WulfBane

Yeah, Act 3 was rough and I did rage quit it for about a week. I was specifically at the part where you get the pistol attachment but not enough bullets or healing. The part where you’re doing the “rotating this will cause another thing attached to spin” puzzles. I could have really done without the parasite damaging you when I was already low. I wanted the flesh puzzles but the forced encounters were getting to me.

Yes, I knew that combat was best to be avoided but some of those early areas were spots that didn’t make it apparent HOW to bypass and my plan of approaching slowly to assess the unknown was in fact the WRONG way.

But yeah, came back and rather than backing away as far ask I could that just meant I was pinned in a three on one situation, it was the seemingly counter intuitive rushing forward so I was closer but at least had some width that I was finally able to do the puzzle parts again and progress.

And even though there are the tougher chargers that show up in Act 4, it felt like the health and ammo resources also ticked up and there were less guys putting you in narrow dead end corridors. Also at that point I brought up a guide just to get a preview of upcoming encounters to be ready for them.

Only puzzle I had trouble with was the ”egg wall” in Act 1 because a combo that it didn’t actually click until late the visual difference between the two grab-able eggs and the rest of the “rocks” as well as the “bad egg” made me think I had to still do something to prepare and reinforce it. Also after doing the “saw route”, I was still poking around thinking there was a way to release Scorny Jr but I guess nah.

It was also funny to finish this after hearing Dan on the recent Hellraiser Film & 40’s and Sonic 06 talking about not picking up on metaphorical themes in the Alien franchise. By Act 5, it takes Alien subtext and just makes it TEXT.

And yeah, I got the impression that Act 1 was a bit of their first intention of having multiple solution/choices and made as a pitch/demo/proof of concept but that part got lost in the production demands for the later acts.

But overall, pretty effective horror flesh puzzle adventure with some stumbles on the Act 3 combat challenges. It was about the right length for me and wouldn’t call for it being longer. Glad to have it on Gamepass as I certainly balked when I saw it was $30 retail.

Awesome. And yeah, I totally understand the delay.

I saw that they had scheduled a live Film & 40’s with Hellraiser not to long ago but I haven’t seen anything about the archive. Did something happen that caused it to be canceled/postponed similar to the first attempt at The Terminator? I can’t make any of the live events so I rely on the VOD archives.

I got a Steam Deck a couple weeks ago and picked up Vampire Survivor over the weekend and was playing a TON. Really "bad" in terms of "one more run" until 2 am.

I know the type of thing you're talking about but not entirely sure. I think either

1. It never actually got implemented
2. It's only a background thing where supporting games can read/update predicted default values.
   1. Player could still update the values in each game options directly and at most it was just setting the default initial predicted preferences

The main (only?) example I recall given is a defaulting of normal vs inverted look. Games still seem to do the "look up Chief" thing, but I *THINK* if this system is real, one game may set your hidden "assumed preference" flag and then the next game that supports it can read and start with whatever that was.

But also I seem to recall a dev for Gears of War 3 say the intro fly in helicopter sequence has an explosion deliberately intended to cause the player to want to look at it and based on how they try to move the stick, set the initial normal vs inverted setting. It's still something the player could change in the options, but they were just sneaky about hiding the "look up Chief" for how to initialize.

TBH, I was half expecting a gummy bear size hat shaped gummy.

It's a stretch, but I played through and got all the achievements in Breathedge the past week because I was jonsing for some Subnautica-like off of gamepass and I already S-ranked the achievements out of Subnautica and Below Zero last year. It's got moments but it also has some slogs and intentional busy work often there "for humor".

But now that's done and I started up a fresh Subnautica save on my Series X and having fun again while I half remember things.

Also I played through ME Andromeda a few months ago and 100% all the quests in that. Again, I see moments but also lots of slog. Plus too many party members and prominent characters that their attempt at "growth" is to have them clam up when you first meet them. "Hey, I'd like to get to know you more" "No. I came out here to get away from my past. I'm not talking about it." times 6.

I just gotta get it off my chest that an example of GREAT potential squandered by that sort of "character development" is one of the random party conversations you can get with the Krogan and Andromeda local party members is the Andromeda local asks "Why do you call it 'The Milky Way'?" "We don't call it that. It's just what the humans call it." "OK, then what do Krogan call it?" "I call it 'Gone' because we're now too far away for me to care anymore." <sigh>

I know Spider-Man games are mentioned but I might throw an "Um Actually..." at it where at least in the PS4 "Marvel's Spider-Man" they technically do a thing where baddies that are sent off of rooftops AND ARE STILL VISIBLE can sometimes be seen getting web-zipped against the side of the buildings to show that Spider-Man is having them get caught and saved from hitting the pavement. If they get obstructed from the camera so you can't see them anymore, the game engine just despawns them.

But also along those lines and I *THINK* does not try to "save" them is you can also knock enemies off the roofs in Infamous. There was even at least one trophy related to it.

Sounds to me from when he was playing Journey and they got to the 3rd chapter where you go surfing down sand dunes and in the process, Jeff lost contact with the random player he was paired with. After chirping a few times, he lost a lot of motivation to continue (especially because of what the next part of that game has you going through)

03-13-2012 (giantbomb.com)

And it was 10 year ago! Crazy how time works. (I would have guessed 5-8 max)

Here are some more general tips:

• Out of combat, you can use LT to shift the camera slightly. It can help you find obscured things.
• Page 17 has two hints about items:
  • Do NOT horde bombs. If you use them enough you'll earn free bombs that refresh at bonfires.
  • Do horde money banks. If you use multiple in a row, they give more and more money.
• There are bombable walls. A clue to their locations is if you see flowers. However flowers may also be a clue for other things.

And I will say that there were some cases where I find something hidden and then when I look back at the manual, I see that they actually DID make a hint about many of them.