elmuerte

Just finished Stranger Things. It's so damn good. As a big fan of how scifi and horror movies were made in the 80s this really plays into my zone. Also the overall non-rushed presentation which appears to be a preferred way to show things these days is really welcome. The series is like a whole bunch of 80s horror and scifi plot elements rolled in 8 episodes. It's probably the best TV series of this year.

Finished Rise of the Tomb Raider Like the previous game this is a bit like a mediocre Uncharted. The game simply doesn't feel like a continuous adventure. The hub areas are interesting, but not in a story like this. Doing the side things feels like you are taking a break from a thing which is really pressed for time. I don't recall the previous Tomb Raider enough, but I think that game didn't have a story which presented everything as time critical. The spelunking part can really use some polish. Pretty much every time I died it was because Lara lost sense of direction and tried to grab onto something a few pixels to the side she should have tried to grab. The stealth part is also a bit flawed, when you break complete stealth the enemies knows exactly where you are even though they didn't actually see you yet. I just screwed up and made them aware I was around, but the AI knew where I was coming from. I guess my bow makes too much noise. Anyway, despite all that it's still fun running around murdering a shit load of people while violating resting places.

how many more posts do we need?

I don't like the fact that you cannot stop playing when on a mission as the whole world resets instantly.

LYNE is a real puzzle game like Hexcells, but I found it to become tedious quite fast. Mini Metro isn't much of a puzzle game, it's more of a survival game A battle against time to create working routes. It's a lot of fun. Did not play Hook.

I just finished it (on PC) . Apparently it only took me 3 hours to play through it, but it felt so much longer. It is probably due to the intensive journey. I played it via Steam link on my big TV in a quite darkened room during two quite sunny/summery days. Opening the curtains after playing the game felt like a whole day passed. Inside's world is quite less dangerous than Limbo's, but it is way less friendly. The last part was quite a thing... I'm not sure what to make off it. I need to go back to find the remaining hidden things.

I'm considering going to the cinema for the new Independence Day, but so far I haven't heard great thing about it. Given the rather hefty pricetag attached to movies (3D and Atmos additional fees) I'm wondering if it's worth it.

My first modding experience was editing gwbasic games on a 8086. And later creating tools to edit games. It wasn't until I went to the university (received a proper internet connection) and when UT came out that I really got involved modding. The good old modding scene, when people tried to create cool stuff just because, not because of money or fame.

Doom (2016) Finished it this afternoon. A really great FPS like they used to be. Although they did add some new things like challenges and upgrades, but non of that health regeneration and cover stuff. Doom 3 was a piece of shit. This one was everything besides that. Pretty much every enemy is more bad ass than the original. The Baron of Hell is probably the most brutal one of them all. The various challenges they added were often the reason why I died, instead of just killing enemies the most efficient way I tried to do it the special way. I played it on normal, and that was just about right. So the challenges and (especially) the collectables were kind of distracting, but fun anyway. I can't really think of a bad thing. But if I had to name one it would probably be the boss battles. They sort of lacked imagination as they played out against a special foe in a plain, flat arena. Killing them was just dodging their attacks while shooting at them. They could have made that more special. Story wise it was also quite ok,

Dreamfall Chapters Just finished the last "book". It was even worse than the parts before it. It was even more of just shitting in you chair looking at non-interactive cinematics. There were't even choices which could influence anything. It was just wrapping up the story (and in some cases even quick and dirty). I really loved the longest journey. I quite disliked the way they went with Dreamfall. But this... this was quite terrible. A lot of tedious walking around in stale environments, having boring dialogues which were pretty much always too long. And puzzles... they were mostly just clicking around until you find the right interaction elements. No, this whole game was a serious disappointment. I almost fell asleep a couple of times while "playing" it. Funny (or maybe odd) thing.

I seriously lost it when Chris announced this sly(boots) caper.

Absolute Drift It's a small game about driving a tiny car. Completing the game isn't really difficult, it's just a matter of spending enough time in the open world. The tasks you have to complete are quite easy. You don't have to get a certain score at the various tracks, in fact the tracks are optional (and you can play them from the main menu anyway). Had to tweak the steering setting a bit to get more control over the car. So the open world is short, and not much to do. And the tracks are somewhat few and the goal is just to compete with online leaderboards. It was fun to play anyway. I got it as part of a humble bundle. I wouldn't buy it at the full price of 12 euros, there's just too little entertainment for that.

Is that the official trailer?! It has comic sans!!!

When did a joystick and just one button become not enough?

Human Resource Machine It's one of those games where you have to write small programs using a reduced assembly language. The problems aren't really that difficult (if you're a programmer) and most challenges I also managed to complete on the first try. Every puzzle has a size and speed challenge. Sometimes there isn't a single solution for both, in this case it's usually unrolling your logic. So it can be quite complicated if you're not a programmer. It's all ok to play, except that entering the program is really annoying when you have large programs. For one challenge my solution was over 100 statements, given that you only see like 15 statements on the screen this is really cumbersome. The 100+ statement solution I worked out in notepad because it was easier to handle, only made a few mistakes copying it over to the game :/

When you complete Uncharted 4 you can unlock some special render modes. One of these render modes is "Thief View" which displays friends and enemies in different colors (blue vs red).

Well... I finished this stupid game As expected I was presented with unwanted gameplay near the end. It wasn't as bad as with the previous games. Most encounters I did in stealth, often even without being detected. Near the end there were simply a lot of forced violent encounters which in some cases I failed often, sometimes even due to shitty companions who wouldn't help me out and shoot the guy behind me. The other thing which caused a lot of deaths was jumping in a direction where I clearly wasn't meant to jump to. Other than that the game is just awesome. I makes me sad that I finished it as it's now over. No more uncharted from Naughty Dog :/ Given the quality Naughty Dog has delivered for this particular genre it will be really difficult for others to measure up. Sure, there's the Tomb Raider reboot. But other than that the genre feels dead now.

Played a shit load of Uncharted today. The driving towards the volcano didn't feel right. I had no feel where to go, and felt like I missed stuff. I like that a lot of battles can be done stealthy, or at least the outside battles. Just like with the previous games I often feel like I'm constantly running into walls because I have no idea where to go. But it is still so much fun. All the little details are so great. I think most people missed it, but in Scotland when you are going from the cemetery to the cave you can see a whale breaching in the ocean once in a while. All these little things makes the world of uncharted to nice to be in.

Do you have camera assist on or something?

why do the hands look so weird in this game?

Finished Evoland 2 The original one was quite bad, started of really interesting to show you how jRPGs evolved, but after a while it felt unfinished and wrapped up in a hurry. In Evoland 2 it looks like it wants to do the same, show the evolution of JRPGs, it starts out like that, but it stops doing that quite fast. It's like after developing the first 30 minutes of the game they decided they didn't want to go that way. Instead they created a jRPG which is set in 3 time frames, each time frame it shown as a console generation (i.e. 8bit, 16bit, 32bit) style graphics. But there's more, they tried to fit in pretty much every other style of game from the 8bit and 16bit era. There's some 2D platforming stuff, connect-three, turn based strategy, shoot-em-up (2 styles), beat-em-up, double dragon like brawler, card game, even some DDR. (all except for tower defense) It's all well constructed and looks nice. There are just a couple of really annoying elements. There is no quest log, so if you skipped too fast through the long and slow dialogues you often have no idea what to do. And yes, the dialogues are really slow, way too many "...", and of course the slow text presentation, and unskippable animations. The 3 time frames/worlds cannot be easily switched, instead you have to travel to a point to switch to a different time (followed by an unskippable animation) and return to the place where you previously were (in the wrong time). These things make the game really tedious as you are constantly traveling around to figure out where to go next. It made the game quite long for me, 21 hours to complete. Anyway, if you're into old style jRPGs and want to play a whole bunch of other game types, you might want to try this one out. (It's currently in the humble bundle at the $10 level.)

Germany is special. Games are often German only, this is especially the case for the more violent games.

Mad Max The world is quite a boring place to be in and you do pretty much the same thing over and over again. How is still different from Just Cause? Well, there traversing the world is interesting, and there is plenty opportunity to goof off. Mad Max is like Just Cause with just cars, no grappling hook, no parachute, pretty much only melee combat, and a dead brown world.

If I had to walk minutes between pieces in an art exhibit, and I could only observe them from a distance, I wouldn't like it either.

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture The game is really beautiful, also an interesting story, the sound is also great. But the game really puts in effort to make the experience suck. This walking simulator has quite a big game world, which is nice, except that you move really really really slow. The game isn't really linear, so you often have to back track to visit a part you missed. But this back tracking can easily consume a couple of minutes. So wandering through this world is quite tedious. And then there's the almost total lack of interactivity. Unlike in Gone Home or Firewatch, you cannot inspect anything. The only interactive thing to do are turning on/off a TV, opening some doors, turning on/off some lights. So basically this game is just walking from invisible story point to invisible story point. I apparently did not find all story elements, but I'm not going back to find the missing one.