jaqen_hghar

I am also about 3 hours in, and am having fun. But I also have a list of grievances.

The pacing is strange, and it also has these gameplay-to-cutscene-to-gameplay cuts I feel you saw a lot ten to fifteen years ago. Last place I really noticed this kind of transition was watching Alex and Vinny play the first Mass Effect. It's not smooth, and it often feels like there is sound missing. That goes for the entire game so far. It is weirdly silent or muted.

The combat can become a lot of fun I think, but I too feel a lack of weight. I also fairly often attack without seeing any numbers, which means the attacks just goes through the enemy I guess. The way the lock-on system works is also kinda aggravating at times, as your character turns towards the locked on enemy even though you are trying to attack someone closer to you in a slightly different direction.

I'll also echo the narrator. I have no idea what the option of raising or lowering narrator and gibberish does in the audio settings, because I can't tell the difference. If I could either go full narrator with subtitles or full gibberish with subtitles I would. This weird hybrid that takes twice as long has caused me to skip dialog. Pressing A advances the dialog so you see the subtitles, but sometimes the gibberish is short enough for that press to skip to the next line.

If it opens up after my current task (Killing the first World Eater) then I think this can be a fun, chill exploration game with some combat here and there that might turn into something cool once I got more powers and different kinds of weapons. But if this was me a few years ago when I had next to no disposable income I would be pretty miffed.
So wait for a sale or try it on EA+ if you have that I guess.

I have been reading/listening to a lot more lately, as I am trying to read shorter books this year. Last year was almost all 600-1200 page monstrosities, as I re-read the main Malazan series (@nophilip: The entire series is so good! I have not read all the other books in the series so far, but I have several of them ready to go) and also listened to the last book in Sanderson's Stormlight Archive.

Some of the books I have read so far: Gideon the Ninth, No Longer Human, Nutshell, Pride and Prejudice, Flights.
The one that really stuck with me though is the one I finished last week on audio. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.
It's about a man living in a most likely infinitely large House, with large halls, corridors and vestibules. Every hall has hundreds of statues covering the walls. The middle floor are where you can live, the lower halls are submerged in water and provides food, the upper halls are open to the sky and provides rainwater to drink.
It stuck with me so that I am learning Blender just to make a picture from this House.

“May your Paths be safe, your Floors unbroken and may the House fill your eyes with Beauty.”

Right now I am reading the first From a certain point of view, and enjoying it a lot.
And I am listening to the first Senlin Ascends book, which is kind of a nightmare in a really good way.

NFTs are bad on so many levels, that if Giant Bomb actually went into them (which I am sure they won't because they all know how fucking stupid and bad they are) I would let my subscription lapse for the first time ever. And I have been a member of the site from day one, and a subscriber as long as they have had a subscription model.
Why are NFTs so bad? Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1C5SYkFC-I&t=1s
He does a pretty good breakdown. And yes, there seems to be less harmful to the environment ways to do NFTs, but they are still stupid as fuck.

I am loving the fact that I am getting almost as many different answers to this as there are replies. It shows how complex our mind really is, while also making it impossible to pin down something like this.
I kind of do hope the "hype" of aphantasia turns into several studies down the line. It would be interesting to see if being able to visualize things with perfect clarity influences things like this for instance. It doesn't seem to be linked with artistic ability, as I know of several great visual artists who have it. It's all really fascinating.

I am one of those weirdos who could upgrade to 1440p, but instead opted to get a 1080p Gsync-compatible 144hz monitor. I don't need a bigger monitor, and I am perfectly happy with 1080p. I also only play on PC, save for some Switch here and there. Haven't been interested in any of the other consoles since Xbox 360.

As a major fan from the beginning of Hitman back in the day I got the Deluxe Edition on Epic just to support them more. The Deluxe Escalations was fun, and you unlock new costumes and weapons by doing them. But it's all more or less cosmetic, and by now there are a lot of escalations to do. So if money is tight you aren't missing that much. And if you just want more content I guess the player created contracts can keep you busy for ages.

I am mainly playing two games right now, with some additional sprinkling of other stuff now and then.
Valheim has taken a lot of my time, but I am now trying to only play it with at least one of my brothers. Two of my brothers and I rents a dedicated server already, and have done mostly building really. Am about to try and beat the second boss, once all three of us can be online at the same time. It's such a chill game, with so many good ideas. The fact that you have to build supports to build larger structures is something I adore. I love building in games, and that turns things that I might put in just for show actually necessary.

The second one in Nioh 2 on PC. Never played the first one, but as a Souls and Sekiro lover I have been very interested. I am pleasantly surprised, as I knew very little about the actual game. I thought it would be like a hybrid of Souls and Sekiro, just from what I have heard, but having it be a mix of Souls, Ninja Gaiden (Xbox version) and a loot game like Diablo is just excellent. Not that far in, and I sadly went down the rabbit hole of build videos already. Trying to not check out too much of that, but it is hard to know what should be prioritized and what doesn't matter much when it comes to skills and stats. I am maining splitstaff, which I initially only chose because it looked fun to be paired with the katana I wanted to use. I have barely used katana it turns out, because the splitstaff is really fun to use.

I actually went in fully committed to do at least one boss rush when this update came out, but I have gotten so rusty that I would probably have to replay parts of the game to get my skills back to what they need to be. Will probably do that someday, unless they make a Sekiro 2. I just want that tight, action-packed combat with those laser-focused hitboxes. It was just as good as I remember it was.

Why should we treat this matter differently here? If I am in a discussion with someone about a game I happen to like and learn that the one I am discussing with is a homophobe, racist, bigot, transphobe or similar I am going to make it clear that whatever point this person is trying to make don't matter to me at all. I do not value what people with those kinds of views think. And I would flag questionable things they have posted, and let the person know that whatever they are on about is not fine. It doesn't matter if it has nothing to do with games on a games forum.

And what is it with people not knowing how to quote-reply to several people in one post?

And even if we ignore the fact that this person obviously has views that would make me block them instantly on Twitter, the "facts" they have posted about broken hitboxes are so blurry and grainy it's hard to see what is actually happening. Most of their arguments about why Sekiro is bad has been shown to be things they don't understand about the game (the different perilous attacks for instance), design decisions that are new and refreshing (using dodge as an attack) and downright nonsensical (having fantasy elements in a fantasy game). I think this person would give the Netflix-series "Kingdom" 1 star because it has zombies in it. I mean, there where no zombies around in Korea during that time after all.

It has devolved into them calling the game SUCK_iro and thinking that makes them win the argument in this "verbal judo". I am more and more convinced this is a young child trolling all of us, who also has abhorrent views about several topics outside of video games. Lock this down. But keep it around as a memento. Like a dangerous derelict rollercoaster or something.