hm. Did I ever finish MW2? And I think I put Black Ops 2 on hold after the first mission. Loved Advanced Warfare tho!)

umbraroze, 1 month ago

Yeah, Randy, I find a way to make it happen, it’s called Xbox sale. That’s how I bought Borderlands 3. Which I haven’t played yet. And don’t get me wrong, Randy, Borderlands 2 is one of the most fun games I’ve played, I’m definitely a real fan! I’m definitely a video game enthusiast, I have a ginormous backlog on both Xbox and Steam.

umbraroze, 1 month ago

I’m personally of the opinion that a separate app sign in is okay as an additional measure, if the app is actually useful. For example, GitHub does this well - they support TOTP, and the mobile app is okay. Steam mobile app is useful, but TOTP option as a fallback would be nice.

Maybe the most useless thing I have on this front is the Blizzard app, really. The app is not particularly useful for me, I’d rather just use TOTP, if they had the option.

umbraroze, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

That’s it, I’m going to skip Switch 2 and get a Steam Deck next. And I’ll stick to stuff that can run Dolphin.

(Learns that Xbox Series can also run Dolphin without modding) Well shit, I’m set for life, now just need to sort out the portable console situation

umbraroze, 2 months ago

Can’t really add much to all of the great games already mentioned. But I’ll add one, because it was one of the best games I played in recent memory. Chants of Sennaar. Where to even start? Point-and-click adventure/puzzle game that is all about language puzzles. With great visuals and music. Really dig the eurocomics inspired style. I don’t know why, but this game really touched me - maybe it’s because the game is about uniting people in an age of discord.

umbraroze, 2 months ago

Game prices have nothing to do with inflation (or even production costs) and everything to do with arbitrary price points the industry just settles upon. Nothing forces them to charge that much, yet they do it because they think they can get away with it for now.

Rising prices have had an effect on me - I’m definitely not buying as many games as I used to, least of all impulsively on hearsay, and I’m not trusting any publisher enough to preorder stuff anymore. So they went past my pain point, sorry. If they keep doing this, they’ll run over everybody. I don’t think this is a sustainable direction.

umbraroze, 2 months ago

If you like puzzles, and greenery instead of pink:

Botany Manor, which is fundamentally about the feminine urge to go alone into a giant manor and grow some cool flowers

Terra Nil, which is about going to a desolate planet and using the power of technology to grow some cool flowers

umbraroze, 2 months ago

I sometimes still think about StarCraft: Ghost.

Pfft, I’m sometimes hoping they’ll eventually make the WarCraft point-and-click adventure game.

umbraroze, 2 months ago

No offence to folks who like Mario games, but I don’t personally feel good playing them. They have a working class protagonist who works to maintain monarchic status quo (fighting evil kingdom to defend another kingdom). Also the games encourage violence toward turtles. Not cool in my books.

Anyway, jokes aside, I’m not getting a Switch 2 anytime soon, will probably get a Steam Deck before that.

umbraroze, 3 months ago

Most of my time in Elden Ring has been 1) ogling at the landscapes going “Holy shit this is metal”, and 2) bravely running away.

umbraroze, 3 months ago

I’ve been incredibly happy lately dumping my GameCube/Wii games (using a softmodded Wii) and running them on PC with Dolphin. Perfectly legit way of playing games I already own, no matter what Nintendo says, and this is also a way to futureproof my GC/Wii collection the way I can actually trust.

I’m sceptical about how close to Dolphin the official emulation experience on Switch will be able to reach. Based on the N64 debacle, I don’t have massively high hopes. Either way, wouldn’t be paying extra.