#in my other game i will sometimes coast for several hours with god mode

[fallout4treasures]

I'm a cheater-cheater-pumpkin-eater type of player and to celebrate the new update on fo4 I've decided to turn off all of my mods and turn on survival mode.

I've died several times.

Send help.

[demonfox38]

Completed - Hylics 2

I just realized that I beat both "Hylics" and "Hylics 2" under a waning moon. I am both mad and pleased about this celestial pun.

Before I had played the original "Hylics", I also picked up "Hylics 2." Call it a leap of faith. I'm not sure if I first saw this sequel in a trailer, or if I saw a streamer working through it, but I believed continuing to support these efforts would be worth it. After all, "Hylics" the original seemed pretty sweet. If "Hylics 2" was that, plus another level of polish, wouldn't that be good enough?

For me, it was! But, man. I can definitely see where this game may scare away previous players.

"Hylics 2" follows the events of the previous game, in which Wayne and his crew succeeded in destroying Gibby (but not before he manages to blow up the moon, which dick move.) Followers of Gibby plan his resurrection, so it's up to Wayne (who may not be the same Wayne from the first game; details following) and his crew to stop these attempts. And, of course, clean up the resulting mess failing that.

More coherent NPCs are present in this game. Sages? Naturally. In addition to them, Dedesmuln appears to have either a sibling or a spouse (hard to tell), as well as Wayne having…essentially, an entire species all named Wayne living in a single Wayne house. With little Wayne larvae and an Old Wayne and everything in between. Is your Wayne the same Wayne from the previous game? Well, he seems more put together, but he definitely remembers the first game's party. It's a weird deal. Between them, the coffee shop guy, miners that can teach you to set people on fire, and an island full of TV antenna maintenance staff, the world's gotten bigger and weirder. More like something you want to see protected. Trust me when I say returning to previous randomized text in this game comes off way more horrifying than nostalgic.

How does Wayne et. al work through the world's grievances? The core of the game is mostly the same RPG layout. Get in fights, get wrecked, recover. Combat variability goes pretty wild in this game. There were several turns I had in progression, going from simply hoping to hold out, then slurping coffee, then charging power levels like a "Dragon Ball Z" protagonist, ultimately culminating in being a stalling tactician until the party could drop their preferred nukes of choice. This isn't a game where you can coast on just slapping away. You've gotta be prepared for special effect buffing and debuffing at every turn. One mismanaged encounter is all it takes to get ejected into the afterlife. But, hey. Sometimes, you've gotta pay it a visit anyway. There's still meat to grind, after all.

"Hylics 2" has two additional twists to its game mode. First, it has both 3D and 2D platforming, used respectively for everyday navigation and minigames. The 3D navigation can be overwhelming at first, especially coming hot off of a playthrough of the previous "Hylics" game. It doesn't take too long to adapt to it.

The 2D version, though?

Like, I don't want to bag too much on the 2D platforming sections. Attempts were made. And I'll be honest—I'm bad at platformers. Even with my deficiencies, I can still tell you that the first 2D platformer level in particular is roughly designed. The level roadblocks without clear progression when you follow the industry rules of going to the right, forcing a reset to the beginning to go left and make progress. The horizontal jumping is nigh infinite, but the vertical jump has a cooldown that makes it actively worse until you stand still for a second. That's not helpful when you're trying to navigate as well as obliterate horde spawning enemies and projectiles. At least an hour of my 10 hour playthrough was stuck just here, and it was not a good time. Let's just say it's probably not a good sign when a minigame has a God Mode to get past playing it.

And yes, playing them is kinda mandatory. At least, if you want the best spell in the game and to survive the final boss, it is.

The other twist—the one I liked, but I could see it turning others off—was an underground first-person maze! Like, if you wanted this game to be more "Megami Tensei", here you go! This was far more reasonable and appealing to me, even with hidden walls. Following the golden rule of moving along a single wall/direction for as long as possible worked well here. Additionally, you auto-healed after every fight, which made enduring it all the more manageable.

While the bug-squashing mechanic for Somsnosa from the first game is gone, you do have a slapping option while navigating. This allows you to crush bugs and recover much needed Flesh and Will points. I noticed that if you crush bugs, save your game, and reload it on the exact spot where the bugs previously were, they'll be back. So, you could use this to potentially abuse health recovery, if you wanted. Or, you could just keep hopping back to the underworld bathtub any time you'd like. That's also an option.

Aesthetically, this game is a stunner. 3D models are coated with color and shading filters to keep that cool pastel and black-shadowed style cohesive across characters and environments. The enemy designs are quite varied as well, looking less like manikins with clay lumps and more like actual, unique creatures. I was particularly impressed with the animation for furrier creatures and Fonthintrelpine, a "Space Harrier"-esque clay abomination. It's an older art style meeting an old game rendering trick to make something new, and man, does it look good together.

Also, I don't know what silent-era movie footage was used for the Accelerate gesture, but that's goofballs. I love it.

Chuck Salamone was brought in to compose music for the game, and man, was that a good call. Not that the original "Hylics" game had offensive music, by any means. But, this game? It's got tunes, man. The winning track for me was "Xeno Arcadia", a groovy cool piece that plays over the infuriating 2D sections, helping to make them endurable. A+. Good work. As much as it's fun to have an auteur complete a whole game by themselves, man, is it great to phone in a partner, sometimes.

Five years and a lot of spit-shine went into this game, and for the most part, it shows. Despite having a longer runtime, it has a fairly similar difficulty pace to the first game (which may cause some despondedness; see platforming rant.) I want to emphasize playing the first game before this one, just to see if you can vibe with its presentation. But, if you wanted a second helping of "Hylics" with more glaze and some additional quirky game mechanics, then here you go!

[rachelkaser]

Stay Golden Sunday: The Competition

A bowling tournament brings out Rose’s competitive side, while Sophia reunites with an old love. It somehow ends with the four girls in a bowling battle.

Picture It...

Sophia is cheerfully singing over a pot of spaghetti sauce, the smell of which is enough to attract Dorothy and Rose. Blanche meanwhile arrives with a new bowling ball for the upcoming tournament, which she and Rose have participated in for years -- and lost, much to Rose’s irritation. Dorothy asks Sophia to partner with her for the tourney, but Sophia will be busy with an old boyfriend named Augustine Bagatelli, who is visiting from Sicily. They were engaged, but lost contact when Augustine went to fight in the war. Blanche sneaks some sauce behind her back.

SOPHIA: Mmm, if this sauce was a person, I’d get naked and make love to it.

The next day, Sophia prepares for Augie’s visit by dressing in black, to show she’s a widow and therefore available. Rose tells Dorothy she found her a partner and signed her up for the tournament. Augustine arrives, and he and Sophia have a cute reunion, catching up on each other’s lives. Augie married a girl from their village and is also a widower. The two leave to go on a walk together.

In the kitchen, Dorothy asks who Rose signed her up to bowl with. Before Rose can say, Blanche enters and is, by her own word, stunned. Rose dumped her as a partner and signed up to bowl with Dorothy, who’s a better bowler. Rose confesses she’s very competitive and wants to win the tournament this year. Dorothy initially refuses to be Rose’s partner, but Blanche reveals she signed up with Rose’s biggest competition, Olga of the unbeatable Nielsen twins. Rose talks Dorothy into being her partner.

Sophia tells Dorothy that she’s having a great time with Augie, but he has to return to Sicily soon. She wants to return with him for the San Genero Festival, but Dorothy protests Sophia’s health is too poor to risk it. Sophia wants to go anyway, but can’t unless Dorothy pays her way. Dorothy refuses, and a just-entering Rose defends Sophia. Sophia lets slip that Rose is dumping Dorothy as her bowling partner. Rose is so desperate to win that she signed on with the other Nielsen twin, Sonja.

Blanche enters and drops a bomb: The Nielsen twins, who split up over a man named Lars, have reconciled after his unexpected death. So now neither Blanche nor Rose has anyone to bowl with. Rose tries to sweet-talk Dorothy into being her partner again, but Dorothy’s had enough and partners up with Blanche. Sophia, wanting to prove that she’s physically capable of traveling abroad, offers to be Rose’s partner. So now it’s the Girls against the Girls.

Later, Dorothy has to drag a reluctant Blanche out of the house for practice, and they meet Rose and Sophia just coming back. Sophia asks Dorothy to make a bet with her on the outcome of the tournament: If Sophia wins, Dorothy has to pay for her trip to Sicily. Dorothy agrees, and counters that, if she wins, Sophia has to give her a pair of antique silver earrings.

ROSE: Blanche, do you want to have a side bet with me? BLANCHE: Well I would Rose, but everything you own is so damn ugly. Oh I can’t wait to whip your butt. ROSE: *death glare*

Finally, it’s the day of the big competition, and Dorothy and Blanche sneak a peek in the men’s locker room. They’re waiting for their opponents, and of course they turn out to be Rose and Sophia instead of the Nielsen twins -- who had to drop out to attend Lars’ Viking funeral. Rose and Sophia resort to some underhanded tactics to get ahead, including wearing identical outfits to Blanche, and acting overly affectionate in front of a jealous Dorothy. Sophia makes the first strike of the game.

Much later, the girls are the last two teams playing, and Rose picks up a spare that puts them in the lead of the tournament. Dorothy points out they could still win, but Blanche chokes under the pressure, only knocking down two pins on her last frame. Dorothy can still win if she gets a spare, and all she has to do is knock down the nine-pin. Augie shows up to support Sophia, and the two reminisce about playing bocce ball together, and sharing their first kiss. Dorothy, looking on, is touched by how happy Sophia looks, and deliberately throws a gutter ball. Rose immediately leaps up, crying victory.

Sophia recounts her trip to Dorothy after she returns -- she had a great time, excepting the time a friend she was about to visit died shortly before they arrived. She then hands Dorothy her antique earrings, saying she knows that Dorothy threw the game to make her mother happy. Rose comes home with the bowling trophy, and both Dorothy and Blanche give her the cold shoulder. She apologizes for being such a sore winner, and says she got their names engraved on the trophy since they all won. However, this gesture is undercut somewhat:

DOROTHY: Why is your name three times larger than ours? ROSE: Because I’m the one who actually won it. If you ever want to look at it, it’ll be in my bedroom.

“Blanche, wake up. My wife will be home any minute.”

This is one of the sillier episodes of the show, with no elevated stakes or touching melodrama -- and while I’m not in love with the episode itself, it’s a huge relief to watch this after watching the other episodes back to back as I have. No grandkids to correct, ex-husbands to tell off, or kidneys to donate -- even the fight between the Girls seems incredibly low-stakes and light compared with the battle between Blanche and Dorothy two episodes ago.

That’s not to say it’s not a good episode. It’s very good, actually, and it’s got some of the best humor and zingers of the first season. The episode rarely slows down to let the audience think too much... instead it’s funny scenario after funny scenario. The whole final bowling game is rapid-fire gags, first with the girls getting a glimpse into the men’s locker room, then Sophia’s and Rose’s mind games with Blanche.

I think, when you hear at the beginning of the episode that there’s a doubles bowling tournament happening, you kind of know it’s going to end with two Girls vs two Girls. It’s just a matter of which two pairings will be competing. It’s great to see Sophia pairing up with Rose, with whom she’s not shared a whole lot of screentime up to this point, and they make a rather devious pair.

It’s not very common in this series for the A & B plots to coincide, but here they both culminate in the bowling tournament. It’s the first time so far in the series the writers have seemed comfortable balancing two different storylines at once. Each gets an equal amount of screentime, everything is set up well, and the stakes for the final competition are established for everyone. Sophia wants to win so she can go to Sicily, Dorothy wants to win so Sophia doesn’t go (the silver earrings are incidental), Blanche wants to win to get back at Rose, and Rose wants to win because she needs professional help.

This is the first episode where we get to see one of Rose’s big flaws -- namely, that she’s very competitive. Up to this point, Rose has been all sunshine and sugar -- even when she was trapping Elliot into a confession, she was doing it with the best of intentions. Here we see she’s got a full-on Mr. Hyde persona, getting this murderous glare whenever she talks about the bowling tournament.

I kind of enjoy this, because it makes Rose more complex. I love that the nicest, most positive of the Girls is the one who would absolutely murder for a bowling win. It’ll come up again in the series, albeit not as prominent -- or as funny -- as it is here. Something about the way Betty White’s eyes change when she’s in competitive mode is just darkly awesome.

Augustine Bagatelli is the first of the many men of Sophia’s past -- I’m not sure where she gets off sometimes, calling Blanche a slut when she apparently had several boyfriends before she married her husband Salvador. But he’s a lovely Italian gentlemen, and you get a glimpse into Sophia’s background. There’s a hint that she and Augie are cut from the same sort of cloth when he laments about his bizarre father-in-law: “Thank god he drank himself to death.”

We also see Dorothy being overprotective of Sophia, which will come up again later. Frankly, if one of my parents was as mobile and energetic as Sophia is at age 80, I would be thrilled, but I can understand why Dorothy doesn’t want her to fly across the Atlantic. But this won’t be the last time Sophia proves to Dorothy she’s still got some spunk in her -- nor will it be the last time she asks Dorothy for money.

By the way, I feel like the unseen Nielsen twins have a far more interesting story than the Girls this episode. They are supposedly unbeatable on the bowling alley, until Sonja sleeps with Olga’s boyfriend Lars and doesn’t tell him he has the wrong sister (which, ahem, is actually rape if Sonja knew that Lars didn’t know who she was, but we’re going to pass over that because... yikes). The girls split up, but then Lars dies -- slumped over a desk at his Volvo dealership, as Blanche puts it. The twins make up, then reenter the tournament.

The day before, they attempt to have an authentic Viking funeral for Lars, which involves burning a ship with him aboard, but the Coast Guard keeps putting it out. So they have to drop out of the bowling tournament entirely in order to finally have the funeral the next day (when the Coast Guard will apparently look the other way). Seriously... who are the Nielsen twins and why do they have a more interesting life than I do?

Episode rating: 🍰🍰🍰🍰 (four cheesecake slices out of five)

Favorite part of the episode:

ROSE: *about the 14-hour spaghetti sauce* Oh Sophia, that smells heavenly! Is it Chef Boyardee? SOPHIA: *holding up a knife* Stick it in my heart, Rose. It’ll hurt less.