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Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of June 23rd
  • I've been enjoying Pacific Drive this week. It's a great survival crafting game in the vein of Subnautica, which is to say there is a linear progression path for upgrades and improvement, and a well-defined objective and end goal.

    I just wish it was less stressful. Even just the normal act of activating a gateway to end a run requires a race through your current zone where one misstep can cause you to get stuck long enough to fail. And sometimes conditions just really stack up against you in a way that can be unexpected and frustrating.

    Overall though it really hits the spot with its loop. I love returning to the garage and going through the ritual of healing, fueling up, recharging, transferring supplies, and checking on upgrades.

    Oh...I also finished and platinumed 13 sentinels earlier this week. I enjoyed that one a lot more than I expected. It's as compelling as it is eye-rollingly funny how many sci-fi tropes the main story burns through, but I i was frequently and pleasantly taken by surprise. And the battle system, which through the first area I thought was so easy it was basically a formality, really did become more challenging and tactical, especially when trying to get S ranks.

  • PlayStation Plus Game Catalog for June: Monster Hunter Rise, Football Manager 2024, Crusader Kings III, After Us and more
  • I've never played one except a PSP game way back that I dont think I understood at the time. I can't even remember why I had it tbh. But I've been eyeing the series for the past few years. They look fun, but I'm not typically a Capcom fan and I'm pretty sure it's not for me. Glad to be able to finally give one a proper try.

  • Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of June 2nd
  • I kind of love Control's navigation. The map is helpful enough to point you in the right direction, but also shitty enough that you have to pay attention to the diagetic signage. It's uniquely immersive.

  • Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of June 2nd
  • 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. I am about 25% through with both Remembrance and the battles... Destruction? I'm in awe of the narrative's complexity. It's also a little overwhelming, it feels impossible to get any kind of handle on things. The game adds new layers every time you think you're getting it.

    Im really enjoying it though, the mystery is really fun to dig at.

    I also beat Malenia this week, which is pretty much the last major thing I had left in my first Elden Ring save. I got help of course (thanks superelva11), but it's been really satisfying tying a bow on that. 140 hours, plus another 30-35 on a second save - Elden Ring is officially the most time I've ever spent on a single game by quite a large margin.

  • Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of June 2nd
  • Good luck my friend. Hollow Knight is a special one, but those bosses can be punishing. A few of them took me separate sessions over a few days, which is a frustrating way to play games for me, but it's such a rewarding experience otherwise. I recently rewatched my recording of beating one of the bosses and I was fumbling so bad, I could see my own desperation in the way I was playing.

    Apparently there's a secret phase for the final boss that I was more than happy to experience via YouTube. I was perfectly satisfied with just rolling the credits.

  • Jeannine Hall Gailey, "Lessons Learned From Final Girls".
  • You can't be too broke to break As a woman always something left to take So you shouldn't try to stay too late or talk to strangers Look too long, go too far out of range cause Angels can't watch everybody all the time Stay close, hems low, safe inside That formula works if you can live it But it works by putting half the world off limits

    • Dessa, Fire Drills
  • "Under the Silver Lake" explanation
  • It's been a few years since I watched it and none of this made sense to me. Just read the Wikipedia summary for a refresher and it's one of the most incomprehensible summaries I've ever read. All I can say is that I remember taking the movie at its word more or less. Interesting idea though.

  • Enotria: The Last Song Demo Impressions

    Has anyone played the Enotria demo? I played about 15 minutes, getting just outside the tutorial area. I've been playing Elden Ring a lot lately and...Enotria just feels bad to play. Credit to the developers for the interesting setting and concept (masks and loudouts), but it's frustrating that it's such a direct copy of the FromSoftware formula. The combat mechanics, UI, enemy behavior, sound design, and level design are so egregiously imitative that its comparative shortcomings in all those areas are hyper-noticeable.

    I haven't played many non-FromSoftware soulslikes like Lies of P or Steelrising (or even, candidly, most of the actual Souls games - just BloodBorne, Demon's Souls Remake, and Elden Ring), but I'd hope they were more taking inspiration and doing something meaningfully different that you can't get from a brand-name Souls game, rather than settling for what feels like a Kidz Bop version of the real deal.

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    Trump Team Holds Breath as Stormy Daniels Returns to Stand
  • Decided to check in on things. She got a chuckle out of me from some of the quotes attributed.

    Necheles asked her about the number of porn films she's written and directed, and said, “You have a lot of experience making phony stories about sex.”

    “Wow. That’s not how I would put it," Daniels replied. "The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room” with Trump. She added, "If that story was untrue, I would’ve written it to be a lot better.”

    Asked if she'd promised people she'd be instrumental in putting Trump in jail, Daniels said, "No." Necheles then asked her about a social media post where someone had called her a human toilet, and Daniels responded, "Exactly! Making me the best person to flush the orange turd down." Necheles asked if that meant she'd be instrumental in getting rid of him. Daniels said it was "hyperbole." "I'm also not a toilet," she said.

    @MrVilliam@lemmy.world called it saying it would get cringey and gross. The "phony stories about sex" line from Necheles is awful stuff.

  • Remembering Prey, Arkane Austin’s masterpiece
  • The Nightmare Typhon that has a timer? That sucks. I don't remember having too much trouble in my first playthrough - I have memories of just hiding in a bathroom that it was too big to enter until the timer ran out for one of the encounters. But I can imagine that if you're in a particularly bad area when it comes for you it could cause problems.

  • Remembering Prey, Arkane Austin’s masterpiece
  • I don't know if Prey is my favorite game of all time, but it's on the short list. I can, however, say that it is the game that most fills me with awe. Talos 1 is an extraordinary playspace filled with incredible detail, choice, style, and diversity. The narrative, possibly the weakest element of the game, still packs in a lot of cool ideas and genuine surprises.

    Prey also contains by far my favorite opening "level" of all time. Without spoiling, the immediate tonal shift, the creepy mystery, the complete recontextualization of your first 10 or 15 minutes, it's an absolute spectacle.

    In a perfect world, all these devs get absorbed by WolfEye Studios or something and they get a bunch of funding to make another massive masterpiece.

  • Microsoft closes Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin and others
  • Via Kotaku:

    Bloomberg previously reported that the vampire shooter’s [Arkane's Redfall] troubled development grew out of a push by top Bethesda leadership to make a live-service game, a decision that ultimately led to sky-high attrition and multiple delays.

    All reward, no risk for the executives demanding that their best-in-class immersive sim developer create an empty live service shooter. Stupid decision led to predictable outcome and the workers feel the ax for it.

  • Got a Switch today, need some recommendations.

    This is my first Nintendo system since the NES. I've never been a big fan of their first-party properties when I've played on others' consoles, although I am interested in the Switch Zelda games.

    We got Mario Kart 8 and Let's Go Pikachu for my son (the Switch is for his birthday). I might try Let's Go Pikachu but don't really care for Mario Kart. I'm keeping an eye on the Ori games too.

    What I'm mainly interested in is Switch games that you can't play on the PS5 (which is my main platform). I don't really do mobile gaming so the Switch will pretty much be a home console for all intents and purposes, so I'm also not really affected by games that are "good for Switch mobility" like Hades (as an example--I already own that on PS5).

    Thanks!

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    New ‘Matrix’ Movie In Works At Warner Bros From Drew Goddard
    deadline.com New ‘Matrix’ Movie In Works At Warner Bros From Drew Goddard

    Drew Goddard, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Martian, has been set to write and direct a new Matrix movie at Warner Bros.

    New ‘Matrix’ Movie In Works At Warner Bros From Drew Goddard

    I started rolling my eyes before I saw Drew Goddard's name, who apparently approached WB with his own idea. He is an incredibly gifted storyteller and I believe his passion for this world is sincere. I'm pretty excited to see what he has in mind.

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    Shredder's underrated introduction from 1990's live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

    I watched Mutant Mayhem over the weekend (which was great). I haven't watched the 1990 movie in years, but I was suddenly reminded how powerful this scene is for what is ostensibly a silly action movie for kids: the elongated shadow, the percussive score with ominous electric guitar accents, the camera tracking down from its starting position to sweep in behind him, the light gleaming from the blades on his helmet as he slowly turns to scan the room, and the ritualistic unrolling of the cape from his shoulders. All in a single, imposing 75-second take.

    Great stuff.

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    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)CO
    ConstableJelly @midwest.social
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