Leaderboard

I also just finished Silent Hill f and instead of returning to Ghost of Yotei like I planned I will be diving right back in for the other endings.

Silent Hill f I bought this to play as a spooky October game and ended up dropping it for most of October... Not because of any fault of the game, I just wasn't really in a gaming mood. Spent most of October watching movies, even started buying them physically again, which I had been meaning to do for a while. But I digress. Silent Hill f is pretty good! It's hard not to compare it to the SH2 remake. Overall, I'd say it wasn't quite as good but not too far behind either. It's also nowhere near as scary but, to be fair, in SH2 I was dreading running into Pyramid Head around every corner and there's simply nothing like that in this game. The atmosphere is incredible, though, and the art direction is fantastic. So yeah, that's ending 1 done. I realize the game is meant to be replayed to get the full picture but by itself the ending felt a bit tacked on. Some stuff I had already put together by that point but the very last section reveals something that I couldn't have possibly guessed or predicted based on everything that happened in the game. I'm assuming I'll start to see the bigger picture as I go through the other endings. I've seen people commenting that as early as the beginning of the first NG+ cycle the game is already dropping little things that start recontextualizing things a lot. So I've got that to look forward to. I've seen a lot of people complaining about the combat and I didn't really have any issues with it for most of the game. You can set the difficulty for combat and puzzles independently and I did my playthrough with both on hard. Combat felt really punishing early on but once I had a good grasp on it the balance felt just right. I had a full inventory for most of the game but when things started ramping up I would burn through my resources pretty quickly. The game kinda goes insane with it in the last few chapters, though, and it started being a bit much. It felt like way too much combat all at once and I was ready for the game to end at that point. So yeah, I'll have to do NG+ soon because I need to know more. Which means

Fuck it we ball. Getting the 1 TB edition.

Got two RPGs under my belt recently! Metaphor: ReFantazio This one is like a combination of Persona and SMT with difficulty somewhere in between the two in my opinion. Like Persona, I cared about the characters and the story and got really invested in this fantasy world, though it takes some crazy turns near the climax. Like SMT it uses the press turn system rather than Persona's One More system, emphasizing the importance of not only exploiting weaknesses but manipulating agility since missing attacks takes away two turns and having attacks blocked or reflected takes away all of them. It sounds bad, but this works for both you and your enemies so you can exploit it if you know what you're doing. There's also a job system which I really like, though the requirements for some of the advanced jobs are pretty difficult to meet and require grinding. Really solid game overall, though there is a massive difficulty spike right near the end and the final boss is FOUR phases that take a VERY long time to get through. If they ever re-release this one like they do with the Persona games I imagine some of these issues are likely to be addressed. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 I have mixed albeit mostly positive feelings about this game. I like the combat system and the characters and world, though at the same time it feels like there are some really obvious QoL features missing here that would have made it much better. There's no restart battle option so if you screw up really bad at the beginning of a fight then too bad, you just have to limp along until the enemy finishes you off before you can start over. You also can't swap out party members in battle so if you happen to have the wrong element in your lineup for a particular enemy then too bad, you can't fix it. You also have to memorize enemy weaknesses and I've been spoiled by Persona (and Metaphor right before this game) keeping track of that for you once you discover them once. There's a lot of trial and error with battles too. Enemies hit so hard that you're likely to just eat shit on every first time enemy and boss encounter while you learn how their attacks work so you can parry them. I guessed about 2/3 of the plot before it was fully revealed but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Just means they foreshadowed it properly. Still, that did also mean that the revelation didn't blow my mind like it probably did for most people. Oh well. Still a pretty solid story. There's more wheeee than whooooo in here. Real ones know what I mean.

Donkey Kong Bananza Holy crap, this game is fantastic! Just rolled credits on the campaign, and while I still have to see what's going on in the post-game, the campaign was meaty enough that I feel like I've played enough to post my thoughts now. This isn't just the best Donkey Kong game yet, I actually enjoyed it more than Mario Odyssey. Punching your way through everything in sight is just insanely fun. Nintendo were really onto something with this one. I really hope they'll keep this formula going and make follow-ups that don't completely reinvent the wheel because I definitely want more of this. The bananza transformations are all fun to use and give you some variety in how you can approach things. Near the end of the game, there were some sections that made you use them all together and I really hope there's more of that in the post-game because that was great and the main campaign could've used more of that. The campaign overall is a ton of fun but the last section in particular had me grinning from ear to ear the entire time. I don't want to spoil anything so I'll leave it at that. The soundtrack is also great. The bananza themes in particular are so freaking catchy that I keep wanting to listen to them outside of the game. The only real issue I can come up with is how easy the game is throughout but the gameplay loop is so much fun that I never got bored by the lack of challenge. Besides, I'm sure that's what the post-game is for like with the last few Mario games. So yeah, whenever you guys get around to buying a Switch 2 make sure to get this one. It's a must-play.

Got myself a new whip... a VW ID5 in "Costa Azul" Blue. It's so pretty.

I have the older model. It's really is fantastic for what it is. With that said, the newer model that you have can have a kettle bell or straight/curl bar attachments! I kind of want to upgrade now lmao On a related note: I recently got a walking pad so I can 10k steps a day while at home. This is far more relevant to my job as sometimes I need to do surveys where I walk/hike 5-10 miles a day.

So over the last year or so I've lost about 23kg in weight. Most of that has come through improvements to my diet, but I've also been moving a little more. Over the last month or two I've been working out. Not much mind you, I don't have much time nor do I have much space, so it's mainly weights and some basic calisthenics; 30-40 minutes a day, 5 days a week. I'm doing this before work, and then going to work (a manual job) so I'm a little tired, but it's worth it. Been using 5kg weights so far and my arms and chest are already feeling a little tighter, more toned. This purchase is the next part of this. They should carry me through the rest of the 'fitness journey'. I can't see myself wanting to lift heavier than 22kg, and if I do, then I imagine it's time to get a gym membership. Sorry kids. So yeah. £229. Money well spent.

Been touching up the living room, making it better with cleaning and new furniture and such. This is the fun part: getting a new tv. My old one was 32 inches because I was using an old pre-HD cabinet and that was all it could fit. Now that I have more room, I bumped it up to a 55 inch. Also went for an OLED because I wanted to get more out of an upgrade than just a bigger viewing space.

I'm an adult and I spend my money in a responsible and mature way. I've also got a decent collection of figma figures at this point but they're all still in their boxes because I currently have no space to display them. With the ones I received yesterday, I now have the entire God Hand from Berserk!

Add games you beat as you beat them. And remember, if you don't post about beating it, it doesn't count as beating it. Dragon Quest I HD-2D Remake Didst thou best thee worst Dragon Quest? Thy deeds are those of a hero, indeed! And let none say otherwise. Right glad I am that thou didst finish thy RPG? Sure. No but seriously, the whole 1 character thing is hard to pull off in this day and age, I don't envy Square Enix's position here. Change too much and the hardcores will riot. Don't change enough and you've created a tough experience for anyone else to get into. Personally, I would have had Princess Gwaelin become a party member after you rescue her, as she talks the whole time after that. As it is, with only one party member but not a very deep combat and levelling system, you end up with a pretty frustrating game where you spend a lot of your turns healing yourself and then attacking, repeat. The final dungeon of the game is also rich with liquid metal slimes, so you end up getting way over levelled by the final boss, even without trying to farm them. Fortunately the game doesn't overstay it's welcome and you're able to power through it pretty quickly. I just wish they would tone down the old timey speak, jfc. Onwards to Dragon Quest II HD-2D!

Starting off the new year with some highly anticipated titles:

An interesting mix of games this year. E33 probably being my game of the year, but there were several very good releases this year including Ninja Gaiden 4 and Ragebound, Silent Hill f, Ghost of Yotei, and Absolum. 1. Ghosts 'n Demons 2. Metaphor: ReFantazio 3. Ultros 4. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth 5. Fantasian Neo Dimension 6. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 7. Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker 8. Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny 9. Post Trauma 10. LUNAR Remastered Collection 11. Death Stranding 2 12. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection 13. RoboCop: Rogue City 14. Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist 15. Astro Bot DLC 16. Nine Sols 17. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater 18. Silent Hill f 19. Ghost of Yōtei 20. Little Nightmares III 21. Ninja Gaiden 4 22. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound 23. Cocoon 24. Once Upon a Katamari 25. Absolum 26. Jusant 27. Alan Wake 2 28. Tormented Souls 2 29. Ninja Gaiden (NES)

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Ok, I see it's appeal now. This game is awesome and deserves all of the accolades. What else can I say about it that hasn't been said? I will say, I played it on my Deck streaming through GeForce Now, which is so good it's kind of nuts. EDIT: And another one! Red Dead Redemption 2 So I played through most of this game in what I thought was a few months ago, turns out looking at my Steam profile I put 156 hours into it between January and March I got deep into the epilogue and, I can't remember why, but I got distracted with something else and never went back, even though I meant to. Knowing I was close and wanting to finish off one more game in 2025, I finished the last few missions tonight. I beat the game on PS4 when it came out and this time played through it on Steam Deck. After some tweaking it ran pretty good on Steam Deck, I got a solid 45fps. There must have been some sort of an update because it ran horribly tonight, textures taking forever to load, you could see right through the game world a few times. Forced my way through to have it polished off. I will say this: Arthur Morgan is the best video game protagonist. I thought that in 2018, I still think that now. I really hope we get another Red Dead in the next few years. That brings, according to my spreadsheet, my completed 2025 games to: Unless you count unlocking mirror mode as beating Mario Kart World, in which case you can add that on too. Other than that I'm not sure what I was doing between 99% of Red Dead 2 (mostly in January) and Super Mario RPG in June

Ninja Gaiden 4 It's 100% a Platinum Games game, just with the Ninja Gaiden name, the gameplay, music, writing, story, everything is 100% Platinum. Which isn't a bad thing, IF you're looking for a new Platinum game, if you were looking for a new Ninja Gaiden game, your mileage may vary. For me personally, I wasn't feeling it at the start, then towards the end I had some fun, even started to like it, except for one thing: The Platinum Platforming Bullshit (PPBS for short lol), if you've watched the trailers you've seen part of it, Yakumo rail grinding or gliding while dodging obstacles, I've never been a fan of this stuff, and this was no exception, chapter 10 was particularly bad because of this. The worst part is that every time I felt like I was actually having fun, PPBS would strike and take me out of it. Overall, if this had been a spin-off I would have enjoyed it a lot more, remove the PPBS and it would have easily been a 9/10. Grade: B-

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black More accurately, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Black. This builds upon NG Sigma 2 improving things, removing some of the boss fights that were added for Sigma, removing an area in the late game that was pretty annoying, plus some other good stuff. Overall, it's a pretty big improvement over Sigma 2, still doesn't beat OG 2 IMO, but if you don't have access to OG 2, this is the next best thing. Grade: A+

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Though it has some serious issues with localization/translation*, it was still a really fun game, with a cool story, ending had me in tears lol. *Some stuff doesn't make sense, other stuff feels out of place, in the Digiline thing for example, there's this message exchange that went a little something like this: What?! Being the complete edition, which includes Hacker's Memory, there's a ton of Digimon that you can get, I was able to get pretty much all I wanted for my main party, only one missing was Beelstarmon, but I don't know if she was around when these games came out lol. Fun thing, on Switch (don't know if this happens on PlayStation), putting the console on sleep mode doesn't stop in-game time, this means that any Digimons you have on your farm will continue to level up. This makes it super easy to end up with Mega Digimon early on, depending on how often you play, it's cool though, because you can leave a Digimon on the farm while you do other stuff, then when you come back to play, you can add that Digimon to your party and they'll have leveled up a bunch, no need to grind for XP. The main dungeon does get a bit repetitive, different floors have different gimmicks, but it all kinda looks the same, however, that didn't bother me that much. Only thing I had an issue with was the last boss, felt more like a test of patience than a challenge, but that was mostly due to my party, apparently depending on which Digimon you have, you can end that fight super fast. Definitively recommend this one if you're a fan of Digimon. Grade: A+

I have returned! Ok, so this didn't turn out quite how I had expected. I now have a better grasp of what was going on, what the different character's motivations were, their relationships to each other, etc. All the endings put together really paint an overall picture that explains all of that very clearly. The thing is the endings don't quite work together in a "this is what happened" kinda way. Without getting into spoilers, the first NG+ cycle immediately drops a bomb that was deliberately omitted from the initial playthrough. So basically every conversation in the entire game is recontextualized. It feels kind of artificial but it makes the first playthrough pretty mysterious and mindfucky so I don't really have a problem with it, I guess. But after that, the other endings mostly serve to flesh out everyone's motivations and feelings with ending 4 providing the last pieces that tie everything together. It's hard to talk about this without dropping a huge spoiler so I'll just say that the game never quite explained the parts that I was the most curious about because, ultimately, that wasn't the point of the game. Or maybe there's some stuff I just didn't pick up on... I'll probably watch some youtube videos to see what others have come up with. I'm sure there's a ton left to unpack since the endings have some contradictory elements and even some hints that But yeah, overall I really enjoyed the game. I'm not enough of a Silent Hill superfan to say whether or not it's a valid entry into the series but I loved both the SH2 Remake and this and I'm looking forward to Townfall, whatever that turn out to be.

Dispatch Goddamn this game, so good. The story and the characters are incredible, your actions (at least feel like) they have real consequences, even the dispatching game itself, which I could have done with a little less of, plays into the larger narrative in a very satisfying way. Everything just comes together so well into an almost perfect whole. If you have any interest in narrative games you've gotta give this one a shot, it's better than anything Telltale ever did. Grade: A+

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time After getting through Hades II I wanted to play a something a little lighter, so I grabbed the retro-console and gave this little slice of 90's gaming a look. Now, I'm not really a fan of the beat-em-up; it just wasn't something I played a lot of growing up, and as such it isn't something I gravitate towards. That said I had a good time with this. It's fairly brief, but that's to be expected from this sort of game. Had a good time with it though and I'm probably going to try and play more games in this genre going forward. Any recs? Hades II Technically I beat Hades II. Took me some 50 hours, but I finally hit credits and unlike Hades 1 I didn't have to enable God-mode. Go me I guess? I am however, not yet done with this one though. I want to get through the prologue before I consider putting it down. Dispatch Man, I fucking adore this game. It's been a breath of fresh air and a game I've been delighted to return to twice a week for the last month. I had some minor issues with the games 'tactical' mini-game (which may well be down to me not fully understanding the mechanics), but everything else from its story to it's characters and it's overall presentation was superb and I can't wait to see what Adhoc has in store going forward.

Chrono Trigger DS My first time ever beating Chrono Trigger. I don't know what to say. It was really good. Maybe the best Square game I've played? Loved FF6 and FF9 but Chrono Trigger...! Works great on the AYN Thor, lovely to play it with two screens. Score: 11/10

I've been waiting for a new Steam Controller ever since my old one broke and the only reason I haven't bought an Index yet was because of all these Deckard leaks over the last couple years. I'm definitely ordering a Steam Frame and Steam Controller once pre-orders are live. The GabeCube is neat and I hope it takes off this time but I personally don't really have a need for it.

Yep, RE3R was alright but very disappointing as a remake. It's really dumb how they upgraded Mr. X into more of a stalker that roams around dynamically but then went on to reduce Nemesis to scripted encounters and boss fights in the very next game. I'm sure that in reality Nemesis was more scripted than he appeared to be in the original but he was still the original stalker that felt like he could show up at any time. That remake was such wasted potential. It could've been something truly special but instead they treated it like a box to check so they could move on to remaking RE4.

Silent Hill f I'm on a horror kick right now, and I would have continued with Resident Evil but I already didn't like how actiony it had gotten with 3R and I know the following games continue that trend even more. I considered skipping straight to 7, but then was told that 8 is a direct sequel to 7 and is also pretty actiony, so I decided to jump to the new hotness instead.

Resident Evil 3 Remake So similar issues in this game with Nemesis as with Mr. X in RE2R, except at least this time it's only the first section and not most of the game. That said, I don't like this one as much. It looses the metroidvania feel of the earlier ones by moving you through new areas so often, I would have preferred to stay in one place and slowly unlock it like the other ones. I also didn't like how much more actiony it was even than Leon's campaign in 2. I still enjoyed it, but it's definitely the low point of the series so far for me. I did enjoy it overall, but not like 2. Grade: C

So I ordered myself an AYN Thor, grip, and pouch. Looking forward to emulating some DS/3DS games, as well as having an easy portable way to play ZZZ with a controller.

Played the demo for this on the deck and really liked it. I was going to wait for the next steam sale but I had a really shitty day (fell through the attic) and was too pissed off to care about paying full price when I already have to pay to repair a giant hole in the ceiling so fuck it, I need to de-stress.

Resident Evil HD I complained about the second half of this game a little in What Are You Currently Playing, but by the end I came around on it. I think I still would have preferred it stay more straight scary horror, but I can appreciate what it actually is even if it's not what I would have wanted from it. The fact that I can still play and enjoy it almost 25 years after it came out, having never played it before (in fact I bounced off the Gamecube version ~2005) so having no nostalgia really speaks well of how good the core of the game really is. I'm not going to grade this one because I would be unfairly dinging it for modern game quality of life stuff that nobody was doing yet when it came out, so instead I'll just say that I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who's interested in checking it out.

I finished Wuchang Fallen Feathers. A game I completely bounced off twice before returning to about a month ago. I loved it. Yeah. I dunno. Sometimes I need to be in the right frame of mind to fully enjoy a game, and eventually I got to that point and I allowed this one into my heart. Is it the best Soulslike ever? No, but it's a very worthy entry into that pantheon and something I'd be tempted to revisit if I ever found myself with a few months of free time (I won't). Far more Souls than Sekiro, which I think will please a few of you here as well. The best part? I finished it just in time to cancel my Gamepass sub. Perfec'

Shinobi: Art of Vengeance This game is great. It's a beautiful side-scrolling action game that's not a metroidvania or a roguelike! Huzzah! I like both those genres but I get a little tired of every side-scrolling game having to be one or the other. I definitely recommend this game. The art is gorgeous, the combat is fun, every boss except the last one is great, it's a reasonable length, it has everything! There's even a demo so you can check it out for yourself. Grade: A (was going to be A+ except the last boss was bullshit)

Hollow Knight Hey I know I'm like, seven years late on this but, yeah this game? It's pretty good. Solid A+, really. Tons and tons of content. Though, it wasn't always clear what was the main game, what was optional, and what was DLC... but everything is pretty rewarding, unless you wait too long to fight the Mantis Lords like I did.... There was some times, especially in my first 20ish hours, where I wanted to throw my Steam Deck out the window thanks to some boss fights. But the more you keep up with it, the more strategies you try, the better you get at the game. Not to mention unlocking upgrades... by the end it only took me two tries to beat the (default) final boss. Yeah, I did the default ending. Apparently there's another and I could do that but it would require a bunch of platforming so... I mean, maybe one day. 93% though, I feel pretty good with that. For now, I've gotten my full. I did buy Silk Song, to support the devs and to see what it's like but I don't think I'll actually play it yet... who knows though. As always, I reserve the right to change any of my non-Uncharted 3 opinions.

It's looking very promising and I need something to play for spooky season, so I decided to take a chance on it. I already skipped Cronos: The New Dawn because of Silksong and I was really looking forward to that too. Maybe I'll loop back to it if I finish Silent Hill f quickly.

Sekiro After several restarts I finally finished this one lol, every time I played, I would stop for a bit, forget everything and then start again, this time I finally pushed through. Easily my least favourite FROMSOFT game, and it's 100% on me, while I can see why it gets the praise it gets, specially the combat, it is also mostly not for me, I saw mostly because I did really enjoy the stealthy bits, going around a level, tracking enemies, taking them down one by one, running away to lose aggro, all that was cool, it's when you actually have to fight, specially during boss fights, that the whole thing comes crashing down. Doesn't help that unlike other games, Soulsborne or otherwise, every guide for Sekiro is just "git gud" there's no other way lol, no builds, no shortcuts, there's a couple of cheeses (and I did use one for one of the last bosses lol), but mostly, the only advise is just "learn how to play, memorize each attack of each phase, then git gud!" The story, presentation, voice acting (played with JP audio) and music are excellent though. Think I got the bad ending? I have no desire to play through again for the other endings though. The way the final boss fight ends was really cool. \m/ \m/ Some of the bosses were amazing to look at, the design of these things is awesome, even if the actual fights were hell. Except for the visually impressive, but one of, if not the easiest boss in the game. Overall, I'm glad I played it, I can see why people like it so much, but I also don't want to play through it ever again. Grade: B+

I needed a keychain. Eradicate all lost keys. Is it overpriced? Yeah but I'm going through it lately and I wanted a treat.

One of the things that made me want a Switch was how all the classic titles are now part of NSO instead of having to purchase them individually. Having access to all these classic titles at all times means I can go through some series I've barely touched before. I'll probably do Kirby at some point but the main one I'm looking forward to doing is Metroid before playing Metroid Dread. Excluding the Prime games, I should be able to play everything except Other M, which it doesn't sound like I'll be missing much. Anyway, the point is I decided I didn't wanna do the Game Boy version of Metroid 2, so I hunted down a copy of the 3DS remake on ebay. And while we're on the subject of classic games available on NSO. I simply couldn't resist the nostalgia of playing these games with their original controllers, so... I'll probably get the NES ones as well at some point to complete the set but those are actually Joy-Cons, so I'll need a charging stand or something to actually be able to use them.

HEY SO YOU KNOW I CAN PLAY OTHER GAMES? Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade Solid experience but I definitely see the quibbles of it being fan fiction, and bloated. With that said, the story is a synthesis of everything that came after the original so not being the same is to be expected. I guess I should also say it is very anime when it's presented this way. With the OG, you can contain a lot. You can also contain a lot of silliness to a kid (like kid me). Adult me can't help but go "wut". Gameplay is decent and about what I expected. I think the only true frustration was with grab attacks. It was a constant pain point. I also feel that some mechanics are poorly explained. Like, for the Yuffie part, I didn't know about synergy attacks with Sonon until their final boss! Ys VIII Lacrimosa of DANA Gameplay is far from being as tight as the OG games but it is decent. Some enemies or bosses can feel spongey but nothing a tornado sword can't fix. Raids are an annoyance to me since they break the flow of the story/exploration. It also doesn't quite make sense early on. Like, please help if you have time! You can for some reason teleport before being explicitly told you can do so, so it really was no big deal. I just have lots of qualms about party management, however, it is a improvement on Ys SEVEN when it comes to the final boss: you don't need to use everyone! You're not going to be casted down for being unable to level and/or play this or that character. I recalled I had issues in Ys SEVEN at the final boss because of it, so I dropped it for a bit, then wrecked the boss after I reoriented myself lol I guess I should mention this is like a very concerning amount of time that Falcom added a totally garbage optional dungeon. Story wise, this slaps. The titular Dana is a joy. This game really does try to expand and connect with the other games (though it should be said it can feel hamfisted since they are expanding on some simple concepts from like 30 years ago lmao). As for within the game itself, I felt like a few parts didn't needed to be there since they didn't quite add anything, however, I wouldn't mind if they allude to some greater thing. Music. Not as many banger tracks but the title screen music (and basically anything piece related to Dana) hits quite differently after you are done. The Sibylline Road (Dana!), Gens d'Armes (tided to the level and part of the game), Volitional Decision, Vanishing Trail (jazzy lol) slaps. --- I guess I had a lot more to say about a Ys game than a Final Fantasy game lmao

Was able to get an order in with Best Buy! Had to go through their queue system like 3 times but I finally managed. Hopefully it doesn't end up getting cancelled... Also those game prices are insane. According to Amazon CA, the Switch 2 editions of BotW and TotK are 100$ and 115$ respectively. Fuck that, I bought the Switch 1 versions and I'll get the free upgrades through NSO. Between the Mario Kart Bundle and getting the Switch 1 versions of both Zelda games, that's already 100$ saved on games.

Old phone is 4 years old and with tariffs hitting I'm expecting prices to jump, so I thought I'd go ahead and upgrade now. Pixel 9 Pro XL

I guess I'm getting a Switch 2! Having skipped the first system means I'll have a hell of a launch line-up available to me, so I figured I'd start building the library early. I'll probably grab a few more between now and June 5th.

Played the demo, got really into it, went to CDkeys and got the full game for over half off. I love CDkeys so much.

Yakuza 5 Remastered Finished it two weeks ago but I immediately jumped into Rebirth and that first week I couldn't be bothered writing my thoughts because that was time I could spend playing Rebirth instead. Then I kinda forgot about it. I'm not joking, either. I literally finished Yakuza 5 like 15mins before Rebirth finished downloading. Anyway, it was pretty good. It was also very long but it never overstayed its welcome. Mostly because every time you switched protagonist it was like playing a completely different game. You start out with Kiryu and he's a taxi driver now, so naturally you end up getting sucked into the street racing world with drifting and eurobeat music. Then the next character fights like 78 dudes at once while breaking out of prison only to immediately get into a high-speed snowmobile chase followed by a fist fight with a giant bear. Then you spend the next 5 hours in a little mountain village playing a survival/hunting roguelike minigame. Then it's time to play as Haruka, Kiryu's adopted daughter, and she's training to be a pop idol so now the combat has been replaced by a rhythm game. Did I mention that this game is fucking bonkers? I can easily see how someone might just bail when they get to the Haruka chapters but it just made me love the game even more. This is the most unapologetically schizophrenic game I've ever played and I loved it for it. Overall, it did the multiple protagonist thing much better than Yakuza 4 but the story ended up feeling a lot less cohesive as a whole. Yakuza 4 kept me on the edge of my seat for the most part and it was only the finale that was a bit underwhelming (I still can't get over how our heroes' big plan was "We don't understand what's going on or know what to do, so let's just put that big pile of money on top of Millenium Tower and beat up whoever comes to get it"). Yakuza 5 was kind of the opposite. The story was so meandering and full of distractions that by the time I was on the last protagonist I had basically forgotten how things had started out with Kiryu at the beginning. The finale itself was much more exciting, although it did end rather abruptly. Anyway, that's now all the PS3 games done. That took me way longer than I expected but I can finally play Yakuza 6 and then move on to the Ichiban games. I'm almost caught up!

It was kind of an impulse purchase. I'd typically want to catch up first but I'm also way more interested in this one than the others. Since it sounds like the modern day narrative is very minimal in this one (and from what I understand, not even included in the actual game), I figured I'm safe to just play this one now and go back to the others later.

And a few more... I would have bought Syndicate too but for some reason that one's not on sale.

Ubisoft are having a going out of business publisher sale on Steam. Some really good deals. I honestly can't remember the last time I've seen so many games 90% off. Anyway, grabbed a few dirt cheap ones. Steep and Immortals just got Steam achievements this week, too. After years of them treating Steam as if it was beneath them, I'd be lying if I said it's not satisfying to see them come crawling back like this lol.

Zenless Zone Zero is neat.

Star Fox Adventures Better than I remembered, but also kinda bad lol, some of the parts I recall being super frustrating (like the test of strength in Lightfoot village) were way easier this time, while the bomb puzzles were as annoying as always. Gameplay holds up better than expected, except for some things. Trying to aim the fire blaster feels like you're fighting against the staff itself, really frustrating, specially with how many timed puzzles require that you hit targets with this thing. Not being able to jump down while climbing rock walls gets annoying real fast, more so if you make multiple visits to the store. Not having proper camera controls is also quite the choice, specially when Assault does have the option to use the C Stick as a normal right stick camera control. I actually didn't remember that moment with Scales lol, was actually looking forward to that fight and then... Nothing. Grade: B+