Kinja reply list

Read More
Shinigami Apple MerchantSam Barsanti
9/27/19 12:35am
Diana Burnwood: Good morning, 69. Your targets are known respectively as The Painter and The Pruner.
They’re ex-intelligence operatives for competing agencies who currently spend their retirement days investigating one another, though unbeknownst to them both are actually helping out different facets of Providence with each report sent. The goal here is to eliminate both without tipping our hand to their overlords. Luckily, these clandestine neighbors utterly despise one another, so you could easily ignite one to eliminate the other.
Agent 69: HONK~!
Diana Burnwood: Our intel indicates there is indeed one ideal route of entry: The Painter has a model for her artistic endeavors that bears a striking resemblance to you.
Whether or not you utilize this avenue is at your discretion. I shall leave you to prepare. Good luck, 69.
*Goose arrives at the Pub Facility*
*Incoming Codec Call*
Is that you, Goose?
HONK!
Be careful in there, Goose! There’s guards all around the Pub’s service entrances and storage rooms.
Press the SQUARE Button to Honk. You can use that for a variety of purposes. Distracting a patrol man, instilling fear in your enemy, or just to buy you time to retreat if you’re outnumbered. And don’t forget, if you HOLD the CIRCLE Button and the shoulder tabs, you can pick up and discard interactive items with ease. Keep an eye out for anything you can manipulate to turn the terrain to your advantage. You never know what might help! A box, a candle, the underside of a table. The enemy may outnumber you, Goose, but YOU outweigh them in variety of approach. Keep that in mind. We’re all with you, Goose!
*Incoming Codec Call*
Hi, Goose! Do you need to SAVE?
HONK~!
Goose, have you ever heard this proverb before?
“One by one, a goose’s feathers are plucked.”
It means no matter how swift and skilled you are, you’re still mortal, Goose. Don’t risk your life trying to get a hold of some stray object just because you think you can reach it undetected. Make sure you take plenty of time to sort out the best route to complete your objectives so you avoid losing ANY feathers.
I’ll be praying for you, Goose!
UNTITLED GOOSE GAME: Tactical Espionage Action Text Adventure
Copyright (c) 2019 House House/Infocom, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Revision 77/Serial number 6911269
Outside the Garden
You are a Goose. You are standing outside the garden owned and maintained by the Groundskeeper. There is a large gate to the north.
What would you like to do now?
>/inv
You are currently carrying nothing but Eternal Contempt for All Humankind.
What would you like to do now?
> HONK
The Groundkeeper hears you. He opens the gate and is now facing you directly.
What would you like to do now?
> HONK
The Groundskeeper sighs in pure exasperation. He tries to shoo you away.
What would you like to do now?
> HONK
The Groundskeeper is starting to have an existential crisis. He regrets all his life choices that have brought him to this point. He realizes he should have stayed in school longer and tried to apply himself so he could avoid your path. He detests you that much.
What would you like to do now?
> HONK
The utter malaise and despair that typifies the encapsulation of the Groundskeeper’s life is becoming ever more readily apparent to him internally. He might get rid of you today. And/or tomorrow. But you’ll always be back. You and your ire will never be gone. Each honk you’ve ever squawked in his general direction replays over and over and over again inside his inner ear. The reverberations he recollects are starting to drive him insane.
What would you like to do now?
> HONK
The Groundskeeper collapses from the Lovecraftian totality of horror that you represent with every action you commit. He’s passed out.
What would you like to do now?
> HONK
I don’t know how to “HONK.”
What would you like to do now?
>Search Body
You uncover the keys to the gate ahead.
What would you like to do now?
>Lock Gate with key.
Congratulations! You’ve successfully locked the Groundskeeper out of his own garden. You've won.... BUT AT WHAT COST!?!?!
Thank you for playing Untitled Goose Game. We hope you had a great time.
Is Untitled Goose Game the best game ever conceived by humankind? Probably not. Its controls take some acclimation, to be sure. And the AI, while impressive at times, can easily get overwhelmed by the sheer deluge of chaos possible at your goose’s beak tip. But it’s so so so so effortlessly charming and infectiously fun. From the animations to the sound design to the musical cues to the variety of objectives and activities available in this brief but engrossing 3-4 hour time period. I’ve played through this twice AND watched a bunch of LPs of it and I still can’t stop smiling my ass off every second I do so. /salute
Final Grade: [Solid A]
Thank you for your time reading through the above. I hope it was enjoyable.
Take care and have a wonderful weekend too. And BEWARE! THE YEAR OF THE GOOSE IS UPON US ON ALL SIDES! THERE WILL BE NO RESPITE! :P
Reply
- Read More
  The One True OpinionShinigami Apple Merchant
  9/27/19 1:25am
  This may be the greatest Kinja I have ever witnessed in my life.
  Reply
- Read More
  ozeiyoShinigami Apple Merchant
  9/27/19 2:29am
  I love you. And the goose.
  Reply
Read More
Evan WatersSam Barsanti
9/27/19 12:38am
So I decided I might try out Star Wars: The Old Republic only to find out that it’s gonna be trouble. The game won’t allow you to install it on an external HD, and I have VERY little room on my actual Hard Drive. I was able to get the basic version running once and played around a little on a starter planet and it was kinda okay, but with one issue.
See, I had in mind that I wanted to play a Quarren smuggler, Quarrens being those guys with the squid heads. But they’re not an option. Nor are many of the familiar Star Wars aliens, not Wookies or Duros or Rodians or whatever. (And Twi’Leks are strictly premium I guess.) All the races they have are very humanoid in appearance, and I thought this was maybe a thing to do with facial rigs or some other technical problem, but apparently it was a choice by the designers? It’s a bad choice is what I’m saying. The gameplay was, well, MMO gameplay, not bad for what it was, I played a bit, and realized that my computer couldn’t handle the full download (the whole game, patches and all, is like upwards of 50 GB it seems, or at least takes up that much room while it’s being downloaded) and so put that away. It’s a pity. Maybe if they ever realize that USB 3.0 exists and update their installation client?
This kinda leaves me with a weird itch- I wanna play a weird alien in a space opera game. The Mass Effect games are all about humanity and what makes us special, so that’s no go, and there’s a surprising dearth of Star Wars games that let you do anything funky either. Star Trek Online ironically has much better options for playing odd-looking aliens (considering the source material is notorious for just sticking ridges on people’s foreheads), but it’s pretty limiting in its structure. Someone make a game where you’re a squid dude having laser fights in spaceports.
Reply
- Read More
  Shinigami Apple MerchantEvan Waters
  9/27/19 12:54am
  /comfort. It really is a shame how few games there are out there with non human and/or alien protagonists. The only one I could think of offhand that isn’t a pseudo humanoid (TMNT, Mega Man, Pac Man, Sonic), is Octodad, but that’s hardly a sci-fi space opera. I wish developers were able to take more chances in the worlds and viewpoint characters therein they create.
  Reply
- Read More
  rogueIndyShinigami Apple Merchant
  9/27/19 5:10am
  I wouldn’t say that animal characters like Crash and Sonic are any more humanoid than Octodad, who can actually pass as human - let alone more than anyone you’d see in a SW cantina.
  Hell, I’d say non-human characters dominate genres like platformers; if you aren’t counting talking animals and robots as humans for some weird reason.
  Reply
Read More
doctuarSam Barsanti
9/27/19 3:46am
Interesting.
I’ve rambled on about this elsewhere but I’ve been playing Dying Light recently and I feel like it fits nicely into the “good bad game” category.
I’m having fun playing it (mostly) and I think the core idea is solid, but the experience comes with so many caveats that I can’t help but sound like I hate it when I discuss the thing.
The story is uninteresting and an excuse for some frustrating missions, normally involving dull human opponents. The combat is all over the place and, all these hours later, I still feel like I’m doing something wrong. The game incentivises staying out after dark by giving you double XP and removing the penalty for dying but it kind of has to; once you realise that you can pretty easily run away from the Volatiles, it just makes things kind of dull.
None of these issues are bad enough to make me want to stop playing (yet) but the fact that there are so many of them and how unavoidable they are is frustrating. It’s like Techland felt the need to balance every two good ideas with one bad one.
The sequel is out next year and I am genuinely interested to see if they have learned any lessons from the first one and it’s proto-predecessor, Dead Island. It’ll be one of those rare times where a sequel would benefit from having less of the original in it, rather than more.
Reply
- Read More
  coolmanguydoctuar
  9/27/19 8:43am
  I enjoyed dying light for a while but it just took too long to get to the good stuff. The tutorial/opening area is like 5 hours and I just wanted to get a gun or a good weapon and go to town.
  Reply
- Read More
  MiFroChidoctuar
  9/27/19 8:44am
  I fired up Dying Light recently and then immediately turned it off. It’s the only open-world game I’ve finished in about eight years, but the prospect of going back to it is just too much. The mechanics are a lot of fun until you hit the wall (I had the same experience when I tried revisiting Skyrim last year).
  Instead I replayed the first chapter of Life Is Strange, and it’s actually better than I remembered. I loved the game the first time through, but knowing where the story is going made the characters seem a little less like teen-movie cliches. (I’d still say Before the Storm is the better game, but it’s not as wide a margin as I’d convinced myself.)
  This weekend I’m heading to Chapter 2, which means (shudder) the bottle-collecting puzzle.
  Reply
Read More
WelcomeThrillhoSam Barsanti
9/27/19 9:32am
I’m enjoying Borderlands 3 a whole heck (not part of the heck, the whole heck) of a lot. Each playable character mixes up the classes (sniper/infiltrator, brawler, soldier, crowd control) presented in the previous games and puts a new spin on the mechanics of the series. As a sequel, I think it’s pretty strong. It’s not a radical departure by any means, but it brings new things to the table even if it maintains the series’ lazy writing and reference based humor. (How do you make a one-off character named Trashmouth and not turn it into a Smashmouth joke?? I’ll send Gearbox my resume and a writing sample of meme jokes.) I don’t play Destiny or Apex (is Apex a shooter RPG or is it a battle royale with light rpg elements? I’m not sure how well that comparison works out), so my looting/shooting/big numbers/explosions of color lizard brain fun have come pretty much exclusively from the Borderlands franchise and I’m really into the newest entry. I disagree with your subjective opinion, Sam, as I am sure you disagree with mine.
So, flipping my chair around to level with you all about what I’m playing this weekend, I am going to hopefully play some more Borderlands 3. I’ve gotten the furthest as Zane and I’m enjoying a kill skill based build despite the fact that he struggles against bosses- once I swap to Moze or Fl4k, it becomes apparent that Zane is not as ridiculously strong as they are, but I have a lot of fun with him anyways. I may respec to take advantage of his shield tree to get more survivability, though.
For tabletop games, we’re doing Dungeon Crawl Classics for the time being. It’s a much simpler but more random system than a lot of other fantasy RPGs- you roll on a chart to see what effects your spells have and each wizard/elf spell has an extra effect unique to the spell as your character casts it. Clerics that fail spell checks risk their deity’s disapproval and they may withhold aid until the cleric burns an offering to apologize- this happened to my friend’s cleric after he kept healing a warrior of Chaotic alignment (he’s Lawful). His god disowned him mid-battle, so he doesn’t gain experience for the rest of the day after he repeatedly failed. It’s more fun than it might sound, especially since players are encouraged to have at least 2 characters at low levels in order to fill in when one of them inevitably dies. I love the magic and critical hits system since it makes magic and combat feel more dynamic and unpredictable- there’s a lot of pulpy influence in DCC and I’m really liking it. Since each character starts as a 0 level, 1d4 hit point commoner before getting a class level, you end up really rooting for your peasant as he gets in over his head and somehow comes out on top after clawing his way out from under the corpses of his peers.

Reply
- Read More
  youhadonejobWelcomeThrillho
  9/27/19 3:09pm
  I’m enjoying Borderlands 3 a whole heck (not part of the heck, the whole heck) of a lot.
  I keep seeing thinkpieces like the one Sam wrote about BL3 being bad, but I suspect that they just don’t like what Borderlands is about. That’s fine, I don’t like what any battle royale is about, so I don’t play them. I understand there’s a certain degree of personal necessity for some people to play games they might not necessarily like, but if you have always thought that Borderlands was bad... why keep playing it unless you have to for professional reasons?
  There’s been nothing even close to resembling a radical departure, so if you have never been a fan of the Borderlands formula, I’m not sure why you’d keep playing them.
  Anyway, as you’ve noted, Zane is the least-good of the playable characters. He got buffed today in a hotfix, but I assume he’s still not going to be as good, because they didn’t really address the core issue of why he’s not as good.
  Reply
- Read More
  WelcomeThrillhoyouhadonejob
  9/27/19 3:21pm
  That’s my gripe- what do we expect from a sequel? If it’s just a rehash of the last game, I can understand the “more of the same” criticism, but I genuinely think this installment has added new things to the game and altered the formula to be an improvement on the games that came before them.
  And I just saw the Zane hotfix update- looking forward to seeing how he’s been improved.
  Reply
Read More
PB-n-JusticeSam Barsanti
9/27/19 10:04am
I’m surprised that you like the influencers. I haven’t played it, but based on trailers I suspect I’d find them even more annoying than Handsome Jack. But even if we both disagree about what’s annoying in B3, at least we can agree it still manages to annoy.
I can finally say, definitively, that I am done Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt. I finally completed the Blood & Wine DLC, and even got the best ending possible! (Well, besides one small thing, but we’ll get to that. Spoilers for the next paragraph!)
I finally escaped from the Land of 1000 Fables with Syanna. I didn’t ascribe it much importance, but I won the ribbon from The Girl Who Sells Matches in one of the smoothest Gwent games I’ve ever played. I then went on to Rapunzel’s tower. I should preface this by saying Rapunzel is my wife’s absolute favorite character. I’ve seen Tangled more times than I can count. And I warned her. “Look. You know Witcher. You’ve watched me play. This could turn south.” But she still wanted to watch...we come upon “Longlocks”, who’s hung herself by her own hair. And now I have to kill the wraith form of Longlocks to get the next jelly bean. My wife walked out. Anyway, after all that we escape, I meet Detlaff, sadly I have to kill Detlaff. A good boss fight, and thankfully Regis survived. (I would have been PISSED if they killed off my boy Regis.) I play Geralt as I think I should, being both merciful and just, and remind Syanna to give ~~peace~~ forgiveness a chance. And then everyone is all honky-dory! Having looked up the other endings to satisfy my curiosity, shit could have gone real south had I played it differently. But I somehow lucked myself into the best ending...minus one thing. I mentioned before, months and months ago, that I accidentally romanced Yenn instead of Triss. And I never had the heart to break up with her, because even though it’s a videogame I felt super bad about saying no to her when she so clearly still loved Geralt. So after drinking the parting glass with Regis, Yenn decides to show up at my estate. Personally, while Triss would have been better, I wish I had Ciri come by my estate. It’s just the most wholesome relationship in the entire game, and I really enjoy their interactions. Regardless, I’m happy I ended it all on such a great note.
I’ve given you my general thoughts on the game before, so this is really just a rehash of that: Blood & Wine continued to have the amazing writing and quests that the rest of the game had. But this time the visuals were absolutely stunning, because this time we’re in Fantasy France/ Italy. Combat was enhanced by the new mutagen system, and Geralt looked like an absolute badass in his Mastercrafted Ursine Gear (which doesn’t fit Toussaint’s summer climes in the slightest.) I don’t have much to add that I haven’t said countless times, but in a weird way I feel like I’m going to miss The Witcher. As a gaming dad I don’t think I can ever afford to replay it, as there’s too much else that I want to play. But if this had came out in my youth I’m sure I’d replay it again every few years, when the itch strikes. So I guess this is goodbye, Geralt.
Currently I’m following up Witcher 3 with MUCH smaller games, like Cadence of Hyrule and Untitled Goose Game, both of which I play with the wifey. I’ve been playing Link to the Past & Ashen solo, the first just because and the second for my bro game club. Lots to juggle, but everything feels easier with that 180-hour boulder off my back. Have a good weekend all!
Reply
- Read More
  Shinigami Apple MerchantPB-n-Justice
  9/27/19 11:03am
  /comfort to your wife at experiencing the ill fated tale of Longlocks. At least you didn’t have to see the fables sex scene in the clouds, yeck. Congrats on getting the best ending though!
  Reply
- Read More
  PB-n-JusticeShinigami Apple Merchant
  9/27/19 12:07pm
  There is that! I should have expected it. But the kingdom was just so colorful, I thought she would enjoy sullen Geralt traipsing through fairy-tale land. Ah well.
  Reply
Read More
Implied KappaSam Barsanti
9/27/19 10:03am
I feel like I played exactly enough of Borderlands and Borderlands 2 to meet my quota for the gameplay loop. And then there was a sale on all the Borderlands 2 DLC, and I said, “Sure, let’s do it!” and then, within minutes of gameplay, realized that, no, this wasn’t some kind of gameplay loop that I craved more the longer I’d been away from it; I’d met my lifetime Borderlands quota. This frees me up to play all kinds of other games without even a moment’s hesitation to dwell on FOMO. I appreciate that others are going to get hundreds of hours of mileage out of Borderlands 3. Meanwhile, it’s nice to have one gigantic release that I don’t have to buy day 1 and consume rapidly lest I’m locked out of watching everyone else’s first impressions on Twith if I want to maintain a blind experience. I will not crave unspoiled Borderlands 3.
Video Games:
So instead of participating in the Borderlands 3 release hype, I grabbed both the Link’s Awakening remake and Untitled Goose Game last Friday. I was like 80% of the way done with my completionist Bloodstained run and wound up dropping Link’s Awakening 6 dungeons in so I could farm several dozen enemies and fill up my bestiary/shard list/item list. By the end, I’d upgraded about 20 passive shards until they’d become constantly-equipped abilities, meaning I had significant upgrades to almost all of my stats, extra attack speed, and all my stats continued to improve as I lost health. It got well past the point where anything was even challenging, but considering the early-game deaths it felt earned and satisfying.
I’ll probably be doing far less complete runs on higher difficulties in the future. I’ve been uninstalling most games I’ve knocked off my Steam backlog. I think I might even start over in two weeks and still enjoy it just as much the second time around.
Then I went back to Link’s Awakening, which I’d read was a one-to-one recreation of the Game Boy game. There are more quality-of-life upgrades than I was led to believe. Manbo’s Mambo teleports you to any warp point, not just Crazy Tracy’s. I’d already read that there were warp points, but not having to walk to them to use them just makes the whole map that much more accessible.
I also appreciate how much of an absolute banger the secret music is when you name your file ZELDA. I also want to check on whether Totaka’s song is still in Richard’s Villa if you wait long enough - I suspect it does. Don’t tell me. I’m gonna try it this weekend.
I wound up finishing the game deathless, and I kinda wonder if I need to play the game on Hero now since the fairy bottles,the ability to get far more heart containers, and just my overall familiarity with the game makes it all just a little too easy. Another game I’ll probably revisit pretty soon.
This left me with Untitled Goose Game. I did it all in Untitled Goose Game. I honked, I cause havoc, I pooled the wool over humans’ eyes, and I stole things. Then I finished every area in 6 minutes or less. Then I wanted to play again. Instead, I immediately leapt into the wonderful world of people who were just a few hours behind me in playing it for the first time and I got to experience the feelings I’d just gone through vicariously through Twitch, where I got a lot of mileage out of repeatedly typing “HONK” in chat.
It’s bite-sized, and for $15, I wasn’t expecting a massive world to explore, but it captures something not a whole let of games let you play with: you get to play as someone truly mean-spirited. You are lot a lovable scamp who, at the end of the day, the villagers have a hard time hating. You are a thorn in everybody’s sides. And everything you do is ultimately just a petty annoyance, never rising above the level of property damage, but there is no tender core at your center, no pleasantry to your rivalry with everyone in town. They hate you, and you should be grateful nobody has it in their heart to take those hedge clippers to your neck.
I will be replaying this game frequently.
Of the three games I finished last weekend, Link’s Awakening is the only one with any daylight unexplored. I’ve got 10 secret seashells to find and maybe 10 heart pieces. Then there are some figurines to collect, of which I’ve only found two, so... you know... I didn’t completely burn through everything in one weekend. But for now I’m still in the middle of one of my bad Steam horror games. If I’m being efficient, I might be able to knock out the rest of the game tonight, clear another 2 gigs off my hard drive, and either get back to another game I’ve abandoned in the middle (Hollow Knight, Final Fantasy IX), chip away at something more open-ended with plenty left to explore (Goat Simulator, My Time At Portial, Slime Rancher), or start into something long-ignored (Tales of Symphonia, Sanitarium, either Shantae game).
As much as I like to frame my (certainly not even remotely record-breaking) Steam backlog as an albatross around my neck, a source of shame, an obligation that must be fulfilled, it really is this giant playground full of toys I’ve purchased over the span of several year and haven’t got nearly enough use out of. Even having cut it in half over the past year and change, there’s still a kind of paralysis when I look at the whole list and ask myself, “What do I want to play?” But it’s gotten easier. I no longer have to type the names of 20 options into a randomizer and let fate choose my next project. I’m far more likely now to come back from work on Friday and confidently say, “Yes, this is a day for Mega Man!”
HONK
Board Games
We’re taking some time off of hosting board games at our apartment since Andrew is both sick and involved in some performance art group I’ve never seen perform, and they’ve have shows on two consecutive weekends now. But we’re prioritizing Pandemic Legacy Season 1. We’re too deep in the campaign to slow down. We may even finish next week.
It’s getting harder and harder to talk about this game meaningfully without spoiling so much of what we’re doing because so we have... 24 rules that we’ve placed in the instruction manual that were not there on day 1. I don’t even want to say, “Oh my god, so much changed in Smarch!” because I wouldn’t want anyone who’s either on the fence or just planning to play the game at some point to know in advance where in the campaign the major curveballs are.
Suffice it to say, this has been an absolute ride.
I brought Spirit Island to the public board game night this week and, as the couple in our quartet for Kingdom Death: Monster was out, I went through a game with some low-complexity spirits with KDM’s owner. There were enough concepts that I skipped over explaining several until he pointed out that he was confused on why X wasn’t a good idea or why he wasn’t able to do Y, but by the end of the game, he was the one who said, “We can win this turn, before the invader phase,” and after the game he went back through the spirit cards to see who might be more interesting to play in future games.
He pointed out that he’d just moved into the area I live in, and we exchanged phone numbers for future board game geekery. His schedule will be difficult to work around, but so’s Andrew’s. It’ll be nice having someone who’s down for some more hardcore games.. A lot of our game nights have been focused around casual, quick, easy-to-learn games, but the more rewarding ones involve giant rulebooks and 4-hour sessions to complete a single game. We now have 5 people who are into big, ugly games. It’s probably going to be rare to get all 5 together at one time, but I think we’re about to start getting more mileage out of our hardcore games even with just 3 or 4.
Reply
- Read More
  Shinigami Apple MerchantImplied Kappa
  9/27/19 11:00am
  It’s a bit early to tell, but I’m wondering if Untitled Goose Game may eclipse Until Dawn as my litmus test for a good LPer. I’ve yet to see a bad LP of this gem. Just as with you, I adore watching people experience it for the first time. “OMG look, it walks just like a goose! Hahahaha these NPC reactions are hilarious! You can do that too!?! Awesome~!” So much darn charm in this thing.
  I hope Andrew gets better soon and you’re able to get more time to host your favorite longform board games with he and your new BG enthusiast friend in the future, /cheer!
  Reply
- Read More
  Implied KappaImplied Kappa
  9/27/19 11:11am
  Oh dear, these typos. Fell asleep writing this, woke up and wrote some more, fell asleep midsentence and woke up to my last alarm. I was determined to wrap it up before heading to work. But at what cost? At what cost???
  Reply
Read More
MisterNooneSam Barsanti
9/27/19 4:33am
Backlogged: How Do I Format These Posts Again? Edition
Just a quick one today. I’ve barely touched my retro gaming list over the past few months due to being busier (a good thing, for the most part) and having returned to my actual, contemporary backlog (Dark Souls Remastered on Switch sucked me in hard), but I’ve picked Dragon Warrior IV back up over the past few days and managed to make some good progress. I’m well into Chapter 5 by now, with my entire band of heroes united (I’m rocking a Hero, Alena, Nara and Mara party for the moment), and I’m intrigued by the choice to limit direct player control to the Hero for this final chapter. I’m not sure I like leaving the actions of the others up to the computer, but it hasn’t caused any problems so far, so I guess we’ll see how it goes. On the other hand, I’m very much a fan of the horse-and-cart which allows my inactive party members to follow me wherever I go, ready to tag in at a moment’s notice. It’s both convenient and organic to the story; a good combination. In terms of progression, I most recently took a trip to Endor Casino, where I manipulated time (i.e. save states) to clean them out. Was it cheap? Absolutely. Did it allow me to purchase as many Metal Babble Shields as I could equip in record time? Yes. Yes it did. (Seaside Village, here I come.)
Anyway, that’s all from me this week. See you folks next time!
Reply
- Read More
  Shinigami Apple MerchantMisterNoone
  9/27/19 6:39am
  Welcome back, and congrats on defeating the Endor Casino (one of the most tricky “foes” in the game). I’m glad you’re enjoying the horse-and-cart system, a relative innovation at the time of its release, to be sure. Best of fortune with the remainder of Dragon Quest IV. It’s got a really solid ending too, if I remember correctly.
  Reply
Read More
Murry ChangSam Barsanti
9/27/19 7:37am
A buddy convinced me to buy Anthem so I’ve been playing it this week. It’s....well it sure is a game. It’s not bad but it’s not great either. Glad I got it on sale, it’s worth about $20. Gameplay is ok, story barely hangs together but at least the landscape is great and flying feels good.
Reply
- Read More
  youhadonejobMurry Chang
  9/27/19 3:03pm
  A buddy convinced me to buy Anthem so I’ve been playing it this week.
  I’m sorry you have such shitty friends.
  In all seriousness, I “enjoyed” the bones of the game while I was still under the impression that it would eventually be improved to a suitable game. So far, 7 months later, it has not. I’ve been waiting for a reason to go back and play it, but they haven’t given me even the slightest reason to do so, and now all future content is on hold. I suspect it to be completely abandoned shortly after 2020, if not sooner.
  Reply
- Read More
  Murry Changyouhadonejob
  9/27/19 3:07pm
  Eh, dude was using a shitty old PC for years and years, finally got a new one and Anthem was what he got, so I can’t blame him for having bad taste he hasn’t played a new game that isn’t indie in a long time.
  And, really, since I got it on sale for $20 I think I’ll get my money’s worth out of it just playing through the story. It’s never gonna be my favorite game but flying around in freeplay to see the world is worth the price of admission, and there’s always the chance the the story will somehow come together at the end!
  I would have felt ripped off if I’d paid full price for it for sure though.
  Reply
Read More
The DemonsSam Barsanti
9/27/19 1:26am
On the “visceral adrenaline” front, I’ve finished Final Doom’s campaign The Plutonia Experiment (plus one more romp through it for good measure so I could find the secret levels), and have now taken the plunge to start attempting its maps as standalone challenges without the benefit of a full inventory.
On the “chillout zen garden” front, my current “Hardcore 100HP” playthrough of Terraria has recently hit the milestone of reaching the hellish netherworld at the bottom of the map; the sheer damage its demons and bone wyrms are capable of has sent me scurrying back to the surface. It’ll be way safer to face the barbs and poisons of the Jungle instead: I can start construction on a new base and railway, and end up with a sweet new grappling hook for my trouble.
Reply
- Read More
  lost_limeyThe Demons
  9/27/19 8:46am
  son_limey seems obsessed with Terraria. HE show me him playing it, but he’s fairly deep into it and fighting some kind of giant venus flytrap thing. I don’t understand it all, and have never felt more dad as he shows me what he’s doing without ever explaining the context.
  Reply
- Read More
  The Demonslost_limey
  9/27/19 10:47am
  Yeah, he’d be better off showing you all the tutorial videos (I assume) he’s been watching while he prepares, rather than his gameplay out of context. The game also, of course, has a comprehensive wiki with which one can educate themselves, but that requires getting over the initial hump of being able to parse its jargon and start speaking its language.
  Anyway, that’s adorable how he’ll present something he cares about without any consideration for why anybody else should care about it. But hey, maybe as his brain continues to develop he’ll discover that he’s inherited a knack for storytelling. You never know.
  Reply
Read More
The_MisanthropeSam Barsanti
9/27/19 7:38am
I’m going to be in Chicago on vacation next week. While I’m there, I’ll be sure to check out the local (b)arcades. Are they merely shallow nostalgia havens that leave their machines in disrepair or are they loving institutions to a bygone era? Are they full of loud time-wasting ticket games? I intend to find out! They’re bound to be better than the local Dave and Buster’s.
Reply
- Read More
  MiFroChiThe_Misanthrope
  9/27/19 8:47am
  Plug - Chicago has The Exchange in Wicker Park, which is still one of the best places to get physical media (including video games from the 8-bit era to the present, with booklets and everything!).
  They actually had several locations in Pittsburgh, and I miss the hell out of them.
  Reply
- Read More
  lost_limeyThe_Misanthrope
  9/27/19 8:51am
  I don’t know about Chicago, but I’ve found most of the barcades I’ve been to have been closer to the former.
  /shoutout to 1984 in Wilmington, Delaware
  Here in Richmond, VA the only barcade I’ve been to does have a few ticket games, but it also has a solid nostalgia section where I played a lot of Tetris and Gauntlet, and it has so many pinball machines....
  Reply