What game are you playing now

I did run through pragmata with all the fling trainer cheats enabled and it does have some good things about it. Vertical levels are a nice extender, some nice scenery when you're not in the generic science type labs(very similar to starfield btw), nice different weapons you can use although they're nothing amazing or extraordinary like the old Ratchet and Clank series had. It does run well on a now low end gaming laptop. It doesn't look amazing for the hardware use but good enough. It's nowhere near as amazing looking as the sony ports and others are using the same equipment. Having played Stellar Blade through the campaign twice before this, pragmata nowhere near as good looking.

For the price it's terribly short and I feel like those who paid it really got the shaft, which is fairly common with modern aaa games.

There are way too many menus and useless animations and confirmation screens and upgrades and such. I felt like I was playing a menus confirm close game at the central camp and other places. Way too many logs, holograms and such about a bland story of saving Earth from some black stuff and bad robots tied to it somehow.

One REALLY nice thing is you can skip pretty much all of the cutscenes and memory holograms and such. It's padding nothing more. Without that it's even shorter than the main game which howlongtobeat gives as like 11 hours!!

I wasn't too impressed by the generic science space station environments and the repetitive combat with the hacking which gets OLD fast. I used mega damage and one hit kill in the fling trainer to just use the guns most of the time when the hacking isn't forced.

The story seemed generic and kinda twisted. So a human cares more about the little weird looking "girl" robot than his shipmates. Very weird "dad" to a creepy little girl robot. He dies for a robot so he is just a tool for the robot and when he serves his purpose this little girl Chucky goes on to more I guess not sure. I wasn't too interested and there isn't really any impetus for a replay since it's so generic and repetitive tbh. I'm guessing with the cheats it took me less than 10hrs probably 8hrs at the most to complete.

The same enemies most of the time in a wave shooter type of thing isn't too imaginative. Very predictable when they'll show up over and over til you clear them then the door opens etc Hack multiple locks to then open up the big lock is most of the game as well. There is some exploration but not much, just some higher difficulty "red key rooms" to get ever more loot. The amount of upgrades is mind boggling and those who try to get them are like hamsters on a wheel imo.

It's not a terribly good game but on a huge discount like 80 90 percent it will be ok for a dozen hours I guess. It's only like 35gb which is nice when every other game seems to be 100+gb in the aaa space now.

Dead Space and Prey are MUCH better games in almost every way and this def took a lot of inspiration from them in different aspects. I thought the dad buddy to a creepy looking girl robot was strange tbh def a turnoff to me.

I'd say it's a 5-6 out of 10. Nothing amazing but passable, not worth the full price or close to it.
 
I foolishly tried Mouse PI again with the new patch and it was going good until I had to alt tab out or some other thing and it locked up may computer requiring a restart to be able to use it. I really do want to play MPI but it's just one problem after another with this game for my system. I'm not saying I might be foolish again and try to reinstall it.

I'm def out of games I want to play rn. Still playing Stellar Blade here and there but after 3 playthroughs, outfit modding and such it is getting to be put on the shelf for a while.
 
So I booted up Dark Souls 3 again after a long while years really since I've played it consistently. It's such a great game, I love the amazing scenery, the faux Gothic architecture and the knights and dragons aesthetic. It was the first DS game I played and it wowed me back when. I've since played 2, some of DS1 remastered which for some reason I never got into can't remember why and of course the really good Elden Ring. ER isn't quite as good as DS2 or DS3 to me.

So I forgot that the character I was using hadn't done all of the main game so I got to where I could go fight the last boss. Then I went and did both of the DLCs which are not long, especially due to the fact that I use a trainer. I wouldn't bother with games as hard as DS without one, not worth the frustration and I'm not interested in becoming a joystick timing hero and the time that takes to master in order to actually not get really frustrated playing such a great game. Games are for fun not for frustration nor mastering some beats and timing skills that are only good for a game mostly.

That character was pretty far along though, just a few of the last bosses and optional levels I had to consult a walkthrough to find. So I've seen the whole game and all its dlcs. Still great and sometime I'll start a new game or ng+. Might delve back into Elden Ring and DS2 as well.
 
I also grabbed the recently bypassed First Berserker Khazan which is a DS clone of sorts but a different aesthetic that's not really knights and dragons but more of a Norse themed game. It's pretty good if not as good as any of the fromsoft souls games. Snappy, runs amazing even on an HDD and is entertaining. It does seem a bit generic though. Thankfully it's a UE4 game that is mostly static environments which is likely the main reason it runs so well. The enemy models are not as good as DS3 or ER but they are pretty nice. It also doesn't have the grandeur and monumental landscapes that fromsoft souls games do.

But so far it's a fine game that is a newer souls type of game. It's certainly better than another souls clone, AI Limit. I'll probably keep playing and finish it sometime. Most of the other major games that have been bypassed not using hyper visor are way too big for my available storage capacity, 100gb+ and if you use steamrips you need double the dl space, hard to do for me. I'd need to purchase another SSD that would need to be at least 500gb in size to grab a few of these newer bypassed games. There's nothing that really seems worth that effort to me. After the disappointing KCD2 and HFW which are both over 100gb it's hard to think most of the current crop of huge major games would be worth it.
 
I am replaying Dark Souls 3 just as to have something to play. So that's going as usual. Smaller game size, takes minimal resources to run and look good, still love the art style above any of the fromsoft souls games.

So I grabbed Elden Ring Nightreign and had a hard time getting it started. Once I did I tried the FLing trainer and haven't solved it yet. There is some problem bypassing the EAC and the trainer won't run or the game will immediately crash with it running. So idk. I was reading for offline SP only play it's really not worth the trouble. So I deleted it and am done with it for good.

I got Dragonsword which is a korean cutesy type game that does have fantastic art style. I have to say they ruin it with typical asian games over the top long winded constant dialogue, cutscenes and just way too many sub systems and such. It gets tedious and wears out the fun pretty quickly. There is almost more focus on these beaurecratic administartive systems than the hands on gameplay and it's not fun. Constantly having to skip the long annoying dialogues is another thing that wears thin.

On the plus side is the nice looking art style and open world. This game gives me Tears of the Kingdom clone vibes down to the enemy types stationed throughout the world. The art style and the like. It's strange how another korean game, Stellar Blade, got so much right. I think if the makers of this game emulated that more it would have been MUCH better. This is a UE game but doesn't feel as generic as Khazan does. If Khazan had used a similar art style with more vibrant colors it would be a better more engaging game. Khazan runs well also for a UE game.

I'm not sure I'll see Dragonsword through due to the mentioned drawbacks. They just suck the fun out of it for me.

I might grab the recently cracked Crimson Desert but I'll have to delete a few games and dig into my other storage drives to get it onto an SSD at the least. It is a full UE5 game so I'll def have to run it at low settings to get a decent graphics experience. Other than that it's really playing some of these marginal games like Khazan and Dragonsword and replays of old games like Dark Souls 3. Maybe a replay of Elden Ring at some point idk.
 
Just replaying Khazan Berserker which is a fairly good Souls clone. For a UE game it runs really well and looks pretty good. I finished it and then grabbed a fully done save for a new game and switched to a female character which is nice for a replay since a lot of the cutscenes are skipped automatically. I'm not too interested in the story but the gameplay and world. It's much more restricted than Dark Souls games are with mostly linear levels that look all pretty much the same over about 3-4 different types of terrain.

They just don't make them like Dark Souls 3 and similar anymore. UE encourages way too much off the shelf assets and such. Likely it also encourages more AI level building so the handcrafted feel isn't there with UE games. Sadly all you have today is UE, Unity and game or developer custom engines. The custom engines are usually better than the cookie cutter ones like UE or Unity. Ironically it's usually always the "streamlined" cookie cutter engines that are optimized the worst and look worse unless you can overpower them with your $5k system. Unity can be a game killer like with Mouse PI for my system, it's a mess of crashes and bad developers.

Khazan is probably good for just this replay then there's not much else to it. It won't age like wine like Dark Souls 3 or probably Elden Ring((which is not as good as DS3 to me). I do like the art style of Khazan and the cinematics are nicely done comic book style. One thing they really missed was what is called the "gooner" aspect.

Stellar Blade is an excellent game without it but the icing on the cake is the gooner eye candy aspect. Khazan doesn't have it at all. You can get mods to make it more like that but they're hit or miss. Khazan would have been so much better if they had modes where you could play as the female NPCs and others and given you the option to switch costumes etc How is it that the devs and such don't realize that most of the gaming community for games like that are males? One of the most famous gooner icons is 2B from Nier Automata. There is in almost any game that can be modded a 2b mod for it. Devs and pubs are idiots for not having these options built in.
 
To clarify I got to the last level of Khazan and just couldn't handle the obnoxious trial and error aspect of the moving ledges which you had no idea how they would move beforehand. So it became a trial and error frustration fest. I DO NOT LIKE frustration in games, that's not why I play games and it does not add anything good to the game. I do not like dying and having to go back over again to figure out what is next. I did that several times on the way to the chaos lord and I just got sick of it just to get to the final boss.

It was much easier to grab a fully done save game and start a ng+ with everything done so I could take my pick of the coolest armor and weapons for a re run. The stats of the armor and such make no difference as I use a Fling trainer to negate the grind. So one hit kill, invincible, move twice as fast etc cut down the annoyances of souls games a lot so I can just explore and see the world and such without frustration. I wouldn't play any souls game or most games sans a trainer to negate the annoyances and make it a fun game to play. Frustrations I have plenty of IRL I don't need or want them in games.
 
Got back into Elden Ring and even after playing it and the dlc before, WOW such a great game. It looks amazing even at my med settings. I don't even have turbo boost turned on so my mobile CPU just sticks with the standard 2.4ghz and so no jet engine fans and ER works fine at 60 or so.

ER is HUGE and the world is so full of things to discover and such. Always amazing art, and I use the stealth option to just wander around and observe the amazing enemy models art and animations and the world in general. ER is easily one of the best games I've ever played.

Dark Souls 3 will always have a special place for me because it was the first FromSoft game I've played and it hit me hard with the monumental style, dragons, architecture, knight motif and such.

ER like all FromSoft games does require googling to figure out what to do in places because it's very minimal explanation and dialogue in general but it makes up for it for not too much cutscenes and blathering dialogue and such. It focuses on gameplay and exploration. I think only The Witcher 3 is better at guiding you with not overly done cutscenes and dialogue.

Stunning game. And I started with a download save I think with a new game plus that had 100% before. It's the best way to get back into an old game replay, start a new game.
 
I've been replaying Elden Ring and it's an amazing game, beautiful art and graphics, mysterious, and really exploration and packed with things to discover and do. I'm near the end game but have held off so far to think about doing the Volcano Manor contract hits not sure if I want to do those or not. I can just go through the manors dungeon to fight rykard to get the last great rune. Not sure there. I've also tried to do more of the NPC quests this time around such as the dung beetles and others. I seemed to find Ranni prematurely in the underground and conclude her quests before I could figure out the normal way.

ER is a game you almost HAVE to search online to know what to do, it'd be hard to naturally figure out how to maximize the options and experience. I know the makers just want you to replay it a few times and make different choices, stumble upon new things and such and that's great if you can not get burned out on it and move on which is what usually happens as there are so many games to play now, once you put something down for new stuff or get burned out it's not always appealing to boot up again.

So before making the final run of the main story, ie burning the tree and laying waste to lyndell, I decided to start the major DLC Shadow of the Erd Tree. I also think I finished this back when the game was newer but didn't spend as much time exploring and also researching the story and available obscure hidden content. The DLC is very much more of the main game which is not a bad thing at all. It does seem to take a bit more resources to run than the main game though. The darker high contrast visuals can be a bit much but other than that it's great so far.
 
I've also been casually playing Dragonsword Awakenings which is a single player offline gacha game. It's had the grinding of gacha games mostly stripped out and just presents a good looking art style world. It's also an obvious "innocent" gooner sexy lady characters game. This is similar to Stellar Blade. The Koreans tend to make games in this vein. As long as it's a good fun game to me the gooner aspects are just icing on the cake and that's the case with Stellar Blade and this game.

DS is a simple game compared to Stellar Blade but it works. I've modded it to be even more sexy with nude mods and such and of course a few QOL mods like free flight for all familiars-mounts etc I'm almost to the end game mission 60 or so as it's way too full of long winded talking cutscenes and just way too much dialogue all over. Many whole mission lines are just running back and forth for dialogue cutscenes which thankfully can be totally skipped but it gets to be much over and over.

Overall it's a decent casual art style game that has a pretty open world and mildly fun puzzles and combat. As I've said the nintendont zelda etc games influence is obvious. I do not and would not engage in any online gacha game, they are toxic slop but a focused single player offline game like this is fine. You can have online friends as other characters and companions but nope not doing that.
 
So yeah Elden Ring has to be top 5 games for me all time. It's amazing the amount of detail and exploration you get. Just the SOTE DLC map is packed and the size of a huge open world game by itself then you add in the main map and it's a massive game. It's amazingly beautiful to look at even at my mix of settings mostly medium at 900p it still amazes me to look at most of the time.

Thankfully FromSoft uses it's own engine because a world like this using UE would be jet engine style brute force, would be way more stuttery and would be 150gb or more to ER's english only with the DLC at 66gb or so. UE would maybe give slightly better graphics but would also look very generic. Khazan is a souls like game that uses UE and is well optimized but it looks very generic most of the time, using off the shelf assets for every level and the world is MUCH smaller, doesn't look as amazing and it's I think around 50-60gb in size.

ER isn't stuttery for me most of the time locked to 60fps or below. It does slow down at points in the DLC which I don't think is as optimized as the main game. I'm on v1.12. I think some of the stutter is due to people not tweeking settings for their system and just going with the pre sets. This is fine for consoles but it's not good for the many different pc systems.

Even using the trainer it's challenging to figure out how to get to certain parts of the ER map. If I didn't use the fly cheat and also a cheat table no die at any fall distance cheat I'd be hard pressed to figure out how to get to certain parts of the map. This is especially true with the DLC.

For me the test of a really great game is if I can use trainers to cut out a lot of the grind and frustration and it is STILL an amazing game that I want to play at length. And if I can replay it over the years.

I know a lot of players of Souls games love the challenge of constant combat, figuring out how to put the right combo to vanquish the even harder bosses, speccing different character focus and builds and such but I dispense with all that. Games shouldn't be frustrating, grindy and require the concentration and planning of a real world job imo. For me exploration, mystery, atmosphere, hands on direct combat at times are primary. Add on amazing graphics is icing on the cake. Then you can add on relatively easy modding and it's gravy.
 
I finished Elden Ring SOTE DLC on a whole game replay and great as always. I'm just exploring the nooks and crannys of the main games map before burning the Erd Tree. I did the whole Volcano Manor saga and have all the great runes etc. Paying more attention to the NPC quests this run as well.

So Fallen Aces came out with it's second of three parts after 2 years so I'm going through it. I have to say the game isn't a wow as it was when it first came out but it's still pretty good. Unity games tend to be very basic and janky but so far it works fine.

Unity is a hit or miss for me, some games like Mouse PI are just impossible and crash a lot and also have very bad difficulty balancing. I had to abandon that game once I got to the scifi machine boss after trying so many times I just got frustrated and it's not worth the trouble. No one seems to make trainers for this game that work to bypass difficulty spikes and such. Also Mouse crashes when loading to another level pretty regularly.

But so far FA has worked just fine for me. I deleted it a while ago after moving on but didn't realize that the save information is in the games folder not elsewhere like most games so I lost all my progress. They changed so much of the code over the last 2 years that old saves don't work anyways. This is bad game design but it's a basic game with a small dev so it can be forgiven easier. They really needed to make Part 1 optional to unlock for people who finished part 1 already as a goodwill to returning players. I remember the basics of part 1 and don't have any interest in having to replay it now to get to the new stuff. They also needed to package the parts as separate programs for ease because it's not a huge game but 15-20gb is a bit much for what is shown. If I'm only interested in part 2 I really don't want to have to install part 1.

The way I figured around having to start all over again is to edit the progress json file to unlock all of part 1s chapters to then start into part 2. It's fairly straightforward just following the existing syntax once you play a new game to where you can save. So I was able to start part 2 immediately after doing that and rebooting the game.

I have to say these devs probably should have had at least the first 2 parts done on release because coming back after 2 years makes me care little about the overall story and forget who is who for the most part. I don't remember the details of the plot and they don't have a recap of part 1 included afaik. I understand that as a very small studio they needed to have the income for part 2 from part one's earnings.

What this is is too big of scope though, if they would have done a part 1 sized fully contained game and then started a sequel to it it would have been a better plan that was more viable. I'm guessing part 2 sales are much lower than part 1. And they are supposedly working on the concluding part 3 but idk if in 2 years I'd care enough to bother with it. Part 2 needs to be BETTER than part 1 for that to happen and so far it's just more of the same. Looks like they cheaped out on various npc models and things in the world to me. Lots of janky looking "stores" with sale items stacked haphazardly etc
 
I went ahead and grabbed the emulator version of Bloodborne which is a fromsoft game that's a souls genre. Apart from the emulation headache and just considering the game I'm not sure why this is so hyped as one of the best fromsoft souls games. It's muddy color palette and messy cramped world is such a huge stepdown from Dark Souls 3 and especially Elden Ring.

Although I do get the intention of being cramped and drab which would feel like the walls are caving on on you. The squalid and criminal "French" Revolution is certainly in that vein. As like all the marxist revolutions it was a Jewish-Masonic affair, completely criminal. A disaster for mankind by those who hate mankind under the guise of freeing it and worshipping it. Which really means worshipping themselves and ultimately Satan.

I suppose I'll need to delve into it more than the first half hour or so to judge it but I've got to spend time grabbing mods and adjusting things to minimize the heavy hardware cost of emulation. Nintendont games are one thing, usually way under the average PC's specs needed but PS4 emulation definitely takes a lot more horsepower to run. I do get playable fps with lag around lots of enemies and big bosses but it for the most part is fine. To NOT get higher fan noise on an old gaming laptop I'll need to grab a few performance mods like potatoborne and others.

I'm using Shadps4 v118 which is one of the latest versions. I just autoupdated from the version that Dodi included with the game rom, which is v050. The good thing is that it has an interface for fixes and cheats built into it. I would not bother with a souls game without cheats trainers, it would be a chore and frustrating to play otherwise.

But it does not include all the performance mods that are out there. For those you have to go to mod sites, the largest being the cartel pushed Nexus. Nexus mods was pushed by google and others to become just another cult owned and controlled website which takes over almost all the traffic in it's field. This is the same as Ebay, Scamazon, etc etc etc mostly cancer.
 
I'm assuming that Sony-Fromsoft does not come out with it's own PC version due to all the OKs necessary for it to happen. Just seeing an independent emulator running it shows them that it would be to their benefit to make a much better native PC version that people would buy. Similar to how long it took Rockstar to do RDR1 though. People had been emulating that for a decade or more before they finally ported it to PC which runs like butter on pretty much any PC, handheld and even phones compared to the atrocious brute force overpowered system you needed to run it just OK as an emulation.

With RDR1 they only did a very lite update, its not a full remake at all but it's fine as is. Mods can upgrade it enough no need for a full on remake. Bloodborne is the same thing. Waiting for PS6 or longer to do a remake is iffy especially now that mid to upper level pc systems of the last few years can run the emulation version with minimal issues. The only benefit is the exclusivity to push ps6 game sales. Bloodborne is really only a blockbuster in a small niche segment of souls games, it's not a catch all wide band blockbuster like GTA, Assassins Creed, COD, RE, etc etc And I'm pretty sure all games are developed on PC and ported to console with console optimizations in mind.

I've shelved it for now though I think in terms of better Souls games that Lies of P would run similar to Elden Ring on my older gaming laptop which is much more attractive to me. It amazes me how good ER looks and runs on my system. Even at 900p med settings it looks amazing and I turn off turbo boost so my fans are silent to whisper quiet while playing it and it stays at 60fps pretty much all the time.

I'm guessing Lies of P will be similar. Modern interface just plug and play, won't tax the system much etc So I'm grabbing that and that's the next planned game for me. I stored Bloodborne on an hdd and will come back to it later on.
 
I've also played a bit more of Fallen Aces and like I said earlier Part 2 is underwhelming. It's just more of the same but looks like they rushed it and feels lower quality than the first part released 2 years ago. It's not a must play by any means.

This studio would have been better doing a full game in one go. Take the first part, add in a couple more chapters and have a fully contained story start to finish. Then release it. So maybe add in another year of development. Then if it's successful enough start on another self contained game using the same style and main character. This is similar to the Indiana Jones original trilogy. Self contained movies which use the same main character and some side characters but for the most part have new characters and stories per movie. Or even the old Philip Marlowe noir PI movies.

Especially in games no one wants to wait 2 years for the next part of the overall story to then wait another 2 years for the final part. For that amount of time you are having to have a noticeably better installment for it to have good will and impact.

They make the same mistake with streaming TV shows. Waiting years in between is just not appreciated and usually the wait is not worth what you get. House of the Dragon is a good example. For a 4 season show it's 8 years total. And the seasons usually feature maybe 1-3 good episodes with filler in the other 5 episodes and this just gives the impression of milking it and a lower quality product overall. Wasting the time of fans.

Having a tighter 3 seasons over 3 years would have been much better, then depending on how well it does go into more stories like the immediate time before GOT. Maybe even at one point go into the post GOT times. Cut out the filler slow episodes or reduce the number of them at least.

Who wouldn't want to see how John Snow(real name something Targaryan) does in the vast cold north. Or where the last surviving dragon goes. Or focus on Tyrions new role as a powerful lord etc etc Idk it's open ended there. What about the annoying youngest "girl" who at the end takes off for parts west from westeros, an obvious Columbus like thing. You have the whole eastern continent there too, maybe delve more deeply into the things that were quickly passed over in the original GOT like the doom in Valyria and such. What happens to the cities that Danaerys left there?
 
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