Mister Jack

Since I've reached the end of current ZZZ content and am just doing dailies that are quick to plow through, I decided to try some of the other Hoyo games. Tried giving Genshin another shot but it really didn't age well. The graphics look hideous today and the grind is far worse than it is in ZZZ. I doubt I'll stick with it. However, Honkai Star Rail was a nice little surprise. It's a turn based RPG where the combat focuses on elemental weaknesses, which is nothing new, but they do a few things with it to give it a different flavor. Enemies have something called a toughness bar along with their HP, and if you attack them with the wrong element then they take very little damage. The best way to kill enemies is to break their toughness with elemental attacks which stuns them, does a big chunk of burst damage, and causes a status effect depending on which element it was. Because elements are so crucial every enemy is going to have at least two weaknesses, usually three or more. Each character in your party corresponds to a specific element so while they can only use one, the multiple weaknesses thing means you usually won't get caught without at least one appropriate party member. When you see enemies on the field you also see a list of their weaknesses attached to their name so you can switch party members if you have to, though I don't often need to do that. Getting in a preemptive strike with the right element gives you an early advantage though. Commands are very simple. Party members have a basic attack that recharges action points, skills that consume action points (shared among the party), and an ultimate that slowly charges as they give damage, receive damage, or use certain energy boosting abilities. Ultimates can be used outside of a character's turn so if your healer gets charged up right before the boss is about to take their turn you can interrupt them to protect your party. Skills aren't always just about doing damage either and some enemies are designed around them. For example, some enemies have an ability called lock on where they aim at a party member for a turn and then do a really strong attack in their next turn, but one of your default party members has a skill that not only shields characters but also counterattacks if anyone attacks the shielded character. Or you could have someone use a skill to remove the lock on debuff which causes the enemy to waste their next turn. For such a basic system they still made it so you can't just hit the basic attack button the whole time. There is an auto battle button and the AI usually makes smart decisions but it can't be used for bosses and you have to turn off letting them use ultimates freely or they'll just spam them as soon as they're charged. Negative points? Well, it's a gacha. You can get by just fine with the default party members for the story content, but obviously the limited party members are stronger. Even putting aside the gacha mechanics, it's pretty immersion breaking to go through a story while having a party member who has no reason to be there. The cutscenes will still use the appropriate characters but I pulled a nine tailed fox alien with a very Japanese, fire based theme who is currently fighting in battles with my party while the story has them stuck on a snow planet with not a single fox alien to be seen. Don't get me wrong, she's great in battle and I'm glad I have her but storywise I have no idea who she even is yet. I assume she shows up on a later planet but right now she's just there because I unpacked her like a Pokemon card (using free rolls mind you). But hey, I'm not gonna complain too hard when I love her design this much.

Got the Zenless Zone Zero platinum, which I think might be the first I've ever gotten for a free to play game if I'm not mistaken. Funnily enough, with all the grinding to max level and all the other things these games are known for to make these trophies take a long time, the last one I needed to get the platinum was the trophy for getting a cat to trust me.

They make handguns without safeties?!

Can't blame you one bit. I'm seriously considering it myself.

Never left actually. Just don't check it that often since most of the channels aren't that relevant to me.

104% tariffs on China?! Are you out of your fucking gourd?!

Zenless Zone Zero Does one ever actually beat a free to play game? I dunno but I reached the end of the current story content at least. Gaming is just getting too damn expensive lately and with Nintendo and the tariffs it will only get worse so I've been trying out more free to play stuff. This one is kind of like a f2p brawler game. I wouldn't compare it to Devil May Cry exactly. It's not nearly as complex, but it's full of memorable characters who all have their own unique combat mechanics and you do missions in teams of three, swapping out characters for combo attacks after building up a stagger meter on your enemies. It is a gacha and so far I've only pulled two S rank characters, but one thing I appreciate is that the main story never gates you off because your characters are too weak. It will always let you try out the relevant characters for the chapter who are appropriately leveled for the story content you are doing. I also like that when you need a certain resource to upgrade one of your fighters or items it will give you the option to instantly launch whatever mission you need to do to farm the stuff you need right there from the upgrade screen. The story itself has an interesting premise. Interesting enough for me to finish the season, at least, and there were some pretty decent boss fights in there for a f2p game. Genshin Impact didn't grab me for very long because it eventually felt like I couldn't go any further without spending money, but that never really happened here. I'll most likely stick around for the next season and while I hate gacha mechanics and don't want to pay for pulls, I might toss a few bucks at cosmetics or something. When a f2p game manages to entertain me for a while I feel like they earned a little something from me.

Played the demo, got really into it, went to CDkeys and got the full game for over half off. I love CDkeys so much.

Disc 3 is just the crater/endgame so yeah.

I'm trying Risk of Rain 2 again. I dropped it back when I originally bought it because I just could not make any progress at all, but I'm doing a little better the second go around. It's a decent enough roguelike shooter, but what really stands out to me is the soundtrack. I mean, holy shit:

Been touching up the living room, making it better with cleaning and new furniture and such. This is the fun part: getting a new tv. My old one was 32 inches because I was using an old pre-HD cabinet and that was all it could fit. Now that I have more room, I bumped it up to a 55 inch. Also went for an OLED because I wanted to get more out of an upgrade than just a bigger viewing space.

My laptop needed a keyboard too. I actually didn't buy this one specifically because of the theme. I tried a smaller TKL keyboard but I didn't like how the right side buttons were vertically aligned so I got this slightly bigger one instead. Feels great to type on but man is it loud. If I had to worry about waking up people in the house I wouldn't be typing on this thing after bedtime, that's for sure.

Mouthwashing I sure picked a hell of a game to follow up on one of the silliest games I ever played. Mouthwashing is bleak. Very bleak. The premise is a commercial space freighter gets into an asteroid collision and the crew is now trapped on a dead ship in the middle of space with rescue unlikely. Food and water supplies are dwindling and the cargo hold is full of nothing but thousands of boxes of mouthwash with just enough alcohol content to get a person drunk if they're determined. The story jumps back and forth in the timeline, leaving you to gradually piece together what happens to the crew as they begin to despair and give in to their darker impulses. A line that is repeated more than once in this game is "I didn't believe people are defined by their worst moments." Are they, though? That's something they leave you to ponder. Some of the implications about what these people do to each other is absolutely vile and since they're all trapped on a spaceship together it's impossible for anyone to run away from their worst moments. It's presented to you through surreal segments full of psychological horror. There's no monsters on the ship other than the ones that already exist inside the crew but you'll be running from them anyway. It's like you're playing a David Lynch film. That's the best comparison I can think of. It deserves the praise it's been getting, but don't expect to be in a good mood when you finish it.

Even the gameplay of the first Last of Us was fairly basic but it was held up by a story people could really get invested in so if the story doesn't work then pretty much everything else falls apart.