#i recommend looking up playthroughs or something of it before playing to get a taste of the mechanics

[userboxvariety]

AHHH THEY'RE PERFECT THANK YOU SO MUCH !! :3

btw, is zzz fun ? we've been considering trying it,,

- 🍰

i'm so glad you liked them !! my answer for zzz will be in the tags :2

[manonamora-if-reviews]

Sweetpea by Sophia de Augustine

============= Links

Play the game See other reviews of the game See other games by Sophia

============= Synopsis

Someone claiming to be your father is trying to break in. Following the eponymous Sweetpea is: a mosaic faced guardian angel, something wearing her father’s guise, and the detritus of life in their gently crumbling mansion.

============= Other Info

Sweetpea is a Twine (Harlowe) game, submitted to the 2022 Edition of the SpringThing. It is the first game of this author.

Status: Completed Genre: Horror

CW: Unhealthy family dynamics, Unreality, Ecclesiastical content, Body-horror, Injuries, Violence, Alcoholism, Home Invasion Note: there is also animated text.

============= Playthrough

First Played: during the SpringThing 2022 Last Played: 21-May-23 Playtime: around 40min (one run) Rating: 4/5 Thoughts: A chilling and confusing snippet of life told through the eyes of a small child dealing with struggling parental figures, in a gothic style.

============= Review

The game follows Sweetpea (name unknown), a young girl home alone, as she is woken up by her father's texts asking her to let him inside the house. Which would not be an issue if she hadn't seen him in his office not long before...

Spoilers ahead. It is recommended to play the game first. The review is based on my understanding/reading of the story.

The game starts with the game's illustration of the eponymous Sweetpea, whose big eyes and scared demeanor grabs you and pulls you (into the darkness).

Pressing start will move the player to a makeshift phone, where Sweetpea exchanges messages with her supposedly father, who hounds her to let him inside the house. [I liked the timed appearance of the messages, and the slight wonky-ness of the its look added to the unsettling feeling]

Continues a series of choices where Sweetpea goes on to explore the house, recollecting past events and feelings while she examines bits of rooms or objects. Parts of the text is animated or transformed to add onto the strange and horror-y setting. There is multiple mention of a Micheal, which comes back later in the story [and whose description reminded me of the Archangel Micheal? <- not well versed in this, so could be me missing the point.] Still, you are often reminded that there is someone at the door, struggling to get inside. [The vivid description of the unusually lit rooms, the creaking sounds around, or the comforting taste of sweets or touch of a sweater, or the pain of the icy window, creates an intense imagery, enthralling any reader from looking away.]

Finally, Sweetpea decides it would be best to go take a nap instead of opening the door to some stranger who kind of looks like her dad, but also not really. She is still woken up by said father figure, a nightmarish apparition which frightens her, even if some part are strangely familiar. She is forcefully tucked in, before (or after?) witnessing blood on the floor and the not-dad-maybe-dad feeling sick in the bathroom. [I didn't catch this the first time I played the game, but it is heavily implied the father is an alcoholic following the mother's departure (death?), behaving strangely in her eyes when drunk. The horror of every day life...]

[The next part confused me quite a bit at first, not because of the change of background marking a new beginning in the story, but by the shift in the story going from a grim reality told through the eyes of a child, to being swooped by some sort of guardian angel in some imaginary place and being served breakfast. Then afterwards, the context of alcoholism with the father kind of makes it as if the dad was sobered up then, caring for his child.]

A confrontation between the Guardian Angel and the Father-Not-Father ensues, where we can read snippets from the guilt of the father over his behaviour and lack of care towards his child since the passing (death?) of the mother/focusing more/too much on his work, as well as knowing Sweepea, the child that she is, notices the changes in behaviour and the important trinkets tucked away.

Still, the game ends on a positive note [and the visual shows it, moving from dark colours to a bring pink], where things turn around for Sweetpea, announcing the turn of a new leaf for her, with brightness and happiness [following the dad's recovery/promise to do better?].

After reading the author's Post Mortem:

HA! I was right on the Micheal thing.

Also Micheal and dad are not the same person, apparently...

The fact that there was no set plot before the story was written strangely adds onto the uneasiness of the game, and works to better show how the mind of a child goes from one thing to another. Also, insane.

The path where Sweetpea does open the door instead of taking a nap was cut for time, and while it would have been interesting to get a more "obvious" hint at the father's strange behaviour, it does work in the game's favour of the child's portrayal (more likely to back down when scared, also it's the middle of the night).

A few random notes:

Sweetpea can/will visit the study twice; during the second visit, the game will not acknowledge the first (this is minor, and due to the construction of the game, done without variables, which is impressive in an of itself.

The choice of colors, while delightful and creepy, made it sometimes hard to read (the white on pink at the end) or to find links (the light pink being very close to the text colour), similarly with the textured words (animation/custom). But from a style/story perspective, since we are in the mind of a child (for the most part), this fits with how Sweetpea would be feeling (the uneasiness/hopelessness/happiness).

The description of the child being left alone for days on end just broke my heart...

The gothic style shines through the text, and makes the horror not just more vivid, but more visceral to feel. Chills going down the spine at every turn.

[personuhh]

So... would you rather recommend Persona 4 or Persona 4 Golden to someone who's never played it?

This is a difficult question to answer, because if you're starting with the original Persona 4, you might get scared off by its significantly harder combat; it can be very punishing sometimes, and my absolute #1 recommendation if you choose to play it over Golden is PLAY IT ON BEGINNER. You'll be given 10 Moon Tsukubame that allow you to restart a battle if Yu is knocked out (which you'll definitely need), even if you plan on grinding and are confident with your JRPG experience, there are plenty of occasions where I've been 1hko-ed by stupid instant death skills and had to replay hours of a dungeon. The only places to save in P4 dungeons are in the lobby before you enter a dungeon, and just before the boss, and this means that you can lose up to 10 floors if you die. On the other hand, Golden allows you to restart from the beginning of a floor.

There are also some other combat balancing changes like Naoto having other elemental skills aside from mudo/hama that makes them a more viable pick against bosses, some enemies are easier and have elemental weaknesses when they didn't before, shuffle time is (i think) worse and takes a little bit longer after battle to complete as well.

TLDR; the combat in Golden is obviously improved quite a bit, and that's the biggest thing going for it aside from added content.

But I played through the original Persona 4 just fine on beginner, you just have to be a little bit more careful.

Now for the pros to the original Persona 4; you DEFINITELY get a much more satisfyingly paced game, it's far shorter, and you don't have to worry about any extra fanservicey Golden scenes (that you can easily find on YouTube after you're finished OGP4 if you're interested).

I much prefer Chie and Teddie's original voices, and though I didn't mention it much in that Golden Yosuke analysis post, the voice acting and direction seems to be a LOT better in P4 than P4G (it's noticeable when you encounter a Golden-exclusive scene, characters sound... different, particularly Yosuke who's voice seems to raise each time Yuri reprises the role). When I played through P4 I didn't mind Teddie, but something about his new voice acting/direction grates on my nerves and makes him way less likeable – I believe it's because his original voice actor played him as the way he was supposed to originally come across (naïve) instead being more in line with what Golden made him into (a pervert). And maybe it's just me, but I think the initial decision to have him speak in a higher pitched voice was partially because it made him sound a bit like a squeaky toy – at least that's the impression I got, and it works perfectly in the original, something about Dave Wittenberg's voice really makes him sound like what you'd expect of a toy – but Sam Riegel's Golden Teddie sounds like he's trying to hard to imitate the original performance, and is straining his voice (human Teddie is SIGNIFICANTLY better, his voice gets lower when he's out of the suit and sounds more natural).

Similarly, Chie sounds a lot more aggressive, and it can be hard to take her seriously with how over the top Erin can be at times (again, this is likely the fault of voice direction, and not the voice actress) and especially in the earlier parts of the game, it feels like when she speaks to another character, the tones don't... quite match up (likely due to her new lines being recorded 4 years after the rest of the cast). It's most noticeable when she speaks to Yosuke, because Golden Chie seems to REALLY have it out for him, while in the original she had a little bit more of an "oh you" tone to it. I know plenty of people prefer Erin Fitzgerald's Golden Chie voice, and her performance isn't all bad (she's especially great in the anime and spinoffs), but Tracey Rooney's Chie just works better in the original game.

So... Original P4 has less overall content, but the quality of said content is more consistent. Golden has the benefit of being released in 2012 on a portable system (which is very nice if you have a Vita), so if you choose to play P4 over Golden you will inevitably feel that P4 is a little dated without combat improvements, but if you DO finish P4 and decide to go through Golden for the extra content, you get a lot of new things to experience (including 2 new Social Links with Marie and Adachi, the ability to explore the shopping district at night and speak to friends about current events, added cutscenes, several new months to play through near the end of the game, etc.) but you'll also have played through the original and gotten to experience the main story as it was originally written.

Some other small changes: resolution is now up to 720p or 1080i (P4G) from 480p (P4), the UI is slightly different (text boxes), P4G looks much more vibrant and clear than the original's more natural colours, including the sprites which now have a bright, yellowish hue to them to match Golden's colour palette (I prefer OGP4's palette), all voice lines are much less compressed (P4's sound tinny).

You can also take screenshots on Vita and PC versions of Golden; unless you're emulating OGP4 on PC or have a capture card, you obviously can't take screenshots of the original PS2 version of P4.

If you have the patience, I would suggest both (especially since it's easy to emulate the original Persona 4 by this point and I have a full guide to setting up the emulator at the top of my blog, with the rom also included, so you can try it out with relative ease) but don't take my thoughts as definitive, because it all really comes down to personal taste. Many people play through Golden and love it, having no problems with the things I've mentioned (I'm a picky bitch), and you might too. If you're that turned off of what I've said about combat in P4 you can always watch a playthrough and then go through Golden yourself too.

[ducktastic]

2020 Gameological Awards

Over on the Gameological Discord, we have an annual tradition of writing up our games of the year not as a ranked list but rather as answers to a series of prompts. Here are my personal choices for the year that was 2020.

Favorite Game of the Year

I didn’t know what to expect when I walked into Paradise Killer. I knew that I liked the vaporwave resort aesthetic from the game’s trailer and figured I was in for a Danganronpa-style murder mystery visual novel with an open-ended murder mystery at its core. Those assumptions were… half-right? The game definitely plays out like the exploration bits of Danganronpa set on the island from Myst but with far simpler puzzles. What I didn’t expect was to fall so deeply in love with the environment—its nooks and crannies, its millennia of lore, its brutalist overlap of idol worship, consumerism, and mass slaughter. It makes sense that the world of Paradise Killer is its strongest feature, since the cast of NPCs don’t really move around, leaving you alone with the world for the overwhelming majority of your experience as you bounce back and forth between digging around for clues and interrogating potential witnesses. And despite what the promo materials indicated, there IS a definitive solution to the crimes you’re brought in to investigate, the game just lets you make judgment based on whatever evidence you have at the time you’re ready to call it a day, so if you’re missing crucial evidence you might just make a compelling enough case for the wrong person and condemn them to eternal nonexistence. Am I happy with the truth at the end of the day? No, and neither is anybody else I’ve spoken to who completed the game, but we all were also completely enthralled the entire time and our dissatisfaction has less to do with the game and more to do with the ugly reality of humanity. I’ve always been of the mindset that “spoilers” are absolute garbage and that a story should be just as good whether you know the twist or not and any story that relies on surprising the audience with an unexpected reveal is not actually that good a story, but Paradise Killer is a game about piecing together your own version of events so I feel that it’s vital to the gameplay experience that people go in knowing as little as possible and gush all about it afterwards. Just trust me, if the game looks even remotely intriguing to you, go for it. I’ve had just as much fun talking about the game after I finished it with friends just getting started as I did actually solving its mysteries myself.

Best Single Player Game

I honestly missed out on the buzz for In Other Waters at launch, so I’m happy I had friends online talking it up as Black Friday sales were coming along. The minimal aesthetic of his underwater exploration game allows the focus to shift more naturally to the game’s stellar writing as a lone scientist goes off in search of her mentor and the secrets they were hiding on an alien world. It only took a few hours for me to become completely absorbed in this narrative and keep pushing forward into increasingly dangerous waters. In Other Waters might just be the best sci-fi story I experienced all year and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys sci-fi novels, regardless of their experience with video games.

Best Multiplayer Game

Look, we all know this year sucked. 2020 will absolutely be chronicled in history books as a fascinating and deeply depressing time in modern history where we all stayed inside by ourselves and missed our friends and family. It was lonely and it was bleak. Which is why it made my heart glow so much more warmly every time I got a letter from an honest-to-goodness real-life friend in Animal Crossing New Horizons. Knowing that they were playing the same game I was and hearing about their experiences and sending each other wacky hats or furniture, it lightened the days and made us feel that little bit more connected. Sure, when the game first launched we would actually take the time to visit one another’s islands, hang out, chat in real-time, and exchange gifts, but we all eventually got busy with Zoom calls, sourdough starters, and watching Birds of Prey twenty-two times. Still, sending letters was enough. It was and still is a touching little way to show that we’re here for one another, if not at the exact same time.

Favorite Ongoing Game

Zach Gage is one of my favorite game designers right now, and when I heard he was releasing a game called Good Sudoku I was sold sight unseen. The game as released was… fine. It’s sudoku and it’s pleasant, but it was also buggy and overheated my phone in a way I hadn’t seen since Ridiculous Fishing (also by Zach Gage) seven years ago. Thankfully, the most glaring bugs have been fixed and I can now enjoy popping in every day for some quick logic puzzle goodness. Daily ranked leaderboards keep me coming back again and again, the steady ramp of difficulty in the arcade and eternal modes means I can always chase the next dopamine rush of solving increasingly complex puzzles. It’s not a traditional “ongoing” game the way, say, Fortnite and Destiny are, but I’m happy to come back every day for sudoku goodness.

Didn't Click For Me

With Fortnite progressively losing me over the course of 2020, finalizing with my wholesale “never again” stance after Epic boss Tim Sweeney compared Fortnite demanding more money from Apple to the American Civil Rights movement (no, absolutely not), I dipped my toe into a number of new “battle pass”-style online arena types of games, and while Genshin Impact eventually got its hooks into me, Spellbreak absolutely did not. With graphics straight out of The Dragon Prince and the promise of a wide variety of magic combat skills to make your character your own, the game seemed awfully tempting, but my first few experiences were aimless and joyless, with no moment of clarity to make me understand why I should keep coming back. Maybe they’ll finesse the game some more in 2021, or a bunch of my friends will get hooked and lure me back, but for now I am a-okay deleting this waste of space on my Switch and PC.

"Oh Yeah, I Did Play That Didn't I?"

I remember being really excited for Murder By Numbers. Ace Attorney-style crime scene investigation visual novel with Picross puzzles for the evidence, art by the creators of Hatoful Boyfriend, and music by the composer of Ace Attorney itself?! Sounds like a dream come true. But the pixel-hunt nature of the crime scene investigations was more frustrating than fun, the picross puzzles were not particularly great, and the game came out literally a week before the entire world went into lockdown which makes it feel more like seven years ago than just earlier this year. I remember being marginally charmed by the game once it was in my hands, but as soon as my mind shifted to long-term self care, Murder By Numbers went from hot topic to cold case.

Most Unexpected Joy

I was looking forward to Fuser all year. As a dyed-in-the-wool DropMix stan, the prospect of a spiritual sequel to DropMix on all major digital platforms without any of the analogue components was tremendously exciting, and I knew I’d have a lot of fun making mixes by myself and posting them online for the world to hear. What I didn’t expect, however, was the online co-op mode to be such a blast! Up to four players take turns making 32 bars of mashups, starting with whatever the player before handed them and adding their own fingerprints on top. It sounds like it should just be a mess of cacophony, but every session I’ve played so far has been just the best dance party I’ve had all year, and everyone not currently in control of the decks (including an audience of spectators) can make special requests for what the DJ should spin and tap along with the beat to great super-sized emoji to show how much they’re enjoying the mix. Literally the only times my Apple Watch has ever warned me of my heightened heart rate have been the times I was positively bouncing in place rocking out to co-op freestyle play in Fuser.

Best Music

Only one video game this year had tunes that were so bumpable they were upgraded to my general “2020 jams” playlist alongside Jeff Rosenstock, Run the Jewels, and Phoebe Bridgers, and that game was Paradise Killer. 70% lo-fi chill beats to study/interrogate demons to, 20% gothic atmospheric bangers, 10% high-energy pop jazz, this soundtrack was just an absolute joy to swim around in both in and out of gameplay.

Favorite Game Encounter

It’s wild that in a landscape where games let me live out my wildest fantasies, the single moment that lit me up in a way that stood out to me more than any other was serving Neil the right drink in Coffee Talk. Over the course of the game, you serve a variety of hot drinks to humans, werewolves, vampires, orcs, and more, all while chatting with your customers and learning more about their lives and relationships. The most mysterious customer, though, is an alien life form who adopts the name Neil. They do not know what they want to drink and claim it doesn’t make a difference because they cannot taste it. Everybody else wants *something*. Neil is just ordering for the sake of fitting in and exploring the Earth experience. It’s only in the second playthrough that attentive baristas will figure out what to serve Neil, unlocking the “true” ending in the process. Seeing the typically stoic Neil actually emote when they tasted their special order drink? What an absolute treat that was.

Best Free DLC of the Year

It’s still only a couple of days old at the time I’m writing this, but Marvel’s Avengers just added Kate Bishop, aka Hawkeye, and THANK GOODNESS. Almost every character in the game at launch just smashed the endless waves of robot baddies with their fists and that looks exhausting and uncomfortable. Hawkeye (the game calls her Kate Bishop, but come on, she’s been Hawkeye in the comics for over 14 years, let’s show her some respect) uses A SWORD. FINALLY! Aside from that, I’m just having a blast shooting arrows all over the place. She and Ms Marvel are the most likable characters in the game so far, so I hope they keep adding more of the Young Avengers and Champions to the game, and if the recently announced slate of Marvel movies and tv shows are any indication (with America Chavez, Cassie Lang, and Riri Williams all coming soon to the MCU), that seems to be what Marvel is pushing for across all media

Most Accessible Game

Nintendo is, first and foremost, a toy company. They got their start in toys and cards long before video games was a thing, and they still do more tests to ensure their video game hardware is childproof than anybody else in the industry (remember how they made Switch cartridges “taste bad” so kids wouldn’t eat them?). This year, Nintendo got to rekindle some of their throwback, simplistic, toys-and-cards energy with Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics, a Switch collection of timeless family-friendly games like Chess, Mancala, and Backgammon, along with “toy” versions of sports like baseball, boxing, and tennis for a virtual parlor room of pleasant time-wasters. The games were all presented with charming li’l explainers from anthropomorphic board game figurines, and the ability to play quick sessions of Spider Solitaire on the touch screen while I binged The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix made Clubhouse Games one of my most-played titles of the year. Plus, local play during socially-distant friend hangs was an excellent way to make us feel like we were much closer than we were physically allowed to be as friends knocked each other’s block off in the “toy boxing” version of Rock’em Sock’em Robots.

"Waiting for Game-dot"

I get that everyone loves Disco Elysium. I saw it on everyone’s year-end lists last year. I finally bought it with an Epic Games Store coupon this year. This year was a long enough slog of depressing post-apocalyptic drudgery, I didn’t want to explore a whole nother one in my leisure time. I’ll get to it… someday.

Game That Made Me Think

Holovista was an iPhone game I played over the course of two or three days based on the recommendation of some trusted colleagues on Twitter and oh my goodness was I glad that I played it. What starts as a chill vaporwave photography game steadily progresses into an exploration of psychological trauma, relationships with friends and family, and the baggage we carry with us from our pasts. In this exceptionally hard year, I badly needed this story about spending time alone with your personal demons and finding your way back to the people who love and support you. Just like with Journey and Gone Home, I walked away from Holovista feeling a rekindled appreciation for the people in my life.

[choices-and-voices]

hi sorry if this has already been asked somewhere but im was wondering if you had any tips on how to get the best experience without having to pay ?

Hi there! Don’t worry, this question hasn’t been asked before, and I am honestly super flattered that you value my opinion enough to ask it ☺️ I’m not sure how helpful my tips will be because I don’t exactly consider myself an expert in this, but here are some things that came to mind! I’ve gone into quite a bit of detail, but if you want a quicker overview, just stick to the bold headings. Also, if any of the people reading this have good tips of their own, please lmk! I’m always learning new things about how to do this too 💕

1. This one’s a bit obvious, but still – take the opportunities that the game gives you to earn free diamonds. That means watching the bonus ads every day (5 diamonds/day), playing through chapters as often as you can (including replaying old books if there are no new releases – 2 diamonds/chapter), and watching ads at the end of book chapters for an extra diamond. Obviously, all this is a bit of a balancing act – you want to be playing Choices often enough to build up your diamonds, but not so often that it takes over your life and makes you feel frustrated, because what’s the point of it if it’s not fun anymore, y’know? So I’ve always been careful not to overdo it. Even if all you do is watch the bonus ads every day, that’s 35 diamonds/week – basically, one big diamond scene a week – which is honestly not too shabby.

2. At any one time, only play 1-2 books that you’re really invested in, and try to supplement that with another 2-3 books that you’re not really invested in or are replaying just for diamonds. As tempting as it can be to rush through every good-looking book in the app all at once, that just leads to a situation where a) you’re trying to divide your free keys between waaay too many releases, and b) there are so many demands on you for diamonds, you never get to consistently spend them on anything. So I personally think it’s best to only read a couple of good books at once, and instead of marathoning them, break them up with chapters from less-good books – this builds up your diamond stash for spending on the good books. Which leads into my next point:

3. Don’t zip through books too fast – even if most of the chapters are already released, spreading them out helps you earn more diamonds for them in the meantime. I’m really lucky to have been playing Choices for so long that almost all the books were presented to me in weekly release format – if I downloaded the app for the first time today, and saw all the fully-released books on there, I feel like I would be way too overwhelmed to play. So I reckon that, even if a book isn’t technically a weekly release for you, make it a weekly release! You might decide to play all the books you’re really invested in on a particular day when you have more free time – say, a Sunday. Then, you have Monday-Saturday every week to earn diamonds for those books, and something to look forward to at the end of it all. As for what you do with those diamonds:

4. Be smart about what you spend diamonds on. There are a couple of different components to this tip – it involves things like a) figuring out which types of purchases are worth diamonds in general, b) figuring out which types of purchases you want to prioritise in certain books, and c) planning ahead before you start playing a book chapter about where you might want to spend diamonds. To address each of those things one-by-one:

a) Figure out which types of purchases are worth diamonds in general. Off the top of my head, there are 6 main types of diamond purchases in Choices: ‘friendly’ scenes with LIs (12-25 diamonds), ‘steamy’ scenes with LIs (25-30 diamonds), scenes with your whole friendship group, collectible items (e.g. the tapestry pieces in Bloodbound, the clues in Veil of Secrets, etc.), outfits, and pets. Your mileage may vary a lot on which of these are most important to you, so take my opinions with a grain of salt. But my general advice would be to i) prioritise group scenes above LI scenes, ii) prioritise ‘friendly’ LI scenes above ‘steamy’ LI scenes, iii) avoid collectibles, and iv) go for outfits and pets only if you really like the look of them. This advice is based on the fact that, firstly, I think you get a better experience of immersion in a book if you know a bit about all the characters around MC, rather than just about one LI; secondly, ‘friendly’ LI scenes tend to tell you more about the LI than ‘steamy’ scenes, which are often 80-90% copied-and-pasted erotica despite being more expensive; thirdly, collectibles are a massive drain on diamond stores, and almost always unlock quite short, generic scenes that it’s easy to find on Tumblr or YouTube; and fourthly, both outfits and pets don’t do much except appear in the story at key moments, which can be a really nice touch but is still only needed in moderation. Of course, there are exceptions to these rules, and you might find that those exceptions are sometimes book-specific. Which leads me to Part B of this point:

b) Figure out which types of purchases you want to prioritise in certain books. It’s all well and good for me to say that group scenes are usually better than LI scenes, but when I’m playing a book with an amazing LI but a pretty meh supporting cast (*cough cough* Myra Dixon carries Baby Bump on her shoulders *cough cough*), I obviously may need to adjust my spending habits slightly. Moreover, by focusing all your diamond spending on just one main thing per book – like Myra’s romance in Baby Bump, or the party’s side-quests in Blades of Light and Shadow, or the posse in Queen B – I think you end up with a much better playing experience, because you feel like you’re seeing at least one facet of the story in-depth instead of getting a patchy surface view of lots of different facets. For the most part, the purchases you prioritise in a book can mostly depend on personal taste, but there are a few books where some background knowledge might be helpful in the decision. Four things that I think are worth flagging are that i) the ‘competition books’ (America’s Most Eligible, Queen B, Hot Couture) do require regular outfit purchases to win, although winning isn’t that much better an experience than being runner-up; ii) Veil of Secrets and Nightbound are two books where it’s worth saving 30-35 diamonds for the final chapter, because your MC is forced to leave the small-town setting if you don’t; iii) Across the Void is a book that frequently invites you to spend diamonds to save characters’ lives, but their death arcs are honestly much better-written and more sensible than their survival arcs; and iv) the It Lives series is the only one where characters can die due to an accumulation of choices you make throughout the story, so maybe it’s worth keeping some diamonds in reserve for that one. Which just leaves us with one more sub-point:

c) Plan ahead before you start playing a book chapter about where you might want to spend diamonds. I want to take this opportunity to thank whichever people in the fandom maintain the Choices wiki, because oh my gosh, they are lifesavers. For the last year or so, my response whenever a new Choices chapter is released has been to wait a few hours, Google ‘[book name] choices’, open the wiki result, and skim through to check how many diamond choices are available & how much they cost. Because all the wiki includes are the possible responses to every choice presented – it doesn’t even state the wording of the choice itself – this is a relatively spoiler-free technique that helps a lot with big picture planning. For example, you might decide not to buy an early group scene because there’s a nicer-sounding LI scene later on, and come to think of it, you should replay a few more chapters of another book first to save up the diamonds for that scene. If you don’t mind encountering just a few more spoilers before you play the chapter, you can also scout out its diamond scenes in more detail by searching the relevant book or character tags on Tumblr, or by looking for a chapter stream on YouTube. You may decide that you don’t need to buy a diamond scene if you’ve already seen it played through by someone else, or alternatively, you may decide whether or not to buy a diamond scene based on how good it looks in an existing playthrough – in either case, these techniques can help you thoughtfully ration out the diamonds you have, instead of being caught off-guard whenever a diamond choice comes up.

5. On the subject of the Choices wiki, it’s also a great way to maximise your success in books without using diamonds. Whenever there’s a ‘right’ option to a choice that gives you a better outcome later in the chapter, that’s indicated in the wiki. So with a bit of pre-reading of the wiki before you play the chapter, and/or with the wiki open on a separate screen as you play, you can get the best outcome without having to buy that outfit or bonus scene that promised you ‘an advantage.’ Obviously, your mileage may vary on whether this method is actually worth it, or whether it takes all the fun out of Choices by ‘cheating’ at the gaming aspect. I personally view Choices as more of an interactive story app than a game I’m trying to beat, so I have no issue with this method, but opinions may differ and that’s okay.

6. If you’re really feeling like a lack of diamonds is limiting your playing experience, it may be best to start out with ‘cheaper’ books until you have more diamonds stored up. In this case, I’m using ‘cheaper’ to mean books where there are fewer diamond scenes, where diamond scenes are less expensive, and/or where diamond scenes don’t play as big a role in the plot. It can be hard to identify which books fit this bill, but as a general rule, it’s more likely to be the earlier-released ones or less-popular ones. Some which I’d recommend are the first few books of the Freshman series, the #LoveHacks series, the High School Story series, the Perfect Match series, Most Wanted, The Heist: Monaco, Wishful Thinking, Bachelorette Party, and The Royal Masquerade.

7. Finally, a really quick tip for making the most out of free keys – keys are used up as soon as you start a book chapter, and refresh ~every 3 hours. This means that, even if you don’t have time to play chapters every 3 hours, you should try to open the app roughly that often and just click to unlock a chapter. When you finally have time to play, you’ll have a whole lot of chapters ready to go plus another two refreshed keys, and you can power through them at whatever speed you need to fit in them into your break time or to earn diamonds for an upcoming release. Once again, this is a tip that may need to be practised in moderation, because you don’t want to be constantly interrupting your life to load up an app on your phone. But even if you just log in and unlock chapters every 6 hours, or every 12 hours, that’s still 2-4 extra chapters ready for you at the end of the day plus your two free keys.

I think that’s about all for my tips! Thanks for reading, and I hope it helped at least a bit ❤️

[venusmages]

Cyberpunk 2077 non-spoiler review

Anyways here’s my writeup about my least favorite parts of 2077 for people who are interested in seeing if it’s for them. Both going to talk about content as well as gameplay. This is for PC version, too, because I know last gen consoles are suffering terribly rn and I wouldn’t recommend the game if you’re not going to be playing on PC. At least not until it’s on sale or the issues have been resolved. It really, really shouldn’t have been released on last gen consoles at all in my opinion - or at least should’ve been released on consoles LATER.

If you like Saints Row, GTA, Mass Effect, Shadowrun, or the Cyberpunk genre in general - I definitely think this is something you might want to take a peek at! I wasn’t anticipating the game until about a month or two before release - so maybe that’s why I’m having a blast - but It’s one of my favorite stories from the past decade as far as sci-fi goes. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, and It’s really impressed me. I can’t even go into detail about all the things I LOVE because I really want folks to experience it themselves. Just know there’s a very intricately detailed world, all the characters are memorable and insanely well realized and complex, and the story is great fun. Also made me cry like 5 times. It’s become one of my FAVORITE games very quickly.

I’d also recommend Neon Arcade if you want someone who’s been covering the game for quite a while, including the technical and game industry aspect. He does well to go into some detail and even though he’s a fan, I’ve found him to be largely unbiased. I’m not going to go into industry politics here because I feel that’s up for everyone to decide on their own terms.

No spoilers, things to keep in mind, content warnings, etc. below!

CONTENT WARNINGS and issues with plot/story

this setting is dark. very dark. if you struggle stomaching things like dystopian landscapes, body horror, physical, mental and sexual abuse, corporate and gang violence, abuse of children, harsh language, and concepts that mess with the perception of reality - this game might not be for you. It’s a very mature setting, and I don’t mean that in the Adult Swim kind of way. I mean it in the ‘oh shit, it went there’ way. In my opinion I haven’t run across anything in it that was handled distastefully when it dipped into the depressing, but dark and gritty isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and I wanted to give a disclaimer.

The game’s universe in advertising and working for the lower class also exploits sex/sex work quite a bit. This is part of the lore itself because in this universe everyone’s become desensitized to sex and violence to the point that marketing embraces it and makes it ridiculous. I feel it’s very obvious that it doesn’t condone this message and is instead a commentary on consumerism - but people still might be uncomfortable seeing a lot of suggestive stuff all over the place regardless. 

Women in game are naked more often than men - even though there is nudity for both. This is likely a mix of appealing to the Gamer Boy demographic (even though the story does NOT actually), or the fact that media is way more cool with seeing naked women than seeing full frontal nudity on men. They probably had to tone some of it down to avoid going above an M rating. 

The story is amazing, but sometimes it dumps a lot onto you at once. It’s one of those sci-fi stories that you have to really be following the names, faces, and concepts continually to get it all down. There’s a lot of betrayal, background players, etc. I think by the mid-way point I’d mostly had it, but It’s pretty dense. However it’s still amazing. You might just need two playthroughs before every tiny detail clicks - because there’s a LOT of details. 

Honestly I think it would help to read up on the lore first so you’re not going ‘what’ constantly. But people have seemed to manage fine without that also! Neon Arcade has a really nice series of videos (like 2 or 3) that get you up to speed with the universe. It also helps you decide if the tone is right for you. 

I think the main story should’ve been longer, also. I don’t mind a 20 hr story, especially in a massive RPG, but It feels like they really struggled to cram as much into that time frame as possible. It skirts the edge of being nice and concise, snappy, and tight - and needing just a few more moments to take a breath and wait a second. This is helped if you do a lot of side quests.

The straight male romance option, River, is INCREDIBLY well written but he doesn’t tie into the main plot in any way whatsoever. It’s very strange and feels like they either ran out of time with him, or slapped together a romance with him at the last second. All the other romances at least know what’s going on with V’s story - meanwhile River has no idea, and you can never tell him. He’s an amazing guy though and I highly recommend his questline. He appears in ACT 2.

In general I’d say not to bother with the romances. There are only 4 total, and while the romancible characters on their own are really well written, the romances themselves are just kinda meh. One romance you don’t even meet until act 3. I don’t think they should’ve been included in the game at all, because they definitely don’t feel as fleshed out as everything else. 

CDPR also sometimes forget that women players or gay men exist. Panam and Judy have a lot more content than River and Kerry for example. I don’t think this is intentional, they just have a large fanbase of dudebros. It only shows in the romance content and the nudity thing though.

Johnny, Takemura, and Claire should’ve been romances and I will fight to the death on that. 

There are gay and trans characters in the game and their stories don’t revolve around their sexualities. It’s very Fallout: New Vegas in it’s approach to characters: IE. you’re going to love them. All of them. 

V’s gender isn’t locked to their body type or their genitals- but to to their voice. I don’t think it’s the best solution they could’ve used but given how the game is heavily voice acted I assume that was what they had to work with. 

Some of the romances are locked to both cis voices AND body types (not genitals if I recall but body shapes). That’s disappointing but I assume it was because of scripted scene issues and/or ignorance on the dev’s part considering the LGBT NPCS are so AMAZINGLY done. There’s no homophobic or transphobic language in the game - though there are gendered curse words and insults if that bothers you. 

Some characters MAY suffer from ‘bilingual people don’t talk like that’ syndrome. But it can be hard to say for sure given that translators exist in this universe and the way they operate aren’t fully described. It’s only momentarily distracting, not enough to take away from how charming the NPCs are.

The endings are really good don’t get me wrong but I want fix it fic :(. All of the endings out of like 6 (?) in the game are bittersweet. 

Both gender V’s are very good but female V’s voice acting is out of this world. If you don’t know what voice to go with/are neutral I’d highly recommend female V. Male V is charming and good but he feels much more monotone compared to female V. 

V has their own personality. To some this won’t be a detractor - but a lot of people thought they’d be making absolutely everything from the ground up. V is more of a commander shepard or geralt than a skyrim or d&d pc, if that makes sense. You can customize and influence them to a HUGE degree, some aspects of V will always be the same.

Streetkid is the most boring background - at least for it’s introduction/prologue.

GAMEPLAY/TECHNICAL

If you can run your game on ultra, don’t. It actually looks best with a mix of high and medium settings. Unless you have a beast that has ray-tracing - then by all means use ray tracing and see how absolutely insanely good it looks.

There are color blind modes for the UI, but not for some of the AI/Netrunning segments in cutscenes. Idk how much this will effect folks with colorblindness but those segments are thankfully short. 

There was an issue with braindances being an epilepsy trigger because for some reason they decided to mirror the flashing pattern after real epilepsy tests - probably because it ‘looks cool’. I don’t have epilepsy but it even hurt my eyes and gave me a headache. Massive oversight and really goddamn weird. Thankfully this was fixed.

There is no driving AI. Like at all. If you leave your car in the street the traffic is just going to pile up behind it. It’s one of the very few immersion breaking things I’ve encountered.

Sometimes when an NPC is driving with you in the car, they’ll drive on the curb and/or run into people. It’s kind of funny but can occasionally result in something weird. Feels very GTA  - but nothing excruciating. 

The camera angle feels a little too low in first person mode when driving on cars. You get used to it though. 

The police in this game feel slapped on and I hope they improve it. Right now if you commit a crime, you can never tell what will actually trigger it. And if you just run away a few blocks the police forget about it. 

Bikes are just way more fun to ride than the cars are. 

You CANNOT respec your character after you make them. Ever. it sucks. Go in with an idea ahead of time what you wanna do - it’s better than being a jack of all trades.

as of now you also CANNOT change their appearance after you exit the character creator. This, also, sucks. Make sure you REALLY like your V or you’re gonna be replaying the openings over and over like I did. 

Photomode on PC is the N key. Had to look it up. The mode itself is great though

Shooting and Mele fighting feel pretty standard. I don’t have a lot of shooter experience besides Bethesda games so anything feels better than that to me. So far I’ve enjoyed stealth and mele the best, but that’s just my own taste! The combat and driving aren’t groundbreaking by any means, but they’re still very fun. I look forward to running at people with swords or mantis blades, and zipping around the city on a motorcycle to see the sights. The story, lore, and interesting quests and characters are the real draw here.

I haven’t encountered any game breaking bugs in 80-ish hours of play time. One or two T-poses, a few overlays not loading or floating objects - but nothing terrible. Again, my experience is with Bethesda games. This is all usually fixed by either opening your inventory and closing it again, or exiting out and reloading your save. 

The C button is mapped for crouching AND skipping dialogue by default. That’s terrible. Change it in the settings to be HOLDING C skips dialogue and you’ll be gucci.

There’s apparently a crafting system. I have never been inclined to touch it. But I also play on easy like a pleb so IDK how it all scales otherwise.

The mirror reflections can be a little bit weird, at least on my end. They always end up a teeny bit grainy despite my computer being able to run everything on Ultra Max. You can still get good screens out of it though!

So many people text me to sell me cars and I want them to stop. Please. also the texting menu is abysmal. The rest is ok tho

It’s pretty clear when you’re going to go into a ‘cutscene’. all cutscenes are rendered in-engine BUT you often will be talking to other characters at a specific angle or setting. The game locks you into this usually by having you sit down. It works for me - after all we do a lot of sitting- but it IS very obvious that it’s a way for the game to get you in the frame it wants to display.

That’s all I can think of rn! If you’re interested but wanted to get a slightly better idea of whats going on, I hope this helps. I’m really enjoying it and despite my issues it’s exceeding my expectations. I’m going to be thinking about and replaying this game for quite a while. 

[commentaryvorg]

heya, i saw on many of your posts that you saw quite a lot of v3 letsplays, i was wondering if you could recomnend me some of them, the ones you think are the best? i'm having a lot of free time on quarantine and i'd like to watch some, but i don't know where to start.

My favourite of all the LPs I've seen, by far, is by a lesser-known LPer called Version2. They were incredibly insightful, both in terms of interesting observations about the characters and story and in terms of how well they figure out the cases beforehand. They figured out basically everything in basically every case before beginning the trial, even case 5! The only big exception to this was case 1, for rather understandable reasons - but even then, they picked up on what was going on several minutes before the reveal and had the absolute most fantastic reaction to the realisation of the twist out of anyone I've ever seen. A lot of people tend to just get confused and upset and be all "but why, though?", but Version2 immediately understood exactly why and that this was the best thing this case could have done, storytelling-wise.

And perhaps most importantly if you're me, they liked Kaito a lot, to more than just background levels of "eh I guess I care about him because he's important and Shuichi's friend, sure, whatever" that frustratingly many LPers don't ever go beyond. They completely understood his whole supportiveness thing - something way goddamn rarer than it should be, grumble - and they did so from chapter 1, not 2 (including noticing Kaito's similarity to a certain character from Gurren Lagann). They also actually went and maxed his FTEs on their main playthrough, making them literally the only LPer I've seen do this. That should also not be this rare, grumble grumble.

One thing I was rather little disappointed with them on regarding Kaito was them not remotely figuring out he's not angry at Shuichi in chapter 5, something I really expected them of all people to get. While they really appreciate Kaito's supportiveness, they don't seem to realise how much he has going for him as a character beyond that, which makes me rather sad. To be fair, that stuff is somewhat harder to pick up on on a first playthrough, but it shouldn’t be impossible to notice at least some of it! I did, dammit!

But even then, still probably the best response to Kaito I've ever seen in an LP (man I wish the bar was higher than this), and from a less Kaito-centric standpoint, still a very high quality insightful LP that figures so much stuff out and has all sorts of interesting discussion about the themes and things, do recommend. (And as you might be able to tell from the pronouns I've been using for them, the LPer is queer, and they talk about things with a queer lens quite a bit, which is refreshing when LPers overwhelmingly tend to be straight dudes. Maybe that's a plus for you as well.)

I don't really have any LPs that obviously stand out to me as being my second favourite below that one. Quite possibly that second-place spot will be claimed by Lucahjin, whose LP is currently ongoing and in the middle of trial 3, so it's hard to say for sure yet when she’s still got the best parts of the story to come. As long as you're willing to put up with someone who's as innuendo-happy as the Danganronpa writing itself is, Lucahjin is a generally lovely person who gets very emotionally invested in the characters and the things that happen to them and is very enjoyable to watch react to games like this.

I had selfishly hoped she'd care a little bit more about Kaito outside of his explicit relevance to the story than she's been doing, but she likes him well enough and has at least shown more signs of being likely to notice his vulnerability than Version2 did, so I'm hoping that'll be a thing as she gets into chapters 4 and 5. Maybe she'll even claim the title of second LPer I've ever seen who actually figures out Kaito isn't angry at Shuichi in chapter 5, that'd be nice. [Update from the future: no, she did not, and I am disappoint. Sigh. I really thought she might have been able to pick up on that.] Maybe she'll give me what I've been so desperately craving from a blind LP, which is a reaction to case 5 similar enough to the one I had on my first time through that I can finally relive that experience vicariously through someone else. That one's looking like a bit of a long shot at this point, though. Why is it so rare for Kaito to be people's absolute favourite. He is the best. He should be so many people's favourite. Grumble.

(If anyone at all does know of a LPer who has a blind reaction to case 5 similar to the one I described myself as having had, and of a similar sort of intensity, please tell me, oh my god, I’ve been wanting something like that since the second time I ever watched that case and couldn’t have the same experience again.)

I suppose, since this is such a big deal to me, that I should also give an honourable mention to literally the only V3 LPer I have seen so far who considered that maybe Kaito isn't angry at Shuichi in chapter 5, namely Rose Matter. Really she only deserves partial credit on this front, because it took her most of early chapter 5 to even think that, and when she did it was a very tentative "eh, I feel like there's gotta be more to this, probably?", rather than just being immediately sure Kaito wouldn't do that like it should be perfectly possible to be even on a first time through. But that's still better than literally any other LPer I've seen, geez. Rose Matter's LP is otherwise not necessarily anything special - she tended to take most other things at face value and not have that much meaningful insight or be that impressive at figuring things out, but she had fun enough reactions and generally cared about all the characters who deserved to be cared about. (Still no actual hanging out with Kaito, though, grumble.)

But even aside from my personal recommendations, since your tastes in what you enjoy and what you're frustrated by in an LPer are likely different from mine, I'd just say check out lots of different ones to find one you think you'll like! You don't have to watch the whole LP if you don't like what you see; you don't even necessarily need to start from the beginning to get a sense of if you'll like one or not. Something I often did when finding new LPs to watch was look through someone's playlist and just watch specific scenes that would allow me to get a decent sense of whether they'd give me what I wanted in a V3 LP based on their reactions to those parts. In my case, this obviously involved a lot of scenes related to Kaito, but in your case this might be something else entirely, depending on what you most want to see someone caring about as they play through the game.

[fyrapartnersearch]

eye-catching title ;

Once again, I’m AJ! Lookin’ for a couple of different things, mostly similar to my last ad. We love a (mostly) one trick pony!

  For original settings: apocalyptic (zombie, disease, extinction event, whatever), sci-fi (futuristic, space-faring, space opera), fantasy (high, low, medieval, urban), supernatural (fantasy, urban, sci-fi, literally anything). For fandom universes: Percy Jackson, Pokemon, and Fallout.

  Gonna run through my basic info and then onto the particulars. 💕

  ⥽ About Me ; ⥼

  • Name/Age ; AJ! So close to 22 I can taste it. One more month…

  • Timezone ; CST! I don’t mind time differences, this is just so you know my general schedule.

  • Length ;  Truly varies to the point where sticking an average on it is difficult to do. 3-5 minimum I guess? I can go with that as an average if you prefer multi-paragraph style or write novella.

  • Reply rate ; Varies depending on whether we’re doing multi-paragraph or novella. I can respond anywhere from every day to every other day or a few times a week to weekly depending on the writing style of the RP and my schedule.

  • OOC ;  I like getting to know my partners and sharing enthusiasm over our ideas and characters. Nothing hits quite like mutual investment! I’m ditch-friendly but don’t ditch myself, so you can expect communication. I’m not picky if I don’t get the same from you, though. I’ve been around the block enough to know it happens.

  • Contact ; Strictly email for OOC and roleplay unless we’re using GDocs for the RP itself, no messengers even for OOC. You can find me at jackrabbitsonata@gmail.com.

  ⥽ On the lookout for ; ⥼

  • Doubling ; Unlike my last post, this isn’t a deal-breaker! I just prefer writing a cast of characters, so this is something that’s more of a bonus. Ideally we’ll double, but I’m down for writing just one character each.

  • Will only write MxM or FxF ; MxF’s not my cup of tea (I’m extremely picky with it, fellow gays u know how it is). If we’re writing a cast of characters then I’m fine with having an MxF side couple.

  • 18 + ; I’m pretty much 22! Partner’s gotta be 18 +. 20 + ideally. Same with characters, extra bonus points for characters who are 30+. Romance doesn’t die once you hit middle age!

  ⥽ Yes! ; ⥼

  • Smut ;  I enjoy writing it, but it’s not a deal-breaker if you’d rather fade to black.  All characters will obviously be adults. I expect versatile characters in bed by default, that way we’ve got an even route for playing roles in bed. Admittedly this shifts a bit depending on the character I write, but a HUGE no on anyone who comes in guns blazing off the bat with how they only write bottoms.

  • Face claims ; Spent a huge chunk of my roleplaying years on tumblr (it was very over-the-top and flowery and weirdly formatted and grossly difficult to read, I know I know), so having a face for characters stuck with me. If you don’t have any of your own and want good resources to find a face, I’ve got some recommended sites I can throw at ya! Had a previous partner who had a character sheet format that I use now that’s simple but looks nice! Nyx if you’re out there don’t come for me for copping your format.

  • Depth & growth ; Not a fan of one-dimensional characters or characters who act the same from beginning to end! People change with experiences and the people around them, so this is to be expected. ESPECIALLY when doubling with a cast. I loooove complicated characters growing together.

  • Plotting & Worldbuilding ;  *For original settings/worlds! I’m not picky with this if we’re working with a canon setting, so if that’s what you’re looking for, we can skip this section. I run into loooads of folks who say they do this when they really don’t. We’re writing an entire world together, so there’s some degree of effort involved! I need specifics to use as a start-off point for the roleplay and a general outline for where the story’s going. RPs that are just random, spur of the moment with writing as we go on tend to burn out REALLY quickly for me. I know not a lot of people are into this, so I’m sorry about that.

  ⥽ No! ; ⥼

  • Underage characters ; Total given that there will be NO sexual themes with underage characters, but in general as well! I only write adults.  20 +.

  • Single paragraphs ; I’m not too picky with a lot of length a lot of the time, I just don’t mesh well with people who don’t write more than that. Go ham. I like my responses meaty!

  • Limits ; Abuse, nonconsensual/sexual assault, pedophilia, incest (includes step-relations, adopted relations, and that figurative like if one character essentially raised another or they were raised as family), weird age gaps, BDSM, any kind of master/slave or dom/sub dynamics.

  As for the goods, I’ve laid ‘em all out for you here! Keep in mind that while all of these are fun on their own, I’m definitely the type of writer who’s into mixing and matching. Sci-fi apocalypse? Fantasy apocalypse? Fantasy supernatural stuff? Sci-fi fantasy? Sci-fi supernatural stuff? Supernatural apocalypse? Period settings? Literally whatever you could think of, I’ll give it a whirl. The particulars down below are just to get the ball rolling and catch some interest. Hit me up with whatever you’d like!

  APOCALYPSE: My bread and butter! Tense, harrowing, and especially gut-punching when it comes to how close people become to survive together in quiet moments of a world they used to know. I’m a big fan of zombies, so that’s my loose preference. I loved Black Summer on Netflix – the earlier episodes, at least, as well as The Last of Us. That’s the kind of vibe I favor with zombies/zombie-like creatures. But, ofc, an apocalypse can be anything! I love writing different takes on the genre since there’s so much to cover. Extinction event, pandemic, impact event, monsters/beasts, man-made, whatever. The more creative the apocalyptic setting, the better, so I’d love to bounce some ideas back and forth. Not too into a nuclear apocalypse setting, since that overlaps a lot with Fallout down below.

  SCI-FI: Sci-fi’s a bit tricky since it encompasses so many different takes, so I’m clearing the air to say anything’s good. Futuristic, space travel, time travel, space opera, AI, apocalyptic, cyberpunk – if it works in sci-fi, it works for me.

  FANTASY: High fantasy, low fantasy, medieval fantasy, urban fantasy, whatever. Love dragons, love magic, love weird fantasy flora, definitely love the classic prince/princess x knight or commoner schtick. You want prophecies? I’m game. You want elves? I’m game. You want steampunk? I’m game. You want none of that and wanna do something else? I’m game, baby. The possibilities are endless.

  SUPERNATURAL/PARANORMAL: Vampires and werewolves and demons, oh my! Can’t go wrong with horror, especially can’t go wrong with comedy-horror. I’m more of the type to prefer humans and supernatural beings together in a ragtag duo type of way as opposed to two supernatural beings, but anything’s cool in my book. Medieval/fantasy setting for a dark fairytale vibe, urban/modern supernatural beings slinking in the shadows outside of the human eye, supernatural sci-fi stuff, mysteries and danger lurking around every corner? Seriously, it’s a great genre! Any and everything is fantastic. I’ve got a loose concept of demons/the Underworld I’d like to get into since I’m struggling with the worldbuilding of it, so applying all that to a roleplay to give it a whirl sounds like a great way to work out the kinks. Plus, c’mon. Paranormal romance. What’s not to love there?

  PERCY JACKSON: I haven’t ever roleplaying this verse before, so this is completely new grounds for me. I’ve seen some fun takes on it, though! Scoured older ads but haven’t reached out to anyone because the posting time’s pretty old, but a couple ideas I’ve skimmed through sound fun. HP got a period take on it, so why not put that spin on PJ with a period setting rather than in modern times? Or just a regular modern setting. Y’know, keep it classy, keep it sexy, keep it fun! I’m definitely focused on life outside of camp, since all the characters will be adults. Life’s supposed to suck for demigods, so let’s get into that.

  POKEMON: Leaning a little more on the Detective Pikachu take, since it was fun to see a less anime/game-esque take on the pokemon world. The almost neo-noir style was sooooo cool, so I’ve got my sights set on leaning maybe a little more into the noir sensibilities and themes as an homage to the blending of genres between Pokemon and noir.  So a lot of themes of alienation, mystery, ambiguity, things along those lines. Definitely a weird mix with Pokemon but I think it can be fun.

  FALLOUT: Gonna be real with you guys, I’m a total newbie to Fallout and have only played F3 because it was the only game I found in my family storage for Xbox 360 and I don’t have enough money to get a gaming PC/Laptop to play the other games. I’m watching playthroughs, though! Dipping my toes in the water, so to speak. I’m into it! It’s a fun franchise from what I’ve played and seen so far, so I’d love to write OCs in this verse.

[harusha]

Dragon Age: Inquisition becomes a much better and decent game once you have mods installed tbh, and here’s my list for the ones that are “necessary” or recommended for an enjoyable experience.

Gameplay

Fly- This mod lets you “fly” everywhere by holding a button. It makes it much less tedious to do quests b/c it cuts the time backtracking and going over vaguely designed terrain. I wouldn’t recommend it on a first playthrough tho since you don’t get the full experience of roaming around. But tbh you can still use it on a 1st playthrough if traveling becomes tedious. Best used with the No Boundaries mod and you should save frequently in case you sequence break or go where you shouldn’t be.

No Wait Time War Table- Cuts the terrible design choice of making you wait real time to finish war table missions (some of which can take literal days to complete without this mod).

Search Radius Increased- Increases the Search Radius’s radius. It’s really useful considering how huge the areas are and how tiny the radius is in comparison. Especially if you plan to find all the collectables.

Configurable Item Inventory by electricfish- Lets you change the inventory capacity. It’s really useful because of how much junk you will be getting since this is a much more open-world game than the last 2.

Quicker Looting- Cuts the animation of the Inquisitor bending down and clawing at air. Makes looting much quicker so you can just run by and grab stuff.

Redcliffe Crafting Supply (and its DLC version addon)- Adds more crafting supplies to Redcliffe so you aren’t forced to kill thousands of bears just to craft optimal armor and weapons.

Unlock Specializations- Only use this if you want a more Origins or DAII style of gameplay where you can mix and match spells between classes or if you don’t want to waste your early skill points. It unlocks all specializations at the beginning.

New Game Plus and Craftorama- The former mod basically changes the Haven shop to include more items, and Seggrit buys your items at a marked up price. Craftorama adds armor, rune, and weapon materials to shops (same deal as New Game Plus). As the name implies, these two mods work best on a second playthrough or if you just want all the materials ready. It’s much more “overpowered” than Redcliffe Crafting Supply.

More Banter- Makes it to where banter actually triggers regularly so you aren’t wandering in silence for like 4 hours.

More Loot- Enemies and such drop more gold and items. Has a few different versions depending on how much of a difference you want.

More Healing Potions- Configurable mod that lets you set how many healing potions you carry.

More Influence and More Inquisition Levels- The former lets you configure how much much influence you get and the latter adds more levels for perks.

Crestwood Requisitions- Carries items for quests such as the specialization unlock ones.

Explore Abilities- Lets you get the explore abilities of the other 2 classes you didn’t pick (Ie. Energize for Mages, Bashing in Walls for Warriors, and Lockpicking for Rogues).

Schematic Spree- Makes Schematics appear a lot more if you don’t like random drops/store appearances.

Complete Schematic and Collectables Collection- Not a mod but a save game. You need the Golden Nug (and a account w/ Dragon Age Keep) for this since this one is just syncing up your saves for future playthoughs. I kinda don’t recommend this on a first playthrough since the game save included on the Nexus page is one before the final battle (so spoilers), but it’s good if you don’t want to play with the RNG or don’t mind spoilers too much (or you can find a save post-final battle). Schematic Spree is the other option.

Tirnoney’s Odds and Ends- Various mods that you can pick from. The one I recommend is TMM Qunari Recipe Upgrades since I like how the armor looks on a male elf.

Gifts from the Gods- Op items. Not recommended unless you just want a large advantage in-game. Needs Sigils Reworked.

Open All Halla Doors- does exactly what it says.

Fall Damage Nullified- Nullifies fall damage for faster exploring. You can get the same effect by casting Barrier and then jumping, but I don’t wanna bring Solas everywhere so.

Cosmetic mods

SK Hair Retexture- Retexures the hair and has “Realistic” and “Smooth” options.

Various Hair mods- This isn’t one singular mod but multiple ones on Nexus. Just look up hair on there to find something you like (b/c the default hairs are horrible at least for a male anyway). I can’t make one recommendation since it varies by taste and Inquisitor race. I personally use Relaxed Hairstyles (the ponytail version) tho.

Cole Angels and Demons- A cosmetic mod that makes Cole look more unnerving. There’s two versions (one makes him more uncanny but still sweet looking and the other goes deeper into horror territory). I use Cole the Horror personally.

Leliana- the Nightingale- Makes Leliana look more like her Origins self and older instead of how “pretty” she looks in Inquisition. Leliana has always been pretty (and still is) but it just seems like hasn’t aged a day since Origins tbh.

Shantia’s Eyebrows- Gives more eyebrow options.

Improved Lashes- More eyelashes options.

No Dirt Buildup- Dirt doesn’t build up on clothes.

LL Crafting Material fixes- changes the textures for tinting and crafting.

HD Eye Textures- Changes eye textures.

EYES- Makes it so everyone’s eyes don’t look so red. Does not work with other eye texture mods.

TEETH- Whitens teeth and makes the more defined. Does not work with other cosmetic mods that edit everything.

Miscellaneous

Bi Cullen mod- Honestly, this is a personal choice because it varies by who you want to pursue, but this mod also eliminates race requirements so you could date him as a Qunari female (for example) if you want as well as gender requirements.

There are other mods in this style (ie. eliminating race and/or gender requirements) but I’m not gonna get into them all too much but they’re easily findable if you prefer to not be locked into playing a gender for a character. The Inquisitor will probably not be voiced if you decide to pursue a gender-locked character since they didn’t voice the lines (just turn on subtitles). Race-locked should be fine more or less since the voices are shared between Inquisitors.

[thorinkingoferebor]

Some thoughts on the horse accident simulator and sad outlaws :(

okay, so this is the big old game impressions post I promised. don’t know how organized it’ll be since I’m still in a state of grief but here we go. First part is spoiler free, whenever there’s a number after a comment you can scroll down to the end to find a more in-depth comment containing spoilers. There’s a clear separation between the spoiler-free part and the rest with a lot of empty lines so you can stop ready before it gets dangerous^^

General comments:

in case you somehow managed to miss this despite me screaming about this game for 3+ weeks: I loved it. So freaking much! I don’t want to rank it cause it’s all still fresh and it wouldn’t be a fair competition atm but it’s definitely in my top 3. there are so many things this games just gets right. Granted, others might disagree but to me, it was the perfect mix of main missions, side missions, RPG elements, perfect map size, dramatic dialogue without overdoing it, etc.

I actually wasn’t planning on buying this game, I was saving money for the new Fallout game (that was before that whole mess) and then more or less bought it on a whim because a) it looked amazing, b) I’d had a rough week and I wanted to shoot virtual things and c) my favourite online news website trashed it and whenever they trash an open world RPG I just know I’m gonna love it cause they have the absolute worst taste in games^^

I bought rdr1 a couple of years ago but never got around to actually playing it. I still know almost nothing about it apart from who the main character is and where it’s set. I’d like to keep it that way so I can enjoy that at some point as well :)

If you haven’t finished yet, I really recommend getting a good horse early on and sticking with it. The final scene with your horse will be even more emotional if you’ve had it for most of the game :))))))))))))))))))))

I suspected this game would wreck me and it did :)))))))) I think the only game that affected me more was ME3. But yeah, I cry easily when I watch stuff and I was gone from the moment Arthur put on his head in Chapter six to the end (which is quite a while and it involves fight scenes and everything! Try shooting people when you’re busy crying!) and then again through the credits after the epilogues.

This game is HUGE! Not because the map is big or because the plot takes so long, it’s just so full and alive. Very hard to describe but it’s just so big!

Stuff I liked:

THE HORSES! Absolutely amazing! That (and landscapes) are probably what people talked the most about when it was released and it’s understandable. The animations and the handling is just unbelievable. I can’t even imagine how much work went into this and that’s probably not even the most impressive thing about the game!

The landscape is stunning but honestly, HZD was just as stunning, had the same kind of diversity regarding climate zones and yet RDR2 does something I haven’t seen to that extent in any other game so far: It makes the land around you feel alive! That’s down to tiny things like being able to see the individual rain droplets in the fog when you hold up a lantern, the way a bush moves around you when you walk through it (the first time I saw that I literally gasped!), rockslides and avalanches, wheel tracks in the mud, localised dirt on Arthur or the horse when you fall down. And then, of course, there are the bigger, scripted additions like railroads being built, houses burning down or being erected as the game progresses, trees being taken down or burning after a thunderstorm, animals around you interacting with other animals, animal carcasses decaying if you leave them, predators hunting prey (like have you seen this stuff? It’s insane!). Then you have NPCs that remember you and make references to your last meeting, NPCs are repulsed when you still have some blood on you, people you beat up sporting a bandage the next time you see them, having to remember to cut your hair and beard and take a bath, someone you captures freaking out when you place them too close to water because they might drown, a farmer fixing their fence after you accidentally rode through it a couple of days ago, Arthur quietly singing when you ride for too long without doing anything, your fellow outlaws having interactions that don’t involve you at all! There is so much detail in this game and it’s not like other games haven’t done a similar thing but not to this extent. It generates an immersion that I think is currently unparalleled. Absolutely incredible and you can tell that (despite the frankly unacceptable working conditions that were reported) people put their heart and soul into it.

I loved the fact that there weren’t too many side quests as there often are in RPGs (and most of the times they are somewhat repetitive). I felt there were just the right amount of additional quest markers on my map at any given time and apart from like “Hey mister race me!” quests every single one of them was unique! And most of the time you met well-developed NPCs you could later meet again! (Mickey and Hamish and the widow whose name I can’t remember right now stand out here <3)

The lighting in this game is out of this world! I think there was only one scene in which it didn’t quite work but apart from that every in-game scene might as well have been a cutscene for its beauty

It’s utterly heartbreaking and since I apparently love being sad this is perfect for me ;)

I loved the fact that they took accidental dialogue interruptions into account with the whole “right, where were we” thing

The motion capture and voice acting is brilliant! And as far as I can tell many of the actors haven’t even really done anything big but everyone was so stellar and Arthur’s actor really delivered!

Love my outlaw gang so much :’) especially the relationships between Arthur and John, Dutch, Sadie, Hosea, and Charles

and I LOVE Arthur! What an incredible main character and what a fantastic character journey! [1]

(connected to the point above) probably my absolute favourite thing about the entire game: The game objective changes drastically 3/4 of the way through and suddenly things that used to be a disadvantage are the opposite and the other way around. It’s brilliant! [2]

The music is so stunning! Both the background ambient music during free play but most importantly the songs they recorded and worked in so seamlessly. I still get goosebumps thinking about “Might I (Stand unbroken)”

Stuff I didn’t like:

I don’t think I’ve had any bugs (which is really surprising for a game of this size) except two instances of the dialogue disappearing for like a minute or so. It didn’t bother me that much, just turned on the subtitles for a bit and it was fine but yep, I did find some bugs

I feel like a horse that is able to bolt if it sees a snake or a predator should be able to not hit a solitary tree that I obviously did not want to ride into ;) like I get the collisions in dense forest areas but in open planes I feel like the horse should be smart enough to take a step to the side without me prompting it ;) 

it’s really easy to accidentally murder someone :( and I feel like the bounty system needs an update. If I accidentally walk into someone who gets offended and then starts shooting at me even though I’m apologizing then I shouldn’t get a bounty for knocking him out so he won’t kill me :/

I really did not like the “supernatural” stuff... I know they were just easter eggs and not relevant in any way but they just threw me off completely

There was one character I think I was supposed to connect to and I just didn’t which was a bit of a shame [3]

I wish there was a mission to the west (think Arizona, Utah landscape) I would have loved to ride through there with Arthur

I’m sure I missed quite a bit and I haven’t done everything in the game by far (only like 80% completion). I didn’t hunt much apart from the first two chapters, I didn’t craft much, I didn’t explore as much as I wanted to and I waited until like Chapter five before spending money. So there’s lots of stuff I still want to do and even more, I want to do again and really take my time now that I don’t have to be worried about accidentally reading a spoiler^^

So yep, second playthrough (albeit a much slower one) is about to start :)

SPOILERS WILL START BELOW! STOP READING HERE IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED!

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SPOILERS APPROACHING!

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THERE BE SPOILERS BELOW!

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[1] Arthur’s Character:

Arthur Morgan is definitely one of my all-time fictional characters now. It was an amazing journey from someone who clearly has a moral code but doesn’t (want to) use it for various reasons to someone who (probably for the first time in his life) takes charge of it and stands up to the people who want to make into something he’s just not. I’m an absolute sucker for character growth and rough characters becoming protective and selfless and trying to make the world a better place before they go. For me, that’s what separates a good movie/tv show/game from an excellent one and RDR2 delivered!

And then there’s the’s the huge TB bombshell in chapter 5 which changes everything and accelerates what’s been coming for a while. I’m such a big fan of this, honestly. Normally you get that kind of stuff at the beginning (e.g. Breaking Bad, Deadpool, etc.) to motivate some kind of change but in RDR2 you get all this time see Arthur not be who he clearly should be but getting closer and closer and then the dam just breaks. I mean I hate it with all my heart because up until then I thought he might get out alive but damn what a wonderful character arc!

[2] Game Objective:

So this is the big one, very subtle I think but again something I don’t think I’ve ever seen a video game do and I’m just stunned!

I started writing a list for this post when I was in Chapter 2 and I had “Honour system” on my “stuff I don’t like list”. The reason for that was, I thought it was pointless and not well thought through. Sure it’s a nice idea (and not a new one) to give the player the option of being a very nice or a very bad guy and then depending on that some interactions might change. That’s the whole nature of RPGs. But the thing is, it should be equally easy to play as totally good or totally bad. And it wasn’t! For most of the game, you were at a severe disadvantage if you were trying to get high honour. You can’t rob people to get some money, you can’t rob carriages or trains to train for the larger missions and gain experience, you can’t refuse to collect a debt instead you have to beat people! Sure, now and then you can help someone and they give you some money or some supplies but that doesn't compare to what you’d get by looting corpses. And even if you somehow do something really good and your honour improves, you will still have to take part in Dutch’s raid so you fall back down to some area in the middle. I thought that was frustrating and I thought I was missing out on a big part of the game experience because my objective to be nice got in the way.

But then Arthur got sick and from that moment the rewards for being nice were insane! And I realized that the game objective was directly tied to Arthur’s internal struggle. He wanted to be a good man but life made it seemingly impossible so he kept stealing, he kept killing, he kept turning back to bad habits. But once he broke free of that, once he started to see the good in the world it was suddenly so easy to get high honour because for once the game (aka Dutch’s influence on Arthur) didn’t force you into dishonourable situations anymore. It’s so neat! Turning something that used to be a disadvantage (wanting to be good) into an advantage more than halfway through the game. I’m honestly so impressed by the total gear change that achieved!

[3] Mary:

Here’s the thing: I really want to like her and it’s not even that I dislike her, I’m just really indifferent. It’s obvious Arthur loves her a lot and it’s obvious she loves Arthur quite a bit as well but all I saw in the game are two people who might like each other but who are clearly not compatible. And I was wondering if the game wants me to root for them, to hope that they’ll make it and basically have the life John and Abigail have at the end of the epilogue but I kept thinking: “That will never work”. I think it’s mainly because we see so little of her and like 40% of what she says is “Oh, Arthur” (which gets old real quick the same way “I have a plan, Arthur!” gets old after 20 times). I feel like if she’d been around for more missions I might feel very differently. Or some flashbacks might have been nice. But with about 60+ hours of gameplay and about 30 minutes of Mary I just couldn’t connect. It seemed like a relationship that was way past it’s prime just like their outlaw lifestyle and just like the outlaw lifestyle Arthur just didn’t want to believe it. 

That being said, I don’t think Mary shouldn’t be in the game! I think she has a purpose and I did her first mission very early one, so that was the first time that I saw Arthur display complex emotions which was great! But as the story went on I just cared so much more about the other outlaws and I honestly think Arthur would have been happier being Jack’s weird uncle who drops in from time to time than Mary’s proper, upstanding husband. So in the end, some outlaws standing next to Arthur’s grave would have made more sense to me than Mary :/

[tifarobles]

My first Super Mario Party!

I’d heard of the amazingness of this game for years before I’d ever had the chance to play it. To be honest, I haven’t played a lot of any Nintendo games since the original PlayStation released. I’d grown up on the classics - Super Mario Bros 1-3 and Super Mario World. I even loved the mini-game in Super Mario Bros 3, which I later realized was the original Mario Bros arcade game. 

I’d been told that Mario Party combined these lovable characters from the franchise, adorable art, and a board game! What’s not to love? However, I’d also heard that this game can ruin friendships, much like New Super Mario Bros on the Wii. I also knew that “board game” in this sense was more like a luck based game, not the high-level strategy games that have my heart forever. 

When Super Mario Party came out on the Switch, I was excited to try it out with Mike. We hadn’t gamed together in a while (yay parenthood!) and I had great memories of playing Yoshi's Woolly World together when I was pregnant. I was thrilled to check out this style of game for the first time and Mike was thrilled to experience this first with me. 

I enjoyed it enough that we invited friends over to play with us and I even had a couple friends over to play it on my birthday! I’m a big fan of the game. Now that I’ve now played it a few times with friends, I have a lot of opinions to share. 

If you are interested, Mike and I did a playthrough dressed as Mario & Peach. It was pretty fun! Note: Peach is NOT a favorite character of mine, but I was able to represent one of the longest standing ladies in video games. Plus, I couldn’t find a reasonably priced Rosalina costume in time... 

1) Losing sucks. It’s (almost) completely luck based when it happens and I kind of feel like every game picks one player to really beat up on. In our first game, poor Monty Mole kept having the worst luck. He was an NPC in our game, but I felt terrible for him. Since then, I feel like I had the same curse twice. It’s not fun when this happens. 

2) The individual die of each character is by far my favorite feature of this game. It does make it feel less luck based when you get to decide what your secondary die is. For those who are unaware, each character has a unique die with a different compilation of 6 numbers or actions that you can roll. You still have standard 1-6 die, but you can also select to roll this unique die.

My absolute favorite is Rosalina. Her die is +2 +2  2  3  4  8, which means you have a 1/3 chance of getting 2 gold when you roll, or you will roll a 2, 3, 4, or 8. Rolling 8 rocks and there is no downside on this die. Some dice make you lose coins or have straight up 0s that you can roll and I much prefer something that feels positive every turn. 

One of the best things about these dice is that each person can pick a character whose die is perfect for their play style. It adds to the “strategy” of the game and makes it feel like you are making a choice that matters. 

3) This game is MUCH better with friends. It’s more fun to laugh at friend’s misfortunes and to win together as a team with real people. Don’t get me wrong, I have a blast playing just Mike and me, but this game is meant for parties. 

4) The art is SO CUTE! With updated graphics, these lovable characters are more adorable than ever. I love Toadette’s cutie braids, Rosalina is beautiful, Yoshi is as cute as ever, even Bowser Junior, Koopa, and Dry Bones are super adorable. The maps feature awesome upgraded art from the original games tying into that emotional nostalgia from youth in the best way. This makes just watching the game enjoyable. 

5) Whomp’s Domino Ruins is an amazing map for beginner players. It has fewer feel bads than some of the other maps, is very generous, and the movement of the board when you hit an event space makes you care about your decisions as the board changes. 

6) Golden Dice are the best! +5 to any roll. This isn’t game breaking good, but it still rocks and can be used to help get a Star if you use it with correct timing and skill. 

7) Golden Warp Pipes are broken AF. You basically get a Star on your next turn, every time. 

8) Allies are really awesome, but having more than one is unfair. With Allies, you not only get a 1-2 bonus for every die roll, but you also get the choice to use their special, unique die. You can have up to 4 Allies, which means having 6 dice to choose from and getting a minimum of +4 to any die roll and as much as a +8. That’s ridiculous and frustrating to play against. 

9) High fives are a really cute feature, even if I look like a fool while I frantically wave the controller around while I try to give one. I think it’s cool that you get bonus points for high fiving your team. 

10) Teaming up with NPCs in mini-games is the worst. They act erratically and it feels like a disadvantage. This is another reason why I HIGHLY recommend that you play with friends. It’s way more fun. 

11) I love the Paparazzi mini-game! It’s so cute and fun to play. There are SO MANY mini-games. I still don’t think we’ve seen them all. It’s really awesome how many there are and how diverse the variety of games are. Some are very skill based, some reward you for having quick reflexes, some reward you for having a good memory, and some are kind of random and silly. It’s really great to have such a variety of games inside one game! 

12) This is more of a critique for the original concept of winning Stars. It should be One-Up Mushrooms that everyone is chasing after and fighting over, not Stars. Stars aren’t even that great. They don’t last that long and you still die if you fall off a cliff. If you want me to care about something, make it a sweet One-Up Mushroom. Also, I always pictured these delicious mushrooms tasting like spearmint, which only makes me want them that much more. 

Whether this is your 10th Mario Party game or your first, I hope you get the chance to check out this game! It’s super fun. And don’t get too hurt if you lose - remember this: if you win it was 100% because of your choices and if you lose it was 100% bad luck. 

[askaceattorney]

Dear jnv11,

Only one word comes to mind in that scenario:

Poor Simon would hit a new record for the number of times he shouted that word in a single trial, and Ms. Oldbag might actually run out of breath before she’s done complaining.

Dear jnv11,

You kidding? The woman’s tough, but she’d have a heart attack in no more than five minutes. It’s been a decade since we’ve seen ’er, plus young samurai prosecutor who was suspected of killing his teacher?

Dear anon,

I think what we’ll actually do is stop answering letters that involve real-world politicians altogether, or at least ones that defame them.  Just to be clear, the answers I came up with don’t reflect my actual opinion on Donald Trump.

Apologies to anyone who was hit the wrong way by those letters.  Make no mistake, I was very uncertain about whether or not I should even bother answering them, but the “answer everything you can” part of my mind eventually won over the “avoid political topics” part.  It was all in the spirit of comedy, but, as I should’ve expected, it became more hateful than funny, so I’d say I’ve learned my lesson now.

(Previous Letter)

Dear Ethan Starbright,

..................................................Pff...

PAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Okay, I’m not sure why, but the utter randomness of that fact cracked me up for some reason.  Thanks for that.

Dear Ethan Starbright,

.............

.....I don’t get it.

(Previous Letter)

Dear 55,

Glad to hear it!  The Ace Attorney series is good at revealing the plot at just the right pace to keep you guessing about who the culprit is and/or what the motive for their crime was, but it’s just as entertaining to see Phoenix and company find the truth for themselves, even if you already happen to know some of it yourself.

Plot-wise, my favorite game was Trials and Tribulations, mostly because of how cleverly it jumped from one timeline (and main character) to another.  Throughout the game, we get to learn more about the events of the past and how they relate to the present day situation -- Mia’s first encounter with Phoenix, Godot’s true identity and history, how Winston Payne lost his hair, and so on, and every tiny bit of it makes the game more intriguing.  My favorite part was Iris’s confession about what she did for Phoenix near the end.  I’d love to see Hollywood try and come up with anything as beautifully touching as that.

It’s been a little while since I listened to the soundtracks from any of the trilogy games, but I think my favorite one comes from the first game, since it’s the most memorable for me.  I sure didn’t expect to hear those kind of fast and engaging tunes in a game about a lawyer, did you?  The other soundtracks are great too, of course, but the songs from the first game (especially the cross-examination theme) are the most fun for me to remember.

Dear Anonymous,

That’s actually happened a few times before.  I remember one letter were Maya claimed she’d never been out of the country even though PLvsAA is canon in this blog, and there was another where Apollo sounded skeptical about spirit channeling, even though he’d been born in the land of spirit mediums.  Chances are we’ll have to delete letters that point out contradictions like that, but we’ll try our best to answer them if possible.  There’s no way to tell what Capcom will come up with next, but that won’t stop us from making guesses about it in the meantime.

Dear Anonymous,

If something changes in the canon that isn’t reflected in a previous letter, it’s not important. Previous means not in the moment. Not in the moment means no one will notice unless they go far back enough. And if they comment on stuff that happened a while ago, they... no offence, kinda need a hobby.

Dear Professor Oak,

Yes.

Dear Professor Oak,

No.

(Referenced Letter)

Dear Lachtigall,

Sorry to hear that, but hey, at least they picked a different character for the idea, so your letter will still get an answer.  We both answer whatever letters we find regardless of which character they’re written to, but in answer to your question about who answered that letter...

Just kidding, it was me.

Dear guquis,

That should be fine if you’re willing to wait that long.  Just make sure to indicate that in your letter.

Dear guquis,

if you want your letter to be on a specific date, specify it somehow. And also specify if you want that info blurred so it’s not obvious. It’ll be easier for us that way.

(Previous Letter)

Dear Ender,

It wasn’t intended to look scary in any way, but whatever floats your boat.  I thought she looked kind of cute like that, actually.

Dear Ender,

Trust me, neither of them are contenders in the scary contest anymore. Have you ever met Robert? THAT, sir, is scary.

Dear SC,

ComEVENo, huh?  That almost sounds like a Native American name.

I’ve finally finished watching Hotel Dusk, but I’ll save my reaction to it for last so I can go into full detail under the cut.  That’s how much I enjoyed it.

My favorite cross-examination theme is from AJ, believe it or not.  I love how it starts out slow and mysterious, then picks up speed and volume when Apollo’s about to discover a big truth.  It’s also nice how the melody begins on the offbeat.  It almost makes me want to dance to it.

I hadn’t thought much about which cross-examination I like best, but I’d probably go with the final confrontation with Furio Tigre.  While bluffing is nothing new for Phoenix, it was fun watching him use the supposedly useless evidence that Gumshoe gave him to give his doppelganger a taste of his own medicine.  It was one of those moments where I had no idea what his strategy was until Furio opened his huge mouth.  After that, it became an “Ooooooh...” kind of moment.

I’d love to see that case ranking you’ve made.  Every case has its ups and downs, but it’s fun to explore just what it is about each one that makes it memorable and...odd.  Let’s be honest, they all have at least a tiny bit of oddness added in somewhere, am I right?

-Modthorne and Co-Mod

(Hotel Dusk spoilers below)

Oh, man..........oh, MAN!!

Seriously, I can’t remember the last time a game’s story left me this satisfied from beginning to end.  To be fair, I just watched a playthrough of it on YouTube, so I might have avoided some potential frustration by not playing it myself, but man...  I can tell the developers put some serious heart into that game.  The music was delightful, the characters were all very charming, the art and animation style were done in a clever way, and the plot...  Man, oh, man.

First of all, there’s the setup: Kyle’s goal in visiting Hotel Dusk (aside from getting a delivery) is established from the very beginning -- finding his former police partner and figuring out why he turned rogue and forced him to nearly kill him.  Oddly enough, he has no real proof that visiting the hotel will lead him any closer to finding him -- all he has is a hunch.

Then there’s the way he goes about gathering information.  Even as a retired cop, his detective instincts are still keen, and by snooping around the hotel (with some help from his “old buddy” Louis), solving a few puzzles, and asking the right people the right questions, he not only gains tidbits of information about Bradley, but also learns the secrets of the hotel’s residents, and how they and their stories are interconnected.  And boy, did some of those connections surprise me.

But here’s what I loved most about the gameplay (and the entire game) -- in order to get the information he needs out of people, he first has to break them down to the point where they not only can’t hide the truth, but they realize how useless it is to keep lying to themselves.  In fact, Kyle said it perfectly himself during one of these confrontations:

Whether it’s pressuring a pretend author to admit to his plagiarism, telling the spoiled son of a lawyer how dangerous his revenge scheme is, or convincing a drunk father to appreciate what he still has -- namely, his daughter -- Kyle just won’t put up with lies, even if he has to sound like the rudest person on Earth to dispel every last one of them...and he doesn’t even need the help of a Magatama!

Like every game, of course, this one isn’t without its faults -- the interactive parts are short, there’s very little challenge in picking the right dialogue options (usually just whichever is less annoying), and the language, while not terrible, could’ve been left out -- but the charm of the story and its characters more than makes up for it.  Speaking of the story, it seems I was a little off on most of the predictions I made, but at least I was right about Melissa.  She didn’t disappoint at being adorable one bit.

Oh, and one more thing -- if anyone reading this feels like playing or watching this game, which I highly recommend, be prepared for your jaw to drop at the very end.  It’s that incredible.

And with that, my gushing about this game is over.  Thank you for suggesting it, SC!

[lunargrrrl]

Life is Perfect - Life is Strange/Pitch Perfect AU

So, seeing as I’m currently waiting to register for both FanFic.net and AO3, I thought I’d post a quick preview of my first chapter (still some more to do) of the fic here. First fic I’ve written in MANY years so I am welcoming feedback with open arms!

Set in Acadia Bay (Aca-dia, get it?!), Beca Mitchell attends Barden Academy and longs for something more in life.

PP’s Beca Mitchell is essentially Chloe Price

PP’s Chloe Beale is essentially Rachel Amber

PP’s Aubrey Posen is essentially Victoria Chase

PP’s Jesse Swanson is essentially Eliot etc

I wrote this because both AmberPrice and Bechloe make me emotional. Plenty of fluff/angst/all the good stuff. This particular part is essentially Episode 1 from Life is Strange: Before the Storm, with some different takes on things/Beca Mitchell’s personality mixed with Chloe Price’s from Life is Strange etc.  For PP fans not familiar with Life is Strange: Before the Storm, it is an incredible game and I cannot recommend it enough. 100% recommend for the gameplay, emotions, and all the gay feels. You can watch a playthrough of Episode 1 on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6uCVUC7XCE Hopefully/maybe you’ll see the Beca Mitchell in Chloe Price and the Chloe Beale in Rachel Amber etc just like I did. TW: Alcohol/violence

Chapter 1: “I once said I was better off just being dead/but I didn’t know you yet”

The cool evening air whipped its way through her hair as Beca Mitchell put her hands in her pockets and left her front yard. It was April in Acadia Bay, and the Oregon evenings still got pretty cold. She didn’t care though; all that she cared about right now was that she was finally going to get to see Firewalk live. The music, the crowd, the atmosphere; Beca lived for music; and live music was one of the best things in the world. Her mom had called after her from the kitchen as she left the house; something about curfew and not being back too late. Beca didn’t care about that either. She’d found out about this “secret” gig online last minute and there was no way in hell she was going to miss it. No good bands ever seemed to roll up to Acadia Bay; just one of the many reasons Beca was determined to get out of there as soon as she could. Acadia Bay didn’t have anything to offer, and she felt like she didn’t have anything else to give in return. She missed her best friend (who had left for greener, more northern pastures 2 years earlier) and most of all, she missed her dad. Beca Mitchell was done with this town. The people, the lack of anything to do, Barden Academy... The gig tonight was going to be a brief escape. Firewalk were playing at the Old Mill; an abandoned building a bit outside of town where the only real way to get there was to follow the train tracks. Twigs crunched beneath her scuffed boots as the sky grew darker and the buildings became fewer. Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she knew it was either one of two people; her mom asking her when she was going to be home or her friend/kind-of-ex Jesse who seemed to text her every hour of every day. Beca and Jesse both enjoyed the same music and that was around about where Beca’s interest in him came to an end. That, and he was probably one of the only guys in Acadia Bay that didn’t make her want to immediately projectile vomit. They had fooled around together in the past and there was no doubt that Jesse was definitely still into Beca. It had been fun at the time and it was a good way for Beca to “test the waters” as such. From now on though, she was determined to try to keep him out of her pants. The only problem was, he was the only one that ever seemed to talk to her or have time for her. She did enjoy talking to him at times, mostly jabbing fun at his nerdish ways or bonding over music. She longed for something more than that though. She longed for someone more. Beca spent lunchtimes at Barden alone with her music blasting through her headphones and she could easily go a whole day without speaking to another student. She made exceptions for calling people out on their bullshit though, and she had no trouble sticking up for herself when the popular students made her feel like a freak; namely, queen bee Aubrey Posen and her followers Jessica and Ashley who worshipped the ground she walked on. Beca tried not to think much of it though as she knew girls like Aubrey picked on other students for one reason only; everyone (including Aubrey) wanted to be Chloe Beale. Well, either be her or be with her. Chloe was beautiful, mysterious, and popular. She excelled in every class and above all, she was a genuinely nice human being who was kind to every single person. Not that she’d ever had a chance to be nice to Beca that is; Beca made sure to walk with her headphones in to avoid human interaction at any cost. Even if people were supposedly amazing and nice and friendly just like Chloe Beale, who’s to say that one day they won’t just abandon you? Or mistreat you? Or disappear without a reason? Just like her dad and her old best friend did.   Her feet began to ache as she walked along the train tracks and the sky above her was fully dark now, but she could finally see some lights and hear the low hum of a hard and fast punk bass line which made Beca’s heart beat faster. She jogged forward and jumped over an old fence that definitely had some kind of “no trespassing” warning sign on it. She was finally there. There was a bonfire outside along with cars, bikes, and some rusty machinery. Two guys were fighting next to an RV and she heard glass smashing in the distance. Sketchy dudes hung around smoking outside and she saw a young drunk guy almost fall down the steps to the mill. “Shit...” Beca’s heart sunk. There was a bouncer by the door who had already seen her walking towards the place. “Isn’t it past your bedtime girl?” The towering bouncer called out to her and rolled his eyes. “Bedtime? There’s no bedtime when Firewalk are playing in my town. You’ve got to let me in, dude.” Beca tried to play it as cool as she possibly could, but she had no idea how she was going to make this work since she wasn’t 21 yet and she kind of looked like a teenage boy with long hair (Aubrey’s words) at the best of times. “Stop being cute and just split.” The bouncer crossed his arms and sighed at her. “I don’t do cute.” Being called cute was the last thing Beca needed right now; it added to her annoyance of not being able to see Firewalk. “I’ve been following this band for ages and I can handle myself. You’re an idiot for wasting your time guarding this place instead of seeing the band.”

“Look kid, I can’t protect you in there. Anything happens to you? It’s on me. I’m surprised the cops haven’t turned up to shut this thing down already.” The bouncer took a drag from his cigarette. “I don’t need looking after,” Beca started to square up to him; the situation right now probably looking ridiculous as the huge bouncer towered over her tiny self. “The only one that will need looking after is YOU if you don’t let me in there...like... right now.” She cringed at herself. Hard. But to her surprise, the bouncer stopped for a moment before laughing. Hard. “For real? Oh man, that’s the best thing I’ve heard all night.” He stepped back. “You’re alright kid. Go in. Knock yourself out... before you knock me out” He laughed and shook his head. Beca couldn’t believe her luck, but she wasn’t about to question it any time soon. She sauntered past him, impressed with herself and more pumped than ever. The air inside was hazy from cigarette smoke and the smell of beer engulfed her nostrils. Taking a beer from the ice bucket in the corner, she eyed up the place and saw the entrance to where the band was playing. Just as she was about to walk through the door to the main room, she was knocked backwards by a drunk guy moshing and she fell into someone behind her holding a beer. It spilt all over him. “Fuck...” Beca stepped back in surprise.

At first, the guy looked angry, looking at his friend and then back at Beca. He was tall, skinny, and stank of alcohol. 

“Hey hey... looks like you bumped into me little lady.” The two guys sneered at her. “Yep. My bad dude.” “You don’t know who I am, do you?” The skeevy guy blew cigarette smoke in her face.

“Nope. Don’t care either.” Beca pushed past them and away from the moshing crowd. She had a feeling it was best to get away from these guys ASAP, and it wasn’t as if her short ass could see anything from the back of the crowd anyway. 

“Let me know how that works out for you!” The mad dude with the beer called after her. She ignored him. “Bitch!”

She shrugged them off; there were more important matters at stake. She had a much better idea. She turned to walk up the wooden stairs in the corner of the building which led to the roof and rafters of the Old Mill above the crowd; she was about to get the best seat in the house. The previous song finished and the drum roll began of her favourite Firewalk song ever. She ran forward to the edge of the rotting floorboards on the top floor and looked down below at the stage. Lights flashed and the amplifiers were set to full; Beca was in heaven. She hung her legs over the edge and nodded her head to the music; letting it fill her ears and her veins with everything she loved. Beca cracked open the beer and savoured the taste as the cold liquid ran down her throat. She leant back and lay down to take it in the music fully. She closed her eyes.

“You spilled my beer, bitch.”

Beca frowned, seeing the two guys from downstairs standing over her demonically. Was this dude for real? There was no way her Firewalk experience was going to be interrupted for this. He followed her up here to start on her AGAIN about his stupid beer?

“You should be more careful, it’s a rough place.” Beca got up and crossed her arms at him. There was no way she had time for assholes like this. Not tonight.

“I don’t like your attitude.” The gross guy squared up to Beca, looking down at her.

“You don’t like my attitude?” Beca questioned him. “Then why don’t I show you how much it pisses me off when assholes like you get butthurt over a spilled beer...”

His friend nudged him. “I think she’s calling you out, dude.”

“She’s going to regret this. Every. Word.” He squared up closer to Beca, waving a skinny finger in her face. “I’m going to teach this little punk some manners.”

Beca started to panic; realising that behind her was the edge of the old wooden floorboards from where the top floor had fallen in. If he kept going, she’d fall down from quite a height and she could really do with that like, NOT happening right now.  Her heart raced.

“I’m serious man.” Beca panicked. “I really don’t wanna get angry. It won’t be pretty either... it won’t...” She backed up further, glancing behind her; very aware of how quickly the ledge was approaching.

He lifted his beer bottle and smashed it on the pillar in front of her.

Her breath hitched.

He grabbed her arm.

He held the razor-sharp broken bottle in front of her.

“Hey! Dickhead!”

The guy looked behind at the unknown voice who had shouted at him. He was distracted and now was Beca’s chance. She remembered the beer she’d been drinking was still in her hand, and strengthened her grip around it. Taking a deep breath, she swung it hard enough to knock it to his head and for him to let go of her arm. He fell to the floor. Before she could run, his friend swung a punch at her and got her right in the eye. Pain seared to her face but she didn’t care. She ran for it, covering her eye and bumping into the voice which had caused the distraction in the first place.

Beca uncovered her eye to look at her saviour. Bright blue eyes were looking right back at her with concern; her eye make-up fierce and her red hair tied up into a quiff and high ponytail. She was wearing almost all black, except for a single bright blue feather earring in her left ear which matched her eyes uncannily. Her jacket was killer, with amazing boots to match. That’s when she realised.

“Chloe?!”

Chloe looked at Beca then back at the guys. The dude Beca had knocked to the floor had started to get up.

“Come on!” Chloe grabbed Beca’s hand and began leading her down the steps. Chloe blew a sarcastic kiss to the guys who started on Beca, pulling her away with a purpose. Beca also went to blow them a kiss; giving them the middle finger instead.

What was happening right now? Was this real? Had Beca actually been knocked out by the skeevy dude earlier? Did she have a concussion? Was Chloe Beale actually at a Firewalk concert? Was she really been saved and swept away by Chloe Beale right now?

Before she knew it, she was downstairs in the mill and being led through the crowd by Chloe; their hands entwined. Chloe manoeuvred in and out of people, finally stopping and pulling Beca forwards when she was right at the front of the crowd. The band were right there in front of them on stage; loud, heavy music filled her ears and the buzz was so intense that it was almost overwhelming. She looked at Chloe who was jumping up and down and shouting the lyrics.

She couldn’t take her eyes off her.

[the-mf-bread-babies]

29/5/20

– REBUILD III –

= RUNAWAY RENEGADES =

· COLLECTION I ·

“backstories”

– VOLUME ONE–

“Dennis, Aaron, Damon, Sawblade”

· PART TWO ·

———————————————————

“Hm? Yeah. Look at Twitter, dude, it's trending,” Damon replied casually as the two quickly pulled out their phones. “What? It's not– oh, it changed,” Aaron stated, “It was normal, then it refreshed, and now I have over twenty notifications and DMs. Sorry, Denny,” Dennis narrowed his eyes at his husband. “I literally gave you that raccoon video last night. I know you didn't look at it,” he pointed out, petty. “How was I supposed to kn–” he argued, before Damon cut it off.

“So are you guys having the apocalypse Twitter now or what?” he asked, interrupted their quarrel. “Oh, I never update mine so I can still have the square icons and stuff,” “I'm just getting normal stuff right now; cat videos, ads, recipe videos, the occasional out of context fandom drama and discourse. The usual,” Dennis confessed. “Like, ever? Never updated it? You don't have lights out mode?” Damon asked, trying to understand this man's level of dedication for square icons. “Yup. Minecraft's square, which is nice,” he replied, smiling honestly. “Okay…” Damon processed.

“Oh, like, she really stabbed him. Like, with a knife. Like, to death,” Aaron said, bringing them back to the current conversation about apocalypse Twitter. “Hm? Oh, yeah, that. The dude, like, died, and stuff; F,” Damon said respectfully. “Chrissy Teigen bought rights to a nuke…” Aaron added. “And Hatsune Miku is leading a protest. Good for her,” He scrolled through his timeline. Dennis made a sad face. “Why's my feed so boring…” “I'm getting hockey spoilers. HOCKEY,”

“Maybe if you had circle icons…” Damon suggested quietly. “SQUARE ICONS ARE GOOD, DUDE, AND I–” Dennis's passionate and tenacious yelling was suddenly interrupted by an inhuman growl. “Oh, stupid cannibal rats. This isn't New York, goddamn it,” Aaron grumbled as he grabbed a broom and walked angrily towards the noise. “This is why stray cats are important, you dumbass mayor,” “Just friggin’, spay and neuter ‘em if you hate them so much, clip their ears and shit…”

“So, about Borderlands. Which one’re you playing?” Dennis said as they both waited for Aaron to investigate. “TWO!! I'M PLAYING BORDERLANDS 2, ON MY THIRD ULTIMATE VAULT HUNTER MODE PLAYTHROUGH, AND ALSO THE PRE-SEQUEL, AND I'M PLANNING TO BUY BORDERLANDS 3 WHEN THERE'S A GOOD SALE LATER!!!! I LOVE BORDERLANDS!!!” Damon explained excitedly.

“I wanted to buy the legendary collection on my Switch, but I… panicked and bought Animal Crossing instead. I have Raymond on my island, by the way,” Dennis said sadly. “I built a cage around his house the other day,” Damon stared sadly at this man, understanding his complicated dilemma. “That's very nice,” he said, “how does your island look like?” Damon leaned against the wall, holding Sawblade, who was now sleeping. “Bad,” the man replied, looking down in shame.

Aaron, on the other hand, was whacking the living hell out of the ground, determined to find the creature. “Wait, I probably shouldn't scare it off or something,” He realized, calmly holding the broom. “C'mere, lil guy,” he repeated as he whistled. Another odd growl echoed in the alleyway, sounding much closer than the previous one. “Hm,” Aaron thought as he stopped walking for a bit, unsure whether to call the two over or to keep going alone. “DENNIS! DAMON!” he yelled, extremely scared of whatever monster was luring him over. “Yeah, I have Graham, he's just ok–” Dennis conversed. “Aaron?! Did you find it?” He shouted.

* CHAPTER TWO *

The Mystery

“COME OVER HERE!!” Aaron yelled back. “What about Sawblade?” Damon worriedly asked. “SAW– Uh, just– just put her in the back, there's some food, water, litter boxes, toys, treats, ghosts, cable,” Dennis listed down as he carefully took her from the boy and carried her to the back room. “Well, basically, it's for cats,” He said as he closed the door. “Alright, let's go,”

As Aaron was waiting patiently for the two to follow, he took out his phone and browsed through a shopping app. Unsurprisingly, this had also changed. The feed was filled with knives, jackets, concrete powder, more knives, advertisements for people looking for commissions, and… snacks. “Oh, apocalypse stuff, huh?” he mumbled as he eyed the “Food” tab, tapping it, eager to know what apocalypse snacks are like. Hopefully not like, chips made out of gasoline or something.

Wow.

WOW .

“Tubby custard, Cookie Monster cookies, Why Does Anime Food Look So Tasty, Hottie's Microwaved Chicken, Salad Fingers’ Salad Fingers, ACTUAL rice fried by chickens, Lembas bread, and–”

“Zeruel meat, $20”

Aaron hastily pressed the “Add to Cart” button, uncaring if it's a scam or not. He continued browsing all the snacks sold in this new world, forgetting what he was doing before until Dennis and Damon came running into the alley. “YOU OKAY?!” Dennis yelled, the surprise of it giving his husband a flinch. “Yeah, honey, do you want to drink the blue milk from Star Wars?” Aaron said calmly. “Is Aunt Beru there?” Dennis asked, casually placing his head on his husband's shoulder to look at the phone screen, his arms wrapped around his neck, but like, in a loving and non-strangling way, you know how, placing a kiss onto his cheek.

“Hey guys, I have bread at my house. It expires tomorrow, so I'd recommend eating it if you want :)” Damon suggested. However, his voice was too quiet for them to hear it and they continued doing gross couple stuff like holding hands and premarital eye contact. Ew. “Now about that cannibal rat…” Dennis retracted his arms from around Aaron's neck, his hand still lightly wrapped around the other’s shoulder. He placed himself in front of the shorter man, close enough for Aaron to smell his stinky-ass breath that reeked of ranch dressing. Dennis smiled softly, waiting for an answer. “cannibal what now” Damon asked to himself.

“That can wait,” Aaron replied, his arms slowly wrapping around Dennis. “I dunno, guys, what if you're kissing and stuff, and then we all die or something,” Damon interrupted the couple's flirting. “When the hell did you– Uh, yeah, okay, let's, um, take care of that first,” Aaron said, only now noticing the boy's presence. “Hell yeah! Let's kill some rats!” Dennis yelled exuberantly. “Capture, Denny, don't kill anything,” Aaron corrected. “That's literally the first thing I taught you about the pet shop thing, honey,” Dennis looked down in shame and disappointment.

The trio went further into the alleyway, staying close to each other in case anything happened. “Wouldn't it be funny as hell if, like, it turned out to be a fridge or something?” Damon asked. “And the fridge was full of killer snails,” Dennis added sarcastically. “Killer snails are scary, you guys don't understand,” Aaron said angrily, “Just imagine sitting at the beach and some bitch-ass cone snail runs straight at you and you die right there on the spot. That's scary as hell,” he explained. “Run. A snail. That would take five months,” Dennis questioned his co-worker, “Babe, for a vet, you have really weird and specific and unrealistic fears,”

“It's because–” Aaron argued back, his sentence cut off with another growl, this time coming from the wall on his left. “A fridge, guys, a fridge,” Damon assured. “Nah, it's a zombie bear,” Dennis said, smirking. Aaron looked around for a door, or a window, so he could investigate. “Aliens, guys, aliens,” he mumbled, finding a foggy window. “Aha!” Aaron yelled as he turned on the flashlight on his phone. “So, Damon says it's a fridge, Denny says it's killer snails and zombie bears, and I said it's an alien, right?” Aaron said smugly, knowing his vague theory is way more likely than their guesses.

He directed the light through the window, its light revealing the inside of the building. It was dusty and empty, probably built as a store room. Or a weird cult place. “Well, that's that,” Dennis said, disappointed in the truth. “Cobwebs, huh? We're all wrong, then,” Damon said sadly. “ALIEN cobwebs!! I'm right, suckers!” Aaron yelled enthusiastically.

“You sure about that? Could be normal ones. Only way to find out is to go in… ;)” Dennis said, taunting the others. “Really? We wanna know that? They're clearly aliens. Not fridges…” Damon asked, looking down. “Suuuure, man. But y’know, it could be zombie bear fridges in those cobwebs… We could be right, and Aaron's wrong…” Dennis suggested. “So, honey, if you wanna make sure you're right…” Aaron scrunched up his face in offence. “I am. Do zombie bear fridges not sound alien to you.”

“Yeah, but… Florida probably has that, yeah?” Dennis said, angering Aaron more. “You think I'm gonna rush in there to prove that I'm right? You think I'm that dumb. Den, babe, I won't go in there,” Aaron asserted. While the two was arguing, Damon, bored, just walked around them in circles. As he was dragging his feet blindly, he accidentally stepped on something hidden under dried leaves, sinking it down. “SECRET DOOR!” he yelled out excitedly.

Damon kicked apart the leaves from each other, uncovering the part of the ground. “Who the hell puts a button here?” he questioned. “Oh, what the–” the ground shook, a piece of it falling down, revealing a staircase. It was carved from stone and it looked straight out of a history book. “Uh… should we go back, or?” Dennis said, weirded out by it. “Homestuck says we shouldn't trust stairs, so,” he added. “Karkalicious, definition: Makes Terezi loco,” Damon sung. “She wants to taste something something photo, dyin’ just to know the flavour, I ain't doin’ HER NO FAVOURS, no reason just season fresh and comes and goes like seizures, I'm Karkalicious,” he mumbled. “What the fuck?” Aaron whispered.

The three stood in front of the staircase, unsure what to do. Aaron was gripping a broom, while Dennis and Damon considered making a quick pit stop at the pet shop.

* CHAPTER THREE *

The Pit Stop at the Pet Shop

Dennis had made the decision to go back to get some tools to help them, and Aaron and Damon waited in the alley.

“So, you wanna look at the stuff they're selling here?” Aaron asked, passing the time. “Sure, why not?” Damon agreed as he peeked at his new friend's phone. “Alright, what're we gonna browse? There's video games, food, clothes, weapons…” “VIDEO GAMES!!” he shouted happily. “Okay…” Aaron said as he clicked a tab.

“Doom Crossing: Eternal Horizon Solid III Dawn”

“Borderlands: The Pre-Threequel – Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Apology Video ft. Tiny Tina: The DLC”

“Overwatch 2: Please Buy This Game – $3 Super Duper Legendary Deluxe Origins Edition”

“Gun Shooting War Tanks Rockets Missiles VR Simulator 46”

“Low-Poly Art Game with Hidden Metaphors”

“Gritty Old White Men Who Are Detailed And Angry 3: This Time There's More Pores”

“Not-Subtle-At-All Metaphor for Society and Politics, As Told By A Cishet White Man, Ultra 4K HD”

“Racing But Very High Quality and Immersive and Also Like $80”

“Ah. This is basically the same.” Damon stated sadly. “Wait, what about this?” Aaron pointed to a familiar video game. “Angry Birds Seasons,” it read. They both began to cry out of nostalgia. “Maybe this world isn't so bad after all…” Damon said gratefully as Aaron downloaded the game.

Meanwhile, Dennis struggled to carry an assembled cat cage, a carrier, a bottle of water, a ball, dog toys, flea shampoo, gloves, cat and dog treats, cat and dog food, and a partridge in a pear tree at the same time. Somehow, he did, and he wobbled over to his husband and the kid, his vision completely blinded by everything he carried. “Man… Aaron's gonna be so… impressed when he sees this. I'm so friggin’… strong…” He whispered to himself as he panted.

“Holy shit, it's Angry Birds, dude,” Damon said happily. “Rock, paper, scissors, whoever wins plays,” Aaron suggested. “Nah, you go first. I'm not really sure if this is the Angry Birds Seasons normally in our world or if it's some weird clone of it.” Damon said, scratching his head. “Wonder what's Sawblade doing,”

As the sound of dry food rattling and a cat cage being dragged across the street grew louder, Aaron excitedly went to help his husband, who immediately fell on his back in tiredness at the sight of him. “Carry,” Dennis panted, closing his eyes and probably about to take a nap. “Why'd you bring toys and treats?” Aaron asked honestly. “Just in case the little guy's angry,” Dennis explained badly. “It could be a zombie or whatever, you know… I'm pretty sure that growl didn't come from an ‘angry little guy,’ dude,” Damon argued.

“Well, okay. Who's going down first?” Aaron asked, making a face that was a combination of scared and taunting. “Uh, I'm like, a minor, and could die, so it's kind of illegal if I go first. Like, I'm all endangered and stuff. Yeah,” Damon stated. “I have scoliosis,” Dennis blurted out, giving Aaron puppy dog eyes. “I could trip and fall and die,” he added, nodding slowly while still maintaining eye contact. “I ate a doughnut for breakfast today, so I'm pretty full; if I go first, I'll just slow you guys down,” Aaron said. “Wolves do that. The slowest and oldest ones go in front so they don't get left behind,” Dennis replied with a smile. “Uh, my leg hurts a lot, I can't go downstairs,” Aaron added. “How about you roll down? It's a much more fun solution :)” Damon replied back, really not wanting to be the first one.

“Fine, we'll do rock paper scissors, then,” Dennis suggested impatiently. “There's three of us, it'll probably take a long time,” Aaron said, tilting his head and looking away from his husband's demanding glare. “Oh, lat tali lat,” Damon said casually, confusing the two. “Huh?” “Shooooot. Um, well basically, where I'm from, there's this game where it's like rock paper scissors, but it's for more than two people,” Damon explained in a very complicated manner, clearly wanting the situation to drag on longer.

After explaining how the game works, the trio finally came to a conclusion on the sequence they enter in– first, Dennis, then Damon, and Aaron behind them. “Oh. So who's carrying the luggage?” Dennis asked to Damon and Aaron. “Do we really need to bring that big ass cage?” Aaron asked. “Like, how the hell are we supposed to bring it down there? Just kick it downstairs and run?” Dennis thought for a bit. “Um, yeah.” “Oh, good idea, you can check for traps and stuff,” Damon agreed.

“A: What about the food? What if this alien–”

“D: No one said it was an alien except for you.”

“A: Fine, this zombie bear–”

“d: – Killer snails in fridges,”

“A: THIS THING, THIS ALIEN THING,”

“D: Ok”

“A: You think it eats kibbles? Little seafood delight kibbles?”

“D: Uh…”

“A: Maybe some of those chicken flavored ones?”

“D: I guess…”

“A: Huh?”

“d: Yeah, why'd you bring dry food?”

“D: Because if I brought wet food, I'd have to bring a plate and stuff.”

“A: Or, you know, just serve it in the can it was in,”

“D: What if it hates the texture or whatever?”

“Aliens probably like crunchy food better.”

“I like crunchy food better than… like, mashed-up meat drenched in some weird liquid. Aliens are like that too.”

“d: Good point, dude,”

“A: Hm. Yeah, can't disagree with that, man.”

“D: See? This is because I was kin with Megamind back in middle school,”

“A: That– okay.”

“D: Yeah. Take that, bitch.”

“Hell yeah.”

“d: So Megamind likes catnip too? We're bringing catnip downstairs?”

“D: That's to make him all chill and stuff.”

“A: Chew toys? Bouncy balls?”

“D: That's if there's guard dogs.”

“d: Oh, and the crab treats are for Jessica, only child, Illinois, Chicago?”

“D: Yeah…”

“A: You really brought everything from the shop, huh?”

“D: Yup! Except cat beds, leashes, collars, custom collars, microchip trackers, heat lamps, cat litter, litter boxes…”

“A: Okay, well just enough for this, then,”

“D: Yeah!”

“d: What if they're lizards, and they're too cold?”

“D: … Shiiiit.”

“A: Aliens aren't– Oh damn, you're right,”

“d: Well, let's just hope I'm not,”

“I don't want them to shit everywhere or whatever, man.”

“D: What.”

“d: This one time in kindergarten, my teacher brought in her iguana and it was shitting all over my desk. My poor, poor, desk.”

“A: Um? How?”

“d: I dunno. Just did. Like, splat, bitch, fuck you,”

“Wait, oops, sorry,”

“D: That's very sad.”

“d: Yeah. Thanks,”

“…”

“d: So are we going in or what?”

“D: No”

“A: dennis.”

“D: do i still have to be first”

“d: DUH”

“D: FIIIIINE OKKKAAAAAY”

“D: this is like that one anime with the big guys”

“the one thats pretty racist”

The three finally went downstairs in the order they agreed upon, and their discovery will be told…

In the next part.

—

still reading this? loser

—

??????? go do smth else

—

...

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helloooo get outtttt

—

hey? you're reading this?

hisoillu is fucking canon

and Fuck parigings. if future me is reading this i really hope ur not pouring your heart out for the rat and the pig men. Really , Dude , Really .

nah jk if they g/y , they ok

unless its weird.

n e ways next part coming soon ,

uhhhh written by rocco wulfram cyaaaa

[entergamingxp]

Streets of Rage 4 Review — The Streets Don’t Change

April 29, 2020 11:00 AM EST

Streets of Rage 4 is a great continuation of the classic series, though it doesn’t do anything revolutionary.

The name Streets of Rage is a calling card back to the early days of video games. They’re days that I wasn’t around for, but from experiences in my own arcades, I understand; people lining up at a cabinet, crowding around someone who’s made it further into the game than anyone else. More than anything, Streets of Rage carries a legacy.

With Streets of Rage 4, that legacy continues in a polished, modernized fashion, although that only goes skin deep. Streets of Rage 4 looks, feels, and plays like an old school beat-em-up, for better and worse, and there’s a lot of worse. And although you can’t go wrong with the classic, heart-pumping action that comes out of a brawler like this, there are some issues that prevent it from being anything but just another entry in the series.

Pure, Aged, ’90s Cheesiness

It should be no surprise that playing through Streets of Rage 4 is something that requires a minimal amount of attention. You don’t really need to know what’s going on to have a pleasant time with the game, although playing the past titles will grant some additional context. The game’s story is chock full of throw-backs to old characters, and even brings some back to fight again.

However, since it’s in the game, I feel the need to talk about it. The story of Streets of Rage 4 is nonsensical, poorly written, and serves only to direct the player towards the next level. The cast of characters transport from one backdrop to the next, ready to beat up baddies all over again.

That said, the story isn’t all that integral to the game. If there was an attempt at building characters, having some kind of sub-plots or arcs, I would say the opposite. Instead, the game’s story is strictly utilitarian, and it does its job decently. There were times however when Streets of Rage 4 seemed like it wanted its story to do more. Nearing the end of the game, with tensions rising and fights against final bosses coming up, I actually began to get invested. That feeling ended after the final boss fight when the game promptly rolls credits before you can even think another cutscene will happen.

“Streets of Rage 4 looks, feels, and plays like an old school beat-em-up, for better and worse, and there’s a lot of worse.”

One thing I can’t ignore is a distinct lack of voice acting throughout the game. In between the game’s story levels are cutscenes in which the characters figure out their next move and yell at their enemies. It’s very much written like a cheesy ’90s action movie, which had me laughing a lot of the time. But every time I would see a line pop up on the screen, all I could think about was how much the game would benefit from equally cheesy voice acting. Not only would it lend a bit more life to the otherwise lifeless cast, but it’d also be hilarious.

Thankfully, letdowns in the game’s story didn’t continue over to its other non-gameplay aspects. Streets of Rage 4 is the best-looking and sounding brawler I’ve played to date. Considering that Streets of Rage 3 released in 1994, it’s not that hard to imagine its sequel looks much better. Characters are beautifully animated, and attack animations aren’t just visually impressive: they carry weight. When you throw an enemy into the ground, it’s guaranteed to look like they just broke a rib.

I also have to mention this game’s soundtrack. Every level has its own themed track, as do boss battles, and nearly every single one will leave you bobbing your head. Its retro-style synth is a great callback, while electronic tones and drums bring Streets of Rage 4’s OST into the modern age. I would personally be shocked if at least four of the tracks in this title don’t end up in a gaming playlist on Spotify.

Bringing The Beatdown

Like I said before, the story of Streets of Rage 4 is only a vehicle to take the game’s characters to new venues where they beat the snot out of baddies. Thankfully, that part of the game is well-executed and brings plenty of fun to the table. That’s not to say it’s not lacking in some departments, though.

Combat in Streets of Rage 4 is just like combat in any other 2D brawler. You go up to someone, hit the button to attack them, maybe sometimes pull out a special, and boom they’re dead, cue the “Go Right” indicator. The game doesn’t mess with that formula much, although it did change up how special attacks work. In other brawlers, using a special attack results in some lost HP. That’s not the case in Streets of Rage 4; instead, health is temporarily taken away. You can earn it back by beating on opponents, but if you’re hit once, you’ve lost a chunk of HP rather than a sliver. It’s a great mechanic that rewards players for playing well rather than punishing them for using a powerful move.

Where Streets of Rage 4 shines is in its multiplayer. I played halfway through the game solo before running back the whole story again with a partner. Suffice to say, the game is much more fun with another fighter on your side, especially in the later levels when fights get drastically more challenging. I’m not the best at beat-em-ups, but even by level four, I was having a hard time getting to a boss solo, let alone reaching them. Playing with a partner, on the other hand, presents a rewarding yet challenging time in the game, and once we turned friendly-fire off, we were popping off to 80-hit combos.

“Suffice to say, the game is much more fun with another fighter on your side, especially in the later levels when fights get drastically more challenging.”

If you’re a fan of Streets of Rage, you know that there’s a decent cast of characters to play as, and in this title, that trend continues. The game presents you with 5 different characters, all with their own move sets and quirks. Each character has the same basics, but an extremely strange decision was made with a majority of the cast – they can’t run. Out of the five character cast, three are punished with only being able to walk. That makes them easy targets for groups of enemies, and impossible to dodge with. Not to mention, it’s not exciting seeing your character walk in the middle of a fight. Cherry and Adam are the characters to play as, since they have more mobility than the rest. For a game like this, I really don’t want to recommend playing as certain characters – some shouldn’t be any more or less viable than the others. That being said, I’m not sure if I could beat the game playing as Axel, Floyd, or Blaze.

Eventually, another mobility issue came up in the form of vertical movement. Naturally, you can jump horizontally, but being limited to walking up or down the 2D plane while enemies can jump that way only left a bad taste in my mouth. During our playthrough, my partner and I both remarked on how much better combat would be if we could move around a little easier, a point that still rings true after finishing the game.

Speaking of which, after finishing the game, you’re presented with a few other gameplay options: Arcade, Boss Rush, and Battle. Battle is simply multiplayer where you face off against another person, which isn’t as fun as it sounds. Combat against other players simply isn’t as intense or interesting as it is against groups of enemies. Factor in that two of the playable characters are better than the rest, and the game mode simply falls flat.

Arcade and Boss Rush, on the other hand, are well worth your time – if you’re up for a challenge. Arcade tries to recreate the pressure you feel at an actual cabinet: you’ve only got one life to beat the whole game with. It puts the pressure on and doesn’t let up, making for a genuinely challenging experience that would leave even the best beat-em-up player sweating. Boss Rush also presents a genuine challenge, and it’s just what it sounds like. Boss battles are some of the best parts of the game’s story mode, and going up against them one after the other is yet another satisfying, difficult experience.

Hanging Up The Gloves

After my eight or so hours playing and beating Streets of Rage 4, I left it feeling like I got what I expected. It’s the sequel to a beloved, classic side-scrolling beat-em-up that plays like other titles in the genre. The few changes it makes do set it apart, but questionable choices with the game’s story and some gameplay mechanics left me feeling mixed.

That being said, during my time playing it, Streets of Rage 4 was a blast. When you’re playing with a friend, shut your brain off and just try to make it through some of the genuinely difficult levels, this game hits the standard of what I expect a brawler to be. It’s fast-paced, energetic, great to look at and listen to, and simple enough to just hop on and have some fun.

April 29, 2020 11:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/04/streets-of-rage-4-review-the-streets-dont-change/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=streets-of-rage-4-review-the-streets-dont-change

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Extremely niche post

hahaha wherein I work through an issue I have with Dragon Age Inquisition in my usual meandering way fml

So, I’ve been playing Dragon Age Inquisition. I picked it up at Gamestop because they were having a buy 3 get 1 free sale and I wanted FFXII Zodiac Age, FFXV, and the Kingdom Hearts collection. I had a different game as my fourth, but the salesperson told me I needed the playstation subscription thing to play it, so I passed. I asked her if she had any recommendations based on the games I was buying and she suggested DAI, so I was like okay. I play games so little that I’d probably never get around to it anyway.

About 2 weeks ago, I put it in on a whim and very quickly got hooked. I’m not a gamer. I’ll go months without picking up a controller, but sometimes I want to play ever second of free time I have. When I play I play for fun, not for the purity of the experience, so fuck yeah I play on normal (I’ll probably even do casual if I do another playthrough) and I walkthrough the hell out of it and google every big decision I make, because I am also absolutely the type of person who will go back and replay 20 hours if a decision I made earlier breaks bad.

Here’s the thing. I’m playing as a girl Levellan (Dalish elf) mage Inquisitor (named Ghilanna) and I romanced Sera (city elf rogue) before I spoiled myself for what a bad idea that is in my case. 

(Ongoing I’m going to assume whoever is reading this is at least slightly familiar with dragon age lore or else what are you doing lol. Go read the wikipedia, I guarantee you get lost down a rabbit hole for hours.)

I’m playing my Inquisitor as open minded, but absolutely connected to her heritage (if not completely devout to the elven pantheon), and skeptical of the Andrastian religion, the Chantry in particular since they’re responsible for a lot of the things that have happened to the elves. She denies being the Herald of Andraste if asked, but is content to let most people believe what they want. One of the things I love most about Inquisition is that it gives you a lot of room for imagination, so you can headcanon many different motivations for the same decision. 

In my mind, Ghilanna has taken on this burden of the Inquisition mainly because it’s the right thing to do; she’s the only one with the ability to close these rifts in the Veil, but even if that wasn’t the case she could never turn her back on innocent people--no matter what race they are. But she’s smart and she is very shrewd, so I also think she sees this as an opportunity to lift her people out of the mire and muck. With the Inquisition’s resources, the friends she’s made, the favors she’s owed--even when she disbands the Inquisition at the end of all this (provided they win, of course) she’ll still have quite a bit of personal power and prestige, and she plans on wielding it to make the world a better place for everyone, especially elves. It’s why I’ve been so circumspect in choosing customization for Skyhold. Inquisition heraldry and banners and throne, to show that everyone is welcome, no matter where they come from. I allowed Chantry drapes for the Andrastian’s comfort, but I chose Elven stained glass windows and Dalish banner crowns.

This is where the problem with Sera comes in. Sera is a city elf, which means she was in an alienage at least for a little while (Alienages are basically walled slums in cities where elves are sequestered. It’s almost impossible to get out of them and live in the city proper, and the few who manage it are usually driven back eventually). She was adopted by a human woman when she was a small child, and the woman--though she seemed to be at least mostly well-meaning--told some terrible lies that gave Sera a ton of trust issues. She’s internalized the discrimination against elves to a really heartbreaking point. She rejects any attempt to connect with her as an elf by making scathing remarks about being “too elfy”; she’s human trained so she can’t wear armor for elf-trained rogues. She feels like other elves look down on her, so she takes the initiative and repels them first and rejects every single aspect of elven culture. It’s incredibly difficult to romance her as an elven Inquisitor (which should have been a clue to what was coming tbh)

As I said, I spoiled myself after I’d already managed (somehow) to get on her good side and start up a romance with her. It turns out that after a certain quest, Sera tells the Inquistor that she thinks something that happened on the quest was bullshit. I’m not clear on exactly what happens, but I’m pretty sure it involves the old elven gods. Sera wants the inquisitor to agree with her that it’s total bullshit and what they saw wasn’t real, because how can THAT be real AND the Maker of Andrastian faith both be real? If the inquisitor disagrees and thinks there’s a chance it was real, or even that it’s at least worth exploring, she’s then given another chance when Sera pleads with her to lie about it! Say it was all nonsense so things can go back to normal with them. If the Inquisitor refuses to lie to her, Sera breaks off the relationship and there’s no way to get her back and all the other romances are also locked after this point.

Interestingly (frustratingly) Sera will have this fight with Inquisitors of other races, but she’ll only dump an elven Inquisitor, accusing her of thinking Sera’s not elfy enough and that they don’t fit. I watched the scene and my blood pressure went THROUGH THE ROOF.

Consensus seems to be that Sera is just overwhelmed and eventually comes around, but this whole thing really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I could’ve taken the easy way out and just lied to Sera, but I honestly don’t think Ghilanna would ever do that. First of all, Sera has made a big fuss about the Inquisitor being one of the few people she can trust, so she’d never ever lie to her. Second of all, this is a stupid argument!! Where is my “Lets not fight about this right now.” option???? I’d even take the “It has nothing to do with us” if only it didn’t include the line about it being nonsense! Third of all, how dare you spoil my adorable lesbian romance?????

Anyway, it killed my enjoyment of the romance, and I’m a weenie who can’t even break up with an AI so I restarted from a save point 16 hours prior and replayed the game without romancing her. Maybe someday I’ll do a whole new playthrough with a Qunari or a Dwarf and romance her. The only people I can’t romance with this character are Dorian and Cassandra and I can’t do Sera if I’m a male, so it would be another whole playthrough just for Sera basically. smdh.

Anyway I just wanted to vent.