Mamoulian War

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/

Goal nr. 8/2024 achieved October 1, 19:15 – After I spent way to much time fighting in Towers of Time to unlock Klassic MKII Skarlet skin (successfully, ranked in top 2.9% of PvE Tower of Time players last "week" ), I have took today a more chilling approach to my PS4 version of Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate and replayed last three chapters needed for completing the Story Mode on 100%.

Are you by any chance one of the 20 people who bought Concord?

4 more bosses DS2 NG+ down since my last post. First was Lost Sinner. And again to my surprise, the fight was much easier with melee than with sorcerer in my previous playthrough. I needed few attempts to adjust to the two red phantoms joining the fight, but it took not to long. The worst part was the gauntlet again... FromSoft really drop the ball here, and put everything to make your corpserunning as complicated as possible. Cost me almost 100k souls Next one was Scorpioness Najka. Again, fine with melee build. Only 1 attempt needed. And again, the issue was to get to her, through the "ghosts", although not as big as to Lost Sinner. Thankfully the mask from the DLC helped a lot to counter Curse. I had to play a little bit backup and reload, due to the Golden Lion, which drops two unique items not respawning. After 15 minutes or so, I got his helmet. Will still need to do the same in NG+2 for his red cloak Third one was Prowling Magus with the Congregation. As always, whenever I underestimate something due to not wiping for a long time, the cheapest mob finishes me off That's why it took me two tries to get this one. Nothing special. Just need to watch out for his AoE attack, which finished me off at first attempt And the last one was The Duke's Dear Freja. So far the longest fight in NG+. It challenged my patience a lot as a melee, now that I am attempting all bosses without summons. Thankfully few Great Lightning Bolts helped a little bit with the fight. But i had to save all the smaller ones for the spider spawns. After that, I got completely engulfed with the Mortal Kombat 11 and Towers of Time. I have found out, that I can get two super rare Classic MKII skins for Skarlet and Johnny Cage as the battle announcer, if I gather enough points to rank in top 5% PvE Tower players. I am now in top 3.5% after 36 towers cleared, but there is still one day until the end of the challenge. So, I have to be prepared to run few towers tomorrow after work again.

Goal nr. 7/2024 achieved. September 28, 22:30 – I took a small break from DS2 NG+ and played through the original story of Mortal Kombat 11: Ultimate Edition on PS4. This unlock Frost and two arenas. It took me about 4 and half hours and if I remember it correctly, I enjoyed the story mode more than in Mortal Kombat X and 2011. I will need to replay three chapters where you had to pick the fighter, and the last fight to see all the content and finish it on 100%. I took a small break from DS2 NG+ and

Two more days of Dark Souls II behind me. During the first one, I had decided to go to Earthen Peak. It started fine, the DLC Poisonbite Ring+1 helped a lot to make this area more bearable. The fun thing was, the Artificial Undead ambush in a small one way room, where now even red phantom variant was present I am still wondering how I was able to survive that But the room design is pretty favourable to kiting the mobs. Soon afterwards, I have joined the Heirs of the Sun Covenant again, and without much hesitation, I went directly to Covetous Demon, which was defeated promptly on first try. The way deeper into the Peak went smooth as well. But then after one stupid hickup, I have lost a little bit of concentration and the Manikins with claws started to tear me apart pretty frequently. Their damage output in NG+ is pretty high, when using my item grinding set. I was still missing few items from them, so I had pretty low AC. Sigh . After few more ****-ups, when I missed a jump now and there, I went finally for Mytha. The first attempt was almost perfect for my clumsy standards, but then, when she was under a 1% of HP, she has thrown her explosive head, and me, thinking that I was at safe distance from the blast, went for the final hit. Well, her final hit went off sooner The next try, I was still angry, so it went downhill pretty fast, but the third one, despite some stupid moves by me, was successful and I got new shiny Silver Covetous Ring+2 as a reward. Unfortunately, I became so exhausted because of the Manikin quickness, that I have decided to quit DS2 for the day. During DS2 play, I have noticed, that Sony is running free Multiplayer Weekend, so I dusted off my Mortal Kombat 11 and went for 3 out of 5 online only trophies, for which I still had enough time before midnight. In the end, I have ended up almost three hours watching AI matches of my toons, and reading some news This gave me two Trophies. And then, I went watching while reading King of the Hill battles for one more hour to get one more online exclusive trophy

A story behind it. not really, just corruption during the procurement of the materials used to build the site. “Unexpectedly”

Oh, and I have completely forgotten the first Sunday boss, the Pursuer Now I definitely can say, that it is much much easier to fight him as melee compared to caster. As a caster I had a lot of trouble to be able to fight him and all other Pursuer mobs most of the time. Now I can defeat them, unless I missclick something on hot bar, on first try. So now I have also unlocked the McDuff infusing services

Played little bit today again. Well more than little bit. I had a lot of time today, due to my wife being at work Unfortunately most of this time was eaten up with the stupid gauntlet towards Executioner’s Chariot Anyway. The way to Skeletal Lords has been fine today. I have cleaned up most of the mobs with no wipes, and I was even lucky with some rare drops, which I was still missing. Then I jumped off the cliff by mistake Then the fight with Skeletal Lords went awesome as well. A lot of help was Yearn sorcery, which attracted all spawned skeletons, which I have been slowly defeating. Few minutes later, soul and new ring have been in my possession. Then, I have decided to go grind for the Lizard Staff… My oh my, From Soft has made this one pretty annoying to get. They definitely hate the completionists To make it short, I made a lot of silly and stupid thing in the arena, so I have been gangbanged few times by the skeletons there, while trying to get the drop out of necromancers. Then I had to run through the stupid gauntlet again. And on the end of the gauntlet, there was red phantom as a bonus encounter. Worst encounter of NG+ so far. His sword has some homing “magic” programmed to it, so whenever I have rolled next to it, he changed his trajectory mid-swing and hit me hard when I was standing up out of that roll Probably 100k lost souls due to this clown… Bleh… Anyway after I have found a pretty good strategy against the skeletons, and purchased one more Yearn Sorcery, I did not needed to run so many times through that gauntlet as before. Still the redphantom clownshoe ended few of them anyway… In the end, I got from the Necromancers the Lizard Staff and their armor pieces so I could finally attempt the boss. Unfortunatelly all this running around through the gauntlet and grind for the loot has made me pretty tired, so I have wiped few times on the boss as well So one of the easiest bosses in the game made me the most trouble in NG+ so far

Back to DS2:SotFS. Two more bosses down. The no phantom attempts work so far. I have started out with Belfry Gargoyles. The interesting thing, I have found out, that summoned phantoms boost up elemental resistances more, than I have expected. In NG, the lightning bolt did almost insignificant damage to them, so I have tried to go full melee on them in my first failed attempt. Unfortunately the only non-infused weapon, which I had was Grand Lance+10, which was not the best choice for the encounter, so in the second one, I have tried lightning spells again. And to my surprise, two casts of great one and one cast of basic one were enough to defeat single Gargoyle. I have used that to my advantage and won the second attempt. Now that I got Covetous Gold Serpent Ring+2 from them, I went to Forest of the Fallen Giants, so I tried my luck again with a rare Hollow Soldier Shield drop. Aaand I got two of them In the meanwhile, I have visited the Last Giant as well. The next goal is to get to Mytha as soon as possible, to get the Covetous Silver Serpent Ring+2 from her. So I will have to get through Skeletal Lords and one Red Phantom with rare drop, which I would love to have as well. Probably, I will have to grind a little bit for the rare Lizard Staff in Chariot arena as well.

Hmm, strange, I like DS2 controls more than DS1 and Demon’s Souls PS3 The only thing I “hate” about DS2 is trashmob placement and aggro range in some areas. Insee everything else as an improvement over the previous games