2024

5 February, 2024. 744 words.

Dispatches from @ultrviolet@gts.endgameviable.com:

Monday 01/29

10:21 # Now that I’ve found this Gold Coin Tree, I have no choice but to leave Lies of P running all day while I’m working, to grab the 8 coins every 80 minutes. I assume it was a calculated strategy to boost their Steam concurrency stats with a time-based consumable currency drop. #liesofp

10:56 # Started a rotating schedule of daily uploads to YouTube including Lies of P, Warhammer Rogue Trader, and lingering un-uploaded videos of Resident Evil. This is probably going to be how I do this going forward.
19:31 # Lies of P update: This dude Romeo attacks 10 times in succession, all different timings, including some fake-out backswings, and his weapon is on fire so you can’t even see his weapon moving. I guess you’re supposed to perfect block all 10 of those without being able to see what you’re blocking. This is fine.
23:10 # Okay that’s the King of Puppets down. Yeesh. Boss fights where it feels like depending on good luck as the best winning strategy are pretty annoying. I keep saying this but nobody ever listens.

00:10 # Finished Detroit: Become Human tonight. Total carnage at the end.
09:56 # Palworld update: I returned it for a second time. Realistically there’s just no chance I’m going to click that Launch button again when there’s Lies of P to finish and then maybe Lords of the Fallen to start and Dragon’s Dogma 2 coming up shortly. I’m a one-game-at-a-time kind of guy.
09:58 # I thought, hey I’ll just make one big master playlist with all the Soulsborne games I’ve played, in the order I played them. Then I realized that YouTube’s UI is the worst thing that’s ever been invented and doing such a thing is basically impossible. 50,000 mouse clicks to add one video to a playlist that’s going to have hundreds of videos in it. No thanks.

10:00 # I like The Rest is Entertainment podcast on YouTube but the main interest for me is WHAT ARE THOSE MICROPHONES. I’ve Googled so, so much trying to find a matte silver side-address microphone with an XLR output sticking out of the side and I just can’t find it.

11:02 # I got it into my head that I should replay the missing parts of the Souls-like games that I had recorded videos of in 2021 that I lost in The Great NAS Crash. So I’m replaying the first bits of Hellpoint, and I’ve… sigh… started downloading Nioh again, the game that I hated so much I gave up on it and hoped never to play another game from that developer.
- 10:19 # Replaying the beginning of Nioh I’m fully remembering my previous toxic relationship with this game. I really enjoy the combat with regular enemies a lot, and there’s a lot of fun weapons to play with. But I also remember hating the boss fights so much I had to quit the game. Also the inventory management and the constant loot firehose is annoying to the point that I’ve already stopped looking at anything I pick up.
14:27 # The annoying nature of boss fights in Lies of P has changed dramatically after I picked up a Pistol Rock Drill Blade and absolutely obliterated the Green Swamp Monster thingy while it was attacking the Spectre. First Champion Victor, and now this one, which makes two bosses in a row that not only weren’t annoying for a change, but actually weren’t a big deal.

20:37 # Okay Onryoki down, the first proper boss in Nioh after the tutorial boss. Totally sucked and I hated every minute of it, and they only get harder and more unfair from here. Nioh boss fights are the worst boss fights in video game history, imo. I’m not going to edit any of these videos so it’s just going to be 55 minutes of running to Onryoki and dying over and over and over again.
21:56 # Tried the new Lords of the Fallen. It’s okay I guess? It’s nothing like the first game. Pretty obvious it’s a complete rewrite by different people. Nothing annoyed me immediately out of the gate, but there’s a lot of weird mechanics to understand. But I haven’t seen any bosses yet, and you can’t really tell if it’s a decent Souls-like until you see how annoying the boss fights are.