Wait, I thought this game was a depiction of what we subject horses to, using a horror lens to drive home the point? I’ve never heard of something less sexy?

I used to be like you. Way back when, I would love to cheat currency into single player games with a little help from cheat engine. The biggest culprits were BTD5 and PvZ1/2, and it’d give me a kick just being able to go through and buy everything before using it all while feeling unstoppable

Since then, I’ve gone back and replayed the games without cheating, and I honestly regret using cheat engine. It felt way more rewarding getting everything at a more sustainable rate, like I really earned the item

You also talk about feeling like you earn the ability to cheat, but, looking back on my own experience, I can safely say that I was terrible at gauging whether or not I should use a hack. Turns out, when you have a shiny item in a shop that you could come back in a few hours for or get instantly now for free, more often than not we’ll choose the latter

It’s true that most of his romhacks are at the very least slightly harder than their original counterparts, but the one I’d still recommend is sacred gold/storm silver

My sense of difficulty is a bit skewed as I tend to mainly do hardcore nuzlockes, but I recently played through storm silver normally and it was a blast. The gym leaders needed a bit more thought when fighting as each of their pokemon were more powerful, but my ragtag group of 6 I ran with only ever failed once in the whole playthrough, and that was against the elite 4 (so somewhat expected)

Drayano made a series of rom hacks for pokemon that, to be frank, are better than the originals. Would highly recommend if you’re interested in adding a little spice to your next game

…would I be able to get in on the playtest?

I’d played through about half of it myself years ago, and again fully with a friend recently

For me, it’s borderlands 2

I thought the gameplay was pretty good, in a “turn your brain off and shoot guys with gradually increasing numbers” kind if way, and I absolutely adored whenever Handsome Jack showed up, but that’s pretty much it

I’ve heard from more than a few sources that the shooting on that game’s peak, but it’s just kind of generic. Outside of Jack, I thought the writing was honestly pretty lacklustre as well, even getting annoying in more than one instance (CATCH A RIIIIIDE FUCK OFF DIPSHIT). The cell-shaded artsyle is quite pretty, I will give it that

At its core, I think it’s just… fine.

I’m in this comment and I hate it

I think it’s really interesting to compare a game like elden ring to something else like BOTW

My first time playing through elden ring I had an amazing time, and thoroughly enjoyed the open world experience. I made sure to explore every crack in every wall, not necessarily for the rewards, but rather for the exploration itself because that exploration felt magnificent

However, I’ve now played through elden ring four times over the years, and I quickly realised I was only playing for the bosses, with the open world merely being a hindrance to my journey. This problem quickly compounds, as the first few hours of a save is usually you running around buck naked looking for your weapons, smithing stones, flasks, etc.

This is opposed to something like dark souls 3, where your journey to get the build you want usually means you can a 30 second detour from your main path.

Compare this with BOTW, which I’ve also played through a fair few times, and it’s easy to understand why these games are different. Unlike ER, I honestly thought of the bosses as more like hindrances to getting the powers, which would help me traverse the open world. To me, that traversal was the most enjoyable thing about the game

This might just be a tinfoil hat theory, but I think this is because of the difference in rewards between the two. Unlike ER, which most rewards being clearly defined and memorable, in BOTW the vast majority of rewards are either

a) spirit orbs from shrines

or

b) korok seeds

While the shrines themselves can be memorised, I’d say it’s practically impossible to remember the location of all these things, mainly because there’s no point - there are so many, you’ll run into your fair share anyway. There are exceptions of course, with weapons and shields and the like, but for the most part it holds true

Anyway, this went on way too long lol

Yeah, because it’s shit

Omg saaammeeeee

Ooooh, what distro did you go with?

Okay, but it’s a pet peeve of mine when a show shows me something about a character and then it’s immediately relevant. Feels a bit forced, I’d like at least a 20 minute break

This is less a “fuck you ubisoft” moment and more a “we need to appease the fans so they forget about the movement” moment

It’s hifi rush all over again ;_;

I’m about 10 hours into silksong and it’s amazing, don’t get me wrong. But the majority of the boss fights seem… cheap?

Like, their difficulty doesn’t come from their various attacks, or their environment. Instead, it usually comes from the fact that they do double damage, or the fact that they spam the same two attacks over and over way too quickly, or the fact that they can do the same add summon three times in a row and make what was a controllable situation practically impossible

Now, I’ve 112% the OG hollow knight and beaten true radiance, so I’m not against difficult boss fights. In fact I relish the feeling of learning their moves and patterns after every single death

But when the moves are “ram into wall. Then ram into wall again” it becomes incredibly annoying

I played maybe ~5 hours of shenmue 3 and thought the core gameplay loop actually seemed pretty fun

The problem arises from all the bullshit they strung along it

Like how you have a set amount of energy you can use each day (which I like) combined with how you can spend that energy to run. This results in you being heavily incentivised to walk around at a snail’s pace for most of the early game at the very least

The game had so many design choices like this that were just baffling

Hey hey people

https://invidious.reallyaweso.me/watch?v=o_PBfLbd3zw

Fix the bloody performance first ya dickwads