I'm glad I looked at a guide. Before that I thought I didn't have much more to do, but when I realised how much was left I thought fuck that and ditched it. Saved me some time there.

Yeah I'm good cheers G. Started 2020 with some kind of radical health kick, and it's brought me down into a delirious flu state. Nearly cut the booze out completely these days, for all the good it's done me lol.

Resi 2.

Borrowed from Jonb. Why have I never played this game? Or rather why did I not play more than 20 minutes of it when I had it originally? Anyway it’s Resident Evil but the quality of this remaster is amazing on the Pro. Especially that torch lighting.

Just had my first death with boss man. He’s a tough fucker!!

I’ve just encountered Mr X and I don’t like him one bit! I can’t stand the stress!! Died twice by his hands.

I played this on ps1 back in the day and don’t recall mr x .. is he like
The nemesis?

Played 40mins or so of 140. This probably isn't what Andy wants to hear, but it's great. Good shout Muzzy, the two boss sections I've played thus far were particularly excellent.

Uh can't remember tbh. Think it does repeat/mirror, maybe with fewer checkpoints or something?? Too long ago to be sure though! But glad you enjoyed/are enjoying!

THOTH is even better from what I've played. Only down to stage 44 but it's superb.

The House of the Head

Started Mohan World on PC and I ain't never going back to Xbox. Just playing it with a buttery smooth framerate feels like a completely new game. Time to get the grind on, don the babby armour and get through to Iceborne.

Yeah, I downloaded and fired that up too. Crossed over my Xbox character so will give it a blast shortly.

MDZ Jimmy's Ryu is amazing and gives me hope for the SF5 S5 update.
I'll never call Ryu a scrub shoto anymore lol.

Let's GOOOOO!!!!

Still Dragon Quest IX, getting to the end I think. Story is picking up again after I collected loads of fyggs. 

It's good, but it definitely feels more stat oriented than most rpg's I've played, I guess that's because of the multiplayer aspect. I usually don't mind getting things to max (I did all the jobs for everyone in BD), but that won't happen in this game. It would mean not only unlocking all the skills for each vocation, two of which I still need to unlock, it would also mean getting all the skills for each weapon type. That's too much of a grind for me, specially since the boosted stats aren't very visible, so it's hard to really build a buff character without going the spreadsheet route. It's a very interesting system though, you could get each character to a certain point in the thief vocation to get their agility up, and they would keep that high agility stat in other vocations. Goes for all skills and some abilities.

I'm happy just going through the story now, trying to get at least my current vocation skills (settled on gladiator, armamentalist, priest and paladin) maxed and then work on should or weapon skills. While choosing fun outfits for everyone. Wish I could show them off easily. They look pretty good.

I know the after credits stuff is huge, but I don't think I'll go there. Too many quests I can't take on yet because skills or levels aren't high enough, and even if I wanted to do them I forget where everyone is.

Gonna keep my eye out for a good deal on either VII on 3ds or XI on Switch, I'm guessing those will feel pretty different without the mp aspect.

Been playing a lot of Nioh this week because i’ve been off ill and i’ve been meaning to get back to it for ages. Had to start again as my cloud save didn’t work for whatever reason, but that’s probably for the best.

It’s an utterly bizarre game though. I’ve been playing it with the help of a few guides to understand the stat and gear stuff, as it’s very in-depth in a Diablo 3 style, with loot having lots of randomised incremental effects and special abilities as well as set bonuses and so on that basically make it a... Soulslike loot ARPG? It’s a mad blend of genres because the first half means that’s it’s overly punishing (more like sadistic and mean) and if you don’t understand the second half it can be even harder.

Anyway, so much old news as this is what I discovered back from my 20+ hours with the demo back in the day, when it was even harder than it is now. It’s clearly designed to be pummelled in co-op, but I hate using that as a crutch and so I have been battling through it solo. It can be insanely frustrating at times, especially with some of the bosses having pointless combos where if you aren’t specced perfectly gear-wise you’ll get stun locked to death, or the window for escape will land you back in trouble making the gap in punishment utterly pointless. Also the window for timely blocks and parries is... insane? I don’t know how anyone can react as fast as you need to, adding another layer of frustration on top
of a brilliantly outstanding but very exacting and punishing combat system that expects you to dance your fingers across the pad like a caffeinated spider.

Still, I have refrained from summoning and I am
now on the last mission main mission before the NG+ content? though I have one or two side missions left to do.

Deposit all of that, it’s a weirdly enjoyable experience but it throws the whole difficulty debate around the Soule games and especially Sekiro into sharp relief, in a weird way. From what I’ve read and seen, co-op trivialises most bosses and tough fights utterly (and i’ll be dipping in to this for NG+) but it also means the game’s difficulty is frequently petulant and arbitrary, and has no way of leading the player through a meaningful learning experience. Where Sekrio has razor’s edge focus, to the point that its combat can be vested with no HUD and no challenge is off limits because you haven’t got the right gear or a good enough limits, Nioh is all over the place with most enemies killing you in two hits and bosses laughing at the idea of giving you even a second to heal. Challenge is a weird thing in games though, because Nioh also has tons of tools in the form of ninjitsu and magic that let you turn the tables, in a more free form and versatile way than Sekiro’s tools and items, although I think they’re great too.

Ultimately i’d rather a game that gives you the tools to follow a curated path through a game like Sekrio rather than crafting your difficulty around the exceptions of co-op and random loot drops and stat levels. But Nioh has still been really good fun, and has an incredible amount of missions to plough through. If only it wasn’t so utterly capricious so often.

Silke wrote:

Dark Souls III (PC) Running around Lothric with six million unspent souls, roughly the population of Denmark, come take me on.

Haha, I admit I lolled!
Struggling against Yhorm the Giant who's making minced meat out of me.
I swear I got to that mountain peak in a previous run doing some sitting gesture but for the life I can't remember which one.