Don’t Think, Just Jam
I started a screenshot album for my virtual adventures. Check it out if you’d like.
I finished Race Driver: GRID! I got all the cars, won all events and got both myself and my team to the top of the leaderboards. It was fun but I definitely need a break from this title, a LONG one.
I’m still thinking about what to tackle next. I’m leaning towards either Shantae (the original Game Boy Color one) or Shadowrun: Hong Kong but my brain is rather fickle right now so I might end up playing something completely different. So many games to choose from…
I get that, I was just wondering about whether it’s OS related or something like that since I or people I know never had such issues despite all of us playing on high settings. It’s just personal curiosity, don’t worry about it.
Thanks for the recommendations! I’ll keep them in mind if I end up sticking with the game in the future.
Yeah, I tried it vanilla during the weird middle ground where it got some improvements but was still lacking in many aspects - I’m pretty sure it got more updates since then. Do you think the base game is good enough to try on its own or are there any expansions/kits that you’d say are not necessarily required but at least strongly recommended?
Oof, that sounds rough indeed. Can’t say I had to deal with any of these issues myself though my last playthrough was a few years back so perhaps I lucked out. What system are you running it on, if you don’t mind me asking? I’m curious what could be the reason for that.
Are you playing the base game or with expansions? I never really managed to get into TS4 for some reason and I wonder how much it had to do with having only the vanilla version and how much with simply preferring the older titles. I should really give it another shot someday.
I have a few tips for the first Witcher that might help a bit. Its combat is like a (simple) rhythm game, you need to click with specific timing (signalled by the change of mouse cursor) to keep the optimal combo going. Also keep enemy weaknesses, your combat style etc in mind when fighting - not engaging with game mechanics can make things way more difficult then they really are and it’s one of the reasons many people bounce off of the game. Sure, it’s old and somewhat janky but some of the problems can be avoiding by playing properly.
Anyway, that’s just a suggestion. Good luck!
Which Sims are you going with, the original or one of the later ones?
There isn’t any real story beyond “you’re starting a race team, good luck” - it’s completely focused on gameplay. The only “cutscenes” in the game are short videos explaining certain event types but they only show up once or can be skipped (24H Le Mans).
RE6 isn’t really that bad honestly. Sure, it’s not the greatest game in the series but as long as you keep in mind it’s an action game and learn how to play (it has a surprisingly deep combat system which isn’t explained in the game itself) there’s plenty to enjoy. This guide shows a good amount of what’s possible, if you’re curious.
I’m almost done with Race Driver: GRID. I got all the cars, won all but the final 6 races and pretty much got my fill of the game. I soured on it a bit (mostly due to the amount of events I’m not a huge fan of) but I still like it overall. Not enough to grind for the first place on the career leaderboard though.
I won’t be writing a big summary of the experience as I already mentioned everything before (limited number of tracks, aggressive opponents, mostly fun driving model etc). What I can write however is: playing this title gave me a bit of insight into what I’m interested in in a racing game (in term of events). For GRID the end result looks like this:
| Favourite events | Least favourite events |
|---|---|
| Touge (not even close) | Destruction Derby (I’m so glad it barely exists) |
| Touring Cars | Club GT |
| Open Wheel | 24 Hours Le Mans |
Everything else is pretty much a toss-up depending on the event or track, varying between “this is great” and “please kill me”. It was fun but I’m kinda glad I’ll be moving to something else soon.
My racing career continues. I’m focusing on this rather than Stunt GP since I played that game quite a lot a year or two ago so there’s not much new to experience there. I’d rather go all in on the title I didn’t spend much time with for now.
I finally decided against skipping 24 Hour Le Mans (took until I bought my own car until I had some fun with it) and played through two so far. Still not my favourite event but it’s not bad. What I did give me more enjoyment however were the open-wheel races - grip on those cars makes it super fun to just zip around the track. I might have to look into some F1 games in the future.
One thing that stands out is something I already mentioned last week - limited content. I don’t need hundreds of tracks but when you start repeating them across regions within the first 18 races (each region consists of 3 tiers made of 6 events) then something is not right. I still like the game and have a great time but it won’t be replacing Colin McRae Rally 04 as my mainstay racing title.
I took a few month break after finishing this and Returns back to back and I’m starting to feel ready to go back in. I tried playing custom modules: Antumbra Saga and SNES Reboot.
The first one started pretty alright, a simple task to infiltrate an office and place a box in specific location. The same mission then turned into a dungeon crawl of a magical cave located under said office, in the middle of a city and fighting through rooms of ghouls and spirits. I was hoping for a slow start with more choices about your approach but it didn’t deliver. I’ll be skipping this one for now unfortunately.
SNES Reboot… I’d say it was a similar story, except it doesn’t even pretend to focus on non-combat gameplay. You’ll get “random” encounters on the very first map (technically second, since you start in a building) you travel through and based on the info text at the start of this campaign, fighting is pretty much the main thing in this game.
Not that I expected different considering this is just a remake of the ancient SNES title but I hoped for a little more diversity (dunno, perhaps there’s some later).
So yeah, my return to Dragonfall was a bust. I’ll probably move on to Hong-Kong next since it’s the only one I haven’t played yet. I just wish there was more to look forward to (especially in terms of custom modules). Oh well, not every game can be Skyrim.
I said it before but I man, the duel races in Ridge Racer 2 (PSP) are the most miserable experience I ever had playing a racing game - they are WAY over tuned. I really feel like there’s a middle ground between smoking the competition on lap 1 and spending most of the race watching your opponent at the edge of game’s draw distance due to them using a car which is faster, has better acceleration and starts the race with a boost. I like a good challenge but this ain’t it.
I finished the three duels required to unlock the EX tour series of events and that’s that, I’m not touching the remaining 4. Ever. I don’t need a 100% completion rate, not when some of the remaining content sucks the fun out of the whole experience. I’d rather have fun with the normal races instead and I’m extremely happy the EX series exist - I was actually worried I already cleared (almost) everything with the ending movie and credits unlocking halfway through PRO tour. I’m glad I was wrong.
Still love the game but boy was that rough at times.
In case you weren’t aware there’s an ongoing project adding Surface hardware support to Linux kernel. It’s in a pretty mature state, with most of the features already implemented and working (here is a full breakdown per device). I’ve been using it on my SP6 for a few years with zero issues.
It might be worth a look until you get to buying new hardware.
(…) I never once worked anywhere that there was a glut of jobs and “not enough bodies” to fill them.
I have. My first job wasn’t the worst at this but it happened to some extent. My last company had such a huge disparity between work and employees that every single one of their IT projects (dunno about the rest) was in constant state of delays, hotfixing and putting out fires. Things were so bad people were moved between projects on daily basis and at one point management decided to throw everyone in the department (including folks who just joined the company and newbies with little to no programming experience) to triage one of them.
That’s not to mention poaching team members from projects they promised more bodies to (only informing the client about the latter decision) and many other issues. They absolutely needed more people but the way the company is run does little to help with that.
The worst party? They’re still growing as a company while their burnout rate stays unchanged. So yeah, it’s a thing.
Not that I was making or watching those but the requirement itself is definitely something I want nothing to do with. Thanks for reminding me to delete my account, I’ve been meaning to do so for months now but always forgot to. One more thing off the list.
Most likely, or maybe someone will try to use this to score some easy points with more online conscious voters. Probably not but one can dream.
There’s a UK Parliament petition to repeal the Online Safety act. There’s no guarantee it’ll do anything but might be worth a try for anyone in the UK.
Seems like most people prefer cases based on what I see around me. Personally I don’t like the additional bulk plus I’m careful enough with handheld objects to not drop them. Haven’t destroyed any phone so far.
The Division 2
I’m back to my semi-regular Division grind. I was thinking about the game due to the recent, time limited, addition of the realism mode (no gear levels or bullet-spongy enemies, limited ammo etc) but couldn’t join in at the time because I forgot how to make Ubisoft Connect work on Linux. I finally figured it out again (use GE-Proton-9.27 and set Windows to 10, otherwise it won’t launch for me) and I also managed to snatch the latest DLC for less about 55% off so I decided to jump back in.
I’m not done with the DLC yet so there isn’t much I can say about it other than “it’s more TD2”, even if in smaller package. Some missions are better than others in terms of design and how they fit my game style so things tend to alternate between “this is cool” and “I’m in pain, help”. One thing that really caught me off guard however was when a mission finale turned into a desperate defence section - the surprising part wasn’t the change itself but the fact that this short part managed to actually make me feel like the situation really was as dire as the story wanted you to think.
It’s an excitement and engagement that doesn’t really happen often as writing and set pieces in TD2 tend to fall flat for me for the most part. It was a nice change and I hope there’ll be more moments like this in the future.
Now if only devs would let us replay all of the past manhunts in full instead of in their shortened version, that would be nice. I’m still missing part of the story after taking a break when they jumped the shark with Keener’s “death” during Warlords of New York and I’d love to know what’s going on.
Yakuza 0
I’d like to finish this game some day. I’ve been on my first playthrough for 7 years now. I’ve been on THE SAME CHAPTER for 7 years now. Granted, most of this time was me not playing the game but still - I have saves from multiple years, all stuck on chapter 7. Why is it all sevens?!
Alright, I came back to the game with the plan to finally finish it so how did it go? Well, I started the game and went back to spending most of my time on the hostess club mini-game. This playthrough might take another 7 years to finish at this rate…
At least I’m having fun, I guess.