On 8/1/2025 7:13 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
* Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remaster
revamped visuals aside
Pretty much the only reason I would buy it, I remember the faces being
squarely in the uncanny valley. But as you mention mods will probably
fix the original. I'm not sure I actually own it, unless it was given
away at some point. It's not in steam. I did play it but was looking
up old Usenet posts of mine about a question of what times I upgraded a computer to play a game, and it turns out Oblivion was one of those. I
also mentioned had borrowed it from someone, and I don't have it now.
I also saw that I completed the game without audio working since when I
had audio on it crashed within minutes, which may have contributed to me
not liking it, which does somewhat make me want to try it again.
-- it very much feels like
an OLD game.
Yeah it didn't look like they really did much to make it more modern fro
the videos I watched other than visuals.
Replaying the remaster only reminded me of how far the series
has come.
I certainly liked Skyrim a lot more, and really the only one I really
liked since Daggerfall. Unless you count the Fallouts. Then you have to
count Starfield, which is a travesty.
I'd forgotten how small the
individual cells in Oblivion were
Speaking of Starfield - I swear it's much worse in that regard with long
load times. Though I also complained that of Oblivion. Insane how they
went from Skyrim being fine at that back to this garbage.
The Stealth Archer takes the win again!
I apparently just played a melee warrior. Big mistake. Another reason
to replay it.
There's a lot to do in
"Oblivion" but none of it really seems to matter, other than to
increase your stats or inventory.
One of the videos I watched was saying the game is actually much easier
if you just rush the end because of the monster scaling, and if you
learn other things besides combat you'll be far behind their difficulty.
I do remember it getting significantly harder the further I went and I
did a lot of wandering, completionist me.
* Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch
I love Niven, I probably don't remember enough of it to get the
necessary references though. It doesn't sound actually fun either. So sad.
---------------------------------------
If I only played two games this month,
What Have You Been Playing... IN JULY 2025?
Well I played a lot between all the games I bought on summer sales.
Although really only a couple took up most of my time.
TL;DR >10h:
**** Cult of the Lamb
** The Surge
** Total Overdose
TL;DR <10h:
**? Bloodborne (emulator)
*? Nightreign
0 Paradox Souls (free)
*** Space Pilgrim Episode II (free)
** Vintage Year (free)
* Caribian Crashers (free)
** Ace of Seafood
** Figet Spinner RPG
**? Disaster Band
* Roundabout 3
***** Verbose Mode *****
**** Cult of the Lamb - roguelike top down 'cute' action-rpg /
'deckbuilder' / town builder.
I love this game. I'm not really into cute, but it's more like cute-lovecraftian horror. It is somewhat buggy, you unfortunately have
to remember to save. I have the GOG version, it does crash
occasionally. I found it crashes far more often if you use the
launcher. It also seems to crash a lot more using the xbox controller
vs. a PS4 one (I happened to find this out as I forgot to unplug it when
I was trying out a ps4 emulator.)
The deckbuilding is a minor aspect, and I actually take umbrage with
most of the 'deckbuiling' games calling it that. Unlike with say Magic
The Gathering where you actually build a deck to play with from the
cards you have, you just unlock random cards you can find on a run in
the dungeon. These are mostly small powerups, some are useless or very marginal, some are good, and eventually you get cursed ones which may be
worse than nothing. So you can't actually build a deck. Even the
titular Slay the Spire you can remove cards, but you have to give up
other opportunities to do so, so even it doesn't really count. At least
in Cult it's somewhat thematic being Tarot cards you mostly get played
from a Tarot reader you find in the dungeon.
The roguelike-action rpg while in the dungeon I really like, and is the
best aspect of the game. Even on hardest difficulty I didn't find it
terribly difficult once I knew what I was doing.
The town building aspect is a bit more than I'd like, but it's not so
onerous that it gets in the way. Being a cult you can do things like
sacrifice spies, elderly, or just anyone you feel like, however you need followers to advance, so you have to be judicious about this.
Overall falls somewhere in my top 5 of roguelikes and well worth the I
think $12 I paid.
** The Surge - Sci-Fi soulslike. Big corp 'improves' humanity and
causes AI nanite and lifter zombie apocalypse.
I'd put it sort of like a knock off souls set in something like
half-life. I find it pretty hard, but eventually got it mostly down.
The areas can be a bit confusing with lots of 'shortcuts' back to the
med centers (bonfires.) What's lacking - while there's probably 20+
melee weapons they seem to mostly fall into a about 4 or 5 movesets with
minor variations and or elements which don't seem to actually make much
of a difference, and fairly obvious best in class ones. The only ranged
weapon you get is a drone which unless you build and have energy though
melee does 1 pt of damage with a couple seconds cool down. Mobs by the
time you get it have at least 100 hp, so it's not really viable. Even
using it when you have enough energy typically does 20-30 points
compared to probably 4x that taking into account damage over time, and
doing that means you can't use other much more effective options for
energy like heals or finishing moves. As usual I miss magic from the
true souls games, and the actual weapon variety is too low to really
keep me interested. It sort of has blocking and parrying but I'm 99%
dodging as blocking eats up a good half to quarter of your stamina.
Story is fine. I'm somewhat enjoying it but have needed frequent
breaks, going between this and Cult of the Lamb, this takes much more
focus and energy so hadn't been playing it much, but as I finished the
'good' end of Cult and did everything I wanted to (not 100%) I started
playing this more the last few days because of that.
** Total Overdose - 12.5h. An older game, This is a weird mix of
something like Max Payne and Saint's Row set in Mexico. It's far more
3rd person shooter than car game though. It's fairly good, it's a bit
harder than I'd like for this type of game, having to play missions over
many times even with the checkpoints to get though them. It has a
trigger timing bar to make a perfect shot which I don't like.
***** Flipped/Low playtime *****
**? Bloodborne on ShadPS4 diegolix29 fork PS4 emulator.
I was trying this out as my son was talking about selling his PS5 and he
wanted to make sure I could play it if he did. It took many hours to
get it in a passable state. It originally was crashing while fighting
the first mob every time. Now it crashes perhaps every half hour or so.
Note if anyone does try this, if you have an intel CPU of 12th gen or
later you absolutely need to find the old intel fix on nexus mods and
install it. I'll note it plays flawlessly on my son's AMD CPU. Next
upgrade I get is definitely not going to be intel/nvidia. I didn't
fight the first boss, as I was in the middle of playing Cult & Surge
* Nightreign - I did play one more round last week, but having been
around a month I had already lost at least half my skill, and quit again
after that. Even that single round took me about an hour. I might need
to go back to solo for awhile if the mood strikes me, I just hate the
time pressure so much and whatever 'it' was that I was feeling like it
had before, I don't now. My son hasn't been interested yet either.
0 Paradox Souls (free) - 6m. not even worth adding to your library for
free, unable to progress past the first couple enemies.
*** Space Pilgrim Episode II (free) - 2.3h Like an old adventure game,
actually enjoyed it, and I can't remember an old adventure game I
enjoyed. It only look 2.3 hours, so I can't see buying the other
episodes for anything more than about 50¢ if that, they're more than that.
** Vintage Year (free) - 24m. Amateur Procedural Roguelike Top-Down
Shooter. It's fine, I kind of like the shadow monsters slowing you
down. Just not something I was enjoying enough to keep playing. It's
free, so if you're one of our broke members it might be worth checking out.
* Caribian Crashers (free) - 1m. I quit this when it became obvious this
was a poorly done Angry Birds.
** Ace of Seafood - 12m. It's kind of like a space sim only you're a
fish fighting other fish with space weapons. It's a bit too clunky, but otherwise kind of fun.
** Fidget Spinner RPG - 25m. Apparently made with some AI assets, which
I didn't realize before I bought it. The RPG aspects were mostly the
type of stuff I don't like, mining, crafting etc. I'm not sure how or
why a Fidget spinner can mine, and craft and wear human armor, or maybe
that's actually you, and you're just spinning the spinner?
**? Disaster Band - 4m. Kind of funny. I find it impossible to actually
keep up with the quick key changes, I think that's how it's supposed to
be though as part of the 'funny'. I have to see if I can get my son to
play it with me as he's into music, it's multiplayer, and supposedly
that's where it's most fun/funny.
* Roundabout 3 - 4m. It looks cool. I died probably 30 times in that 4
minutes. You have to press space to turn your ship, it's sort of like
snake in the idea is only not not crash into walls. A bit too
annoying/hard at least to begin. I can't see trying it every again.
--
-Justisaur
ø-ø
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