Ruining It For Everyone Else Since 2004
This weekend feels like it left before it truly started. I mostly spent it feeling tired and unwell, but at least there was plenty of Steam Deck to help while waiting for the pain to go away. I decided to continue my replay of Blade Kitten on Steam Deck while I rendered something on Desktop.One of these days I’ll get back to Act 2 and actually finish the game.
Sadly my desktop didn’t get much love for gaming, oh well… Maybe tomorrow night after another animation sesh. 🙂
Another evening, another game conquered. I finally made it to the end of Dust: An Elysian Tail. Still have some missing achievements, but I’ll save that for another day. The ending was bittersweet, not only for the ending itself, but knowing I finally reached the end with no further story to continue. I’m glad I savored this one over the years, this was easily one of my fave Metroidvanias to have played.
I think we’re finally getting our summer weather! We almost hit 30 C today. It gave me an excuse to dust out my desktop, it’s been in a dire need of a cleaning. Also got a little sun and Steam Deck time in, played some Gal Guardians and made it through an area that could have drawn inspiration from Little Shop of Horrors, or even have added to it. I had to make my way through a garden that has become most evil, some of the plants try to eat you, and they drink only the freshest blood from sprinklers, or you if you’re not careful.
I did end up having to take a break when I got to the boss battle, kept getting endlessly skull fucked by a Venus Fly Trap and its friends. The game was generous enough to give me some hints after dying one too many times.
Last weekend I installed Decky, a plugin manager for use in Game Mode on the Steam Deck. It’s pretty handy! I’ve already installed Decky Recorder and a few other oddball things. Up at the top is an additional HUD I added called MangoPeel. If you’ve used MangoHud under Linux you probably already know what it is, but it’s a very versatile overlay that allows you to not only view your framerate, but other system statistics as well. Quite handy for watching how much resources are needed for certain games, and how much battery it’s drawing.
It’s supposed to be another hot summer like day tomorrow. Might have to fondle my Deck some more. 🙂
I was greeted to the sound of rain pitter pattering down when waking up today, and finding that the rain also helped me sleep in even further… Maybe it was the weather, maybe it was the green tea I drank while listening to the raindrops and contemplating how to spend this rainy day, but I ended up not only settling on Aragami, but I finally beat it!
It felt satisfying to finally finish it after all this time, and now I can look forward to a bit of replay value! There are still multiple achievements for me to claim, but those can wait another day. I’m on vacation, and I crave more adventure! I’ll save the achievement hunting for another night where I only have time to mess around with it.
Since I enjoyed the first one so much – I figured I would spoil myself a bit and pick up the sequel/final installment in the series. It tells the tale of a completely different Aragami, who frees himself and discovers an entire community of fellow Aragami. I’ve only made it through the tutorial, but it does change quite a bit from the previous game. The game mechanics are a little more athletic, you can sword fight with enemies, whereas the original relied entirely on stealth. Either way, it’ll be interesting to see how this one compares with the original.
Four months into 2024 and I’ve finally completed another game in what feels like an ever growing collection of entertainment. After all these years I finally defeated the Dragon, conquered the overall clunkiness and ascended Toren with only one achievement to go back for on another day. It’s only a couple hours long, but if you’re thinking of getting it I recommend waiting for a sale. While the visuals are stunning, and the music is immersive as well as breathtaking, the controls were off putting enough for me to take long breaks until finally willing myself to sit down and finish it. I put up a short review on Steam for it if anyone wants to see another opinion cast into the ocean of mixed reviews.
If you do end up buying it I’d recommend it more as a Linux game than a Windows one. If you play under Windows the game has a nasty habit of not closing out the executable properly, but if you play it on Linux or Steam Deck it functions normally. A good reason to be dual-booting! 🙂 (Now if Linux could support my Sound Card properly that would be greaaaaaaat)
So far both games I’ve finished this year have been Indie games. I wonder what the third game I’ll finish this year will be… There’s a good chance it could be another indie game, but who knows? Maybe a triple-AAA game will slip in there somewhere.
Only time will tell.
Decided to do some zenning on the couch tonight with some tea and good scenery. Covered a lot of ground, leveled my character and found more things than I could detail.
I journeyed between The Village and Fields mostly. Found some Spirit Mail to deliver, which helped purify and open more areas. To be honest it was hard for me to put the game down tonight because I couldn’t stop finding things. Kept finding hats, rots, even a couple of meditation spots and several chests. Even with the battles it was still very therapeutic gameplay. Enough that I can give it a rest, as well as myself.