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Something Something Video Games
Oct. 25th, 2023 01:52 pmI have been playing Baldur's Gate 3 for the last few weeks. My character is currently sitting in a jail cell where a talking rat is trying to upsell her a potion to help her escape which she cannot afford because she spent all of her party's gold in the brothel.
10/10, no notes, game of the year.
I'm playing as a half-orc warlock who is sensitive about her -1 to strength and is doggedly romancing Shadowheart. I am also extremely bad at the game; not really surprising given that my experience of D&D is half listing to the audio feed of Critical Role while doing something else and playing the odd session with my friend and his eleven year old son where mostly we let The Boy make up the rules.
I mostly just stand at the back of the party and cast the odd eldrich blast while Karlach and Lae'zel hit enemies with swords. Sometimes I'll look up why I'm not getting anywhere with a particular enemy and the internet will be like 'You need to be doing magic damage so you should have Gale and Wyll in your party' and I go 'Shan't' and keep doing what I've been doing until the random number generator thing-y agrees that muscular women with pointy objects are indeed the way forward.
Sometimes I play a hundred hours of a game without ever learning how to properly play it; see also: Elden Ring.
It is the first game to make me glad to have bought this PS5. Like, loading screens aren't really a thing anymore and that's neat, but if the graphics are markedly better it's not in ways that I have a good enough TV to notice. Speaking of graphics, now that Spider-Man 2 is out I see that The Gamers are having discourse about whether MJ is hot enough. Honestly, the venn diagram of people who want video game graphics to be 1:1 with reality and people who have never known the loving touch of a woman continues to be a circle.
I originally bought it for Star Wars: Jedi Survivor immediately after which they announced that there's a PS4 version coming, oh well. I really like playing as Cal; I'm glad the male video protagonist has completed his evolution from gruff silent type through 'your dad' to nice young man who just wants to help. I'll be delighted when he inevitably shows up in live action. I know one of my many kvetches about Ahsoka was how much of it was 'Look, a character you may recognise from another thing!' as Disney jingles the car keys in front of our collective faces. Yes, I am part of the problem.
The cosmetics were both better and worse than in the first game. Rather than just fifty different coloured ponchos you can collect a truly horrific selection of facial hair and haircuts for Cal and I was having a good fun time seeing how much of a dirtbag I could make him look. When the romance subplot with Merrin started I had him in a manbun with a soulpatch; I had to reload an earlier save and clean him up a bit because I couldn't believe that she would voluntarily kiss dirtbag!Cal.
My favourite thing about the game though, was that you can pick your lightsaber colour from the very beginning and I could have a pretty pink murder sword to go with my pretty pink poncho. I will not be taking questions at this or any other time.
The other thing I played was the Burning Shores DLC to Horizon: Forbidden West. I was really miffed when this was announced as PS5 only even though the base game was on PS4. The reason given was 'prettier clouds' the real reason, I assume, was 'give us £500 for a PS5 you dickheads.'
It got review bombed when it first came out and I wondered if it was because other people also felt that this was a terrible, anti-consumer move, or if it was because there was a gay person in it and the worst people on the internet were having a Normal One about it. It was the second one, it's always the second one.
I appreciate that Guerrilla Games response to the predictable The Gamer backlash to there being queer people in the background of the first game was 'Did we fucking stutter.' I figured they were going to go for Aloy being some flavour of queer ever since the Elisabet/Tilda subplot because the games have gone pretty hard on Aloy and Elisabet being basically the same person, but I'm glad they made it so explicit.
The Aloy/Seyka romance I really did find very sweet, and as an Aloy/Talanah shipper I'm glad that Aloy has a type - and it's badass warrior women with shiny black hair and family issues. Outside of the relationship though, I did find the DLC kind of sparse, especially compared to Frozen Wilds. I was a bit disappointed at the lack of new enemies to fight; at the third time of fighting that giant robot toad I was like 'Did you guys finish your Big Book of Dinosaurs? Because the Smaller Book of Amphibians just isn't cutting it for me.'
10/10, no notes, game of the year.
I'm playing as a half-orc warlock who is sensitive about her -1 to strength and is doggedly romancing Shadowheart. I am also extremely bad at the game; not really surprising given that my experience of D&D is half listing to the audio feed of Critical Role while doing something else and playing the odd session with my friend and his eleven year old son where mostly we let The Boy make up the rules.
I mostly just stand at the back of the party and cast the odd eldrich blast while Karlach and Lae'zel hit enemies with swords. Sometimes I'll look up why I'm not getting anywhere with a particular enemy and the internet will be like 'You need to be doing magic damage so you should have Gale and Wyll in your party' and I go 'Shan't' and keep doing what I've been doing until the random number generator thing-y agrees that muscular women with pointy objects are indeed the way forward.
Sometimes I play a hundred hours of a game without ever learning how to properly play it; see also: Elden Ring.
It is the first game to make me glad to have bought this PS5. Like, loading screens aren't really a thing anymore and that's neat, but if the graphics are markedly better it's not in ways that I have a good enough TV to notice. Speaking of graphics, now that Spider-Man 2 is out I see that The Gamers are having discourse about whether MJ is hot enough. Honestly, the venn diagram of people who want video game graphics to be 1:1 with reality and people who have never known the loving touch of a woman continues to be a circle.
I originally bought it for Star Wars: Jedi Survivor immediately after which they announced that there's a PS4 version coming, oh well. I really like playing as Cal; I'm glad the male video protagonist has completed his evolution from gruff silent type through 'your dad' to nice young man who just wants to help. I'll be delighted when he inevitably shows up in live action. I know one of my many kvetches about Ahsoka was how much of it was 'Look, a character you may recognise from another thing!' as Disney jingles the car keys in front of our collective faces. Yes, I am part of the problem.
The cosmetics were both better and worse than in the first game. Rather than just fifty different coloured ponchos you can collect a truly horrific selection of facial hair and haircuts for Cal and I was having a good fun time seeing how much of a dirtbag I could make him look. When the romance subplot with Merrin started I had him in a manbun with a soulpatch; I had to reload an earlier save and clean him up a bit because I couldn't believe that she would voluntarily kiss dirtbag!Cal.
My favourite thing about the game though, was that you can pick your lightsaber colour from the very beginning and I could have a pretty pink murder sword to go with my pretty pink poncho. I will not be taking questions at this or any other time.
The other thing I played was the Burning Shores DLC to Horizon: Forbidden West. I was really miffed when this was announced as PS5 only even though the base game was on PS4. The reason given was 'prettier clouds' the real reason, I assume, was 'give us £500 for a PS5 you dickheads.'
It got review bombed when it first came out and I wondered if it was because other people also felt that this was a terrible, anti-consumer move, or if it was because there was a gay person in it and the worst people on the internet were having a Normal One about it. It was the second one, it's always the second one.
I appreciate that Guerrilla Games response to the predictable The Gamer backlash to there being queer people in the background of the first game was 'Did we fucking stutter.' I figured they were going to go for Aloy being some flavour of queer ever since the Elisabet/Tilda subplot because the games have gone pretty hard on Aloy and Elisabet being basically the same person, but I'm glad they made it so explicit.
The Aloy/Seyka romance I really did find very sweet, and as an Aloy/Talanah shipper I'm glad that Aloy has a type - and it's badass warrior women with shiny black hair and family issues. Outside of the relationship though, I did find the DLC kind of sparse, especially compared to Frozen Wilds. I was a bit disappointed at the lack of new enemies to fight; at the third time of fighting that giant robot toad I was like 'Did you guys finish your Big Book of Dinosaurs? Because the Smaller Book of Amphibians just isn't cutting it for me.'