Club409

I have carcassonne from a previous humble bundle purchase I think. Get your play test on and let me know if it's fun; I seem to recall a bad UI experience.

Going back to sound cards I remember having to choose irq and a bunch of other things to get sounds to work and then doing the same thing for music settings which were pretty much midis but I could choose a few different devices and one of them sounded like a full orchestra of vibrophones

Ni No Kuni - Finally wrapped things up here. Actually there's more quests I just finished the main story and I'm pretty sure I'm done. What's good: the way it looks and sounds. Man this thing is polished. Not only is it well made but the creative designs are top notch as well. I noticed little details on textures and characters that indicated a pretty throrough art direction. The music is a little boring but the production is immaculate. Thematic orchestral stuff from Joe Hisashi who is almost always paired up with Hayao Miyazaki anyways. Where they could have done better: for one the combat system gets frustrating. I found myself frantically flipping through commands trying to block an imminent attack before failing and getting pwn. For a not insignificant part of the game your teammates have no ability to defend themselves so they get pwnt a lot. Later you get a command to go all attack or all defend but that should be there from the start. Also the teammates have a very short term view of things and burn up their MP like in 2 regular battles if you let them. You have to tell them to not use abilities if you want to conserve for a big battle. The story was just alright. Earlier I mentioned the cowliphate and a domestic violence situation which I really thought were clever. In the domestic violence thing this dad was angry and bad and it turns out he had a nightmare inside of him you had to defeat then he was nice and normal. I thought they were setting this up as a fleshing out of a coping mechanism a kid might have in that actual situation. I thought it would be a good way to explore childhood traumas by way of dramatically confronting the rationalizations kids make up but no. The only other thing that could have gone this way was when this one character was stealing all the time and looked kind of ragged out. You have to replace a part of his broken heart and he's better. I thought going a little further here they could have made it about a guy dealing with substance abuse and the kid dealing with that but no. Overall though I really appreciate the earnestness which I think is apparent in this game. They committed to the story of a kid full on complete with trite dialog and everything but they made a very high quality game. There's lots to do and if you know a kid that would be into a JRPG this is probably the way to go. 4 out of 5 coffees that are 20 times more expensive than pie what kind of world is this?!

and be ready for my review of you watching me

so while i'm playing games now there's a consistent mind thread on how i will describe the game on 409 it keeps me focused and thinking critically but i did enjoy spectators because i shift the focus on making a cinematic presentation which is a big part of why i play them

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 - Beat the main story last week. I thought I had a writeup for LoS 1 but I checked and I never did. So to answer your question the first one is better. Visually 1 I think maxed out the graphical capabilities of an Xbox360. They had large and colorful environments and immersive set pieces. In LoS 1 it was a fixed camera so you saw your character from a predetermined position and got a predetermined look which meant if they had more control over how areas could be taken in. LoS 2 had a user controlled camera so you're viewing the environments in the same way. The areas in LoS 2 were much less varied and almost generic like bland futurey science building corridors or bland gothicy corridors or bland street corridors and those pretty much cover it. It's been a couple years but I can still remember some of the LoS 1 areas prob won't with LoS 2. Gameplay LoS 1 had chapters and you played them sequentially or could go back to previous ones. LoS 2 is a contiguous world of corridors where you can back track if you want. This is more in keeping with conventional Castlevania gameplay but I like the first way better. It's a more focused experience. Also the treasure finding system is better in 1. I collected all of them 2 I did not. Actually I got all the achievements for LoS 1 not going to for 2. Combat I'd say is pretty equitable for both mostly similar and I don't like one more than the other. The story was better in the first but not the best executed but the second relies on a lot of story developments from the 3DS Castlevania game which I didn't play. Music was great for both high quality stuff. Gonna refer back to the trailer I posted earlier for a sample. Overall I'd say LoS 1 was a fantastic game and play 2 if you want more but can deal with slight disappointment. Respectively 4 and 3 out of 5 synced blocks take that asshole!

 

edit: went and watched the trailer again and now an issue I have is that you never get to feel like you look in that trailer not even towards the end i mean i get they have to give a sense of progression for your character but a big part of a lot of video games are power fantasy fulfillment and 2 never really got there