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Games Played in 2015

Much like my Games Played in 2014 list, this is a list of games that I played in 2015, when I played them, and what I thought of them at the time.

This will be unedited and likely full of typos and misspellings. The descriptions of my sessions may include story spoilers.

Here's how the time log is broken down since it will be different from last year's log:

Time Period	Term	Time Period	Term
12am to 3am	Midnight	Noon to 3pm	Afternoon
3am to 6am	Early Morning	3pm to 6pm	Early Evening
6am to 9am	Morning	6pm to 9pm	Evening
9am to Noon	Late Morning	9pm to 12am	Late Evening

I will also now include a single word at the top of each session description my mood on the game. Examples: Neutral, Bored, Interested, Loved, Hated, Enjoyed etc. I haven't quite determined these yet though.

Last year I had played way more games on PC that breaking down the data by platform was pretty much useless. This year I'm going to specify the PC platform more. PC will now be expanded to categories such as: Steam, Origin, Browser, Stand Alone. Most of it will still likely be "Steam," but I do plan on buying more games through itch.io this year.

List items

2048

Played: Jan 1st. Morning. PC Browser. Enjoyed.
I needed to add something to this list to create it, so I decided to play some 2048. I do love this game and play it whenever I to just relax my brain for a bit.
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Played: Jan 28th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Just played a bit while listening to the bombcast.
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Played: Jun 16th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Had some time at work and decided to mess around with this. I'm pretty rusty.
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Fantasy Life

Played: Jan 1st. Early Evening. 3DS. Neutral.
A lot of people I know have been talking about this game so I had decided to pick it up late last year (ie a couple of days ago) and only did the character creation. Today I played through a bit more but wasn't quite in the mood for it despite it being very charming.
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Played: Jan 1st. Evening. Neutral.
Finally got to the part where there's more game. Had a little bit of combat. Still in tutorials, but it seems alright. I'm playing as a Wizard because that's what I tend to do giving the option. I really like the music in Hazel's House.
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Played Jan 7th. Early Morning. Mixed.
Only played a very little bit more of this and completed one of the intro quests to get my character to level 2. I don't know it's not really grabbing me at all.
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The Joylancer: Legendary Motor Knight

Played: Jan 2nd. Evening. PC Steam. Mixed.
I played an old version of this months ago very briefly. I decided to finally getting around to playing the Steam version. There's a lot to the combat. I think I missed some tutorials though since I had to figure out a lot of the moves. There may be bit too high of an execution curve for me, but maybe I should just turn off some of the effects first. There's a lot in the current version too. It definitely feels like an indie made Platinum game.
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Qbeh-1: The Atlas Cube

Started: Jan 4th. Early Morning. PC Steam. Mixed.
This is one of those games I picked up on Steam sometime because it looked interesting. This session I played through the first world. I wasn't really digging after the first couple of stages because of it's basically a first person platformer, but once I got to the last stage of the world 1 I started to get into. I came to the point where there was a branching path and decided to take it which after some tricky maneuvering lead me to a yellow triangle and after that an exit. But I hadn't explored much of the rest of the stage it seemed. So I'm not sure if that was a secret exit or a roundabout way to get a collectable and then loop back to the regular exit. There was a bunch of other things I noticed in the level but couldn't get to. So I'm wondering how much exploration is in this game. Apparently there are yellow triangles in every stage and I missed them in the others. So I may go back and try to find them.
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Played: Jan 6th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Went back and found all the yellow triangles in World 1. Started World 2 but didn't complete it or find all the yellow triangles. I really like the design of World 2 and how it went from enclosed spaces to more open environments.
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Played Jan 11th. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
Finished World 2 and tried to get all the yellow triangles, but couldn't find the one on 2-4. One 2-5 I found the level probably too easy outside of getting the secret.
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Played: Jan 11th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Finished up World 3 and found all the secrets in it. I like the new low gravity block that was added in this world. By the end of the world they were doing some pretty interesting stuff with it. On 3-5 or 3-4 I could see the yellow triangle but couldn't figure out how to get to it. So I collected just about every cube in the level and build a long path from the nearest point to get to the place where the secret was. If that's how you're supposed to do it then it's a bit disappointing because of all the awkward backtracking. I had to solve multiple puzzles forward and backward to do it. If it had lead to an alternative route to the exit I wouldn't have minded though.
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Played: Jan 12th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Finished up World 4 but didn't find all the secrets and started on World 5. I didn't find the fan mechanics of World 4 very interesting, but I did like where they hid some of the secrets. One level in particular required me to not pick up a cube that was laying on the ground. I only played the 1st level of World 5 and found it to be kind of tough. They introduced these new blocks that move in a direction once placed then disappear after a bit. I got to the end but noticed somewhere I could place a blue cube and spend sometime trying to figure out how to get a blue cube there but failed.
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Played: Jan 14th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
I finished World 5. I didn't find all the secrets in it though. Apparently that was the end of the game though I know there is a 6th world from the achievements. I bet you have to find all the yellow triangles to unlock. I'll give each stage I missed one in a shot, but I'll probably end up using a guide to find them all. I'm real interested in that 6th World.
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Played: Jan 17th. Early Evening ~ Evening. Enjoyed.
Tried to find all the secrets I missed. I found a couple but got to a level where I couldn't figure out where it could be, got frustrated, and closed the game.
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Played: Jan 18th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
Found all of the secrets in Worlds 1 ~ 5! Some of them were real pains to find, but looking for them let me find some nifty alternative solutions. I dip into world 6 and it seemed very tricky with potentially some timing base platforming, but we shall see. Later.
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Played Jan 20th. Late Evening. Mixed.
Played through most of the World 6. I'm not so sure about it. In the previous worlds the platforming was fairly simple. In World 6 it's been tricky and awkward and I don't really like it. I also haven't been able to find a single secret. I don't know if I'm going to try it again. This World has really soured me on this game.
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Indie

Some games aren't in GB's data base yet so here's where I'll put them. If they're added then I'll remove them from this section.
The Miskatonic
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Played: Jan 25th. Late Morning. PC Stand Alone. Interested.
This was a pre-alpha build of the game that was mainly some sort of proof of concept. It's a Lovecraft themed adventure game of sorts and seems pretty interesting. It's has a creepy-cute art style that I'm really digging. Not so sure about the writing, but the pre-alpha might not be the good example of it. I'll certainly be paying attention to this as it develops.
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Momodora
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Played: Jan 25th. Afternoon. PC Stand Alone. No Opinion.
I heard about this series from a blog about Metroidvania games. I decided to check it out from the beginning. Unfortunately I couldn't play much of the first game as it would randomly crash. Unfortunately this was a game made with GameMaker 7 and it doesn't surprise me it has this sort of issue. I do like the art style though. It's very similar to Cave Story. Hopefully the sequel won't have this issue.
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Momodora 2
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Played: Jan 25th. Afternoon. PC Stand Alone. No Opinion.
Unfortunately the sequel has the same issue that the first game had. It's a big shame because both of these games seem super cool. Ah well. Hopefully the 3rd game won't have these problems.
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Soluna - http://michaelvandiest.itch.io/soluna
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Played: Feb 22nd. Morning. PC Browser. Mixed.
I found this game from the Metroidvania tumblr. It was ok. The combat wasn't great or all that interesting and the platforming felt unnecessary. I got to a boss and found the fight really tedious and didn't stick around to complete it. The fight had two phases. One where it summoned a bunch of regular enemies that would often rush you. Then it would do the Ganon styled throw a fire ball that you have to knock back. It wasn't all that inspired. But considering it was the designers 2nd game ever and they made it within a month it's not all that bad. Grats to them for completing something.
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Retro Generations - http://diablohead.itch.io/retro-generations
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Played: Feb 28th. Evening. PC Stand Alone. Negative.
I did not at all like this game. It lacked audio except music and would send you back to the start of the game if you died. I found myself dying a lot because it was very easy to get stun locked by obstacles. The controls felt awkward too, but I can't quite place how. The lack of sound effects really felt weird. I did, however, like the art of the main character, but her art style was very different from the rest of the game's art. I didn't get very far.
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SUPERHOTline Miami - http://albatr.itch.io/superhotline-miami
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Played: Apr 12th. Evening. PC Browser. Enjoyed.
This takes the top down look of Hotline Miami and the things-move-only-when-you-do mechanics of SUPERHOT. It's short and still looks like a proof of concept but works really well and is actually pretty fun for the 10 or so minutes I played of it.
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Pioneers - http://eigen.itch.io/pioneers
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Started: Apr 26th. Afternoon. PC Standalone. Neutral.
This is a frontier RPG of sorts. I only played up to the first town area, but it seems pretty interesting and very detailed. I was disappointed that it seemed like you could only play as a man but maybe there was an option that I missed.
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Played: Apr 26th. Evening. Neutral.
There's no female option in the character creation screen. Booo.
Regardless I played up to where I could take on my first quest of sorts which was to gather herbs on an island. I got to the island fine and figured out how to pick up herbs, but couldn't drop any items. At all. I'd click "Drop" and nothing would happen. Despite the tutorial saying that's how you drop items and despite doing it before. It must be a bug I guess. I tried closing and opening but that didn't solve anything. Unfortunate since this game seemed really cool.
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Played: May 3rd. Afternoon. Mixed.
The developer got back to me on something I posted about on the game's forum. Apparently I was not boarding the ship and therefore couldn't drop things. The game has a lot of unfortunate useability issues, but I think the idea and general interaction is solid. I'll probably continue to check it out every now and again, but right now it's pretty rough.
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Agar.io : http://agar.io/
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Played: May 12th. Midnight. PC Browser. Enjoyed.
This was a game that some streamers I follow was playing and I joined the server to play with them. It was alright. Seems like it could be pretty cool in teams honestly.
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Twenty: http://twenty.frenchguys.net/
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Played: May 22nd. Early Evening. PC Browser. Neutral.
This game looks like Threes/2048, but is actually very very different. It's kind of cool, but I don't know. You just have to match the numbers to until you get to 20. I was able to get to 17 on my first time playing. It seems like an alright mobile game.
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Flip-something or other
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Played: May 26th. Evening. PC Stand Alone. Neutral.
I don't remember the name of this game, but it was a competitive multiplayer game. It was pretty interesting, but I was terrible at it.
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Optisocubes - http://dr-d-king.itch.io/optisocubes
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Played: Jun 4th. Late Evening. PC Browser. Enjoyed.
This is a mind bending isometric puzzle game. It's pretty cool but I stopped played because I didn't like how the isometric controls were orientated.
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DRAGON: A game about a Dragon
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Started: Jul 13th. Afternoon. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
This is a floatly handdrawn platformer. Only played til after the first boss but it was charming if a bit simple. Don't know how long it is though.
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Future Grind
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Played: Aug 27th. Late Evening. PC Standalone? Enjoyed.
I played this at the Giant Bomb PAX meet up thing. It was super rad! I had heard about it before and didn't know it was going to be there. I'm excited to play more of it.
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Potions: A Curious Tale
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Played: Aug 30th. Afternoon. PC Standalone? Enjoyed.
Played this at SIX. It's still very much in development but has some really beautiful character art.
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SuperWeights
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Played: Aug 30th. Afternoon. PC Standalone? Enjoyed.
Played at SIX. It's a simple but really fun local multiplayer game. Could use more features, but it's just getting started.
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Biodrome
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Played: Aug 30th. Afternoon. PC Standalone? Enjoyed.
This was my favorite game at SIX. I really had to tear myself away from it. It was a procedural first person competitive metroidvania. Really interesting.
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Bit Ball
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Played: Aug 30th. Afternoon. PC Standalone? Enjoyed.
Played at SIX. An interesting local multiplayer game. I liked how the screen and thus the play arena would change as points were scored.
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Astervoid
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Played: Aug 30th. Afternoon. PC Standalone? Enjoyed.
Played at SIX. This was a cool competitive Asteroid game. Fairly simple but was a lot of fun.
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Soul Locus
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Played: Aug 30th. Afternoon. Mobile. Enjoyed.
Played at SIX. The mobile version was a bit rough, but the basic game is interesting and cute.
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Bleat
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Played: Aug 30th. Afternoon. Mobile. Neutral.
Played at SIX. A cute little puzzle game. It was ok.
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Momodora III

Started: Jan 25th. Afternoon. PC Steam. Mixed.
After failing to be able to play the first two I decided to try the third. I didn't encounter the same bug as the other games, so that's good. I did find this game to be a bit of a mixed bag. I don't like when platformers have health but still rely heavily on instant death traps. I found the combat in this game to be kind of wonky. It's fine but something about it just doesn't feel right. The damage it too high without the damage reducing item. A lot of the sound effects, especially the text speech one, are very grating and too loudly mixed. I really like the art style and animations. The equipment system is also pretty cool. I'm a stickler for systems where you could combine different items to get stacked effects. I'm playing as Momo and got to a plant focused area. I'll probably play more of this.
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Finished: Jan 25. Late Evening. Mixed.
So I guess I beat the game. I didn't think it would be that short, but it ah well. Also 100% it though I know I didn't pick up all the items so I don't know. I did enjoy the later levels and the final boss was pretty cool. I feel all my problems with the game were mostly due to me being bad rather than the game being bad, but I don't know. I will say that I feel some of the item effects obscured too much of the screen. It would have been nice if those effects were transparent. I do want to play through more, especially as the other character. I did dip into NG+ a bit and found that in it you get another item slot so that's pretty cool.
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Played: Jan 26th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
I played through the entire game again as the other character. Apparently there is a character you can save if you get to a certain boss in under 30 minutes, but I failed. I might try again but I doubt the reward is much aside from an achieve. The other character doesn't seem to play any different. Maybe she has a larger hit box but longer reach? I don't think there's any difference though.
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EarthTongue

Played: Jan 24th. Late Morning. PC Stand Alone. Neutral.
This is a game made by a guy I know from Twitter. I also helped a bit with the music. I finally got around to playing it and enjoyed it for the most part but didn't really understand why things weren't always doing as I thought they would and found that a bit frustrating. the RNG with the random weather was not in my favor either and I kept geting droughts. Still I'll probably play more of this later.
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Played: Jan 28th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Still couldn't get a long running world and haven't really figured it out.
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Played: Feb 4th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
After thinking about this game a lot I asked if I could do more music. He hired me and I started doing some additional music for him. I haven't done much yet, but will be in the coming months. Since that I also got access to an early build of the next version with some rebalancing and new fungi and critters. Now the game may be a bit too easy haha. I had a long session and stopped when I decided to rather than when I had a mass extinction. So many beetles, flies, and snails. haha.
It certainly helped me figure out what I want to do for the music.
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Played: Feb 7th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Played while listening to a podcast. I couldn't seem to get a world as self sufficient like the one from my last session though.
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Played: Apr 13th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Played the new patch with some of my new pieces in it. It's a bit rough to be honest. I've been finding the game to be a lot easier too.
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Played: Apr 28th. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
This is now out on Steam! I played a bit too see how it was working and everything is working fine. Once I completed the session I got nearly all the achievements haha. I'll be showing it off at tonight's Seattle Indies meeting.
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Played: Apr 28th. Evening. Enjoyed.
I was demoing this at the Seattle Indies event so I had to play a lot of it to just explain it to other people. They all seemed to enjoy it or at least find it interesting.
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Life Is Strange

Started: Jan 29th. Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
I played through the 1st episode in one sitting. I liked it for the most part. It reminded me a lot of how I felt when I first played the Longest Journey. Or more accurately the main character, Max, reminded me a lot of April Ryan. Similar to the artsy girl gets a super power and goes on an adventure to find herself. Hopefully the story will keep it's scale down, but I suspect that it might go at little to large.
Some more detailed thoughts. I like the dialogue. It's mostly naturally written and well delivered. Most of the characters seem like real people rather than larger-than-life bore-fests. Still it does seem very Twin-Peaks-esque in parts.
That teacher looks like such an asshole, but exactly like someone who I'd expect to be a photography teacher. Maybe a bit to hopeful and acclaimed. Something similar could be said about all the adult characters that I've encountered so far.
I really like the time travel mechanic. It's not perfect. I had it glitch out on me more than a few times, but it works really well with the type of adventure game this is. Probably the best use of time travel I've seen in a game recently. Certainly better than all those platformers from about 6 or 7 years ago.
There's a lot to discover in this game and I may do two playthroughs of it and make different choices/find all the things in it. We'll see.
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Played Mar 25th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
I got all the way to the before my laptop shut down because of a windows update. Bah!
Regardless I really enjoyed this episode. It was straight up amazing. The ending bit was some of the most intense parts of a game I've experienced since the first season of Telltale's Walking Dead. I like that it focused more on Kate. She reminds me of people I've known in real life. In fact, all the character's do.
I don't like Warren. He seems like the type who would say/think stuff like "If I do this she'll have to sleep with me." Maybe he'd grow up into an alright guy, but I do try to avoid him in the game. Looking back over my life I actually wouldn't be surprised if there were some girls who thought that of me unfortunately. So there's that.
I save Chloe in the most disastrous way and couldn't undo it. Ah well. I'm sure that'll come to bite me in the ass later.
I'm excited to see where this game goes.
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Played: May 24th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
Episode 3 was great! I saw where some of the twists were going shortly before they happened (like the very very end), but still it continues to be a welcome breathe of fresh air in video game story telling. It does do the whole butterfly effect thing and I suspect I already know a plot point of the next episode is. Though I'm super interested to see what they do.
I do like how there's a lot of secret stuff that you can miss. That's pretty cool. Depending on how the other episodes go I could totally see myself playing through the whole thing again.
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Played: Aug 2nd. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
That first 3rd of episode 4.. Yeesh... Yeesh... That'll be a moment that likely sticks with me for a real long time.
This episode really moves and has a lot happening. I got to the point with Frank, and was trying to figure out everything to say right, but eventually I could no long rewind for some reason. So I decided to stop and pick it back up from there.
So far I'm really happy that this episode is not going anywhere that I've seen people predict. It's fantastic. Really loving the story. I could do with less memes, but they are high school aged people so... I guess that just makes me fear for our future generation.
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Played: Aug 2nd. Morning. Enjoyed.
Oh boy... that was an explosive and dense episode. So much happen. That ending. Oh boy. This game really delivers. Unless everything falls apart in episode 5, I see this game becoming not just my game of the year, but one of my all time favorite games.
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Played: Oct 27th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Played up to when David saves Max. I like the little bait and switch though obvious. I didn't see if there was any other option to tear the photo or not. Unfortunately in the art gallery I didn't quite talk to everyone like I should have. Ah well.
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Played: Oct 27th. Late Evening. Enjoyed
Before I go on about the ending I just want to say. God Damn it. Joyce (Chloe's mom) has had two husbands named William and David. My first name is David and my middle is William. I guess they're common names, but still!
OK!
So I really like the whole dream sequence bit and save folks bit. I made the very correct choice of not showing any affection towards Warren.
Now for the final choice I chose to not save the town because I had assumed something interesting would happen. I had to know. However I feel that was the wrong choice for how I was playing Max. I may go back and choose the other option. However 2, I was really hoping that they would not set up for a 2nd season. I don't want games like this to become as serialized as TV since the constant pressure to make something new causes the show to peter out and become garbage. Walking Dead Season 2 kind of already shows that with it being generally mediocre (at least from what I played compared to the 1st). But if they are going to make a sequel that will involve these characters than I guess my choice at the end is alright.
Regardless this is my favorite game of the year so far and I don't see something taking it's place.
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Elminage Gothic

Played: Feb 7th. Evening. PC Steam. Mixed.
Oh I don't know about this one. I picked it up on a whim during the winter sale and oh boy. It's super dense and doesn't explain itself at all. I had no idea what I was going to get into. The only thing I knew about it was that it was some sort of RPG. Turns out it's a dungeon crawler and from what little I played not a particularly interesting one. There could be a really cool get in here, but I'm not interesting in a dungeon crawler at the moment so I don't think I'll be playing any more of this.
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Massive Chalice

Played: Feb 8th. Midnight. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
I played a lot of this last year, but didn't play any of the more recent patches. Decided to load it up and was happy to discover it works alright on my laptop.
This time around I decided to do a Easy Mode Ironman run. It didn't seem that much easier than what I remember. In fact I had a Keep Assult that ended killing both regents and 3 of my party. After that I started to play a bit more conservatively. I also am having a hard time getting Alchemists. Whenever I try to get new people I get a ton of hunters and handful of caberjacks and that's it. I'm at about year 50 or so. Just started researching the veil armor for my hunters and that pretty much broke the game last time. We'll see if it's still amazing.
When it comes to characters I had one gal who I never put in my party, but would trigger on a bunch of random events. She traveled the world beyond the Cadence for 10 years then help put down a riot. She was a rad lady.
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Played: Feb 9th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
God damn I love this game! I started to have some mixed classes and they're all pretty interesting. My 3 main houses have been struggling for kids. One also ended but I was able to save it. The generation after had 12 kids! Now I'm over run with brewster (?) (the hybrid alchemist/caberjack). Two of my other houses are starting to come back as well. A fourth just started and is going pretty strong. It came about because I happened to use this one caberjack and he turned out really good. His wife was the real hero though. After he died she found a spot back in my active team and is my one pure alchemist.
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Played: Feb 10th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
This game is so good. I really can't stress that enough. I don't even know where to begin explaining what happened this session. I'm now just passed the half way point. I've got 5 keeps. One of them was attack 3 times! All those battles I lost one or two characters because I'd forget to equip the regents. Right now I'm in a pretty good spot. Though I have way more men than I do women which is unfortunate. But what is important is making sure as many characters have the "MIGHT OF THE WALRUS" trait as possible.
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Played: Feb 11th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Oh this session did not go well. It started off fine, but I had an event that lost me an empty region then right after that I had a battle where my alchemist missed a shot and ending up killing my cablejack. Then I didn't have enough stopping power to deal with a bunch of advanced bulwarts so I ended up losing that battle and the region. I'm down a sagewright guild now. This is on easy, but also ironman. I'm in a pretty bad spot right now. We'll see how it goes.
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Played: Feb 12th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
This was a short session. I rebounded a bit and started building a new sagewright guild. I only have one area left for a keep, but I can't build one there since it would take like 28 years to build. Things are recovering though.
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Played: Feb 16th. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
My world is in a mixed spot. I have a lot of heroes and none of the families are in a bad spot, but 3 of the regions have 2 strikes so it's very likely I'll lose two more before the game ends. I'm just approaching the 250 year mark.
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Played: Feb 17th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Things got pretty dicey. I had one attack where I had to choose which region not to lose. So I ended up losing two more regions. Also I ended up having two cousins that both had the nickname "Mr. Pancakes."
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Completed: Feb 17th. Early morning. Enjoyed.
I beat it! That final mission is really awesome. The game is pretty well balanced in it's current state. Easy didn't feel too easy and I still lost a lot of characters/regions. The only thing that felt a little underpowered was the Enforcer class. I'd rather have a Hunter or Trickshot over an Enforcer.
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Started: Jun 5th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
It's now officially out and I decided to start a new run. This time on Hard. I had a bit of a rough start, but things are going pretty well for me now.
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Played: Jun 7th. Evening. Enjoyed.
My hard game is going fairly well. So far it's been a good balance of challenge. I've lost so people and had to make hard choices but I haven't felt like it's been unfair. I did occasional save scum a bit.
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Played: Jun 7th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Got to the half way through the game. I lost my Alchemist house completely and on the way of losing my hunter house. Scary.
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Played: Jun 8th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Tried to play while exporting some video. It's was not running well enough to make it playable during the battle. Regardless I'm at the point where the game I'm getting 3 attacks each time and it's getting hard to manage all the outer regions. It'll probably go fine though. Probably...
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Played: Jun 10th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Not having any alchemist was a real pain in the battle I just had. I had to save scum so much to get around bad RNG. I spent an hour in this one battle.
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Played: Jun 10th. Early Morning. Mixed.
I found myself save scumming a lot more because of annoying RNG. I really hate missing in games. I'd rather just do low damage or something. Also I just encounter Advanced Cradles. They really suck! They spawn two advanced seeds every round. It's crazy hard not to be completely over run. Especially since my folks can't hit for shit and I have to constantly reload because they're hit chances are all below 65%.
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Played: Oct 23rd. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Played this with the gal I'm currently seeing. She liked it much more than Antichamber and didn't get motionsickness. Perhaps we'll play it more together.
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Darkest Dungeon

Played: Feb 9th. Evening. PC Steam. Mixed.
After watching the quick look this game looked like it would be right up my alley. It is, but it has a lot of the RPG mechanics that I'm not a fan of like missing. I get so annoyed when an attack misses. I like art style and prema-death. There's a lot of good things going on in this game but I'll to play more of it to figure it out. I did have some issues with getting it to run but fortunately a quick trip to the steam forums and I was able to find a solution.
~~~
Played: Feb 9th. Late Evening. Disliked.
The more I played of this game the more I find the RNG to be complete bullshit. There's so much about the combat that balanced in a way that doesn't make it difficult so much as just unfair and unenjoyable. I have no idea who's turn is going to be when and can't really strategize around my party other than praying that the RNG gods smile on me. Enemies seem to be way too strong. Even going through an easy area I barely survive. Only to waste all my money on items. I don't think I like this game. I left this session feeling angry and frustrated. I'll give it at least one more shot, but I don't know about this game. It's a shame because there's a lot of cool stuff around it.
~~~
Played: Feb 9th. Late Evening. Mixed.
Restarted and got better RNG but still most of my successes in this game feel like they're completely due to dice rolls rather than skilled planning. There's some strategy in setting up your team, but once you're in combat you're almost entirely at the whim of RNG. I'm still not sure about this game. I like the art, set up, and basic battle systems, but it can be really frustrating.
~~~
Played: Mar 8th. Afternoon/Early Evening. Enjoyed.
I don't know if there was a new patch that made things better or I just had better luck but I was able to get through every mission so far without getting screwed over by RNG. The game still doesn't really explain itself very well, but I'm found I enjoyed my time with it much more.
~~~
Played: Mar 8th. Evening. Mixed.
Then I have a mission where everyone dies and I don't understand what I could have done to prevent it. Maybe the mission was to hard? But I don't understand so much about things in this game. Like turn order. I don't see anything telling me who will go next or in what order. It's annoying.
~~~
Fate Tectonics

Played: Feb 28th. Evening. PC Standalone. Mixed.
I like the concept for this game a lot. I like the art style and presentation. However I found it frustrating because I kept getting the same tile of half grassland, quarter forest, quarter water in the same arrangement so that I couldn't do anything with it. I'll probably play more of this game at some point, but I did find it frustrating.
~~~
Played: Mar 1st. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Alright now that I understand this game a bit more I'm enjoying it more. I was able to play for a decent amount of time and had a fairly successful world, but it does get really tricky to keep your world from crumbling. It's nifty though!
~~~
Played: Mar 8th. Midnight. Mixed.
I played this for about 20 minutes, made a pretty cool world but just kind of got bored of it. I think I'll have to look up what some of the abilities actually do before I play it more.
~~~
Cities: Skylines

Played: Mar 10th. Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
I love city building games. This one is pretty good so far. My first city is not that great and I wish maps had multiple places you could place start cities, but I'm still enjoying it quite a bit. I'm probably going to restart my first city since I really messed up the traffic.
~~~
Played Mar 10th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
I love this game so much! The fact that you can add districts makes this game feel so much more real. I love making little town areas and industrial areas. It's not perfect. I'd love to see the building extension from Sim City 5 in here, but ah well.
~~~
Played Mar 11th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
I got my little region to a small city and am now thinking about setting up a University district. I'll likely jump right back into the game now. haha.
~~~
Played Mar 11th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
I did indeed boot it right back up and played until a Windows update nearly crashed the game. Fortunately it stabilized and I was able to save. My city is now a Grand City. So far my complaint about this game is it's perhaps too easy and a bit too bare bones. The Steam workshop will fix that eventually, but the base mechanics seem a bit lacking. Also planing bus routes is a pain in the ass and there's not enough variation to the parks.
Right now all my city cares about is offices and industry. That's it. That's all they want. It's a bit annoying. I'd like to get some high density commercial, but there's no demand.
~~~
Played Mar 11th to 12th. Midnight to Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Started a new city after I accidentally deleted my other one. Picked a community map and build up a nice city. Towards the end of the session I had some issues with my industrial areas not exporting stuff or something. I've been getting a lot of abandon buildings there.
I also tried building a Hydro power planet, but doesn't generate power. I assume it has something to do with the river not fully backing up yet.
~~~
Played Mar 14th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
Added a farm to my city, a couple of universities, and started to understand the importance of good bus routes. My dam is still not generating any power though and that's pretty annoying.
~~~
Played Mar 14th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Expanded my city across a river, but I thinking about starting a new one. I'm just not liking the lay out I did for this city very much and think I could do better on a different map.
~~~
Played Mar 15th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Started a new city on the Island map. This time I decided to make a rather boring grid based city and so far it's going alright though it's not very pretty. I've been setting up areas for future development though. I will eventually have some nice suburbs and farm land. Until then it's just straight roads for days.
~~~
Played Mar 17th. Afternoon to Early Evening. Enjoyed.
This new city is going much better. I've figured out traffic, got dams working, and realized I could change the color of bus lines.
~~~
Played Mar 17th. Evening. Enjoyed.
I think I might start over once again. I'm not liking my lay out. haha. Especially after seeing some other people's cities. But perhaps I need a break from it.
~~~
Played Mar 18th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Just expanded my city a bit while listening to a podcast.
~~~
Played Mar 22nd. Morning. Enjoyed.
Started a new city and tried to make it so the major industrial area is separate and has it's own high way. but I did it a little to early and now everything is pretty much fucked. haha. I'll have to restart.
~~~
Played: Mar 26th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Started again. I'm going to have to tear down the whole industrial area and real build it.
~~~
Played: Mar 27th. Midnight ~ Early Morning. Enjoyed.
This city is doing really well. It's growing, there's not too much traffic, there's some nice little communities. It's awesome.
~~~
Played: Mar 29th. Morning. Enjoyed.
My city now has a lot of abandoned buildings and traffic. I think it's likely time for some major major replaning.
~~~
Played: Mar 30th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
Did some heavy replaning of my downtown and public transit. It's not quite there yet, but it's looking a little nicer. I put in a train route right through the city. Still have a lot of replanning to do though.
~~~
Played: Mar 31st. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
I worked a lot on public transit and am really happy with the way my city is looking now. It's has a wonderful downtown area, some nice suburban areas, and now a nice rural town. The only major problem is my industrial area. The traffic there is crazy. I just bought a new plot of land and will be moving all the industry there to make a new large industrial spot. Then I'll rezone the old industrial area as low income residential or something.
~~~
Played: Apr 2nd. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Built that new industrial area, but I don't know. There's so much traffic still in that same area I was having issues with last session. I'm not sure why though.
~~~
Played: Apr 11th. Late Evening. Neutral.
I tried to re zone my industrial area but was having a lot of trouble with the game being very laggy to the point of being unplayable. Seems like its my computer and not the game. Going to try to restart it.
~~~
Played: Apr 18th. Early Morning ~ Morning. Enjoyed.
Decided to try to make my own region. The editor is alright but making rivers and dealing with water is a pain in the ass. Once I got that working though I was really happy with my region. I spent a while trying to get the high ways. I didn't end up starting a new city on it however.
~~~
Played: Apr 18th. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
Started a new city on my custom region. Making it a bit too grid-like at the moment, but at least I've been able to keep the industry (all farms!) completely separate from the rest of the city and on the other side of the highway so traffic has generally not been to big of an issue. I did have to change my main way into the town so it's a roundabout however. That seemed to really free up traffic.
~~~
Played: Apr 18th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
This new city is going a lot better than any of my previous cities. I need to make more of a down town/more city-like area, but it's going well.
~~~
Played: Apr 19th. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
Just added some stuff to my current city. Only played for like a half an hour or so.
~~~
Played: Apr 21st. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Spent some time listening to the most recent Danswers and making a new custom region. Rivers and lakes took me forever, but I eventually got them working well. They tend to have a "pumping" or wave-like quality if you don't really smooth out the bottom. I didn't even start to put in the highways or rail yet.
~~~
Played: Apr 21st. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
I spent a long time getting Highways set up and they're not complete yet. Then I decided to add another lake and river that lead to a waterfall and that's where I am at the moment.
~~~
Played: Apr 21st. Morning. Enjoyed.
Finished up the custom reason I was making. It's really pretty and the highways are absurd. I put in a express and local highway down the center similar to highways I was familiar with in NJ and made absurd spaghetti on/off ramps.
~~~
Played: Apr 22nd. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Started to build on my custom region and it's coming along fairly well. I always find that money is tough early on but once you start really making some and slow your building projects it's pretty manageable.
~~~
Played: Apr 22nd. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
My city is now four tiles and I've been zoning different types of industry which is something I don't tend to do besides farms. I also set up a University on a large section of a delta. It's surrounded by poop water but that'll clear up once I get the treatment plants.
~~~
Played: Apr 28th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
I was building up my city all nice and then the game crashed before I could save. Ah well.
~~~
Played: Jun 2nd. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Decided to make a new map and wanted to install some new modes, but after installing them the map editor was running like total shit and was barely functional. Such a shame.
~~~
Played: Jun 6th. Midnight. Neutral.
The game continues to run sort of laggy. I don't know what it is. I didn't try uninstalling some of my mods so that might be the cause.
~~~
Played: Aug 7th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Saw the teaser for the first expansion and decided to mess around with it a bit. Wasn't experiencing the lag I had months ago. Not really feeling the pull of it, but did enjoy this session.
~~~
Played: Aug 7th. Early Morning. Neutral.
I don't know. This game just isn't grabbing me at the moment.
~~~
Played: Oct 3rd. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Decided to get the new After Dark DLC. I haven't messed around with too much of the new additions, but it seems like things are at little harder to maintain. I've got the itch again.
~~~
Played: Oct 3rd. Evening. Enjoyed.
Finding tourism fairly interesting. Not sure I get it yet. My city now has a downtown area and it's pretty nice I guess. I need to build a college area next.
~~~
Played: Oct 3rd. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
My city is quite large. Possibly the largest city I've every made? I don't know, but it's going alright.
~~~
Played: Oct 6th. Evening. Enjoyed.
I'm getting to the point where I'll have to do some really heavy modifications to the city to get it flowing well and I'm just not sure if I want to do that. haha.
~~~
Played: Oct 12th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Sick. I decided to really up this current city. It's going very well. Probably my largest city yet.
~~~
Played: Oct 18th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Tried to find a solution for my one traffic issue. It's not quite there yet, but it's getting there. This city is large enough to where I have nuclear power. I discovered one district was set to be leisure when it was not meant to be and now things have really grown.
~~~
Played: Oct 19th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Oh how the city has grown. So many new districts. I now have a pretty comprehensive metro system. I also decided to put in a large regular industrial area well away from the majority of my main city. This issue though is that there's too many educated people.
~~~
Played: Oct 20th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
I have an airport now and am very close to having an international airport. I decided not to really mess with trains this time and haven't really built any of them. They could cut down on my industry traffic, but it would be a pain to put them in. Still I'll think about it. Right now I've just been growing the city. Up to 8 tiles. Though most of the city is compacted in the starting tile.
~~~
Played: Oct 23rd. Late Evening. Neutral.
Just show my lady friend my city. She thought that it was swell.
~~~
Played: Oct 25th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
Sprawled out my city a bit. Need to put in a major high way through my one area, but can't do that until I get another tile.
~~~
Dreamfall Chapters

Played: Mar 16. Midnight. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
Started Book 2. Kian is certainly not my favorite character. It's a bit dry so I try to play him as such. Admittedly I don't really remember him much from Dreamfall and I should really go back and play the first and second game completely. Anyway, I'm enjoying this chapter. There are some things about it that are kind of underwhelming but the Kian parts of Dreamfall were as well. Not solely because of him though. I did like the Mole, but man... man... I stopped once I finished up the weird Nazi-like meeting. I didn't finish that quest but I want to stop to log this since it's 3 am now. I'll probably launch it right away.
~~~
Played Mar 16. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Finished up Kian's bit and got through what felt like a large chuck of Zoe's bit. I really do have to replay those earlier games. I didn't remember the one gal in Kian's story at all. I had to pause and look her up on a wiki to jog my memory of her. I've been trying to keep the characters on a steady path. Kian's general respectable if a bit overly honest instead of angry and scornful towards everyone. Zoe is curious, listless, and gets involved in things she shouldn't, instead of just going with the motion. I am curious about the other options, but from what little I've seen of the other choices not much changes and that's probably for the best.
That "stealth" part in Kian's chapter was a pain. And I feel there's not enough or as much incidental dialogue like there was in the early games or even the other chapter. That's a bit disappointing. Even if it was "Shelves. Still just shelves." it made the environments a bit more interesting. There's a lot more of that when playing as Zoe. Perhaps it was an intentional character thing. Kian seems to have more to say about people than objects. But I think it was just lack of time and funds realistically.
~~~
Played: Mar 16th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Completed Zoe's bit and thought that would be the end of the chapter, but apparently it's not! So I get to enjoy more Kian.
I liked Zoe's chapter. I decided to give the data over to the news because let's face it that's the right thing to do. Probably!
~~~
Played: Mar 16th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Finished Book 2. Man it really dragged. I liked it overall. It didn't have the big "oh shit" ending that the first one did, but that's ok. I'm certainly going to go around and read what some of the other choices cause.
~~~
Played: Jun 27th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
I played up to Zoe's chapter. I thought the intro with Saga was kind of annoying and tedious, but I did like the call backs to the first game and I find her bits really interesting. Her VA was pretty rough but still pretty cute.
Kian's chapter felt like it ended too soon. Makes me think there will be a second one after some Zoe bits. It was ok. Pretty adventure game-y. I think the general character has a really silly looking pony tail. I was smart enough to return the guy's tools before going onward.
~~~
Played: Jul 2nd. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Finished up Zoe's first Book 3 chapter. Really enjoyed it over the early two of this episode. Shitbot and Mira are a lot of fun and the puzzles weren't nearly as a tedious. Though I never did figure out what to use the Kung Fu personality for. Ah well. Excited to see where this goes. The "stealth" sequence was pretty silly though. I mean why wouldn't they see or hear her? Ah well. Video games, eh?
Also I really want one of those Watilla hoodies.
~~~
Played: Jul 2nd. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Walked around Marcuria mostly. Stopped when I got to the Rooster and Kitten since I was getting tired. I glad there's finally some cross over between areas with the characters. I didn't fully explore the city though. I figure I probably will later in the episode.
~~~
Played: Jul 4th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Finished episode 3. It was ok. I felt it ended too soon and not much happened, but that could have been just because I played it over a couple sessions instead of all at once. Still it felt like an inbetween episode. Things are going places but not much got anywhere. Aside from Zoe. Maybe it should have ended with her arriving in Arcadia instead. I've seen folks on twitter talking about the ending for Book 3 being awesome, but it just kind of stops like it was a commercial break. Almost wonder if there's a bug that made it end too soon.
~~~
Played: Dec 27th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Finally made time to jump into Book 4. I really enjoyed most of what I played so far. The stuff with Baba Yaga was really cool and felt like what I liked of the first game. There's still some wonkiness with the puzzles though that is a bit unfortunate. I think I figured out why I don't much care for the Kian bits. His plot just seems so minor in comparison to Zoe's. Especially now that she has a proper goal and arch. I've only played up to where he's about to break into the prison. Maybe it changes, but his entire existence for both this game and the last has just felt so unimportant compared to Zoe's now and April's journey in the first game. Perhaps that'll change.
~~~
Played: Dec 27th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Finished up Book 4. My opinion hasn't really changed much or at all. Perhaps it would have been better to wait and play all the episodes in one whole go though.
I feel things actually happened at the end of this book compared to Book 3 though. There are certainly some choices I think I would have made differently considering the outcomes that happened.
~~~
Orcs Must Die! Unchained

Played: Mar 30th. Late Evening. PC Standalone. Enjoyed.
Got my main desktop back up and working. They released Beta Phase 2 about a week ago and I've been dying to mess around with it. I haven't played a real game yet. Only messed around with the tutorials and bots, but it's a lot prettier.
~~~
Played: Apr 2nd. Evening. Enjoyed.
Just played a normal bot game then a single co-op game. The game feels a lot different, but not bad. I do think it's a little slow. I play the Master (now Cygnus) and he was already a slow character, but the aiming and targeting certainly feels better. I wish I had access to more traps/stuff but I guess that'll come with playing.
~~~
Played: Apr 3rd. Evening. Enjoyed.
Played a handful of co-op games. Seems like the people I used to play with are never around but I may be playing later in the evening for them. I'm not sure if I like the new reward system. It feels like I never get enough skulls. But honestly I've not played enough games.
~~~
Played: Apr 5th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Played a co-op game then jumped into a regular competitive game. It definitely feels slower, but against live humans it's a lot of fun.
~~~
Played: Apr 6th. Early Evening ~ Evening. Enjoyed.
Played a few games of Hard Co-op with people I've known since the alpha and got a bunch of more equipment. I think the progress is slow.
~~~
Played: Apr 12th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Played some co-op games with random people. Had to explain somethings to them, but that's ok! No one was mean or anything and that's good.
~~~
Played: Apr 13th. Evening. Enjoyed.
I played a game with some folks I know and it just lasted way too long. It went to wave 27 or something. I tried a weaver set up suggested to me and I didn't like it. It was supposed to make me really tanky, but didn't feel all that powerful.
~~~
Played: May 7th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
They were showing a new map. Its really cool, but people have no idea how to defend on it. I don't know it looked pretty obvious how to build the path. Ah well. I only played one game.
~~~
Pillars of Eternity

Started: Mar 31st. Afternoon. PC Steam. Neutral.
I've been vaguely interested in this game. Decided to pick it up after all the good press. I've never really played an RPG like this. I've played Neverwinter Nights a very very little bit, but didn't have much of an opinion on that game. All I did in this session was make a character (an elven ranger with a lion named Django) and kill a wolf.
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Played: Mar 31st. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Got to the first town and just wandered around finding and completing quests. Met a mage guy and now have him tagging a long. I like the set up for the story though I wish the two characters at the start didn't have to die. Maybe you can save them, but I don't know at this point.
~~~
Played: Apr 1st. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Wandered around and found things a bit too powerful for my small party. Went to the inn and made two new characters then found another after I rested at the inn. Decided to do the ruined temple area in that first town.
I'm playing on easy but I still find this game hard. I don't know how to effectively use my spellcasters or really any abilities. But I'm generally liking the game.
~~~
Played: Apr 4th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
I'm doing some dungeon crawling now in the Lord's keep. I'm finding this game's story so far to be painful generic and not really all that interesting and I don't really understand how to really use the combat to my advantage other than select all and attack, but I am enjoying my time with the game. I think I really need a rogue in my party. I keep getting killed by traps.
I have a zombie cat now though soo yay.
~~~
Captain Forever Remix

Played: Apr 13th. Midnight. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
I remember seeing this game at a local indie dev meet up a couple months ago but didn't get the chance to play it. after watching the QL I decided to pick it up. At first I wasn't so sure about the controls and didn't realize I could use Q and E to strafe until the end of the session. Eventually I got used to the controls. This game is nifty. I didn't get very far. Only to level 4 or so, but I like it and will probably play more. The art style, premise, and audio I really dig.
~~~
Played: Apr 13th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
I had a good run where I got lucky with my quick kills. You need to try to target the core of their ship as much as possible. Building a ship that's super maneuverable is key. This game is cool. I wish they gave you more parts at the start though.
~~~
Played: Apr 13th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Had a really good run with the Missile kit and unlocked the Melee kit.
~~~
Valdis Story: Abyssal City

Played: May 5th. Late Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
There was a recent update to this game that added two new characters so I decided to check them out. I picked the new demon girl character who seems like a pretty interesting take on a mage-like character. Since bosses give you grades that give you permanent stat bonuses I really wish you could redo bosses right after you beat them so that you could try to get a higher grade. Ah well. This game is still great.
~~~
Played: May 6th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Tried out the other new character and like him a lot, but I got to a point where I'm not sure if I can progress. Then the game crashed. Perhaps I'll go back through to see if I can get the one item that I would normally need to interact with the one timed device, but it might just be some platforming stuff. Admittedly its in the fire temple and I've always hated this area.
~~~
Played: May 6th. Midnight. Mixed.
Fuck the Fire Temple so much. I got the boss and there's literally no way I can deal enough damage to him and he does so much damage. I can usually knock him out of his one attack but not always. Like my attacks will randomly not effect him during that one attack. He blocks so much and deals so much ongoing damage. I hate this area. I don't have double jump yet with this character so avoiding things is a pain in the ass and I can't leave because it put me down an area that I need double jump to ascend. Fuck the Fire Temple.
~~~
Played: May 6th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Beat that Fire Temple boss by exploiting a spot where he couldn't hit me. It took a long time and was pretty bull shit, but it worked. Now I'm at the point where the game opens up a bit and I can get around a lot of places I'm probably not meant to be yet. I wanted to go back to the library to look at who I've found so far but I ran into the Raven boss. Something that didn't happen earlier despite having the item for it. Now I'm stuck at this boss. My big mega move doesn't seem to do much damage to it and it's so fast I can't really keep up with my parries. Hrmm.
~~~
Played: May 6th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
I went to some other areas before trying to take on the Raven again and when I went back I was able to beat him fairly easily. I now have Vlad's chakram weapon and really like. His minions are maxed out and I just got to level 16. I unfortunately didn't save the sewer town because I don't know where I was supposed to go to trigger the yeti fight earlier. Ah well. Now I'm kind of at lost for where to go.
~~~
Played: May 6th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Got the Demon key and some other stuff. After a ton of upgrades my character feels so much more maneuverable. It's fantastic. I'm at level 20 now. Not much left in the main story, but there's still a bunch of stuff to do.
~~~
Played: May 6th. Evening. Enjoyed.
I'm pretty much at the end of the game. Only a little bit more to go. I decided to do some of the optional stuff and was able to beat one of the super bosses. Mostly because she decided to be friendly and just blocked a whole bunch allowing me to chip away at her. Something that was really cool about the fight was that if I summoned my demon helpers they'd be on her side rather than mine. It was pretty rad!
~~~
Played: May 6th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Finished my Vlad run. I really don't like the new final boss. It didn't at all fit that style of combat that I S ranked many of the other bosses including the old final boss, but the new one it took me a while to even figure out how I was doing damage to her. Apparently you're supposed to damage bombs that then deal damage to her, but they leave in a single hit and my build was around dealing lots of hits rather than lots of damage in a single hit. So it took me forever.
~~~
Played: May 7th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Tried to play more as Gilda and found her not nearly as enjoyable as Vlad. Maybe I'm to used to his end game feel, but she just feels like she has a lot less options to her. I'm having a lot of trouble on bosses that I breezed through as Vlad.
~~~
Played: May 7th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Got up to the Fire boss as Hilda. Fucking hell. I'm having a real hard time with just about everything in here. I think I need to grind up some and respec her a bit.
~~~
Played: May 7th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Decided to do NG+ as Vlad with a gun build. It's a lot of fun, but I realize I should have prepared a bit better for the boss battles thus far. Ah well.
~~~
Played: May 8th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
I couldn't sleep so I decided to continue on. I wanted to upgrade my one weapon but I didn't kill enough angels to get their souls. So I have to go do that. I finished the fire area. It was ok this time around since I didn't try to get all the treasure. Still don't like that boss and just cheesed him. I was also looking for the one crew member that lets you learn double jump but I can't seem to find him.
~~~
Played: May 8th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Just looked up how to find the crew member that teaches double jump and went to get him.
~~~
Played: May 8th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Got through the Electric temple. Grinded a bit to get my armor and weapon up a couple levels. Visited the Sewer town. I'll be doing the Mines next and have set things up to fight an optional boss there that I've never fought before so that should be fun.
~~~
Played: May 8th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Beat up to the Angel optional boss and am fairly happy with my equipment set up. I have all but one piece of armor and I'm missing one of the tomes. I'm not sure where they are. I want to take on the Demon optional boss, but I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do that yet. I think I might need to upgrade my lightning magic first.
~~~
Played: May 9th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Did the secret "super hard" boss and found it really easy. Still can't beat the Demon boss though. I think I may need the last finisher. She's tough because you can't summon minions.
I also discovered some other optional mini-bosses that are pretty nifty. Apparently the one hidden boss is a shop after you beat them and can make you an absurdly powerful sword if you bring them 3 Arch Feral spirits, but I could only find 2. You also need a ton of rare metal that is used in crafting weapons, so you basically need to not upgrade any weapons then go there. Yeah. Ok. I'll probably never do that.
~~~
Played: May 9th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Found out where the last arch feral soul was from looking it up. It was actually a pretty tough boss battle. I had to cut this session short because I had my regular DnD session starting soon.
~~~
Played: May 10th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Decided not to go after the Demon boss and just take on the final boss. I didn't realize until the end how awesome focus mode is and should have been used. I've mainly used it just as something to pop and then use the finisher. Ah well. I think I might do an LP of this game, but probably not. I'll think about it.
~~~
Played: May 11th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Started a run as Wyatt to see if I'd like to LP this game or not. I think I may.
~~~
Played: May 12th. Morning. Enjoyed.
Just played a little bit more of my Wyatt run. Realized that I should be doing certain things for the LP, like grind a bit to make sure I have the items to craft a specific potion, armor upgrade, and I think I could get the master scroll as well.
~~~
Played: May 14th. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
Started recording stuff for my LP, but ran into some unfortunate technical issues that I'll need to iron out if I'm going to do this. I have some plans though, but first lunch.
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Played: May 14th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Decided to redo the recording from earlier in the day and did a much much better take on it.
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Played: May 16th. Morning. Enjoyed.
Run through where I what I will record for the second episode. Missed out on some key crafting materials though. Should be fine.
Also practiced parrying a bunch.
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Played: May 16th. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
Recorded the gameplay for the second episode. I unfortunately wasn't able to get the same rank as on the bosses as I did in my practice run, but ah well.
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Played: May 25th. Late Morning ~ Afternoon. Enjoyed.
Played more of my "scouting" save file to get a feel for what I'll do for my main LP.
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Played: May 25th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Did my Scout run all the way to the third town through the sewers which is a different route than I'll take for my LP. That's so I could show off what happens when you don't save the towns.
Then on my practice run I did the Abandon Gardens. On my scout run I had no issue with the boss, but on my practice play through I had a bunch of difficulties with him. I'll probably record the video later tonight.
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Played: May 31st. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Did my practice run for the 4th episode of my LP. Did really awful against the Yeti, but still beat it. It'll likely go better in my actual run.
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Played: Jun 9th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Got to Ishk on my practice save. I was able to S rank the boss of the Central Skyway fairly easily. It'll probably end up being a real short episode, but who knows.
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Played: Jun 13th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Recorded the 5th update to my LP. Didn't do post commentary yet. I was not able to get a SSS rank on the Central Skyway boss like I did in my practice run though. I did decide that the episode would be too short so I decided to go back and do the Raven fight as well. It should now be about 20 minutes once I do the editing.
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Played: Jun 21st. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
Went through the fire temple in my scout run. The boss is really tough as Wyatt. He's really tough as Wyatt.
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Played: Jun 21st. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Went through the lightning temple. Oof. It was really hard as my scouting save. I was just not doing much damage. I think I may do the mines first before doing that temple in my actual run.
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Played: Jun 27th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Recorded the fire temple. I was able to get an S rank on the Fire Boss during recording!
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Played: Jul 2nd. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Recorded the sewers area. Still didn't do the post commentary for either update 6 or 7 yet, but I have all the footage. Today power went out in part of my house. The part where the internet is connected too. So I used that time to record some more of this LP. Might record the gameplay for update 8 and 9 as well. I want to get as much up for the 4th's weekend as I can.
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Played: Aug 9th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Scouted the mines. I think I'll go to the lightning area first instead of picking up the demon key now. Mostly because the lightning magic is all really good.
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Played: Aug 9th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Recorded the lightning temple. It went alright.
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Played: Aug 10th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Recorded the mines. The episode is probably a little short, but alas. I did include the optional boss fight versus the abomination. It's a super cool fight and I wish they did more stuff like it. Though I shouldn't have just jumped into it blind. Ah well.
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Played: Aug 15th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
On my Scouting playthrough I completed the Ziggurat and decided to fight the Manowar. I'll probably alter my path a little bit but that episode will definitely have the Manowar fight in it.
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Played: Aug 23rd. Evening. Enjoyed.
Did up to getting the Divine Key on my test run through. Pretty sure the route I have is good. I also messed around with the Banana focus finisher on Gernot and it works really well. Not so much on the Manowar.
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Played: Aug 28th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Finished up the Ziggurat and recorded what I wanted for this video. I had a great battle against the Manowar and Gernot. Wyatt on that save deals so much more damage than my two practice saves. There he has a lot more STR and LCK.
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Played: Oct 25th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Finally got back to recording stuff for my LP. Just did the Raven and Yeti fights if you don't fight them earlier in the game. Also showed off dead Ishk.
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Played: Oct 29th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Went through the Tainted Lab with my scouting file. That place is a real pain, but fortunately really short.
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Played: Nov 1st. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
On my scouting run I did all the way up to the Eye of Alagath fight. I was able to beat her on my first try so that was pretty cool. Now to record up to that.
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Played: Nov 1st. Evening. Enjoyed.
Recorded up to the Eye of Alagath fight. Have just over an hours worth of footage to edit. Probably will be about 40 minutes or less when it's an episode. Decided to buy the Ninja Scroll accessory and it's really rad! Makes parrying crazy good.
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Played: Dec 6th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Did my scout run up to the hidden boss area. Was able to beat the Eye of Myrgato. Though it took a long time. Found the other area really frustrating and closed the game before getting to the boss. I forgot to go buy an anti-ice elixir too.
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Orcs Must Die!

Played: May 11th. Early Morning. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
I was going to record something a bit extra for my LP. I recorded a little bit, but then said fuck it.
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Played: May 11th. Morning. Enjoyed.
Decided to unsay "Fuck it" and recorded all the extra bits I needed to.
It turned out all my footage was corrupted and looked like shit. I also didn't like the run of the level I did all those months ago. So I decided to redo do the level.
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Played: May 11th. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
Finished up re-recording the stuff I did earlier this morning. Hopefully it won't be fucked when I bring it into my video editing software.
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Played: May 13th. Evening. Enjoyed.
I had to re-record something again for my LP. It turns out my one video didn't have any audio for some reason and I had already deleted the files once I became aware of it. Ah well.
~~~
Axiom Verge

Started: May 14th. Morning. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
I've been really excited for this game to come to PC. A lot of Metroidvanias have been either terrible combination of Super Meat Boy style precision platformers (which really doesn't mesh well with the exploration aspect at all) or more like the Action RPG style of Castlevania. I've been following this game a long time and was so happy that it seemed to get good reviews on PS4.
Now I've been able to play it and it's pretty good. It doesn't quite capture the motion of the later Metroid (Super and up) games, but it certainly doesn't feel like other modern Metroidvania games either. I do appreciate that there is a Lock-in-place button but I wish there was also a Lock-Angle button as well like in the Contra games.
Now this session I stopped when I got to a boss. The boss's pattern was easy enough and I knew what I had to do but I did not beat it. I found the boss to have way too much health. The fight was going on for too long. I knew what to do and how to do it but then was asked to do it over and over again. It was a bit frustrating. Maybe there is some other item I could go find to make things a bit easier, but I don't know. I hope this isn't an indication of future boss design, but I fear that it may be. We shall see.
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Played: May 17th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
I beat that boss I was having problems with by just running through and shooting in the back. After a lot of exploration I came to another boss that was super cool looking but the boss fight was totally boring. That's been the running theme with the boss battles in this game. Cool looking but really poorly designed. The level design and abilities you get however has been actually really fucking cool. None of them are too standard outside of a high jump. I really like the mood, music, and exploration aspect. I even like how the weird face lady talks in broken English. But I do wish the boss battles were better.
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Played: May 17th. Early Evening. Mixed.
So I now have the grapple ability. It's terribly awkward. It controls poorly. It seems to randomly detach itself. Aiming it and moving up and down are awkward to say the least. You don't preserve momentum while swinging. It wouldn't be so bad if there was a lock-angle button. Then you could at least always be aiming diagonally up without also shortening the length of grapple arm.
I also got an ability that increased the range of my drone, but I haven't really noticed any difference. Maybe you can throw it higher? I don't know. I didn't even use it to get out of the room where I got the ability.
I like the variety in the weapons, but there does seem to be a few that are clearly the best in most situations. Like both green lightning guns.
I'm going to keep at it, but I'm starting to get a bit disappointed in this game. It really missed out on the feel of Super Metroid in the spots where it emulates that game. The story is at least interesting.
~~~
Played: May 17th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Ok now I got a teleport move and it's alright. I find it triggers sometimes when I don't want it to and it's hard to get it upward or diagonal. But still it's pretty nifty.
I "fought" a really cool boss. I won't spoil it though. They story, itself, has taken a turn for the fairly generic. It turns out the villain is likely the hero from a different dimension or time. Booo. Ah well.
The area I have yet to explore now is really kicking my ass and I didn't find a save point so I was thrown all the way back to the otherside. Still I'm enjoying it but not as much as I thought I would. Compared to Valdis Story, it doesn't control as well. Still it's nice to see a metroidvania that's actually more metroid than vania.
~~~
Played: May 17th Late Evening ~ May 18th Midnight. Mixed?
I'm completely stuck. I'm in Edin and I can't figure out where to go. I can get to the boss room as the drone but can't enter. I've wander the entire map and found some new weapons and items, but not progress. There doesn't seem to be anywhere I can go.
Oh, somethings I keep forgetting to mention in these write ups:
-Enemies don't drop health often enough. In Super Metroid the less health you had the higher the chance enemies would have to drop health. That isn't the case in AV and it's frustrating to die over and over again simply because enemies rarely drop health.
-The respawn animation time is absurdly long. It takes a good 15 to 20 seconds to respawn each time you die and you can't speed up or skip the animation. It gets real annoying if you then also have to back track only to die shortly after. Even if you're just outside the boss room. Recalling your drone has a similar issue. I don't know if those times are hiding a load but I find that hard to believe.
-The music is fantastic but doesn't loop. This is a major pet peeve as someone who write video game music. AV's music is really awesome, but the pieces don't have a smooth loop to them making when they do end and start over again feel abrupt and amateur. It actually takes me out of the world a bit since it's so noticeable.
-If I didn't mention this before, the grapple beam has a really slow shoot speed adding to the difficult of using it. It's honestly the worst feeling traversal item.
-The controls could be consolidated a bit. Examples: Have R2/RT + Right Stick act as a special weapon select then have R1/RB work for the drill, glitch gun, grapple, etc. You can't use them all at the same time anyway and it's not like this game is fast paced enough to need dedicated buttons for those abilities. Have Circle/B + a direction to dash. Then have L2/LT as a Lock-Angle so you could move and shoot in different directions. It would play so much better like that.
~~~
Played: May 18th. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
Apparently I could get around that one area by using the grapple hook and teleport. Binding the grapple to L2 really helped, but it's still awkward. Now I have the bombs and drone teleport. I'm going to wander around looking for stuff.
I didn't like the one wasp boss. It was really not a very interesting fight whatsoever. I totally called the story beat. Apparently Trace is a clone of the villain but younger. It's not done poorly in this game, but it's a still pretty over done trope. There's always a Man, an Axiom, and a Verge.
~~~
Played: May 18th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
I now have the red jacket. I found a note by the start of the game that I thought was interesting. Maybe the story isn't so vapid. I don't know, maybe you're supposed to find that a lot sooner than I did. Anyway now that I have the red jacket I think I'll be able to get to just about everything. I apparently have 100% of the tools.
~~~
Finished: May 23rd. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
So I beat the final boss. The ending made it seem like there are multiple endings though. I don't think I'll go back to get them. I also had 79% of the items and 95% of the Map. I might go back and get those with a guide, but I doubt it.
That last area, this games Torian, was kind of lame. Mainly the enemies. They're just too strong for the demands of the combat. If you could shoot and move independently this game would be a lot better. It's a 3 star game that could be a 5 star one if it just had better controls.
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Demon's Crest

Played: May 29th. Evening. WiiU. Enjoyed.
Played a little bit of this during Invisible Arcade. It's still really good.
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Splatoon

Played: Jun 23rd. Late Evening. WiiU. Neutral.
I love watching this game and my roommate was like "hey why don't you play it?" so I played through the tutorial and first singleplayer stage. I found the controls super awkward. But admittedly it was more the right stick and d-pad lay out that I found awkward more than the motion controls. I would probably really dig it if I could play it with a mouse.
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Final Fantasy V

Started: Jun 26th. Morning. PC Emulator. Neutral.
I decided to try the FF5 Four Job Fiesta. I've never really played FF5 much. The first job I got was Black Mage. We'll see how it goes. I didn't get very far in this first session. Just to the pirate ship.
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Played: Jun 26th. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
Got up to Welse or however it's spelled. I like this game so far. All Black Mages hasn't been so bad. I'm playing the GBA version and I remember hearing it had a great localization. So far it's pretty good, though the weird stuff with the way Faris's gender is revealed is kind of icky. At least she's the best player character so far.
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Played: Jun 26th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
My 2nd class I was assigned was the Time Mage. My party is too elemental and doesn't really do enough damage. It's kind of annoying to grind because I can't just hold down an attack and put on turbo. At least not in the fire area because of certain enemies. The timed area is a real pain. I got through it but had to avoid a lot of the chests because my party just couldn't deal enough damage fast enough.
My 3rd class is the Mystic Knight. I think I'll be rolling with two of them. The one I tried out was pretty good.
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Played: Jun 26th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Went through the Library. Mystic Knights are pretty cool. Shame they don't really appear in most other FF games.
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Played: Jun 26th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Got to the desert area and died to the sandworm boss. Yeesh. I suppose I could go grind a bit. My characters are around level 17 or 18.
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Played: Jun 26th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Beat the sand boss. Got the airship. Now wandering around the desert. I don't know where to go.
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Played: Jun 27th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Got up to the cannon boss and died. Though I wasn't really paying much attention during the fight. It would be a lot easier if I could have someone with White Magic or had access to high potions. Ah well.
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Played: Jun 27th. Evening. Enjoyed.
This is the first really long dungeon I've encountered. It's not great. I think I'll have to walk back out to level up my guys and go buy more tents and healing items. I'm thinking I should be at around level 23 or 24 for this boss battle.
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Played: Jun 28th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
Went out of the flying dungeon and bought a whole bunch of rods. Came back and discovered that the boss revives itself and is then immune to magic. Welp.
Asked around and apparently that boss can be slowed. Slowing it then smashing it with all basic attacks made it go down pretty easily. Now I have access to my final job, Geomancer. I've not hear good things about them unfortunately and the auto-equip didn't put any armor on them. Oh gee.
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Played: Jun 28th. Evening. Enjoyed.
I'm in the 2nd world now. I have the spell Break and have been gleefully prettifying anything I can with my Mystic Knight. Geomancers are actually really cool.
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Played: Jun 29th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Got up to the barrier tower. Gilgamesh is the best FF character.
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Played: Jul 1th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Took down the tower, talked to the sage. Now off to the forest. I did miss out on getting any reflect rings, but whatever. It'll be fine.
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Played: Jul 4th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
RIP Galuf. That Forest dungeon was as annoying as folks have said. The boss was also pretty tricky, but I was able to cheese them with the Flame Shield. Now I guess I can go do some side stuff. Not really sure where to go.
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Played: Jul 5th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Got up to Exdeath at the end of World 2. Oof. I think I'll need to level up some. There's just not much I can do against him and I'm having trouble against some of the normal enemies.
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Played: Jul 5th. Morning. Enjoyed.
I was able to beat Exdeath, but it was a hard fight. Now in World 3 I guess. I thought they were going to do some weird multidimensional stuff where's there's two of each character, but apparently it's just that the world's merged. Didn't go too much further yet. Stopped right outside the library.
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Played: Jul 5th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Got the Chicken Knife and am going through the Pyramid. Nothing much else.
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Played: Jul 5th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Finished up the pyramid and got Lenna back. I think I now have some equipment that really gives my characters some uniqueness rather than stuff that just increases numbers. I really like that.
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Played: Jul 5th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Tried to mug the Stingray for a Rune Blade with the Thieves Knife. Couldn't get it but found out that after I do Fork Tower I'll have access to get an even better weapon. Right now I my Mystic Knight equipped with the Assassin Dagger and its working alright. I finished up Fork Tower and now get Spellblade Flare and Holy. I wonder how good they'll be.
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Played: Jul 6th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Did all the side stuff I think I will do. Got the weapons I want. Got all the Black and Time spells. I think I'm ready for the final area. There were some real cool side areas in this game and it's super interesting to see what this one added to overall series. I'm tempted to do another fiesta run after this.
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Finished: Jul 6th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Neo-Exdeath is DONE. This was my first fiesta and first real time through this game. I really enjoyed it. The ending is really sweet too. Exdeath as a character and villain was pretty bare bones. But I guess that's what you get for a SNES era jRPG villain. Still he had no real reason other than power I guess. Exdeath is a really dumb name too!
I may do another run too. Or maybe a regular playthrough. maybe. Maybe.
~~~
Started: Jul 7th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Decided to start another run. Got up to and passed the Fire boat. The jobs I was given so far was Monk, White Mage, and Black Mage. Haha so this'll be mainly a Wind Crystal jobs only run. Hopefully I'll get something like Knight or Mystic Knight or something that's just more physical. If I get Red Mage. Oof. It'll be tough.
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Played: Jul 7th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Got up to where I have to fight the cannons on the flying city. Monk's damage has really dropped off so I'm grinding wolves outside the fire temple to get money to buy a bunch of rods.
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RONIN

Started: Jul 4th. Early Morning. PC Steam. Neutral.
I picked this game up because of the Quick Look. I loved Gunpoint. This game isn't really like Gunpoint at all and I knew that going in, but it looks enough like Gunpoint that it's hard to separate the two. Because of that I found myself expecting some things to work a little differently then they do. Namely the entering and exiting of elevators. But I guess I'll just have to get used to it.
The combat in this game is where most of the time is spent for me. It's interesting. Seems like most encounters boil down to a game of cat and mouse where you're trying to lure enemies into advantageous positions. It's kind of cool. I don't fully understand it or the ability system yet, but it's interesting.
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Played: Jul 13th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
After getting some more upgrades and understanding the idiosyncrasies I'm really enjoying this game. I've unlocked most of the skill tree and am in missions where mines are being introduced. I don't know how you'd get around the mines with out the teleport upgrade however. The stealth segments around the citizens are a lot fun and train you to figure out how to stealth around combat encounters. While you can't do it all the time when you can it feels really good. I'm liking this game. Hopefully I'm not too close to the end.
~~~
Played: Jul 13th. Early Morning. Mixed.
Ok some of the later levels are just ehhhh.. I don't know. They like big open rooms with no grapple points and enemies on either side. It's just really annoying. You have to go back and further waiting til you have an opening, but some areas are times. It'd be nice if you could set traps, but I don't know. I find when you're jumping back and forth it doesn't even matter if you have abilities since you can't use them. This game is getting frustrating.
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Finished: Jul 13th. Morning. Mixed.
That last mission is really rough and not really enjoyable. There's only one check point and if you get hit you start a bleed out timer that each kill will reset. I get the whole narrative hook and stuff, but it's out of nowhere and the game doesn't present the mechanic very well. They game feels pretty sure too. There's a new game plus but I didn't try it out. It's probably just the same levels with more enemies or something. I don't know. I like the art, music, and concept, but I think the game is a bit rough around the edges.
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Guild of Dungeoneering

Started: Jul 14th. Afternoon. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
I liked most of what I've played of this game. However I found myself getting stuck because of RNG. Super unfortunate. I guess if you just keep at it you'll eventually level up stuff to the point where you'll just power through stuff, but that's pretty disappointing. Still everything else is super cool. I love the art and music.
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Played: Jul 24th. Evening. Mixed.
I have a lot of trouble with this game in that to finish a level you tend to have to have THAT-ONE-RUN. The RNG can really just screw you over if you don't happen upon nice equipment. I just don't like that sort of design philosophy at all.
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Rocket League

Played: Jul 31st. Midnight. PC Steam. Neutral.
Decided to pick this up. Just played through some of the training. It controls well and the PC version recognized my PS4 controller without any other programs running. I had to rebind some of the controls, but it's awesome that you can do that. It feels nice but I can imagine some hand cramping after long sessions.
~~~
Played: Jul 31st. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Jumped into unranked 3x3. It's pretty good. I really didn't have a handle on the controls until my 5th or so game but it's certainly a lot of fun.
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Played: Jul 31st. Evening. Enjoyed.
Did some unranked matches. Did some training. Did some more unranked. Only won 1 match! haha. I'm not very good at this game to be honest. I find the training helps a bit.
~~~
Played: Aug 1st. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Yeah, Ok. It seems this game get really good when you kind of know what you're doing. Had some great varied games.
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Played: Aug 1st. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Yeah. This game is pretty damn good. Played while listening to the Giant Beastcast. I'm starting to feel real comfortable with the controls. Still haven't gotten any hats though.
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Played: Aug 1st. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
Just played a few rounds.
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Played: Aug 1st. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Had some real close games after a person dropped. Was up 5-0, but eventually went 7-6 in overtime once a new player joined. Really great game. I still find myself just sort of driving around trying to get stuff set up. I figure it's always a good idea to have at least some boost and to never be at 0 boost, but I'm not sure if that's super important.
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Played: Aug 2nd. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Had some decent matches then jump into do more goalie and striker training. Tried the Pro level stuff and it's hard. Didn't even attempt the aerial stuff. I don't really get that yet.
~~~
Played: Aug 4th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Had a few games. Did alright in a couple of them. Got MVP twice in a row then had a game where I had 10 whatever-points (not scores).
~~~
Rising Thunder

Played: Jul 31st. Afternoon. PC Standalone. Neutral.
Got into the alpha about 12 hours after I submitted to their site. Just messed around in Training with Chel for a bit. Dusted off my fight stick and it worked quite well, but I certainly feel kind of the rust on my execution.
~~~
Crystal Story II

Started: Aug 10th. Early Morning. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
I picked this up on Steam a couple of weeks ago. It's cool that non-RPG Maker jRPG styled games are starting to trickle out from indie devs. Unfortunately a lot of them tend to have a real lighthearted and parody tone to them. This game is no different unfortunately. The combat and UX design of this game has been really cool so far. The story has been pretty generic with it's Oh-so-clever jabs at jRPG tropes. The writing isn't all that terrible though. The music is really good too if a bit generic.
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Played: Aug 11th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Yeah this game is a really well made jRPG. It has an interesting level up system that was likely inspired by FF13, but instead of being able to upgrade all classes you have to pick on for each level. Wish I knew that before, but ah well. The card and fishing mini games are pretty forgettable.
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Played: Aug 11th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Got through to Chapter 2. Now I have four party members. Dungeons are starting to get a bit long and the combat is really easy. Fortunately combat is really quick when I'm not trying to steal everything from them.
~~~
Played: Aug 13th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Finished Chapter 2. Not much new to say about this game other than I wish you didn't have to spend so much time stealing crafting materials. Apparently if I grinded a bit I'd be able to get some new weapons by now. Ah well. I'm not having any trouble with the combat at all so it's not a big concern. The boss at the end of chapter 2 was pretty boring. Not a very interesting fight at all. defeated him with poison.
~~~
Played: Aug 14th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Now my characters can do limit break styled attacks and they're real damaging. I don't fully understand what allows you do them, but it seems like they can only be done once per battle.
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Played: Aug 14th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
The game is definitely too easy at the moment. I can very easily take out entire waves of enemies in a single turn. Bosses aren't much to worry about either. Hopefully it'll get more difficult soon.
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Played: Aug 15th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Finished Chapter 3.
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Played: Aug 16th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Got to a point where the party splits up for a bit and I get some temporary characters.
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Played: Aug 16th. Morning. Enjoyed.
My mage character is really carrying me in random battles. I have her set up to have haste on from the start and she has a really high MAG stat. She'll usually go first and take out all enemies in one attack. It really makes random encounters trivial. Bosses, on the other hand, have been getting tougher. Sometimes I even have to revive characters! I wonder how my strategy of ignoring most HP upgrades in favor of damage or speed updates will serve me in the long term, but for now it's not been much of an issue.
~~~
Played: Aug 22nd. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Finished Chapter 4. I do hope the game gets a bit more challenging.
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Played: Aug 22nd. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Just did the chapter 5's starting side quests. I didn't know that the areas are randomly made.
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Played: Aug 23rd. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
Just played while listening to a podcast.
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Played: Sep 4th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Played some more. Don't really have anymore comments about this game anymore.
~~~
Sentris

Played: Aug 23rd. Midnight. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
I was in the mode to play something, but didn't really know what I wanted to play. Saw this on my list and figured it was a good time to jump and mess around with it. As a game player I find it's light rhythm game element pretty enjoyable, and as a musician I find the music aspect a bit too simple and abstract. I like music theory, but a lot of Sentris is about playing by ear rather than playing by knowledge. This is probably a good thing though as when you rely too much on your knowledge you tend to get stuck in a rut more often. I didn't play through all the levels or mess around with the remix mode. I just made some beats.
~~~
Road Redemption

Played: Aug 23rd. Late Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
Decided to play this again after not playing it for months. They added a lot. It's still a bit janky in places mainly the menus, but the basic game play feels so good!
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Played: Aug 26th. Evening. Enjoyed.
I had a long string of bad luck and kept dying at the first level. I really don't like that the first few levels are just straight races. There not as fun as the other types.
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Played: Aug 26th. Late Evening. Neutral.
I really don't like the race design at all. It's annoying because if you don't zoom to the front right at the start you've lost. You cannot catch up. I want less of the races and more silly things like cars raining and c4.
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Played: Aug 27th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
Still don't like the races. I wish there were less of those. But everything else once you're in the game proper is really good.
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Played: Sept 3rd. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Had a good run where I got to the rooftops. This game still needs work and my thoughts haven't changed on it.
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Played: Sept 5th. Early Morning. Neutral.
I think I'm done with this game for now.
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Below

Played: Aug 27th. Late Evening. PC Standalone? Neutral.
Played this at the Giant Bomb meet up thing. It seemed cool but that was not really the environment for it.
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Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Started: Sept 13th. Afternoon. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
I've never really played an Metal Gear game before. Maybe for like 10 minutes here and there, but not really played through one. This looked interesting mostly due to the much more modern controls (though I'm playing it with a keyboard and mouse, which requires some rebinding, but is fine) and the base building stuff. I've played this one for about 2 hours. Just finished up recusing Miller. I could see myself getting pretty good at the stealth. Though I do tend to restart if things go kind of bad. Still I was able to get a no kills no detection on that first mission. I'm excited to play more of this and plan on recusing a female prisoner asap so I can play as a badass lady soldier.
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Played: Sept 14th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Just went through the second mission. Trying to be as stealthy as possible. It's not always going super well, haha. I guess if I really wanted to get higher rankings I could do scouting runs then restart the mission, but eh... I don't know about that. Oh but I did totally capture that guy instead of killing him.
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Played: Sept 14th. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
Played very briefly. Only messed around with the emblem maker and did a short side op.
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Played: Sept 14th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
Just continued doing side ops. Now have a couple of translators and my base is filled with folks. Couldn't find all those damned sheep though.
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Played: Sept 15th. Morning. Enjoyed.
Did a bunch of missions. Got to one where the same guy kept finding me and I would have to restart from the checkpoint over and over again.
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Played: Sept 15th. Late Morning. Enjoyed.
Still on that same mission. Spent way too long on the outside. I tranq'd the whole inside base at the front door before having to go around the outside and sneak in a side entrance. Fortunately all the C rank+ soldiers were on the outside and they all came with me. I was able to complete the mission, but took like 12+ hours of in-game-world time to do it. Ah well. Now I can make new robot hands.
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Played: Sept 15th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
Did the Honey Bee mission. Ran for the Skulls instead of fighting them. Though I did try a couple of times. I have a terrible quality of trying to clear out everyone for a base and get everything. I think this mission started to break me of that habit though.
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Played: Sept 16th. Afternoon. Enjoyed.
I fought a bear and now my emblem has a red bear with the phrase "Special Horse" on it. I didn't really do much else of note this session.
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Played: Sept 16th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Did more side ops. I got my first woman soldier so that's cool. She has a dumb name and mostly E rank stats though. I found the importance of blowing up the relay stations and AA trucks. So I'll be doing that from now on.
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Played: Sept 17th. Morning. Enjoyed.
Did the mission to kill/capture the three soviet guys. Got all three of them. Ambushed one while he was going to the meeting. Got the other two at their bases. I also side tracked and saved the two prisoners. Never was discovered, but did have to use the reaction time. Then recused another woman prisoner. This one has a much cooler name and better all-round stats. Now just to figure out how to switch characters.
Oh! And I now have decoys. Haven't used them in the field yet, but they seem fun and cool. I can't wait to throw them at dudes. I also noticed that I'm starting to have some money issues. I haven't been researching everything, but still running low on funds. I've had to sell the mortars and machine guns I've fultoned.
Lastly, I find it real annoying that you can only edit your load outs from the pre-mission screen. I should be able to do that whenever not in the field. But ah well.
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Played: Sept 17th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Did a mission where I had to recuse a guy named "Malak" or something similar. I was trying to be fancy and save him early on, but any time I did that they would kill the other prisoners and I was just not going to let that happen. And now I have access to a combat team so I think I could play a people other than Big Boss. Haven't tried it yet though.
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Played: Sept 19th. Morning. Enjoyed.
A sideop ended up with me getting caught and killing a bunch of people. I didn't really enjoy that and should have restarted at a checkpoint. Apparently it didn't clear the sideop either so I could go and do it again for some reason.
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Played: Sept 19th. Late Evening. Neutral.
Played a sideop as a different character. Unrelated to that I just wasn't feeling it this session. I don't know what it was. Maybe it's just going over the same areas again and again. Something just wasn't grabbing me.
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Shovel Knight

Played: Sept 19th. Evening. PC Steam. Mixed.
I decided to boot up this game because of the Plague Knight DLC. I said this last year and still feel that way. Man... This game has still has too much instant death. It's level design is poorer because of that. Coupled with it's death mechanic makes the game overly punishing and grindy for those who can't quite grasp it's unique movement. Plague Knight's movement is even goofier than Shovel's and that compounds the problem with it's level design.
That said I do like they reworked their magic system. Having it recharge over pickups is fantastic. It means you don't have to just rely on the overpowered abilities and can experiment more. I also like the weapon combination mechanic. I always love stuff like that.
I should say that the music, art, and particularly the animation and writing in the DLC has been fantastic. Still I don't think I will play much, if any, more of this.
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Played: Sept 22nd. Afternoon. Mixed.
I don't know why I decided to play more of this. The level design is just frustrating. But man that weapon combo stuff is cool.
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Lisa

Started: Sept 20th. Morning. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
I knew I'd like this game I just never really found the time. Decided to start today. I've been enjoying it so far.
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Played: Sept 20th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
Got a bit further. Got a party member killed. Fought a wild man. Found a new town. This game is pretty nifty. I the way it paces itself.
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Played: Sept 20th. Evening. Enjoyed.
I was really enjoying it until I got to the motorcycle part.
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Undertale

Started: Sept 22nd. Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
There's been a lot of buzz around this game and I've the early parts of it. I played up to Snowdin and that's as far as I've seen in videos. I like it. I've been not hurting anything, but I find myself dying on occasion. Also I find the "instantly show dialogue" button doesn't advanced the text and it's kind of annoying.
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Played: Sept 22nd. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Did the Papyrus "fight" and "date." This game is really charming.
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Played: Sept 24th. Evening. Enjoyed.
Just played a bit through the swamps. I didn't talk to the echo flower before the mouse hole by the save point. I feel like I missed a silly joke or something cool.
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Played: Sept 27th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Got up to The Quiet Place. Didn't play for that long. Fought a really hard battle against a dummy that was mad because I ran away from the dummy at the start of the game. That's pretty clever.
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Played: Sept 27th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Beat Udene (sp?). That was a cool battle. It took me a while to realize I needed to run away. There needs to be more cute dogs in this game.
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Played: Sept 27th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Started the lava area with the Octacon-like scientist gal. It's doing nifty things.
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Played: Sept 28th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Got up to the Spider lady. She's real tough. I love the robot guy though. This game is really charming.
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Played: Oct 4th. Midnight. Enjoyed.
Up to the final boss. I really like all the bits with the robot guy. But Undyne is my favorite. I went back to her house and that whole bit was fantastic. I tried the fight with the final boss, but ran out of healing items. It was real tough! I think I'm going to go back to see if I can find other things though.
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Played: Oct 4th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
I went back and found the hidden village and bought a whole lot of bisicles. Then attempted to fight Asgore. I was able to beat him and showed mercy. However in the cutscene afterwords the game appeared to crash. If that was intended then I think it falls flat. A quick search hints it's probably not meant to happen and there should have been another boss battle after that one.
Then I restarted the game... Oh. I see.
Apparently I still had some things I could do so I went on another date.... That was super cute. Now I'm in a spooooky abandoned lab. Honestly I was not expecting there to be so much left to this game.
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Finished: Oct 4th. Early Evening. Enjoyed.
So I went for the True Pacifist ending and I felt it really dragged on for a little too long, but it was good if a little heavy handed. It took me too long to realize I could get healing items from the one form of the final boss. I don't think I'll be playing it again to get any other endings. At least not without deleting all my save data or something. Though apparently there is a dog related ending....
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Indivisible

Played: Oct 06th. Evening. PC Stand Alone. Neutral.
Started the prototype and go to the boss. Found the battle system really tricky. Maybe the prototype doesn't explain it well enough or just throws you into tougher enemies too early. I found it really hard to heal your characters. OR at least when you can act. It seems like while it is not explicitly turn based, there does seem to explicit times when the players can go and when enemies can go. Using magic is a bit strange. But this game has a lot of potential. I like the music. I hope there's more consistency between the environmental art and character art.
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Downwell

Played: Oct 17th. Late Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
Decided to pick this up. It's a lot of fun. It's very similar to an idea I had for a game but could never really figure how to get things right. This game figured it out.
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Played: Oct 17th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
Unlocked the Levitate style and it seems pretty cool. I also can only seem to play well in the Pastel colors.
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Played: Oct 18th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
I love that there is a lot of nuance to the scoring system. I discovered how to get long combos and how time bubbles don't break them. Oh. It's really clever.
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Played: Oct 18th. Early Morning. Enjoyed.
Just played a bit more. Didn't get much further than I did previously.
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Played: Oct 18th. Late Evening. Neutral.
Just played a some more but couldn't really get into it.
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Played: Oct 25th. Early Evening. Neutral.
Just couldn't get into it. Played one game. I don't know. It just wasn't grabbing me anymore.
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Shoppe Keep

Played: Oct 19th. Midnight. PC Steam Neutral.
This game seems kind of cool but it's not there yet. There's a bit too much micromanagement and the building is really awkward. I think what I would want from a game like this is not a first person thing and more of a top down simulator styled game. Like Sim City, but for item shops. Still it's early in development so who knows where it'll go.
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Antichamber

Played: Oct 23rd. Late Evening. PC Steam. Neutral.
Showed this to the gal I'm currently seeing. She thought it was interesting but was getting a bit motion sick unfortunately.
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Long Live the Queen

Played: Oct 31st. Afternoon. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
Showed to the gal I'm seeing. She really enjoyed it. We died at the chocolate, but were able to stop a civil war. She was disappointed that we didn't kill more people plotting against us.
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Banished

Played: Oct 31st. Afternoon. PC Steam. Neutral.
Forgot how to play this game and didn't want to go through the tutorial.
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FTL: Faster Than Light

Played: Oct 31st. Afternoon. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
Played some with the gal I'm seeing. We did not get very far. haha
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Roundabout

Played: Nov. 27th. Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
Played with my girl friend a bit just to show it off.
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The Banner Saga

Started: Nov. 27th. Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
Played with my girl friend a bit. We didn't get too far. Hopefully we'll play more of this.
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Lyne

Played: Dec. 5th. Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
Played with my girl friend a bit. She thought it was interesting. Unfortunately I no longer had my save so I couldn't show her how hard it gets.
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Played: Dec. 5th. Evening. PC Steam. Enjoyed.
Decided to play more of this since I remember really liking it and its still really good. Completed up to C.
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Just Cause 3

Played: Dec. 5th. Late Evening. PC Steam. Neutral.
This game could barely run on my computer. It's pretty mid tier, but even after turning down all the settings I couldn't get it to run well at all. Very unfortunate. This is the first game on steam that I refunded. Eventually I'll pick it up again though.
From what I did play it seems like the keyboard and mouse controls are garbage and it's menus aren't really very keyboard and mouse friendly. Ah well...
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Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Started: Dec. 26th. Late Evening. PC Emulator. Neutral.
A friend of mine has been playing this game and it inspired me to play a little bit of it. It feels pretty sluggish but maybe that's the emulator. I still like dashing in this game though. That makes the combat feel a bit more interesting than it usually is. The Hearts/MP system seems like it works well enough too. I suspect the leveling system is completely useless and unnecessary like in other Castlevanias. I don't remember what the whip equipment is but I suppose I'll find out.
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Played: Dec 26th. Late Evening. Enjoyed.
I enjoyed it enough to keep playing despite having some issues with it. Mainly, stuff like leveling up seems completely arbitrary and unnecessary. Especially when there are max health and heart pick ups. The fact that you can't use your dashes to cancel other animations seems like an over sight. The combat would flow much better if you could. That said I've liked the general level flow so far. It has enough goodies that are either just out of reach or at the end of a deadend that it makes the otherwise linear/circle level design feel nice. It rewards exploration while still directing a player to somewhere. And the path way doubles back on itself enough times for you to say "oh now that I have X ability I can get through Y room." so that's nice. I don't know if I'll stick with it, but it's not been terrible.
OH! and so far it hasn't had too much of the "long featureless hallway with just strong enemies in it" too much. There are spots, but so far I've been able to avoid enemies by jumping over them or exploiting their AI to get around them. I suspect this will not last though.
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