Moa

Hooray! July 23rd, holy fuck.

Im not deep enough into ffxiv to really compare complexity between the two games. What I do miss about WoW is the way the world feels vast and open and each zone feels distinct. The loading screens between areas in ffxiv is honestly a huge immersion killer and the world doesn't feel like it has much continuity.

Does anyone have a spare "Fat Black Chocobo" code for FFXIV from Amazon's promotion in June? Also, I think I'm enjoying FFXIV, I just got it after using the free three day subscription to WoW, leveling from 114 to 115, and re-uninstalling after about two hours. I like that the game seems to be less about racing to the endgame for "the real game to begin" and instead seems to hang its hat on authored story-based content. The ability animations are also flashy and go a long way towards making pretty standard MMO combat feel impactful. It is a bit of a bummer that I primarily want to heal and it sounds like healers in general were the only jobs not improved in the recent expansion.

I thought it was the definition of an okay movie. In Hereditary it felt like every single strand connected into both the characters, the content of the plot, and the building horror, but in Midsommer it largely felt like the plot threads were left in the wind while events progressed more or less without input from the characters.

It's really easy to know whether or not you are going to like a game from seeing like 30 seconds of gameplay. There are times when I've been wrong about games based on initial impressions, though this mostly occurs with indie games, but the idea that you have to play Far Cry 7 to know that it's going to be trash is ludicrous. AAA games are to Marvel movies as indie games are to movies worth watching.

Having just finished S2, past episode 3 it becomes less important to have seen the first season recently and I don't think it is really necessary to rewatch S1 even if you're occasionally confused.

Forza Horizon 4 is a great indie game that deserves more attention.

We are now entering the era of unnecessarily shiny surfaces.

Fuck Luigi and his condescending ass.

AAA gaming has been chasing its own tail for a while with constant retreads, iterations, and generally trying to be the Witcher. Indie games tend to be doing much more interesting and original things. I also think that past a certain age you've seen what AAA gaming has to offer and it's hard not to be jaded about it.

Yeah, season 2 takes the training wheels off when it comes to character continuity. I was using the wiki to help remember character iterations and the family trees for some characters are like 10 people deep and contain some spoilers like X is Y's Aunt / Granddaughter, which is super funny. Three episodes into season 2 I'm glad that almost all of my fears about the direction of the show have been abated, i was particularly worried that the future setting would be too shark jumping and that the show would be too good v evil with whatever Noah is up to.

I should've rewatched the first season, fuck this show is so fucking confusing.

To each their own, but I think what differentiates this game from a lot of survival/exploration games is that it is actually engaging to play because of the very precise control you have over your ship/suit.

Outer Wilds is One of the Best Games I've Ever Played - Jason Schreier

The level design and environmental variety were definitely the weakest aspects of the game. It didn't bother me too much personally, since the game is really all about the combat and there is only so much you can gussy it up before you just slow the game down. That said, I'm glad Doom Eternal is expanding the color pallet beyond rust and red.

Doom is the only AAA single player FPS that I can think of that was significantly improved with M/K controls. By the end of the game on Ultra-Violence every enemy with the occasional exception of the Barons of Hell were just walking healthpacks. I really wish that there was a difficulty setting that maintained the AI damage and behavior of Ultra-Violence but was jam packed with more demons.

Allowing people to 360 no-scope a baby is not how you make a meaningful statement about war.

I definitely went through a few frustrating sections where I either was missing the solution and kept trying something impossible or otherwise goofed and found myself in a sticky situation. I like that the game isn't too hand-holdy and gives you lots of rope to hang yourself with since the emergent oh fuuuuuck moments are spectacular. This game inverts the fear of deep water, and I now dread being plucked from the safety of my planet and thrown into space to struggle, die, and drift ever further from home. For those who haven't played this game, I would strongly recommend it and I hope Epic is paying the Devs a fuck ton of money because if this wasn't an EGS exclusive it would be making much larger waves.

Based on the fact that it's call Overwatch 2 and it has to be mostly similar to Overwatch I don't have too much hope for this, but Blizzard doing a Warframe-esque game in the Overwatch universe would be pretty interesting.

RIP Starcraft: Ghost 2.

Ape Out is some hard bop I can recommend to anyone.

I just started Outer Wilds, and I strongly suspect that this game is great. I avoided reading much coverage about it since I knew it would be a day one purchase for me, but so far what has really struck me about this game is how much control the player has over their ship and space exploration suit, and the resultant terror of accidentally jettisoning myself into the void. There was a moment as I was exploring a broken satellite where I had to get into an inaccessible section by space walking around the satellite, and somehow in my ineptitude I got going too fast, got turned around and lost orientation, and lost sight of the satellite completely, and as I spun out into the murky black trying to reorient myself the game activated a very specific panic center in my brain generally reserved for being trapped underwater not knowing which way the surface is. I also really like that is is an exploration game that it isn't a survival game.