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This was supposed to be my restful week, and instead I've spent most of it sleeping terribly and in inexplicable stomach pain featuring nausea, existing with my waking hours in the bathroom. I learned my body definitely doesn't like sesame seeds in one way (it's fine in another), since it was a bit grumbly about it, but that was Sunday; Wednesday daytime it decided to scream, and continued to scream, until the early hours of Friday morning. I only ate once on Thursday, and that was less a choice of "it's settled" and more "I haven't eaten for 28 hours, I need to eat something". And even then it screamed today over lunch for several hours... it hasn't screamed over dinner and the nausea finally let up, although it's still a bit gripey, so I'm hoping it's calming down over its erratic upset...
S17 of Overwatch is... something of a letdown, skins wise. We knew a few days before that cosmetics were going to be arcade and school themed. Now, I am 33 years old. I do not really care about the latter, and my eyebrows raise when you deage your young women into minors from the way you've named them as Freshman and Sophmore. And the arcade theme? They'll all still meant to be kids in an arcade game and most of the battlepass is all school related and Man. Man. I was worried over the magical girl skins being a little too sailor moon school uniform but I should have been worried about this. This could have been avoided if your academy was a university or follow on setting... we could have had the characters with canonical academy outfits (cough, Ashe, Lifeweaver)... nope.
Worse for Ashe is that Cassidy is in the battlepass and he has a Deadlock varsity jacket so in this bland af AU there is a Deadlock club and you can't just dangle her club in front of me and not show. Cassidy when I catch you.
It's the first battlepass I haven't wanted a single thing for in eighteen months which is a long time. Gameplay has been somewhat bleh due to them messing with DPS passive healing reduction numbers again, and stadium really sucks for the rank reset and new characters added in and everyone being thrown together in a boiling pot and we still don't have a quick play mode to try out and learn new things which is like. It's desperately needed at this point. idk. I want to learn, but I have to feel like shit to do so. I'm trying not to let it get me down too much, but it's just hard when I know I'm not playing my best in a ranked mode because I'm still trying to learn new things. This is the only time to try it, when I have no rank to lose. But stadium grabs anyone and everyone instead of people at your skill rating, so people rightly get upset when their team isn't playing at their best if they have rank to lose. Bad!
Map voting also works on paper but I, and other players in the lobby, will know what they missed out on. I've had multiple cases of people actively throwing games due to not getting a map they wanted, or not trying after one fight. I don't anticipate it settling down, honestly...
In the throes of the terrible tummy ache I tried picking up a new game, After Us. The Earth has been destroyed by the devourers (humans) and it is a commentary on consumerism and environmental damage, and it's Gaia's duty to rescue animal spirits. I was having fun with it; it looked beautiful, the platforming had terrible moments with depth perception, but it was doable once it gave you access to your dash about five minutes of basic jumps in.
It was mostly just, visual enjoyment. Vibes. Linear exploration. And then it throws enemies at you: but this is a game without a combat system. I honestly don't know why it has traditional encounter arenas, it was not made for it. It reuses what is known as your "heart", or the power of life, to fight them. A long press briefly restores nature around you, can shatter nearby glass, grow trees, vines. It now stuns enemies. To defeat them, you have to use the short press to throw the heart out, which was previously only used to gather collectibles. And then recall it. And then throw if 1-6 more times before they go down.
But you can't do this when the enemies are stunned because it's the same button and has a cooldown. You can't do it whilst jumping or in the air, because the heart only travels horizontally. The enemies run as fast as you do at dash, and you have to be facing them to boomerang throw the heart that defeats them and even then it's picky because it's a short range auto, but it doesn't have anything to lock onto, you can't really aim it. Okay, bad system, I thought. And then it got worse, because they started spawning in packs of twenty. That's not good game design! Like one or two I could forgive, but if you have this many enemies, put some thought into maybe developing a combat system...!
And then it got even worse than frequency, the stun isn't precise enough, so they grab hold of you. Your dodge doesn't go far enough to avoid this because again... your movement is not designed for combat. The only way to escape the grab is through a button mash... introduced two hours into the game. There is no way to turn this off, and no suggestion until you see your first enemy, two hours into the game, that there are things to fight at all.
I quit after two rooms, because, no. I went back to it this evening to see if it was liveable, or enemies intermittent. No. In every fucking room they are there, dozens of them, and you have to mash. You walk five metres and there are more. I tried mashing throwing the heart but that also doesn't really work, it's too slow, they will still get to you, so. Nope. I like having thumbs. Give me accessibility features in games please.
Now I have to find something else to play. I might make a list of what I have access to next time.
S17 of Overwatch is... something of a letdown, skins wise. We knew a few days before that cosmetics were going to be arcade and school themed. Now, I am 33 years old. I do not really care about the latter, and my eyebrows raise when you deage your young women into minors from the way you've named them as Freshman and Sophmore. And the arcade theme? They'll all still meant to be kids in an arcade game and most of the battlepass is all school related and Man. Man. I was worried over the magical girl skins being a little too sailor moon school uniform but I should have been worried about this. This could have been avoided if your academy was a university or follow on setting... we could have had the characters with canonical academy outfits (cough, Ashe, Lifeweaver)... nope.
Worse for Ashe is that Cassidy is in the battlepass and he has a Deadlock varsity jacket so in this bland af AU there is a Deadlock club and you can't just dangle her club in front of me and not show. Cassidy when I catch you.
It's the first battlepass I haven't wanted a single thing for in eighteen months which is a long time. Gameplay has been somewhat bleh due to them messing with DPS passive healing reduction numbers again, and stadium really sucks for the rank reset and new characters added in and everyone being thrown together in a boiling pot and we still don't have a quick play mode to try out and learn new things which is like. It's desperately needed at this point. idk. I want to learn, but I have to feel like shit to do so. I'm trying not to let it get me down too much, but it's just hard when I know I'm not playing my best in a ranked mode because I'm still trying to learn new things. This is the only time to try it, when I have no rank to lose. But stadium grabs anyone and everyone instead of people at your skill rating, so people rightly get upset when their team isn't playing at their best if they have rank to lose. Bad!
Map voting also works on paper but I, and other players in the lobby, will know what they missed out on. I've had multiple cases of people actively throwing games due to not getting a map they wanted, or not trying after one fight. I don't anticipate it settling down, honestly...
In the throes of the terrible tummy ache I tried picking up a new game, After Us. The Earth has been destroyed by the devourers (humans) and it is a commentary on consumerism and environmental damage, and it's Gaia's duty to rescue animal spirits. I was having fun with it; it looked beautiful, the platforming had terrible moments with depth perception, but it was doable once it gave you access to your dash about five minutes of basic jumps in.
It was mostly just, visual enjoyment. Vibes. Linear exploration. And then it throws enemies at you: but this is a game without a combat system. I honestly don't know why it has traditional encounter arenas, it was not made for it. It reuses what is known as your "heart", or the power of life, to fight them. A long press briefly restores nature around you, can shatter nearby glass, grow trees, vines. It now stuns enemies. To defeat them, you have to use the short press to throw the heart out, which was previously only used to gather collectibles. And then recall it. And then throw if 1-6 more times before they go down.
But you can't do this when the enemies are stunned because it's the same button and has a cooldown. You can't do it whilst jumping or in the air, because the heart only travels horizontally. The enemies run as fast as you do at dash, and you have to be facing them to boomerang throw the heart that defeats them and even then it's picky because it's a short range auto, but it doesn't have anything to lock onto, you can't really aim it. Okay, bad system, I thought. And then it got worse, because they started spawning in packs of twenty. That's not good game design! Like one or two I could forgive, but if you have this many enemies, put some thought into maybe developing a combat system...!
And then it got even worse than frequency, the stun isn't precise enough, so they grab hold of you. Your dodge doesn't go far enough to avoid this because again... your movement is not designed for combat. The only way to escape the grab is through a button mash... introduced two hours into the game. There is no way to turn this off, and no suggestion until you see your first enemy, two hours into the game, that there are things to fight at all.
I quit after two rooms, because, no. I went back to it this evening to see if it was liveable, or enemies intermittent. No. In every fucking room they are there, dozens of them, and you have to mash. You walk five metres and there are more. I tried mashing throwing the heart but that also doesn't really work, it's too slow, they will still get to you, so. Nope. I like having thumbs. Give me accessibility features in games please.
Now I have to find something else to play. I might make a list of what I have access to next time.