Ruining It For Everyone Else Since 2004
Taking a break from one pummeling and getting through another one. In this case it’s Outland! I made quite a bit of progress! Increased my health, and now I can harness both the power of light and darkness in the name of getting more achievements!!! Bwahahahahahahaha!
Took another crack at Abyss Odyssey, this time as Katrien. I made it juuuuust outside the Warlock’s entrance before getting gang banged by a bunch of demons… oh well. I leveled up, so there’s that I guess?
One of these days, Warlock! one of these days…
Gardening as Palpetine is harder than I thought in Abyss Odyssey. I came sooooo close to beating the Warlock! Oh well… There’s always next year!
Any day where I can put time into a game and actually make progress puts a smile on my face, even if I don’t get any trophies. I mastered the gravity inversion technique! Now I can turn my world upside down to get into places I never thought I could go! I’m over 75% of the way to completing it, but I still need to do another playthrough in David Hayter mode! 😛
Thanks to cloud saves I’ve been playing it between my main computer and the Steam Deck quite easily. It’s cool being able to play this on the couch, in bed, on the toilet? Literally anywhere, with only one copy of the game. No having to rebuy it for multiple devices.
Made some progress in Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night! I discovered a secret lab, which contained secret monsters, and a clone of myself that needed to be defeated. I played this in between my Steam Deck and my Desktop – Cloud Saving FTW.
Then it was onto multiplayer activities! Yutram and I braved more Borderlands 2 DLC, and squared off against credits that were almost as long as the DLC itself. Actually, we’re still going through it, but we had credits forced down our throat before it was over because reasons. We did earn an achievement though, so that was something. I’m not sure if the collected footage will be of any value, but I’m currently saving it to one of my recording drives. I’ve already nearly filled one of them up again! That 4K footage just eats up even more room.
I knocked a light bit of Dust off of Dust this evening while running a couple renders. There was even one quest completed! I’ve moved onto the creepy woods now to further the plot, and this is where the adventure ends for now. There are plenty of other games screaming at me for their attention this weekend.
As promised (to myself) I immersed myself in more of Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night, continuously pressing on through challenges and evil demonic beasts (as seen above). If you haven’t treated yourself to this game yet, it’s a metroidvania type that takes places in late 1800’s anime-ified England. You play as Miriam, a young orphan cursed to be a Shardbinder, a being who is slowly being consumed by demonic crystal because of an alchemists curse. She can consume other shards, granting her numerous abilities throughout her journey.
Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night has a fun cast of characters; Tonight I met Todd, a poor soul cursed to roam the halls of this demonic castle as a Killer Barber, a demon that typically cuts more than just hair (and wears high heels for some weird reason). In order to release him from this strange and unusual curse I’ll need to find different hairstyles on my journey, and then impart my knowledge to him so that I can get him one step closer to humanity, and one step closer to achieving the perfect look:
This was the last hairstyle I obtained before calling it a night. I also unlocked a French Braid, and of course lots of weapons and cosmetics. 😛
I’ve also been doing a lot of Alchemy, and stocking up on potions to ensure that I can escape certain situations… and also feed an old lady who keeps rewarding me with extra swag. I made her these chips and she gave me designer sunglasses as a thanks… late 1800’s Anime England is weird.
My biggest challenge was defeating Zangetsu, a super powerful fire samurai, voiced by David Hayter himself! There’s no hiding that dummy thicc voice from me! 😛 It took me awhile, but I finally learned how to defeat him; though something tells me that I’m not quite through with him yet, and not because he’s also a playable character now! I guess at some point I’ll have to take control of him, he looks like he could be fun to play.
In order to improve my experience I ventured over to the PCGamingWiki and found a fix for jagged 3D models that appear during NPC chat and the status screen. On the left is what it looks like without the mod, and on the right is with the mod in place. By default, the game is set to render these models at 1080p even if you’re running at a higher resolution (1440p in my case). This mod upscales the models to 4K for a less jagged look. The mod can be located here.
All in all, from the 7 hours I’ve invested into this game thus far, I can say that if you like Metroidvanias you should definitely consider this one (assuming you’re like me and haven’t played it already). It has stunning visuals, excellent voice cast and it’s a fun kind of grind with a gripping story… or perhaps it’s the month of Halloween possessing me to have a good time. 😛
In continuing my Octoberfest of Digital Horror I kicked off my weekend with another game to match the theme! I was in the mood for a metroidvania flavoured game, and I think I’m starting to understand the genre enough to get further in the game. I even got a couple achievements! I defeated a stormy hentai mermaid, and became an alchemist! I might consider grinding at it a bit more tomorrow. I’m thinking this will be one of the many games I’ll be loading on my Steam Deck once it is well within my possession. It’s the kind of game that plays perfectly on any controller, great for a portable or TV, and I’ll be able to do it all without buying into another platform!
Not everything in the 21st century is bad, I guess.
I decided to try one of the many games I haven’t touched in my library, and my magical dartboard of destiny landed on Ghost 1.0, a metroidvania meets megaman type of game that isn’t afraid to make fun of itself:
Your name is Ghost, and you’re on a mission to steal the greatest electronic secret ever hidden on the Nakamura Space Station. Primarily you remote control an android that can be rebuilt via 3D Printing should you die. You can also use your mysterious unexplained digital ghost powers to possess different robots and androids on the Space Station to solve puzzles, or clear things out ahead of time.
It handles nicely under Linux, even on my Linux Surface Tablet! It runs as if it were made for it!
Aside from your typical powerups and weapons, you also have upgrades and… geeks? I found a geek item while playing a little bit ago, and equipping it seems to emit a weird scream anytime you’re damaged by an enemy.
You can also collect skill points to apply to certain skill trees. You can improve your chassis or your ghost abilities. You can also level up Jacker and Boogan, the ones that hired you to take on this cray cray adventure. Boogan is your technical specialist, and Jacker is a hacker . 😛 You can also improve things for yourself around the space station, but so far I’ve mainly focused on chassis upgrades.
So far the game has been fun, challenging, and funny enough for me to forgive the voice acting in certain spots. Perhaps I’ll will myself through this game on another weekend, and maybe also during a long trip on my tablet! I can finally tell the co-worker that gifted this to me that I love it! 😛 If you like metroidvania style games you might want to consider looking this one up.