Recent reviews by dusty

liked it a lot, would recommend to your standard crowd of oddballs who like weird stuff like this more for the experience rather than gameplay.

only caveat would be i do not really agree with the "go in blind" advice because on the standard save system you save to a single slot once you've spent enough time outside your apartment, and whilst 15 days is generous(and also something you can edit online if you are really pressed for time) you still get that urge to maximize things done before you return. without save slots the ability to redo content once you feel/know you've missed something or want to revisit it is nonexistent, and this game has a ton of stuff you want to see and can easily miss.

i ended up just going section by section, doing things as i would with a save beforehand and a save made afterwards, then glancing at a guide to see what i missed. you could do it with skimming a guide to try and not spoil yourself beforehand but most sections really aren't long and the best of guides is gonna struggle to not give away details when the list of achievements does just that.

this is all from the perspective of a person who doesn't really replay stuff, my 15.7 hours is with a good 3-5 hours where i left it running, so if you're not bothered by replaying stuff you like you could very easily redo content super easily, i'm just writing to the "experience as much as possible first time around" crowd whom i think are better served with the save anytime system

this series just never could get their big break, three solid(if janky) titles that moved back and forth in terms of quality and problems but showed consistent effort to improve and then on the day of their biggest game so far's launch the dev got ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. not really a huge surprise seeing as conquistadors was crowdfunded and vikings by their own admission did not do as well as they had expected, but i figured they'd have at least given their third game time to fail before axing them

it is with a very heavy heart i announce japan is yet again being invaded by demons, but this time they've decided dancing is the best way to defeat them

nobody's going to read a review about a game about to turn 10 years old or change their mind because of one review but i want to say the steam box disguise they used to announce a metal gear game on pc isn't in the game

strikes me as firaxis publishing this masked that it's essentially a graduation project-esque game made to test the waters of a post-jake xcom(busy on midnight suns, rip) that got blamed as killing any hope for xcom 3(which was also probably amostly the combination of jake leaving, jake leaving for midnight suns, and jake's midnight suns flopping, though this didn't help). for $20 it shows that firaxis wasn't expecting too much out of it, but i feel like releasing it at all after we had held with bated breaths to see if we would retread into TFTD after xcom 2's ending or go the apocalypse route when it was, again, something absolutely nobody asked for really didn't help.

for starters the game is comically tone-deaf to the standard xcom player's absolute indifference to the story beyond the setting or their absolute disregard for questions of morality when the fate of humanity is at stake, leading to a very, very weird experience where the world post-ADVENT is us all singing kumbayah and working together towards the future with the killer mindless aliens(now only some of them are mindless killers) who just 10-20 years earlier turned 90% of humanity into holocaust zombies and were in the process(which was shown to everyone worldwide in the mandatory propaganda events you had to attend or be sent to a concentration camp) of turning the remaining 10% into goo. to "alleviate" this conundrum, the devs gave the aliens human features which ironically makes them even creepier(note: the vipers conspicuously remain unchanged). it's not at all helped when the story and character interactions are brought to the forefront and they're the equivalent of drywall without paint. every conversation plays out like an overwatch pre-round interaction in terms of depth and you start to actually long for bradford bothering you or shen talking about computer games whilst you try to just kill aliens.

so with the potential tidbits of interesting conundrums about what to do with vast amounts of earth post-invasion and the status of the ADVENT hybrids/collaborators/aliens done away with you get 3 mini campaigns with pretty much nothing tying them together and even more minimal overworld management, leading to this being about the equivalent of the legacy pack for 2 where you are just playing sequential missions and that's all you care about, and those missions aren't very replayable at all nor offer the level of depth desired, and even the simplest of xcom's enemy prioritization is simplified to just manipulating the action order.

so with nothing i have said being positive i still recommend it because i am a battered and broken soul hoping for jake to do game 3 and fix his game and if i don't recommend it i am forced to face the fact that neither will happen and i'm writing a stream of thought about a sidegame nobody cares about in a dead(again) series

weird korean game featuring new xcom style battles mixed with every sort of rpg mechanic ever devised by man and guys who worship spoons, muscular women, and the devs have a guy who responds to every single review posted, enduring the endless cavalcade of nonsensical waifu recommendations

i listen to critical clash 2 on endless repeat

it's exactly what you'd expect from a wuxia game: vast amounts of time spent being beaten up by monks and elderly men who then elaborate on how to fly on swords whilst you thank them for whooping your ass, a main character who can't get enough of having his ass kicked, hordes of women attracted to the raw sex appeal of getting your ass kicked, a sort of jank english translation(though the genre isn't exactly known for stellar writing before or after translation), lots of walking around mountain trails to beat up c̶h̶i̶n̶a̶'s̶ neverending hordes of bandits accosting peasants, a nondescript time that just kind of settles for "ming dynasty era", and lots and lots of very long martial arts techniques that are something to the tune of "Eight Trigram Pentifold Magnificient Destiny Centrepieces Blade Dance".

if i had to give a distinguishing feature of this game versus others of the sort: you can recruit virtually any random bum off the streets by gifting them rice and ♥♥♥♥ to help you fight demigods. however seeing as Chef Wang(or Farmer Ming, Herbalist Chang, or Tailor Wu) has not, in fact, spent his entire life cultivating qi and practicing swordplay so he is totally useless at this task and will die instantly

great game

I was quite on-board and enjoying my time with this DLC and revisiting Elden Ring to the point I was about to leave a positive review...until the Bed of Godskin Demon Trio of Magma Rat Rot Vanguard Congregation Dragon Kings. I hardly think it's controversial to call this fight padding seeing as it is not essential to the story but blocks the player out of completing the DLC until they beat it. I will try to spoil as little as possible, but still elaborate why this ruins the DLC as a whole and possibly the entire game for some players.

Firstly, the boss has no bearing on the story or plot and merely serves as filler to pad the runtime and price. In the final area of the game in front of a locked gate leading to the final boss is a collapsing floor trap leading to the subarea the boss is located in. The player is given a single grace at the bottom of their fall(and their sole stake of Marika right beside it for some reason). Now, to make matters worse this is still treated as part of the legacy dungeon the final area comprises of so you have no access to Torrent. The trek to the fog gate begins with a perilous jumping puzzle across multiple tree roots filled with those annoying sorcerers that disappear and invisible archers(datamining reveals them to be reused Albinauric archers from the base game). Supposing you cheese the archers and sorcerers with ranged weapons/sorcery or manage to run past you are then treated to a myriad of prefab tunnels and hallways that are so endemic to Elden Ring's world you can recognize them immediately. Patrolling these blood loss and madness inflicting winged giant dog hallways are numerous chariots(if there is a way to destroy them it hasn't been found even with datamining) that require such precise timing and jumps I'm not sure many of them are possible without taking damage. At the end of this section(no loot is provided except Dung Slime Ashes and some Grave Glovewort 1's) you finally reach the boss fog and are greeted to a pool of scarlet rot just deep enough to slow your character's movement. And then, what should appear? The Bed of Godskin Demon Trio of Magma Rat Rot Vanguard Congregation Dragon Kings(note: this is possibly a mistranslation/something lost in translation, the Japanese name "宮崎はあなたの足の悪魔を嫌っています。お金をありがとう、バカ者。" has a number of other possible meanings). Mechanically this fight could be good in concept. A fight wherein you have to time your boss kills so that they do not revive each other has been done before(DS2, for instance), but is very unique to the series still. A trio fight is rarer in the grand scheme of things as well, being seen seldomly outside of Elden Ring's Crystalian minor bosses, especially with all three boss enemies present at the start.

However I simply could not comprehend the decision to design the boss arena so that pitfalls of instant death are barely visible underneath pools of scarlet rot and lava spewed by the boss(es). All of this while your camera is focused up on the flipping and jumping enemies dealing enormous amounts of damage either by spell or their rolls and grapples. You're slowed, outnumbered, the bosses heal for damage dealt, hit hard, revive each other, you can't even see their rat summons half the time, and are constantly accruing scarlet rot whilst just trying to functionally medium roll and not die.

I died many, many times. I'm not ashamed to say that I tried every summon available and died many more times falling on my way to the boss fog. I ran out of arrows and quickly realized Miyazaki is no ordinary spiteful Japanese man. You know how minor dungeons lock you out of fast traveling until you beat their boss like it's a major inconvenience to just take four steps to the door and warp away? Now remember you fell in a trap to get to this area. Put two and two together and you realize you cannot escape this area until the boss is dead. There is no escape. You either were lucky enough to back up your save before entering for whatever reason or you are now stuck until you beat the boss.

This is a master class in game design. To my knowledge there are no achievements in Shadow of the Erdtree because beating it is not a natural, humanly possible feat. Sure, some cheaters few and far between have hacked the game to beat the boss or used glitches to bypass it, but those are not intended or something game designers can prevent. Themes of futility are rife in the game and this one boss ties it all together with such well-done metanarrative on both expectations of difficulty and Miyazaki's intentions.

Thank you, Hiyao Miyazaki. Thank you for the 46+ hours of 3-second delays into loading screens of YOU DIED as my character falls to their death after I slid off solid tree branch to my death screaming. Thank you for the 100+ hours I have spent trying to beat this boss, only to remember that a Tarnished cannot kill a God. And so too, can a Tarnished not kill the Bed of Godskin Demon Trio of Magma Rat Rot Vanguard Congregation Dragon Kings. I toast my Thioller's Concoction to instantly die in honor of your masterpiece. Thank you.

i think tolkien always envisioned shelob as a goth chick who resembles American pornographic actress, actress, model, and writer Stoya(not to be confused with Serbian singer Stoja), recipient of the 2012 AVN Award – Hottest Sex Scene (Fan Award) – Babysitters 2, and I feel in his writings it is clearly indicated that he based Shelob off of her appearance in Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge, although later in his life would cite Stoya: Sexual Freak 7 in his letters. When reading "Shelob's Lair" great care should be paid by readers to the passage: "Most like a spider she was, but huger than the great hunting beasts, and more terrible than they because of the evil purpose in her remorseless eyes," highly reminiscent of Stoya's piercing gaze, a feature shown prominently in Bad Girls 6(Notes: facial) despite the lack of 4K quality. If it were even up for debate I would also cite "her huge swollen body, a vast bloated bag, swaying and sagging", and whilst I do not agree with Tolkien's interpretation of Stoya's 34B-25-34 breasts to be of the same caliber I think the literary allusion is obvious. Some have cited it as a "liberal" re-imagining of the foremost spawn of Ungoliant, but I would remind them to read "a dreadful gash, but those hideous folds could not be pierced by any strength of men" and dare them to NOT be reminded of her appearance in Hacked: The Cyber Penetration.