whatchu playing now

Oh, I also played one of the PSP games a fair bit but that was iirc in collaboration with Kojima and not directly produced by him

MGS4 was not good, only one of the bunch I’d throw in the garbage. Pretty sure the amount of time in cutscenes in that one finally surpassed the amount of actual gameplay. And the gameplay is entirely forgettable and was showing its age even at the time.

A corrective was made with MGS5, which pares down Kojima’s ‘Film Director’ fantasies and has the most robust and engaging gameplay mechanics by a mile. Officially pulls it into the next generation. Unfortunately it was unfinished and runs out of steam partway through. What coulda been.

MGS1 thru 3 are all-time classics, but also might not be as mind blowing to someone coming at them in 2024. Y’all might be forgetting how clunky that shit played.

2 is a forever favorite. Got a PS2 and that for Christmas when I was in high school and what a fever dream it was to sink into over Xmas break. After 9/11 lol.

Just started Venba, the Tamil cooking narrative game. Oh man this game is so sweet, I love it love it love it

The most realistic onion chopping simulator I've ever played.

don't know how much longevity it's got but mark me down as another idiot hooked on Balatro atm
can't quite place what the soundtrack reminds me of either, but it's pretty great

Alright already I'll buy the game! Sheesh guys!

feels like it would go crazy on ipad

iOS version is coming, I’ve read

i should not have bought this game

it's 1am, i have to be at work in 6hrs, and I have an exam I have an exam I need to cram for on next weekend

Accountability: I will not touch this game until after this exam next Saturday. Balatro will steal my life if I'm not careful

lol whenever a new roguelike, online multiplayer or deck builder shows up I breathe a sigh of relief that it will not be added to my backlog.

it has also destroyed my life over the last few week. my partner calls it "the solitaire game"

i think i'll be done with it...once i complete a run with all of the decks

I've been really enjoying Tametsi - I've seen a few reviews describe it a cross between Minesweeper and Hexcells (High praise! Justified praise!) and well it's not like there was no Minesweeper in Hexcellls...

The main thing I think they mean by this is that it won't penalise you for marking a spot as mined, only for attempting to clear one. There's a number of different boards with different tile pattern or rules ("neighbours must share an edge" always takes a bit of getting used to) but the main thing I miss when going back to Hexcells is the ability to draw on the screen, a real game changer.

The bad news is, I didn't keep to my word.

The good news is, I just hit a 1mil chips in a single hand. Got a vampire joker all the way up to 7x multiplier by the end and had a rare "duplicate the joker to the right" card next to it, netting me a cool 49* my already existing multiplier at the end of my turn. Silly numbers make h.p. smile

I don’t think I can do Balatro. The dev said their inspiration was Luck be a Landlord and that game almost destroyed my life with its addictiveness.

It's even worse than landlord imo. Be careful

Got a vampire joker all the way up to 7x multiplier by the end and had a rare "duplicate the joker to the right" card next to it, netting me a cool 49*

the duplicate the joker to the right card is awesome, and also there's a "allow more than one of the same joker in a deck" card (i haven't used it yet), but theoretically you could use that with your above setup to get..4 trillion points

the beginning of this highlight reel shows off a great balatro deck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hci9GtuTt3w

Jeff has introduced “Luck be a Landlord” to me via that post and oops the afternoon is over

I'm going to march right over there, grab you by the collar, and say I mentioned it twice in this thread before Jeff and demand credit for your new found addiction

You can have the credit! Mh is a nice lad, I don’t want to be the person to ruin his life.

I on the other hand, am not a nice person, so it works out perfectly

God I want to play landlord again now. Going to go on a bender after this exam. Drinking in bed and deck building all sunday: the dream

you guys can all take credit for ruining my life

the Balatro tune has been driving me crazy the last couple of days. the high lead synth especially reminded me of another game but every time I tried to place it, it would slither away beyond my reach. infuriating! anyway I finally figured out it was this track from the original Pikmin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqjKACLsZhQ

I'm qualifying these addictive puzzlers as "hot stove" games. You accidentally touched that hot stove once as a kid, and now you're just thinking... hmm, I bet I could touch the stove a little without burning myself

one thing im not clear about on balatro - do you need to unlock items (e.g. jokers) before they are able to spawn in game? or does unlocking them maybe just increase their spawn rate?

I think you start with a pool of about 100 jokers that can spawn, unlocking the rest of them adds them to that pool. who knows about spawn rates tho.
just figured out you can change the order of jokers during hands, so if one of them is context dependent (e.g. copy joker on the right) you can move it around tactically.

yeah you generally want to make sure your x-mult jokers are to the right of +-mult and chip jokers.

I had just finished filing you under "good poster" and then I had to read your last sentence

To each their own. I'm loving Alan wake 2 haven completely forgotten the 1st which I played on release and never touching control. I think with that added context you'll find it a real treat. It's an absolutely stunning game too, especially if you have a decent PC to make the most of all the path tracing bells and whistles.

― H.P, Monday, February 12, 2024 2:59 PM (one month ago)

Ha! Yeah - wrt to DS1 here's what I wrote to a hardcore Soulsborne friend of mine: "I also am giving Dark Souls 1 a try and am disappointed by it. The atmospherics are massively lacking, even for an older remastered game, and the extra steps necessary to even have a baseline of functionality compared with Elden Ring (buying the infinite item box to hold stuff, humanity after dying) is ... very annoying."

I also got it for the Switch which only plays it at 30fps. I got to Undead Burg, lost my humanity, realized what was necessary to have the baseline of ability I took for granted in ER (and what it would take to get it) and kinda gave up playing. Also the lack of music for much of the game so far really turned me off too. Is DS3 more immersive and atmospheric? Do you at least keep all things save souls when you die in it? Maybe I should start there instead of DS1. Elden Ring also punched me in the face and I had to revisit it again to truly get into it, but at least the game loop was predictable and world incredibly immersive and beguiling.

I'm also playing Alan Wake 2 now and it's incredible! Playing AW1 and Control deeply enrich the world and gaming experience. It's fine to play without it, but there's so many connections throughout that really bring some Lynchian level intrigue to the experience. Also how about that full on 20+ minute film near the end of the game? JFC the effort and vision put into this is insane. How many games use the same actors for the voice and face models so they can add filmed bits mixed in with the game?! Becoming of huge fan of Remedy, and I hear they're working on Control 2. Sign me up.

My friends insisted I join them on Helldivers 2, so much so that one of them kindly just bought me the game. So I had my first go this evening. It's really fun! I'm still working out where to go and how to play, but it's definitely good craic

Hey octobeard, I'd say keep at Dark Souls if you can bear. No it's not Elden Ring, but nothing is. I found it very disconcerting at first (you can't warp between bonfires?!) But it all makes sense after a while.

You don't need humanity really, not unless you're desperate to play PVP. I played the whole game pretty much hollowed.

Not sure what you mean about the infinite item box though? I don't think I saw that.

HD2 is big right now, my coop buddy has even abandoned me to go play with his diver owning friends lately.

Meanwhile I'm still rocking minecraft and farming sim 17, never say die.

black deck is kicking my be hind

black stake*

Venba free update includes a cookbook now!

Not sure what you mean about the infinite item box though? I don't think I saw that.

Some dude in Undead Burg sells one for like 20000 souls or some shit. Did not want to farm for it. It's an item that allows you to carry infinite stuff, basically the default in Elden Ring. Did you not ever use it?

You don't need it at all, there's no limit to your normal inventory. It's just for organization, like if you don't want a ton of unnecessary stuff in your regular inventory list. And I think it's only like 1k souls but I wouldn't worry about it.

The repair box is useful though!

my coworkers were trying to recruit me to the helldivers 2 family, but I fear one of them has already maxed out all their stats

my brother and i *loved* the original helldivers for couch play. this looks like its too sophisticated for us (fps, fancy graphics, no top down view where you can go “did you pick up the briefcase” “no i thought you had”

HD2 is 3rd person.

octobeard, I don't think I even knew it existed. In Demon's Souls there's a limit to how much you can carry, which is a pain, but in Dark Souls the only reason you'd want to get rid of stuff is if you've got, say, 6 crappy swords you don't want, in which you can drop them or recycle them via an NPC who shows up

Note to self: don't play Balatro before bed. (I reached the last boss blind in I think my 4th run but my deck relied heavily on Joker synergies which of course the boss does not care about).

Also buying that and another deck builder (Cobalt Core) when I'm still up to my eyes in BG3 campaigns is probably a bad idea.

I've beaten Balatro twice now, both times with flush builds, think that's an effective strategy.

my first win was straights with the joker that lets straights have gaps

my fav strat now is to try to make insanely high value stone cards and win without playing real hands at all