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After a few months of playing, with alternating intensity, I finished Elden Ring. Overall, my initial impressions haven't changed – the game is certainly good, but very derivative of Dark Souls, and I clearly still felt like I was playing a nice, but uninventive game. There were certainly some very exciting moments, including tense exploration and some boss fights. The world and monster design is also excellent and atmospheric. Unfortunately, the combat itself is tedious and repetitive (enemies varied visually and in attack style, yet I killed each one in roughly the same way), the progression is uninteresting, and the loot useless. If someone has never played a game in the series, they might be impressed, but I'd rather recommend DS3 or Bloodborne to such players.

After finishing it, I tackled another one I'd missed from a few years ago – Hades… and I don't understand the enthusiasm at all. After my first few attempts, I expected some variety – maybe environmental puzzles, maybe platforming, maybe something else. No, just a hack and slash. That's not a bad thing in itself, if the game were short. But having to play through everything from the beginning after only five or six attempts seemed terribly boring to me, especially since the procedurally generated levels and enemies have so little variety!

I'm no newbie to this type of challenge. In the 8-bit Nintendo, Contra or Mario or Adventure Island also had to be completed in one go, and when you ran out of three lives*, you had to go back to the very beginning. But now I expect something a bit different, and the fact that in Hades you gain power between runs makes replaying the first levels pointlessly uninteresting, because it gets easier and easier. It becomes going through the motions, not playing. In Contra, you had to stay focused the entire time

The characters (illustrations, dialogue) seem well-drawn and recorded, but the seams of this procedural nature quickly become apparent – ​​subsequent encounters and conversations are clearly random and completely incapable of faking any continuity of plot or relationships.

In summary, Elden Ring is derivative and a bit too repetitive for its length, but it has its moments and can be captivating and very engaging at times. Hades is pretty boring and after something like 12th samey attempts I left the game and I feel zero motivation to return to it.

*

I've been playing Hearts of Iron 4 every so often.

I basically have all this land as Imperial Japan and i've also grabbed afghanistan, british malaya and much of dutch east indies since then. Turkey also got capitulated and we pushed all the way into egypt against the suez canal region. We can't get past the suez canal and my attempts to send paratroopers into australia's northern region failed sadly to horrific results.

Dear lord take the Day night cycle out!

Great job

Played wh40k: dawn of war definitive edition with a steam friend today. He played sisters of battle and i played imperial guard for all 3 matches. The first match was 1vs1 against each other, the 2nd was 2vs2 with us vs chaos and tau a.i. on hard difficulty (which took some time but we won) and the final was another 1vs1 against each other which i also won.

Perhaps it's a little unfair for him since i used to play Winter Assault almost religiously as imperial guard many years back and the game itself got some tweaks in dark crusade and soulstorm just adds flyers (which i disable in multiplayer because they're lame). For what it's worth i never got great with dark crusade but i fought against the a.i. a bit to figure out some enemy factions. That may not apply as well to human players though.

Got the Mount and Blade Warband Mod Warsword Conquest working on my linux laptop.

I've only just started but I already love it. I mean there's something wrong with me because I can just play Mount and Blade endlessly. I did the Last Days of the Third Age last year and had a fantastic time, but I think I'm probably going to enjoy this one even more.

As is traditional when they give me the option, I'm an Orc. Saving up for my first boar.

Picked up DOOM: The Dark Ages a while ago on sale and finally had the time to give it a go. Bit worried it would be more of Eternal, a game that just didn't gel for me one bit due to the disjointed story and radical departure in gameplay mechanics.

This one is.. really good. A bit too twitchy at times with all the movement and blocking, but somehow it just works. You get to fly around on a massive dragon with holographic wings and jet engines and it just works. You get to pilot a massive 'mech and punch daemons into a pulp, it just works.

I've just found the super shotgun and it's like coming home.

Finished up Silent Hill f and quite liked it. Shame that the story doesn't really conclude without multiple playthroughs because by the end you definitely hit that point where nothing is scary anymore and the combat just isn't fun enough on its own. Still, definitely one of the best Silent Hill games overall.

Also finished Scott Pilgrim EX. Definitely a fun throwback to River City Ransom with tons of love to the source material and in particular the recent animated series. Good combat, a little repetitive but definitely a good time.

Not sure what to play next. Probably back to FF7: Remake.

I recently bought Eiyuden Rising, FF9 and Darkwood.

Eiyuden Rising is nice especially since Ive played Eiyuden Chronicles. Although the movements are a bit stiff.

FF9 I'm really loving the aesthetics and the gameplay looks solid.

Darkwood I got because I wanted something dark for a palette cleanser. Nice grim atmosphere, but I don't know what to do after getting out of that room...

Finaly.

I managed to do the "Stuff of legends" paraguay foci in HOIV.

Finished FF7:Remake last night and its such an odd thing that absolutely lives up to the various opinions on it. It's both a loving recreating of the opening chunk of the game that brings the world to life in ways the original just couldn't and a bloated mess trying to reach a satisfying standalone runtime and conclusion that kind of goes off the deep end whenever Tetsuya Nomura gets to starts writing in his Kingdom Hearts stuff. Enjoyed, but its going to be hard for this to ever be as definitive as it probably should be given the resources spent on it.

Finally got to Havoc Rank 40 in Darktide.

Fun times, and only took me switching main main class to the easiest class in the game to do it(Arbitrator) !

Not a big fan of the new game mode that they recently released, but I admittedly didn't give it much of a chance yet. The map might be a fun time, though its a wild change from the more claustrophobic(mostly) hive maps.

After i finished up my Hearts of Iron 4 game like over a week ago i played some wh40k: dawn of war 1 definitive edition.

I also watched a streamer play Phoenix Point so i've fired that up again. I think this is a harder difficulty from my previous campaigns. I'm just remembering about the "go out into the open or behind light cover, shooting and moving out of line of sight" that this and xenonauts 2 has. It's rather funny because this is very tau-eldar level of fighting in some cases. I haven't fought many shooting units yet but the enemies are starting to ramp up with guns and more armor.

In regards to phoenix point and xcom and me playing them i suppose the more things change the more they stay the same. If i recall it even has 3 sub-factions like xcom 2: war of the chosen (except they eventually all fight each other) and the pandoravirus is technically sent by aliens if you go through enough of the lore.

I was having another go at Diablo 4 but quickly came to the same conclusion as I did last time - it's just bland and boring. Maybe it's because I'm playing a Necromancer and not on a very high difficulty level - but there's nothing to combat. Between all the summons and the corpse-explosion, I'm just strolling through everything. And the plot is not exactly gripping me.

Maybe the 'true game' is once you've completed the story-line, and are playing multiplayer? But I can't be bothered with it any more.

Reinstalled Warhammer: Inquisitor - Martyr for my ARPG hit instead. Enjoying that a lot more.

 LunarSol wrote:
Finished FF7:Remake last night and its such an odd thing that absolutely lives up to the various opinions on it. It's both a loving recreating of the opening chunk of the game that brings the world to life in ways the original just couldn't and a bloated mess trying to reach a satisfying standalone runtime and conclusion that kind of goes off the deep end whenever Tetsuya Nomura gets to starts writing in his Kingdom Hearts stuff. Enjoyed, but its going to be hard for this to ever be as definitive as it probably should be given the resources spent on it.

Even the faintest whiff of Kingdom Hearts writing near this was enough to ensure I'd never look at it, and I absolutely love the original game.

More Phoenix Point and i haven't even lost a single soldier yet to the pandorans. It hasn't been incredibly long i suppose and my tech is going ok. I may try to spread out if possible and get more bases and a 2nd transport plane for my troops. I think i'm gonna go for a disciples of anu ending (they're the human mutants) if possible since there's so many of them and my reputation with them is by far the highest.

Need to find the time to get more stuck in with DOOM: the Dark Ages, but have instead been playing Helldivers 2 on and off again when there's a hole in the schedule.

Also more random Brigador contracts, always room for some of that.

I'm at the end of phoenix point where all 3 of the sub-factions start killing each other while the pandorans try to kill everybody as well. Gotta love the theme in games of humanity trying to kill or de-stabilize itself when a greater non-human enemy is the greater threat. Good job humanity for being your worst enemy.

Got into Pragmata, it’s a lot of fun so far. Less combat than I was expecting and more exploring so far.
I’m feeling really cool with the controls as well, definitely worth putting difficulty up if you’re good at dodging.
I think it looks really great as well, and plays really well. Much fun!

Been playing Cyberpunk 2077 as my psychopathic corpo V. Just infiltrated the Arasaka warehouse for Takemura. The game is so nice when I manage to get it going at a smooth framerate on my laptop!

I've been playing Sol Cesto - very gnarly graphics and an unusual game but interesting.

The System Shock remake, remaster, whatever it's called but the one Nightdive worked their magic on. I think I'm almost done, been an interesting romp so far, navigation is a bit of an arse with how everything looks the same.

 Da Boss wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Finished FF7:Remake last night and its such an odd thing that absolutely lives up to the various opinions on it. It's both a loving recreating of the opening chunk of the game that brings the world to life in ways the original just couldn't and a bloated mess trying to reach a satisfying standalone runtime and conclusion that kind of goes off the deep end whenever Tetsuya Nomura gets to starts writing in his Kingdom Hearts stuff. Enjoyed, but its going to be hard for this to ever be as definitive as it probably should be given the resources spent on it.

Even the faintest whiff of Kingdom Hearts writing near this was enough to ensure I'd never look at it, and I absolutely love the original game.

Working on FF7: Rebirth now and its a lot happier to tell the story pretty straight at least from playing about halfway through. There's a big slow burn plot twist being built up that is almost certain to change that eventually though. The Ubisoft nature of it is a little obtrusive, particularly at first when its bolted onto what is supposed to be a VERY brief bit in the original. Once you hit Costa Del Sol its mixed in a lot better since there are multiple major locations in the area to bounce between.

My one gripe is that they really pushed the black robes to be the main driving force of the story instead of a reoccurring background element that slowly builds into a big reveal. I'm sure knowing their purpose doesn't help, but there's just no subtlety to them this time around, with hordes of them all lemming walking through every area no matter how out of place it is to have zombie cultists wandering on the beach or through a casino. They were probably too subtle in the original, but they definitely swung the pendulum way too far the other way.

And wrapped up System Shock last night, quite a fun romp, hard as feth, even with all difficulties lowered to tourist levels haha! Maybe time for System Shock 2 sometime soon, I need to be called "insect" more by mommy SHODAN.

On a whim I've booted up Terreria again. This may be a mistake. I'm determined to focus on game progression this time around and less on faffing about.