It’s an interesting note and I’m sad to hear the controls are a bit clunky on console.
For what it’s worth, the interact button is left-click and the knife would be right-click. So while there’s a bit more symmetry with a mouse, the interaction is given priority. I’d also add that the button for the knife will also be used for a number of other pieces of equipment, such as flashlight, repair tool and flora/fauna/tech scanner. And the knife itself is more for harvesting flora samples than it is for any kind of combat.
But none of this is meant to dismiss your critique of the controls because catching those fish can be a pain!
The main thing I’ve been playing since I finished up PS Spiderman is God of War a.k.a. Dad of Boy.
I find myself torn about this game. It’s not nearly as pure fun as Spiderman was. It utterly lacks the wildness and absolute committment to being batshit over the top that the old games had. (Well, outside of the Baldur fight so far.) It’s this weirdly deliberate game that feels like it was made in Unreal (maybe it was?) with a lot of attention paid to art, but not as much paid to controls.
But the art is outstanding. The emotional beat of embodying a truly awful dad trying (and not entirely failing) to turn his largely good son into himself is compelling, and an interesting commentary on the irredeemable Kratos of games past. The turn to Norse mythology is a good one, and I never imagined wanting to give the world-serpent a great big head pat, but here we are. And I could go on for days about the audio. Voice acting, score, and environmental audio are all just about perfect.
Still, I’m a long way from done, and it’s really just a little too much in terms of upgrades and systems and ability “trees” particularly since you seem to be able to afford just about everything pretty easily. I tend to like a bit of maximalism in games, but I often find myself wishing this was done just a bit more like Hellblade and more rigorously focus on the good parts.
I just finished the third zone in Remnant, and now I’m getting my ass kicked fighting the Undying King because for some reason I believed everyone when they said that giving the Guardian Heart to the Iskal Queen was the best decision for a first playthrough… It certainly gives better loot, but the UK bossfight is damned hard.
That said, I just learned something important about the fight mechanics after reading about it on Reddit, so maybe I’ll fare better when I take another crack at it tonight. After that, there’s only one more zone in the base game. I do want to play the Subject 2923 DLC, but MELE is here, so that’s going to have to take a back seat.
Yeah, that fight is rough. It’s one of the few places in Remnant that gave me any kind of trouble. I wasn’t going to make any other choice so I ground at it till I could beat it. I don’t think I came up with a smart way to win, just stubbornly rushing the objective and trying not to die.
So, the thing I learned is that the spawn rate for additional enemies is based on how quickly you’re damaging the King, so my strategy of alpha-striking him with the Devastator bleed was directly responsible for my getting overwhelmed and surrounded by the Vyr. There’s still no clever way around his ridiculous melee lunge combo, though. I’ve been using 2 Void + 1 Scrapper, but I might switch to a Leto’s build if I can’t clear him with an updated strategy.
I still really like Dandy Dungeon but as I approach the final castle the fact that it’s a port of a f2p mobile game is becoming more obnoxious. The parts that are designed to encourage players to dump money into are turned into gold grinds, and grinds to get rare items in dungeons.
The games charm does go a long way tho.
No joke, I got caught up on what I’m sure is the last dungeon of the base game (the fight with the character pictured) when I tried to make my way through Dandy Dungeon last year. That fight threw such a complete curveball at me that I had literally no idea how to prepare for the rematch. Still walked away big fan of the game though as it’s just so immensely charming.
If you end up finishing it please let me know what you did because I’d love to get back into it so I can see all the wild looking crossover content for myself!
I’ve decided to revisit Dad of Boy as part of my recent series replay because I did not feel favourably towards it at the time. I think it’s one of those games where the absolute worst time to talk or write anything about it was when it had just come out and it was the subject of The Discourse. I’m very curious to see if my disappointment extends beyond its then-ascendant status as a prestige artefact.
im playing Persona 5 Royal. I played vanilla years ago. Its been interesting seeing the changes between the 2 versions. They really added a bunch of visual details in places.
I am playing Subnautica: Below Zero (which finally came out of Early Access today) and, oh man, I am loving every second of it.
The short version? It’s more Subnautica. Like, it feels like I’m playing Subnautica again, because I essentially am. It’s the same engine with a new world (or, more accurately, new biomes in the same general world), with a lot of the same creatures, the same general premise (crash land on alien planet with only a drop pod and a handy fabricator that can turn raw resources into just about anything), the same crafting tree and mechanics, the same general gameplay loop, the same distant roars from some invisible creature I’m sure I’ll meet very soon… and you know what? Sometimes more of a very good thing is exactly what you need. I played Subnautica a little over two years ago at this point and ever since I’ve just had this on-and-off craving for more of it… which is honestly pretty hard to find. It’s a really unique game. The combination of crafting/survival, suspenseful narrative, and very open systemic exploration isn’t something that really comes together anywhere else. But here it is. In what seems like a shorter, more story-driven package — which hey, even better.
That all said though, it’s also worth noting that this game is absolutely gorgeous. I played the original on PC and in general it looked very nice, but I decided to get this on PS5 and my god, it might genuinely be one of the prettiest games I’ve ever seen. All the creatures and their bioluminescence and the entire undersea environment are just a joy to exist in. All told, I’m just having a blast.
I’m actually starting in the other end with Umineko, at least for now skipping Higurashi. Three thoughts: 1) The old character art isn’t a looker but it’s very charming, blowing the updated art out of the water. 2) The story and mystery is finally starting to heat up nearing the end of episode 1. I’m curious to see where it’ll go. However, 3) it’s not fun to actually read. The text is very dry and scenes move at a glacial pace as characters and narration repeat what the other just said or sidetrack into a pervy joke. Can’t tell if this is due to the base text or translation, likely a mix of the two.
The contrast between the interesting story with fun and creepy characters to the dull text is very sharp. I’ll still try to keep going due to the former.
Good points! R2 is the “use tool button” simply no matter what the tool is, so it’s not like combat is prioritized over other stuff. But yeah, clunky it is. And with that said maybe you can remap the controls, I didn’t check, but I will if I boot it up again.
Wholeheartedly second all of this. I was so hyped up for this and it has not disappointed through the first few hours. Much the same game with a bit more polish, but that’s exactly what I wanted. It’s hard to tell because it could be that I came in with the experience from the first game or just strumbled across stuff earlier, but I think the onboarding/early game might be a bit quicker here.
In any event, it’s absolutely gorgeous. Even more so than the first, what with the new biomes and weather effects. These games are masterpieces of natural environment design.
I had been trying to get some of my friends to give the first one a go for a while, but unless there’s some narrative tie-in I haven’t reached yet, which I doubt, I think BZ is probably where I’d recommend people start. The quality of life improvements and more focussed narrative/character elements I suspect could go a long way to keeping people from bouncing off during the early game like I did the first time I tried
I tried Mechwarrior 5 on Game Pass. Good stomping through buildings. The writing is… well, my grizzled dad told me I was “… just like his old man” before dying so I could escape. It was hard to see the screen because my eyes rolled, like, all the way back in my head.
So I went and started another Battletech campaign. I am destined to half-finish many such campaigns before the reaper calls. Hat tip to XCOM.
In one of my early missions I killed the pilot of a Firestarter, a light mech that comes with a bunch of support slots- light, short-ranged weapons that fire when you perform a melee attack. The stock model comes with flamethrowers, which overheat your target to disable it. These work as advertised, but you run out of ammo quickly.
I swapped them out for extra armour and a bunch of small lasers. I left the twin machine guns, which don’t do a lot of damage but are really efficient at causing critical damage to exposed components. This thing is a beast. It packs a big punch for its size and speed. It’s just deadly against a mech that’s already taken some hits and has some armour missing. It’s still a light mech, so it can’t take many solid hits, but the design was for something that wouldn’t start fights, but would reliably end them.
Just finished the campaign in Remnant. Good game. Final boss again had a mechanic I might not have figured out without a guide, but after my third defeat I looked one up and got it done. There’s still a LOT more to do, and I want to come back to it eventually for more Adventure mode shenanigans, the DLC campaign, etc., but the siren song of Mass Effect is calling…
Beat the boss of the (base) game today!
I have the Legendary Crystal Sword maxed out, and the Safety Shield maxed as well. Have the Wind armor set equipped, also an inventory full of heal scrolls.
If you use a heal item, he will also heal you for some reason. If you use a barrier scroll, he will negate it. Lots of status attacks.
Hope this helps!
Still bad at Apex. Have to play Nier: Replicant kind of carefully because I’m currently living with my parents for a bit and I’d like to not have to explain Kainé’s outfit. My setup here is a little weird because I don’t really have the TV real estate to have my XSX and PS5 set up at the same time, but I bought Mass Effect and I’m looking forward to it.
I wonder what you’ll think after the end of episode 1! Fwiw, the narration stays very long-winded, but the bad jokes start to disappear pretty soon from episode 2 onwards. The updated art (in the steam version) comes from pachinko games I believe? It’s atrocious. The PS3 art is not bad, but I still like the original sprites better.
