comicallycluttered

I’ve been playing Batman Arkham origins. Never played it when it came out but loved the other ones. It’s pretty good so far!

I really enjoyed Origins. It embraced the “detective” aspect a lot better, IMO. Also enjoyed the, well, origins of what essentially became Batman and Joker’s inevitable “love story”. Troy Baker played him really well.

Also, it’s pretty funny hearing Sonic voice Batman. I mean, I know he does a ton of other voices, but the contrast is always hilarious to me.

Anyway, onto me…

After taking a weeklong break from video games, I started playing something on my wishlist that finally went on sale again: Unheard - Voices of Crime. Detective game where you solve the cases by listening to conversations and identifying people by their voices/dialogue. The visuals are basically just floor plans and moving from room to room from a top down perspective in order to hear whoever’s speaking in that room.

All the recordings are binaural as well, so wherever you move your “character”, the volume and location of the voices change. It’s pretty interesting and not too long.

Today, I began Dungeons of Hinterberg. At first, super fun. Then got a bit bored because stuff felt samey. Then got interested again. I expect this pattern is going to continue. Despite being a dungeon crawler, it’s a pretty chill game.

Basically, think Breath of the Wild-type shrines mixed with Persona-style social sim gameplay. You do dungeons (or not, you don’t have to if you don’t want to) in the day, explore and spend time with people in the city at night.

What game is this even? I mean, why would any game need a graphic rape scene? Who is this going to sell to?

Don’t video games outside of Japan try to avoid getting AO rated any more?

Sounds like some typical David Cage bullshit. Wouldn’t be surprised at all if it was one of his games.

Edit: Considering the content of the games, and looking over her IMDb credits, it was very likely one of The Dark Pictures Anthology games, which was actually my second guess after David Cage (well, those or Until Dawn; same developers) due to some of the weird shit Supermassive Games add in for “shock value” because “horror”.

No surprise that she suddenly stopped working with them after House of Ashes, so that was probably the game in question, if I had to guess by context here.

There are only a handful of studios that’ll throw that kind of shit in their games. Quantic Dream and Supermassive are always the most likely culprits.

EA FC 24 is so unrealistic.

Imagine Barcelona Feminí actually conceding more than like 2 goals in an average Liga F game IRL.

Ridiculous.

Charrua Soccer.

Man, I miss these pure arcade football games. Feels a bit like FIFA circa early 2000s, although a lot more fast-paced, no commentary, and no offsides. I would have said FIFA Street, but this sticks with the general rules, stays eleven-aside, and without super powers (although you do get some crazy screamers from outside the box and knocking in a bicycle kick feels ridiculously fun).

A little bit like Redcard in terms of silliness, though it’s been a couple of decades since I played that.

Also, bonus for having women’s teams and leagues/cups. Only about four (maybe five, I’ve forgotten) cups/leagues in total, but that’s just a touch less than FC 24 which has two women’s tournaments and five leagues.

When I saw the “store”, I was immediately all, “oh, fuck no” only to realize we’re doing good ol’ PS2-era stuff where you actually unlock things by playing (earn coins from games, buy random shit).

Now I need to try the other one I bought, Kopatino All-Stars Soccer. Looks wild with all the powers and gameplay modifiers and what have you.

Edit: Lol, Kopatino is basically a “cute” version of Redcard. No rules, foul the fuck out of everyone because no cards, score crazy goals. Powers can also result in some funny scenarios. Turns out you can teleport yourself with the ball directly into the opposing goal net because why the fuck not.

All that said, I can see myself getting a bit bored of these because I get the sense that they’re geared heavily toward multiplayer (offline included). They do have a shit ton of stuff to do, though, even single player, so who knows. Probably best for short sessions here and there, rather than longterm.

Huh, didn’t even realize it had started.

Taking a look at my wishlist, and seems like I’ve got enough in my wallet to snag a couple of heavy sale games purely from all the cards I’ve sold on the marketplace.

May not get anything, though. Got tons of other shit to play and I’m not aching for anything in particular, although Charrua Soccer and Kopanito All-Star Soccer might be options because I want some good old fashioned arcade football and they seem fun enough.

Oh, and Shadow Gambit and Desperados 3, mainly because getting them now is one of the last opportunities to actually have the money go directly to Mimimi (the developers), who are shutting down end of year (which at least was their own choice and not because some publisher/holding company fired them).

Edit: Oh, I might get one of Frogware’s Sherlock games. Don’t know what the consensus is on the newer ones.

Edit of original comment:

Loaded up Vampyr after ditching it a while ago. Remembered why I didn’t enjoy it and ditched it again.

Took a break, listened to some podcasts, saw Jusant finally got an accessibility update which makes it actually playable for me, so going to spend some more time with that, since I can actually enjoy it without destroying my wrists now.

Lol, some of these replies…

I think you know what it is you enjoy, so you’ve just got to remember not to fall into that trap of “well, everyone says it’s good, so I must try it”.

The great reviews come from the people who already enjoy that kind of game. Like, reviewers on a site usually favor specific genres. If something gets a good review, you’ve got to put it into the context of whether or not it’s something the reviewer usually plays.

You’re not often going to see an RPG review by someone who mostly plays platformers.

So if an RPG is good to an RPG-enjoyer reviewer, and most of the people picking it up are already RPG fans, then good reviews are always going to be biased in favor of people who enjoy that gaming experience.

My advice?

Take a look at the tags on Steam. I know they’re user-submitted and “RPG” is on like every fucking game now, but things like “turn-based”, “tactical”, “simulation”, “crafting”, and a few others I’m forgetting will most likely be the things you’ll want to avoid (maybe there will be some exceptions here and there).

Also, wait a bit. No need to play games immediately. Play some stuff you enjoy for a year and then see if you still want to play it.

As for how and why people play these games… Just preference really. It comes down to the energy and time someone’s willing to commit. Neither a good thing or bad thing. Some find that thrilling, others find it chore. Both perspectives are perfectly valid.

Sometimes, people just enjoy them as is without getting too deep and never bother with “the meta” or whatever. Usually one of two things happens here: either they really enjoy it because they don’t have people backseat gaming them and telling them how to play and they’re finding creative ways to do things, or they find it a miserable experience because it’s just not fun if they don’t like the core mechanics.

I personally don’t have the energy for “deep complex games”, despite enjoying RPGs and immersive sims. I don’t ever bother with crafting or strategy games (although I did get into Civ V for a while, which was nice).

Over the years, I’ve learned what I like, what I don’t like, and just wait things out. Game Pass and deep sales help a lot here, actually. (Also other options, but not strictly ones people necessarily approve of for various reasons.)

Pulling off a Junkrat mine-assisted jump and destroying Pharah on a wide outdoor map is always glorious. Love(d) doing that shit.

Then just spring a trap and blast Mercy as soon as she immediately goes to res the dead Egyptian rocket lady, because that’s what she almost always does.

Man, I miss the good days of that game.

Finished up Return of the Obra Dinn earlier.

I’ll admit I started getting a bit frustrated about halfway through, but then some more stuff started clicking and I managed to get through the rest.

I had looked up a couple of hints to point me in the right direction when I was stuck, which I ended up only needing for about three cases. Admittedly, I did also brute force some shit with pure guesswork, but I don’t really mind all that much.

Still, it was interesting. Might hit up some other detective game soon, not quite sure.

More stealth games that aren’t horror and don’t allow you to punch or shoot your way out of the situation, should you get caught.

If you have any weapons, make them underpowered to the point of useless in combat (eg. Thief) or you just have gadgets to use that won’t help if you get caught (except maybe something that helps you get away like smoke bombs or some shit).

At the same time, though, I don’t want that “get caught, immediate game over” thing. You should still be able to run away and hide or whatever. Just make it exciting enough that you don’t feel like you need to load up a quicksave.

Similarly (if not directly related to stealth), more espionage/spy games. Not as many as there used to be.

I’d also like more actual detective games. Zero action and preferably ones that let you fuck up a case by accusing the wrong person or making the wrong conclusions and have it impact the narrative. Like, if you get it wrong, you get it wrong and you have to live with that. There are several currently, but I’d love more.

God, I so badly want more.

There’s maybe a chance that the Adam Jenson trilogy gets finished up, but the Embracer situation has made that less clear.

Still on my ten hour trial of FC 24, which is almost done.

Trash optimization, but I prefer the gameplay over 23. Still not going to buy it.

It’ll probably come to regular EA Play around May/June, so it’s not a terrible wait and not like I’m in a rush.

I do wish we had more straight up arcade football games. EA tries too hard to straddle the line between “sim” and “arcade” and feels less fun because of it (IMO), especially in comparison to the older FIFA games.

The only reason I really play it is because right now it’s the only game with actual women’s teams.

They do the bare minimum, and the commentary reflects that better than anything (more generic than male teams, also occasionally hear “he/him/his”, though it’s fairly rare), but at least it’s something.

Otherwise, I booted up Mad Max the other day as a spontaneous decision. Seems fairly fun and might get into that, but I could also just catch up on TV. Who knows.

I do still like to clean out ~/.cache from time to time, often because of the thumbnail cache (which more or less rebuilds itself to the same size within a few days, so kind of pointless sometimes).

No need for an application, though. Just an alias (well, abbreviation in fish) when I feel it’s getting too much.

It’s completely pointless for anything else. This does remind me to check for empty or left over ~/.config and ~/.local/share folders, though. Haven’t cleared those out in a while.

I had encountered it a lot before the whole “what, with like a cloth or something?” thing (it was basically everyone’s FOSS answer to CCleaner), but I did find it funny when they used that whole situation as a “selling point” on their site.

Close.

2016 US presidential election race.

centaurs in space!

I can imagine the '50s B-movie poster already.

Blonde woman in an astronaut suit (no helmet, obvs), beautiful face clearly shown expressing her awe, riding the back of a centaur and clutching his muscled human half as he’s trotting over a planet or moon.

Also, he’s aiming a bow with a laser arrow at a space monster.

(Jesus, did I just write an AI prompt? Also, half of that works for a centaur romance novel as well.)

May have something to do with this.

To be honest, ever since that news hit, I’ve been expecting something like this to happen.

I’m actually surprised it took as long as it has.

Lol, I love how they can’t mention it in the article, but freeing the main bugfixing patch from Arthmoor’s grasp is probably a bigger accomplishment than the patch itself.

They’ll definitely release the CK.

But it’s not for the benefit of modders anymore. It’s because of how they can monetize them like they did with Skyrim and Fallout’s “Creation Club”.

Get modders to make what’s essentially some minor DLC for you and offer it at a “small price” or with a “Special Edition upgrade” while those same modders are actually making waaaaay better mods and releasing them for free on Nexus or wherever (this is basically the state of Skyrim AE; some very notable modders did some cool stuff for CC, but their other mods were way fucking beyond those in terms of quality).

Okay, so started Jusant.

In a weird way, it reminds me of the 2008 Prince of Persia game. Mainly because there was also a lot of climbing and platforming there, and also because of something I guess is story-related so won’t get into.

Anyway, doubt I can keep it up for much more. If they had a toggle option for the triggers, maybe, but it’s hell on my already strained wrists.

Otherwise, it seems like a nice little game. Probably just not for me.