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This game is sort of like what you'd get if you took Vampire Survivors and made it a 2D side-scrolling arena (without the scrolling), in which you run back and forth, jumping around, throwing knives at monsters, and collecting bones (the game's currency), until you dieget knocked out. During the arena part, you get level ups that let you gain new (temporary) powers and abilities.[1] You start in a tiny hub town place, to which you return when you dieget knocked out. It has a shop (which only opens after you've lasted at least 2 minutes in the arena part) that sells permanent upgrades, and there are other doors that open after you last increasing amounts of time. I've only lasted 7 minutes so far, so the only other door I've opened so far is the one to the item mixing guy. I've only played it for 35 minutes as of this post, though, says Steam.

The game is free. If it had cost even just a dollar, I probably would have just clicked Next in my discovery queue, but I'd say now that it's probably worth at least a dollar. Maybe even almost the same money as Vampire Survivors.

My only issue with the game is the weird effect that is on the text font that makes it annoying to read. It's kind of like that Zalgo shit, but not really. More like just a weird repetition/echo effect or something. Still, in any case, I wish there was an option to make the text not do that.

[1] - I could see the game becoming super easy if you lucked out and got a bunch of the power ups in a row that increase base damage and increase healing per kill, though. On the other hand, you could get unlucky and get two "choices" of the same power up that doubles your damage but sets your health to 1 (i.e. near instant deathunconsciousness, unless you have godlike reflexes or something).
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Took me longer than I thought it would (but not really since I went several days at a stretch without even touching it at all), but I've finally unlocked everything in Ode to Castlevania. The last character to unlock cost over 17 million gold, and I only had like 3 million at the time, but one trip to Moongolow with Sammy and weapon slots set to 1, and I had 20 million gold in less than 15 minutes, or about seven minutes in real time (had it set to Endless, too, along with Hurry and Hyper, but didn't even need that, since I exited out before I even reached what would have been the 15 minute time limit).

So, now I'm going to get into spoiler territory beyond this point (behind a cut, if you're seeing this on my main page).

Silly, nitpicky, and also spoilery character stuff behind cut )
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Another reason in a very long list of reasons why I don't play online multiplayer video games involving random people.

That said, as far as this particular video goes, everything from "family annihilation" and onward was pretty interesting.

Kenshi

Nov. 23rd, 2024 10:10 pm
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Kenshi is a game that I have put 100 hours into, so far (101.6 according to Steam), after I bought it several weeks ago. Here is a PC Gamer article about it that I read several months ago, which put the idea of the game into my head and which is why I finally bought it when I saw it on sale more recently. Oh, and here's the Wikipedia and TV Tropes pages for the game, for what that's worth. Oh, and I guess the official page.

I have attempted three playthroughs between then and now. The first ended after something like four hours, when I simply decided I wanted to restart with what I'd figured out from playing it a "little bit." The second one ended after around 60 hours, when I ran into a game breaking bug (after running into other potentially game breaking bugs that I was able to bypass via save scumming, cheesing, and just plain random luck). The third one, i.e. this most recent one, has just ended after another 40 hours or so, when I ran into a different game breaking bug. I have just deleted all my saves and uninstalled the game. I'm not sure I'll be attempting a fourth, at least not any time soon. (Then again, I felt the same way after the previous time I deleted all my saves and uninstalled the game, only to reinstall and restart the damn thing after just a couple of days.)

Kenshi would be a super great game into which I would have and could have probably poured thousands upon thousands of hours (rivaling the X series), if it weren't such an extremely janky, buggy, broken piece of frustrating shit. (And this was with fan-patches installed via Steam Workshop.)

So, while I'd like to recommend Kenshi, I just can't, not in good conscience. It's very disappointing to have to say that.

With that said, I guess I'll actually talk about the game a little.

Read more... )

Oh, and there's apparently a Kenshi 2 coming at some point relatively soonish. Maybe since the sequel has more people than just the one guy who made the first game working on it, it will be more polished and less of a roach motel? Who knows. *shrug* I'd rather that they had fixed the first game before starting on a sequel though. (EDIT) Apparently, after "asking the fans" what to do, they decided to make a sequel rather than further work on the first game. Only after the second game is out are they apparently considering going back and full on porting the first game to a more modern engine and (hopefully) fixing bugs. That kind of sucks, honestly, but whatever works for them and their "fans" I guess. *shrug* Maybe I'll even come back to it after all that (assuming I don't just reinstall and try again tomorrow or something). (/EDIT)
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Coming to PC, Mac, Linux and Switch in Spring 2025!

Jump with Fia into seven time-travel cases spanning two centuries in New York City, from the speakeasies of Prohibition to the vicious gangs of the Gilded Age to the World Trade Center on September 10, 2001. Solve temporal problems, survive paradoxes, and resolve the mistakes of the past or die trying—as many times as it takes.

Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/13...
Wishlist on GOG: https://www.gog.com/en/game/old_skies/

Developed and published by Wadjet Eye Games
Trailer voiceover: Sally Beaumont, Abe Goldfarb
Trailer music by: Pond5.com




Above is the trailer for the next game from Dave Gilbert to be published by his company Wadjet Eye Games. So far, I have written half a dozen posts about their games over the years (this will be the seventh), and this one looks pretty good, too. More than just "pretty good," honestly.

So... that's at least one thing I have to look forward to at the start of this upcoming hellish quadrennium, I guess.

And... damn, now I want to start yet another playthrough of all the Blackwell games, Unavowed, The Shivah (all of which take place in the same universe [and I wonder if Old Skies will as well]), Strangeland, and Primordia, which I've all finished at least once... or else do playthoughs of the ones I still have yet to complete (or even start, in some cases), like Gemini Rue, Resonance, A Golden Wake (it used to be published by Wadjet Eye at one point and still shows up under the Steam developer page, anyway), Technobabylon, Shardlight, and The Excavation of Hob's Barrow. Or maybe do both of those things.
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I've done this with far too many video games and some anime (e.g. Hajime no Ippo), usually more for Pat's reasons (just getting distracted by the next shiny thing) than the other ones.
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No spoilers. I'm just going to say that everything about the final boss from lead-up to aftermath is by far the best thing in Vampire Survivors so far, and it will be incredibly tough to top it with anything else in the future, assuming there's more updates/DLC to come at some point down the line.

The Ode to Castlevania DLC, as far as I can tell, is around half or so of the game now, and that's if you include all of the base game and all the rest of the DLCs combined, probably. It was certainly worth that "1 less money than VS."

(EDIT) Oh, and fighting the "final" boss seems to be only the halfway point. So maybe there is something else later. (/EDIT)
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Whenever anyone brings up "roleplaying horror stories," I can't help but immediately think of Counter Monkey. Pat's story of his bad experience sounds vaguely similar to (albeit about 27 and a half minutes shorter than) Spoony's Vampire Jyhad story, at least with how it ended up (i.e. with the campaign ruined [or nearly ruined in Spoony's case if the DM hadn't simply neutralized the whole thing via DM fiat] and their involvement in it unceremoniously ended).
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The best parts of this video were the parts where they weren't talking about Sparking Zero or Dragon Ball, which were significant portions of that 47 minute runtime.
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"The full-circle moment we've been waiting for."

Huh. How about that.

Watching the trailer, I saw some pretty deep pulls in this, like Saint Germain and Pumpkin. And, wow, they're even including Sonia Belmont in this, despite her being officially declared non-canon by Konami almost 20 years ago. I didn't notice any Lords of Shadow characters, though. I also didn't see Aeon, either. However, I did see several characters in the trailer that I didn't even recognize.

Be kind of funny if Dracula himself was left out of it so as not to break the trend of not having vampires in Vampire Survivors. There's no mention of him in the release announcement, and I didn't see him in the trailer... though it did play a bit of "Dance of Illusions"/"Illusionary Dance" at the end of the trailer. (Also, Alucard isn't a vampire, he's a dhampire, so him being there doesn't break the streak.)




Vampire Survivors join forces once more with KONAMI, this time featuring their notable Castlevania franchise, in a new DLC which many have been anticipating!

The Vampire Survivors have come a long way in their honorable hunt, and after joining forces with the Belmont Family, they are the closest they've ever been!

This all-out celebration has over 20 new characters, 40+ weapons including more whips than you can count on one hand, 30+ music tracks from Vampire Survivors historic composers Daniele Zandara and Filippo Vicarelli, but also from fan-favorites Evelyn Lark and Keygen Church! The BIGGEST stage we've made yet! Even though we're literally at Dracula's Castle, there's still zero vampires?

And the cherry on top: a man.
kane_magus: (Default)

Yeah... I'm pretty much with Pat and Woolie in that most or all of these will probably never see the light of day (especially anything from ZA/UM itself). I'll personally believe they've succeeded when I see them available for sale on Steam, without being infested with shit like Denuvo, and probably on a 50-75% off sale (depending on whatever their initial price points are).
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Learn the real story behind the mysterious "Martin." Who is he REALLY?

Featuring:
Jacob Quinn as Alex Tremont
Stephan Krosecz as Everybody Else




This is the last of the "session 0" vids for Tales Unwritten. Martin/Alexander's story. It's... probably the least interesting of the three "session 0" things, at least to me. Also, huge spoilers for the end of episode 4 and all of episode 5 of the actual campaign and all that.

Also, because somehow I managed to entirely miss the actual "session 0" vid when it was first released four days ago and only found out about it today, when the Tales Unraveled discussion showed up in my Feedly, here's that, too. (I had to go back and check to see if it was a Feedly fuck up or something, but it wasn't. It was there in Feedly, I just missed it somehow.)
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G.O.D. stands for "Growth Or Devolution."

It is an old SNES RPG released in Japan in 1996 that never got an official release outside of Japan. There is, however, an English fan translation available. I just finished it, over the course of a week or three. My final time was 30-ish hours, and my characters' levels were in the high 50s or so by the end.

Lots of text and a Youtube embed behind cut )
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Man, if you'd told me before an hour or so ago (it's currently almost 4am) that I'd be into watching videos of some dude listening to and reacting to video game music for games he (claims to have) never played before, I'd have told you "No, not really, but that does sound kind of interesting. Let me look into that."

And then we'd be here, now.

(I see in the Youtube sidebar that this is A Thing™ that apparently lots of other people do as well, which is a rabbit hole into which I am not properly equipped to dive, at the moment. I don't even have the wherewithal at the current time to even embed a shit ton of this guy's videos, much less anything else. Probably should go to bed now, for real.)

(EDIT) This isn't my first introduction into "React Andy"-type streams, because I've seen all of the slop streams of Woolie and Reggie, but the "entire video reacting to just one (or two or three) song(s)" is a new wrinkle. (/EDIT)
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"When Mats Steen died from a muscle-wasting disorder, his parents believed that his life had been a tragically lonely one — until hundreds of emails from strangers arrived. It turns out that he'd found friendship and even romance in a gaming community"

Just goes to show that "online gaming communities" like that of WoW aren't always the terrible, unholy horrors that they tend to be depicted as (or all too often prove themselves to be) 99% of the time, I guess.

"The story of Mats' double life, and of the emotional impact its discovery has had on his parents, is told in a new documentary called The Remarkable Life of Ibelin. It is a moving and often deeply philosophical work that tackles questions around the nature of reality and relationships in an increasingly online world."

I am potentially interested in seeing this documentary, at least as it is described in the above article, I will admit. (Though I fully realize that this article is as much or more plugging the documentary as it is actually talking about the subject of it.)

I still have absolute zero (K) interest in playing online games with the general public, myself, of course, but that's just me being my typical asocial self. *shrug*
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Uncover the backstory of Maud! Where did she come from? Where did she go? Did she get eaten by a giant toad? All that and more!

Featuring:
Jesse Nowack as Maud
Stephan Krosecz as Everybody Else




This is Jesse's session 0 as Maud. Not sure where the name "Maud" actually comes from, though, since the character was called "Mittens" for the entirety of this one, even in a narrative way by the player and DM. I'm guessing that is a question that will probably be asked and possibly even answered when they post the discussion video for this later.

This one is almost the opposite of Karna's in terms of tone. Whereas Karna's started very light and remained so for most of it, then got a lot darker toward the end, Maud's story started pretty dark (after a bit of fluff at the very start) and remained so for most of it, then ended on a (relatively) lighter note.

I hope Skitterkit appears again at some point. Rufflepaw, on the other hand, can die slowly in a fire, for all I care. Although that would possibly traumatize Maud/Mittens if it happened and she found out about it (or saw it happen).

(EDIT) And here is the discussion video for the above. (/EDIT)
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The legend of Karnacus Freehorn begins! This is the first of three "Session 0s" we made, playing out the backstories of each character! Expect Maud's Story next Thursday, then the final one the week after that!

Content Warning: Descriptions of hanging - 57:40 - 1:06:00

Featuring:
Nick Landis as Karna
Stephan Krosecz as Everybody Else




Yeah, this is Nick's "session 0" as Karna. I hope the other two are at least as good as this one was.

(EDIT) And here is the Tales Unraveled discussion video for Karna's episode zero. (/EDIT)
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Darkanas are absolutely broken as fuck. (Especially with Queen Sigma.) And this was just me fucking around with it for a little while, rather than actually trying to engineer some truly beastly build or anything.

Those first three links are screenshots from a run I just completed. The fact that it took three screenshots just to show the list of weapons I picked up (including all the Candyboxes and Arma Dios) is nuts.

I wish I had taken a screen shot of the map screen before the run ended, but I didn't think about it until it was too late.

This run, even though it lasted almost an hour (more like almost 30 minutes, real time, since I had Hurry mode turned on), was not on Endless mode, which means that Reapers did start showing up at the in-game 30 minute mark. I was trying to see if I could actually kill one of them without having to use Infinite Corridor, but after another almost 30 minutes (almost 15 real time), I gave up on that, since any given Reaper's health is 655,350 x player level when it spawns, and my player level was already in the multiple hundreds by the time they started showing up. The last reapers to spawn would've had something like almost 500 million health (though actually probably way higher than even that, since that doesn't even take into account the amount of Curse I had, from maxed out Skull O'Maniac, Torrona's Box, and, by the end, Gold Ring and Metaglio Right, and I don't feel like doing that much math right now). So... yeah, that probably wasn't going to happen any time soon, even if all the weapons together were doing over a million DPS (assuming they all hit any given Reaper at the same time, of course, which probably wasn't actually happening). I eventually remembered that I had taken Laurel and Clock Lancet, so instead of just standing there waiting for any one of the Reapers to finally legit die, I just gave up and went to grab the Metaglios and the rings to evolve them to Crimson Shroud and Infinite Corridor. Didn't really need the Crimson Shroud, since the Reapers weren't able to kill me even without it. (I could've just manually quit, I suppose, but where's the fun in that?)

If you look at those screenshots, on the right hand side, where it shows the dropped items I picked up, on the second row, next to the gold coins, those little blue hearts are Crystalized Hearts from the new Crystal Cries Darkana. I had picked up 13,959 of those things. That's why the Reapers couldn't kill me. It's also why I reached almost to level 700. My health regen was at something like almost 40 health per tick, and I don't even know why my Growth was by the end of it, since on the stat screen, that had been completely pushed off the bottom of the screen by all the weapons and passives I had picked up, but I remember the last time I looked and was able to see it, it was already in the multiple hundreds percent increase to XP gained, and that was way before the Reapers started appearing, too. I also had Sapphire Mist, Moonlight Bolero, and Hail from the Future (and Disco of Gold from the regular Arcana list, too, just for shits and giggles).

I know poncle said the Darkanas are "experimental and subject to change," and I suppose that they probably should be nerfed, maybe, but I'd be okay with it if they weren't. *shrug* ¬_¬
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(EDIT 2) I've since read the Group Ibex translation, and I believe it is indeed better, or at least more readable, than the one I initially read, as mentioned below. It's also somewhat more consistent, terminology-wise, to Disco Elysium. (/EDIT 2)

Or Püha ja õudne lõhn in the original Estonian, written by Robert Kurvitz, of Disco Elysium fame. The book, written before the game, shares the same overall world/setting, but otherwise has little to do with the game. I.e. you won't be seeing Harry or Kim in this book, or even mentions of them. While Revachol is mentioned, the story never actually goes there, outside of one seemingly unrelated, added-after-initial-publication epilogue. Available in English via unofficial fan translation, here. If an official translation ever became available for sale, I might consider buying it, but only if the money actually goes to Kurvitz, and not to the current ZA/UM asshats. (EDIT) As it turns out, it seems that I read an earlier translation, different from the one above, which is, apparently, inferior to the one linked above? Well shit. Guess I'll need to read it again with the later translation at some point. (/EDIT)

I just finished reading it last night/this morning. I'm honestly not sure I would recommend it to anyone who hasn't played Disco Elysium, but I liked it well enough. It was interesting seeing references to places and historical figures mentioned in DE, and things like the Pale are definitely involved, but other than that, there isn't anything to connect it to DE (not that that should be the only reason to read it, but I probably never even would have heard of the book, let alone read it, without the existence of Disco Elysium).

Plot summary, without spoilers. Four young girls, the Lund children (Maj, 5, Anni-Elin, 12, Målin, 13, and Charlotte, 14), disappear pretty much into thin air, as far as anyone can tell. Twenty years later, three men named Inayat Khan, Jesper de la Guardie, and Tereesz Machejek, all of whom were around the same ages as the Lund girls when they disappeared, are still obsessed with finding out what happened to the girls. Over the years, there have been vague clues/hints/leads that keep hope alive for them, so to speak, on which they follow up. The story is told in a very back and forth way, splitting time between the present, where the three men are still searching, and the past flashbacks of their interactions with the Lund girls. Along the way, there are also shorter chapters of world-building tidbits of some obscure history or concepts that may seem unrelated at first, but which usually come into play in the following chapters, or which provide context to otherwise no-context references in earlier chapters, at least a little.

On a technical level, though... the book... uh... well... it's not the best book I've ever read. Let's go with that. It's rather obtuse, in a lot of ways. That may be a translation issue, though, I don't know. (EDIT) See above edit about different English translations floating around out there. (/EDIT) In any case, the writing of (the English version [EDIT] that I read [/EDIT] of) Sacred and Terrible Air does not hold a candle to the writing in Disco Elysium.

Also, the book was, apparently, intended as a sort of prologue to a much longer series of books, which never got written, because of how poorly this first book sold. That... well... puts the ending of the book in a different light, if nothing else. Also, if Kurvitz had wrote more books, that means Disco Elysium probably wouldn't have ever existed, and I may or may not have ever heard of the book series, as a result.

I won't say more, for spoilers, but I will say that it has made me want to play Disco Elysium again, even if the specifics of the story of Sacred and Terrible Air has little to do with the story of DE overall.

I might watch/listen to the Woolie VS "Let's Read" of the book at some point, as well, as I'd avoided doing so until now, since I hadn't read it myself yet.

Also, considering what "ZA/UM" means in the actual book (which I won't say here, because spoilers), it's kind of ironically appropriate that the company that made Disco Elysium was named ZA/UM, given what ended up happening with that. ¬_¬ (That's a new tag there, only created today, so while I think I got all of the posts I made about ZA/UM and DE there, I might've missed some. In any case, most of the ZA/UM related bullshit is there, anyway.) Seriously, current ZA/UM needs to die, with extreme prejudice, and the entire Elysium IP needs to revert back to Kurvitz, et al.

"Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead."
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They think it's just shits and giggles, but just consider this 8 minute video to be point number four million and something in my list of reasons to never want to play publicly accessible online multiplayer games. *shrug*

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