Mister Jack

Detective Pikachu Fuck the haters, this movie was rad. I won't pretend it doesn't indulge in a few cliches or that it doesn't occasionally rely on some easy writing techniques like using flashbacks to explain the main character's feelings, but the way I see it the positives outweigh the negatives here. The world they build around this storyline is really fun and interesting, and the Pokemon themselves are cute and likable. The CGI may not always be convincing, but I would rather they look cute than realistic so it worked for me. Sonic the Hedgehog is a cautionary tale on chasing realism at all costs. Not every joke lands, but most of them are pretty funny and I appreciate that the movie didn't try to wink and nudge and say to the audience "The Pokemon world is dumb and makes no sense! Isn't that funny?!" It never acts like it's above its own source material, and if the director isn't a Pokemon lover himself then he hides it well. While the plot is predictable to a point and I did manage to figure out the mystery before it was explained to me, there were still other things I didn't see coming so it isn't like there's no surprises to be had. Honestly, if you ever had any affection for Pokemon then it's hard to imagine you won't have fun with this film, even with its flaws.

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen I've had this game for a while but I never got around to playing more than an hour. Since I've been on such a fantasy RPG kick lately I decided to go back to it and it was an interesting game. I can see why people want a sequel so much. The thing about this game is that you can definitely tell it's Capcom's first real effort at a large scale western RPG because it can be pretty rough around the edges. The graphics look like total ass and the story, while it has an interesting premise, never really goes too in depth with it so there aren't too many memorable quests or characters. Some of the menus can be clunky, the carry weight system is a real hassle, and Dragon's Dogma commits a major cardinal sin when it comes to open world games. There aren't enough fast travel points. In fact, the fast travel system is weird. Aside from three points that are already unlocked, you have to find the rest of them and physically place them in the locations you want to be able to teleport to later. While this is neat in theory, these portcrystals are few and far between. I went the whole game only finding three of them, so I still had to do an absolute fuckton of walking and yes, it got pretty old since the open world is huge yet mostly an excuse for monsters to ambush you while you go from place to place. I heard that in the original version of the game you needed an expensive consumable item to fast travel too, so I can't imagine having the patience to play it. Thankfully the Dark Arisen version gives you a permanent fast travel item in your storage, so at least they addressed that problem. I know this all sounds awful, but the rest of the game shows real potential. While there's no online co-op (another thing to fix in a sequel), you create an NPC follower called a pawn to accompany you through the game. You can also go online and recruit other people's pawns to create a full party of four people. This is pretty neat! I still miss the absence of actual human players, but in theory this is a good system for those times when you wouldn't be able to find other players to help you. Pawns may talk too much---though you can turn the chatter off in the menus---but they are genuinely helpful in battle and will even show you where to go for quests if they've done them before with other players. Online pawns don't gain exp, so you're encouraged to trade them out for new ones every few levels, which keeps your party from getting too stale. Speaking of the battles, they're easily the best part of the whole game. You can try out and freely switch between several different classes, including hybrid classes if you want to try abilities from multiple paths. I spent the late game as an assassin, keeping my sword but trading out the shield for a bow and it was a lot of fun. Class abilities are easy to use in the heat of battle and if you are willing to put in the time, you can even learn abilities in one class and use them in another if you have the right equipment. The best part, however, are the giant monster battles. Huge monsters like chimeras and gryphons wander the land, and fighting these creatures is no simple affair. They're tough, often with specific weaknesses or body parts you need to target. In fact, you'll often need to climb on them Shadow of the Colossus style to get to those sweet spots or keep them from escaping if they start to fly away. The large monster battles are the real highlight of the game without a doubt. Capcom made a good game here. Not great, but pretty good. If they can take what they learned here and apply it to a sequel with improvements and fixes now that they have more experience with making western style RPGs, I think a Dragon's Dogma 2 could potentially be a GOTY contender someday.

The Russo brothers explain that thing everyone is confused about with the ending.

Sega does what Nintendon't.

Got the Bloodborne platinum. This one is admittedly easier to get than the Dark Souls achievements because you don't have to do as much grinding and about 75% of them are just for beating all the bosses, but you do need to collect all the weapons and tools in the game as well as find a few extremely rare items. Getting the last trophy was uniquely difficult because it was for beating a certain boss, but the boss itself is actually pretty easy. The hard part is getting to her in the first place, because to even get the chance to fight her you have to work your way through several optional endgame dungeons. Not only do you need to farm specific materials to even gain access to these dungeons, but once you're inside the game really stops going easy on you. Several of the bosses you have to fight on the way to the actual boss you need for the trophy are way harder than she is. As if that wasn't enough, one of the dungeons has an absolutely sadistic modifier where your maximum HP is chopped in half and you have to fight three bosses with this handicap. After managing to do that, actually killing the game's true final boss at the very very end was a cakewalk by comparison.

I'm placing my bet on Dormammu. Maybe Shuma Gorath or something.

Bloodborne: The Old Hunters Yeah, this is still my favorite soulsborne game (Sekiro isn't soulsborne). I beat Bloodborne once before a long time ago, but now I played through it with all the updates and DLC which adds new weapons, areas, bosses, and covenants. What a difference a little experience makes. The first time I played through this game I remember timidly keeping my distance from most big monsters and bosses, rushing in when I was sure it was absolutely safe to get one or two hits and then running for my life. I remember summoning for most of the bosses too. Things felt totally different this time. My usual reaction upon seeing a building sized boss or a room full of werewolves wasn't "Oh god I'm gonna die" anymore it was "Come get some, you pussies." It certainly helped that I had a better understanding of the game's systems and how to make a proper build, but even putting that aside I just blazed through this game with very little trouble. In fact, the only boss I really felt the need to summon for was the final boss of the DLC, and that was primarily because I was about 20 levels below what is generally recommended for fighting it. I already had a positive impression of the game the first time I played it but this time around it was still a lot more fun. Pretty much the only things I don't like are the healing item being a consumable and the damn frenzy mechanic, which can make certain sections practically impossible if you've accumulated too many insight points. Since I rarely summoned, it didn't take me long to buy out all the armor in the insight shop and then my points just kept building up, meaning my frenzy meter would fill up and kill me in mere seconds whenever I came across those damn abominations that can induce frenzy just by looking at you. It REALLY doesn't help that frenzy keeps accumulating even after you've removed yourself from the source of it. One shitty mechanic is not that bad compared to all the other changes from Dark Souls that I like though. No stupid item weight to worry about, armor is more about resistances than physical defense so you have reason to change outfits to fit the situation, the transforming weapons are more fun to use than pretty much any weapon in Dark Souls, I like that you can get your HP back by playing aggressively, and I generally just prefer the Victorian horror setting to the dark fantasy setting of previous games. I don't know if From ever intends to make a Bloodborne 2 for the PS5, but if they do it'll be the first game from them that I get day one.

How are they supposed to enforce a quiet policy with a theater full of people?

No mid or post credits scene this time. You can leave when the movie is over.

Anyone who hasn't done it yet, google Thanos and then click on the little infinity gauntlet that you see under his picture.

@deanb

Endgame was dope as fuck but I'm gonna wait to talk about it until you guys have a chance to see it.

Wow that's the worst possible thing it could have been. I hate musou games.

The Avengers with the most expensive actors will die.

I think spending all that time with Sekiro has actually made me better at other games. I fired up Bloodborne for a couple hours, but since it's been so long I completely forgot where everything is and I accidentally wandered into the Father Gascoigne boss fight, which is infamous for turning players into red smears on the floor. I thought "Aw shit, I'm not prepared for this at all. I haven't even done any weapon upgrades. I'm going to get my fucking ass kicked." Ended up beating him on the first try. Didn't even have the music box. Having to learn to deflect made me much better at pulling off visceral attacks this time around. I mostly avoided them the first time I played because I could never get the timing of my gunshots down. It feels much easier now, probably because the timing is more generous than Sekiro's deflects.

Dark Souls III Yeah, this one was much better than the first one. The QoL changes were sorely needed. Menus are much easier to navigate, crafting materials are much easier to come by, the curse status doesn't completely fuck your game until you get it cured, boss fights are more interesting, and while I know it's a controversial change, I like having my shops and blacksmith all in one place so I don't have to run all around the entire map just to get an upgrade. In fact, about the only thing I don't like is that now you have to talk to an NPC to level up when before you could do it at any bonfire. If I had to give the first game points over the third for something, it would be the level design, but only for the first half. The first game's world has higher highs, but this one had a more consistent quality throughout. I actually struggled with the difficulty for a while, but ironically enough, once I stopped playing like Dark Souls and started playing like Bloodborne I had an easier time with it. I guess that's another thing people don't like about this sequel but it didn't really bother me. I tried fighting the DLC bosses after the story's final boss but they are absolute motherfuckers and I think I'm gonna have to grind some levels or respec or something because they are so overpowered that it is actually kind of obnoxious.

Well since I'm going through all these From games recently I might as well do Bloodborne again. I played through it once before, but I didn't have the DLC back then so I'm gonna play it fresh. I'm generally better at these games now too, so I think I won't flounder about as much as I did the first time I played it.

I'm glad they did. It's not very hard but he runs around so much it's kind of tedious to chip his health down.

It seems From put out a patch today that buffed several shinobi tools and combat arts in order to encourage usage, as well as reducing spirit emblem costs. Not only that but they reduced the health and vitality of one of the bosses because it was taking too long to fight. No, not THAT boss. So congrats fellas. We officially beat the harder version of the game.

I still had to fill out a few skills on the other trees first so I guess that would explain it. In an unrelated note, I realized something earlier. Did anyone here ever actually use this particular item? I played through the game three times and never once used the fistful of ash. I have to wonder if maybe I would have had an easier time if I did.

Holy shit, how does anyone say Dark Souls 1 is the hardest of the trilogy? I am having so much more trouble with 3. Not as much as Sekiro, granted, but this feels way harder than the original Dark Souls. Enemy AI is much more aggressive and they like to travel in packs far more often. Even the common sewer rats are a legit threat this time. Not only that, but enemies are also fond of combo attacks where if the first hit connects, every other hit will also connect which can drain almost your entire life bar in one go. You start with fewer Estus flasks and on top of that it seems much easier to have your guard broken. I'm dying more to the trash mobs than to the actual bosses, which are a lot more manageable by comparison.

Kind of a weird way to honor the destruction of one the world's most important historical buildings but OK, free is free I guess.

It only took you an hour? Which new game+ were you on? It took me way longer than that.