Mister Jack

You got me, Steam Sale. I resisted the last few you did but you finally got me.

Code Vein Wow, I hated this game, which sucks because I really didn't want to. I went into it with reasonable expectations, figuring it wouldn't be as good as Nioh or Bloodborne but that it would still be solidly enjoyable. Holy shit was I wrong. I usually try not to rely on summons in these games too much but I basically speedran this game with summons almost the entire time because I wanted to get it over with. Okay, so before I take a giant dump on it I'll mention the few things I did like. The story is interesting. Not a masterpiece by any means, but it was neat enough for me to be willing to suffer through the gameplay to see where it was going. There are multiple endings, which is nice, but fuck playing this game twice. The music can also be pretty good sometimes, and there are some ideas in the gameplay that I liked. I liked having an AI companion with me at all times who was actually quite helpful, although you can choose to leave them behind if you really want to go it alone (you don't). I also liked what they were going for with the class system, although the execution is a little hard to understand at first. Lastly, I liked that you could summon pretty much whenever you want and you don't need to farm any consumable items to play co-op. In fact, a co-op partner doesn't even replace your AI partner so you can have a party of 3. I would like to see more games of this genre that are built around actual parties like most JRPGs rather than just you going it alone all the time. However, it must be said that while you're summoning you can't rest at checkpoints or use items, which is really stupid and arbitrary. Alright, that's where my praise ends. This game sucked. Frame drops, bad load times, combat that just has no weight, a severe lack of enemy types, cheap and frustrating bosses, only a handful of weapons, and level design that is shockingly, embarrassingly bad. Don't even get me started. Cathedral of the Sacred Blood might be the worst level design I have ever seen in a modern game. The others aren't that much better. Not only are they boring to look at, full of narrow corridors, easy to get lost in, and chock full of WAY too many bottomless pits, but most of them have some kind of annoying gimmick. Imagine if every level in Dark Souls was Blighttown. Hell, these levels make Blighttown look like Anor Londo. Hey, you want an ice level where the ground always breaks beneath you and plunges you to your death? No? How about a fire level where you are forced to constantly take damage by walking over burning hot pathways because there's no other route available? Still no? How about a swamp where your movement speed is constantly halved? Pick your poison! Thank god I bought this used. I'm getting my money back on this piece of shit tomorrow. Fuck this game! Watch it go!

I'm on the fence about Code Vein so far. I knew it was going to be inferior to Nioh 2 but it's got some performance issues, the level design so far is kind of bland, and the second boss was way way too hard for the beginning of the game. I am willing to look past all of that, but what's harder to overlook is that the combat feels a little clunky. It's not really as responsive as a Souls game and it definitely isn't as responsive as Nioh. I'm willing to give this game a little longer to see if I come around but if I don't get used to it in the next day or two I might just refund it.

I've finished Nioh 2 with 100% but I still have an itch for this kind of game so I picked this up. I have heard that it's not as good as Nioh but I only paid 20 bucks for it so it's fine.

Well, Nioh 2 is officially platinumed. It didn't take as long as I thought it would since New Game+ difficulty is much more generous with handing out skill points for your weapons. I had already mastered the katana and odachi during my normal playthrough and going through again on NG+ I was able to master two weapon types per day. I'm done for now, but I'm looking forward to the DLC.

They really upped their game for the Nioh 2 music. This soundtrack is badass.

Nioh 2 This game solidifies the Nioh series as the best Souls type game not made by From. In fact, I actually enjoyed this more than some of the From games because the combat is just so much more complex and rewarding. About the only other game that can deliver samurai battles as frantic as this is Sekiro. Ghost of Tsushima will certainly have its work cut out for it when it comes out. They didn't change too much from the first game, though. There's a new counter mechanic that comes in three different styles and you can also now absorb enemy souls to use their moves in battle, which is a mechanic I always love to see. Other than that it isn't too different. They took what already worked and added more. More weapons, more enemies, more levels, more everything. You now create your own character instead of having to play as William, which is nice, and the story, while nothing amazing, is also better than the story in the first game. I don't know if it's just because I've had a lot of practice but this game felt easier than the first one, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's no bullshit 2-on-1 samurai duels in this game, and thank god because those were way more frustrating than fun in the last game. Yokai abilities are also much more versatile than the living weapon from before, and the new counter moves give you lots of options to create openings. That's not to say it's a cakewalk. I still dropped many an F-bomb while going through this game. The enemies didn't really get weaker or dumber, it's just that you now have more tools to deal with them. You absolutely have to learn how to use these tools too because you will not get by just blocking and dodging. That's what makes the combat in Nioh so great, though. There's so many different ways to approach a fight and there are probably dozens of viable strategies out there for every single boss. I platinumed the last game and I think I'm going to try to do the same here, although this requires mastering every single type of weapon and I went through the whole game using just the katana and the odachi so I'm probably in for a long grind.

CRASH IS BACK Now do Spyro next!

I would love to see an updated version of the Persona 2 duology as well. They were good games held back by a bad encounter rate and load times and a PC port could fix that. Of course this is probably not going to happen since they're so old. I'll just cross my fingers for an enhanced P3 port.

I mean, obviously I was going to buy this.

Nioh 2 is reminding me just how much fun the Nioh gameplay can be, and now it's even better. Yokai moves feel a lot more rewarding than the living weapon system of Nioh 1 and on top of that this feels like the leap from Dark Souls to Bloodborne in the sense that there's now a high risk/high reward counter move that you can use to turn an enemy's unblockable attacks against them. This game is also hard as fuck, much harder than the early game of Dark Souls was, but I'm not struggling as much as I did in the beta because now I can actually properly customize my character to my preferred playstyle. Three player co-op is also a lot of fun but it completely breaks the game even after it increases the enemy spawns to account for the extra help. I'm trying not to abuse it but it's a great way to farm for items and exp when you join someone else's game. You get to keep half of the exp you earn as a visitor even if you lose and you get multipliers if you win so that's a nice incentive to help out if you need to level grind. Out of all the Souls copycats out there, this series is probably my favorite. Combat just feels so damn good and now there's even more depth to it than before.

Probably the last game I buy for a while unless P4G is confirmed for the PC. I am not really feeling Last of Us 2 right now. The state of the world at the moment is already depressing enough without playing a game that even the developers say will make you miserable.

Has there been any official statement saying it's a small scale spin off? Because the rumors I've heard are claiming it's a full fledged game. I don't know what to believe.

Yakuza 6: Song of Life The final chapter in Kiryu's story is a controversial one, and I sorta understand why. After Yakuza 5 expanded everything with more characters, more side activities, bigger stakes, and pretty much just more everything, Yakuza 6 scales it back quite a bit. You only play as Kiryu again and instead of five cities you have two now: Kamurocho and Hiroshima. The plot is also far more personal to Kiryu now and the Tojo clan itself actually plays a fairly minor role in this story. Kiryu is no longer concerned about the Tojo clan whatsoever and all he cares about anymore is protecting his family. While I can sympathize with people who may have been disappointed by this because they wanted a big, explosive grand finale, I actually don't mind a smaller, more intimate storyline and think it's rather appropriate. Kiryu is getting on in years by now and he can't keep doing this forever. He's tired of being pulled back into the yakuza life and he just wants to put it all behind him and retire with his kids, but his shady past has come back to haunt him by directly putting his loved ones in the crosshairs and he's forced to take care of business one last time. While this entry still has plenty of humor and silliness, you get a real sense of fatigue from Kiryu. He's just so done with this shit. On a side note, Beat Takeshi of all people plays a major role in this game. You know, that guy who designed one of the most frustrating video games of all time because he hates video games and wanted to give a middle finger to the people who play them. I dunno how Sega got him to agree to this, but he does a pretty great job. The gameplay hasn't changed all that much, but the biggest addition seems to be a new RTS style minigame based around building up your own clan and pitting them against other clans. I only did a few of these matches myself so I don't have a lot to say about it. It's there if you want something to kill time with, I suppose, and I think it also can be played online so that's cool, but I was never really big on the RTS genre. It's kind of bittersweet to say goodbye to Kiryu. This entry definitively closes the book on his saga, but I think that's fine. Some people are pissed that the next game switches protagonists and has changed to an RPG, but Kiryu has suffered enough. If he came back as the protagonist it would be a total copout after the way they wrapped up this game. After playing 7 brawler games I'm also not opposed to the Yakuza team trying a new genre either. What I've seen of Yakuza 7 so far looks pretty cool and I'm looking forward to revisiting this franchise in Ichiban's shoes.

Bleach is doing the same thing and I have similar feelings. The original manga ending was rushed and half assed because Kubo's publisher only gave him 5 chapters to wrap it up. I hope the upcoming anime adaptation diverges from that.

One concern I have is that built in controller microphone. I really hope you can turn that crap off or at least limit it to a push-to-talk functionality. I don't want it picking up everything I'm saying at all times, nor would I want it picking up ambient noise.

Interesting conference. I can't help but notice that there's still no price. Neither Microsoft or Sony seem to want to be the first one to fire that bullet for obvious reasons. Actually getting to finally see the console was nice, although I wish they'd gone into detail about the hardware and the OS a little more. They sure showed a lot of games, and while only a handful of them personally interest me there's still more good stuff than you usually get during a launch window. I told myself I was going to wait on the PS5 until there were five games I want to play on it but they already revealed three or four so good job, Sony. It was certainly better than the Xbox reveal earlier this year so I'll give them a solid B.

This whole "defund the police" movement is not going to pick up steam the way BLM did simply because it's so ill-defined. Everyone seems to have their own idea of what defunding the police actually means and both presidential candidates have already come out against the idea, which makes the whole thing moot. Abolishing the police system entirely and leaving law enforcement to some kind of wild west community system—which some people are absolutely supporting—is a ludicrous fantasy that shouldn't even be acknowledged. "Defund the police" is also a terrible slogan that is red meat for conservatives to tear apart during an election year specifically because it sounds so extreme to the average layman. They really should have gone with something else to put on their signs. If you always have to explain and clarify that it doesn't actually mean what it sounds like it means then it's a bad slogan. On a side note, domestic violence calls are one of the deadliest and most volatile emergency calls in the country. Like it or not, you need to keep police on those. Maybe if we didn't have a second amendment it would be different but it is what it is. In fact, our gun culture in general is gonna be a pretty big obstacle to any movement to scale back the police system in the US. I think at best we'll be able to dismantle especially problematic departments and hire new ones and maybe establish some kind of federal police oversight bureau. I sure would love it if the for-profit prison system could also go fuck itself but that seems even less likely to happen from where I'm standing.

Does that bundle only include stuff that's in it at the time you buy it or do you get to keep the new games they add? Because if it's the former I might as well wait until the last day.

If they do P3 it needs to be more than a mere port. Portable, despite the downgrade, still ended up being the best version to play just because your can actually control your damn party members. We can't go back to the days of MARIN FUCKING KARIN in 2020.

Come ooon Persona 4 Golden port! @TheMightyEthan There's no way they're announcing Persona 6 this early. They just put out P5R a little while ago and these games take yeeeeears to come out.

Let's do this, Kiryu. One last ride.

Yakuza 5 I'd say this one is probably the best game in the remastered collection and I can see why this was the only one to get a special PS3 case. There are now five playable characters, although one of them doesn't do any actual fighting and is instead used for an idol based rhythm game. You may ask what japanese idols have to do with the yakuza, but that all gets explained. Actually, this game probably has the most complicated plot in the series. In addition to having more playable characters than ever there are also five cities this time around scattered all over Japan and all of them have their own side plot but are also relevant to the larger plot overall. It's a lot to swallow and if you haven't kept up with all the previous entries you'll probably get hopelessly lost. This is not a series where you can just skip entries and expect to keep up. Story aside, this entry has by far the most amount of side content to amuse yourself with, including activities that aren't available in any other Yakuza game. If you want a Yakuza game chock full of stuff to do, this is the one for you. Still, while this is the best of the remastered collection I would probably still put it below the Kiwami style games, which just feel better to play. Like I said before, this collection is not a series of remakes. They're simply remasters, which means they don't have all the gameplay improvements of the Kiwami games. For 20 dollars per game, however, you really can't complain too much. I'm glad I played these and I enjoyed experiencing the missing chapters in the Kiryu saga, even if they got completely bonkers at some points.

I've actually heard the same thing about Drake but it was so long ago I couldn't give you a source on that anymore.