Another fantastic video from Loadout and well-known weapon expert Jonathan Ferguson.
This time about the origins of some weapons from the original Star Wars trilogy:
I was surprised that they even mentioned Dark Forces / Jedi Knights games.
Also, I didn’t know that Boba Fett’s pistols are inspired by Webley & Scott Flare Gun. Always thought those are some kind of revolvers.
Can’t say I’m too excited about “open world” part, but the fighting part of Street Fighter VI looks absolutely fantastic:
I’m mostly excited about the drunken kung fu fighter, obviously.
Another trilogy I have never thoughtfully watched is Lord of the Rings.
And unlike Star Wars, it held the test of time extraordinary well. Even the fights still look pretty solid. Especially the fight with the troll.
Since it’s 12 hours long in total, we’re watching it like a series, one hour at a time. And this works pretty well.
One detail I didn’t remember is that in the first movie Gollum isn’t actually shown. We see his hands and eyes a couple of times, and characters talk about him a lot, but we never see him directly.
Rivendale always confused me. It looks like a nursing home for elves, or an elven hotel.
The sheer aesthetics of some scenes is amazing.
Had a chance to degustate three different brands of Irish single pot whiskey.
Powers John’s Lane Release 12 Year Old Single Pot Still – tastes as if you’re drinking ethanol. Glad I didn’t buy a bottle. The only good thing is that it warms the throat nicely.
Green Spot Single Pot Still – milder, and nicer that Powers.
Midleton Barry Crockett Legacy – had a bit of a nice aftertaste, but for 200GBP a bottle, I honestly expected more.
Hit my first roadblock at the end of the dessert episode, when the game told me literally that I need to be at level 35 to progress, while my character was only 32.
Also about that time got my first Legendary item. Those are the only items that actually need to be identified in town.
Besides the usual gem system that has been around since Diablo 2, there’s also a new “rank” system, that basically allows you to upgrade different equipment slots. That is, if you level up rank of your shield slot, any shield that you wield will become stronger. Level up everything!
The nice part is that when you equip a new item with sockets, the game will also propose you to transfer your gems to this new item. Very convenient.
“Zero” from Ace Combat Zero is one of my most favorite video game tracks of all time.
And this live performance of it is fantastic. Very interesting to see how the performer actually looks:
Completed Dark Forces.
There’s a few slightly weaker levels in the middle. Vertical city is still amazing, though. It’s not too vertical, the engine has its limitations, but the bridge hanging above the abyss of the cosmos and some flying scrap and the sound of the wind still feels right.
Speaking of the sound and music, I took it for granted, but the developer of the engine has a whole post explaining how music was a separate program, that the game interacted with to get that interactive music that changes with game events, and not just a simple music loop. And the music sounds right. Guess because it’s either the authentic music tracks or composed by the same author. After all, this was made by Lucas Arts themselves.
A few things blew my mind at the Imperial City. First, they actually implemented spotlights on the roof.
And second, the moment you walk in to the imperial building, and there’s a ton of Imperial Commandos there. What a show.
Also, I would have been surprised by Boba Fett, but I actually remembered this part, although slightly differently. I remember that he used his pistols, and here I was blown away by his rockets.
On the final level, there’s a conveyor belt that I remember felt very difficult back in the day. But on WASD, it’s almost trivial.
What’s less trivial is the amount of Dark Troopers the game throws at you in the last two levels. Luckily, by that time I had plenty of ammo for Assault Cannon. But still I found those to be more difficult than the final boss battle, mostly because the final battle takes place in an open hangar with plenty of space to maneuver, while some encounters with Dark Troopers are almost face-to-face.
Last bit that I forgot – the sewage monsters. I hated them as a kid. But back in the day I played on an old monitor which was very dark, and I think I didn’t know there’s a flashlight in the game. So that eye popping out of the water followed by a bite scared me. Noways, the only difficult part with those is that they bite through your shields.
I already mentioned that the graphics aren’t far from a 10-year old game. Where it differs though slightly is in the models. The models look better. This includes both your character and enemies. At first I was sure they are mostly reusing old models from Diablo 3, but when you fight King Leoric (yes, you have to fight him AGAIN), you’ll see him riding a horse.
Manoruk, a giant lich popping out of a doorway is also a lot of fun.
There are now splashes of blood on the character, and the fabrics such as crusader’s tabard looks better too.
The fights are slightly more telegraphed, I would say, than Diablo 3. Bosses would highlight the zone they plan to attack, and your attack draw cones or lanes as well.
Story-wise, it was a very smart move from Blizzard to release this after Diablo 2 Resurrected, as the story takes place after Diablo 2 and before Diablo 3. So most of the iconic characters such as Deckard Cain or Charsi are still alive and well, and gamers now remember who they are.
And in general, it feels very much like a tribute to Diablo 2. You even visit first woodland, then a desert, just like in Diablo 2.
Battle Chasers is a very special kind of game. Because it shouldn’t have been a game at all. The franchise started as a comics by two brothers in ’98, but albeit the art and character design were fantastic, authors couldn’t keep up with the pace, and pace is very important for comics. So, the story got interrupted for almost 15 years. It’s really a miracle this game got released at all, really.
The battle system is a classical JRPG 3×3 turn based style. The dungeons are more of a rogue like nature, though, generated from discrete blocks. The main battle mechanic is called “overcharge”, and it allows regular attacks to generate temporary mana supply. This is useful since mana is quite limited and is not replenished easily. So, your characters end up alternating between regular attacks that generate mana and powerful spells that consume it. Other than that, there’s a lot of “status play” involved, which reminded me of Darkest Dungeon mechanics. Character affected by one ailment may take increased damage from another type of ailment: eg “sundered” character is susceptible to bleeding.
What I really liked is there are no trash characters like in Final Fantasy or Persona series. I liked design of all of them, and have used all of them extensively.
All enemies are visible on both the world map and inside dungeons, so there are no random encounters. Nice “quality of life” improvement is that fights are optional if your party outlevels the enemy.
The drops are a mix of randomly generated and unique-but-autoleveled stuff, with the common green/blue/purple rarity system.
Most unfortunate part is that the storyline is just a huge filler. W40K fans wouldn’t be bothered by that, of course, but others will.
I liked how artifacts you buy for boss tokens are real game-changers. Gives you good reasons to hunt those extra bosses, instead of just grinding.
Sidequests are fun, although not very intuitive sometimes. At one point you have lo light 11 torches, using flint, which is a random drop. I have up after lighting 10 of them and running out of flint, thinking that probably I’m doing something wrong. No, you just have to grind more flint.
Another quest asks you to find a specific skull. On the other side of the area there’s a roaming unique executioner, so it’s quite obvious he’s the own that drops it. But no. The skull is actually randomly dropped in a dungeon. I had to do the dungeon 3 times until I finally got it.
I ended up completing almost everything there is to the game, and enjoyed every bit of it. Well, maybe except some of the random stuff you have to do in order to get the ultimate weapons. Had to complete the same dungeon 6 times for that. But compared to some other JRPGs, this is basically nothing.
Probably one of the games I enjoyed the most this year.
Hunting for the ultimate weapons was fun, but the only problem I have with them really is that they don’t possess any unique abilities. Just weapons with the strongest stats. Even some non-unique weapons were more interesting.
As I mentioned, the storyline is pretty solid. Empire develops a new kind of troopers, called Dark Troopers, which resemble T-800 Terminators the most.
Those are unleashed on a Rebel base, and we are sent to investigate.
We find a weapon, so we look for a weapon inventor that hides in sewers.
He tells us about a research base, so we go there a find a strange metal. We then fly to a planet where that metal is mined to thwart Dark Troopers production, and fight our first Dark Trooper there as well.
In the meantime, Empire officer that was providing intel to us is captured, so we go and rescue him from an Empire prison.
There is some in-game dialogues, which doesn’t have captions. Since I mostly played pirated versions in the past, I wasn’t even aware of that.
You then get captured by Jabba the Hutt that is smuggling stuff for the Empire. Not sure why Empire needs anything smuggled. They are the government! There must be better, more efficient ways to do this.
As a kid I was terrified of that episode. You get stripped of all your weapons, and have to fight that huge lizard you’ve never seen before with your bare hands. Hell, I still died once in that episode even as an adult.
What I didn’t remember is that there are two lizards (they are called kell dragons) on that level. I was wondering about that, because I looked at the game sources, and there is handling of explosions for kell dragon. I thought that there are some grenades laying around in the arena, but no. It’s for the second encounter.
Diablo Immortal also made me aware that Diablo lore was quite heavily retconed.
Now the Dark Wanderer in Diablo 2 is not just your anonymous warrior character from Diablo 1, but Aiden, son of Leoric and elder brother of whatever the name of son of Leoric was.
It’s no secret that some games from the 1990s are easier nowadays to play on an PSX emulator. Emulators allow key remapping (and proper gamepad support!), higher resolutions, and also there are some nice shaders available that emulate what the game was supposed to look like.
But in case of Dark Forces, this isn’t the best way to play this game. Raising internal resolution doesn’t improve the visuals much, and running this even on my top-of-the-line CPU is very taxing. There is a better solution though. Someone has been working on a complete engine rewrite for Dark Forces, and it’s still actively developed and works really well: https://theforceengine.github.io
I’ve almost finished the game some 20 years ago, but for some reason lost all of my progress. So I do remember it, but quite vaguely.
The game requires you to be quite intentional in what you do. At one point you need to pick up codes, and read them in your inventory to get the combination.
There is actually a quite good story to the game. And that’s from the age when storylines weren’t common in shooters at all. You don’t just shoot everyone. There are characters, like an Empire officer that gives away information to the Rebels, and you may need to rescue that character at some point, for example.
There are some quite challenging acrobatics, even with WASD. That’s taking into account that there’s no save/load system in this game.
Was surprised to see ricochetes from walls.
I also didn’t remember there were powerups. There’s one akin to quad damage from Quake that supercharges your weapons, making them fire twice as fast, and another that supercharges your shield.
In the prison level, I vaguely remember the ingenious elevator puzzle (the one where you have to align the elevators to jump on their roofs), so it wasn’t the hardest part. The hardest part was to figure out that a blinking force field means that it’s active, while a still forcefield means that you can pass through it. I bumped into a blinking one a few times, and thought that I need to find a way to disable it, because on another floor there was a force field that you had to disable (for no good reason, that is, beside a few pickups).
If this video is to be believed, in 16th century Italy mathematicians dueled by sending each other problems to solve.
I wish someone had explained me algrebra that way some 20 years ago.
Arcane Expanses is one of the most interesting episodes, with some truly lovecraftian architecture on one hand, and some of the longest and hardest levels on the other. The most interesting parts are the huge water bubbles hanging in the air, than you need to traverse. Only natural that the fight with the twin bosses of this episode occurs in one such bubble.
In general, the game is very good at not abusing mechanics. For example in the Arcane Expanses you meet snakes spitting acid. Stepping into an acid puddle damages you slightly. This is the only place in the game you will meet those.
The Forge episode with levels such as “Gauntlet of Torment” is probably the least favorite of mine. The only positive thing I can say about this is that the boss looks inventive.
Solar Solcitce is probably the most tactical episode. I also like how the Sun sets once you kill the Solar Saint.
The final episode is hard, but interesting. The geometry is against you, you fight on tilted platforms hanging above the abyss.
The final boss looks like a mushroom trip, but a short one, and in a good way.
Diablo 3 for the poor from the authors of Diablo 3? Not necessarily a bad thing, really. I mean, Diablo 3 wasn’t especially technologically advanced even when it first came out ten years ago. And nowadays some phones have 12 RAM. So it shouldn’t be surprising that they are able to run the game just fine. After all, Diablo 3 was running great on Nintendo Switch back in 2018, and it’s actually my favorite version of the game. Also, it seems the game runs in a low resolution. So the camera on PC feels very close to the character.
Item stats are super-basic. Every item has just one attribute: attack for a weapon, HP for armor.
Once you get past the training quest line, the game begins to resemble MMO. You’ll see other people around you running and killing monsters. But I managed to ignore them mostly. A couple of times I had to go into dungeons with other people, but those end pretty quickly.
The way most of the quests work is usually that you need to kill X enemies to progress.
There are no rolls. Not sure if there ever were rolls mechanic in the PC version of Diablo 3, though. Tried PC version now, and there’s still no support for gamepad in it.
It’s really impressive that they voiced all the dialogues. And there are even some cinematics.
Somehow it turned out to be even worse than what I’ve imagined.
From Obi Wan jumping through a window to clutch to a drone, to awkward dialogs.
And why Natali is dressed as a dominatrix?
It is incredible how unimaginative that thing is. Including diner from the US sixties.
The CGI has improved, but it went into that uncanny valley.
The only good part is the final battle between droid and clone armies. And it comes at 2:00:00, which means a lot.
It’s a WW2 kind of battle, with two rows of tanks and infantry clashing together. But at least this is not the awkward middle-age battle from Episode 1. There is a breef moment of clones fighting in a dust cloud that still looks good to this day. But it is brief and fleeting and a moment in a 2-hour long horror.
What else did they manage to ruin? Sword fights. Yeah, you know, one of the staples of Star Wars. Well, those were never actually good. Bust somehow, Anakin and Count Doku waving their swords above the heads made it even worse. Worse that CGI Yoda jumping around.
I’m happy I’m done with it. But wouldn’t wish this to anyone else. It’s very hard for me to decide which is worse: Attack of the Clones or Phantom Menace. But I would say based on the horrible acting that Attack of the Clones takes the lead for now.
Yesterday we went on a circular hike from Waldingham. Had to take 3 trains instead of usual 2 and make a change at East Croydon. Luckily, there are trains there every few minutes.
Spotted another fox by the tracks on the way there.
The most excitement I’ve got from that hike was from passing through the farm and the start of the trail. There are pigmy goats, and alpacas (we learned that they are used to protect other animals from foxes, and can even trample a fox if needed in the process), and a cat.
Seen a couple of rabbits. The first darted into the Bush, but the second one was just sitting there eating grass like a total maniac.
Lots of cattle:
There was a bench with a view in a shade in the middle of the trail, which is rare. Even more so that it was free. Actually, we haven’t seen many people on that trail at all. Mostly cyclist passing above us.
There was a promise not to see dormouse as well:
All in all, enjoyed this hike greatly. Not the easiest one, but the weather was on our side, as most of the walking is in the shade.
Certainly a powerful homage to Hexen, or maybe even Heretic series, as there are no classes, and more than four weapons. There are no Tomes of Power, but you still power up your weapons using souls of enemies. And Blue and Green mana crystals are straight from Hexen.
Choosing difficulty and episodes is done in Quake 1 style, where you walk around jumping through different portals.
The only part that really surprised me is how overpowered the starting weapon is. It fires magic missiles at a good pace, and those are homing, and I mean extremely homing – they can follow jumping enemies and still hit them.
Speaking of weapons, another really fun one is a Star of Torment. Combination of shotgun and nail gun that looks like a morgenstern. Corpses remain stuck to walls, similar to Messiah.
The war sure threw a wrench into my writing style. I was trying to publish post per day for at least five years in a row. Mostly about my hobbies: videogames, emulation, sometimes movies.
But then the war happened.
First, I lost respect for most of my Russian speaking readers. And second, it felt wrong writing post a day about something as trivial as a videogames or movies as the war in Ukraine rages.
Although the war still occupies most of my thoughts, I do manage to escape them from time to time. But I’ve found that writing once I complete something, be it a game or a series loses the context of time. Instead of reading about my progression, I now read just the final snapshot of it. And I don’t enjoy it as much.
So, I plan to start writing notes as I did in the past, as they come. But also publish them now right away, without caring about readers retention at all, since there were never many readers to begin with.
Spend the weekend going back to Windows 10.
Unlike upgrades, which are quite straightforward and preserve everything, downgrades are hard.
Had to install it from scratch, first time in maybe 10 years. Until now, I was always just upgrading, from Windows 7 to Windows 10, then to Windows 11, preserving all of that junk. It migrated probably between a few HDDs and SSDs. Not anymore.
What broke me was strange UI freezes, as if it was trying to read something from a slow disk. Couldn’t find anything concrete about that problem: Internet is full of “7 ways to fix your Windows”, with suggestions to reinstall mouse drivers 🤦♂️
Also smaller things: no previews on folders, dumb taskbar and useless websearch instead of working local search.
As part of the migration, I also moved from Opera to Firefox. I was on Opera by inertia, really. Same as I was on this copy of Windows.