Etchings

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Warning: incomplete/rambling thoughts.

Valheim is, in my opinion, a good game mired by its developers. The graphics are very stylized and take getting used to but grow on most people quite quickly. Combat is overall slow and a bit boring. Gear progression is unsurprising but fun enough. The biomes really shine, though some absolutely suck. The music and overall ambience are fantastic. Sailing with friends is fun, but doing anything else with them sucks because the netcode makes everything lag when players are near one another, meaning multiplayer is best when you're not playing together. The boss fights at first look cool, but are just annoying. Food is an interesting system but the game relies far too much on it. Fishing sucks. I'm convinced there's some semi-sentient AI baked into the game that makes the wind always against where you want to go. The Meadows and Black Forest are super fun, the Swamp is awful, the Mountains and Plains are fun, the Mistlands is the thing I hate most about this game, and the Ashlands are poorly tuned; I haven't gotten to the Deep North yet. I played in EA and again in 1.0, both solo and with friends. This game has good roots, but poor developer decisions. Worth $20, $30 if you like the genre.

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Microsoft broke several ways of upgrading from 10 to 11 just in time to EOL Windows 10, and sometimes you don't have or want to use TPM or a Microsoft account.
I don't know how to keep your files while installing Windows 11, but if you still want to install 11, here's what I did:

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Finally! Hollow Knight: Silksong is out. These are my thoughts after 4 hours.

Overall: I'm a few hours in, so far so good. I love being back in the Hollow Knight universe! The game looks, sounds, and plays great.

Movement: Hornet is quite a bit more agile than the Knight, and being able to kick-up/pull-up on ledges with a flip demonstrates that well. Sprinting being an ability rather than a charm is definitely different, and I like it. Floating is fun, but looks a little silly. She definitely flips around more.

Combat: Quite a few enemies do 2 "points" of health with a hit, while Hornet's healing requires a full silk (soul) meter and heals 3 quickly, rather than the Knight requiring less but taking longer and only healing 1 point per heal. Combat seems faster. Hornet's down-air being diagonal is trippy; I expected being able to pogo like in the first game. Makes traversing some sections harder than if we could just pogo, but I don't mind.

Environment: The vibe is definitely less lonely than the first game, with more NPCs that you can see and talk to. The opening "get to the village" part is very reminiscent of the first game.

New game vs DLC: It is definitely closely tied to the first game in terms of many design elements. So far, I don't mind.

Story: I'm interested. Has a little more, mmmm, drive? than the first game, because Hornet actually talks and the Knight didn't. She actually wants something, but the Knight, on purpose, didn't want anything.

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