Mister Jack

They absolutely deserve to be sued but it always pisses me off to be reminded that shareholders are the only ones who can ever actually force these companies to do anything.

Also, while reviews might not be "paid" in the sense that money exchanges hands, sometimes it is paid in the sense that there are reviewers on record who had to consider the possibility that their review copies and industry event access would be revoked if they were too harsh on some big budget, high profile release from a large company. Just look at all the reviewers on Youtube who no longer receive early copies from one publisher or another because they shat on a previous release.

Is it me or does this new Spider-Man movie sound like it's going to be completely awful? Three Spider-Men, Molina Doc Oc, Electro, Venom, rumors of three goblins, Chameleon, Scorpion...That crap all seems exciting in isolation but if the rumors are true then this movie is going to be so bloated there won't be any room left for a damn plot.

Monster Hunter I saw this for free. It was big and loud and dumb but not really as bad as the trailer made it look. It's kind of weird because Paul W.S. Anderson is definitely a hack but I can tell there were people working on this movie who are big fans of Monster Hunter and they tried their best to make it as much like the game as they could within the limitations they had to work with. The monsters, costumes, and weapons all look surprisingly accurate to the games to the point where I have to wonder if they consulted Capcom when designing them. The hunters even speak the Monster Hunter language from the game so there's a language barrier between Milla Jovovich's character, Artemis, and the hunter characters that requires using nonverbal communication. And yes, there is a palico that wasn't in the trailer for some reason. Of course, if you aren't already a fan of the game then the only thing that's going to have any appeal for you are the giant monster fight scenes, which are cool. This movie is kind of weird in the sense that the only thing that seems to be holding it back is the studio being afraid to spend a lot of money on it. The monsters and props all look fine, but you can tell they cut corners everywhere else they could to lower the budget. There aren't many human characters and most of the movie takes place in a desert, which I always found to be the least interesting Monster Hunter biome. If Sony was willing to take a risk and increase the budget on this franchise they could probably make a really cool fanservice movie for Monster Hunter lovers with more sets, more weapons, more monsters, and definitely more palicos. I definitely feel that the designers and effects people would be up to the task. Alas, I'm pretty sure that Sony is going to keep playing it safe by churning out low budget sequels that are serviceable enough but don't quite live up to their potential. I also have to go on a bit of a rant here. I can't stand Hollywood shoving the US military into films where they're not needed, especially movies based on toys or video games or whatever. The soldier characters in this movie don't play as big of a role as the trailer implied and they're mostly there just to show that conventional weapons are useless against monsters, but you really didn't need this in the first place. Nobody goes to see Monster Hunter or Transformers or Godzilla because they want to watch soldiers dicking around. They want to watch monsters, Transformers, and Godzilla! Can they please stop shoehorning this shit in all the time? If they did it to keep costs down, they could have just made the main character a native to the Monster Hunter world and spent first 15 minutes or so building up their backstory. The isekai bullshit was not necessary. Audiences don't need a protagonist to be from the same world they're from to get invested. In fact, Tony Jaa's hunter character was way more interesting than Milla Jovovich's soldier character and he didn't even speak English. If this had been a thing through the whole film I might have stuck it in the crap movie thread but thank god it's only a factor for maybe 15 minutes total.

If I was naming the Quarantine Game of the Year I would definitely pick Animal Crossing for that.

That's a rather odd claim since those are settings that usually cause big hits on performance in PC games. I guess I'll find out when my copy gets here.

@TheMightyEthan That video you watched, were they playing with motion blur/depth of field/chromatic aberration and all that stuff all turned on?

I really gotta play Hades at some point. Maybe in the next Steam sale.

Electoral college just solidified Biden's win. Bring on the Trump cope.

I've been hearing that patch 1.04 has brought the last gen versions into a state where it's playable and not offensively ugly. Obviously it isn't going to match the PC or next gen versions and there are still issues they're working out, but if reports are to be believed then at the very least the game isn't broken now. Of course I would have preferred that they at least delayed it until January to iron this shit out, but we all know why they didn't do that.

All the major releases for 2020 are out now and while it has been a total shitshow of a year in pretty much every facet of life at least we got some pretty good games out of it so here's the annual thread to pick your personal best along with a runner-up. I haven't played Cyberpunk 2077 yet but given the state it's currently in I feel pretty confident that my picks won't change even after I have. I pretty much knew since the beginning of the year what my GOTY was going to be: I really didn't expect that an FPS would become my favorite game of the year because lately I've become less and less interested in the genre. I think the last Call of Duty game I played was Black Ops III and I didn't even finish it. I expected to like Doom Eternal since I liked Doom 2016 but good lord they really brought their A-game for Doom Eternal. I have never played an FPS that was so punishing, yet so thrilling at the same time. Everything gets thrown at you so fast and so aggressively that you rarely have a moment to breathe during battles, but with so many tools at your disposal to even the odds this ends up being more fun than frustrating. Once you get into the groove and learn to use everything in your arsenal you'll be splattering so much blood and guts all around you that you can practically hear the 90s parents clutching their pearls in the distance. I feel like this is the game all those fearmongering news reporters were imagining in their heads back in the day because killing in a video game is rarely this exciting or this much fun. It's almost impossible to play on higher difficulties without feeling the pump of violence fueled adrenaline and I fucking love it. Rip and tear! RIP AND TEAR! Runner-Up I was really torn between this and Nioh 2. They're both great games and I was tempted to just put both of them here but that just felt cheap. Nioh 2 is an excellent game that improves on its predecessor in pretty much every way and I would recommend it to anyone who likes challenging combat but the thing that gives Yakuza just a slight edge for me is that it had bigger, bolder ambitions. While Nioh 2 refined and polished its existing formula to a shine, Yakuza: Like a Dragon completely reinvented the franchise and took a huge risk that I think paid off wonderfully. That's not to say that everything is different. You still have your cities full of activities, your wacky side stories, and your yakuza-style storyline full of twists and turns, but changing the game from a brawler to a turn-based RPG was an enormous gamble and I gotta respect them for actually making it work because that sort of thing is really easy to screw up. Even when you put that aside, there's just so much to like about this game. The characters are incredibly well-written. The minigames are addictive as hell. The story sucked me in and repeatedly turned two hour sessions into six hour sessions. The ending is unforgettable. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who snidely dismisses this game just because it's an RPG cannot call themselves a true Yakuza fan.

Not that I really care about or put much stock in The Game Awards or pretty much any award show but I have to take umbrage with The Last of Us 2 winning Best Game Direction. Never mind all the other awards, but I got a real problem with the industry giving such an accolade to a game that was made under conditions where everyone had to crunch for months at a time. That isn't good direction, let alone the best direction in the industry. It is bad direction but I guess the fact it won anyway means people really don't care about that factor after all.

Aside from a massive graphics update, Kiwami added the 4 different combat styles from Yakuza 0, new mini games and missions, the Majima Everywhere mechanic, and new story content to further flesh out characters from Yakuza 0. There's really no reason to play the original version at all except for curiosity's sake. It gets a bad rap sometimes, but mostly because 0 was such a huge, ambitious game and Kiwami is much more humble by comparison. I got Kiwami for 20 bucks and I don't regret it at all.

Yeah that poll question oughta be changed. But I think that no, he won't be dragged out because he's a coward. He'll put up a tough front for as long as he possibly can but he's not about to risk actual body harm. When he's told to GTFO, he'll leave, probably complaining the whole time about how he was cheated.

Took the words out of my mouth. Even if Yakuza 1 came before 0, the story of Kiwami is much better served by 0 devoting time to developing the characters so you'll actually care about them in Kiwami. That extra bit of context makes a huge difference.

US Supreme Court has rejected the Texas lawsuit to overturn the election. It's over. Mind you, I never expected them to do anything different but it's good to finally be done with this shit.

@FLD 3 and 4 are definitely worse. When it comes to 6 I think it's a fine game, it's just smaller scale compared to 5. It doesn't have as many activities or cities or playable characters so while I still liked 6, it just doesn't have hundreds of hours worth of content. Also I don't know who this Britney is but she's full of shit. The plot of Like a Dragon is spoiler city.

Yakuza 0 is probably tied with Like a Dragon for best game in the series depending on your tastes. I could see someone reasonably giving either game the edge based on their preferences. FLD is right, though. You shouldn't rush through 0. It has so much to offer. If I were to rank the games from best to worst to use as a reference for how much time you should spend on them, I'd probably go with 0/Like a Dragon > 5 > Kiwami 2 > Kiwami 1 > 6 > 4 > 3.

I'm gonna clarify that by saying it's a good entry point IF you don't plan to play the Kiryu saga. If you want to play the Kiryu saga and just haven't gotten around to it yet then you should do that first.

It did not

Yup, I'm in the same boat. Preordered the PS4 version just now and will eventually upgrade to PS5. It occurs to me that even when I eventually get a new PC, the PS5 hard drive will still be faster and that matters to me more than graphical upgrades.

Definitely return Watch Dogs. Everything I've seen about it suggests it's going to get a huge price drop sooner rather than later. Even then I don't know if it'd be a good idea to buy it.