Mister Jack

I have to wonder something now that I've had some time to process Infinity War and the franchise as a whole.

So why does Black Widow have blonde hair now? Did I forget something?

Avengers: Infinity War Yeah, as it's been said before, it doesn't work as a standalone film, but it was never meant to be one. If you haven't figured that out by now then you should just stop going to comic book movies entirely. As the culmination of ten years of setup, however, it succeeds spectacularly. While there are other films in the MCU that have stronger writing or characterization or dialogue, this one is still pretty strong, and in my opinion it has some of the best action set pieces in the entirety of the franchise. You don't go to see the Avengers films because you expect them to be deep with something meaningful to say. You go to Avengers films for balls to the wall action, and this film definitely delivers on that front.

Easily, and I liked Horizon quite a bit.

God of War If you own a PS4 and you don't pick up this game, just get rid of it because you are doing it wrong. This game is an absolute must-play for PS4 owners, and it may just be the best exclusive they've released yet. I thought I was done with the series after God of War III. The previous games were excellent, but after so many sequel and spin-offs that used the same formula it was getting stale. This soft reboot, however, changes up so many things that it feels like a completely new franchise, and I mean that in the best possible way. Kratos' character arc is satisfying and feels like a natural progression from his days as a rage-filled murder maniac in the previous trilogy. He is now a man filled with regret for his past actions and struggling to move on from them as well as teach his son to be better than he was. It's very interesting to watch their relationship unfold. The combat is top-notch. While I enjoyed the old combat just fine, this feels a lot more methodical, requiring you to really consider the various options you have in your arsenal. I can't wait for the inevitable sequel, but in the meantime I still have a lot of side content to do. I'm not anywhere near done with this game yet.

Thank god. It took me four damn days to get all the parts I need to finish the Kulve Taroth armor set, and that's just for one of them. I'm not about to do it again for the beta set.

Now there's a Devil May Cry crossover event going on to get a Dante costume and sword. I'm starting to wonder if Capcom is purposely doing all these events right when God of War comes out to keep me from playing it.

Has anyone else checked out a manga called Goblin Slayer? I tried it on a whim and so far I dig it. It should surprise no one to hear that the story is about an adventurer who genocides goblins along with his party. What sets this apart from typical fantasy stories is how it tends to deconstruct common RPG tropes. Goblins are weak creatures individually, but when they come together and form a nest they become highly dangerous and are a constant problem for nearby villagers and townspeople. Most high-level adventurers refuse to do goblin slaying quests because the pay isn't good enough, and low level adventurers are frequently overconfident about goblin slaying quests, so guilds are forced to reluctantly send several groups of inexperienced adventurers to their deaths (or worse if you're a woman) in order to handle a single nest. Enter Goblin Slayer, a high level adventurer who is absolutely obsessed with killing goblins using practical, realistic tactics like traps, ambushes, hiding his scent with goblin blood, and wearing full plate armor at all times. Famous adventurers don't respect him because the only quests he ever does is goblin quests, and yet the people love him because he's the only experienced adventurer who is willing to do anything about this absolutely massive pest control problem. The manga is pretty graphic. Goblins are extremely brutal creatures who will tear a man limb from limb or gang rape women without a second thought. Goblin Slayer himself is even more brutal to them in return, and will even kill their children just to ensure they don't grow up and make new nests. It's an extremely violent series, but if you've read Berserk then there won't be anything here that you haven't seen before.

The Switch has been irreparably hacked. This is a hack at the hardware level, meaning Nintendo can't do jack shit about it without a total redesign of the console. I would feel bad for them, but after their last update forced me to pay for their shitty, overpriced first party dock to avoid the risk of bricking my system I can only feel smug as hell.

Sanrio is targeting bitter, jaded adults now. Aggretsuko is such a wild departure from the normally cute and child-friendly Hello Kitty brand that it feels really bizarre. I've watched a few episodes of this anime. It's still cute but there's a lot of swearing in it and poor Retsuko's boss is a literal sexist pig. I gotta admit, I kinda like this show. I wanna root for Retsuko because god damn, her life sucks.

I'm not that far yet, but so far he comes in handy. I don't know if he can die, but you have to equip armor on him so I assume he can at least be knocked out. Atreus is like a support unit. If you hit square he'll shoot an arrow at an enemy, which takes their attention off of you for a few seconds. If you have the right upgrades he can also attack downed enemies for you or do a combo attack with you. This is all early game stuff, so I don't know what else he's capable of.

I picked this up today and I'm about three or four hours in. This game is amazing.

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom It's...alright? Honestly I don't have much that's interesting to say about this one. The game is fairly generic and there aren't really a whole lot of original ideas in it, but it's polished and generally well done. It just doesn't do much to stand out. The story is extremely predictable. The characters are pretty bland and the only one I really cared about was Evan himself. But on the other hand, there were no super annoying party members either. I dunno, this game is real middle of the road. I didn't hate anything about it, but I didn't really love anything either. If you're into basic, tropey RPGs like Dragon Quest then I guess you'll probably like this game as well, but I don't really think it's worth 60 bucks. Maybe 30.

NEW ELDER DRAGON TOMORROW EVENING 16 PLAYER SERVER RAID NEW WEAPONS AND ARMOR LIMITED TIME ONLY GET HYPE

Playing Ni No Kuni II. It's not bad, and combat is better than the first one, but at the same time it's a really simple game. Battles are very simple. The story, at least what I've seen so far, is really basic. That might change later, who knows. The game is piss easy unless you're severely underleveled (I'm level 30 taking on level 45 enemies). The characters are simple too, although I do find Evan's kindness and idealism to be endearing. It's not reinventing the wheel. In fact, it's doing pretty much the opposite of inventing the wheel, whatever that is. That said, I'm not having a bad time with it. I'm not blown away or addicted to it, but it's also perfectly competent and beautiful to look at. I also enjoy the kingdom building and army skirmish mechanics. It's a nice RPG to just relax and chill out with. Worth 60 bucks? Right now I'd say no. This game, and perhaps the franchise in general, definitely feels aimed toward younger players. We'll see what happens, though.

When memes... ...become dreams

Cringe

Warner is removing Microtransactions from Shadow of War. If you had been refusing to play the game because of the microtransactions before, your gripes will soon be addressed. Hopefully this means they won't be shoving them into other games so liberally in the future, since I've never heard of any AAA game studios doing this. EA turned off microtransactions for Battlefront 2, but only temporarily. This appears to be a permanent change, so they must have decided they weren't making enough money from it to justify the backlash.

I was about to say. Was someone holding a gun to your head?

I imagine that it would be inconvenient to use gyro controls in handheld mode. I know that Splatoon 2 and some sections of BotW use them, and it's probably awkward to have to tilt the whole screen along with the controllers.

I honestly just use this thing It's like ten bucks, is super simple to use, will fit in pretty much any bag, and has multiple viewing angles.

@TheMightyEthan That's great if you just want to replace the dock it came with, but I wanted a second one for the bedroom which means you're still paying 90 bucks. I got mine for 70 but that's still ludicrous for a glorified USB plug.