Mister Jack

I think you mean Horizon: One Fine Afternoon

Oh yeah, I'm keeping an eye on this one. I haven't watched the Lodoss anime since high school but I'm much more interested in how closely they're adhering to the style of Symphony of the Night, which is my favorite game of all time. Even if you wanna accuse it of being a copycat, my only big complaint about Symphony is that there isn't more of it so this will be right up my alley.

I kinda feel where you're coming from. I switched to console gaming exclusively a while back because my PC was having heating issues every time I tried to play on it and I was sick of paying for repairs so I told myself I'd save up for a new one later on. PC prices just keep going up, though, and I have to ask myself if I really miss it that badly. I'm sure I'll probably get a new PC eventually, but I'll probably be good with PS5/Switch for a good while. Any PC exclusive I'm interested in right now is already an indie game that will play on a potato and as much as I like 60+ frames on my games I am pretty reluctant to pay the exorbitant prices that are out there right now to achieve it.

I doubt Trump has even heard of Posse Comitatus until today, and even if he has I bet he cares even less about adhering to it. I expect nothing to change unless Trump gets voted out in November. I'm not really a Biden guy—although he's certainly better than the alternative—but at least he's pledged to establish a police oversight board if he's elected. Whether that would work or not is anyone's guess but at least it's an attempt to fix this situation.

Yakuza 4 This one was better than Yakuza 3. The plot has better pacing, but it ties all the way back to Yakuza 0 so if you're not paying attention it can be easy to get lost. There are also some retcons in here that not everyone is going to like but that's a matter of opinion. Regardless, you don't spend 33% of the game at an orphanage. In fact, in addition to Kiryu you are now also playing as three other characters. There's Akiyama the loan shark, Saejima the convict, and Tanimura the cop. They all have different fighting styles and storylines that eventually intertwine near the end, and just as you start to get tired of playing one character it switches you to another. Some people might not like having to play as people besides Kiryu but I found these characters to be likable and well-written. Tanimura is maybe the weakest of the four, but not by a huge margin and only because cop stories aren't as interesting as Yakuza stories to me. The gameplay outside of that hasn't changed a whole lot so I don't have much else to say about it. I'd rank it above 3 but maybe not quite up there with Kiwami.

Hope you guys have been enjoying covid-19 because all of this is definitely going to ensure that it's with us for a long, long time.

The Irishman Let's just address the elephant in the room right off the bat. This movie is really long. Three and a half hours long! I watched it all in one sitting and I'm telling you now that it did not have to be that long. The last half hour, maybe even 45 minutes could have been chopped off or at least condensed and the movie wouldn't suffer from it. I get what Scorsese was going for but he could have made the point more succinctly. I watched this all in one sitting and by the end I was anxious for it to just get it over with. If you decide to watch it, I'd recommend doing it in two sittings so you won't lose patience like I did. Length aside, this is an interesting story about the life of mobster Frank Sheeran and his friendship with Jimmy Hoffa, along with the complications that entails since anyone who has ever picked up a history book knows that things don't end well for Jimmy Hoffa. Everyone gives solid performances, though Al Pacino as Hoffa is especially good, and the digital deaging technology used on De Niro, Pesci, and Pacino is surprisingly convincing. I personally never found it distracting, at any rate. If I have to criticize the script for something it's that sometimes it feels a little unfocused. It starts off as a biography of how Frank gets into the mob life, then it becomes all about Hoffa, but in between all of this there are these Forrest Gumpesque vignettes about historical events like the Bay of Pigs or the Kennedy assassination and how those things affected the mob. To be fair, these events aren't just there for little cameos like in Gump and the historical events in question have direct repercussions for the A-plot, but I still think some of that stuff ended up distracting from the more interesting Hoffa drama. There's also very little of that black comic relief you get in other Scorsese films like Wolf of Wall Street or Goodfellas. This is a serious drama through and through, but if you're down for that then it's a pretty good mafia film.

It'll be a while before I get to this one probably but it was at a good price and I didn't want to miss out.

I think Nintendo said recently not to expect a direct any time soon but instead they'll randomly be dropping trailers like they did for Paper Mario.

A dataminer has FINALLY figured out what determines if villagers move out or not.

Start with 0. It's the best in the series and also the first chronological chapter. Even if you decide not to continue after you finish it, it's still a great game all on its own.

Yakuza 3 So the first to get out of the way is to point out that this is NOT a Kiwami style remake. This is pretty much the original game as it was released except with updated textures and a new localization. As such, well, there's just no way around it. The gameplay is outdated. Really outdated. Only one martial arts style that feels pretty limited, unskippable cutscenes that you can't even pause unless you hit the PS button, an inferior hostess club side quest, a lack of interesting games to play at Club Sega, and on top of all that there isn't even a run button this time around. You get a second city to play around in with Okinawa in addition to Kamurocho, but the truth is that Okinawa just isn't all that interesting. There's a lot working against this game in 2020. Thankfully, this is a game that's salvaged by its story. The crime drama that's at play here, while not as compelling as 0, Kiwami, or Kiwami 2 in my personal opinion, is still interesting enough that I wanted to keep going to the end. Even a lesser Yakuza plot is still going to be about ten times better than the plot of most games out there. However, I do take issue with the pacing. While the yakuza drama is good once it gets going, it takes its sweet time getting there. Kiryu spends roughly a third of the game just dicking about at an orphanage in Okinawa with very little actual yakuza stuff involved. You're mostly taking care of these orphans and helping them with their problems, and while I do see the appeal in showing Kiryu's softer side and the importance of fleshing out his family I still feel like a little too much time was spent on these kids. Fortunately, the backwater yakuza family in Okinawa happens to be pretty likable and I think they were pretty good additions to the franchise. I'm not gonna lie, I doubt I'll go back to this one anytime soon. I didn't hate it but out of all the Yakuza games I've played so far this one is easily the weakest entry. Maybe that's unfair to say when the other games I've played were made with modern design sensibilities in mind, but it is what it is. Still, I bought the remastered trilogy as a bundle so I figured I might as well play through all of them. Even if you plan on buying them digitally, I still don't know that I would recommend skipping this one because then you'll be missing a huge chunk of the overall plot. If you want to play the complete Kiryu saga then I would say just go ahead and get this one and blaze through the main story missions quickly before moving on to Yakuza 4.

Final Fantasy VII Remake This was pretty great...for the most part. First and foremost, it's kind of surreal that I actually played a Final Fantasy VII remake in the first place. It's like catching a unicorn. Anyway, the new combat system is one of the best in the franchise and I mostly enjoyed the expanded story content they did. Characters like Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie who were pretty minor before have been greatly expanded upon among others and for the most part it works. There are also some new characters who can be kind of hit or miss, but I didn't hate any of them. I think the new stuff is mostly fine except for two things. The first issue is that there's a little too much padding. The side quests are almost all a "go here and kill this" or "go collect these" affair, which isn't very thrilling but you still want to do them for the rewards and extra exp. As for the second issue... Still a pretty great and challenging game and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. Maybe I'll go back later to replay optional stuff I didn't get around to, but for now I'm moving on to Yakuza 3.

Got this on sale. Now I can finally see the rest of Kiryu's story. Until, you know, I gotta play Yakuza 6.

SCOOB! Okay so this one is kind of odd. It's not a very good movie, but at the same time it's kind of enjoyably bad? While I can't prove it, I feel pretty sure that WB is trying to kickstart some kind of Hanna-Barbera cinematic universe because this movie has quite a few cameos from characters who aren't originally part of Scooby-Doo. It's pandering for sure, but it's the kind of pandering that directly targets me so I couldn't help but feel happy when another character I recognized came onto the screen. Unfortunately they also recast Mystery Inc, except for Scooby himself, and I do not like the new voices at all. Daphne is passable I guess but the rest just don't sound good. I'm really tired of Hollywood hiring mediocre voice actors because they want a big name attached to the project. Frankly, the names they did attach aren't even that big. There's also this really forced conflict about how Shaggy and Scooby leave in the beginning because a cringy celebrity cameo that's quite literally 10 years out of date tells them that they don't contribute anything to the team. Then Fred, Daphne, and Velma are made out like the bad guys for driving them away even though they never said a single line that implied they felt that way. The plot is also really weird and ridiculous, even for a cartoon. Think Scooby-Doo live action movie plot weird and it's not far off the mark, although this was still better than that movie. There's also some real eye-rolling "heartwarming" dialogue about the power of friendship. Barf. So what did I like? Well some of the jokes actually did make me laugh. They don't all land, far from it, but enough of them landed for me to consider myself entertained. Dick Dastardly was also a pretty fun villain, every bit as conniving and mustache twirling as you'd expect him to be. My favorite character actually ended up being Dynomutt, who is surprisingly way better than his original version. The original Dynomutt was a doofy, bumbling screwup like every animal sidekick in the 60s and 70s, but this Dynomutt is actually highly competent and put-upon while Blue Falcon is a bumbling superhero who never listens to Dynomutt's good advice. That's a much more amusing dynamic to me. So while I wouldn't go as far as to urge anybody to check this out, I will say that I think it could provide some dumb fun if you decide to watch it with no expectations.

Well I can check the Persona 5 Royal platinum off of the list now. This one was actually easier to get than the vanilla version's platinum. You don't even have to beat the twins or complete the persona compendium, although you do have to beat the Reaper. It gives me the impression that they made the trophies specifically for people who already did everything in the last version and wouldn't feel like doing it a second time.

It looks okay but that's kind of the problem. It just looks okay, like every other open world game ever made. It would probably be fun enough if I play it, but do I want to spend $60 on something that looks like I've already played it a hundred times? I don't know. I might just get Nioh 2 instead.

I am still pretty tired of games that try some fourth wall meta bullcrap like whoa maybe you're a bad person for playing such an awful game! It was okay when Spec Ops did it because it was a relatively new idea at the time but now it just annoys me. If you're going to shame me for playing your game then you better have given it away for free because otherwise you people are gigantic hypocrites. Yeah, maybe I'm playing something violent and messed up but you're the ones who spent years making it and are now profiting off of it so what's that say about you?

The clock rolled over while I was waiting in line to sell at a lucrative island. I didn't realize turnips always spoiled on Sunday no matter what. I bought them from a time traveler and assumed they'd be good for seven days on my non-time traveling Switch but that is not the case at all. Thankfully I have since managed to bounce back by using the last of my bells to go back in on turnips AFTER Sunday and sell them for a 3 million bell profit on another island, but boy did that get hairy for a while. If that last Hail Mary maneuver hadn't panned out I would have been completely fucked. I felt like the Wolf of Wall Street, checking turnip exchanges online and making a mad dash for the best islands before they filled up. Seriously, those queues can go from 0 to 50 in just the few seconds it takes to click on the button to join. Turnips be crazy.

I don't even have to look it up to know Trump hasn't found shit.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I JUST LOST OVER A MILLION BELLS IN THE TURNIP MARKET NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Sooner than I expected! I already got the season pass with the deluxe edition so bring it on!

So how are they gonna explain away this one?

God I am so tired of picture based captchas, especially the "click verify once all pictures of X are cleared" kinds. I tried to sign into my PSN account on my laptop and had to load and then dismiss a picture of a fire hydrant six times. Enough!

I really wish they'd have her stick around all day on Sunday. Or at least until 5 PM or something. Or hell, move her time frame so she shows up at a time later than 5 in the freaking morning.