Mister Jack

Yeah those lawsuits are going nowhere.

There just happens to be a sale for this franchise going on right now. Time to finally finish it.

World of Horror is pretty cool. I guess it counts as a roguelike? Each game lasts between 1-2 hours if you make it to the end and it changes every time so yeah, that seems right. The old school point and click interface isn't especially intuitive and the tutorial isn't as helpful as it probably should be but once you understand what you're doing it's not really a problem. This game takes place in Shiokawa, Japan and has you play as one of many different characters who are investigating supernatural mysteries in order to to stop the revival of an Old God. Which god you're trying to stop can be changed with each playthrough and each god has a different penalty to make it harder. For example, if the Old God of your playthrough is Cthac-Atorasu then you're rendered unable to run from battle. If it's Ithotu then you and enemies will both deal double damage. This game really makes you feel the pressure of the time limit. Every action you do slowly raises something called the doom meter. Resting to regain your HP and sanity also slowly raises it. If the doom meter gets to 100% then the Old God awakens and the world ends so you really can't screw around and waste too many actions. This game is a lot like a tabletop game in the sense that it's all about stat checks. During your investigations at different locations you'll encounter various creepy and supernatural events and if you choose to confront them then the outcome depends on a dice roll. Success can get you experience, heals, or even items while failure means taking a hit to your HP, sanity, or doom meter. You can't just run away from everything either because that's an automatic sanity penalty so you have to pick your battles carefully. To make matters worse, after every mystery the Old God's influence will increasingly corrupt Shiokawa and make it more dangerous, either by taking away valuable resources like the shop and clean water or by perverting the town itself to nerf your stats and add more enemies. Combat was the thing that confused me the most for a while but that really comes down to the tutorial not being thorough enough. It's turn based and on each turn you have 200 "time points" to spend. You can choose various actions between offensive, defensive, support, and spiritual actions, each one taking a certain amount of time to perform. Weapon attacks depend on your corresponding stat. Knife attacks are based on your DEX stat and while the damage done never changes, a higher DEX stat means each swing takes less time to perform. Likewise, using a baseball bat will check your STR stat to determine how many swings per turn you get. Each character excels in a different stat so everyone will be better with different kinds of weapons. So far I have found that the best way to win is to prioritize leveling up whatever your weapon stat is. Things like perception and charisma can be helpful in getting you allies or lowering your doom meter, but extra attacks per turn is just too useful to pass up. Of course, when you level up you also have the option of sacrificing a stat increase for a heal to your HP or sanity instead, and there will inevitably be times when you're hurting so bad that you just can't afford to pass it up, especially during times when your doom meter is high or you can't go back home to rest. It's all about risk vs reward. This game is in early access and it's still in the process of adding new characters, items, mysteries, events, Old Gods, and even mod support. There are some areas that still need improvement. Spiritual actions, the only thing that can hurt ghosts besides throwing salt at them, are way too difficult and unreliable to be useful and need a serious buff. Some of the characters are also borderline useless compared to others and need to be balanced. Thankfully, the devs have acknowledged these issues and are working to fix them. Even in its unfinished state it's a pretty fun game and I look forward to seeing it fully realized.

Bought this because I dig Junji Ito, I dig Cthulhu mythos, and I dig RPGs. It checks a lot of boxes for my personal tastes.

Today is a good day

Actually it takes place after Yakuza 6 and Yakuza 6 changes the story in a way where if he plays Like a Dragon first it will absolutely spoil things for him.

With all the craziness going on I almost totally forgot to preorder this!

Gooood morning, Republicans! Say hello to your next president!

I cannot fucking take this

The stuff about Dominants and Eikons sounds a lot like Naruto. No, actually it sounds exactly like Naruto.

Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part One Ho-lee fuck. Where do I even begin? Well how about the fact that this easily takes the difficulty crown from the base Doom Eternal as the most blisteringly hard FPS game I've ever played. To be honest it's so hard that I got frustrated more than once. It's so hard that I actually think it was a mistake for id to let people buy this as a standalone game without playing Doom Eternal first. If you haven't played Doom Eternal, you do NOT want to start with this. Ancient Gods assumes that you have not only played the base game, but mastered it to a degree that first time players will never be able to grasp. No pussies allowed here. There are only three extra large levels in this expansion, which took me maybe 10 hours to beat on ultraviolence, but at least three of those hours came down to dying over and over. The first fight, the first fucking fight in this DLC took me five tries to get past it and by the time I finished these---I repeat, three levels---I had probably died over a hundred times and you bet your ass I mean that literally. I hate to keep banging this drum but I really cannot overstate how much the difficulty has jumped in this expansion. So what makes it so much harder? For starters the encounters are much, much bigger with swarms of elite enemies, a far greater number of fodder enemies, and arenas that are full of hazards that you're pretty much guaranteed to run into over and over again. The waves are also looooooooong and you get very few checkpoints. Most of the time the game expects you to do the entire thing in one go with no deaths. That alone is tough enough, but the new demons feel specifically designed to give you the finger. The worst of them is an enemy who buffs other demons into minibosses while also removing all their weaknesses and making them immune to freeze grenades. You cannot kill this enemy without killing the buffed demon first, and even after you do that it's only vulnerable to one weapon that kills enemies very slowly, so good luck killing it without getting fucked in the butt in the process. You gotta do it though because otherwise he'll just buff another demon and you have to do it all over again. God damn. And don't even get me started on the final boss. That fight is so overwhelmingly, relentlessly unfair that I would not blame anyone who chooses to accept the super armor when the game offers it to you. Even then you might still get killed over and over. I appreciate the work that went into this expansion. They made a decent amount of content and the level design is pretty well thought out. It adds to the story and lore in cool ways and the new music, while not as good as the base game's music in my personal opinion, is still solid. My only real complaint is just how carried away they got with the challenge. Doom Eternal was pretty damn hard but it always felt fair and balanced. Ancient Gods frequently feels like the game really doesn't want you to finish it and is willing to do whatever it takes to stop you. If you're an absolute masochist, a true glutton for pain and punishment, then I wholeheartedly recommend Ancient Gods. By all means, dive in and enjoy the suffering. If you are just a casual FPS player who wants to relax and shoot stuff, however, then you might want to ask yourself if you're willing to deal with the frustration. Seriously, this game gave me actual adrenaline rushes while playing it. My hands were still shaking when I started typing this post.

I've been playing on ultraviolence and sweet Jesus, they really took off the kid gloves with this expansion. It's like they don't even care if you are able to finish it or not. I just fought through a wave with four mancubi, four cyber mancubi, at least three arachnotrons, two titans, three prowlers, three hell knights, two barons of hell, three pinkies, more carcasses than I could count, and an endless horde of imps and soldiers with shields. And this was all with no checkpoints and an electrified floor. God damn. It must have taken me 20 tries.

Being able to look up hints right there on the screen is my favorite feature too. Whenever I play games with collectibles or a bunch of secrets I've just gotten into the habit of keeping my tablet by my side to occasionally stop and look things up. Not having to do that anymore would be great.

I'm glad you said it because I have the same feeling. I loved Witcher 3 and I really want to be excited for Cyberpunk but every time I hear about it lately it's some new story about how a planned feature had to be cut or scaled down. It just gives me this nervous feeling that CDPR might have bitten off more than they can chew.

After the success of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie, I don't really buy that excuse anymore. If anything, the feedback they got was to put in more game stuff in the sequel. But Paul Anderson is most definitely a hack. No doubt about it. This soldier bullshit is something he just loves to keep falling back on like a crutch.

What the fuck is this shit? Why would you do this stupid soldier angle? God damn I am so tired of the US military being shoehorned into movies where they're not needed or wanted. The worst part is that the monsters actually look pretty accurate so clearly someone cared about trying to do it justice, but they were drowned out by the Hollywood machine. Oh and I didn't see a single palico in that trailer. Fucking trash.

I think they're also doing it for historical reasons. The Democrats surely knew that impeaching Trump would not successfully remove him from office, but he'll still be known for all time as one of only three US presidents so far to be impeached.

1) Go to Youtube 2) Search for "Tobey Maguire in the MCU" You're welcome

Trials of Mana I'm not really sure how to judge this one. By modern standards it's not very impressive, but as a remake of a game from the 90s I can tell they tried to update what they could without completely losing the spirit of the original. The new graphics, while not mind blowing, are still appreciated because it's a lot more work than just slapping on some higher resolution sprites. The gameplay is still stuck in the 90s with a few added bells and whistles but it's a remake of a 90s game so what do you expect? Unlike the FF7 remake, which is trying to capture a new, modern audience, this game is just trying to please people who were already fans of the original. Does it succeed? I can't really say since I'm not especially nostalgic for the original. The story has no more depth than it did on the Super Famicom and the voice acting is really, really bad, but I just can't bring myself to be too harsh on Trials of Mana because I feel like people who buy it should know what they're getting into. It succeeds at being what it wants to be and doesn't aim for anything higher than being the original game with better presentation and a few QoL adjustments. It's fine, probably worth getting if there's a good sale on it or something, but it's more of a casual time killer kind of game than something you should expect to get sucked into for long periods of time.

I don't care about any of those games but I do wonder why it's those specific 11 that won't work.

So far I'm up to 49 plats but that one FF7 trophy is just too much for me. Kudos for powering through that.

Now I hardly claim to have played every JRPG ever made, but at least in this console generation I've found grinding to be much less of a problem in JRPGs than it used to be, at least in the ones I've seen. I won't say it never becomes an issue because I'm sure there are still examples I'm not aware of, but by and large I only find myself having to resort to grinding if I'm doing endgame content or one particularly poorly designed boss. It's nothing like it was back in the 8 and 16 bit days when grinding was pretty much mandatory and it damn sure isn't like these western games that try to sell you XP boosters. For the most part it feels like they've figured out how much they need to guide you along the main path when it comes to exp gains. Of course, if you're the type to run away from every battle then that's another story.