ZephyrusRaine

Progress Report #6 - June Progress Wrap-Up | 23/07/2018 | (Click here to skip to the next post )

2%
2%
4%
86%
6%

Preface:

I know, July is almost over already and here I am still posting about June lmao. The reason why I took so long in updating my report was because I was learning Bootstrap by looking at other BLAEO users' posts. I'll probably stick with this post formatting in the future so hopefully it won't take long for me to update July's progress report.

I resumed my backlog assassinating activity on May, but I feel like I've already made huge chunk of progress on my backlog. This is probably caused by me finally deciding to play shorter games, as I explained on the last progress report. Steam Summer sale was also held and like always, I can't control myself during large Steam sales, especially on June as it is my birth month. Though when compared to last year, I managed to reduce my spending lol.

While I named this progress report "June Wrap-Up", I included some games that I managed to clear during the first half of the year as well. Feel free to ask my thoughts about a game I played, which I haven't included on the reports section.


Played Beaten Completed Abandoned
22 13 12 4

June Monthly Theme: Bundle Appreciation Month

june monthly theme

Beaten: 11 Games

Completed: 5 Games

Beaten
Completed

The Gems

The Good

The Meh

The Bad

Dark Souls series

Ah, Dark Souls. The series which people easily shy away from because of the supposed difficulty. Make no mistake, it is still a difficult game no matter how many effort you put into playing it, but the series is always about fairness, perseverance, and having fun. It doesn't demand a constant time and effort to play, just the desire to improve. Once you get into it, DS becomes an exceptional game series with what I think the most satisfying combat and exploration system.

I cleared every entry almost back-to-back if it were not for 2 months of FFXIV hell again lol.

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin

118.4 hours, 35 of 38 achievements
[Highly Recommended]
Notable Feats:
Almost 100% complete, just need to get to NG2+ to purchase the covenant exclusive sorcery and miracle.

More

I'm not going to claim this game is perfect. Several bosses feel pointless. But in the end DS2 feels much more consistent in terms of enjoyment than its predecessor. Not to mention the DLCs it has house some of the best bosses in the series. I plan to 100% this game sometime before the end of this year

I'm not going to claim this game is perfect. Several bosses are pointless. But level design-wise DS2 feels way more consistent than its predecessor and the DLCs it has house some of the best bosses in the series. I plan to 100% this game sometime before the end of this year.


DARK SOULS™: Prepare To Die Edition

58.0 hours, 29 of 41 achievements
[Recommended]
Notable Feats:
First run, need to get all unique weapons for a 100%.

More

At this point I think many people already know what makes DS1 good. So instead I'll mention some of my gripes with this game.
After playing DS2 and DS3, I think some of the controls has aged badly. Some areas in the second half are also terribly designed, most notably Crystal Caves and Lost Izalith. They are pretty much platforming areas in a game not designed for platforming, and this is the only moment in the entire series where I feel the game is being unfair to the players. DS1 is still very much an excellent game to play though.


Dark Souls III

43.8 hours, 30 of 43 achievements
[Recommended]
Notable Feats:
First run, haven't played any of the DLCs

More

This is gonna be controversial, but I think DS3 is overrated.

All the praises surrounding this entry initially made me excited with DS3. When I finally get to play it though, this game just feels… strange, at least on its PvE aspect All enemies got upgraded with Bloodborne speed, while you still have a slower speed. You get staggered by enemies easily, and for this reason you have to attack the enemies first or they'll combo you. This limits the viability of many builds in the game, particularly heavier weapon-based builds. Not to mention the rolling is bizarre, both in its animation and in its cheap stamina consumption. With these two problems, the game turns into a roll-fest and stagger-fest.

Compared to games from other franchises, DS3 is probably still a more enjoyable game for sure. And I can see how newcomers would like DS3. But to me it's probably the most fundamentally flawed Souls entry in my book.

I haven't played the DLC yet and I won't plan to for a long time, probably until I get Ringed City for cheap.


Shadow Warrior

18.1 hours, 53 of 92 achievements
[Decent]

More

I actually didn't enjoy this as much as I had hoped. You see, I get motion sickness easily. Some games even make me dizzy. On FPS I am extremely weak against games with the notorious head bob + motion blur combo and in this game you can't turn off the former. Add in a fast-paced action and a weapon bob and I got the perfect recipe for motion sickness. The game itself was alright, but I had no choice but to play this on numerous sittings and lay on the bed for a while after each one because of the nausea I experienced.


Contrast

Sleeper Hit

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin

Most Enjoyable Finish

P.S. For those who are more knowledgeable about web development than me, is there a way to utilize webdesign viewport/CSS media query to make a mobile responsive design using inline CSS? I know how to do it with a separate CSS sheet, but I'm really curious if there's a way to get around that without resorting to it.

over 5 years ago* 5 comments
Trilled Meow

That sounds interesting, and I do what I can to customize my posts and would like to know how to do more. What was your knowledge level from before you started studying the posts here compared to now? And did you use other resources? I have previously learned HTML and CSS, but I never knew what to do with it to practice – using BLAEO is a great idea, and being able to brush up on some of that has been an extra reason to post my progress.

over 5 years ago
ZephyrusRaine

Before I started, I know both HTML and CSS in a beginner-intermediate level. I was out of practice though and BLAEO is the perfect way to keep my touch. I started doing inspect elements to steal look how others’ write their posts. I still wrote my first few posts badly but this is how Bootstrap came into my attention.

W3Schools is probably the best resource for everything web development; like many others, it has tutorials on HTML, CSS, and jScript but it sets itself apart by adding useful things like Font Awesome compendium and Bootstrap tutorials. I also use an Android app called Enki, which is like Duolingo but for programming languages.

I do recommend practicing in BLAEO though. It’s been fun looking at others’ codes while also practicing on my own code.

over 5 years ago
Vito

I’m always happy when I see someone share my enthusiasm for ‘Contrast’. Such a lovely little game :) And I see you played a lot of other good games as well!

Also good job on learning some Bootstrap. I always avoided doing that, but I’m sure I gotta do it for work sooner or later.

over 5 years ago
ZephyrusRaine

Agreed on Contrast. That game has never been on my radar due to low promotion. For some reason that game has always been conspicuously missing from recent game recommendation lists and I still have no idea how the game came to my attention. Now that it did, I gave Contrast all my enthusiasm it deserved lol.

I’m sure you could learn Bootstrap though. Most of the time you just have to call pre-made CSS classes, and let Boostrap do all the work for you. Obviously you can’t remember every single pre-made classes and functions, but resources like W3Schools is always handy. Bootstrap saved me a lot of time and effort to build some things which otherwise require a lot of optimization. At one point I actually considered creating a separate CSS sheet for my posts lmao.

EDIT: Oh, and one more thing. Normally you would have to put the Bootstrap.css file manually on the meta tag, but BLAEO has done that for you. You just call the classes as you would normally without worrying about the meta tag.

over 5 years ago*
Vito

I’m totally with you. I got ‘Contrast’ in a bundle and had no intention of playing it initially. Years later I saw its short HLTB-time, decided to give it a try and was pleasently surprised by it.

W3Schools is great, I looked up a lot of stuff on it already. I’m just not really that much into web-“programming” and it probably would require me to brush up my HTML and CSS first. So it’s mostly me being a bit lazy ;) Thanks by the way for mentioning Enki in your answer above, looks interesting and I’ll check it out :)

over 5 years ago