My impulsive gaming blog, or yours?

it's been a long time since I play AF (before Libertatis even existed olololol) but dump plenty of points into magic stuff. Great game overall!

I've snagged S&ASRTC during the Sanic sale and I'm having an absolute blast. I wish I had someone to play it with on splitscreen, but that would also require bringing more control devices as all I have at the moment are a keyboard and a gamepad with fucked up sticks. There's also a weird issue where the game freezes when I enter water for the first time in game session for some reason, but it gets fixed by alt-tabbing out of the game and back, I have no idea why.

MegaPancakeStrategist Glad you're enjoying Anachronox! Seems like this game perfectly fits your character. I actually preferred the more sorrowful tone of the beginning of the game (and it's music matched the overall feelings I had during that time, the beginning of Hell phase of the pandemic), but I should have expected a humorous twist from a person such as Tom Hall.

Twin Peaks and Alan Wake, I like them both!

I have a new game addiction, my brother introduced me to the world of Dark Souls. I already had been playing the first in my youtube channel, then stopped for a while. Now I tried the second, and even if it's considered the worst from the community and I can see the issues, I am so hooked into playing it that I haven't been creative for few weeks (something I planned to return back to though). Long time for a game to hook me up so much, for me it's not the difficulty (which is broken because of the hitbox bugs in DS2) but the sense of exploration. They might say DS2 is linear, but it's not in my book. It just doesn't have the interconnected separate worlds like DS1, but visiting each map, the non-linearity is there at the local level, you are enticed to go explore this or that or come back to explore other things you miss, a corridor, a ladder going down, a ladder going up, a scary cave, every area has so many different things to check, with traps and enemies and surprises, and some doors and openings that at least interconnect the levels on their own, so it's pretty much great in my opinion, this is less linear than the most less linear oldschool FPS, I don't know get why they say it's linear, because it doesn't have the brilliant indeed world interconnection of DS1.

Anyway,. then I replay new characters in DS1, then I bought Dark Souls for my nintendo switch so that I have DS on the go lol, then I play yesterday for 2 hours and then 8 hours on the PC a new character focusing on magic, then I am like wtf am I doing with my life? When I finish DS2 on my channel, I'll pause and take a break. I am not getting into DS3 now (or Demon Souls or Blood Borne when they come on PC), it must have been very very long since a game has captured me so much! So yet another famous series I didn't know I needed in my life.

Am I the only one who thinks that the first Borderlands was the best?  I just couldn't get into the sequels.

I agree with all of this.  I loved the sense of lone exploration in BL1, with its huge, empty expanses.  BL2 just seems too shoehorn too much into every scene, so that it's overflowing with visual stimuli.  BL1 really let things breathe, and as you said that built a sense of atmosphere.  Also you mentioned the humor.  I liked the humor in BL1.  It was just enough, but not too much.  BL2 makes everything a joke, and much of it just comes off as very immature.  Also, let's talk about the guns/power levels.  BL1 let me feel powerful at times.  I could get good guns that made a difference, guns that gave me an edge.  But in BL2, no matter what gun I get, it always seems like I am a little behind the enemies.  They always feel overleveled.  Just my two cents.

I literally ragequit my Dark Souls gaming session. I have screamed so hard at a boss fight in DS2 that I Alt+F4 and Uninstalled the game from Steam. Then I uninstalled DS1 too even if that one is much better and fairer in most cases.
But it wasn't just the difficulty. It was the for a month or so, I got into the Dark Souls again, and the game are both so hard and grindy (and grinding doesn't help that much) and tedious, they never flow, they have bottlenecks where you might fight the same thing over and over again, and I know the elitists say when you die in DS it's your fault, you were a dumb player (that kinda is closer to the truth in DS1 but not so in DS2).

But the other reason I quit was that for a month it was so addictive, while also tedious and take much longer hours to progress in this game (very slow flow with it's difficulty and slow character movement), that I didn't do anything else in my life. I stopped my creative activities (I have to finish a new map for Doom, meanwhile go back to coding activities, makes me feel much better when I create rather than when I consume), and I have very tense not relaxed gaming moments where I just scream at the screen and then I am exhausted. Playing other games have a more casual flow, even Doom that people would say needs skills, I either have these skills or it's easier to move around and avoid stuff and know what the hell is going on in the screen, and you can save spam or select easier difficulty or just play oldschool WADs from the 90s. In fact, the reason I like the Dark Souls games is because of the sense of world, atmosphere and especially the exploration aspects. It's not because of the difficulty. I do wonder what they did with DS3 (because the community agrees DS2 sucks) but I am not going to try that now, I might wait for 6 months before I replay these kinds of games.

And everything people say about DS2 being the worst is confirmed here (even though I haven't tried DS3, but I am sure they cut a lot of the bullshit and the hitboxes work), regardless if the world and exploration is also great in my opinion in this game. That boss (which are 3 very tough guys) in the DLC, I was watching a video and it was saying it's the absolute worse, and I was like "it doesn't seem hard, just 3 tough guys", but it's the way the mobs work in DS2 and the agro and bullshit hitboxes, that I just couldn't isolate them and kill all. After many many attempts, I killed all but one and died at the last one. So the video said it's the worst ever and couldn't believe it. Now I do.

I need to get out, sometimes gaming is too addictive and makes you depressed. But I was almost never depressed with Doom or Borderlands which are casual feel good play, I was addicted but then frustrated by DS and I know they are good games. But not for my psychological state right now (it's ironic, I heard others say Dark Souls cured their depression, because they showed them how to overcome everything in life, now in my case it's the opposite it makes me more angry and depressed and depleted)

I remember hearing about Dx2 Shin Megami Tensei: Liberation when they had a Berserk promotion which was really cool. As for SMTV I finally beat the first proper boss last night with some decent grinding and a bit of luck getting closer and closer when I was one-two shotted my first go at it (playing on hard but also didn't have any healing abilities on my party lol). I'm pretty wary of gacha games now when I was addicted and put in 1700+ hours to Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links heheh.

ohhh maaan!
that games is marvelous!
Re-making it to be widelly available was the best move.
It was a crime that this game was only released for SNES.
I love the western steampunk setting.

maybe you can try programs like hamachi or other one that i don't remember the name that ''emulates'' system co-op but online.

On my side, i been playing RPGs on my cellphone since my ex gifted it for my birthday last year.
Right now i playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.
Nice mix of FF9 skill learning engine with Tactics aesthetic and gameplay.
Tactics storyline was a huge criticism to christianism, so it was too heavy for a Game Boy Advance game.
The advance storyline is a bit childish, but well, it works as a criticism of escapism. You know, how we resort to fantasies, games, books, drugs...anything! Just to escape a little from Real Life. Thanksfully, it also point out the good aspects that escapism leads to, like vocation, hobbies and personal growing. Nice game for sure.
I put like 80 hours on it and i was just on level 20, not even on the middle of the game, just playing, learning skills and really enjoying the gameplay..
But i recently restarted it because i miss one secret character that would be huge help and i want a 100% run.

yep, Tom Hall thought it would be possible to have a sequel to close the storyline.
But never had the money or time to do it. :/

A shame, Anachronox is a great game.

Maybe we can have a crowdfunding remaster with the proper sequel in the future.

Sometimes it baffels me that Ion Storm, the same guys, Tom Hall and Romero included, give us both Daikatana, one of the biggest flop games of all time, and aslo Deus Ex, one of the best games ever made.
Curious things for sure.

Hmm I should play Daikatana then. With the fan-patches or whatever's needed to increase the quality of experience.

yep, i like it, too.
But well, he didn't made us his bitches after all

Now, that is a really bad choice on marketing for sure.

ah, yeah i remember something about being different teams inside Ion Storm, but well, the flop and the win are from the same developer company and that is kinda hilarious.