Mister Jack

Thank god the mongols only have a handful of these archers.

I'm not really much of a Biden Stan but I sure hope he beats Trump in an absolute landslide in November. Not just so he'll be indisputably labeled as a loser for the rest of time but also so the GOP might finally be forced to do some god damn introspection for once and ask themselves how they need to change if they want to win next time.

Nioh 2: The Tengu's Disciple It's pretty short with just two main missions that last about an hour each if you don't die and a handful of side missions that can range from 10 to 30 minutes each depending on skill level and mission type, but the whole season pass is only 20 dollars so I kind of expected this. There are, however, multiple new bosses and they're pretty good. A few of the them are recycled from the first game but they've been redesigned with new attacks that make them stronger than before. Whether they're harder or not is a matter of opinion. Nioh 2 gives you far more defensive and offensive options than Nioh 1 so at least for me personally I didn't struggle with them nearly as much, but I've gotten pretty good at Nioh after playing it for so long. Full disclosure, I was also overleveled for this DLC. I've heard that the original game's DLC expected you to be at least halfway through NG+ before you tackle it, which a lot of people complained about, so this one is balanced in a way that makes it accessible right after you beat the campaign. However, I was already halfway through NG+ so I pretty much breezed through it. I'm sure when I eventually replay it on NG+ difficulty it will be much tougher. The new splitstaff weapon is pretty cool and introduces a new style of gameplay since it's a weapon based more on draining ki and then going for deathblows than it is on doing large amounts of direct damage. I think this applies to everyone regardless of DLC but there are also new accessories called picture scrolls that you can equip. These are rare, high level drops that provide very powerful bonuses but in order to unlock them you have to first go inside of the scroll and complete a mission. Each scroll has one static perk and two random perks, but if you don't like the random perks you have a limited number of attempts to re-roll them by completing the mission again. Not bad so far. Looking forward to the second episode.

Well Trump's approval rating is around 45% sooo...

Definitely. Aside from the graphics, the OG version was better in almost every way. More content, longer levels, better online, and arguably even better writing.

OG version was actually much better.

If they do bring back the games I want to see more Chaos Theory, less Conviction.

Let's do it! Bring it on, you filthy yokai!

Friend of mine surprised me with this because he wants to play VR shit together. I'm looking forward to seeing what the community has come up with while never submitting anything myself because I'm a braindead consoomer who can't into programming and design.

Ah yes, the J.J. Abrams school of writing. Everybody loves that.

I swear, watching people eat shit in this game never fails to make me laugh.

King always seems to have a problem with writing a good ending for some reason, at least in everything I ever read from him. It's a shame because he's really good at buildup.

I don't think any amount of dynamic lighting can explain away those textures. When they showed those cliffs I thought to myself, no exaggeration, "that looks like upscaled Minecraft." If they wanted to get so ambitious I think they would have been better off just pushing this game to the next gen rather than limiting themselves to the current one. Doing so means it has to work on the original Xbone hardware which, as we all can remember, was pretty weak. I guess you could argue that allowing more people to be able to play it is the preferable option, but I have to wonder if they're being held back by outdated hardware. That demo was being played on the PC though so honestly, what the fuck.

I just wish they didn't go for the open world. I reeeeally don't think that's something that works in Halo's favor.

Ghost of Tsushima I still have a lot of side stuff to do but I finished the main story and all the supporting character stories so that's good enough to post here. I'm surprised just how much I loved this game. A critique I hear over and over is "Assassin's Creed but good" and yeah, that's pretty accurate. This is more or less an Assassin's Creed game without all the tedious Ubisoft baggage (microtransactions, bugs, an overwhelming number of objectives) and with a lot more polish. I would be lying if I said it doesn't check a lot of the open world checkboxes. You clear out enemy camps, you do stealth kills in tall grass, you track footprints, and you do climbing/platforming challenges. All these things are competently implemented but they don't really bring anything new to the table. If this was all there was to the game it would be fairly average but there are two big saving graces to Ghost of Tsushima. First, the combat in this game is great. Sword strikes feel nice and heavy and the constant juggling of stances for managing different enemy types along with using your tools for crowd control is really satisfying. If you time your blocks just right you can also do parries that you can follow up with a powerful deathblow, but this is a lot trickier than it sounds, especially when you're being attacked by a group. Make no mistake, if you rush in and button mash you will quickly get your ass handed to you.You have to fight like a samurai, not a barbarian. It's also worth mentioning that stealth and open combat are usually both viable options for clearing your objective. I personally liked to start with stealth to thin out the herd a little, then jump out in the open and yell for all the remaining enemies to come get some. It's a lot of fun. The other thing this game does so, so right is the presentation. If this isn't the most beautiful open world I've ever played in then it's at least in the top 3. The world here is smaller than most open world games, but Sucker Punch took that smaller space and crafted an absolutely gorgeous environment that is oozing with atmosphere and natural splendor. I took so many screenshots just while riding around the map and I would gladly make any one of them into my desktop wallpaper. It looks that good and it feels super rewarding to explore the island when there's always some breathtaking new sight to see. As if that wasn't enough, the game's navigation blends seamlessly into the world itself. Animals you find will lead you to secrets and the wind blows in the direction of your current objective. Instead of following a map marker, you observe the grass, the trees, and the leaves to find your way. It makes you feel much more connected to the world and it's really cool. I won't say there's no map markers at all, but they only pop up once you're extremely close to your goal and need to narrow down your search area. You can also minimize the HUD if you wish to make it even more immersive. There's a black and white Kurosawa mode if you want to play it in the style of his movies, but while I appreciate the gesture I just can't imagine missing out on these colors. The story is fine. It's a solid if unremarkable samurai movie tale. The characters are also fine. I don't love them but I do like them, if that makes sense. However, even though this plot treads familiar ground there were still a few points where I felt an emotional impact. It's a story we've seen before but it's presented well with great music and strong performances, especially in Japanese. It's hard not to get at least a little invested when it's told with this much style. On one final note, I was really happy to see that this game doesn't lean too hard into realism to the point where it becomes a detriment to your enjoyment. You don't have to watch a slow animation to pick up every item you come across, you don't have to wait for your horse to catch up to you when you whistle for it, and some of the physics are kind of "video gamey." Is it realistic? No. BUT IT'S FUN, DAMN IT!

"This is the largest open world we've ever created!" When I hear this nowadays I actually see it as a negative. When a developer brags about how huge their open world is that tells me one of two things: 1) There's huge patches of boring, cut and pasted emptiness 2) The space between actual mission areas are filled up with an overwhelming amount of busywork and meaningless collectibles rather than meaningful content You know what I prefer? Open worlds that are smaller, but more thoughtfully crafted. I'd rather have a smaller open world with love and care put into every inch than an enormous world where long stretches of boring traversal is a feature. Even Rockstar is guilty of this.

I keep seeing this image and it's hard to deny.

Is it me or do the graphics look really bad for a late gen Xbox one game? Did they have to downgrade THAT much to achieve 60 FPS? It's really distracting.

When you're in the middle of an important samurai mission but then you see a fox.

Apparently physical copies of Ghost of Tsushima are already so hard to find that people are scalping them for 100+ dollars online. Corona is bound to be a factor here but Sony still really screwed up on distribution. I feel lucky that I managed to get what might have been the last copy in the tri-county area in my state. Someone at a Gamestop told me they didn't even get enough copies to cover their pre-orders. Digital is always an option, at least, so nobody has to miss out on the game entirely if they are desperate, but I usually prefer having physical copies whenever I can. Modern games have huge file sizes that take forever to download and even if you can preload them they still wreak hell on data caps. If I ever have to delete or reinstall a game I'd much rather pop in a disc than wait for a download.

Ghost of Tsushima is pretty cool so far. It isn't exactly breaking the mold for open world games but it refines certain things in ways I really like. Using the wind as a navigation tool is a brilliant way to seamlessly blend player mechanics into the game world itself and I like how it does the same with certain animals. There's no need for map markers because the world around you gives you the guidance you need. It's really cool and I hope future open world games take notes from this. The world is also freaking gorgeous to boot. This is some of the best art direction I've seen for an open world in a long time. This game was made for photo mode. On another note, I appreciate that this game isn't afraid to just be a game when it needs to be. It has really nice animations during combat but when I want to collect a crafting resource I don't have to stop and get off the horse every time to watch a painstaking animation where Jin picks a flower off the ground and plucks off the petals and puts them in his robe. I don't have to watch him bend over an animal carcass and slowly skin it and pull off the hide and roll it up under his arm. You just hit the R2 button and boom, it's yours. You don't even have to watch him pick it up with his hand. You just get it instantly. I vastly prefer this to the tedious gathering animations in Red Dead Redemption 2. Sure, they look impressive, but they waste so much time.

Lookin forward to this one. I was going to wait a bit on it but from everything I'm seeing PS5 gaming is gonna be so expensive that I might as well hold off on saving for that and enjoy the current gen a little longer.

Yeeeah they kind of ran out of time and money with the anime's original ending. You can practically consider it non-canon.

I got a month of Disney+ so I could watch Hamilton and figured as long as I have it I might as well watch The Mandalorian too. After finishing it I'm starting to feel like Disney should just give Star Wars movies to the Marvel people too because they do it so much better than the people who did the new trilogy.