If you played Sid Meier's Pirates or Port Royale you will feel right at home. No naval combat yet, but trade and automated trade routes. Dynamic prices based on supply and demand. Randomized worlds using climatology science - seasonal wind patterns which affect the flow of trade. Some cool stuff to check out.
Today’s game is some more Portal 2. I stayed up later than usual tonight and finished up the Single player. It was nice going back through Portal 2 because it’s one of those games that hits well at the ending no matter how many times I play it. Listening to Cara Mia Addio at the end made me cry a little. Part nostalgia (Portal 2 is one of those games that have been with me a long time) and also just it’s really moving to me.
One thing I noticed this go around, is that I like all the signs in the game. Just stopping and reading it is super amusing. There were a bunch I really liked. But my two standouts were the one above and this one:
I think going back through Old Aperture has also given me a new appreciation for it. It was one of my least favorite parts of the game. but just slowing down and going through it with the aesthetic and the music and the SFX? I definitely like it a lot more.
Anyways. I’ll be sticking with this a little bit longer. I have a few achievements left before 100%ing it. And since it’s not a lot of work I figured I’d do it. And plus I’d like to go through the Co-op again with friends, or, well. One friend though if somehow someone coughed up a 4 player mod for the game all these years later that would be cool. No idea how the puzzles would work though
It’s been on my ‘one of those days’ list for years now, and with Resonance out, they ran a $6 Steam sale for the original which put it in the impulse buy category. Fast forward a week and I’m out of town for work with some hotel time to kill so hooked my Steamdeck up to the TV and gave it a go and wow… I see what the hype is about.
Any non spoiler tips, tricks, or things I should be on the lookout for?
Some of the ports we're seeing in the retro handheld community lately have been great, and I love seeing developers push these little devices beyond what they were ever intended to do. But I've definitely noticed what feels like a growing amount of 'port-slop', with new projects appearing seemingly every few hours, many of them feeling more like quick experiments than anything particularly worthwhile.
I'm not against the experimentation at all, but I do wonder if we're reaching a point where quantity is starting to overshadow quality. Anyway, I put together a short opinion piece about it, just my own thoughts on something I've been noticing lately, especially here with my favorite old system: the PSP.
Specifically things like instanced 5 man dungeons (like Ragefire Chasm or the Deadmines in WoW) which are explicitly designed to challenge a full party of a certain level range. Notably, not endgame content. I'm sure the answer changes based on different factors (e.g. how good are the rewards? What are the drop rates like? Are similar rewards available elsewhere? How long is the dungeon? Am I late picking the kids up from soccer practice?), but I'm curious what folks' thoughts are. I'm personally sour on the idea, but I understand that my attitude is "the less MMO an MMORPG can be, the happier I am", so MMO designers should probably disregard my opinion.
Supplementary Context: usually about once a year, I get the bug to hop into an MMO. However, I am not a good MMO player. I tend to flit around my gaming library like an ADHD pixie on cocaine, and there's no telling how long my interest will sustain itself. Therefore, any "meta" choice I make is purely by accident, and I don't spare even a moment of thought on "efficiency". In fact, I've often thought of my dalliances in MMOs as digital tourism. By and large, I'm there to craft, read quest dialogs, and poke around in the weird corners of the map for a couple weeks before logging off for another few years. Anytime I've ever done group content (which is, admittedly, not often), I'm desperately trying to keep up while someone nukes everything in the dungeon as they sprint towards the end. I wind up feeling like my lackadaisical approach is probably fucking up someone else's farming loop. Now, I don't think either the sweatlords or I are playing the game "wrong" so to speak, but our priorities are in conflict. Maybe I'm letting people-pleasing anxiety get the best of me, but I feel like the person that cares enough to grind a dungeon reward as fast as possible should get right of way over my happy ass who will intentionally sandbag my way through a dungeon if the vibes are right. Therefore, I tend not to engage with such content, if it's not possible to solo.
This has all come to a head because my current preoccupation is Star Wars The Old Republic. Given this game's much greater emphasis on story and dialog than a typical MMO, I actually feel like there's RP content that I want to see in the dungeons, irrespective of any item reward. To the game's credit, many of these can be done solo by selecting the "story" difficulty option before loading in, but not all of them. I just don't want to be the asshole holding up the party cause I want to watch the 3 minute into cutscene (or whatever) while everyone else is hammering their skip buttons trying to get to the boss.
Not necessarily asking for advice, as the solution seems obvious to me (it's "talk to your fellow players", like it always is), but I thought this might foster some discussion, especially from old heads who might have lived the raid life back in the day, but now have different priorities.
Today’s game is some more Pokemon Soul Silver. I think I got as far as I could in terms of the Pokedex in Johto. Because of that I finally decided to head over to Kanto. I figured many of have some luck over there catching some of the other things I was missing.
The league was definitely a challenge. I ended up carrying with a few level 55 Pokemon and revives. But the other Pokemon in my party definitely pulled through too. At the very least the weakest bought time for me to get ahold of some revives for the other members of my party.
After that I headed straight for Vermillion city to wrap up. I figured I’d explore a little bit before hitting up the gym. I took a peak in there and saw 3 trainer battles and moped out though. I can tackle that later.
I ended up bumping into Cameron the photographer where the guy was doing construction and got a photo. I thought that would be a great spot to end it. I’m excited to see Kanto again. I played through FR once and I always love seeing old locations return in newer games. It’s something fascinating to return to an old place like that.
Almost four decades after Wizball arrived on the ZX Spectrum, one developer has set about giving it the version it perhaps always deserved, with a little help from someone who worked on the original.
This isn't even an article-article, and if you've been following my posts at all you'll see it isn't for my site. This is just a bit of a ramble on a fun (yet super niche!) topic for my newly semi-formed NeoCities page I've been tinkering with.
If you're old enough for the ZX Spectrum, then you might find it vaguely amusing :)
Today’s game is Portal 2 again. Made it all the way to old aperture and stopped today. Honestly got me thinking about Wheatley. I think yesterday I said he’s on a spectrum of loveable villains. Just a different Axis than Glados. Or at least I find him enjoyable.
Anyways. I was just thinking about him again. I almost wonder if we’ll ever see him again (outside of LEGO Dimensions of course). I do think Portal doesn’t really need another entry but it would be interesting to think about.
While doing the test chamber with the Lazers I also went out of my way to do it in the most impractical way possible. Anything but the right way. At least I don’t think this is the right way.
Anyways. I made it all the way to old aperture today. This game goes fast. I kind of like it though. It’s nice to have games I can tear through in like 4 days rather than a few weeks. I miss having games like that.
Anyways. I think I’ll go through the Multiplayer with my friend after the story. And by that I mean we’ll terrorize each other in whatever way we can for a few hours while stumbling our way through a level. My favorite way to play it.
Blizzard Entertainment's 'Diablo II' remains a classic game beloved by many gamers to this day.
In 2021, it gained new life with the release of 'Diablo II: Resurrected', which improved graphics and quality of life. Recently, however, a rather strange transformation has been occurring around the game. Moving beyond simply adding new items or classes, a series of attempts are emerging that alter the game's perspective, controls, and even its core genre...
There’s still a couple days left and I’m curious to hear what others have been playing.
A couple standouts I’ve played:
Tropico 7: I’m a pretty big fan (~360 hours in 6) so I was very excited to try the demo. It’s more Tropico, which is what I’m looking for! Some of the gripes I had with 6, like managing buses, have been smoothed over and I like the better visibility of how much money each citizen makes. I’m looking forward to the full release.
Beastfolk Barber: I tried this more to recommend to a couple friends since visual novels aren’t usually my thing, but this game is so cute! Customers come in, you spend a minute getting to know them, pick out some haircut options, then chat more while cutting their hair. I like that no customer overstays their welcome before leaving, and a couple of them were really endearing. I likely won’t play the full release myself, but I know a couple people I may gift it to.
Today’s game is Portal 2. In the background I finished up Assassin’s Creed 3 Remastered. Turns out I had missed an achievement about playing Fanorona and I’ve just been putting off beating that. I got that done though. And decided to swap it out with Portal 2. Make that my current “Project” game. There’s some challenges/achievements I’d like to do so I’m picking this up.
First thing I noticed, and I’m sure everyone always talks about this. But it’s how timeless the game feels. It’s one of those games that honestly I don’t feel like feels dated. I know it got a few updates here and there but honestly it plays so well and is so well written I feel like it could come out today and I wouldn’t bat an eye.
Second thing I noticed? There’s a companion cube with Cat ears in the game. I like cats. That’s all their really is too it. I just thought it was interesting and cute.
I like that we have more characters in this one to. That’s another aspect I like. I know it’s just one more character but just having Wheatley there I feel like helps balance things well between Glados and Chell, considering Chell doesn’t talk whatsoever. He’s like a whole other spectrum of likeable villains I feel like to Glados.
Anyways. This shouldn’t be a long play. It’s not a long game and I’ve played it like 5 times in the past. And considering my urge was to play this or replay Alan Wake 2 for the millionth time, this was probably the better choice in terms of uniqueness.
This is confirmed to be real according to Jason Schrier. They were going to use this trailer to reveal the game soon if Bioware hadn't closed. It's obviously a little unpolished (especially in the fake gameplay section) but it did look promising.
I've been looking into a lovely little preservation project involving EverQuest Online Adventures, the PlayStation 2 MMORPG that shut down way back in 2012.
Developer Ahmad Hassan (B-Ted) has been working on something called EQAI: an effort to bring the game's original 2003 character models back into its later Frontiers version. It turns out this is way more complicated than simply swapping a few files, involving all sorts of reverse engineering of the PS2's graphics and memory systems.
It's still a work in progress, but I find something really appealing about people putting this much time and effort into preserving the little details of online worlds that disappeared years ago. So I've written a short piece about the project and the wider community working to keep this forgotten corner of gaming history alive :)
Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and Monster Hunter publishers Capcom have revealed that a data breach has seen a third-party gain access to information associated with more than 11 million Capcom ID accounts. "Suspicious activity" around the service, required to play online in the likes of Street Fighter 6, was initially noticed on October 19th according to Capcom, who have spent the past couple of days taking measures to contain and combat the problem.
