Mister Jack

Technically it was a gift, but I look forward to getting into this.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War This was a big step up from the first game, which I liked but I also felt like it was a bit too small in scale. This game is bigger and better in just about every way. There's more to do, there's more maps to explore, the bosses are better, and the combat has been fine-tuned. It does get a bit grindy if you're going for the true ending in Act IV, which is the part that tries to bait you into buying loot crates, but I managed just fine without them, minus the crates I occasionally bought with in-game currency. It took me a little over 40 hours to complete everything, so there's really no need to waste your money on microtransactions.

XCOM: The Bureau is free on Humble Bundle right now. I know it's an average game, but hey, free's free.

I'm having a total blast with Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, but I'm at that infamous endgame now where you have to basically fight a prolonged war and the average level of your enemies jumps up dramatically. This was clearly designed to entice people into buying loot crates to help even the odds, which is definitely shitty, but fortunately I found a good way to level up without having to resort to loot boxes, so if you are playing or have played this game and gave up around this part because the grind was so bad, here's my advice: Lose your forts on purpose. Seriously, do it. Defending your forts requires a ton of resources and you'll be going through your spoils of war like water trying to buy all these upgrades to fend off attackers who are ten levels higher than you. However, if you lose the fort first then all you have to do to move on to the next battle is reclaim it. This is much better than trying to defend for two reasons. Firstly, you can still lower the fort's level by doing missions to kill off individual defending captains. It's much easier to attack a fort with a 120 rating than defend from attackers with a 380 rating. On top of that, you get 3x as much XP for capturing a fort as you do for defending it. You're guaranteed at least one level up for every fort you capture, maybe even two. Is it still a grind? Yeah, a bit, but much less of one. I'm halfway through after just a few hours using this method. It's possible the last few stages will jump up again and force me to find another way to grind, but I still went from level 40 to 45 after just a few battles.

Bungie caught concealing XP scaling. If you haven't already heard about this, Bungie had a hidden system in place where if you were grinding an activity repeatedly for XP, your gains would be increasingly reduced over time, but this wasn't actually reflected in the onscreen XP notifications. In otherwords, the game would straight up lie to you about how much XP you were getting. When Bungie got found out they turned off the XP scaling, but then without telling people they also slashed XP gains in half, which means the grind to get another bright engram is now even longer than it was while the scaling was turned on. I really hope this loot box shit comes back to bite them in the ass like it currently is with EA and Battlefront.

Coco Coco is a wonderful film about a boy who goes on an adventure in the land of the dead during Dia de Los Muertos. It's full of beautiful imagery, lovely music, and heartfelt moments. I would recommend it to anyone. However, the film is preceded by a TWENTY ONE MINUTE LONG short about the snowman from Frozen. I'll let Jhonen sum it up.

If you haven't done it already, get your hands on Yoshitsune. He's your best weapon against the twins.

I couldn't possibly put Jessica Jones that high. It starts off strong but it runs into a real problem where they have to fill out 12 episodes but they don't seem to know how to do that other than having characters making really boneheaded decisions that make no sense just to extend the plot longer. I feel like these Marvel shows should maybe cut 2 episodes off of each season so they could tighten up the pacing a little more.

Okay one more. It was only six bucks. I definitely got my fill on fighting games with this sale.

Been a while since I really splurged on a steam sale. Shadow of War actually came from CDkeys because it's not only cheaper even during the steam sale, but it also comes with DLC that the basic steam version doesn't.

Mine is 0738 8095 286.

That Animal Crossing mobile game is out now. Connection quality is hit or miss, obviously, but it's not as bad as Pokemon Go was. I haven't been able to play it long enough to form an opinion on it yet, though. I was busy all day.

Season 1 is universally agreed to be the weakest season actually, which should tell you how good the others are. I think the fact it's limited to Netflix as opposed to adult swim kept it from getting as much exposure as Rick and Morty. Definitely watch the other seasons though. Bojack is by far my favorite Netflix show.

Ruh roh Raggy!

Yeah, I wish Evil Within would let me do that. I mean, it's not like it has leaderboards or anything, and I must have played through RE5 three or four times just to keep getting upgrades and then bump up the difficulty and I enjoyed it every time.

Is there any genre where new game plus is more satisfying than survival horror? I get so much satisfaction in going back through a second time with my now overpowered character and making mincemeat out of all those monsters that gave me such a hard time on my initial playthrough.

And now I've beaten Evil Within 2. Yeah, this one is a lot better than the first one. It's not perfect, mind you. I don't think it reaches the highs of Resident Evil's best games, but it is still better than some of the less impressive mainline RE titles. I appreciate that they're trying to do something different here with the semi-open world, and it feels like they took most of the criticism of the first game to heart and made a good faith effort to fix what didn't work. That said, the open nature of the game means it doesn't build atmosphere as well as the first one did. I would also say the monsters and the villain of the first game were better, although this one definitely had a much better story overall and Sebastian is much more relatable as a character than he was before. It wasn't ball-crushingly hard either, but nor was it too easy. For a first time playthrough, the difficulty was just right. Some of the controls still feel just a little bit wonky, but I eventually got used to it. It also kind of feels like the devs aren't expecting to make an Evil Within 3, because this game ties up the major plot points in a way that makes it pretty hard to continue. I'm not saying it's impossible, but they would definitely have to go in a totally different direction if they do make a direct sequel. I still wouldn't call this game a survival horror classic like RE4 or Silent Hill 2, but it's a big step in the right direction and I would like to see this series continue to improve.

That tank boss was a real son of a bitch. I can't even remember how I eventually got past it.

Aw hell yeah. This is great news. But shit, I never played VC 2 or 3. Am I gonna be totally lost with the story?

It's already looking like Justice League is going to bomb. It has pretty disappointing opening day numbers, and it didn't even do very well in China, and those guys eat any shit Hollywood throws at them. With a ludicrous 300 million dollar budget, it's estimated they have to make 600 million just to turn a profit, and with such a tepid reception it seems unlikely that's going to happen. If it does, they probably won't make much of a profit on it.

Was it a human boss? Because if so I bet I know who it is and he's the hardest boss in the whole game by far, at least without counting the DLC which I have not gotten around to.

Well I beat the Evil Within's DLC, including that silly arena mode with the Keeper. It does fill in most of the holes with the story...not all of them, but most of them. That boss fight against that one monster wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. I mean, I did die a few times before I figured it out, but I had a way easier time with it than just about any of the bosses from the base game.