Messages

1

General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

« on: Today at 05:03:13 am »

32 - Bendy and the Ink Machine (PC 2017) - BEAT - This was always one of those games I meant to check out, I think I played the 1st chapter at some point, I feel like it was free before release, sorta like Poppy Playtime has the first chapter free and then you buy the rest.  It's basically got some very, very, light Bioshock vibes, mixed with a little mascot horror.  Honestly kinda wished it picked one or the other, because it's not a good action game like Bioshock and its not a good mascot horror game because there's not much in the way of puzzles or non-action stuff that's very engaging.  The art is pretty great, visually has a decent aesthetic, performance could've been better, because for some reason Steam said I was running at 120, but the game felt lower than that.  Not unplayable, just something I noticed.

Like I said, gameplay isn't great, the action is stiff and kinda bad, some areas drag, it's sorta just fetch quest type things, it really could've used some puzzle solving.  Some decent voice acting for some characters, though could've used more characters throughout and the game is quite short, I beat it in under 4 hours.  You do get a bonus thing that adds a little replay value if you go through the game again, but I didn't like it enough to want to do that.

Not a bad game, but definitely not something I would've spent 20 bucks on, which I'm glad I got it for I think under 10 bucks (And its going up for free on Epic soon, because of course it is even though I bought this like 2 weeks ago lol). 

I am going to check out the sequel, Dark Revival eventually, need it to go on sale (Kinda hoping a few horror games go on sale next week), but will get there eventually and the third main game is on the horizon.

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General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: Today at 04:55:08 am »

Played the Cronos demo and it seems interesting.  I had heard it was kinda aggressive with its survival horror aspect, very tight with resources, which I don't love. I know that's a notable part of survival horror, but often it's not quite this bad, even Resident Evil could give you a decent ammo if you were careful with your shots.  There is like a charge shot attack, but even if you get a couple of those in, it can still take more, and I was not getting much more ammo.  The game feels like a mixture of Dead Space and Resident Evil, but I can see it being solid.  Not sure when or if I'll get it, at least not anytime soon, I don't think I'm getting much else other than maybe Arc Raiders soon, not sure.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

« on: October 22, 2025, 10:22:00 pm »

31 - Five Night's At Freddy's 3 (PC 2015) - DROPPED - Boy, not doing well with the FNAF games lol FNAF 2 I've mostly dropped, might attempt again, because the Withered's have the dumbest timing to them.  FNAF 3 I'm dropping as I just don't like the mechanics at all and the visuals are garbage.  I can understand the idea that the cameras and systems are janky and old, but what isn't fun is using those cameras in a gameplay scenario.  I'm constantly losing Springtrap because in like half the main cameras, I'm just looking at dark, jittery, static.  A couple rooms I can see him, but there's so often I just have no clue. I only got up to Night 3, but I just don't like the mechanics of sorta having to lead Springtrap around with audio while dealing with hallucinations and the audio from the cameras is distracting and grating...

I do like the big emphasis of the cameras in this, it's a better concept than FNAF 2 where cameras don't really matter, returning abit more to what FNAF 1 was doing, but I don't like the gameplay.  It's too slow to go side to side compared to what it was before to reach the panels.  It's really funny seeing Springtrap like skedaddle in the background surprisingly quick despite being and haunted corpse in a huge body suit lol  FNAF 2 was just that one mechanic, but here it's sorta the whole game experience doesn't feel enjoyable to play.  This one I won't attempt again, already refunded, I still might try FNAF 2 again as I think I can beat and I'm doing it more out of stubbornness at this point. 

One I get my refund, I'll be attempting FNAF 4, see if I can find another I like well enough.

29 - Five Night's At Freddy's 2 (PC 2014) - BEAT - Out of sheer stubbornness, I beat Night 5 and the game.  I know there are more nights, two I think to get the true ending and what not, but I'm done.  I think I got abit lucky on this one, Toy Chica can be the odd one to get me in this game when it's not the Withered's, but I think the randomness worked out and I beat it.  My view hasn't changed, I think while mechanically it's fine, the idea is fine, the turn away from actually using the cameras undercuts what the first game did, and all you do to beat the game is basically just a whole "meta" thing of wind music box, flash hallway for Foxy, tap the vent lights to check for Toy Chica and Toy Bonnie, flip mask when needed.  It's not fun to me at all and the Withered timing ruined stuff so much for me.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

« on: October 20, 2025, 03:03:17 am »

30 - Ball x Pit (PC 2025) - BEAT - Think I might've hit max action rogue-like games at this point after playing a ton of Megabonk and now Ball x Pit while still playing Vampire Survivors every so often lol

I don't know why I like these mindless games, it's weirdly addictive even if the gameplay is fairly basic.  Ball x Pit is basically that idea of auto-firing (Technically you can not have auto-fire on, you start with it off, but there's no real point to not have it on I think), you get items to boost you, you evolve weapons together for better weapons, it's just done a little differently with an upwards scrolling level and crossing it with the old brick breaker game, Breakout.  That aspect does change things up abit as you are trying to often get the balls fired in certain directions to maximize ricochets.

Another slightly unique thing is there's a town builder aspect, and this is how you upgrade your stats and unlock characters, instead of just spending money on a selection screen.  I feel like it's trying to be deeper with it, but I mostly just found myself throwing things wherever and then setting up a spot that I use for "construction" as you build by bouncing guys off the buildings brick breaker style.  It's just something a little extra to do and if you want to, you can spend a lot of time maximizing that whole thing.

Overall, fun enough game, good art, it's that perfect game of "Just one more run" or thinking you got like 15 minutes and you can just get a quick run run in with not much need to stick around for longer.

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

« on: October 19, 2025, 06:08:58 am »

Ford vs Ferrari - Solid racing movie, Christian Bale and Matt Damon nail the characters.  Apparently Tom Cruise was gonna be in the movie, I assume as Shelby, but I definitely don't think he would have fit the part nearly as well.

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General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:

« on: October 18, 2025, 07:52:44 pm »

After not playing Pokemon since the GBC era, I was hoping the Switch era would be this big great thing for the series and a way for me to jump back in, but other than nostalgia basically doing all the work for Let's Go Pikachu, and general enjoyment for Arceus (It still has issues, but I actually had abit of fun), it's been such a mess and I hate that they do have no incentive to actually make good games.  The brand guarantees things will sell, no matter how bad the game is. 

I will say I have seen more disappointed people with ZA, even fanboys, I think people were also expecting more after Scarlet/Violet and while the game runs smoothly, the graphics being so simplified down to something that feels multiple generations behind, along with lacking content and features, I could see this doing worse than even Arceus.  Of course I thought Scarlet/Violet would see worse sales than usual, but somehow it became the second best in the series, so what do I know.

I hate it, because I adore the brand, I've always loved it, it's why I struggle to get into other takes on the creature collecting genre because I like the designs and such.  I almost thought about getting into the new Digimon, it's generally similar while just being an overall better game and I have a soft spot for Digimon, but I also struggle to get into turn based JRPG's these days, and the demo wasn't drawing me in enough.

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General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: October 17, 2025, 10:06:21 pm »

Took a break from my Battlefield 6 time, to play something completely different...a shooter, but in third person lol Arc Raiders had a stress test I didn't know about but it was the perfect opportunity to check out the game as I didn't get into the last beta.  Right off the bat, this game looks fantastic and it runs AMAZINGLY.  Like even with Battlefield 6, a game that runs well, I'm doing around 100 frames on average, but I'm regularly hitting my current top 120 frames, it feels great to play.  There are some visual bugs here and there, but minor stuff like that isn't unexpected and on something that probably won't be the day 1 build of the game.

I'm not huge on extraction shooters, either they are far too in depth and immensely challenging to be fun (Tarkov), or are just don't do much to excite me, but this kinda works.  For one, there's an option to solo play if you chose "No Fill" for squad, and it prioritizes putting you into a match with other solo players.  I feel like they should say something about this in game, but I found out from the forums.  I think it means you could get into a squad match, but I played probably 4 or 5 matches in a row and all seemed solo.  This is rare for these sorta games honestly.  I think pub play grouping would be fine, I did two, but I'm not often one to enjoy team focused games like this without people I know when playing.

It's your standard extraction shooter with a retro futuristic feel, enemies are varying types of drones, which could get a little boring, but hopefully they have plans to add more and the gameplay is solid.  Weapons have a nice kick, getting a sniper shot on someone to watch their shield explode is super satisfying.  I'm kind of a loot goblin in games so just scavenging for junk and such that can be used for crafting and base upgrades is something I like.

I probably will play through the stress test, though might not grab it when it releases as I'll still be doing Battlefield 6 and I think it's rumored for the Battle Royale to come out with Season 1, but I think I'm just focusing on BF6 for abit, but I can see myself enjoying this game.

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General / Re: VGC's Anonymous/"General" Topic:

« on: October 16, 2025, 03:50:46 pm »

Part of me was hoping that the extra time Game Freak got for Pokemon Legends ZA could mean they put abit more work into it, especially after how bad Scarlet/Violet was, but it seems like the put the bare minimum into the game again and it's so frustrating lol I want to like Pokemon and there's still things I could enjoy, but they just don't make good games.  If they were an indie company making these games for a relatively low budget and it had flat textured buildings, lacking features, low range pop in, and just in general very basic features, there's some leeway there and it wouldn't be an 80 dollar game, but something that's probably half the price. 

I can't even get auto box sorting in these games, what are we doing, Game Freak? lol

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

« on: October 15, 2025, 04:28:00 pm »

I'm hoping for a decent sale on the Silent Hill 2 remake around Halloween to pick it up, so if it gets like a 40 to 50% sale, I'm there lol

I'd say its worth picking up even at full price. I enjoyed it at least as much as the original, if not a little more.

I'm sure it likely is, I just don't buy full price these days when it's over 40 bucks unless it's a game I really want or I know I can get a good amount of playtime from it.  It's dropped down to 40% before already according to SteamDB, so just hoping it gets that again and I'll give it a go.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

« on: October 14, 2025, 11:12:54 pm »

I'm hoping for a decent sale on the Silent Hill 2 remake around Halloween to pick it up, so if it gets like a 40 to 50% sale, I'm there lol

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

« on: October 13, 2025, 11:53:28 pm »

29 - Five Night's At Freddy's 2 (PC 2014) - DROPPED - My anger to beat the last night might bring back before the month is out, but I've dropped this for now, because this game is ass, and it's entirely because of ONE thing.  The Withered's.  They pop up randomly, forcing you to quickly bring up a Freddy mask to cover up, but the timing window is something like...a second? Maybe less? So any hesitation from bringing your mask up leads to immediate death.  It's absurdly tight, which is weird, because all of the other characters have some leeway from the feel of it. 

If I die from Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica, Foxy, Mangle, or get screwed by Balloon Boy, it's my fault, I missed the audio cue or wasn't watching the vents well enough.  The problem as things ramp up and I keep flipping to the music box and back, I start to lose a tiny bit of focus, which in some ways helps, because I'm just trying to grab glimpses of possible characters, I don't need to actively see Foxy, I just need to vaguely see his orange shape while being more focused on the vents when I swivel to look.  That's when I'm in the process of bringing the tablet down, going to a vent light, and then being hit by a Withered, but I was in the process of moving, and by the time I swing to the mask, it's over.  It's so frustrating and not fun. 

I've seen some guide stuff that you need to start bringing up the mask immediately after dropping the tablet no matter what, even if there's no clear threat just to predict an appearance, which is meant meant more for the bonus, harder night, but I'm already meta gaming/micro-managing the game down to the tightest it can be, that anymore just isn't fun, it's such a badly designed game because of this timing, and honestly, despite liking the idea, worst than the first game.  You really don't use the cameras at all once you learn what you need to do other than use the music box, but you aren't using it to look in that room, just to wind up the music box.  I really hate that Scott never updated this at any point to make it a more reasonable experience.  A half second update to this window would make the game not great, but tolerable.

I poked abit at FNAF 3 because I was mad at FNAF 2, but not sure I'll play it.  They made the cameras look terrible and have super annoying audio, making it almost unplayable to me.  It's really not good and I think it might have some annoying mechanics to it, not 100% sure on it.  My run through the original FNAF games is not going well lol

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2025!!!

« on: October 12, 2025, 10:07:42 pm »

28 - Poppy's Playtime: Chapter 1 (PC 2021) - BEAT - I thought I had played this before, but I think I just watched someone play it, but this is mostly just a tech demo, proof of concept, as it's free and very short, mostly just to set things up for the next chapters.  I kinda dig the goofy extendo hand gadget, it offers some lightly unique gameplay elements.  Aside from Five Nights at Freddy's, I'm kinda generally not into mascot horror a ton, there's a lot of slop out there, but this and maybe Bendy seemed decent enough to check out.  I'll get to the next one once it gets a sale, maybe there will be a Halloween bundle sale.

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General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: October 12, 2025, 04:21:37 pm »

Battlefield 6 - It's mostly what I wanted, the only real negatives I have setting aside light bugs or mild annoyances, is that it doesn't have the best maps, a couple are decent, one or two aren't great (I haven't even played one of them to know if it's good, but I think it's a smaller map, so I probably won't like it).  It's not like BF2042 bad where the maps are big for the player count and otherwise are just boring, they are just abit bland other than Firestorm which is a BF3 map.  I don't think anything is gonna be considered all the notable from this game afterwards.  We'll get more eventually, but not the strongest launch maps, and the lack of water vehicles/maps is kinda lame how the series has kinda had to reset itself after BF2042, but is lacking stuff most previous games had.  I'm still enjoying myself though, I'll be playing this for a long time.

Oh and I'm partially through the campaign, but yeah its not good, though I was kinda expecting that lol

Ball x Pit Demo - I hadn't heard about this one, but saw someone playing the demo and it's releasing soon, but its really fun.  It's abit Vampire Survivors, but by way of Breakout/Brick Breaker games, along with being abit of a vertical scrolling Shoot'Em Up.  Progress upward with ricocheting attacks against sliding down block enemies, upgrade/evolve random weapons and items you get, and when you die or beat the level, you go back to your little town you build up which is how you boost stats or unlock characters, by placing down structures.  I can see it being very addictive and great to get after kinda doing all I wanted with Megabonk.

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Off Topic / Re: What TV/Netflix show are you currently watching? (Megathread)

« on: October 09, 2025, 11:53:24 pm »

Peacemaker Season 2 - This season didn't work for me as much as Season 1 did, had a pretty weak finale to me, especially with there being no Season 3 planned apparently?  It sounds like characters might show up in other movies/shows, but cliffhanger ending with no continuation plans is odd.  It wasn't a bad season, some decent points, but just felt like it wasn't quite as strong as the first one.  Sorta felt like Vigilante really stood out in this season with just how absurd he is lol

The Pacific - I think I watched this before, remembered some bits, but it's a decent war show, though felt like it dragged whenever they weren't out on the battlefield, like early on, Episode 3 and 4 were just shore leave stuff in Melbourne Australia, two full episodes.  Not that it was bad or poorly done...I don't know how to explain it without seeming like undercutting the drama of things and only wanting "violence" or something lol There were decent stuff where we weren't on the Battlefield like the one guy needing to do with a health issue and basically goes to a medical center for awhile to recoup or the short bits showing the Medal of Honor receipient having to deal with no long being on the Battlefield and out there hawking war bonds, that was mostly fine.

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General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: October 08, 2025, 11:27:06 pm »

Realizing why I kept hearing that people generally don't like Five Nights at Freddy's 2, because despite some fan favorite characters in this, the gameplay is garbage lol I like not having to worry about power, and while the music box windup is a little tedious, there's a decent bit of gameplay for the most part...until you have to deal with the Withered's.  They can just show up in your room out of the blue, and you have something like a literal second to put down your Freddy mask, but I keep missing the window.  I might not be the snappiest player ever these days, but the timing is ridiculous and makes no sense and it draws things out, because it'll disappear for a second when you think you got it, just to jumpscare you, it's super frustrating and it's so weird, because most of the other characters have clear audio tells and seemingly make sense to deal with.  I've died 3 to 4 times now just from Withered's because of the timing window, it's so bad.

I hate that these games are so barebones, because there should be controls I can change so that I could make camera and mask flip a button press and not a mouse over move, and there's a slight delay to the controls, or its very easy to accidentally bring the tablet back up instead of mask and that screws you.  I'll try a few more times, but this isn't the sort of difficulty I like in a game, because it feels arbitrary, more than like I'm genuinely doing something wrong.

*EDIT*

Kept banging my head against FNAF 2, the timing window is the worst, any bit of hesitation, and the Withered's get you, it's frustrating, because it's not an issue of "Oh, that was a mistake on my part, I'll do better", it's "I didn't have perfect reaction timing, and if I don't have perfect reaction timing, I'll never win".  It's not good, which is a shame as mechanically it's fine even if the cameras are entirely pointless in this game lol

I decided I might jump into FNAF 3 and...god this game is ugly.  I understand the idea is that the location is basically a cheap garbage dump with crappy old systems, but I hate that it justifies horrible camera visuals that also have annoying audio stuff happening, and then having to flip up two panels on either side is awkward after doing the side to side tablet stuff of FNAF 1 and 2.  It's clunky.  I'll give it a shot, I just need to figure out what I have to do with Springtrap as I know the Phantom's are just hallucinations and can't hurt anything, they just cause system issues I think.