kawadec

Randomly stumbled onto Gizmo's work a couple years back and was immediately intrigued. This kind of horrorcore trap metal, or whatever the appropriate terms would be, is something I keep sleeping on way too much.

Off-and-on Elden Ring with friends, via the Seamless Coop mod. It's WIP and quite glitchy at times, but totally worth it for removing vanilla co-op's limitations. Been cycling through a few different characters, with builds based on various Fate servants --- Ushiwakamaru with a light load katana build (I am not Let Me Solo Her, so this isn't going very well), King Hassan with a heavy load Strength/Faith black flame build (versatile thanks to the stats, the fact he has both armor and an optional greatshield makes for good survivability, and heck he always seemed like a more anime-ish Soulsborne character anyway so he fits right in), and most recently Elizabeth Bathory who will be more breath/voice focused to go with her dragon characteristics and musical aspirations. I guess a polearm weapon would be most fitting for that last one, though Liz is a popular enough character to have multiple variations (Lancer, Saber, Caster, etc.) to base her combat around, we'll see what shakes out.

Over time it seems I've gone from a palm grip to more something akin to I guess what the graphic on the last page calls either an extended finger or pincer claw grip, going toward one or the other depending on how intense things are getting. As the number of buttons on my mouse increases (this one has been my go-to) it's helped if I keep my fingers and thumb arched a little so they can more easily move between everything.

Aside from the obvious answer of Doom 64, I also have a big soft spot for the first Turok, for a lot of the reasons already stated. Just a really good run n' gun experience with platforming that isn't too bad, some good enemy animations and music, and of course plenty of fun weapons. Though I never played Descent, I did get to enjoy Forsaken growing up and have to give it a shoutout, both the PC and N64 versions (since they were indeed different, and it's cool that the Nightdive remaster merges the two).

Very good point, I should definitely mention that, rather than playing the DOS version, I was running it through the BStone source port for WASD controls and the such. Apparently it was originally made for Planet Strike, but works well enough with Aliens of Gold as well, aside from a few minor audio things such as the weapon jingles not playing.

Huh, and here I thought I was the weirdo for shying away from the BFG. For me the combat comes down a lot to using the right tool for the job --- shotgun for sparse or distant fodder, chaingun for larger groups of fodder, chainsaw for pinkies, rocket launcher and SSG for the big boys, and plasma rifle for whatever needs to be both stunlocked and killed quickly (some overlap exists in these categories of course). There's enough variety and effectiveness among these weapons that I just never feel the need to deal with the heavy ammo cost and slow fire rate of the BFG, when a longer yet still tolerable amount of time using the other guns will also clear a room in a way that's more fun than one or two left clicks.

Pistol: "What is my purpose?" Me: "You kill one shotgun guy." Pistol: "...oh my god." The chainsaw is my go-to for pinkies, and at least the fist is a viable way to save ammo once you got a Berserk in your system. Unfortunately the pistol is just a worse chaingun and not much else. I don't blame 64 for giving us a shotgun 2 seconds into the first level, nor Eternal for cutting out the middle man and just making the shotgun our actual first weapon.

Earlier this week I was in a bit of a funk, and as a way to give myself something to do that wasn't the crushing grind of Warframe (not that I could have played much of it anyway, since my internet cut out a couple hours later for the rest of the night) I returned to Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold and played that. Over the next couple days I finished what remained of that game's 60 levels, then got the sequel and beat that. Something about the simplicity of a good Wolfenstein engine game was something my brain needed at the moment, I guess. But yeah, if Wolfenstein 3D but sci-fi and with new bells and whistles added to levels sounds like your Jam (get it, because the developer was called Jam) I give both a solid recommendation.

One thing I've heard from those who are left-handed is that, since a lot of things are designed for right-handed use, they often become a bit ambidextrous to some extent out of necessity. So I could see him using his left hand by default for pistols and the such but right hand for things that would be awkward to handle otherwise.

Been getting back on my gacha nonsense again by going through more of Fate/Grand Order's story. Finished the Agartha chapter --- wasn't a big fan of the writing, though I did finally warm up a little to Scheherazade by the very end, and the stall team I've been putting together really paid off a few times, so fun was had. Feels nice now having three developed strats to try given the situation (stall team focused on survival, buff-stacking zerker team designed to take out bosses as quickly as possible, and a buster-crit team with survivability in between the two). Moved on to Shimousa, which I hear really kicks people's butts and requires you to have a balanced roster to make it through the bosses (no borrowing a friend's servant to fill the gaps), so time to see where my weaknesses lie I guess, heh. Worse comes to worst, there's an event starting tomorrow I can farm a shitload of materials from to get a necessary person up to snuff.

Finally getting around to Ion Maiden Fury. I've tried a couple other Build Engine games (Shadow Warrior and Blood) and unfortunately decided they weren't really for me, but this might be one I play through to the end. Satisfying guns and combat, nothing frustrating me so far about the enemies, and I'm a sucker for tracker music.

All these people posting SSG as their "newest" waifu, as if they haven't had pin-ups of it in their bedroom since they were 12 smh

The roster of Hell/Cabal hybrid enemies in Bloom (a Doom/Blood crossover mod as the name may suggest) are a group of baddies I enjoy getting chewed up by repeatedly. They have less of the BS things that kept me from getting into Blood (namely the hitscanners' lightning quick reflexes), while still remaining far deadlier than Doom's vanilla offerings. Imps that can throw both fireballs and evil spirits, fire-breathing pinky-hounds, cacogoyles that can block attacks, slime archnotrons that do splash damage, the list goes on. All I can say is let's be glad Davoth and Tchernobog never swapped ideas at the water cooler. Also, I dunno if back-ports of modern Doom enemies count, but I love bringing 2016/Eternal's Knights and Barons into the classic setting. It's one thing when those two are basically just imps with more health and damage, and a whole other world of "oh shit oh shit oh shit" when they're sprinting and jumping at you.

The way I picture the Doomverse setup is kinda like a bicycle wheel, where Hell is the axis, Urdak is the tire, and the spokes in between are the myriad of mortal dimensions (dunno who put that idea forward first, but I swear I read that description somewhere and it made enough sense). Doomguy was born in one "spoke," and after killing the Sister Resurrector got yanked from Hell into a different one that had its own Earth with a similar history (similar enough to have its own UAC at least), but with more direct involvement from Argent D'Nur and especially the Makyrs. Personally I liked the idea floating around back in the 2016 days that the Doom Slayer was a different guy --- a Night Sentinel who sold out Argent D'Nur to revive his son (so yes, he would have been the Betrayer the lore talks about), was betrayed by Hell and went on a one-man wrathful crusade from there for vengeance and atonement. But hey, if their goal was to make Eternal as hype as possible by confirming the "Doomguy = Doom Slayer" theory, I can't say they failed at all at that. Of course Id can't seem to make up their mind on the lore of new-Doom, so who knows how accurate the current theories are (or how much will be retconned with the next game). But I guess one advantage of the multiverse setup is that it's pretty easy now to assume Doom 3 slots into one of the other mortal dimensions, with yet another Earth and UAC mucking about with risky technology.

Used to be a generous cream and sugar kinda guy, but in recent years I took an interest in cutting back the calories in stuff and switched to no cream and just a hint of sweetener, ended up developing a taste for that as well. I still maintain the heresy of going decaf a lot of the time though, just due to too much caffeine messing me up instead of helping.

Funny how many of these I knew were stock sounds, but also how many also were but I didn't recognize at first. A while back I was editing a recorded playthrough of some level and fast-forwarded through a part at 2x speed, and when some zombies were getting shot in the footage I heard the sped-up hurt noise and was like "wait what, I know that scream!" Imagining imps with that noise at the original pitch and screaming like a normal human is a pretty funny image, I must say.

Ended up thinking a bit about this today after watching a video about how Eternal's bosses steadily escalate the stakes as you go from the first Doom Hunter all the way to Davoth. Story at this point has decided to let Doomguy get some well-deserved rest, but what could bring him back out of the box that feels like a fitting progression? I welcome any corrections on whatever story/lore I got wrong, but what got me thinking is what TAG 2 told us --- and didn't tell us --- about the Wraiths, where Primevals like Davoth and (I guess) Doomguy came from, and what's going on with that "Engines of Creation" thing that supposedly exists outside Doom's multiverse. Clearly there is even more going on than what we saw or read about; travel beyond the mortal realms, beyond Urdak, even Hell itself, and who knows what, or who, is out there. Now you might be thinking, "Whoa wait, are you suggesting eldritch beings from the outer void or something? Isn't that outside the Doom Slayer's job description of tearing demons in half?" Well here's the thing: killing Davoth may have stopped Hell from being able to invade other worlds, but at no point did anyone suggest that it was gone now, just contained, hopefully forever. All those demons, all that power, is still there, and if someone, Vega forbid, bridged a way to/from that world they could use that power to once again wreak havoc. But who would even have the ability to do that? Surely it would have to be someone at least on Davoth's level, if not greater, and aside from maybe Vega and Doomguy there's no one like that in the multiverse. But outside of it... Perhaps an unknown presence within the Engines took an interest in the worlds Davoth created. What the Dark Lord accomplished was fascinating in the early stages, yet frustrating in the ways his obsessions held it back. Surely anyone could handle it better, but as long as his influence over it persisted one could only watch and wait. Eons passed, until the time came that Davoth was no more, defeated by the very being at the heart of his master plan. A fitting end. With this turn of events the multiverse has grown quiet. The realm once known as Jekkad stagnates without its creator, more isolated than ever; the time has come. There is some resistance at first, but ultimately Hell bends its knee to the strongest, and there's no debate even among their oldest nobility that this outsider is beyond anything they have ever seen. Changes to the realm proceed quickly from there. Not as many as initially thought were needed, as Davoth's designs make for an admittedly good base, but still there remain many areas for improvement. Ways to make these so-called demons stronger, smarter, faster, overall more effective at their tasks. Inevitably someone will notice Hell's growing presence. Whether it is Davoth's first creations, or someone in the mortal realms, who is to say. But by the time they do, it will be too late. Hell will have been remade, forged by the Father but perfected by the Mother. And the rest of creation will follow shortly. tl;dr Would be really cool if they mixed the unanswered lore questions in TAG 2 with the fan idea of Doom 6 being a reboot of 64, and made its version of the Mother Demon a being on Davoth's level who takes over Hell and makes the demons even worse. And since Hell is under new management, when the Doom Slayer awakens he finds his foes have taken on forms that are still recognizable in some ways but very much not in others.

It'd be one thing if this was about removing an outlet for toxicity on the platform and improving the experience for viewers and creators alike. I've seen forums that used to have a downvote option for posts later remove it for that kind of reason. But they're still leaving the option there as something to click, and creators can still see the like/dislike ratio privately? Whoever this change is for, it doesn't seem like it's for the average users' benefit. It allowed for more versatile feedback than a binary like/dislike, but I like to refer to this xkcd classic when it comes to how star ratings really work in practice: Ultimately the like/dislike system does what stars were actually used for, only in a more straightforward presentation. I don't wanna give Facebook too much credit for things, but one thing they have that seems to be a step in the right direction for better ratings is the different "reactions" beyond the usual thumbs-up one can tap to convey if they thought something was funny, awesome, sad, pissed them off, etc. It's another way for people to get an impression at a glance of what kind of content they're about to see and how it's been received.

It's a name I know mostly from Retsupurae and what I watched of Gaming Garbage. Learning a bit more from what's been shared here, it's interesting to think about how much influence he has had on so much of the internet that I've experienced, for better and worse as OP put it. Never went to SA, but there's a certain through-line that can be traced from there to 4chan to the kind of community I hung out in for longer than I should have that attracted its own share of shitty individuals. You wanna believe people like that will grow out of their behavior and get better as the years go on, but sometimes they don't, and maybe even spiral in the other direction. Then one day you hear they're dead or otherwise at the lowest of lows and respond with an "oh." And even you're not sure what emotion that "oh" was meant to convey. Hearing about the kind of place he was trying to make SA into as late as friggin 2019 says a lot. Makes him come across as a relic of a bygone, edgier era that doesn't exist today for a reason. Thanks for the funny gaming videos I guess, and condolences to the family.

Dunno how far in you are or what exactly you may be struggling with, but I've played enough of Eternal on UV to not die constantly (barring certain DLC moments) and can offer what I learned along the way that helped: Remember the flame belch and grenades, and use them generously. This was a big one --- I kept forgetting they existed, and the thing is that they can and will save your butt in tight situations. Torching a group of fodder then blasting them with a grenade or rocket gives a big chunk of armor that can keep you going until you find that next medkit or glory kill. The shoulder frag grenades pack a pretty good punch and have a good chance of tripping up enemies that aren't killed by them, and the freeze grenades make for a handy escape if you get cornered. Only takes a few seconds for them to recharge (especially if you equip the rune that cuts recharge time with kills), so make that shoulder buddy earn its keep. Assess the situation and figure out what heavy/super-heavy foes to deal with first. Fodder like zombies, soldiers and imps respawn infinitely until the higher-tier monsters are taken care of, so the other baddies are the ones to strategize over. Some will give you more immediate grief than others, or need to be taken down before you can deal with other threats safely. Personally I'm not a fan of being restricted on where I can go in an arena, so if there are Carcasses or Mancubi around I like to focus them down first so they're not messing with my movement. Pinkies, Knights and Barons can get bad if they corner you, but as long as you stay on the move you're good. Tyrants, Marauders and Doom Hunters I can evade until the support around them is dealt with, but Arch-Viles take priority due to their summoning and buffs. Pick runes that match your playstyle best. For a while I was trying to maximize my chances of pulling back from the brink of death with a combination of Savagery, Seek and Destroy and Saving Throw. This kinda worked, but I kept dying all the time anyway (partly because of above reasons, but yeah). Eventually I figured out the combat approach that I vibed with the most was "if they want to kill me they'll have to catch me first," and switched to Air Control, Blood Fueled and Equipment Fiend. This ended up not only working better but I was having a blast, zipping around the arena after glory kills and using that better midair control to maneuver from bounce pads and Meathook swings to reach safety or rain death from above. But that's just my playstyle, other runes may work better for whatever your approach to ripping and tearing may be. Rapid weapon swapping, as mentioned already. One nice thing about PC Eternal is the ability to quickly swap between desired weapons. Also, an important detail about guns is that their reload animation is less like a normal reload and more like a cooldown time. This means you can, for example, fire the SSG, quickly switch to another gun and shoot that, and by the time you switch back to the SSG it's ready to go again. That way you're dealing damage way faster than you would if you waited until your next shot on the current gun is ready. Players better than myself like to rapidly cycle through some combination of SSG/Ballista/Heavy Cannon Precision Bolt/Rocket Launcher, but even just alternating SSG and Ballista helps with turning deadlier targets into soup faster.

Could never bring myself to hate the guy. He's different from the other enemies in that instead of having a particular weapon, mod or ability that counters them, beating him is more about timing and positioning, which I thought was an interesting thing to bring to the table and fits well enough with Eternal's focus on movement. I appreciate that Id stuck to their guns on the design of his combat, while still giving us some QoL things like the wolves howling to announce their arrival and the Looney Tunes-ish stun effect so newer players know exactly where the time window is to deal damage. Things change a bit when you start throwing buffs on him that mess with his combat balance, given how finely he rides that line between hard-but-fair and just plain frustrating. But even then I dunno, things like the totem-buffed Marauder in Blood Swamps being too fast for his own good is more funny to me than anything.

Yeah, I'm a bit late --- wanted a break, and got sidetracked by Doom Eternal's Horde Mode and learning how to make MIDI music. But every recording of this run started with King Novik saying "until it is done," so I guess I'll carry out that decree. Actually did maps 27 and 28 a few days ago, but screwed up the upload and sat on the footage for a bit. Maps 27 and 28 Maps 29 and 30 Looking back on the overall experience of this wad...y'know what, I'd say it was good time. A previous post pointed out that this was all by one person and originally made without outside/community input, and honestly I respect that kind of (or kinda, hur hur) independent effort and ambition to make a competent long-form experience like this. I know I got salty here and there on the things I didn't enjoy or couldn't figure out in a level, so let me make clear: Whoosh, you did good. Some things weren't my jam, and I hope I explained well enough why in case you wish to appeal to a more combat-oriented and directionally-challenged player such as myself in the future. Props for taking the criticism in stride, and either way, you do you, as you clearly have the chops to make some good levels.

Map 26 - Monstrous This is one level where I was rather glad I read ahead a bit about it, at least enough to understand it was a large map and meant to be a castle of sorts; that put me into the right mindset going in. With that in mind I can say I enjoyed the exploration, and though at times the progression took a bit to figure out, it was less because things were hidden and more that there was a lot to keep a mental map of (or to check the actual map about sometimes, in order to maintain a sense of direction). I do acknowledge the attempted convenience of the teleporters that take you back to, I dunno what to call it, the red key hub? If this map was any larger or the progression more cryptic I'd be singing a different tune, but as it is I liked it well enough on a first play. Whatever that red key does will remain a mystery for this playthrough; at a certain point the exit was in front of me, so there I went. I presume the areas full of multiple baddies to kill but no switches or otherwise to get (at least that I found) might have had something to do with that particular key. Tight spaces full of Knights and Barons are especially tense with EoA-ternal, and this map deemed fit to throw a generous amount of them my way. The fact I kept backing up into a teleporter amid the most cramped fight is probably why I didn't suffer a death there, heh. Otherwise this was a pretty easy level combat-wise. Okay, then have a blind vote for +++Community Chest. The name alone sounds like an interesting experience.

Maps 24 and 25 Map 24 - Frontier in Situ This is one case where I wish I hadn't read other posts about the level ahead of time spoiling what happens with that Cybie at the start. That said, even with that knowledge I still instinctively backed up and fell into that trap, derp. Seemed like every new corner had a lot to deal with, which overwhelmed me more than once. Nothing some grenades and smart movement on take 2 or 3 couldn't handle. The Marauder duels only get easier as we go along, as I start to grasp where the soft openings exist for damage when his eyes don't flash green. And yes, it seems you can chainsaw the hell doggos. Take that info how you will. Had to wander around a bit, but I recognized the utilization of narrow switches early and expected them to be put in any corner anywhere. I guess I'm slowly learning how to get through this wad, heh. Map 25 - Her Company My temptation early-ish on was to hop on up to the upper cliffs to deal with every imp and gargoyle personally, but it seemed that was not always an option, between prison bars and straight-up invisible walls limiting how close I could get to such hordes. It's a good thing Altar of Pain is one of my favorite D64 levels, and because of that I have some patience for shoulder imps. But yeah, plenty of good fights and a nice hell aesthetic. Given how easily the Spiderdemon went down I wonder if maybe I should crank up the heat on myself and turn on fast monsters, maybe even switch to Nightmare for future runs. Not sure if I'm ready for the resulting over-caffeinated Marauders, though.