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Kevin Klemme
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Mycelia Board Game Review

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River Wild Board Game Review

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Outback Crossing Review

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What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

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07 Nov 2017 12:52 - 07 Nov 2017 13:08 #257198 by Gary Sax

jeb wrote: I am back at ZELDA:BotW now. Having a good time with the t h i c c Gerudo ladies. Some bird man sang me a song and I ate some tasty cactus fruit to ward off the sand lizard's lightning attack. See? that's what I want in my adventure games.


I finished like every quest in Witcher 3 so that's where I stand on that. It was my last big game obsession.

I have BotW but I never took to it. It's intentionally 0 hand holding so it felt extra aimless, lots of beating up Bokoblins which has no point. That said, I do like the way they do exploration (putting actual discovery into it) but it just hasn't caught me yet. It could still happen.
Last edit: 07 Nov 2017 13:08 by Gary Sax.

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07 Nov 2017 13:00 #257199 by jeb
I actually avoid beating stuff up unless I have to. Smacking dudes around levels them up and they come back tougher after each blood moon. I have been stuck on a rainy cliffside. I have knocked a boulder into myself. A different boulder came to life and punched me to death. I am currently cross-dressing and trying to steal a helmet from some sand ninjas. I think I need to talk to the Fat Bonsai Man to get more inventory slots for Bows. I got so tired climbing a tower I had to eat some mushroom kebabs before I could continue on. This game is incredibly weird and amazing.

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07 Nov 2017 14:09 #257207 by san il defanso
Breath of the Wild consumed me like no video game had since maybe the first Mario Galaxy. It's probably my favorite Nintendo game since either of those titles, though I'm not sure it'll work on replay nearly as well.

I think my only real problem with it is that once you get your bearings and figure out how the game works, the lay of the land, how enemies can be defeated, it actually becomes really easy. The difficulty curve is sharp, and then suddenly flattens out. I'm also let down that the dungeons/divine beasts are so short, and surprisingly easy, aside from Vah Naboris. The overworld more than makes up for it, and I love that it just lets you do whatever, but I wish the story itself had been a bigger challenge.

Now that I'm playing Link Between Worlds, I'm seeing that it has a similar difficulty curve. The open-ended nature of the quest means that all of the dungeons need to be roughly the same difficulty. There's not a lot of shape to the narrative because of that.

A friend of mine straight-up gave me his copy of Fire Emblem: Awakening. I've only played a little bit of it, but I like it more than I expected. I'm playing at the easiest difficulty with the the casual, "no character death" setting as well. JRPGs and turn-based games are normally not my cup of tea, but I am really impressed by the characterization and the relationships it forms. I might give it lots of time, against my original expectation.

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07 Nov 2017 14:34 #257209 by jeb

san il defanso wrote: A friend of mine straight-up gave me his copy of Fire Emblem: Awakening. I've only played a little bit of it, but I like it more than I expected. I'm playing at the easiest difficulty with the the casual, "no character death" setting as well. JRPGs and turn-based games are normally not my cup of tea, but I am really impressed by the characterization and the relationships it forms. I might give it lots of time, against my original expectation.

The writing on the FE games is excellent. They do a solid job there and it makes things interesting when most RPGs are boring. I played with character death, though, and it makes it tough. You play much more conservatively, and you can't risk big pushes into unknown enemies. Makes the game a lot different.

I am on the second "Boss" in BotW and I already want to play it again, but without warping. Need to get my horses going, &c. Spend time on developing my relationships with the stables.

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07 Nov 2017 14:59 #257211 by RobertB
For me, Witcher III was in the sweet spot between a total open world a'la Skyrim (liked it), and being on rails a'la Bioshock Infinite (finished it). Plus Geralt got to touch a boob! The DLC was a letdown, but then I had played the game for a gazillion hours by that point.

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07 Nov 2017 22:10 - 07 Nov 2017 22:34 #257229 by Sevej
For me I like open world games, and right now I think W3 nailed it on the compromise. It's not GTA in which every single meaningful NPCs missing form the world when you're not on a mission, and it's also not Skyrim with it's mundane (but working) tasks. It's got a lot of story in the quest and side quest, while still maintaining some non-eventful/random discovery that's actually interesting.

We'll see if that lasts.

(the first one I can't keep my interest after leaving the castle and I find the 2nd one was pretty opaque to me from mechanism standpoint--it's also more akin to action games where you just move forward)

EDIT: Keeping the game easy was a good decision. I feel like bad ass and i actually long for combat. It's not like when a group of soldiers feared me in a tavern, moved out, only to get ripped by a band of dogs.
Last edit: 07 Nov 2017 22:34 by Sevej.

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08 Nov 2017 07:54 #257238 by hotseatgames
I saw that a modder released a 30 level campaign for the old horror FPS Blood, so I downloaded it and checked it out. It's called Death Wish, and it's apparent that a lot of love went into it. However, the second level crashed on me a lot, causing me to get frustrated. It was at that point that I realized that I never actually played through Cryptic Passage, the 5th chapter of Blood (it was an expansion). So that's what I am doing!

I have a soft spot for the Build engine; Duke Nukem 3D brought life to your character as opposed to the usual silent protagonist, and its level of interactivity far surpassed not only the games of the time, but a lot of games of today. So while Duke has a special place in my memory, my ACTUAL favorite Build engine game is Blood. While the "little extras" were less than they were in Duke, the character is cooler, the voice acting, sounds, music, levels, pretty much everything else is better. Even the multiplayer was better. If you have never played Blood, and can deal with 1998 graphics, you should pick up One Unit Whole Blood during a gog.com sale.

Side note: 3DRealms is actually making a new Build engine game, and early screenshots are pretty promising. I lost the link and can't remember the name of the game. I'm not sure of a release date or price at this point.
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08 Nov 2017 15:03 #257274 by Erik Twice

san il defanso wrote: I'm playing at the easiest difficulty with the the casual, "no character death" setting as well. JRPGs and turn-based games are normally not my cup of tea, but I am really impressed by the characterization and the relationships it forms. I might give it lots of time, against my original expectation.

You'll probably find that removing permadeath breaks the game by allowing you to throw your characters at the opponents, specially the bosses, without worry. Really, it's not really something that dictates the difficulty of the game, but a core aspect of the design. It's also vital to the theme of the game, I feel.

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08 Nov 2017 15:51 #257275 by the_jake_1973
I loved shooting enemies with the flare gun in Blood.
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08 Nov 2017 16:59 - 08 Nov 2017 17:00 #257280 by Colorcrayons
I recently bought an original Wii from a friend who barely played it since its release, so it is basically a new console. She threw in a bunch of games for it as well. She knew I was in the market to get one for the kids, and figured they would get much more enjoyment from it than it sitting in her tv room unplaced for nearly 8 years. Best $20 I've spent in a very long time.

I've used it before to play Mario kart and Zelda but never played the truly fun stuff like dance games and other party stuff. It makes me wish that Nintendo never stopped supporting it.

I bought a few accessories and a couple more wiimotes to bring the total up to four so the entire family can engage. Along with a few more games since many good games are dirt cheap on it.

I am finding excite bots to be a superior experience to Mario kart. A lot more fun. The dance games are a blast and watching the whole family flail around is good stuff.

But with four people, we need more room as even the large living room isn't enough space to stop us from knocking into each other, so I am actually in the middle of refurbishing a room in my gfs basement for the sole use of a wifi room and exercise area. It's taking a bit since she is so persnickety though and everything has to be detailed just right... :( but it's worth it since the family is having so much fun and winter is coming, so I am guessing a fair amount of time this winter will be spent in there.
Last edit: 08 Nov 2017 17:00 by Colorcrayons.
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08 Nov 2017 18:13 #257292 by Michael Barnes
Playstation has that Mad Max game for $4.99. I couldn't resist.

Played for about 30 minutes. Watched some videos that were OK because they had War Boys and Mad Max talk in them. Walked down a corridor to fill up a canteen. Got to a scene where I had to follow a character while they talked so I turned it off.

Eh, probably wasted five bucks on that one. Looks like it will have ALL the junk ass open world stuff.

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08 Nov 2017 18:49 #257296 by jeb
@Colorcrayons: The Wii is awesome. Don't let anyone throw shade on the Wii. Kicks ass. EXCITEBOTS is awesome. So is BOOM BLOX. Track that down. See if BOMBERMAN BLAST is still around. That was WiiWare, you might need to homebrew. Dynamite party games, the lot of them. SUPER MARIO GALAXY 1 & 2 are both incredible, and have a co-op lite element. If you like pinball, PINBALL HALL OF FAME: THE WILLIAMS COLLECTION is great (The Wii has such a great control scheme for pinball.) That is a wise investment!

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08 Nov 2017 21:40 #257316 by the_jake_1973
Check out Antihero on Steam. It is a very slick area control, worker placement game with some direct combat. Set in Victorian London, you are a master thief who needs to get a set amount of victory points by assassination, bribes, Blackmail, and some board specific conditions.

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08 Nov 2017 21:52 #257318 by rocketkiwi
I've been playing HQ trivia on the iPhone, which is arguably a game. Finally won tonight for a cool 36 bucks that will help defray the cost of buying Cthulhu Wars from Barnes last night.

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09 Nov 2017 09:53 - 09 Nov 2017 09:56 #257342 by san il defanso

Erik Twice wrote:

san il defanso wrote: I'm playing at the easiest difficulty with the the casual, "no character death" setting as well. JRPGs and turn-based games are normally not my cup of tea, but I am really impressed by the characterization and the relationships it forms. I might give it lots of time, against my original expectation.

You'll probably find that removing permadeath breaks the game by allowing you to throw your characters at the opponents, specially the bosses, without worry. Really, it's not really something that dictates the difficulty of the game, but a core aspect of the design. It's also vital to the theme of the game, I feel.


I haven't found that at all actually. It's still quite challenging, and I still play a bit conservatively because I want to actually keep my fighters in the fight, rather than losing them for some reason that I didn't foresee. Having never played before, I am fine with losing out on a core part of the experience if it makes the game a little more playable for me.
Last edit: 09 Nov 2017 09:56 by san il defanso.

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