#and i had like. no noticeable glitches in my playthrough and i had so much fun. what are you people talking about

[sonknuxadow]

i havent looked into pokemon scarlet and violet all that much but everyone is saying its a glitchy mess and ive seen people compare it to sonic frontiers saying sonic frontiers is boring and unfinished and glitchy like pokemon and like. What. you people clearly just hate sonic and wanna make fun of it at every opportunity because what the hell

[heartsforhavik]

yandere kung lao I’m begginf,,,,

self aware! yandere kung lao x reader pt.1

warnings: mk1 story mode spoilers, obsessiveness, gender neutral reader, ooc kung lao, self aware kung lao

summary: kung lao is aware he is in a video game, and he just loves you so much. he just wishes he didn’t have to be behind a screen.

a/n: anon im so sorry it took me a bit to get to this, anyways i decided to mix it up and make kung lao self aware bc i thought my yandere hcs were getting too repetitive and i am also a diehard SAGAU fan. (also sorry for my mini break, finals week is crazy man.)

part 2

- kung lao *hated* being stuck behind a screen. behind a stupid wall. away from you.

- you were just a regular mortal kombat fan. when mortal kombat 1 was announced, you were just so excited to get your hands on the game.

- you watched playthroughs before you could buy the game, and you were so happy when you found out that you could play as kung lao in the first chapter of story mode.

- when you got your hands on the game, you noticed that every time he had a funny one-liner in the story mode, he would look at the camera and wink. that’s weird… he didn’t do that in the playthroughs you watched… but oh well, it’s probably nothing.

- in the final battle you even chose to play as kung lao out of all the fighters. he was surprisingly easy to use, and his moves seemed to hit even harder than usual and the fights would be over in a blink of an eye. maybe he was buffed just for the fights?

- and when you finished the story mode and checked out all the skins and rewards you got, you noticed that you somehow had all of kung lao’s stuff unlocked. all of his palettes, skins, brutalities, etc. everything. you owned all of it. even the ones that weren’t out yet.

- you thought it was just a glitch, so you shut your device down and restarted it. but when you opened it again, his stuff was still there.

- and it got even weirder. when you tried to practice, the game only let you use kung lao. for some reason, you couldn’t use any other fighter. you couldn’t even use any kameo other than kung lao.

- he was still your favorite character and all, but that was weird. you tried to exit out of the game and restart it again, but it wouldn’t shut down. the game stayed on. it was frozen on kung lao. and he seemed to just stare at you. as if he knew you were there.

- you were starting to get creeped out, so you completely powered off your device and decided to leave it disconnected overnight.

- but over that little period of time, even though it was only a few hours to you, it felt like an eternity for kung lao.

- he felt hurt. a bit betrayed, even. did you not like him anymore? was he not enough for you? he gave you everything he could. he did everything he could to show his love for you, since he cannot communicate any other way.

- without you playing the game, he felt nothing. he couldn’t feel your warmth. it was nothing but a cold, dark space. he needed you. he needed you to always be with him. even if he couldn’t communicate with you, he’d figure something out.

- that’s why he was changing the coding of the game. he had to always be on your screen, or at least give you hints that he was self aware. he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if you weren’t looking at him. if you weren’t using him all the time.

- what do you mean you want to main johnny cage? or raiden? or even syzoth? what do they have that kung lao doesn’t?

- you liked the powerful fighters? no worries, he can just nerf everyone else and completely manipulate the coding of the game so he has the best damage.

- you thought the other fighters were more attractive than him? he’ll change the game so their designs were ruined and less pleasing to your eye.

- he would mend himself to your liking. he just needed you to use him. please make him feel important and useful. make him feel worthy of being your main. your favorite.

- if anyone became your favorite instead of him, he would go ballistic. he would rethink his entire existence. he’s so strong, and funny, and easy to use. so why would you choose anyone else? what’s wrong with him? is he not enough for you?

- if kung lao found out you wanted to start using a different fighter, he would erase them from the game. they would be nowhere to be found. their image in the game would be warped into a bunch of blurry pixels.

- if he has to erase the entire kast of fighters, he will. he needs your love. he needs your attention. if he isn’t your favorite, then what is the point of his existence in the game?

- kung lao needs you. and you need him too. why can’t you see that? he’s done everything he could to gain your approval. he was already so great, but he changed himself for you. accept him. please.

- the last thing he would resort to is bringing you in the game with him. what better way to stay by your side, than force you into the world of mortal kombat?

- at first, he didn’t exactly like the thought of taking away your freedom, but the more he thought about it the more he craved your company. why stay behind your screen when he can just bring you with him? now, you don’t have to turn your device on and off! he’s not going anywhere. and you aren’t either.

[expirisims]

Back in Isle of St. Bernie

Hi everyone! I am finally getting around to at least one or two posts in my queue. I have been beyond busy and on top of that my little one is sick so my simblr has had to take a back burner. I can't tell you how much I've been wanting to get more posted AND get back to my game and working on Pickerling Cove! Anyway, enough of my personal life, we are back in St. Bernie with the Garret family!

This is a family I have made in literally every version of the Sims I have owned! I happened to find them on my old flash drive when I was searching for the old builds for Pickerling Cove and thought this would be the perfect playthrough to drop them in! Tom is at the highest level of the Military career and Nan, his wife is a socialite, though through free will she's taken on some collecting for extra cash which I am not opposed to because they live in one of the most expensive homes on the island along with their two child wonders, Jill, a teen and Joe, a child.

And we can't seem to escape drama in the sims! I know I directed Andrew to break up with Remi when she kept blowing off his proposal, but honestly, these two were never a really cohesive fit. Oh Andrew, it's time for you to move on!

And here we have little Joe Garret who wasted no time changing into a costume to visit the family fun center I built. A Center of Fire and Ice... Sadly, I can't make him the child prodigy he was in past games because apparently children can't play the piano??? Is that a thing I've never noticed or is my game glitched? Are there mods for that?

And the rest of the fam! Tom and Jill seem to be catching on quickly! Nan isn't quite as athletic, but she's holding her own just the same.

What!!?? I moved Korey in with Angela and her roommates seeing as she's carrying his child and he's hooking up with one of them! Does Angela mind!?

Nan out to collect some claw machine prizes I see! See ya Joe! It's probably getting close to your bed time anyway!

Looks like everyone else stayed behind. Wow! Tom is REALLY getting good at skating! Too bad there's no roller derby in the Sims!

Lol! Joe is a clean freak! He's in Jill's room making her bed for her!

Apparently Tom is RIPPED! LOL! I forgot I made him like that! I didn't have any mods way back in the day so I basically couldn't see what any of my sims actually looked like!

Seriously Jill! That's your swim suit??!! Whatever floats your boat I guess!

Nan finished chores and ended the night in the hot tub while Joe played games and Jill joined her father in his workout.

[ajdrawshq]

Hey so after an intense amount of fishing and banana peels I decided to play the epilogue as a palette cleanser and discovered the island might be back now?? So ty for sending me on a fishing journey bc I would've never noticed.

The reason i say this btw is bc if you don't point out the dialogue during a loop to the daydreamer about her sister, she just seems to think hard during the party b4 returning to daydreaming. HOWEVER, if you did she asks the elder if she had one. The elder says she doesn't think so but her memory isn't what it used to be and asks her why to which she says she dreamed of one. She then describes her sister and the elder interrupts saying that the sister would say she'd travel the world and see every country on earth. When the daydreamer says thats exactly what she said in the dream and asks how she knew. The elder says she's not sure but I can see you having one, that they can imagine it vividly which makes the daydreamer happy. AND NOTHING SUDDENLY GLITCHED! THE UNIVERSE DIDNT REWRITE THEIR CONVERSATION!!?? So yeah ty for sending me on a fishing quest!

OH YEAH!! i got that during my first playthrough, i didnt know it was missable tbh :0

im not sure if id take it as confirmation that the island has fully returned, since the daydreamers memory (and the elders memory, who knows if its old age or the other thing) of her sister is still a bit off, but theres possibly something going on here thats.. more lenient ? about peoples memories and perceptions regarding it and/or connections to it. either that or that conversation was indirect enough that it didnt require being rewritten.. idk!! shits weird!!

the situation w the island and its very (non)existence is honestly super interesting to me bc its like. its not completely, physically gone, is it? during act 4 after beating the king if you have sif look outside towards the sun, they can see it - if only briefly, since they stop themself before the universe has the chance to. so its. still there?? but what happened to everyone else who lived there, besides the few we know about? the daydreamers sister didnt just cease to exist, did she? sif had parents, and other people they knew there, what happened to them? are all the former residents end up just.. wandering around random areas unable to remember anything, like the king? did some actually disappear? but theres still physical proof of it in written form, so thats unlikely.. probably.. but the land itself is still there, somehow, so.. ?????????????

didnt mean to get into all that here cksbksjs anyway ur welcome!! :] its so fun to find new things in this game theres SO much stuff hidden away that u dont even think to look for, especially when its by accident!! what a game .........

[spinningbuster98]

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles (Knuckles) Part 2: Knuckles hates the circus

Now I know that unlike Sonic he doesn’t chuckle (yeah sure), but what does Knuckles have against the circus? I don’t understand why his treck through the stage has him pretty much skip 90% of the thing, was Carnival Night just not designed with him in mind?

Other than that though everything else is fine, ice Cap I like how his act 2 focuses on the bottom portion of the stage and I like how different act 2 of Launch Base is with him. It’s appropriate that he gets to fight two versions of the miniboss, after Sonic only fought one with the other two being left inactive if you noticed.

What’s less appropriate is me dying all of a sudden for no good reason because Knuckles just happened to clip through the floor as I was falling

Ok let’s go there

If we wanna talk about an “objective flaw” that Sonic 3 has is that the game is...honestly pretty damn glitchy

Now I know full well that the whole “Sonic is a glitchy, rushed mess of a series lol” take is something that Sonic fans are sick of hearing but...guys there is a degree of truth in that statement and it cannot be denied. Sonic games, even in the early days, have always had at least a certain degree of rough edges. Sonic 1 and 2 were pretty minor with this, at worst there were some physics related shenanigans but nothing too noticeable. Sonic CD was pretty problematic though, with some winky collision detection at points and noticeable slowdown when things got too hectic

Sonic 3 might just be the worst of the classics in this area and Sega must’ve known this because even the International manual mentions something along the lines of Robotnik setting some traps that might be impossible to escape from without resetting the game....which is a cute way of saying you might get softlocked while playing this and I can confirm

Now I don’t wanna say it’s as bad as Sonic 06, but every time, every SINGLE time I play Sonic 3 SOMETHING happens. Whether it’s my dying for no reason at all like what happened here or in a previous video while in the Death Egg, me getting crushed for standing too close to a crusher even though I wasn’t actually crushed by it, clipping through some terrain because I was going too fast forcing me to restart (this happened recently to me twice during another Knuckles playthrough I was doing, during Hydrocity Act 2, and another time it happened while I was messing around with the Hyper Dash as Sonic) and my most detested and frequent occurence: coming at a complete stop while rolling in some specififc loops or up some small hills which is the absolute worse: you lose all momentum and speed for no reason in a game that’s all about momentum and speed

I don’t know what it is with Sonic and glitches, the obvious answer that most on the Internet would give is that Sega likes to rush out games and that Sonic Team is clearly incompetent, but while there is truth in the former statement (as I’ll touch on later), the latter just doesn’t make sense to me: you may use this explanation for current Sonic Team, but this is the Sonic Team that brought us the original games, Sonic 3 itself, glitches aside, is one hell of a game, these guys are by no means incompetent so what happened? Honestly I think it’s partly due to Sonic’s inherently speedy nature, which makes it way easier for physics related bugs to occur.

Honestly for as much as I love Sonic 3 to death I...don’t really have a defense for this. When I was a kid I would rationalize the bugs as this just being an older game, but not only were Sonic 1 and 2 not this buggy, no other big game from this era had all of these issues. Super Metroid, Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, Mega Man X,all of these games do have glitches (as all games do), but they’re mostly minor stuff that you have to go out of your way to trigger and can actually be beneficial for speedrunning. If someone were to play this game for the first time and call it mediocre because they happened to run into these bugs frequently...I wouldn’t know what to tell them. I personally believe that Sonic 3′s overall design, gameplay, music and presentation are so top of their class that it allows me to mostly ignore the rough parts, but depending on one’s own sensibility regarding glitches this might not be enough.

Of course I do have an idea as to why Sonic 3 is so much buggier when compared to its predecessors and I believe it’s mostly due to its complicated development and it having to be split in two halves and I really wanted to focus on the latter part

Whenever I hear someone talk about Sonic 3 split nature they usually go “oh man lock on technology was so cool!”

And I’m like: they split a whole game in two parts and made you buy both of them. They sold you an incomplete game only to sell you the rest later on. This is almost the same shit companies like EA and Ubisoft pull nowadays, had the 90s had DLC that’s what Sonic & Knuckles would have been. People trash modern gaming for this, and rightly so, so why does nobody ever talk about this? And I’m not saying all of this because I want to bitch about how “Sega bad” and get a free cookie from Sonic Twitter, I know about the context behind this game, I know about Sega’s deadline due to their deal with McDonalds (which, unless I’m missing some details, feels very stupid to me and proof that Sega’s decision making was pretty faulty even back then) and I know about the difficulties of putting the whole game on a single cartridge without skyrocketing the manufacturing price. Game development can get insanely complicated and messy and I genuinely have respect for Sonic Team for the quality of the final product, especially given the overall conditions in which they were working.

But in the end there’s no getting around the fact that consumers back then had to essentially buy two games to get one

Sonic 3 alone cost about 70 bucks in North America back then

(This is from a magazine from 1994)

I couldn’t find similar data on Sonic & Knuckles but I think it’s safe to assume that it had a similar price tag, meaning that, if you wanted to buy the complete Sonic 3 experience, you had to fork over roughly 100 dollars at the very least. Keep in mind: this is all without taking inflation into account

Now some might say that none of this matters anymore because nowadays you can buy the whole game cheaply off of Steam or something. I find this logic flawed: when judging a game you need to at least take into account the context in which it was made, as that was the only frame of reference that its devs could have while making it as nobody could predict the future

Let’s put it this way: consider all of the beyond half finished trash that some companies nowadays like to throw on the market, while patching it like a year later or something. Now consider that some of those games might get rereleased 30 years from now more cheaply and with their full content from the get go. Would that suddenly make everything ok? No? Then not even Sonic 3 should be excempt from this

Now I’m not saying all of this because I wanna imply that Sonic 3 is actually bad and a cash grab and Sonic was never good yadda yadda

I’m saying that while Sonic 3 the videogame is, from a qualitative standpoint, a phenomenal experience, one of the very best videogames from the 90s (though with some noticeable rough edges), Sonic 3 the commercial product was pretty shoddily, and perhaps even greedily depending on how you wanna look at things, handled. This is an indelible part of the game’s history and I think it should be talked about. For the past years I’ve seen Sonic fans bitch and moan about the prices of games like Forces or Superstars because they’re too high for games that are so short and clearly rushed etc. And they might even have a point or two but I find it absolutely unfair that Sonic 3, which has the same issues in this regard but on an even bigger scale, is never mentioned, purely because it came out when all the people who are currently bitching about the industry’s problems were kids who had their parents but them stuff and this kind of discourse was practically non-existence. It’s a matter of fairness is what I’m saying

[darkx-the-dragon-kn1ght]

Pokémon Reborn Screenshot Let's Play: Chapter 8

Hello hello, and welcome to 2024 everyone! The world is strange and still chaotic, but one of the many constants in this life (or, I should say, my life) is Pokémon! And if you’re here for this next installment, then chances are it’s at least some sort of constant in your life too! But after the excitement of the last chapter, it’s time to wind down at least a little bit and move on to some new plot developments!

In addition, it has been brought to my attention that my game might be at least somewhat…bugged. You might have noticed that, in the few screenshots featuring the Pokémon’s moves, some of them have missing type icons. This hasn’t been that big of a deal, I mean knowing the typings of moves is more or less second nature to me. But I was also informed that- well, remember how I talked about the layout of the Field Notes app and how I thought it was confusing? Turns out, it’s not supposed to look like that- there’s supposed to be more text, but on my game some of it is just…missing, I guess.

This also isn’t that debilitating, and as far as I can tell it’s only some of the move type icons and the Field Notes text that are glitched, doesn’t seem like the UI is messed up anywhere else. So, I’m gonna keep trucking along even with those bugs, I can handle it; if it gets worse, like really worse, then I’ll consider more drastic measures to see if it can be fixed. Maybe this can be like a form of challenge playthrough. Nuzlockes? Monotypes? Forget all of that, bugged UI run is where it’s at!

But before we see the new stuff, how about we go over those other developments, hm?

In preparation to take on Julia’s Gym, we went out to catch some leftover event Pokémon, starting with Bloom the Budew thanks to the Rose Incense.

We catch Twig the Bidoof in order to evolve it into Bibarel for a trade with the one Street Rat, but are interrupted when we walk by Dr. Pharmacist again, now with a much shorter line to contend with.

A thug steals Dr. Pharmacist’s remaining painkillers, and since he cannot leave his last patient unattended, he asks Xera to go chase him down.

While searching for the thief, Xera runs into a pair of Team Meteor Grunts plotting to “liberate” someone’s Pokémon (something to be dealt with later).

Xera manages to find the thief and defeats him in a battle, forcing him to return the stolen goods. Dr. Pharmacist commends Xera for her work and fortitude, finally introducing himself as Corey.

Twig is evolved into a Bibarel, which we trade with the guy to obtain Shimmer the Munna.

Xera also catches Crescent the Teddiursa- the same Teddiursa that had been fleeing from her since she first arrived in Peridot Ward.

In a house to the north, Xera defeats the two Meteor Grunts from earlier, who were attempting to steal a woman’s Igglybuff. Concerned over whether the Grunts would return, the woman gives Igglybuff to Xera so she can protect it, and thus we obtain Kirby the Igglybuff.

Behind the Electric Gym, we find a present that an old man had misplaced. As thanks, he ensures that Xera will be “showered in presents” in return, and he gives her Claus the Delibird.

After giving a bit more money to one guy, Xera is able to access a house in an alley, where she finds an abandoned Minccino; we catch it and name her Trim.

That night, Xera goes into an apartment building having a power outage due to a Pokémon sucking up the electricity. This Pokémon is none other than a Grubbin, which we catch and name Prong.

With the party all filled out and trained (including Bloom evolving into Roselia, respectively), Xera steps into the Electric Gym for the first time. She defeats the Trainers within and solves the puzzle (read: she blows up a bunch of gates with Voltorbs), gaining access to Julia’s room.

Before challenging Julia, we head back north to pay the Magikarp thief those 500 Pokémon Dollars for the Pokémon’s return. Predictably, he does not uphold his end of the bargain, revealing he and the salesman were actually in cahoots to scam Trainers.

Xera defeats the two in a battle, but it’s revealed the thief can’t give back the Magikarp- because it was stolen from him for real, by a pickpocket who fled to Obsidia Ward. Something else to be solved later.

With some final training (including Riptide evolving into Croconaw), we return to the Gym to actually challenge the Gym Leader.

Julia engages Xera in her first Gym Battle in Reborn. After a lengthy and tense battle charged by Electric Terrain, Xera emerges victorious and earns the first Badge of the Reborn League: the Volt Badge.

Outside, Xera encounters Victoria. After congratulating Xera on her win, Victoria mentions the situation in Obsidia Ward regarding the plants apparently growing out of control. She wishes to go there and help, and suggests Xera do the same.

So that’s what we’re gonna be up to now! All signs point towards Obsidia Ward being the next destination, and I for one am excited. Finally, we’ll get to see some new sights and characters after spending so long in Peridot Ward! Will this go well? Will it go wrong? What kinds of new Pokémon will we encounter, wild encounters or static/event ones? And most important of all…will we be able to spend even more time with Victoria? We’ll have to see!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13

Part 14

Part 15

Part 16

[loveislandthegame]

Babe if you can't complete Kassam route before the deadline, someone called Sound something covered every single scene of his route. Anyway, congrats on getting the 🦄 I tried it but alas.

yes, SoundNo3485 on reddit ! i have mad respect for their dedication in covering so many different routes. especially with the bugginess of the OG app (and all the damn ads, because the airplane mode trick doesn't work. that's the only thing i like about the new app) they've posted scenes i've never come across before, it rlly amazes me how detailed season 2 was.

kassam was my LI while s2 was airing, so i managed to unlock him back in 2019 ! (time flies, doesn't it?) after that, i couldn't get it to open again , i've always just dragged him back to the villa. so i'm like, ridiculously happy i unlocked his route again lol

if you (or anyone reading this) want to unlock kassam's route: there is a guaranteed method of getting him . unfortunately it's extremely time consuming (FB is so trifling for only giving us two weeks notice) the game is glitched out so the "actual" way of getting him (being a shy/chill MC) is pretty much impossible, but we can use those glitches to our advantage. what matters is the casa guys' heart scores, nothing else. hearts from previous playthroughs get stored in the game's cache, so:

before casa amor, play however you want, seriously, you can do anything. (if you're wondering what i did, i was with rocco until he gets dumped, then i was with henrik. unlocked marisol's route, fixed all the drama, didn't participate in operation nope)

once you're in CA, wear the free outfits to prevent getting hearts from arjun and felix . pick all the mean options for them too, you'll need to get a bunch of frowns (when it comes to carl, i think he always likes MC ? at least in my playthroughs he does, but i pied him off as well just to be careful)

flirt with kassam and elijah at every opportunity. yes, both . their routes are connected for some reason. more importantly, elijah has to be your bed partner if kassam's route isn't unlocked. if kassam rejects you, you'll most likely be stuck with arjun or felix, whichever casa guy has been hounding you the most. it's way easier to get on elijah's route, even if he doesn't say your name. as long as you pick all his heart options, his route will open during the speed date . (i like elijah too, he's such an underrated LI)

pie off elijah when he eventually starts talking about bringing him to the villa (sorry luv) choose kassam for brunch and then drag him to the villa, keep increasing his heart score for a few days. another important thing, if you care about scenes being out of order, don't kiss, don't do bits, don't take gem scenes for alone time. blah blah blah. his first kiss is where he reads your palm. his first alone time scene (on the swing) he talks about taking in the moment/meditating (imma be real, idk what the steamy scenes look like cus i don't pick them lmaooo🖤🩶🤍💜)

the unfortunate and time consuming part, you have to hit the "restart show" button. one time! no more than that. some people on the LITG subreddit have had luck with just restarting to day 14, i'm not one of them . you can try it ofc, but it's very finicky. restarting the show works 100%

again, play however you want. (i pretty much did the same stuff as my 1st playthrough, except i was with lucas after rocco leaves) while you're at it, check for signs that heart scores carried over. one immediate way i was able to tell is: in my completely brand new playthrough, i picked the shy and neutral options, so bobby didn't step forward for my MC. second time around, with thee same exact choices, he did.

once you're in casa, kassam and elijah will be the ones that say your name ! yay ! wooo. i cheered when it was elijah staring at MC instead of felix . there's a funny scene during the speed date when you're on their route. elijah lingers after the buzzer goes off, kassam walks up to yall and tells him to move. anyways, ask kassam to share a bed and he'll say yes . unicorn acquired

[paleopinesofficial]

Hey! I'm the anon that talked about the partical glitch, the dirt harvest effect! Those are what are bugging out, and what I mean by that is that's what they def are supposed to be like but not what I'm seeing. The bug I'm getting is that effect happening but way higher in the sky (like starts at head level and goes a bit higher), a lot bigger, more transparent, less to no mud/dirt chunks and rapidly appearing and disappearing. (Basically big spontaneously appearing and disappearing dust clouds) I currently have to start up a new game due to circumstances but I'll try to get a video and send it to y'all when I can!

Dirt harvest anon again (I am so sorry for so many asks and that this is a long one), I've started my new game and am just beginning it but have been basicly speeding my way around the valley to the spots that had been causing the bug. The bug I was talking about has not appeared to the extreme that it had been before which pushes me to think it might've been from the patch (I'm not good with time frames so if my first ask was before the patch was active then another theory I have will be talked about later) but I have been noticing another one and it makes the pond being a place of glitchy madness make more sense in a way? At least I've seen it in other games, when picking the colvers around the pond and looking at the pond the water glitches out and disappears and reappears rapidly till the dust animation is done. I've had a few similar to my first glitch observation but to much lesser extremes but if my theory of it being the patch that caused it to happen isn't right it could have been the other seasons causing it, since I'm doing a brand new playthrough I can't tell till much later. I have taken two videos of me picking stuff up as requested and caught quite a few. Where would it be best to send y'all the videos? (one video has my voice in it explaining better the glitch I had initially so if it's like an email or something more private to send it to that'd be great, or I can rerecord the glitches since for the ones in that video I basicly know what is happening to the point I can easily or even accidentally recreate it that, are on that video or just completely get rid of it's audio) Also this is such a small potatoes glitch so I hope y'all feel no pressure from these asks, the game is glorious and y'all have been workin real hard on it and it shows and omg is that appreciated!

Please don't apologise for getting in touch- we really appreciate you SO MUCH for helping us repo these issues to fix. Videos would be FANTASTIC for our team to see what is happening- if you're able to, can you please send them to katy@italicpig.com?

[rottenbrainstuff]

BG3 playthrough: still stuck in the Tiefling camp, and an amazing roleplay experience

(Spoilers)

First some quick notes, but then I want to talk about how this game is really making me get into *actual* roleplaying in a way I’ve never had a game do to me before. (I’m not sure why my phone keeps capitalizing Tiefling and I’m too lazy to correct it)

First of all: I am never going to leave this Tiefling camp, there’s too much to do and too many people to talk to. The Absolute is going to overrun Faerûn and I am going to still be sitting here having gruel with Otka and playing my violin for the kids.

What am I going to do if I run across another area that makes me this emotionally invested?? It is going to take me years to finish this game at this rate!!! (Well, this week I’ve had a bit less time to play though, which has also really slowed the progress down)

Hey a quick note: there was a little glitch for me with the Auntie Ethel conversation. I introduced myself to her as my tav, and got Astarion’s approval when I told her about our tadpoles, because he thinks it’s delightful how demented she seems. Then I talked to her again using a different character, got the same conversation, and got a SECOND Astarion approval. (Didn’t work again with subsequent tries) Someone told me you can do something similar when you pet scratch. Nice little bonus.

Ok anyways the main thing I wanted to talk about was the crazy fact that I am actually roleplaying in this game, getting emotionally involved, and legitimately able to make what feels like natural and realistic decisions based on what my character would actually do, rather than… you know… interacting with the game feeling very much like a player. Oh ok, here’s the conversation, here’s the normal dialogue option, here’s the smart dialogue option if my talk stats are good, and here’s the evil option, which is always bad to choose because it messes up your game. And I know, because I am a player playing a game, I should pick the normal option. This is how games always go.

Me and my friend were talking about our extremely different reactions we had to the Druids in the Emerald grove, and why.

So the Druids have been letting the Tiefling refugees stay there, but the welcome is wearing thin. Supplies are running low and goblins keep trying to attack. Now with the old leader of the Druids missing, the next highest in command wants to finally kick these Tieflings out. The current leader is creepy and militant, but mostly the other Druids range from “following orders” to “ok-ish”.

You have been told Nettie the healer might be able to help remove your tadpoles. She’s being a little evasive at first, but it’s because mindflayer infection is serious business and she wants to protect her people. After she realizes you are not going to be a threat, she confesses that unfortunately she actually doesn’t have a way to heal you. Their absent leader might though. She gives you a vial of poison and says she needs you to swear to take the poison if you start to change into a mindflayer, because if you transform in the middle of this grove you are going to kill everyone. You must swear: if you don’t directly swear it to her, she will become hostile and start a fight.

My friend who is playing is terrified of transforming into a mindflayer, and he likes Nettie, so he took the poison and promised sincerely.

In a normal game this would be the “good” route and the one I would normally take, because I am a computer game player playing a computer game and the goal of the computer game is to make the good numbers go up. Right?

My experience of the grove though has been very different from my friend’s. I am playing as a dark urge seldarine drow who is trying to be a nice guy. The Druids have been rude and racist to my character, which I’m sure he’s used to, but the contrast between that and how the Tieflings are friendly and welcoming to me is very noticeable. I had a conversation with the pickpocket kids about how people say lies and racist stuff about Tieflings too, just like they do with the drow. My character has been spending so much time getting to know the Tieflings in the grove, mediating arguments, playing with all the naughty Tiefling children, doing sleight of hand tricks for them, watching them pet Wyll’s cat familiar. (I need to be really clear, I’m not simply imaging that these activities are happening, this is flavour that is actually programmed into the game, ie the kids do literally follow around my cat and make comments about it)

So I get farther into the grove and find some frantic Tiefling parents being held back by Druid guards. Their daughter has been taken away because she stole something, (which she only stole because she thought it would prevent the Tieflings from getting kicked out of the grove, and anyway, it’s since been returned.) and they won’t let them see her. The Druid guards are, as always, being rude and racist to me, and my tav is getting angry at the way the Druids are treating his new friends.

So he goes to talk to the Druid leader, and is absolutely shocked to find she is threatening a Tiefling child with a venomous snake. Yes the kid stole something but I have to say again: she stole it because they are going to die on the road if they get kicked out, and the damned item was returned anyways. The leader is a real nasty piece of work, and when she saw me she even said that she feels this must be a good omen, having a blessed child of lolth visit their grove!!! First of all, yikes lady, but also: Lolth-sworn drow are different from seldarine, my kind rebels against the more brutal and merciless lolth-sworn, this was NOT a good comment to make to my character. By this point in time, my tav is absolutely fucking done with these fucking Druids. Yes, objectively speaking, most of the Druids are not terrible and I can see their point, but I felt like my tav in this specific situation would be feeling quite angry and hostile at this point.

So then we get to Nettie. The very first words out of her mouth to me are that the last time she saw a drow, it tried to cut open her belly, and did I have any plans of doing the same? She brings us into the back and there is a goddamned dead drow laid out on her table. I guess it attacked them and they’re studying it because it also had a tadpole infection but goddamn.

She is being evasive and asking a ton of questions. She confesses that if she decided she didn’t like us, she was going to poison us with this little thorn branch she was holding. Then she holds out the poison and demands that I swear to take it.

As a player, I know the best option is to swear, just to get her to shut up. It makes the good numbers go up, and that’s what it’s all about, right?

But my tav in that moment - I felt like he would have absolutely lost his goddamned temper. I’m doing a dark urge run and he’s trying his hardest to not hurt people horribly, but this has pushed him over the edge of his patience. The Druids have been shit to him, shit to the people he’s come to like so much, they’re dissecting another goddamned drow over in the corner, and this woman is sticking poison in his face and telling him to swear to her that he’ll kill himself. He told her fine he’ll take it, but she says that’s not enough, you need to SWEAR to me. You know what? No, he’s not! He refused, she started a fight and attacked us first, and I switched to non-lethal damage and I knocked her out.

This wasn’t just me making a fun decision on my own, like, oh: I have decided on my own, because there’s no game dialogue for this, that my stardew valley farmer is lonesome and feels like an outsider which is why she gets along with Elliott. This is like. Actual things happening within the game that are provoking a legitimate emotional response from me, and I am able to respond to it in a realistic way. When Kagha called me a blessed child of lolth, I had dialogue options to be offended by it.

I am, once again, just absolutely blown away. My friend and me were talking about how we’re both playing “good” characters but how our game experiences still have been so different that we had completely different reactions.

I think that’s absolutely amazing. I can’t remember any game I have ever played ever where I was able to actually get into the roleplaying aspect as much as this, and feel like I was making choices totally based on what my character would do, because this situation was utterly unique to the experience of my friend who is playing the exact same game.

I’ve only really scratched the surface of act 1 here. What the heck else is going to happen by the end?

[milktian]

I think an easy way to solve the 'halsin joined way too late for him to be a meaningful companion' thing would be for him to have become a proper companion after the grove stuff had finished. That way he wouldn't have been an npc for the majority of his story, and it could have been an opening for a much more developed relationship with the player character.

I understand why that's not why it is, because from what I know, the reason Halsin became a companion in the first place was people thirsting over him in EA (which valid I did too) which meant that he hadn't really been written as a companion up until the end of Act 2 and Act 3 which is a Thing itself

(A bit more of a vent generally about act 3 below the cut)

A lot of stuff is rushed ESPECIALLY in Act Three + the epilogue, which I feel could have been easily sorted if they had spent a little more time on it.

Don't get me wrong, I love it to bits but when you've done like two completed playthroughs, you start Noticing things that could've been better. This is even more emphasised on the 'what could have been' aspects like that werewolf halfing companion I heard about.

I think im getting to the point where I kinda stop on my playrhroughs before act 3 because, as much as found it enjoyable initially, there's alot of bugs and glitches and also the ending + companions epilogues Aren't Great.

I even thought whilst playing back to that one post (that I cannot find anymore someone please tag the op so I can give proper credit) that the Act 3 stuff would've worked better being in Act 2. Like, you get to the city, which is where the majority of the companies stories are heading aside from finding a cure. You find out about the elder brain there, deal with orin and gortash, and then make your way into the shadowlands to deal with ketheric + fight the elder brain in the mindflayer colony.

Obviously there's ALOT that would need to be shifted around - like shadowheart's quest for example, and the tiefling stories etc - and I am not a game dev in anyway but idk having the shadowlands as the final place feels more thematically appropriate? If that makes sense

I really do like baldurs gate and I it is super fun to play it. It's just like,,, Act 1 and 2 were so, so strong like the initially areas + quests, and then Ketheric's introduction got me so hyped. Then you get to Act 3 and it really feels like that horse meme, yknow?

Idk I need to go to bed lmao

[maryellencarter]

(this post largely drafted last night before i went to bed)

OH MY FUCKING GOD I FLURRIED REVALI :D

okay so i remembered that "hyrule warriors: age of calamity" had a demo, so i downloaded it on my big switch (i had previously downloaded it on my switch lite and Not enjoyed it on such a small screen, it made me motion sick) and found i enjoyed it much better on a tv that holds still, so i went and bought the game

and basically the conceit is that it's a prequel to breath of the wild, which happens a hundred years after an apocalypse called "the great calamity", and this game happens during the run-up to that apocalypse, hence "age of calamity" -- except with a time-travel twist, so you go in *thinking* you know how everything happened, but then you start to notice events that aren't quite the same.

I honestly wouldn't recommend playing it if you don't already know Breath of the Wild. The story is very much a prequel, and most of the big moments rely on you going "oh fuck I know what's about to happen" or "oh my god what just happened I was expecting something completely different".

The emotional heart of the story especially, which is *amazing* -- I haven't played nearly that far yet but I've watched a complete playthrough, which is why I knew I'd enjoy it (there are a couple of *extremely* spoilery scenes especially that, to me, make Breath of the Wild's story significantly better in retrospect)... where the fuck was I? Right. It does its best to stand on its own, but in my opinion you really have to have seen all the "memories" in Breath of the Wild that tell the story of the Calamity era, in order to get the full impact of how certain moments play out differently.

The playstyle is mostly not at all like Breath of the Wild, although it retains a few core concepts. In Breath of the Wild, you generally fight one enemy at a time, or camps of about six to ten at worst, and it's completely open-world once you leave the tutorial -- the top speedrunners in the world will beat the tutorial level in about thirteen minutes (no one has yet discovered a glitch to let them skip the tutorial, but if anyone ever did, the fastest time would suddenly drop by about ten minutes), spend the next four minutes getting to endgame location Hyrule Castle, and fire the final shot in the final boss battle at about 24 minutes after gaining control of the player character, Link. It's very much focused on exploration and discovery with some combat on the side.

Age of Calamity is what they call, if I understand correctly, a "hack and slash" combat game -- you face thousands of weak enemies at a time and basically zoom around annihilating them with overpowered moves. To balance the challenge, there are several mini-boss battles in almost every level -- even the levels where my best time is two minutes or less have 2-4 minibosses. You have to defeat the minibosses using some strategy and timing techniques and some special moves (mostly drawn from Breath of the Wild) along with clobbering them.

One of these techniques is the "flurry rush" -- if you predict your enemy's attack correctly and time a dodge at precisely the right moment, time slows down around you for a bit, and you get to hit the enemy a bunch of times in a row without getting hit back. The timing/dexterity required on these dodges can be extraordinarily tight -- I'm absolutely crap at them in Breath of the Wild, but I'm doing surprisingly well at them in Age of Calamity, which is to say I've successfully done at least a couple dozen since buying the game a few days ago, compared to like one total that I remember in Breath of the Wild (other than the ones in the shrine that teaches you how to do them).

SO. Point is. Other than the "hack and slash" basic style and the Breath of the Wild combat elements, Age of Calamity is built a lot more like Lego Star Wars than anything else I'm familiar with -- it's got a fairly linear structure, you play the main story in order (with little sidequests that unlock after each mission), and all the levels are repeatable. You play each level the first time with one or some of a certain set of characters, but then if you get a character that's unlocked later, you can go back and play most earlier levels with that character. (If you have more than one character in your party while playing a level, which not all levels allow, you can hot-swap between the ones you're playing, also very much like Lego Star Wars gameplay.)

There are something like 22 playable characters, I forget if that's including DLC or not, and some of the later unlocks are quite spoilery for major game story points, but it's no secret that the first seven characters are from Breath of the Wild -- the player character Link, the titular princess Zelda, Zelda's sidekick and BFF Impa, and the four "Champions" who (in Breath of the Wild timeline, anyway) died during the Great Calamity and whose spirits guide you through the four dungeons, called Divine Beasts, each of which has a boss fight against the evil being that killed its Champion.

(The Divine Beasts are notionally giant war mechs, but in Breath of the Wild they function solely as dungeons, and their mech capabilities only show up in cutscenes. In Age of Calamity, there are a few dedicated levels where you play as each mech, which is a hell of an experience and was the first part in watching the playthrough where I went "I need to buy this game eventually".)

The Champions are each from a different... species? Ish? Link and Zelda are both Hylians, the closest to baseline human in the games, and Impa is a Sheikah, which I'm not clear whether it's a species or a race of human or Hylian, but they all have white hair and are known for building elaborate technology full of secrets. (The Divine Beast war mechs are attributed to ancient Sheikah builders of a time period 10,000 years before Breath of the Wild.)

The other four species, or whatever they are, are Gorons, who are roughly spherical rock people who live on a volcano, eat rocks, and generally roll around like the stereotype of armadillos instead of walking, although they do have arms and legs on a roughly humanoid body plan; Zora, bipedal shark people who originally started out as enemies in the Zelda franchise but have been friendly for several games now, and are firmly friendly in these two games; Rito, human-sized-ish bird people who, in the great tradition of animated bird people, use their wing pinions like fingers (this is especially noticeable as they're famous archers); and Gerudo, who are a culture of eight-foot-tall iron-bikini-wearing human-like warrior women with truly improbable waist-to-hip ratios.

In the base Breath of the Wild game, since it's mainly focused on discovering things in a random order at your own pace, there was about enough room in the story for each Champion to have one personality trait (and one superpower and one trademark weapon, which you inherit after beating their dungeon). So the Goron Champion, the white-bearded Mighty Daruk, is jolly and overenthusiastic, with the superpower of becoming temporarily invulnerable; Urbosa, the Gerudo Champion, is the most badassful of all the Gerudo, and controls lightning; Revali, the Rito Champion, is overconfident and smug, and can fly upwards on a personal updraft while other Rito can only glide; and Mipha, the Zora Champion, finds herself in the unfortunate position of being the designated love interest and designated healer.

(You know how a video game for a presumed male audience that includes a romance element might have that one girl the game really pushes the romance with, who's very sweet and demure and probably shy, likely fills a support role, and has a really specific voice type, kind of... musical almost to the point of breathlessness? That's Mipha. It's not her fault. :P She's also a fish lady with tits -- admittedly subtle, but definitely there -- because... game devs, man.)

The DLC for Breath of the Wild included a storyline called "The Champions' Ballad" that fleshed out the Champions a bit more, beyond the flashback apiece they got in the base game, and Age of Calamity fleshes them out a *lot*. I already loved all of them except Mipha -- like I say, it's not her fault, it's just that everybody else has a voice with oodles of personality and she has That One Particular Voice, very much like Liara from Mass Effect, that sets off every bit of romance repulsion I've got. Plus, her whole added personality in Champion's Ballad was "jealous of Zelda for being the girl Link is bodyguard to and therefore goes around with all the time", which didn't fucking help. But in Age of Calamity she gets to have conversations with other characters besides Link, and because of the way you can mix and match all your characters, you can even get her to have (mostly not voice acted, but well written) little interactions with the other female characters -- Zelda, Impa, or Urbosa being my options so far.

Anyway. Where I was trying to get to in this here essay. Other than Mipha, I do love all of the Champions a lot in every appearance they have. Daruk is very loud and friend-shaped, and also his temporary shield of invulnerability helps me out a lot, because I'm a klutz in video games and very bad at not getting hit.

Revali is that character who has to point out at every opportunity that the player character really isn't all that, which makes a lot of people hate him (especially since he pairs it with pointing out that he himself *is* all that). Me, having seen myself be the player character since the beginning and smack into walls and die repeatedly to creatures with one hit point, I will basically always agree with that character that they have some valid points. Plus, his voice acting is the perfect blend of snotty but exasperatingly lovable, and he has what I personally love best out of maybe all the music themes in the game. Plus, his superpower is the only one that's useful outside combat -- his personal updraft is extraordinarily useful for exploration in the cliff-heavy, slippery-when-wet world of Breath of the Wild.

And Urbosa is just... really badass, also really well voice acted, protective of Zelda (whose deceased mother was her close friend), and I mean. She controls *lightning*. I wasn't sold on the Gerudo designs in Breath of the Wild, or in the Zelda franchise in general -- they're very swaybacked with giant hips and tiny waists (with six-packs), and the positioning of their iron bikinis sort of on top of their arched-out chests makes them look like their boobs are attached wrong. It's definitely a fanservice design for people who have different tastes in fanservice than I do. But actually getting to play as Urbosa, whose weapon tooltip says that her combat moves "resemble a beautiful dance"... they really fucking delivered on that description. It's like the perfect balance of power and grace. I've been replaying all the levels as her, trying to master her moveset, because she's very, very gender. I don't know if it's just that I feel more comfortable dodging as her or what, but all or almost all of my "flurry rushes" so far have been as her.

So *anyway*, of the levels I've unlocked so far, four of them are the recruitment missions for the four Champions. Two of the Champions, Mipha and Daruk, agree to join you right away, but you have to help them clear their territory of attacking monsters first. Urbosa has a brief introductory battle against her soldiers (for reasons) before you get to take over and play as her for the rest of the level.

And Revali... oh, Revali. So his core personality trait in Breath of the Wild is that he really hates not being the player character, and resents Link for being the player character, which in Breath of the Wild is because Link was chosen by the semi-sentient(?) Master Sword, the weapon required to defeat final boss Ganon. He doesn't actually break the fourth wall to bitch about it, a la Deadpool, but he gets as close as he can in a non-fourth-wall-breaking game.

In Age of Calamity, of course, Revali *is* going to be a player character, and also you don't get the Master Sword right at the beginning of the game because it would be way too overpowered (and also there's a fucking amazing battle and cutscene later leading up to the point where you do get it, which really makes it feel earned). So the game sets up his contentious relationship with Link differently. Specifically, his whole recruitment mission is based on the "for reasons, he's convinced we're the people who have been attacking his people's home, so he's going to kick our collective ass". It's actually justified very well as part of the time-travel plot.

SO you spend this whole mission battling your way through the Rito army to try to get to Revali and explain that you're not in fact here to attack the Rito people -- the win condition is literally listed as "Clear up the Rito's confusion", which cracks me up -- and then you fight Revali himself as the level's final boss. He's a zippy little bastard, constantly airborne, very hard to hit, and because he's supposed to be your own level when you meet him (although I always overlevel ridiculously), he packs a ton of health. Urbosa can knock out most other bosses at that level with a single snap of her fingers, the way I've got her overleveled, but the same move only damaged Revali by about a sixth of his health.

So! That part where you have to predict the enemy's attacks in order to dodge them? Revali is *so damn fast*. He barely telegraphs anything. He starts to draw his bow and before you can twitch you're flat on your back. (This is pretty true to the draw time and power of the bow you inherit from him in Breath of the Wild, just exaggerated for the faster-paced nature of the Age of Calamity combat.)

BUT. I was playing this boss battle last night, Urbosa versus Revali, and I fucking flurried him! I had him on the ground, and I was interspersing clobbering him with dodging around, like I do when I play Urbosa, and one of my dodges landed just right -- it was luck as much as anything, I absolutely do not have the gamer reflexes to flurry Revali on purpose -- but I managed to knock him down from half health to zero with that one move, so I feel pretty damn accomplished. ^_^

[shadowonwater]

Pokemon Scarlet Playthrough part 16: getting lost in the land of fog and sparkles, meeting Kori's evil twin and also a robot lady, and fighting an evil time machine, Main Story Complete

Playthrough Masterlist

So I went to Research Station 3 and I'm on my way through the cave to 4. I ended up getting lost and going around in a loop. I was like "wow it sure is taking awhile to get to that last station" I was lost

Me and Arven fight a Great Tusk just like we did in the dessert. And Nemona was jealous we already fought such a cool Pokemon. And Penny was rightfully concerned with wondering how it got out.

So we chatted about Koraidon. That not only was it an ancient Pokemon but it was the first that Sada brought into the future. I imagine that must have been wild for the big guy. Apparently two were brought into the future and the other one should be at the lab. I wonder how Kori will react when it sees the other... I'm a little worried to be honest. I just get the feeling somethings wrong.

I now get why Arven was so hostile to Kori. Kori is connected to why his mother left. Arven's whole deal is just a constant stream of "that's rough buddy".

Anyway talking about the other character's parents... Penny's dad sounds great! Penny is like one of those kids who finds anything their parents do annoying and/or embarrassing. They sound really nice. Nemona's parents seem ok but not great like Penny's. But I called it that her family was rich as fuck. I mean did you see her house?! Same could be said for main character's house. They are both huge houses and are like right next to a beach. They are also far away from the town. Rich people. Also Nemona's dad is involved with Rotom Phones. I have... feelings about Rotom Phones that give me a very negative impression on him for that. But that's entirely based of headcannon that based off the fact that Rotom Phones kinda give me the heeby jeebies. They just have bad implications when you really think about them.

So afterwards I got lost as fuck, ended up doing a whole ass loop. Before winding back where I started. It was then I noticed the cave and was like "oh, I was suppose to go there." Cave is pretty as fuck. Look at all them crystals! I also caught a Scream Tail and a Flutter Mane! I finally got to catch some of those ancient Pokemon and I'm excited to catch some more!

Penny mentions the crystals might have a connection to tera and I'm like "duh". And then I keep trying to walk but my Switch ran out of power so it's plugged in, so I'll give it a moment then get back to playing while it's plugged.

Well instead of the short break I intended, I jammed out to some of this game's OST on Youtube, then I went and had lunch. We've opened the last lab, I haven't gone in yet.

So the cave area is so freaking beautiful, love all the crystals and the shallow water so much. The ground being a dark purple really helps those crystals pop! The cavern at the bottom is so big! Took me awhile to explore it. I found two different small caves, one had a crystal in it. I've been taking some screenshots as I've been playing along because it's so pretty.

So we get to the 4th lab, and clearly something is wrong. There are crystals growing inside and it looks like something had rampaged it there. Sada goes all glitching and freaks everyone out, it looks like Arven may know what's going on.

The journals speak of the other Koraidon being aggressive. I don't think I said this before but I've been suspecting that my Kori's trauma has to do with the other Koraidon. And this journal backs it up.

The journal also mentioned a partner of some sort who left around the time Arven was born... perhaps the Violet Professor? and/or Arven's father? It could also be Clavell though, since he seemed to be aware of what Sada was trying to do with the time machine. Maybe even Geeta. But my best guess is Arven's father.

Well Sada was having a hard time getting people to work with her and she was losing funding I think. She wished she could be in two places at once. I suppose this is her motivation for what she did.

skipping ahead, I move to unlock the gate. The other Koraidon shows up and is an ass, just as expected. When it sees the door opening it sees that as a more important priority. Why? I'm not sure but I guess it wanted to get in. A bunch of Paradox mons come out. THis would have been a great opportunity for horde battles or at least 2 v 2 but alas we got none of that.

Penny and Nemona go chasing off after some that ran away. I'm not sure why they're so worried, this place is huge, and I don't it'll be too big of a deal if they get out. Well anyway Arven's going to hold them off and I have to go through the door, see you soon.

Ok so uhhh... beat the game have much to say. Lots of shit happened, some expected, some not.

So I go in the door and I'm like "oooooo, spooky dark tunnel". I must say this before I continue. I knew already by this point that Sada was an ai and that the real one was dead, it was spoiled to me. When I saw Sada's body out of the corner of my eye when walking towards the end of the tunnel I was wondering if Pokemon had enough balls to show a dead body, because I thought that was her body. I didn't know the ai had a mechanical body, I thought it would just be in a computer. Another thing, I assumed the ai would be evil, I was wrong.

So Sada bot starts up and is like "oh your here, good". So she tells me she's a robot and that the real deal is dead, and died in the messed up Research Station 4. It's unclear how long that happened ago. She could have been dead for a long time and no body knew. But it also could have been very recent. I wonder what happened to her body... this is gruesome but was it eaten by the asshole Koraidon or something?

Well Sada Bot wants me to help destroy the time machine. So I find that the original Sada would have been a huge fan of Jurassic Park. She just loves ancient Pokemon, thinks they're cool as fuck and that having them around again would make the world a better place. So she straight up builds her time machine. Problem is she didn't consider the ecological disaster that would happen if these Pokemon got integrated into the rest of Paldea. And I'm like "you have a good point".

So the two of us go to the crystal room where the giant ass ceiling time machine is. And I find out the reason she needed the book, and I was wondering, was because it had an id card needed to stop the machine. Anyway the crystal room is crazy and beautiful, holy shit. But yeah she's like "btw the time machine will probably posses me to fight you" So I turn it off, or rather, try to.

So first fight. I've heard that Sada has a killer theme, and they were right, this theme slaps. I like how her speech has weird characters and numbers in it to show her being glitchy. My fight went pretty well, she gave me a good fight, but nobody fainted. I was reasonably good at guessing her Pokemon's types. I even knew the typing of two of them because I caught some myself. The way she just stands up their on the pedestal is really cool. And she just casually drops the extremally rare Masterballs down to the ground like they are nothing.

So first battle over, and I think the thing is over. My friends show up and are like "what's going on, Sada are you ok?" Sada is not ok. All our Pokeballs got locked, I heard mention of this when looking around at Sada's stuff in the other room. Well all Pokeballs except those registered to Sada. I'm like "Ah, It's time for Kori to shine!" And Sada herself goes kind of Tera and has these crystals growing on her. I know she's a bot, but that's still really freaky.

Kori's evil twin shows up to fuck us up. And don't forget, Kori's Evil Twin was the one to kill Sada in the first place while it was trying to attack Kori. The Evil Twin means business. So I toss out Kori and he goes into battle mode and I'm like "oh man, the boss has a big health bar and all I have is one Pokemon." Anyway my beginning attacks didn't do much but then the game let me Tera him and I start using Tera Blast. Suddenly the other Koaidon tears apart like a wet paper bag. I take it down in two shots.

Sada bot is in control of herself again and she sees Arven and fueled by Sada's memories she's all like "wow my son has grown so big!" And Arven realizes his mom is dead, that's rough buddy. So Arven says something about his mom putting her time machine work over him being an understandable and I'm like "NO! Her son should have at least shared equal priority! Your mom just kinda sucks" Honestly, Robo mom is both a better mom and a better person in general than the original.

So Sada bot is like you can't stop the machine so long as I'm here. So I'm going to fulfill Sada/My dream of going to the past. And the characters are like "noooooo" and she's like "byeeeee" and she goes into the light, literally. And when she's gone the machine stops functioning.

At this moment a thought ran through my head. One that made this whole thing very confusing. You see the paradox Pokemon were here because Sada made a time machine. But it seems to be the Scarlet Book that inspired her, at least to some degree. The Scarlet Book came out a long time ago. So how the fuck did Heath see Paradox Pokemon?!? They truly are a Paradox. The best guess I have is that maybe the time machine wasn't pulling everything into the future all the way? Like in it's attempt to drag some Pokemon into the future it dropped the ball part way through and they just wound up in Area Zero.

Another thing I want to get into... there's still a lot of mystery surrounding Area Zero. What the hell is Tera energy? Where did it come from? Sada was just using it to power her technology, there's got to be more too it. It looks like it came from a meteor that created the crater. Also what the hell is [redacted].

Another thing I want to bring up that crossed my mind.. I have compared Area Zero to Area 51 because of the danger and secrecy. It's not the best comparison though, since the danger of Area 51 comes from humans not nature. No a more aft comparison is Area X from The Southern Reach Trilogy probably better known as Annihilation. Since the danger is more the area itself as well as the wildlife. And also the fact that there is clearly something unnatural about this place.

So back to the story, we all decide to go home. We share a nice scene where we strong arm Arven into taking a nice long walk. Credits Roll. It's very odd to hear an actual pop song playing and not video game music. We cut to my dorm room and I'm called to the Clavell's office along with my friends, and immediately I'm like "who snitched?"

We could have all kept quite about it but I guess some people found out about it anyway. We don't get in trouble despite sneaking off to a place off-limits. But only because we saved Paldea. Nemona wants to put on a tournament and Geeta wants me to be a gym inspector, I hope all those gyms bring their A-Game. Also as I expected, Penny has to help patch holes in league computer security. And Penny's like "But I haven't watched my anime yet." Geeta smiles but it's a threatening smile and Penny is like "ah! I'll do it now!"

And so I head off to fight some gym leaders, there still things to do like the tournament. So this isn't the end of my playthrough yet. See you next time! Hasta la vistar! Toot-a-loo!

[lord-radish]

Top 5 Media Experiences of 2022

???

Snapcube's Ratchet and Clank 3 playthrough

DanganRonpa 1 and 2

Dar Williams

lord-radish

First of all, I liked all of her RnC playthroughs a lot. I loved it when she sold Clank for 640,000 bolts, and the tangent about Ratchet going over to someone's house and doing sideflips in front of them after chat tricked her into the boob glitch. Her ship voiceover for Going Commando was one of my favorite parts of those sections, I love how it became like defacto knowledge that it was the ship itself making those noises.

"uhh yeah can you get me one of those chiccy sandwiches please? thank you thank you thank you" is burned into my brain bc Youtube kept losing my place and I kept having to start that VOD from the start. The tangent about the clothes seller in Tools of Destruction comes from a goofy place and I love it. The first four streams go from strength to strength - they're incredibly entertaining and immensely quotable, even months later.

I watched a LOT of Ratchet streams this year. Never quite finished Crack in Time and beyond, but I saw the rest. And 3 is my favorite, because A) that was the one big formulative Ratchet and Clank game I played as a kid, and B) 3 is probably the funniest and most well-structured game in the PS2 era. I never knew because I had limited experience with the first two games, but it's no surprise at all that 3 was the first game with a dedicated writing staff after seeing the other two (which are perfectly great games in their own right).

So clearly I have a bias here. Penny seemed to have an absolute blast with this game, I remember her losing her shit at the Courtney Gears music video and she bought into Dr. Nefarious after being wary of him due to prior exposure to the character. That bias played a role in my enjoyment, sure, but it also just felt nice to see such a funny, cozy stream because I'm not used to that.

I've historically watched a lot of Vinesauce, Game Grumps etc. for like odd games and video game corruptions - I feel like even the more homey aspects of that content is steeped in irony and shitposting, with Game Grumps in particular being noticeably caustic. There's just as much laughing at the content creator for falling short at their sisyphean task as there is in sharing their victories, maybe even moreso. That's sort of been the cornerstone of how I consume game media. I've become very jaded and irony-poisoned over the years.

I think what made the Snapcube streams so special is that I was almost never laughing at Penny, but I was laughing with her. Yes, losing a bunch of lives can be frustrating and it can be funny to see someone react to that. But for every time Penny misses a jump and goes "Fuck!" with a small laugh or a bit of rage, there's an extended comedy bit she does that ends up being really funny and well-built, and it comes across as her having great fun with it too. I think it's that crowd work that makes her stand out the way she does.

That energy carried into RnC3, which was an incredibly nostalgic experience, and I enjoyed seeing her react to the game itself almost as much as I liked her own additions and embellishments along the way. The fact that she was playing such a nostalgic game was a bonus - personal memories or not, I was looking forward to entry #3 of like #8 of this awesome, entertaining game marathon I was enjoying so much. The nostalgia was still a huge highlight though.

Beginning to watch Snapcube streams as a whole was a highlight of 2022, but RnC3 just put a smile on my face like nothing else. The Sonic fandubs are really good, I absolutely saw those before I saw her streams, but these streams were what made me a Snapcube fan.

[lady-byleth]

So, I am on my second FE3H playthrough, on Hard Mode, and so far the difference is kinda negligible? I mean, I did use NG+ to get Byleth’s Professor Level to A, but that doesn’t explain why the only difference I’ve noticed is slightly higher HP and/or Defense. It’s enough that I’ve been using Combat Arts more often to deplete those last few HP (or failing that, weakening with a different character), but it doesn’t change the fact that I had to actually check to see if I selected the correct difficulty level.

Does it get any more difficult than this? Minus the fact that you can’t grind infinitely, a feature I never really used much even my first time through. (Okay, the infinite-month glitch is still a thing, but I don’t intend to use that except as a last resort for character recruitment)

I think the difficulty goes up post time skip but don't quote me on that, I've been playing on hard for so long I don't remember what normal feels like xD

[nathank77]

4/28/24

6:32 a.m edited/added to

I gamed until like 4 a.m and I lost a 40 minute video that thank God I didn't save so I can redo it. I was online, sometimes I feel like I'm being sabotaged tbh.. but I'm not allowed to feel that way bc I have psychosis....

It's funny cause most of my best videos when I streamed on twitch would have, "muted audio," I'd have to appeal for copyright and other issues like disconnections and weird glitches. It's the reason I stopped streaming. It was a major problem and I lost many good videos bc of it.

And since I've been recording muted audio for copyright isn't an issue cause technically I can record American dad or something it would just need to be credited on YouTube.

Although I've been recording offline bc I feel like someone sabotages me. I forgot to go offline when i was recording that 40 minute video and bam the video disappeared. Funny how that works if I had saved I wouldn't be able to complete my chapter 5 playthrough of Bully bc it would have been missing 2 missions and I'm making videos chapter by chapter with all main and non-storyline missions complete.

I hate psychosis. I have to say it was just a mishap... but once I started recording offline I haven't had any issues.. I do feel sabotaged.

My trans channel is taking off. Getting hundreds of views a day and if one day that happens to my gaming channel I'll blow up with the quality of my content. Yet I can't believe that being online might be the reason.

I'm annoyed but at least I didn't save and can redo those two missions and piece together my whole playthrough of chapter 5.... I only have like 6 more missions before I can put it together and post the complete playthrough... I wish I could have finished it tonight.

Anyways, the shoes didn't fit any better but I still got to fuck with them a little but I might as well return them. I could use the money and loosening them doesn't seem to do anything...

Also do I believe elise is here? I can't bc of psychosis another reason i Hate it. I can't allow myself to be delusional at all. I need facts about everything..

Anyways- after I gave up on my video and decided to do it tomorrow, I changed all my, "made for kids," videos to adults as I lost that SH2 Maria video due to some uptight parent who reported it and I can't get it back. I have to remake it when I had 20 hours of view time on it... I'm not willing to risk losing any more videos to some stupid asshole of a parent. I work too hard on them between trying to be perfect and waiting hours to piece them together....

The only videos I left as made for kids was the minecraft video cause fuck it if someone reports it for some reason or another. It sucks cause made for kids can really get my views up but I can't lose another amazing video I make. I invested a good 10 hours in that Maria video and its fucking gone. I learned my lesson. Not to mention if I for example get one more community strike I'm not allowed to post any videos for a long time.

Anyways as I was adding tags to my new videos and changing my made for kids videos back to adults only, my hallucination was driving me fucking crazy. It was awful and tbh idk how much longer I can live like this.

If youre here Elise, I noticed something. When I tried to load your Instagram from my Mac it had that, "couldn't load page," thing.. then I tried from my phone and it was loading...

The night I thought you were deactivated as some sort of invitation, I checked many times on my Mac and then my phone. They both said couldn't load page.... and then when I made the post about it, 20 minutes later I could load your page.. so idk if I disrespected you...

I question everything, are you here? Did you really deactivate your account or was it something with safari/google/meta? I can't trust anything bc of psychosis. Until you reach out to me I'm going to write about you until I move on... and I'm going to have no idea if you're really here or not.

[sporadicspores]

well despite having 10 other tavs and two durges i still need to play, i ended up caving and completely making a new file/save for Vrisryn since their main campaign is just... corrupted as hell at this point lmao. it was funny at first with little glitches like the whole Astarion-confessing-to-being-a-vampire-on-the-first-long-rest thing (which works since Vrisryn def noticed he was a vampire right away anyways) and minor stuff like the companions just forgetting that they had a high approval rate together. but by the time i got to Act 3, it was like... painfully bugged, to the point of their entire romance with Halsin being skewed/glitched, and major parts of companion quests weren't executing properly. with the whole point of restarting it being to 1-to get a fresher grasp on their character/make more in-character choices and 2-to be able to play the epilogue properly without glitches, it felt like i had to restart again. (thank god i love them so much and would replay their run 1290823980482394 times)

that being said, i was able to fully take the time to flesh out their Act 1 clothing, stats, armor etc! and i realized i never made any real proper post or introduction for them before posting the first chapter of their backstory/fic, so... behold! the refreshed Vrisryn (or Vrysryn as they're named in my game to avoid save issues lmao)

i decided to go for a more civilian looking outfit since they would have been in Baldur's Gate, not the wilderness they considered home when abducted. they were traveling to bring research findings and samples from the Underdark to the Lodge of the Society of Brilliance on behalf of their circle, as well as to fulfil some personal curiosities and make a bit of coin by selling/trading herbs and tinctures in the city. routine stuff mostly, that landed them unfortunately in the illithids capture. and ofc i had to use the autumnal druid dye from astralsprout on nexusmods bc i mean. look at them. that dye was made for them. typically though, when traveling they would roam in druidic armor or their camp clothes, which consist of a long overcoat and simple garments:

in my canon/work, they also don't really take their headpiece off like... at all, not until like Act 2.5 at least and even then, it's only around Astarion, Karlach, Wyll and Shadowheart. it isn't until Act 3 when they've finally reached the Elfsong that they let their guard down fully about their Spellscar, and their headpiece is used to help cover it since it takes the shape of antlers and stems from around the same area that their headpiece lay. The Spellscar appears in a similar fashion to the spores that typically surround their person and effects during travel/battle, so as long as their headpiece is attached, it's rather difficult for anyone who isn't familiar with Spellscars to notice that that's what's going on with them when it appears.

also the foreshadowing of this shot given the weird temporary triangle of angst they fall into with Gale and Astarion cracks me up but we'll get to that in many future fic chapters lmao

anyways this was really just for me to be able to dump some pics and keep a timeline of stuff as it develops in this playthrough. i'll do a more proper introduction post later and i'm gonna try to remember to reblog this whenever i get around to finishing my own character sheet of them in my style so i can show the differences between how they appear in bg3/how i see them and how they actually appear! stuff like them having top surgery, their Spellscar/it's effects, and other little details that bg3 simply can't convey. even if it's just for my own sake i'm excited to share more about their character on here :3 it's crazy to me how they started as simply an over-glorified self insert and then within 10 hours developed into a whole different, realized character with a HUGE backstory. that bg3-inspiration pipeline goes crazy when you're on hiatus in your own dnd campaign i suppose lol (also gonna try to post my next chapter of spores & stars later next week! just gotta push through finals and the end of this semester, then i plan on letting the oc brainworms consume me during the entirety of my break before summer classes begin oTL)