How Are You Passing the Time Until Release?

Probably gonna play various Castlevania games.

I'm working on a Zangetsu solo Ultimate run, and replaying The Last Door on my PS4 one episode a night.

I loaded up my "Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection" and am alternating between Shining in the Darkness and Phantasy Star IV. Good times, good times...

I've been playing the Castlevania Anniversary Collection as well as Dracula X and Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (I got LRG's PS4 Classic Edition which is why I'm playing it again ) lately, but I don't think that's gonna keep me busy until launch. So once I'm done with Bloodlines (all that's left is to beat the game with John Morris), CotM & Dracula X I'll probably move on to Guacamelee 2 on PC, also there's E3 coming up in a few weeks which will keep me entertained for a few days and there's an "Sweetheart" Kickstarter for the Evil Dead 2 board game coming out in the next couple of days that if successful will give long suffering backers (like me) their long awaited games (If you're curious as to what the hell I'm talking about just see the paragraph below which should serve as a "quick" primer on the situation) so I'll be keeping my eyes on that, plus throw in work and that should definitely help keep my mind off of BS until it arrives .



A few years ago there was a Kickstarter for an Evil Dead 2 boardgame, which I was a backer (all told I put in about $117 which compared to what other backers put in was light/tame by comparison as some people had put in well over $500), the KS was successfully funded, raising $723,000 from over 6,000 backers easily crushing it's $70,000 goal. Well during the first year or so they were telling backers everything was moving along smothly and the they'd be getting their game soon, then they started telling backers that they were hitting a few snags in production which were normal and that if things go good we'd get our game early the next year. Well flash forward to early last year, around April/May, the shit hit the fan as it became known to backers that the people responsible for the KS campaign, namely the CEO/Owner of the company behind the KS had essentially taken the KS money for this KS as well as 2 other KS's the company had done (Terminator the board game and The Evil Dead comic book Omnibus/Artbook), all told just north of $1 million, to pay for things other than the promised board games/books, which they already had the licensing rights to. During this whole time it turns out they were regularly lying to backers saying that everything was fine and that the delays were due to production complications caused by Chinese New Year. Then they essentially tried to blackmail backers into putting up additional money in a wefunder campaign by essentially holding the game hostage telling backers that if you want your game(s)/book donate to this campaign. Of course that didn't go well with backers and the wefunder utterly failed so the company (essentially) went bankrupt. Now here's where things get "real good", the owner of said company then started trying to sell off backer exclusive items (figurines, dice, etc.) that he had gotten a hold of (we later found out he had also stiffed the very people who had made the items and was even trying to stiff the warehouse owner where this stuff was being stored) to any and every company/person he could, for example backer exclusive figurines ended up in a Loot Crate competitor's box, exclusive wooden dice (which were "made from the original wood from the cabin in the movie" and sold for about $200 ea) were being sold on Amazon for not even half the price, and just recently (as in earlier this week) the damn Omnibus/Art book, which had it's own full blown KS popped up for pre-order on Amazon with a Sept release date even though not a single backer for that KS had gotten nor will apparently get their copies of the book. While all of this was going on backers flooded Kickstarter, BBB, their credit card companies and the Attorney General of the company's "home state" with complaints and charge back claims. Kickstarter did jack shit even though the company repeatedly violated the KS terms of service agreement (which backers & creators must agree to before using the platform), hell they even refused to make the "creator" company produce a full blown list of what the money was spent on and then basically told angry backers to f*** off. The Attorney General apparently looked into it briefly but decided to not to push it any further than that despite backers having an obvious case and Credit Card companies declined about 90% of the charge back claims since it had been well over a year since the cards were charged. So fast forward to earlier this year and this guy named Tommy who works for/co-owns (I think) a board game company called Lynnvander (who had also apparently been screwed over by this company after helping them out on designing a board game) basically starts working behind the scenes to see about resurrecting the project, he pops up on the FB group dedicated to this fucking debacle to let us know that there might be a small chance that we might be getting our game after all and that he'd let us know for sure once things were more concrete. Well last month Tommy let us know that his company Lynnvander was teaming up with Jasco to make/Kickstart a new Evil Dead 2 board game soon (they've since said the KS will launch by the end of the month) and that for each game essentially pledged/sold a backer from the previous ED 2 board game KS would get a free copy of the new game as well. If the campaign is successful in reaching it's goal then pretty much every backer from the previous ED 2 BG KS would be guaranteed to get a free copy of the new game.

I feel bad for you. Too bad that 505 isn't more active.

by wasting away

I'm using this time playing through Curse of Darkness for the first time.

Curse of Darkness is the only CV game I've never played. (aside from the Lords of Shadows series, which I have also not played yet)

When I had completed Lament a few years ago, I thought it was one of the most monotonous and boring games I had ever played, so I was not too keen on starting Curse of Darkness at the time. But now in the run up to Bloodstained's release, I'm giving CoD a proper go now, and I can say that it's somewhat better than Lament, but still very repetitive.
I like the crafting system, and having such a fleshed-out familiar system is really cool... but I really don't like how the entire game is comprised of corridors of enemies with literally nothing else going on. Hector's animations feel really stiff, and there's just no feeling of power behind his attacks. I just reached the Aiolon Ruins, and this area has so far literally been nothing but enemies in corridors.

I keep fighting only because I enjoy levelling up, collecting occasional loot, and completing bestiary entries. The actual combat mechanics are really not fun for me though, so it's a shame that 90% of the game is this stiff, ugly combat.

I have never understood the opinion of people who think the PS2 CV games are amazing, yet also think the N64 CV games are horrible. I would rather play a game like CV64 any day compared to these PS2 ones. I loved the environments in CV64. The hedgemaze was especially memorable, the Castle Center was fun to explore, and the occasional platforming segments such as Tower of Sorcery helped give the game some variety. CV64's combat is bad, but the interesting environments more than make up for it imo.

Finished playing dark souls remastered, nearly finished replaying dark souls 3.