Brainscraps.net – Page 4 – since 2009, somehow

Impressionistic Braincrumbs

RKasa

December 1, 2020

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I haven’t posted in quite some time, and I apologize about that. Part of this is due to all the work involved in settling into a new house, another part is probably because of 2020’s unique stressors, and yet another is thanks to my propensity to procrastinate. There’s also the matter of certain games that I’ve been playing, which I’ll be discussing here today. The main titles in this batch are all lengthy and dense with content; I’ve been playing one of them since last December, and the other two since July.

That said, this installment of Braincrumbs contains impressions, not reviews. The first game is a city builder with no proper campaign, though there are a set of storylines which I’m still working through. The second is a live service mobile game with an ongoing main storyline and regular events, and the third is the meatiest open-world adventure I’ve ever played. I’ve been playing all three in between some shorter games, and I have no idea when I’ll be done with them.

Post-Move Hodgepodge

RKasa

July 6, 2020

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We moved, and somehow even managed to order and receive some new furniture. That process wasn’t without its own headaches, and it’s not over yet. Nor is the unpacking; for starters, I’m still trying to figure out how to store and display my massive figure collection, especially since we have no walk-in closets this time. At least I was able to set up my office by mid-June, though a few other areas, such as the living room, are a work in progress.

The first thing I played on my desktop computer in the new house was Dungeons 3, which I reinstalled after picking up the latest and final DLC, “A Multitude of Maps”, during the ongoing Steam Summer Sale. As opposed to a mini-story, this DLC consisted of a set of skirmish maps, and given that I hadn’t touched the game in some time, it took awhile to reacquaint myself with the basics of play. The maps and missions were well designed, though I did miss having story content tying them all together.

Speaking of that sale, I installed Augmented Steam alongside a couple of other related browser extensions recently, and have been using it to see what the stats are for certain smaller games on my wishlist. Although I knew on an academic level that a lot of newer indie games have abysmal sales on Steam, it was still shocking to see some great-looking games—some of them rather highly-ranked on my wishlist—with Steam Spy-estimated ownership stats of 20,000 or less. My current plan is to buy a handful of these, including at least one at full price, alongside a few others that have done somewhere between a little bit and a lot better before the sale’s over.

Pre-Move Braincrumbs

RKasa

May 11, 2020

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The world is weird right now, especially here in New Jersey, but given that we had spent most of our time at home pre-pandemic anyway, some things haven’t changed. We did buy a house, though, a process which began during more “normal” times and concluded with a socially-distanced closing. Some painting and other work is being done on it right now, and we’re hoping to move in this coming Saturday. In other words, we’ve been keeping busy with packing, contractors, and related bits of business. We’ve also been patronizing our favorite local restaurants as much as we can via takeout, especially since we’ll soon be moving on to a new set of eateries in a different town.

There have been many strange little things about this pandemic—the memes have been a highlight—but one of the oddest for me personally has been seeing jigsaw puzzles explode in popularity. I’ve been a jigsaw puzzle hobbyist for a long time, as has my mom, and finding puzzles to send to her as an early Mother’s Day gift to help stave off some of her boredom was tough, as many online shops’ stocks have been depleted. I currently have a dozen puzzles in my personal backlog, but couldn’t do any of them after a certain point because they had to be packed away for moving. This whole situation with puzzles’ popularity is baffling but understandable, and I hope some people stick with it after this is all over, as it’s a relaxing and meditative hobby.

Anyway, let’s get started. Today’s reviews feature a 60+ hour JRPG, and a JRPG that was nowhere near that long, but felt like it. I’ve also included the platforms I played on this time, something I’ll try and stick with for future reviews.

Special Project #4: An Alternate Final Fantasy VII Remake

RKasa

April 8, 2020

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Sometimes ideas come along that you had never planned in the first place, and you just have to execute them. Thus, despite my announcement that there would be no Holiday Card this year, about a couple months ago, I started work on a game. It’s not a Holiday Card, though, so it’s technically okay, right?

This time around, it’s a fangame loosely inspired by my all-time favorite, the original Final Fantasy VII, titled DARK CITY FOURTH STREET, Part One: The Sprawl. This title was inspired by a very peculiar part of FFVII‘s Debug Room, and the plot takes Hironobu Sakaguchi’s original idea for FFVII as a detective story and runs with it. It tells the tale of detective Cloud Strife as he takes on a job related to the environmental terrorist group AVALANCHE, and branches out in a few different directions. There are a number of endings, and even some hidden scenes. Also, as with a certain other revisiting of the FFVII world, this game is the first installment in a series, and ends when Cloud leaves Midgar.

As with my previous game, DARK CITY FOURTH STREET, Part One is exclusive to itch.io, though this may change in the future. Kick back, put on “Anxious Heart”, and enjoy!

Doom 2016 ][

RKasa

March 29, 2020

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On the PC at least, I almost never buy triple A games at launch, the collector’s editions of the three StarCraft II installments being a notable exception. These games ran fine once I fired them up, a testament to Blizzard’s obsessive attention to technical polish. At the time the second part of the series, Heart of the Swarm, launched, the hardware I used to play it was seven years old, the same age as the machine I first installed Doom Eternal on.

As with my previous Boot Camped Mac Pro, I had future-proofed my desktop computer enough so that it would meet the minimum requirements for the likes of Doom Eternal here in the year 2020. However, due to a combination of Apple more or less abandoning Boot Camp support for the 2013 Mac Pro, and AMD being AMD, I suffered through several rounds of driver update attempts only to wind up with a machine that wouldn’t be able to run Doom Eternal after all. It ended up that the only way I could do so was with a gaming PC borrowed from bitprophet, featuring some newer hardware.

Braincrumbs Variety Pack

RKasa

February 19, 2020

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So far, February has been a busy, stressful month in real life, and rather productive when it has come to beating games. My struggles with Age of Empires II HD, which started in January, eventually led me to quitting the game altogether this month. Other than that set of headaches, things have been smooth sailing. With that said, here’s what I thought about the three games which I most recently finished.