Be Excellent To Each Other

Katana ZERO: closing in on the end now, peeking at the table of contents for a walkthrough suggests I've got a couple more sub-levels then some sort of boss fight finale. The plot is coming into focus and I think has been well handled through the game. The more of it I play, the more I think the correct reference point for understanding this game isn't Hotline: Miami -- despite the obvious aesthetic similarities -- but instead Mark of the Ninja. There's a fluidity and precision to the side-scrolling controls that I never felt H:M achieved but reminds me of MotN a lot.

Katana ZERO has also become significantly more difficult in this last quarter or so of the game, it feels much more like a puzzle game now -- where the levels have a definite path of least resistance through them that you're trying to find. It can take me 10-15 minutes before I find the magic 10 second combination to clear a screen. Very satisfying when it all comes together though.

The walkthrough also tells me I've missed all five hidden items, which give you unlocks at the end of the game. Oh!

Killing Floor 2: a few rounds with bezzies. I continue to love this game. Got to try out the new tier 5 weapons for medic (an assault rifle with an underbarrel heal-grenade launcher) and demo (a rapid-fire six-barrelled grenade launcher.) Both were lots of fun.

Frantics: It's a party game for the PS4. It's good because it uses phones rather than controllers, but it's bad because it still only allows four players But it is really good fun. If you ever played Fusion Frenzy on the Xbox then this will remind you of it. You wouldn't want to play it on your own but with three friends to piss off it's fantastic.

Dragon Ball FighterZ: It's a 1v1 fighter (with teams of 3, like Marvel vs Capcom), and it's great. The hyper moves are, as you might expect, insane.

Dear Esther: It was all right. The music was amazing.

Killing Floor 2: I'm yet to kill any floors. I feel I must be letting my teammates down.

Story checks out.

Still deeply mired in Rimworld. Current colony is about 40 hours in and I've just about got to the point where I have a reliable defensive perimeter and raids don't tend to get inside it.

Here:

Still loving Resident Evil 2!

Fortnite.. with the boy

Good Knight Story (Android) - been really enjoying this and unlike the likes of Candy Crush where levels are just churned out week after week, it looks like there are a set 125 in this. Unfortunately, the end game boss is at level 124 and I seem to have reached it earlier than I perhaps should have as I'm massively underpowered, so it looks like some grinding of previous levels will be needed

Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 - another Xbox Game Pass game. No idea what's going on half the time, but it's fun

The Golf Club 2019 - Games with Gold game, but not until the 16th, so I'll have to wait to download that one.

Somehow I got past the janky graphics and terrible combat of Morrowind and I’ve sunk in 15 hours now. Still not sure if I’m enjoying it, but for some reason I can’t stop.

Started Celeste on the Switch. It’s got me swearing at the screen in the same way I do at Trials games. But it’s brilliant.

Abandoned Flashback as I got to a bit I couldn’t do and didn’t have the motivation to look it up. The combat was just too fiddly.

Cras are those plaststeel walls? You madman! You're gonna want that for the ship!

The Rimefeller mod (all the oil refining on the right) gives you the ability to make a plastic building compound which isn't as strong as plascrete but it's a hell of a lot better than wood and much less flammable. And has purty colours.

Oh fair enough, I haven't tried that mod!

Shenmue (ps4) - Eagerly anticipating the third game in the series (for the last 17 and a half years), I thought I'd better get back to working my way through the first two, having not played it since October (time stamped save files are a great way to make you wonder where the time has gone).
It's got to be said, I am leaning more into the, "this is boring, you're just waiting round for stuff to happen" camp, rather than the "there's so much stuff to do" one. To be fair, I think this is the 4th time I've played it, so the novelty was going to inevitably wear off.

Celeste (Switch) - my current bedtime gaming, having moved on from Gunman Clive 2 which was getting a bit tedious. Enjoying it so far, although there seems to be the odd point where I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing/ where I'm going.

Various (switch) - If I get caught out by Switch number one running out of charge, then I'm playing various N64 games on number two, mainly Mario Kart 64 and Starfox 64 (which I'm still rubbish at).

Red Dead Redemption 2 - I am up to chapter four, now. Micah's a knob, and I still haven't recovered my favourite hat. To complete a challenge I needed to kill two species of animal in one dead eye session. Every time I fire a shot I come out of dead eye, so I decided to try dynamite fishing instead, but that didn't work, so I will tether a horse hear a goat or something and dynamite them. And I caught a legendary fish by, err, shooting it in the face.

I'm mostly still playing Battlefield V because the multiplayer is brilliant and Troops is a wrongy wrongface.

Oh also - I realised that Space Pirate Training game is the one that we played on Mr Dave's VR thing at Cottage a couple of years ago, which felt like LIVING IN THE FUTURE. So I bought that. The kids have loved it. I've enjoyed it, but it's not quite as world changing as it felt the first time (title) ... I think maybe Superhot spoiled me.

Hearthstone - Main gaming PC

MAME - Media Centre PC on the big telly

Pinball Arcade - Media Centre PC on the big telly

Split Second - 360 backwards compat on XB1X on the big telly

Borderlands 2 co-op with Mrs Hearthly when we get chance - Main gaming PCs

This would have been my answer last week too, except for Split Second.

I tried Wolfenstein The Old Blood which everyone says is fantastic but it didn't checkpoint for ages and I had to quit out of the game and when I went back in I'd lost an annoying amount of progress which irritated me and I haven't played it since. (Because implementing an actual SAVE GAME function is apparently not a thing these days.)

I also stopped playing RE2 for a similar reason when it took all my guns off me and made me play as an annoying woman in high heels.

Chase HQ does not do this type of crap.

Press R1, not R2.

I can’t say I’ve found this issue, and I’ve just got out of the hotel now. I’m really enjoying it although it’s maddening sometimes! I’ve died well over 500 times so far.

This week I've been mostly playing games with the kids, so...

Lego Star Wars 2: We've played through this before but the kids love it. Who am I to judge? Also, they're both good enough at it that I don't have to help them anymore.

Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: Same really, except we haven't played it before. This one has the split screen feature that the Star Wars game lacks.

Peggle 2: A quick way to make an 8 year old girl cry (as if that's difficult) is to win a 2 player duel with last shot. Daddy's mean, apparently.

Marooners: Was this a Games with Gold? I don't even know where it came from. Pretty basic, manically timed, multiplayer party game. Fun in short bursts.

D'oh

Forgotton Anne: second session last night and it's just not grabbing me. The unskippable dialogue is making the already gratingly twee story annoying to wade through and the game mechanics are so repetitive and bare bones that I'm not enthralled by that aspect either. Pretty sure I'm going to dump it and move onto something else tonight, possibly 11-11 Memories Retold.

Days Gone. I'm getting dead good at stealth now, for the first time ever. I would strongly imagine that's because there isn't really a "steam in and smash their heads in, ye steam ye bundle!" option.

Which is good because I'm actually enjoying the huge change of play style.

Atlantic Fleet

Cheap and cheerful Boom-Ships simulator on Steam in reasonably pretty 3D. Chug about the North Atlantic in WWII ships X-Com style. Pick yer rudder setting and speed (always Flank) and click Done. Then choose your gun battery and dial in the elevation based on your range-finder and radar's best guesses and the splashes from the bracketing your prior volleys have made. Click Fire. Thrill as the rickerty Hood flukily penetrates the Bismarck's front foremost turrett and detonates in the magazine, thus reversing history! Despair as your King George V volleys miss a nimble destroyer beading in on you with a torp spread. Custom battles are the best where you can run up endless variations of Kriegsmarine vs. RN shenanigans. Fun in quick blasts, until you realise it's three in the morning.

American Truck Simulator

Now covering California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and soon to be Washington state, this is my favourite relaxing head-space as I roll across the two-lane blacktop of America. Tune in to local radio stations as you pass through the states, and pretend you're in some sort of David Lynch film at night as you drive through New Mexico. Love it.

The Long Dark

You know the story, I'm always on about this. Have been taking a bit of a break the last half year but feeling the lure again. Top Canadian post-apocalypse wilderness winter-based survival fun. Zombies need not apply for the quiet apocalypse.

Night in the Woods

Rust-belt Pennsylvania town with paper-cut-out woodland animal people living their lives in a dying economy. You play a girl who's quit college and has come back home to chill with her buddies who never made it out. Possibly there's something spooky in the woods, but who cares, let's go to the K-Mart and then commit some trivial CRIMES. CRIMES! It's just brilliant.

Mad Max

Brrrm brrrrm crunch yahoo "Look out it's the mighty duster! It'll, like, knock over your shopping or something!" brrrrm punch punch punch punch punch punch find find find find find find find find phew achievement brrrm brrrm brrrm ha-ha-I-harpoon-you-not-today-jump-spike-man brrrm brrrm oh-a-cliff-wheeeeeee! Kaboom! Roll. Punch punch punch etc.

Valkyrie Chronicles 4

Play the most combat-efficient unit in the history of the universe, despite the fact that they all have emotional baggage and big floppy fringes and cowlicks that make it difficult to see. Gasp! As the 1930's CommunNazis Empire invade Belgium Galacia! Thrill, as NATO The Alliance push them back thanks to the lessons of team-work and family. X-Com fun where as you run your characters across the battlefield your action-point bar runs down and baddies shoot at you, with you hopefully reaching cover and shooting them accurately in the face before you die / run out of energy. It's just brilliant, and features the anime staple of characters wildly gesturing as they talk.

Phoenix Wright Ace Atorney

Now on PC! OBJECTION I LOVE YOU!

Cheers, again. I use this loads now.

I solved the "kill two species in one deadeye" by going to a farm, standing on a roof, and accurately throwing dynamite between a flock of goats and chickens.

Still playing Xenoblade chronicles 2 in gaps. General thoughts are that the map design often leads you to not having a damn clue where you're supposed to go. More later.

Resident Evil 2... having to go back a few saves as I'm stick at a checkpoint that after a skippable cutscene plonks me in front of a very large bad thing and I've no health spray / herb and life meter is on DANGER!!!

Which large thing? There's normally spray in with the large things.

In one attempt I got to the left side and there was ammo so I assume there would be health on the other. It was late though so I stopped trying after 4 attempts.

It was

It was having to fend off 3 or 4 zombies and 2 lickers in a previous section that caned my goodies.

Yeah, if you leg it round him, turn right and keep going to the end you'll find a spray.

You can see me do it here (although I loiter for a few seconds to FUCK HIM UP) - spoilers, obv: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vjzCI4DWGs

Ta, I'll have another crack from my last save then.

Hearthstone and MAME for me. I've even stopped playing Peggle 2 and Split Second.

I can just fire up MAME and next thing I know three hours have passed.

Bloody hell,.that's some loading time.

I downloaded a charming little puzzle game called Two Dots, because the graphics are by an illustrator I follow.

The game is a wonderful little distraction, and I was reallly, really enjoying it until I failed a level and then had to wait ten minutes to play again. I get that they are trying to get me to buy some kind of boost thing to play immediately, but I’d much rather just pay a flat price and have a game to play when I want, rather than either wait, or drip buy things to speed the process up, so I deleted it. I don’t ever have games on my phone, so it’s a shame, as I was enjoying it otherwise.

This is the illustrator:

https://instagram.com/owendaveydraws?ig ... fjkquwmh4n

His work is a little Charlie Harper-esque, I guess. The ‘Pop-Up Dinosaurs’ book is just beautiful and a great gift idea for any dinosaur obsessed child of about 6-10.

Still playing Eternal because it is great.

Over 2000 hours now.

Also Rage 2...because I am an ID fanboy.

Update: Went back a few saves to to have a pinch more health AND I THEN FUCKED HIM UP after many, many attempts.

THEN

Onwards into Claire!

Wrong thread.

I wasn't making a new thread to pick up where I was chatting to Grim... about a game.

This forum is fundamentally broken.

BROKEN!

My contiguous thread idea with a changing weekly title fixes all this stuff.

Mostly this week I will be playing Trine 2 on switch and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on PS4

A new thread was going to be created each week until some arsehole complained.

Beex made it to week two.

Good going!

I'm just waiting for the new thread so that I can post what I am (will be) playing.

It was actually nine days. Even quicker than I expected.

Today I've been playing silly buggers, because some arsehole in engineering support didn't tell anyone that there was a new password required when configuring Reduce To Clear printers with our client.

Oops, wrong thread, but I couldn't be arsed to post in My Cocking Employer.

Changing the thread title to:

What's Everyone Playing? (This week)

would work in a snazzy kinda fashion.

This is called 'leaning the process'.

Nah, you don’t need two of those.

https://www.beexcellenttoeachother.com/ ... ng#p950915

Lake Ridden. Nice walking simulator slash puzzle game.

I have been playing TEAM SONIC RACING on the XB1X and it's good but not great.

For starters it doesn't run at a steady 60FPS, which for the most powerful games console in the world, running a bloody kart racing game, is crap. I'd rather they'd dropped the resolution to 1080p to lock in 60FPS, rather than run at a higher res and drop frames at the worst possible times. (Or at least leave the option of 1080p/60FPS on the table.)

Moreover, the way it drops frames is awful, with some weird sort of double buffer that means you get a proper lurch when it happens, that can totally fuck up a drift swap through some tight corners and lose you a gold. (The ring challenge stages in particular are really harsh and a single mistake will cost a gold.) It's not just me being picky, if you watch the Digital Foundry video on the PS4 Pro version which drops frames in the same way, they say it genuinely takes you out of the moment and negatively impacts the feel of the game - and it really does.

Mario Kart 8 - this is not.

Beyond that it's a very competent game but not jaw dropping, it terms of pure fun I think Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed was better, and it had a wider roster of Sega characters.

The drifting feels a bit off too, I can't quite get locked into the zone with it, honestly, OutRun2 Coast2Coast felt better on the original XBox five million years ago.

The story and cutscenes are object lessons in banality, do yourselves a favour and skip them.

The music ranges from great to annoying, seemingly at random.

Oh yes and instead of nice distinct icons like you get for powerups in say, a Mario Kart game, here you collect 'wisps' which all sort of look a bit the same so you really have to learn them.

Despite all that, I'm having fun with it, and at its best it's a beautiful, fast, exciting, challenging kart racer. I'll probably work my way through the single player campaign a few stages at a time. It's an enjoyable game, don't get me wrong, but it has its flaws.

I'm feeling 7/10 territory at the moment.