Good morning everyone. I'm not going to go in to what's going on in Ukraine because we've all seen it by now. We're wishing them luck there and that's all I'll say on that for now. Let's go right to WRUP related things.
So if you've been playing games lately chances are you're probably playing Horizon: Forbidden West, Lost Ark or Elden Ring, or all of the above. I managed to finish my #4if goal in SnowRunner just before Elden Ring came out and boy am I glad I did. I still haven't picked up Horizon but I will eventually, or maybe I'll hold out for what seems likely to be an inevitable PC release to play it with a KB and mouse. I know Yoda0vgs picked up Lost Ark and is enjoying it, even putting up some footage on the YouTube channel - the first in a long while actually. For me recording is more or less impossible these days or I'd have some footage up of Elden Ring by now. Not that it matters much, I think basically anyone has Elden Ring footage.
I don't have much to say about Horizon or Lost Ark but I do have some words on Elden Ring. So far I'm really loving it. I'm not sure why it's not just called Dark Souls 4. Here's why I say that - Combat is 100% the same but with addition of the mount. Enemies may not be quite as unforgiving as DS but they're the same in many ways, from combat patterns to gear farming to fog walls to severing tails to boss rooms having tons of player blood stains etc etc Elden Ring is open world Dark Souls. It has its differences and accessibility additions but it's a souls game for sure. For instance, you can fast travel from anywhere to your site of lost grace (bonfire) at any time as long as you're not in a dungeon. The world is open and fully explorable and you'll get a cool goat horse to run around on and even fight from if you wish to, it's a little OP honestly but that doesn't mean it will stay that way. There's a world map, something that doesn't exist in DS. Leveling characters uses the same sort of stat tree from DS including alphabetic weapon scaling but there seems to be ever so slightly less stats to clutter things things up. It's all very enjoyable so far and I'm having a great time exploring and farming gear and leveling and upgrading weapons and occasionally using two tower shields because that's something you're allowed to do in souls games.
What are we playing?
Greywolfe: well, i did a dumb. because i want to [potentially] stream infernax [and because i'd already started playing shovel knight that way - that was a set of streams i did just for funsies between other, bigger project], i picked up the messenger, so that i could explain the sort of middle ground between those two games [with shovel knight on the left being a pure platformer and infernax on the right as a more pure metroidvania] - we're past the bone crushingly awful part of that game [the part where you HAVE TO fight bosses], but we're now in the long stretch where all you do is hunt for items. i like this part of the game the best, but those first ten hours [where i was fighting bosses] were exactly as awful as the first time i played the game. this second time around, it's a little less absurdly stupid [because i know what i'm doing], but that first bit still remains the most tedious part of the game by a far, far margin. [because the bosses are all designed around ATROCIOUS attrition mechanics.] - in the background, i'm playing a SUPER slow playthrough of infernax, to learn it, but also just because i'm not sure you can play huge chunks of that game at a time. it's not as backbreakingly stupid as the messenger's bosses, but it has some of that attrition factor built in because of it's source material. so, it's slow going. [ps: play infernax if you're into that sort of thing. it's pretty good.]
AJ: I went by the local retro games store again and picked up my first ever PS2 console (the slim model). Assuming it works, I'll be setting that up and enjoying a couple games I recently acquired for it, Devil May Cry and the King of Fighters XI. I may also play some Atari Flashback Classics on the Switch.
Yoda: [I can only assume he's playing Lost Ark]
Scrooloose: I am of course playing Elden Ring but I'm still trucking in SnowRunner building a Tatra Factory as well.