Mister Jack

Bloodborne remake doesn't sound so unlikely anymore does it? But still this sucks. I would much rather have Days Gone 2. I'm pretty much done with The Last of Us entirely. I've lost interest.

I like the ones that aren't necessarily challenging but ask you to think outside the box. One of my favorite achievements is from the Ghostbusters game. You have to shoot the ham off of the bartmitzvah buffet table in the hotel level because it isn't kosher.

Picked up Crash 4 again after putting it down for a while but good god this game is unreasonably hard for a E10+ rated platformer game. Just out of curiosity I looked up a trophy guide to see how difficult it would be to 100% this and the official rating is a 9/10. To put that in perspective, the ratings for Sekiro and Bloodborne is 7.

Battlefield 1 Downloaded it alongside Black Ops III and was playing it off and on. The campaign is pretty much a glorified tutorial for the multi but it still confirms to me that I just plain prefer Battlefield's gameplay style over CoD's. There's not really much worth mentioning either way, although there was one mechanic I found pretty interesting. There are a bunch of guns in the game where if you try to reload them before you're empty, you don't just throw away the clip that still has some bullets in it but instead manually load new bullets in one at a time. Obviously this takes a lot longer to do, but I thought it added an interesting strategic element to ammo management. Do you reload early and risk getting caught with your pants down or do you wait until you're empty so you can reload faster but risk not having enough bullets in a bind? It's something I wouldn't mind seeing in more FPS games. Ammo capacity in this game is also much lower than in CoD so I was switching guns way more often.

Judgment What a ride. This is a spin-off of the Yakuza series and while I wouldn't really call it a Yakuza game because it has none of the familiar characters, not even as cameos, it does share a very similar style of gameplay and it does take place in Kamurocho. I suppose I'd call this a Kamurocho side story. However, don't let that trick you into thinking this is a game where the story is an afterthought. The plot had me riveted. You play as Takayuki Yagami, an attorney-cum-detective who gave up law when one of his former clients went on to murder his girlfriend. Yagami has begun investigating a rash of murders being perpetrated by a serial killer called The Mole, who targets yakuza and gouges out their eyes as his calling card. What starts off as a simple murder investigation ends up being full of twists and turns and it becomes so much more. I also gotta say that the killer is one of the coolest villains in the whole franchise. I'd say this one is worth experiencing for the story alone. Yagami himself isn't as memorable as Kiryu or Ichiban but he's not poorly-written or anything. His archetype just doesn't really stand out that much in comparison. We've all seen detectives with a chip on their shoulder who will do anything to get to the truth, but he's still fine for what he is. The gameplay is mostly similar to Yakuza. Yagami has two fighting styles, one for groups and one for strong solo enemies. It's not as complex as 0 or Kiwami but it's not totally mindless either. In addition to the normal fighting you can also solve cases for clients, which is the easiest way to make money. Cases usually involve interviewing people, examining crime scenes for evidence, and...ugh...tailing suspects. I swear, President Biden should sign a bill outlawing tailing missions because they're always the least fun part of any game they're in and this one is no exception. There's also a cool system in place where you can befriend certain NPCs all over Kamurocho by doing missions for them and if you do they'll help you out in their own way. Some might give you special store items or teach you new skills and some might even help you out during street fights. It's pretty neat. Not EVERY new mechanic is a winner though. If you take too long during random encounters the police will show up and you're forced to run away, lest you get caught and penalized with a 10,000 yen fine, which is a lot of money for this game. Worse than that are mortal wounds. When you're damaged with a gun or a sword it inflicts a mortal wound, which decreases the maximum size of your life bar. The only way to get rid of mortal wounds is either to visit a back alley doctor, which costs 20,000 yen, or use a medical kit, which cost 40,000 yen each. You really don't want to get shot in this game because it will seriously hurt your wallet. This is the first game in the series where I got in the habit of using human shields to block bullets. Those are fairly small complaints though. If you like the Yakuza series and you like crime dramas, this one is a winner. The tone of this game is more serious and not as over-the-top as Yakuza so you won't see Yagami singing Baka Mitai or hiring a chicken to manage his business, but you still get plenty of kickass action and compelling characters to enjoy.

You STILL haven't watched it?

PART SIX BAYBEE

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.