SleepingSilence

What shows/movies are you watching?

Well other than keanu being bad but he always is.

@Fabricant451

I don't think what I said could even be argued against. (Aside from the slow beginning/first hour, I suppose.) There were so many bloodless deaths throughout, that it didn't do the action scenes any favors. John Wick took the 'most punishment' in this movie. But reacted like nothing happened after nearly every fight. The plot *is* much simpler in the first two movies by far. The movie has nice expensive looking shots/cinematography. (Like the dancing scene that has the dancers not act like human beings and keep dancing in the middle of a gun/axe fight.) It's the longest movie. Etc etc.

Unlike most things, I went into this one expecting to like it. (Especially after I saw some IMDB reviews claiming that 'despite being disappointed with the third one, this one is a return to form'.)

But this one reminds me much more of the third one. Even tries the same "tension building moment" of making everyone hunt him, after putting a big bounty on his head. But the "highs" are probably better than the 3rd's. (Though I remember very little about the third one.)

This movie repeats a lot of ideas already done, and from the people I saw checking their phones on several occasions, I know I wasn't the only one in the theater, who thought that the film was dragging.

I know there's this "backlash" of the first John Wick movie. Because everything popular gets some amount of flak, justifiable or not. But the revenge/feeling of catharsis in the first movie has been lost. (IMO) And I didn't *have* to look it up, to know that different writers were apart of the third and fourth one.

How exactly would you rate the movies? (And how would you defend the boring/made to look stupid in every scene that he's in, villain.)

What shows/movies are you watching?

John Wick 4 is like a Triple A video game. Expensive looking and really f*cking long.

It was not exactly a thrill ride from start to finish...

Beginning was a bit of a slog, and its first few action set pieces were nearly bloodless for no particular reason. Plot was bloated and nonsensical (even for John Wick.) John Wick is a superhero (even for John Wick.) Acting was the worst of any of the four. And the main villain was on par with Last Jedi's General Hux (had to look his name up.)

Still probably better than the third one? It's still a John Wick movie & it has its moments. Won't spoil it for those who we see it regardless.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

Dungeon Defenders 2: Someone wanted me to play this game with them. So I gave it a try solo. (And this game crashed so badly within thirty minutes of playing, that I had to forcibly shutdown and reboot my PC.) But I’m sure this (Smite-like tower defense game) would be fun to play with a friend group.

Gatekeeper - Eclipse: Basically a top down Risk Of Rain. It plays alright. (Had no obvious bugs or control issues.) Though it only has three levels, five enemies and one boss that repeats infinitely. So I didn't give it too much of my time. But it serves as a reminder that I should play more game demos. (Bloody Hell was still way too good to be free.)

Unheard - Voices Of Crime: Was a decent enough mystery game, that was a bit on the short side. (Even if it does have a free downloadable case.) But it has a fun gimmick, and it's fairly priced. (When I got it on sale). Though a game that revolves around listening to characters talk, could’ve used some better voice actors…

Foretales: A mixed bag. I have some issues with this game. Both on a technical and story level. So this might not be a ringing endorsement. But there’s plenty of potential here. (And it was far more engaging than the last several games that I played.) But I stopped after “ending” the first branching narrative that forces you to go back to the start. (Because the last few levels were a bit too trial and error for my taste.)

And I don’t understand why nearly every indie story has a branching narrative gimmick, where it claims “your choices matter”, yet it forces you to fail and repeat sections you’ve already completed. (But I think I got the point, after completing each section and the obviously liberal side character concludes every single conversation with “Gee golly buddy. I know we were attacked by slave traders, evil cultists, armed pirates, and literal zombies. But I don’t think we shoulda killed nobody.”)

Maybe I’ll go back sometime. Hopefully when the ‘Save Game’ button actually matters…

Pronty: (First impressions.) Yay. I might’ve found another Metroidvania gem. It’s already challenging, but fair in its difficulty. Has charming characters, and an adorable MC. (That I must protect.) It’s doing rewarding exploration well enough for how linear it starts out. And I’m enjoying the atmosphere/improved “Ori and The Blind Forest”-esque combat. So here’s hoping that it only gets better…

10 Random Songs

Random Rock Songs
1. Witches - Good Kid
2. Alone In The Universe - The Motorleague
3. Wolfpack - Blind Channel
4. Something Else - Childish Japes & David Vines
5. Up and Atom - Astronoid
6. Burn - Alexis Munroe
7. End Of It - Friday Pilots Club
8. Where Will We Go - IAMDYNAMITE
9. Sick Little Games - First And Foremost
10. Fight Fire With Gasoline - Self Deception

Word association Game!

Just

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

Does anyone use their Steam trading cards?

@Kuro

I usually sell them for cheap.

I also haven't used Fanatical. (And only recently heard of it on Reddit. Where some people were complaining about how they've been raising their prices.) How's their customer service? If you've used them before.

Humble Bundle took three days to give me an obvious robot email.

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I've been tempted to review most of my Steam games. (Especially the indies.) But it would take a considerable amount of time. (Plus, I’ll likely go back and give certain games a 2nd chance, before I leave an unfavorable review.) So I'm debating on whether to do it or not…

That—and I now have a dozen or more new games to play. Thanks to Steam’s 'Spring Sale’ making most of my Wishlist discounted. (And enduring the intense boredom of house sitting.) With my original intention of getting through some games that I got from random bundles again. So here's hoping that I can find some diamonds in the rough…

Instead of all these disappointments...

Stopped Playing:

• Clustertruck - Controls poorly, and the RNG only hinders the player. So it managed to bore me quite fast.
• Revolver360 Re:Actor - It’s a bit incomprehensible. But I don't dislike it per se. Though the minutes-long gameplay sessions aren't keeping me engaged. (And any tutorial whatsoever would've been nice to include.)
• Bendy And The Ink Machine - The art style is nice. But its third chapter of 'find RNG items and avoid this spoopy monster that spawns in directly behind you' is incredibly flawed/boring to play.
• Shadow Warrior - This game has strange controls, inconsistent abilities, unclear hit detection & bullshit exploding hazards. (My ex-roommate liked this one. But I sure didn’t.)
• And as someone who quite enjoyed the original trilogy of games, I did not expect ‘The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles’ to be such an insufferable bore. But it really does have the worst (and most dead simple) mysteries of any game that I’ve played in recent memory. (Saying nothing about how awful both the characters and writing is on top of it...)

Games I'm Still Playing:
Cult Of The Lamb: It’s really good at keeping you playing. But the game’s shallowness only gets more apparent in its second half. (As I was experiencing a lot more bugs than before.) Plus, it’ll keep repeating the same trick of forcing you to quit your dungeon run, or else several of your cultists will die. So you’ll be done with all the cult upgrading, long before you can complete (or get tired of repeating) the other combat dungeons.

But at least the Devs are still adding even more content to it. (Hopefully with some bug patches included.) Though I wouldn't know as of yet, since I decided to play some other things too…

Environmental Station Alpha: Goddamn. And I expected this one to be something that I’d immediately like. It’s immediately challenging, and it’s very familiar to how Axiom Verge started off. But its control setup is f*cking busted, to put it lightly. (For instance, turning “D-PAD only” on, is the only way to get the controller's stick working? For some reason. Otherwise its control menu has a seizure and starts changing all the settings by itself.)

So it took some time to get my controller working, and then after I beat a boss and acquired the hookshot. (The world’s worst hookshot in all of video games, but I digress.) It somehow combined my jump and hookshot ability to the same button. Canceling out my jump and making it literally impossible to progress onward. (But I couldn’t change it in the settings, nor save and restart.) So I had to repeat the boss fight, as the controller suddenly stopped working and forced me to do it again. So THEN I succeeded—and found myself stuck forever in a room requiring TWO jumps with the hookshot. (Then four more in the very next room, before you have any chance to save.)

So uh. It didn’t surprise me that I found numerous “this developer has clear contempt for the player” posts on forums. (Maybe it's where HAAK got its inspiration...)

But I’m continuing for now, in hopes that it’ll improve…

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Narrator: It did not.

Environmental Station Alpha certainly made me swear a lot. But it fails to deliver rewarding exploration, and at providing boss fights with a fair challenge. Its smattering of HP upgrades (eight max) give you 2 HP each. Yet they're still incredibly frustrating to get. (Single attacks can and often do more than 2 HP.) Most areas have no rewards whatsoever, and its platforming is only difficult because the hookshot is terribly inconsistent. (Straight up will not do the same thing twice in many instances.)

Stopped at a three phrase boss fight (midway through the game) that has many attacks that spawn at random and overlap. To make it likely that avoiding one, means frequently getting hit with the other. But he’s also invincible for long stretches of time. So you’re doing nothing but losing all your health to bullshit attacks. The second phase is where it becomes completely unfair, as the camera zooms in and it becomes impossible to see the numerous attacks that are coming from off-screen. The third phase (I didn’t even bother getting this far) requires the hookshot to work flawlessly. (And it doesn’t.)

And this was right after the last two phase boss fight had pulled the exact same fucking trick. (Multiple overlapping attacks that go off-screen.) Apparently this boss requires a random secret weapon upgrade to make the fight bearable. But I couldn’t be bothered.

Even the developer sounds like he knew he fucked up with this boss. But he clearly didn’t fix it. And the reward for beating this boss like many others is—nothing.

Though I could tell that it was “one of those games”, where the game basically cheats you the first time you fight them. And after death upon death, the boss fight simply gets easier every failure. So you’ll do better each time, regardless of how well or poorly you play. (It was really obvious with the two phase boss fight. As the third time in, the boss was barely attacking in comparison to the first two times.)

So sure, if I wasted more hours of my life, I would’ve gotten past it. But maybe the game should’ve given me any kind of interesting characters, dialogue, a decent song/soundtrack, combat that meant anything, etc etc, that made me want to keep going.

What Are You Listening To?

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

It was smart for the Figment devs to release the first one for free. (Since they have an upcoming sequel soon, and I'd assume that most people have never played/heard of it before.)

Apparently Humble Bundle doesn't want my money. (Tried to buy the bundle twice. Credit card got declined for false reasons, and the charge appeared six times on my account.) So I guess time will tell to see if I'll be getting that or not.

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To further rant on BL3. Just when I was going to give it credit for finally adding new enemy types. Holy sh*t this mid-game feels like an absolute chore. Huge empty maps. Broken mission waypoints. (Been having to look up where I'm even going. Or why these missions show up on my map, when I can't even do them yet.) Endless side quests. (Some clearly weren't even played tested.) Side missions have 30 separate objectives. There's a full unskippable minute of talking before and after every completed objective. (I've died way too many times from falling through the map. Making the grind I am doing, and the ending mission reward feel completely pointless.)

The only thing keeping me playing is "it's easy enough to mute and play music over it", and a sunk-cost fallacy at this point.

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Edit: BL3 actually got worse as it went on, and I'm glad to be finished with it.

Figment was obnoxious to play. (But it was free. So I'll cut it some slack.)

I found "Patch Quest" through the game developer's Youtube channel. Where the premise of his video was "I spent so long developing a game concept, but it took years to realize that I hadn't made anything fun yet." And in my first session/impression with it, I still don't know if the game found "the fun" yet. It's a bullet hell rogue-lite, that so far seems to reward you with jpegs of plants, and levels you up once per death, regardless of how well you do. (Basically, its beginning feels scripted.)

Anime & Manga! Oh my! (Anime/Manga Thread)

The question is "who are they going to replace him/the other cast with?" (Pretending they haven't already shown the generic anime boy/girl self-inserts.)

If it's anything like the Gary Stew that other anime had. It's not going to have the same longevity. But if they have an Ash 2.0. People will question why it was changed in the first place. (Marketing and toy sales.)

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Most of the anime this season are pretty mediocre, and I stopped watching them.

Hoping the next one is better. (Assuming Dr.Stone & The Ancient Magus' Bride aren't lackluster.)

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

@Kuro That's usually what I do too. Just wish I had Steam friends who played more than one game. Haha.