Saturday 25 February 2023

Baldur's Gate III / CyberPunk / Theatrhythm

Baldur's Gate III finally comes out this August. I need to crack on with replaying Baldur's Gate II.

I'm not sure what to do with CyberPunk, I just can't seem to get into it. Part of that could be that I'm playing it on PS5, where the text is super small and you can't plug in a mouse and keyboard. I might just sell it and try the PC version in 5 years or something. I won't be buying a PC that can play it for some time.

There's a lot coming out at the moment that I'm interested in. I didn't get round to buying the newest Fire Emblem or Yakuza but did pick up the latest Theatrhythm which is fun. I went for the Switch version for the option of mobile play, but I've only played it on the TV so far.

Saturday 9 October 2021

Alundra

This game really caught my eye back in the day. Psygnosis took out a two page advert in Total PlayStation and the artwork just wowed me. The art style, music and dark story, filled with tragedy, despair and desperate attempts at holding on to hope really struck me. I've always had a soft spot for it.

I never beat it though; Alundra is one of the hardest RPGs I have ever played, far too difficult for my 13/14 year old brain at the time. Even now it's brutally hard. Puzzles can span multiple screens, involve timers and absolute jank top down 2D perspective platforming as well as respawning enemies.  The game is genuinely too hard for its own good, I can't imagine many people ever completed it.

Still, it pulls me back in. I love the game world and want to finally see it through. I need to see what happens in this story.

Thursday 19 November 2020

PS5 is Very Impressive

 Yeah it's made a good first impression. Astro's Playroom was absolutely fantastic and I'm loving Miles Morales. The pad is a step up from last generation and I love that you can play just about any PS4 game on it.

Saturday 14 November 2020

Formatting your HDD

 I somehow managed to format my 2TB HDD instead of the 128GB flash drive I was looking to use. I want to give myself a massive slap right now. 20 years of curated roms, isos, emulators and videos gone in an instant. And yes, I can use recovery software, and I am, but it's not as easy as clicking 'undo'. It was stupid and while I do have a 1TB HDD with some of the files on it, I haven't used that drive since 2014 at the earliest.

I suppose its time I looked into a backup option, more to protect against my own stupidity than anything else. It's be nice to have something setup that I can connect to using any device int he house and stream movies/music from tbh.

I'm going to look into it.

Sunday 8 November 2020

PS5

 It's almost here. I have the disc version pre-ordered. I don't have any games pre-ordered but I will be picking up Miles Morales. 

I'm hesitant to start any new games now since it comes out so soon. I did pick up a copy of Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise to play on it. Hopefully the backwards compatability holds up and its not in that 1% of games that don't work.

Friday 10 April 2020

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers

Nintendo have a bit of an Atlus sale going on via the EU eShop so I picked this up for practically nothing. I briefly searched eBay and said nah, I'm good going digital here. Strangley, the game seems to be dpad only which I don't think I've ever seen before with a 3DS game.

Sunday 16 February 2020

Seal of Evil First Impressions

I'm 5 hours into Seal of Evil. The game doesn't explain any of its mechanics in-game so you have to read the help menu/manual and kind of figure it out as you go.

Essentially, everything from attack to defence to individual enemies comes down to being one of five elemental types: Metal, Wood, Earth, Water and Fire, with each element being stronger than the element after it and weaker than the element before it. Mixing and matching equipment and skills/spells helps you take on different enemies in each area.

I'll be honest, I was fumbling at the start; combat felt boring and slow initially and it was the artwork, music and wuxia setting that kept me going. Then I had to fight two giant spider bosses with two health bars each, who spawned smaller enemies in an enclosed, blocked space and found myself woefully unprepared.

I did a little bit of levelling and looked into the crafting screen, which is just labelled "Creation". By mixing and matching different items you find in each area or pick up from enemies, you can craft some excellent armour and weapons. I also started to get used to swapping between my party members, casting various buffs, summon spells and the like. An hour later I went back to the spider bosses and mopped the floor with them.

The voice acting is terrible, almost Chaos Wars bad and the translation isn't great either, but games in this setting, in English no less, are quite rare and I'm enjoying the change, especially now that I'm feeling the combat.

The music is really, really good.