On Monday, May 1, 2023 at 7:17:39 AM UTC-7, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
What Have You Been Playing... IN APRIL 2023?
*** Crysis
**** Void Scrappers
** Sector Six
? Everspace 2
** Dink Smallwood
* Stargunner
**** Elden Ring
Quite a bit more than I realized.
*** Crysis. Great Sci-Fi FPS. It's just about perfect for what it
is. My current rig handled it fine on highest settings, and it's still
about as good on visuals as anthing released today. I don't really
have much to say about it though, it's almost forgettable, in fact I
did forget and only remembered because I checked my gog played games.
It felt like it was rushed at the end, that you should've gone back to
the island.
**** Void Scrappers - Vampire Survivors in 2d top down space combat.
It's shorter and more accessible than Vamp S, I was left wanting more.
Well worth the $3 or $4 if you like that type of game.
** Sector Six - this is a fairly complicated side scroller 'roguelike'
space shooter with building your ship from modules. I didn't play it
long as it seemed a bit grindy and too complicated to get into to begin
with. I'm not that fond of side scrollers, r-type is one of the few exceptions that I probably don't care for much anymore.
? Everpace 2 - I didn't play it long because I felt the Elden Ring call
and had to go back to playing it. What I did get through seemed more
relaxed and more story based than the original. There doesn't seem to
be the semi time limit of more and more waves of the original. It also
had a lot more and longer cutscenes than I remember, not something I
really appreciate. The voice acting is fine at least. I intend to go
back to it first after my ER addiction wanes again.
** Dink Smallwood - An old somewhat silly fantasy top down game on
gog. It felt very familiar, I might have played it some time in the
ancient past. I got a bit into it, and don't actually remember why I
stopped playing it. Maybe just too old and too familiar with not quite
as interesting gameplay as newer games.
* Stargunner - another old game, I thought it might be similar to star
control 2, but no, it was closer to Star Control 1, and not even really
that fun, again it was side scroller, more similar to r-type than
Sector Six was. Missions only, and only 5 that I could see, which I
presume you're supposed to play over and over to upgrade your ship,
only unlike Everspace, no persistance, so when you die you must start
over from scratch, only without the add another coin option of r-type,
and seemed to be harder to boot, with real bad graphics. Can't
recommend this one at all.
**** Elden Ring - What more can I say? A lot apperently, I'm not sure
it will be of much interest to those that haven't played though. I'll
divide this in two sections, for those who haven't played following immediately, and later for those who have.
- For those who haven't:
I had stopped last time as I got stuck on the halig tree, but I had
thoughts of how to get past it I wanted to try, so I went back to try,
it worked, and I finished my str/faith run fairly easily after that. I started str/arc but was finding it way too easy with the bloodhound
fang, and the bloodhound fang was more dex than str, I'm starting to
get gud with the game at last I guess. So I went back to my newbhelper
build for more challenge, which is locked to Level 11 and +3/+1 weapons
(for those not familiar the game is balanced to finish at around level
125-150 and +25/+10 weapons so that's severely underleveled), so that I
can be summoned and help people at the beginning of the game.
I'm really enjoying the puzzle aspect of figuring out what works in
each case of enemies. For instance I've always had trouble getting
past the fire spewing sitting tree/gargoyle things in deeproot on the
roots before, but figured out you can snipe them freely with a bow with
the arrow's reach talisman from somewhere their breath doesn't reach.
I've so far gotten a bit more than halfway through the game which
surprises me. I've hit some hard spots I gave up on and don't really
plan to go back to unless I'm near finishing the game, as the bosses
don't have anything I really need/want, and moved on elsewhere.
- For the people who've played it:
That's the crucible knight in the limwood jail, rot dragon, and the
tripple rot crystalians boss. For the big bosses I've defeated
Godrick, Rennalla & Radahn (first time because of the summons.) I'll
also mention Twin Gargoyles as I had to resort to slam bolder wall
climbing and sniping/mist cheese to defeat them, which is actually the
hardest fight I've had that I succeeded at, mostly because they're
immune or reisistant to almost everything, hit really hard and fast and there's two of them, they've given me a lot of trouble on most of my characters except my astrologer as they aren't immune or very resistant
to magic. On the big boss fights I use serpent arrows/bow combo to
poison them, then rot breath to rot them, then ice breath, and volcano
pots to roast them when they freeze, or after I'm out of mana. As long
as the host doesn't managed to get themselves killed (and me either,
which is pretty rare now) all that will take down Margit/Godrick fairly quickly.
My weapon staples are the morning star with sacred blade and a no skill
shield for catacombs with skeletons or imps, or turtle shield (+end
regen) and great stars two-handed with with whatever ash I'm feeling
at the moment, it currently has golden land which is a PBOE with a
bunch of sniping holy bolts (used it a lot on my str/fai build) and
claymore for dealing with stormveil banished knights, as its default
ash lion's claw flattens them, when I'm summoned there. I usually have
the faith talisman and the physical scarseal on. When I'm doing my own progress I have Godrick's rune on and a rune arc active for the +5 to
all stats most of the time. I rely on the crystalian summon as much as
I can as while they don't do tons of damage and aren't great at taking
agro, they're extremely tanky taking single digits of damage until they
get stance broken and become vulnerable. I found warming stones will
heal your summons and have done that when able when not in a boss
fight. I use volcano pots a lot as they're infinitely craftible (well
up to 300 as they require 2 volcano stones which have a limit of 600)
after you don't have agro, and can hold and use up to 15 in a fight,
and they don't use mana. It's somewhat of a pain to farm the stones
for it when I'm running low though. I like to keep a few lightning
pots too, as some things are immune to fire, they're a bit harder to
farm for though (mostly just the mushrooms which are used for most
pots) so I use nd them more sparingly.
I want to mention I hate to be summoned to Stormveil for the run
through as hosts rarely follow me , and choose to follow another summon
that doesn't know what they're doing or insist on going where they
want, and again don't know what they're doing (So far I've only about 3
times out of hundreds that knew Stormveil better than me, but I learned
from them so now I'm on equal footing.) I'm tempted to change my
character's name from Nubelper (newbie helper) to FOLLOW ME! We also
get immediately invaded mostly by people twinking far worse than I,
that probably just had another account or a friend duping and drop
everything, and a win against them is rare meaning we don't make much
if any progress, and when we do, it's probably the longest run you can
make in the game with co-op summons. Yes I could just nope out with
the finger severer when summoned, but that would be against the point
of the character.
I have tried invading to help people out, basically by taking up the
invader slot/time and not fighting, but I usually get killed
immedately, and it's not very fun just wandering around watching or
leading them.
- Justisaur
ø-ø
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