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didsomeonesayventus · 2 years

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What have you been up to? Ramble away about your current interests my friend 👉😎👉

uhhhhhhh well. in the years since consistent activity I have:

Started, Subscribed, and MSQ/Major sidequest Cleared FFXIV and it occupies my brain like a parasitic worm (but I love it) as goes most people who get into it it seems. For those wondering started with WHM and have run it through just about everything so I'm fairly confident I am at least Somewhat Competent in pretty much everything except Savage and Alexander raids (shudders in Eyes of the Creator if you know you know)

Not only that but have main 5 categories of battle class leveled- WHM for healer, PLD for tank, MNK for melee, DNC phys ranged, RDM caster

I should stop talking about FFXIV help

I think I've changed jobs??? still call center-based work boo been there two years and I Hate It Homie (but hey 16/hr without a degree is hard to beat)

my cringe ass ff.net is poised for deletion as I've got ebook back ups of everything I just can't commit yet (and might not have to since I hear. Gasping Dying rumors about ff.net being on last legs)

I've developed a hobby of making FEH wlw ships- Azura/Deirdre, Mathilda/Lilith, Nagi/Natasha, Felicia/Selena (sacred stones) to throw some out -and stubbornly want to write fic but can't seem to figure out how to finish it oops

also generally feel awkward posting on AO3 because I don't really agree with their "you can write fic of actual people" stance but also Where Else Post Fic but also jokes on me I can't finish fic anymore

speaking of I did contribute to a zine or two with the Invincible Zine group over on twitter a handful of Duo Unit scripts and a 5k one shot on the Horrors of Adrift Corrin

("Katie isn't that the "uwu" corrin alt that looks after baby azura what is possibly horrifying about that" you ask and to which I respond "eldritch horror of being a dream-based sentient clone made real babeyyyyyyyyyyyy" and I didn't even use all my concepts and ideas)

Genshin Impact made a character I finally was willing to eat the lore for Miss Shenhe I love you so much what a wlw icon I think I did reblog something of her earlier but yea love

Played through Persona 5 Royal was a good game but I have never seen a game Say So Much and Nothing At All at the same time while also contradicting itself (and somehow in 100+ hours of gameplay even on 2nd easiest difficulty and w/ a friend and a guide hello). Core cast is poggers tho love these high schoolers and I don't think anyone would be surprised to hear I love futaba the most

Have kinda accepted that I've fallen out of love with KH and frankly don't feel a lot of hype for 4. 3 was a solid gameplay entry with some neat use of worlds for the filler plot but the more time goes on the more disappointed I get with how it handled resolving anything from all the build up, shafting it in favor of setting up a game that doesn't even exist yet.

Because of this I REALLLLY loved Endwalker and was very happy to play it on release (oops back on XIV braincell)

I do miss RikuVen tho and think about how Re:Mind validated the hell out of me by confirming Riku hung out with the Wayfinders and to the lil guys out there making content big fucking salute I'm sorry I'm a bitter woman who couldn't handle expectations.

Have a wild ass idea about XIV/Fates crossover to give an excuse for Ysayle/Corrin to exist they are just about perfect together but can't quite figure out how to make a plot to justify it that I'm satisfied with

I made a quotes bot on twitter that may not last much longer but eh

Gotten really into The Oh Hellos not out of any christian love but moreso the lyrics are just (chef kiss)

TAZ Ethersea season one was. Okay? It started really strong but fell off like the shoreline which was. sad. I can hope season 2 learns better from the mistakes there but also can't be too mad improv-based storytelling is hard to 100% nail

is that everything? I think that's like everything. still me just now several years older and just a smidge wiser and man I'm gonna be 26 in like. a week.

oops.

#Katie rambles #tl;dr no longer as fixated on KH that is now FFXIV and have tried a few other things but mostly still just thinking about rarepairs #and playing with concepts and going way too in depth on one off ideas #so the usual but with much less KH

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meganaut · 2 years

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THE

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO lets get ROIIIIIIIIGHT INTO THE NEWSSSSSS. Where's Pepper Adventure? On hold. Yes baby i am once again putting MORE PROJECTS ON ***HOLD*** HOLY [[smoked salami]]. I think I'm just burnt out on working on games and big projects. Right now in this moment in time, I can't enjoy the work I do anymore. I can't work on games or comics anymore. I've found myself more enjoying the idea of a game/comic moreso than actually working on it. I think I really fucked myself over by working on a webcomic non-stop and then making 2 whole-ass games and trying to work on a third one. I think I just need time and space away from "worky" things. My capitalistic desires of productivity have to be put on hold... For now. If anyone is looking forward to Pepper Adventure, I'm really sorry. You can take solace in the fact that its not cancelled. I absolutely wanna finish Pepper Adventure, its just too great of a project for me to ignore. Too great and too do-able of a project. I just need time to recover.

I know I don't update my blog often, but if you like livestreaming, I'm (mostly) active on my youtube channel over here! I've been doing a lot of livestreams lately and I've been enjoying it! It's fun to talk to myself and pretend I have an audience and am in desperate need of psychiatric help. In all seriousness though, I have been having fun doing streaming. Even when nobody shows up its just nice to sit around and talk to myself and play a game I do (or don't) enjoy. Its been nice. If you do wanna see more stuff from me, your best bet is that youtube channel. Not only do I stream there on weekdays (sometimes), i also upload edited videos of my shenanigans in games. You can find all my past streams here! Lets talk card games

After playing Inscryption I've found myself absolutely enamored and infatuated with the card game genre. I've played tens of card games, even obscure games like the Pokemon Trading Card game. I've tried dozens of card games and man, I just can't get enough. Also there's a shit ton of games that mimic most of Hearthstone. B r e h The card games I've found myself enjoying most are: GWENT Pokemon TCG (yeah im serious) Inscryption (what a fuckin game bro) Mythgard (bruh moment) Elder Scrolls Legends (yuh)

Here are my indepth thoughts on the games:

Gwent:

is fucking good mate. I've played quite a few card games, many I like, many I absolutely dislike, but Gwent is the one I've been coming back to more than the others. Its a simple card game. The object of the game is simple, get a higher number than your opponent. Each card has a number, each number contributes to your overall score. Just get the highest score and WIN. Its that simple. What makes Gwent great is that each card has different abilities and stats that allow it to do different things under certain conditions. Some decks straight up have their own abilities and stuff they can utilize. Gwent is what I consider a deceptively simple game. Its easy to get into. And you can pull off so much shit with cards. I don't want to say its complicated, but it can be. Not like Yu-Gi-Oh though, I hate Yu-Gi-Oh. That shits REALLY complicated. If you ever wanna try out a card game that isn't Hearthstone, Gwent would be my recommendation.

POKEMON Trading Card Game:

is a card game that exists. No really, its real. They don't actually sell Pokemon cards for the sake of selling Pokemon cards. They actually have a game to use those cards in. I know, its absolutely INSANE. Its gameplay is pretty unique. You draw cards, you use Pokemon cards to battle for you (just like the real games). However, you also draw energy and Trainer/item/whatever cards. The energy cards you put on your Pokemans to allow them to do moves (and retreat). I could go on and on about the rules since its a bit more complicated than Gwent. The object of the game is to defeat at least 6 of your opponent's pokemon. For me personally, this game allows more skill and thought than the OG pokemon games would allow. Instead of JUST 6 pokemon, you can have a ton more at your disposal (you can only have so many benched tho). Since each Pokemon has only 2 moves (sometimes 1), you have to REALLY strategize what to do at every turn, maybe switch out Pokemon and stuff, maybe use a Trainer card to heal your pokemon. There's a lot that can go thru your head in a game of Pokemon TCG. Its nice. Sadly you kinda get jackshit in terms of actual Pokemon cards when starting out. You'd have to grind a bit in the online mode and hope you can win with your wimpy starter decks. I haven't played too much of this game, but I can safely say I enjoy the game for what it is. It might not be my first recommendation for bestest card games, but its definitely on the list. You can't do much in the game if you don't sign up with the website. Its nothing unusual, but I feel you should keep that in mind that you gotta create an account first.

Inscryption:

i'll say more about this later cuz im not gonna re-edit this post lmao

Mythgard:

is good... with a pretty big fuckin caveat. There's a lot of Hearthstone games out there that take more than just a "little" inspiration from it (and i guess MTG by proxy). Mythgard is no different. However, Mythgard does quite a LOT to stand out from the crowd. You can move your cards around when they're on the battlefield, you burn cards in order to raise your "Mana" bar. There's a lot going on in Mythgard. Its a pretty fun game, I don't go too indepth with it since its mostly the same Hearthstone stuff that you'll recognize immediately. Plus, I haven't played as much of it as I would like to. I would recommend this game... But there's a BIG caveat with it. You have to register an account with them. Now this doesn't sound too bad, after all I mentioned that the Pokemon TCG does the same thing. Why is Mythgard different? Maybe I'm just paranoid but when a SMALLER game company that I have never heard of asks for my personal email account I get kinda... Sketched out. I don't know if other people feel the same way, maybe its just me but I would consider that kind of a catch in Mythgard's case. I might say "fuck it" later and sign up just to play more of the game. I genuinely enjoy Mythgard but I would be wary of that kinda thing if I were you.

Elder Scrolls Legends:

Once again, another Hearthstone type game. Its not bad though. It has a singleplayer campaign that is really interesting to go thru. I found myself enjoying this one the most out of the Hearthstone-like games for some reason. There's 2 lanes you can play in that alter the gameplay. One of them gives you a stealth ability that basically makes your card unable to be targeted or hit until it attacks. Sad that the game is no longer being worked on and has been mostly abandoned for a couple years now. Its pretty fun. I'm kinda getting tired of writing so I'll just leave it at that. On the topic of Inscryption tho. Man. MAN. M A N . what a game. No spoilers, since I truly believe Inscryption to be a game worth playing blind for. More than Undertale/Deltarune. Its just THAT good man. Absolutely love the simplistic gameplay in the game. I was thrown off quite a bit when the game kept... Well, "changing". But I eventually grew to like the entirety of the game. I cried like a bitch when it was over. Not on stream, sadly. That would've been good content. I cried a day after the stream.

I absolutely wanna say I want to update this blog more often. But at this point every single blog entry I make ends with that condolence. I'll make no promises. Keep gaming, fuckers.

#card game #game development #livestreaming

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radramblog · 2 years

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Hands on with BDSP (or, more specifically, SP)

Well, I’ve finally played this game. Not all of it, I’m actually only up to gym 2. But enough to get the gist of it, which probably doesn’t bode well for the game as a whole.

Sigh.

BDSP sure is a Pokémon Remake.

I don’t want to be unfair to this game, because at its fundamental baseline it is a fun game. It’s fucking Pokémon, it was always going to be fun. I’m not sure there’s a major console Pokémon game that is actually bad, much as the series' fans and haters alike attempt to decry various parts of it. Like, I think my least favourites are probably…X and Y maybe? But even then I can point out a lot of good in them.

I am, however, left in a fairly frustrating place with Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl. It’s a frustrating game, as it happens. Because it spends so much time trying to be a faithful remake, that it seems to miss what made the best remakes what they are.

I’ve seen a lot of what I’d call unhealthy discourse online about how these games don’t seem to know what they’re doing, that they can’t decide whether or not they’re “faithful remakes�� or expanding on the formula, and the thing with those arguments is that they’re almost always centred around incredibly minor things. Post-DP moves and abilities being in the game, different item and TM placements, the addition of the Fairy type. And this all strikes me as both incredibly nitpicky and petty, and also completely missing how a Pokémon Remake has worked for the past 17 years- I guarantee you few to none of these people have complained about Firered and Leafgreen having Dark and Steel types, or the Gen III TM roster, or abilities at all.

I think the ideal remakes to shoot for are still Heartgold and Soulsilver. It managed the perfect balance of retaining what made the originals good while tweaking (a lot of) what made them not as great, as well as working to update the design of the gameplay and region with the new gameplay in mind. The additions (save arguably Pokéathlon, but we gotta have a gimmick I guess) all felt natural to the world of Johto, and the awkwardness of Game Boy design restrictions was alleviated with the power of hindsight and updated technology.

Compare Firered and Leafgreen, which changed arguably too little- it updated the mechanics, but if you’ve played the original duo, the only really new things are the Sevii Islands- while the early introduction of One to Three islands helps bridge the Blaine-Giovanni level gap, little is done to address the Erika-Koga/Sabrina gap, and the rest of the Sevii islands are postgame. Contrast Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, which changed too much, but didn’t do so with the original’s balance, pacing, or world in mind- thereby, many additions feel tacked-on or hard kill the tempo of the game (looking at you, Southern Island event), and the new additions of Mega Evolution/Primal Reversion and the Gen 6 EXP Share to a relatively unchanged Hoenn completely break the games, making them probably the easiest the series has ever been.

As for Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl? Well, they definitely lean towards the Firered and Leafgreen end of things. It’s actually kind of astonishing how little has changed, especially when one considers that Diamond and Pearl were definitely not in the upper echelons of Pokémon experiences in retrospect.

And especially when one considers how much of the faults of Diamond and Pearl were fixed via Platinum, and how as far as I can tell none of that game’s refinement has been taken onboard for BDSP.

I will give the game a lot of credit, however, for at least allowing some of its bigger changes to the Diamond/Pearl formula to take effect during its main game. I mean, obviously the Gen 8 experience system is there, people complain about it, blah blah whatever. I mean moreso the addition of on-the-fly box switching (which is much better than in Sword and Shield when one considers that Sinnoh actually has dungeons to make use of it in), of making ball seals way, way earlier, and of paving HMs off for a Gen 7 style “summon friendly helper” obstacle clearing system (though I have a minor issue with the fact that you still get “access” to the move and then still need to get the gym badge to actually use it). I genuinely think all these changes are good! Hell, I’ll even throw my lot in behind single-use TMs, which isn’t something I thought I’d do- because on the one hand, the TM/TR system in Sword and Shield was actually pretty great, but the fact that they can all be reacquired (I assume) means the biggest downside of single-users has been alleviated, provided you’re willing to put in the work. Plus, as someone who’s done more than one Nuzlocke of D/P/Pt in my day, it means a lot to me that you can just buy copies of Thunderbolt and the like in the shopping centre rather than spending literal hours grinding the casino or hundreds of thousands in cash to exchange manually.

And for what it’s worth, I’m really enjoying the new Underground! It was always something I was weirdly into as a kid, just chipping away at walls over and over to find something that wasn’t a Sphere, but now that there’s a bit more to discover in there, it’s actually a lot more interesting. Not to mention the ability to access Pokémon that weren’t normally available in Sinnoh- just about everyone I’ve seen on the Nuzforums discord talking about their runs has come away with something crazy (a lot of Houndooms, I’m noticing), and while I’m sure the options are more limited than my limited experience would suggest, it’s been a blast so far. Spheres aren’t completely dogshit anymore, and I hate to say it, but I do enjoy the statue lootbox things solely for scratching that booster pack itch without actually involving microtransactions.

However, I still find myself deeply frustrated with BDSP as a whole. And it’s not just the lack of refinement or incorporation of work already done to Sinnoh after 15 years of potential hindsight, and it’s not the utterly divisive artstyle (it’s eh. Getting used to it. it looks really good in battle at least). The thing that bothers me the most about BDSP is genuinely how awkward the controls are.

It’s actually super weird? After the brief hiccup that was Gen 6’s semi-grid-based system, it felt like Pokémon had actually managed to pretty cleanly transition fully into 3D, with S/M/US/UM and Sw/Sh feeling smooth as necessary, but this game’s map just feels like a step back. Like care and attention was not paid to the hitboxes, to how things that were in a grid have to adjust to 360 degree movement. I’m sure this is exacerbated by my joycon drift, but I just keep getting hung up on things, not going through doors I’m trying to unless I adjust my trajectory a few degrees, and the like. And while the D-Pad is an option, unlike in the last few games, it for whatever reason is on the 4-directional movement mode, and that is how Gen 4 was obviously, but when other games have let you do at least 8 directions (because, you know, 3D world), going between the two just feels incredibly awkward.

And speaking of awkward, the touch controls just feel so much worse than on the DS. While the Switch has a touchscreen, it’s clearly not built for it, as using it in the handheld mode is awkward as hell and you obviously can’t use it when docked. This makes things like using the Poketch and mining underground supremely uncomfortable, as you’re now having to do these designed-for-touch input things either very carefully while supporting the full weight in your other hand, or use a cursor that doesn’t quite move the way it feels like it should. This might be less of an issue on the Switch Lite, but I (and probably most people) am not playing it on that, so I have to deal with it as is.

I have a fair few other nitpicks- things like the weird moveset choices and certain stiff animations. But at the end of the day, none of that actually matters in the long run, no matter what dorks on Twitter will tell you. At the end of the day, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl set out to make a modernized and slightly remixed version of Sinnoh, with everything that has ended up entailing. Whether that is worth it depends entirely on how you feel about the original games, honestly, because I’m not sure whether the Gen 4 stans are going to appreciate the love to their favourite generation or whether they’re going to declare it ruined (like I admittedly kinda did with ORAS) and keep replaying the original games forevermore.

Knowing this fandom? There isn’t going to be a clear consensus. A line will be drawn in the sand, and people will cyberbully each other to shreds in the name of their side of it. It’s hard dealing with whining all the time, and I can tell you it certainly isn’t healthy actually doing it, but that hasn’t stopped people yet. So the cycle shall continue.

Boy I can’t wait for Black and White remakes in…probably like 2025 or so. That’s going to be even more divisive, somehow, I’m sure of it.

#ramble #pokemon #video games #bdsp #pokemon bdsp

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talesoftextposts · 3 years

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Exactly! Crestoria is not the only game they don't really keep tabs with. A while ago i played a saint seiya game by them and it had many many issues. If you cannot have multiple games with quality than please don't. Is bad for us and the employees, those poor people must be going crazy :c

At first I liked kasque, quite different than what I would expect from a goddess, but I ended disliking her...

I feel kinda bad for aegis just being a punching bag for jokes and Yuna just being there to look pretty, they have a lot of potential for the story. Like you said Yuna had a great point and a good reflection moment but whatever eh? Aegis too, I felt his story like a punch on the gut because I tend to be like him and the queen, but again, whatever...

I do the arena for the free stuff too! I am not competitive at all XD

hello again anon!! im going to do another readmore gksghkeg

yeah i honestly...ugh. i have just a lot of issues w bamco in general but i also Do Not want them to pay attention to me jic they tell me to stop making memes or something stupid like that— like genuinely instead of making the game more functional or adding like...idk. any story or shit that makes Sense they just added things like the transcendence board which is just. for ppl who already maxed out their ascension boards?? after like 6 months??? Y'ALL... ik for a while too the phantom tower was Waaayyy too difficult but i think they nerfed it back to normal considering i can now clear thru level 40 at least :/ but overall the game is just. geared towards ppl who drop fucktons of cash on it. if you look at the ppl in the top 3 in arena rn? you KNOW they've spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on this game. what the fuck.

also minor gripes are just...they don't add very many new units anyway, compared to like even asteria, and i get that there's effort for the whole models or w/e but...i mean if rays can do it... and i don't mean that in the rate that banners are released, bc those are...kind of annoyingly often as of late (looking @ all the crestoria cast alts) but the fact they're only for 1 or 2 charas who are Only ssrs, and it genuinely makes r and sr stones and sr charas just...obsolete and useless imo? like i genuinely have EVERY sr AND r full awakened/ascended which. is probs partly due to the drop rates being Absolute Garbage, but thank god they implemented a pity system, right? ...right? [tired sigh] i've saved enough for julius who has been in crestoria for 228 days, bamco, fucking release h—

i also want to add that i've contacted support MULTIPLE times abt issues w the game and they have legit just told me "hm sucks have u tried playing the game w all other apps closed" like yes, bamco, but that's not the problem??

SORRY for several paragraph rant abt the gameplay i just have some very strong opinions LMAO

i understand not liking kasque! tales antags...and characters in general, actually, are rather hit or miss. i personally just love evil women so im rlly in love w her GSKEHGESKHG

but as for the aegis and yuna things... YEAH. i rlly love them both and it's been extremely disappointing to see how they've been treated by the story :( like even if yuna's acting silly to cover her own feelings, it would be nice to get those scenes we get in other tales games (like...idk even the scenes in xillia like where alvin and elize sit and talk in the park, and leia talks w i think jude or milla depending on the route?) considering it's like...is penelope going to be okay? can she ever go back to her?? is she okay just crossing the sea and leaving her, even if there's really no choice??? sorry for the character introspect i just have a lot of thoughts—

aegis too, it's like. i don't mind teasing to an extent, but i really feel sometimes they go too far w it :( esp in like. events and the character episodes moreso than the main story (tho i could be remembering incorrectly) which makes me wonder if they just have different writers for each but even THEN like the main story still fails to act like yuna and aegis Exist half the time?? and JEEZ yeah i am constantly thinking abt aegis and queen rebecca, esp imo it's just a very... well first of all, that has to be Traumatizing As Hell but second of all i strongly headcanon he was unable to say it bc he didn't mean it and also i have a headcanon that the whole event has kept him from ever saying the words "i love you" ever again so that's that on THAT. (these are my headcanons pls don't send me hate over them they're not canon i promise—)

and honestly same!! i used to be sss rank and then i stopped caring abt arena for a bit and dropped a couple ranks...oops. i'm currently s-5 and had to FIGHT to keep myself there this season. it's not that i rlly care abt winning or being high ranking. or first, even, i just want the prizes from being at a certain rank/placing tbh. which is why.....................................oh im so tired of the ppl with lvl 120 fully awakened new ass units like i GET IT you have MONEY but i am not spending that much on a mobile game!!

ANYWAY thank u for coming to my ted talk omfg im so sorry this is so long (again)

#mod.txt #SSSSSSSSORRYYYYYYY #if u disagree w me pls don't yell at me im sensitive—#these are just my onions i pr #anyway i again apologize for a v long post where i just. bitch abt crestoria ig that's my life now

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antagonistchan · 3 years

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god

fucking

DAMN

Mass Effect Legendary Edition is so fucking good

i’m not gonna go so far as to say it’s the only way you should ever play these games again. i think it’s the best way to play them, especially if you’ve never played them before. but the originals still have value if you’re a Mass Effect superfan like me.

Legendary Edition 1 fixes a lot of the clunkiness that the original ME1 had. this is mostly a good thing.... but also, that clunkiness had a certain charm, and i absolutely want to revisit it on occasion.

i don’t know much about LE2. i haven’t experienced much of it myself. if i had to guess, i’d say LE2 is probably the only one that outright obsolesces the original; everything looks way better, and ME2 didn’t have much clunky charm to it to begin with. but of course, OG ME2 inherently just still has value since you’d want to import from ME1 and to ME3.

and then from what i’ve heard, LE3 is largely identical to the original ME3, just with AI-upscaled textures (which makes sense, even by modern standards OG ME3 is a really good-looking and graphically impressive game). this’d also make it the definitive way to play ME3... if it weren’t for the fact that it removed the multiplayer, and the multiplayer is still really good. i fucking adore ME3 multiplayer. and the fact that it came out in 2012 does it a lot of favors, because that’s when studios were just starting to experiment and test the waters with lootbox mechanics. back then, lootboxes were still an unproven concept, studios didn’t know if they could get away with them, so they weren’t as disgusting as they are in modern games. honestly, if it weren’t for the mere presence of microtransactions (which are inherently exploitative), i’d say ME3′s lootboxes do more good than harm. i’d actually honestly recommend new fans pick up the original ME3 (it’s pretty cheap these days anyways) just so they can experience the multiplayer. don’t touch the microtransactions, just use the in-game currency. there’s enough of it to reasonably get new lootboxes regularly, don’t worry.

all that, and the fact that there are mods for the original trilogy that haven’t come out for the Legendary trilogy.... yet. but i’ve heard for a fact that the Expanded Galaxy Mod- the ME3 mod- is getting ported over, and i’d imagine a lot of the other essential mods (like the ones that re-implement the gay versions of Ashley, Kaidan (ME1), Tali, and Thane’s romances) will also eventually make their way over. so that’s only an issue for now.

but enough about the original trilogy still having value, let’s talk Legendary Edition.

for some background: the Mass Effect trilogy is collectively my favorite game of all time. i replay the entire thing at least once a year, and i have since i first got the trilogy collection on PS3 in 2013. so i fucking know these games like the back of my hand. i can basically play them in my head. and it’s especially true for ME1, since it’s the first one (and thus, if i start a playthrough and don’t finish it, i’ll at least have seen ME1) and also imo the best one (just to clarify though, while i AM a “Mass Effect 1 is the best Mass Effect” person, i’m NOT a “Mass Effect 1 is the only good Mass Effect” person; i’m actually one of those weirdos who genuinely loves ME3, and i honestly hold equal amounts of affection for both, with ME2 not far behind).

and god.

i’m just constantly finding myself blown away by how good Legendary Edition 1 looks.

even on the ultra-high graphics settings, OG ME1 looks super rough in a LOT of ways. i think OG ME1 is a good-looking game, for sure, but it’s a testament to how a good art style can salvage a game with garbage graphics. ME1 only looks good because the style they were going for is so unique and beautiful. the actual graphical capabilities? it’s bad even by 2007 standards, and imo 2007 was the worst year for video game graphics since the N64-PS1 days. games from 2007 almost universally look super weak now.

but here....... god. everything looks so good and intense and sharp and detailed.

the Mass Relays are a standout. they looked cool in the original, but god they’re so beautiful now. i’m constantly finding myself thinking “jesus i really understand what Tali means when she talks about how Quarians appreciate the aesthetic value of the Mass Relays”.

there have only been two major annoyances i’ve had so far:

the dumb Femshep redesign is still dumb after all these years, and when they announced New Femshep could actually work in LE1/2 now, i was really hoping they’d also do the reverse with Old Femshep, and.... only kinda. when you go to customize Femshep’s appearance, the first preset it tries to go to does actually look a lot like the old default, even moreso than what you’d get if you tried to import ME1/2 Femshep into ME3 (that was actually a bit of a pleasant surprise). but it’s still not perfectly like her. they outright removed the old default hairstyle. it was already baffling when they removed it from OG ME3, it’s even more baffling now. that used to be the default, why is it not even an option anymore UGHHH

they STILL haven’t fixed the menus. i’m used to these games on PS3 and only migrated to PC last year, and god, navigating the menus is a pain with mouse and keyboard. if you want to back out of a menu, you have to either hit “escape” (which is in the corner of your keyboard) or click a tiny little button in the corner of the screen. it’d be so great if you could just back out of a menu by right-clicking or something, like how on PS3 you could back out of a menu by hitting the circle button. i know Legendary Edition also finally fixed the controller support on PC, but when i migrated to PC, i realized i did actually prefer mouse and keyboard for actual gameplay. it’s just the menus that suck with mouse and keyboard.

#antagonist originals #mass effect

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 3 years

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Michael in the Mainstream: Crash Bandicoot

Reviewing video games is not my forte. Like, sure, I can review the Metal Gear franchise because it’s near and dear to my heart and it’s incredibly story driven to a cinematic degree, but I’m not super good at touching on game design or any of that. I stick with movies. But then there are a lot of games I love and want to talk about, such as this game, Crash Bandicoot, and it’s like, how do I talk about this? This is a platformer that is very light on plot and is more about precision platforming than anything, and I’m just not really good at talking about gameplay.

But I’ve come up with a solution! One that I plan to use going forward for a few other games, too! I’ll start with a few paragraphs with my basic overview of the game, and then I will do a ranking of my favorite levels, and then how I’d rank the bosses. I’m much better at talking why I enjoy the challenge of specific elements of games like these then I am talking about the game as a whole, so let’s see how this turns out.

Crash Bandicoot was the first video game I ever played, and so is extremely near and dear to my heart. It’s a rather simple game, a “save the girl” platforming adventure in the vein of something like Mario, where an intrepid hero travels through platforming challenges to save the love of his life from an evil mastermind, though as the main character is a furry animal with a bit of 90s ‘tude, and his archenemy is a mad scientist who utilizes cyborgs to stop you, there’s a dash of Sonic in here too. Being a simple platforming game like this, you’d think there wouldn’t be all that much to the story… but surprisingly, that’s not totally the case (although the story is still relatively simple to later entries).

Crash was meant to be the ultimate soldier in Dr. Neo Cortex’s army of evil marsupials and other assorted critters, an army he presumably was going to use for world domination. After rigorous training, Crash was set to be brainwashed and turned into a mindless slave, but something got screwed up and Crash remained a good, heroic guy. He ended up chased out a window and washed up on the beach of a nearby island, and set out to save his buxom, big booty bandicoot babe Tawna from the creepy clutches of the cantankerous Cortex, causing chaos and crushing crates as he went along. The manual included with the original version of the game actually outlined sort of a little story for the first island, showing how the levels involved Crash infiltrating a native village, defeating its leader, and then riding a hog to escape on his way to the next island. It’s kind of fun and imaginative, and the next island keeps it up, with Crash having to brave ancient ruins to make it to the volcano on the other side of the island, before finally going through Cortex’s toxic power plant, causing a reactor meltdown, and climbing Cortex’s castle to confront him as his island burns to the ground. It’s a fun, simple story that’s not too challenging on the mind while still being engaging.

Perhaps the best thing about the game is the music, which was done by Josh Mancell with the assistance of Mark Mothersbaugh’s Mutato Muzika production company. Let’s not beat around the bush here: Every single track in this game slaps. Basically every track in the original trilogy slaps, but I feel pound for pound this game just hits all the right notes with its music. It perfectly sets the tone for each level, with eerie levels like Slippery Climb getting foreboding music and unsettling yet somewhat whimsical levels like Road to Nowhere getting music that perfectly suits it. This is the biggest downgrade of the remake; they redid the score, with no option to go back to the old tracks, and while some of the updated tunes are great, they don’t really hold a candle to the original (especially the creepier levels, which got dumbed down a fair bit to the point of narm).

The one thing this game is being known for these days is its pretty brutal difficulty, at least with the original release. A lot of the staple elements of the series like checkpoints saving the boxes you had previously broken and an actual save room were not present, so every level (including the brutal ones where the margin of error was incredibly slim) needed to be completed perfectly in one go. The challenging road to 100% completion was absolutely brutal, but thankfully the remake polished things and brought it more in line with its sequels to the point you only need a flawless run on colored gem levels. It can still be pretty tough since the colored gems are located in the hardest levels of the game, but it’s a lot easier than it once was.

The original game is a great, fun game, but only play the original release if you really want to test your skills; the remake is the way to go. The game holds up amazingly well even today, so no matter which version you end up playing you’re in for a fun platforming challenge.

Anyway, let’s get on to the levels!

TOP 10 LEVELS

10. Generator Room

There’s something to be said about the various one-shot themed levels of the third island. Toxic Waste is an interesting one we’ll talk about later, The Lab is a fun penultimate level, and Cortex Power is a frustrating slog of confusing backtracking. The Generator Room, though? This is unnerving atmosphere and dark ambience at its peak, with the eerie, minimalist music and the looming Cortex faces lending a chilling sense that you’re being watched as you make your way through this dark platforming challenge. It’s not the most exciting level, but among the one-shot themes it stands out for being a heaping helping of nightmare fuel… Though moreso in the original game. The remake sadly toned things down a bit too much, though it’s hard to blame them, really.

9. Native Fortress

The level that caps off the first island is a more challenging remake of The Great Gate, and closes out the story of the first island by showing how Crash escapes the territory of Papu Papu’s tribe. It’s a pretty fun and reasonable challenge for the point in the game, but my favorite aspect of the level has always been that, when you get the red gem, you get to fly up in the clouds and experience the painted background of the other two islands with less clutter. It’s just a simple background image, sure, but I have always found it very pretty and breathtaking.

8. Road to Nowhere

Everyone’s favorite! This is one of the more challenging levels if you don’t know what you’re doing because of the tricky and precise jumps you need, but it just has so much atmosphere and pleasant music it’s hard to get mad even if I screw up and plummet to my doom a few dozen times. Bouncing off of hibernating turtles to make long jumps and inexplicable evil hogs help make this memorable. Frankly, if you want to direct your ire to a stage, direct it to The High Road, the third island’s more challenging take on this level’s theme and which is a joyless, frustrating experience.

7. Castle Machinery

This level is honestly a bit of a breather for being so late in the game; sure, it has a lot of tricky jumps and an annoying crate bridge you need to really think about to conquer, but overall it’s just an improved take on Heavy Machinery without an obtuse branching path to figure out. Still, this level really makes the list because, if you have the right colored gem, you can just immediately skip the entire level and gain thirty free lives in the process in one of the single funniest moments in the game.

6. Toxic Waste

This level is simple, straightforward, and to the point. It’s one long-ass hallway where Crash is on a narrow walkway and has to avoid incoming barrels being tossed at him by the Mafia. It has no branching paths, no crazy elements, just Crash, some barrels, some boxes, and some bad guys. It’s almost too basic, but what saves it is the atmosphere of it all and the sheer awesomeness of the music, no matter which version you’re playing. It’s a level that has stuck in my mind since I was a kid. In a way, it also set the basis for colored gem unlocks in the games to follow, as avoiding the barrels is more of a puzzle than anything, much like the tricky puzzles you had to solve to unlock the colored gems in Cortex Strikes Back and It’s About Time. It’s a neat little first step even if it’s not quite there yet.

5. Boulder Dash

I almost didn’t include one of these levels, but God, these levels were trendsetters! The whole “Crash gets chased by dangerous thing” trend began in this game, and this second take on the boulder chase from the second island is a lot more fun and challenging than the earlier version of the level. And if you get the colored gem, you’re taken to a pretty underground alternate exit with tons of crates, which is pretty dope.

4. Fumbling in the Dark

The only one of the secret levels that requires a Cortex key to make the list, Fumbling in the Dark is a remix of Lights Out, the level it branches off of. That level is a bit of a cakewalk if you have the right gem, with an alternate exit being available to you before the level’s challenge ramps up. Not so with this level! You’ve gotta do some tricky timed jumps as quick as possible so you can get to the next Aku Aku mask before the light runs out. It’s a pretty fun and fair challenge, and it pushes my platforming skills to the limit. I also just really enjoy the creepy, Gothic aesthetic of the levels inside Cortex’s castle.

3. Hog Wild

This is, hands down, the funniest level in the game. From Crash’s really suggestive eyebrow waggle which leads to him tackling a pig to the extremely goofy music, this level is just an absolute blast. It does have an equally fun yet more challenging remix as an optional secret level, Whole Hog, but I have to give props to the original level for being the most hilarious thing I ever saw when I was little.

2. Slippery Climb

Where Stormy Ascent is a brutal, unrelenting challenge, Slippery Climb is more of a tough, but fair challenge. It’s definitely up there with Sunset Vista and The High Road in terms of difficulty, and the fact you’ve gotta do a flawless run of it if you want the red gem is daunting, but this is the most thoroughly rewarding mandatory level to conquer. You’re gonna feel really cool when you take this one down, guaranteed. Maybe not as much as when you take down Stormy Ascent, but still, this may be the toughest level in the game.

1. THE GREAT HALL

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WOO YEAH BABY! LOOK AT THIS CHALLENGE!

Ok, ok, here’s the real number one:

1. N. Sanity Beach

This is the first level in the game and, thus, one of the easiest. And yet I placed it above all the levels I find to be more fun and challenging. Why? Well, for one, the pure nostalgia of it all. This was my first level in a video game, and I have fond memories of traversing the beach and jungle. For the other, this is one of the most perfect tutorial levels I have ever seen. Basically everything the game has to offer is laid out to you and slowly dished out to you: you start with a couple crates and a free life, move on to experience some enemies and pits, you can get total invincibility if you’re smart, you’re introduced to branching paths and backtracking… Everything is dished out to you at a solid pace so that any new player will be able to figure out what they’re doing with relative ease. Plus, the music slaps, and interestingly enough halfway through the level changes to a different song (the only level to do this). It really does encapsulate the game as a whole in one tiny package, and for that, I think it’s my favorite level of all.

Boss Ranking

The best way to describe the bosses in the original Crash is that they are incredibly basic. Most of them have simple patterns, easy tells, and don’t take much effort to take down. There’s not really anything here that will put your skills to the test, but none of them are really bad per se; in fact, considering how hard the levels can get, it’s sort of a breath of fresh air when you get to a boss that can be taken down without thinking hard.

6. Papu Papu

Coming in last place is our first boss, the big chief of the first island himself. He’s a pretty simple and straightforward boss battle: just jump on his head a few times and he’ll be out cold. It’s pretty nice to ease in new players, but it’s seriously not much of a challenge (though none of these bosses are particularly hard, mind you).

5. Koala Kong

So far, this has been Koala Kong’s sole major outing, as he was pretty quickly replaced with the more engaging Tiny Tiger in terms of dumb muscle.Tiny at least has some semblance of combat prowess and strategy, while this guy is just tossing boulders at you to spin back while he’s flexing and posing like he wants a part in the next volume of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. He’s certainly not the sharpest tool in the shed. Still, he’s not bad or anything, just a bit of a generic battle compared to the last three or the one before him.

4. Ripper Roo

Ripper Roo is a bit of a frustrating puzzle boss, requiring just the right timing to get in any damage on the guy. Still, the fun and bouncy music coupled with the amazing stock laugh does help make him a bit more memorable than the previous two bosses. I will say he’s probably worse in terms of an actual boss battle, because he ends up being more an exercise in precision than the typical dodging and waiting for the right moment to strike, but he’s also a funny kangaroo in a straitjacket, and I think that counts for something.

3. N. Brio

The longest boss in the game, Brio comes with a massive health bar that you’ll shave off pretty quickly for his first phase if you’re careful, and whose second phase features him hulking out into an incredible monstrosity. He’s simple and straightforward, much like all the bosses to be honest, but I think the bosses on the final island all have solid presentation to make up for that. Brio just comes out at the lower end, which is honestly a running theme for him in Crash games, as his battles are rarely the best out there and few can match his debut.

2. Pinstripe

Pinstripe may not be the most challenging boss in the world, but damn is he cool. A tommy gun-toting potoroo gangster who goes full-on Scarface and starts blasting up his office when you walk in while cackling like a madman? Awesome. Defeating him is also heavily implied to be the reason Cortex’s castle eventually starts burning down, as he accidentally shoots the generator upon defeat, which is a neat little touch. If nothing else, Pinstripe is just fun, and he has killer theme music to boot.

1. Cortex

Cortex begins his reign as the big bad of the franchise with a final boss battle that, while lacking in serious challenge, has such good music and presentation that it’s hard to really care. The fight is simple and straightforward: you dodge his blasts, and hit back the ones of a certain color so they blast his health off. All of this is done from atop his dirigible, as his island burns down in the background. The bosses just don’t get any cooler than this.

#Michael in the Mainstream #review #video game review #Crash Bandicoot #Naughty Dog #Platformer #nostalgia

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ladala99 · 5 years

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Spyro Reignited Countdown - A Hero’s Tail

And finally we get... I guess it’s not really a return to form but it is a return to greatness.

A Hero’s Tail uses the Spyro characters and basic mechanics and makes it a modern (for the time) platformer. This does eliminate one of the franchise’s core features (finite gems), but ultimately, it did a good job and did the franchise justice.

And it also officially introduces Ember, who Spyro fanficcers liked to ship with Spyro, especially as a rival ship versus Cynder of later titles. Yes, that was a part of the fanbase I frequented. I am not sorry.

Gameplay

Spyro’s controls are brought to the modern (again, for the time) age, with a much more responsive camera and really that’s the only major difference. Spyro feels like Spyro. He flames, he charges, and he glides.

...Well, aside from the fact that they swapped the Flame and Charge buttons, and now you have to hold X to glide rather than just press it. I first played this game as a demo and legitimately thought the change was a mistake, but nope. Not entirely sure why it was made, but it was. Perhaps it aligns with other PS2 platformers better?

Mini rant, courtesy of how 3-year-old me remembered the controls: Circle is flame because it’s red and the mouth makes an O. Square is Charge because the sides are pointy. X is jump because the X is blue like air and you are in the air while jumping. Triangle is zoom in because the bottom represents a really wide view and the top represents a really narrow view. Why would you change this?

But anyway, it works for the game. Aside from not matching previous games, it’s easy to adapt to and the controls are very responsive. They’re not quite as tight as in the originals, but they’re very close.

Additional Playable Characters

We’ve got a few this time. There’s Hunter, Sparx, Sgt. Byrd and the new character Blink. Totally new. What are you talking about with the “but he appeared in a GBA game”?

While Hunter was technically playable before, this is the first time you can platform with him. His moveset’s pretty similar to Spyro’s, aside from one of his main attacks being very ranged. Aside from his arrows, he’s basically Spyro, but not as maneuverable. Yeah, he can scale walls and Spyro doesn’t in this game, but that ability originally belonged to Spyro, so it doesn’t feel unique.

What is unique is that one section that you’re forced to play as him as part of the story. That was neat. And frustrating because he does not platform as well as Spyro does, since his movements are floaty and you can’t correct them with gliding like you can Spyro’s, and this area has a lot of small platforms.

Sparx has a completely different gameplay style this time: rail-shooter. It’s honestly not that bad, especially in comparison to Season of Ice’s Speedways. I just prefer the other Sparx gameplay.

Sgt. Byrd, speaking of Speedways, takes over for Spyro during them. And his levels are definitely not designed in the same way the old Speedways were designed. It used to be that there was a clear linear path to take from one object to the next, but that is not the case here. I like these Speedways better than Season of Ice’s, but I don’t like them much.

As far as actual controls go, Sgt. Byrd does just fine. Sometimes his turning is a little difficult, but it works for how wide open the areas are.

Blink controls very similarly to Hunter, with the main difference being how the level is designed. Blink’s levels are all underground, having a specific set of enemies and such, and they’re all considered minigames with the goal of destroying Dark Gems. He suffers from the same floatiness as Hunter, and there’s certainly a lot of platforms. Somehow, though, his levels never got me stuck like Hunter’s did in that one section.

Sometimes I feel that Eurocom wanted to make a Blink game, not a Spyro game. While Blink’s levels are minigames, they’re really fleshed out and well-designed. They have plenty of variety, if not in appearance.

Collectables

Gems are not just currency to be used at Moneybags’ shop. They’re found everywhere, and can be collected from enemies multiple times. At the beginning you’ll be hurting for them, but by the end of the game you’ll have much more than you know what to do with. At least, that’s my experience.

Dragon Eggs return, with a twist. They’re pretty much optional, and much less valuable than the other main collectable. This time, dragon eggs come in different patterns and if you collect a set, you unlock a thing. A lot of those things are just the ability to play minigames from the main menu.

The things that I care about are the concept art gallery (as that’s always cool) and the Ember and Flame skins. Mostly Ember since I like playing as female characters. It’s just a skin, though, and it changes back to Spyro in cutscenes plus uses his sound effects. Still: first time skins are in the game, unless you count the color cheats!

Finally we get Light Gems. They’re used to power up gadgets and open doors. They’re required for progress in certain places, but not always. They’re always rewarded on the second round of minigames, which means everybody talks about how worthless Dragon Eggs are in comparison. We don’t want these unborn children, give us the shiny thing!

Oh, and Dark Gems. They aren’t collected, but destroyed. You need to smash all of them to continue. They’re just scattered around the levels. You’ll come across them.

Powerups

Supercharge returns! Sort of! It’s one of the powerups that the Professor unlocks for you when you collect enough Light Gems. It really doesn’t feel the same, and it’s used for a few doors, some of which you can’t just charge to from the pad.

There’s also invincibility which works like it did in Lost Fleet, allowing you to travel through acid. Just with a stricter time limit and now it makes Spyro metal rather than red.

Finally I’ll mention the orb-thingys that let you use a ranged version of your breath abilities. I literally have never used them, but they’re there. I can’t say one way or the other how useful they are, but they definitely are not necessary.

Other Modes

The other minigames, as all minigames repeat, are turrets and ball gadgets.

Turrets aren’t hard, but they are stressful. You need to protect the thing while other things try to steal/eat/whatever it. Or you need to protect yourself and hit a huge number of enemies. I don’t like this minigame. Especially the baby turtle one.

Ball Gadgets are much more fun to watch than they are to play. The controls work, but it takes a bit to stop. There’s also a couple of on-rails ones that are really trial-and-error. Even knowing what to do, you’re going to fast to react so you need to memorize every action.

Breath Abilities

This game continues the trend of having them! And acts like it’s the first time at the same time. Enter the Dragonfly is apparently not canon.

Fire acts like it always has. They didn’t do the particle effect thing like Enter the Dragonfly did so it moves forward with you as it should.

Electricity starts out as a weaker Fire and then ends up being much more useful. It takes longer to defeat enemies, but there are certain enemies that are immune to Fire but not Electricity. After a point, it’s not worth it to switch back, since Fire just isn’t universally useful like Electricity is.

Water is just used for puzzles. Nothing else. This is also the only time Water is an element in the series.

Ice freezes certain things (like steam vents so you can use them to pole spin), and enemies of course. There are certain enemies in the final area that are only weak to Ice. (Maybe Water too, but I haven’t tried) Otherwise it freezes enemies so you can charge them like in other games.

Bosses

Finally, we get some new ones!

Gnasty Gnorc returns as the first boss. He’s actually far stronger than he was in Spyro 1, ironically enough. The fight itself is a pretty fun platformer boss fight, but his personality... it’s so childish. It’s like they didn’t know who he really was before.

Ineptune is a new character. The fight itself is, again, great for this style of game. Her character is kind of forgettable, though.

And then we get Red, who we fight twice. The first time is actually harder if only for the fact that you’re in an icy arena and thus the controls are more slippery. He’s not a very complex villain, but his fights are pretty fun, but very similar to the other two.

Special mention to the mammoth, who wins via being in a cutscene. You never see him again, having no chance to best him. He is truly Spyro’s greatest foe.

Levels

Continuing from Attack of the Rhynocs, the levels are much more seamless. They’re still very distinct, but in a lot of cases (moreso early-on than later) they feel like the same level as you begin in.

And again like Attack of the Rhynocs, the levels don’t have concrete ends. You can check your map and see how many Dark Gems are left, but it doesn’t really feel like you’ve finished even after you smash them all.

There’s no main conflict to defeat or anything, it’s just exploring and smashing Dark Gems, and occasionally finding a Dragon Elder to give you new skills. You get a checklist, but it’s not the same.

The theming is fine, if generic. Older Spyro games tended to have an irony to them, but not this one. Everything is played straight. Which, of course, makes it so this game doesn’t stand out very much.

Story

I don’t even know if I fully understand it. So Red’s an evil dragon who mined some Dark Gems to spread evil throughout the lands. And the Elders are very hesitant to tell you more.

Eventually it comes out that Red used to be an Elder, but he betrayed them. I really don’t understand why they couldn’t just tell Spyro that. Do the Elders just have a reputation that they don’t want to sully or something?

We get no motivation on Red’s part, and normally I’d be fine with that, but with all the secrets I expect a bit more. Also: who’s Ineptune in all this?

There’s parts where I feel I missed a game. Ember knows Spyro, and Spyro appears to know Ember. I feel like I should know who Ineptune is just because of how little introduction she gets.

I read that there was going to be a TV show that got cancelled but the games didn’t, but it was literally one forum post and it may have just been someone making things up. It would certainly explain things, though.

Unique in the Series?

Yes and no. It definitely has a unique feel as far as the series goes, but it’s very generic at the same time.

A lot of what it introduces is used again in later games, even though that part of the series is very different.

But yeah, Water Breath, Pole Spinning, and Wall Kicking are unique to this game in the series. They aren’t unique in general (See: Mario. Yes, even Water Breath. See: Sunshine), but for the series, definitely.

It’s at that weird awkward part in which it’s not anything groundbreaking, but it’s still really good.

Conclusion

Best post-Insomniac Classic Spyro, if only by default. It’s generic for its time, bringing Spyro fully into said time. It works, it’s fun, and I wish there were more to this part of the series that weren’t... well, Orange.

#spyro #a hero's tail #video game review #spyro reignited

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pahrak-the-sinnoh-slizer · 3 years

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I beat NEOTWEWY! That was the most JRPG-ass final boss I’ve fought in years, love to see it. Need to dig into the post-game content before I try to compare it overall to the first game, but the ending at least...I’d probably say that’s better than the first game’s, and being able to say that just makes me giddy. A long list of other, super spoilery thoughts below the cut.

-It’s pretty cool that every family of Noise has its own symbol this time! Makes it a lot more clear when you’re hunting a specific Noise.

-Pachy Noise seem a little less annoying? Maybe? I still dread them but not the most.

-Puffers take a bit too long to explode and that’s annoying, but in the grand scheme of things that’s pretty minor.

-Those fucking Chameleons, though. The vanish and snipe routine I could tolerate, but combined with that counter blast every time you hit ‘em...yikes.

-I still think Rex Noise are cool af, but the Maximazaurus kicked my shit in and it didn’t feel entirely fair. How was I supposed to know that roar attack covered the entire battlefield? Can it even be dodged, or are you just supposed to kill it before it can use it?

-Fuck Plague Noise

-RIP Drake Noise and Progfox :(

-I do find it a little weird that some Noise have a regular and boss version that use the exact same name. Makes me wonder why they didn’t just recolor and rename the boss version. Meh, it’s not that important.

-So it seems “mutating” a Pin just means evolving it but it requires certain conditions, and those conditions seem to be which character it’s equipped to when it finishes leveling. Very glad there’s a skill on the social network that makes their conditions clear.

-RIP Shutdown PP :(

-Music still slaps. I really like that one, “Breaking Free” I think? It embodies that early 2000s angst, plus the final lyrics are “the world ends with me” and I’m a sucker for that shit.

-The direction they went with Kanon didn’t quite land with me personally. Like it was still pretty good, I did feel a bit sad to see her go, but her introduction just really rubbed me the wrong way I guess.

-I was unsure about the VIP system at first, but shopkeepers do still warm up to you even if it isn’t as trackable. And...I never did a whole lot with the brand chart anyway, I guess. The VIP level being a permanent thing rather than resetting every time you leave the area is a strong point in its favor.

-I really like the social network! Gives you even more info about the background characters and helps drive home the themes of connection, and it’s heavily incentivized by the wide variety of rewards you get from it. Five of my six pins can be Uber now.

-There was a minute there I thought I wouldn’t be able to progress without grinding Style, but then I realized it only restricts abilities, not what you can and can’t even equip like Bravery did. Yeah that’s a step up.

-OH, and Pin Mastery! Mastered pins counting even if you evolve or sell them! That’s good. That’s very, very good.

-I like how most of the playable characters have their own unique Psych used in the overworld to make up for their interchangeability in battle. Do sort of wish Minamimoto and Neku had their own, but it’s not a sticking point by any means.

-Also how fucking hype was fighting Leo Cantus Armo and then seeing Neku bust in with Twister playing, that was so fucking cool.

-Speaking of Hype...was kind of expecting Tsugumi to do more? In and of itself I don’t think there’s really an issue, I 100% think it’s a matter of her being central to the sequel buildup in both Solo and Final Remix. She’s super sweet, though. ^_^

-As for Tsugumi’s Noise form...well, lolz told me to bring Stone pins and those really trivialize the fight. The first time, at least.

-Someone I do think was underutilized is Ayano. We didn’t get enough from her prior to her infection and that limited the impact. The flashbacks offered during that scenario definitely helped, and I really liked Rindo going through the day trying to talk with Shoka and mentally prepare her, but...they definitely could’ve done more with her, and her being one of the characters who actually dies doesn’t help.

-Neku’s so happy in this game!!

-SHIKI FACE REVEAL!!!!

-I lost my shit when Beat took off his mask, adding him relatively early was a Good Move.

-HACKER RHYME

-I feel like Joshua showing up right out of nowhere would be confusing to new players, but obviously I can’t say that with certainty. Plus, there’s still the Secret Reports, those might explain quite a few things.

-Right, Secret Reports! I actually got one before even beating the game (Report 3), it was after my social network got to 70% completion so I think that was the unlock. I am...nervous about not having a checklist of the unlock requirements this time, but it seems they might be easier to get overall (I got Report 2 just from fighting Go-Go Beringei’s symbol on Easy) so we’ll see.

-Don’t think I see game time anywhere so that sucks, especially since the Switch’s gameplay records are so damn vague.

-Still a tiny bit salty the game didn’t tell me about what the “-” button does right away.

-All the books seem to be in one shop and I quite like that, as well as the whole organization/aesthetic of the Collection menu. I really want to see if I can 100% this game.

-The Graffiti wall is also a cool spin on achievements, even moreso since you can actually see the wall in Udagawa.

-Susukichi’s completed Noise form is tough. You really need to time your dodges when he punches, took me a minute to get that, and taking cover from that massive lightning attack is a pretty cool gimmick. I got massive Ovis Cantus vibes.

-Can we talk about how fucking packed with spoilers that last trailer was? I am of the opinion spoilers don’t necessarily ruin things but that’s a personal choice and holy shit Square.

-Really like how they subtly mislead you in regards to Swallow’s identity. The way scenes cut made me think for the longest time that they’d be the leader of the Ruinbringers, helped by the fact that Susukichi and Tsugumi start just a bit out from Rindo on the social network, leaving just enough space for one character to link them. Then they start making you think it’s Rhyme. Then you get surprised by the final reveal, but it’s a surprise that makes sense looking back. Love it.

-The whole bit with Rindo meeting anOther is also a really interesting juxtaposition with Neku meeting CAT. Both of their character flaws can be traced back to their idols, but in Neku’s case it’s down to his own misinterpretation, while Rindo is just the type of follower Motoi wanted to create. Meeting his idol is a positive experience for Neku, but a negative one for Rindo, yet they both grow as a direct result of the encounter. Super cool.

-In fact, it’s actually Fret whose backstory ends up being closest to Neku’s, despite their wildly different dispositions, that’s nuts and I love it.

-After her speech in Week 3, Nagi might just be the best character.

-They did a hell of a lot with Shoka and I love all of it.

-I said it before but I was not expecting to love Kaie as much as I do. Definitely in the running for favorite Shinjuku Reaper.

-I didn’t expect much from Hishima due to his nondescript character design, but he’s actually pretty cool.

-For Susukichi and Shiba both, they’re complete assholes in different and entertaining ways, but both manage to have a healthy amount of depth as well, I really like that.

-And fucking Kubo! Hated him from the start, but he managed to grow on me as things went, and his final reveal left a hell of an impression. I do sort of wish we got to fight him ourselves, but he got a brutal death and that’s what really matters. Xander Mobus sounds like he’s having fun.

-Haz was a very interesting addition. We’ve been wondering who he is since that final trailer (where they showed the last scene he, a Walking Spoiler, was a part of, what the hell) and I still wasn’t sure what to expect once we did get his name. He definitely gave off the same vibes as Joshua so I thought he might be a Composer (either replacing Joshua in Shibuya or maybe coming from Shinjuku), but the reveal of what he really is was pretty cool.

-Uzuki mellowed out just the right amount, I like her a lot more now.

-Kariya’s pretty much the exact same character and I love that for him.

-Would’ve liked to see Hanekoma but oh well, it sounds like he’s still writing the Secret Reports so that’s cool.

-Oh yeah, Coco. Mmm...I mean I still don’t trust her? It is a little weird that Neku does, but not to a jarring extent? I dunno, I feel like she’s still got a scheme going on...

-Again, fantastic ending, last scene very similar to the last scene of Steins;Gate so that’s a plus in my book.

-And it’s got its own Another Day!! The mention of Tin Pin makes me wonder if it’s the same timeline as the first game’s Another Day, but not sure. All three of the checkpoint bosses kicked my ass so I left to go hunt Secret Reports and fill out my Noisepedia, but eventually I hope to get further into it.

-I wasn’t super diligent with Pig Noise but there’s only one variety missing in my Noisepedia, plus I missed the second level Rex Noise. Other than that and the spots past Phoenix Cantus I just need to try to fill in drops.

-Blond kid spending one of his seven days hunting for seven urban legends really took me back to the KHII prologue, and I’m one of the folks who liked that so I mean that as a good thing.

-”The pigs’ll come sniffing!” Beat knows what’s up.

-The Chapters menu seems to count Scramble Slam rewards towards completion...I am quite nervous about that, seeing as I only got like halfway to the lowest prize every time…

-Commentator Reaper has my whole heart though

-There was one sidequest...W3D1, I think? It said someone in Udagawa needed help, but I ran up and down Udagawa like 5 times and couldn’t see anyone. Did I miss it? Is it post-game? Is the game bugged? Hm.

-But I have done almost all of the sidequests, and I...usually did well on Dive missions. There’s a decent chunk of stuff for me to do in revisits but not too much.

-Where I am right now, I still have some unanswered questions, but a lot of that comes down to specific details I might not mind if they don’t clarify. Still hope they do, of course. I crave knowledge. Time to get back to finding those Reports...

#Pahrak plays NEOTWEWY #NEOTWEWY spoilers

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princehandsome · 6 years

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So, I wanted to make a list of all of the games that came out in 2017 that I actually played, and kind of briefly discuss what I thought of them.

The list ended up being longer than I thought, so the games and such are under a readmore! Everything is pretty much spoiler free, minus some very light, first-hour spoilers I talk about when it comes to the premise of a game.

The main highlights of this list are: Resident Evil 7 is my game of the year, because it’s so damn good, and also it was a really rough year as a Dangan Ronpa fan, because New Dangan Ronpa V3 fucking sucks.

The year kicked off really strong with Resident Evil 7, which I was incredibly excited to play after the electrifying E3 trailer, and the playable teaser. This was fresh off the cancellation of P.T., so there was a big hole in my heart to fill, but Resident Evil 7 knocked it out of the park with ease. The whole experience is so amazing, managing to inject some good survival horror elements into a tired franchise to revitalize it, while not losing that over-the-top, B-Movie Resident Evil charm. The DLC only elevates it, with the Banned Footage tapes being bite-sized additions of the gameplay you love, while stuff like Not A Hero and The End of Zoe changes up the gameplay in fun and amazing ways.

Hitman has never been a franchise I’ve been into, but I decided to try the new episodic version of it that’s come out recently, and it’s a lot of fun! I’m god-awful at stealth games, but the game offers you some pretty cool guided assassination plans, if you’re terrible like I am, while more experienced people can find faster or more elaborate ways to do it, off-script. It’s a lot of fun, and if you’re into stealth based games, I’d definitely recommend it.

Being a recent Switch owner, naturally I had to pick up The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as my first game on it, because, duh. It seems like a fun game, but there’s something there I just can’t get into; maybe it’s not giving me the story fast enough? Maybe it’s the sometimes wonky controls? I really can’t say. The combat is easily my favorite part, but I find myself losing interest when I’m not finding hidden treasure or slashing enemies to pieces.

An extremely controversial game to come out this year was Mass Effect Andromeda, the newest Mass Effect installment and the first one to not be made by the main Bioware team, as far as I can recall. It’s true that a lot of the faces are wonky (or at least, they were on launch, I’m seeing that patches have made them better) and that some of the writing is weird, but I still really enjoyed it. Combat has never been better, and the RPG elements are still satisfying enough to keep you invested. Any game that lets me really customize my character and pick some relatively diverse speech options has my heart from the start, and there really wasn’t anything in Andromeda that lost me. Frankly, I’d love to see this team tackle another Mass Effect game, using what they learned from Andromeda, but that probably isn’t going to be a thing after the reception to it.

Being incredibly into Dangan Ronpa, it may come as a surprise that I’ve never played Zero Escape, so when I got Zero Escape: The Nonary Games as a Christmas gift, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’m barely an hour into the game, but I’m super into it so far! The puzzles are cool and fun, all of the characters are interesting so far, and the plot gives a very effective air of tension to everything happening. This game is definitely going to be what ends up scratching my Dangan Ronpa itch for 2018, but I’ll speak more about Dangan Ronpa below.

Being a huge Persona 4 fan, I was pretty optimistic about Persona 5, which my fiance @shutupshea was really hyped up about. I’ve gotta say, I really don’t care for it. Persona 4 was a game bursting with optimism and love, with tons of warm interactions with total random strangers, and even through the dark events, the main theme of it was friendship, and love, and the different ways that can manifest. The only real theme I got out of Persona 5 was... the world is bad, and people are bad? People in positions of authority will always abuse their power in the most over-the-top, cartoonish ways? Don’t get me wrong, I know that there are a thousand shitty people in a thousand positions of power, but it just feels overly cynical to get beaten over the head with it in every line of dialogue from every single character. The gameplay seems fun and deep, I just can’t really get into the narrative of it.

Being a fan of Outlast, and a super fan of the Whistleblower DLC, I was really pumped up for Outlast II, and it was... okay? It was kind of a mixed bag. On one hand, I think there were a lot of good gameplay improvements, and the overall pacing of the story felt like it moved along at a better clip, leaving me less frustrated. I also thought the ending was much, much better, via having greater emotional impact. On the other hand, I felt like some of the dark elements were... too dark? Not to say they like, personally offended or disgusted me, moreso that they made it difficult to take the game seriously. When you see the fifteenth mass grave, it less horrifies you, and more makes you go “how can there possibly be this many dead people in one town?” Overall I liked it, and I’d recommend it to horror game fans, but it was a lot weaker than the first game, and doesn’t even hold a candle to the Whistleblower.

Prey is a game everyone’s super into, and having played two or three hours of it so far, I’ve got to admit... I don’t super get it? Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun, and it reminds me a lot of the original Bioshock; the design is good, the weapons are varied, there just isn’t anything there that keeps me... super interested, I guess. It wasn’t like Rapture, where it’s filled with all of these incredibly colorful characters and antagonists, it just seems to be goo aliens and your dickhead brother trying to stop you from regaining your memories. I’m assuming some big bombshell is coming soon, but my main issue with it is that the plot feels incredibly... vanilla, in the early game.

I think I wrote a blog post about the original Injustice, which I was gaga over, and Injustice 2 is an improvement... somewhat. The gameplay is good, and the customization of each hero/villain is awesome, really letting you craft a distinct visual and gameplay style. That being said, I feel as though the story was much weaker (until the very end, the last couple of chapters are very emotionally strong) and the roster of characters was a little disappointing. No Nightwing... No Deathstroke... No Doomsday... What’s the point? Overall, it’s a worthy sequel, but it didn’t top the first, in my heart.

I didn’t want to put any remastered games on my list, but the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy earns a spot through virtue of being a remaster of such an old game series, leading a lot of people to play it now for the first time. I’m a huge Crash Bandicoot fan, it was my game of choice growing up, and I still fondly remember playing Crash Team Racing with my parents (where’s that remaster?). All in all, it’s a very competent remaster, with basically all of the weird quirks and certainly all of the difficulty in-tact, and I’d highly, highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t played Crash Bandicoot before.

Telltale’s Batman Season 2 managed the unlikely feat of making me really enjoy a Telltale game, episode by episode. I really loved the first season, it being the first Telltale game I’ve ever enjoyed, but I had to ask myself if I’d still like it if I had to wait 1-2 months in between each episode. Would it hold up, having larger expectations for each episode? As it turns out, it certainly holds up! Having cool and original twists on each classic Batman baddie, a tone and visual style that’s right at home with the best of the Arkham games, and just generally dynamite character writing, Telltale’s Batman is fantastic for fans and newcomers alike, to the whole Batman mythos. Now, where the heck is Deathstroke, and where’s my Batfamily, Telltale!?

Back when it first came out, I played about two weeks of Destiny, non-stop, before I got really bored and jaded. I never bought any of the DLC, because I’me one of those people that thinks that you shouldn’t have to pay money to have a good game, but it got at least a solid chunk of my time, and some good memories with my buddies doing Vault of Glass. Destiny 2 held my attention for about two hours before I went “this is boring” and turned it off.

Never played anything in the Divinity series, but a buddy of mine recommended Divinity: Original Sin 2 to me, as it’s an Oblivion RPG, and it was new, and I could play it for free off of his Steam account. I must have put, I dunno, ten hours into it? It’s an extremely good RPG, but mostly I was put off because, and I’m showing my age here, it just felt too old. I didn’t hate it for that, but eventually there’s only so long I can spend in a top-down view of tiny character models, clicking buttons on a hotbar. There came a point where I just got sort of tired of the gameplay, but if you don’t mind stuff like that, then Divinity: Original Sin 2 is probably like, one of those hundred hour RPGs.

Now, I’m obsessed with Dangan Ronpa. My avatar is Dangan Ronpa, my header is Dangan Ronpa, I talk about Dangan Ronpa almost constantly. It’s safe to say Dangan Ronpa is my favorite franchise ever, even moreso than stuff like Star Wars, and Super Dangan Ronpa 2 is probably my favorite game of all time, despite my misgivings with it. So, you’d think New Dangan Ronpa V3 would be an easy GOTY for me, right? I’ve played through two chapters (the prologue, and Chapter 1) and I got a little bit into Chapter 2, and I reached the verdict, almost right after Chapter 1 ended, that New Dangan Ronpa V3 actually sucks a butt, and is probably the worst Dangan Ronpa game thus far. Whereas other games had very strong emotional cores and casts of characters you instantly fell in love with, New Dangan Ronpa V3 has left me feeling cold on... just about everyone. There are a couple of characters I like, here and there, but for the most part, I just... don’t care about what happens to any of them. Anybody could get murdered, and anybody could be the culprit, and I’d basically feel nothing. I don’t find myself curious about what the overarching mystery is, I don’t find myself pondering the identity of the master mind, I just... don’t care about any of it, which is probably the most damning thing I could say about a Dangan Ronpa game.

On the subject of sequels to games I liked, The Evil Within 2! I always thought the first game was actually pretty good and a lot of fun, and I’ll love Joseph Oda until I die, and the sequel was... pretty good? It falls into that area for me where I think all of the gameplay improvements were great, but overall the story was much weaker, and so were the characters. It didn’t feel as fun or varied as the first game did, like it had the same amount of imagination, but in much lesser quality. Out of the three main bad guys you fight, only the first one is really interesting, and the recurring Anima enemy was the only super memorable boss fight. Overall, it was a fun followup, but I still like the first more.

Doki Doki Literature Club came out of nowhere and took the world by storm, and I’m so so glad I was able to avoid spoilers about it and go in relatively blind. I knew that it had a horror twist to it, so I was expecting it to start glitching out and having eerie stuff happen, but I really wasn’t expecting to get so invested in it. It’s an experience that’ll stick with me for a long long time, and I’ll never forget the best girl, Natsuki. The game is amazing, and if you’re reading this and haven’t experienced it, go do it! It’s free on Steam, and try to stay as blind as possible!

I’m one of those people that buys Call of Duty every year. I always have fun with them, they always keep me occupied for a few months, and I generally don’t have anything bad to say about them. There’ve been some weak years, especially with Black Ops 3 for me, but Call of Duty: World War 2 is a competent little package to bring CoD back to its roots, in both a literal and figurative manner. An emphasis on classes, boots on the ground, World War 2, it’s basically everything the fans asked for, and it’s pretty solid! My only complaint is that I think I’m getting too old for twitch shooters, because my aim and reflexes are getting god-awful, even though I used to be amazing back in the CoD4 days.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2 is an even more controversial game than Mass Effect Andromeda, from Loot Boxes to laggy servers to yadda yadda yadda... I never really had much of a dog in the fight, to be honest. I play stuff like Overwatch and Counter Strike, so loot boxes are pretty par for the course (Counter Strike even makes you pay them to open the box!) and while these boxes did technically give an advantage, I don’t find that the Star Card system allows for anything too wild, as far as power gap due to lootbox elements. By and large, I didn’t care, but it seems as though the narrative of the game has basically become the loot boxes, leaving many people unaware that it’s actually a fun game! There weren’t any paid lootboxes present at launch, so all lootboxes here are earned in-game and in-game only, and usually just contain garbage anyways, so most of what you’re going to be doing is from gameplay too. All in all, it kind of makes me sad that this was the game people decided to rail on for lootboxes (despite so, so, so many other games having them and getting away just fine) instead of holding it up as a massive improvement over the first game. Overall, I still think it has some flaws, but with a full year of free DLC and many features (like trooper customization!) being confirmed to be on the way, I’m really happy to be playing it now. Honestly I think I play Battlefront 2 more than Call of Duty, or... any game on this list. I really really like it.

#games #gaming #too many games to list #i played a lot of fucking games this year

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mcranterreviews · 7 years

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Digimon Links

As of this article, Digimon Links has been out for well over a year in Japan, but has been out for approximately two days in the US and Australia. If Canada is included, I am willing to edit a post-script to indicate otherwise, but mroe important that technicalities is the game itself: is Digimon Links a good game?

Digimon Links is an mobile game, currently found on Google Play and soon available on the App Store for iPhone users. The story is surprisingly engaging: as a user of an app that allows you to communicate with a universe both parallel and directly connected to our world’s internet, known simply as the Digital World. This the home of the eponymous Digital Monsters in the game title. But as your tour of the Digital world begins, “something happens” that results in the Digital World becoming almost completely deleted.

I say “almost” because your guide in the introduction of the game, Hina, uses your mobile device as a quarantine space to prevent the deletion of the Digital World entirely. Now, it’s up to you as the player to raise Digimon to collect data clusters to rebuild the Digital World.

Gameplay-wise, there are a few differing variations: exploring the different servers of the real world in the hopes of gathering more clusters to rebuild the Digital World; rebuilding the small patch of the Digital World by placing Facilities on an island in the style of resource-management town-building simulators; raising and Digivolving your Digimon; and a PvP Coliseum that as of this writing has yet to open. As you progress through Story Quests while Exploring, you will unlock more Facilities and gather more Clusters that you use as the equivalent of in-game currency to upgrade different Facilities to improve what they do. For example, upgrading your Restaurant increases your maximum stamina, which is expended each time you complete a Quest.

The small island you reside over happens to grow meat that allows you to grant small amounts of instant EXP to any Digimon you choose, per piece of meat. Meanwhile, there is a Lab that allows you to train In-Training Digimon by leaving them in the Garden section of the Lab until they are ready to Digivolve naturally. The Lab also houses the ability to perform a Version Upgrade of Digimon, or to Research Two Mega-level Digimon in an attempt to create a new DIgiEgg. If the Base Mega Didigmon has Maxed out its Friendship, the Digiegg will be +1, improving the overall potential of the hatched Digimon.

Digivolution is the game’s way of improving the abilities of a Digimon, allowing a low-tier Rookie Digimon to become a Champion-level Digimon, then an Ultimate, and finally Mega. Literally any Digimon can become a Mega-level Digimon if you’re patient enough. But for those that want a Digimon with a higher level instantly, there is the Rare Capture area. At the cost of 20 Digistones, the Premium Currency, you are guaranteed a Rookie Digimon at minimum, or a Mega-Level Digimon at most. There may be variances based on events occurring at the time; for example, during the first month of the game’s release, there was a special Release Anniversary Megafest Capture, guaranteeing a Mega if you perform a 10-Digimon Capture. There is also the Link Capture, where you spend Link Points to get In-Training Digimon.

But just because a Digimon is a low-tier Digimon doesn’t meant necessarily that it’s not going to be useful. Sometimes, Digimon can also have Leader skills, offering passive buffs to your party when put in the leader slot of the team, or a powerful Legacy Skill, an attack that can be transferred to another Digimon with the use of the Dojo, another available facility, at the cost of the Digimon with the ability you want to transfer. The Dojo also has the ability to add additional elemental resistances to a Digimon you have, by using smaller amounts of Digivolution Fuel and a copy of the same type of Digimon. Next is the Chip Factory, where your Chips will be held. By adding Chips to your Digimon, you can augment their abilities even further and improve your chances in the Quests. The option to purchase Chips will presumably be available in the future, but as of this article’s completion date, they are not yet available.

In the Quests, you take a team of three Digimon into a server to do battle against multiple waves of enemy Digimon. The battles themselves run in a pretty straight-forward turn-based battle system: the top left circle to the upper right of each status box, next to each Digimon’s name, indicates how many attacks until that specific Digimon’s turn. The bar beneath the Digimon’s name is their Health Points, and works the same as HP in conceivably almost any other RPG: it hits zero, that Digimon is defeated. Below the HP is the AP bar, for Action Points, are they are used to perform A Signature and Legacy Skill of your choice. Each time a new round begins, every Digimon gets one AP. Each time a single Digimon’s attack lands with a Critical Hit, they gain an extra AP. The quest continues until the enemy Digimon are all defeated. There is also the Auto-battle button near the upper-right of the screen, which can be useful to getting lower-level digimon to level up via quests in you’re low. But much like a lot of focus-intensive RPGs, if you just set it and forget it, eventually you will lose handily because you weren’t paying attention. Still, if you have an idea of what all the Digimon in a level are weak to Resistance-wise, you can give it a shot anyway.

Afterward, your team of Digimon gain experience points, Clusters, and Digivolution Fuel. They also let your Digimon attain Friendship Points. After set intervals can improve your Digimon’s stats, encouraging you to battle with those Digimon frequently, even after maxing out their level. There are also quests for gathering elemental Digivolution Fuel necessary for Digivolving higher-level Digimon. Eventually, you will gain access to Advent Quests, special quests that grant you access to Mega-Specific Digivolution Fuel.

There are also the Co-Op Quests as well, allowing you to team up with other players and their partner Digimon. This nets you Link Points as well, but it comes with its own unique challenges: instead of each Digimon having their set pool of AP, you share one as a team, and gain 3 AP at the start of each round. To assist communication, you have a set of stickers that can get a simple message across in terms of discussing strategy.Now comes the big question: How does the game balance the Premium Currency of Digi-Stones? How they are balanced can be seen by the purchase screen: 6 digistones are worth 99 cents, and the other amounts of Digi-Stones being sold remain consistent with that selling value. 3.99 gets you 24 Digi-Stones, 9.99 gets you 60, and so on. It’s honestly slightly refreshing not to see a large spiky sticker saying that the best possible value is to spend a ridiculous amount of money on the most possible Digi-Stones. Though to be technical, you get 490 instead of the expected 480; the improvement is absolutely minimal.As for obtaining the Digi-Stones in other ways, you gain 2 for every level you clear in Exploring, and you gain more by completing Missions, such as performing a certain number of Digivolutions, completing an Area during Exploration, and any other things. However, many of the Missions grant you Clusters and Link Points instead. You can also gain Digi-Stones based on the currently-running events in the game as well; by gaining 10 by logging in for a day, and an additional 10 for the event’s occurrence, for example.When you compare it out with the minimum 20 required to obtain at least 1 Rookie-level Digimon, it feels fairly balanced... dangerously so, to be honest. There is a very distinct chance that changes in purchasing habits overall may have an effect of the value of Digistones overall. If we’re being honest, if the amount required to get a new Digimon reduced by a fourth, it would feel a bit more sensible compared to most other games. However, the nature of this game lends itself to dedication moreso than simply just paying-to-win.Overall, I feel my time so far has been enjoyable, and I hope that eventual upgrades to Digimon LInks will provide me with more Digimon, more Quests, and more fun.Digimon Links is currently available on the Google Play Store, with an App Store release pending.

#game review #digimon #digimon links #digimon linkz #linkz #links #mcranter

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balfuset · 7 years

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Mass Effect Andromeda - A Review. Kind of..

So, after a five day weekend of no-lifing Mass Effect Andromeda - and seeing a few friends expressing concerns about it - I feel I am properly equipped to give my verdict without the initial squee factor of fanboyism, so, here goes.

Andromeda is shaping up to be my favourite of the Mass Effect games. Now, that might sound like fanboyism, but hear me out those of you who are going to tell me that ME2 was the best of the series and cannot be topped!

Now, as some may or may not know, MEA was put together by the guys and gals over at Bioware Montreal, previously a 'backup' studio of sorts to the main Bioware studio in Edmonton. Bioware Montreal was also responsible for the Omega DLC for Mass Effect 3 - which aside from Citadel was actually my favourite addition to that game.

Mass Effect Andromeda is Montreal's first 'full' game, though that doesn't mean that they passed the thing off to the B team, it certainly doesn't feel like it!

Andromeda's opening is almost as strong of that of Mass Effect 2, and that's no mean feat considering we had a whole game to get to know Shepard and co, and seeing Shepard die and the Normandy get destroyed at the beginning of ME2 really hit home for a lot of people, myself included.

Despite Andromeda having a whole new cast of characters they manage to get you invested in them from the beginning, and so the events of the first couple of hours of the game hit, and they hit hard.

The writing, in my opinion, is fantastic. It's less riddled with a lot of the cringeworthy, cheesetastic lines we're used to from previous Bioware titles, I remember several groaners throughout the Mass Effect series and haven't really encountered many in my 20+ hours in MEA so far.

Bioware have taken a lot of the things from the trilogy and Dragon Age Inquisition and improved upon them. I think the galaxy exploration part of the game is the smoothest and least soul-crushing version yet. No stupid planet scanning mini-game, no fuel or probe limitations, and no dreary planetary maps.

I have yet to meet a duff character, especially amidst my crew or squadmates. Mass Effect had Ashley and Kaiden, 2 had Miranda, Jacob and the Cerberus peeps in general, 3 had Vega and Javik. I actually like all of my squadmates, even Liam and Cora, who I can see as the two that most people might find the most bland and uninteresting. Sure they have some 'defining' character traits - which I won't spoil - but they at least have character, which is more than I can say for some.

So far, the main plot is tight, and the missions are... intense. Without spoiling too much, I had Collector ship flashbacks during the 'end of Act 1' mission and the decision to be made was TOUGH, at least for me.

Generally speaking the plot is a lot better paced than the previous games of the series too, and, in fact, of Bioware games and even RPGs in general. The original Mass Effet trilogy, Dragon Age 1 and Inquisition and Skyrim all suffer from one blinding problem - there's meant to be this huge sense of urgency of 'holy shit everything's fucked if I don't do this RIGHT NOW!' until you realise that everything is on hold while you pick flowers, scan planets and do whatever other shit you want, which takes you out of the moment.

Andromeda doesn't have that problem, and in many ways I think that's for two reasons - one, the main story arc feels like a slow burn (this is a good thing, by the way) and it feels like you can take time to prepare yourself and ensure the Initiative and your outposts are settled before you move on. Two - the stuff you're otherwise doing is interesting, contextual, and rewarding. Side quests on the various planets are just as narratively important in their own way - being the Pathfinder, helping the Initiative make the best of a bad situation and try and turn Heleus into a home. Are there MMO-style fetch quests? Sure, but they fit into the context of the situations on the planets in which they take place, and they tend to happen AFTER you've done the interesting quests that let you set up your outpost or presence on a world in the first place - where it becomes your colonists needing your help with the stuff they don't have the resources or training to do themselves - whether it be because of outside threats or otherwise.

They make sense, and exploring the worlds between the quest markers is interesting.

Plus, the way quests can go 'On Hold' while you wait for more information or for a squad mate to do some investigation themselves breaks things up in a nice way. Loyalty missions especially benefit from this as it gives you a sense of the passage of time that other games have lacked. Loyalty missions in Mass Effect 2 were a very 'wham, bam, thank you ma'am' sort of experience that hit you out of left field and then were done. This is not the case here and it works well, giving you a constant variety of things to do, and things to anticipate coming back to later.

Now, I can't avoid addressing the elephant in the room. The animation quality. This is what has been talked about A LOT in the run up to release, and... yeah, it's not 100% perfect. But at the same time I've seen worse. Some lip syncing issues, those dead, soulless eyes... after playing Horizon Zero Dawn it stands out. A lot.

Does it detract from the experience? No moreso than some of the weird animation glitches in something like Skyrim, Witcher 3 or Assassin's Creed do! Also, it's only really the human characters that have the major issues - maybe Asari too - the aliens are generally pretty well done, in my opinion.

Gameplay is perhaps one of the game's strongest points. Combat is amazing fun with the mobility provided by the jump jets and the variety of weapons and powers. The profile system is genius - as well as having an in-game explanation - and lets you switch things up basically on the fly. I tend to go between a Tech-heavy and Biotic-heavy style depending on the enemies I'm fighting and the general combat situation - and I can adapt if needs be. The Nomad is a great means of exploration and unlike Inquisition's horse, you still get party banter while driving it, so there's no reason not to. Gameplay and story tie together in a way that works really well. Power in Inquisition was a neat idea to show the influence of the group but I think it felt kind of arbitrary. Viability and AVP (Andromeda Viability Points, not Alien vs Predator ;) ) somehow feel connected because they're integrated into the story. It's introduced to you as a useful abstraction of lives, resources and the like in-game by the characters you meet.

This is a very long post, but I think it needs to be. Andromeda is a big game, as is expected with Bioware and Mass Effect as a whole, and I have a lot of good things to say about it.

I would just like to sign off by mentioning one thing, and that is Liam Kosta's loyalty quest. This is the only one I've done so far but holy shit was it amazing. It is not hyperbole for me to say that it gave me all the great feelings of the 'let's have everyone together' part of the Citadel DLC for ME3, where you're chasing after clone!Shepard with your ENTIRE squad in tow.

That's no small feat.

I don't want to ruin it for anyone else but it had be giggling and grinning like a madman throughout. It was fantastic.

Long story short? Andromeda has problems, but they are not deal breakers for me, and the good things it has MORE than outweigh the bad. I do not regret my purchase, and actually look forward to this trumping ME2 as my favourite in the series if it can manage it. It's already above ME3, and I loved that game - which I consider to be 99% of an amazing game with a sucky last 20 minutes.

#mass effect #mass effect andromeda #bioware #video games #review

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falcon6 · 7 years

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Turnabout Design: Franziska and the von Karma Legacy

Hello, and welcome back to Turnabout Design, a novice’s look at character design using the Ace Attorney series as a base. I am the foppish fool Falcon who flounders and fawns for fictional females, and let us begin. Spoiler Warning: This is going to be covering a character specifically, so there will be story points gone over, mostly from Justice for All.

Even though there’s still a few points I could talk about regarding the first game, I feel it’d be better to go ahead and continue on with the second game of the Ace Attorney series: Justice for All. Considered by some people to be the weaker entry of the trilogy, with a fairly meh first case (Phoenix gets amnesia, whoaaaa) and a - in my humble opinion - lukewarm third case, it still etches itself up to good quality with a pretty good second case and one of the most memorable final cases in the entire series.

And part of that is due to the main characters and their arcs continuing. New characters pop up, old characters get new tidbits to them (Gumshoe having a crush on Maggey while also being a big hero...I should probably get to him at some point), and our main lead has a veritable moral crisis on his hands at the end.

But that’s not what we’re going to talk about today.

So I elected to put off on talking about Manfred von Karma, the first game’s final antagonist (aside from Rise from the Ashes) because, aside from his terrifying presence, he’s actually not a very grand design. To me, at least. I am aware that his design is actually an adaptation of the original design idea for “the rival prosecutor” (Edgeworth), but he never struck me as a very memorable design. A memorable character, yes, but his actual design layout didn’t strike me.

Not to mention, a lot of the deal with Manfred is that his actual character, in a lot of facets, is used to fuel motivations of other characters. He’s the opposing force for Gregory Edgeworth in the past which was needed for his murder, his involvement with DL-6 caused Miles Edgeworth to live with him and eventually set himself down the road to becoming a prosecutor. His involvement with DL-6 is what eventually (non-intentionally) led Mia Fey into law. His role as a prosecutor is used to be the “final boss” for Phoenix for the fourth case. The man’s actions reverberate throughout the original trilogy and beyond, in a lot of respects, but there’s not much to him beyond the need for a perfect record and a calculating, cold megalomaniac.

His child, on the other hand, bears a few of those characteristics along with a lot of time to grow beyond them into her own staple of the series. I’m talking, of course, of Franziska von Karma.

You ever wonder if she ever intends to....draw blood? No? Just me?

You liars.

The Design

So I’ve spent the last few times talking less and less about the actual facets of her design, so I think it’d do to try and fix that. First off, let’s see her silhouette.

A lot of the best parts about Franziska’s design is the lively actions she is able to produce in court. This is mostly due to including the whip into the picture. The whip is one of the most important parts of her design, both due to her character and due to the added action poses it can create. If a character can be defined by the tool they use, that’s a very good thing to consider when designing their poses. You can tell that, when you take the whip out of the equation, you’re still able to tell who she is in a list of Ace Attorney characters, but it’s not as clear if you throw other franchises in.

A lot of times, an external item like a weapon is almost as integral as a piece of clothing for a character. Of course, relying entirely on that for a character’s design isn’t prudent, as the weapon needs to be integral to the design. For example, if Link from the Legend of Zelda series were to not have a sword available, the clothing is still very distinctly him. The hood in particular is almost instantly recognizable, even with every other feature blacked out. And, forgive me, but even the Master Sword is still just a sword to a silhouette.

However, we look at Samus from the Metroid series, we end up having two ‘states’ of Samus. One with her Power Suit on and one without. (I count the Power Suit as a weapon, fight me) With her Power Suit, she is the same Samus we know, who is able to go into the unknown and fight whatever comes her way but without it, not only does the silhouette change but the actual gameplay changes. She can’t go in and fight aliens the same way without her weapon. The lack of her suit makes the encounters she faces more aligned on the side of cautionary, because she can’t deal with space pirates and monsters the same way as if she did have her suit.

Lot of talk to amount to “her whip is important”, huh? It’s a very distinct trait for her design that speaks of her character. She’s aggressive and wishes to dominate her opponent with nothing short of perfection in her case. She uses it to force her will through the court. She uses it for “reward” once with Detective Gumshoe, too. (poor Gumshoe)

When you look at her design, you can see that there are elements of Manfred in her. Compared to Phoenix, her design is more regal looking with a nice big bow and a stylish suit. Her gray hair masks her actual age, to the point that you’d have to hear it from her to find out that she’s actually a young prodigy. Her posture intimidates in court, with animations ripped from her father, yet her fragile ego causes her to lose her cool very fast, which includes a few distraught emotions in her sprites.

She builds up a cool facade with her whip and her dressed-to-impress confidence that she attempts to exude. To her, the impression she leaves is most important, which makes sense because have you ever gotten hit by a whip? She cares about the mark that’s made and aims to make sure her presence is known. And to a passerby, that is exactly what happens, because outside of context she looks like a very scary lady who will absolutely dominate you, in court.

Franziska is obsessed with perfection and control, even moreso than her father was. This is due to having not one, but two individuals she has to live up to. She lives up to her father in terms of name, but she must also live up to her “little brother” Edgeworth in terms of legacy.

Legacy

Now obviously when I say “legacy”, I bet you would say “but wouldn’t she get that from her father, as well?” Well, only tangentially. I personally believe that Edgeworth left a more lasting impression on her character than her father, and it’s mostly due to Mr. Phoenix Wright.

See, Franziska grew up with her father’s shadow looming overhead. To be anything short of the genius prosecutor that Manfred was would be considered a blight to her name. So she focused her energies on doing so, even though she personally admitted to herself that she’d never get to the same level of genius as her father. Still she studied and persisted, earning herself the title of “the Prodigy”.

Soon enough she heard of her father’s defeat at the hands of Phoenix Wright, but that alone did not set her off. In fact, she couldn’t care less about her father’s defeat. It was learning that the defendant was Edgeworth, then finding out that Phoenix had already beaten him twice before despite HIS perfect record, and then learning of Edgeworth’s disappearance (Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death) that set her off on her travels to Japanifornia.

Because she wasn’t facing against Wright for revenge of her father. She was going to prove herself against someone that Edgeworth lost to.

When I think of a “legacy” character, I consider a character that has a torch passed down to them, much like a family line of superheroes. In some ways they retain the same spirit as those who came before them, but they have their own spirit about them. Take, for example, DC Comics icon - and man with most elaborate basement under parents’ house - Batman. A few years back when Bruce Wayne had “died”, Dick Grayson took up the mantle of Batman. While Bruce was more stoic and cold in his style, Dick was more loose in his demeanor. He cracked more smiles and was more talkative. More relaxed. He couldn’t replicate Batman himself, despite how many years he studied under him as Robin, because he realized that he couldn’t do so. He instead took his own take and, depending on who you ask, succeeded in doing the role justice. He lacked confidence as Batman but was more than able to fulfill the role as Gotham City’s protector regardless.

Why I find legacy characters fascinating is the little bits of what is brought from the past into the role of the present and how that can mix well, can clash with other elements, and even be forgotten. Even Edgeworth did this, to an extent, when he was the antagonist of the first game. You didn’t know it until the fourth case, but everything that Edgeworth did was due to what was displayed to him by his teacher, Manfred. Winning at any cost. He sets that aside after the first game and finds his own path as a prosecutor, yet he still retains some elements of his mentor, such as his outfit’s similarities to Manfred’s and his posture when at the bench. Naturally, some elements would have to stay because of his iconic design, but even 7 years later in Dual Destinies, Edgeworth is still using the same posture, and his big change is that he also has an unbuttoned coat and wears glasses out of court.

So going back to Franziska, her main motivator for Justice for All is to “defeat Phoenix Wright”. She goes through the same methods as her father before her, but also took in Edgeworth’s forwardness in understanding the entire case, no matter the absurdity. She studied the Kurain Channeling Technique and even introduced it in the second case in order to prove that, even with something supernatural like channeling spirits which is beyond normal law, Maya would have still done the deed and is still guilty under law. She puts up a potentially damaging photo for her prosecution just to back Phoenix in a corner. In the third case she focused her energies on making sure Phoenix wasn’t getting any evidence she didn’t know about, which ended up costing her the case when she forced Acro out of the room before he could dispose of the murder weapon. And in the time she was involved in prosecuting the final case, she made explicitly sure that Adrian Andrews knew that she didn’t have to testify.

All of this was to defeat Phoenix Wright, who had inadvertently brought himself up as a target for all of her ire. The one who defeated her father and adoptive brother before her. All to stoke her ego.

But, of course, she didn’t.

Try as she did, she wasn’t able to defeat Phoenix. She got shot on the way to court to the fourth case and had to let Edgeworth do the job for her. Even then, she took it upon herself to get the decisive evidence to court just in time to give Edgeworth the win. Finally, Phoenix lost and it was because of her!

And yet, when Phoenix was so happy even after losing his first case (for a reason she didn’t know), she broke. She didn’t understand why he was so happy about it. She tossed her whip aside and left for the airport, to fly far away.

But then Edgeworth came to her with her whip. He spoke to her about what he found out on his trip. About how win records were meaningless. About how Manfred was wrong, and how a prosecutor’s job is to find the truth. She was still a prosecutor, but if she wanted to give up, then he would continue forward and leave her behind.

Handing the whip back to her was an important gesture, because as mentioned, the whip is a symbol of control. When she had it, she had always felt like she was in control of her situation. It was much like a security blanket for her. Handing it back after she tried to toss it away signifies that Edgeworth understands that prosecution is important to her and she needs to find her own path forward like he did.

Telling her that she’d be left behind is also important. It may have been cruel, but Franziska is a character who went through all that effort to overcome her own faults in order to try and surpass those who came before her. She was obsessed with it, in order to stoke her own ego, but she wouldn’t be able to do so if she gave up. Edgeworth knew she didn’t want to do that. She still needed someone to fight against, and being the doting little brother that he is (still like 7 years older), he took it upon himself to stoke that fire again.

And she vowed, in a show of sobbing emotion, that she would return and defeat Phoenix Wright and to become a better prosecutor than he.

Franziska is a great character even though her role as a prosecutor was done because the designers didn’t want to have Edgeworth continue to lose fights due to his popularity. She was brought in as a flawed and fixated prosecutor to further the prosecutor’s role as an antagonist while solidifying that which Edgeworth had proven before; that the prosecution is merely an antagonist, not a villain.

Her emotional weight is believable and sympathetic. Her personality in court is perfect for the role of making you detest her because of how many times she’s able to one-up Phoenix (you) as you go through the cases. And yet her overall character is someone you can’t help but feel for once it’s all over. She’s in a dogged pursuit of proving herself as better than those before her, and Phoenix (you) proves to be an obstacle she can’t overcome.

After Justice for All, she learns to pursue her goals for herself and not for any legacy she was supposed to inherit. She works with Interpol and assists Edgeworth in his own games, but she hasn’t seen much action since. Now that we know what Maya’s been up to in Spirit of Justice, I really want to see what Franziska has been up to in the years since next.

I want to know if she sued Larry for the use of her likeness in his children’s book, “Franzy's Whippity-Whip Trip“.

Conclusion

Wow, she’s tipping Gumshoe $5. That’s probably the nicest thing she’s ever done for him.

Even though her inclusion was the designer’s intent to keep Edgeworth from losing all the time, Franziska was a worthy entry in this series as an antagonist. Her flaws helped elevate her as an egomaniac that eventually made you empathize with where she’s coming from. She’s not perfect and can’t be the same level as what her father was, but that’s exactly what makes her such a good character.

Because true perfection doesn’t exis-

Okay, stop that. Get outta here.

Thank you very much for reading. It was fun to look more into Franziska and remind myself why I really like her. Most of these thoughts are just my thoughts, of course, so if you have any thoughts about her yourself, let me know!

Until next time...

You foolish fools.

#Turnabout Design #Ace Attorney #Franziska von Karma #Blog #Ace Attorney: Justice for All #Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All

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luckykhuxguide · 7 years

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I'm really worried about continuing in NAUX because of this draw... you've recommended to switch to JPUX before. Moreso now...? Is this the final straw?

I don’t blame you anon. I have my doubts on continuing with NA KHUX as well. As I said in my rant post regarding removing the guarantee, if Square doesn’t give us back guarantee for premiums, I am deleting NA KHUX from my phone and quitting.

From a JP KHUX player POV, I would say this is the last straw if Square doesn’t give us back guarantee draw for premiums in the next new draw for premiums…people shouldn’t continue especially since the bonus point HSE medals are ONLY the new medals. I think it is safe to say that if NA KHUX doesn’t give us back guaranteed medals in the next draw for new premiums, we’re relying on luck to obtain KH2 Kairi Illu. [M] in the future and that’s just ridiculous. Whales will continue to make KHUX harder for f2p to catch up and there is no downside to playing JP KHUX aside from the language barrier, especially if you love the gameplay.

In terms of catching up quickly, maybe you can if you switch over now? There is no 0 AP campaign or guilt bonus going on but KH1 Kairi Illu. [P] is in the premium 10 medal draw and you are guaranteed to get 1 of the old premium with each draw! All the premiums in the current draw for Terra Illu. B [P] are all very good, though the worst is probably Sora Illu. [P] because he’s REALLY outdated, but still good for a newbie. If you love the KHUX gameplay but can’t stand how NASE is treating f2p in NAUX, definitely switch over, or at least start playing it and do the daily jewel mission (super easy, only need to battle level 30 enemies unlike the hell NA KHUX gives us) so you can have SOME jewels saved up on a JP KHUX account if you decide to fully switch over to NA KHUX.

As a fair warning, your strategy for playing JP KHUX is slightly different from NA KHUX because you want premiums and not tier 3 guilt or event medals. It is really common to see decks full of premiums now. Rare/good skills, like Atk up L 100% or SP+ related skills are given to premiums. Attack boost 2 are given as a temporary skill for premiums and are often overwritten because we get them all the time in Coliseum. But aside from this, the buttons are the same as NA KHUX! There are SOME medal difference, but you will find JP KHUX much easier than NA KHUX thanks to guilted partner premium medals as well as better solo and party rewards.

On a side note, a JP KHUX party member of mine suggest that we split up the current JP KHUX party in half so we can have newbies who join JP KHUX can join the second party so you’re off to an easier start with a guilted premium as a partner medal. (Maybe we start kicking out members once they guilt 2 premiums so more newbies can join? idk. Will be cycling party members in my old party to the new one for medals or something maybe. XD) It’s a good idea but there are some risk involved, as I would like to rank in top 50 party wise during RB weeks that give out Zodiac crowns and M&Bs. So that means if splitting my old party in half is not good enough to have us rank in top 50, the second party would be rather “temporary” as one week out of the month won’t be available since I would like to go back to my old party to obtain the gold Zodiac crown and M&B. If you guys are okay with this idea and everything, let me know via asks or comments so I can discuss this with my party leader and members.

~ Lucky ★彡

#KHUX #JP KHUX #Switching to JP KHUX #Question #Anonymous #Opinion #Please let me know if you want a temporary party #Lucky ★彡

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heysnowflake · 5 years

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Sims 4 Questions

1. What is it about the Sims franchise that draws you into playing the game?

Being able to build with so much control and creativity. Also being able to live vicariously through my sims is a big seller.

2. Are you working on a build right now? If so, what are you building and why?

I am currently working on a recreation of Barbie’s Dreamhouse from the netflix series ‘Barbie’s Dreamhouse Adventures’. From the first episode, I just fell in love with the house. It is such a different take on a Barbie dreamhouse. It truly gives you the sense that the house does exist, whilst still being a complete fantasy. Unlike most barbie houses, you actually get a feel for the scale and the floor plan, whereas others would often have endless closets that just couldn’t exist and didn’t appeal to me. I love how, because it’s with Barbie’s whole family, it’s a proper family oriented house with every colour imagined used within. And the rooms are so inventive and quirky, I just had to build it. I’m currently around, I want to say 3/4 way through and it is easily my favourite build I’ve ever done. Will be creating the whole family soon, including the puppies of course. And then will also make Ken and his house, and the Reardons for their neighbours so that I can fully enjoy my gameplay. I’m also thinking of making Barbie’s friends too to really fill out Del Sol Valley.

3. What is your favourite feature that was introduced in the Sims 4?

I’m someone who never properly played with the earlier Sims games. I played with Sims 2 and 3 with friends but I’ve never actually owned the game myself and played hours on end of it. So my knowledge is somewhat limited where those are areas concerned. But what I have noticed is that the building tools are far more flexible and cross-neighbourhood travelling is much simpler which really enhances the gameplay.

4. Which life stage is your favourite to play?

I have always played as a young adult, they’re my favourite to control as I feel like you can do the most with this age. But I do love having pets and children in my family.

5. Do you like completing challenges? If so, which ones have you done?

I have yet to do any gameplay challenges but I have done a fair share of building challenges which I have thoroughly enjoyed. I’ve done the strictly black and white build, I’ve recreated many existing/fictional houses as a challenge for myself (like I’m currently recreating Barbie’s Dreamhouse for my save file) and I’ve done a few budget builds like creating starter homes and large houses under 100,000 simoleons.

6. What are your current top five packs?

Seasons, Get Together, Cool Kitchen Stuff, Parenthood and Cats & Dogs (that was extremely difficult and I hate that you made me do that).

7. List your top three favourite packs from each pack category:

Expansion packs: Seasons, Get Together and Cats & Dogs

Game packs: Parenthood, Jungle Adventure and Spa Day

Stuff packs: Cool Kitchen Stuff, Laundry Day, Movie Hangout, Perfect Patio and Vintage Glamour

It all varies depending on which style I’m into at the time, but the packs I’ve mentioned easily have my favourite gameplay and build and buy items.

8. What pack would recommend a beginner to purchase first?

As a first pack, I would always recommend an expansion as they offer the most gameplay and items to build with. Sooo...... It’s a tie between Seasons and Get Together. Get Together if you’re more into modern items and hanging with friends. Seasons if you’re more into family time and traditional country houses.

9. Name three gameplay items you’d really like to see in the Sims 4:

I’d love a proper sized telescope that I can place in someone’s room, a cinema screen where you can book certain movies to watch and visit with snacks (I get that you can kinda do this with movie hangout stuff but it’s not the same as an actual cinema), and a mini golf course.

10. What kind of world would you like to see next in the Sims 4?

I’d really love another world that is based around animals. In particular, I reeeally want an farm expansion pack. So we’re talking building your own farm, you can own and ride a horse, flock sheep, take care of pigs, get milk from cows etc. And the whole world could be very country-esque like Cats & Dogs, but instead more land and you could have grocery shops that only sell fresh food. You could live somewhere else but then also own a farm that you can visit/work at. OR!!! I think a Zoo expansion pack would be amazing. Like we could get a new zookeeper career, take your kids to the zoo, feed certain animals, watch animal shows. And the build and buy items could all be animal themed.

11. If you could create and release your own stuff pack, what would you make?

I would 100% make one of two packs. I’d reeeeally like to collab with Disney and release an official Disney stuff pack. Have some really versatile furnishings with plenty of swatches, but also include some very clear disney items. Like disney character toys, disney bedding, maybe even give kids disney vhs tapes where they have to rewind them before they watch the movie. Just little things like that. But one I’d really love to make right now is an actual Barbie stuff pack. Especially if you base the stuff pack on things in the netflix series ‘Barbie’s Dreanhouse Adventures’, you could get so many versatile furniture pieces that all have this modern yet 70′s vibe(each one having every colour swatch available, including pink). You could have iconic pieces like an actual buildable elevator that you can stick in any house, a computer with multiple screens, barbie’s official pink and orange bed spread, a twisty slide, a trampoline, a 3D food printing machine, an inside children’s train that children and pets can ride around the house in… I feel like there’re so much potential there.

12. What are some particular build and buy items that you would like to see in the next patch?

As in the aforementioned, I would like to see a buildable elevator. We’ve seen that they can make them in City Living, but I want to be able to have a working one in my house, rather than just simulate one with clever building. Preferably, I’d love two versions- one that is walled, and one that is windowed, both with many swatches. I feel like four squares (2x2) is the best size as it’s not too big or too small. Another one I’d like to see is spiral staircases. I feel like, moreso than the elevator, this is one the community has been asking for for a while. And whilst the configurable staircase tool they created is genius and I use it all the time, I’d love a simple spiral staircase that fits all wall heights and has a variety of swatches. Another build item I’d like is one I’ve seen in customer content. As someone who plays exclusively on console and never wishes to play on a computer, I rely heavily on packs and patch updates. So I’d really love them to add in infinity windows. Essentially, these work similar to some rugs where you have two items of the same window- one being either end and one that is the glass in the middle. That way, we could have windows that run across the whole wall seamlessly. Another window related feature I’d like is where we have windows that adapt with the line of the roof. For example, in many modern builds, you see windows that cut off at an angle in line with the roof, and I’ve love a tool in the Sims that can help me recreate that. Talking of roofs, I’d like to see an option where we can sledgehammer the inside of the roof so that we can have angled ceilings. And whilst we’re also talking about ceilings, along with having the option for an angle, I’d like to be able to change the colour of the ceiling. I know I’m not a programmer, but I do feel like these are all features that could easily be implemented into the game. As for buy items, I’d simply like to see more swatches of what we already have. We have plenty of furniture, but just give me more swatches of that furniture piece so that I can use it more. Though I would love a nice and simple, large, round dining table.

13. What’s a pack you’ve been waiting for?

I am currently waiting for some sort of farm expansion. Although, whilst I’m in the Barbie kick, I’d love something to do with Barbie. Particularly in the Sims 4, I feel like everyone has created a Barbie house at least once in their life, in one way or another, and would benefit from a Barbie pack.

14. Do you have a least favourite pack?

I don’t particularly hate any packs but there are definitely ones I don’t use or only use for one thing. Realm of Magic for example, I haven’t even delved into the gameplay and I’ve only ever used the items in one build because that build was specifically for a witch. Spooky Stuff pack is great for when you want to experience Halloween and they have a great wooden floor but that’s basically about it. Strangerville, I’ve never even bothered with the gameplay but they do have some nice windows.

15. A pack you feel is underrated?

I don’t think it’s as much now but I feel like Get Together gets extremely overlooked when their game play is genuinely fun and you get a great array of items. I also feel like Spa Day is underappreciated by some people. Like their wallpapers, floor swatches and build and buy items are some of the most versatile that we have in the game. Plus, being able to do various relaxing exercises with Sims is really fun.

#sims4 #sims #sims 4 questions #sims 4 buy mode #sims 4 build #sims 4 build and buy mode #sims 4 questions tag #sims community

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