Mister Jack

Pledge of Demon

Yeah, I can agree with that. In fact, I think that scene right there is when the movie starts to get interesting.

The VVitch This is...a horror drama, I guess? The titular witch probably has less than two minutes of screen time in the entire film. The drama is mostly focused on the puritan family being bedeviled by said witch in the woods and how they become increasingly unhinged and paranoid as bad things keep happening with no rational explanation. I know this movie is critically acclaimed but it's a mixed bag for me. For starters, all the characters speak in Old English. I don't know if this is historically accurate or not, but even if it is it's very distracting and can make the movie hard to take seriously at times. Even if you're willing to look past that, the first half of the movie is straight up boring. They spend way too much time establishing the characters. It's good to set up your characters in a horror movie so they're not completely flat, but almost nothing interesting happens in the first 45 minutes. The last 45 minutes, however, are when the movie gets good and shit actually starts going down. I'm glad I hung in there for the second half, but I was tempted to turn it off more than once during the first half.

Yakuza 0 (for real this time) This was my first Yakuza game and I can see why people are so into the series. I expected another GTA clone like Sleeping Dogs but it really isn't like that at all. This is more like taking the classic beat-em-up genre and updating it with things like RPG mechanics and a TON of minigames and side content to give it more value to modern gamers. I wouldn't really call it an open-world game. You're free to run about the streets as you wish, but the map is closer to the size of a neighborhood than a whole city, so there's no driving involved whatsoever. The only time you ever operate a vehicle is when you pick up a motorcycle to bash over some poor bastard's face. I actually like this because a smaller map means the content is more densely packed. Pretty much every street has several things to do on it and you never have to go too far to get to it. Since you're getting everywhere on foot, you also frequently get into street fights with punks or yakuza. I wouldn't call these random encounters since the game warns you in advance when hostiles are around and you can run away from them if you've got the stamina for it. The story of this game is amazing. Honestly, I got way more sucked into this plot than the plot for any GTA game I ever played. The only Rockstar game that can hold a candle to this one in terms of story might be Red Dead Redemption. There's way more involved here than just going to some guy at a marker and doing missions for him until he sends you to the next guy. Because of this, the cutscenes can get pretty long, which some people might not like, but I was just too invested to care. I liked the story so much that I think I might start watching actual Yakuza films now. Combat is decent. It's not quite as nuanced as something like Devil May Cry or God of War, but there are three martial arts style for both characters that you can switch between on the fly which excel in different circumstances. You essentially have fast but weak, well rounded, and powerful but slow attacks to choose from. Combos aren't super complex, but you'll still be doing more than bashing square for the whole game. The side content blows GTA's side content out of the water. You still have a few standard open-world type minigames like karaoke, arcade games, and bowling (although this is also my new favorite bowling minigame) but there's unique stuff too. In addition to a bunch of really charming and sometimes hilarious side stories, you can also manage your own real estate and club businesses. In fact, the game pretty much expects you to do this because late game upgrades can cost up to 100,000,000 yen and there's no way you're getting that just by fighting thugs on the street. However, if you invest wisely in your properties and smartly manage your clubs, you'll end up with so much cash you don't even know what to do with it. It's a great feeling, and the business content even has its own subplot involving a turf war against a local syndicate. So basically, I loved this game and I'm glad I gave it a chance. I'm definitely going to be looking into Yakuza Kiwami and even Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, which was made in this style.

The anime for Goblin Slayer just premiered. Obviously it's toned down a little from the gore and nudity filled manga, but so far it seems like a decent adaptation, at least in the first episode. A couple of bits from the manga chapter were cut, but these were unimportant flashback scenes so I honestly don't miss them.

I'm pretty sure Part 3 and 4 didn't show their openings/endings until the second episode either. We'll get it next week.

It looks like Sony accidentally leaked the PS Plus games for November a month early. Next month we're getting Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition and Yakuza: Kiwami.

- Keep craftable flash pods and lifepowders on hand to have 13 of each item - Use the temporal mantle - Cut off his tail early to eliminate it as a threat - Flash him whenever he tries to cast charybdis - Avoid going directly in front of or underneath him as much as possible - Learn his tells in order to block his physical attacks almost perfectly - Avoid that bullshit ecliptic meteor attack - Team carts in the last 10 minutes

I usually have to play with at least one or two randoms. There have been occasions where I had good people who knew what to do. Unfortunately, Behemoth's stupidly high damage output ended up killing me or someone else when he gets in a lucky shot. He's so damn aggressive and he has so much range that it can be really hard to get some breathing room to heal yourself if he decides to put you on his shit list. At least half of my deaths against this guy happen while I'm trying to drink a potion.

Has anyone managed to kill the Behemoth? This guy is such an absolute FUCKER and I've lost to him probably 30 times. I am truly at a loss for what to do. No other monster in the game has caused me this much trouble.

Anybody watch the new season of Bojack Horseman yet? Man, this show just keeps defying my expectations. The only thing I saw coming was

Spider-Man I'm going out of town for a week so I wanted to get through the story before I left. Took maybe 20 hours? I still have a bunch of side stuff to do. But yeah, this is easily the best Spider-Man game ever made, maybe even the best Marvel game. Without getting into spoilers, the story and the way certain characters are treated is really compelling, and there are some new ideas here to ensure it's not a direct adaptation of anything, kind of like the Arkham games. Combat and web slinging feel damn good. Anyone with even a passing interest in Spider-Man should play this game. If I have any complaints, it's that the MJ sections began to wear out their welcome towards the end, but that's a small knock on an otherwise great game.

So I've played for about three hours now and this game is fantastic. I've barely even touched the story because it's just so much fun to zip around the city and do random activities.

This may just be a big advertisement for the eventual Kickstarter game, but it's a damn good one.

When you unlock the Temperance confidant, make sure to get it up to level 10 as soon as you can. That'll address one of your complaints.

Castlevania 1, 2, and 3 I never beat these games as a kid and I've been on a big Castlevania kick ever since they announced Simon and Richter for Smash so I decided to finally beat these on the NES Classic. I used a walkthrough for 2 because that game is way too cryptic but other than that I abided by my usual rule of no save-scumming. 1 and 3 are definitely hard games, but after Ghosts and Goblins they didn't feel nearly as difficult as I remember. The trick that makes them a lot easier is to take your time and not jump too often, which I think is a natural instinct for a lot of people. You have much more control over Simon/Trevor on the ground than in the air, so unless jumping is the only way to dodge an attack you're usually better off just walking, ducking, or whipping to avoid damage. Pretty great games once you let go of your frustration.

Some absolute saint has created a PC port of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood! No tricky emulators or roms needed. This is just a plain old exe file that works like a charm. They even translated it into English! How did I not know about this sooner?

God damn, this looks amazing. They fixed everything I wanted them to fix. They did things I didn't even know I wanted. At this rate this is going to end up replacing the last game as my favorite shooter of this generation.

This seems to be getting a lot of great reviews. I still have other games to finish but I wanted to get it while it was on sale.

Yes. Yes I did post it in the wrong thread. But I agree, I like it fine the way it is. Making the map bigger just to force you to drive all over the place would make it less fun for me. There's plenty of fun things to do all within walking distance in Kamurocho so I don't see how making the map five times bigger and spreading everything farther apart would make it better.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Related article

I started playing Yakuza 0 on steam. It's my first entry into the series. Getting it to recognize my controller was a frustrating son of a bitch, but once I was past the usual PC gaming pains I started having a pretty good time with it. It definitely isn't "Japanese GTA" the way Sleeping Dogs is Hong Kong GTA, but honestly I'm kind of glad. I'm a little tired of open world crime games. This is more like a really good looking River City Ransom where you get a very small but tightly packed town to run around in and beat up bad guys while occasionally doing some shopping or some pretty fun minigames. I think this actually has the most fun bowling minigame I've ever come across.