I’m still dealing with some sinus issues even as I’m getting better every day. One of the side effects of being sick is that I just can’t play anything too intense. I don’t even mean intense in the way of Dark Souls intense. I just mean anything that I have to engage a lot in, which actually doesn’t include Dark Souls. Which, by the way, I still haven’t played since the twin not-plat runs. I was worried this would happen, and it makes me sad because I could do with some comfort Soulsing night now. Instead, I’ve played Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!!, which sounds like a contradiction to the no-intensity thing, I know. But, however, there are ways to make the game more or less intense, and I’m doing it as easily as possible. There was a recent update with a new area, which was a little more stressful. However, once I finished that (one of the new achievements was really frustrating because I couldn’t figure out how to actually do it. Once I read about it in the forums, however, actually doing it was simple, and it was worth it. It was so funny), I went back to cruising through each day as easily as possible.
I’ve also gone back to my roots and playing Hidden Object games. It’s mindless especially when I play ones I’ve played a million times before, and it’s something about the repetitiveness that soothes me. I still find comfort in the games, but I can acknowledge that most of the games are just lazy reskins of previous games. Most companies just crank out a game per series a year with the smallest tweaks to the story. I’m all about fantasy settings and the paranormal, but if I have to play one more game where my husband/wife/daughter/son/other relative is snatched away by some shadowy figure that may or may not be aliens, and then you have to go to some mysterious world in order to save them, I may just scream.
In addition, they still do the thing where you can’t mess with any of your options before the opening cutscene, which means I will skip it rather than mute it every time. I play with the sound off for casual games because that’s just the way I do, and all the intro scenes are the same, anyway. I saw a remake/remaster of a HOG for the first time, and I laughed my ass off because it was so clearly a cash grab.
I haven’t played Borderlands 3 in several days because it does take a lot out of me. It’s not hard, per se (well, not exactly, but I’ll get to that in a bit), but it’s constant action. There are mobs all the time, and I’m constantly running out of ammo. I’ve gotten a few of the SDU for my favorite weapons and my backpack, but it’s still not enough. And, I have to emphasize once again that while they love to tout how many guns there are, the tiny amount of backpack space is ridiculous. It’s reached the point where I don’t even look at the white or green items any longer when I’m running out of space. Why bother when I won’t be able to sell them for ages? That’s another complaint. There aren’t enough vending machines. I know it’s to give a sense of limitation and urgency, and while I hate running out of ammo for my favorite weapons during a fight, I can understand that they don’t want to coddle the player, but they could have some machines that just buy your shit. Because what is the point of having all that loot if you can’t pick up any of it?
I started playing again after a few days past the Lilith incident. The gameplay is great and very addictive–as long as it’s gunplay. The driving is…not great. It’s not terrible now that I’ve gotten used to it, but it’s still annoying. Part of it is because the game deliberately makes it so by putting blocks and obstacles in your way and part of it is because the controls suck. I was able to buy my cat-ears helm and it comes with a socially-distancing mask as well.
Side Note: For some reason, I can’t use the Steam overlay in this game for my screenshots. No idea why as I used to be able to do it. Same with I used to play this game called Good Pizza, Great Pizza, but one day, it suddenly wouldn’t start. No idea why. It’s frustrating. Anyway, I jury-rigged a solution which is using the GeForce overlay and their screenshot button. It’s a bit more awkward than just hitting F12, but it’s still doable. However, I can’t include them in this post because they’re too large and resizing them isn’t working.
Anyway. I had a horrible feeling before playing the game while watching the trailer than they were going to kill Lilith. I’ve explained my reasoning before so I won’t go into it again. I knew they were going to do something terrible to her (which they did), but I feared it wouldn’t be enough. Then, after I saw Maya in the game, I had the same fear for her. Same reasoning as with Lilith. She’s too powerful; they like to shock their players; they’re terrible to women. Or at least Randy Pitchford’s attitude is. After reading something about something else that implied both of them were killed (and probably in very graphic ways), I lost any desire to play. I probably will go back to it as some point, but for now, I just can’t.
I don’t know what I’ll play next. I bought a few low-key games (on Steam) on sale, but I don’t have any motivation to try them.