First play-through of CONTROL. Got it for $4 on PSN on Supa-Sale.

Today's game is some more Super Mario Galaxy. I picked it up to relax today and got down to 5 more stars to finish the game. I even got into the final area of the observatory. I'm officially out of areas i recognize, so when i entered the final Dome, i was surprised to find a green grassy field. I was hoping i could run around in it but sadly i was walked in. It gave me heavy Majora's Mask vibes though because it reminds me of the center of the moon where you get the Fierce Deity mask.

I got the red star too, which, i was expecting this to be another Wing Cap style level. Thankfully, it wasn't though. Don't get me wrong, Mario 64 will always be one of my favorite 3D Marios, but damn, does the Wing Cap drive me crazy. I always put it off for last just to avoid doing it.

I did Deep Dark. Not much to say here other than i love it. It's a good solid level and also a water level, which i'm sure is no mystery that i love it. The boss fight got a bit hectic, but i managed to pull through.

I also did the other Green Star. I think i need one more and then i'm done, i can't remember exactly how Galaxy 1's green stars work. I just know it's nowhere near as many stars as Galaxy 2.

I ended off with the second boss fight with King Kaliente which got me down to 51 stars. This boss fight also felt hectic but i managed without much trouble. I ended off there for the night and will pick it up again soon. It will be nice to have it off my list so i'm not juggling so many games at once.

Shocking exactly 4 people on the planet, Squadron 42 might not make it's just-recently-confirmed-absolutely-rock-solid 2026 release date. 😂

Although I will say that at this point even laughing about it becomes difficult. It's been so many years, every joke has been made and every laugh has been had.

Today is some more Final Fantasy 7. It seems i'm going to be taking this one chapter at a time for now. Which honestly, i don't mind too much. If i go through it too fast i might miss some details.

I spent today dorking around with the photo mode to see what i could do with it. I got some photos during combat that i especially like, such as this one of Cloud midway through his attack animation. I noticed when he's in that heavy hitting mode he always ends with this bad ass ground stab, so i got a photo of that.

I will say, i dislike how limiting the photo mode feels. There's like a total of 5 options with very minimal scale. I am happy to have it here rather than not, but man, i love having Photo Modes with features that let me go absolutely nuts with them.

An example is a photo i wanted to take of the flower. I wanted to get up close and do a Macro shot, but the photo mode wouldn't let me get close enough for it, so this is the best i could do. Still, cloud's mug is far from the worst thing to pair with a flower.

While exploring Midgar, i decided to put Cloud up against random people to see how well he blends in. The answer is not very well, he's got similar vibes to Mario in New Donk City in Odyssey. Still, this guy seems very amused by Cloud's presence so it's not for nothing.

Next i put him in a crowd of people. Safe to say, Cloud, i don't think you have a career as a Assassin's Creed Protagonist. Like no cloud blending skills whatsoever. That's okay though, he still kicks major ass with the sword.

Overall, i'm liking the Save the planet angle so far. I'm not going to sit here and explain it in depth, but it is very much something that rings true today, so it makes me a little happy to know that even when the game first launched there were people raising concerns about the Planet's health.

Once i got to the apartment i stopped, but i'm excited to play more. Hopefully tomorrow i'll be able to play some more. I'd like to have it done by the end of the month (not going to rush to meet a deadline though) as i'd like to replay Silent Hill 2 for the Season. I see everyone always have a yearly "Halloween game" and i want to try doing that with Silent Hill 2 because it thoroughly unsettled me just to exist in the space, and it's rare for a game to do that.

I just thought these were nice, and fun. The artist goes by Abovesn4kes, and having recently started Red Dead (the first) on my OLED Switch, I've been looking into fan art and builds, projects and ideas the community came up with, for RDR and RDR2. And then I stumbled over these!

If seeing these makes you feel like you'd like to see a movie with them in it, well Johnny Depp made a movie with a similar basis called Rango, released in 2011:

When Rango, a lost family pet, accidentally winds up in the gritty, gun-slinging town of Dirt, the less-than-courageous lizard suddenly finds he stands out. Welcomed as the last hope the town has been waiting for, new Sheriff Rango is forced to play his new role to the hilt.

You can find the link to the trailer for Rango here, if you want to check it out!

Anyway, now on to the pictures. I just love these! All credit to the artist :)

(now go install Red Dead again, you know you want to!)

Finally, and it's coming very soon

Incredibly cursed. Who asked for this.

According to videogame patent lawyer Kirk Sigmon, the USPTO granting Nintendo these latest patents isn't just a moment of questionable legal theory. It's an indictment of American patent law.

"Broadly, I don't disagree with the many online complaints about these Nintendo patents," said Sigmon, whose opinions do not represent those of his firm and clients. "They have been an embarrassing failure of the US patent system."

Today's game is Final Fantasy 7. I picked this up on Steam after borrowing it from my local library a few years ago and playing like 7 chapters on PS4. That poor PS4 barely held together while running it. It sounded like a Jet Engine. I nearly wasn't able to play this today due to my slow ass internet taking forever to download this though.

I really enjoyed my time with it the first time, despite being very mixed on Turn Base RPGs. I like the whole Realtime battle mechanic thing though. It kind of offsets the whole thing i have with Turn Base battles. Plus, it looks cool as fuck even if i do suck ass at it.

The boss fight with the Scorpion thing was hard. I feel like i'm missing something with the combat, maybe it's just naturally hard though. There's only one way to get better, and that's practice. Maybe i'll commit to trying to grind for the first time ever.

I particularly struggled with not getting hurt by the rockets from the fight. I could block them, but that still took some damage. Maybe i'm supposed to take damage while blocking? I'm not sure, so i'll have to figure it out as i go i guess.

I only did Chapter 1 due to how short on time i was with how long it took to download, but i plan on doing a whole lot more (assuming i don't struggle). The Scorpion Robot took a few attempts, so i'm assuming each boss will be a bit like that.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/37310154

Patch Notes:

• Fixed situation where players could remain cloakless after Slab escape sequence.

• Fixed wish Infestation Operation often not being completable during the late game.

• Fixed wish Beast in the Bells not being completable when Bell Beast is summoned at the Bilewater Bellway during the late game.

• Fixed getting stuck floating after down-bouncing on certain projectiles.

• Fixed courier deliveries sometimes being inaccessible in the late game.

• Fixed craft bind behaving incorrectly when in memories.

• Fixed Lace tool deflect soft-lock at start of battle in Deep Docks.

• Fixed Silk Snippers in Chapel of the Reaper sometimes getting stuck out of bounds.

• Fixed Claw Mirrors leaving Hornet inverted if taking damage during a specific moment while binding.

• Fixed Snitch Pick not giving rosaries and shell shards as intended.

• Fixed Swamp Squits becoming invincible if hit under water.

• Fixed instance where Lugoli could leave the arena and not return.

• Removed float override input (down + jump, after player has Faydown Cloak).

• Slight difficulty reduction in early game bosses Moorwing and Sister Splinter.

• Reduction in damage from Sandcarvers.

• Slight increase in pea pod collider scale.

• Slight reduction in mid-game Bellway and Bell Bench prices.

• Slight increase in rosary rewards from relics and psalm cylinders.

• Increase in rosary rewards for courier deliveries.

• Various additional fixes and tweaks.

Not mentioned in the patch notes is that they apparently made many environmental hazards deal 1 damage instead of 2, including the worms at Blasted Steps and the cogs in act 2. In classic Team Cherry communication, they just didn't include it in the patch notes!

AAA game? Performance issues and crashing on release? Why I never.

Link: Itch.io | Room Designer Simulator

Room Designer Simulator is a game where players can play minigames in order to earn gamecoins and buy various assets with this fictional currency. The game is designed in 8-bit style and features a single room in isometric view. Thanks to isometric projection, players can experience the illusion of depth when looking at the room they're designing. This is a major upgrade from the classical 2D perspective where a room's inside can only show floor and one side of a wall but since other three wall sides are invisible to players, the illusion of a 3D-like environment isn't very strong.

The game includes various minigames –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Snake, Catch the Fruit and Bullet Hell. Gamecoins that players earn in these minigames can be then used to buy room assets in the shop. After an item is purchased, it appears in the inventory and during selection, players can place it on floor or wall by clicking on a desired tile in the room.

The game also features an asset selling system, so if players don't want a particular asset in their room anymore, they can click on it to pick it up and then sell it in the inventory.

Take your bets on how much this will cost

This is the Northern European division of the Half Life Battlefield Dodgeball Meet Up, and I partially got the idea from reading about the Fallout meetups, but ours could still be something unique, such as possibly including a dodgeball event using a set of rules inspired by the NES Super Dodgeball game, and more. I’ll be open to discuss any suggestions or modifications to the sample of the plans.

The image attached to this post shows a potential location for the meetup, set on about 437 acres in Norway. We can use this location as an example, since the official location is TBD and of course we could find a much cheaper location.

You can choose 1 of 6 Factions:

Resistance

Xen

The Combine

Aperture Science

The Employers

Race X

I'm a former member of the USA Dodgeball Team, and I first began playing at age 14 in 2001, and to make this a fun meet up, we can have a competitive dodgeball series with one team per faction featuring a video series inspired by Extreme Dodgeball from Game Show Network, which could be used as a way to help advertise the Half Life Meet Up.

4 Potential Half Life Meet Up Options:

HEADCRAB OPTION: €50 (1,625 people per faction goal)

Full access to the video series inspired by Extreme Dodgeball from Game Show Network, with one team for each faction, and the top players selected from tryouts to represent each faction.

HOUNDEYE OPTION: €100 (813 people per faction goal)

Attend the event, play recreational dodgeball, and try to break a world record of largest dodgeball match. Includes HEADCRAB OPTION.

BULLSQUID OPTION: €100 (813 people per faction goal)

Attend the event, tryout for the competitive dodgeball series, and try to break a world record of largest dodgeball match (with the recreational players). Includes HEADCRAB OPTION.

STRIDER OPTION: €1,000 (82 people per faction goal)

Get a vote in the new organization in the decision making process and get the chance to have your voice heard. Includes HEADCRAB OPTION and either HOUNDEYE or BULLSQUID OPTION.

We will have a limit to how many people can attend the first event depending on the location, so we'll be sure to let everyone know that if they miss the limit, they can support the project and save their ticket for one of the following years.

If this is the most recent record info, "The largest game of dodgeball involved 6,084 participants and was achieved by the University of California, Irvine at a game organised by UC Irvine students and NLA Sports (both USA) in Irvine, California, USA, on 25 September 2012" then we can aim to find a place that will allow for over 6,000 people for world record attempts.

CONQUEST DODGEBALL (official name TBD) -

6 teams per match

6 control points

12 acres playing area

100 people per team

600 people per match

Rough draft rules:

Only 1 ball per team and 4 refs per ball, with 1 of the 4 refs holding a camera.

Hitting a player eliminates them from that round, but a catch only awards ball possession.

Players must stay a certain amount of feet away from other players if they have the ball.

Control points could be disc golf goals which would be in a neutral zone where players can’t throw / dodge / catch in for safety reasons. After a point is scored, a 3 minute timer is set until another point can be scored at that location.

If successful, we can create multiple locations for the series to try to allow more people the chance to participate in the events.

€2,300,000 / 6 Factions = €383,333 / 4 options = €95,833 / cost of each option below to show how many people are the goal.

HEADCRAB OPTION: €50 (1,917 people per faction goal)

HOUNDEYE OPTION: €100 (960 per faction goal)

BULLSQUID OPTION: €100 (960 per faction goal)

STRIDER OPTION: €1,000 (96 per faction goal)

Judging by the numbers above, the number of people who choose options to attend the event:

6 factions x people for HOUNDEYE = 5,760 people +

6 factions x people for BULLSQUID 11,520 +

6 factions x for STRIDER = 12,096 people / 8 year plan (can be less years for smaller goals with new potential locations) =

1,512 people for the first event goal

Read more details about it on a potential Southern European division post I made for the meet ups at https://lemmy.world/post/35749413

I won't make anymore new Lemmy posts with these plans unless we have any big updates, but I've also organized everything into a public FB group if you'd like to check it out on the link below

facebook.com/groups/halflifebattlefielddodgeballmeetup