Mister Jack

No brainer for me. My CatDog is to be feared.

Yeah that's ultimately why I decided against curved. It seems like the majority of content out there isn't really made with curved in mind, at least from what I've seen. Probably works great for certain titles, though.

I thought the demo was pretty decent but fuck the EGS. I couldn't use it even if I wanted to because I no longer remember my Epic account password and in order to reset it I'd have to tell them when was the last time I bought something using it, which would have to be at least 10+ years because I can't remember ever buying shit with it. I'll probably end up just going with the PS5 version.

PC port is never ever so time to break out the PS5 again.

I decided to download Pokemon Unite on the Switch just because I was jonesin' for Pokemon content but I refuse to play SwSh. I normally hate MOBA games for a number of reasons but I decided to give this one a chance and I'm glad I did because it strips out a lot of the bullshit I normally hate with this genre. First, and most importantly, NO VOICE CHAT. If you've ever played a MOBA, you know voice chat is an absolute cancer on the genre, full of the most toxic kinds of people you will ever meet. No text chat either. If you need to communicate with your team there is a menu to send out prewritten messages that cover everything you would reasonably need to tell your team during a match. This alone is a huge factor that contributes to my enjoyment. I can't stand hardcore esports dicks. But let's be super SUPER generous and pretend the MOBA genre doesn't have the worst community on the face of gaming. Is it still good then? Well yeah, I'm having fun, at least. It's not overly complicated. Each Pokemon has a regular attack, two specials that change as they evolve and level up, and one unite attack, which is basically an ultimate. You have to decide which special attacks they learn as they level up, but they only ever have two at a time. Trying different combinations of specials is where build variety comes in. You can also give them items to hold like in the mainline games and you can pick one active battle item that works on a cooldown. Even though it's only cosmetic, I also enjoy watching a Pokemon evolve from the first stage to their final form over the course of the match. It's quite charming. It's worth noting that there are no type advantages here. Don't expect your Squirtle to curbstomp an enemy Charmander. How well you do depends on skill and strategy, not type matchups, and thank god for that. But then there's the ugly side. The microtransactions. I counted no less than five types of currency in the game, and I'm not even sure what they all do. Coins are unlocked through gameplay, tickets are earned through challenges, there's a premium currency you buy with cash, energy that you gain through matches, and fashion tickets. I don't even know how you get those, nor am I sure if that's all of them. Frankly, I'm not concerning myself with all that crap. I'm only worrying about coins and tickets. To be fair, I've already unlocked five Pokemon to use. Every Pokemon can be earned with coins, and when you first join there's a 14 day daily reward system that gives you three Pokemon for free if you keep coming back. The problem is if you're the type of person who cares about cosmetics, both for your trainer and your Pokemon. You don't have to use premium currency to buy cosmetics, but buying them with tickets is obviously going to take a lot longer. There's also a dreaded loot box system in place. Granted, as far as I can none of the cosmetics are loot box exclusive. It's just an extra unlock you earn every now and then. I'd much rather it wasn't in there at all, though. So would I recommend Pokemon Unite? Yes, but with a warning. If you have trouble resisting the siren song of cosmetics, you might want to stay away. They really want you to spend money on costumes and the prices on some of them are outrageous and insulting. If, however, you don't care about getting Pikachu a hat and just want to have fun battling with Pokemon, then this game is a pretty good time.

Got a deal on this one on GameBillet. It's only 26 dollars there, which is way more reasonable than the 49.99 they're trying to charge for a game this old.

I've heard that's for trademark reasons but I don't know if it's true.

Every PC game with controller support should have an option in the menu to manually set whether you want to see Xbox button prompts or Playstation button prompts. That damn X button has messed me up more than once.

The game so nice I bought it thrice. Gotta have it on Steam too now that I have a PC that can run it. It was on sale.

I'VE NEVER HAD A DISPLAY WITH A HIGHER REFRESH RATE BEFORE I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE PLEASE UNDERSTAND

I knew this was coming sooner or later. Didn't expect it to be on Netflix, though.

I'm a friggin dumbass. I got my new 165hz monitor out of the box and hooked it up with the HDMI cable and tried playing some Killing Floor 2 with it. My first impression was "Whoa! This is so smooth!" Oh but wait. The variable framerate isn't turned on in the game settings. Okay so I turned it on. "Whoa! This is so smooth!" Oh but wait, I looked at the monitor manual and it says you need to use the DisplayPort cable to get the full refresh rate. Oops. So I unhook the HDMI and hook up the DisplayPort cable and try the game again. "Whoa! This is so smooth!" Oh but wait. The monitor's hardware menu says it's only putting out 60hz. I forgot to change my windows display settings to allow for higher refresh rates. So I changed the control panel options to raise it to 165hz and checked the monitor's on-screen menu. Now it says 165hz. Is it okay to think it's smooth now?

I don't really need a 4k monitor because I only have space for a 25" display on my desk at most but I did want a monitor with a higher refresh rate so I could finally experience 120 FPS gaming. The monitor I've been using worked fine but it was super super old and only 60hz. I got this one for around 220 and I used Amazon points I've been accumulating from all the expensive medical equipment I was buying so I only paid about 150 out of pocket.

Wow, the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster is pretty damn solid. In fact, given the "quality" of previous Final Fantasy ports done by Square-Enix, I'm honestly stunned at how good it is. The updated graphics actually look good, the redone music is excellent, and there are a ton of QoL improvements that probably aren't even noticeable to people who didn't play the original NES release. I mean, my god, I can walk diagonally! Pretty much my only criticism is the ugly, out of place font, and that's easily fixed with a text mod, so I can confidently say that this remaster is the definitive way to play Final Fantasy now.

Twelve Minutes Game Pass again. This is a point and click that takes place entirely within a two room apartment. The main character is trapped in a roughly ten to twelve minute time loop with his wife right before some very bad shit goes down, and you have to figure out how to prevent it from happening as well as how to escape the time loop. The interesting thing here is that puzzle solutions are often timing based. Since you only have, at most, 12 minutes per loop, you have to gather what clues and information you can in each loop so you can put it to use in the next loop. You're always working against the clock and even if you know what to do in a loop, if you do it too early or too late it won't have the desired outcome. Of course, if you get stuck this can result in monotony since you're repeating the same events over and over. If you need to restart a loop right away the game lets you do this by leaving the apartment, but otherwise you need to wait for your opportunity, and if you've been at it a while this can be kind of tedious. A Groundhog Day puzzle game is an interesting concept, though. Unfortunately, the thing that kinda killed this one for me is that the plot is mind-blowingly contrived and dumb. Despite strong performances from a cast with the likes of James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe himself, the twist ending completely obliterated my suspension of disbelief because it just relied on too many ridiculous coincidences. I thought to myself "There is NO WAY in hell this could ever really happen" and as soon as that thought enters your head any story it applies to is going to be dead in the water. I had an easier time believing in time loops than I did in the ending. Hell, I would have believed magic space pixies were behind everything more than I would have believed the ending. In short, I like the idea behind the game and I like how it's presented and I like the performances but holy SHIT the script really needed another pass. When I think about it, another game that does time loop puzzles and has a much more compelling story, even if it gets out there sometimes, is Ghost Trick. Unfortunately, this game is only available on the DS or iOS platforms, but if you have access to either of those I can't recommend it highly enough.

Miles is a standalone game but it's a shorter length. You can think of it like an expansion pack but one where you don't have to own the original.

Why the hell isn't Halo 5 on PC anyway. It boggles the mind.

Oooh he thicc

I haven't been to Kotaku in so long that I didn't even realize Jason had left. It certainly explains a lot since he was one of the last people doing actual journalism, and pretty good journalism too.

Remember that Epic vs. Apple lawsuit? We finally got a judgment on that. The results are as follows: - Epic knowingly violated their agreement with Apple and must pay 30% of the revenue they got through their direct payment system, which is 3.65 million dollars. - Apple was within their rights to kick Fortnite off of the app store and are not required to put it back. - Epic has to put out a statement admitting that Apple was right. Sounds like a clean sweep in Apple's favor, right? Well as it turns out there was one other judgment. - Apple can no longer restrict developers from including direct payment options in their apps that bypass the Apple ecosystem. When this whole thing started I didn't know who I wanted to win because I hate both companies, but as it turns out, they BOTH lose!

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles I finally wrapped this one up after playing it off and on since it launched back in July. This is actually a compilation of two games with ten cases overall. There was a time once back when this was Japan exclusive when I thought missing out on this game was no great loss since it was totally unrelated to Phoenix, Maya, or any of the other characters I'd come to love in the other games, but I have completely reassessed my feelings toward this entry now. While it's true that Phoenix and co. are completely absent, I grew to adore the new cast. Herlock Sholmes especially is an absolute himbo who steals every scene he's in. I friggin love him. This game also has my new favorite defendant in the entire series. There's just so many goofy, memorable, and not to mention highly animated characters on display here. They also have more presence here than in previous games, meaning when the story calls for it you can see multiple characters on screen at once or see them in the backgrounds during investigations. Herlock is a treat in this regard and you never know where he's going to pop up next. As far as the story goes, these games were clearly planned as a duology and the ten cases all connect to each other in some way. There's no filler cases like Big Top Turnabout here and every episode has some kind of new revelation in service to the greater plot, which is full of twists and turns that eventually lead to one of the most memorable climaxes in the franchise. It's a hell of a ride. On another note, the PC port here is pretty damn solid. I don't know if the character models were remastered since I never played the 3DS version, but they all look quite good and I often forgot that this game was originally on a handheld. If you're an Ace Attorney fan, don't skip this one just because Phoenix isn't in it. Trust me, you won't regret giving it a chance.

Alien: Isolation Finally got around to this one thanks to Game Pass and it reminded me a lot of Condemned: Criminal Origins in a good way. The developers utilized some clever and sadistic tricks here to really up the tension. For starters, the alien is completely invincible to every weapon you have, and at best you can temporarily drive it away if you have something to set it on fire. While I imagine some people will gripe at this, it does dispel any notion that you can fight this thing. More than that, however, is that fact that there is no auto-saving except at a few specific story-related moments. 95% of the time, the only saves you get are the ones you make yourself, and saving the game at a station takes about five seconds, during which you are completely vulnerable. The alien actually killed me once while I was in the middle of saving the game. As if that isn't enough, each save station has a cooldown period before you can use it again. It definitely makes you more cautious because you don't want to lose progress by dying, but sometimes the save stations are a little too far apart. I had to redo up to 15 minutes of progress on more than one occasion, sometimes multiple times in a row, and when that happens it gets frustrating and not very fun, but this is a problem that could easily be solved in future games by putting just a few more save stations in the environment. Props to the alien's AI, too. It's quite relentless and will learn to adapt if you use the same trick too many times to get away from it. I never felt like I could exploit it to make it do what I wanted or move how I wanted it to move like I could with Mr. X in Resident Evil 2. At no point is the xenomorph ever going to stop being the biggest threat in the game, and rightfully so. I also liked the android enemies, which are cheap uncanny valley knock-off versions of the more sophisticated Weyland-Yutani androids. That's a brilliant design and their robotic one-liners as they chase you around the ship are super memorable. If I have one major complaint it's that the story runs out of steam before it's over. The big climax of the game happens around maybe 3/4 of the way through but then it just keeps going for several levels. The last few missions are mostly just constantly backtracking to flip switches, push buttons, and power up generators while a pissed off xenomorph who never ever leaves stalks you in an enclosed space, which is more tedious and aggravating than anything. Remember, if it catches you at any point you have to push all those buttons and flip all those switches all over again unless you were lucky enough to manage a save in between. I think if they shaved off the last two or three hours of the campaign it would have been much tighter and ultimately more satisfying at the end. It's still a damn good survival horror game though. I'd love to see Sega make more of them, if not another Alien game then at least something else, because they've done it enough times now to prove they know their stuff.

You're good, man. I had my issues with the game but I can understand why someone else might love it.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice Game Pass again. I heard all kinds of talk about how this one is a masterpiece and a must play and how it'll change the face of gaming forever and...it's just okay. That's not to say there aren't things to like. The graphics are superb, the story and presentation are compelling, and the sound design especially is top notch. In fact, I'd recommend playing this with headphones on, preferably with 7.1 surround if possible. As a storytelling experience, Hellblade is indeed quite ambitious. As a game, though? It kinda falls on its face a bit. Most of the time you're just walking around and looking at things. The environments are beautiful, sure, and there are puzzles, but the puzzle solutions almost always consist of, again, walking around and looking at things. It gets pretty monotonous. There's no map or markers of any kind either. The only guidance you get are the voices in Senua's head, who are not always helpful as you can probably imagine. If you get turned around you can spend a long time just trying to figure out where you're supposed to go and that's both boring and frustrating. When you actually do fight, combat is as basic as can be. There's only one weapon, not many enemy types, and your moveset is just light, heavy, kick, dodge, and parry for the entire game. It looks neat visually thanks to some cool cinematography, but it's really not that fun to actually play. I ended up turning the combat difficulty to easy by the end because otherwise it's just such a chore to get through. Would I recommend this? Well, if you go into it with the understanding that it's pretty close to a walking simulator and keep your expectations in check then you might be satisfied, but then again you could probably just watch a playthrough on Youtube and not miss much. I like everything about this game except the gameplay, but that's a pretty damn big caveat.

You get it free if you own the original, which I did not at the time.