Sorry for barging in through the door like a Jehovah's Witness, but if you like these kinds of games you must try The Drifter. I finished it yesterday and it's the best point-and-click I've ever played, may well have ruined the genre for me. It's an adventure game that actually doesn't use moon logic. A couple puzzles were a bit convoluted, but even those I felt like actually were based on some logic and made sense.
Plus it's a great pulp story with phenomenal voice acting. Can't recommend it enough. Well anyway, sorry for the interruption, I'll move on to the next house. Thanks for your time.
It's an inherent problem with having both users and communities on the same instances, and just how humans tend to operate in general in that we automatically gravitate to others and clump together.
I think it was @rglullis@communick.news who was saying that in an ideal world there would be two types of instances, one for users and one that only served as hosting space for communities. That way you could block or defederate user groups without losing access to entire communities.
Of course, we're way past the point where reorganization into a structure like that is feasible. But it's interesting to think about.
I'm at the last bit of The Drifter, which I've been enjoying immensely. In the latter half some of the puzzles did start get a little convoluted (though maybe I'm just stupid) but overall it's been an incredible pulp thriller ride underpinned by mostly logical puzzles. Beautiful art, sharp writing and excellent voice acting. The story is a fun ride too.
I've also been playing some Wanted: Dead. It's an interesting mess of a game. I already ranted about it over in the PatientGamers community weekly thread. In a different universe this could have been a cult classic. The combat is still decent enough even with all the flaws.
Do we really need more Baldur's Gates? The story was finished in Throne of Bhaal, then Larian dug the corpse up and put a mindflayer brainworm in it, and now it's finished again. Just tap into the oodles of other Dungeons and Dragons settings for the next game. Why not adapt the Dragonlance novels into games? Or call it something else if you stay in Forgotten Realms, let this franchise rest.
Ah, I'm sorry I'm just shouting at clouds. Who wants a new IP when you can cash in on a successful established brand and squeeze some wallets until they bleed. That's my bad, I forgot myself and the current state of things for a second. And I mean, it already worked for BG3 so fuck it, run it back I guess.
I already own it, still haven't finished it though. If you love parrying and Soulslike Metroidvanias and don't hate backtracking and platforming this is for you. Really cool graphics and art direction, too. World building is interesting. It's a good game. Maybe one day I'll finish it.
Ocean Air sounds really interesting from looking into it. Does it gain any funky flavours from the process? I'm not opposed to that, I even enjoy Sumatra Mandheling a lot even though some really don't. Hell, the aged Mandheling I had once is one of my favourites - tasted like leather, pipe tobacco, black pepper and damp jungle earth. I loved it but, probably not everyone's cup hah.
Yeah, I have noticed that too. I don't think DS2 is a terrible game, despite itself. But it does amaze me that you're more likely to get an essay about how ADP or the level design is actually good instead of a more balanced take that appreciates the good and acknowledges the flaws. Though to be honest, fans like that exist everywhere and in all sorts of fandoms. Ninja Gaiden 2 faces the same problem. It's a beautiful mess of a game, but its diehard fans just can't admit that parts of it are unfinished, untested and unbalanced. You can still love the game for its amazing highs even as you acknowledge that some parts are absolute toss.
And the claim about surrealism would be stronger if it would be included in other parts besides only the stitched togetherness of non fitting maps. Inside the maps they are all coherent, which weakens that argument a lot.
Well, yes. That's the thing. Tanimura basically had to salvage the project halfway through after its very troubled development, and said himself he would have preferred to start over from scratch but didn't have the time. So yes, it was quite literally stitched together.
I haven't looked at them all but most of the large brand coffee is robusta, it's actually pretty rare to find 100% arabica like Oro. A quality robusta can be okay, especially for a latte or something (although I rarely ever drink that, only cold brew latte over ice in the summer). But they can get kind of samey and bland, even when they're not suffering from being overly bitter or having unpleasant undertones.
What's your current specialty coffee? Hatch looks like a great place, I guess I'll keep it in mind if I'm ever in Ontario. I'll probably make my next order from a Swedish micro roaster called Tadah. They have a great rotating selection so you can usually pick up something oddball there, like aged Mandheling, funky fermented coffees or Indian monsoon coffee. They even sell pure Jamaican Blue Mountain from time to time.
Lavazza Qualita Oro is pretty solid for just non single origin regular brand coffee. I drink it quite often, I can't really afford to make every cup fancy specialty coffee.
A beloved element of Dark Souls is that the map all fits together perfectly. If you see something in the distance, it is very likely there in some capacity. The Dark Souls map is a marvel, a maze of circuitous and beautiful shortcuts. (...)
Dark Souls II does not do this. If looked at in a strictly top-down, literal way, the world fits together in bizarre and nonsensical ways with many areas overlapping. I will admit that this complaint is not entirely meritless.
(...)
But people have taken this quirk of the game as some unforgivable betrayal, and I’m sorry but that’s the most pedantic, CinemaSins ass complaint I have ever heard in my life. For starters, video games are creative artifice and often employ tricks and illusions to achieve that impact. (...)
Dark Souls II is a game about not having firm ground under you, even if you assume you know better. It is a game about questioning your world down to the very geometry. This may not have been the reason for why the creators decided upon their locations, but it does function narratively.
"This is true and a valid argument, but I will dismiss it out of hand with an insult because while high on copium I created an interpretation where Tanimura is actually a surrealist genius and everything is a masterplan, despite admitting to being aware of the common knowledge that there was no such deliberate intent behind the world design".
We get it, you love DS2. But I wish you'd focus more on highlighting the great parts instead of trying to justify even the stuff that gets fairly criticised.
I always did associate that quote with David Foster Wallace, but I guess the statement and insight is obvious enough that it makes sense that a lot of clever people have expressed it over the years.
Sorry for barging in through the door like a Jehovah's Witness, but if you like these kinds of games you must try The Drifter. I finished it yesterday and it's the best point-and-click I've ever played, may well have ruined the genre for me. It's an adventure game that actually doesn't use moon logic. A couple puzzles were a bit convoluted, but even those I felt like actually were based on some logic and made sense.
Plus it's a great pulp story with phenomenal voice acting. Can't recommend it enough. Well anyway, sorry for the interruption, I'll move on to the next house. Thanks for your time.