Tried about half an hour of the Obsidian backyard survival game today. It’s clever and looks well done. Nothing like what they showed in the trailers - it’s first person so all those shots of player characters running around doing stuff were just… for trailers I guess. But the actual game seems like it might be pretty fun in a sort of Arc meets Metroid Prime kind of way.
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an interesting short and sweet game you might like is carrion. its an indie game, youre basically a monster out of cthulhu horror story killing scientists and security. you eat people and grow in size, you can play it quiet with surprise attacks, or go rampage.
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I downloaded it but haven’t tried it yet. I’m crashing at my brother’s place while my mom is I’m the hospital, so I get 20 min between my shifts here and there. So not a lot of gaming going on. I’m grateful for Xbox’s sign in system though.
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hope everything is alright man, i wish you the best
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Thanks man. I don’t know if I would describe it as alright, but she’s going to recover. These are chronic health issues and not COVID related, so I guess that’s good.
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Sending good wishes to you and your family!
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I’m currently playing through Halo 5: Guardians on solo Legendary, my first attempt at that difficulty for the game.
I reached new heights of profanity in the first Warden battle…
Ghost of Tsushima for me as well. Playing on hard and spent the first hour dying repeatedly (I’m talking literally 1 minute between each death as I returned to the same leader-housing camp again and again and again). Aside from the camp got ravaged by boars, bears, bandits, and not a few arrows in the back, but after my hour of dying spectacularly I’d pretty much gotten down the combat system and am now unkillable 
I dunno what it is about these kinds of games, but for whatever reason I always wander way, waaaaaay outside the beaten path to challenge the biggest, toughest thing I can find until I’ve nailed down exactly what everything does and how to kill it with a wooden spoon. In BOTW it was chasing guardians when all I had were 3 hearts and a bunch of pot lids (not joking here), and in Ghost of Tsushima it was how to kill Mongol bases before I’d learned assassinate or gotten a bow 
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Been playing a lot of Grounded. It’s been fun! Had my base attacked by a bunch of Larva, and a Wolf spider jumped into the fray and made sure I was dead. I’ve enjoyed playing it in 1st Person, and my friend who plays plays it in 3rd person (probably because they don’t like the spiders in the game, so they want to see everything lol) have had a blast making a fort on a rock.
Rouge Company with friends, and I have a SFV and SC6/Tekken drive right now. I want to learn all of these games again.
I was able to do the first third of Halo 5: Guardians on Legendary, Solo, but after that it’s proven too hard and unforgiving to me. I’ve continued on at Heroic instead, and am focusing and snagging some Achievements I missed before.
I’ve also started up a playthrough of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Repiblic (PC) for the first time in, oh, sixteen or seventeen years. It’s still a fantastic game, and arguably the bet Star Wars game ever made.
Been enjoying some DOOM (2016) (Xbox One X) Arcade Mode as well, and I’ve been playing a little Ranked Leagues in Killer Instinct (2013) and Kombat League in Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath.
Battletoads early impressions:
So I had a chance to play the first Act and then the beginnings of the new “turbo tunnel” level in Act 2. I can’t review the game but here are my early thoughts.
You may not like the art style, but the animation is great. Some strange visual style choices - like all the enemies in the first level are shifted to a pink tone. I don’t know if this is supposed to be reminiscent of the limited color palette of the original or spoiler
[spoiler]if this is to represent that the roads are actually in a VR chamber[/spoiler]
Either way it looks weird especially since the Toads themselves are bright and vivid. But the animations and the expressiveness of the characters and enemies are really terrific. Not quite cup head but closer to that than to Streets of Rage 4.
The beat em up combat feels pretty good and responsive. The Toads all fight slightly differently and have weird and inexplicable limb morphing moves that have no explanation and you will either find wonderfully whimsical or off putting. Rash’s heavy combo Ender turns his arms into limp fish that he them swings in a circle… Combat suffers from what ails other beat em up games - it’s repetitive. The difficulty ramps right away as they throw six or more enemies at you all at once with long range and short range attacks as well as guys who block. This is fine but it means you will spend most of your time fighting so furiously that you won’t be able to appreciate the games best feature - which is the animation. There’s a nice added “dodge/dash” move that adds a bit of DMC to the Final Fight here but it’s a bit wonky in terms of when you can be hit coming out if it. The first boss is a hit sponge who takes forever to die even though his attack patterns are easy and simple. So you dodge, hit hit hit - repeat like 80 times. It’s the first boss so I don’t want to be overly critical. But if later bosses increase the level of complexity in attack patterns but maintain this same level of tankiness then the game is going to be really tiresome.
When a toad is killed you switch to another toad, and after a cool down time the dead toad returns to the lineup but with half energy. You can switch between the three at any time. Flies make an appearance but grabbing them involves holding a direction, LT and Y which seems overly complicated - especially since RB and LB don’t seem to be used at all in beat em up levels. Also you have to eat about 6 flies to make up the health lost by a single hit from an enemy. So it seems a bit worthless.
The cut scenes are visually very polished with wipes to transition and fluid animation etc. but the voice overs sound like they were recorded on an iPhone 1 with RARE office staff playing
The parts. I don’t know if this is a directorial decision (“let’s make it sound like The Office”) or of they ran out of money after the animation or what. But the difference in quality between the animation and the voice I find jarring. The humor is… Well humor is subjective. If you pee yourself laughing at the thought of the Toads working 9-5 jobs then you’re going to like this. Personally, I didn’t think they were funny even in the 90s when a self aware Ninja Turtles parody was culturally relevant.
The turbo tunnel is what you’d expect. It’s not as hard but looks like the replay value is in not getting hit and collecting all the little diamond things. It’s nice to have some variety and it’s not as blatantly bad as the original.
Overall, my first impression is that this is a decent hybrid beat em up game and works well as part of a library of games. Is it worth money if you don’t have gamepass? I’m not sure. I will also try to get the kids to try 3 player coop with me this weekend.
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Alright… No more Playing Around… I’m going to beat Hollow Knight… Even if it kills me !!!
But first I’m going to have Tea… 
Edit:
Well that was Embarrassing… I gave up after 10 Attempts…
My Nail Art build isn’t working… It’s too high commitment in this fight… On top of that I haven’t noticed a pattern I can exploit yet…
I heard about a Beast Master build but when I tried it it was difficult to tell if it was Working because they allies just add more Visual Noise to an already visually incomprehensible boss fight.
Hmmmmm…
Will try again tomorrow… But until then… More TEA !!!
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Finished Battletoads on “Toad” difficulty. The story got weirder and more out of control as it went on. If there’s a moral to the story of any kind it might be a subversive message about MS. But it’s pretty opaque. Some of the levels were kind of fun. Others were inexplicable. The end of Act III has you doing a series of weird control panel mini-games which are neither fun nor interesting but you have to memorize a new alphabet of symbols to try to recognize which of the 9 puzzles displayed on the screen you are supposed to work on next. It’s baffling to think that someone thought it would be a good idea. Difficulty is also all over the place.
Overall I would say this was meh. Unlike a game like Cuphead, which is equally short but difficult and requires you to try the same levels over and over, you can’t really look at this and go “wow, this has never been done before.” I have no desire to go back and finish it on hard mode or to collect additional collectibles. The gameplay is simultaneously filled with old school design tropes (like pattern memorization) but allows you to just keep trying until you beat it. It “brings back” the sort of identity-less varied gameplay of the original but doesn’t (in my opinion) add anything either groundbreaking or fun. If you want to spend an afternoon playing it you can get through the game, which is probably good. I wouldn’t have come back for hours more of this.
As I said before, if this was one of a sea of MS games coming out - or if this game released as a “guess what? It’s available now!” The day it was announced three years ago I would say it was great. But I don’t really see this as doing much to fill the big void in MS’s lineup of first party games.
Spoilers below.
[spoiler] The “story” in Act II is that the toads punch out a diplomat, then have to negotiate a peace between two warring factions. After they get the medals of respect they murder a waiter who resembles a fly at the celebratory banquet, causing both Warring factions to attack them. They ride the unconscious diplomats body to escape in one of the most annoying levels of the game which is really just a simple endless runner but required me to use two hands on the a b x y buttons because the controls were awful. Once they escape with the diplomat, the dark queen extracts the information they want and then murders him. There is a funny fourth wall breaking joke where the diplomat makes fun of her new outfit and she says “you don’t get to control how I dress just because we met once 20 years ago,” which for me was the highlight of the story. The Toads commit genocidal mass murder in two different locations in Act III. All this senseless murder is played off for laughs but there isn’t really anything funny about it. I’m not that prudish but it would have been nice if there was even a hint of a reason for any of it. The “character development for the toads is really random and arbitrary and incoherent. The dark queen is my favorite character. Which says a lot. At the end of the game, the toads defeat the evil beings ruling the universe and implant the dark queen as the new ruler. Which seems… not like something they should do. And again, I’m sore there’s someone out there who will find this all hysterical. But I didn’t see much humor in any of it. Some dumb tired jokes and an occasional one liner that made me smirk. [/spoiler]
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works been absolutely bonkers so ive been swapping between stellaris and soul calibur 6 PC. stellaris is a pretty deep strategy game in space filled with references from pop culture and sci fi movies. you create your own alien species/civilization and start building your empire to span the galaxy whether by diplomacy, or violence, both maybe. you decide what kinda civics you have. for me i made a race if lion type aliens that are militaristic and spiritual, sort of like adeptes astartes from 40k.
gameplay is cool, you colonize worlds, expand your borders with outposts which are upgraded to bases for military ships or trade, and can make them bastions to blow up invaders. i got into a feud with a criminal empire who entered my turf and basically set up shop in my homeworld since i hadnt known you can close borders. this led to criminal syndicates unifying on the planet and taking over lmao, the ■■■■■■■■ even started to take half my ■■■■ i was trading for themselves. i built 3 fleets, and declared war on them. i raided the hell out of their turf until they agreed to get off my planet. i blew up all kinds of their stuff until they cried uncle, then after that the rivalry turned into economic rivalry as we raced to take more systems to stop growth. its pretty complex game overall, but i find it alot of fun. i want to make an empire like from starship troopers and be anti-bug lol
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I bought two games via the Ultimate Game Sale Microsoft is having: Halo Wars 2: Complete Edition, and Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration. I have yet to try the latter, but am really enjoying the former.
So games I’m overall playing right now:
- Halo: The Master Chief Collection (Halo: Reach Firefight)(PC)
- Halo Wars 2: Complete Edition (PC and Xbox One X)
- Killer Instinct: Definitive Edition (PC and Xbox One X)
- Mortal Kombat XL (Xbox One X)
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (PC)
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I’ve been playing The Sinking City with the family because they love creepy games. It’s a really interesting game that has some great ideas. It looks like a PS2 game and has some wonky mechanics but if you like Cthulu style horror it’s worth a look.
I also picked up the Witcher 3 from the summer sale. We will see how much time I’m able to put into something the kids can’t watch.
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And I finally beat Hollow Knight (With the True Ending)… With a completion rate of 105%
So… It turns out the key to defeating The Radiance is to just pray to RNJesus that he doesn’t do the Homing Fire Ball Attack and you should be fine
Battle Plan ?
I used the Beast Master build so I had 5 Companions dealing damage for me whenever I couldn’t attack directly myself. That being said… Only 2 of those five companions are actually worth it since the other 3 don’t fly… So really you can use whatever you want.
On top of that I didn’t heal once…
No I’m not Bragging. This Boss is so Aggressive that there’s no time to heal (just like the final Boss of Dark Souls 1) so I just stacked a bunch of Maximum Health and outlasted him. It’s not really a battle of Attrition but you can play it like one.
And that’s it… Now I don’t feel so incompetent… I mean IL never be as Good as Dan (who I still think cheated) but atleast I did a thing… 
it took all weekend but I did it…
Next Up… beating DmC (Reboot) on The Hardest Difficulty 
!!! (It’s gonna take a while since I’m starting from Scratch).
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Finished Ghost of Tsushima
Still playing Samurai shodown.
SamSho is, except for online, a KI clone. Not enough costumes and dlc offerings for more than a year after launch, monthly character releases in season 2, no character plays the same, some stage visuals have visual issues that ppl avoid them online (similar to KI dark stages being avoided for better stream experience), I have been close to the community for a while now, ..
TLDR many parallels lol
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Spent a couple of hours last night with my wife finally wrapping up Thimbleweed Park. If you are interested or have nostalgia for point and click adventure games it’s a good one. Be warned it’s a throwback so you will see a lot of inconvenience in the UI and a lot of “use lever” command does nothing but “pull lever” command works to solve the puzzle. But it had a cute story and quirky characters and all the stuff that we used to enjoy about point and clock adventures when we were young.
Well… How was it ? 