Mister Jack

@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.

Danganronpa v3: Killing Harmony What the fuck did I just play? No, seriously. This franchise has officially gone off the rails. I could talk about the gameplay tweaks, some of which were sorely needed, but never mind that shit. The real elephant in the room is the story, which is the most important part of a visual novel. That makes it impossible to talk about without spoilers so the non-spoiler stuff I'll say is that for the most part I liked the characters in this entry. With some exceptions I found them overall to be more compelling than a lot of the previous entries' characters. I found fewer of them to be annoying wastes of time, although I did not care for the new Monokub characters. They really serve no purpose other than to be forced comic relief and Monokuma was already doing that on his own. Alright, so with that aside, I just gotta talk about the ending... So yeah, even with the improvements to the gameplay and the cast of compelling characters I would still call this entry the weakest of the three. Even if I put aside my distaste for the ending, there are some real pacing problems. The prologue and the ending drag on for way, way too long and some of the new minigames during trials also last too long and mess up your momentum right when you're on a roll with your deductions. I wouldn't go as far as to say it's a bad game. The trials are still fun for the most part and there are cool new mechanics like telling lies to advance your case. I'm just flabberghasted that all of this turned out to be in service to a story that was so fucking stupid.

To the best of my knowledge, yes. They're definitely trying their damndest to give this series mainstream appeal with all this extra effort.

Something else Yakuza related that I noticed recently is that not only do they have both the original Japanese dub and an English dub, but they also did separate lip syncing for both languages. To make it even better, if you choose to play in Japanese with English subtitles you get a different script that sticks more closely to the original dialogue as opposed to the more localized (but still very good) English script. Having more language options like this is fantastic and it should happen way more often than it does.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon Man I have a lot to say about this game. For starters, this has easily become one of my favorite games of the year. A lot of people scoffed when they heard Yakuza would be moving to a turn-based RPG format but it's not a joke. They took it quite seriously and did their best to make a real, respectable RPG. Most Yakuza games take around 20-30 hours to beat the story so I figured this would be a smaller scale RPG but I was dead wrong. By the time the credits rolled I had clocked in 51 hours. This is a full-fledged turn based RPG that deserves to stand among the giants of the genre. There is room for improvement in a possible sequel, but this is a great first effort. Combat is interesting. While it is turn based like what you're probably already familiar with, there are things to consider regarding positioning and timing. There's no battle screen and everyone just fights at whatever location they happen to be standing at, which can be important. If you attack an enemy who is standing near furniture or a trash can or something else like that then your characters will pick up whatever object is in their path and use it as a weapon for extra damage. If you're fighting near a road you can even kick enemies into oncoming traffic if you hit them at the right angle. While you can't manually control where your characters are standing or walking during battle, your position is something to keep in mind when choosing commands, especially since enemies you aren't targeting can knock you out of an attack if you happen to run past them while trying to reach a far off enemy. There's also an interesting mechanic where certain strong attacks can knock enemies down and if you hit them while they're down it's a guaranteed critical. However, despite being a turn based game enemies recover from being knocked down in real time and will only stay down on the ground for a few seconds. You have to follow up quickly to get that damage bonus but that also means sacrificing a chance to heal or use a skill. You have to decide what's more worthwhile and you don't have much time to do it. There's also a job system here and while it's not as deep as something like Final Fantasy it still gives you enough freedom to decide what kind of role you want each party member to play. You can even your cell phone during battle to call in summons for hugely powerful attacks, but each summon costs money and the stronger the summon the more it costs so you'd better not neglect your bank account. The story is great and probably the best in the series since Yakuza 0. Ichiban Kasuga is a wonderful protagonist and more than worthy of picking up where Kiryu left off. Ichiban himself is nothing like Kiryu in terms of personality, strength, or intelligence and this is a good thing because it allows him to have his own identity and not just be Kiryu Jr. The party members are all compelling and fleshed out with stories of their own that are easy to get invested in. The voice actors all give great performances as usual. Even the English dub, which hasn't been done since the PS2 days, is very high quality. I can honestly say that people who choose to play in English would not be missing out or getting an inferior experience. Both the Japanese and English cast really gave it their all. The ending also provided a satisfying, emotional payoff that even got me a little misty eyed at certain points. I don't know if they plan to make a sequel to this game. I would assume so since it's such a big franchise for Sega, but if the creator were to decide he wanted to retire the Yakuza series and move on to something else, the plot of this game would be a good way to wrap up the series. Oh, and it wouldn't be Yakuza without side activities and the activities here might be the best yet. You got your batting cages, golf center, classic Sega arcade games (of which this game has the best selection in the series), battle arena, shogi, mahjong, and karaoke like in other Yakuza games, but there's also an addictive business management side game that can make you filthy rich AND a Mario Kart style go-kart circuit called Dragon Kart, both of which have their own separate storylines! It's just crazy how much effort they put into things that some players might never even touch. That's not even a complete list of everything you can do. I'm deliberately leaving out some things that weren't in the advertising so people can discover it for themselves. This game, like every other Yakuza game, can keep you busy for a long, long time if you let it. I usually try to find things to criticize when giving my thoughts on a game but I really don't have many complaints. The biggest thing I think they could fix for the sequel would be to give you direct control over where your characters move during a fight so you can plan out those environmental attacks more deliberately. I should also mention that while about 75% of the game is fairly forgiving, there is a massive jump in difficulty during that last 25% that will almost certainly require level grinding. Fortunately, right around the time you hit that point the game provides you with a pretty efficient way to level up so it's not the end of the world, but the fact it does that at all shows that they knew exactly how much of a spike there was going to be. I know why they chose to do this but it's still kind of jarring. So yeah, I loved the hell out of this game and even after 51 hours I still have a ton to do. I haven't even beaten Dragon Kart yet! And that's not even getting into the stuff that only opens up after you've beaten the main story. This is the kind of game you can easily play for 100, maybe even 200 hours. It's the perfect quarantine RPG. Oh yes, regarding the whole "is it okay to start here" debate I would say the following. If you have no intention of playing the Kiryu saga and want to jump into this as your first Yakuza game, you should be able to do so without feeling completely lost. While past events in the series are frequently referenced, it isn't mandatory for you to have played the games detailing said events to be able to follow the story of this one. Just accept that they happened and you'll be fine. If, however, you are still working your way through the Kiryu saga then you should be warned that this game WILL spoil the ultimate fates of many characters and storylines. Like a Dragon doesn't exist in a vacuum. Many things that happen in the plot are the consequences of things that happened in earlier games.

Yeah I used to have a bad habit of buying multiple games at once and not playing most of them. I now try to never get more than two at a time at the absolute most unless there's a limited time sale or the game is something that will be going out of print before long.

Can't fuck up the Yakuza without a kickass soundtrack while you do it.