[Serenity]

Have you tried Master Mode? It's in the DLC. Includes higher level enemies and they regain health if your don't take them down quickly. Might be worth a look if you want the game to be more challenging.


I'm currently a few hours into The Banner Saga 2. Love these games so much. I'm also playing Celeste, which is just wonderful.

[Mentalist]

Started Darksiders Genesis.

It is good.

[Mentalist]

To expand on Genesis: it's basically just another Darksiders game, but in isometric perspective. Once you start unlocking War's move-set, he basically plays exactly like in Darksiders 1, just with a different camera angle.

Strife is a twin-stick shooter character and his attempts at comedy are very hit and miss. But he's quick and he plays a lot like Death when you equipped claws (his melee weapons are a pair of daggers, though he obviously mostly relies on his pistols). Enemy variety is nice, levels are pretty varied, loads of collectibles to hoard.

Unfortunately, the fixed camera doesn't always play nice with tricky jumps and M&K controls. Some jump sequences can be pretty rage-inducing, because the collision detection on ledges and invisible walls is kinda finicky, imho. I like that Darksiders gives the horsemen these aethereal wings aping my boy Raziel for some short-term gliding, but if you're gonna rip off the gliding mechanic, then please do it properly. The way it's implemented now, it works sometimes, and for varied amounts of time, and it can just be.... aaaargh. Isometric camera and pixel-perfect platforming are not a good match. Loads of trial and error on the jumps- thankfully the respawns are basically instant.

One thing I gotta praise is the portals. Just like I and II, there's a portal-making tool, and some collectables rely on making progressively higher leaps. The conservation of momentum as you jump back and forth through these portals really works well. More games need to rip off portal physics puzzles.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 02 June 2020 - 09:38 PM

[Morgoth]

Gwent on mobile is surprisingly fun. I've been playing for about a month and not at any point felt the need to spend any actual money.

[Maark Abbott]

The Reach remaster is... god, beautiful. I forgot how good this game was.

[Mentalist]

Maark Abbott, on 13 December 2019 - 08:29 AM, said:

The Reach remaster is... god, beautiful. I forgot how good this game was.

I think I'm gonna try to put together my new PC this weekend, so that I can start playing some of the prettier games I own. Reach will be one of them.

[Avatar]

Been upgrading my pc as well, gpu to a AMD 5700 and the monitor to a 1440 with freesync.

Now I bought Far Cry 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2. And started with Mafia 3. Man, these games are pretty!

What are these other games, Mentalist?

[Mentalist]

Avatar, on 13 December 2019 - 05:05 PM, said:

Been upgrading my pc as well, gpu to a AMD 5700 and the monitor to a 1440 with freesync.

Now I bought Far Cry 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2. And started with Mafia 3. Man, these games are pretty!

What are these other games, Mentalist?

Well, I'm quite a bit behind, because I've spent the past 4 years running only 3GB of VRAM- so most games I could play, but not particularly well... I got loads to catch up on, probably gonna start with Shadow of War, because I really enjoyed Shadow of Mordor. Also gonna play Resi2, because I played the original for the first time in January, and the remake of 3 is coming out in April;

But if you're looking for graphical showcases, then Metro Exodus, Plague Tale, RDR2 would be the games to check out. Final Fantasy XV , AssCreed and the Total War games are most often used for graphical benchmarking articles, so I guess try cranking those up as well?


Edit: I've spent most of the week staring lovingly at the pile of new PC parts, while facing the existential dread of having to backup all my data before doing a new build and installing a new OS (I'm gonna be finally upgrading to Win 10- via a new OEM license, to keep my retail Win 7 just in case, as a backup option).

I can't wait to pop off the case cover and start swapping parts. But I really CBA to do all the software prep work first.

Halp,

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 15 December 2019 - 09:43 PM

[Mentalist]

Spent almost 2 hours Grinding out a 70K+ score in the Endless Arena last night. But now War's Golden Armour is mine!

almost done with the game, literally one level to go. Might grind out a few more "quest" achievements before I do that, though.

[Mentalist]

Ugh, discovered there's another set of platforming challenges in Genesis. Not up for this right now.

So now I'm playing the time-honoured "copy everything of value onto external disks before re-building and re-installing Windows" game.

I also sorted my Steam library and downloaded (almost) all the free games I get from the Humble Trove before I pause my sub. Things are slowly getting done.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 25 December 2019 - 11:49 PM

[Mentalist]

New PC is up and running, downloading Resi 2 onto the shiny new 2 TB SSD as i'm typing this.

[Mentalist]

BfuckinK, on 28 December 2019 - 08:14 PM, said:

Are you gonna try Death Stranding?

in the summer, when it comes to PC

[Mentalist]

The Eyeball guy begins to vex me greatly.

Doing a Hardcore run (naturally, since I'm pretty sure Resi is meant to be played with only limited saves); and this guy just refuses to die.

At first I felt the ammo in the station was plentiful; then I wasted like 30 bullets killing 3 zombies in the Library and things weren't so rosy anymore.

Still, i think I'm doing kind of okay, except I'm not sure if I missed any locker/padlock combos that I should unlock before I venture into the basement.

But the Eyeball... ugh, he's annoying.

EDIT: about an hour later, got the bastard. Now I'm back in thee station with very little ammo. Things could've gone better.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 29 December 2019 - 08:34 AM

[Traveller]

Got Luigis Mansion 3 for Christmas. It's not Fallen Order but the bosses are fun, I've not played any of the previous games.

It's like a house cleaning sim so it's quite therapeutic! Great for playing with the kids too.

Currently fighting a mad Beethoven ghost and his possessed piano.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 29 December 2019 - 09:18 AM

[Mentalist]

Man, the Tyrant sure is annoying.

Now that I've stumbled back into the station for the third (!!!) time, he's thankfully nowhere to be found.

At one point I have decided that crafting shotgun bullets was the best investment of gunpowder. Now that I have found the magnum, I am beginning to question the wisdom of that approach.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 30 December 2019 - 08:22 AM

[Maark Abbott]

Ah, having fun with Birkin and Mr X, I see.

Just wait until 3make and Nemesis. Kukuku...

[Mentalist]

Maark Abbott, on 30 December 2019 - 08:26 AM, said:

Ah, having fun with Birkin and Mr X, I see.

Just wait until 3make and Nemesis. Kukuku...

On the strength of the 11 hours I've played of 2, I just pre-ordered the R3make. GMG gave me a nice 25% off pre-orders coupon, so I figured, why not?

What's different about playing as Claire? Should I do that right away once I'm done with my current run?

Also: that thing in the sewers: am I supposed to try to kill it or just bypass it? Because either way I'm doing a poor job of it.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 30 December 2019 - 06:11 PM

[Maark Abbott]

Mentalist, on 30 December 2019 - 06:06 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 30 December 2019 - 08:26 AM, said:

Ah, having fun with Birkin and Mr X, I see.

Just wait until 3make and Nemesis. Kukuku...

On the strength of the 11 hours I've played of 2, I just pre-ordered the R3make. GMG gave me a nice 25% off pre-orders coupon, so I figured, why not?

What's different about playing as Claire? Should I do that right away once I'm done with my current run?

Also: that thing in the sewers: am I supposed to try to kill it or just bypass it? Because either way I'm doing a poor job of it.

I never played vanilla RE2 but the general theme has always been the guys have more health but less item space, whereas the lasses have less health but better inventory and usually better equipment too. In RE2's case they have unique routes I believe.

RE3 was terrifying back in the day, the fact Nemesis could just appear anywhere (much like X in the 2 remake, there were only a select few rooms Nemesis couldn't get to). Except at times he packs a rocket launcher.

[Mentalist]

Well, it turns out that wasn't a boss, just a new, very angry enemy type. And I don't have enough inventory slots to haul the loot back, so I'll have to replay that section.

I'm not sure what the rules for Mr X are; he hasn't exactly followed me into the main actual save rooms- except for the police station main hall, but that's more of a throroughway, really. He does tend to lose me even if I run into a dead-end though, so he might not be the brightest.

[Maark Abbott]

Mentalist, on 31 December 2019 - 05:00 PM, said:

Well, it turns out that wasn't a boss, just a new, very angry enemy type. And I don't have enough inventory slots to haul the loot back, so I'll have to replay that section.

I'm not sure what the rules for Mr X are; he hasn't exactly followed me into the main actual save rooms- except for the police station main hall, but that's more of a throroughway, really. He does tend to lose me even if I run into a dead-end though, so he might not be the brightest.

From memory, he can't access save rooms, but can generally get anywhere else. Also he is hardcoded to know exactly where you are if you fire a gun, and will zero in on that location unless he spots you beforehand.

We finished Reach. Still every bit as excellent as when it was first out. Might have to replay the full MCC at some stage.

Girls' Frontline is getting to the tricky stuff CN has had for a while. We have Heavy Ordnance Corps unlocked at some stage this month (estimating the second or third Tuesday of January) and that's good because Continuum Turbulence is coming, and that means Paradeus units. You gotta use HOC to overload their shields, or they won't take any damage.

Prep for the event is well underway. Hah, imagine that. A gacha game requiring event prep. Such is the way of a Shikikan.