Mister Jack

Mortal Kombat Finally got around to watching this on HBO Max and it's 100% a fanservice movie. If you're not already familiar with MK lore then this movie is not interested in filling you in on anything more than the basics, but if you are a fan of the franchise then they really went out of their way to give you what you would want to see in a Mortal Kombat movie. The signature moves are there, the fatalities are there, even the iconic announcer lines make their way in. Most importantly, the blood and gore is present in copious amounts. It is complete pandering but it's the kind of pandering I can't help but get into. The fight choreography is also quite good. However, I do have issues. I can forgive the plot being just a thinly veiled excuse to have a bunch of fight scenes, but even then it still does a few things where I was not a fan. The main character is an OC Donut Steel who was made up for the movie, which I'm not against on principle but he's just not very interesting and his powers are stupid. I have nothing against the actor who played him, I'm sure he did the best he could with the material he was given, but that material wasn't good. It just made me wish they'd used Johnny Cage instead, who isn't even in this movie at all. Some of the exposition scenes also get dull, but Kano steals the show whenever he's in the scene. He honestly salvages the talky portions of the film. I don't see myself watching this one over and over but I bet I'll be looking up the fight scenes on Youtube every now and then. I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel.

Well I have officially finished my Village of Shadows difficulty playthrough with 3 hours on the clock and did my speedrun with the clock at 2 hours. Mind you, the game does not count deaths and the timer will reset to whatever it was at your last save, so take that as you will. I died a few times on Village of Shadows but didn't die at all on the speedrun.

There is a lot of replay value after you beat it, if that makes you feel any better.

Resident Evil VIII Eight and a half hours. I totally binged this game. It's like it took all the best parts from 4 and 7 and put them together. More weapons, more enemy types, more places to explore, more replay value, more everything. About the only area where I think VII is still better is that the Bakers were more memorable antagonists than the villains in this game, and that says more about how good the Bakers were than it does about these new ones being bad. I'm already going to jump back into NG+ as soon as I finish posting this. So far this is my GOTY for 2021.

I played the original just in time, it looks like.

God I hope that's true. Activision put all their eggs into that basket and I want it to crash and burn. I know that seems impossible but nothing lasts forever. There WILL come a day when it runs out of steam.

Toys 4 Bob is now a Call of Duty studio. While I guess it's a good thing they weren't all laid off, this fucking sucks. I had a great time with the Crash remakes and I absolutely loved the Spyro Reignited Trilogy. I even liked Crash 4 when it wasn't pissing me off. I was hoping really hard for a new Spyro next but I guess it won't be happening now because Activision is ALL CALL OF DUTY ALL THE TIME. Literally, I don't think the Activision side of the company is making anything except Call of Duty anymore. At least I can't think of anything else.

Ha! Got you, you bastard! This is the DVD that was part of the collection I've been acquiring recently that was going for 400+ dollars on eBay, the one I told myself I would probably have to accept that I would never get. However, I was able to place an order from this directly from the Turner Network, which is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. It will be a while before they can actually ship it, but it's still mine now. To make matters even better I did some looking into the shorts I currently own and it turns out that some of the special features on the collection I recently got include shorts that are on some of the other DVDs I was originally planning to get for completion's sake so now I don't have to get those. This brings me up to owning roughly 93% of all the shorts that have been transferred to physical media.

I actually consider R&C 2016 to be one of the weakest entries in the series and I didn't even dislike it.

Digimon Cyber Sleuth This game is a hidden gem with a few rough edges around it. I bought it purely because I was sick of the Pokemon franchise never innovating since Gen 1 and I wanted to give the competition a try. Naturally, this meant I was comparing the two franchises the whole time and now that I've finished I've come to the following conclusions: Things Pokemon does better 1) Creature design is, as a whole, better in Pokemon. There are some pretty good Digimon designs in the roster to be sure, but there are also some that are just faceless blobs or something else dull like that. To be fair, the more boring Digimon are usually on the lowest rungs of the evolutionary ladder and they evolve out of them quickly. Even then I'd still say Pokemon designs are usually better, but there are some still pretty cool looking Digimon. 2) Environments and exploration. Digimon takes place partly in cyberspace, which is basically just a bunch of holograms, and Tokyo, which has the usual Shinjuku/Shibuya/Akihabara/etc districts you're used to. You also move between regions through a menu so there's minimal exploration in this particular Digimon game. Don't play it expecting to explore a wide open world. 3) Better side activities. Most of the side content in Digimon Cyber Sleuth involves you taking on cases for clients. Almost all of these cases are just fetch quests or "go here, fight X" missions. It also has an annoying habit of making you go somewhere just to talk to someone before sending you somewhere else. It's pointless busywork and it really wasn't needed. On the other hand, Digimon has better post-game content with some seriously tough optional missions to really put your high level party to use. 4) Catching a Pokemon in a ball is more exciting than scanning Digimon out in the field and then reconstructing them in a menu. That said, every Digimon you encounter gets scanned, even multiples, so there are no wasted encounters. 5) If you lose a battle you can continue. If you lose in Digimon you have to reload, so you'd better save often. 6) Music is more memorable for the most part, although the Digimon OST has some legit bangers on it. Things Digimon does better 1) The battle system is way more engaging. The menus are quicker, battles flow much, MUCH faster, you have easily accessible information to all your abilities, what they do, and even whether they'll be effective or not against the enemy type you're targeting. You also get a battle party of 3 instead of just 1. You can also carry up to 8 extra Digimon in reserve depending on how much RAM you have and you can switch out your entire party for any of your reserves at any time during battle at the cost of just one turn. It honestly plays more like Final Fantasy X than Pokemon, which I consider a good thing. There's also a handy auto-battle option for dealing with trash mobs and the AI for it is pretty good. 2) Way, way, WAY more evolution options. Every stage of every Digimon has a minimum of 3 different evolutionary paths to choose from. Some of the evolutions look nothing like the last form (there's a fox that can evolve into a tree), but each mon will still have at least one evolutionary path where the design stays pretty consistent. You can even devolve back to a lower stage if you want to try a different path. Evolving or devolving puts you back at level 1, but with increased base stats inherited from whatever level you were at before the change. You'll be digivolving way more often than you ever evolved your Pokemon and you have full control over when and how it happens as long as you meet the requirements. It's quite addicting. 3) Better presentation. The graphics are better, the framerate is better, there's voice acting (in Japanese), there are some anime cutscenes here and there, but most importantly every single Digimon has unique animations for attacking and performing signature moves. None of that pathetic "Scorbunny used double kick" jiggling in here. While there are shared moves that have generic casting animations, every mon has at least two attack animations that are exclusive to that species. The story is also more interesting than any Pokemon story I've personally played. It's not a masterpiece or anything but for a mon game it's got a lot more going for it than you'd expect. Oh yeah, and all three Digimon from your battle team follow you while you walk around. 4) Each Digimon has a normal attack and can learn up to six moves rather than four. New moves after that are stored in a bank and you can swap them out between battles as many times as you want. No need to forget moves like in Pokemon. 5) Type matchups are not the end-all-be-all of battles. Digimon come in four types (vaccine/data/virus/neutral) and then on top of that they also have elements like fire/water/lightning/etc. In order to do maximum damage you have to use both the right type and the right element, and unless your team is VERY carefully balanced it'll probably be rare that you have everything matched up perfectly. Depending on your type matchups you can give or receive anywhere from half damage to 3x damage, but it usually hovers around 1.5x to 2x damage. Obviously you want to have an advantage whenever possible, but even at a disadvantage it's usually possible to tough it out if your mons are well trained or have support from their teammates. 6) Challenge. Everyone knows Pokemon is piss easy with maybe one or two bosses per game that turn out to be harder than expected. Digimon is pretty easy too for the most part but there are quite a few boss battles, especially in the second half, that can really give you a run for your money. That's not even getting into the bonus post-game bosses. Fortunately, leveling up is pretty quick in this game. With a full team of 11 you're guaranteed to get at least one level up every two or three fights against similarly leveled oppenents and you'll usually get more than that. There are also ways to boost your exp gains and if you're willing to put in the work then by the end of the game you can make it so you get 40+ levels per fight. When certain evolutions require you to evolve and devolve multiple times to build up the ability stat, this is a godsend. Things that suck in both games 1) Unskippable cutscenes. Ugh. 2) Pacing is kind of uneven. 3) Annoying side characters. Digimon only had one character that really annoyed me but she annoyed me enough to count for three bad Pokemon characters. 4) Silent protagonists. I am really tired of seeing that. All in all I liked Digimon quite a bit and I would recommend it, or at least this particular game. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Never gonna make it

You just reminded me of how much I used to love the hell out of Simant. Man, I wish someone would make a new version of that.

Humble Bundle is kneecapping charitable donations. Maybe they should change their name to something else like Insincere Bundle or Token Gesture Bundle.

I really wasn't planning to buy these anytime soon but in a crazy coincidence right after I bought the Pepe DVD a reliable insider leaked info that Warner Bros plans to stop all DVD production for these shorts in 2022 and transition to streaming only. I figured I'd better get them now before they shoot up to ridiculous prices. This brings me up to owning roughly 85% of all available shorts. There's another Sylvester DVD in this collection but it's going for $400 so I might just have to let that one go.

This was on sale in the eshop. The last few Pokemon games were such underwhelming disappointments that I've been meaning to give the Digimon games a chance to see if they're any better but I didn't want to pay 40+ bucks on a gamble. Just 19.99 for a two game collection is a steal and if I don't like them then at least I didn't pay much.

Beat the Nioh 1 DLC. Going back to the original right after spending so much time with the sequel made me realize just how different they are. On the surface it seems like 2 is just 1 with some extra features and a couple of new mechanics but those new mechanics completely change the way you approach combat. With Nioh 2 you are given multiple ways to heal during battle that require you to play aggressively, kind of like Bloodborne. With Nioh 1, however, you're mostly limited to your finite elixirs and maybe healing talismans if you've invested enough points into magic. You also don't have the burst counter move from 2 so you can't interrupt the enemies' strongest attacks, which means you pretty much have to play more defensively. If Nioh 2 is Bloodborne, Nioh 1 is closer to Dark Souls. Speaking of differences, this DLC has an absurd spike in difficulty compared to where you are probably at after beating the game for the first time. I was dying in one or two hits for a while because I was 50 levels below even basic enemies. They gave pretty good exp so I was leveling up pretty quickly, but each mission jumps the level up even higher so by the time I finished all three episodes I was more like 90 levels under the recommended. I got by because I invested in a living weapon build, which is a mode that makes you temporarily superpowered and invincible for around 10-20 seconds. Usually it takes a while to charge that up but I figured out a specific setup that let me refill the meter every two or three minutes. Even then it was pretty brutal. On the plus side I got the PS5 platinum trophy in the process.

You hear the same theme for over an hour on the same boss fight and it has a way of getting stuck in your head. It's a good thing the music in this series is god tier.

Playing the Nioh 1 DLC for the first time and it's absolutely kicking my ass. At first I thought the game was just harder than I remembered compared to 2 but I was dying in one or two hits and that's pretty extreme even for Nioh. It wasn't until I beat the first of three chapters that I realized that unlike the Nioh 2 DLC, this one expects you to have already finished NG+. I'm 50 levels under the recommended. Fuck it though. I'm gonna finish it anyway. I've already gotten this far so I think I can do it.

I'm a really big fan of the classic Looney Tunes shorts and one of my nerdy pursuits is to eventually own every short on physical media, at least the ones that aren't lost to time. I already have the Golden Collection, which is the most robust, but that on its own only has about 60% or so of all the available shorts. This DVD right here is the only way to have all of the Pepe shorts on physical media and unfortunately after he was pulled from the Space Jam sequel and WB announced they have no plans to use him the price of this DVD shot up to absolutely ridiculous prices. Up to $400 on eBay from asshole sellers. Thankfully, I got extremely lucky and only had to pay $13 for this thanks to a recent restock.

The PS4 version of Nioh 1 doesn't upgrade to the remaster like the sequel does. I never got the DLC for it either. Buying the collection used ended up being cheaper than just buying the first game on PSN. So I guess now I don't need my PS4 disc anymore.

Finally got around to finishing the Nioh 2 DLC. I think I've nearly mastered Nioh at this point because there was only one boss who gave me a lot of trouble and when I eventually fought her a second time in a side mission as part of a dual boss I steamrolled her pretty easily. Not that the DLC is easier than the main game or anything. If anything it's harder but I feel like I've got the combat down to a science. I suppose that's what happens when you play a game for 300+ hours. I'm doing a co-op campaign with a friend but after that I guess there's NG++,+++, and ++++ to go through as well as the boss rush dungeon. I doubt I'm putting it down completely any time soon.

Fair point, but Demon's Souls is hardly a blockbuster either so I guess it'll just come down to demand and how willing Sony is to listen to it. I would be more than happy with a performance patch but if it hasn't happened by now I can only assume the only way we're getting it is with a remaster. RE4 definitely doesn't need a remake whatsoever but I admit I would play an upscaled 4K/60 FPS port at least.

Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time Finally wrapped up this one after playing it on and off for a few months. This is, hands down, the hardest Crash game in the entire series, and it was already not an easy game to begin with. I have kind of a love-hate relationship with this one, honestly. I like the cartoony animation and designs. The controls are tight, the levels are cool and the new mechanics and playable characters give you some variety and keep it interesting, which is nice, but if you're a completionist this game is going to ruin your life. If you want to 100% a level in this game you need to do ALL of the following. - Get every crate, many of which are often hidden offscreen and you just have to know they're there. - Get 80% of all wumpa fruits - Find the hidden gem - Don't die. At all. Keep in mind you usually die in one hit and these levels much, much longer than ever before. - Beat the platinum time in the time trial, which also requires not dying even once to accomplish - Now do it all again in the inverted stage variant Have fucking mercy. This is a kid's game! To be fair, they did bring it up to modern standards in some respects. You can turn on a brightly colored ring under your feet when you jump so you'll always know exactly where you're going to land. You can play in modern mode which gives you infinite lives and just counts how many deaths you have. You can play in a limited lives retro mode if you're a purist but I do NOT recommend doing that at all because these levels were clearly designed with the expectation that you will die over a dozen times. Even if you're up for that kind of punishment, one thing I just can't forgive is that whenever you die you have to recollect every box you've broken since your last checkpoint. I know it was like this in the old Crash games but come on. It's a 2020 game. There's no excuse for that anymore. When you are likely to die many, many times in most levels, going back and getting the boxes again every single time you do isn't fun or challenging. It's just tedious. Yes, some of the boxes are used as platforms so you need them to be there every time, but you could at least mark them somehow to indicate that the game counts it as being collected already. I can recommend this game if you're the type who can ignore collectibles and completion percentage and you just want to play a platformer without worrying about any of that stuff. If you can do that, it's a pretty fun, challenging game. If, however, you are compelled to get all the things like I usually am, just know that you are in for one of the most frustrating, infuriating, unfun grinds of your entire gaming life.

I agree, really. In Demon's Souls case I think it really needed that remake because I hated the original game and all of its inconveniences, but by and large I just want 60 FPS gameplay and maybe some updated textures. A 60 FPS patch for Bloodborne, maybe a remaster, would be more than enough for me.