Last Game You Played

[Kyng]

The Sims 4

Got back to this after what must have been a good couple of weeks without any gaming .

Didn't do a whole lot of note, though. Just paired up a couple of my 'background' Sims who aren't in my main household, and got a couple of the main-household Sims to complete their New Year's Resolutions.

[Moonface]

By sheer technicality...

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth (PC)
I pulled it up for about 5 minutes to test something. FF7 Rebirth had a new patch on the 2nd, adding stuff to the game. Cool! Problem: it broke ALL the mods! Every last one of them! Game crashes if you load it up with a mod! No one has gotten a mod working on Patch 1.005, so that means I have to take drastic measures: I have to download an old patch version of the game. Now, it turns out this is actually really easy on Steam; you can literally just open console commands, go on SteamDB, find the patch data in question, and say "Hey, Steam, download this now!" and Steam will say "OKAY!" After it's done it'll even say "I did it! It's here!" So yeah, I'm gonna have two copies of a 160 Gigabyte game, one of which will facilitate mods, and one won't. So, you know... shit.

Edit. So it actually turns out that FF7 Rebirth can only be opened from the Steam client, for some reason. So, no, I will only have one copy of it, because the devs are jackholes who made it that way for some reason.

So did it let you play the older version or not in the end?

Slay the Spire 2 (PC)
Two of todays runs could be summed up with the term "the duality of man". One co-op double A10 Silent run starts off so badly that Shira and I are crawling into each rest site with barely any HP and I was convinced we weren't even gonna make it to the Act 1 boss let alone beat it, to the point I was down to just ditch and restart the whole run. Instead, we stuck with it and I ended up getting a card right before the boss that just completely turned our fortunes around, and then it got even more in our favor during Act 2 to the point we almost actually beat the run.
On the opposite end, we had a run start off incredibly strong and we thought we had victory in the bag, only to be completely bodied by the first Act 3 boss. Better yet, we thought we would actually do it because it had enough poison to die at the end of our turn, despite me only having 1HP. However, I had two cards in my hand that would damage me at the end of the turn, which added up to exactly my HP and block, but I thought dying wouldn't matter since the fight would end anyway and I'd be revived automatically for the second fight. The problem was I had a card in play that triples poison damage, and it only works while I'm alive. I die at the end of our turn, and because the poison damage on the boss doesn't proc until after that, it meant the triple poison damage was removed and thus they actually didn't die, so Shira died thinking we would be safe. Personally I thought it was hilarious but she's still malding about it.

[Maniakkid25]

So did it let you play the older version or not in the end?

Oh, it did. Just had to replace the entire directory with the old files. I then had problems with text not showing up on the HUD and menus (which I've since narrowed down to a mod that I'm sad that I can't use, because it was a Game Over screen replacement), so I ended up redoing the thing several times, but I've got it working now!

Edit so I don't double post: Wicked Seed (Demo, PC)

So this random game crossed my path, and I watched the advert video that plays for most every Steam game, and said "We're making it out of New York City with this one, boys!" The game plays almost EXACTLY like Parasite Eve, and I'd say that's a good thing, because it gives the developer solid footing. See, the game is good, but you can definitely tell this is someone's first Unity project. There's a lot of intangibles that just give it that feel (loose movement, enemies standing stock still, etc.). If you are willing to give it leeway, it's a solid 8/10 or 9/10. If the jank is too much for you, it falls to more like a 6/10. The developer definitely has a good idea; they just don't have the experience to refine it as much as you'd expect. At 20 bucks (current sale price of 15), I'd say you can't really go wrong picking it up.

[Kyng]

The Sims 4

It was Love Day today. I took some of my younger Sims out on dates - but, since two of my older female Sims had both lost their husbands, and I didn't want to leave them out altogether, I had them do romantic interactions with each other . It didn't go too well: they ended up hating each other!

[Moonface]

Slay the Spire 2 (PC)
I've lost count at this point of how many A10 Silent runs I've lost just in the last two days, let alone since I last posted in here. It has to easily be above 50 attempts by now. I've done it before in an earlier version of the game but now I can't do it no matter how strong the run seems to be going.

[Maniakkid25]

I have brought shame upon myself for this transgression, but I might as well get this off my chest...

Fortnite (PC)

So, I am a Guitar Hero nut. I love all the games, and Rock Band, too, so you better believe I was aware that Harmonix got bought out by Epic Games back in 2023. I've been resisting ever since, but I'm really itching to play drums again, even though that would require shelling money out for a full-blown Midi kit, so I didn't know how much longer I could resist. Turns out, people are still selling third-party controllers since Fortnite Festival is, you know, a thing. Bought a guitar so I could play it on PC, and away I went!

So, there's a very limited selection of songs (though a few are very fun, like Ain't It Fun and Nightmare), and you are incentivized to spend money buying more songs to jam to in the shop, which has a rotating roster of songs. Right now, Snow (Hey Oh) is in that list, and you have no idea how much I want to break my wrist to that song! It is legitimately one of the hardest songs ever devised on (real) guitar; I have to conquer it! And I would have already, but the prices for songs on Fortnite are absolutely outrageous! These are extortion-level prices, here! One song costs 500 V-bucks, which is sold outright to you for $8.49! Are you serious, Epic?! I can buy DLC songs for Rock Band 4 at 2 bucks a pop! Now, you do get more V-bucks for a lot less if you buy more of them, but these are still ridiculous! Even at the most bulk level possible (12500 V-bucks for 90 dollars, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!), that's still $3.60 per song, nearly double the Rock Band prices! Greedy bastards! I'd actually be fine with throwing my cash at them if the prices weren't this ridiculous!

[Moonface]

I hadn't actually heard of Fortnite Festival before so looked it up, and one of the first things mentioned in the reception summary of its Wikipedia article is the monetization being horrible. However, this was also at a time where 500 V-Bucks cost $4.50 instead of the $8.49 you mentioned, so it's almost twice as bad now as it used to be!


Slay the Spire 2 (PC)
OMG I finally beat a vanilla A10 Silent run since the patch that changed the Act 3 boss went live ages ago! Somehow I ended up with a deck that just steamrolled almost everything in one or two turns including bosses, and it was with cards I've not had much luck with when taking them most times in the past. Now my Silent sits at 18W 148L. ;w;

[Maniakkid25]

I hadn't actually heard of Fortnite Festival before so looked it up, and one of the first things mentioned in the reception summary of its Wikipedia article is the monetization being horrible. However, this was also at a time where 500 V-Bucks cost $4.50 instead of the $8.49 you mentioned, so it's almost twice as bad now as it used to be!

And this is even worse than that -- somehow! -- because they are price gouging CHILDREN with Miku Hatsune songs! I'd shift to Clone Hero, but that game is built around Guitar Hero 3's engine, so it has all sorts of weird timings for Hammer-On/Pull-Offs, and I don't wanna deal with that.

[Moonface]

That and what also irks me is there is no reason other than greed to have increased the price of V-Bucks like that. They're a digital item, it isn't like something such as consoles which increased their prices because of the ongoing hardware issues.