Mister Jack

N I N T E N D O P R E M I U M

What fucking year is it? I can't believe the White House put out this video and actually wants us to take it seriously. It actually kind of pisses me off, not because I'm worried about games getting banned or something because I already know they won't be, but because it's so obviously a shameless diversionary tactic to try to distract everyone from the gun control issue. I mean they're not even trying to be subtle about their intentions here.

I honestly see no need to port the first Splatoon to Switch, and I say this as someone who really enjoyed the first one. The second one has all the same stuff the first one does outside of the original campaign, and having two games would just split the playerbase. Plus, they aren't doing splatfests on the original game anymore anyway. They gave it a finale of sorts with the Callie vs. Marie event. At best they might put the original levels in Splatoon 2 as an update or something.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Out of all the PSVR games shown at e3 last year, this one intrigued me the most. It has pretty good word of mouth so I figured I might as well. I mean I bought the damn headset. It's a bit pricey for a VR game ($30), but I don't need Bloodborne or Ratchet and Clank anymore so I did a trade to bring it down to about 10 out of pocket.

I hope it wasn't much for a house that tiny.

I don't think we need to worry about the AI Singularity anytime soon.

Dead Space (the original) is free on Origin right now. If anyone ever didn't get around to downloading the PC version, there you go.

60% off on the eshop. This one supposedly has switchable combat styles for each weapon, so it'll be just different enough from World to not feel like the same thing all over again.

I need a new keychain already. My old one broke and I'm constantly in need of some kind of tool, so this was a nice 14 dollar solution. I used to have a pocket knife I really liked, but the friggin TSA took it a while back when I forgot I had it in my bag. This was 12 bucks.

Don't get me wrong, I get it. It's still kind of a bummer to lose out on something, though. If we can get better PS4 games as a trade-off, however, then that will make up for it.

Bloodborne and Ratchet and Clank are the PS+ games for March! On the downside, PS+ will be discontinuing support for PS3 and Vita next year.

"Who wears a watch anymore?" I can already hear you say. Well, I do. I like being able to check the time without having to pull out my phone constantly, and sometimes I can't be taking my phone out anyway. Up until now I've been getting by on fairly cheap watches. Target and Wal-mart Timex fare, but they're just not very reliable over time. The Timex I have at the moment tells the time, but the light on it died a long time ago which makes it worthless at night. This is my first smartwatch, but I didn't go crazy. This is a kickstarter watch that normally costs about 150 bucks online, but I got it for around 120 thanks to a discount code. There's no need to buy a new data plan for it. This does mean you can't use it as a phone when you don't have your phone already nearby, but I take my phone with me everywhere anyway so that's a useless feature. You can still use it for calls and texts as long as your phone is within bluetooth range. I really just want something with customizable faces and the ability to check my notifications and incoming calls without always having to take my phone out. If I don't like it, I have 30 days to send it back anyway.

I beat the story for Monster Hunter World. It took me about 98 hours to get through, although truthfully I could have done it much sooner if I rushed. I spent many hours helping out a friend with her own hunts. Had I ignored that, the story might have taken me...I dunno, maybe 70 hours? Just a rough estimate. Honestly, the story in the game really isn't anything anyone is going to care about. It's just an excuse to go from monster to monster, and now that I've beaten the final boss I can move on to the endgame where the monsters are super buffed but also drop better loot. I'm nowhere near done playing this game yet.

I could see one of those Hori pads being good on the PC for emulat--I mean for legally purchased retro games from the steam store, naturally.

So my old phone, the S6 was alright, but the battery life on it has always been less than ideal and I didn't like the lack of an expansion slot. The S7 fixes both of those problems in addition to better performance, and since the S8 is out now it cost me less than 500 to do this slight upgrade. This one is just a tax time treat for me. As much as I listen to music, I really should have invested in some decent headphones a long time ago. These were 200.

I caught part of a town hall debate that had Marco Rubio and some lady from the NRA and people were absolutely livid. Several of the people in the audience were survivors and they were tearing them new assholes about gun policy. A few people even started screaming out of anger. Rubio himself said he has rethought his gun control position recently. People are PISSED.

BULLSHIT! If I have to hypothesize, which I do, my guess is that vibranium absorbs shocks but can be manipulated with gentle kinetic energy i.e. tapping it with a chisel as opposed to banging it with a hammer. Otherwise it just makes no sense how they can build an entire civilization out of it. I don't recall anything in the MCU that says this can't be the case.

Black Panther I don't think it's Dark Knight good like Metacritic would have you believe, but it's still quite good. People kept going on about how it has a strong message, so going into it I was concerned it might be preachy or even racially charged, but it really isn't. There's a message, but it doesn't dominate everything. The white characters aren't made evil or buffoons just because they're white. The message was fine. More political than racial, honestly. Strong performances all around, though slightly hampered by questionable CG and cinematography at times. Killmonger is one of the better villains in the MCU, surprisingly. One question bugs me though. If vibranium absorbs all kinetic energy, how did the Wakandans manage to mine it in the first place?

You can tell that cat is Japanese without even looking at the tweet.

I hate to triple post but this is just too good not to praise. Monster Hunter World is a loot based game, which means much of your time will be spent farming for drops. Generally it's not too hard to get what you need, but the rarest crafting parts in the game are gems. You can spend hours farming a monster for a single gem drop. Gems can be earned sometimes as gold quest rewards, but the quests that give these rewards out are a real son of a bitch. HOWEVER, there is another way! Every few days (possibly a week?) Capcom puts up new limited bounties, which are basically rotating lists of three or four specific objectives or hunts. If you complete the whole list before it expires, you receive a voucher that you can trade in for ANY GEM YOU WANT. Imagine how much monotony this erases, and it doesn't even kill the game's longevity because you have incentive to keep playing for the next bounty list to get another gem. Frankly, I think every loot based online game should do something like this. You can still farm the old fashioned way if you're impatient or need multiple gems, but if grinding the same mission for hours is too dull, just do the limited bounties. It may take longer if you need more than one gem, but you're guaranteed to get what you want eventually. That relieves so much frustration for me.

God I can't wait for EVO.