Mister Jack

They start filming in 2020, so unless something else goes wrong it'll probably be out in 2021. I can only assume they didn't mention it because the whole thing is a sore spot for a lot of people, Disney included. Either that or Gunn wasn't available for Comic Con because he's working on Suicide Squad.

Nope. Sorry. This is just too much to follow. I was fine with seeing a couple of movies per year, but if you're telling me that I have to watch all these shows to keep up with the MCU storyline then I think I might be getting off after Guardians 3.

More details are slowly starting to come out and it's looking like the plagiarism motive is the correct one. He thought the studio stole his idea for a novel.

Over here we call that Tuesday.

I'm a little hazy on the details but from what I hear the arsonist was some train otaku who hated moe anime and was mad because the studio "appropriated train culture" by using a song that's popular with train otakus for some moe anime? Edit: This could be completely wrong. So far the only thing that's been confirmed was the guy was ranting about how the studio stole something from him. Edit edit: Okay so the reason the train thing is spreading is because shortly before the fire happened, someone on the Japanese version of 4chan posted a rant about burning down the studio because they ruined his favorite trainspotting location after one of their shows made it popular with anime fans. This could end up being a completely different person. Another possible motive is that he feels they plagiarized some manuscript he submitted for a LN contest, because witnesses heard him saying something that can potentially translate to "they ripped me off." I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Damn it, I would still want a longer battery life but I bet they aren't offering any kind of trade-in program.

I recently, uh, "acquired" the 3DS version of Dragon Quest VIII to play. With DQXI for the Switch right around the corner, everyone seems pretty hyped for this series but despite being a big fan of JRPGs I've never really gotten around to seeing what the fuss is all about. I know that the gameplay in this series is pretty basic and on the surface wouldn't seem like something that should still be this popular, but I assume it's one of those things where you have to play it for yourself to "get" it so that's what I'm doing. I'm a couple hours in and so far it feels pretty chill. For most normal encounters I just let the AI do their thing and only assume direct control for bosses. It's a little brain dead but also kind of relaxing. Naturally, I assume it's only going to get harder but we'll see.

Directly above

Detroit: Become Human is free right now. When I downloaded it I also noticed I had a free version of Heavy Rain for the PS4 in my library too.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a Switch Pro. Not like we ever got Wii Pro or Wii U Pro. I guess we did get the New 3DS but they barely used it for anything.

I couldn't even be bothered to get all the pagies in the first world. Yooka-Laylee was such trash that I couldn't believe it. Thank god A Hat in Time was available to wash that taste out of my mouth.

Well I finished killing Emerald and Ruby Weapon in FFVII so I went ahead and bought FFIX for the Switch too. The Switch really is the perfect console for classic JRPGs.

I use a Galaxy S2 I'm pretty happy with. I got a refurbished one on ebay for less than 200 bucks and it was indistinguishable from a brand new one. The screen is 8 inches and it has expandable memory. The only real downside is that the shape of the screen is closer to a square than a rectangle which means you'll get letterboxes if you watch movies, but if that doesn't bother you then it's pretty solid.

Got Final Fantasy VII for the Switch. The PC port is trash and I am now hyped for the remake so having a portable version of the original was just too tempting to pass up.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Symphony of the Night might just be my favorite game of all time, so of course I was going to dig this. While the graphics do have a little bit of that 2.5D indie stank on them, I've seen far worse done with this art style so it didn't bother me that much. The gameplay is what matters most, and it shines here. This game seems to have taken the good ideas from previous Castlevania games and combined them all here with some improvements. For example, the soul system from the Sorrow games is in here with the shard system, but there's five types to collect instead of three which opens up a lot of variety in the combat. The drop rate is also far more generous. There's familiars like in Symphony, but they're no longer useless in a fight. Weapons also have command moves like some of the weapons in Symphony, but there's far more of them this time and you can make the moves work universally by mastering them. Guns are actually a viable way to play the game now as long as you keep up with ammo and wear the right equipment to enhance Miriam's gun prowess. Iga seems conscious of criticisms of his past games, particularly that they are thought of as too easy because Bloodstained is much, much harder than any of the previous Castlevania games under his umbrella. Some of the bosses were so hard that I found myself wondering if I had accidentally wandered into the room of an endgame superboss. Healing items are rare and expensive. You can cook food which heals you and gives you permanent stat buffs the first time you eat each dish, but you need to gather the ingredients first. Save points can be spread pretty far sometimes and enemies can have pretty unpredictable attacks so I probably died more in this game than in all the previous Igavania games combined. I'm not going to whip out that hackneyed comparison that game journalists love to make, but it's tough as nails regardless. If you somehow still think the game is too easy, there's also a hard mode where I hear enemies get new attacks, though I haven't had a chance to confirm it, and a nightmare mode which locks you at level 1. You'll find a challenge here if you're looking for one. The story is passable. Not great, not awful. It provides an excuse to explore the castle, which is good enough for me. Music is good, although it doesn't reach the highs of the Castlevania series. That's almost unfair to expect, though. Castlevania has some of the greatest game music of all time. If I have any real serious criticism, it's that sometimes the game isn't clear on where you're meant to go next. Previous Iga games tended to have clear roadblocks or unreachable areas that you could return to after finding a certain item or ability. Here, it's not as obvious. For example, there's an underwater area and Miriam can't dive. I spent a long time looking for an item to unlock a swimming ability but it turns out you're supposed to farm a specific enemy that drops a shard that lets you travel through water. I had to go online on two or three occasions just to figure out where to go next because some of these mandatory shards and items you need to progress are a little too well hidden. I don't have much else negative to say, though. I finished it in about 12 hours, which might not seem like much for 40 bucks, but I do intend to play new game+ on hard mode and there's 13 pieces of free DLC coming including a roguelike mode, a boss revenge mode, and a versus mode. I can't wait.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night After Mighty No. 9 and Yooka-Laylee I got a little nervous for this game, but thankfully Iga has broken the streak of shitty games from once respected developers. There's still a little bit of indie jank on this one. Miriam doesn't move around or attack quite as smoothly as Soma or Alucard once did, but it's nothing you can't adjust to and I'm really enjoying it so far. I hear there's New Game+ now and a lot of free DLC coming down the line, including online modes, so I'm really looking forward to seeing where this game is going.

Finally, a Kickstarter game from an industry veteran that doesn't suck.

Found out Ace Attorney Investigations was on the android store so I played through it. I usually hate mobile games but this series is a perfect fit for phones and tablets. I spent two days going through it and then I immediately found myself a translated rom for the sequel. I fall in love with this series all over again every time I play it. Please, Capcom. Give us word of Ace Attorney 7 for the Switch!

Oh, my bad. Upon further research, it does seem to be PC only. That's the only version I played so I naturally assumed every other version had the same feature.