Mamoulian War

Have you seen latest releases of Mortal Kombat by the chance? Because this is a most obvious example of "game for modern audiences" where what you describe is in complete reversal Jacked up males in maximum revealing outfits, and extremely unattractive (words of my wife) female characters covered from head to toe . So it seems, the current western developers are unable to create content, which you just described. They are capable of creating only extremes on whichever side they think the "morale pendulum" just swung

And it looks like UA will not need the western long range weapons anymore in close future. They just hit missile ships in Caspian Sea (1500km away) which were launching missiles against UA cities. This also made at least one airport in similar range from UA, to stop operations. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/11/6/7483198/

Looks like Elerond’s gloom and doom has not fully fulfilled. Pro-European Maia Sandu has won presidentship again. Looking at it after yesterday, we live in a very strange world when ex-soviet satellites with strong pro Russian sentiment among population, are better at fight against the Russian influence operations than the USA and Germany

According to newest study led by female researchers about preferences for character visuals, the perception within female population dramatically differs, when talking about visuals of characters and actually have the option to choose which one to use to play. “Women surprisingly expressed dislike, but also preferred sexualized characters.” https://nichegamer.com/research-shows-women-prefer-to-play-sexy-characters/

Not sure if @Melusina is still around, but in a month, Fairy Tail 2 will be released.

Now, when I am getting to the hardest part of the DS2 DLCs, I needed a little bit more relax in-between bosses, so in addition to MK11, I have went back after few years into the post game of Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition. So far, I got new swimsuits for the whole team and defeated first boss in the first post-game dungeon Labyrinth of Memories.

I have done it. I Went for the Sunken City NG + without help of summons Once again, the area design is gorgeous! Now, that I knew the areas, I was able to move through the city with pnly three deaths. Two of them was my clumsiness again , the third one was Jester Thomas. As always, the first boss in line was Elana. Well, what can I say… Now, that I fought her solo, I feel a little bit dissapointed. Her design to me feels now pretty cheap. She’s not much of a threat alone, pretty similar to Vendrick fight, all you need to do is follow her patterns, and not be greedy with hits. But then she starts summoning. The skeletons are more or less manageable, even by a clumsy old man like myself, but Velstadt… It’s just cheap way to punish player, if he has a bad RNG luck… sighs… Especially, if she summons him back to back, and starts to throw double fire explosions… I am just to clumsy, to defeat her if she summons him… Thankfully after 45 minites or so of attempts, I had luck few with double or triple skeletons in row, so I was to train the dodging and DPS enough to finally defeat her. IIRC, only one Velstadt attempt has ended with her under 50%… On the other hand, Sinh, is what I would call a properly designed skill check. On one hand I ****ing hate him, on the other hand, I ****ing love him Same as with Kalameet in DS1 It took me just a short time, to learn all of his attack patterns, but it took me a ****loads of time to “master” avoiding them. But I had a lot of fun, trying to overcome him. And yes, a lot of “mental breakdowns” as well, when I was to slow to dodge his fire showers In the final attempt, I was even able to cut off his tail I didn’t even knew, that this mechanic is still in DS2, but no reward for doing that at all I think it took me more than an hour, maybe hour and half to defeat him, with many many many “This will be my final attempt for today”. But whenever I said that, I had good attempt, so I went for another. And another. And another But now I am not really looking forward to finish the Sunken City. I already know, that for my skill level and reflexes, the Gank Squad will be atrocious experience… sighs…

Sooo I have not reported about me having fun in DS2 for a while, but I am still at the NG+ cycle. I just spent to much time grinding for covenant stuff and missing items, that it would not be much interesting for me to write about The reason is, that I have a feeling, that they drastically lowered the droprates for covenant items, because I spent much more time trying to get them. The most hardcore stuff are the Dragon Scales, which I Got just a single piece in last 2 maybe 2 and half hours of farming for Black Dragon and Drakekeeper weapons. Anyway I was able to clear all available content in base game, before the gate to the final boss, with the exception of twin Pursuers, which are still alive and happy from all the spanking, which they generously gifted to my ass, while I was trying to fight them. For now, I am just to bad to get them down with melee. Only one attempt was close to defeating one of them, but then, I have just rolled in the wall, which was closer, than expected, and got double pounded with overhead smites. As always, I had much more trouble with trash mobs, than actual bossfights, and from boss figths, it was again Vemdrick, where I needed most retries. The monotony of the covenant and item grind helped with me getting out of concentration and then ass kicked a lot as well. Actually the still missing content are also two covenants. Dragon Remnants and Rat King. Both due to the atrocious drop rate of covenant items. And I am not very eager to farm for them. We’ll see how this will play out. Now I have to decide, If I should go for Nashandra or for the DLCs first. So far, all of the NG+ fights have been done without NPC summons.

I do not want to turn this into political debate, but since 2022, there is really not much nice, that Ukrainian can say about Amnesty International, due to some of their reports about the war, which were really “sloppy” there has been a lot of debate about these reports in Way Off-Topic threads during that time as well.

Goal nr. 10/2024 October 26, 11:45 – More of Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate on my PS4. I have decided to finally finish the last missing branch to get 100% in the Aftermath story mode and finished the story as evil Shang Tsung.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Scratching their games off my wishlist. For now…

If I understand it correctly, for most of these games, they are acting as publisher. Not all of them are made in-house.

The most likely reason to deploy DPRK soldiers now, is neither manpower shortage, nor improving attack capabilities, as 12k soldiers will prolong the war by approx 10 days, with current RU casualties, but both RU and DPRK expect to get a response from US, which would give Trump new “ammo” to his campaign. The thing, that no one speaks about DPRK soldiers outside of UA and ROK, makes this argument more plausible. Everyone else is waiting for US elections.

Heh, anyway. For me it is sometimes a redflag, because from my experience, if your marketing is to much focused on "woke" thematics (not talking exclusively about games now), that most likely means, your product does not have much substance to offer. The Steam Group page looks much better and is better handled, than this one, and thank to it, I have found few gems, like Capes, Eyiuden Chronicles and Shadow Gambit (thankfully not reading the forums ) . On the other hand, I have also found few games, which I should avoid at all costs I have to admit, despite I am considering myself pretty "woke" , I have issues, if the localization of games to English is to far away from the original, and being Eastern European, I still can't understand, why you folks in the US and UK are so obsessed with visible pixel "skin" and have absolutely no issues with pixel ultra violence in games I am playing lately a lot of Morktal Kombat 11, the game is fun, but sometimes I really feel disgusted by some of the deliberate graphic decisions by the team behind it... And looks like a lot of other people are feeling similar, as from the game statistics, the players are doing almost twice as many Friendships as Fatalities

Now in all “seriousness”, it is listed in Sweet Baby Detected steam group, with Sweet Baby affiliated (namely the CEO) listed as a consultant for the title. https://deidetected.com/games/-unknown-9-awakening Could not care less about the DEI drama itself, just wanted to poke a little bit at Hoonding

I got another likely masterpiece for you https://steamdb.info/app/1477940/ That 141 players on day of release couldn't be wrong!

After a week long break, I have started again with DS2 playthrough. I was not very keen to go into Gutter, so I have postponed it, until I felt relaxed enough to make another attempt. And it went much better than anticipated. First I have went for Royal Rat Vanguard and finished it on first try. No complications, and no clumsiness this time Then I went for Gutter. To my surprise, I got to second bonfire, without a single **** up But it did not took long, to make one, on my way to the Ant Queen, where I have not seen a missing planks After that, I have run around to light all sconces to summon the Red Phantom at the end of the area. After a victory, I moved slowly through the Black Gulch just to get obliterated by the first of the Red Phantoms here. I was not able to hit him at all, just few times with the Lightning Bolt. Then I have cornered myself into one of the caves, and my days were numbered The second encounter was funny one, as he pushed me with one of his hits into the abyss. I started to bitch aloud, just to end up completely surprised, after I've landed on one of the small alcoves, which lead to the big cave with Giants. Cleared them fast with lightning bolts and after traveling up with the lift, I have finished the phantom as well The second on was much easier, as I was able to lure him into the bonfire cave, where I was able to kite him a little bit and finish him of soon. After that It was time for the Rotten. I equipped Fire Resistance Ring+3 and Ring of Steel Protection+1, and started the fight. I got him to 25% without being hit a single time, and then I have started to do stupid things again and almost burned myself in one of the fire pools. I ended up with less than 1% HP Luckily, I was able to avoid the boss and heal up a little bit and then to land the final hit. So both bosses today on first try, and as a reward, I got one more trophy for crafting final Hex from the NG+ boss soul.

Goal nr. 9/2024 finished October 5, 15:30 – I have decided to relax a little bit with Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate on my PS4 again, and started the Aftermath story added to the game as a DLC. It started immediately after the events of the original story and brought back to life few old characters. It was 2 hours shorter than the original story and this time, you are also playing as members of the evil entourage. At the grand finale I have picked Liu Kang’s ending.

To not break the narrative, I have defeated two more bosses in the Iron Keep in DS2 NG+ Smelter Demon was interesting one. Somehow, I managed to get to the boss without a single death, and also defeated him on the first try. I was really surprised how that went After that I went to save/reload farm the one very rare item dropping by the roaming souls in Belfry Sol, and then I went towards Iron King. And of course my clumsiness finally jumped in and my ass has been kicked a lot of times, which cost me again around 100k souls After some time, I have arrived at the Iron King, and again, I did some stupid missclick, and had probably the fastest ever wipe on this boss Seriously. One of the easiest bosses in game, and I still managed to wipe in less than two seconds I am planning to spend some time on DS2 again tomorrow, as I am a little bit tired of all of that MK11, which I have experienced since I booted that up for the first time, since I have purchased it

IMHO, 40EUR price tag in the era of full games costing way over 100 EUR is most likely scapegoat as well.

Another giveaway on GOG. https://www.gog.com/en/game/whispering_willows

They blame both of these things combined with failure in the Sony marketing department. You just can not compete in one of the most oversaturated genres offering least aesthetically pleasing assets to the target audience which mainly consists of teenage males

I wish some of the racing game developers would care as much about physics as the people behind Stellar Blade https://nichegamer.com/stellar-blade-update-1-007-adds-visual-and-qol-improvements/