Fluox

06/06/2022

I passed on Old World a few weeks back cause I didn't like the art style. That watercolor high school textbook look holds appeal for a lot of strategy game enthusiasts and history buffs, but not me. I generally prefer the sci fi style 4x games with lots of pretty stars, cool spaceships, and weird alien races. It's a personal preference is all.

But those games aren't exactly being released in bulk, especially good ones. (As far as actual game enjoyment goes, I loved the remake of Master of Orion and that's pretty much it). In my desperation for a good 4x and after reading some critical acclaim, I gave Old World a second shot and I'm glad I did. For better or for worse, it IS the best 4x game available on the market today. Rather than focusing on inevitable conflicts and army buildup, each turn in the game presents a unique scenario for players to actually consider, giving them time and clarity to weigh all the potential options. It's not as drastic as Civilization...you won't find n**i Ghandi here...but it does allow you to play with things like national religion and shape your family lineage.

That's not to say there's no robust combat in the Old World. You will need an army, but there isn't the constant pressure to rush the most overpowered units in the game before the CPU can show up and wipe you off the map. Old World asks you to put together more of a minimal defense force for when conflict does occur, and this is easily handled by converting workers into militia or training up simple ground troops and adding court members as generals to lead them.

But what I like about the game most is that it lets me THINK, rather than instantly punishing me for making the wrong decision. I had a sovereign princess who went mad. She became queen and was still a capable ruler, but she encountered situations which could have turned disasterous if not for other aspects of her rule (her religious beliefs countered her paranoia). This is good stuff! A lesser game would have gone the roguelike route and made madness an all but certain game over. Not so here.

Old World takes some getting used to but I can honestly say its worth it. Its only the 3rd or 4th 4x game I can truly say I've enjoyed, but its easily the most surprisingly solid of that small bunch. 8/10

Old World is a revolutionary new historical strategy game where you lead your dynasty over generations of rule against rival kings and queens. Wage massive wars, manage your court, and build a dynasty — or watch your empire crumble to dust. What legacy will you leave behind?

28/04/2022

I played Sifu a little while back and died pretty early on. This was of no concern, but then I died again and it caused me to take a closer look at the hit detection. Sure enough, several of my attacks and counters were getting straight up ignored in service of cheap deaths. I assumed the game was broken and uninstalled it, not planning to mention it.

Today I see all these articles about how Sifu is now getting difficulty modes because its SOOoOoOoO hard!!! Sigh...

"Difficult" and "Poorly developed" are two different things, people. If a patch has improved hit detection it means you bought the game while it as still in beta. 😔

15/04/2022

Final Fantasy Origin: Stranger of Paradise beaten on...I dunno, adventurer? Whatever normal difficulty is I forget.

Stranger of Paradise came out just around the same time as Elden Ring, and its fitting that it stands in direct contrast to that game. Both are billed as soulsbourne style games, but I argue that neither one really fits that bill. In fact, I would argue that SoP is more of an arcade brawler than a soulsbourne game, especially when stacked against the slow, plodding combat and infinite exploration of Elden Ring.

You are Jack (who's last name is totally a well-kept secret you guys) who arrives at the town of Cornelia with two buddies in an attempt to thwart the forces of Chaos (or COWWWS as it is lovingly referred to in the Japanese dialogue). There's supposed to be four of you, and you can't remember s**t, but the king sends you off anyway, quite confident that this won't all end in cataclysmic anime style disaster.

The combat in SoP is FUN. There are several different "jobs" or fighting styles to level up and choose from, and you can mix and match lots of different abilities to maximize Jack's potential against a fairly large variety of Final Fantasy based enemies. I went into the game ready to play Red Mage the whole way through (because of course I did) but by the end I was having much more fun with fist-based classes like the Tyrant. Adding to the brawler feel of the game is the fact that you have two buddies working with you for about 90% of the game, and they take up much of the slack in most battle situations. Summons like these would be optional in a souls game, but here they are ever present and make things a lot more manageable.

The story makes no sense and don't let Final Fantasy fanboy nerds tell you otherwise. The dialogue absolutely suffers from the classic Japanese trope of communicating a concept without actually saying it, or saying it multiple times in different ways. For example, one place in the game is referred to as an alternative country on the same planet. Then they say it exists in a different dimension. Then it exists in a different time. You can try to explain this nonsense away by introducing more and more science fiction concepts to cover the bad writing, but you'll exhaust yourself in doing so and you still won't cover all the gaping plot holes and contradictions SoP leaves to Final Fantasy 1. At the end of the day, the writing just sucks.

That's not to say the game isn't interesting though. Certain characters in the game (including Jack) do have a bit of shine to them, and exist in fun sort of 'what if' space that made me want to see more of them. Actually, I kinda wanted more of everything from Stranger of Paradise. More stages, more dialogue, more cutscenes, more armor and weapon choices, hell you could just throw Nioh 2's content in there and it would all fit rather snugly. And that's the ultimate contrast between Elden Ring and SoP: Elden Ring left me wanting less. SoP left me wanting more. 8/10

Download and play STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN at the Epic Games Store. Check for platform availability and price!

14/04/2022

Final Fantasy Origins: Stranger of Paradise beaten. I have some questions:

1) If Princess Sarah is dead and the Warriors of Light don't show up until after the events of the game, how does Garland kidnap Sarah leading to the rise of the Warriors of Light?

2) How does Jack not notice that Sarah is talking about him when she asks him to look for Garland? Did he forget his name is Garland? Why would he remember his name once and forget it another time?

3) How did the four fiends come back to life?

4) Why does Jack have to go to Cornelia to become Chaos? Darkness turns him into Chaos no matter where he is. He can literally stay in Luferia and just solve all his problems without Cornelia ever getting involved.

5) If the Warriors of Light beating Chaos closes the time loop, doesn't Luferia just pop back up and start all over again?

6) Back to question 1, how is Bikke alive? How is Astos alive? Why would Astos fight the warriors of light if he has no idea what Jack is doing?

7) Why didn't Luferia notice when Jack showed up without a crystal? He gave his crystal to Sarah, did he just say he dropped it?

8) Why does nobody notice the actual light orbs are sat right behind each of the four fiends? Why did the four fiends fight themselves if they're supposed to be fighting the light warriors?

9) I can accept that cell phones exist in Cornelia. How does FRANK SINATRA exist in Cornelia????

10) Why does Jack put on Garland's armor ever?

11) Why does Jack need the warriors of light at all? Can't he and the fiends just kill each other and restore everything? If not, can't he just do a fingerpoke of doom and roll over for any loser who shows up at the shrine? That's literally what Garland does in Final Fantasy 1.

12) How did Astos turn the Lufenians into bats? Why can't he turn all the Lufenians into bats? Why didn't the bats fly away when they found out they would die?

13) If Garland actually wants to save Cornelia, why does he slaughter the people there when he kidnaps Sarah?

14) Jack and the fiends travel back in time so Lufenia can't reach them. Why not just wait until Lufenia rises and take it out before any of this bad stuff can happen?

15) Why do Jack, Ash, Jed, and Neon all laugh about not being able to remember anything? Is that funny? Why is it funny? If you had Alzheimer's or a brain injury, you wouldn't laugh about not remembering anything.

16) If the Chaos temple isn't in Lufenian records, why do the Lufenians use it for extraction all the time?

17) What happens if Astos never sends the strangers back? Will Lufenians come to kill Astos and the strangers? Can't the strangers just then kill the Lufenians one at a time?

18) How do you knock someone out by punching them in the stomach?

26/03/2022

Elden Ring beaten with the super mega happy romance ending. I hacked the last boss(es) cause the game kept breaking and I got tired of it.

Elden Ring is what happens when Dark Souls and Breath of the Wild have a baby, but Dark Souls had all the dominant genes in the family. But before I can criticise it at all, fanboys will absolutely jump at the chance to yell at you and brag about how great they are and how you need to git gud and put in effort and games aren't for everyone and mleh mleh mleh mleh mleh mleh SNORT!!

Such commentary doesn't apply to me and it never has. See, ever since I beat Dark Souls 1 I have made it a point to play Souls games in the direct opposite direction that others do. That is to say I play the easiest version of the game I possibly can. I use OP ranged magic builds. I summon player and CPU controlled characters to do much of my fighting for me. I overlevel before fighting a boss, etc. While most Souls players are attempting a no damage solo speedrun using only their space bar, I literally sit around eating burritos while I watch bosses die.

I say all this because my critique is that Elden Ring is a very good Souls game, but its not a great one. The open world exploration of BotW and the hard walls of Dark Souls combat don't always mesh together so well. Yes its a fun world to be in, but that wears thin after you follow the same repetitious process on each trip. Get on your horse, ride to a mountain, a giant dragon lands on you, ride past it, grab the treasure, get back to the boss fight/dungeon/Dark Souls part of the game. The story, while interesting, does not deviate from the FromSoft formula enough to justify the vast open world...a normal Dark Souls game would have been fine. The bugs and lag that purists complain about are also quite real, and detract from the general solid experience a Souls game should have.

The game does have its individual strong points: its beautiful in a way that no other FromSoft game has ever been, for starters. There are points of exploration that illicit shocked gasps from the viewer, and diving into these areas with a mix of stealth/combat/magic/speed is just pure video gaming fun. Some of the boss fights are among the unique I've played in any Souls game, and they rank among the most fun too. But ultimately the best part of Elden Ring is that its Dark Souls, and FromSoft knows how to make the Dark Souls formula work.

At the end of the day I would have preferred Elden Ring to nix the open world concept and just act as another Dark Souls sequel. Dark Souls 3's world felt open enough to me, and having completed Elden Ring I just don't see what From Software was trying to get across by formalizing that aspect of it. You've seen one giant dragon riding at you across the landscape, you've seen em all. But Dark Souls is Dark Souls, and Elden Ring is pretty darn good Dark Souls. 7.5/10

THE NEW FANTASY ACTION RPG. Rise, Tarnished, and be guided by grace to brandish the power of the Elden Ring and become an Elden Lord in the Lands Between.

19/12/2021

Halo: Infinite campaign beaten on legendary difficulty, but it doesn't matter cause I got bored and started cheating anyway.

Hello Master Chief, I am Cortana.
Hello Master Chief, I am Cortana.
Hello Master Chief, I am Cortana.

Do you enjoy hearing the words "Hello Master Chief, I am Cortana"? I hope so, because you hear them repeated about 8000 times throughout the course of playing the Halo: Infinite single player campaign. You'll also hear several other bits of dialogue repeated 8000 times as well, because this game does not have time for things like subtlety, plot development, or fun.

When Infinite was announced and its open world concept revealed, I made two predictions. 1) That the open world would be a chore-filled slog of boring. 2) That a team dumb enough to bring open world to Halo would surely ruin the multiplayer as well.

I was right on the first count, and wrong on the second. Halo Infinite's multiplayer is a tight, well-crafted sandbox with lots of fun new things to play with and fast paced modes to keep things interesting. But this campaign....if there were ever a tell-tale sign that a game was simply not finished before launch day, this is it.

You are Master Chief. A whole s**t load of stuff happened off screen since the last Halo game happened. When you wake up the first thing you're told is that all your worst enemies are dead. So are all your friends. You descend upon a blown up Halo ring (which also blew up off screen btw) to fight as one man against a massive open world army of second string losers who constantly crow about their great victory over man, while also acknowledging their best warrior's death and desperately searching for an ultimate weapon to use in the fight against.....someone else? Maybe?

You move from outpost to outpost engaging in Halo type room battles that offer absolutely nothing different from the past games. Occassionally you can free up sets of 3 marines to assist you in battle, but they're promptly killed by the time they pick up a rifle. The open world does absolutely nothing to serve the game...no epic tide turning battles between aliens and humans, no massive change to the landscape before your eyes, nothing. Just drive/slowly climb from place to blocked off place taking outposts and securing objectives, killing an occassional "boss" along the way. Do it enough and maybe you'll get enough points to reduce the cooldown of your grappling hook by 40% Ooh! So OP!

As I mentioned before, peppered throughout this mess are the same 5 cutscenes from previous Halo games, detailing much of Master Chief's training and his relationship with Cortana. The plot from Halo 5 (which few played and fewer liked) is all but thrown out the window, and the game ditches all subtlety of the relationship between John and Cortana by slamming it in your face over and over, practically flashing a PLEASE HAVE S*X WITH ME EVEN THOUGH I AM A COMPUTER PROGRAM hologram over and over again. But don't worry, nothing in the game actually happens. You grab a new A.I. (who is creepy and weird), you f**k up some aliens, your pilot gets kidnapped, you kill the aliens, another alien tries to resurrect her species (who we're never told if/why they are a threat), you kill her, that's the game. The ring never fires. The aliens never rise. Cortana never comes back. The Halo ring is just as dead and dumb as when you first got there.

At one point in this game, your pilot who has been bitching at you about how much he wants to get home breaks down and admits he has no family on Earth anymore, absolutely demolishing any narrative point of having him watch old holograms of his family for the entire game. That's a great metaphor for the campaign itself. You're meant to watch this story unfold because of its heritage, but its just the same past stuff recycled over and over again, and in the end none of it means anything.

The good news is Halo Infinite's campaign will cost most players nothing in terms of money, and not much in terms of time if you brush up on your cheats and secrets. Halo Infinite gets a 7/10 for a pretty darn good multiplayer package and an absolute trash campaign that never should have been made in the first place.

The legendary Halo series returns with the most expansive Master Chief campaign yet and a ground-breaking free to play multiplayer experience.

14/12/2021

Nioh 2 beaten on normal. No DLC, no new game++++++, don't get excited.

I enjoyed the original Nioh well enough, but after awhile the sheer size of the game combined with the somewhat convoluted political plot just left me tired and bored toward the end. It was a fun enough concept, one that several other games have copied since, but by no means was it a top tier soulsbourne game in my opinion.

But where to begin about this epic wonder of a sequel? Nearly everything in Nioh 2 is a vast improvement upon what was presented in the first game. The controls are tighter, the attacks and weapons are more interesting, the story is presented better, the pacing and difficulty are damn near perfect. It's the best soulsbourne game in the world second only maybe to Bloodborne, and that's a very big maybe.

In Nioh 2, you are Hide; a half-human half-yokai (Japanese monster/demon), looking to sort out the bizarre circumstances surrounding your birth. Doing so leads you through several fantasy interpretations of real life events throughout Japanese history, albeit presented in an alternate Japan where humans, yokai, and guardian spirits all wander the landscape in some strange and mystical harmony. I'll say nothing more of the plot other than the yokai and fantasy aspects are presented front and center here, so the political pills Nioh 1 asked us to gobble down are far easier to swallow this time around. I never once got bored or tired of playing new missions in this game like I did in its predecessor, from beginning to the well written end.

The genius of Nioh 2 is in its usage of fantasy bleeding into reality. This theme is present even in the game's expertly designed and fleshed out combat system. A human overcome by magical blood rage might dash toward you with a flailing combo of blades, only to be deftly countered by a well placed yokai-transformation-parry that sends them back to the ground, followed by a rain of ethereal steel directed right into their mid section and every other part of their body to boot. This game is about way more than just managing stamina finding openings in your opponent's guard: you have an absolute array of options in dealing with various types of attacks. This is not just present in how you build your character, although the game does offer you a wide array of magical abilities to compliment the weapon play, but it also shows in the actual combat itself. Maybe you want to widdle down a guarding enemy to the point of exhaustion, when you can flat out impale them into a shishkebob. Maybe you want to zip around them like a ninja and throw out some burst combos of your own while they stare off in disbelief. Maybe you just want to launch a giant te****le at them from a mile away. It's all here, and it's all great.

Is Nioh 2 a perfect game? No. But it IS a perfect sequel, improving and expanding upon every single aspect of the original Nioh in ways that are fun, engaging, and satisfying. But most importantly, these improvements are CONSISTENT THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE GAME. I want to emphasize this point above all. When I play a video game, I may or may not get the experience I am hoping for from that game. Maybe I'll get a bad team in G**O. Maybe I'll have to slog through a particularly slow, boring stage in Halo Infinite. That's ok, but every single time I played Nioh 2 I got the exact experience I wanted. Whether it was solo challenging great historical samurai warriors on moonlit hilltops, blasting through stages with summoned allies, or even using bots to assist as I skulked around Japanese castles and forts hunting treasure and kodama, Nioh 2 nailed it every single time. That is something I cannot praise enough. I'm giving Nioh 2 a 10/10 score. It's as close to perfect as I think it could be, and I applaud Team Ninja (who I am not a fan of btw) for bringing such well thought out and concise experience into the soulsborne genre. What an absolute gem of a game.

Battle hordes of yokai in this masocore Action RPG. Create your protagonist and embark on an adventure through a myriad of locales across Japan during the Sengoku period. Utilize the new Yokai Shift ability to defeat even the most ferocious yokai and be prepared to brave through Dark Realms created....

21/10/2021

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous with a kinda sorta good ending beaten on...on..you know what? I'll get to that later.

Pathfinder WotR is hands down one of the best role playing experiences in over 20 years. I mean this not just in terms of video games, but the act of role playing itself. This game embodies the true spirit of what RPG's are meant to be: big, vast worlds that stimulate the imagination, reward exploration, and facilitate that sweet sweet escapism that gamers so desperately seek.

You play as...you, or whoever you want your character to be. You show up wounded at a big fancy celebration in a big fancy city. Then a giant locust demon shows up, kills everyone, slices the world in half and chucks your fat ass into a hole. While in said hole, you gather allies and find yourself the inheritor of a strange, heavenly power that allows you to communicate with angels...or something like that. Will you get back to the surface? Can you defeat the locust demon? Wtf is going on?

All these questions and more are examined and answered over an absolutely massive campaign that can be played with dozens of combat and interactivity options. You can choose to fight in turns or in real time, you can customize between dozens of class builds, you can even build your character to wield charisma and diplomacy to avoid most battles entirely. All this is handed to the player in one great big RPG package, and if it included the ability to design ones own customizable campaign, I'd call it the greatest RPG of all time.

Well, I'd also need the game to not be completely broken.

BORK BORK BORK, this game is more borked than the Swedish chef himself. Quest lines disappear, DOORS disappear, a.i's wander off aimlessly (both your enemies and your allies), mechanics come into play almost at random, characters t-pose, its just awful. This game is the nightmare everyone told me Cybersuck 2077 was. In the case of Pathfinder WotR, I can't even blame all the issues on bug testing...even the enemies themselves are often unbalanced to the point of absurdity. You will run through massive boss demons standing in your path, only to be knocked silly by some random customer starting a bar brawl in an inn. Hell, even the ending crashed on me, at which point I could only shrug and say "of course".

The good news is you can adjust Pathfinder's difficulty on the fly, so even the absurd broken fights are easily skippable. Still, this lack of stability cannot be ignored as it absolutely slaps you upside the head and back into reality time and time again; this after luring you in with such a beautiful, well written, interesting RP world.

How do you rate good games that just happen to be broken? Do you give into the fanboy love and ignore the flaws, or do you rage and p**s all over the game for ruining what could have been an experience that would serve as a great memory for all time? Well, there's a reason the numbers 6, 7, and 8 exist. Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous is a great game that is completely broken. I'm glad I played it, and I will not touch it again. 7/10.

Embark on a journey to a realm overrun by demons in a new epic RPG from the creators of the critically acclaimed Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Explore the nature of good and evil, learn the true cost of power, and rise as a Mythic Hero capable of deeds beyond mortal expectations.

11/10/2021

Them And Us beaten on normal difficulty using the over the shoulder camera and getting the good ending.

"Wow what a perfectly decent indie Resident Evil clone. I really enjoyed playing that."

These are words I never thought I would say. I've played a rather large number of indie RE clones in my day, and very rarely have any of them held my interest to the end. Surely none of them have been solid enough titles that I wanted to recommend them to anyone other than my worst enemies (I still haven't forgotten, Jason!!) :P

But Them and Us breaks that streak. This is a perfectly simple, well put together RE clone that gives players the option to experience the exploration and combat aspects their way...whether using tank controls, over the should camera, or even FPS, the game just runs solidly enough that each of these modes more or less work the way they're supposed to.

You play as Alicia. 9 years ago you were imprisoned for the murder of your husband and daughter. During a prison break you're knocked out and boated onto an island mansion that's filled with zombies and every room seems strangely familiar. Is your daughter really here? Where did the zombies comes from? Why don't you remember anything etc etc.

I think what appeals to me most about this game is that it really doesn't try to outdo the Resident Evil classic gameplay or make its own mark. You're never taking on overly grotesque zombies or struggling with tank controls for the sake of nostalgia. You just get to run around, managing your inventory, completing puzzles and shooting monsters who get progressively stronger and faster. And that's it. That's the game.

Everything here works in terms of game design. It has the old school survival horror feel but lacks the pizzazz of getting the RE experience for the first time. But you know what? No game can give you that...not even if they actually remake Resident Evil for the 20th time (yeah I said it). Them and Us does a perfectly adequate job of presenting spooky set pieces, a whacky half baked plot, and lots of the old school survival horror gameplay we used to know and love. It's not a masterpiece, but it doesn't try to be, and what more can an old school survival horror fan ask for in October? 8/10

Them and Us is a classic, survival horror game with a focus on atmosphere and player immersion. Discover the truth of Alicia’s past as she descends further into her strange, unending nightmare.

23/08/2021

18/06/2021

It works! IT WORKS! Operation Trip Hawkins Easter is a go! ...damn it I need another hdmi cable!

16/05/2021

Admit it, you don't know if this is a joke or not.

12/05/2021

Silent Hill Fans: There's a new pachinko machine based on my favorite franchise? This is unacceptable! It's an insult! Why don't they just make a new game already?!

Fatal Frame Fans: There's a new pachinko machine based on my favorite franchise? GIMMEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After seven long years, Fatal Frame is back and ready to haunt your nearest Japanese pachinko parlor.

12/05/2021

Capcom you DURTY TEEVES!! :(

Are the monsters too similar or is that just a byproduct of the genre? You decide.

10/05/2021

Update on my 3DO collection list.
Upon further review I have elected to remove PO'd from the list as I found out its basically a Dragon's Lair style fmv game. While I do consider those games to be legit titles worth grabbing, the fact is if you've played one, you've played them all. Currently I am researching Dragon's Lore (not lair) to determine if that game is the same one I remember from several decades ago. If it is, I will add it here.

We're getting there....

06/05/2021

Yes. Good.

IndustryMMORPGMultiplayerNews Activision-Blizzard Q1 2021 financials: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years But overall Acti-Blizz and Blizz revenues are up By Bree Royce -      May 4, 2021 4:30 PM 82 Welcome back, my friends: It’s time for another Activi...

16/04/2021

My god, Madden is just completely unplayable now.

13/04/2021

Starting tomorrow I will be streaming across multiple platforms using the restream.io service. Unfortunately, restream.io costs money if you want to use it for public pages, and I have little intention of paying them. Therefore, for the time being you can catch all my future livestreams on Twitch.tv, Steam and Youtube. Just follow the links below, and thanks for watching.

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/DamianCr0ss

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_fjJbtzaOFdUbqn4ONZI5A

Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/broadcast/watch/76561197965499203

I'm a former video game/mma indie journo who worked for websites like 411mania.com and Nokaut.com long ago. My favorite hobbies are playing video games and complaining, so I figured I should do both of those things here on Twitch. (Also I write fiction novels that nobody reads.)

09/04/2021

The Zentraedi War is Over (Mech Mechanic Simulator)

08/04/2021

Interesting discussion here about how fans are gravitating towards Japanese and older US media to avoid modern woke products.

This hits home for me because of my recent experience with collecting old school 3DO games and buying old storybooks for baby Fluox. At first I chalked these decisions up to political pressure (banning Dr. Seuss??) or my own customized version of a midlife crisis. But...is that really the case? How can it be, when people decades younger than me are going in that same direction? My niece doesn't want to watch Batwoman on the CW, she wants old episodes of Buffy and Angel. I don't want woke Outriders, I want great war games like Return Fire. At some point you have to look past the nostalgia excuses and concede that maybe, just maybe, there's a reason the old stuff is better.

Follow the entertainment channel over at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSFD56YY5pcR18lZZGT0imgYou can also view ALL of my videos at https://odysee.com/...