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girl gamer diary

It's really a fairly gender-neutral gamer diary. Or, make your own mind up, I guess.

  • 02/01/2024 Dragon Age: Inquisition

    Happy New Year :) Same old games... haha!

    I'm just finishing up Jaws of Hakkon. It's fairly fun. Well until your adventuring RPG hero character can't scale a hill you a fat middle-aged DA fan could... The worst thing about this game is how accidentally hitting a bunny rabbit that decided to run into the midst of a battle means it's your forever enemy and you have to either hunt it down or just wait 5 whole minutes for it to despawn, just so you can save. It's the worst. I hate this game. Anyway, there's not loads left? I don't think? So I got home from the Winter Palace and I'm letting Alistair and Morrigan catch up whilst I'm doing DLCs and working my way through the awful war table wait times. It's a good plan right? I'm absolutely dreading having to meet the worst DA character ever in the next bit of the MQ. It's bad enough that they made DA2 in the first place. When I'm done with Inquisition I'm done with it and I can go back to beautiful precious Origins, a game where the fights actually require your attention and the characters aren't screaming out to be murdered (I hate so much that you can kill Leliana, send away Morrigan etc. but they lump you with that prick Varric who manages to be a significant part of what makes DA2 unplayable, which is really impressive considering the rest of it...)

    I'm so angry about this game lmao! And it churns up my GPU like nothing else. Is that the securom bullshit or just I need to turn the graphics down... but I don't and won't lmao. The best thing this game has going for it is that it's pretty. Well, and Dorian... who is pretty, so...

  • 04/01/2024 Dragon Age: Inquisition, Theme Hospital

    I finished JoH and mostly enjoyed it (apart from the map going shit and dark at the end... good job I did almost everything first), and played TD and... kinda enjoyed it? I really liked Valta and Renn so obviously they take them away from you lmao. The war table quest that wraps up their story is even more of a letdown somehow. Just give me back my cute goth dwarves. God, going back to Varric after them was painful! Why him and not Sigrun? (Obviously: prejudice against goths.)

    Speaking of shitty war table: I've blasted through all the Mythal stuff and now I'm ready for the final final battle. (They really psych you out with "THIS is it!!!" and I've played all this before so I knew it wasn't but even so... totally fair and reasonable in a game that's 99% sidequests). Except I won't do it because I am on the last stage of my last war table quest and it's a grey warden one so I actually care. Each stage was about 30/40 mins. So this last one is 14 hours. 14 hours to wait until I can finish my game that I paid for, literally twice omg. I hate BW so fucking much. Also? Maybe I could fight Corypheus and it would keep ticking but I don't know and can't find a good answer. Infuriating!

    This playthrough has been kinda fun 'cause I have had the double disapproval thing on. So they're not all constantly happy with me. And after commiting the dual crimes of taking the blight seriously and being an elf, Sera got her knickers in a twist and started accusing me of being evil and shitting on the little people. So I told her to fuck off or die which was really relieving actually! But: she's still in the horrible scrolling squad selection, just crossed out lmao? Please give me back the Origins posing and quipping. Oh, I can't wait to play Origins again after all this!

    But everyone else looooves me. Oh, okay, Vivienne hates me lmao. I hope she doesn't end up Divine. And, I made Cole a spirit this time. I did human last time but I think I like this more! And this was years ago now but I decided to just skip Iron Bull rather than get Dorian dumped later. I never liked their relationship anyway (and I always hated IB himself and his qun spin doctor shit, as well as his repulsively tiny head!). But no, I refuse to let a ship of potential allies sink in favour of a handful of QUIRKY!!! sidecharacters!! so that's the BAD choice for BAD people ugh I hate this game I hate this game!

    I had Theme Hospital on Origin - for free, along with a handful of other non-DA:I games - but it wouldn't run, even though it was installed. It wanted to install the new Origin thing but I can't be doing with one EA launcher on my pc, really. So I decided to grab it in the GOG sale for just over a quid, and installed it and played a bit just before I went to bed. So far the only thing I can say it misses compared to big bloaty stupidly-multiplayer TPH is pausing whilst being able to build, but with no camera angles and less decorative items, it's not such a big deal anyway. I forgot how this game was sponsored by kitkat lmao? Do you think they got money or just a steady supply?

    I suppose I ought to feel annoyed at the sex-based jobs but... I don't! It's not meant to be that realistic. Also it's clearly an evil hospital in an evil healthcare system. I'd forgotten the intro movie and it's pretty funny. Also makes it more incredible that NHS bosses supposedly got furious at this attack on... what exactly lmao? (Well, it has the same kinds of standards and outcomes as the modern NHS, but they don't additionally slow things down with a credit card swipe, at least!)

  • 05/01/2024 Dragon Age: Inquisition

    After nearly 9 years, I finished Dragon Age: Inquisition! Very close to 9: I bought it on the 17/01/15... bought it again as GOTY 25/11/16 apparently, to get the DLCs.

    Trespasser was kinda fun? If I just totally black out what they did to heroic well fit Teagan. That was just a different character to me. You know, I'd heard about it, but I thought it would just kinda annoy me what they'd done to him... I literally couldn't recognise him as the same character!

    I love Solas' Shakespeare-Hallelujah antics and I feel kinda sad I probably won't play the sequel! But also like it's for the best.

    I'm also not sure if I actually did Doom Upon All The World last time I played to nearly the end? I don't know because it was so unmemorable. The end fight of Trespasser + the actual ending is much more exciting. And then, the slides are just incredibly awful, boring and ugly... well, whatever. Cassandra's impressions in the credits were fun though :)

    I uninstalled it. Now I have 2 other Origin games to play: Sim City 2000 (SPECIAL EDITION!) and Syndicate. I don't know if I'll get round to them. Well, maybe, so I guess I'll leave them and Origin installed for now.

  • 06/01/2024 Theme Hospital, Dragon Age: Origins (kinda)

    I was playing some more TH last night as well as today. I only just rediscovered the speed setting. Makes setting up the hospital before opening so much simpler :)

    Since I finished Inquisition, I really want to play Origins again. That means uninstalling Steam version to install GOG version and setting up my mods again. Thing is... my mods are an absolute disgrace lmao! I'm still kinda frankensteining my initial forays into modding from 10 years ago. I need to get this folder nice and sensible. It's hell. I have three basically current folders to work with. Only one is actually named "current" so that's pretty impressive. I made early headway by deleting the very tidy and neat DA2 mods folder. I'm never playing that again! But god, I wish the DAO mods were so nicely laid out.

    Starting from scratch is probably a good idea anyway when I'm sure my tastes have changed. For example, I'm so disatisfied with all the Morrigan robe mods - ones I've used and a handful of new ones - that I kinda wanna just go back to vanilla lmao. I think I can handle the 90s bikini, the flat giant pearls, but can I handle "how is that shoulder thing even attached??" I don't know. But most of the mod ones can't answer that either. It's the kind of mystery you expect from a Witch of the Wilds after all.

    I'm gonna start with tmp's proportion fixes (elf, human, dwarf). Maybe my main reason for starting fresh 'cause I know they're in that mess but god knows where lmao. Once I've reinstalled, I can load up the toolset and check out all my morphs. I could never settle on a Leliana I liked, but I remember liking my most recent Morrigan, Zevran and Alistair :)

  • 10/01/2024 Dragon Age: Origins (kinda), Divinity: Original Sin 2 (kinda)

    I finished setting my DAO mods up on the 7th but I never got round to playing. Maybe it was partially because I have some kind of fullscreen mouse bug - I have no cursor unless I mess with the mouse settings (literally just tick untick apply kinda stuff). This also affects Divinity: Original Sin 2, I just found out yesterday after starting it up. And not playing it... it looks shit... why did I not realise you're intended to play as one of their lame edgy premades. It looks so dull. I just wanted the same kind of fights as D:OS1. I don't know if I'll play it. I looked forwards to it for a long time but I wanted to finish D:OS1 first and I was playing that with my husband and it's not really his kind of game so it was slow. I paid £18 for it lmao ._. In 2019.

    I don't know what I want to play! Maybe Kenshi, maybe last FO3 DLCs... I keep thinking about FNV and FO1 and DAO and TS3 and and and...! I am probably going to play TH too, but not for hours :) But when I think of it like that, I think I should focus on my writing instead!

  • 13/01/2024 Fallout: New Vegas (kinda)

    I don't think I played anything on the 10th after that lmao. Or on the 11th. But I spent a few hours yesterday messing around with my FNV mods. I really want to start again lmao but I think I should finish the FO3 DLC first or I'll not get round to them. I got rid of a mod I never got round to using much, Titans of the New West - it looks great, but I only want it for the looks on NPCs, and it's just a bit much bearing that in mind (and it would fuck up things like changing companion heights, at that, so...). I also got rid of vurt's landscape mods. I'd been using the main one, the road/dirt textures too, and the grass mod. But now I'm just not sure. I have a new road texture I'm already fond of and these animated trees I've had for a while (but maybe overwrote with VFO when I was using it?) and... it looks fine and good? It's a bit more brown yeah but I guess what I really want is the grass mod with a lot less flowers. And not just turning down the grass types but a totally different approach that really favoured flowers in certain areas, for example, instead of being more moderate. But I don't want this enough to actually do it, and no-one else has done it, so I'll just live without!

  • 17/01/2024 Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas (kinda)

    I finished Mothership Zeta either yesterday or the day before. It was fine? I got glitches towards the end of the main quest that nearly stopped me finishing it properly - glad I'd made a hard save not long before. Fallout: Star Trek is pretty fun at the end :)

    Yesterday and today I've been making an FNV mod - for the Novac motel room. I try so many different ones and I always like this or that about this one but not the rest... the only thing I know for sure is I don't like it to change too much. I'm attached to the vanilla layout, maybe for fanfic reasons :) And I just want it to stay as a motel room! A motel room someone is living in, but it shouldn't have all the amenities. It especially shouldn't have a workbench. Who even uses the workbenches??? But if you really want to, there are 2 in Novac I'm pretty sure!

    So I made my own version properly in the GECK for once instead of just messing around disabling and spawning furniture with console. It's on the mods page :)

  • 20/01/2024 Fallout 3, Icewind Dale

    So, with FO3, I did the main world Broken Steel quests I'd skipped, and then I set off to do the Pitt. And found an annoying glitch if you'd found + freed the slaves before starting the DLC... I found a way around it. And kinda lost a lot of patience with the way it was set up. Long story short, I just started killing everyone lmao. I cheated Cross in there with me for Scourging The Pitt 2: Female Bonding Edition and she died really fast because she refused to get under cover when the raiders are on the walkways. I didn't mind because I brought her there to kill her lmao ._. I want her to die in my Marina story for drama. In the story it's going to be a little more heroic than that haha (I am thinking: storming uptown rather than doing the arena fights). There was a 2nd annoying glitch, where you meet the woman in her house and if you kill everyone it doesn't trigger the next bit properly lmao, luckily it fixed itself when I exhausted her dialogue options, going through the scene again and again :/

    I don't see why it takes your stuff away when it flat out showers you in stuff, even if you're being totally violent about it. Well, I guess it's the benefits of being level 30.

    After kidnapping a baby (and everyone acting like its parents weren't thoroughly dead??) it was time to go to my old nemesis, the thing that stopped my old playthrough in its tracks so long ago: Point Lookout. Impressions: either I am a lot better at Fallout (playing it and being less scared of it!) or the hard bit is still ahead of me. I think I've mopped up all the sidequests and now I'm just meeting Nadine. (I guess one thing that might be really helping, apart from alien weapons, Charon (who, yes, is also here to die :( :( :() is a mod I got to make them less bullet spongey. They still take half a dozen shots to the head a lot of 'em!)

    Second impression: what is it with FO3/FO4 and the foggy seaside DLC where the fog is EVIL and makes you EVIL? Is this some kind of american holiday stereotype for some people? It seems like something teenagers hate and adults love maybe, so I guess the equivalent here is a caravan haha. They are so similar though, they even both have you finding a missing girl? I'd forgotten that detail.

    I'm gonna finish that now, but otherwise, today I've been playing some more IWD. I really like it. And now I levelled up a bit, even my cleric/mage isn't totally squishy. Just mostly. :) But I still wonder, what is the game I used to play that I thought was this? Because this isn't it haha.

    I did it! I finished FO3 for the first time. Charon didn't actually die but I'm still killing him in the story haha :)

    Am I going to start FNV again? I just don't know! I kinda wanna make a Novac town mod. I also want to port some FO3 armour. I like one of the Pitt raider ones with a leather halter top and some nice boots :) And I'd like to use Tobar's jacket for a Boone outfit...

  • 22/01/2024 Icewind Dale, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, Seedship (belated)

    I'm progressing in Icewind Dale and progressing towards making dollies of my dollies and showing them to you. But it requires picking the right dollmaker to suit all 6 obvs.

    So, today, after having had it installed for a while, I thought I'd give Rebel Galaxy Outlaw a spin. I wanted something simple and fun. And... this game is neither ._. So disappointing. The UI is fun and I like playing a girl but the story is annoying and the flying is worse!!! And they knew it, too - why they try to force fucking autopilot down your neck. The big thing I remember from Rebel Galaxy is ... piloting my fucking ship! And listening to the fun radio. But this is awful. You literally have to configure a key to fly the ship, that's how little they expect you to do it. And the 3d combat is not as fun as the 2d combat in the old game :/ I liked E:D (until I got bored of it) but this is just not as good as that. The first game, I heard it was made by just two blokes, and this is actually the game they wanted to make. But the constraints really suited them. Rebel Galaxy is a masterpiece!

    My husband patiently listened my complaints and is trying to sell me on Star Citizen. It won't even work on my pc, but that's okay I guess 'cause it don't really work on anyone's :) The hunt for the perfect space game continues I guess!

    I should plug Seedship which I was introduced to and enjoyed a fair amount last year but apparently never mentioned. It's free! It's not a flying game though. I just want to zoom zoom and pew pew. And it seems like I especially want to do this to the strains of rock cowboys growling about their sins.

  • 27/01/2024 West of Loathing, Rebel Galaxy

    I started Rebel Galaxy again on Thursday. It's so much more enjoyable than the sequel, even comparing early game to early game... it's a shame! Anyway, I can still have fun replaying the first game.

    But I was bored of spaceship antics, I guess, so I started West of Loathing. And I've been playing it until just now when I finished it :) The early game is sooooo fun. The mid game is also fun. The end game is not so good. But my frustration with some of the (glitchy!) back-and-forth doesn't diminish how fun the whole game is. I was just laughing the whole way (well, until the annoying last third, I guess?) I played as a cowpuncher or whatever the fighter is called exactly. I will play again with the other classes some time :)

    I'm not sure what to play next... hmm... I keep thinking Underrail thoughts... but I should finish IWD first probably... or maybe being scifi and fantasy is enough to keep them separate?

  • 05/02/2024 Rebel Galaxy, Twilight Oracle, Dwarf Fortress

    I kept playing Rebel Galaxy here and there. It's fun! I might play more today.

    On the 2nd, I tried the Twilight Oracle demo, bought it and played it. It's really short. Pretty much the whole game is in the demo and trailer. It's not worth the price (and I bought it at 20% off), but maybe half the price, if you like these kinds of games. (It's super similar to my fave, Kyrandia 2: The Hand of Fate, which is maybe also why it disappointed me so much!)

    And after that I went back to Dwarf Fortress. Every time I start a promising fort, something awful happens. In this case, I let some monster hunters in but then I wanted to get rid of most of them. But I can't expel one because he's "nobility" (1. he isn't 2. it's nothing to do with me if he is! he's a human!!) and I can't fix it even with dfhack. Obviously I could kill him, but I don't want to have to memoralise him, and I don't want to delete him, the man has children lmao. I also had stupid caravan get stuck in a tree, and I didn't notice until they'd left all their junk up there. The map is mostly mountains! They have really no excuse!

  • 16/02/2024 Kenshi

    I started playing again, this time I tried the one arm desert start. Made it to Sho-Battai and was having fun stealing until I got caught. I kept trying to get free. Got good at lockpicking, a little tough, and even treated myself to training melee attack on their training dummy lmao. There was a nameless starving vagrant and an outlaw named Leaf who I was friends with, but when I got took by slavers, they were left behind... They took us to Stone Camp (very slowly) and I just kept getting beat up until nighttime, when I freed everyone in my barracks who wanted freeing. 6 of us escaped (we snuck past the gate guards?) and I had a party of 4: me, a shek named Maggie, a hiver named Bland and a man named Benjie. Maggie got eaten by a skimmer ;_; Now we're looking around the ravaged hamlets for ANYTHING (so far we found a big UC-HN skirmish...)

    Benjie, least injured (most arms) went out from Bast to get food, got kinda HNed instead. Managed to play dead and crawl back. Now he had to stay in a bed to not bleed to death. Next it was my turn (didn't get skimmered, but nearly got UCed, but I got a bunch of rotten meat yay!!). So then I sent Bland (what a name) to the fishing village for medkits. They had NONE? But there were some dead cannibals nearby who had a few!

    We eventually managed to all be healed up enough to hobble to the fishing village. When we got there, a fisherman gave me some cooked vegetables because he felt so sorry for me :)

    We were happy there and just on the way out (following some skeletons because why not), a huge swarm of cannibals attacked... it looked like we would be okay, the fight was mostly won and I was still up, but just as I healed Benjie's worst wounds, Bland died! I guess I should have realised he was more tough, but they were both "dying" and he was closer, so... :(

    We left for World's End and decided to pledge our allegiance to the Flotsam on the way. My slave status finally wore off just before we entered; Benjie's had worn off about 12 hours before (I have no idea why). That's when Bland's would have worn off, too, but he died with slave status :( I miss Bland, he was an excellent fish gathering hiver. But, well, we continued without him and did some kind of deadcat-flotsam-WE circuit twice until they finally had a left arm in stock (and we had enough money to buy it). So now I can finally pick Benjie up, which I celebrated by doing just that :)

  • 17/02/2024 Kenshi

    I'm not sure what to do with Benjie! When I got this little squad my plan was only to let these chumps die as part of my Sad Backstory but I'm a little bit in love with Benjie. He's so tough, and I don't know why - my toughness is a fair whack (ha) higher than his - but I go down like a souffle and he just heals like wolverine. It's mental. I'm not sure where we should go/what we should do next. We are nowhere near strong enough for any kind of revenge... maybe bust some more slaves out of the stone camp? But we will probably just get taken again and I don't want to lose my arm!

    I decided to get some spending money by having Benjie turn me in and then pick me up after I broke out. It's so dumb. It was fun though. We used that money partially to join the thieves, so now I have assassin training I've barely used. We went to the stone camp to cause trouble and didn't acheive much more than getting a few slavers ate by skinners. Oh, and passing off one slaver as a slave lmao. But I guess that's something. On the way out to Bast to heal up, we died a few times so I reloaded... (once a nomad tried to heal me but it was too late!) And once I survived but Benjie didn't but I'm too attached now! So I tried until we both got out. Then I started researching in World's End. It's boring though. The game is boring when you're too well-equipped to want to lose your stuff/too attached to your squaddies to let them die. In the beginning it feels tough and hard and fun, later on you're actually powerful and can actually do fun things. But this part is so bleh and it's where I usually give up!

  • 19/02/2024 Rebel Galaxy, Kenshi

    I played some more Rebel Galaxy yesterday, but today it was back to Kenshi. We started a nice little base by the fishing village. Don't really need walls when the fishermen hardly do (and can help defend you from cannibals lmao). We spent a lot of time healing goats who killed cannibals... and just having fun on the beach. Then, trying to save a hungry bandit from being taken away by just 2 cannibals, Benjie got himself abducted... and died of his wounds as they slowly took him across the sea ;_; He was nearly to the shore and I was there to rescue him but it was hopeless. So now I live alone with my little hemp farm... it's sad...

  • 25/02/2024 Kenshi

    I have been playing thoroughly too much Kenshi! Okay, I'm still based in Seaside Town (creatively named I know). I got a girl from the bar to mind the crops whilst I handed in some cannibal like Big Meathead or whatever for a reward from the Shek lmao (I was fairly tough, but I'm sure it was the tech hunters/cannibal hunters/mercenaries I've been hiring by the dozen who actually got him). I needed Ruka before I started becoming loyal to Generic Bar Girl. I also wanted lamps from the hivers, something I end up with really early when I start in the Hub, but I never went down there yet this time.

    Maybe because of a tighter pathfinding mod I got, we somehow ended up travelling back via Mongrel (I mostly kitted Ruka out there, initially). And you can't leave Mongrel without Beep, can you? And the shortest route back was then through the floodlands, so why not knock on tower doors until you find Burn? So yeah, there's been 5 of us in Seaside Town (not counting my dog and 3 goats, in order of adoption: Barbara, Doggy, Barnaby and Mary, haha). We had a dodgy event once where some THers who refused to go home when their contract was up decided to make war with us and some starving bandits. I'm sure the bandits started it, but considering they're my allies and it's my house... I ended up importing to get rid of them! They would just beat us to a pulp and then the other mercs would heal us and we'd try and crawl back to bed and ugh god. It was the impetus I think for me to experiment with turrets for the first time! We have some fun ones on the tower that's next to the house. We don't have walls. No need and we are maybe on a road along the beach or something too lmao. Anyway, Burn's getting okay with them. He had some skill at first and was pretty good, and has been training and actually practicising and has now nearly killed at least 2 of us lmao!

    I have a healing relations mod that winds me up 'cause it triggers when you heal your own squad with annoying dialogue but I need to be more friends with the deadcat fishermen!!! They are my neighbours and I love them. I wish they would stop "forgetting" us when we don't pop in for a day or two when we literally live a stone's throw away. We are direct neighbours to the houses right on the water!

    My best fun so far is maybe putting training dummies in the fields, like scarecrows :) I'm getting pretty good with the jobs stuff. It's running nice and smooth, so me and Ruka have been able to go on our first adventure, to the skeleton shop in the black desert (we needed some ancient science books and I wanted to look at the arms and she wanted to look at the swords - got her the world's shiniest plank). Ruka doesn't really do anything at home apart from burn corpses, which Beep and Marisa also do. It's strength training! I got strong from it! Now I mostly make medical supplies. I was doing armour smithing too, but making it to sell kinda bores me. Marisa's skill is getting pretty good too (we are both ~60 I think) from taking over leathermaking duties, but now she's mainly the cook, and operates the loom. I could automate it now maybe, she hardly ever gets to sit down! Beep has "his" wheat farm and Burn mills and bakes and we split the work of the veg and hemp fields between us. It's really nice and peaceful apart from the cannibals and HN raids!

  • 06/05/2024 Sims 3, Atom RPG, Swordhaven

    I haven't updated this in a long time! Okay, so I think for a while I was making FNV mods. I still need to add some to this site. And there are 2 big ones I was halfway through before I pivoted to TS3 mode.

    But about a week ago I decided to play ATOM RPG, which I've had installed for a while but not got around to. At first, I really enjoyed it. It's so much like Fallout. But as it went on it started wearing on me. The dialogue is mostly low quality filler (idk if it was better before being translated, but there's too much of it, in any case) and the whole game just starts dragging. I decided it was my fault for avoiding the main quest for too long. But... as soon as I started the main quest, it was over! Or that's how it felt. And I was getting weird endings because I hadn't done enough of the side quests. But I just felt drowned in it. It was a lot like my experience of playing Fallout 4. Enjoyable moments here and there but just way way way too long and bloated. I can't work out if I liked it more or less than Fallout 2. Do I just like FO2 more out of some kind of brand loyalty??? Because everything I hate about it, I think was in Atom RPG, too: too bitter, too many references, unbalanced combat... One good thing is slightly improved inventory and companion management. Worse one is that it takes forever to get the car and you basically get no chance to use it!

    The worst thing about this game is actually that it has way too many weapons. Idk. I never got the chance to try most of them. Some I swear I only saw in the final battle! Between me being melee and my two human companions being pistol and rifle, it just wasn't really a lot of opportunity (especially adding in how the companions swap to shit weapons in their inventory just out of spite). So, I'm kinda glad I waited until I finished it to decide whether or not to buy the expansion and go for their new game on kickstarter. I played the demo of it (had to get it on steam, annoying; at least it still works, for now) and it was sooo draggy, but I assumed it was just due to it being a demo... but their first game was the same. It's a shame, I really want to like them and what they're doing! Maybe I would have when I was younger, but now I just can't stand overly long games.

  • 12/09/2024 Stardew Valley, Transistor, Octodad, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Dwarf Fortress, Underrail

    ... did I give up updating this because I was so disappointed by Atom RPG? haha

    In May, I think, I wanted to play SV again and I got it on GOG now. There's not a lot to say, really. I married Harvey again. (Sorry Leah, but at least you get my new 3rd choice?) I've been doing ginger island stuff. Not sure how I rate it. It's all kinda like what happened to Minecraft if you see what I mean. Multiple pets is fun though :)

    In July, I played Transistor because my husband has it on steam probably from some bundle and he reckoned it was my kind of game. At first, I really liked it. It's really beautiful and the battles are fun (if too easy). But then they literally make the game ugly. It just gets uglier and uglier as the ~clever plot twist~ gets more and more spelt out and then there's a dumb ending that explains fuck all about the seemingly-interesting setting, but not before a final battle where they make you reequip all your perfectly arranged abilities for literally no reason other than sadism. Apparently the devs keep making the same bad game again and again and I guess people keep buying them because they're pretty? I am glad I didn't spend a penny on it!

    After that, I tried out Octodad because I've been meaning to since it came out. But I was never cut out for octopus life - the controls are way too annoying. Especially throwing things... so I never got out the tutorial!

    I've wanted to play D:OS2 for a long time. A very long time. I've played most(? all?) of the Divinity games, and I got both original sins (can't be that original) on an offer several years ago, aiming to play them both promptly. I got my husband to play the first one with me, but he's not really an RPG person, so we were playing it for years and years and got about halfway through before we hit an annoying glitch. It seemed like I could move on to the next alone, but I didn't like the preset thing, and it took me several months to calm down :) Once I got over that, the game was pretty fun. Well, the fights were fun? As always. If you don't mind sitting there for a few years waiting for everyone to take their turns. (Or the glitch that I think is new for this game, where you often get the preceding npc's action subtitle over the current action??)

    But oh my fucking god, the inventory management. I am never buying another game by them unless they promise it's fixed. (And obviously I would never buy another Baldur's Gate game anyway!!!) Also, the game dragged so bad in the last act. Even the big final battle has a stupid puzzle. It's just so bad. (And there's a magic sword to defeat Braccus Rex again, but it was such a pain to get it to trigger lmao) And after I forced myself through just because I was nearly there, the ending slides were honestly such a joke. Shit tier sketches with nonsenscial, brief, yet somehow repetitive narration... never again! Never again! Oh my god. So happy to uninstall it.

    My guess is that everyone felt the same, otherwise we'd all be neck deep in Ifan/Lohse fanfic and there's literally like 5 on AO3. :)

    I've been playing DF again and having great fun with my spreadsheets. It's nice to keep track of their preferred materials for their bedrooms and tombs. It's also nice to be able to see at a glance who the pet duck/pig/rabbit that just died belonged to (for burying and commemorating in statue in their favoured materials in their beautiful tomb complex natch). I'm experimenting with traps more. My aim is to have a tavern that's totally open to the surface and the caverns, but just an emergency door that cuts the survivors off from their ~legendary dining room~ until they retake it. I'm excited to put it all to the test but kind of nervous. It's taken my original 7 and their 4 kids 13 years so far to have carved out their little fortress, sold 13 million eggs and cheese wheels to the caravans, and carved and forged enough spikes and mechanisms for all the traps! (We still need some more spinny wheels and giant axes!)

    After finishing DOS:2, I wanted to start another rpg. Underrail has been hovering near the top of my list for a while. Not sure why for example Atom RPG won over it. Anyway, it's kinda fun so far. I restarted early when I realised how cool the psychic powers are, but my new character is soooo weak, running back for a plaster and a kiss from the doctor every time a rathound looks at her too hard. Actually she's getting kinda badass now 'cause she can kill two!!!! Obviously I try to stay away from using ammo and psychic powers 'cause you have to pay to get them back, so this is mostly my little weakling ineffectually slapping her way to something like victory. I'm in the vault where the khans are holding them prisoner now so I have to get them out haha.

    Actually, I can't tell so far if this game or Atom RPG is more Fallout. I think maybe this one, but maybe I'm just misled because the tilesets look soooo similar (your station is even done in v13 and v11 lighting on different levels) and the music is like a (bad) addition to the classic soundtrack. One thing I really can say for this game is that it loads soooo quick, love it, especially after DOS:2 where I swear you could go for a bath!!

  • 17/09/2024 Underrail

    I was having great fun with Underrail until I got an error trying to look around Core City. Apparently my save is corrupted. I take great care with my saves and make sure they load okay (Fallout trauma). But it was all for nothing because this game is buggy in ways you can't defend against. Like, the save is fine! It's just not letting me move between these two specific maps. Apparently this has been an issue since the game came out and was never fixed. I tried reverting to my earliest save where I could get to Core City but it has the exact same issue and I don't want to go further back, anyway. I guess I will just hold out hope it gets patched or something. I don't want to restart! I would if I knew the issue was fixed, but I don't want to just play the first part of the game again and again :(

  • 28/09/2024 Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord, Infraspace

    As a big massive Warband fan, I preordered Bannerlord, played the beta, installed the game the moment it came out - to find there was basically nothing in single player mode, which is the only mode as far as I care (even though I found out during the mp beta I'm actually the amazing amazon warrior I rp as). I heard it wasn't much better now, but I felt like giving it another go (and going back to Warband if it was inferior), and I'm glad I did. I've been playing it basically non-stop since the 18th.

    Actually, it got kind of boring yesterday because I've got a town (it's too easy compared to Warband, no-one really cares that I'm a woman...) and my faction, like all the factions, is stupid, so I've just been leaving the idiots to it and sitting in my town hoping to upgrade it fully before declaring independence. And as my 5!!! kids grow up (in Turkey full term pregnancies only last 6 months so they have funny ages. I am fine with the first kid being fat and healthy and 3 months premature, but not the 2nd lmao, and let's not talk about when I apparently started trying again). This is all fine on some level, but incredibly boring on all others. I wish waiting in towns at least told you when there was a tournament without having to check every day. I hate missing chances to beat up my husband and friends for trinkets.

    Btw I married Simir, the only young Sturgian who fancied me. I wasn't going to convince one of the others, that's not the kind of demeaning female gameplay I'm looking for! He was my last pick amongst the cute because he's somewhat evil, but I was hoping I'd control the kids' traits and not just their stats. Haha! I wanted to marry a Sturgian because I'm Battanian natch and we are getting our arses absolutely handed to us by the Vlandians. So guess who Caladog and my FIL mostly declare war on. And guess who the other factions tend to be at war with on another front when these tactical geniuses decide that they look like easy pickings. Never mind who controls half your territories, lads! I am not winning Car Benseth back for you again! I'm just living in Omor forever as a fuck you to both of you! With my 5 beautiful (evil) premature children! And my steadily mounting tribute bill because our brave high king and his wise advisors always pick exactly the right moment to sue for peace with our tin can oppressors, like when I've got them on what looks to silly old me like the back foot, but I'm fine with it, absolutely fine with it

    I fancied a change today, so I gave Infraspace a whirl. I got it in a giveaway from someone who didn't want the key. It seemed like Cities: Skylines in space, so I thought it'd be right up my street, but god, it's so dull. And glitchy. I can't complete the incredibly boring tutorial without rebuilding everything twice so the roads actually fit. That's when I do things in the order they're suggesting. Mental. Then I found out I had to make a science lab that makes units of science that have to go to a central warehouse before going to the neighbouring research lab and I was just done!

    I've updated Dwarf Fortress to have the baby and child sprites (which involved terrifying visual c++ updates too) but I don't really fancy playing. I know, weird. I kind of want to play Kenshi. Those early Warband/Bannerlord vibes. Kenshi gets boring when you're on top, too, but it takes longer to get there.

    I think really I want to keep playing my broken Underrail save :( I might play FO1. I don't know!! But it's getting uploaded here for posterity!

  • 02/10/2024 Shadwen, All Walls Must Fall, Civilization VI

    I tried Shadwen today, just for the sake of scraping my steam barrel. It sounded fun but it's really not. It's like console Thief (auto aim rope arrows...) with annoying Dishonored morality mechanics. I actually like the rewinding as an alternative to savescumming but even so, I couldn't get through the first level. There are only so many barrels a woman can knock over before she'd rather throw the girl into a haystack too. Oh, you know what? With the steam achievements, I can see that what I assumed was still the first level was actually the third.

    Maybe I should have another crack at the Dishonored DLCs that glitched out on me. But maybe I'd rather just skip to the sequel. I didn't find those bad guy characters interesting in the slightest, but then this confronts me with a terrible dilemma: play as a woman vs play as Garrett!

    Maybe I should just go back to Thief :)

    I tried All Walls Must Fall, which is free, but not worth the price. I can't think of many things less fun or anything less "tactical" than clicking through randomly generated dialogue to get randomly generated effects on randomly generated guards. Literally wtf.

    I won Civ 6 in a giveaway - hadn't bought it 'cause I never liked the look of it. It's really not very good. Feels really bloated. Constant alerts about things that don't even matter. And you have to press so many keys and move the mouse so much just to do simple things like move a unit around. Then guess what - clicking on a spammy city alert can automatically makes your selected unit move there. And get bombed by barbarian ships. Omfg. Also they made Dido ugly so I had to play Victoria and get lobotomised by icecream van renditions of Greensleeves & Scarborough Fair. Soooo I uninstalled it. Is it possible for me to start a game and like it. And for it to not fucking break (I am still so sad about Underrail!!)

  • 08/10/2024 FNV, Never Second In Rome

    I've gone back to both trying to write HTTWSB (feels like building a mountain with a teaspoon) and playing FNV, by which I mean modding it but also playing it a little bit and being like omg i need to get these mods sorted so I can play again. I've ditched my sky mod because I cannot get a result I'm happy with and I'm going to ditch my Novac mod probably (or scale it back and start again). I want to finish my Strip mod and my L38 mod. They are both like 99% done and have been since spring, why do I always drop things right at the finish line!!

    I downloaded the demo of Never Second in Rome because it looked interesting. It's not my kind of game but it seems well made. (I don't really like games that move between discrete stages the way this one does - it was one of the things I really hated about Civ VI actually - and also I think the latin names were just making my eyes glaze over at some point lmao)

  • 12/10/2024 FNV, Jupiter Hell Classic

    I'm still trying to finish my FNV mods - and still getting sidetracked by playing :)

    I was thinking about maybe buying Jupiter Hell as it's on sale, but I wanted to try a demo. There's a demo for Jupiter Hell Classic. It's fun, but I'm not sure it's spend a fiver on it fun.

  • 28/10/2024 FNV, TS3

    So, on the 13th I was finishing up my Boone outfit mod with my husband's help (both to work Terrifying Blender and to export the nif for me 'cause I can't get it working on my pc for some reason). I still need to actually make the mod, but I have the mesh and texture looking great!

    Not sure if I was playing anything until the 16th (I opened HTTWSB twice and added nothing...), when I got back into TS3 with a completely new world plan. I'll write more about that in the sims diary. But I suppose I just wanted to write somewhere on my website that in the early hours of the 20th we had to put down my beautiful baby cat ❤ Flea ❤, who was only 11. I miss her really badly. I'm going to make her a proper page on here with lots of pics and Cat Facts when I'm up to it. But that's why there's not really anything to report here for now, and why I haven't even been blathering about my new sims "game" I'm "playing" :) I am going to be fine, not least because nothing is more soothing than collecting photographs, organising files and filling out spreadsheets, but god I miss my sweet baby Fleaby!

  • 10/11/2024 TS3, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3

    I've been thinking theme park thoughts in my sims planning, so I decided to reinstall RCT3 on the 8th (I forgot to check the date I last played it on steam, it was 2013, maybe it was before Flea was born or before I adopted her or after... ;_;). I find I have limited patience for actually building rollercoasters. I think I just like designing parks. But maybe I just need to remember how the controls work, so I stop building and having to delete (and lose money on!) pieces when I'm just trying to change direction.

    It's fun though! I like this kind of game. It's probably my favourite, but I hardly ever play them any more. I guess they always start winding me up eventually with some mechanic or other (the big one was always the laziness and insanity of Pharaoh job listing blokes; more recently I was wound up by suicidal patients in Two Point Hospital), and now I'm oh god middle-aged and I have like 3000 other games to play - asides from my other hobbies, asides from the things I actually should be doing - I just don't have the patience any more? But it is so fun to watch little people doing little things.

  • 29/11/2024 TS3 planning, Kenshi

    I was doing more St. Fleaby's things up until the 21st/22nd when I guess I got fed up. I was wanting to play Kenshi for a while but I didn't until the 24th. I had a go on some starts like slaves but wanted to make a solo slave start (I know I can just dismiss them, but it's wrong to abandon them lmao) and in poking around the FCS I decided to make a new start that's like the wanderer but random location (also no money or weapon, but a vest, because I use topless skins and the rags are so revealing). It was fun, it started me in Clownsteady, I basically never go down there until I'm high level. After some bad attempts at shoplifting that culminated in slave shackles, I decided to set up a base in the waystation. I was healing so many poor rebel farmers that with this mod I ended up their ally in pretty short order. (I also ended up enslaved several times, but it's so busy down there it's easy to just run off lmao before they get you back to base). I was healing all kinds of genuinely or basically innocent passersby and I ended up with a hiver named Streak asking to join up. We went on some expeditions to ruins and Flats Lagoon to get research materials for the tier techs with my mod that I was so sure I was either going to have to apologise for not uploading or hurriedly upload, but no, it's there on the mod page phew!

    ... but it winds me up so much, all the flaming research, even with that mod. It glues me to the base. I don't like splitting between groups because the ai is so poor. You always have to check in and mind them. I just want to play as the group I'm playing as. I got two escaped slaves joining up at the same time too and idk I just got bored thinking of turning them into base-minding farmers. The dodgy collision is so annoying, I just don't understand it at all, for heavens sake let them walk through furniture sometimes if this is the alternative!! Everything wants 10 bloody meters all around it and it's still not enough for literal sticks to not get caught on invisible corners.

    I was also getting pissed off about Shark. I wouldn't mind the bloodbath there if the Hounds weren't guaranteed to win every time! There's just so many of them compared to the vastly more interesting Swampers, and let's not begin with the poor (horrible) casino hivers and their scattered limbs. I added some faction relations based on someone else's mod but idk I don't want them to be allies either exactly. I have never actually gotten far enough in the swamps to even know about who you can side with and the outcomes. This is characters that have gone to the ashlands and everything, set up bases in the cannibal plains...

    ... but my new character started in the swamp village just south of Shark. She's been farming rice and selling it to the 3 people who live in the village and never pay any mind to their like dozen paddies. She recently went up to Shark for a proper visit (unlike when she nipped in to lose a swamp ninja, whilst trying and failing to save a handsome Band of Bones bloke from various (other) bandits as well as spiders...) and ugh I just hate importing...

    Actually, I take it all back. The worst thing about Shark is that, after this dumbshit fight triggered by the Stone Rats, which leaves them all Extremely Dead, you can't sell their shit to anyone in town. You all loved them did you? Hounds and Swampers are filling each other full of harpoons in a field of hiver limbs but nobody wants to tangle with the dead Stone Rats. Okay!

    But the point of all of this is is that I made a new new start which is what I actually used for my farmer girl, which has all the research unlocked. And I hope it makes me less base-y in early game... but then... my farming and my desire to get involved with all the hemp growers doesn't suggest I've avoided it lol! But next next game should be better at least.