Mister Jack

This is pretty cool. Nioh 2 had Yasuke as an ally in the story and I thought he was one of the more interesting characters in it.

Godzilla vs. Kong This one manages to cross over the line from average to decent. Past Godzilla movies in the west have disappointed me for two main reasons. One, there's too much focus on human characters who aren't interesting. Two, the monster fights are too dark and obscured and it's hard to see the action. This movie addressed both of those complaints. While there are obviously human characters, they have less prevalence than before and there are fewer of them as well. Most importantly, there's NO MILITARY BULLSHIT. No offense to any soldiers out there but when I watch a kaiju movie the last thing I care about is some army grunt's trials and tribulations. There are jets and ships that exist just to get smashed but we don't have to follow any boring soldier characters. As for the action scenes? They're good! Godzilla and Kong are both given proper respect and while in my opinion there's a clear winner in their matchup it's not completely one-sided. The monster fights are all nice and clear. No fog, no rain, none of that other garbage to block your view. There is a fight at night but it takes place in a brightly lit city so you can easily follow what's going on. What a difference a little visibility makes. Obviously this movie isn't trying to be anything daring or innovative. It wants to be enjoyable popcorn fare and I think this one finally succeeds. There's still a little bit more human focus than I'd prefer but I can't claim that the monsters are neglected. It takes less than 15 minutes for both Kong and Godzilla to get screen time and they're never gone for long after that so good job, Legendary. There's still room for improvement but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

The last sort-of Yakuza game to cross off the list.

I just wish they had included a C-to-C cable instead of an A-to-C cable. They cost about the same so I don't know what their basis for this decision was. I already have a ton of A-to-C cables lying around.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III It was free to PS5 owners with PS+. Yeah, that sure was a Call of Duty game. It's fine but the futuristic cybersoldier mechanics don't really all all that much to the gameplay except for an enhanced HUD and hacking enemy drones. Plot was kind of creative, I suppose. You know, for a Call of Duty game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Games are definitely getting bigger but I feel like Call of Duty is an exception, not the rule. CoD games are always stupidly huge for reasons I will never understand. Even RDR2 is only half of that size.

I suppose but I think I'd rather just wait for the update, buy a 2 TB drive, and never worry about it again. That's what I did with the PS4, anyway. I'm sure games will be bigger on the PS5 but I think by the time I fill up 2 TB I'll be fine with deleting some of the older ones anyway.

Uh, no...Yours did?

I could do that, I suppose, but wouldn't that mean it wouldn't take advantage of the PS5's speed? It's better than nothing, I suppose, but I paid 500 bucks for this thing. I wanna take advantage of the perks of the hardware.

Well I had to buy a new cable to use that port in the first place, which was an extra 20 bucks, so I didn't really appreciate that. But it was either that or constantly switch out between the controller and the dongle. I have plenty of usb-A to usb-c cables lying around, but I didn't have any usb-c to usb-c because that's not a thing I ever needed until now, and I'm a guy with a fair number of usb-c devices.

Damn, my hard drive is already almost full. A terabyte really doesn't go as far as it used to, especially when a huge chunk of it is used up by system files. I can't even buy a secondary drive until Sony gets off their duff and releases the update to make it work. Guess I'll be juggling games for a while.

Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods - Part Two The absolutely insane, ball breaking difficulty of part one has been dialed back for part two. It's still pretty challenging, but it's not the hardest shooter I've ever played in my life. In fact, I've heard rumors that they patched part one to be less punishing but I haven't gone back to verify this myself. While you don't have any bullshit like huge battles in heavy fog in part two to make your life miserable, I think the main reason part two is easier than part one is because you're given a really powerful new weapon that not only does respectable AOE damage around you but also dazes enemies AND makes them drop pickups. You can't spam it endlessly but refilling the charge for it isn't hard to do so you'll probably be using it at least 3-5 times in every major battle which really helps in keeping you alive. I know it saved my bacon more than a handful of times. There are new enemies that are only vulnerable to certain weapons to keep you from being totally overpowered, but you're still in a pretty good position thanks to that weapon. The final boss fight is easier than the part one boss too, mostly because the arena isn't full of lasers and buffed enemies and other bullshit like that. It feels more like a proper duel, although the ending is a little anticlimactic after pretty much the entire Doom franchise was building up to this battle. Oh well. Still a kickass shooter and a worthy expansion to Doom Eternal.

Yeah it's disappointing but I just put the dongle into the USB slot and then put a usb-c to usb-c cable into the other port for everything else. If there is something I have to knock on the PS5's design it's that there aren't enough ports. Hooking up the VR alone took up both ports on the back.

If you want to use it wirelessly, yes.

I had pretty much the same thought. "Mass shootings are back? Gee, I guess covid really is over."

My old headset was literally falling apart. I was lucky enough to get my hands on one of these. Apparently these are also being scalped. I have to say this one is super comfortable to wear.

Zack Snyder's Justice League Boy, this is a tricky one to talk about. If this had been released in theaters back in 2017 it would have been an absolutely unbearable slog to get through. Utterly unwatchable. The freaking thing is four hours long. Imagine watching a four hour movie with no intermission to take a bathroom break or stretch your legs or anything. It never would have worked. Watching at home on demand, though? It's...passable. I watched this movie over three sittings and when I did it like that it was okay. I do appreciate that the movie was broken up into six parts so you could easily digest it in chunks. Two parts per viewing worked pretty well for me. As hard as it is to divorce the movie's length from its quality otherwise, I'm gonna try to do that here and say that the film is kind of a mess. It just has too many moving parts and it gets dull at times. I'm not going to put all the responsibility for this on Snyder, though. He had the unenviable task of having to make an ensemble film with characters where several of them didn't even have movies of their own to establish them beforehand. A lot of the new footage is for building up these characters. Does it work? Ehh, I only really think it worked for Cyborg, but I appreciate that Snyder was trying his best. There's still a lot of Snyder trash in here though. If they cut out all the slow motion I bet it would have shaved 30 minutes off the film's run time. I also watch with subtitles because of hearing issues and I can't tell you how many times I saw [Ancient lamentation music playing] on the screen. Snyder has his cliches that he just can't let go of and he certainly didn't decide to let go of them here. The last half hour or so also has nothing to do with the story at hand and is just meant to build up a sequel. I would say it should have been cut off and saved for another movie, but they're probably never coming back to the Snyder stuff so I guess they wanted to just dump everything they had and then wash their hands of it? I don't know. At least the action scenes are generally better and not chock full of that shaky cam nonsense. If I have to choose between slow motion and shaky cam, I'm picking slow motion every time. Of course, all the extra footage is only going to do so much to fix the movie. At its core it's still average at best. Cyborg and Steppenwolf's designs still look really stupid, even if Cyborg as a character is better than he was. The Flash is still really annoying and unfunny and that bugs me because I usually love Flash. The conflict is pretty much over the moment Superman shows up during the final battle, but to be fair each member does still feel like they have an important role to play. The pacing is all over the place. Still, I suppose it is better than the theatrical cut. Of course, being better than a total piece of crap isn't saying much, but it was an interesting watch just to see HOW different it was.

The Otto lab ones with the circuits and the chemicals. I did them all back on the PS4 but they just break up the pace too much.

Man Spider-Man is much more fun to play when you have the option to skip all those stupid puzzles.

Sony reveals the next-gen VR controller It's pretty much everything I was hoping for, especially the tracking without a camera, so I'm pretty delighted.

What worries me is that Microsoft might try to pull an EA/Ubi/Epic and decide to pull all their games from Steam and make you buy it from the Microsoft store. Just the thought makes me want to vomit, and we know that Microsoft intends to buy up more studios so this is absolutely a possibility. An even worse possibility is that they might remove the ability to buy them at all and make you subscribe to their service if you want to play the games. That probably wouldn't happen now, but in 5 years time? They tried to force an always online console so I'm not putting anything past those fuckers.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales Well that was short. There's an okay amount of side content but I still think this is about 10 dollars too expensive. Putting the price aside, this is a good expansion that does a decent job establishing Miles as a character. I'm glad they set Miles up in a spin-off game so that we won't have to waste a bunch of time doing his spider training in the sequel and the plot can just focus on the main story. The venom powers and invisibility are pretty cool additions. Other than that it's pretty much just more of Insomniac's Spider-Man so it's as good as you would expect.

Yeah, I'm not buying Gamepass just for one studio's games. This is Epic Store shit and it pisses me off. I don't want an Xbox and getting a PC that will be good enough to play next-gen releases is just not going to happen anytime soon because PCs are just too god damn expensive now. Whenever I do manage to afford one, however, I'm definitely not resorting to Gamepass just for Doom, Fallout, and Elder Scrolls. If they try to keep those games from Steam and make them Microsoft Store or Gamepass only then I'll grey market or even pirate that crap with no remorse. Say what you will about exclusives being bad but at least Nintendo and Sony typically make their own exclusives.

@Thursday Next It almost feels like the cling ring is mandatory unless you're a total god at the game, which I am not. That's a pet peeve of mine in general with some games, not just Demon's Souls. I hate it when I feel like I'm required to play a certain way to get anywhere, like when Hollow Knight doesn't even show where you are on the map unless you use up some accessory slots for the privilege of a map marker.

Demon's Souls Remake Okay, so I liked this game. I didn't love it, but I liked it. The lightning fast load times, buttery smooth performance, and quality of life improvements went a long way toward warming me up to Demon's Souls, but I have to say that there is still some stupid bullcrap that is intrinsic to the game itself and was never going to be changed. I don't like the world tendency system. It just cuts you off from content if you're not in the right tendency. It also makes the game harder if you're doing poorly, which is the opposite of how it should be. In fact, I really can't think of anything positive or interesting that this whole system adds. Being blocked off from paths or having extra enemy spawns because you're in the wrong tendency is dumb. It wouldn't bother me so much if getting white tendency didn't require killing other players in PVP, which can be easier said than done in a Souls game. I also REALLY hate that your health bar is cut in half when you die. Is it not enough that I get sent all the way back to the beginning of the level and lose all my souls in the process? You have to take off 50% of my life bar too? Granted, you can get your life bar back by doing co-op, pvp, or using a certain consumable item, but if you die as a human then it fucks up your world tendency so you're really just better off staying in soul form the whole time. See why I hate the tendency system? The humanity in Dark Souls was much more fair, and even then I thought it was a dumb system. That's why I'm glad Bloodborne just gives you the bells to summon or be summoned with and you don't have to worry about all that bullcrap. Those things irritate me just as much now as they did back on the PS3. However, the changes made in the remake are just enough for me to say that my time with Demon's Souls was more positive than negative. If I discount the shiny new graphics and next-gen performance I'd probably still call it my second to least favorite game in the Souls series after Dark Souls 2. I didn't hate it though, so I call that progress.