I wouldn’t say if only it was good, but I would say if only it was better. They’ve got a solid core, but they really need to build. But you are right, it’s definitely not there yet, and they’ve got some work to do.
Has anyone tried Island of Nyne? Is the game broken af or is it just me? I can’t even shoot sometimes when I face a player.
Also, the recent update is not completing on steam. It says “broken manifest” 
Any clue someone?
Honestly, never even heard of it. It’s got an interesting style, but not enough so that I’d actually buy it.
Tried out Hearthstone for the first time recently. Scratches that CCG itch without all of the associated bullshit that is getting into Magic. Honestly, it just makes me wish I could play Codex more.
What’s going on with MTG now? I was kinda slightly interested because “oh hey new base game” or whatever.
Also, I’m not a fan of tournament splits in general, but if they’re going to happen somehow they need to be managed… https://twitter.com/TheTiuTangClan/status/1024342382618267648?s=19
The most recent set release is Magic Core Set 2019, which features mostly pretty basic cards but also a number of cards supporting other themes and mechanics from other sets, rather than being built around its own coherent theme. Core sets used to exist before but WotC put them on hold when they decided to rework their release schedule and have two blocks of two sets with a continuous narrative per year. However they have since reworked this again due to other concerns. The return of the Core set also gives WotC a good tool to seed their tournament scene with some additional cards for certain themes as well as some “safety valve” cards should a theme or mechanic become too strong, without those cards having to strictly conform with the themes of other sets.
This weekend is Pro Tour 25th Anniversary, which is the highest level of tournament play and requires players to qualify. This PT is noticeable because rather than individual competition it features “team trios” where three players compete as a team. One of those team members is playing a Standard constructed deck for the entire tournament (cards from the last 2 years), another Modern (cards released since 2003) and the third Legacy (cards since the beginning of the game). The entire three-day affair will be streamed on twitch, of course.
There are also new Commander preconstructed decks about to come out. Commander is the most popular non-tournament format and revolves around specific legendary creature or planeswalker cards that you always have access to and there are certain deckbuilding restrictions, most notably that the deck is 100 cards and except for basic lands you can’t have multiple copies of any one card. The Commander precon decks are a great entry point to that, they feature new cards (aren’t legal in Standard or Modern, but are legal in Legacy), and usually the value of the cards in those decks exceed what you pay for the precon.
As for that douchebag not paying the price split, this is the first time I’ve heard of this kind of behavior and he is being roundly condemned by the entirety of the community. Apparently the guy in question is quite notorious for being a douchebag in his local scene. I don’t have an issue with price splits, but yeah, it would be better if this was directly handled with the tournament organizers.
La Mulana 2 is amazing. Even if you were turned off by the first one, this one improves it in so many ways. Less cryptic bullshit, more common sense puzzles and every trap is telegraphed. I recommend this is you enjoy puzzle platforms.
That’s good to know, I acquired La Mulana 1 in a bundle at some point and tried to play it today and was like “WTF is this cryptic BS” ;-p
Yeah it doesn’t hold your hand at all but all the answers are available in game, or so they tell me.
La-Mulana 2 had handful of bullshit insta-kill traps, some even annoyingly after minibosses. I was able to shrug them away and just go “oh, La-Mulana, you trickster,” but I can feel they’d be frustrating to some.
Also while overall I think the puzzles never were as bad as the worst in first, some puzzles were bit much. I’m also ignoring an actual translation error here that made easy puzzle into exploration in frustration.
I hit my target in my first attempt at setting a speedruunning record. The goal: complete/get to level 61 of Alto’s Odyssey in under 10 hours. And I cracked it! I got it in 9 hours, 52 minutes and 22 seconds.
Frustratingly, another two times seemed on track for a record, only for me to fail continuously at the challenges in level 59. 13 hours 19 minutes? Took about 5 hours to get from level 59 to 61. 12 hours 34 minutes? Over three hours just on level 59. So frustrating.
But with real practice at catching three care packages out of the air in one wingsuit flight, I got past level 59 super quickly this time. Only took about 20 minutes, and is now mostly down to randomness, not lack of technique or skill.
My other strategy worked too: don’t play when super tired. It’s a great game to play when listening to audiobooks in bed, but that means not paying much attention, and making silly mistakes that can lead to wasting 30 minute level attempts. Cutting out tired play cut out many silly mistakes.
Now I’m not sure if I want to break my sub 10 hour record. Maybe only if I find a website to enter the record and then see if anyone can/wants to beat it.
?
Though if you’re a hair under 10 hours it looks like you’re not playing the same game.
Those are records to reach a certain distance or a certain number of points. Not really what I’m looking for. I guess I could sign up and submit a new record category.
So about 5-6 years too late, I finally stepped into Diablo 3.
Oh no.
You didn’t wait to pick it up on the Switch?
I already owned it on PS4 from a sale years ago. One of those “forgot I had that” things.
Diablo 3 is great on the PS4. I actually prefer it on console to PC because I think moving with the analog sticks, as opposed to using a mouse, is better.
All I want from Diablo with a gamepad is to be able to attack by using the right stick like Robotron or SmashTV. Does it let you do that, or do you have to mash a button to attack repeatedly?
I played a bunch of Hollow Knight since it was on a big sale.
As far as Metroidvanias go, it’s better than most of the indie ones out there. I’ll say that it is definitely very good, but it falls short of being excellent or fantastic.
There are a lot of positives. The art and theme is way cool. I especially like the giant bug guy who is basically a subway. Lots of cool animations on things in general. Also they seem to have managed to find a balance between making a game dark and underground without everything being some shade of gray or brown. Lots of colorful things even though it still feels dark all the time.
The way health works is also a very elegant abstraction that is mechanically identical to Metroid, but a lot more elegant and interesting. You get 5 health, so you can get hit 5 times, then you die. Want to refill health? Well you can hold down B and not move, hopefully when standing in a safe place, to refill up to three health. But in order to fill up to 3, you need this soul energy. You get the energy whenever you kill bad guys. So basically if you are low on health, kill some bad guys and then get to a safe place and hold a button down. You can also risk healing in a boss fight and such!
In Metroid if you are low on health you also go and farm enemies. The difference is that the enemies drop health randomly, this makes healing time consuming and repetitive. Also, Metroid provides enemy generators, so there is little risk of actually dying while you refill. You just have to run from danger and reach the safe place with the enemy generator. In Hollow Knight you have to actually fight the same real bad guys you fight all the time, just more carefully, in order to heal.
Other good things are that there are lots of interesting places and enemies that behave differently. Definitely don’t feel like I"m fighting the same things or going over the same territory over and over again. I really like the bad guys that float in the water and then you continuously down-stab them over and over to make it to the other side. Very Zelda 2-like using a down-stab to get a bounce.
The part of Hollow Knight that I think needs a little more polish are the enemy behaviors and design of individual rooms, especially vertical ones.
Most of the enemies are difficult and challenging, which is good. Lots of these games have the problem of filling the game with useless enemies that are just cannon fodder. What is bad is that some of the enemies, behave in ways that are not hard in the fair Super Meat Boy way, but hard in the unfair Kaizo block way.
Take for example the hollow woman with the spear. I fought her for the first time in a jungley place. In that fight she had a few different attacks. I learned them all, how to dodge each one, and when I could get my hits in safely. The problem is that the boss did nothing (that I could see) to telegraph which move they were about to use. She yelled out an audio cue before each attack, but the audio was random! There were also two moves that starts with the same animation, but had to be dodged differently. I often guessed wrong and got hit. The result was that it took me several more tries to beat this boss than I thought was necessary.
There are many enemies and rooms with similar problems, but boss and non-boss. They don’t telegraph what they are about to do. They attack suddenly. You better have a crazy fast reaction time because nothing else will save you. There is no safe place to stand and think about it. You are thrown into the fire, deal with it.
The other problem is with the design of rooms, especially vertical ones. I find myself constantly using the stick to scroll the screen downwards to see what is below me. Very frequently it doesn’t scroll far enough, and I have to jump into an abyss and hope for the best. In Metroid, notice how Samus falls kinda slowly so you can guide her to a platform? Perhaps that is also the low gravity of planet Zebes. EIther way, Hollow Knight falls too fast, especially for situations when I’m going down into the unknown. What makes it even worse are the hazards, especially the deadly water which is much too punishing for something I didn’t have much chance against. They also often design the vertical rooms to not have the staggered platforms, so unintentionally falling annoying long distances is a frequent occurrence
If you want to play a challenging Metroidvania game, I say go for it. Just expect to get something that is polished until smooth, but not polished until shiny.
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