im too poor for raggarock so i played godda war ascension. everyone says this one sucks and they had to soft reboot the series but it was pretty good. kind of a step down from 3 - there's still "weapon swapping" but only the special moves change so it's pretty half assed. uh other than that it's pretty much what you'd expect from god of war 6.
i thought the enemies and bosses were above average. more human enemies instead of tedious damage sponge giant monsters. combat is a bit more technical and really rewards you for not getting hit, if you care about that shit. you could still button mash your way through.
whenever someone started talking i checked my phone so i can't really assess the story. it's a prequel set before the first game so nothing of real consequence can happen. i think this is the big fuck up. people want to see him kill a new god or something but he already killed all the greek gods. gameplay is better than all of them except 3, but the story doesn't develop. it feels small and unnecessary.
that style of game sort of went out with a whimper. sure, it's finely crafted and there's subtle improvements to the formula, but it's still basically a ps2 game released in 2013. i think the norse shit is over so hopefully next time he murders a pantheon he'll be able to jump and they'll pull the camera back.

im gonna merk that fucking narutoad next weekend bros... watch this space for the killfeed...

Been playing this:


As someone whose reason for playing FF is 50% the music; a game centered around entirely that with cool easter eggs, fanservice and other neat stuff is cool. Nice selection of tracks from each title. I always forget but FFII really does have a top 5 soundtrack; how the fuck did they do it? There's DLC with more games from other square properties[including TWEWY] on it. Good stuff.

The Noclip documentary on the development of Hyper Light Breaker got me to finally play Heart Machine's other game, Solar Ash.
I'm not good at writing reviews but here goes.

First off, this game's art direction is insane, and it's all one connected world with no load screens. It's genuinely impressive that it even manages to run* tbh, Unreal Engine is on some eldritch bullshit.
The visuals kept me interested the whole way through, with some beautiful environments and incredible vista reveals on entering certain areas.
*it did chug for me a little in a couple areas early on but only in some specific spots

The gameplay focuses way more on movement than combat, with enemies mostly serving as obstacles during movement sections, but the movement itself is super smooth and the area design makes it really fun to just move around. It took me a little bit to get used to but once I did I had a blast just traversing the environments.
There's some great action/movement setpiece design, and the boss fights were like if Shadow of the Colossus was a fast-paced Movement Platformer- they were sick as fuck and I only wish there were more.

Unfortunately Disasterpeace didn't reprise his role as musician for Solar Ash, but he did lay groundwork for the eventual composer, so the music and ambience still feels great. I especially enjoy the music that plays during the boss fights' final phases, as well as the overall audio design.

To give some criticisms though;
Some of the combat can be a bit jank in 3d, and the way the world is laid out can be really disorienting. It's also kind of a slow start and a slow end, with most of the best parts being in the middle.
Searching for all the collectibles ("Voidrunner Caches") without any direction can be pretty boring/confusing. Finding them while on the main path is a fun reward that makes you feel clever, but once you've finished the zone and are just looking for the ones you missed it can grate a bit. The reward for the final area's caches is the ability to scan for the others if you still haven't found them, but that comes really too late for them to be of any use.
I didn't let myself progress from an area before collecting all of its caches so I ended up not needing it anyway.

Anyway I 100%ed it and had a good time doing so.

Baffling gameplay summary: Super Mario Galaxy meets Jet Set Radio meets Shadow of the Colossus + Spyro and 3D Sonic?

This post was last modified: Feb 24, 2023 at 5:35 AM by sealelement.

i killed narutoad btw. i soloed it with a stored power slowbro and it was pretty lit. working on getting a breeding partner for froakie to get that shiny

edit: I Will Smash That Wet Rat

i've been playing fallout 76...that's not something you ever want to hear