#SIMS 4 IS A STEAMING DUMP

[19thperson]

19th's Steam Next Fest Impressions Oct 2024 Edition - Day 6

Day 1/Day 2/Day 3/Day 4/Day 5

Is This Game Trying To Kill Me?

A game that's entirely the escape room parts of the first third of Inscryption. You wake up in a mysterious cabin with a computer in front of you. the computer runs a game about exploring a castle. Doing things in the cabin will effect the game and vice versa. Solve puzzles and try to escape.

It's fine.

It does want it wants to do but what it wants to do doesn't feel too impressive. I could see ahead of time where things were going.

Videos Game

All-in Abyss: Judge the Fake

In Japan's new "Designated Gambling District," 99% of the populace lives in poverty while 1% live like kings. In this dire city, the genius gambler Asuha enters to make her riches and defeat the 5 undefeated witches.

I'm a sucker for gambling manga so as long as this was functional this would click, but I have some complaints.

The aforementioned witches all have different means of cheating, and in-between the big matches, you have to investigate around the city to find some clue as to what their trick is and figure out a counter-strategy. The problem is the investigation is so linear that it just feels like padding between the poker.

It doesn't help that the characters are all kinda one note right now. (I was gonna say they were kinda flat but that isn't true huehuehuehue)

(It is a boob joke)(Kill me)

The poker itself is kinda fun. It has two systems complicating things: the "skill" system lets you alter the cards or your opponent's behavior. The skill "make em chase" is a taunt that keeps the opponent from folding, for example, while "ace in the hole" is "once 4 community cards have been dealt, you get to choose the 5th one". They're balanced by luck being a spendable resource. The 2nd system is a multiplier system. Every time someone raises, a multiplier on the final payout goes up, and it doesn't reset until someone goes to showdown, so you can't just endlessly fold. Hopefully future bosses up the stakes.

the problems: the poker AI for the non witch boss battles kinda sucks. and the big boss battles give you enough in the tank that you can just fold repeatedly until you get an ideal hand, and then use the skill to force a showdown.

Lastly it has dangan-ronpa-esque execution scenes, although not animated, just a CG with description, and the first witch's ironic death, the witch of sweets is force fed to death in blatant feeder fetish art.

Overall more Kakegurui than Kaiji.

Project Silverfish

Small Scale Scalie Stalker.

You choose a backstory, are dumped into some sort of exclusion zone, and take missions from various factions with a reputation system.

Not sure about the gunplay because I spent my short playtime avoiding fights.

Has Stalker's system of multiple smaller maps connected by loading zones but fewer of them. I don't know if they're similarly sized. I did not get far in my one attempt at Stalker years ago.

While I am fine with a map that doesn't give you waypoints or player markers, I would like a compass.

It's still in alpha and you can feel it. And I'm already not the best judge of immersive sims. But it seems to be a functional one I like that it has a cooking system.

Escape Everlit

Sci-fi mystery adventure game. Four people, who all visited the Everlit Building on the same day, wake up in an isolated island with little memory of how they got there. They discover technology that seems impossible in the house. For whatever reason, their dreams send them back in time, to the day of a violent tragedy on a train station

I'll address the elephant in the room first. Game uses a lot of AI art it seems. Some of the more consistent AI art but you can still see the seams. Would not be surprised to hear the translation was similar. It's got a very flat cadence, everyone talking like everyone else in plain terms. Which is sad because I do like some of what's going on here. Of course that's also because I am a sucker for this kind of mystery.

Promise with really big drawbacks. Not sure what to do with this one.

Glitch Dungeon Crystal

The world is falling into glitched corruption. You play as a tiny babushka who doesn't really know what's going on but has just discovered this place and it's filthy. Use your broom to clean up this place and maybe save the world.

A puzzle platformer. Being an old grandma your jump isn't worth writing home about, so you have to use a limited number of spells as well as NPC behaviors to get around. Some spells include one that lets you coyote-style walk off a ledge and keep going, as if there was still ground beneath you, another lets you high jump and float downward, another lets you climb walls, and one lets you go through enemies. I assume they'll be more in the full game. NPC behaviors include fishing frogs that pull you up from their lines and insects that will dig down holes, for some examples.

On one hand I do like the freedom of movement all these systems give you. It feels like there's very little aside from the limits to your own ingenuity to go OOB or at least reach seemingly unintended places. The problems so far is that the game isn't rewarding me for doing so yet, and that movement often requires mid-jump spell switching, which is easy to screw up, but also adds a bit of fun execution to the mix.

Becrowned

I didn't finish this one, not because it was too scary but because poor health item management led to me being painted in a corner. That isn't to say it isn't scary. It does succeed at that. Got a good jumps and some dread out of me.

It is kind of defused when you die and your character ragdolls. Seeing him flail kinda robs the moment of its tension.

It cribs very liberally from Silent Hill 2 but if I were to knock it for that I'd have to knock like a good 80% of the indie survival horror scene.

The demo takes place in a Fucked Up Asylum, but thankfully it's not going straight for "oooh scary crazy people." It's not a huge upgrade but it's going for something more personal than that.

Biggest complaint is that enemy spawns don't reset after you leave the room. You run away from the enemy, enter a door, do whatever you planned to do in said room, step out again and oops they're right there taking a swing at you.

[honiemun]

fuck it, I'm bored at work

EDIT, i just realized I think you're supposed to be given a number from the ask pile? Woops I answered them all anyways

1. NieR: Automata, ending [B]

2. Pizza Tower, Fortnite (i know i know)

3. Hi-Fi RUSH fucks so good!!!!

4. Not really? I mean, if the game is VEEEEERY good I might consider it

5. Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Bay Beeeee!! Game Of the Year Every Year

6. Can I be boring and just say mainline Mario platformers

7. I'm losing more and more interest in Animal Crossing day after day. Look how they massacred my boy

8. I keep telling myself I'll play the Persona games someday. I don't think it's gonna happen guys

9. Undertale. I just heard there was a character that talked in Comic Sans font and went, holy shit I need to check this out

10. I wouldn't be opposed to getting a PS5 sometime. A Gameboy Advance would be an awesome find, I loved playing that thing through emulators way back when

11. I'm more of a blank slate kinda person. Personality can always shine through, I'm just not a huge fan of massive exposition dumps. Lemme vibe

12. I like that brick shaped rat :)

13. Trainwreck of Electro Swing (A Hat in Time)

14. Credits (Super Mario World)

15. I mean, do Game Pass and Steam wishlists count? If so then kinda, but I don't keep track of it. Feels like a chore.

16. I'm halfway through my third annual playthrough of Bowser's Fury. I'm coming back for it sometime for sure

17. Psychonauts! God has that game aged. Really good, just can't bring myself to pick it back up

18. Can I live in Stardew Valley please and thank you

19. Have I mentioned Hi-Fi RUSH yet. Look it's on the mind a ton okay

20. No idea. Does Rhythm Heaven have bosses

21. Eve from NieR Automata is bullshit AND underwhelming as fuck

22. OneShot. I don't think I can bring myself to do a second playthrough. Sorry little buddy

23. Insane fucking combos in Super Mario Odyssey

24. I've yet to play it but I always thought Okami looked pretty awesome

25. None because I love art and styles

26. Stylized all the way baby

27. Splatoon has such an awesome setting honestly. So much history and style packed into a multiplayer shooter, it's crazy

28. I wouldn't start with City Folk today... Pick up Animal Crossing: New Leaf if you like life simulation, or New Horizons if you're the kind of person that creates Sims then never plays as them

29. Multiple ish? Depends if I even have the free time for them, these days. I leave most games unfinished anyways

30. Pizza Tower, one hundred percent

31. Depends! If it's like, my parents or my grandma, boot up Wii Sports or a fitness game. If it's a young ish person who's really eager to learn, any low stakes game will do. At risk of sounding basic, I would say a platformer, to get them accustomed to a controller?

Video Game Asks!

Adding my own pool of asks about video games because I always like to talk games and asks are fun. Send numbers, reblog for yourself etc.

Last game you finished

Game(s) you’re currently playing

1-3 games you’ve played in the past 12 months that you really enjoyed

Do you like to get 100% achievements/trophies?

Game(s) coming out that you’re looking forward to

A series you’ve enjoyed since your early days of gaming and still enjoy to this day whether it still has games coming out or is one you return to

A series you’ve lost interest in

A series you haven���t played but are interested in trying

A game you played completely blind with no prior knowledge of and enjoyed/loved

A console and/or handheld you’ve never played but would like to try

Do you prefer ‘blank slate’ main characters you make yourself or otherwise project onto, or characters with a set personality and backstory?

A character you particularly like in the game you’re currently playing

Quick, name the first song from a game that comes to mind

A song that’s sure to hit your nostalgia buttons

Do you have a backlog and do you keep track of it? If so, how?

A game you’d like to replay that you haven’t

A game you didn’t finish but would like to get back to or restart someday

A game location you really like

A game you started up for the first time and you knew from the start it was going to be great

A boss you think is really cool

A boss that was disappointing

A game ending that’s really stuck with you

A “Wow” moment of awe

A game with a cool art style

A game’s art style that had to grow on you

Realism or stylized?

A game you love the atmosphere of

Pick a series you like. What was the first game you played for it? Was it a good starting point? Would it still be a good starting point now?

On average do you have one game or multiple games going?

Game you think you’ll finish next?

Someone has never played a video game before but is open to trying any genre. What game would you recommend as their first?

[lowcaloriesims]

WTF is an mklink?

To all the simmers out there, I’m sure that you’ve come across a lot of great CC out there. There are so many great mods by fantastic people, across all the games. If you’re like me, you’ve probably accumulated gigs upon gigs worth of the stuff. If you want to save room on your hard drive, and move all this great stuff to a larger one while still being used in the game, I can show you how. 

NOTE: This works for all sims games, and much more! You can use mklinks for anything!

What is an mklink? I'm not going to write an irrelevant story, so I'll save you from the bullshit. An mklink is a symbolic link where you take something from one part of your computer, move it to another hard drive, but link it to the first one. Confused? It's hard to explain without pictures and examples, but in practice it will make more sense.

Here's an example, of what I use symbolic links for. In our modern day, at least in 2022, we have a serious space problem on our hard drives. Even though SSDs are faster than HDDs, they also contain less space to save files on. With games in our modern era, it is not surprising to see files that are over 50 gigs easily. Call of Duty Black OPS 3 requires 100gigs, as stated on steam. Mortal Kombat 11 is easily 80 gigs, on my husband's computer, it was over 100. Cyberpunk 2077 is 70 gig as stated on steam. With these huge as games, there's little space to place them all.

Personally, I use the symbolic links for my Sims games, stuffing all my mods on an external hard drive, to save as much space on my SSD as I can. Even though the Sims 2 Ultimate Collection is about 12 gigs, I have...seriously...over 19 gigs of mods and custom content. 😬 I may have a problem, but this is how I play lol. A symbolic link is very useful in a scenario as the sims, where you have to have your mods folder in your documents folder on the C: drive. Without that folder there, none of your mods and custom content will work. That's just the way EA set up the games, Sims 2, or Sims 3 (if you have sims 4, this is probably the case too).

The problem with having multiple large programs on an SSD, plus certain games that need to be in specific folders, is that you lose space very fast (windows dumping all your stray data and temp data in the hidden temp files don't help either. If you are low on space, look at cleaning out your temp files. Seriously. I had 100gigs there.).

In 2021, I looked up if there was another way to store my mods folder, so that I could still use it in my game, but not take up so much space on my SSD. I was hoping that there was a solution to potentially be able to place the mods on my HDD, while keeping the smaller files in place. Symbolic links were my solution, as this ameliorated my problem. To get to the point, the mod folder was placed from my C: drive, to an external hard drive. In order to get The Sims 2 to still recognize my mod folder, I used the 'mklink' command in windows cmd, with a symbolic link. It is called a symbolic link, in my words, because your computer "thinks" it's on the one hard drive, while actually existing on the other. It's as simple as that, and that explanation makes sense. While symbolic links and mklinks are rather unknown to the common person, they actually have a lot of use for more than the standard tech ideologies.

So how the funk do I do it?

There are multiple examples and instruction pages out there, though I feel like many of them barely make sense, or leave out certain details. Very few people in the sim community can seem to communicate accurately, and write instructions that make sense. I know that's harsh and arrogant, but I have spent so much wasted time trying to do something in someone's wiki or instruction file, just for their own documentation to be wrong. like wtf man 🤦‍♀️ I will provide pictures, because not only do I want this to help you, I am writing this to help me later. Sometimes I forget things, and need a refresher lol. Here is the "hard" way, aka doing it manually, without an extension. 1. Move your mods folder wherever you want. I am moving my Sims 2 mods folder, which is called DOWNLOADS, to my D: drive, as it has a lot more space. I am putting my folder in another one created, with the title "MODS LEL". This isn't necessary, organization is just something I like. If I dont put the folder in another folder, then I would just have random "DOWNLOADS" folder with no other description. Hang with me, I know that made little sense.

2. delete the mods folder from the C: drive. Yes, seriously. 3. open up notepad or some other word processor thing. Just in case you mess up and need to edit this. 4. type in: mklink /D "C:\Users\User\Documents\EA Games\The Sims™ 2 Ultimate Collection\Downloads" "D:\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\MODS LEL\Downloads"

➡️ 4.1] To explain the syntax, we have the mklink /D, with "/D" standing for directory. There are other letters we can use, but I want to keep this simple for now. The first "address" is where we want our file to show up, symbolically. So, for me, I want to "trick" my computer into thinking that my mods folder will be in the Sims 2 ultimate collection folder, on my C: drive. The reason why we deleted the C: folder, is that the symbolic link cannot be created if the folder you want to exist, already does. Bear with me here.

➡️ 4.2] The first "address" is where we want the symbolic to go, and technically, be created. So we have to put the name of the folder/location we want it to be. It is important that we have QUOTATION MARKS. I see many guides talk about symbolic links, but look over this fact.

➡️ 4.3] The second "address" is where our mod folder actually goes. The D: is where my mod folder is actually located, and accessed.

➡️ 4.4] So, for reference, the formula we have is: mklink /D "location you want the folder to go" "location where it actually lives" Think of it like a shell company that is avoiding the government. There are American companies that are based in the USA, but start fake ghost companies in Europe to act like it's not them, and avoid taxes through, and more than likely launder money in. It'd be like Walmart opening a shell company in France called Ballmart, and acting like it was a separate whole company, despite the fact that it was really them.

5. Open the command prompt AS ADMINISTRATOR. If you do not know how, press the windows key, and type in cmd. When it pops up, right click, and you will have the option to run the program as the administrator. 6. Type in the mklink that you created, or copy pasta it if you wrote it on notepad or something. Hit enter. 7. If done correctly, you should now have a symbolic link! Congraturations!

If you aren't sure that you made the link correctly, there will be a little arrow icon on your folder, indicating that it is symbolically linked.

Hope this helps!

[This was originally posted on my neocities page.]

[swashbucklery]

Things I’ve been into this week:

1. Got my COVID booster, spent 3 days in a Side Effect Fever Nest and am just now coming out of it, science rules but also science hurts just a little bit.

2. Re: point 1, am now a scant 40 hours behind on Critical Role C3 which feels like ~practically nothing~. I have several complex theories on the ways in which EXU is secret lore dumping for C3 and am struggling with how to find the people in this fandom that are Cool To Engage With. Accepting recs if you know anyone.

3. I checked my Switch profile and did you know that I’ve played 375+ hours of Animal Crossing since March 2020 because fuck me I sure didn’t. It’s that ten minutes a day thing, it catches up. Anyway I’m really proud of my island and since I’m still working through 2020s pop culture please know that I just now discovered the acnh.guide app which has made it a million times easier to actually figure out which bugs and fish I’m missing. I’ve made a ton of progress on completing my museum which makes me happy. I’ve also made a twitter account to share photos of my island build bc I’m really pleased with how it’s (slowly) coming together, if that’s your jam I’m @mermaidlamp on Twitter and I’m happy to make a tumblr to crosspost photos to if there’s interest. It’s night themed so it’s mostly just me on an eternal quest for lamp diys but maybe that’s your thing!

4. Last night I was rewatching some Buffy and I got to the scene in Once More With Feeling where Willow and Tara have a whole number about oral sex and like. Just thinking about the ways in which people make art about queerness has changed and the ways in which - like - when you couldn’t show two women kissing on TV you had to think a little harder? And the ways that intimacy and longing and desire can be communicated without kissing and the ways that on the one hand we’ve made such progress and on the other hand I think there’s an art that’s been lost? And maybe this just circles back to Everyone Is Beautiful But No One Is Horny but I really felt it, you know?

5. Has anyone played RDR Online recently? I’m downloading RDR2 onto my PS5 finally and I want to play Sad Cowboy Horse Sim because Laura Bailey being bad at describing horses made me absolutely pine for the RDR2 horse engine, but also as with point 2 I don’t have time to get cyberbullied by children. I can always play infinite post-game and I probably will; I could start a new game on the PS5 but gosh that epilogue broke my heart, you know? Anyway, I like to know my options.

6. Has anyone actually played the RDR1 port on the new PS Store Classics Collection? Does it work? Is RDR1 actually a bad game when played with fresh eyes or does mourning Arthur Morgan along with John add a certain je ne sais quoi that compensates for the pre-2010 graphics. If it helps I’m very bad at video games and am very attached to a few of the modern accessibility features to make games work for me.

I hope you’re having a good Tuesday. I love you and appreciate you. I’m thinking of doing a Legends rewatch from the very beginning and trying to decide if I’m going to rewatch Supergirl in parallel or if the complexity of that will make me lose steam. Always accepting new recs for television that is a) good b) going to scratch the Genre Fandom part of my brain real good and c I cannot stress this enough) not spooky or gory.

[trustwash]

Micro machines world series cheats

MICRO MACHINES WORLD SERIES CHEATS MOD

MICRO MACHINES WORLD SERIES CHEATS UPDATE

MICRO MACHINES WORLD SERIES CHEATS FULL

MICRO MACHINES WORLD SERIES CHEATS PS4

MICRO MACHINES WORLD SERIES CHEATS PLUS

Thanks for the email Mohandevir! Article taken from. The local multiplayer in games like this can be massively fun. If you're coming to World Series for old school Micro Machines kicks, especially off the back of playing Toybox, you're going to come away feeling. Whether driving the Spy Car destroying a Hovercraft with a NERF Blaster in the Games Room, or the Dump Truck blowing up a Tank with a Dynamite Launcher in the garden, Micro Machines World Series will have players of all ages smiling from ear-to-ear while delivering absolute carnage. Games like this are essential, especially when a lot of us have partners, kids and friends over often. The Sims 4 cheats PS5 Stock Supporters only. I loved playing it when I was younger and if they do it right, it could end up proving rather popular. To unlock the following Trophies, complete the following tasks.

MICRO MACHINES WORLD SERIES CHEATS FULL

It's rammed full of features too, with offline and online play, customization, interactive tracks and plenty more.

MICRO MACHINES WORLD SERIES CHEATS PLUS

LEGENDARY LOCATIONS: Featuring the iconic kitchen and pool table tracks amongst others, plus all-new locations and arenas such as the garden and workshop, Micro Machines World Series features 10 Race Tracks and 15 Battle Arenas! Use our Micro Machines: World Series message board to communicate any issues with the trainer, request assistance or just make general comments regarding the game. QuoteThe legend is back! Micro Machines World Series combines the thrilling madness of racing micro vehicles with epic team battle strategies, set against the extraordinary interactive backdrops of the everyday home! Grab your NERF blaster, try to avoid the jam, and unleash miniature multiplayer mayhem onto the world! Our Micro Machines: World Series Trainer is now available for version 1.05 and supports STEAM. It would be odd to add such specific system requirements and check the Linux/SteamOS icon box if it wasn't.

MICRO MACHINES WORLD SERIES CHEATS UPDATE

I've shot off a message to Codemasters to see what's happening and will update you all once I get a reply. A minimum of OpenGL 4.2 support is needed for your GPU and they even list that Mesa is supported for AMD cards, so it sounds like they know what they're doing here. They have also added some proper SteamOS/Linux system requirements, so it seems pretty likely this is actually happening. Just today the Steam store page was updated to have a SteamOS icon (shown below) and SteamDB shows it was added to the platform list. View cookie preferences.Īccept Cookies & Show Direct LinkIt seems the new Micro Machines World Series racing game from Codemasters will be heading to Linux. select to replace the version in system storage.YouTube videos require cookies, you must accept their cookies to view.

MICRO MACHINES WORLD SERIES CHEATS PS4

"Do you want to overwrite this saved data?" will display if the file you're copying already exists in PS4 system storage. Set check marks beside the data you wish to copy or. We will send you the modded save data by email, copy it to USB Storage Device and then copy to System Storageģ. If this happens, select to replace the version in system storage. "Do you want to overwrite this saved data?" will display if the file you're downloading already exists in PS4 system storage. Set check marks beside the data you wish to download or.

MICRO MACHINES WORLD SERIES CHEATS MOD

Send the save data to us by email, we will mod it for you.ĭownload the modded save data to system storageġ. has many cheat and codes for PS2 related games. If this happens,select Yes to replace the version in USB storage.ħ. Click on any letter below to search the PS2 game you are trying to find cheats and codes for. 2021 Using AI-powered by machine learning this cheat could work in theory for. "Do you want to overwrite this saved data" will display if the file you're copying already exists on the USB storage device. Were now into Warzone Season 6, which brought new weapons, map changes. Set check marks beside the data you wish to copy or Select All.Ħ. Go to Settings > Application Saved Data Management > Saved Data in System Storage > Copy to USB Storage Device.Ĥ. Contribute to FrodeSolheim/cheats development by creating an account on GitHub. Connect a USB storage device to the PS4™ system.Ģ. Offer us your PS4 account, we will download your save data and mod it for you.Ĭopy save data to USB Storage Device, you must be signed in to the PlayStation™Network to use this feature.ġ. If this happens, select Yes to replace the version in Online Storage.Ħ. "Do you want to overwrite this saved data" will display if the file you're uploading was previously uploaded to Online Storage. Set a check mark beside each saved data that you wish to upload, or choose to Select All.ĥ. Go to Settings > Application Saved Data Management > Saved Data on System Storage and select Upload to Online Storage.ģ. Upload save data to online storage, to use this feature, you must subscribe to PlayStation®Plus.ġ.

[pkmnsdarkqueen]

   ❤ DATING SIM TROPES ❤

REBLOG AND FILL IN WITH DETAILS ABOUT YOUR MUSE AS IF THEY WERE A CHARACTER IN A DATING SIM. (Inspired by Huniepop) TAGGING: whoever wants to do this!! TAGGED BY: stole from godconsume

NAME: Karen Mirami THEIR PROFESSION: Top Elite 4 member / Vigilante and charity owner WHERE THEY CAN BE FOUND: Her room in the league, Olivine beaches and the dump there, She generally has a single spot in each city that she hangs around, and is often alone walking around at night.  FAVOURITE FOOD TYPE: Dark Chocolate, the more bitter the better FAVOURITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK: While she will drink anything straight vodka is usually her go-to, and then she stops after getting a buzz. She will go as far as needed in a shot contest though to destroy someone. WHERE THEY WOULD GO ON A DATE: Depends on how closely she knows the person. If it’s a first date she’ll opt for something traditional like dinner or a movie. The more she feels like she can trust someone she starts inviting them to her secluded spots which are all special for various reasons. An example is the beach dump where she will happily tell them about some of the things her and the league do there to blow off steam. Such as seeing who’s pokemon can launch a broken toaster the farthest. IDEAL GIFT: Truthfully gifts alone will not get her attention, and while she appreciates them time is the most important to her. Gifts that do have an edge over other’s are ones that tell her someone’s listening. So giving Karen her favorite flower, clematis’s, something that she’s been expressing a need for, or non fiction books which occupy a section in her room will get her attention. Also hand written notes are ones that mean alot.  WHEN WILL THEY DRINK ALCOHOL: If challenged to a shot contest she is down, or from time to time at her bar. Generally she doesn’t indulge on the side though due to old habits. HOW MANY DATES UNTIL THEY GO TO BED: Sorry, only a wedding ring will land someone the same bed as her.

[rayegunn]

PSA - Check the health of your hard drives

I just got done dealing with my very sick computer, a failing hard drive, causing repeated 'unexpected store exception' BSODs and frequent freezes. I actually had 2 bad drives, it turned out, though one was only in the early stages of failure with a number of bad sectors, but still overall working OKish, the other one was so far gone it caused a S.M.A.R.T failure, which is prompted me to look at all the drives, because that showed up at the boot screen. And it could not even be detected properly by the disk analysis software

The one that really failed, E, was where i dumped my movie files, so on the one hand, at least it was not holding anything irreplaceable, no family photos, or artwork, etc. But on the other hand, it also wasn't being backed up, for precisely that reason, since i was a little short on backup space. Besides the boot drive (a SSD, and not really meant to hold much besides the OS and program files, except games which went on D) i had 3 2TB drives, and only one was in good shape. It was the internal backup drive, which is something everyone should have for just such an occasion, the contents of my main drive were being copied to it. So, you know, at least all my STUFF was safe, i had 2 current copies of everything important, and I do also keep copies of some especially important files on the cloud, but i do not pay for extra space, so it doesn't hold enough for everything. But the movies were not being backed up, and stuff going on to E was at high risk of getting corrupted. So i likely have some corrupted movie files. But I selected some favorites that were not available on streaming here, and backed those up, and we can sort out later which are good and which are bad. So, got to work uninstalling/deleting unnecessary things. Mainly games on Steam, since those could easily be reinstalled, except the super-modded beasts like, well, all of Bethesda's games, and the Sims 3 and 4, which just... live permanently on my computer even if i haven't played them in a while, because reinstalling all those mods would be a HUGE pain. (I am a mod addict, please help)

It is at this point i have to plug the backup software I use, it saved my ass. It's called SyncBackFree, and as the name implies, it is a completely free backup program. What I love about it is that unlike SOME backup software, it has an option to mirror, so if i delete something on the source, it will also get deleted on the backup, so you don't end up with a continual buildup of unneeded clutter files that got deleted ages ago on the source drive. It also has a scheduling system (though admittedly one that is not very intuitive to use) that will keep things backed up continually without you having to actively remember to do it. And restoring from the backups is as simple as hitting 'restore', and you can pause at any time, if needed, during those big jobs. I highly recommend it, it may save your ass too: https://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html

So because i was already using that, mostly i just made sure everything was backing up as it should, and did current runs on the ones that backed up infrequently. (some folders get backed up every few days because they get changed frequently, others only every couple months because they rarely change) The games especially, since that one changes a lot, and i created a temporary profile to backup at least some of the movies, and the entirety of the C drive, (what could be backed up anyway, some C drive system files are blocked) because i was considering my options as I was doing this. And, on my dad's recommendation, i decided to replace the boot drive as well. It was still good, but it was a bit small, and getting old, it was already a second hand drive when i got it, so.... And I decided to get a single 4TB drive to replace the 2 failing 2 TB hard drives. I probably could have gone with 3TB,because it wasn't like i had either one all the way full, not even close, but, for some bizarre reason, the 4TB was cheaper than the 3TB on Amazon, so... may as well. Ordered the drives, and as i waited for them, created an external backup of my backup, just to be extra safe (I had one, but it was old, so updated it) The new drives arrived the other day, and so plugged them all in, after copying the C drive, and now I am using SyncBack to restore all my stuff from the backup drive. And my computer is doing good again, though I have a lot of games to reinstall, even games that have all the files there (as mentioned, i did not uninstall the games that were heavily modded) are not being registered by Steam, so... yeah, gotta reinstall them all. But at least that is pretty easy with Steam. My plan for the backup, now that I have a source drive twice as large as the backup drive, is to back up C to D, and D to F (E is now gone, i could rename them, but the backup software is all set up to work with F, so meh, whatever, it works) and just be really selective with which games and movies get backed up, and the 2 TB backup should be ok.

One thing I found surprising though was how much faster and smoother my computer runs without the bad drive in there. It's remarkable how a bad drive you're not even actively using as anything but a media dump can gum up the works that badly. And like, it sneaks up on you, as the drive goes from just.... a little bad, to outright failing, so you don't realize it's happening, until it gets really bad, and your computer begins crashing, and it just decides to freeze for like 20 seconds at random intervals. But, at least it was just a media drive, and if anything is corrupted, it's probably files that are not irreplaceable, so there's that. Anyway, this has been a PSA to check the health of your hard drives. I should have caught this much sooner, but i had not been checking the health of the drives.

[medifox631]

Golden Axe III Download

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https://medifox631.tumblr.com/post/655269009922637824/out-of-space-download. GOOGLE DRIVE – CRACKED – FREE DOWNLOAD. GOOGLE DRIVE – CRACKED – FREE DOWNLOADTITLE: Out of Space (ALI213)DEVELOPER: Behold StudiosPUBLISHER: Behold StudiosRELEASE DATE: 24 Apr, 2019GENRE: Strategy, Casual, Indie FILE SIZE: 200 MBOut of Space is a LOCAL and ONLINE co-op multiplayer game. Out of Space (ALI213)DEVELOPER: Behold. Out of Space is a LOCAL and ONLINE co-op multiplayer game about living together in a house in space. You and your friends are about to move into a house in space, where you will have to deal with a deadly alien infestation and face the challenges of building a sustainable spaceship, all to make your new place feel as cozy as home! Download Out of Space ISO Game PC. Direct Links, Google Drive, Torrent, Download ISO game PC. The Prodigy are an English electronic dance music band from Braintree, Essex, formed in 1990 by keyboardist and songwriter Liam Howlett. The line-up of the band has included MC and vocalist Maxim, dancer and vocalist Keith Flint (until his death in March 2019), dancer and live keyboardist Leeroy Thornhill (who left to pursue a solo career in 1999), and dancer and vocalist Sharky (1990-1991).

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Download Golden Axe for free. Golden Axe - You family is dead and your entire village is in ruins. You may want to check out more software, such as Golden Axe 3.

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May 2, 2012

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Chaos is spreading across the land once again as the Prince of Darkness arises to conquer the world.To stop him and retrieve the legendary Golden Axe, four heroes step forward to accept the challenge. Source: steampowered.com

OS: Windows XP or higher

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Golden Axe III (Europe)

Dump statusReleasedDumped bySEGA Released bySEGAOriginROMGameGolden Axe IIISystemSega Mega DriveGenreBeat 'em UpRelease dateJP Jun 25, 1993 US Unreleased EU Unreleased Release dateUnreleased

Download Golden Axe III (Europe) (info)

An unreleased European revision of Golden Axe III for the Sega Mega Drive.

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Notes

Released by SEGA on the Nintendo Virtual Console for the Wii.

Was only released in Japan.

ROM contains only code changes.

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Retrieved from 'https://hiddenpalace.org/w/index.php?title=Golden_Axe_III_(Europe)&oldid=14107'

[dramallamadingdang]

The longest reply post in the history of ever.

These go back, like, two weeks, because I am a very bad llama. An I should probably break this up into multiple posts, but I don’t wanna go through and select replies again. So...apologies to those for whom the “Read More” cuts don’t work?

These be for @getmygameon, @alicenorthernlights-blog, @eulaliasims, @penig, @tamtam-go92, @didilysims, @taylors-simblr, @mortia, @delicatesoul88, @twofingerswhiskey, annnnnnnd @immerso-sims...

getmygameon replied to your photo “Owen, running in terror from Olivia. …..Well, OK, really he was...”

Small miracles, dear. Small miracles ;) *pats*

Yeah. :) I’m actually surprised Owen made it to graduation. He didn’t have great chances of going to class/finals, according to my rules -- which is why he often ended up on probation -- but eventually his Fortune aspiration kicked in and worked in his favor. He rolled up wants to go to class because of it, and rolled wants override the manual rolls I do to decide that.

alicenorthernlights-blog replied to your post “I woke up this evening in one of those little dream-induced panicky...”

Hyperactive shield volcanoes. The scaries thing I can think about Hawaii.

I dunno...Hyperactive volcanoes aren’t bad. They are constantly letting off steam, quite literally, so they just kind of constantly belch instead of going, “Oh, hey, I think I’ll catastrophically explode this week.” I worry about the quiet ones. Like, the last time I was in Naples/Capri and visiting Pompeii/Herculaneum, Vesuvius -- which is overdue for explosion -- was all grumbly and belching smoke. Creepy! Or there’s all those up in the Cascades here in the States that are kinda overdue to explode. And then there’s Yellowstone, which is practically underneath me. If that thing ever goes, we all gonna die. :)

To me, the scariest thing about Hawai’i is...the cost of living. Yowza. Which, now that I think about it, might have factored into the dream. Cost of living at possible destinations is definitely a factor when it comes to emigration planning. :) Hawai’i would be a terrible option in that regard even if it wasn’t part of the US. :)

eulaliasims replied to your photoset “Oriana toddlerated into a crisp untextured white tux, some cheekbones...”

I love the combo of pure white tuxedo and enormous (for a toddler) bun. Oriana's got a real Look.

Ohgodohgod, 90s flashback to that Roxette song! :D 

When my son -- who’s now a big, bad Army Ranger who’s killed people -- was around kindergarten age, that was his favorite song, and he sang it (with all the wrong words) while doing this hysterically-amusing dance to it. Which of course I recorded to keep as blackmail material. So now it’s like, “Behave, or your unit commander -- or, worse, your unit in general -- gets a copy of this, bucko.” 

*ahem* But yes, she is totally fabulous! And Maxis fails at tuxedos.

penig replied to your photo “Amelia is Unthrilled about potty training. But at least she...”

Nobody's thrilled about pottytraining. Can't blame her for that.

But she’s a Family Sim! She’s supposed to love this stuff! She’s supposed to be so proud of her little precious darling using the potty! She’s supposed to be glowing with maternal contentedness that she gets to stand there and watch her kid poop! 

...OK, OK, so in game-reality Family Sims are THE WORST at actually raising and interacting with their kids as opposed to just making/birthing them. (I’m tellin’ ya: Pleasure Sims are THE BEST parents...and Owen has a Pleasure secondary.) But, you know, they’re supposed to like this stuff. Ideally. Or at least theoretically.

tamtam-go92 replied to your photoset “Owen is, of course, excited to have another baby to cuddle, now that...”

Love how oriana's Shirt matches owen's skin.

HAH! It does, doesn’t it?

Which reminds me that I need to get baby clothes working in my game again. Since I dumped all my custom clothing and just defaulted most of the Maxis stuff, I’m back to diaper-clad babies...

didilysims replied to your post “So sad about the deaths �� Why don't you use Comfort soup? What are...”

Wait, are *you* saying you caused this plague?? MURDERER!!!! (I'm kidding...sort of. ;) )

MEA CULPA! I AM A PIXEL MURDERER! :D

Although, I didn’t deliberately start the sickness in this household. Sage came home from work with it. So it’s all the game’s fault.

taylors-simblr replied to your post “So sad about the deaths �� Why don't you use Comfort soup? What are...”

I’m very similar to this. I get super attached to my sims, but I still don’t coddle them. I do allow them to plead to the reaper otherwise I’d lose a lot more sims and I only have a small population. I just get very sad when my sims die, have a break from playing, them get over it. I always have the clones of them to play with anyway

I imagine it’s hard when Sims to whom you’re attached die. I mean, there are players who avoid it entirely, never allowing Sims to age past adult (or to age at all) and who use mods to make things non-deadly because they’re so attached. I confess that I don’t understand the mindset, myself, especially because you can make clones of them or resurrect them at will or whatever, but it does exist and is valid and all that. 

But yeah, if you have or allow only a playable population, you don’t really need population control. :) I’m more of a “let ‘em breed freely, then cull the herd when necessary” sort of player, though.  

mortia replied to your post “So sad about the deaths �� Why don't you use Comfort soup? What are...”

I like this. I also use the Realistic Sickness mod but I DO get attached to my pixel people and find myself coddling the hell out of them the second they even start to sniffle. I need to stop doing that and just let life play out once in a while.

I can understand, intellectually, the desire to coddle. I don’t really feel it myself because I don’t “attach” to pixel people, but I understand that other people do. There are times when I’ve felt a need to coddle that have nothing to do with attachment, though. Like, if I really wanted a particular Sim to breed because of unique facial features or the recessive genes they have and stuff like that. And I think I have coddled a few of those at times, over the years. But generally, I’m of the opinion that it makes no sense to use Real Sickness if you’re going to coddle because it just makes the coddling more drawn-out and frustrating. :) Then again, I suppose I can see where you might want to coddle your faves -- or, say, those in higher classes who might have access to some sort of dubious “medicine,” in a medieval game -- and let everyone else die as they will.

penig replied to your post “But alas: It was not to be.”

What?! Nooooo!

YEEEEEES! :) Well, OK, kind of “no” because child ghosts are wacky in that they just teleport around instead of float because they don’t have the proper animations. (Which is dumb. I mean, they made it possible for children to die -- as opposed to the immortal babies/toddlers -- so you’d think they’d’ve given child ghosts the proper floating animations, but noooooooo!) So, I kinda wish she’d croaked after her teen age-up, but...such is my game.

didilysims replied to your photo “Yeah, that hike was definitely not a good idea. :( I’m bummed. :( Sage...”

Sickness is not to be taken lightly. You should know this!!!

Yeah, yeah, bad llama! BAD! NO PEAR 4 ME! 

(One of our llamas goes absolutely insane for pears. She adores them, has since she was weaned. If she sees that you have one, she will follow you around and stick her head over your shoulder and poke you with her muzzle and give you little hums and long-lashed puppy-dog eyes until you give it to her. Only for pears, though. Other fruit she can take or leave, but she’s a total pear whore. And you can’t even trick her with pears that are oddly-colored or oddly-shaped. Like Asian pears, which are apple-shaped. She knows the difference between an apple and an Asian pear. Llamas -- camelids in general, but especially llamas -- are kind of scary-smart that way. I wish they could tutor the super-stupid horses. Seriously, if horses hadn’t been domesticated, I don’t think they’d still exist. They’re great big idiots constantly looking for new and interesting ways to die. Deer are geniuses compared to them. Sure, they’re loyal as all hell, and very trainable, and I love them to death, but...Dumb to the core, all of them.)

didilysims replied to your photo “Meanwhile, Gwendolyn exists and got gave herself a promotion! We’ll...”

ALlamaInEveryHome would make an excellent username...

It would be! Wish I’d thought of it, when I made this Tumblr. :)

didilysims replied to your photo “Heeeey, Cherry! I totally just knocked up your daughter, man. It was...”

Umm...tell me more about this (harvestable?) peach tree please. :)

‘Tis one of Sun & Moon’s seasonal fruit trees, from this set here. 12/10 would recommend. :)

mortia replied to your photoset “To get everyone’s mind off Sage’s death, Emmy took the girls on an...”

Ooh these are lovely!

didilysims replied to your photoset “To get everyone’s mind off Sage’s death, Emmy took the girls on an...”

This is such a gorgeous lot--and the background too!

It is one of my favorite lots that I’ve built. But it’s also kind of annoying. Since it slopes so much from road to waterline, much of the lot is pretty much unusable. Like, Sims trying to talk to another Sim just do a lot of stomping and yelling because of the slope. I kind of hate that in Sims 2 Sims can’t really interact with each other on anything other than flat ground. (They fixed this for Castaway, which is one of the things I love about that game, but not TS2. WHY??!) It’s one of the reasons why I (usually) build only on flat lots and why I’m (generally) fond of flattening beach lots from road to waterline, too. So...Yeah, that lot is very pretty to look at, but it’s pretty much only usable in the 10-tile-wide strip of flat beach. The rest just generates lots of yelling and stomping. So, it’s also kind of wasted space. :\

penig replied to your photo “Annnnnnd a couple hours later, this happened. *headdesk* I kind of...”

Everyone grieves in their own way?

I suppose one could see it as doing something life-affirming in the aftermath of death. Especially when you’re sick and possibly facing death yourself. Although I gotta say that sex is not high on my to-do list when I’m sick. :) But, to each their own!

eulaliasims replied to your photo “Yeah, that hike was definitely not a good idea. :( I’m bummed. :( Sage...”

Noooo, Sage. :(

I know. I was bummed. :( But, life -- or the game, in this case -- goes on. :)

tamtam-go92 replied to your photo “Stephanie does most of the gardening these days, while her dad’s at...”

What can you even do there?

Fishing, apparently. Which Sims can do pretty much anywhere there’s water, so what’s the point? :)

penig replied to your photo “Sage doesn’t do sitting still very well, and the next day he rolled up...”

This is what happens when you don't lock 'em in their rooms. You could have sent him out by himself, you know.

I could have...but my rule for hikes is that as many people in the household as possible go on them when any household member rolls a want for one and is able to take one. So, obviously toddlers get left behind as well as someone to care for them, and if anyone’s imminently due to go to work/school they don’t go, but everyone else, including pets, goes. Even if they’re sick. 

penig replied to your photo “Stephanie does most of the gardening these days, while her dad’s at...”

It has major routing fails and a fishing hole. Also the hydroponic garden for some reason.

Yeah, I’m afraid I’m pretty unimpressed with the hobby lots in general. :\ The only one I ever really use is the Cuisine one, and that just for food contests. I think what I’m eventually going to do, instead of fussing around to make over the hidden hobby lots, is just build all my own “hobby lots,” but just make them regular community lots and then use the Visitor Controller to limit their patronage to Sims for whom the dedicated hobby is their OTH. I think that would make them busier overall, which would be nice. They won’t have the hobby leaders...but if I wanted to, I could make them owned by the game-generated leaders, so they’d still be there...although I don’t know if they’d retain their “leader” functions, since I’d have to make them temporarily playable to buy the lots. It’ll be something to experiment with...one day. :) A large community-lot garden would be nice for Nature Sims to grow/maintain/harvest...although I suppose they’d have to stay on it for a number of days. And it’d be better if gardening was autonomous...And...

Well, anyway! it makes sense to have the hydroponic garden on the Nature lot, I suppose. I guess when the devs were building the lots, they just threw in anything that was related to (or “assigned” to, via the coding) that hobby that existed at the time.

delicatesoul88 replied to your post “So Tumblr decided to unfollow a bunch of people for me. :\”

It does that to me too! All the time! I really wish it wouldn't...

Yeah, I’ve seen people complaining about Tumblr unfollowing people as long as I’ve had a Tumblr. (Four years, geez!) Honestly, I always kind of suspected that people claimed that it did that in order to “cover up” the fact that they’d unfollowed people deliberately. But then it happened to me! And I didn’t even realize it! I just assumed those people had gone quiet for a while, as people do off and on...until I saw reblogs of posts that I didn’t recall having seen. And then I looked through the blogs I follow and, sure enough, they were no longer there. :\ I knew I didn’t do it, even by accident, because I don’t think I’ve ever unfollowed anyone, even when they announce they’re leaving... just in case they come back like, say, Trapping did. I’ll mute reblogs, sometimes, if they reblog a lot of non-Sims stuff, esp. real-world political/social things that I use Tumblr to escape from for a little while, but I’ll still want to see any original stuff they post. Otherwise I wouldn’t have followed them in the first place.

Anyway, yeah, it’s very, very annoying, and I wish that Tumblr would address whatever’s causing it. But then, Tumblr seems to like to try to control what we see, don’t they? :\ Thank God for Xkit! :D

eulaliasims replied to your post “Replies, yay!”

I love the graying snouts on the dogs too. :) Older doggos are great. Cats too! Kittens are lovely, but older cats are highly underrated. Grumpy old lady cats are the best.

Yeah, I have a huge soft spot for grumpy old lady cats. My own RL grumpy old lady cat passed away rather recently. (She was almost 19 when she got really sick and I decided to have her euthanized, so she had a good long, but always kind of sickly life, probably since she was a very runty runt of the litter.) Once she got past kittenhood, she wasn’t the cuddly kind -- she appreciated being petted and scritched and she would curl up next to you of her own volition, but would never get in a lap or tolerate being picked up or held -- but she was very chatty. She’d sit near me, and we’d have long cat-sound “conversations.” I often imagined that she was bitching to me about all the annoying young ‘uns and all the damn dogs underfoot.

I kinda wish the cats/dogs in game had more varied behaviors like that, but I understand the coding limitations and all. *sigh*

penig replied to your photoset “Samantha, childified. She looks just like Sage, down to the Vulcan...”

Bathtub piracy is one of the most important traits its possible to pass on.

YES IT IS! Bathtub piracy is probably one of those things that annoy a lot of people but that I just love, love, love. :)

penig replied to your photo “Later, the other Emmy GilsCarbo called this Emmy GilsCarbo. :) (The...”

You could start calling Simon's Emmy Em instead.

I could, yes...but I rather like confusing myself. Messing with my brain is so much fun! S’why I appreciate hallucinogens. :)

twofingerswhiskey replied to your post “SO MUCH DEGRASSED, THEY COULD CALL YOU DEGRASSI. okay there's my joke...”

The show is actually super popular, everyone I know has at least heard of it - it's been around for more than two generations, so I mean, yeah :D

Two generations? Really? I thought it was just a 90s thing. But then, I haven’t really watched TV since the early 90s, so there’s that. :) Anyway, I know the name of the show, but I know nothing about it other than that, since I never watched it. Seemed like it was aimed at a demographic that...isn’t me. :) My kids, maybe, but not me.

immerso-sims replied to your photoset “Annnnnd the younger daughter, Samantha. ”

Goopy and Sandy's genes still going strong!

They are! Goopy’s nose seems to override Sandy’s, but Sandy’s lips and jawline seem to override Goopy’s, so it all comes out even. 

immerso-sims replied to your photo “Heeeey, Cherry! I totally just knocked up your daughter, man. It was...”

I am laughing way too hard at this :D

Yeah, I think Sam is pretty much the most amusing Sim I’ve had in my game, ever, and he’s not even a playable. And really, I kinda hope he never becomes playable because then he’d probably become all boringly domesticated. It’s just, as an ex-llama-mascot, he’s freakin’ everywhere, and he’s apparently in a sort of eternally-adolescent hormonal overdrive. Don “Lothario” is a total amateur compared to this guy. Some folks will probably dislike him for that (and perhaps will dislike me “glorifying” or approving of his behavior or whatever), but I take this game not-seriously-at-all, and I have never had a Sim who’s made me laugh so much, sometimes in exasperation but also because he just does goofy things. I’ve had ex-llamas in my game before, but they’ve not been nearly so entertaining.

[thevideogamestudies-blog]

A Cult Classic To Sink Your Teeth Into

   Let’s be honest. Most of you have never heard about Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, so you have no idea why everyone is so ecstatic - or negative depending on whom you talk to - about the new sequel coming out next year. Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines isn’t considered a cult classic for no reason.

© Activision    

**Under the cut does include pictures of animated violence between fictional characters and blood**

                                                                           What is V:TMB?

   Synopsis:  Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is an RPG that takes place in modern Los Angeles and you play a character who has recently turned into a vampire - shocker - in the character creation you choose the vampire clan you want to be a part of, as well as their starting stats. The game revolves around following or disobeying the Masquerade, which is just a fancy word for vampire laws, that keep humans oblivious to all the vampires’ existence. The main plot centers around the arrival of a sarcophagus that is rumored to contain the remains of an old and powerful vampire - and without going into too much detail - there is some vampire politics because of this as well.

   Vampire: The Masquerade started as a table-top roleplaying game in the 1990s, which sparked novels, and video games - such as Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption, and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines followed shortly after (Wikipedia).  Bloodlines was released way back in November of 2004, and unfortunately, sold fewer than 80,000 copies. Compare that to other games released the same year like “GTA: San Andreas” which sold 12 million copies - and that was only on Playstation 2 (Wikipedia).  

                  Why Did Bloodlines Perform So Badly?

   According to the lead writer, Brian Mitsoda, "It was dumped on the market at the worst possible time - most people didn't even know we were out...both fans and the Troika devs are always going to wonder what the game could have been like with another six months,” (Lane).

  Sure, maybe the timing wasn’t right, but it didn’t help that the game was pretty much ‘unfinished’ when released. The engine used for Bloodlines, Valve, was still in development. The developers were dealing with code they were unfamiliar with (Lane). The issues with the engine caused the game’s development to extend longer than Bloodlines’ publisher, Activision, was wanting. After three years of being development, Activision was getting impatient, "We were told to wrap it up in a matter of months at a point where we knew that was going to require a lot of crunch. It was pretty obvious at that point that we weren't considered a very important project anymore,” commented Mitsoda (Lane). Shortly after release, Troika laid off more and more developers until Troika’s doors were permanently closed (Lane).

                 Why Does Bloodlines Have A Following?

   The issue with Bloodlines was never the story. The unforgettable characters, dialogue, and storyline are why the game still has a following 15 years later. In ScreenRant’s article on the announcement of the sequel they commented, “Bloodlines is considered to be one of the best RPGs of all time (even if parts of it haven't aged well),” (Baird). In IGN’s “Top 100 RPGs”, they list Bloodlines as number 42, and Game Informer lists the game at number 98 in their list. PC Gamer mentions Bloodlines in their “The Best RPGs on PC” article as well.

   Bloodlines gets the ‘unfinished’ label because it was unfortunately left a bug-ridden game, and as it gets older and operating systems update, the game seems to keep getting worse. In my personal experience, certain quests are impossible to complete because of bugs. Luckily enough, the fanbase has a passionate player, Werner Spahl, who continuously updates the game - and occasionally adds new content that he recovers from the game files - for free (Lane).

                           Bloodlines 2: Electric Boogaloo

   Paradox Interactive, Bloodlines new publisher, and Hardsuit Labs, Bloodlines new developer, announced the sequel in March and will be released sometime in March of 2020.

© Paradox Interactive     

                                              What We Know So Far

   We will be playing as a ‘Victim of the Mass Embrace’ in Seattle, and we are thrown into the middle of heated vampire politics. Your background, discipline, clan, faction, humanity will affect the main character throughout the whole story (Bloodlines). Brian Mitsoda is still the lead writer for the series, Mitsoda promises, “a true successor guided by the people who knew what made the original so special,” (Robertson). There will be more clans than in the original, new abilities such as telekinesis, turning into mist or bats (Game Checkup).  In character creation for the sequel, we don’t choose a clan, (clans are picked later in the game) but instead, choose a background for our character, and since the character starts as a ‘thin-blood,’ we get limited powers (Alexandra). Senior writer, Cara Ellison, confirmed that there is a massive side quest revolving around finding all the other ‘Victims of the Mass Embrace,’ “We’re looking at introducing you to the idea that lots of different people will have a different experience of being a vampire,” Ellison said. “And their vampire puberty might be a bit more difficult or more fraught,” (Alexandra).

  The sequel will also support all the features from Nvidia’s latest video cards - such as real-time ray tracing effects and DLSS technology - and mod support (Capel).

© Paradox Interactive

© Paradox Interactive 

                                                                                                       Response

   In an article on GameGavel, they claimed Bloodlines 2 as the most anticipated RPG sequel (Bassili).  In Kotaku’s review, they commented, “I’m cautiously optimistic about Bloodlines 2. The gameplay’s emphasis on exploration and Hardsuit’s goal of building a vibrant Seattle are compelling. The team’s willingness to talk about the first game’s stumbles was good to see. And it’s exciting to have a Vampire game that appears to play well,” (Alexandra).

© Paradox Interactive

                                       “Farewell, Vampire”

    If you haven’t already gathered, I am excited about this sequel, so much to the point, I am contemplating pre-ordering it - and I never, ever pre-order games – unless it’s a new Sims 4 expansion pack. I have pretty high hopes the sequel will be worth it, considering the positive reviews from those who tested it at E3 and that the lead writer returned. March 2020, please get here faster!  

Follow me on Twitter @ girlfrmthesales where I post a lot about video games, comics, etc! Or follow me here on Tumblr @mentallyinnoir!

Also if you have never played the original and you want to check it out here is a link to a forum that links mods and the patches! But of course, beware of spoilers in the comments!

Buy the original game here on Steam for $19.99!  Pre-order Bloodlines 2 here on Steam for $59.99!

                                                       Works Cited

Alexandra, Heather. “Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines Is Getting A              Sequel,     And It Looks Pretty Good.” Kotaku Australia, Kotaku Australia,     22 Mar. 2019,     www.kotaku.com.au/2019/03/vampire-the-masquerade-     bloodlines-is-getting-a-sequel-and-it-looks-pretty-good/.

Baird, Scott. “Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 Announced, Story         Details Revealed.” ScreenRant, 22 Mar. 2019, screenrant.com/vampire-         masquerade-bloodlines-2-details/.

Bassili, Albert. “10 Best RPGs of All Time: Don't Miss Them Even in 2019.”       Game Gavel, 14 May 2019, gamegavel.com/best-rpgs-of-all-time/.    Capel, Chris J. “Vampire Bloodlines 2 Will Have Mod Support, plus Ray         Tracing and DLSS.” PCGamesN, 23 Mar. 2019,                                               www.pcgamesn.com/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2/vampire-           bloodlines-2-mod-support.

“Game Info: VtM: Bloodlines 2.” Game Info | VtM: Bloodlines 2, 2019,                www.bloodlines2.com/en/game-info.

Game Informer Staff. “The Top 100 RPGs Of All Time.” Game Informer, 1           Jan. 2018, www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2018/01/01/the-         top-100-rpgs-of-all-time.aspx.

“Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 25          Aug. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto:_San_Andreas.   Lane, Rick. “Reanimated: The Story of Vampire: The Masquerade                 Bloodlines.” Eurogamer, Eurogamer, 27 Apr. 2014,           www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-10-reanimated-the-story-of-vampire-   the-masquerade-bloodlines.

PC Gamer. “The Best RPGs on PC.” Pcgamer, PC Gamer, 12 July 2019,         www.pcgamer.com/best-rpgs-of-all-time/.   Robertson, Adi. “Cult Role-Playing Game ‘Vampire: the Masquerade -       Bloodlines’ Is Getting a Sequel.” The Verge, The Verge, 21 Mar. 2019,     www.theverge.com/2019/3/21/18275652/vampire-the-masquerade-   bloodlines-2-world-of-darkness-white-wolf-rpg-sequel-announced-release-   date.

“Top 100 RPGs of All Time.” IGN, www.ign.com/lists/top-100-rpgs.

“Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 Announced for 2020.” 

Gamecheckup, Gamecheckup, 23 Mar. 2019, gamecheckup.com/vampire-   the-masquerade-bloodlines-2-announced-for-2020/.   

“Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia     Foundation, 27 Aug. 2019,   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire%3A_The_Masquerade_%E2%80%93_Blood  lines.

“Vampire: The Masquerade.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Sept.            2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade#Video_games.

[pumpkin-interactive]

So since we were planning a steam greenlight campaign in a few weeks I want to talk about this. How will this affect Pumpkin Online? We don’t know, since this has just been announced and we have already paid the greenlight fee and are planning to go ahead and do it sometime this month. We don’t know when they are officially dropping it. So we’re caught in a bit of a limbo. I just want to talk about this as a developer. If steam decides to increase their submission fee anywhere from $500-$5000 ( on top of 30% royalty per sale) as they are considering, we may have to distribute other places, increase the price of the game, or have to fund raise again just to cover the submission cost. Now I’m not saying the Steam Greenlight process is perfect. There are a lot of trash games that got steam greenlit, and bad early access games (Some of which I have bought myself) and I’ve been seeing a lot of people championing this hike in price to get rid of shovelware, ‘bad’ games. However, please consider a price hike for us smaller developers like us means 1. Games will get more expensive on Steam to cover initial costs 2. Consider what will happen to games you can buy for under $10 or free 2. Less games on steam as we are forced to go someplace else 3. We’re no longer going to see the possibility of smash hit games like Undertale or Stardew Valley on Steam and it’s going to mostly AAA games who can afford the exorbitant fees. 4. Future indie game Kickstarter goals are going to go up to cover this cost. 5. End of smaller or niche games like Visual Novels, and short games on Steam made on a smaller budget by a small team that don’t intend to sell many copies.    The fee they already have I think takes care of a good amount of the shovelware, and we’re willing to pay a submission fee, but we’re just hoping it’s something reasonable not $1000-$5000, because we would love to have our game on Steam and sell Pumpkin Online at a low cost. So we’re going to go ahead with greenlight this month and we’ll see what happens. I hope you guys will continue to support us because we are working really hard to make sure when we release the game it is fun, playable, and as bug-free as we can. On that note our monthly demo video will be released in a few days, Jayden is working on a few more things and we’ve moved on to private playtesting with close friends and have started the process of getting feedback and debugging. ~ Pumpkin Online is a multiplayer, farming dating sim, currently being developed by a small indie company, Pumpkin Interactive. Feel free to check out our website for more information about our game.  

[ideahat-universe]

Harvest Mooooooo-

Ever had a lot of spare time while also being busy at a moments notice? That’s what I was going through and the solution to that problem was to buy a couple time sinks. The first one was Dragon Quest 7 but I couldn't wait to play it so I got a quarter through it by the time my trip actually started and it ran out of steam by the second week. I finally beat the game and after finally beating it I must say. 

Not as good nor as engaging as Cursed King. Heavenly Bride’s throne is untouched in relationship engagement. I wish the plot in this game was in Heavenly Train (Dragon Quest 9) and that created characters can have a personality of a sort. It wouldn't take a lot to make them engaging. 

There’s an aftermath mode where you get to fight an even harder opponent and as Gajin Goomba once suggested, the Japanese don’t make much distinctions between the devil and god when you can fight them both like common final bosses. 

I don’t really get what they don’t get. 

Part of the changes to add more gameplay was in letting you invite people into your town and having a monster ranch so you can have them run out and find tablets for you to use. Everyone else’s tablets up to the point where the monster ranch builds it’s second location is useless and once you get them out there to find tablets you’ll find it’s nothing like the key system in Dragon Warrior Monsters 2. In fact it’s much worse. 

There’s no incentive to grind the other classes I mean you could but for what? So that every monster flees from you and you can one God himself?

Be my guest. That’s not a carrot I want to eat. 

So I thought about buying Rune Factory 4 but I was nowhere near a store and it would have taken half my data on my 3dsxl and some clown thought it was a good idea to change the card type and to completely cover the SD Card slot. 

So I downloaded a much less intensive game that’s legendary for sinking time. Harvest Moon. But which one? There are several in the Nintendo Store and Natsume makes a lot of games that are like Harvest Moon but aren't (and one of those games is Rune Factory but not quite) so after some research I was told that A New Beginning is the best one and well. If A New Beginning was the best one than I’m going to go on a limb and say that I really wish Stardew Valley was the DS. 

Holy crap the game is lacking in content. The character’s don’t really interact, you run around looking for resources but will find very little reason to buy or build anything and once you get some golden tools and animals you kind of run out of things to do. 

The Blueprint idea is great but it’s excessively woeful in it’s usefulness. Contrary to popular belief I do NOT have aspergers or autism and therefore I can’t actually be assed to use every asset in the game to meticulously design a town I’ll barely pay attention to. I had more fun pretending that I had a comedic back and forth with my horse than actually playing the game. 

That’s some post campaign mode faffing about and I was only in the 4th restoration. Everything is stalled out making the game really boring as you just wait for months to pass. The only thing to do is to hit on the chicks in the game and they are all terrible but eventually I put all my chips on one girl and she turned me down so I forced myself to pass out in a forest and uninstalled the game. 

I finished the roleplay by killing myself out of boredom and sadness. At least I could make myself that weird shade of brown Japanese people put in games and wear a dress despite having gender locked suitors. 

I finally found the time to go to a store and buy Rune Factory 4. It’s a lot of fun but I sort of expected that. I had previously played Tide’s of Destiny and I enjoyed that one as well. 

These games are missing something. Why is it that in none of these games you can have a giant family? My understanding of farm life is that once you find someone you basically work the farm and relax and by relax I mean a lot of heavy petting. 

Oh my god don’t google that phrase pretend I never said that. 

Despite all appearances I actually find animals a lot less engaging than people and I would rather have couple of gremlins who have my face and my wife’s hair terrorize farm animals and dump water on seeded soil than get some pets to do that.

I just got done playing a game with special side characters who behaved generic and the whole point of having a specific cast of characters is for their unique personalities and their ability to really engage in events but that didn't really happen so I don’t see why we have to have these specific characters. Should be able to invite random characters into town from a generator that goes with stuff you build for the town and or village. There should be a village, a town, a farm, and a forest with dangerous animals because farmers didn't make their living in the 100 acre woods it was kill or be killed every now and again! 

I don’t understand why The Sims hasn't created a Harvest Moon type environment for you to play in that progressively becomes the suburb of standard Sim games as the generations go by or why Harvest Moon games don’t allow for the Family Legacy Challenge.

Is it too hard? Does no one want this? I want this. I have all this money to throw at something like this but no one wants my money....

[ritosgale]

My Sims 3 Mess of a Legacy Challenge: Catching Up and Meeting the Nieves Family

Okay so I downloaded the Sims 3 a while ago during the Steam winter sale and because I was getting slightly bored with the game, I decided to start a legacy challenge. I doubt anyone who is reading this doesn’t know what it is because I’ll literally tag it “Sims 3 Legacy” but I don’t feel like explaining the rules so here they are. Knock yourself out. Also I would like to say that tamashiihiroka inspired me to do this, so check out her own legacy journals and such.

Anyways I started a legacy a while ago, and I thought it would be a cool idea to keep a record of it because I love playing this game and I feel like it’s fun to share one’s experience with the game because everybody’s challenge is different. I feel like Tumblr is a less cluttered place to share the challenge compared to forums, as much as I hate to admit it because this website is trash but ANYWAYS. I like writing too so this gives me an excuse to do write... I feel like I have rambled on for too long so I’ll go ahead and just make this introductory post about the family I’m playing with.

(I started this Legacy with Late Night, Generations, Seasons, and Diesel stuff installed)

Also, I have quite a number of mods installed for the game. I have Overwatch and ErrorTrap to help reduce the lag, the story progression mod that makes every sim actually do interesting things, and the MasterController mod so that I manually fix things. I also have many custom career mods such as the NFL, NHL, social worker, teen modeling, and standup comedy career mods just to make things more interesting.

I’m also not the best picture taker so prepare for poor pictures and screenshots!

I have no idea how to start with other than to introduce the founder- 

Mateo Nieves

His traits are virtuoso, flirty, artistic, handy, and star quality. I named him Mateo because I like the name a lot for some reason, and I gave him the surname Nieves because the last name just sounded cool. He is a five star celebrity, and is also a vampire. He is only an adult despite the fact that I have spent many hours playing with this Sim... jfc these vampires NEVER die. 

He settled in the big city of Bridgeport to seek celebrity status and to become a rockstar. He has achieved both dreams, but it was not an easy path. First, he basically lived as a hobo because the rules to the challenge are cruel AF. He had to sleep in a sleeping bag every night and had no shower for basically four days. I made him go to a co-worker named Brandon’s house and spend four nights there so that he could shower and eat well because his house was so shitty. (Side note: His lifetime wish of being a rich and famous celebrity glitched out somehow so I changed his wish to being a rockstar and his wish was fulfiled).

I made him fall in love with the co-worker, who he later became engaged to. However, I got bored of Brandon so I made Mateo dump him and he later fell in love with and married Marina Prattle, who later obviously became Marina Nieves. Together they had triplets, who you will be introduced to further in this post.

The family traits that he is passing down in his family are the purple eyes, his celebrity status, his virtuoso trait. Every descendant of Mateo is a musician, since that idea just seemed cool to me. Right now, since the death of his wife, he’s been a player and has been hitting it off with many different people. Who knows if he’s happy to be free as a flirty sim, or is longing to fill the hole in his heart...

Marina Nieves

Lmao she ded af

Triplet #1: Tiago Nieves

I couldn’t get a good picture of him, but he’s the oldest of the triplets. He inherited his late mom’s blonde hair, his father’s eye color, and the virtuoso trait. He is not the heir of the legacy, but he has achieved the most out of his siblings. For example, he won Valedictorian in his high school class and has mastered many instruments because of him joining band class. His lifetime wish is to become a Renaissance Sim, and he has mastered the Logic and Guitar skills so far.

His career is a hit movie composer, his traits are genius, virtuoso, flirty, and good (I guess you don’t get a fifth trait until you’re an adult or something?). He is very flirty like his father, and is still looking for a girl to start a family with, after he achieves his lifetime dream, of course.

Triplet #2: Mateo Nieves, Jr (The First Heir)

This is Mateo Jr, obviously named after his father. I chose him to be the heir solely because he shares the same name as his father... that’s really the only reason...He has inherited his hair and eyes from his father, and his vampirisim from both his parents (I have no idea what he’s inherited solely from his mother). His traits are virtuoso, perfectionist, vehicle enthusiast, and athletic. His atheltic trait has helped him achieve his lifetime wish of becoming a professional athlete, and he’s reached the top of the athletic career.

He’s still a young adult and is happily married to his husband Pat (the guy right behind him), who was his imaginary friend growing up. Together they have two teenager daughters- Natalia and Gina. 

Note: One thing that I’ve done with heirs throughout my legacy is that they wear purple earrings and are associated a lot with purple (because it’s my favorite color). Mateo Jr’s room is purple, his swimwear is purple, etc. I just thought it was a cool idea to do that.

Triplet #3: Diana Nieves

She is the youngest of the triplets, and is the most artistic one in terms of painting. She works from home, painting brilliant works and masterpieces and being pretty crucial to maintaining her family’s wealth. 

Her traits are virtuoso, loves the heat, star quality, and technophobe. She’s a 4-star celebrity, and I’m trying to make her famous just so that she can be like her father. Her mother Marina, also dreamed of being a 5-star celebrity, but because of some stupid glitch with the celebrity system, she stayed stuck at 3 stars. For RP’s sake, Diana would like to achieve something that her mother could not just to honor her life.

She’s single, but because I’ve been running out of room in the household, I’ve been trying to marry her off. Like Tiago, I’m trying to have her accomplish her lifetime wish before having a husband. I’m thinking about using the MasterController mod to prevent her from having kids- not to make her sterile, but just because she doesn’t want to have any. I also think that she’s too good for many of the Bridgeport sims, so I haven’t really found a perfect partner for her.

Pat Nieves

Pat and one of his daughters are the only two humans in the household. He’s Mateo Jr’s husband, and was his imaginary friend. When both Pat and Mateo Jr were teenagers, Tiago finally developed a potion for Pat to become real. When offered the potion, Pat happily accepted and became real. He immediately fell in love with Mateo after looking back at the years of their friendship, and the feelings were mutual between the both of them. They both then got married. I used a mod to get Pat pregnant (I don’t support MPreg or anything, so anyone who has that fetish can walk away now. I just didn’t want to buy Into The Future for the genes mix baby thing), and that was a huge mess. His body disappeared and glitched out until he gave birth to Natalia, who is the next heir.

He works as a journalist, and his dream is to become a star news anchor. However, since he ages a lot faster than everyone in his family, he hasn’t really come close to achieving his dream. He’s very close to becoming an elder. He can’t become a vampire because he’s already an imaginary friend, but I’m greatly considering using the mod to make him become one. I would feel bad to have him die without achieving his dream...

His traits are nurturing, angler, bookworm, neat, and vegetarian. These traits were very helpful when it came to raising Natalia as a baby and a toddler.

Natalia Nieves (The Second Heir)

Natalia, like Mateo Jr, is also a vampire. Also, surprisingly enough, like her other father, she is also an imaginary friend. Her hybrid-ness is legitimate, and I was surprised when I saw the option for her to turn into toy form. So yeah, that’s something funny about her. She also inherited Pat’s hair, which is a pretty cool scheme to me. Lastly, she is the heir, and she also has purple earrings, bracelets, and many other things. 

Right now, she is a teenager, and she missed many of her elementary and middle school days because of the winter snow. Despite her being a genius and having a high logic skill, she barely reached the honor roll in high school. She is striving to becoming her class’ Valedictiorian, just like her uncle.Her lifetime desire is to become a world-renowned surgeon. I hope that her genius trait will help her out with that. 

Her other traits are light sleeper, friendly, and virtuoso.

Gina Nieves

Last but not least, this is Gina Nieves. I named her after Gina Rodriguez because I love her and stan that actress. She is the adopted child of Pat and Mateo Jr. She is also human, and has no desire in becoming a vampire no matter what. 

She wants to become a famous actress, which stems from her wanting to honor the legacy of her late grandmother. She also desires to become a 5-star celebrity. In her high school career, she is striving to become the most popular in her class, and wants to win that award at her graduation.

Her traits are perfectionist, excitable, artistic, and athetlic. She wants to paint a little on the side just as a hobby and for some pocket money, but she also wants to be a great athlete. Perhaps her aritistic nature and ahtletic skill will help her become a famous movie star, where she can express herself and have lots of stamina for different roles.

Edit: I put this post on drafts because I am a great writer who takes breaks and doesn’t write on posts for days. I literally just* installed 6 other things for this game because of the Steam Midweek Madness sale. I downloaded Ambitions, University Life, Pets, Supernatural, Master Suite stuff, and World Adventures and I’m pretty excited to see how they turn out and add to my gameplay. I’m gonna edit some random town sims into supernaturals just so the expansion pack doesn’t go unused but yeah I’m excited.

Another edit: I took another break and it’s been like two days since I installed the EPs and I haven’t played much with them. I just finished editing this post lol so I’m gonna post this now. These edits are pretty poorly-written but I don’t know what else to add. Lol also just so you know the paragraph after this was written before these edits. But anyways

Conclusion:

These are pretty much the family members of the Nieves family. They’re a wealthy and famous family, which I think is interesting. I’ll try to make them dramatic and as extra as I can when things seem to get a bit bland just for the fun of it. Maybe they can be some sort of weird Kardashian rip-off family. 

Anyways, these characters will come and go, since I’m only on my third generation, and it’ll be pretty sad to see some of these characters die. I want to in a way immortalize them outside of my memory just so that I don’t forget exactly why I spend 5 hours a day playing this really fun game. This might seem cheesey to many people, but I like the thought of doing this, and I guess that matters to me more than what others think of this. Anyways, I hope that the three people who read this enjoy this journal thing of the weird ass things that happen in this game.

Fun fact: I’m planning on making Natalia and Gina attend university together when they’re young adults since they’re basically the same age. That should be fun!

P.S. I don’t feel like spellchecking this thing so deal with my grammar errors lol bye

[zydrateacademy]

Steam Review - The Sims 4

It actually gave me an error when I tried to post it, so I’ll dump it here like I was going to anyway and try again later. It's been difficult for me to express the joy this game has brought me. My brother played a couple of the first ones way back in the day and the idea of micro managing toiletries and doing household chores never appealed to me. I watched a let's play of a team of people seeing who can kill their sims the quickest, and while I never really plan to be that cruel, it still gave me a good look at the interface and it was the first time I thought "hey that actually looks kind of fun". Sure enough, I would go on to dump almost 90 hours on it within a week (my back going out and having to stay home from work helped this endeavor).

It's still hard for me to explain why I love it so much. In one way, it caters to my inner character creation. My mind has always been a character generator and I've blogged and done short stories about my various characters throughout the years. This game allows me to get into their heads a bit more and live their daily lives. I have a powerful witch, a naturalist islander, a famous painter and DJ, a couple of adorable aliens... And one character whom is essentially my self-insert, a woman I wish I could be. She's a writer, and made a surprisingly decent living dumping out blog posts, reviews, and a children's book about my childhood teddy bear. If only it were all this easy in real life.

That really is the appeal, isn't it? I never thought of Sims as a 'lifestyle simulator', but here we are.

I wish I could go review each and every pack but I got a good chunk of them on sale through Humble Bundle, but it went directly to Origin so I can't directly review some of them. I will say that if you're reading this and wondering; Seasons and Magic are probably my top two favorite. Season adds weekly dynamic events that really help shuffle up your daily routine and get you out into the world properly. Strangerville adds a more point-and-click adventure style type game but Act 3 brought in an irritating mechanic that forced me to rush through it. I could go on all day about the packs but I'll save that for my actual blog.

I'll do a short dive into the gameplay. As you might be aware you can create a sim or multiple, I believe the max is eight? I had trouble just managing four so most of my households stop at 3 and maybe a pet or two. You can indeed manage their daily toiletries but I honestly cheat in some reward store perks that shut down the needs to eat and sleep and that has paid dividends into making the gameplay more enjoyable for me personally. Regardless, I've done non-cheaty characters in solo or duo households and it can be managed once you get some of the basics down. My aforementioned writer made a small living off of publishing her books and thus lacked a proper job for a while, which in turn gave me a lot more time to manage her usual bodily functions

.I will admit I don't build any damn thing from scratch but thankfully there is an online, in-game gallery where you can sift through some of your favorite creations and just plop them instantly, funds allowing. The most I do is combine and slap together premade rooms and then just work on the decor and upgrade. I never build anything myself because I just do not have the mind of an interior decorator.

One quick point of contention: Loading up the gallery destroys my bandwidth. It freezes most of my computer's functions as it's loading. It hasn't caused any crashes, but my podcasts and youtube videos start having hiccups, like an old skipping CD and it's very annoying.

Beyond that, everything else is a nitpick. You can go on all day about EA's general business practices. Some of the packs can be seen as simple cash grabs, and the upcoming Star Wars pack looks fun but I think it breaks the flow of the game somewhat.

All the same, I've adored this game and will be playing it for several weeks to come. Or at least until Cyberpunk 2077 comes out. I have more to say but as I mentioned, I'll save it for my blog.

[nerdy-bits]

Bouncing Off: Why it's Okay

When I was a kid, in fact, when most of us were kids, our options for games to play were limited. I still remember planning out what game or two I would have for summer break. Final Fantasy VII, XIII (the amazing title from Ubisoft), Final Fantasy VIII. The list was small, always. My gaming as a kid was almost entirely dictated by the money my parents were willing to siphon into my recreational habits, and baseball was expensive. Occasionally a lent disc.

Between the years 2003 and 2004 three online marketplaces for games launched: XBLA, PSN, Steam. Between September 12th, 2003 and December 4th, 2004, those three platforms revolutionized game distribution. Small companies no longer needed to fund physical releases. Instead, they could publish their titles on multiple digital networks. Instant visibility. Instant access. Over the next 15 years the game industry would swing more and more towards digital distribution as a primary means of distribution.

The surge of indie titles over this period was LARGE, and while I have had a hard time tracking down hard data, it isn’t hard to assume in the following years, the number of small market games able to self-publish to these marketplaces skyrocketed. On Steam alone, just 7 games were released in 2004, in 2018 the number sat at 9,050. A nearly 1300% increase in 14 years.

But why am I saying all of this?

When I finally got an Xbox 360, in 2009, there were a lot of titles available. Over the last 10 years, I have learned how to find the games I like. Specifically me. This ability to find content, and tailor your gaming experience based on your preferences, has led to a multitude of diverse and hyper-specialized experiences. You like first-person puzzlers and explorers? Grab Talos Principle, The Witness, Q.U.B.E., or Portal. You prefer retro-style side scrollers or dungeon crawlers? Snatch up Hyperlight Drifter, Below, Katana Zero, or Dead Cells. And those aren’t even the hyper-specific games. Like the retro-RPG feel, music, and XCOM-style strategy games? Try Wargroove. Third-person, focused linear story, cover-based shooters, with a more open world? Try on Spec-Ops: The Line or the Uncharted Series. Love dungeon crawlers and pinball/breakout mechanics? Look no further than Creature in the Well. 

Honestly, the categorization and customization of your personal playlist is nearly infinitely wide and unfathomably deep. There is something for everyone out there, it just takes the know how of how to find it. 

This abundance isn’t without its setbacks though. As one would assume, the highly specific nature of many games, and the ability to hone specific likes and interests leaves more ample space for disappointment or, what industry professionals and gamers like to call “bouncing off” of a game. As I have developed my tastes I have become very familiar with this feeling. 

In 2018, Rare released Sea of Thieves, and open world, sea faring, pirate game giving its players the freedom to do just about anything they wanted. Sail the seas looking for treasure on age-worn maps? Do it. Challenge ancient evils and defeat hordes of Skellys (skeletons) to unlock the vault on the island? Sharpen your blades. Hunt other players down in true buccaneer fashion and sink their ships, making off with their hard earned treasures? Avast! But I had grown more accustomed to being told more story along with my gameplay and Sea of Thieves, when it launched, just didn’t offer what I wanted. I played Sea of Thieves for about 12 hours before I just couldn’t play anymore. My enamor in staring at the beautiful water and unique sailing mechanics just wore off. Instead, traversal between points of interest became dull busywork, and I legitimately began catching myself falling asleep while playing, only to wake right up when I switched to Rocket League.

I ran into the same issue with Elite Dangerous, a space sim which falls into very similar categories as Sea of Thieves. You can do anything, be anything, so long as you take the time to find out how to do it. I needed more. I wanted a few story missions to hold my hand through the core processes and functions, even if just a little. I wanted to be introduced to the games ecosystem and universe. Not to just be dumped into a sandbox with a pile of tools and no instructions. I bounced off of those games hard. I have returned as they have added additional features, sure, but they didn’t become career games like Battlefield or Rocket League did.

I have a long standing feud with my family over Warframe. My uncle and grandmother absolutely love the game, and for good reason. Digital Extremes is unrivaled in their community interaction, feature addition, and bare knuckled persistence. Warframe is deep, and shows no signs of showing down. There is just one problem: I just can’t force myself to like it. The introduction, specifically the portion of the game you have to play before the story really “gets good” takes close to 30 hours. Your time before said moment is spent digging through a series of relatively unremarkable levels, recycling mission objectives, and frequently plowing through enemies like some kind of space Dynasty Warriors game. It is pretty, smooth, and mechanically sound in every way. I just don’t particularly care for the gameplay loop. Give me more substantial rewards. Give me more story. Give me more unique objectives. Give me enemies with consequence. 

I don’t want people to see this as a piece solely devoted to bashing Warframe, because it isn’t. What I am trying to point out is, I have tailored my tastes around a few key genres with a more diverse subset of sub-genres mixed in. No matter how hard I try, Warframe just doesn’t click enough of those boxes. Sea of Thieves didn’t originally tick those boxes. Hell, I bounced off of Doom 2016. Something about the speed of player movement and the specific setting didn’t jive with my desired gameplay or sensibilities at the time and I ricocheted hard. Like…I played 4 hours. Tops.

The hardest part, in all of this; the hardest part about bouncing off of a game, in today’s gaming environment, is dealing with the feeling of guilt you get when it happens. Often times for me it is a self inflicted guilt, but the guilt is easily compounded when you have friends who do like the thing you can’t get into. My family’s Warframe feud has largely subsided, but when it was at its peak, I genuinely felt like I had failed them, not being able to get into something they loved so much. 

I wanted to speak to those who have found themselves bouncing off of games everyone around them seems to love. It’s ok! Really. There is so much out there to play, so many things to discover, you should never feel like you have to like something. It’s ok if you picked up Red Dead Redemption 2 and just couldn’t stick with the sluggish controls. It’s ok if you tried to dive into Monster Hunter World and just couldn’t fall in love with the hunt (I didn’t either!). 

Instead, keep your head up and keep looking. Austin Walker, on Waypoint, said in a podcast recently, “someone out there is making my favorite game.” Maybe its already out there. Keep looking. And don’t feel bad if you bounce off of a game a lot of your friends love (I’m looking at you Destiny). Games are rarely closed books the day they come out. Most of them will continue to add content, and a lot of the content they add is made to bring more people in or win them back. Stick out the bouncy ones for as long as you can, come back if you are intrigued with new content, and in the spaces between those events keep looking for your favorite game. It’s out there somewhere.

~Caleb @LubWub

[barbosaasouza]

Bus Simulator 18 Review: Makin' Stops, Makin' Paper

When Euro Truck Simulator 2 made its debut on PC many moons ago, the idea of taking a monotonous task and building a game around it was considered outlandish. After the game sold like hotcakes and developed a rabid following, the rest of the game development world took notice and a sub-genre of occupational simulation games was born. The latest take on this format comes from Stillalive Studios in Austria. Their newest game, Bus Simulator 18, hopes to grab the hearts and minds of PC gamers who find the idea of driving a bus around for 8 hours exhilarating, even with no explosions, guns, or hookers. The team has delivered a good foundation to build out from, but a lack of content and annoying bugs keep this trip from going cross country.

Living The Bus Driver Dream

Bus Simulator 18 give you the chance to operate your own bus company. While you start with a single bus and a single route, you can build you way up to a large operation with lots of busses and employees. The game begins with the creation of a bus company and your avatar. You are given the choice of a few outfits, hair colors, and other customizations. A small European town is your virtual bus playground. As you progress through the game’s campaign, you will unlock the ability to move into the various districts of the town until you are given permission by the city government to operate your business throughout the town.

The game features licensed buses from a few different manufacturers. The modeling work and interior details are pretty good. While I’ve never played Bus Simulator 16, one of the game’s loading screens proudly boasts that Bus Simulator 18 has over 1100 different bus sounds compared to just 55 in 16. While I’ve never been on a city bus (I live in a swamp and use a fan boat to get to the public library and post news everyday), the game sounds exactly what I’d expect a real bus to sound like. The game offers player two distinct driving modes: simplified and realistic. I only played with realistic and found it to work very well. All the buses had a unique feel, weight, and turning radius. The game even has a few articulated buses to spice up the experience (and raise your maximum occupancy level).

Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round

I used the Xbox One S controller exclusively, though the game supports keyboard and mouse input, as well as dedicated steering wheel setups. The game’s audio, visual, and control feedback did a great job of putting me in the driver’s seat. I’ve played a few European shovelware sim games and Bus Simulator 18 is very much a cut above. The only time I found myself killing pedestrians or causing collisions was due to my own negligence or error, never because of the game’s design (with a couple of exceptions).

While the game has a solid driving feel, the main gameplay loop is very limited. The developers added in some filler to break up the driving sections, though I found most of them to grow annoying after several hours of play. The worst of these diversions is the ticket selling mechanic. Some of your passengers will need to buy tickets and you must correctly enter their order onto your touch screen console and dish out their change. I was never able to find a way to do this with the controller, so I had to constantly swap between mouse and pad operation. You will get loud passengers, idiots who won’t let the doors close, and subhumans who leave cups in the seats. None of these situations is hard to deal with, just tedious busy work to make your route last longer. Thankfully, most of these can be disabled, but then you are left with the simple loop.

The town is fairly detailed and I found myself enjoying trips through it. Bus Simulator 18 runs on Unreal Engine 4 and gains some serious graphical muscle versus competing sim games. The lighting is good and reacts very well to varying surfaces. Roads look like roads, cars finishes look right, etc. Some of the lens flares from brake lights are incredibly aggressive, but it doesn’t harm the experience.

Driving Up Onto The Curb

I had some issues with the campaign design. You are tasked with objectives from city officials that must be completed to expand your operation. All of these objectives are arbitrary routes that connect various bus stops. Most of them make no sense from an efficiency standpoint and do little to enhance the experience other than bring you into new districts. You have to personally drive each route that you assign to your subordinates or the game does not give you credit for completing those routes. If you choose to edit a route later on to enhance efficiency, you must drive it again or your employees and buses will sit around losing your money. I feel that the objectives serve no purpose other than to pad out the single player campaign. You get no reward for carefully planning out routes other than more money.

The game only has one town in which you can operate. It doesn’t take long to unlock all of its stops and you will find yourself wishing for a new environment pretty early during your playthrough. While the game is not priced like a AAA release, it still feels short on content. Thankfully, the game has Steam Workshop support. I was able to download some dank bus skins that really helped give me some street cred. The workshop promises that players will be able to download new cities, but there are none on the Workshop as of the publishing of this review. Players who have the Epic Games Launcher installed will see that the Mods tab has a card for Bus Simulator 18. I suspect this is where players can create new cities, but there’s no way to know when (or if) that will happen.

Bus Simulator 18 also touts multiplayer bus driving. You can invite your Steam friends into a cooperative route or make a public game for randoms to join. Despite multiple tries with coworkers, friends, and pubbies, I was never able to stay in a multiplayer session that lasted longer than 2 minutes. The multiplayer portion of the game always dumps one or more of the players out of the session almost immediately. I’ve opened ports, checked firewalls, and reinstalled the game and was still unable to live my multiplayer bus dreams.

The Last Stop

Bus Simulator 18 is not a game changer and to be honest, it’s not the most rewarding experience I’ve ever had in front of my PC. Still, it has solid driving mechanics, some detailed buses, and a gameplay loop that is strangely relaxing. A lack of content, multiplayer bugs, and a boring campaign keep me from recommending the game to all. Bus aficionados and sim game enthusiast will find lots to like in this package. It is possible that the Steam Workshop will be able to breathe life into the game in the future, but without the content available now, the asking price is a little steep. 6/10 drug addicts passed out in the back seats

This review is based on the PC Steam release. The game was provided by the publisher. Bus Simulator 18 was made available for Steam on June 13, for $34.99.

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