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Because gigabytes of eye candy and forced immersion are easier than actual praiseworthy game mechanics.
 
Because gigabytes of eye candy and forced immersion are easier than actual praiseworthy game mechanics.
Well, the funny thing is, RDR1 already worked really well. Much like with the eating and other B.S. they added to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, they included a bunch of new details in RDR2 that didn’t add much to the experience — but unlike GTA: SA, you can’t just ignore those details if they don’t interest you. They’re shoved in your face and you’re forced to deal with them.

In RDR1 you could go lose yourself exploring. You’d come upon interesting situations and could deal with them as you pleased. If you got in trouble with the law you stood a fighting chance of shooting your way out of it, and if you failed, it didn’t cost you much. If I try to go exploring in RDR2 I wind up with a dirty, tired horse and a tired character I have to tend to with scroll lists of over a dozen healing items that all do slightly different things. If things go poorly in a shootout, I wind up in the middle of nowhere with no horse, no hat, and a full bounty burden. Yes, it makes you have to think more about what you’re doing, and plan your trips more carefully, but this also makes the game much less fun.

I never bothered with the online portion of RDR2 — do the same tedious things apply there, or do they loosen it up for online play? I had a blast with RDR1 online in Hardcore Free Roam back in the day...
 
I never bothered with the online portion of RDR2 — do the same tedious things apply there, or do they loosen it up for online play? I had a blast with RDR1 online in Hardcore Free Roam back in the day...
I never bother with online content. Well, that's a lie, the only game I pay online is HALO, because I play it with my friends in the U.S, but that's it.

I started making my way through Mega Man 9, got to Wiley's castle, got to the end... died. Have to do the WHOLE castle all over again. Fuck that. My thoughts are pretty much like everyone else's on this game. Why did they take away the mega buster? Why did they take away the slide? What's with the super frustrating mid level difficulty spike? The new music mostly sucks. Everything else is pretty good. The p-chip store is awesome. Well, here they're "screws" when in reality they're bolts, but whatevs. Also, very happy we don't have two castles to go through. I'll just redo the stages, stock up on bolts, buy lives and e-tanks and brute force my way through the end.

In the mean time I decided to play Alien: Isolation since I have one more week off, before going back to work. I´m glad I waited until having some time off to do it, because this game is really good. It's been praised up and down and it has earned every bit of it... BUT I do have one gripe. It does what every major game does: hide loot/audiologs/blueprints/collectibles behind locked doors and says that to access the room you need to "turn power back on" or "ion torch needed." This tells me I'm either going to circle back to this or worse, going to have to back track if I really want whatever is in there. That's it though, that's my only gripe. Aside from that I am loving EVERYTING, from the whole, you're playing a movie, to the 1979 aesthetic achieved by getting 3 TERABYTES of ORIGINAL footage from the actual movie. I'm about half way through and the Alien still scares the shit out of me whenever it pops up.

On a cool note, The Witcher III has gone on sale again! the base game is DIRT CHEAP, like... 70 pesos about 3 dollars. And the game of the year edition with all the expansions was 171. As stated in previous posts It's a tad out of my current budget, but I got it anyway. Along with Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice which was also under 100 pesos. Quantum Break is also on sale, but after these two purchases I'll hold off until the next major sale.
 
Has anyone played little nightmares?

This JUST happened to me with Little Nightmares on xbox Gold lol. It didn't sting too much, because only the basic game is available for free and I bought the "complete" edition (which is STILL incomplete)* at a deep discount. I decided to give it a spin and played the whole thing in just under 6 hours. It is a fairly short game with the main game clocking at 1.5 hours and the dlc another 1.5. Took me longer because I explored every nook and crany, some areas were trial and error and some puzzles took me a little longer than I'd like to admit. VERY satisfying game. Amazing and it did creep me out. I played it alone... at night.. minimal lighting and I was pretty creeped out. I really like playing suspense/horror games like that. Playing them during the day really kills the mood. Can't wait to get started on Alien: Isolation in a similar manner.
 
Yes little nightmares is a very satisfying game. One of my favorites. There were some parts that did creep me out. I like horror stuff as well.
 
I wanted to ask if any one of you that played World of Warships, could spare a minute and write a very quick review of the game. I'm curious as my clan is involved in some players' actions against WG's decisions. Most of the players that do such actions are long time players that do not like the direction of where the game is going.

Both parties use highly biased sample groups. So I wanted to try an independent ground, here.

I'm curious about how many games you've played, where do you feel you fit (class and tier preference, coop vs random vs ranked vs clan wars etc), do you think most of your matches have a positive outcome, not only by winning but actually feeling "okay this went alright let's go another one" after the match? Apart from free form reviewing, can you describe for me, with as many details as you want, differences between matches that make you feel good and positive vs ones that leave a bad aftertaste.

I also want to ask you about ships you feel are overpowered, specifically what ship in your collection do you play when you want to feel more powerful against the majority of possible opponents, and what ship you really hate seeing on the other side against you.

Thanks :)
 
With a few more hours into Alien: Isolation I've found more things to kinda nitpick. Ok, so I get Sevastapol is being decomisioned and taken apart. I get the androids have gone crazy and the creature is lose. But what is it with every freakin' "post-apocalyptic/disaster" game and people painting stuff on walls? Like... shit hits the fan and now everyone is a graffiti artist. "Help!" "Trust No one" "You lying bastards!" etc. all the Bioshocks, Dead Space, FEAR, etc and now this one. It's no longer creepy, really gives a been there done that feel to the game. Also, just like every plataformer has a mandatory water level, seem like every adventure/survival game has a mandatory "I'm going to take all your weapons away" level. Busted my ass procuring revolver rounds, getting the shotgun, and flamethrower just to have them taken away. Ah, and we can't forget the, "let's move around a tram/train/monorail/bathysphere,etc" Mechanic. Againn.... this doesn't detract from the main aspect of the game, but it definetely knocks it's "uniqueness" a few pegs.

I've hit a minor wall, because I got used to being able to confront or at least fight back my foes, be it human, android or Xenomorph. Now I have to creep and run, because i have ZERO defenses in this particular section, sooooo.... I keep dying. Might take a day off to regroup. I've been powering through it, because once work begins next week it's bye-bye gaming till July.
 
Been a while since I played through Isolation, but I remember the alien’s behavior became pretty predictable after a while. I think I really enjoyed the first 2/3 of the game and then it started to wear out its welcome a bit. I did finish, though.
 
Been a while since I played through Isolation, but I remember the alien’s behavior became pretty predictable after a while. I think I really enjoyed the first 2/3 of the game and then it started to wear out its welcome a bit. I did finish, though.

The cool "gimmick" is that it "learns" from its interactions with you. The more you do something the more likely it is to call you on it. If you always hide under desks or in lockers, it will start looking there first. At first I would hide in plain sight and it wouldn't "see" me, then it would catch me all the time. But I agree, after a while you start using that to your advantage. I started laying pipe bombs in door ways or lay in wait with a molotov or the flamethrower. At the moment, the thought of running away from Working Joes in fireproof/EMP proof suits is frustrating.
 
While not a "video game" it's still on a console. I've pulled out my Wii fit plus again. I became concern over some weight gain, because I thought I was getting fat. I actually lost .5 kilos since my last weigh-in, 2 years ago. So I'm just melting. Thought it best to start doing something to contain my ever deforming physique. I'm on day 3 of a very basic 26 minute routine and everything hurts. Pecs, shoulders, upper abs, side muscles, even my glutes hurt. Everything cracks and pops when I reach for things or stretch lol. Yet I feel good, going to keep it up while I can.
 
Installing Red Dead Redemption 2. It’s taken all day because that thing is BIG. Too bad I have to wake up early tomorrow.

Oh and I hope my computer will be able to run it properly.
 
Finished Alien: Isolation. I got through an annoying weaponless section with Working Joes only to get to an annoying fully loaded section with face huggers and xenomorphs, yay. Got a little better after that. Damn thing had a habit of jumping out of a vent right in front of me or right behind me giving me only a second to react which, of course, was never enough. Gave up looking for collectibles towards the end and just focused on getting the hell out of that station. Shortly after you gain the gas mask you can basically go anywhere, with the alien on your tail, to keep getting I.Ds, blueprints, audios, Nostromo reports, etc. I think I got 4/10 Nostromo reports and I was about 60% on the I.Ds and a secret achievement. There is no New Game +, but you can reload mission saves. Screw that, not going to bother on this collect-a-thon. I started playing the DLC "crew expendable" and I was playing as Ellen Ripley. There are no saves except meeting checkpoints. I gave up after completing 3 tasks all the while hiding from the fucking xenomorph, found me, killed me and had to do all three tasks again. Nope. I quit.

Overall a good experience. It's that rare experience now-a-days of a good challenge. I played it on Medium difficulty (from Novice, Easy, Medium, Hard, Nightmare), and I feel anything less would have been too easy. Medium did offer me that tension, fear and challenge I was looking for. I don't think I'll ever replay it like I have with other longer games, but very well worth the playthrough.

Decided to start Ori and the Blind Forest. I'm stuck in the tree in which I need to unlock the water. It reminds me a lot of Seasons after Fall, only way better. I think it is the perfect game to follow up Alien, because after such a tense playthrough, I'm VERY relaxed playing Ori. Alas, tomorrow I start the grind and Who knows when I'll pick it up again. However, as a metroidvania I feel I'll be spending a considerable amount of time with it and if I'm having an issue with a section at the moment I can always comeback to it. I'm unlocking as much as I can now, but when I pick it up again I'll just keep chugging forward.

As for Mega Man 9, I stocked up on lives and E-tanks to take on Wily's Castle and finally finish the game, also TBD.
 
I bailed out about 2 years ago. Played a little when the pandemic started but it didn't grab me, so I'm really not up to date.

2018 was the best moment for the game. It's been going downhill since. The company is killing the game with every second patch.

On the sidenote, you might want to know there are 3 USN BB lines at the moment in the game. There is an extra super-dreadnought tech tree line which is Tillman-inspired but the hulls are not Tillman. The final one on Tier 10, Vermont, has 4x3 457mm guns. There's also an informal, premium/reward line of ships that have extra secondary performance and fast reloading heals. Their tiers 9 and 10 also use 457mm guns.
 
On the sidenote, you might want to know there are 3 USN BB lines at the moment in the game. There is an extra super-dreadnought tech tree line which is Tillman-inspired but the hulls are not Tillman. The final one on Tier 10, Vermont, has 4x3 457mm guns. There's also an informal, premium/reward line of ships that have extra secondary performance and fast reloading heals. Their tiers 9 and 10 also use 457mm guns.
So pure fantasy now. Love it. (I do not actually love it.)
 
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