Mister Jack

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.

Be sure your sins will find you out.

You don't HAVE to be a cheating asshole. Unlike Persona 3, you can level a confidant up to level 10 without having it go romantic. But yes, Kawakami's rank 10 perk is one of the best in the game. I recommend maxing out the doctor, the politician, and Mishima too. I know he's a weenie, but his perk is worth it.

I should really start recording some of my Monster Hunter sessions. They can get absolutely insane. Me and three other guys were hunting an Anjanath (T-rex monster) and managed to hurt it enough so that it started running away from us up into a tree. We were all pretty hurt too and down to only one life left between us, so it was anybody's game. However, going up into the tree was a bad move for the Anja because a Rathian (Wyvern monster) suddenly swooped down all pissed off, picked up the Anja in its claws, and dropped it right the fuck off the top of the tree. Hitting the ground from that high up did over 1000 damage to it, and this is a game where the heaviest weapon type is currently doing around 100 with a fully charged finisher. That poor bastard didn't stand a chance. I should note that this was not a scripted event. That Anjanath was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Alright, I finally had the chance to play with a friend. It's a little confusing at first, so here's how it works. When you invite your friend to join your session through the options menu, you're not inviting them to a party. You're inviting them to join your particular lobby. You don't invite people to join your specific quests. What you do is you wait until they join your lobby, then you select a quest to do. A notification pops up in the lobby every time someone accepts a quest, so your friends will know you're recruiting. After you accept a quest your friends go to the quest board and choose to join a quest. Your open quest should then be on a list for them to join. If you're already on a quest, your friend can drop in as long as they're part of the same lobby as you. If you're doing a story quest, they'll have to wait until you've viewed any cutscenes within the quest before they can join. If they join within the first ten minutes of a quest, they'll get the full reward for it. If they join later they won't receive rewards, although they still get to keep any monster parts they carve up. If you want to do an expedition (free roam) in co-op, you need to first accept a side mission of some kind. It can be something easy like collect 20 plants or whatever. They'll join you on that quest and get it done quickly. After it's done, you have the option to either return to HQ or go back to your camp and start an expedition. The latter option will take your friend with you if they also choose the same option, then you can run around in the map for as long as you want. It's a rather strange set of hoops to jump through, but at least the option is there. There is a clan system, although they're called squads in this game. I didn't use it, however, because starting a squad session closes you off to playing with randoms. I'm pretty sure that feature is meant for large groups of people who play regularly. Edit: Something else I should mention is that when you accept a quest and are waiting for people to join in the lobby, the only people who can join you are the people who are in the same lobby as you. Since that's only 15 other people and they might all be doing their own thing you could be waiting forever if none of them feel like doing your particular quest. However, if you depart on the mission and then fire a flare, that opens you up globally.

I wish they'd add a percentage for the probability of unlocking rare blades when you open a crystal. There's no microtransactions so there's really no reason to keep that a secret. I want to know if some characters have a better chance than others. There also needs to be an easier way to get your hands on overdrive protocols. They're absolutely essential items yet almost impossible to get.

Here's a good beginner's guide for players who are ready to stop relying on the auto combos.

It's not odd at all, really. High level fighting game play is really impressive to watch. As gaming genres go, fighters probably have the highest skill barrier to entry, so when someone is really good it's amazing to watch. I absolutely hate eSports and have never EVER watched a Starcraft or Overwatch tournament, yet I"m really into EVO every year because it's full of all these kickass moments you'd probably never see anywhere else.

God damn, why can't Sony make a decent trailer to save their lives?

I'm loath to compare it to Destiny, but it's a quasi-MMO I guess. The difference is that you aren't required to play online, although if you don't want to play online then why would you even buy this game. You join a matchmaking hub with about 16 people, I believe, though you only actually see other players in the gathering hub area when you're in your headquarters. Whenever you select a mission, you can be matched with up to three other people before departing. If you are doing a story mission then you usually have to start it solo but people can join you afterwards. If you don't want to wait to be matched or you're doing a story mission, you can also fire a flare after you've departed to open your instance up for randoms to join.

Alright, so I've done about three or four hunts now. Obviously, the game is way bigger than that, but I think I've played it long enough to at least have a decent impression of what I'm in for, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. I haven't really had the chance to play with any friends, though I have done some hunts with randoms. I've played two Monster Hunter games previous to this one, and despite what some series purists may say, this game plays better than the others. No awkward claw grip 3DS controls, for starters. You also don't have to constantly stock up on whetstones either. Only idiots ever ran out of those things anyway, so this game just gives you one permanent whetstone you can use infinitely. Right there that cuts out a lot of busywork. You also don't need to stop to grab resources all the time. You can just hit circle as you run by something and it'll add it to your inventory automatically, which saves a lot of time. There are exceptions for things like mining, but you don't have to stop and physically pick up every herb or mushroom anymore. Items have a shortcut menu now so you don't have to fumble awkwardly through a horizontal list to find your potions if you don't want to. Potions and such can be auto-crafted. Joining online sessions is pretty painless, at least with randoms. Again, haven't played with any friends yet. You can also use potions without having to stand still and then pose after drinking it. I always thought that was so stupid. What kind of idiot, in a fight to the death with a giant monster, would stand still while drinking a healing potion and then also stand still to flex their muscles? There's a fight going on, retard! You can run or even sprint while drinking potions now. However, healing isn't instant and if you roll away to dodge an attack while drinking, it will interrupt the animation and you won't get the full benefit, which seems like a fair trade-off. The name of the game here is quality of life improvements. Once you strip out all those horrendously outdated and tedious elements that were in previous games, Monster Hunter becomes much more enjoyable.

There's no trailer yet but I just heard that Black Dynamite is finally getting a follow-up movie (kind of) and I am god damn ecstatic. It's not going to be a direct sequel though. This time it's going to be a western called Outlaw Johnny Black, but it's still going to be doing the whole blaxploitation parody thing.

Fire Emblem would be nice, provided they don't split it up into two games again and they rein in Treehouse's abysmal localization work. Fates was such a shitshow that I had to skip it. I'd like to have a good reason to play the next one. As for Kirby, it's been a while since I bought a Kirby game, but this new one has the power combining mechanic from Kirby 64, which is my favorite game in the series, so I'm pretty tempted to pick that one up. As much as I'd love a new Rune Factory, I wouldn't hold my breath. That developer went bankrupt, and while they were bought up by their publisher, they ended up working on a completely different project after they were rehired.

So what does the Switch have to look forward to in 2018? I'm eager to play Bayonetta 3 and Shin Megami Tensei 5, but there's no telling when those are going to come out.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 I think this is probably my favorite one in the series. It definitely has the best gameplay, as it's far more active and there's much less emphasis on waiting for cooldowns if you are managing your abilities right. I really liked the blade system (basically weapons with Personas attached) and how it allowed me to customize my party rather than just depend on certain characters with certain abilities. It's actually pretty complex and can seem overwhelming at first, but once you understand how it all works it's a ton of fun. I liked the characters in this game more than the others with the exception of Rex, who I think is a poor man's Shulk. The story in the first game was better too. The story in 2 isn't BAD, per se. It's perfectly serviceable and has some interesting twists, it just has a few too many cliches. I know the anime art style is divisive, but I think it's a good change. The Switch only has so much horsepower, and making a more simple art style lets the characters be more expressive. What didn't I like? Well, while the game isn't too grindy in terms of your character levels, it can be grindy in other areas. Blades are the biggest offender. You acquire new blades through core crystals, which are glorified lootboxes. Before you get the wrong idea, there is no money changing hands here. Still, it's annoying because you have pretty much no control over what blade you get. I went the entire game without drawing KOS-MOS, and I really wanted her. You can supposedly influence what element you get by using certain items, but no matter how many of them I used I never got the element I want. The entire blade system is based on RNG, and since blades dictate what abilities you can use, you can really get fucked over if the RNG decides to be a dick. The worst part is that even if you use a rare or legendary core crystal, which are really hard to get, you can easily still have a common blade pop out. I fucking hate that shit. Rares and legendaries should be rares and legendaries! The other thing I didn't like is the field skills. Your blades each come with skills that you can use out in the field to unlock new areas or complete certain objectives. A blade with lockpicking can open chests, for example. This is cool in theory, but the problem is this only works for blades your party has equipped. If you need the lockpicking blade but you aren't using it for combat then you have to rearrange your party just to open one chest. They really should have just let you use backup blade abilities. On top of that, leveling up your blade abilities so you can, say, unlock a level 3 chest can be pretty grindy depending on your blade's affinity requirements. Sometimes you just need to use them for long enough, but other times you have to jump through hoops to level them up. One blade in particular that I saw forces you to store hundreds of items just to unlock the privilege of leveling up his abilities. I mean, come on. Finally, since the blades you get are completely random, if you don't have blades with the abilities you need then you're just shit out of luck until you draw one with the right ability. I have sidequests I never got to finish just because I could never draw any blades that had the right abilities. I also ran into a nasty bug where after I beat the game, the framerate dropped to a crawl during the ending and then froze up entirely before I could save my clear data. This doesn't seem to happen to everybody, but you bet it pissed me off. I just ended up watching the ending on youtube instead. I hope that was a fluke, but I don't feel like beating the final boss again right now just to find out. Maybe I'll try it again later after the new DLC comes out. Something I'm realizing about the Xenoblade series is that they're generally pretty solid RPGs that just happen to be held back from true greatness by some confusingly bad design decisions or oversights. When I wasn't dealing with the RNG or having to shuffle my blades around just to use a specific skill, I had a blast with the game. Those two things were persistent problems though, and I feel like if they weren't there the game would be a 9 instead of an 8. Oh yeah, and the English dub is fucking atrocious. I mean, Jesus Christ. Thankfully the Japanese audio is available, but Monolith should be embarrassed about putting out a dub this bad.

Symphony of the Night was probably the first real Metroidvania game if you require RPG elements as part of the criteria to be called Metroidvania.

Looks like Episode 5 isn't out yet.