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A 1970 Corvette

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Posts posted by A 1970 Corvette

  1. Posted · Edited by A 1970 Corvette

    Lol I am so fucking late sholy ssjt, I will necro the topic solely because I promised I'd post (I have some replies to stuff in this thread as well other than noita but I swear I'll work on this after I sleep it's 1am okay please I only feel like writing stuff during the witching hour right before I pass out)

     

    The Good

    Spoiler

     

    Hypnospace Outlaw: A really charming game that rides that "early" internet retro-wave which is kind of common now I think? Honestly it was kind of before my time but since eras don't end cleanly I still experienced a bit of it and obviously the game is well put together enough that it doesn't completely crutch on the nostalgia, but it does hit the notes extremely well. I kind of wonder how someone who wasn't aware of that era would react to it honestly.

    Honestly, my only complaint is that I enjoyed the initial investigation loop and kind of wanted more of it before the plot developed into what the game was actually about, but I think there was only so much of that you could really have in the game and what we had was good. Plus, they did a good job of having a similar experience while you unraveled the plot, though obviously the stakes and content were a little higher by then.

    Overall I say it's a lot of fun and I love the presentation and UI and how it all speaks to these little snippets of time for computers and the internet. 

     

    Echo Point Nova: Wonderful mobility shooter from an indie dev who likes to make these kinds of mobility shooters. Not a long game, nor well balanced, but has a lot of catharsis in the speed and exploration. This game is straightforward enough that you'll know if you wanna play it by watching a minute of gameplay I think.

     

    Cruelty Squad: This game is damn good. I can't really say anything about the presentation that can't already be said tbh. I definitely need to play it more because the levels are dense and I know there's a bunch of stuff I missed my first time through. I love how the gameplay is like a simultaneously less and more refined version of Deus Ex and the fucking bizarre visuals create lots of very memorable scenarios that no other game could possibly dream up.

    It kind of inspires that same exploratory spirit that a lot of other games I really like have, but in this case it's almost like you're demanding answers from the game rather than learning or exploring. Just what the fuck is up with you, Cruelty Squad? How the hell did someone have all the creativity to make a game and they ended up making this? And how is it so good?!

     

    Genjitsu no Yohane: Numazu in the Mirage: A competent slay the spire clone based on the Genjitsu no Yohane anime which is in turn based on the Love Live Sunshine anime/idol series. It's not got the same depth as Slay the Spire, and copies a lot of its homework. The main draw to this game is definitely the full 3D characters with lots of voicing and fun cut-ins that show off their character quirks. It doesn't quite go over the line of "fun enough to try even if you're not a Yohane fan" but if you enjoy the overlap of slay the spire and love live/yohane it's not bad. It has an irresponsible amount of DLC that is way overpriced.

    The english localisation for this is pretty bad though. I played it mainly in japanese for my own practice but after playing a little in english I feel like they mangled a lot of references in translation.

     

    Atelier Ryza 2: Honestly not really a great sequel in the sense of evolving the gameplay but I kind of don't expect much from JRPGs so I wasn't really disappointed or anything. It's definitely a "more of the first" kind of game. I really like the loop of exploring areas, finding stuff to do new alchemy with, using that to explore more areas, repeat.

    Baba is You: As part of Noita's lineage it was only a matter of time that I played this. It's very good and extremely noita-esque in how it has this depth that I imagine I have maybe scratched 2% of the surface for. Unfortunately I kind of have issues dedicating time to play puzzle games so I haven't beaten it... My complaints are just the kind of stuff that comes from not really being a fan of the genre moreso than anything about the actual design.

     

    Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl: This is probably the standout game I played in 2024, damn I love Stalker so much. I honestly should've known I'd like it since I constantly have brushed up against so many adjacent things to Stalker and things made by people who love Stalker but it took me this long to play it.

    This game is just a great FPS RPG, it has a lot of mechanics that I don't really consider "jank" but I can see why people say it's that way at the same time. The stance system, early weapons being fucking worthless, the general pace and lethality of combat, it all comes together into this package that I really love which isn't really true tactical shooter but just approaches it enough before it becomes unfun crap. I can't help but contrast it with Fallout New Vegas which has perhaps more variety in combat but feels about ten thousand times worse due to the engine presumably being made for any purpose other than first person shooting. Meanwhile SoC still feels like a kludge job but a kludge that was made by people who at some point knew what a first person shooter might be like.

    The atmosphere in this game really just sucks you in and makes you want to explore, I can't get enough of it. I just love crabwalking through abandoned areas waiting to blast mutants away with way too much firepower, stumbling on some artifact (it gives you 5% bullet resist but kills you with radiation in 30 seconds) lying amongst charred skeletons, flipping out when you find a rare rifle, it's all just stuff I've always wanted in my life. And there's just a lot going on in the Zone that fosters that exploratory spirit, even if the game isn't like true open world but it kind of is at the same time.

     

    Painkiller: Extremely solid FPS which honestly feels weird given the time it came out being a weird time for FPS games. I'm not used to the tech and graphics of that era being used for classic shooter gameplay I guess? It feels like an anachronism even though it is a real thing that happened. Holy SHIT do ragdoll physics add so much to these kinds of games though. I loved the scale of the fights and how many enemies could come at you at once and it actually had some pretty memorable boss fights (as a boss fight hater I consider that a huge win). It's so weird that some areas could only be played on higher difficulties and the system of cards was something I probably should've engaged with better but I didn't play on a super high difficulty so I only really used them a few times.

     

    Balatro: Yeah okay this game was a good addition to my phone and tablet, it's very good. Nails the UI feel and has a lot of weirdness that keeps things interesting. The only thing I really want is a custom mode similar to how Slay the Spire has, where you can fine tune the parameters of your run and basically make your own challenge modes.

     

    Gakuen Idolm@ster: Mobage count right? This one is the other slay the spire clone I've played (and still play) which shirks being idol-adjacent and instead is full-on idol. I actually like the gameplay of this quite a bit, the intersection of the card game and the parameter raising while managing your stamina and trying to plan ahead gives you a lot to think about during runs without being overwhelming. The character stories are pretty varied in tone so I think people will give you different answers on overall quality (plus I'm not exactly a great reader so some of them I may not  have gotten the full gist of) but I think they tell pretty good stories and some of them I'd say are very well executed for the idol genre, like Lilja's.

     

    I suspect this game is slowly trying to boil the frog by turning into a normal Idolm@ster game over time given that they've introduced a new gamemode that more closely resembles the mainline games and has less of a focus on the slay the spire card game aspect, but it's still pretty fun (despite less card game being played, you get a lot more say in what is in your deck so it feels a lot more consistent).

     

    This game would also probably contribute 100% of my music picks since it is an actual idol multimedia project and as a result has a bunch of music releases. I'll just throw some in that I really like here I guess.

     

     

     

    The Bad

    Spoiler

     

    Tom Clancy's (tm) Ghost Recon (r) Wildlands (& Knuckles): I got this at such a heavy discount that I don't really regret purchasing it, but man is this game just indicative of "the ubisoft sandbox" through and through. It's really annoying that there's this engine that is perfect for a Mercenaries-esque sandbox of destruction game where you pick apart a nebulous criminal/military organization but it just literally has nothing. No battling factions you can play both sides with, only like eight kinds of missions, only like five kinds of enemies. The oper8r larp aspect is fun for a bit, I enjoyed the customization you could do and it was nice that you could see your dress-up all the time given the third person / first person hybrid gameplay. 

    Basically it has all this polish but it's a fucking clear pane of glass, there's nothing to it other than some shine and it has nothing to show for itself.

     

     

     

    The Weird

    Spoiler

     

    Stalker: Clear Sky: It's funny how this is such a "growing pains" kind of game. I actually really find this one interesting because the core concept that kind of is the crux of the game's difference is the source of the upsides and downsides. The synchronous open world is a really cool idea but it's not quite there in this installment due to bugs and jank. But I can see how the idea is solid at the same time, and there's something to be said about these faction wars developing even when you aren't around, with battle lines and stuff like enemy assaults interrupting your guides and forcing you to fight to re-open routes of safe travel. The story isn't as strong, mainly due to the open world, but it has its moments. The atmosphere is still there, but it is somewhat diminished by the open world aspects since dodging stuff like blowouts by changing level entrances and the NPC travel system kind of take you out of that whole "surviving the zone" thing. And respawning (not infinitely I think but basically infinitely?) enemies make exploration and retreading areas a lot less fun than the first game, which also had respawning enemies but not anywhere near to the degree of Clear Sky. 

    The graphical upgrades are really excellent, I will say. Given that they recycled so much mapwise, I was surprised that I didn't get that tired of it and I think it's at least partially due to things looking so much nicer. The system for finding Artifacts is VASTLY superior to the first game's "just find them lying around in the open lmao here's five burners sitting next to a corpse in a populated warzone" as well.

    I am really excited to play Call of Pripyat next since I believe people consider that to be the happy medium between clear sky and shadow of chernobyl (and I've evaded any discussion of stalker 2 so please no spoilers).

     

    Ultrakill: I got this as a gift but I couldn't really get into it. There's nothing much wrong with it and I think it does a great job with weapon feel and variety, I just wasn't really a fan of the boss fights (I never am a fan of boss fights in any game though). I'll probably go back and play easy modo to get past the boss I was stuck on just so I can see more of the stuff I do like in it, which is navigating an arena packed with enemies and whittling them down until you're the last one alive (it does a good job at this kinda stuff)

     

     

    The verdict:

    Spoiler

    Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl wins for sure. I am all cheeki breeki'd up for this game god damn. My only regret is not playing it earlier.

     

    Bonus best girls:

    Spoiler

     Mao from Gakuen Idolm@ster

    Dia from Genjitsu no Yohane: Numazu in the Mirage

    The main character from The Chronos Event Demo cuz damn the ass was fat

    Patricia from Ryza 2

    Forester from Stalker Clear Sky

     

    FreshHalibut, Moby, Silent and 1 other reacted to this

  2. Posted · Edited by A 1970 Corvette

    3 hours ago, Rynjin said:

    They should have made Thundermountain a TC Payload map, eh?

    Not really on topic, I'm just consistently sad they never made more TC maps after Hydro. I will never understand how the game mode was THAT unpopular.

    I played at least a bit of hydro back in my console days (heh heh... you damn kids with your unlocks and upgradeable dispensers...) and my experience was like most people say, either over too quick or last forever. I'm pretty sure you can make a good TC map but it would speak more to the mapper being dedicated and working around the bad than making the good shine. 

     

    Hydro's aesthetic is really nice though, I was recently reminded how nicely it fit in the "original wave of TF2 maps" aesthetic of these desert maps while standing out with the concrete areas, watery areas, and power station areas.

     

    1 hour ago, Moby said:

    Hightower is either a stomp or an eternal stalemate because both teams are busy defending the Big Ramp or the elevator to push their own cart. And you can't push your own cart because your team is defending the other cart and the enemy team is defending yours.

    So its 20 minutes of destroying sentry nests on the big ramp and getting blown up by nade spam on the elevator, until a team decides to camp the enemy spawn with heavies so the nightmare can finally end.

    I recently finished up the contract for hightower and it made me want to commit sudoku (I am a reformed 24/7 tdm hightower player)

     

    I don't even think it would be that bad (graded on a curve since payload race is a bad gamemode) if every player on the server was actually playing the game instead of screwing around and prolonging the game by only defending and never attacking. But I could be wrong since I have never in my life played a hightower game that was serious or even had 50% of the players trying to win.

     

    3 hours ago, John Caveson said:

    I would argue 1st is actually worst. I've had many a round on either side ending in 5 minutes because of the gauntlet of 1st. Red has immediate high ground to just spam spawn. If you somehow get past that, then there's the army of sentries perched in the backline. Pushing the cart itself is a breeze until you get past the tunnel, then it's a slog for inches at a time.

     

    2nd can also be bad, but that depends on how well the breakthrough (it it even happens) on 1st goes. Total RED wipe? 2nd is essentially free which gives more momentum to 3rd. Which I would agree with can be a strong hold as RED rallies. Teleporters are essential to have any chance. Badwater I think has one the easiest Last points to push, mainly because the shoe's on the other foot now and BLU has all the high ground.

    My issue with badwater other than what has already been said is that the maps are "solved" even in casual. There's always a sticky jumper or gunboats soldier going to spawn (on either side depending on the cap). The areas that really should be blocked off once they're no longer part of the objective area/are not yet part of the objective area are free health zones for annoying fuckers who tie up resources making people chase after them ad infinitum. Every blue push that makes it past 1st also caps 2nd because every soldier immediately beelines to the roof to stop red from setting up (or demos go to the shutters to camp them because DUDE SHUTTER DOOR CAMPING LMAO) and often they do it before blue even caps because it's basically free to stay up there anyway

     

    Honestly any map where the biggest influence a solo player can have on a fight is going to break teleporters at enemy spawn (and it's possible for them to do so consistently) has a problem, but that may be a sticky jumper/other super mobile unlock issue as well

  3. Posted

    I would enjoy thundermountain enough if each cap was its own map. Doing all three back to back is a fucking grind, then you realize now you have to play it on the other side too.

     

    Especially last which I think is a really interesting map with the tower and indoor areas. If both teams are actually aware of the map (rare) then the different areas all are defended differently and it is really varied for a single map.

  4. Posted · Edited by A 1970 Corvette

    On 1/8/2025 at 3:46 PM, Silent said:

    Yeah @A 1970 Corvette can you make a thread or something on exactly what you're doing in this game for 1k hours? Maybe some insight into a what a typical run is like for you or some tips to get the most out of the game, if that makes sense? I would be interested as the furthest I got was beating it and experimenting with a few fungal shifts. I think the last time I played in 2022 I found the chain gun and left the save for the next time I played it, it's probably been wiped by an update by now. 

    I will preface some percentage of it is just me doing autopilot runs that are really basic, but there's a lot of fun challenge runs (and a few less-than-fun challenges admittedly) that have eaten up a lot of sessions. Stuff like playing without picking up gold, pacifist runs, no hits, all boss kills (this got more complicated due to epilogue 2 though) and stuff like that. A lot of these are just the normal path but with a limitation on them so they can be quick or take a lot of time. A good deal are also doing some mods like Apotheosis which has a ton of extra things and is good for someone like me who's done a ton of the base game and wanted some new stuff.

     

    I've done a lot of speedrunning sessions too, I really think this game is fun for casual speedrunning (my PB is only like 4:17 so I'm definitely not putting any records up ever) once you have a good level of mastery over the base game experience since speedrunning drastically changes how you approach things and what is good and what sucks while also taxing your ability to navigate dangerous areas and enemies with low resources.

     

    There are a few "quests" that legitimately take like 10+ hours of gameplay for the first time you do them which are mainly the Sun quests and peaceful end/33 orbs or if you're really a psycho trying to get the amulet of yendor (tried to do this and fucked it up and probably won't try again for a while). These are definitely ones that you probably wouldn't really ever complete without a guide honestly, I played through with the community guides from the wiki. Without a guide you'll literally never understand how to place the star child or something fucking stupid will happen like the essence eaters will yeet your waterstone into the stratosphere and it'll despawn or something, or you'll pick up slime blood while getting perks and doom your run.

     

    I think a good way to get the most out of the game is picking up a few tricks to kill important bosses "early." There are surprisingly simple cheese strats that let you kill the bridge boss for chances at incredibly high tier wands, for instance, and the Alchemist boss is similarly cheesable. Both of those bosses drop insane resources that can let you just do whatever you want basically. For a while when I was getting consistent at winning I would try my best to put together a wand capable of reaching and killing the alchemist boss by the Snowy Depths and that helped me understand when I could push certain bosses early and when I needed more resources to make it work. There's a lot so I can't really list them all, but the Bridge Boss/Squidward/Connoisseur of Wands is extremely weak to plasma due to duplicating their beams and often killing himself (make sure to have a way to get out of the way or ambrosia), and the Alchemist boss is weak to just a fuckhuge explosion if you can cram them all in a wand and cast it without killing yourself too.

     

    I honestly don't really recommend doing something like a 33 orb or sun quest run. Really long runs in noita tend to really hinge on you trying to find an extremely specific combo of rare spells and there's a very huge parallel world grind for that. I spent legit like six hours trying to find a summon wall/platform spell once it fucking sucked ass. You'll also need to plan them out way in advance because if you do something like pick up repulsion field and projectile slower it makes something random as fuck not work like certain world travel wands. Or if you pick up exploding corpses then eating poly mages for immunity becomes almost impossible. Stuff like that.

     

    If you want to get a bit more out of it after the main path I would just look into killing all the bosses (not necessarily in the same run but some wand combos can kill a lot of them). You might want to just look into where they are, or into more detailed guides depending on how much you want to discover on your own. Then another thing would just be reaching a parallel world since it requires a few things like infinite digging (likely from killing the alchemist boss) and a way to not die to cursed rock. Then further than that is the moon quests which mainly are just collecting some specific things from off the main path and visiting remote and dangerous areas of the main world like hell and heaven. The sky temple quests are pretty fun too and I fucking love the OST for the Henkeva Temple so much.

     

    After that gathering the main worlds' 11 orbs is a run that runs you through a lot of different areas and is kind of at the limit where it starts becoming a pretty long run (this one also probably would need you to look up an orb map though, there are ways to locate them entirely in-game but it's finicky creating guiding powder). If somehow you wanted more after that, then the crazy long ones I've brought up above might be more doable but yeah.

     

    Basically I'd just recommend giving a little look into the wiki and learning boss locations (and strats to fight them if you're down to learn it that way), and when you have a strong main path run (good damage, a way to move around quickly like spammy teleport bolts, and a way to dig through anything like black holes; these are the three things you basically always are going to want to find if you plan on going off of the main path) you can consider going up and taking a swing at some of the bosses or exploring the off-path areas like fungal caverns or frozen vault or the pyramid. You can also look at the wiki's achievement pillars list since that has a bunch of challenges like boss kills, special challenge runs, etc. that if you complete show up on your world's pillars for every run afterwards. The pillars are kind of what got me into doing the side stuff honestly

     

    If doing that vanilla sounds like a lot of work mods that make things smoother like the health pack drop and anvil of destiny and starting perk and stuff aren't bad (I used them a lot at the start) but I can maintain that barring some fucking insane RNG like a greater chest dropping monster powder in the first level pretty much every run is at least winnable, if not capable of going to the crazy endgame quests. Doing stuff in Noita is kind of all about being very methodical at the start and taking all the little benefits the game's early areas give you and being good at evaluating the risks you're taking and knowing when to cut and run.

     

    Sadly a lot of stuff really does need a bit of meta-knowledge to even engage with. The wiki is great for that but I also picked up a lot of knowledge from watching speedrunners and streamers doing challenge runs since they might just pull some random combo out that you've never seen before while doing something unrelated and you can tuck that away until you need it in some run where it seems like you've not got anything good at all

    Silent reacted to this

  6. Posted · Edited by A 1970 Corvette

    Behold, 2024 in retrospect! I think as usual I probably could have watched more but hey only so much can catch your eye at once. If you don't care about anything else at least listen to the ED of the year cuz I really really like it.

     

    Spoiler

    iq0m3u.png 

     

    And some meandering commentary to explain my category choices:

     

    Spoiler


    AOTY: Girls Band Cry
    This show was fucking sick. I know that girls' band shows aren't anything new but I think there's a lot that stands out. One is of course the visuals which use a very fluid 3d style which doesn't do a common 3D error of trying to emulate lower framerate 2D animation, and has a bit of flair (obviously Nina's thorns when she's feeling pressured being the chief one that comes to mind). The other one is the characters who all have a lot of heart and Nina being a roiling ball of anger at pretty much everything in the world who despite being so abrasive manages to bring this band of weirdos together. I also don't mind the music! I actually liked the performance I went to for the actual band (though the entire band wasn't together sadly).


    Winter 2024: Uh... So I only watched Metallic Rouge, but I don't even want to call it anime of the season. Like, it was an interesting ride but ultimately it fell on its face and I don't really have much of a lasting impression of it.

    I actually marked a ton of shows this season but didn't really watch any of them. Oops. I think what I was doing at the time was catching up with the Link Like Love Live story which I put on there but isn't anime technically and also didn't all come out in 2024 (a lot of it has admittedly) but fuck it I need to acknowledge its existence somewhere.

     

    Spring 2024: Girls Band Cry as well as Highspeed Etoile on top of Jiisan Baasan Wakagaeru. All three were shows I really liked, though I'd say GBC tops them all by a bit but it won aoty so I'll not count it. Jiisan Baasan I've talked about before but I'm just amazed at how the show kept that knife's edge balance between bitter and sweet. On the complete opposite side Highspeed Etoile was just someone's weird idea of super racers and how they're all weirdos interspersed with these extended racing scenes that were very detailed and didn't really gloss over things like a lot of hobby shows tend to do. They both left an impression on me but I give it to Etoile by a little bit just because of the way it really snuck up on me in terms of appeal.

     

    The image is Rin (MC of Highspeed Etoile) looking clueless since that's her default expression for most of the anime and it makes me laugh every time I think about it.

     

    Summer 2024: Senpai wa Otokonoko and Na-Nare Hana-Nare. Senpai wa Otokonoko is kind of a very specific premise but I think it executed it well enough and I enjoyed the drama. It wasn't groundbreaking but I think it was executed well. And given how I was during high school I guess the story of a crossdressser actually going for it did have a personal resonance with me. I think it did a school drama premise a lot better than the other show I watched this season so I'd say it wins the season. Plus the art is really cute.

    Na-Nare Hana-Nare is just a weird show about cheerleaders but it's moreso about them being weirdly snippy with each other. I don't really think it was great but I liked the artstyle and there were two characters in particular that set off old shipper instincts with me cuz I liked their chemistry a ton.

     

    Fall 2024: Gun Gale Online II and Love Live Superstar S3. Gun Gale Online is basically just a continuation and I don't really have too much extra to say, really, I think it's pretty good but I also feel like I probably need to just move to reading the novels. Superstar S3 is kind of interesting because it's all over the place and kind of makes the love live competition a complete afterthought in service of running small character stories culminating in a graduation arc. I think the second half is a lot more coherent and focused and the first half feels a bit meandering.

    I feel like Superstar S3 wins by default here. I don't think it's bad, I don't think GGO2 was bad, but both were continuations so I feel like they have less impact than if I had discovered something new.

     

    Best Season: Spring had a solid lineup and AOTY so easy win there.

     

    Worst: Winter 2024 was a dry spell for me, I think at the time I just decided to watch more of the Link Like Love Live story instead of pursue stuff airing. I reviewed some of my other charts and I swear to god I NEVER watch anything during winter seasons. What the hell's going on with that? Even right now I've only picked up Ave Mujica for the winter season and haven't even checked anything else at all.

     

    MC of the year: Iseri Nina for breaking the mould for a lot of japanese character tropes by being loud, aggressive, and uncaring of what others think. She nearly assaulted a poor salaryman at midnight with a hanging lamp like it was a mace. Shit was so cash that she kind of just removes my desire to find any honorable mentions tbh

     

    Girl of the Year: Sachi-senpai. She died so the Hasunosora school idol club could live.

     

    OP: Wrong World by Togenashi Togeari (Girls Band Cry). It's got the perfect energy for the show and it's even a lot of fun live too (slight bias having come back from a live show where they played this).

     

    ED: Scarlet by Dazbee (Metallic Rouge) has a very nice feel that kind of runs counter to the chaotic clusterfuck that the show became. I really like the breathy vocals giving an ethereal/dreamy feel and the synths make me think of deus ex (and that's a good thing)

     

    Honorable Mention goes to Love Live Superstar not really due to music necessarily but visuals. Superstar's OP and EDs have always been exceptionally high quality in visuals playing along with music even for love live.

     

    Surprise of the Year: Highspeed Etoile surprised me because the intro was a fucking blind drop into a THREE EPISODE LONG RACE SEQUENCE WHERE WE DIDN'T KNOW ANYONE and basically only learned about the characters and world through the announcers and actions taken during the race. This fucking annihilated a lot of people's interest but I found it weirdly engaging and as the show went on it only got better and I really liked the culmination of the story, the evolution of the racing scene, and how the characters were fleshed out and intermingled with each other.

     

    Honorable mention goes to a "Show I Watched In 2024 But Didn't Come Out In 2024" which is Bang Dream! It's MYGO!!!!!. I picked it up mainly just because I knew it connected to Ave Mujica but it actually really grabbed me. It's another "girls form a band" drama akin to girls band cry and that stuff's my jam so it's not surprising, but what was surprising was how it played this background plot that slowly came together to lead into its sequel, Ave Mujica, which is airing right now in 2025 and is picking up the threads in an extremely interesting and fun way. I didn't expect much from it since it was Bandori, but hats off to them really.

     

    Dissappointment of the Year: Metallic Rouge, though I'm really no stranger to anime originals that fumble a premise and fall flat on their face. It should have really not gone as huge as it tried to be. I just wanted a cute robot girl and her weird cop friend running around in a sci fi noire world, man...

     

    Friend of the Year: Okay this is stretching it since this is supposed to be an insult (?) but Ryuji (from Senpai wa Otokonoko) is gay as fuck for his crossdresser friend and I kind of loved seeing that unfold. 

     

    Worst Girl of the Year: This is kind of a cop out since it was clear by the end of Girls Band Cry that Hina wasn't actually like some kind of twintail-twirling villain or anything but I still enjoyed her dynamic against Nina. Or in some ways, Nina just being unreasonable as fuck because that's just how she is.

     

    Overall Rating: I think other than GBC and Etoile it wasn't great, but that may have been me not trying more. I'll try harder next year (clueless)

     

    Now I need to work on the 2024 games in retrospect oof

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  7. Posted

    You know that thing when you joke about doing something over and over and it stops being a joke after a while? I've been doing that with getting a steam deck so I'll probably hold off on the switch 2 until it's well into its release life.

     

    Plus when you do that with Nintendo consoles, you tend to get the chance to get cool variants with unique designs so win-win for me

  8. Posted · Edited by A 1970 Corvette

    6 hours ago, Moby said:

    I have heard that tis common for the regional bacteria on food and water to do that to foreigners. Happens if you travel between countries or states.

     

    Happened to me when I traveled 3 states north and was like an entire day of violent toilet visits.

    Given that what I had was basically the same as other people for the entire first night I was there, it's kind of the only explanation I can think of. I just hope if I ever go eventing in Japan again my body remembers

  9. Posted · Edited by A 1970 Corvette

    The trip was fun. Met with someone I hadn't ever met IRL but have known for years and they were awesome. Saved my ass right out of the airport. They had a small eventer group that we linked up with and shared a hotel with right next to the venue. That group's awesome too.

     

    Got really fucking sick on hasunosora 3rd live day 1 of the live and couldn't make it (don't even know what it was tbh, just my stomach violently emptied itself and I couldn't stand). Made the second day just fine though, and as a bonus another event the next day (avoid note mygo x togetoge) opened up when an eventer had two spare tickets. Pretty different type of show (as far as cute girls playing music can go at least) but also really awesome. I felt terrible that I didn't know all the songs but holy shit this one MyGo song blew me away live, it was so good.

     

    After that we spent the remaining day and a half visiting important love live locations from the various series. We actually visited something from every single love live one except Sunshine but that's due to Sunshine's location being weird. I snapped a bunch of pictures that a normal person would be like "hmmm yes very scenic" and I'm like "hehe the stairs nico tripped on when racing honoka"

     

    Crazy good experience, glad I went. It was basically the only vacation trip I ever took where I was actually just left in the lurch when I was coming back home because normally I'm counting down the hours but I was just enjoying every single moment so much that it just ended and I was sitting in an airport so quickly

  10. Posted · Edited by A 1970 Corvette

    8 hours ago, hugthebed2 said:

    I'm well aware I could find spoilers when looking at fanart (doesn't really happen)

    this is why I hate myself for starting on blue archive global and I won't play any weeby mobage on a global version ever again

     

    I hate all the big reveals and stuff being spoiled by fanart and I'm not going to just stop looking at fanart because it's part of the fun. Even if blue archive is leagues ahead other ones I've seen like FGO in terms of trying to catch up with the original servers it's still not there

  11. Posted

    9 hours ago, Huff said:

    I’m going to put mine off for a couple weeks because of boat hellschedule and wanting to finish a game or two. 

    I'm in the same boat of needing time though I don't even know if I played that much this year. (Also same with the anime post, I promised not to forget even if nobody cares!!)

  12. Posted · Edited by A 1970 Corvette

    16 hours ago, Razputin said:

     

    EDH has to be the most thoroughly ruined format of all of them. Like ok Modern is now just MH block with hard rotation and Legacy has to deal with the random insanely busted commander card that was clearly not balanced for 1v1, but you're still playing the same game. Comparatively, the entire spirit of EDH is just gone, It's just straight up constructed net decking now, you're no longer hardcasting derpy 6drops, you're winning on turn 4. There's hundreds of legendaries specifically designed to be your commander so the creativity of it is gone, and you either pick the 4 color legend with 3 paragraphs of value generating text, or you pick something that is so strictly inferior you lose the game the moment commanders are revealed.

     

    Also I'm not sure if that means anything to anyone here, but they recently actually unbanned Splinter Twin in Modern. And it doesn't matter, because the new cards are so busted that twin is just passé in comparison

    Yeah EDH really became a casualty of the power creep and (ironically? at this point it's expected but perhaps ten years ago it'd be surprising) direct focus that it got from WotC. It'd be one thing if it stayed as a place for jank WHILE the other constructed formats were imploding but it got the same treatment if not worse. It also doesn't help that the format is handwaved by all this rule 0 shit but then they also still have a not-run-by-wotc-but-who-the-fuck-is-kidding-themselves banlist that is curated in an extremely confusing manner (hey let's ban these fast mana rocks but not sol ring even though it's the exact same thing tehee iconic card!!)

     

    I remember hearing people when I first started playing (around the second commander deck products I believe) say that creating cards directly for commander was terrible and ruined the format. I was new enough that I didn't really get it but now that I see every mythic commander that is its own engine and the 30 staples you'd put in before you even start adding other cards I see they were unironically right even if back then the 1 set of commander decks a year seemed harmless enough. Back then there were commanders that telegraphed a pretty specific type of deck (oh gee I wonder what this doran the siege tower deck's gonna play like!!) but they weren't everywhere like they are now and you still had a lot of slots that you needed a little bit of jank or creativity to fill.

     

    Honestly the deckbuilding and prowling the card databases for something weird that worked for your idea was half the fun of EDH which is probably why I just stick to cube now. At least a cube you can stuff with weird cards that you like and control the powerlevel pretty well and still have that variance that the spirit of EDH's 100 card singleton decks tried to instate (before wotc realized they can print the same effect in every set to the point where you can have eight copies of basically the same card in your singleton deck)

     

    And yeah the twin ban was seen by a lot of enfranchised players as this crazy gesture "wow twin is back!!" and I'm wondering if they saw things like amulet killing people on t2 when they think twin is going to do anything

  14. Posted

    2 hours ago, Razputin said:

    Happy new year ol' subspuffers! I hope 2025 will be great for you all

    I spent the last three weeks of 2024 sick as a dog so 2025 is at least looking up on that front!

     

    I'm also going on a trip to Japan in a few days and I'm absolutely fucking terrified oh god why did I decide to do this I just want to crawl into my bed and miss my flight and just pretend I never organized it

    Silent, Razputin and Gyokuyoutama reacted to this

  15. Posted · Edited by A 1970 Corvette

    I keep up with news just to watch the burning dumpster, but basically the only MtG I ever play is my friends' old cube that hasn't been updated in years and draft simulations on Forge. Basically the only one in our group who cares anymore is just an EDH whale and even he pretty much just goes to a game store and doesn't try to bring us along anymore. It's just so crazy that everything that captured my interest back in 2013-2014 was pretty much completely thrown out even if the game is still all theoretically there. 

     

    It is literally irreversible at this point, you'd have to create an entirely new format if you wanted to try and recapture the bygone era of the game when everything wasn't power crept to shit. I still remember people talking about how you'd need 20 or so bans to "fix" modern years ago and now it's just like not even worth discussing, and even formats dedicated to being full of old broken stuff get rotated by new cards too.

     

    They've been saying more or less directly to the players that had concerns about the power creep that the game isn't for them anymore. At least those players can always proxy block constructed or cubes from sets where everything didn't generate some kind of massive value swing for just existing in your deck

  16. Posted · Edited by A 1970 Corvette

    1 hour ago, Gyokuyoutama said:

    >Relative has a book with pictures of products that were screwed up (bootlegs, spelling errors, mispackaging, and the like)

    >One has a caption like "well win you win a cheap stuffed animal at the fair you can't expect them to get little details like having the eyes facing the right way"

    >It's an accurate Derpy doll.

    Silly mistake by someone not initiated with the series, or clever reference to the initial mistake/animator joke? You decide!!

     

    Well if the photo was dated then we'd probably know definitively since she became "real" pretty quick

  17. Posted · Edited by A 1970 Corvette

    Yeah I just ran through the entire comics series since it had been so long. So crazy to think that it's happened. I mean obviously I'm caught up in the moment but I really liked it

     

    So we're getting a TF3 announcement soon right? :pinkiegasm:

  18. Posted

    I've been playing the Stalker games recently, just finished Clear Sky and I did Shadow of Chernobyl a couple of months ago. Honestly I don't really have that much to say about them that isn't already said but I enjoy that blend between the atmosphere of the zone and the way the shooting/combat mechanics dictate this very specific pace of combat. I also like how both kind of throw away the strongest part of the game at the end for this big action set piece but the game is literally not designed to do them well so they fall flat on their face each time. (I actually did like Limansk in Clear Sky but I was heavily overprepared for it)

     

    Clear Sky is really interesting in the sense that it's low effort and high effort at the same time? Like it uses pretty much the same overworld as the previous game and has a weaker story overall (honestly basically a retread of the first game though I think parts are cool) but adds in this persistent faction territory system that actually does push and pull without the player which I really like in theory since it avoids a little bit of a common RPG issue where literally nothing goes on unless the player is around to do it or watch it happen. Obviously there are some issues like how the AI is as sophisticated as a single-celled organism and the game can easily bug out and basically break the faction wars in this weird non-deterministic way that means it could never fix itself or randomly fix itself ten hours later in real time (this is my fault for playing without mod fixes, but even those I've heard are not 100% successful).

     

    People seem to really enjoy the next game in the series so I'm looking forward to that whenever I get to playing it. Overall this series is kind of a "damn I wish I had played this earlier!" series for me since it hits a lot of notes I enjoy and I can look past the jank pretty easily. And if I'm lucky, I'll finish the next game in time for Stalker 2 to go on some steam sale for the first time :DDD

    Gyokuyoutama reacted to this

  19. Posted · Edited by A 1970 Corvette

    I had a dream my international flight crashed and the survivors were taken for ransom by terrorists. Luckily it ended before we got to the ransom note readings

     

    Why yes I might be a little nervous about flying on my own overseas for a trip how could you tell

    Raison d'être reacted to this

  21. Posted

    6 minutes ago, Idiot Cube said:

    You probably shouldn't have brought up the "That Demoman is a NEGGA-*wheeze*" one.

    I actually remember the example I used was "You are all weak! You are all MEDIC!"

     

    Maybe his mom was a medic main

    Idiot Cube reacted to this

  22. Posted

    I had a dream where I explained what "pootis spencer" was to some clueless kid. I also gave him some sick TF2 voice line meta hints like how you can cut off certain voice lines with other ones to make the mercs say something silly.

     

    I think this was at a church or something. His mother didn't like me was the only other part I can remember.

  23. Posted

    3 minutes ago, Gyokuyoutama said:

    I hold in my hands a copy of the first volume of the Nyaruko Light Novel series, imported from Japan.

     

    I have officially entered the "if no one is going to bring it over, then fuck it I'll just learn Japanese and read it myself" period of weebdom.

    I've kinda reached the point where I'd rather have the original Japanese for stuff like manga just because I can hack it out just fine, but I probably need to actually read a light novel through in japanese before I'll start considering that.

     

    That being said there aren't really that many LN series that I like to begin with so it might be tough to start

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