Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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I finished my protracted play through of StarCraft 2. Took me a few months of on again off again play.
The Terran campaign I played on normal, and it was easy to the point of being tedious and boring. I definitely feel like some pussification happened in the difficulty, and "hard" became normal, normal became easy, and easy became "This is mathematically impossible to lose unless you are a game journalist".
The Zerg campaign I played entirely on hard, and that felt about right.
The Protoss campaign I started on hard, but towards the end I caved and had to switch to normal. They just throw too many high level units at you when all you start off with are zealots and stalkers. Also too many obnoxious defense missions where it feels like Protoss are just too squishy on defense. I forget which mission it was that finally broke me and caused me to switch to normal, but it was some defense mission where your allies start off covering your east, west and south entrances, and you get repeatedly hammered from all three directions.
Then I played the epilogue on normal, because I'd already switched, and also the Nova mini campaign. They felt alright on normal. At least not tediously boring like the Terran campaign on normal.
All in all, it was alright I guess. I had to obsessively watch every dialog because I can't help myself. Which really slowed things down because the game feels like 50% dialog and 50% gameplay. The story beats of "Cure Kerrigan of her Zerg infestation, then re-Zerg her, then she saves the universe" was as dumb as it always was. Especially with that being the penultimate climax of the Terran campaign, and then completely undone halfway through the Zerg campaign. It reminds me of all those show runners that end season 1 on this show altering cliff hanger/climax, and then completely chicken out and backtrack in the first episode of season 2. Like in Santa Clarita Diet when the first season builds up towards Drew Barrymore turning into a feral zombie, and then in the first 30 minutes of the next season they cure her and go a completely different direction with the story.
It also got pretty tedious how every campaign is some weird neoliberal fanfiction about all these different peoples coming together in a melting pot where all their differences actually make them strong enough to defeat the big bad. In every single campaign. I don't remember StarCraft 1 being remotely that obnoxious and one note. Oh well.
This is now a vidya thread.
I haven't played SC2 past the first campaign, but the Terran campaign was ridiculously bad. Like, B-movie bad and not the kind that becomes a cult classic.
In other news, I finally played Dispatch for a minute and had to quit it to try again later. I expected it to be a VN, but it's a Telltale-style game. Which sounds like not a big distinction, but it is. A proper VN puts you in charge of the technical (not dramatic) pacing. Clicking through after every line is a tiny action, but it results in a completely different experience, as you can stop at any moment, reread, etc. I picked "no QTEs", but every single dialog choice was a QTE.
I don't mind a Telltale-style game, but it's a much more involved experience, not something I want to play half-asleep.
Mildly interesting masochism game: Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library
You are the librarian of a magical university. Your goal is to reshelve literally three thousand books that have been thrown onto the floor by a rogue fairy. You must figure out from each book's title on which of the 31 shelves it belongs.
The game is translated from Japanese, so the proper categorizations of some titles are not obvious, and you must figure them out by trial and error. For example:
The shelf labeled "romance" actually is for novels in general.
Puppet Crafting: An Introductory Guide to Automata and Statues belongs on the art shelf rather than on the magical artifacts and enchanting shelf.
Ultimate Choice: Curry-Flavored Poop or Poop-Flavored Curry? belongs on the psychology shelf.
The game costs only six dollars (and currently is on sale for five dollars).
Now THAT's a Japanese learning game!
Is 'masochism game' a generally used term? It made me think of Viscera Cleanup Detail.
This game does not use a real-life library classification scheme, so I don't see how it counts as a "learning game".
No, I made it up just now.
What I mean is that as a semi-advanced Japanese learner, it sounds like the best way to play is in Japanese where translation quality is not an issue and you have to go by real cultural nuance / in-depth understanding to figure out the answers. It's very rare to find something that is a) not targeted at (beginner) learners, b) not novels and novels worth of text as in an RPG, c) requires specific attention to the language at a level deeper than 'can I work out vaguely what is going on', and d) provides feedback about whether you got it right.
In theory it sounds great for an intermediate to advanced learner. Do you actually get any feedback, or do you have to do all 3000 and pray?
If you put a book in a correct position on the correct shelf, it briefly glows yellow.
If you put a book on the correct shelf but in an incorrect position on that shelf (e. g., volume 3 in position 7 of a 10-volume row, volume 3 of a 10-volume set in a 3-volume row where the other volumes of the set won't fit, volume 3 of set B in a row where you've already put volume 2 of set A, or volume 3 of a set in one row when you've already put volume 2 of the same set in a different row), it briefly glows red.
If you put a book on an incorrect shelf, it doesn't glow at all.
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