Damn, losing your saved games like that absolutely sucks. I’m so sorry. I’m glad you got to experience most of it, at least. The lost film in the cinema is so good too, almost more audacious than the We Sing chapter is shoving a whole ass European art house short film in there haha.

The first one or two bosses are alright, I think. I’m pretty sure you can parry all their attacks. But I can see what you mean, there is definitely a very simple design behind a lot of the bosses in vanilla. None of them were really super fun, but they also weren’t really all that difficult so I guess that’s why I didn’t think too much of it. I died way more to the environment than to any boss, except Isidora. She got my ass like 50 times. Though to be fair I never did the rest of the DLC so there may well be another equally tough boss there.

But yeah, the game seems to really lean into the whole “virtue of suffering” theme - which works great with the story, world building and vibe and all, it’s just… not necessarily fun.

I absolutely love the art, music, story and world building in Blasphemous, but I could also not really vibe with the gameplay. Way too much platforming combined with instant kill hazards and janky ledge//ladder grabbing. Also enemy placement that seems deliberately designed to waste your time and prevent you from rushing through areas, even when you backtrack.

I didn’t have much issue with the bosses though, at least in the main game. Isidora from the DLC was a fucking pain, though.

I finished The Drifter yesterday. It took me three weeks to get through a 10-hour game, that tells you a bit about how little I’ve been gaming lately. Anyway.

Game is absolutely great. 9.9/10, a must-play if you like the genre of point-and-click adventure games, and a game you should seriously consider even if you don’t.

I’ve already waxed lyrical about it in past weekly threads, so I am not going to repeat myself here. All I can add is that the game does stick the landing.

From what I have played, this is the most logical puzzle game ever. There were only something like 5 convoluted puzzles over the course of the whole game, and even those did make some sense in retrospect. Besides those five I got stuck on, I was able to figure out the rest of the game without outside help, and everything felt like it was logical and made sense.

The story is a lot of fun, it was more sci-fi than I expected but I don’t really mind it. It’s a breakneck pulp thriller and it keeps throwing curve balls at you, there is always a twist and turn and you never know what to expect. The writing is super sharp, it’s witty and fun and the dialogue is great. In the latter half there were a couple of voice actors that were only okay, but the rest of the cast is absolutely top shelf and the protagonist especially is great.

Overall I can’t say enough good things about it. The conclusion is satisfying, the main theme of the OST hitting with its heavy synths at a climactic moment was epic and there is even an emotional arc.

Play it, it’s fantastic. Even if you don’t like puzzle games, the story and presentation is great, so if you have to look up a few hints or solutions then so what? You’ll have a good time regardless.

Ah, good to hear. I checked out his other games on Steam and wishlisted Telwynium immediately after finishing The Drifter, but it will probably be some time before I play it. I like to switch things up genre-wise game to game. But I’m glad to hear it’s also quality, I’ll definitely pick it up at some point during some future sale.

Sorry for barging in through the door like a Jehovah’s Witness, but if you like these kinds of games you must try The Drifter. I finished it yesterday and it’s the best point-and-click I’ve ever played, may well have ruined the genre for me. It’s an adventure game that actually doesn’t use moon logic. A couple puzzles were a bit convoluted, but even those I felt like actually were based on some logic and made sense.

Plus it’s a great pulp story with phenomenal voice acting. Can’t recommend it enough. Well anyway, sorry for the interruption, I’ll move on to the next house. Thanks for your time.

It’s an inherent problem with having both users and communities on the same instances, and just how humans tend to operate in general in that we automatically gravitate to others and clump together.

I think it was @rglullis@communick.news who was saying that in an ideal world there would be two types of instances, one for users and one that only served as hosting space for communities. That way you could block or defederate user groups without losing access to entire communities.

Of course, we’re way past the point where reorganization into a structure like that is feasible. But it’s interesting to think about.

That sounds like a great idea, that’s some of the most important information.

I already own it, still haven’t finished it though. If you love parrying and Soulslike Metroidvanias and don’t hate backtracking and platforming this is for you. Really cool graphics and art direction, too. World building is interesting. It’s a good game. Maybe one day I’ll finish it.

It’s a great game. In some ways I might even prefer it to Human Revolution. Also, make sure you do the DLCs after. A Criminal Past is some of the best “new Deus Ex” they ever produced.

I also landed on Summit, only thing that comes close in my opinion and the best app for Lemmy/Piefed at the moment.

I’m happy with my instance, with my admins and with my /local feed. And with Lemmy at large. It is not a feature that’s critical for me (I am unaffected as I only use my phone for Lemmy anyway).

But thank you anyway!

I mean, I know weird ass simulation games are an entire niche so this will probably sell some copies but it doesn’t look great to me to be honest. It tries really hard to be funny and that usually doesn’t end up with jokes that land. I don’t know, maybe it’s just the sizzle reel and doesn’t do the game justice.

Still, nice to see a new game that isn’t UE5.

You can copy paste the URL into you instance’s search box.

But I do think we also need this feature https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/2318

Since I use my phone for Lemmy 100% of the time I sometimes forget what a massive issue this is. A feature like that strikes me as critical.

The Lake House DLC is great, nice tight survival horror and a great commentary on Gen AI to boot.

I’m glad you’re having some more fun with Saga at least. I found the retirement home to be an awesome horror level, some of the best scares in the game there and some nice creepy atmosphere. Dilapidated hospitals are clichés maybe, but they are so for a reason. And I don’t know, I still found it effective.

Man, while you’re running Xemu you gotta throw in Ninja Gaiden Black!

I feel like the only game that could come close to the same level of digital crack is Football Manager. Since I’ve already plowed way too many hours into that one I’m steering clear of Factorio.

I’ve been playing a little bit of Wanted: Dead. Man, this is a weird fucking game to write about. I don’t even know how best to describe it. How about this: Wanted: Dead is a 3/10 but I “see the vision”. There is an alternate universe where this game is an absolute cult classic.

(EDIT: spoiler tagged to preserve real estate as I sort of vomited out a whole ass rant).

So yeah… It’s been an interesting experience so far. It’s been something to do when I’ve felt too mentally exhausted to play The Drifter, but it’s not exactly going to enter my permanent rotation after (if) I finish it.

I mean, I don’t think they’ve done something this bad just yet but they also do hardcode a lot of things into the software, and some of the webpage blocks are apparently very tedious to take out if you want a politically neutral Piefed instance. They are very openly opposed to the leftists around here. Here is some recent stuff too.

There was also stuff like the implementation of flairs on Piefed deliberately declining to use ActivityPub endpoints, which made it an exclusive feature to entice users to switch instead of something Lemmy could create compatibility with, which felt kind of EEE-ey to me. Now that was years ago and I haven’t kept up on development, they may have changed it around since then. I think flairs are coming in Lemmy 1.0, or something sort of like it.

And recently there was the whole vote rationing fiasco, which stemmed from some sort of fundamental misunderstanding of how voting works on a place like this by Rimu, was idiotic from the start and ultimately drove PugJesus (an incredibly valuable and active poster in tons of niche communities) permanently off the platform after they didn’t back down.

EDIT: more in this comment thread too: https://piefed.social/comment/12273761

Piefed has some great features but my opinion of it hasn’t been great as of late.