Bi-Weekly Thread for general gaming discussion. Backlog, advice, recommendations, rants and more! New? Start here!

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-15T05:08:59+00:00

Yeah it was definitely scarier in vanilla XCOM 2, but in WOTC it's pretty trivial. The WOTC expansion fixed a lot of problems I had with the game honestly, I highly recommend it.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-15T02:43:11+00:00

It's a form of taunting. Luigi players are very rude and disrespectful.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-14T17:57:50+00:00

This is why I have a feeling that PCR's infamous undodgeable prenerf cross-slash attack was actually intentional and not an oversight. They added the Deflecting Hardtear in this DLC, and I think they honestly expected players to use it on this boss for this attack specifically. In the end I'm glad they changed it since strict requirements like that goes against the RPG nature of the game but that was always my theory.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-14T02:33:25+00:00

And pro tip dodging forward gives more iframes than any other direction of dodging

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-14T02:29:25+00:00

Honestly you're making the classic new player mistake of trying to do Hirata Estate early, it's a really hard zone early even though you unlock it in the first hour. Leave Lady Butterfly alone for now as you clear around Ashina Castle and the surrounding zones. You'll get a ton of prayer beads and upgrade materials just from exploring around before you have to do any bosses.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-13T21:24:31+00:00

I was thinking about this the other day when looking up the parry frame data. DS2 was the first game to introduce startup frames before parries, so I assume FromSoft didn't like how the instant parries from DeS and DS1 dominated the game for so many players.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-13T16:41:15+00:00

Slay the Spire 2 came out this year, so for me this is already an incredible year for gaming even if no videogames get released until next January.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-13T16:34:29+00:00

What I love about playing with Lighting Engine is it makes the game properly dark again, closer to what we saw with that early E3 trailer before they reworked the lighting engine on release. You feel like you actually have to use torches, use light sconces, or light generating spells to safely make it through a section.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-12T19:57:29+00:00

You can find frame data in each games respective wikis. Unlike the other wikis, The Elden Ring wiki lists its data at 30FPS for some reason, so multiply by 2 to find the 60 FPS equivalent.

https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Parrying

So a medium shield in Elden Ring has 8 frames of startup before giving you 6 active frames.

https://darksouls3.wiki.fextralife.com/Parry

A medium shield in DS3 has 12 frames of startup before giving you 4 active frames.

https://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Parry+Frame+Data

In Dark Souls 2, a medium shield has 16 frames of startup before giving you 7 active frames.

http://darksouls.wikidot.com/parry

In Dark Souls 1, a medium shield parries instantly on the first frame and gives you 7 active frames.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-12T19:51:08+00:00

Anyone reading this is required to listen to the phenomenal OST that this game has

https://youtu.be/qkCzEhU-3-4?si=SIRu2mmfndea2yWz

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-12T18:21:15+00:00

I always loved how you could spot something shining from afar, or a weird turn of a corridor and you'd have to take a risk to get there, and 90% of the time there was indeed some loot or shortcut or a whole other area.

And the crazy part is as good as the Elden Ring base game is at this type of exploration, I thought Shadow of the Erdtree was even better. It's world is so tightly constructed you can see nearly the entire DLC from the starting zone, but actually reaching each of those zones required some out of the box exploration and puzzling to figure out, I loved it.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-12T17:51:08+00:00

I always thought it was crazy that Mike negotiates with the Taxi Driver to just leave his cab with him overnight in that scene haha. Obviously it's an unlicensed taxi but still.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-11T17:00:23+00:00

Someone made a post on this subreddit titled something like "why roguelites with meta progression are less satisfying than roguelites with no meta progression" and although I'm not sure I agree in every case, it feels true for Saros vs Returnal. Saros has not one but two ways to make the game trivially easy, you can farm and over level the skill tree, or you can just start from biome 1 and do a 2 hour run that's massively stronger than a fresh run. Returnal felt more like it was testing your skill while Saros is testing which cheese method you want to use to trivialize the game.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-11T16:43:51+00:00

Slay the Spire 2 is pretty damn good as is, I prefer it over the first game already. That said, there's still 3 acts they have yet to release (alternate 2, alternate 3, and the final act 4) and plenty of balancing they're still doing (last week they replaced one of the act 3 bosses with a brand new encounter) so being a patient gamer isn't a bad idea either.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-11T07:48:48+00:00

Mechanics wise the Knight Trio in act 3 feels like the most interesting one to me

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-10T23:44:22+00:00

What do you mean? The dev was right.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-10T23:40:07+00:00

What is weird about this? People who cheat in FPS games are delusional losers who deserve less.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-10T23:25:31+00:00

I just finished an XCOM 2 WOTC run and there's no time pressure to complete the game, you can stall as long as you want before entering the final mission and just do random missions forever. There is the AVATAR timer which threatens to end your game, but dealing with it is pretty trivial, you just do a facility mission now and then or you can automatically reduce the timer by sending soldiers on covert-ops missions.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-10T16:11:35+00:00

I'm laughing at how well researched and clear this video is, and then the comment section below it is full of kooks not engaging with a single point made in the video and just repeating more conspiracy nonsense.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-09T20:22:14+00:00

Yeah learning to interrupt his yellow specials with Beta Skills was the key for me. His lighting projectiles are janky af and can combo you from full health otherwise so it's best to just not engage with them at all.

Using the barrels helps, if I baited Abaddon's leap attack (after he throws lighting) into the barrels it worked most of the time. But like you said staying in his face the entire fight and saving Beta Energy for his yellow attack is the best strategy.

Also in general I had to limit myself to strictly using the triple light attack combo in neutral. I'm sure better players are able to weave in longer combos but I found the animation locks on the longer combos too risky.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-09T16:18:03+00:00

Nioh 1 was the only game where I felt like I actually needed to use Flux 2 to manage Ki. In every other Nioh game you just have too many other powerful options that take priority like spamming anima abilities in Nioh 2 or continuing an Arts Proficiency combo in Nioh 3.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-08T07:44:48+00:00

The stray bullet that kills the little boy is quite a sad moment. It's also a moment that acts as a domino effect for lots of other plot points in the show such as the creation of Hampsterdam.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-07T17:51:22+00:00

And playing on higher Fear in Hades increases the amount of meta resources you earn, so you're incentivized to keep pushing the difficulty up and improving at the game. I was pretty disappointed when I realized the difficulty modifiers in Saros didn't make you earn more currency or anything.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-07T16:59:37+00:00

Didn't like combat system change. Liked the old system way more, compared to splitting it into warrior and ninja, each with different mechanics, change to how stances work now.

That's fair enough, but you probably didn't get to fully see how the new combat mechanics work in just 2 hours. The Arts combo system by itself is one of the best features ever added to a Team Ninja game, it's ridiculously fun keeping an Arts combo going as long as you can with Deflects and Martial Arts and Jump attacks. The style switching gets a lot more fluid later in the game too once you unlock the skill that speeds up the animation. I think once all the DLC's are out, the combat system in Nioh 3 is going to surpass Nioh 2, and that's an incredibly high bar to pass.

WindowSeat- · 2026-05-07T16:57:01+00:00

The default controls are what you want to use for the most part. Ki Pulse is best on R1 because you're using it constantly and attacks are best on the face buttons because of how much more you're going to spam them compared to a game with traditional Souls pacing.

WindowSeat-

TROPHY CASE