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So, having crafted the Barroth Shredder 1 last night, tonight I tried it out.

Despite Bazelgeuse frequently turning up to pick a fight with Jyuradoctus, plus a couple of faints, it died to it. Did have to resort to throwing crap at Bazelgeuse to get it to bugger off.

I then tried it on a Barroth. Poor, poor Barroth. As the sword absolutely lived up to its billing! One big hit whacked it for 345 damage! Parts were getting broken left, right and centre. It’s a damn good sword.

 

Just started playing Assassin's Creed III on the PS3, like it so far.

 

I reallllllyyyy stumbled on this game. I could only advance the story along when my son was here to watch so sometimes over a week would pass. It was super fun but the promise I made him began to really hinder my playtime and I lost interest. Weapon and armor system was a bit daunting to.

Will play again at some point.

 

Yeah, I can see that happening easily on this game. I'm taking my time and it took me 60 hours to get to High Rank, have spent a further 10-12 adjusting to the expanded options in crafting that came with it.

That said, I'm really seeing more of a difference in the weapons now - this new greatsword tore through Barroth, but was less effective against Jyuradoctus so it's far more about tailoring your gear to what you are hunting and crafting appropriately.

 

So, good news, bad news:

Good: Somehow, despite using a greatsword on a highly agile total bastard of an enemy - High Rank Anjanath and Bazelgeuse turning up to crash the party - at one point Barroth joined in for a 3-way super brawl! - I managed to tranq it!

Bad: Next is Pink ****in' Rathian - and it earns the name.

So, to feel better I went and got the Pukei arnour by killing it three times.

 

You get 50mins for a hunt in MHW. I went after the Pink Rathian, again - this time with a Dragon Longsword and poison immunity. What happened? I just, after having gone through nearly all my potions and mega potions, took the hellspawned mutha****ing bastard piece o’ **** out at just under 44mins!

No joke. It was death by a thousand cuts against a flying camera hiding cheat of a monster. That sword? Did 20-50 damage per hit on a bastard I was spending most of the time trying to hit. Had I not managed to get the tail lopped off - the main advantage, I wouldn’t have even had a chance as she has this tailswipe move that whacks off 66% of your health, without it? It’s only down to a third.

The fight went through about five locations, including a couple that the laws of physics declare to be an impossibility for her to fly around in.

What did I get for winning this hugely irritating, offence to the gods of game design, piece o '**** fight? Well, there was:

• New armour tier
• New weapon / armour unlocked
• Final area of the game unlocked - which you can only access in High Rank setting - Elder’s Recess.

That new area has a ton of new super monsters and materials that in turn also unlock crafting ability for new weapons and armour. I’ve a huge amount of stuff opened up that was sealed off before. Oh and it turns out this area has Azure Ratholos, so the same gig as Pink Rathian - a total bastard has become a super-bastard.

Does it make up for the nature of that boss fight? It’s all very good, but no, no it does not. That said Elder’s Recess, like the other areas, is a masterpiece of game design and aesthetics. Cooled lava mountains at the top, lave hell hole at the bottom and it looks like a good half of it is still walled off. Or was on the expedition I was on.

In story terms, what’s next? Nergigante. Am I inclined to want to do that fight after the last two? Can’t really say that I am. In terms of what I wanted from the game I’ve been far more successful than I expected to be. the weapon upgrade tree is as open as it’ll get - I thought there might be another unlock but it seems not. Can now get the arnour upgraded to help duffing up the weaker monsters and so really go to town on gear development. So, yeah, not going to rush that, but neither is there that much inclination to do it - not least, as in both of the last two - and the final Low Rank fights - having the best gear you could get meant the monster can’t one-shot you, but it gets to do it in two or three. Combine that with a weak dodge move that tends to fail a good 50% of the time and it doesn’t add up to incentive to continue the story.

In contrast, taking on the new monsters, doing the new quests and investigations, acquiring what I need to get some new stuff, while now being able to access the entire world? That’s far more of a hook.

Although, to be fair, it’s not as if there isn’t a pile of other games I need to either get or return to. I’m at the 75 hour mark on MHW.

p.s. Forgot to include - you will have a bastard hard fight, you just about win it - then the game allows you to upgrade your armour. Really? I couldn't have done that before, by say feeding one of the Workshop assistants to the furnace in order to motivate the smith into 'fessing up the secret upgrade? Nope, you can't - you just have to live with these artificial restrictions.

 

Persona 5 is awesome at 11 hrs(about 1+hr idle time here) I’m assaulting a castle. Great stuff so far I just wish the safe rooms offered rest points so I could go crazy lvling up without worrying about my magic points.

 

Do you mean recovering SP? It's annoying at first for sure, but eventually you'll get enough restorative items and have it at a high enough level that clearing dungeons in a day is quite feasible. Mementos can be a nuisance, but luckily I never felt a need to grind much.

Really need to get around to beating the final boss...

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They've gotten too lazy about giving you healing options. Back in my day mounting a full-scale one shot assault on a dungeon in an SMT game was the insane desperation move of a cornered animal who was hopelessly outgunned due to being bad about resource management and navigating the negotiation system. These days it's a midgame objective. Next they'll start giving you full restoration at save points. *Grumble grumble grumble old man shtick grumble*

This freaking series turns me into a bad stereotype of MonHun fans. "Oh you think this terrible design decision is hard to navigate? Well it used to be even worse!" Like that's a desirable benchmark.

 

Yea.
I have been able to buy around 8 SP potions in vending machines but they seem precious so I’m not using them yet.

 

Been playing Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. I gotta say, while I l kind of like the puzzles in the game, the combat in it has to be among the cheapest in any game. The controls in combat, for lack of a better word: stink. You can adjust the difficulty; but I don't see any difference between "Normal", "Auto", and "Easy". It's mind-numbingly, throw-your-controller-on-the-floor frustrating. When you make combat ridiculously hard like that, it poisons your feelings for the game overall. I must've spent at least half an hour on one part where I was just trying to get through five or so enemies that come at least two at a time; giving you no leeway. And you can't run anywhere as the whole area is sealed around you. My character must've died a couple dozen times before I gave up and played something else.

 

I'm sure the devs have some **** excuse like "It's supposed to feel hard because that's how it feels for the character." Celeste was the same way. At that point I just move on to something good instead.

 

Well that's pretty much what I did. I went to a far less stressful game like Overwatch. It's a fun game that I like playing.

 

A competitive shooter = stress for me. I'm ready for that Tetris Effect to be my new zen fix.

 

Tetris isn't stressful? Just wait until you get into the later stages when the bricks keep coming down faster than you can blink.

 

I started the BioShock trilogy today. I’ve had the remastered PS4 versions in my gaming cupboard for a while now but haven’t played them. I must’ve played about 3 hours of the first game so far. It’s decent. I love the world building and the creepy atmosphere. You never know what’s around the corner. I also like the sound design. The gameplay is pretty bad though, but it’s over 10 years old, so it gets a pass. It’s impossible not to get your health low whenever you’re in a fight. I’m interested to keep going and see where this goes.

 

I really was enjoying Persona 5 at 1st. Now I’m not so sure. It’s hard and frustrating. I can’t get past the same spots sometimes for hours and death after death. Magic depletion and only a bare handful of precious mixtures that only give a whopping 5 pts of magic power back is really angering me. Then I’m reluctant to even leave the dungeon to recharge as I only have 6 days left to complete and each exit cost a day. Blah

 

MHW - Duffed up a load of Gajalakas. If I'm going to try and befriend them, best do the chef kill quest first!

 

Let me try and break down some tips. Fair warning, your current save might not be salvageable if you don't have good backup points, especially if you're running out of time:

• Optimal dungeon days are almost entirely dependent on your social schedule and are usually the first time you enter the dungeon, the next day, and the last day. You shouldn't be spending more than two days on a new dungeon, ever. Yes, two days. Yes, that takes hours of ugly grinding and optimal Persona fusion, especially if you're not on easy. If you happen to have a free day, go grind.
• The reason the optimal window is so small is that maximizing social links (or whatever they call them in 5. Contacts?) is the key to victory. You should never be socializing without a Persona of the correct arcana equipped, you should be socializing as much as possible, and every rank up means it's time to start fusing new things.
• Healing items are not optional the way they are in other JRPGs, you need as much SP freed up as possible to make it through the initial ascent, and then the boss. Any heal cast is a waste. If you can get by on pure weapon attacks do so. Yeah it takes longer. Them's the breaks.
• Similarly, status and buff/debuff magic is not optional the way it is in other JRPGs. In fact most bosses after a certain point are pretty much unbeatable without a solid buff/debuff pattern. Your base stats can't and won't carry you the way a well-timed Rakukaja will.
• Rotate saves, rotate saves, rotate saves. You should probably have, like, six: one for when a new month starts, one for when a new dungeon opens, three that are "standard saves" that you rotate, one for dungeons. That way if you ever really, really screw up you have a backup. Rotation with non-dungeon saves is key because death spells are super common in these games and you don't want to be stuck mid-dungeon with a half dead party forcing you to retreat. There's a (dumb) philosophy regarding save scumming that developed in the last... ten to twenty?... years in gaming circles that SMT titles aren't designed around, do not care about, and will sometimes punish you for adhering to. They know you have multiple saves and they expect you to use them. If an entire run is a botch discard it and load an earlier save.

Oh, and last but not least since you're clearly on the fence about continuing - multihour boss fights that end in an ignominious, progress destroying wipe are A Thing. That's a humongous goddamn ask for anybody (at least it is for me!). If you feel like you're wasting time already it might be in your best interest to stop, or start using a guide for strategies.

 

I’ve got quite a few save files thankfully and have been eyeing my earliest one since the option to invade began. Going back almost 11 hrs playtime is pretty depressing to consider but may have to do it. So much happens though the game throws at you causing a day to pass: read this, talk to so and so, training etc... days passed before I got in there for 1st time and realized how hard it would be to clear. It really drops the hand holding at that point and I wasn’t prepared for it having never played the franchise before. Watching people go through this castle on YouTube pisses me off as I’m struggling to even survive battles but they have edit buttons to smooth things over.

 

Edit buttons and if you've played previous titles there's kind of a basic rhythm there you can get a hang of, but they're tricky when you're just getting started for sure.

 

So, very briefly tried The Crew 2 beta demo tonight - as might be evident, it didn't go well:

• Cars: The handling was off, it bounced everywhere and the gameworld had the same weird lack of solidity as the first one.
• Boats: Looked pretty, weird handling and actually not all that. (Water-based racing? Wave Storm cracked it way back when.)
• Planes: Oh, ye gods, these were vile.

So, one deletion later, I boot up the PS3 and stick on an 8-year-old, last-gen game, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. It kicked the arse of The Crew 2. Great handling, graphics that actually looked like they were designed, good sense of peril with spectacular crash to match. And custom soundtrack - the freedrive remains perfect fun for me. Just bombing around at insane speed to a soundtrack of choice.

EDIT: Before that downloaded, did a couple of Elder's Recess quests in MHW - including tangling with Gastodons. After getting whacked, went strategic, lured them down to a flashfly, blinded and then killed them before they could recover. Did the Galajaka quest, acquiring them as allies, well some of the little buggers, plus ability to recruit Gastodons, which could be very useful. Getting a nice pile of cash too, which will be needed given the price of most of the new stuff.

 

Currently head over heels for Hollow Knight right now. Wanted to play it last year when it released for the PC but held out for the Switch version, and it feels oh so nice to finally get my hands on it. About six hours in, and couldn't be happier. The fact that it's only $15 boggles the mind. It's gorgeous to look at with a variety of different areas and environments (City of Tears being a particular highlight), the music is fantastic and engrossing, and the gameplay is tight, tight tight. Still feels like I have a lot left to go, can't wait to explore more of it.

 

So, had an irritating go on MHW in that I'm fighting a Kula-Ya-Ku or Great Jagras, with about 50-75 points extra of armour defence and does it make a damn difference to the fights? No. At one point Jagras manages to land a big hit and it has the same 50% health whack as when I had the lower defence which makes a mockery of its entire crafting structure. The Kulu fight did similarly cheap crap and it's pretty demotivating in terms of incentive to play the game. If the better armour doesn't reduce the hit, why bother with it all?