AWKWARD ZOMBIE

So Japan showed off some Monster Hunter World gameplay.

I managed to snag all the Sims 3 expansions for about $60, so once they come in I will set fire to my computer once I frankenstein them all together.

Provided I even have the energy to play.

Nice, dude. I will never pay full price for a Sims expansion pack, with the way EA tries to price them like an entirely different and complete game.

Just restarted and completed Final Fantasy XV. I know I'm six months late to the party, but I haven't had enough time to actually finish the game until now, since I"m finally done with school.
So, final thoughts on FF15: 9 for the dive, 2 for the landing

The most infuriating thing is that there was a really good framework with a lot of potential for engaging story, sympathetic characters, and intense lore with some solid dungeon designs to accompany said lore. And they fucking squandered it by dicking around on development so long Square basically said "scrap anything that isn't 100% ready. Don't care if the game is only 30% of its original size and half your story is missing. We'll DLC that shit if we really have to."
"But by all means, keep that detailed cup noodle intricacy in there. Can't miss that. Fuck, give it its own goddamn theme song"

The three strong points:

1: Ardyn. Saving goddamned grace of the writing, and the only thing worth enough interest to ponder theories about his character and plot.
I do adore Ignis as my favorite out of the main party, but due to the structure of the story, I acknowledge that he didn't have much impact for most, aside from the moment where he challenges Gladio. His DLC will hopefully expand on the character points that I liked, though. Similarly, Prompto might end up actually being a fun/interesting character once he's FORCED to be relevant in his DLC chapter. Can't say for sure.

2: The music. No reservations on this one whatsoever, because Yoko Shimomura is fucking godly, and I aim to compose as well as her one day.

3: Visual design in regards to the environment and gods (except Ifrit. Ifrit is not supposed to be that fucking pretty, even if he is taking a Lucifer route in this story). Most of the story-relevant dudes were overdesigned, but generally, the lady designs were okay, save for Cindy's cringy translation to the North American release, with the generalized "American South" persona. Although that's more of an issue with her writing than her fanservicey design.


Sloth and I have basically gotten so hung up on the wasted potential thing that we ended up just talking about edits we would make, and ended up over-overhauling it to the point that we basically accidentally came up with an entirely different game, that happens to just have a similar framework, although Ardyn and Ignis (see above) are admittedly relatively unaltered, save for certain origin things.

A tradition that might have ended with the original Sims if development of The Sims 2 wasn't screwed up. The bast Sims 2 game was going to have all the content in the first game's expansion packs and more, and there was talk of getting rid of expansion packs in favor of smaller priced downloadable updates (possibly even free). This went off the rails when there was a fire at Maxis' office and the beta source code of The Sims 2 went up with it. The idea then was to make a good base game and then re-add the other content they showed off before as expansion packs when the dev team had time to finish those parts. It would also help recoup the lost development costs of having to rebuild the game all over again.

So now we have to wait to get some basic features, since EA forces the same basic expansion ideas. Like pets, seasons, night clubs, and basic human rights.

I got World Adventures after getting The Sims 3, but after that I fell off playing it until now because of my laptop dying and college happening. I've been wanting to get back on occasion but I wanted all the stuff and didn't want to pay $200 to complete one game. The fact that they never released a definitive version like, after The SIms 4 came out with all the expansions baffles me.

So I got all the expansions but one installed (the seller sent me a duplicate instead and is working to fix that), and it took 4 hours to do. I also forgot that The Sims 3 had a stupid serial code verification to every expansion, because of course EA would rely on you needing an insert in a game case to play the disc you have. Luckily all of them had the inserts.

I might make some Sims up tonight but I only have a bit of time to remain conscious today.

As I understand it, Far Harbor is the only DLC worth getting for Fallout 4.

T/F?

Between Far Harbor and Nuka World, I think Far Harbor is a more engaging story. Nuka World has a really nice variety of differently designed areas.


Automaton could be fun if you just like putting together weird robots but it doesn't bring any new areas to the table, really. Same for the other DLCs like the vault pack and so on, like, they put in one or two fun new things like being able to catch and tame beasties or making settlers use an exercise bike (I refuse to give that statement context). But they don't really give you any new places worth exploring.

So Hollow Knight is a pretty awesome game so far. I never thought bugs could be this cute.

I definitely get lost a lot before I got the map, though. I figure the same will be true for the other areas as I get through the game

We're getting the SNES Classic too.

Comes with Starfox 2.

Finally a Starfox game that doesn't ride on the coattails of the original by retelling the same story. I'm hyped for this.

holy fuckin shit I just saw that Phantom Dust is free on PC from Xbox store.

this game was the shit when I played it as a kid but it was Original Xbox so I was never able to revisit it and now it's fuckin FREE.

if any of you haven't played it I'd recommend it. Best description I can give you is that it's sort of like a real-time card game. Nothing I've played or heard of has ever really replicated or come close it.

Some games just fucking GET me.

I never minded people who play games on Easy at their own pace. I just wish I didn't have to deal with the people who violently leap in on a conversation to refute points and call me names when I personally think some parts of some games are too easy.

I didn't think people who would do that even existed until I started saying things in the Dark Souls subreddits.

It depends on the game for me, but I never play any game on a difficulty high enough to be frustrating, and I tend to get frustrated if I'm struggling or failing more than 1/3 of my attempts/25% of my playing time or so.

Some games I play pretty much exclusively to just trash the AI, like playing Civ V with unlimited city growth proletariats on Settler difficulty just so I can do stuff like build bodaciously ALL OF THE WONDERS, or go to Alpha Centauri by the 60's, or culture victory in the bronze age, all with only one or two cities to my name. It's also why I tend to mostly play stuff like Overwatch and TF2 with goofy game modes or against bots, because the standard victory rate against people is only maybe a little bit more than half the time, which means I usually only play two or three matches that way at a time before it stops being fun.

I just realized, if you suck at video games, then playing Dark Souls is like saying, "Life isn't hard enough. Present me a challenge, bitch." in front of Mr. Devil himself.