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.
Author: TheAleosha
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.
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.
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Game backlog
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I really respect space sims that get anything besides fighters/interceptors right. Unlocked the Gunship, and it is actually quite different from the Interceptor you start with, which is great.
The turret is not always active, you need to activate it when enemies get close, but is still very helpful, as are the drones you can emit. The downside is that you don’t have regenerative shields at all. So any damage you need to repair yourself.
Then I unlocked the Scout. At first I couldn’t understand how such a flimsy craft could be effective. But the more appropriate name for it should be “sniper”. As it is equipped by default with a weapon with twice the range of most of the enemies. And it’s the only craft that has stealth ability. So you can snipe, run away, and repeat.
The downside is the time. You’re bein chased, so after a few minutes the enemy fleet usually teleports into the sector, forcing you to escape to the next one.
Another interesting detail is that some decision results are indeed random. You have to repeat Russian Roulette multiple times to get both results. Common for RPGs, not so common for visual novellas and puzzle games.
At some point they introduce an alien machine that can teleport people to the past. The caveat is that it works like a fax. It creates a copy of you. But you also stay stuck in the place you tried to escape from. Reminds of the Soma game.
The midgame is slow. At first, you solve all those escape rooms and make decisions and have fun. But then the game forces you to take all the OTHER decisions. Some of them quite stupid, like deliberately losing at Monty Hall game. But you need to see all the deaths in order to progress.
But finally we get to what’s we’re all here for, the endgame mindfuck revelations. The game starts with a story about a boy that died waiting for a surgery, because his surgeon got into an accident. Turns out Q is that boy. Well, not exactly. Q is controlled by a quantum computer, and there are a lot of Q’s doing menial tasks like getting rid of the bodies, but Q was implanted with consciousness of that boy. He’s given a choice of creating a copy of himself in a virtual world living a happy life and continuing his life as a drone, or to completely erase himself. Again, resembles Soma a lot.
I got so annoyed by the fact that I got myself an unhackable PS4 Pro that I found a PS4 9.00 on eBay and bought it.
The seller didn’t lie, it was indeed 9.00 firmware, and he even was kind enough to ship the hackingUSB with it.
So now I have two PS4s, one of them hacked. And a bunch of cheap PS4 games on top of that.
Categories
Ninja Perfect Temperature Kettle
We had a Sage Smart Kettle for about 3 years and were very happy with it. But for the past couple of months it started to act out, loosing contact with its based, beeping when regaining it, sometimes not turning on at all.
The requirements were simple:
- Temperature control to be able to prepare green tea at 80C
- Visible water level
- Attached lid
Turned out that the choice isn’t that large. For example Haier I-Master Series 5 doesn’t have a visible water level, something I’d consider a basic feature.
So, we settled for Ninja.
What can I say:
- It boils 1L of water at exactly 2 minutes, which is pretty amazing.
- There’s a real time display of temperature.
- And there’s a led highlighting the water level when the kettle is on.
I especially like the real time display, as it gives a rough indication on how long until the kettle boils, or if it’s too hot to touch.
Gaming as a kid in the ’90s was a very confusing experience. Most of the information I’ve got was from game magazines, featuring a game on the cover, that would be hopefully reviewed or at least previewed in the issue.
One of the magazines I proudly owned had Re-Loaded on its cover. But I never actually played the game, and a few seconds of gameplay I’ve seen many years later gave me an impression it’s trash. Now, I can finally confirm my suspicion.
First of all, it turns out to be a sequel of another game I’ve never seen called Loaded. The gameplay is Chaos Engine like, with multiple characters to pick from, each with a regular and a special attack. The characters and enemies are prerendered, but the levels are 3D, with multiple levels of elevations.
One of the main issues with gameplay is that enemies movement is not discreet, but weapons are. Meaning enemies would run at you at an angle you can’t hit them at all.
The only feature of note is that some enemies will try to roll rocks at you from above. Adding insult to injury, from the 3rd level onward, most of the enemies shoot at you, turning the game into bullet hell.
This is all topped with what was considered in the 90’s as “edgy humor”. One of the characters is a cannibal, another is a crossdresser, the planet is named Kee-Butt (such laughs), and so on.
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Chernobylite
Completed Chernobylite.
Storywise, Tatyana, the woman in the red dress that Igor looks for, got kidnapped by KGB for being anti-communist. It’s not clear if she really was a traitor, or if it was just Boris ploy for Tatyana refusing him. Then KGB discover that she’s pregnant with a special child, and grow the child in a lab until he escapes.
Boris goes on to experiment on himself, his face gets scared, and he becomes the Black Stalker.
Chernobylite is a multidemnsional organism. When traveling through portals, people travel through its “veins”. And zombies-Shadows are the white blood cells.
It’s a bit annoying getting to the best ending, as the choices you need to make are very particular and not very obvious. For one, you need to interrogate Kozlov, any other way of disposing of him, and there are many, including a sniper rifle, will not give you all the clues you need. And you need to let the little kid out of his cell, not keep him there “to be safe”. The only way to know about that, is to play the mission multiple times, as bad outcomes give you clues to what you’ve been missing.
The final plot twist is good. Black Stalker is not Boris. He’s Igor. Then who you are? You’re Igor’s son, implanted with his memories. Brings everything together nicely.
The game is definitely not for everyone, and I’m glad that I set the crafting bit to “easy”. But still, very glad that I found it, as I enjoyed it far more than I expected.
Categories
Precision screwdriver
Yesterday I was fiddling with spotlights, and dropped the precission driver case. Not sure if it was just the gravity, or I left it open last time I used it. But all the 48 bits flew away.
Spend good 30 minutes putting them all back in places.
But now I can distinguish between TORX T7H and PZ00 bits.
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Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer
This weekend Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer was free, so I gave it a try.
It’s like Modern Warfare 2.5. Few of the maps are the same I played last year. And funnily enough, the arsenal I unlocked last year, because there was some double-XP promo in Modern Warfare 2, is still there. So I dominated with the fully upgraded RAAL.
I found that I didn’t enjoy it, though. Felt very mechanical.
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Hitman: Agent 47 (2015)
– Bombs?
– Moths. It’s Italian wool, and I love it.
At least this movie understands some signature elements. The sniper rifle, the .45s, the garrotte, changing uniforms.
It’s still ridiculous at times, like shooting a handcuff chain with a sniper rifle. But still.
The bait-and-switch with John Smith is pretty good. The idea of a female assassin is pretty good, considering we already had Hitman: Absolution.
The airport scene is pretty amusing. Again, a play on both changing costumes and avoiding cameras.
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Vibram adventures
My KSO Evo FiveFingers broke down, with sole at the thumb cracking. So I decided to explore other Vibram options. Tried Furoshiki Icon and Furoshiki High Knit. Icon is basically a strapped sole. High Knit at least feels like a sock with a sole. They provide excellent grip, at least on parquet, but I don’t like that they stick my toes together even more than a regular shoe, not to mention a FiveFinger shoe.
Then I got V-Run Retro. Those feel great, right amount of padding, quick lace, back loop, everything I need, basically.