Mister Jack

No lie though, I would love a game where you play as Bowser and conquer other kingdoms, even if status quo demands he lose them all at the end.

Reggie is officially retiring from Nintendo. He will be succeeded by Bowser. No, that's not a joke. I look forward to the announcement of Super Bowser World, Super Bowser Kart, and Bowser Party. I wish the Mario Brothers well after their upcoming forced retirement.

I don't think any Nintendo game, even Zelda, should still cost 60 bucks a year after release. Especially not a port. It's bullshit. You can get God of War and Spider Man for 40 bucks right now. Nintendo has absolutely no excuse.

If the Link's Awakening remake released for 40 bucks I'd be all for it. However, we all know that's not going to happen because Nintendo gonna Nintendo. It's too short and simple to be worth 60 bucks to me, even if they add a bonus dungeon to the remake. I haven't played every Zelda game there is, but of the ones I have played I do remember beating this one the fastest, even as a kid. It's much smaller in scale than pretty much every Zelda game after the NES, and understandably so since it was a Game Boy game. Of course, back then portable games didn't cost as much as console games. I'd love for Nintendo to prove me wrong here, but I don't think they are going to. They're STILL charging 60 bucks for New Super Mario Bros. re-releases.

Well it's a few things. Yakuza 0 was my first game so it took longer for me to beat simply because I wasn't used to the series yet. I'm pretty familiar with it now though, so I don't really get stuck anywhere like I did in 0. Yakuza 0 also has by far the most amount of side content. This one still has a pretty good amount, but there's no pocket racing or real estate management. I spent several hours in the hostess club minigame but not much time in the construction company since tower defense isn't really my thing. I might try it some more later but I didn't want to divert from the story to mess with it for too long. I also spent a day basically no-lifing this one so I made a lot of progress. If I had to guess I'd say it took me maybe somewhere between 30-40 hours? I didn't spend a whole lot of time at the arcade, batting cages, or driving range, but I did do every side story I came across except for shit like Mahjong quests that I just didn't have the patience to figure out. I'd wager it's shorter than 0 but longer than the first Kiwami. Two weeks should be plenty of time for you to beat that.

Yakuza Kiwami 2 Between the two Kiwami games, I think this one is superior. Although it only has one martial arts style as opposed to four, the style you do have still gives you a decent amount of freedom. It also puts a lot more emphasis on using throws and weapons than previous games. You can also use a super mode when you're at full heat that gives you access to new, more powerful moves and finishers that can absolutely decimate bosses when used properly. There's more content here than in the first Kiwami. You are back to having two cities to run around in as opposed to one, and there are just more side activities overall. The addictive hostess minigame also returns, as well as a new tower defense minigame where you fight a turf war of sorts with other Yakuza. I didn't dabble in it too much, but it's nice that there's something else to occupy your time with. The arcade games are different too. While there are only two games outside of the UFO catcher this time, those games are Virtual-On and Virtua Fighter 2, so that's not too shabby. There's also a urinal arcade game in the bathroom where you defeat enemies on a little screen with your piss. I know it sounds like I'm making that up but I swear it's real and it's also the hardest game in the arcade because I have yet to win a single round. My piss power level just isn't high enough, I guess. Something I appreciated was the change to the food system. Eating got you exp in Kiwami, but not much. It's understandable since they probably didn't want you breaking the game by eating constantly for free exp, but the gains were so low that eating had little point other than to replenish health. This time around there's a hunger system. Eating food gets you much more exp, but only if Kiryu is hungry enough. You can eat for HP at any time, but if your stomach is too full you won't get the exp benefits. This seems like a fair trade-off, and you can also get Kiryu hungry faster with intense physical activity like fighting or running. The story is full of twists and turns and it had me pretty much from beginning to end. I still think Yakuza 0 has the best story in the series that I've played so far, not to mention one of the best stories I've ever played in any game period, but Kiwami 2 still has a pretty damn compelling narrative. There's also an extra mode where you play through a prequel story as Majima that reveals what happened to him between the events of 1 and 2. This mode is only a few hours long so it's more like a DLC episode than a whole new campaign, but it's nice to have it regardless. But now I have a problem. I've played all the Yakuza games for the PS4 except for 6, which I don't want to play before 3, 4, and 5, but the remasters for those haven't come out in the west yet! They haven't even been announced! I gotta know what happens to Kiryu and the Tojo clan, but it's gonna be a loooong wait.

Lots of them. I'm surprised you never heard it. It's that feature turned off for you or something?

So this might seem like a weird question but what do you guys set your maximum processor state to? My cpu hit 100 degrees a while ago so I checked it and it was set to 100%, which apparently enables a turbo mode that improves performance but raises temps. Setting it to just 99% will disable this and lower temps, which I did, but I'm just wondering if 100% is the norm.

It's such a superficial feature but I can't help loving the little speaker in the ps4 controller. The PS5 can ditch the touchpad or make it smaller if they want, but I hope they keep the speaker.

This game had a big price drop recently so now was the perfect time to scoop it up.

I beat Kingdom Hearts HD today and it unlocked a theme for my ps4. That's rad as hell and more games should give out more tangible rewards like that.

Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise This is an unusual example of a licensed game. Most of the time licensed games either adapt the show/movie/anime story more or less exactly or they make up a new story that's separate. This game did both. Many of the HnK characters and iconic battles are present, but the circumstances behind them are changed around in order to fit into this new setting. The other half of the game is an original plot with new characters. This does mean that not every story from the source material makes it in, but what they have works well enough. Unlike the manga, the game mostly takes place in a city called Eden that has managed to thrive after the nuclear apocalypse. Similar to Yakuza, you spend the majority of your time doing missions and side activities in this modestly sized environment. However, you also get a car in this game to drive around the wasteland to go to other locations from time to time. It's not a total game changer, but it does give you an extra side activity in racing and upgrading your car. The game borrows a lot from the Yakuza series, but if there's one area where it feels different it's the combat. As you can imagine, Kenshiro is much more lethal than Kiryu, so the developers compensated by throwing waaaay more enemies at you per encounter. Kenshiro's signature fighting style allows him to instantly kill people by hitting pressure points, so the increased enemy count was necessary for balance. You still have to beat people into a stunned state to instakill them, but this is not that hard to do for most mooks. What is hard is keeping track of what 15+ enemies are doing at all times. Individual enemies usually aren't too strong, but there's so many of them that if you're careless you could be looking at death from a thousand cuts. Also, this game has giant enemies you don't see in the more realistic Yakuza series. These enemies are much harder to stun and you can't toss them around as easily as normal sized foes, which adds another level of difficulty to encounters. By and large, I'd say this game is a LOT harder than the Yakuza games, at least the ones I've played. The bosses are especially challenging. Since everyone important in this setting uses crazy mystical kung-fu, their attacks are unpredictable and also fast as shit. On top of that, these bosses hit like a truck and can take a ton of punishment. Even the first boss of the game will wipe the floor with you if you treat it like a tutorial and go in mashing buttons. Kenshiro only uses one style as opposed to Kiryu's four, but Hokuto Shinken is extremely versatile. Kenshiro doesn't really need separate styles for speed, balance, and power because Hokuto Shinken pretty much combines all three. Activating pressure point attacks is usually accompanied by a short little cutscene and QTE, but you can turn off the QTE part of it in the settings if you prefer to just have the damage be decided by the skill's level instead. The attacks are so lethal that it won't make much of a difference except maybe against bosses. Later on you also gain the ability to skip the cutscene as well and just instantly kill people with a timed button press if you desire. Killing people with techniques (cutscene attacks) can give you health with the right upgrades and killing people with perfect channeling (no cutscene) will cause them to drop energy for your super mode, so neither method ever really becomes obsolete. I enjoyed this game, but part of that definitely comes from my being a fan of the source material. It's good in its own right, though. As licensed games go, it may not shine like the Arkham games or Spider-Man but it's a solid and enjoyable effort from the Yakuza team. If you think the Yakuza games are too easy and want a better challenge, this could be a good game to look at. Oh, and Kenshiro as a bartender is too good.

I'm conflicted here. I love Jojo but I fucking hate Battle Royale.

Got a gift card from my sister and this has been on my backlog for a while.

Resident Evil 2 Really, I don't have much to add here that everyone else hasn't said already. It's a gold standard for remakes of classic games, adding modern improvements and polish without losing the things people liked about the original. It's got a great atmosphere, you never feel like you have enough ammo to go guns blazing on everything, even at the end, and it has a ton of replayability. Anyone with even a passing interest in horror games owes it to themselves play this remake.

Alright, now I've ACTUALLY beaten Kingdom Hearts 3. The first question I'm sure most people would ask is "did it live up to the hype?" Honestly, how could anything live up to 13 years of hype? That's not to say I'm disappointed in the game. I thought it was great. I just realize that a lot of people probably either expect absolute perfection from this game or they're smugly waiting to gloat about how it didn't live up. I, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than a great game and that's what I got. All the loose threads from the clusterfuck of a story are finally wrapped up and the final confrontation that's been building up for over a decade now did not disappoint. Square had to have been well aware of just how high people's expectations were because the last few hours are absolute balls to the wall insanity like what you'd expect from the climax of Nier: Automata or the Infinity War movie. Some great improvements were made to the battle system, picking out the best bits from previous games while also adding some new stuff on top of it that makes literally every fight as flashy as you want it to be or not to be. So what's not so great? Well, not much. The pacing is sometimes a little uneven, but it didn't bother me too much. The camera occasionally becomes an issue, but it's not a constant problem and it's usually fixed easily. Something else that bears mentioning is that barring some quick recap movies in the main menu, this game doesn't even pretend to care about players who haven't gone through the other games first. When I said it wraps up the loose ends, I mean aaaaaall the loose ends from almost 20 years in this series. If you haven't been keeping up then the game says "fuck you, you had your chance." Outside of a few brief conversations here and there where characters reminisce on past events, the game does not care if you're new. At all. I've played all the games though so thankfully this didn't both me, but I'm sure there are some PS4 and Xbox players out there who would try to start with this as their first game in the series and I would advise against it. The gameplay is still fun, but when you have no idea what's even happening it can damper your enjoyment.

I'm sure the tone deaf response from the administration doesn't inspire much confidence in the third paycheck either. "Work something out with your grocery store." "Ask to do chores in lieu of rent." "Just get a loan." If you're a government employee, I can only imagine how terrifying it must be to hear that.

"Ye gods! A government shutdown! My luncheon is ruined! But what if...I were to purchase fast food and disguise it as a White House banquet? Ho ho ho...Delightfully devilish, Donald..."

Son of a bitch, I gotta start double checking the thread titles

I usually don't buy two games at the same time anymore because I tend to let one of them fall by the wayside, but there is no way that's going to happen here.