MindFreak

Wow, a Deino just spawned very much near me! So.. Deino get! So as for Gen V, I only need to get a Snivy and an Oshawott to get all base evolutions. Now to get candy for all those that need 125 Candy before evolving... That'll take some time.

I watched Joker last night and well, it's a good movie but not perfect, and had it not been about the Joker but just some random guy going insane, I probably wouldn't have watched it. Joaquin Phoenix was very good in the movie and the story was excellent, with some very intense scenes.

I watched Season 1 of Mr. Robot and wasn't really convinced that I needed to watch more of it afterwards.

I'm now 32 hours in and have just got the third magic stone. I really like the game, the story is really good as is the pace. I have spent a lot of time trying to catch certain familiars, though (I found a place telling me what to get) and training them to a good point. I have come to terms with the battle mechanics but I still find them a bit off as I often don't have time to guard and heal properly because I have to switch characters and find the right menu item without the game pausing.

It's Psychic, not Poison / Fairy!

Galarian Ponyta is Shield exclusive. And there's now a full trailer showing it off:

I think this is new information: His Dark Materials premiers on November 4th. Really looking forward to that! And in relevant news, the second book in The Book of Dust-series - set around HDM - has also just been released. Good times.

Well, I just went to the library, read the first book (top left, if I remember correctly), thought the books were just tutorials and tales and left again, never saw the black book. Or I could also have forgotten about it completely because 12-15 hours and several days passed from starting the game and getting to the point where I needed to find that books again. That's on me, I know. But I noticed the phone guy giving hints and I used that to progress as much as I could, never returning to the library. It's fair enough, I didn't know that the library held an important book that you needed to read in order to complete the very last puzzle, but I just gave up at that point and read a guide, the game was just frustrating me more than I wanted it to. I am sad that I didn't enjoy my playthrough as I had looked very much forward to the game, and I do love Zelda-games. The puzzles in them are mostly really good, I enjoyed the Shrines of BotW very much because of the quality of the puzzles (but I missed traditional temples in the game), so it made me sad when I found that especially the three or four last dungeons didn't have very interesting puzzles. I mostly recall them being "bomb the walls" or "move this block a little", along with "find the switches" and I found that both frustrating and boring.

Doesn't it tell you to go here and get the instrument that is located around here?

I don't necessarily complete side-quests before completing a game, no. But yes, I did end up completing this one before reaching the end of the game but I had never noticed that small, black book in the library and thus, never got that hint. I only found the trading quest because of a guide telling me that I should do it), I had seen the Yoshi-doll, didn't catch it in a couple of attempts and moved on, forgetting about it. It was the same with the Ocarina, I didn't know it was in the game before accidentally finding it. I found some place speaking of an Ocarina afterwards and it is needed for waking up that darn whale but I found no reference as to where it actually was. You just had to remember that there was that house in early stages of the game. I don't like too much hand-holding in games, I want to experiment and get better at the mechanics of the game but games should at least tell you in some way how to complete the main quest. Several people have complained about this game having moments where you are utterly lost and the game doesn't help you in any way - thus needing to resort to guides. This game has some design flaws that make you wander about aimlessly which a lot of people dislike because games should not waste your time. To most of us, time is precious as it's the only resource we haven't got enough of by now (contrary to when we were kids and could spend days doing nothing in a game, accidentally solving side-quests or something like that) so if a game makes you feel like it wants you to get lost, people complain, because it's not fun. And this game does that several times, especially in the latter half of it. And that's what made me not really enjoy or like the game. Others like that aspect, that's fine. Btw. I have a feeling that without any changes, the first Zelda-game would definitely also have these issues. It's just that Zelda and modern games have changed a lot and some things are just expected from them. So remaking a 26 year old GameBoy-game 1:1 with only some GUI QoL improvement is going to be hit and miss for some people. The GameBoy mechanics and restraints of this game were just too obvious. Also, I don't really do retro gaming. I don't enjoy older games that much. Maybe that's also a part of it?

Yeah, the library. But only after you've found some random item that you don't know that you have to find... or even exists!

My OnePlus 6 that I got about a year ago started having some screen issues - it would flicker green and white before turning on and off, like seen here. I googled it and it seemed like it was a common error with the screen type (amoled) so I need to get my screen replaced. It's a phone I got from work so they take care of it for me but they only had a Samsung Galaxy S6 lying around for me to borrow in the meantime. It's battery is totally fucked so I can't really use it outside. It's really frustrating me - mainly because I play Pokémon Go and not being able to do that outside is just... hard... and irritating. Also went for a run with the phone - I use Google fit to track distance and time - and it just didn't measure anything at all. I miss my phone. Will probably have to wait a couple of weeks for it to return.

From that description, it sounds like I should move this game up on my priority list... Thanks for the early impressions!

Wow, something came up! My Little Po-kémo-ny, I guess.

It has a "winter" release window so I guess it will probably come out in January or February - even though we don't really have anything for December yet.

Sorry to add to your list but if you love the series, then you should also consider the remake that's coming to Switch this year.

So it's a wildlife cam.. that's a good idea except that they should have called it that instead of a stream.

What the f.. is that?

The Pokémon Company has issued an official statement: Also, The Pokémon Company is hosting a 24 hour live-stream from a forest region in the game:

Just found this video with impressions and found it rather good: I want to try it out for a period of time to see how fun it is. Maybe I'll try to find it used in a couple of months.

More games for October. Did anybody need that?

Birds of Pray trailer: Looks alright but nothing spectacular. Will probably just wait for it to come to Netflix.

I'm about 18 hours in now, just arrived at Hamelin and snuck into the palace. And met my doom. Several times. I thought I was there levelwise, being able to handle most things but the miniboss in the palace is at the moment impossible to handle. I then saw that I had recently "evolved" a couple of my Familiars so they are very weak. Off to grind then! I do see the problems with the combat now that I have three party members. The AI is not really good - they never defend, for instance, which means they take huge amounts of damage most of the time, even with the All Out Defence-option. They also don't prioritize very effective attacks and such. It's a shame that it makes battles even harder and I have seen my downfall several times after getting to the island where Hamelin is located, partially also due to the fact that healing items are very expensive and I spent most of my money on weapons. It's also as if the developers wanted to make the combat fast paced and strategic at the same time, but then you have to go through a menu to find your attacks or even switch character to heal another character. If you then run out of mana without the right provisions, you are stuck. All in all, it's really not balanced all that well, which is unfortunate. One thing that I'm also missing is a quick travel option as some of those errands demand me to go across the entire country on foot. However, I do enjoy the game very much. The story is really enjoyable, as is the cast in general.

Transistor is quite good - the combat is very interesting. It's very short so the 90 % off is a good deal, though it's meant to be played several times. Bastion is also priced ridiculously low right now so that's a no-brainer, really.

I played it recently and it still stutters and has performance issues. Nothing game breaking, though. However, I didn't enjoy the game as a whole but that's another matter.