2024

8 April, 2024. 845 words.

Dispatches from @ultrviolet@gts.endgameviable.com:

Tuesday 04/02

08:43 # Oh wow I got a single like on the second Badgerfriends video! I mean I know I should only be making content for myself but yay! All that work I did trying to seamlessly patch that one spot where I said “10 gold piece each” instead of “10 gold pieces each” has paid off.

12:34 # Checking out Natural Six, another one of those actual play shows where they try to get actors/semi-famous people together to play D&D. Six posh U.K. nerds displaying all the excitement of a BBC chat show. Probably just first show jitters. But decent production. And hey it’s got the guy who voices Geralt in it (except not sounding like Geralt). So if you’re looking for more of an ASMR-style U.K.-style actual play you can play in the waiting room of a very expensive doctor’s office, without any of rowdiness or chaos of High Rollers, it might be for you.
- 12:56 # Apparently Natural Six was a kickstarter campaign. One wonders what a kickstarter backer got for donating to that. Because the first episode is just up on YouTube for anyone. They probably get the episodes early somehow.

12:36 # I’m struck by how similar an actual play live show is to a band show. Was watching the Natural Six session 0.5 and at the end they’re like “thanks everyone! we’re Natural Six!” just like they were a band leaving the stage. I guess it’s pretty similar to a stage show in general. Improv troupe, stage play, actual play show, band set, all kind of the same concept. Natural Six is kind of winning me over btw. The chemistry comes through more in the session zero stuff. Session 1 was a bit flat, although they loosened up toward the end of it. I like the minimalism of the look with that stark black background.
12:46 # I got Dragon’s Dogma 2 last night for the PS5. I only played for an hour, but not surprisingly, it starts off mechanically weird. Picking up stuff off the ground and carrying them around? Check. Climbing all over monsters? Check. Combat moves make no sense? Check. I literally picked up and threw a bystander at a monster.

08:38 # Played a few more hours of Dragon’s Dogma 2. It’s such a weird game. Controls feel weird. Animations are weird. Physics is weird (everything is speeding up and slowing down). The graphics look weird (it’s a sunny day but everything still looks muted like it’s cloudy). Lip sync is nowhere to be found. It doesn’t feel like they changed a single thing from the first game, except they redid it in a modern game engine. And I guess added a new vocation (I think the thief is new isn’t it?) and a new cat people race. Which I guess is good? I dunno. I guess I’m not in a receptive-enough mood but it isn’t really wowing me. But it’s not bad either. Just a quirky old-school RPG with an unapologetic slavery simulator built in heh.
19:59 # I have a strong suspicion already that I’m going to want to quit playing Dragon’s Dogma 2 when my inventory gets full. It’s already full. I’ve had to stop and spend time doing inventory management quite a lot in the first 4 hours of the game. That’s not a great sign for my longevity in the game. There is literally nothing more boring in gaming than moving little squares around a finite-sized grid, and for some reason here we are, 30 years later, still moving little squares around a finite-sized grid. I don’t mind the concept of managing weight for characters or managing finite resources, but the implementation is like having to stop and do your taxes every hour.

07:39 # I got a game called Pacific Drive, which sounded like one of the coolest original ideas for a game I’d heard in a while. The concept is fantastic, however the first hour is a bit of a drag because you’re bogged down in a lot of complex fiddly mechanical bits that are kind of a chore to do. Still, amazing game idea.
09:02 # One of my favorite things about Taskmaster is how they speed up the clouds moving by in the background sometimes.
15:55 # When you try to high-five your Pawn after a battle in Dragon’s Dogma 2 but it doesn’t work and they look disappointed.

18:19 # A somewhat annoying aspect of Dragon’s Dogma 2 is that it’s much much easier to manage all the crazy attack possibilities in combat with a controller, which is rather bad for my thumb. Oh by the way I got the PC version too so I could play with mouse and keyboard and preserve my thumb. Except, you know, it kind of stinks with mouse and keyboard, just like the first game. Unless you’re not doing anything but walking around. Which, to be fair, there’s a LOT of walking around in DD2.