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Yeah, the game just plops you down in front of the Kayran again. I was able to meditate anyway, just as the boss started his movement animation to raise his tentacle up to smash me. I snacked the potions and was able to get up and get out of the path of the strike with plenty of time. I still had to fight him a few times, though.

Alas, I have put the game down again, simply due to the fact that a game that had been a total pushover so far became almost impossible all of a sudden. I know I got past the Letho fight before...now I can't get him under 80% HP.



Looks like I need to go into Dark Souls mode with this guy, memorizing every animation? Weird difficulty spike here...

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Uhoh, if even your DS-fu is being thwarted I'm gonna be in real trouble!

I kinda like that these games seem to be pretty tough - makes seeking out every possible advantage seem necessary, and it seems to reward turning over stones in a story sense too. I guess I couuuld dip in then, if I'm liable to be taking periodic cool-off breaks My main worry though is I'd then forget how the hell to complete all the miasmic side-quests that'd be half complete!

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

That's a good point. That's why I started this game over in the first place - I forgot what was happening! To be fair, I only fought the guy a couple of times, noticed he was not budging, and shut it down, as i had already been playing for quite a while and needed a break. When I fire it back up again, I will get back to the fight with a more studied and patient approach!

Beat Letho last night on my way to chapter two and it took me two or three tries. Best thing to do is copy him - Cast Quen as often as you can and try to keep him off guard either by a well timed block or by casting Aard.

Once I worked out the beginning of his Aard animation (the main reason I was losing before as it would throw me across the room) I was able to get him without too much difficulty.

F5 is your friend in this game and I'm not embarrassed by scumming it.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Ah, so I need to drop my "no Quen allowed" hard mode, then? I see...

I am well into chapter 2 in my PC play through, which is why I didn't have much patience to keep fighting him. I mean, I had already beat him!

I'm playing on Insane.

Got a mod which gives me some extra Talents per level otherwise it'd be impossible.

Really hope that Witcher 3 tidies up the potions/meditation mechanic. Just had my arse handed to me trying to get Selkirk's armour and forgot to save before going in, cost me half an hour's play time. This time I'll quaff some potions before going through the door...

No time to meditate just as the fight starts, ala Kayran?

Nope, there was a cut scene without any options to avoid the fight and it ended with 6 guys attacking me at once. Second time around I was ready for them and rolled out of the way. They didn't last long.

Playing at higher difficulty levels really opens up the combat - I'm much more reliant on bombs, traps, throwing weapons and signs than I was before. Spent some coin upgrading my gear too.



The armours in this game are fantastically designed, on a par with DA Inquisition in fact.

I would expand that comment to include the entire game being fantastically designed; clearly a labor of love!

True. It's a bit clunky in places - animations and such - but everything feels, and this sounds poncy as frick but I don't care, so organic.

Chapter 2 is a lot less of a grind this time around as well, probably because I've got half an idea as to what I should be doing.

I don't remember this fight. I do remember that rolling around is a good strategy in that game though.

Getting somewhere in Payday now. Turned over the odd bank with the Tank Twins, as well as lots of smaller fry. Still need some more stealth kit to take on the Mucky Waters depot, or whatever it's called. Def more body bags, and maybe a silencer. The upgrades are a touch slanted towards grindy maybe, but they're all useful, and I like how skills cross-pollinate across the trees and you can really build your own style of crook.

Off to test my new sentry gun now

PS Rhys do you recommend any of the DLC maps? Might snag some while the sale's still on.

(*EDIT* Christ, no idea how I survived the Watchdogs coke run. When it started up with a pile of bags in front of me I nearly quit straight away. Glad I managed to somehow get to the other side though - pretty intense!)

I had some time to myself, and had planed to get back into The Witcher a bit. Alas, I ended up with my guitar in my hand, and 4 hours later, I was still shredding face... I will get back to The Witcher soon, though!

Ach, it's good to mix it up

I had a half day today, and have spent almost all of it learning to sprint slightly faster with a bag of gold on my back :S

Enjoying some of the multi-optioned endings to these missions. Finally dusted a town bank that required a a 'sky hook' lift, but in this case the cops nabbed the loot while I was ducking and covering. Had to bludgeon my way to a sewer grate instead & scurry my way to sludgy freedom with the bag on my back. Not ideal, but did feel pretty badass to escape by the skin of my teeth

Liking all the pre-planning and on the fly decisions too. Should I risk nabbing the second set of planks I scouted earlier to cover more windows from snipers, or stay and move the hostages to a secure location? Stuff like that means the semi-randomisation can really flip mission replays.

I'm still bruising my way along offline, finally moving up to 'Hard' mode (which is actually 'easy' mode in theory. It is hard though! Wasn't ready for the weird kung-fu night-goggles guy who wasted me in one flurry of blows). Lots of XP accruing but I'm definitely cash poor. Time to go have fun in the wilds soon I think

Would be interested to hear more about Payday 2. I bought the first two games awhile ago on sale, but haven't played them yet. I'm really intrigued by the idea of a bank heist game, but was worried it would either be a) overtly stressful/frustrating and/or b) too much arcadey-railsy cover shooting.

From what you're saying, it can be really fun and improvisational, but only if you play it with real people?

*EDITED for clarity*

Haven't actually played with real people yet but hope to find out soon. (Rhys and mack could give you the full skinny on that). It definitely seems to be more limited in solo, that's for sure, but there is some room to play around. I think the main issue for you would be that stealth options seem to be pretty limited at the beginning.

When you're playing 'loud' it is definitely on the stressful end of gaming. Once things kick off it's essentially an FPS with some novel strategies & kit thrown in. (And worse, with waves! All be it with some strategic freedom about where you set up etc, and with some reasonable AI tricks up its sleeve). It's also got some real grind curves to get through to open up fun stuff (expanded pre-planning options, full viable stealth runs, kit that speeds up operations or opens up new strategies etc).

Prob worth a dip though, I think there are things in there that might appeal to you. (Even though full blown stealth is very tricky, the longer you can go without raising awareness the less carnage you have to deal with - so there's a challenge in that).

See how far you can get casing the joints and surreptitiously taking out guards and cameras in Four Stores & the Jewellery / Diamond Stores. Then move on to banks . (Or just embrace the firestorm and take on Mallcrasher - where the objective is to trash a mall, and the cops tend to help out with that )

To get a feel for what stealth could be like have a poke around the Art Gallery map too. I think it might even be do-able at an early stage, once you unlock the ECM jammer, but very tricky still. [See here for some of the tricksiness involved with just this one bit of kit]. (Shadow Raid is also an early dedicated stealth level, but I've struggled so far without the means to hide more than one body).

Can confirm that online is a lot of fun

Grabbed a few games with Rhys and it's much more satisfying when everyone's buzzing around doing useful things, and throwing money bags around in bucket chains at the end. He also walked me through an insanely profitable diamond heist done entirely stealthily. Was fun just to play support and tell him where the guards were via the security room cameras, then make sure the crowd stayed controlled. (You also got a daft echo of teams going wrong when our third member decided not to get into the loaded van but go back for the poxy wee safe as well - while Rhys ran around desperately dealing with stray civs )

If you had a team all miked up could see pulling off some very slick jobs. (It's a bit harder to stab in warnings with keys if you're mobile - although the game does have a spotting function which is cool for basic stealth and mini-boss takedowns). Also makes the more support-orientated skill trees look a lot more tempting. The one called 'Mastermind' in particular (In theory you could totally max out the ability to pre-plan, control crowds, generally manage the chaos etc)

Still loads of stuff I don't understand, but yeah, it's definitely fun chaos on balance

Just finished Shadowgrounds ,its a good game for price, I got it for 1 euro during sale. It has some strong points and some weak. Starts as a mystery, you can compare it to Alien movie, few types of weapons , not knowing what is happening , finding documents that shows you story bit by bit. But more and more you progress game becomes mindless shooter, story becomes worse and worse , I don't want to spoil but its one big cliche, they end up showing all these types of weapons in your face. Idea for upgrade system was nice but later on you get so many upgrade parts its easy and there is no need to chose what you want to upgrade because you can do it all. Voice acting is bad, not Resident Evil 1 type of bad, but not good either. Action is good, atmosphere and mystery (while it lasts). As I said, good for its price.

Got The Witcher 1 Enchanted Edition, already started playing it and I must admit, it got me into the series and I really recommend not skipping it. Got Two Worlds, Torchlight 2 and Trine also, so there will be more stuff to play.

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“By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.”

I'm at 320+ days in The Long Dark and I've got like 20 days' worth of food. Making it to a year almost seems like a foregone conclusion, though I did do some out-of-the-ordinary things recently that carried some extra risk with them. I'll probably stick to the routine until I hit 365, and after that maybe have a little more fun/mix it up a bit.

Once I'm done with this run they'll have presumably put out their next update, though in all likelihood it'll be tweaks, so I'll probably play around a little just to see what they're like. I've also wanted to see what it's like to die from a fall (particularly that treacherous spot on the tracks in the ravine), and test a few other things (like whether or not you can sleep through a whole night dehydrated). But that'll all probably just take a few short sessions.

After that it's probably another long break until they make a major change, IE: another map. Which is just as well: Lent is over in less than three weeks, at which point I'll be able to buy Far Cry 4, and GTA 5 won't be too far behind, so it'll be a good time to put TLD away and pick it up again down the line when there's something new to do/accomplish.