Games

Well, we finally made it! I’ve genuinely been looking forward to Monster Hunter Wilds, and now I’ve finally started playing it. Wanted to share my first impressions. Maybe some of you are playing too (or planning to)? Let’s discuss!

The design really impressed me! The world is wild — in a good way. The landscapes are stunning: from deserts and jungles to volcanoes. The atmosphere pulls you in right away. The weather effects are incredibly well done — storms or sand veils can kick in during a hunt, adding a ton of immersion.

Combat feels even deeper and more refined. There are new mechanics, like a wound system that affects monster behavior — a very cool addition.

But yeah, there are some downsides. Performance... oof. Even with solid PC specs, I’ve experienced stuttering, FPS drops, and occasional crashes. From what I’ve seen on the forums, I’m definitely not alone. Some mechanics also seem a bit simplified — World veterans might feel a bit let down.

Reddit is buzzing: some are slamming the bugs, others are loving the lore and gameplay. Fingers crossed Capcom rolls out some patches soon.

Just did a GOG survey that focused on the idea of a paid membership option on GOG. Seems they're determining what people would be willing to pay extra for. Some of the options were

• a tool for backing up offline installers
• ability to install previous versions of a game
• extra insight into the preservation work they're doing.
• voting rights on games to bring into the preservation program.

And others that I can't remember.

Runescape Valheim is a weird pitch but I guess it looks ok

Insane headline. I would've liked to see what a SOMA show would look like.

Long time no see! I really need to stop promising to write about specific games. I get too in my head about it, then I feel obligated to write instead of wanting to write. This is supposed to be a fun personal writing project, not work!

But enough about me. This is a space for discussing games! And as promised, today's discussion is on Black Mesa, a fan remake of Half-Life that was officially sanctioned by its creator, Valve.

The Black Mesa project was started in late 2004, shortly after the release of Half-Life 2, using Valve's new Source engine to rebuild the original Half-Life game from the ground up. It would be 16 years before the game was fully completed, although you could play most of it online for many years.

With new advancements in the Source engine over the years, the fan team kept rebuilding and enhancing sections of the game. Eventually, Valve stepped in and allowed them to sell the game commercially so they could afford the commercial license for their newer Source engines. The fan team never intended to make money off this game, but a source of income did help them keep building and improving the game.

Black Mesa is still available on Steam for $20, and I highly recommend supporting the team and buying it over the original game. Valve makes tons of money with their Steam store; they don't need the income from their old game.

So let's get into this game. Apologies in advance; I played this in 4K resolution, which resized everything appropriately except for subtitles. If there are subs, they're really tiny near the bottom of the screenshot. Open the image in a new window to see its full resolution and read the subtitles.

Black Mesa opens with you riding a tram line deep into an underground research facility in the New Mexico desert. You're playing as Gordon Freeman, a Theoretical Physicist with a PhD from MIT. You're running late to work today.

Side-note: I always saw Gordon as a much older man (I was a teenager when Half-Life first released), but now in my early 40s, finding out Gordon is only 27 makes me feel super old. He's so young! >_<

This game's opening was revolutionary for early games, as it played out like a film. You're stuck on this single-car tram for a few minutes, just taking in the sights of the research facility while opening credits slowly fade in and out. This was unheard of for a game in the late '90s and really pulled you into the world of the game. And this remake has so much more detail than the original game! Here's the same scene shown from Half-Life and Black Mesa, respectively:

In a "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" scene, you pass by another tram on the left with a creepy-looking government man, or "G-Man" staring at you. He's wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. With all the scientists and security guards running around this place, this one G-Man stands out. This mysterious figure is important later in the game, but I'll let you discover that story for yourself.

If you're trying to find G-Man in the opening, you'll see him right before you approach a hazardous chemical spill. If you see this, you just missed him:

Eventually, you'll reach your stop where a security guard will come to let you off. He'll make a comment about you running late. If you linger around other scientists and security guards at the beginning of the game, you'll hear some interesting and funny chats. You can also interact with everyone, although some people won't have time to chat with you.

You enter the research facility (see main screenshot) and are instructed at the front desk to hurry up and get ready. Everyone's been waiting on you. You go to the locker rooms and don the H.E.V. suit, or Hazardous Environment Suit. This orange and black suit will protect you from most damage, heal you if you're injured, and will give you a HUD (Heads-Up Display) with some information about your health and weaponry.

Its protection status is on a scale of 1-100 and you can recharge it at H.E.V. charging stations. You can also find Health charging stations, which will recharge your suit up to 100 health. Think of H.E.V. as armor and Health as... well... health. You'll be fine if your H.E.V. drops to zero, but the game is over if your health runs out.

After making your way deeper into the research facility, you run into several other scientists who give you more information on today's research project. You are doing an analysis on a sample and are instructed to go down to the test chamber to get started.

One of the scientists leads the way, where the two of you run into Eli Vance (on the left below). Eli wasn't in the original Half-Life game, but he is an important character in the sequel who apparently worked alongside Gordon at the Black Mesa Research Facility, so Black Mesa chose to introduce you to him before the game gets rolling.

There's a malfunction in their equipment, so Eli and the other scientist stay behind to fix the machines. They complain that there's been so many issues lately and they can't explain why. They instruct you to go ahead without them.

You run into two more scientists at the giant blast door to the test chamber. They're eagerly awaiting your arrival, but are also worried about the test potentially going wrong. They have the utmost confidence in your abilities though, and encourage you to do well today. They use dual retinal scanners to open the door for you.

You find yourself in a giant room with a Mass Spectrometer filling the center of the room. Once inside, a voice over a loudspeaker instructs you to get up on the catwalk and start the rotors from a computer so they can get the test going.

The sample is brought into the room through an elevator in the floor and you're instructed to push its cart into the beam of the Mass Spectrometer.

Once you add the sample to the beam, everything goes haywire! A Resonance Cascade occurs! The scientists feared this was possible, but the chances were so slim, they didn't think it could actually happen. And yet...

In a flash of green, Gordon finds himself in an alien world. The Resonance Cascade has opened a portal to another dimension!

Some intelligent alien creatures approach Gordon, speaking in an unintelligible language. We'll later learn these creatures are called Vortigaunts.

In another flash of green, Gordon finds himself back inside the test chamber, which has been destroyed by the Resonance Cascade. People are dead, the lab is destroyed, and all sorts of alien creatures are portaling through the dimensional rift to Earth. You run into Eli and he instructs you to get to the surface so you can contact someone and let them know they're all trapped deep underground.

As a scientist, you're not especially trained to fight with heavy weaponry, so you make due with a crowbar you find on the ground, fighting through invading alien creatures on your way to the surface. Along the way, you'll come across the infamous Headcrab, which leaps at people's heads and munches on their brain, turning them into walking zombies.

There are also Barnacles, which attach to the ceiling and drop a super-sticky tongue of sorts that will grab you and drag you up to their awaiting mouth. Be careful; their lure is hard to notice if you're running around in dark hallways.

Then there's the Houndeye, a multi-eyed alien dog of sorts with a super-sonic bark that will injure you, even from a distance. And many more creatures to find along the way!

If you're paying attention, you might just run into G-Man again, who observes you curiously before calmly disappearing down a corridor. Who is this man?!

Once you get close to the surface, you learn the military has arrived and has orders to clean the entire site - terminating aliens and humans alike! They're intent on covering up the Resonance Cascade! If you manage to hold your own against the Marines, you'll earn yourself a nasty reputation and the military will call in Black Ops to take care of you once and for all. These guys are extremely fast and deadly:

Having nowhere left to go, you fight your way back into the underground facility and search for other survivors...

Why am I playing the fan remake instead of the original Half-Life game? Well, because Black Mesa was built not only to be easier to play through for modern gamers, but it also fixed plot and story inconsistencies, and flows better than the original. It's not just a visually-improved version of the game, but they rearranged parts of the story and gameplay to better introduce modern gamers to the world of Half-Life.

'Cause let's be honest, back in the late '90s to early 2000s, before games had standardized controls across platforms, FPS games were kind of the Wild West, with their control schemes varying from game to game. They were great fun in my childhood, but playing them nowadays is difficult and frustrating when there are much better controls in modern games.

So if you want to get into the Half-Life franchise and you're not sure where to start, Black Mesa is a great introduction to the series! The main games are Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2. The other games in the series are either expansions, multiplayer-only arenas, or spin-offs.

One could argue that the new VR game Half-Life: Alyx is part of the main series, but you spend the entire game playing as Alyx Vance, a side character from the series (and daughter of Eli). However, from what I've heard, it does advance the plot of the Half-Life franchise a little bit, so that sounds like it could be main game content to me.

Also, as I mentioned in my last post, the Portal games are set in the same universe as Half-Life. Their Aperture Science company is the competitor to Black Mesa; although the Resonance Cascade led to events that would negatively affect both companies. Portal and its sequel take place after the first Half-Life game.

Made this base today, thought it turned out nicely :) I'll add a book case or two once I defeat skeletor tomorrow.

Finished my first BG3 run, man the acting is great, especially at the when characters get their big emotional moments. I'm thinking "that's acting!", also recognised Omni Man immediately.

Now I'm on to Alan Wake 2 and omg I can't take the dialogue and voice acting. It feels jarring. The prior game I played was Silent Hill 2 and I remembered it was OK, the MC was very chill in a horror game but its kinda explained by the story

The closure of Monolith Productions, an innovative video game developer, shows what’s wrong with an industry in which game publishers have the ultimate power to shut down projects and fire workers.

Previews and first impressions of the new Doom game are out from various game journalists!

IGN: Doom: The Dark Ages - We've Played It!

PC Gamer: Doom: The Dark Ages' melee-heavy, parry-focused gameplay was nothing like I expected, and now I'm more eager to play the full thing than ever

Eurogamer: Hands-on with Doom: The Dark Ages reveals another reinvention, but one that feels less cleanly defined

PCGamesN: Doom The Dark Ages nails the essentials, but some of its new ideas fall short

VGC: Doom: The Dark Ages nails the gameplay, the tone, and the gore

RockPaperShotgun: I threw hands with Doom: The Dark Ages and its rock 'em sock 'em robot

Someone made the suggestion to remove the "until i forgot part", which initially i was hesitant to do for consistency, but after 257 days, i think the chances i forget are slim and i just think it looks better.

I went back to AC Shadows today, and eliminated another one of the Templars (if that's even what they are). One thing I've neglected to mention is the main antagonist itself. (Spoilers). They did a really good job setting them up in this one in my opinion. They're all mysterious masked men, and they're introduced to you at the very beginning when they kill Naoe's father. It's this dramatic cut scene that does an amazing job of:

1. Setting them up as a threat.
2. Introducing why the protagonist is against them in the first place.

The game has yet to elaborate if they're templars or not. Chances seem kind of up in the air though, because the Assassins are called the Hidden Ones either. It seems the name was lost when Naoe's father dies, and with the order in Japan being dead, Naoe kind of restarts it. Only she doesn't know what to call the order because her father left her out of the loop, so she calls it the "League of the Hidden Blade" because the hidden blade is what she has to go off of.

Anyways, the Target i eliminated, had this fun arena setup. When i went into it asked if i wanted to fight him as Naoe or Yasuke. I ended up going Naoe because her stealth is really satisfying (picture above i took during the boss fight). I snuck around the arena and took out all the enemies one by one, leaving only the boss. There was one move i was proud of (which i wish i could have clipped) where i lured an enemy to a Shoji Door and then stabbed them through it before vanishing through a hatch in the floor.

After clearing the Arena i ended up using parkour to sneak around the back of the boss, and then assassinating him. This game still follows the RPG title's "Hidden Blade no longer one shots" rule, but it had made it a little more fair by making it a skill tree upgrade where each upgrade eliminates an extra bracket of health, so there's no longer this annoying grind too get the hidden blade upgraded.

After that, i took Yasuke on a little cross country road trip, all of which the above screenshots were taken on. I took him to meet up with an NPC to start a quest.

Before i did that though, i took a detour to get a synchronization point with Naoe (who's better at Parkour).

Finally though, that brings me to the main screenshot along with the one above which i took to accompany it. I took it after a cutscene and got this really pretty view of the landscape and the sunset. I also had some fun with the photo mode and took a portrait of Yasuke:

An older title which I missed the first time around but recently discovered. Makes one think about how subways are designed.

From a game design perspective, this is a fine example of how to set up progression, all done at various levels -- the abilities, the opponents, the character stories, and the location reveals. Not too difficult in game mechanics but does take time to complete. From Google Play.

Caution / spoilers: some stories touch on death and suicide, and there are some creepy visuals and characters. Be aware when letting kids play, as you may need to give them some guidance.

Gift link, so it should be accessible to all.

Some friends asked me too play Lethal Company with him today, and i decided to do that over a 4th day straight of AC Shadows. The screenshots for this one will be a bit light because i have to go through and manually censor all my friend's info to respect their privacy.

We ended up buying this Disco Ball for our drone ship. It ended up being a constant in the entire playthrough. We had it running the entire time. Somehow it got everyone but me killed, as i assume it attracted the enemy. The TV i bought probably didn't help either though.

Said TV is pictured above. Apparently my friends could all here it through the radio in the game, which was fun because they got to chew me out for watching TV instead of doing my job (it was all in good fun though).

At one point we landed on a moon that was foggy (seen in the screenshot), and immediately my friends i was playing with walked off a cliff and drowned to death. It was even funnier to hear though because one of them radioed in as they were drowning just to announce they were drowning, but it was all muffled because they were, you guessed it, drowning. That's not the only time it happened too. There was a second time where they immediately jumped off a ship and drowned in mud. it hadn't even been a minute before they all died. I had to pull the ship out because i wouldn't be able to get all the scrap alone.

Here's a bonus picture of my friend in a Rabbit Suit

They're STILL talking about the engine transition. This game is never coming out, is it?

Some friends asked me too play Lethal Company with him today, and i decided to do that over a 4th day straight of AC Shadows. The screenshots for this one will be a bit light because i have to go through and manually censor all my friend's info to respect their privacy.

We ended up buying this Disco Ball for our drone ship. It ended up being a constant in the entire playthrough. We had it running the entire time. Somehow it got everyone but me killed, as i assume it attracted the enemy. The TV i bought probably didn't help either though.

Said TV is pictured above. Apparently my friends could all here it through the radio in the game, which was fun because they got to chew me out for watching TV instead of doing my job (it was all in good fun though).

At one point we landed on a moon that was foggy (seen in the screenshot), and immediately my friends i was playing with walked off a cliff and drowned to death. It was even funnier to hear though because one of them radioed in as they were drowning just to announce they were drowning, but it was all muffled because they were, you guessed it, drowning. That's not the only time it happened too. There was a second time where they immediately jumped off a ship and drowned in mud. it hadn't even been a minute before they all died. I had to pull the ship out because i wouldn't be able to get all the scrap alone.

Here's a bonus picture of my friend in a Rabbit Suit

Hey, Henry's come to see us!

The screenshots for today are some more AC Shadows. I found out today that you can get pets for your hideout by petting Animals, so i've been doing that every time i see them. The above one was a Calico i found at a shrine. They're absolutely adorable. Still a little odd looking, but it's a cat, so it's still absolutely adorable.

I found this kitten too while exploring as Yasuke, and got to pet it. He was like a gentle giant (in heavy armor) to the kitten, leaning down to pet it and telling it that he bets it's "a good hunter".

The kitten was also out with it's mother, which i thought was really cute.

On the Subject of Yasuke, I recently unlocked him in Act 2, it's hard to pick a favorite protagonist. They both are fun to play (Yasuke is a fucking powerhouse while Naoe is the more classic stealth), both have personalities i really like, and they both have a Dynamic i really like. There was one cutscene where they both were staking out a Sumo Match waiting for the target, and Yasuke was really into the match, which Naoe had to remind him to stay on task. He also has just a lot of character that i like. For example, when you do a leap of faith with him, he's not an assassin and he's also wearing clunky samurai armor, so he doesn't quite stick the landing and comes out of the hay bale clutching his back. And another time when i was climbing a temple he comments that he thinks Naoe would like to climb it as a challenge. This game feels like it has so much more detail in it compared too Valhalla, it really makes the world kind of feel alive in a way.

Elaborating more on his playstyle, he's a heavy hitter. He doesn't have all the Assassin stuff like Naoe has, but instead he has a ton of combat abilities that are far more catered to being a Samurai. Like he has this one attack which will quickly close the gap between an enemy. Or another where he just straight up kicks them. And then he can just straight up sprint through doors like they're nothing. It's a lot of fun to just storm a fort as him. He's like a one man army.

Another thing i like about this game is that it feels far more unique in the world. There's actual Biomes it feels like and i can actually start recognizing landmarks, which is fun. For example the two above screenshots were taken in two different territories. Both look really different and if i had a map i think i could probably point to around they were taken. I will say, i so far have only been to a few of the territories though, so this may be subject to change.

Also, i wanted to share that you can drive boats in this game. There's not really a point too this one, i just thought it was neat. I stole the one in the screenshot above and crashed it into another boat on accident.