Author: TheAleosha

PS4 Sony

Diablo 4

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date January 9, 2024

Something I didn’t expect is that I’d have the most success with Rogue, out of the three classes I tried until now. Rogue has the same concept of two weapons slots the barbarian has, but in her case it’s for ranged and dual-wield set of weapons.
The class mechanics are what you’d expect: homing arrows, barrage of arrows, imbuing arrows with elements. But with her I didn’t die once yet. With barbarian: many times.
I’m at level 24, ending of Act I, and I’m seeing an “orange” item for the first time just now. How times have changed since Diablo 3…
Are we dealing with a dysfunctional family again? I think we’re dealing with dysfunctional family again. First we had Adria who sacrificed her daughter.

Now we have Lilith and that Angel who killed his son the goth-necromancer because anger management and prophecies, and now mommy is angry.

Seeing Vigo as Knight Penitent after playing Blasphemous is… strange. I’m not sure if the reference is intentional, but it is quite obvious.

Tags Diablo

*.DOC *.MP3

Player of Games, Ian M. Banks

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date January 9, 2024

Finished listening to “Player of Games”.
This is basically a spy novel wrapped in Banks’ sci-fi utopia. A professor in game theory is bored with everything, and recruited by an intelligence agency to participate in a complex game played in a distant empire.
The empire is a parody on modern Britain, with fashion that haven’t changed hundreds of years (ouch), and all government positions decided by a result of a particularly elaborate Game. Hence universities that teach The Game have huge influence on politics of the Empire (ouch, ouch).
For ’88, the book is quite progressive. Banks plays with the idea that in the utopian future, people would be able to change their sex back and forth, for example. He also dedicates a lot of attention to the fact that AIs in this society considered to have the same rights as humans.
Overall, I enjoyed it far more than “Consider Phlebas”, his first book. It describes the obsession of something like a chess player quite well.

Tags Ian Banks

PC Gaming

Chorus

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date January 9, 2024

Piloting is quite tricky, as enemy ships are very agile, frustratingly so. Luckily, since we play as Sith turned Jedi, we have an ability to teleport behind an enemy, alighting the reticle while doing so. Helps a lot during fights with the smaller enemies.
Speaking of bigger enemies, Wraiths started to appear during missions, which I guess are frigates or maybe corvettes, the game doesn’t specify, I think. The game also only half explains how to defeat those. First you hit the thrusters to disable other shields. Then you fly inside wrecking everything. That disabled the shields around the tractor. Then you destroy the reactor and fly out as quickly as you can, since it is hinted that the explosion can take you out, although I haven’t stayed yet to validated. All that while invincible until the end turrets are hitting you.

The game world is divided into half a dozen zones, each an asteroid field, basically. The zones are quite wide, but not very deep, although there’s still some verticality. The main missions usually have multiple objectives, which you can do in any order. Then there are sidequests and even some random encounters. Can this be called a space-sim-RPG mix?
To add to the metaphor, equipment comes in “sets”, like the “green” items in some Diablo games. If you install 2 or 4 items, you’ll get bonuses. Quite significant, I must say: seeping enemy shields, for example.

Tags Chorus

*.BAK

Johnnie Walker Green Label 15 years

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date January 9, 2024

This Christmas I got myself the Drinks by the Drum Advent Calendar, once it got a discount.
Finally got to opening it. The first one is Johnnie Walker Green Label 15 years, 49GBP per bottle.
I’m not a fan of blends, because you never know what goes into them. This one is slightly peaty, but still quite smooth and sweet, leaves nice numbness in the mouth. Certainly quite nice.

Tags whiskey

PC Gaming

Chorus

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date January 8, 2024

That’s the game I was always confusing EverSpace with. And there are some good reasons for that. It’s also a modern arcade space-sim, for one.
But it’s very narrative driven, unexpectedly so. Nara, the protagonist, served the Cult, and even destroyed a planet with all its population once, which torments her. She has a sentient ship, Forsaken, which she calls Forsa, and the ship has a score to settle with the Cult too.

As I mentioned, I respect space sims that don’t just threat all spaceships as fighters. Here you’re quickly given a capital ship to pilot for a short while, and it’s interesting. It does have turrets, although not autonomous ones. But you can fire them in any direction, not just the direction the ship is facing, which makes a lot of sense.

Like in many other games, there’s the shields-and-hull mechanic. Some weapons are better against shields, some are better against hull, so you need to switch all the time. But here they changed the role of missiles a bit. Missiles are used against armoured enemies.
The mechanic Chorus leans heavily into is drift. And I’m not a fan. In some games, you have the inertia system, where you can gain velocity then spin in any direction and still follow your path. Here, by default there is no inertia, you fly where you point your nose. Unless you enable drift. This is a nice system, and in other circumstances I may have even liked it. But the beginning of the game is full of ancient temples with narrow corridors and regenerating locks, that you need to hit in a short period of time while drifting. And this isn’t fun at all.

Tags Chorus

Nintendo Switch

Diablo 2 Resurrected

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date January 7, 2024

While comparing Diablo 4 to Diablo 2 and Diablo 3, I noticed one detail that is very interesting. You start as a necromancer with no ability points. But you can still summon a skeleton to help you from the get go. That’s because you’re given a wand with +1 to Summon Skeleton skill. So you can be a necromancer from the get-go, basically.

Tags Diablo

PS4 Sony

Diablo 4

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date January 5, 2024

They certainly took a lot from MMORPGs. Diablo 3 was mostly linear. Here, every village has a bunch of quests for you. And since everything is leveling up with you anyway, it doesn’t matter much which village you start with.

Interesting aspect of playing as the barbarian is that your weapon mastery grows with use, not with your level. That’s different from any other Diablo game I remember, where everything, and I mean everything, was tied to your character leveling up.
I of course build a Whirlwind barbarian. Luckily, this skill is available as soon as level 3. And in the meantime, it’s a lot of fun, mowing hordes on mobs.

Surprising that the first area is very Slavic. Less surprising after the success of Witcher, of course, but still, names like Fedor, and areas like Zeleny Lowlands or enemies like Volkodlak.

Tags Diablo 4

PC Gaming

Everspace

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date January 3, 2024

Completed Everspace.

The final boss really requires to bring every trick you’ve learned up your sleeve. The cruiser summons fighters with Corrosion Missiles, that penetrate shields and just a couple of those can finish most ships. So my bet was on Gunship, that doesn’t have shields anyway, and plenty of hull. Front shield also helps negate some of these. Still, you need a lot of repair items, and a lot of luck. Cruiser regenerates shields quickly, and the missile flies slowly, so a few times it hit the cruiser when its shields were already up again. And you need three pairs of eyes, to watch both the cruiser with its wave of flame attack at the fighters, and their missiles, all at the same time. It’s not a fun mission, I must say.
I also finally figured out what to do on the Ancient Temple map. Turns out you can fly inside the temple and summon the Ancient, or whatever that is. Luckily, on the run I discovered this I was running a Scout with “sniper rifles”, and Okkar can’t chase you there, so you have all the time in the world to chip at this fire blob and hide behind asteroids. It’s ironic that the perk that I’ve got from achieving this task is that those Ancient Depots are shown on the star map.

Tags Everspace

PS4 Sony

Diablo 4

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date January 3, 2024

After another 45 minute wait for yet another 4GB patch that should have been downloaded in 15 minutes, I finally launched the game.
It does feel a lot like Path of Exile, which I always found incredibly boring. When the skill tree has a search button. At least characters wear pants, though.
I usually play as Crusader/Paladin, but for the lack of such, decided to give Necromancer a try. Nice that they give you 4 skeletons right away. No need to slowly build your army anymore, it seems.

The main mechanic from Diablo 3 remained the same: use Signature Skill to build Essence, use other skills to kill everyone, repeat. Better than spamming a single skill from Path of Exile, I guess.
Then, I decided to give a Barbarian a try, and strangely, I enjoying it much more than I’d expect. Funny thing about Barbarian is that she had 4 weapon slots. One for bludgeoning two handed, one for slashing two handed, and two for dual-wield weapons. And her skills work in such a way that she uses the right weapon for each job.

Tags Diablo 4

PC Gaming

30 Years of God Game History, Indigo Gaming

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date January 2, 2024

Another interesting bit from this retrospective on the God Game genre: War for the Overworld and Dungeons 3, two tributes to the Dungeon Keeper games, should actually be quite good.

I also completely missed the fact that Peter Molyneux tried to create another God Game in 2015, Godus, which turned out to be a complete failure in the end.

PC Gaming

Everspace

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date January 2, 2024

The game becomes more interesting as you acquire more blueprints. At first it’s the runs are mostly about luck. Then you starting gaining the ability to craft Nano Injectors to preserve your Nano Bots and repair your ship when you need them most.
By now, I completed runs with all the ships, I could say. “Could say”, because once you collect all 8 DNA samples the corrupt admiral appears in a cruiser, which is impenetrable for your weapons, and you need to launch missiles from a silo at it.

Tags Everspace

PS4 Sony

Diablo 4

What I like about console versions of Diablo 3 is that they work completely offline, both on Switch and PS4. No such luck with Diablo 4, unfortunately.
The game won’t even show menu without internet connection.
So, I had to download latest system firmware.
Then I had to set up PSN account.
Then download 12GB update.
I wasted an hour, and didn’t play Diablo 4 at all this evening.

Tags Diablo, Diablo 4

PC Gaming

Everspace

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date January 1, 2024

As I mentioned, Gunship doesn’t have regenerative shields at all. But it does have an impenetrable shield at the front, that can be activated once in a while. Combined with a turret and some drones, that makes Gunship quite formidable. Managed to do a couple of successful runs with it.
One detail that enormously impressed me is that when you destroy a frigate, it doesn’t simply evaporates. It turns into a hulk, that you need to navigate in order to get some of the loot trapped inside.

The approach this game has for perks is… interesting. There are stations you can find that hold perks. But in order to open the door to the station, you need Access Key, that randomly drops from some enemies. And once you’ve got it, you also need to guess behind which of the two doors the perk is. The second door usually just holds bunch of powerful weapons, but nothing persisting.

Tags Everspace

*.XLS

Game backlog

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 31, 2023

I’ve been maintaining game backlogs for twenty years at least.
And I always split them by platforms, since that made the most sense to me, exclusives aside.
When I got Nintendo Switch, I moved some games I planned to play on PC to its backlog. Games that don’t require much details and can be played on a smaller screen, like Hades, for example, and games that are more fun to play on a TV.
But with PS4, it became a bit harder to track, as many games are present on all three platforms.
So I decided to switch to Grouvee for backlogs as well:
https://www.grouvee.com/user/2574-Aleosha/shelves/13039-backlog/?num=200

PS4 Sony

Order 1886

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 31, 2023

Completed Order 1886.

The story is told in such a way that the characters have all the context, and don’t try to explain anything to the player. “In medias res”? Which is good in terms of storytelling, but leaves me with a feeling of missing something.
Oh, there are not just werewolves but also vampires. Oh, Lord Hastings that we protected half of the game from rebels is actually a vampire. He’s Jack the Ripper that was mentioned at the start of the game. And the United India Company tries to ship vampires to USA.
Why? I don’t know. Usually those gaps are filled by Codex, but there’s none here.

Surprisingly, I didn’t find the game short and the ending lacking. Yes, it doesn’t wrap much of anything, and it’s a shame we won’t get to see the sequel. But then sequels rarely stand up for expectations anyway. Just ask Assassin’s Creed.
Alistair, the commander of the Knights, turns out to be a werewolf. Interesting that he refers to Lord Hastings as “my breed”, meaning that in this universe vampires and werewolves are somewhat related.
Lord Chancellor knew that fact, but he was unable to kill a child. Instead, he tasks Galahad to do that for him.
I must say this all doesn’t make sense, stories about people that live for hundreds of years rarely do. For example Lafayette is clearly meant to be the historical figure, as he “seen two Revolutions”, and is “the most American Frenchman I know”. But that would mean he’s 86 years old with the look of 30, and that is without the Grail powers, as he’s knighted during the events of the game. Unless of course the American and French revolution happened in this reality around 1860.
We end up with Galahad and Tesla on the run, and martial law declared in London.
It’s now clear who helped Tesla get Galahad out of Thames. It credits he just appears as “misterious man”. Presumably it could be either Arthur himself, or Bots, one of Arthur’s knights, as Ravi mentions him, although saying that he may not be alive after all. But that would explain why Ravi has the same sword design and bottle as other knights.

Tags Order 1886

PS4 Sony

Order 1886

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 31, 2023

Don’t get me wrong, it’s cute. It’s just not the masterpiece everyone claimed for it to be. Being exclusive doesn’t make a game into a masterpiece, you see.
Fighting werewolves in a steampunk version of Victorian London is a nice enough idea. But on top of that they put Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. At first I thought some of the characters were sharing the names. But it turns out they are supposed to be those knights, having lived for hundreds of years. Then there are historical figures, such as Nicola Tesla, that of course supplies us with new weapons.

Gameplaywise, it’s a cover-shooter. But at least the enemies are not as beefy as in Gear of War, and they respect headshots somewhat, so shooting is actually quite satisfying.

There is a strange mechanic for such a game to examine different objects. Something I’d expect in an adventure, but not in a shooter. Maybe just a way to flex.

Or “gun porn”, as you can also rotate some of the new guns that way.

I got excited when I reciver the Lewis machine gun. But it turned out to be a strange contraption that requires you to spray enemies with termite, then ignite them.

The voice acting and cinematography are superb. To have a direct quote from Resident Evil was surprising.

Turns out the knightly names are codenames, and each Knight has also a first and last name. So Perceval is Sebastien Malory (Thomas Malory was the author of Le Morte d’Arthur). And when Sebastien dies in the explosion, Lafayette inherits his codename of Perceval. And they live for hundreds of years due to the Holy Grail they have.

Tags Order 1886

PC Gaming

Everspace

On the 16th attempt, I even managed to reach my destination, with the Scout, no less. The main struggle was with a frigate that blocked my path at one point. With it, you cannot jump out of the sector.
Luckily, I had ARC-9000, which is Everspace’s version of BFG.

But even with that, I just wasn’t putting enough damage. But I had lots of resources onboard. So in a very sci-fi manner, I started producing rockets to finish off the frigate.

Storywise, a human admiral planned to set up a false-flag operation, and the original Adam was forced into cooperation by being poisoned. He escaped, kicked off a clone production, and put himself into cryostasis, in hopes to switch bodies with one of the clones that would reach the lab. But even you as the cloned that reached it is flawed. So now you need to collect DNA pieces to prolong your lifespan.

A solid excuse for a few more runs, I’d say.

Tags Everspace

3DS Nintendo

Zero Time Dilemma

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 25, 2023

Completed Zero Time Dilemma.
One annoying bit is that the game gives you multiple 8-numbers long passwords, and it was driving me crazy that I tried all of them in the Quantum Computer room, and none worked. Turns out, one of the scripts is slightly buggy, and you need to do all the votings methodically over again, to get the cutscene you’ve missed initially.
The game goes on to break the 4th wall by saying that all that time you were controlling a supposedly blind, deaf and immobile old man, and for that reason all characters ignored you completely. Kind of Saw-like moment.
Must say, that the ending disappointed me a little. Not just because it ends in a cliffhanger despite it was known that that’s the last game in the trilogy. But because despite having the “all knowing villain”, Chessmaster, trope, it doesn’t tie up nicely. Very little explanation given why Eric is in the experiment, and everyone seems to forget that Mira is a sociopathic serial killer.
The rant about the snail changing the course of humanity (aka Butterfly Effect) is only half-meaninful. Yes, Akane is an orphan “because of a snail” and genius Sean died “because of a snail”, but I expected a bit more.
Comparing all three, I think that the puzzles are the best in Zero Time Dilemma, while Virtue Last Reward had slightly smoother mechanics. But the first game in the series, 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, is still the best for me story-wise.

Tags Zero Escape, Zero Time Dilemma

3DS Nintendo

Zero Time Dilemma

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 25, 2023

Revelations continue. Sigma and Diana are Phi parents. They got trapped in the bunker in one of the timelines, and sent of “fax”. Of their twins to the past to save them. Phi has a brother, Delta. This also establishes an obvious paradox that Diana gets a brooch from the ashes of Phi that got trapped in the immolator, then gives it as a memento to her daughter, Phi, who will tell Diana later that she got it from her mother.
Zero is also the founder of Free the Soul, the terrorist cult from previous game. So Zero = Brother = Delta.
Another twist that I didn’t expect is there’s just one ward. From the beginning of the game teams are told there are three wards, and they can only communicate in one direction by sending messages. And that when they vote, they do it simultaneously, proved by their watches. In fact, their watches were with a 2 hour delay from each other.

Tags Zero Escape, Zero Time Dilemma

PS4 Sony

PlayStation 4

Post author By TheAleosha
Post date December 25, 2023

I for one forgot how noisy PS4 is while installing games, and that it takes fucking 10-15 minutes to install one.
Another thing I didn’t knew and it blew my mind… You can’t just connect any Bluetooth headset to PS4. It needs to be “supported”. Out of the 3 I own, none are, are neigther of them are cheap.
You can always connect your bluetooth headphones to TV, of course. But it’s ironic that Sony claims they don’t support A2DP because those have a lag, but running A2DP through TV will have even more lag, which is fine.

Tags PlayStation 4