sometimes I talk about video games. RIP kbin.run

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Playing on easy doesn’t mean you don’t want to play. Or at least, that’s not my personal experience when I put games on easy, which is not always.

    I’ll throw out two examples. Age of Empires 2. I suck ass at real time strategy, so I put the bots on easiest. What this gives me is the experience and feeling of building up my faction, gathering resources, making upgrades, feeling later like those upgrades were smart (which I wouldn’t get on harder difficulties as my actual poor choices would backfire and punish me), and then I get to conquer my enemies with my large army.

    I still got to build something up from nothing, create a satisfying army, utilize what I made to conquer. I got something out of it that I wouldn’t have if I played on normal. I would’ve struggled and likely lost. I might’ve just as likely actually risen above the challenge and came away with a more satisfying, but hard fought win, but I have challenging and hard fought wins at work every day. I don’t need that in a genre I’m only a tourist in at home. I have Monster Hunter for that.

    I put Gundam Breaker 4 on easy, the combat is satisfying on a surface level, but too precise and finicky as the challenge rises. I enjoy the combat still, on a smaller scale, but I moreso enjoy acquiring gear and making a Gundam that looks a certain way. The things I enjoy more about the game are facilitated by easier combat, I can get to those parts more easily, but still enjoy the combat.




  • It’s really the kind of game that either requires a significant in-game tutorial and very long ramp up (and you’re right, even with all the info in the current tutorial it’s not all inclusive) or it requires someone to bounce questions off of, which is the far superior way to learn, even though it’s far less accessible.

    Once you’ve learned it, though, I actually don’t think it’s all that complicated, it’s just such its own beast that someone coming from nothing would have a hard time wrapping their head around the whole loop and all of the systems, but once you do one time it’s like riding a bike.

    The pause menu in Rise is if you press start, it’s the bottom option on one of the menu tabs, it’ll only show mid mission, so trying to find it in the village is pointless. But if you found a workaround that works too.

    Also, yes, the free game breaking gear with no clear indicators is fucking stupid. I understand why it exists, but it trivializes the experience for so many new players due to the way its implemented that I think it should never have been created. I get wanting to get to end game fast if you’ve done it before, but the consequences are absurd.


  • I couldn’t take this post seriously with how much subjective opinion is stated as fact. Fallout 4 is one of my favorite games, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to its faults and shortcomings. That being said, I can’t read something that’s claiming extremely broad negative things like Fallout 76 is still “broken” and only lives because of MTX" without acknowledging “why people are playing this and microtransacting if the game is broken and irredeemable?” And without defining what is broken and what is not.

    I think Starfield was a wake up call for Bethesda. They need to heed it and keep up with the times, get back in touch with the simulational and unique things that they were known for and can still carve a niche out of, and not rest on their laurels as the rest of the gaming landscape innovates around them.

    As soon as the unique and interesting mechanics and systems have been eclipsed by Bethesda’s failure to make an exceedingly polished and innovative game, people stop justifying the jank and the public opinion falls off. Starfield is their last sign to turn the ship around.





  • I love this series. First played 4 Golden on the Vita, and it was really something that connected with me. I loved the combination slice of life and intriguing mystery, and the characters and voice acting really drew me in. It took me years to actually finish that game, and I’m about halfway through 3 Reload and 5 Royal as well.

    However, biggest thing we need to mention here? The soundtracks. Holy fucking shit, these games have the best OSTs I ever damn heard, as someone who plays bass and loves acid jazz and other adjacent music every game hits the spot in different ways.


  • Voices of the Void a free (likely while it’s in pre-alpha) light simulational game about receiving outer space signals and recording them to sell. You use the currency to clean up, upgrade, and decorate your small facility while moving around the Swiss forest valley you’re in to repair and upkeep the satellite dishes that make the operation function.

    It sounds very purely simulational, but there are a lot of secrets and interesting signals that are more than signals. It’s also an Unreal engine game, but features a lot of Source engine love, for example the art style is reminiscent of Half-Life 1, all of the sound effects are EXTREMELY Source game nostalgic, and there’s crouch jumping.



  • TBW has a low poly, low texture detail art style in contained levels, and the controls are very simple. I think it would be more than possible to port it to switch, I hope the devs do! They didn’t port their last game, Heat Signature, but that game had a more complex and precise control scheme.

    The Judge is the best character. He plays it dumb when it’s funny, but he hands down fair verdicts. He even appears in one of the Investigations cases as a witness! And it’s a little easier to understand Franziska given that she’s Manfred von Karma’s daughter. Being raised by a guy like that cannot be easy on you.


  • Tactical Breach Wizards just released, so I’m picking back up where the demo left off! Excited to see more of it, the writing is great and the gameplay is just complex enough while rewarding experimentation.

    And I just got into Voices of the Void, a free (likely while it’s in pre-alpha) light simulational game about receiving outer space signals and recording them to sell. You use the currency to clean up, upgrade, and decorate your small facility while moving around the Swiss forest valley you’re in to repair and upkeep the satellite dishes that make the operation function. I’m very early in learning how everything works, but I’m really enjoying it!

    And I’m imminently finishing Edgeworth Investigations, the last case is massive, but I’ve got the perp, so I should be very close and then onwards to Investigations 2! Glad to see you continuing Ace Attorney, OP. Franziska is indeed a hardass and slightly unhinged, but she’s not so bad!


  • Definitely not trying to do that. To speak on the idea of visible, inaccessible DLC in a game, it is bad, full stop. I think it’s certainly cynical of the developers to put the doors there and not completely remove them unless you have the DLC installed.

    Seeing those seams is something you can’t help but notice, and it absolutely does impact your perception of the game to have them there. What I am saying is that Dead Cells is so thoroughly well made and considered that I was able to tell myself “these doors are locked until I beat the game on a certain boss cell and feel justified to pay for an ‘expansion’ and access new content”.

    I can live with that specifically because the doors are not necessary, you just can’t enter them and take a different path, similar to other locked zone doors that are instead locked because of boss cell requirements. The maps are also consistently laid out in terms of direction to get to a certain zone entrance, so once I know it’s there I can avoid that path in the future until I decide to stop playing or buy more content.

    If Dead Cells were a lesser game I would be much less forgiving about it, and to be clear, again, the fact that you can see DLC doors for DLC you don’t have is bad design, full stop. It’s just that the game is so good overall, I think it’d be sad for someone to pass it up for that reason, or to think that they’re not getting enough because of it. It’s a shame, but the game’s still awesome.

    I don’t think you’re wrong to feel the way you do, but try not to sleep on the game because of it. Even without the paid DLC the base game and free updates have a lot of mileage.






  • Investigations (1 at least since I haven’t started 2 yet) has the greatest change in gameplay I’ve seen, I’ve otherwise played the first game up to Apollo Justice, then investigations 1.

    Instead of exploring the town from a “first person” perspective, you instead explore a singular crime scene area of a few rooms in a more, sort of side-on almost beat em up esque perspective. You walk Edgeworth around as a character and interact with objects and people by walking up to them.

    Instead of only having evidence (which you still have), you can also collect “logic subjects”, which you can connect in pairs when you think something is related to something else. For example, you might notice a string of objects scattered on the floor, adding the logic point “scattered objects”, then you might find a high powered fan, adding that logic point, and then you can connect that, logically, the fan was likely turned on and blew the objects around, and connecting them furthers your investigation or allows you to ask people about that subject.

    You also don’t go to court to prosecute, though you still have testimony that you can refute and disprove, it just happens while you’re walking around the scene and talking to people, so you may not even necessarily be disproving witness testimony, you’re just trying to convince somebody of something or establishing the crime’s timeline by presenting evidence and pressing statements, much like you would in mainline Ace Attorney.

    Overall, I really like Investigations! It’s a neat change of perspective, but still scratches the itch, has a good soundtrack even though it’s not as good as Ace Attorney 1, the GOAT, and overall I only had maybe three occasions where the logic was so obtuse I had to look up, which is par for the course for these games.

    I also found it refreshing to follow Edgeworth and Franziska von Karma because their personalities are so different from Phoenix or Apollo, though there’s still a ton of returning characters, there are some new ones, too. I’d say if you like Ace Attorney so far you’ll certainly enjoy investigations.

    And with Powerwash, I’m not sure why the crossplay wasn’t extended to PS. Xbox and PC are under Microsoft together, so that seems an easy crossplay negotiation, but I’m not sure why PS didn’t play ball since theyve it with other games.