deanb

Watch_Dogs Legion Got this on sale and I can see why it hit that. I actually quite liked the first and second Watch_dogs (more so with the latter) but this one I think I can appreciate the legion idea, but it just wasn't hugely fun. There was very little variety to the people - there was only like one or two missions where you'd somewhat need a specific type of Operative, but with the gadgets they all ended up much of a muchness. It also meant since any mission could be done with any operative the dialogue was written as bland and generic as hell. One thing that really grated for me was the amount of gun play in this game about hackers. It's like "cool you snuck into this building, got passed everyone, ran your spider through the mazes, deactivated turrets etc, now twiddle the console so we can move on to the next part of the mission where everyone knows where you are, we're going to throw an army at you, and you're limited in where you can go as you need to be near by to do the hack". So towards the end I mostly used my hitmen operatives since they had actual proper pistols and rifles rather than the weedy tazer pistols most of the others had. Which sure fit into the aesthetic of not being terrible bad guy hacker group - but they're super weak and slow so why would I use them rather than an operative with a auto-rifle? I did like exploring virtual london and seeing some of the sights. Some really weird gore going on though - like I found a flower bed with feet and hands in it. And hidden torture rooms and such. But also some nice things like Bowie mural. Also a hilarious advert for a burger paid for in pounds and weighed in pounds called "The Churchill". Which was funny given everything was in a crypto currency (foreshadowing!!!!). Also kinda neat how London lends itself to a kind of video-game map layout. I don't see us getting a 4th Watch_Dogs game for some time now.

Wait - they've made him DLC for the remaster? That's kinda poopy

I need to finish reedfall - I think I'm nearing the end so it's just that final push. Took me a bit to get the hang of at the start (and I picked a mage type which I think it's maybe weaker than it wants to be). But the story is pretty neat. Do enjoy! For me: Pathfinder Kingmaker for PS4 It was £6 - I figured for that I could give it a shake. Plays very old school. Some of it's a bit clunky on a console - and the "card" menu/character management is a bit fiddly. But I imagine it'll make more sense as you get a bit deeper and especially with more characters to manage. Also, though I've yet to get it: Got in a bundle with Spider-Man and Ratchet n Clank. Only took however many hours staring at menu walking across screens in digital waiting rooms (one of the stupidest product launches I've ever seen)

tbf the comic run was kind of neat in especially with and sort of a neat aspect in being heroes, and being conscious enough to know what they're doing is wrong but still driven by "the hunger". (which was toned down a bit for the What If in just being intelligent enough to still use powers and battle plans). Also I like you didn't even define the plot of Episode 3 it's that bad. It just gets called "episode 3". I did hear that subtitling/dubbing ruined the reveal though. Did potentially confirm one fan theory for Endgame was possible though. Oh Paul Rudd in Zombies was a real standout - I imagine most was his own improv (especially given the school of films he comes from). One aspect I didn't like in Doctor Strange was Though I really did like (and I think many others)

How we enjoying What If so far? For me it's one of those shows where having weird spread of ideas does mean the quality is a little bit all over the place based on what the "what if" is. The last two weeks have had rather dour endings too. The "What if Black Panther became Starlord" one (second episode) is so far I think one of the highlights. I am noticing that the tentacle beasty carries on showing up but also...some more thoughts to follow in my next section. I watched Shang-Chi the other day. Very enjoyable. In the same way they've done "war movie" and "spy thriller" and other genre mish-mashes this is basically a kung fu movie and really aside from a few aspects doesn't touch too much on the MCU. If you're a fan of jackie-chan type stuff or crouching tiger (and there's actor overlap) then it's a fun watch. Was also my first cinema outing for nearly 2 years. Aside from a bit of a weird operation involved in buying a drink it wasn't too bad (I already used to buy my seatss online so the QR stuff wasn't new to me)

honestly I really like it. As folks have been saying in the discourse - most of the "strongest man" competitors are not built like body builders. And I think "Lebowski Thor" in Endgame opened folks up to the "yeah you can have heft but still be strong" edit - I really need to finish the first one. I'm probably like 10% off the end It just opened up with the challenges and collection stuff and I get too easily side tracked trying to get all the shiny trinkets.

Got this for the Switch in the recent eShop sale. Reviews said that the Switch version was a bit "fuzzy" but looks fine on the Lite. Kind of an ideal game for the Switch really in that it's not really pushing graphics super hard , just a very set aesthetic. Also got the "HyperX Cloud II 7.1". Not had a chance to play with the 7.1 side of things (it's ultimately still a standard 3.5mm jack on the end so fairly sure it'll be faking it). But it's really comfortable and I like that the microphone is detachable (though I strongly suspect I'm going to lose it some point)

Say hello to Snowy

Yeah, very enjoyable.

Aww yiss

What materia do you have slotted?

Chaos Walking Quite neat effects (that you'll see from the trailer). Neat cast, Mads is looking fine. It's kinda heavy handed with the toxic masculinity thing (only mens thoughts are "noise", there's a town that's just men, Tom Holland (Todd Hewitt, who for reasons we learn his name very well) is always about being "brave" and "not crying" and "got to attack" and so on to prove his manliness. Shame that it's one of a trilogy that'll never happen.

Palm Springs I think this has been out in US for a while, but what with pandemic they ummed and awwed over here and it instead came out on Amazon. It's a more drunken riff on Groundhog Day, though I think it maybe leaned a bit much on the romcom aspect than I'd have liked; I certainly wanted more Roy. Especially given the pivotal involvement to the early plot. He kinda vanishes for a huge stretch of the film. If it's on Amazon (or Hulu I guess) for you then I'd say it's worth watching. Also it has Superman in it.

Falcon and Winter Soldier is basically a tiding over thing until Loki comes out.

It looks perfectly fine to me ?

Immortals Fenyx Rising (no colon!) This was on sale and I kinda found the Stadia demo okay. Figure even if it's not at its best on Switch I'm on a Lite so not like it'll be blown up to a 55" 4K TV. This was also on sale. I'd kinda wanted to hold of until the full thing was out but I'm aware that won't be for ages and hey £20 ain't too bad.

Dragon Quest XI I have some epilogue stuff to do but I have finished this. And I think it's my first Switch game I've completed. It's quite cutesy and I'm happy to pass it on to my younger brother to beat at some point. The story is fairly simple - you're the destined hero and there's a big bad. My main nitpicks are - the item management is godawful. You have to assign recovery items to each character in addition to their equipment slots. Not a shared pool like most other games have done for decades. And to top it off when organising their equipment it also removes all the healing items n stuff too (except for the reviving items, so there's no rhyme or reason). And it adds them as individual items too, so it's cluttered as hell in their equipment space. There's also a bit in the middle where your party end up scattered to the four winds so you end up with different temp parties and such, and it's kinda cute and the only major plot effort, but it lasted so damn long where you're basically without your full party. There's also all these doors around with varying levels of locks, and some you eventually get a key mid-way through, there's nothing really given during the start of the game that implies you'll get a key later on so for a while I was thinking i'd missed out on something/missed a sidequest/etc and so had to google a walkthrough for it. More recently found at least one of the types of locks I won't be able to open until post-epilogue either. Which to me is stupid to have things set behind lock doors you can't even access til post games. But given it can clearly set up additional areas post game I don't get why they didn't just put the post-game items there instead of doting around the map and you can't touch them for tens of hours. Oh the ability tree limits you a ton too - I've barely gotten enough by the end of the game to unlock all of one weapon type so it doesn't really promote mixing it up with weapons given abilities are weapon-locked. It's super stingy with points. But otherwise was fun, a nice simple game to play through. I liked the rideable enemies to go to new areas/hidden areas too, that was kinda neat. Will see what my bro thinks of it.

https://www.yardbarker.com/entertainment/articles/film_gimmicks_that_worked_and_a_few_that_didnt/s1__34078445 Neat article on various "gimmicks" of cinema over the decades (some of which are long standing staples now).

The River stuff feels like if he was brought in earlier then maybe could have had a thematic reason to be doing jobs for the cops. (also I was surprised to find he was not a same-sex relationship choice). I thought his personal mission was quite good - but the way it's set up as pretty much running one into the other it does feel like it's boom and gone right away. Compared to say other missions that take a while to trigger the next part due to setting things up/building things/getting a crew etc.

Ethan got his second hand. It's on sale atm for £9.99 which I'd say is fine, but yeah normal price of £25 is a bit much. Though as a bunch of "demos" in one game it's great for when family are over then you've got the one game with a bunch of smaller experiences than sitting them into the middle of like REVII or Astrobot etc.

Cyberpunk 2077 The Panam ending. The game has a lot going on in it; so it certainly kept me amused for a long while. Though I'm not sure there's any notable quest lines like with Witcher and the "Baron" stuff. A lot of it was busy work - quests along a simple theme of "kill this person/steal this item/access this datapoint", alongside the many many many police missions (which by pure volume are the most common overall and exceptionally "punk" of you to help do police work uncritically). It kinda largely plays like Watch_dogs tbh and that's mostly contemporary times. Sort of a bummer you don't get to do much that feels "2077". I think once you get past the various bugs (which really came to the fore in the final mission - hooray for invisible guns and quest markers that don't trigger), there's not much in it that justify the "brand new open world experience". There was nothing really new in it. In fact there's some fairly standard things that were missing - like GPS on the roads. I've probably spent about half the game time basically watching a small square in the corner of my screen so I can know where I'm going. More galling is the function is there - you get on-road GPS markers in the races, so why not in the main game. Especially when parts of the city are multi-level and the map can be nigh indecipherable knot. The "stash" that the game early on tells you can also be accessed in the boot(trunk) of your car - isn't connected with any other stash. So my car has some shitty low level guns in and to manage inventory you have to go to your apartment (and none of the apartment stashes are connected either - which would have been handy for the final mission when you can access one of the stashes but not your main apartments stash). Oh and the game that's all about transhumanism and modifying your body and...you can't get and tattoos or hair styling done after you've done the original character creator. Like in the post-nuclear wasteland of Fallout* I can get a fucking hair cut but nope I have to spend the entire game with the stupid look I gave my guy. I don't really "roleplay" as such but it's nice to upgrade my characters look to reflect change in circumstances - ya know maybe go from wasteland gonk to slick afterlife legend. Looked pretty mind, even with the not great graphics my laptop can handle. And once they run their updates/fixes and throw out DLC (which might take advantage of it being set in 2077, who knows) I'll give another spin as female V. *there's a few little dioramas they've set up like Mad Max Fury Road and Terminator 2 that make the comparisons with Fallout even easier.

I think the glasses might be part of it then (I believe Ethan wears glasses). As for the V1 to V2 differences - not sure if the flaps changed. The processor box is better on V2 but I would have preferred the easier access headphone port - it's a bit fiddly on the V2 with it having a dedicated head phones (which aren't great when you're sharing a headset).

Wonder Woman 1984 Pretty much echo Jacks stuff. Wonder Woman was the best of the DC films but that's a pretty low bar to start from. This is also no Zack Snyder trash either but once again is still kinda pants. Pascal certainly was a highlight of it and he was having a lot of fun. Wiig was good until she became Cheetah. This film series is rather crap at casting convincing super-villains. Still can't get over Thewlis being cast as big butch Ares, The God of War. And yeah - the love life thing was weird. She's practically immortal. You'd think she'd know not to spent over half a century pining after one guy. Even mortals know to move on eventually. To follow on from Jacks spoiler bit: There's also some casual "go back to your country" racism thrown in too, but it's against the Irish so I guess that's okay?!? I did like the very fan servicey post-credit scene. It's maybe showing the film is a bit too confidant in their current lead though

I'm noticing we've a few folks in PSVR renaissance. Worth loading up Rec Room some point? (I've not had anyone to join in with it). As for the flaps - do you wear glasses Jack? I'm pretty fine with them (in fact I like them), but iirc my sisters bf wasn't too keen and he doesn't wear glasses.