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Right up my alley!

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I have since beaten Persona 3 and Persona 4, and I am now about 50-something hours into Persona 5. Moral of the story, I like Persona.

I also started playing a videogame called Hi-Fi Rush I would recommend. It has a fun / unique art style and a gameplay I would call a "funkier" version of Ratchet & Clank.

Just started playing this today. It's really good (despite the pixel graphics, which become sorta fun after that first small case).

Haven't used any hints yet, and I don't plan to. This seems like exactly the level of deductive fun I enjoy--hard enough to feel good when you get it without being frustrating because the solutions are ridiculous.

We didn't even notice there was a hint system until I think afterwards. It's a good hint system, though: vague at first and increasingly specific, makes you work for it. Ideal, really. Way more puzzle games need things like that.

I did just use a few hints on chapter 5 (?) or so. I found I really only needed one of them. My problem was mostly that I had missed a few things in the pixel hunting. What a fun game! Glad you mentioned it!

I've pretty thoroughly conquered the Amazon at this point, so decided to take a bit of a break from the jungle fun. While scrolling through my list of games, I received a DM from a guy I used to play WOW with back in the day, and he said he had a free trial of Game Pass to give me, and hey, let's try to find a game to play together on the service, for old time's sake. One of the first games he mentioned that he had his eye on was...





Pretty much Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The Game. It looked a little twee at first glance, but man, after about 30 minutes of playing this, we were both totally hooked. Just so much to do and see in this game, including excellent atmosphere and game mechanics. It's tagged as survival, but the survival stuff is very light, more akin to games like Subnautica or No Man's Sky. Just food and water meters, which are fairly easy to keep topped off. In fact, the game would be nice and relaxing in that regard, if not for...

The spiders

Man, I hate spiders. There are actually a lot more threats as far as the insects go, and some of them are quite unsettling also, but man, those spiders. Ack!

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I finished Journey again this weekend. Still brings a subtle tear to my eye, every time. Such a beautiful game.

@Austruck
in the words of Rachel Weisz, "FINISH IT!"

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"My Dionne Warwick understanding of your dream indicates that you are ambivalent on how you want life to eventually screw you." - Joel

"Ever try to forcibly pin down a house cat? It's not easy." - Captain Steel

"I just can't get pass sticking a finger up a dog's butt." - John Dumbear

Ha! Sorry, I haven't really touched it since the last go-round about it here. Game-shaming is apparently a thing now?

this is the way.

was looking through the current PSN sale and Xbox gamepass has them all. for all the talk of PS exclusives…it’s a pretty weak stack.

Mr. Do cause I'm an old

can’t drop a gem like that without at least saying what platform you’re playing it on?

fingers crossed you got an arcade machine

I wish, the theater near my house had an arcade machine, used to play it all the time. Im playing on the Snes, it's a great version with a two player mode.

Games are arguably worse now.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

Ghost of Tsushima, Journey and CONTROL would like a word with you...

I'm not saying there aren't outliers. But like, as a whole, gaming has de-evolved. God forbid we get couch co-op games, or games that don't come with broken code and require 20GB day one patches.

There are very few risks being made, as well. And, I should have clarified, this doesn't count for indie developers. They are the only thing keeping gaming alive and well. Because these big name companies and their antics are just...tiresome.

I'm looking at you, Nintendont



or maybe i'm just old?

Yup, all over Tears of the Kingdom. Great so far, as expected.

I'm genuinely surprised by how much trust they put in people to get through that starting area in some creative way. It took me longer than it should've specifically because I just don't expect a AAA game to do that, let alone so early. I mean the first few things are signposted pretty well, but the "last" part, I genuinely couldn't figure out how I was even supposed to get there, and then I just jury-rigged something
And then I saw someone else play and they'd jury-rigged something totally different.

Maybe I missed something easier or cleaner, but I wonder if they actually made it so you can't finish the opening area without doing something you basically just threw together. That'd be pretty wild for a game of this size.

More Zelda!

Thinking about it a lot, playing it a lot. A lot of stuff would've been difficult to get used to if I hadn't played Breath of the Wild, and in particular, if I hadn't played and finished it just late last year/early this year. It's been really nice just kind of sliding over to ToTK a few months later. I bounced off BoTW really hard (which is why I only ended up really playing/finishing it years later) and I expect something similar might've happened here otherwise, especially given how robust that opening area is.

Honestly, with BoTW the key was just figuring out the critical path to certain upgrades (get a few more inventory slots, do a few shrines so I can upgrade health and stamina, hunt so I can make more valuable dishes to sell). Once I realized how those systems worked it immediately went from hard and confusing to challenging and fun, so knowing all those systems (plus a few more!) work about the same here has enabled me to get to the "fun" part a whole lot faster than I did last time.

Also...geez, the physics in this game are so good. It's crazy how rarely you have the kind of ragdoll freakout (or that thing where a car or a platform just completely flips or spazzes out) compared to basically every other game. The building works intuitively and behaves in appropriate, predictable ways, even when my attempts at things fail. Sometimes they fail because I'm used to game physics being crappy, IE: I build a platform and stand on the front corner and it's perfectly rigid, because that's easier to do for a game, whereas in this one I'll do that and my weight tips the platform forward. Like, duh, of course it would. This is just one of the first games to actually work that way, the way it should.

I've already found tons of "solutions" that are surely different from most other players, or not specifically intended by the developers, and it's always enjoyable. The feeling of getting away with something is a regular thing, combined with enough of the more "official" solutions that come to mind so that you get both types of satisfaction.

Anyway, loving it.

Another bad Zelda game. I can’t wait till they get back to their roots. I’ll keep playing Twilight Princess until they do that.

Bonkers take. Love ya anyway.


TP was very good though, yeah.