Man, some of these Sekiro bosses are next level brutal ball busting bullshittery. Like, the second I start feeling I've got shit down, one of these bitches throws a "Surprise, motherfucker!" my way and just absolutely hands be me ass. The Corrupted Monk I THANKFULLY beat the time I did, because I had used up the last of the only item to give me even the briefest chance with this screen spanning montherfucker, had I died, I'd be proper fucked. Word to the wise, SAVE YOUR SNAP SEEDS. The general hoi polloi of the game are all pretty easy and more manageable than the Souls enemies (though in packs can tear you to shreds in half a second flat), but these fucking bosses, some of the toughest they've offered. Now it's not about avoidance and chipping down health, but perfect parrying and countering to fill the posture bar for the kill shot, as taking down health takes MUCH longer, and they can all usually kill you in a couple good hits. It's really a game of remembrance and precision. Took a break today to decompress from the days of crushing battles, back to the grind when I wake up.

Which monk fight Rags? Both times took me three tries, didn't find her as bad as mentioned. No need for a snap seed on this boss, never really saw the need of it besides maybe Lady Butterfly and even then I didn't pop one.

I'm at the end game dungeon, dead smack in the middle of it and did plenty of side content, Sekiro is FANTASTIC and should be my GOTY when it is all said and done. The game does so much good, the combat and exploration is to my liking and there is so much content as always from FROM Software. There is a right amount of difficulty for me. There are ways to go about a boss too, I had to improvise some early on by utilizing items like oil+ Fire and fistful of ash to get a charged blow in there and play ultra conservative and other times I got in there, deflecting/parrying the necessary shots and counter with my own hits and keep the pressure on to break their posture and secure a death blow.

I don't know if I will do some of the other side content because like with Nioh, this game suffers rehashing bosses like Headless and Sch. Warriors a few times and you will fight a General or Black Ninja quite a bit to get a vital prayer bead. I will access my standing by the final bosses to see if I need to hunt for more prayer beads or not. So far, I am on my 7th prayer bead necklace and have an attack power of 9(I think?), think that might be enough. 9 Gourd Seeds, will hunt for that 10th.

My problem with the aforementioned Headless and Sch. Warriors is you are essentially forced to grind for Divine Confetti which are scattered throughout the game and are somewhat scarce. They allow you to hurt Headless or do more significant damage to ghost/spirit apparition types like Sch. Warriors. The problem is if you die, you don't regain these items and given these bosses can inflict Terror quite a lot you will instant die often unless you pop a P. Agent or have bought the Purple Umbrella or Infinite P. Agent item. Even then you can get spammed and caught in bullshit to make you lose. Now fortunately, you can buy Divine Confetti MUCH later on by end game for 300 an item but gold isn't really easy to keep given the game has a cruel way to punish you by taking HALF of your gold per death which is cruel. Forces you to invest in having to be (somewhat) ripped off and put money in small and large pouches sold by vendors even if you lose out interest wise. You can also farm Divine Confetti in rare drops by a certain enemy in the Castle but really the point is, I wish FROM learned it's lesson from Bloodborne in the headache that was Blood Vial farming by not having you MUST farm Divine Confetti to even hurt a boss. Just a headache, not sure if I will pursue fighting these sub bosses. Took 2 Headless down and 1 Sch. Warrior.

Majority of my boss defeats have been me abusing the Charge Attacks or using firecrackers to create an opening to pull a charge attack and wither their health away. Very few bosses have I posture break for a deathblow. I play very conservatively and get in there or try and block/deflect when I feel safe after learning their pattern. 

The first, spectral Corrupted Monk, but I figured out why it have me such trouble, the way the game is structured, pretty sure I got to it way before I was meant to, I think I'd only beat one full boss by the time, maybe 2, when I ran into it, so I only had like 2-3 attack at the time. The way I breezed through the second coming back at the end, I was just severely underpowered at the time. What had happened, was I missed the little window in Ashina Castle to continue the story, so I actually cleared all other areas possible before essentially the 2nd/3rd boss of the game. I can't remember if I did Lady Butterfly before or after.

I just got to Fountainhead and beat the True Monk when I took my leave for the night.

Apr 1, 2019 18:24:33 GMT RagnarokMike said:

The first, spectral Corrupted Monk, but I figured out why it have me such trouble, the way the game is structured, pretty sure I got to it way before I was meant to, I think I'd only beat one full boss by the time, maybe 2, when I ran into it, so I only had like 2-3 attack at the time. The way I breezed through the second coming back at the end, I was just severely underpowered at the time. What had happened, was I missed the little window in Ashina Castle to continue the story, so I actually cleared all other areas possible before essentially the 2nd/3rd boss of the game. I can't remember if I did Lady Butterfly before or after.

I just got to Fountainhead and beat the True Monk when I took my leave for the night.

Oh yeah, the path I think I went was Valley Depths-Tengou Temple-Ashina Depths. 

Based off of the trophy listing, I think it was meant to reverse Tengou Temple and Valley but yeah the Ashina Depths probably is best for last so kudos to you for taking that whole path down. 

That happened to me too, the Ninjajar fellas who crash down and can one shot you scared me so much in packs that I ended up running down all the way to the end Sculpture Idol near the Great Serpent exit towards the valley. I advanced as far as I could there until there was a door that prevented me from moving forward until I caught that same window. 

We're in the same spot pretty much, I might be like 2 or so Idols ahead of you. We might be locked for the same ending too I think, glad you are going true path and not taking the easy way out for an ending!

Finishing up for the day, just have the Hate Demon and the final boss to go. I don't have to fight the redo bosses, as I went Immortal Severance and not Purification, so those bosses'll have to wait till the eventual 2nd round, with the final set in a 3rd round for siding with the Owl. Gave the Hate Demon a couple goes, it is at the same time easy and hard. Actually take down his life pretty reliably, but his attacks just have so much damn range, and his charge is such a bitch to get out of the way of with how it can signal and go off midswing (with little telegraphing) that he can kill you in just 2 hits despite having a HUGE lifebar at this point. See how I fare in the morning.

I see why they saved the Demon of Hatred and the Sword Saint for last, certainly the steepest hills to climb. The Demon's main difficulty simply comes from his size, range of attacks, and speed of his unblockable charge. Once you really hit his patterns down, it's not all that hard, really, that's anyboss in a FromSoftware game I guess. I had the most trouble with the Sword Saint at the end, this is a 4 phase boss fight, the first phases is a rather simple final battle with Genichiro, can take him out in a minute or so. But dammed if I couldn't get the Sword Saint's timing down, his moves just come at such wildly varying speeds that it's hard to fully time them. Even worse in the second phase when he pulls out a spear along with his sword, which gives him crazy ranged attacks and leave little in the way of openings. This was the phase that took me the longest, took me 3 damn hours to finally drop this SoB, only making it to phase 3 four times (the fourth being victory). Phase 3 is really just phase 2 with lightning, so not as big of a step up as 1 to 2. If you can truly master parrying, this could be a very simple fight, he does a ton of parry-able moves, with very few unblockables...but I couldn't so he was a right bitch. Utterly satisfying that moment I finally landed the kill shot. It'll be some time until I revisit the game, with alternate routes offering the only 5 bosses I didn't beat (extra 2 for betraying Kuro, extra 3 for Purification). Hell of a game, satisfactory hill to climb.

Beat Sekiro late last night, beat all the bosses in my Purification run except the obligatory 2 for the Asura ending. Even the Headless and Schi. Warriors. Wow, what a game. I will say this, if this game isn't my GOTY by year's end, this has been a phenomenal year of gaming altogether.

I beat Demon of Hatred AND Sword Saint Assina on the same day. Will not lie, I raged quite a lot. It took me about 40 minutes to run through Demon of Hatred and took me about 90 minutes for Sword Saint, a lot of frustration for both bosses but as expected given they were end game bosses. Demon of Hatred was more up my alley as Rags said it's a Bloodborne/NiOh style boss that you go in there and be aggressive and get as close to the boss as possible. Shades of Ludwig the Accursed for me. The third phase is brutal of this boss, I only used the Phoenix Umbrella to negate his fire belly flop attack as it has such a huge hitbox it catches me. I did not know about the whistle that stuns him for 3 turns which seemingly a lot of players use to sort of get free shots in on the boss so I feel kinda good about that I guess. The fireball attack is such utter garbage, my run that I captured the win I DASH through the fireballs and I yelled out loud "LETS FUCKING GO THIS IS THE RUN!" because those fireballs hurt you hard, have a crazy range and almost instantly burn you too in the process. By Phase 3, I had 5 or 6 Beads and all my medicine so I felt damn good despite the unblockable fireswipes that I still wasn't used to. Not a ridiculously hard boss but if you mess up like not getting away/blocking his stomp or that quick instant death charge that is unblockable not knowing to jump over it, he will get you.

At the very end, I popped the Divine Grass to no doubt this one and we exchanged hits but I had half health and his posture was done leaving it for a deathblow and I got the heck up ran near the fire barrier and downed him and screamed in joy!

The Saint though, in particular that Phase 3.....wow. I actually found Phase 1 more annoying than Phase 2 on the pure basis that I was not satisfied if I had to use more than 1 heal to get through it and I let Girichiro just kill me if that was the case. Phase 2 I had his ass beat with two very, very, very punishable attacks being his white charge two slice trick and his instant unblockable swipe both got punished by my charged up R1 which for much of the game I utilized. By the time I got the hang of this, my run of winning it all I USED 0 heals on Phase 2! After using 2 for Phase 1! Wow.

Phase 3 is a pure wakeup call, he has range, power, posture over you and he had so many tricks up his sleeve including the gun shots, swipe you quickly with a side sword and his ridiculous ranged spear that reaches you nearly halfway through the screen! Makai Counter on his unblockable thrust all day, so big. I got aggressive and after a majority of the game where I did not parry and rather used firecrackers, fistful of ash etc. to get my shots in to take the health down over the posture, FINALLY the game told me no no no you have to break posture to capture victory. And that I did.

Phase 4 had lightning and an additional arts attack and by god I still don't get the lightning gimmick given you barely fight anyone who does it throughout your journey because I swear I am hitting R1 in the air as the shock is coming down but a stray lightning bolt somehow hits me still inducing shock and a good deal of damage. By this point, I got to the final phase a second time and with all my medicine, beads and yes a Resurrection used, fuck it I got him good. I legit yelled out loud "FUCK YEAH!" and was on hype mode and Cloud 9, what a tough ass boss but god damn if the feeling isn't satisfying after winning. I didn't cheese him or anything, went blow to blow and poked him consistently all the while parrying his nonsense on Phase 3 and 4. Thank god my 8 or 9 uses of Firecrackers saved the day on Phase 4, I popped them and got about 6 or 7 of them on use while being very very careful he wasn't in the middle of a combo. So, so, so, so big. Ultimately got his posture down after he got me and I resurrected and I went for it with less than half health and did it.

I don't know how the hell you did it Rags without 10 beads given you didn't do the purification run. Kudos and credit to you sir, as both bosses had me down 0 pallets and 0 beads and in the Demon's case, I popped a Divine Grass to make sure this was it(Lone Divine Grass I used EVER in the game, it's a big problem I create for myself in Soulsbourne games in not using the items given, consistently saying I may need the items later on ultimately to never use them! )

Even though the Saint was the Harder of the two bosses, the Demon had my most butt clenching moment of the entire game. First off, I'll preface this by saying I feel like kind of an asshole, in reading your rundown, I realized I forgot all about the few Divine Grasses I'd picked up, never used any, notta one. Either way, once I finally got the Demon's patterns down, the run I actually won on, I was down to no life items (since I forgot about the fucking Divine Grass), one hit and I'm dead, I just dodged his attack, and decided to go for broke on the kill (as he had a couple hits left on his bar), as I was swinging away, he jams his hand in the ground, the symbol pops up, he's about to charge and this shit's over if it touches me, if he took one more hit...I was already committed and the charge was going to fuck my world up, right then I just managed to land the kill shot,done deal. I probably would have had to quit for the day had that charge taken me. Though that did make it that much more satisfying, it was a "next hit wins" situation, and I beat him to the punch, or slash as it were.

Currently playing Borderlands: GOTY Remaster on PS4. Man, this game looks really nice now. They even touched up on the PC (which is a free update for them) and man, it looks pretty. There is a bit of screen tearing which kinda sucks but they said that they are working on the issue currently. Playing the first game where getting legendaries give me quite a prospective on how bad and grindy getting good weapons are in games now adays. I'm so glad that Borderlands 3 seems to be following the path of it predecessors. Gearbox even added a few new legendaries for us old school players to find which give me even more reason to jump on.

Really love how Gearbox gives us the option to transfer our older characters from last gen. So many pearls and they are here to stay <3

I tried to play From Software games blind then it stuffs me over half way through and I use a walkthrough.

Like in DS2 I I logically followed the crow at the dead end..big mistake. Why wouldn’t you think to do that?



As for Sekiro I was at a dead end in the monk area, turns out I had to climb to a top of a building I went through and face a 3 phrase boss. I wasn’t pleased when I realised there was a 3rd phase. Finally beat him after several tries, frustrating to say the least.

This remastered Call of Duty: Modern Warfare free download on PS4 has been a blast from the past these past few days.

MK11 is so damn good, barely scraped the surface so far, just a bit of "vs" with the nephew, but just a ton of fun. Fast and fluid. Love it.

Anyone playing Black Ops 4?

After a 27gb update, everything is locked apart from Blackout. What?

This thing is a massive piece of shit.

Apr 23, 2019 11:12:37 GMT NATH45 said:

Anyone playing Black Ops 4?

After a 27gb update, everything is locked apart from Blackout. What?

This thing is a massive piece of shit.

I was super into it when it came out and played Blackout all the time,
now everyone I played it with just plays Apex and it got to the point where it was taking about up 100gig of my PlayStation so I uninstalled it.

Apr 23, 2019 21:25:00 GMT System said:

Apr 23, 2019 11:12:37 GMT NATH45 said:

Anyone playing Black Ops 4?

After a 27gb update, everything is locked apart from Blackout. What?

This thing is a massive piece of shit.

I was super into it when it came out and played Blackout all the time,
now everyone I played it with just plays Apex and it got to the point where it was taking about up 100gig of my PlayStation so I uninstalled it.

Update jumped from 27 to 80gb. Over it all ready. Back to Battlefield.

Started Monster Boy. Something about these "slowly reveal the map" games that I love.

Playing MK’s story mode, probably just me getting Older but damn the cutscenes are bad. I know MK has always been cheesy but it’s sounds like English isn’t the first language of most of the voice actors.

Enjoying the actual gameplay though.

Started in on Days Gone, right now, feeling consistent with the consensus, it's a very good, but also flawed game...never quite great. Feeling like a 7/10 after a few hours.

Apr 14, 2019 15:03:41 GMT 🤯 said:

This remastered Call of Duty: Modern Warfare free download on PS4 has been a blast from the past these past few days.

So this has turned into a quicksand trap.

Haven't been able to force myself to play (or really even do) much of anything else.

Occasionally Wife and I will play a little bit of The Witness together since she loves puzzles.

But the old school COD addiction has been so bad I even uninstalled all the other games I bought late last year (with the exception of Destiny 2) because... fuck it.

Playstation's State of Play showed FF7 gameplay footage! It is beautiful. <3

Got the Platinum for Days Gone, nothing particularly original, but still a really fun game start to finish, solid story and voice cast as well. Hordes are a truly frightening thing, without the right resources, even at maximum life, they will tear you to shreds in mere seconds. Later in the game, with the right guns and a heaping helping of explosives, can finally start taken them on. Though, the game does suffer from some ever present technical issues, long load times, frequent slowdown, the occasional major glicth (only one that I had to reset the game for the 30-40 hours of play). Solid first out, nice stinger at the end for a hopeful sequel, just a little bit more polish and they really have something. Though my biggest negative for the game is the weapon wheel, WAY too sensitive, I could never get it to select the thing I wanted without going to the next group over first try.

Also beat Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, an 8-Bit throwback prequel to the proper Ritual of the Night. If RotN can deliver as same as CotM, then it should be a fantastic. This was a perfect throwback, enjoyed myself from the moment the game started. As much as I was already looking forward to RotN, this at least doubled it.

Bloodstained looks so good from the recent play stuff I seen.

Growing up as a kid, I loved popping in quarters into pinball machines, be it at the movie theaters or at Magic Land (an old video game arcade), unfortunately in this day and age it's hard to find one to play. Having said all that, I ended up getting The Pinball Arcade for the Switch, and pretty much spent all day going back and forth between the Frankenstein, Ghostbusters, and Doctor Who tables.

I know that this isn't something everybody would like, but as I said as a kid I played pinball tables a lot, and felt myself really digging this.

Finished Rage 2, and...eh. Honestly wish I had given up and played one of the games on my docket I've been waiting to lay into. It's not a bad game, but it's just, I don't know how to put it...only a time killer. Like, it can be fun, but in the end, very pointless. I think this mainly comes down to the criminally brief story elements. This is literally the extent of the story:

1. Opening, after which you're told there's 3 people you need to see to in order to take on the Authority.
2. You see each of the 3, each gives you a mission, at which point you must reach level 5 bond with them to get a second mission.
3. You reach level 5 bond, each gives you one single mission more.
4. You complete those missions, and are then primed for the final mission against the authority.

100% of the rest of the game is just clearing outposts of various types. Now, the gameplay is actually a hell of a lot of fun at it's core, shooting is on point, and powers make you truly feel like a bad ass. But even something like Days Gone, which was also mainly just clearing outposts, had enough character content to make that all feel worth it, most outposts had a well portrayed story to go with them, here, there were some loose threads, but honestly nothing stuck the second after reading/hearing it. Drowned into white noise.

Also, the most pathetic NPC's I can recall. You talk to the few you can, and they lay out a story and a goal, and then it's marked on the map. But all of these markers can also just be found naturally, and you never really have any sense of what sidemission you're doing, because it's actually just the same outpost clearing as the rest of the game. Later you can return to them for a line of dialog, and that's it, other than maybe 1 that payed (and I literally only remember one that payed), there was no incentive to talk to them beyond getting the marker, and no incentive at all for returning to them after you completed whatever mission. Just that single line of dialog confirming it was done.

Plus, vehicle combat was supremely disappointing. Coming from the team that did Mad Max, some of the funnest vehicle combat I can remember, even more so. Also, convoys and upgrading the Phoenix seemed rather useless. Convoys give you a substantial amount of material in upgrading the Phoenix (other activities rewards are too paltry to bother in comparison. Random races give you 1, with 10 being the minimum upgrade), but you really only need to upgrade the Phoenix to fight convoys, once it's fully upgraded, really no point. Also once it's fully upgraded, it'll never matter again.

It's just a pity they couldn't put something more substantial behind the core gameplay, as firefights are always a ton of fun, and you truly feel like a badass by the time you upgrade...but the meagerness of the rest of the game means it is absolutely INADVISABLE to pay full price for this game. Maybe around $10 it's a decent time killer, but even then, can't imagine wanting to return to it often/ever.

I remember Rage was a fun yet forgettable game, this is very much the same, only I don't remember growing as tired of that one by the end of it. I'll give the sequel 6/10.

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in"

Crazy to think that one of my most favorite games last generation is still getting content. For a limited time the "Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary" dlc is free to download and man it's great getting back into it! Even added a few more legendaries, skins, even a new weapon type. Adding also a new level cap with increased OP levels. Man, with 6 characters, I have a lot of work ahead of me. Working on Borderlands 3, they were also working on this. Insane. The DLC is even the size of some of the story dlc's from the original run of the game, so it's crazy to think that they are temporarily giving it away.

^ That was one of the better moves of E3. It gives players something to do in the interim and is amazing content for the price they're charging.

Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life (Natsume; 2003)

Consider this a blog post. When this game originally came out, I was beyond excited for it. I watched my cousins play Harvest Moon on the SNES and their knowledge of the game made me want to go out and buy it. Unfortunately the game was stupidly rare and by the time it came out down here, the N64 was the 'it' machine so I missed that opportunity. Then Harvest Moon 64 was announced for the Nintendo 64 and it was near the top of my most anticipated games. If you quizzed me in 2000 what my most anticipated games were, it would look like:

1. Pokemon Gold/Silver

2. Harvest Moon 64

3. Digimon World 2

4. Mario Party 2

5. The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask

#2 and #3 never made their way down under. I was crushed and even though my aunts and uncles owned real farms they would have loved my help on, without being able to throw tomatos at girls and make them fall in love with me, the appeal just wasn't there.

I thought my dreams of becoming a farmer had been dashed, until finally A Wonderful Life was announced and was coming out around my birthday circa 2004. Unfortunately, it came out a week before and the release was so low key, it was hard to tell if it was out. Being an awkward teenager, I headed down to EB Games and just mosied around the store, hoping I could see a copy on a shelf, on the counter or in the back. I didn't want to go up and ask because I felt that would corner me into buying the game. So I just floated around the store minding my own business when somebody who must have been in their 20s to 30s asked about it. My ears perked up and as it turned out they had a copy in the back. I had a feeling they only had the one copy, so I wandered over to confirm it and yep, that was all their stock.

Then the Cartman Land effect took over, I had to have that game. So for my birthday, I was able to pool enough money together to buy both it and the GBA game and finally my dreams of becoming a farmer were realised, finally I was going to run a successful business and settle down with a girl who liked having watermelons thrown at her head...

I got bored of it within days.

I couldn't remember the specifics other than the game felt really barren and there was a caveman who would come and eat your food if you weren't careful. Either way like other anticipated games like Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Onimusha 2 it sat on my backpile.

Until now...

I've slowly been making my way through my GameCube collection. Last year I marathoned through Skies of Arcadia and Phantasy Star Online Ep I - III, now it's time to get to the bottom of this game.

Right off the bat, I can understand why I dropped this game so quickly. The game has a steep learning curve and it has one of the worst manuals possible. The manual really needed to be as thick as Baldur Gate II in terms of guiding the player. Instead, it's about 4 pages long, and the rest of the pages are translated into other languages.

So the game has become like a pen and paper RPG where I'm constantly taking note and save-scumming to figure out how much things are worth, who sells what, and who likes having cake thrown at their head. I've spent roughly 5 hours in the game, but my save file is only 10 minutes old since I'm constantly resetting.

As far as I've figured out, crops aren't meant for selling. You use them to nourish yourself and to make into other dishes to either make friends or sell at a higher profit. The real money is in other ventures like livestock, fishing and possibly mining. Mining as the big money spinner in the Harvest Moon spin-off Rune Factor which I beat a few years back, so I wouldn't be surprised if the game was the same.

A few bug bears early.

The town actively wants you to die.

So in my first session, I did what needed to be done at the farm and worked up an appetite. I walked around the town, seeing where I could grab a bite only to be offered repetitive conversations or alcohol. Finally I wandered over to the other big farm in town and seemingly as a joke they offered me seeds and told me to go make my own food. It takes a week to grow veggies! So I put my character on a hunger strike. As far as I know, the only food you can eat is plants found around the farm or you can eat into your profit and drink some of the left-over milk.

Once I figure a few systems out, I'll make progress through the game. I get the sense I'm just going to power through a lot of it, but finally I'll get to run my own farm as I once dreamed.

Pokemon Moon (GameFreak; 2016)

I finally got around to beating the post-game content three years after the fact. What took me so long is that I barely touch my 3DS now that I have a PS4 and a Switch. So the few times I go back and play, I usually just explore the map and grind. I never really sat infront of Serebii.com to figure out what there was to do, so I'd go every three months, play through the Elite 4 and just drop it again as my monsters slowly inch their way to Lvl 100.

Enough of that, I had E3 streams to wait for, so I decided to boot it up and see which monsters I had left.

So this generation included Ultra Beasts, quasi-legendary Pokemon who are a lot easier to acquire than regular legendary. With half of them, you can acquire two or even four of them on a single save and the game gives you these special balls that allow you to capture them easier than most common monsters. The most disappointing aspect of Ultra Beasts is how they're located. In past Pokemon games, after you got to a certain point, the game opened up so you could go out and explore sections of the map previously unavailable. Usually you would stumble upon something worthwhile like a legendary monster and a powerful TM and it would enhance that feeling of exploration. In this instance, you're sent on a mission by Looker, a recurring character from past entries, to track down these Ultra Beasts. He will send you to one location at a time, and you've got to capture x amount of monsters to progress. It's not the end of the world, but it feels more like a chore than meaningful content. The only saving grace is that it expands on the lore, similar to the Doxys post-game stuff from ORAS but I feel it could have been handled better. I presume Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon fixed this, but still, the wormhole stuff feels lazy. That was another design element of ORAS I hated where a mystic portal would open up in a random part of the map and suddenly you're up against an old monster from a previous game.

Even though you didn't ask, this was my team in Pokemon Moon.

Lunala

Alolan Raichu

Salazzle

Bewear

Primarina

Parasect (It's been my go-to for catching Pokemon in lieu of Smeagle learning attacks)

I usually don't use legendaries in my team, but I made this an exception. After playing Stadium 2, I grew to appreciate how strong they were and how they make grinding through the E4 less bothersome.

I still have Sun sitting around, which is basically my Event Pokemon back-up. I've always wanted to assemble a team of Gen VII Pokemon in Moon, breed them and send them over but just never did the research to figure out which direction I wanted to go. With Sword and Shield coming out, I might re-discover the taste.

Splatoon 2 (Nintendo; 2017)

The second last Splatfest, Unicorns vs. Nardwhals, has just wrapped up and my salt levels have slowly dwindled. I was one of those filthy casual Splatoon 2 fans detest, one of those lapsed players who comes back for the Splatfests all rusty and demands to be carried. I haven't played Splatoon since around December where my internet provider messed up my NAT and I was on the phone to them for weeks trying to set them up. I was speaking to a bunch of people overseas trying to get them to fix up my Nintendo system designed for kids, it was all very humbling but if there's a problem I like to solve it.

So to break my campaign down...

Team: Nardwhals - They sounded like that Canadian rock journo, so I had to jump on board.

Weapon Of Choice: Sploosh-o-matic - A short-range rapid fire gun that's great for covering turf, but not so great in a skirmish. I actually started really well with this weapon with a 1000+ 10+ kill run on the Shifty Station, then I bottomed out. I tried other weapons like the N-Zap 85 but I was even worse with those weapons, I went back to the Sploosh.

Maps: Started with Wahoo World and Inkblot Academy and it took so long I was around for the map rotation to Kelp Dome and Moray Towers. I thought the Shifty Station was pretty interesting with the rising currents and those roll-out rugs. There was a risk/reward element to picking the right moment to cross over and holding your position was rarely a good idea, especially with the Sploosh's.

Salt-Levels : Way too high, I was dropping all sorts of f-bombs and throwing tantrums over a game designed to be fun. When I paused it and reminded myself just to have fun, I actually started playing better. I'll get some more sessions in before July and have a proper crack.

I had AEW Double Or Nothing in the background and it took me from the start of the show through to the start of Jericho-Omega to reach royalty. So that was about 3 hours, not the longest campaign, but definitely very rusty and below others where I had it done in around an hours time.

Sonic Mania was I guess one of the free games of the month for PS4, and so I downloaded it because... FREE!

It was a nostalgia throwback as the screens loaded... but then as soon as I started playing, I was taken back to that single-digit age range and memories of those first panic attacks induced by this game. The speed, the various paths throughout the level and no way to ensure you've explored everything, losing rings and scrambling to re-grab as many as possible... not even hi-🤯 can handle it.

Jun 18, 2019 12:31:48 GMT 🤯 said:

Sonic Mania was I guess one of the free games of the month for PS4, and so I downloaded it because... FREE!

It was a nostalgia throwback as the screens loaded... but then as soon as I started playing, I was taken back to that single-digit age range and memories of those first panic attacks induced by this game. The speed, the various paths throughout the level and no way to ensure you've explored everything, losing rings and scrambling to re-grab as many as possible... not even hi-🤯 can handle it.

It's not a Sonic Panic Attack until you're underwater and you hear the sound DUN DUN DUN DUN as you scramble for an air bubble. And you literally touch one the moment you die. I've never beaten one of the originals. Hell, I've only ever beaten the 2 parts of Sonic 4 and a few of the 3D ones. But man that shit always gives you a legit attack where it feels like you're drowning. VR before VR?

Jun 18, 2019 13:33:15 GMT @ness said:

Jun 18, 2019 12:31:48 GMT 🤯 said:

Sonic Mania was I guess one of the free games of the month for PS4, and so I downloaded it because... FREE!

It was a nostalgia throwback as the screens loaded... but then as soon as I started playing, I was taken back to that single-digit age range and memories of those first panic attacks induced by this game. The speed, the various paths throughout the level and no way to ensure you've explored everything, losing rings and scrambling to re-grab as many as possible... not even hi-🤯 can handle it.

It's not a Sonic Panic Attack until you're underwater and you hear the sound DUN DUN DUN DUN as you scramble for an air bubble. And you literally touch one the moment you die. I've never beaten one of the originals. Hell, I've only ever beaten the 2 parts of Sonic 4 and a few of the 3D ones. But man that shit always gives you a legit attack where it feels like you're drowning. VR before VR?

You're not helping my PTSD, brotha.