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Flirted with the Steam version as it apparently runs fine on Deck, but I didn't want to take any chances so ultimately decided on the PS5 version.

Resident Evil Requiem I tried to take my time with it but I finally got to the end last night. One thing that always bugs me on my first run of a new RE game is that I'm always stressing out about how short it might be and worrying I'm going through it too fast. Especially this time since there were pre-release reports that it was 16+ hours long but as reviews started coming out that started going down to 12, 10 and even 8 hours. That must have been the in-game timer because my completion screen said about 10h30 but on Steam I have 17h, which accounts for the times I died and lost progress. I probably would've finished it faster if I hadn't played on standard classic but daddy needs his ink ribbons. For Grace's sections: no notes, 10/10, classic RE Mansion experience. Exactly what I want out of Resident Evil. The Rhodes Hill Care Center in particular was amazing. There's just something about the way the RE engine is lit that makes these environments such a joy to explore. The main Baker house in RE7 was the same way. You'll round a corner and at the end of a dark hallway there's a light revealing a door with a weird handle or something that you can't open yet but it's setup in a way that makes it so intriguing that you're already looking forward to finding out what's on the other side. If they're actually working on another RE1 Remake, I kinda hope it'll be first-person because it's so perfect for that style of gameplay. The one thing I'm not really a fan of is playing hide-and-seek with a monster you have no means of defending yourself against but thankfully that was only the case for a short section at the beginning. Also, what the hell was that orphanage section? Those kids genuinely creeped the hell out of me lol. Replaying it on subsequent runs is gonna be tedious, though. For Leon's sections: I was getting a little frustrated early on because of how for every hour I played as Grace I'd only get like 15mins as Leon but these sections were paced so well that I can't really hold it against the game. It helps that you get plenty of playtime as Leon later on. Also, if it hadn't been for all the glowing reviews, I would've been really worried early on because Leon's combat gave me strong RE6 vibes. But I think Max Dood said it best: Leon's sections in Requiem kinda feel like an apology tour for RE6. This is what they were trying to do at the time, it just really didn't work. They really nailed it this time, though. All tension goes right out the window the second you switch to Leon, but when I was exploring the ruins of Raccoon City I just didn't care because that TLoU-like gameplay loop was just so much fun. I kinda wish that section had been longer than just the one zone, though. I could easily see a full game set in the ruins of Raccoon City with a proper vendor and everything. Everything that came after was great, don't get me wrong, but once you go through that gate you're on rails until the end of the game. Even the short visit to RPD is pretty linear unless you go out of your way to find the few hidden items. I also loved how they went out of their way to cram as many callbacks as possible in there. When a certain someone showed up, I got so excited even if it was just for a short section. And I think this kinda ties into my main issue with the game. There's a lot of really great ideas but I feel like a lot of them could've been executed better. Not that they were executed poorly, I just feel like there was potential for something even better and meatier in the second half of the game. So yeah, overall I feel like the game was fantastic but I can't shake the feeling that some of it could have been executed better. Also, I need more content. It's kind of a bummer that there isn't a proper NG+ or even a Mercenaries mode in the game. I'm sure the inevitable single-player DLC is still a ways off, so hopefully Mercenaries is coming sooner but the fact that they still haven't said anything about it is a little worrying. For now, I'll have to settle for unlocking stuff in the bonus store and trying out Insanity mode. Also, if the rumors are true, I'm excited to go back to yearly Resident Evil releases for a little bit. Getting RE2R, RE3R and Village within a 2 year span was great and it made the longer waits for RE4R and Requiem more painful.

Resident Evil Requiem Since I watched Vendetta, I've been hoping for something like that in game form, while 6 got the action right, it fell flat in many other ways, Leon's sections in Requiem however, finally delivered what I was looking for, his weapons, melee attacks, finishers, everything was awesome, even the didn't feel out of place, on the contrary, I loved that part lol. Leon's campaign is cool, badass, cheesy, with just enough tension and creepiness to keep things interesting. The only thing missing was a proper merchant. Grace's sections felt a lot like 7, the opening was pretty scary, though as soon as you get the ability to craft stuff it got a bit more actiony than I was expecting, antique coins are given to you like they're candy and it didn't take long for me to buy all the stuff you can get from those things, however, once blister heads were introduced I quickly regretted my choice to shoot my way through a bunch of encounters lol. The story was cool, The whole Wonder where it'll go now that Based on the ending (and a fair amount of copium on my part lol) if RE10 ends up being with the gameplay of Requiem, it'll be GOTY, GOAT, Best Resident Evil ever, etc. I don't think I do have some complaints lol, had to change to third person with Grace, even with wobble at minimum, there was something that felt off about the camera, didn't help that in first person, it doesn't feel like there's any difference between walking and sprinting. Speaking of, there's no real sprint here lol, Leon feels faster but that might be more because I'm running towards the zombies rather than away from them, Grace on the other hand, "oh, a giant monster is chasing me, time to power walk!" I get why, but still, running for your life should feel more like running for your life not, gently jogging for your life. The worst part of this game for me, was the section, and it'll be a pain in future playthroughs, I'd rather have House Beneviento over this kind of stuff lol, Beneviento at least goes by pretty fast on subsequent playthroughs since, once you know where to go and what to get, you can complete the first part pretty fast, this one however, is always "go here, wait, go there, wait, now go over there and wait some more", it's a pretty short section, but all the waiting makes it feel like a slog. Overall though, I liked it a lot, easily one of my favourite RE games. Grade: A+

Gonna play Requiem later this month so I figure I should play this first.

It's actually happening! MGS4 is getting out of PS3 Jail! I wonder if they'll announce more bonus games, though. Because just 2 main games + Ghost Babel is kind of underwhelming after Vol. 1's lineup. I mean, MGS4 being included at all is huge, so I'm not complaining but they could've thrown in MGSV as well to complete the Solid series. The AC!D games would've also been really cool as bonus titles. Kinda makes me wonder if there's going to be a Vol. 3 down the line.

Bosses with kill counters in online games. Nioh 3 has a thing where the spirits of dead players coalesce into a tough as nails boss that spawns randomly in the open world and drops really good loot if you manage to kill it. That's already neat but something I got a kick out of was that it displays how many players it kills until someone eventually takes it down. I managed to take one down earlier with a player kill count of over 61,000. Is it completely cosmetic? Yeah. Did it feel cool as hell to be the one who ended his reign of terror? Hell yeah.

Resident Evil Requiem I really liked this game. After the first half I was at a 10/10, but that got dragged down a little (not a lot) in the back half because it was more Leon-heavy, and I liked the Grace/Leon balance of the first half more. The last section is great though, everything I want from a Resident Evil game. Grade: A

Ditto.

Probably won't finish my current run of 4 and 4R before it comes out lol.

Nioh 3 complete!

Thank fuck it's not too close to Requiem. Should leave me plenty of time to play through it at least a couple times before it's time to put my Fedex uniform back on.

Dual-screen Android emulation handheld. https://www.ayntec.com/products/ayn-thor

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds I'd tried and failed several times to get into A Link to the Past, so I thought I'd give this a shot instead, and it really hooked me. It's a great Zelda game, reminiscent of the old 2D ones while feeling much better to play. I was a little worried about the item rental system, but even that ended up not really bothering me, though I do think overall I prefer the classic dungeon item unlock system. This is definitely a fun game and worth playing though, and I highly recommend it. Grade: A Side note: Playing it on the Thor felt great, like that's where it was meant to be played. It looked great too, running at a solid 1080p 60fps.

Nioh 3 Boy, I really binged this one. 43 hours over six days to beat the main story, which for me is a lot. So yeah, I liked this one. Nioh 2 is one of my favorite action games ever and this one went in a pretty different direction, though a lot of the familiar series staples are there. Yokai transformations from 2 are gone since your character isn't a half-breed, which means the soul cores are used for summons and magic spells rather than transformations. The living weapon mode from Nioh 1 is back to make up for it. The two biggest changes, however, have got to be the ninja style and the open world. Older Nioh games had ninja abilities, but they were a specific subclass you had to devote points into leveling and the ninja items were consumable. It could be pretty powerful if you devoted yourself to it but I never really did much with it outside of a few ninja tools that were useful for my playstyle. This time around, you shift between ninja style and samurai style at the push of a button. Each style gets its own weapons and equipment and, importantly, ninja items recharge while you're in samurai style rather than being used up until you get to a shrine. Ninja style doesn't have the stance system samurai weapons get and you take more damage while in ninja style, but it has a better dodge and you do double damage with any back attacks you land. Swapping styles is also how you parry heavy attacks so you'll be switching between them frequently no matter what. Technically you can also parry with your guardian spirit attacks, but those need to be charged up by doing damage so you can't guarantee you'll always have one available when a heavy attack is coming your way. Putting together both a ninja and a samurai build is mandatory. Losing a few weapons to ninja style stings a bit since you only get one stance as a ninja, but you can now equip four melee weapons at once so that helps make up for it a bit. I might slightly prefer the yokai shift abilities from 2 but I also gotta admit that they were pretty overpowered once you mastered them. The samurai/ninja swapping feels a bit more balanced. Either way I appreciate that it's not just doing the same thing again and both games have their own distinct feel. This game also feels easier to me than 2 but I don't know how much of that is the open world design allowing you to overlevel and how much of it is me having played Nioh 2 for hundreds of hours. The open world was a change I wasn't sure I'd like but it actually worked out fairly well. It's nothing mind blowing, this isn't Elden Ring, but the world is just large enough to feel dense and full of things to find while not being so huge that it feels bloated or padded. The amount of collectibles and side activities here is generous without being overwhelming and the map size reflects that. It feels more like a Metroidvania than a Ghost of Tsushima to me and I'm perfectly fine with that. It's as big as it needed to be and no more. Plus, hey, we get a jump button now! It's fine for platforming but also opens up a whole new set of strategies for combat so that's nice. I gotta ding one aspect though and that's the PC performance. Don't get me wrong, the game works. I could run it at 60 FPS, but I could run Nioh 2 at 120 FPS and this game really doesn't look that different from 2. Yeah, I know it has an open world, but it's not like it's a visually stunning open world. It just felt like this game is a lot more demanding on my CPU than it needed to be. I have a midrange CPU (Ryzen 5 5600X) but I still don't think this should be the game that makes it struggle. I've seen worse ports, it only crashed once, but I've certainly seen better. I'm on the fence about whether I like 2 or 3 more but this one at least feels on par with 2 in its own way. I can easily see myself playing it for hundreds of hours just like its predecessor.

IT'S HAPPENING!!!!!!

Photo mode coming soon. Minigame coming May, hopefully Mercenaries lol, also story DLC is in the works, but that one's going to take a while.

Playing RE4 remake, OG did this too, separate inventory for key items and treasures, would be neat if Requiem had the same system.

I was thinking that about the wristbands. Like, it's on my wrist, that shouldn't take an inventory slot.

I too have beaten Resident Evil Requiem and I feel pretty much the same about it. Really good game, although sometimes during the Grace bits it feels like you almost have no choice but to take a hit because of ammo scarcity and a lack of evasive options. Even the original RE gave you a shotgun for when you really needed it. It's manageable enough on the default mode but I'm replaying it now in Classic mode where you need to carry ink ribbons to save and it's downright painful. It's always bugged me in this series that a measly key takes up a whole slot in your already limited inventory. "Oh no I can't pick up this box of bullets because there's a key in my pocket." Come on now. But that's really more of a gripe with the series as a whole than this game in particular. I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

Resident Evil 4 Remake: Separate Ways Okay, this was badass, I liked it quite a bit more than the main game. Playing as Ada was fun, I felt like stealth was more viable, the story moved faster, it was just better in basically every way. Plus there's ! Grade: A

Resident Evil 4 Remake I bounced off this game on Gamecube back when it first came out, but this time the remake clicked with me way better. I'm partial to the Raccoon City incident, so the fact that this is largely unrelated to that is a bit of a ding, but it's fun game and I enjoyed my time with it. Grade: B+

Resident Evil Village + Winters Expansion With Requiem coming out at the end of the month, I figured now was the perfect time to finally play the Village DLC and get the last few achievements I was still missing. I also used the opportunity to replay the base game so I could mess around with that 3rd-person mode they patched in a while back. I was gonna do a fresh run but once I loaded my clear save and saw all the fully upgraded guns with infinite ammo I had at my disposal, I decided I wanted to play with those instead. So it ended up being more of a victory lap kinda run. I did bump the difficulty up to hardcore to keep things interesting. I almost did Village of Shadows but then I remembered that the Heisenberg fight almost gave me an aneurysm the last time I played... Anyway, you can really tell that the game was made with first-person in mind. The devs expected you to be looking at the environment with the camera way up close. In third-person, some areas feel kinda clautrophobic in an awkward way and the added distance makes it kinda hard to make out all the small details in the environment. I'm glad they added the option for people that care about this kinda stuff but to me this felt like an inferior way to play the game. I'm hoping Requiem won't have this issue because it's being made with both POVs in mind from the very start. Overall, I still feel the same way about the game. It's really good but it feels super disjointed. Castle DImitrescu is still by far my favorite area of the entire game with its classic RE Mansion experience. The factory area with its more actiony RE4 style is a close second but I can't help but feel like they dont belong in the same game. I would have been fine with a full game's length of Castle Dimitrescu gameplay or a full game's length of Factory gameplay but having both together (along with two other areas each with its own different style of horror/gameplay) kinda feels like they were trying to please everyone and that just never works out. The best parts leave you wanting more and the worst parts feel like they're wasting your time. Although, to be fair, House Beneviento is the only area that feels completely out of place in the game and is so fucking tedious on subsequent playthroughs. Oh and the whole fake out about Chris being evil is still such a baffling plot contrivance. It's like they couldn't come up with a plausible justification for the fake out so when everything is revealed Chris just goes "yeah, that was a bad idea lol". I still can't get over how bad this actually is lmao. There isn't much to say about Mercenaries mode. It's fun if you enjoy the combat and the Winters Expansion added some new characters that made getting S rank on all the stages easier, so I'm glad I waited this long to do it. As for Shadows of Rose, it's... fine. It mostly re-uses environments from the main game in basically the exact same way (e.g. Castle Dimitrescu is still the classic RE "Mansion" area). There's a few neat twists in there but overall it's kind of underwhelming as the "conclusion to the Winters Saga". And the way they connect it to the final cutscene of the main game is kind of confusing, too. It really makes me wonder if the original plan was for Rose to be the protag of a future game and then when that idea was scrapped they had to throw something together to wrap things up for her. Also, I kinda wish I had done my first run on hardcore because I had to run through it a second time and that was kinda tedious. But anyway, I'm finally done: Now bring on Requiem!

Probably started way too late, but I'm doing a bit of a Resident Evil marathon before Requiem lol, going through the Raccoon City trilogy, finished REHD, RE2R and starting RE3R soon, think I can get through that one fast since it's so short, OG RE4 shouldn't take that long either since my last save had everything unlocked lol, the remake of 4 is the one that might take a while.

The first Nioh is definitely the hardest. I actually think it gets progressively easier as the series goes along. The best tip I can give you is not to try to play it like Dark Souls. Dodging is possible but blocking is your friend.

One of the more tedious parts of Soulslike games is using consumable resources to top off however much exp you need to level up, especially in the early days when you had to use these items one at a time. Nioh 3 finally streamlined that process. When you're at the level up screen you can hit a single button and it will ask if you want to use however many items you need to reach your next level up. You hit yes and you're DONE. Can every soulslike do this from now on, please?

lol