Messages

16

General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

« on: May 20, 2025, 07:55:51 pm »

11 - V Rising (PC 2024) - BEAT - Take a slightly slower version of the gameplay from Hades and combine it with a less open sandbox version of Valheim, and you get the vampire sim game, V Rising.  Been wanting to play this for abit and had a good time.  I realized it's not often I get to play the bad guy in games, like an outright villain, and that's a fun change of pace.  I think the overall experience is solid, decent action, the crafting offers up a lot of decoration as you progress through the game to give you the chance to build a neat castle and there's a solid amount of content here as I put 60 hours into it and that was entirely solo PVE.

That's where the cons are, as the game to me feels like it leans more PVP or Co-Op than PVE, perhaps 60/40.  You can do everything solo just fine, but just how things are executed, how things feel, I think if the game was built with PVE in mind, it would've been better, but that's just because I'm not gonna play this outside of a solo private game.  I do appreciate that since you run the private game as a server, you can customize so many options of the game itself.  I highly recommend turning off teleporting limitations if you play solo, it's a mechanic that only makes sense in a server where you have to worry about getting ganked by other players and it makes the game way more enjoyable.  Or you can just jack up the difficulty and challenge all you want. 

Good game, had a solid time with it, definite recommend.

17

Modern Video Games / Re: Nintendo Switch 2

« on: May 19, 2025, 04:03:54 pm »

Let's Go Pikachu would be great for a kid of any age, it's pretty chill, like I didn't enjoy the throwing mechanic, but he'll probably dig it and its otherwise a good nostalgia trip being a remake of the original games.  I'd certainly recommend it as a starter game along with New Pokemon Snap.  Then probably Sword/Shield as that one is fine enough (I think it's a bit crap, but a young kid won't care) and then Arceus.  I'd never recommend Scarlet/Violet on Switch personally due to the reasons I've listed already, though if your kid likes the other ones, there might be no other option and they may or may not care, I don't know lol

18

Modern Video Games / Nintendo Switch 2

« on: May 17, 2025, 04:21:19 pm »

Figured we could have a new thread for the system coming up, all the current news and such related to it for people to discuss since it's releasing soon.

They did come out to say that there will be games with free updates that will improve performance and visual clarity.  They are doing it in the Nintendo way though by only having a limited number of games right away, 12 of them.  It seems that updates that may add "content" are what will lead to the upgrade packs, though in the case of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, that "content" is a garbage, useless, app to justify charging money. It's very skeezy.

https://www.gematsu.com/2025/05/nintendo-details-free-switch-2-updates-for-12-first-party-switch-games

Was bummed to see that they are doing very little for something like Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, I thought that maybe they could do an improved version of the game, fix its many issues, but seems right now it's only to improve it's clarity, framerate, and are gonna have a few more Pokemon visible at once, but it still looks awful and likely won't fix any of the other issues that game has.  Guess there's no reason to when they already sold 30 million copies of the game and their new one is about to release.  Such a half-assed franchise.  Sorry, I'm venting, because I want to like Pokemon games again, but it's a real struggle with all their terrible choices lol

19

Off Topic / Re: What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

« on: May 17, 2025, 01:27:48 am »

Look Back - Didn't expect going into this one and getting a tearjerker, but it was a good watch, beautiful animation, not too long, it's not a full length movie, it's just under an hour, but it's a generally sweet story about two younger girls and their love art, who come together to draw manga and even gain some notoriety because of it, before their lives take different directions.

Kind of a funny note, some things I saw in it, I thought were just fun little nods to Chainsaw Man, but it turns out, that the mangaka of Chainsaw Man wrote the original manga this is based on (And the director worked on designs for Chainsaw Man), so that was fun to see.  It's a real love letter to art for sure and I would definitely recommend it.

20

General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: May 08, 2025, 12:19:03 am »

I thought V Rising had just hit 1.0, but apparently it came out last year and with a 50% sale, seemed like a good time to check it out.  Decent survival/crafting game, isometric sort of setup, general action hack and slash, and cool getting to be a Vampire.  The downside of not being able to go out in the day, or being careful by zipping between tree patches is possible, isn't the most fun, but they did make it so that night time is generally longer than day and you can buff sun resistance to some degree with gear and potions that I don't have yet.

It gives me Valheim vibes, just abit less of a giant sandbox, which I appreciate as you don't feel like you are just wandering endlessly through a gigantic map.  Gameplay is a solid top down sort of action game, simple attacks, dodge, spells and abilities to throughout, sort of like a Diablo I guess, but not a loot grinder in the same way.  It's not my favorite gameplay, I'd probably prefer something a little more straight third person, behind the character sort of setup, but it's not bad.

Should be a decent time though.

21

General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: May 05, 2025, 05:57:44 pm »

Poked back into the new Fortnite season after hopping off it a few months, mostly because it's Star Wars themed, and they turned it into a poor man's Battlefront game lol All the weapons are Star Wars based, so no ammo to worry about, there's Tie Fighters and X-Wings you can pick up and they are crazy strong, but can get taken down fairly fast, and there's of course the lightsaber abilities. 

I still have my issues with the game as there are a lot of bots in every match (It's gotta be a 1/4 to a 1/3rd of the matches, I swear), but having so much be focused around the one theme is a little different than usual.  Could've used more I feel if they really wanted to sell the theme, a few more guns, some land vehicles like a land speeder and AT-ST, but it's fine so far.  Got my one win I needed off a kinda crazy sniper shot.  Figuring out the weapon control on some of these blasters is a little odd compared to guns before lol

22

General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

« on: May 04, 2025, 07:22:48 pm »

10 - Pacific Drive PC 2024) - BEAT - I love a good survival/scavenging game, especially one that has a real unique hook to it and I feel like this one is probably the most interesting since Death Stranding perhaps.  Everything is focused on getting around this post-apocalyptic terrain in a customizable and improvable car, utilizing it as your space space and mobile base.  Get out of the car to tear up things with tools or explore structures to find supplies, and then survive the area to return back to the garage and research new parts, tools, or ways to improve your next trip into the zone.

They nailed everything with the car here, the atmosphere of the zone, how it gets more chaotic and messed up the deeper you go, starting out in relatively normal forests with odd anomalies and hazards, all the way up to what I can only call a "cement filled hellscape".  Each area I believe is a set layout, road, exits, terrain, and then what changes in each run are buildings, hazards, anomalies, etc...Makes you want to do "one last run" more than once so you can try and find the more rare parts you need for the higher end parts.

Story is decent, characters are enjoyable, I think they could've had more missions and things to do throughout as there's not a lot of variety going on, same for the things you loot, it feels like there needed to be twice as many types of things to loot through because it gets very samey even early.  There are three general sections of the zone, so just when you start to feel board of the areas you can go to, progress through the story, get to the next section and you'll get a new area type, and that would then reinvigorate the experience.

I also appreciate how much customization this game has, where you can just hit sliders that make things tougher or easier and it's a lot of things too tweak, I love that this has become way more common in games.  It ended up saving me on a soft lock situation, where I couldn't progress because it forced me into a story situation that I couldn't complete, so I found out you could abandon trip, which is "death" in the game, sending you back to the garage, but that drops a lot of the loot on a rusted out version of your car that you can go get back, but if you change the death options, you won't lose anything, which let me just return to garage with no issues and I appreciate having that.

Also I felt it saved me being annoyed at certain mechanics, because you have to "hold e" to interact with most things, including turning the key and shifter every time you stop the car, which is immensely annoying and they realized that, so they gave the options to to just make it an instant click, which was such an improvement early on.

I think this is a cool game, it can get very addictive and definitely the type of game you like to see, bringing up unique gameplay styles you don't see often.

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General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: May 04, 2025, 04:38:44 am »

After giving up on the Minecraft mod pack, I think I really nailed something with Pacific Drive.  I'm a sucker for survival type games, so one with the hook being that you have a mobile station wagon base that you take out on dangerous trips through hazardous terrain was quite interesting.  It's definitely one of those games where you just want to do "one more run", try and get the supplies you need to research stuff, get new gear, get new parts to help your runs out, cycle continues.  I think I'm near the end of the story, but I have really dug the game.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

« on: May 04, 2025, 04:02:12 am »

Sadly have to drop my run through Super Mario RPG as my Switch's battery isn't good and I've sold it off to someone else to deal with lol The plan is hopefully, if this year isn't an absolute disaster, to pick up a Switch 2 down the road, where I have my save backed up and I can just bring it over to that and jump back into the game.  I may not be happy with a lot of Nintendo's decisions with the console, but now it's less about just looking at an upgrade.

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Modern Video Games / Re: What are some older IPs you would want to see brought back as a remake?

« on: May 02, 2025, 02:36:11 am »

Dino Crisis - Just do it like Resident Evil 2 Remake, I never got into the series originally, much like Resident Evil as I was not into tank controls back in the day, but survival horror with dinosaurs would be awesome.

Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie - If we can't get a new game, just do the Crash Bandicoot/Spyro treatment to Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie in a bundle, would make me so happy lol

I know there's one or two others I'd like, but I'm spacing on them at the moment.

26

General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: April 29, 2025, 01:39:22 am »

Been wanting to play Pacific Drive for awhile, I love scavenging/survival games, the "exclusion zone" idea, much like STALKER, but set in the US and your main gimmick is that you have a car to get you around and acts like a mobile base while out in the field are all cool ideas.  It has pretty good atmosphere, lots of tension, even though I don't think there's any creature threats, none that I've seen yet in a good hour or two of play, it's mostly environmental hazards and these weird drone robots that grab your car and drag it around, damaging it, but I'm digging it, I can see the gameplay loop of going out to scavenge for supplies being fairly addictive for abit before wanting to progress the story for the chance to unlock new things.

27

Off Topic / Re: What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

« on: April 28, 2025, 12:38:13 am »

My Hero Academia: You're Next - The last of the MHA movies before the end of the series and it was okay, all three of them have just been okay, having moments of good stuff happening, a cool finale, and that's what you usually expect for most anime movies for tv shows.  I thought I was kinda lost on the timeline placement, along with kinda being lost on certain characters around, but realized it was just me forgetting the story of the past season of the show lol

A lot of it feels very re-used to me, because there's a character with quirk booster quirk, so like Erie, who is being abused by a crime family for her ability, like Erie.  There's a guy pretending to be a new version of All Might, earning the name "Dark Might" and it's kinda just like a lazy version of Goku Black in a way, though I mean the idea of an "evil version of the hero" is a very standard trop...It's not the best setup, though I thought Dark Mights abilities, sorta how he faked being All Might, was kinda cool.  His goons were just complete nobodies, which kinda sucks, because you want more of the new cast to stand out to help this new plot, but it's just Dark Might, the quirk booster girl, and her servant who is trying to help her and that's it for the new cast that matters.

Overall if you are fan, it's a decent enough watch for what it is, a little bit of extra fun before the final season happens.

28

Off Topic / Re: What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

« on: April 23, 2025, 11:47:00 pm »

Conclave - Saw some story about how people were flocking to this movie because of the Pope's death and I was bored, so I figured why not.  I'm not religious, let alone have any Catholic connections, just thought seeing insight into the Vatican during a situation like this (As stylized and dramatic as it probably is), could be interesting.  It's a decent drama, but one of small scale.  It's not as bold as I feel like the initial idea lets on and it does try to have moments of heightened drama, but this isn't trying to be anything drastic, it's more about interpersonal problems between Cardinals and delving into the political infighting that likely exists.

It's fine though, a decent watch.

Sicario - Seen clips over the years, didn't know exactly what sort of movie I was getting into it, but it's pretty intense, didn't go in the direction I expected, pretty gritty and brutal.

Leviathan - Needed something way less serious after the last two movies, so dumb 80's scifi horror schlock is what I went for lol I always got a soft spot for underwater movies, don't know why, setting is kinda that perfect, uncomfortable place, deep water is scary, and I've watched a lot of deep sea movies.  This one was definitely better than the last one I saw, The Rift, generally better budget, though it's mostly just an Alien/Thing knockoff lol

It's that perfect throwaway, old school, horror flick, most people have probably never heard about it, you got a couple known actors in it with Peter Weller, Ernie Hudson, Daniel Stern, and I feel like I generally recognize two others from some other movies.  It's very by the book, of the era, all the tropes are there, but totally functional.  I wouldn't say it's "so bad it's good", because it's not really that bad, and it's not that good, but it fits in that realm if you wanted something goofy for a movie night in that vibe.

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Modern Video Games / Re: Nintendo Direct: Nintendo Switch 2 - 4.2.2025 thoughts?

« on: April 21, 2025, 09:21:36 pm »

Right now, only Mario Kart World has any appeal to me, but I don't really enjoy the kart racer sub-genre that much, so I may just be impressed by its presumed level of quality. I'm sure that I'll own a Switch 2 eventually, but it may be some time after its launch.

If they didn't have the free roam mode, I'd be saying the same, but it sounds like I'll be able to explore and do stuff, otherwise it's more of a multiplayer thing.  It's why I really loved Sonic All-Stars Transformed, because they had a whole campaign to do stuff that unlocked things that was more than simply just racing the tracks and that was something Mario Kart always lacked.  It's why I thought Diddy Kong Racing was better than Mario Kart at the time.

That and Donkey Kong Bananza in July would have been enough to get me interested in a launch release, maybe even a replay of Breath of the Wild if I decide to give in to the stupid upgrade thing...still unsure about that...but neither have quite the impact as Super Mario Odyssey or Breath of the Wild was for me with the Switch 1 launch.

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Modern Video Games / Re: Nintendo Direct: Nintendo Switch 2 - 4.2.2025 thoughts?

« on: April 21, 2025, 02:10:38 pm »

And now the Zelda amiibo got a 10 dollar price increase.  Guess I'm not getting those anymore.  Such a bummer launch of this system.