Mister Jack

Blood: Fresh Supply Finally got around to finishing the last episode. As old school shooters go, this one isn't too bad. A solid 7/10 I'd say. The weapons are unique, there are some cool power-ups, and some of the levels are pretty memorable. The Fresh Supply version of the game also includes a made to order difficulty setting where you can adjust certain parameters, which is how I played and I would strongly suggest turning down the enemy hitscan accuracy because otherwise even the most common human enemies will be sniping you from across the map with pinpoint precision. The difficulty balance in the vanilla version is completely fucked. The weakest enemy in the game should not be more of a threat than the bosses and if you choose to play this way it's going to be a real slog. Also, one thing the custom difficulty can't fix is the fact that flying and underwater enemies are bullshit. They're ludicrously fast and hard to hit, especially when you can't look all the way up over your head. The flying enemies in particular are a pain because they'll zip over your head and then just hang there for ages, becoming completely impossible to hit until they come back down. A lot of times it will be more efficient simply to run away from them than to stay and fight. Swimming enemies are a pain mostly because the swimming controls suck. It was often a struggle just to stay underwater so I could aim at them properly. One other inherent flaw of the game is the fact that there are six different kinds of keys, and since you never know for sure how many will be in a level it's easy to get lost, especially when progressing often depends on you blowing up a wall with an explosive. I had to consult a walkthrough more than once. All these issues do drag the game down a bit. If they weren't in there I'd probably say it's an 8, but as is it's still pretty decent. You'll just have to prepare yourself for some frustration.

Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth This one is a Metroidvania based on the characters of the Record of Lodoss War anime from the 90s. Naturally, you'll get more appreciation if you've seen the anime and are familiar with the characters, but even if you haven't the plot is simple enough that you'll get the gist of it by the end. While I have seen the anime, the reason I really played this is because of its striking similarities to Symphony of the Night, which is my all-time favorite game. It must be said that the graphics of this game are quite similar to Symphony's style and the sprites would look right at home on the PS1. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen another Metroidvania that replicates the style so faithfully. Even Deedlit's walk animation looks similar to Alucard's. The gameplay is pretty similar too, but with some unique twists and modern enhancements. Deedlit uses equippable weapons, armor, and magic just like Alucard, but in general her commands are easier to use than Alucard's were with his special button input combinations. Deedlit just has a dedicated magic button. Her high jump move is also easier to perform than Alucard's. Unlike Alucard, Deedlit can only take a few hits before dying, but to compensate for this you get two spirits, wind and fire, which you switch between with the press of a button. Each spirit gains power when you do attacks and when you max them out at level 3 your health will automatically regenerate. Taking a hit will level down your spirit though, kind of like the gun in Cave Story, so you will constantly be switching back and forth between the two spirits to keep them both leveled. Each spirit also gives you boosts to certain abilities depending on which one you currently have activated, and enemies will take more or less damage depending on whether you're using wind or fire. You also switch back and forth to absorb wind or fire attacks for MP kind of like Ikaruga with its white and black bullets. It's a pretty neat mechanic overall. Aside from the spirits, Deedlit's game has a lot of modern QoL improvements to the Symphony formula. There's always a partial minimap in the corner so you have some idea of where you're going without having to pause, the full map and equipment menu are on the same pause screen so you can look at both without any extra button presses, enemy HP and elemental resistances are clearly indicated in the bottom right corner, you can automatically save the game just by running past the save point rather than having to stop and do it manually, and Deedlit can attack in any of the cardinal directions, even while jumping. Am I saying these things make Deedlit the better game? No, of course not. Symphony is still longer, has more content, better music, and more weapons/abilities to play with. I am saying, however, that if Symphony had been made back in the day with these modern mechanics it would be a perfect game.

For some reason, I dunno why, I was really in the mood to play some boomer shooters so I downloaded DUSK, Dread Templar, and Blood: Fresh Supply. After playing them for a few hours I remembered why I used to love these old-school shooters so much. I have nothing against modern shooters most of the time, but the sheer speed and mobility of these games is such a blast. I love never having to think about reloading in DUSK. You just jump, strafe, and hold down the fire button until everything is dead. I also like that there doesn't seem to be any hitscan projectiles in these games, at least not that I've seen. If you are agile enough you can dodge every enemy attack, even bullets. Plus, I really like that one of your most basic, common bread and butter weapons in DUSK is dual wielded shotguns. So satisfying. Dread Templar is still in early access but it's looking pretty promising. It shares a lot of similarities with DUSK in that it's a fast-paced boomer shooter, but there are a few differences. Unlike in DUSK, you do have to reload your guns in Dread Templar, but something really cool they did to compensate is that the swords you use as your basic melee weapon can be combined together into a spear that can then be thrown at an enemy. This does huge damage, but it also leaves you without a melee weapon until the cooldown resets. It's great though because it means your swords aren't simply a last resort and you'll always be looking for a good opportunity to throw the spear during a skirmish. Blood: Fresh Supply is basically just the original MS-DOS game updated to run on modern systems with modern control and performance options. I'm enjoying it but not quite as much as the other two for the simple reason that the game is VERY stingy with ammo. I'm only four or five levels in so far but I have run out of ammo for all my guns many times already, and it's not because I'm a bad aim. This means I'm eventually forced to use the shitty pitchfork against large groups of enemies, enemies with hitscan guns. Naturally this gets me killed probably dozens of times in every level and I usually end up having to lure them around corners to stab them to death, which is more tedious than fun. I hear that this is only a problem in the early levels though, so I'm gonna stick with it and hope that it starts dropping more ammo soon.

Rocket is my favorite MCU character. This was online for 30 bucks and I couldn't resist. It's already out of stock and climbing in price on the secondhand market so I got while the getting was good.

My new desktop has pretty good wifi, but the fact it's enclosed inside the desk weakens the signal considerably, even compared to my last desktop which is over a decade old. I suspect this has something to do with the physical location of the motherboard. A direct connection to the modem just isn't an option for me. That room is too full of stuff already and I don't want to move the entire desk anyway so I got these powerline adapters instead. After plugging them in my speed jumped from around 7 MB/s to 25 MB/s. I know that doesn't sound like much but I'm stuck with Comcast so that's pretty good for my situation. More than enough for my needs, at least.

Sunset Overdrive Nice to finally play this former Xbox exclusive. It's unapologetically cheesy and videogamey and the characters will frequently break the fourth wall to comment on the fact they're inside a game, but this is a story where a defective energy drink turns people into mutants. You're really not meant to take it seriously at all and are just supposed to have a bunch of goofy fun. As expected from an Insomniac game, the weapons are a lot of fun to use, although I kinda wished that fully leveled weapons transformed into their stronger versions like in Ratchet and Clank rather than you just having to buy the better version separately, thus rendering the original weapon completely obsolete. Other than that I don't have a lot of complaints. The parkour is fun once you get used to it, there's a good variety of enemies and guns, and there's a decent amount of stuff to do in the city. Definitely worth picking up on a steam sale.

Eh, why not.

It's technically a sequel but it only really references the first movie in that Harley is friendly with a few characters she met before. It's easy to not even notice unless you're paying attention. You should be completely fine if you didn't see the last film.

You never needed to attack your own party members to level up your HP in FFII, but at least in the original version you could do that to exploit the system and raise your HP to much higher than it should be because the HP leveling worked based on how much HP you lose in battle. I don't know if they fixed that exploit for the remaster but it was definitely a thing back on the Famicom. There was also an annoying stat atrophy system where one stat would decrease when another one increased so it was definitely possible to level up your party wrongly. I know they got rid of that crap in the GBA remake and it sounds like they did the same for the pixel remaster, which is good because that was a terrible idea. Final Fantasy II is a game you can completely break in half if you know how to cheat the system, which can be fun, but I can also see why some people don't like the game because is has pretty much no balance. If you know what you're doing you can even kill the final boss in one turn.

The Suicide Squad This is by far the best movie in the entire DCEU right now. James Gunn seems to really excel at these films where he's given a cast of freaks and weirdos to write for, especially when he's allowed to go with a hard R rating. Make no mistake, this one is hard R, soaked from head to toe in gore and profanity and I wouldn't have it any other way. Not only are the action scenes a bloody good time, but the jokes frequently made me laugh out loud and the characters were written very well. Even though they're all murderous psychopaths, Gunn got me to actually care about most of them. King Shark in particular steals every scene he's in and I have no doubt he'll become the most popular member of the squad. The movie really lives up to the title, too. The squad starts out with around 20 or so members but this mission has one hell of a body count. I actually felt bad when certain characters died, but by the end I was quite attached to the survivors. I hope to see them all again in a sequel soon.

It was on sale and I didn't want to risk waiting too long only for it to disappear forever once again because of license expiration or some other bullcrap.

Original game didn't have ethers or phoenix downs at all. If someone died you either used a life spell or went all the way back to town to revive them. If you ran out of spells you had to either go back to town or use a tent/cottage/house at the dungeon entrance to restore them. Cutting out that bullshit would definitely make it easier to get through efficiently.

They must have rebalanced it or something because I remember the original NES version being quite a grind. Do they use the original stock system for magic or MP? Do they have more than one kind of healing potion? I remember back in the day having to tediously stock up on 99 healing potions, which only healed 60 HP each, and then use them over and over in the Chaos Shrine between fights.

Damn, you beat it already? Didn't it only come out like two days ago?

Now that my badass new PC is here I'm taking advantage by playing some of the games I couldn't run well before. I installed the Master Chief Collection that a friend gifted me ages ago although it's obvious my former Halo skills have atrophied from disuse. Also got Sunset Overdrive, which is cool, and Vermintide II, which is a lot of fun. I may not be buying any new releases for a while, though. I can't think of anything coming out for the rest of 2021 that I want that's available on PC. That's okay though. I have a huge backlog to catch up on. I looked into VR headsets just out of curiosity but it turns out I don't like any of the PC options. They're either too expensive or too cumbersome so despite having a new PC I might end up waiting on the PSVR 2 anyway.

I think it's mostly the price people are upset about with this one. 75 dollars for the complete set of games when they're this old is a little steep.

Of course I was going to buy this.

Finn Wolfhard, yeah. Also what an awesome name to be born with.

It's not the one for the fragments, is it? Because that's all I'm seeing on Youtube.

I got enough for the game to give me the trophy for finishing Act 3. If that somehow still isn't enough then screw it, I've got other shit to play.

Got the final true ending for Returnal. Story still makes no sense. In fact, it makes even less sense now than before.

The latter

I bought a desktop. https://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Gaming-RDY-SMRVRG201 I wasn't really planning on it but this was such a good deal I had to jump on it. A 3060 these days on its own will cost you around 1000 dollars, let alone a whole system. Part of the discount comes from the fact I have to take the system as is and can't customize it at all, but it honestly has almost everything I would want already. Liquid cooling is new for me and I would get 2 TB of storage if I could, but I can always add an SSD later on. I told myself for a long time I would build my next pc myself, but that was before covid came along and made that impractical. After taxes and discounts it came to 1747, but it also includes a keyboard and mouse

I did look it up and that area wasn't there.