AI find it very befitting myself that I started playing Hades a while ago, decided to play Transistor first, and then never came back to it. Well, until now.
Hades absolutely deserves all the acclaims it gets. Characters are very British despite being Greek gods and whatnot. The genre, roguelite, is certainly not my cup of tea, but I’m willing to enjoy it for all the art and humor and voice acting.
The game turned out to be more about shooting stuff than what I had expected. Or maybe it’s just my play style. But since there are a few opportunities to heal, it’s best to keep away from enemies.
Author: TheAleosha
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No Ghost Recon Breakpoint for me
I was absolutely sure I had both Ghost Recon Wildlands and Ghost Recon Breakpoint bought on one of the platforms.
But either I forgot where I bougth them, or I was mistaken, as they aren’t on Uplay for sure.
I don’t care about those games enough to buy them (again?), though.
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Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra
I ended up ordering my next phone, Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, from Hong Kong. Hong Kong uses UK standards, but the phones ship with Snapdragon CPU instead of Equinox. And the price is lower by some 10 to 20 percent. So, you end up getting a more powerful phone for less. A no brainer, really.
It took 10 days for the phone to arrive. Looks legibly sealed, so if it was tampered with, someone at TechInTheBasket did a great job to conceal it.
There is a bit of bloatware, but it’s easy to uninstall.
Fingerprint sensor works great. It’s super fast and recognizes both hands well enough for now.
Camera hole in the middle of the screen is slightly annoying, but that’s the norm nowadays.
Funny, but it seems to be nearly impossible to operate this phone without a case. All the lenses are on one side, and stick out too much.
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About Street Fighter 6
Juri is confirmed for Street Fighter 6:
That’s all you need to know to buy it now.
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Diablo Immortal
Guess who got 3 4 similar legendary helmets now…
On the flipside, Blizzard is surprisingly generous about some aspects of the game. For example, you need to get every legendary item only once in order to keep its effect. You can “extract essence” in Westmarch, and after that you can always imbue another legendary item with this trait.
I like comparing how character look evolves in Diablo. But after you reach maximum level and start accumulating Paragon points, it stops being interesting. Your character just stocks on all-legendary equipment, which defines most of their looks. You don’t look that way because it’s cool, but simply because you need a trait from that particular piece.
That also means that if you play Diablo Immortal enough, you’ll know which traits are equipped on each character simply by looking at them. I won’t mistake that bucket helm or that armor for any other now.
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XCOM Chimera Squad
An interesting XCOM 2 spinoff. Events take place after XCOM 2. Humanity won, and now humans, aliens and hybrids all live in the same megapolis.
The game is slightly more story driven than the original XCOM.
Game mechanics are mostly focused around breaching. Different points of entry, each granting different bonuses, like extra damage for the first turn.
And we have aliens of all kinds in our squad, which is always fun.
Our squad is basically a SWAT team. So much more emphasis on close combat, and even on capturing enemies alive.
All characters are unique, and loosing one means Game Over. I got woman-snake as my first hire, not because she’s efficient, but because she’s fun to listen to.
The only annoying bit is that enemy reinforcements seem to be endless.
I already wrote that I tried out Forza Motorsport on Xemu emulator a few days ago. Now, I decided to compare it with Project Gotham Racing, another predecessor of my much beloved Forza Horizon. And I was surprised how a more realistic Forza Motorsport plays better than “arcadish” Project Gotham Racing.
Now, to be clear, I suck at racing games. The only two racing games I ever finished, I think, are Need For Speed: The Run and Forza Horizon. And that’s only because both had rewinds.
But still, Forza Motorsport feels so much better thanks to its guidelines mechanic.
It also is emulated better at the moment. Project Gotham Racing has some issues with either depth of render or transparency, but on one of the tracks I’ve seen trees disappearing and appearing again. And also it seems there’s an issue with shadows from the cars, so cars seem to hover, never touching the track.
An issue both games share, and that’s because it’s the same engine, I would guess, is that during replays there are strange black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Guess it’s some transparency issues again.
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Diablo Immortal
I love to track the evolution of my character in Diablo-like games:
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Coffee habbits
For the past few months I stopped using any kind of thermometer when frothing the milk for my coffee, and started using “the hand method”. In my opinion, milk heathed to 60C is already hard to work with. So I keep it around 50C, or until the jug is hot to the hands touch.
I’ve been a fan of Ethiopian coffee for a long time now. But for the past few months, since April, we’ve been drinking a lot of Chinese coffee. It’s available only from one coffee roastery, Origin, as far as I know. But it’s absolutely fantastic.
Coffee that I won’t ever buy again, I think, is Union Coffee Roasters. Bought 1kg of Sumatra beans that turned out to be dark roast. Couldn’t finish them.
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Last Epoch
The game is in Early Access, but still feels pretty solid. It’s a mix of Diablo 2 and Path to Exile. Some Ancient Rome vibes here as well, and also huge skill trees for each skill.
But there are classes instead of a weird grid system of Path to Exile I don’t really like.
Was surprised that one of the first paladin skills is a “whirlwind”, which is also crazily effective.
Also, the health regeneration here is extremely fast, and you don’t even need special equipment for that.
Not sure if I’m going to continue playing it now, but maybe worth returning to it once it’s released.
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Witch (2015)
If your newborn disappears, it’s a witch. If your 12-year-old dies in agony, it’s a witch. If your doe gives blood instead of milk, it’s a witch. If your goat gets angry, it’s because he’s literally Hitler.
You’re born in sin. You don’t have wheat, you don’t have crops, apples are only in your dreams. That, and Jesus.
I couldn’t find any morals in this movie. This is more like an account of a calamity.
There are a few screamer moments, but most of the time it’s just about the athmosphere of isolation and fear of the unknown.
Some peculiar details: a silver cup is the most expensive item the family possesses. Which is traded for a few snairs. The value of snairs is not in enabling catching rabbits for food, but for their pelts.
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Корса в Тиндере:
Корса в реальности:
Еще одним колорадом меньше.
Земля стекловатой 😚
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Inscryption
Completed Inscryption.
For real this time.
Act II is much more sane and enjoyable than Act I. It’s basically Pokemon, and now you have four classes (in Hearthstone terms). If you loose, you can retry immediately, no need to replay the last hour or so. And you can alter your deck as much as you want.
Actually, with the Painter boss, I had to alter it quite a lot. And that’s what I like to do.
Act III is still better than Act I. Nothing is as bad as Act I in terms of gameplay.
You get checkpoints, and you can edit your deck a bit by exchanging cards. Some fourth-wall moments actually made me chuckle: like a boss that asks you to pick your oldest file from your real filesystem, then threatens to delete it.
The ending sequence made me chuckle.
Honestly, I can forgive the horrible first act for how awesome the ending is.
“We don’t need to keep score” and a handshake from your nemesis.
And a glimpse into other Scrybes Worlds and Games.
What I expected: some viking brutal power fantasy.
What I got: rather historically-accurate interpretation of Hamlet.
Father killed by his brother, mother taken by the same brother, prince returning from exile and all that. Even “poor Yorick” is there.
When I say “historically accurate” I mean that those vikings look a lot like slavs, and not like “vikings from the movies”.
Also, there are a lot of unexpected elements of culture. Like the game they play, some mix of baseball and rugby (I didn’t actually check what it’s called, and don’t really care).
There is also a strange mix of reality and dreams. At one point Hamlet fights an undead warrior, but it’s all in his head.
The most impressive role is Fjolnir, the same uncle. Yes, he’s an asshole. But who wasn’t back then?
Amleth/Hamlet on the other hand is just a vengeful bastard, that enjoys killing people.
The final duel is impressive. No shaking camera or anything like that. Just two men hitting each other with a sword.
The moral is simple: vengeance doesn’t bring joy to anyone.
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Love Death & Robots
I think we finished Season 1 of Love Death & Robots now.
Witness – while the animation was somewhat impressive, I felt like the story tries to be explicit for the sake of explicit ness. Or maybe I’m not a fan of such time loops / paradoxes
Good Hunting – absolutely fantastic, breaks expectations multiple times in 15 minutes. Chinese steam punk, Witcher, Battle Angel Alita, it has it all.
Dump – mostly funny. Liked the frog/dog monster made of trash
Suits – looks like someone has been playing Into the Breach too much . Tons of good mech action
Shape-Shifters – feels like watching a game trailer for some reason, with ideas taken from Werewolf: Apocalypse universe. Very brutal, but feels trite
Fish Night – tries to be sci-fi, but I dunno, hasn’t impressed me much
Helping Hand – like “Gravity”, but better, because it doesn’t have Sandra Bullock in it
Alternate Histories – another one that tries to be funny, but I got tired of its jokes even if this was just 10 minutes
Lucky 13 – a bit like Helping Hand, not really a sci-fi, and a bit like Shape-Shifters in animation style. Story of a helicopter pilot and a helicopter that is slightly smart
Blindspot – mix of Battle Angel Alita and Mad Max.
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Keychron K8
Decided to try out a Keychron keyboard as well. The closest to Razer Type Pro I could get, so I could compare apples to apples. I went with K8 with brown tactile switches.
First impression: slightly quieter, about 60db vs 65db for Razer. Also, wired connection option is great. But I actually miss the second Enter, since it’s a TKL keyboard. Turns out I press it with my thumb unconsciously quite often.
Also, Keychron is much faster to wake up than Razer. It takes just a second for it to connect, and about 5 seconds for Razer.
Ended up returning the Razer keyboard.
Discovered that there’s an alternative to Cxbx Reloaded emulator for the original Xbox. It’s called Xemu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfnbmXgLkzU&ab_channel=ModernVintageGamerThe annoying part is that Cxbx wants XBE files, while Xemu only accepts ISO. So if I’d want to keep testing both, I’ll need to have two version of each game.
Dead or Alive 3 is fully playable, and I even managed to beat the entire story mode, as it’s relatively short and easy.
Kakuto Chojin is also playable, although there are some minor slowdowns, and when fighting Ying FPS drops to single-digit values.
Tao Feng – doesn’t load at all.
Forza Motorsport – fully playable, although I think that are some glitches during replay.
Completed Backbone.
It’s quite short, just 4 hours, and since there are almost no puzzles, it’s mostly just story.
We follow the science lead. Get into the lab. The Artifact is kind of a black goo that is able to create hybrids. Also, this is a postapocalyptic world where humans are apparently long extinct. The Artifact gets into us. That’s… unexpected.
From here, game turns into Weird.
There’s a fantastic scene where we walk through a crowd during a festival.
We meet our friend, Anatoly, the taxi driver. And that thing kills him.
We lay low with the homeless people. But the mafia finds us eventually and captures us, to experiment on the Artifact. There is a bunch of pointless inner dialogues, after which we escape. And… suddenly, that’s it. We are told that the mafia boss plans a revolution, our partner decided to work for her, and our hero either dies beyond the Wall or mutates beyond recognition.
Well, that’s a depressing turn of events.
Yet another detective noir adventure with furries. Not point-and-click though. At least not entirely. And with some elements of stealth.
We play as a private detective, of course, who’s hired to follow a husband that frequents a certain nightclub, so his wife could get a divorce. We find the husband in the basement of the club, not only dead, but also prepared to become someone’s roast.
We pair with a reporter to follow the suspicious trucks that have been seen around the nightclub. The meat is being delivered to a wealthy ape, who happens to be Minister of Science. Are rich people eating poor people?
We follow some leads on the missing prostitutes from the nightclub. Turns out one of them was spying on the wealthy clients for the nightclub owner, Bloodworth. Science minister and one of his employees mentioned “Project Artifact” a couple of times. We also get a visit from Bloodworth, and some beating from her henchman.
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About Call of Duty: Vanguard
There was a free multiplayer weekend for Call of Duty: Vanguard. And I was surprised how much I appreciated the craziness of this game.
Customized boring as hell MP40 looks like something from steampunk:
Charlton automatic rifle (NZ-41), a total rarity:
And I have no idea what these supposed to be:
I don’t care. Those are great.