u/YNKWTSF

I want to keep my ackie monitor bioactive and am debating between two species: Porcellionides pruinosus 'powder blue' and Porcellio laevis 'dairy cow'. To my understanding P pruinosus does slightly better with arid species, but P laevis seems to be a hardier species.

Which species do you use with your arid enclosure and which do you think would do better from these two?

In recent weeks I've been looking at ackie monitors being sold in my country, both babies from breeders and (sub)adults being sold by keepers. One thing I have noticed is how many of them are missing parts of their tail and even some missing a few toes. I've never seen it to this extent with any other species (not counting tail dropping species obviously).

Now I'm not one to instantly judge. My beardie had a nail that broke off from digging, and she also had a part of her tail amputated after it suddenly broke from one day till the other. Accidents and/or health issues happen. But as said I've never seen it to this extent. Especially since some of them are babies aswell. Does anyone have any idea what could've caused this?

I want to keep my ackie monitor bioactive, but also in a substrate that will hold his burrows. In the passed I've always used a 70/30% "top"soil mix (where I live they don't sell topsoil, so I just 100% biologic soil without animal based fertilizers instead) for my reptiles. I've now read that addding clay to the mix should help with holding burrows. I've found a 20KG bag of bentonite clay (non-food graded) and wonder if that would work.

Important is that the substrate will hold high humidity without staying wet and allows for burrows to stay. What substrates and mix percentages do you recommend?

I want to get an ackie monitor in a few months, ideally in Houten (biggest reptile expo in the Netherlands). I care a lot about the breeder taking good care of their animals, so would like to talk to them before getting the animal. So far I haven't been able to find a (good) ackie breeder yet. Anyone here who knows a good breeder?

I have a 5x2x3ft enclosure available with multiple platorms in it. I wonder if there's any monitor lizards that would thrive in it.

De afgelopen 2 maanden merk ik dat mijn vriend minder aandacht aan mij besteedt. In het begin dacht ik er niet zoveel bij, maar de laatste weken valt het mij erg op. Ik dacht hem laatst te verrassen door mijn haar blond te verven. Dit had ik vroeger ook wel eens gedaan en kreeg daar veel complimenten op van onder andere mannen. Mijn vriend daarentegen vindt het helemaal niks. Althans, hij zei wel dat het mooi was, maar klonk totaal niet enthousiast en aan zijn gezicht kon ik duidelijk aflezen dat hij het niks vond.

Hij is de laatste weken ook vaker van huis. Oke, hij heeft het wat drukker met uitjes met vrienden, maar voorheen hield hij altijd tijd voor mij over of appte hij mij regelmatig terwijl hij weg was. Nu krijg ik vrijwel geen appjes meer van hem.

Afgelopen weekend viel er mij iets op. Er waren ineens veel meer kilometers gereden in onze auto dan een paar weken geleden. Dit terwijl zijn vrienden allemaal dichtbij wonen. Dit versterkte mijn vermoedens, en ik besloot hem gisteren te volgen met een vriendin van mij.

Ik verwachtte een lange autorit. Echter begon hij al na 10 minuten rijden te stoppen bij een tankstation. Terwijl hij afrekende zag ik hem bijzonder lang glimlachen naar de medewerker. Ook toen hij naar buiten liep keek hij nog een keer naar binnen om naar haar te kijken. Dit gaf mij best wat buikpijn. Wat er daarna gebeurde gaf mij nog veel meer buikpijn. Wat bleek? Hij reed een uur lang rondjes door de stad, om vervolgens bij hetzelfde tankstation te tanken en bij dezelfde meid af te rekenen. En dit gewoon 3x in totaal! Bij de derde keer zag je haar haar lach inhouden, wat mij in ieder geval het idee geeft dat zij het maar niks vindt.

Wat kan ik het beste doen? Mijn vriend hierop aanspreken of de relatie gelijk beeindigen?

[SPOILER WARNING] I'm gonna spoil multiple bosses of this game, including the final boss.

For years now have I been wanting to like the Souls games, as people seem to love them and I like difficult games. I haven't been able to get into them yet though, as the dark fantasy style never got me and the gameplay looked very clunky. I tried Bloodborne before once and didn't like it at all.

Now, years later, I gave it my second shot. The first 5-ish hours I did NOT enjoy it at all. I hated how unclear the game was. Did not find the combat to be satisfying. And I didn't like how tedious the game was with its runbacks and you having to farm consumeables over and over again. I didn't even enjoy beating the Cleric Beast and Father Casgoine (which I now both really like) for the first time. Luckily soon after beating Casgoine did Bloodborne start to click!

The gameplay loop: The gameplay loop of this game is very fun. You're constantly engaged because the enemies are tough and you need to think and memerize where you're going. There's always something at stake because you respawn at the previous lantern when you die and lose all your blood echoes. Because of this there's basically no time to get bored during this game, minus farming, which I'll get to later.

Most games you play nowadays are quite easy combat-wise and are spilled out for you in terms of where you need to go and what you need to do. It therefore felt very refreshing to play a game where you actually can explore in and are challenged by its combat. And exploring is also meaningful as every item and stat upgrade can and will make the difference. The only downside is that I often googled what an item, stat, etc. does, and sometimes googled what certain bosses are weak to and where I actually needed to go. This was the trade-off for me that definetely was worth it however.

The combat: As mentioned, I didn't like the combat for the first 5 hours. Now however I really like it! I really had to get used to how slow and strategized this games combat is compared to other (difficult) games I've played. I love games like Cuphead, Returnal and God of War, which I tend to play quite aggresivelly, and based on reaction time and precise movement. In Bloodborne I quickly learned that I need to think every movement through, as you can't cancel your animations or make any last second adjustments. I still have a preference for the games named above, but also had a lot of fun with the combat in this game. And man, parrying in this game followed by a visceral attack might just be one of the sickest moves in any videogame!

The bossfights: The bossfights in this game are fucking sick! Many have really cool designs, good music and are really fun to fight. Surprisingly most weren't as hard as I expected them to be, but that doesn't mean they were easy. Besides, Kos and Laurence from the Old Hunters DLC took me multiple hours plus a guide (I know) to beat.

Yarnham: I stated before that the style of these games never drew me in. Not because it's bad, but because it isn't for me. Well... that's changed. By playing Bloodborne I've really warmed up to the Gothic aesthetic. I already liked most dark settings, and can now add this setting to my list aswell.

My critiques: Like with any game I also have some critiques. Probably my biggest critique of this game are the runbacks and farming. I love difficult games, but I hate grindy ones. Having to run back to each boss for around a minute feels like tediousness for the sake of tediousness. This especially applies for having to farm blood vials for 20 minutes after multiple boss attempts. Sure it adds some extra stakes to the bossfights, but it mainly adds irritation and often got me just annoyed. I don't mind runbacks in a rogue game, but having to redo the exact same, easy runs over and over gets irritating very quickly.

Another critique, and this one may be very personal, is that there didn't seem to be any logical 'rules' in this game. What I mean with that is that for example some enemies are parryable, yet some are not. And against certain attacks you need to parry them immediatly, whereas with other attacks you needed to parry them last second. Maybe there is logic behind it, but it never made any sense to me. Meanwhile in a game like God of War, I know that in order to parry, I need to wind up my shield at the absolute last second (reaction time-based). With many enemies, specifically bosses in this game, I just had to try and find out what the timing is and remember it per indiviual attack. And I wasn't a big fan of that.

My final critique is about the main bosses. The majority of main bosses were pretty meh for this games standards. It starts off strong with Father Casgoine and Vicar Amelia, but they became worse after. The Shadow of Yarnham is still alright, but Rom, the Reborn One and Micolash are boring ass bosses from a gameplay perspective. Mergo's wet nurse is good again, but then Gehrman is pretty underwhelming for a final bossight in my opinion. Luckily however, the optional bosses in this game make more then up for it! Ebrietas (my favourite!), Darkbeast, Cleric Beast, Amygdala and Blood-starved Beast were among then best bosses in this game for me.

Having finished both the game and its DLC, years after feeling like Souls games unfortunately aren't for me, I can finally say I get it! It might still not be the perfect game for me, but mannn is this a good game! Super happy I played it.

Recently I've been playing games that aren't necesarilly my thing. Nier being an anime-styled RPG with an oversexualised main character unticks all my boxes, so I never looked into it any further. Hearing that the game has an incredible story, really good, varied gameplay and supposedly one of the best gaming soundtracks ever made got me excited to try it.

Let's start at the best part of the game for me: the Soundtrack. Having finished the game from A to E, I can confidently say that this games soundtrack is indeed among the best I've experienced in any game. There are so many great songs in this game that my Spotify Gaming playlist just got a lot longer. Absolutely amazing!

When it comes to Nier's gameplay, I feel a bit conflicted. Before I started playing it I saw a lot of people praising the game for essentially being multiple games in one. You got 3D hack and slash, 2D hack and slash, top-down SHMUP and hacking mini-games. I really love varied games such as Mario Odyssey and It Takes Two, so was pretty excited. Unfortuntaely the hack and slash in this game felt... quite boring to me. The only hack and slash games I've played prior are the greek God of War games, and I love the combat in those. In this game the hack and slash had less depth, felt less satisfying and was way too easy. The latter was caused by the infinite amount of heals you can easily aquire, which took away all stakes when fighting an enemy and changed the fight into a "how long does it take before his health bar is down" type fight. Especially the bossfights suffered from this, by them being a giant bullet sponge.

Luckily the SHMUP and hacking sections were fun! They also didn't have much depth, and at times got a bit boring, but they weren't present as much as the hack and slash and therefore felt like nice mini-games to change the pace a bit.

Regarding Nier's general gameplay, I have to say that this game just isn't designed all that well. It will differ per person how much this bothers them, but the invisible walls, poor balancing, horrible map and bad camera work in one section just ruined the experience a bit. At times navigating certain sections felt like finding the way out of a house of mirrors, where multiple openings felt accesible, but were not. Overall I still had fun with Nier's gameplay, but it didn't live up to the hype for me.

Last: the Story. Perhaps the aspect of this game that gets the most amount of praise. Personally, I liked it. The setting is interesting. Nier has some fun characters and character moments, and tackled some interesting topics. Unfortunately it never really did more for me though. During Route A I essentially figured out what the game is about; >!Machines and Androids mimicking human behaviour, and showing how absurd some of that behaviour can be and questioning why we do what we do!<. I really like this stuff, and think about it often myself. However it also kinda feels like therefore this game didn't tackle any subject that I hadn't thought about before. And unfortunately the game didn't really come with any unique views or story moments to get me to think further.

I also didn't really conect with any of the emotional moments of this game, besides >!the children machines killing themselves when you and Pascal were gone for a minute!<. I thought 2B and 9S were fine, but never connected to them personally and therefore didn't feel emotional during emotional moments. In that sense a game like The Last of Us, when (MAJOR The Last of Us SPOILER!) >!Joel eventually saves Ellie, knowing he ruins a potential cure for the world!<, shows what it's like to be human more to me than Nier Automata did. It made me understand >!Joel's decision, despite feeling like it was the wrong one!<. In Nier Automata, I unfortunately didn't experience any powerful moments like that, despite the game constantly talking about what it's like to be a human.

Overall I had a fun time with this game and am happy I played it. I might try Replicant sometime aswell. I get why some people love it, but don't think it's as good as most people say it is, unfortunately.