AernaLingus [any]

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: May 6th, 2022

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  • Sidenote complain about the world: Sandbox games combined with my autistic obsessive compulsive need for completionism lead to me playing them with very frusterating habits lmao.

    I feel this so hard. I really enjoyed Subnautica, but I think I spent more than half of my playtime farming a giant locker full of every single material because I thought I might need them later, but it turns out that you barely need anything to complete the game and there isn’t an endgame to speak of. Whoops. It could have been justified if I were into basebuilding, I guess, but that’s not my thing.

    Another issue I run into is overoptimization–just figuring out the cheese strat or collecting so much that the game becomes trivial. I think that’s why I enjoy Resident Evil so much, since survival horror games are designed for you to be a compulsive loot goblin and therefore don’t fall apart even when you collect every last bit of ammo.

    Speaking of Resident Evil: with Resident Evil: Village, I didn’t get true 100% because I don’t like the arcade submode The Mercenaries, but I had tons of fun doing a bunch of NG+ runs to max out all the weapons and get all the unlockable collectibles through the main campaign. I find the process of fighting through the first run with the intense experience of not knowing anything and then continuously getting more experienced and more powerful until you’re sprinting through and headshotting enemies with your infinite ammo revolver on the highest difficulty by run six.

    Others have mentioned SM64 and Super Mario Galaxy, and I’d also add Super Mario Wonder. The final secret level (unlocked after you complete everything else in the game) is a bit frustrating due to the sparse checkpoints, and there’s one or two treasure hunt levels where I had to look up a location or two, but I appreciate that otherwise I could 100% the game just using my platform skill and natural loot goblin instincts. I did my whole run through on Ryujinx and it ran perfectly, too!

    One that I wouldn’t recommend for this is Control, even though I enjoyed the game and it’s got a very cool atmosphere. They have this very unfortunate system where they offer four randomly generated generic missions (Kill X of Y enemy [in Z location] or get X kills with Y weapon/ability) and each mission awards a random selection from a tier and an equippable skill/weapon enhancement. You can see both the exact mission as well as the tier and category of reward before accepting a mission (of which you can have three active) and there’s no penalty for dropping a mission. This led me to sitting at the assignment board endlessly regenerating missions until I would get a full loadout of missions with the highest tier rewards and reasonably achievable objectives, after which I’d go do those missions, rinse, and repeat. I would not be surprised if I spent twice as much time doing this than actually playing the game normally, and I sank a good 60+ hours into the game. Oh, the worst part is that the rewards aren’t unique and there’s unspecified variability within tiers (so a tier VI shotgun enhancement could be like +35% damage, but then you get a +36% damage enhancement and are like, “wait, how high does it go?”). And also, you can only see the broadest category type, so the odds are high that you’ll get an enhancement that you don’t even want. It’s funny–I suspect the devs made the system flexible to avoid forcing people to do missions they don’t want to, but it created a perfect trap for people like me.


  • All I’ll say is that RE6 is definitely a game for one who’s already neck deep in the series as opposed to a relative newcomer who would get a better first impression with RE5 if they’re looking for raw action.

    I’m 100% with you–I would never want RE6 to be anyone’s introduction to the series. My personal progression was RE4→RE5→RE6→RE8→RE7→RE2R→RE3R→(you are now here), so just release order starting with RE4 except RE7 and RE8 were transposed. Oh, and I also played the Oculus Quest 2 exclusive RE4VR, which is definitely not tuned difficulty-wise for the huge increase in mobility and precision afforded by VR but is an absolute blast (nothing quite like knifing a downed Ganado with one hand while fending off a horde with the pistol in your other hand). It’s also really cool to be able to just walk around the areas you know from RE4–I mean, it’s no Half-Life: Alyx, but even with the relatively primitive graphics of the RE4HD you still get a pretty great sense of presence. Really wish I had a PS5 and PSVR2 so I could experience RE8 and RE4R in VR, but I can’t really justify the eye-watering cost for just those two games. Maybe we’ll get it on PCVR when the PS6 rolls around…

    Funny thing is that I actually prefer RE8 to 4 (though I played it first). I would consider close to perfect if it were a good bit longer and didn’t kill off the entire villager cast in the first 30 minutes.

    RE8 is some of the most fun I’ve ever had with a game, and I could hardly put it down until I’d gotten all the achievements. I don’t think it’s the kind of game you can really obsess over in the same way you can with RE4, but it executes on it’s premise incredibly well. The only word of caution I’d have to anyone playing it for the first time is that there’s a long scripted encounter near the beginning of the game that (unless they’ve since fixed it) is absolutely brutal if you start out on Hardcore because it’s not clear what the game wants you to do and there are some invisible triggers you need to hit in order to progress. I think it took me an hour on my first attempt, and I know I wasn’t alone there. With that notable exception, the game plays like a dream.

    As for RE3R, I know a lot of people who played the original were disappointed due to cut content and Nemesis not being a true pursuer (apparently he was more like what Mr. X is in RE2R?). I didn’t have that frame of reference, but I definitely preferred Mr. X as a constant presence in RE2R and I like the extensive backtracking present in RE2R compared to the linearity of RE3R. More of a case of really loving RE2R than not enjoying RE3R.

    My petty complaint about RE2R and RE3R that could be easily addressed is not having infinite ammo unlocks for ALL weapons like RE5/6/8. Personally, I don’t find the Infinite Rocket Launcher that fun, the weak unlimited handgun/automatic rifles are pretty lame (I just used the unlockable but limited Samurai Edge in RE2R and ignored the rifle), and while the RAI-DEN in RE3R at least offers a different playstyle, what I really want is to rampage through the game with unlimited ammo for my fully upgraded normal weapons. I’d even accept what you get in RE4, where the unlocks are different (but not completely absurd) weapons with unlimited options: the Handcannon and the Chicago Typewriter. I just want to blow away every single zombie with a magnum–is that so much to ask?

    Also I have really got to check those CGI movies out–from what I’ve heard, they seem like they’d be right up my alley.




  • I’d recommend the line-up on sale right now on Steam except the one that came after RE5 and before RE7

    As the resident RE6 apologist, I firmly believe that it is easily worth $5 for a somewhat janky and extremely campy action co-op experience if you have a buddy to play it with. And yeah, there’s no “survival” aspect–this is definitely the game where they turned the dial too far to the “action” side, after which they swung towards “survival” back past RE4 for RE7 (excellent if that’s to your taste–incredible atmosphere), and finally landed back in the crowd-pleasing sweet spot for RE8 (which I absolutely adore and beat like half a dozen times).

    RE2R and OG RE4 I could easily recommend to anyone; perhaps not the latter if you’re completely allergic to tank controls, but the game is tuned for that playstyle and it makes the encounters very intense. I also enjoyed RE3R, although it’s not quite as good as RE2R and a bit on the short side. And I hear RE4R is great, but I haven’t yet played it myself–would definitely recommend giving the OG a shot first, since the new REngine games have a different tempo and feel to them and the original holds up completely. I’d also recommend installing the RE4 HD texture mod if anyone goes for OG RE4–truly an incredible labor of love by a pair of dedicated fans.




  • “Stupid fucking mistakes, man.”

    “Nothing illegal happened, no pictures were shared, no crimes were committed, I never even met the individual,” Beahm claimed. “I went through a lengthy arbitration regarding a civil dispute with Twitch and that case was resolved by a settlement…But trust me when I say this…to all my haters that live and breath [sic] social media with zero real life experience, I don’t give a fuck about you. They want me to disappear… yeah fucking right.”

    The words of someone who is definitely contrite.

    Also,

    Meanwhile, the cause for the ban remained a mystery, prompting years of innuendo, conspiracy theories and questions about why neither Twitch nor gaming journalists had been able to reveal the nature of Beahm’s violation. (Full disclosure: the primary author of this article, Rod Breslau, first learned the reason for Beahm’s ban from credible sources in June 2020, but chose not to report on it then due to the extreme sensitivity of the topic.)

    holy shit, Slasher finally vindicated after all these years. That tweet became a major meme on Twitch, with some people assuming that Dr. Disrespect did something truly horrible (ding ding ding!) but plenty of others assuming he was full of shit and just grandstanding.




  • VTuber posting

    Don’t really have detailed thoughts about the final two Hololive Justice debuts (Raora and Cecilia), but this is the first time I’ve been blindsided by hearing a VTuber I recognized from a previous life! I know internet detectives will often figure out stuff before they debut (I don’t really follow those rumors), and the ex-corpos are usually known well in advance when they return to indie, but I was surprised to hear the voice of a certain pesto-loving dog during Raora’s debut. Always nice to see some non-Anglo representation!



  • VTuber posting

    Looks like Hololive EN finally has a Bri’ish chuuba! She’s got a lovely voice, although she didn’t do herself any favors by picking a song (Daddy Daddy Do) that’s clearly not well-suited for her tessitura so she had to resort to both shouty high notes and unsupported low notes–the song she sang in her lore video showcased her voice much better (was really excited to hear some scatting!) as did Sekai no Yakusoku. I also can’t quite place it, not having a lot of formal vocal training myself, but I think she’s forcing things a bit in general–you hear it particularly in her vibrato, and I wonder if she’s doing that thing where you imitate a voice you like rather than using your natural voice (common untrained singer error which leads to a superficially better sound in the short run but can hamstring you in the long run). She’s clearly got a great instrument though, so I look forward to hearing her forthcoming music and seeing how she improves! Hope Nerissa will take Liz under her wing.

    Ngl was kinda zoning out midway through Gigi’s debut (I’m just a bit tired), but her lore video was sick and I loved the choose your own adventure part which culminated in a Twitch Plays Pokemon style interactive Frogger game–never seen anything like that in a debut! Her cover also had some really impressive animation–again, nice to see something different from the usual VTuber cover video direction.


  • Many of us spend hours researching scouring the internet to learn to dig deeper and ultimately enjoy more of what the game has to offer. This is where Project G-Assist comes in. It uses AI to make sure information is readily available whenever we need it.

    How is this possibly going to supplant hours of research? It’s basically the equivalent of hitting the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google that takes you to the first result and never looking at anything else, except now since it’s AI-generated you can’t even judge the accuracy based on the source. Oftentimes there aren’t objectively true answers to questions, so it’s necessary to read different perspectives to make a decision. And also, I actually LIKE interacting with fellow human beings to find out about games–it’s not a bug, it’s a feature!