Energy Shield + Evasion is the safest (literally) route to go for now. Armor scaling and math is way off (there's a steep drop-off higher up, meaning that 1-hit issues will keep on being an issue, while trash mobs might be mitigated better).

I haven't played coop with anyone yet, but I've seen videos of others playing (a party of 4, no less). It looks really difficult, bosses have insane amounts of HP, and most any build gets whacked with AoE or charged attacks.

I found a somewhat better staff for my Monk last night, it's still only incrementally better, and even has the wrong main elemental damage along the base, but my DPS went up by about 50% with one item. Witch continues to tear up maps with minions, I'm up to Tier 7 now, and this is without any significant defense or damage reduction (except almost capped resistances).

My Ranger (Deadeye) is now level 60, just started Act III on Cruel. It was really slow, I focused on defensive nodes in the beginning, and my damage was poor. Changed it around and tripled my damage, making everything so much easier and better. This game is the epitome of "the best defense is a good offense". Still haven't activated one of the main parts of the Deadeye build though, I need more Spirit (running two Heralds and defensive passives at once is costly).

Played indie darling from 2024, Little Kitty, Big City, this weekend. Some 4 hours long, exactly what I had. Adorable, feel-good game, especially for cat lovers (and even for those who don't like them, like my wife). Fairly satisfying gameplay, but I was expecting bit more mechanically. Way overpriced for such a short length. They have solid foundation, hopefully sequel will bring longer adventure and improved gameplay.

What's your current game? You forget to type it?

Edit: Oh nvm, I see the widget now, I thought that wad your signature. 

I steongly recommend Alan Wake 2. Damn is it good, I really wanted it to be a more RE4 focused thing like Alan Wake was but since they've pivoted genre slightly to more core survival horror, I'll pivot with them and wow, this is how you do psychological horror in a video game. Really trippy stuff and it legit makes me uncomfortable, the focus being more on survival horror really works. The mechanics are super well polished and thought out even though I'm not a huge fan of having a hub in a linear game and it breaking up gameplay but I'm shocked that I actually feel good about engaging with it cause it's just one super fast click away and I never thought it would be this genre where the benifets of an SSD shows themselves, it takes longer to open the map than to load into the character mind palaces. I love the style of it and mixing in live action which has always repulsed me but here is the first time I've seen it work and well at that. I love how chapters are structured and the presentation style of them with the song playing at the end. I didn't get what I wanted from a sequel but I'm getting something I didn't know I needed. Such great vibes and very impressively presented. I doubt Silent Hill 2 could top this.

Added Cyberpunk 2077 back into rotation, this games story is so fucking good, it was amazing even with the disaster the game was on PS4 but now that things are all glitch free it's beyond that, game feels like a "Next gen" experience but it's how cool it is that's what tickles, it's so fucking fresh and flashy. The music, the intensity of the scenes, the gunplay, the animations, the pacing of the story beats, it's all so fucking wildly specatcular.

I hope people returned to this one in masses on 9th gen and didn't just write it off. Just done the Relic mission and the stuff after all Glitch free, no falling through the world, Jakie didn't glitch out once,nl the whole thing just went smooth as butter and didn't have to reload the game once since I started my playthrough, even the texture static is almost gone. I can't wait to do the takamura car scene the way it was ment to be presented, looking forward to a lot of stuff in this game actually.

I highly expect this is now a masterpiece and it blows my mind that this game went from almost unplayable to completely fixed. Mind blown that this turned out to be even better than the No mans Sky situation and devs have no excuses anymore to not fix broken games even if it is a console generation later. Fix 'em up, repackage and give the fixed game for free to people who own it, perhaps then your too big to fail dev studio may actually survive through good will.

I can't believe how well presented Cyberpunk is, the most natural animations and body language from NPC's I've ever seen in a game even better than TLOU2 or RDR2. All the small details and how you run into NPCs so organically and naturally while they do their own thing and move about doing stuff while they talke is astounding. All these small details is very impressive. 

And the campaign, my God, I can't think of a single game that is cooler, it even beats COD games or Doom with how it makes you feel and amps you up but the trick is the pacing, having down time then reving up and repeating that process is masterfully done here. My only complaint is the map markers, I wish there was something else they could do instead of having to check the map for side stuff. 

Sounds great. Sadly the game is forever tarnished in my book. How it all went down at release and the disrespect by management to those that put so much overtime into it, I can never enjoy it. CDPR to me represents the worst of the hype building, false promises by marketing and release broken product, fix later. (Or not, last gen versions were simply abandoned)

I feel the same about Acti/Blizzard, hence I'm not touching Diablo 4 despite it having co-op.

So we're playing more Path of Exile 2. We did a few maps on Act 2 in cruel yesterday, much easier now than in normal. I can still get one hit killed but boosted my freeze ability more so now I'm quickly freezing any threat. Basically I jump from enemy to enemy to freeze them while my wife shatters them. Crowd control. It works on bosses as well, just need to get 'lucky' the freezes happen at opportune times.

Indeed @Mummelmann The best defense is a brutal offense. With all out new abilities, scorched and lightning earth, slams, stampeded, jagged earth, shattering palm, charged staff, it looks like a Peter F. Hamilton space battle goes off. Fights only last a few seconds so even when we die it's just more xp/loot.

Whirling wind / dashing over the screen with charged staff pretty much feels like this lol


We defeated the Bone pits boss (Mastodon quest) first try. First round (normal mode) we had no chance there and had to come back way later.

It's starting to become a 'cozy' game as well. Of course from playing together first, but the light show in dark zones is also a true spectacle. The lighting is great, lovely shadows everywhere and colors and HDR highlights from all the spells.

But we'll see how Act 2 boss goes later on, I'm probably speaking too soon :p

Tonight time to try out some more upgrades. Since I'm using a 'fire hat' still we found in Act 2 last time, we've been taking advantage of dmg against ignited enemies, and now also looking for anything against enemies inflicted by ailments. Since everything in range is always either on fire or frozen, it's permanent damage buffs. (Doesn't reflect in the DPS shown in skills unfortunately. Rerouting 10% spell dmg to 12% spell dmg against inflicted dropped my dps from 2000+ to a bit below 2000, it would be nice if it gave a breakdown instead of just a base number) My wife now has 30% additional fire dmg against ignited enemies, she was just above 4000 dps, so should now be 5,200 dps before other modifiers. That should make a difference tonight. More chaos.

First off, they simply got too ambitious with with what they were doing and ya can't really blame them for the hardware being so behind what they were attempting to do, the fact that it was playable from start to finish on ps4 at all was a miracle and the stats show more than the average count finished it, so people at least loved the campaign and yeah but you get the free PS5 upgrade. I know they can't fix PS4 but they solved it for costumers at least. I'm willing to forgive them anyway, especially since the final product is this good. Like I can't explain to you how good this is now and I hear Pahntom Liberty is even better. I can't say yet cause I'm barely into it in this version but it looks like a 10 if not a masterpiece and I'd have rated the ps4 version, game overall all a 4 and a bit line campaign run at 6. 

If we don't forgive these companies then noone will have incentive to even attempt a No mans Sky like fix. Think about Athem, bare bones game that could easily have been brought back in and made better or repurposed into a single player game cause the mechanics and vore of it were super solid. Same with ME Andromeda and many other games, we are in the digital age, this isn't like games go Gold and that's it, even the most polished games provide fixes and updates after release and it's the broken ones that are abandoned, forgiving and taking the win of a fixed game means more will be fixed in the future and there will always be and has always been broken or really shit products right back to the first generation, they could never fix or upgrade them back then like E.T for example but they can now. Hell, the Witcher 3 needed much fixing at launch, not as bad as Cyberpunk but it took to months to get that game fixed and years to perfect it along side releasing the DLCs and that game was a 10 even in launch state with the technical issues, damn, you could barely use the map on ps4 cause it was so jittery, while sections of the game (which were tough areas) that the FPS was so bad it would get you killed constantly but it was fully complete and no one really or demanded fixes nor complained and yet they fixed it anyway. 

Yes, you could argue it would have the lean on and take advantage of this to release EA titles but I don't see that happening cause they would be doing this for free and everyone wants the best reception at launch with lots of sales and word of mouth buzz. You're playing Path Of Excile 2 now, you paid for essentially the same thing, many paid for Divinity OS 1 & 2 in EA, at least Cyberpunk was completely playable at launch and was such a good game that despite the technical issues many saw it through to the end and it had a high completion rate on PS4 for that size of game, above the average of 30%. You also have thousands of hours in GT sport which launched without a career mode only to be added in later, I don't see the difference. To have it fixed for free when they didn't need to do it is something that should be applauded. It could easily have been abandoned lile so many EA games or Live service failures, hell we live in a time when the game you bought can be removed from you six months down the line. 

Cyberpunk being fixed is a good thing. And honestly man, this shit was and still is so fucking cool, it just back at release it was a rough diamond, now it's a really polished diamond and the added in some gold on the side in new content and QoL. You're missing out on something spectacular and really special. There really is no other game that feels this "Next gen", not yet anyway. I'd be surprised if GTA manages some of the stuff that they have achieved here especially with the details in animations and how you interact with NPCs.  

Yeah I refunded CP2077 when it launched and didn't touch it until Holiday 2022 and my god, what an experience!!!! The Phantom Liberty expansion was absolute perfection too.

So worth going back in, he'll I'd repay for this game on a half price sale if that was required knowing now how well it has been perfected. And still to this day even though they said they were done, they are adding features, there was a patch since I last played this game a month ago.