Mister Jack

Now there's a game that could use a remake.

Pokemon Violet This is the first mainline Pokemon game I've bothered to finish since I was a little kid (Legends Arceus is a spinoff and I don't care what Nintendo says). I really don't think I've managed to get all the way through a mainline Pokemon game since the Game Boy days. But here it is, the first truly open-world console Pokemon game we all dreamed of playing one day. How is it? Well, it's...goooood? I'll explain. Since it's been so long for me, I'm judging this one mostly on the progress the series has made since I last played it. I hate to use the phrase "a step in the right direction" because I've reached a point where I have to ask myself how many steps you can take without getting anywhere, but SV really did evolve, no pun intended, in several ways I had been wanting for a long time. For starters, tall grass random encounter bullshit is gone and thank fucking god. You want a Pokemon? You can clearly see right on the field which one it is. If you don't want to fight it? Just go around it. Also, trainer battles out in the routes are OPTIONAL. You still have to fight trainers for gym battles and story-related moments, obviously, but you don't have to fight random strangers while you're walking around unless you want to, which I am really grateful for. Some of the bits and bobs about the battle system have been sped up or streamlined. For example, you can set the options to skip Pokemon nicknaming prompts or to automatically box anything you catch while your team is full. There are several little things in there to reduce the number of button presses you have to endure in every battle, which may not sound like much on paper but it really reduces the tedium and speeds up the gameplay. Ride Pokemon are back from Arceus, and while you only get one, the one you get is very versatile and makes exploring the map more enjoyable than just running around on foot. My favorite new feature is the ability to send out a Pokemon onto the field with a button press and let it run around and auto-battle wild Pokemon nearby. You can't catch anything that you automate this way but you still get the experience so this is a great way to quickly grind exp without having to go through a bunch of battles yourself. These are all really good QoL features that improved the basic Pokemon gameplay loop enough for me to want to finish this one. I also liked several of the side characters, which is saying something because I often find them all stupid and annoying. It's not all praise, though. There were some great strides made here, but the series still has a way to go to become truly great. For starters, while I appreciate the open world that lets me go anywhere and do anything, there isn't much in the way of side content besides catching more Pokemon. You get three main questlines, then after that you get a fourth endgame quest before the credits. You can do them in any order you choose, but there's no level scaling so there's still a recommended order. That said, if you want to challenge yourself like I did you can go to higher level areas and attempt higher level missions before the game wants you to, so I appreciate that you are at least allowed to make that choice. It's still rough in other areas, though. The graphics? What else can I say? They range from acceptable to dreadful. The performance? It's poo poo. Pop-in everywhere. Frame drops. Slowdown. This game really makes it sink in just how outdated the Switch is, not to mention how they really need to make a second studio for Pokemon games so that each entry gets another year of development time. But the thing that bugged me the most, the thing that I still hate more than anything, are the constant battle messages for buffs, debuffs, and status effects. In just about any other RPG, stuff like this would be indicated with a graphical effect and maybe an icon, which is more than enough on its own. But what does Pokemon still feel the need to do? GARCHOMP WAS POISONED! GARCHOMP TOOK DAMAGE FROM THE POISON! GARCHOMP'S ATK INCREASED! GARCHOMP'S DEF INCREASED! GARCHOMP'S SP. DEF DECREASED! GARCHOMP'S SP. ATK DECREASED! God damn do I hate this. I dread fighting Pokemon with lots of stat changing moves because this is what slows battles down to a fucking crawl. With all the other improvements they made, why is THIS the thing they still decide to keep in? You don't need it! Just look at Persona! Sure it has a message when someone buffs or debuffs, but it comes and goes in less than a second. This, to me, is still the worst thing about Pokemon battles and they seriously need to ditch it when the next game comes along. At the very least, if there are multiple stat changes, put them all in one text box rather than several different ones one after another. I don't think this is too much to ask. I haven't tried any of the postgame content yet so I can't comment on that, but even with my gripes this was at least good enough for me to finish and mostly enjoy. They're still pretty easy games even if you try to challenge yourself like I did by skipping the field trainer battles which are basically free exp, but not every RPG needs to be hardcore. Sometimes I just enjoy the thrill of catching and raising a Pokemon team. Oh, and while the performance was unimpressive I didn't experience any game breaking bugs like there were at launch, so I think they fixed the worst of the issues by now.

Got the PS5 version in anticipation of the future VR update.

Atomic Heart Another Game Pass game. Before I go any further I'll address the elephant in the room and acknowledge that this game was made by Russians, who are pretty much nobody's friend right now for obvious reasons. I will not speak on the matter here other than to say that people's buying decisions are ultimately their own but I certainly understand if somebody chooses not to play this out of principle. It's not like I actually bought it either way so I did not worry about that too much myself. Putting that aside, I have mixed feelings on this game. It's basically Russian Bioshock and while it has some cool world building and lore and some design choices I really liked such as being able to refund your upgrades at any time to try out another build, there were also some choices made that are so baffling it made me wonder if these developers had ever played a video game before. Why can't I make a custom waypoint on the map or even zoom it in unless I'm at a terminal? Why do half of the powers feel useless? Why do they constantly throw me against large groups of enemies and then not give you a block or parry option with the melee? There is a dodge but it is not nearly good enough on its own and if you get trapped in a corner there is not much you can do to save yourself unless you have telekinesis equipped other than flail your melee weapon and hope they die before you do. Some of the boss fights are cool, but others are shit and unfortunately the worst boss of the game is fought three times. You can scavenge for resources by just holding down a button and sweeping it across an area but they compensate for that by making all the upgrades cost more than I think they should. Sometimes it feels like for every positive there is a negative to balance it out. On the plus side, it has a great soundtrack. You can thank Mick Gordon for that one. And just to put it out there, he donated his fee for working on the game to a Ukrainian charity. Also, while the story and the universe of this game has potential, the main character is written like a complete douchebag with terrible dialogue. He has a stupid catchphrase ("crispy critters!") that he says all the time. It is a fetch that they are desperately trying to make happen and it is never going to happen and every time he said it I cringed. He is also really stupid and gullible and he is the main thing that brings down what could otherwise be a decent plot for this kind of game. And for the record, no, the plot is not Soviet propaganda. They hammer in how much communism sucks about as hard as George Orwell does. They don't have many nice things to say about capitalism either. I don't know, the game is okay. But just okay. Maybe with some QOL patches I could see myself giving it one extra point. I still would not really recommend buying it but it might be okay to kill time if you have game pass.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty From the makers of Nioh 2, one of my favorite games ever. I was planning to play this anyway but it happened to be on Game Pass so I got it through there. It's a smaller game than Nioh 2 and took me about 20 hours to beat, though that probably isn't typical since I've got over 300 hours in Nioh 2 across various platforms and I beat this game 20 levels under the recommended level for the final boss thanks to not doing all the side missions. That's not to say this game plays just like Nioh 2. If that game was meant to be an answer to Dark Souls, this one is meant to be an answer to Sekiro. Basic combos are much more simplified than in Nioh because the real focus on the game lies in the parry system. Parrying is a bit more forgiving than it is in Sekiro because block and parry are assigned to two different buttons in this one, but you can't just spam it endlessly because every time you miss a parry it builds up negative spirit, and if you go fully negative then you'll be stunned after a single hit. On the other hand, successful parries build up positive spirit, and performing heavy attacks with positive spirit in your bar will lower the enemy's maximum stamina and open them up to absolutely devastating deathblows, which is the best way to kill the bosses. You can focus on blocking and dodging and fighting normally if you really want to, but a deathblow on a boss will take away around 20% of their life, which is just too strong to ignore in my opinion. In addition to parries and deathblows, positive spirit can also be used to cast elemental magic spells. There are five elements on the game and they work on a rock paper scissors system that let you exploit enemy weaknesses, though how effective your spells will be will also depend on which elements you decide to put points into when you level up. The story and level design and enemy variety are not really anything to write home about here. In fact I'd say all of those things are mid and the combat is this game's saving grace. While I didn't mess with it much, there's also a PVP mode so if you ever wanted Sekiro PVP then this is probably the closest you're going to get. Unfortunately, the PC port is rough. Not unplayable since obviously I managed to finish it, but from time to time I had to deal with frame drops, and in a game that is all about timing your parries accurately you can imagine how that screwed me over and caused deaths that were not my fault. I'm hoping they fix it. The Nioh 2 port did get fixed eventually and is now pretty good so I don't think it's too much to expect of them. I liked this game, but I certainly didn't love it the way I love Nioh 2. It's of a much smaller scale than that game and kinda feels like filler made by the B-team while the A-team works on Rise of the Ronin, which looks promising. I don't mean to disparage Wo Long by saying it's a B-team game. I still quite enjoyed the combat. I just think it might not be worth a full 60 dollars. Worth checking out on Game Pass? Absolutely. Worth buying after a price drop? If they fix the port I do intend to buy it later. The DLC will probably add more enemy and weapon types too, so maybe take a wait and see approach if you had an interest. Oh yeah and the English dub is Kung Pow tier so definitely play it in Chinese.

I just finished Don Quixote, both parts, which I had started because I'm spending a ton of time in and out of doctor's offices and hospitals for long periods of time so I needed something good and long to occupy the hours. I was not expecting to like this as much as I did, because classic literature usually struggles to grab me and I gave up on it entirely for a long time after suffering through Moby Dick. This one, though. Damn was it funny. I kind of thought that humor from the 1600s wouldn't hold up as well in the 21st century, but this story of a guy who reads too many chivalry books and decides to put on some armor and pretend he's a knight got quite a few laugh out loud moments from me. Near the end of the first book Cervantes took a weird detour that takes the focus off of Don for a long time to focus on side characters and an in-universe novel that they're reading instead of, you know, the actual protagonist, but other than that I think I'd consider this my new favorite example of classic literature. Something that gets funnier if you know the context is that after the first book was written, some other guy wrote a fanfic sequel and sold it, which clearly had Cervantes coping and seething for years because in the actual part 2 he wrote (which I think is better than part 1) there are many moments where Don or Sancho or some other character references the fake sequel, which also exists within the story, as a piece of shit that everyone loathes. One character even describes a vision where she goes to hell and demons find the plagiarized sequel and are so disgusted by it that they order it thrown into the deepest pit of the underworld. You'd think that the author inserting his personal grudge into the narrative like this so many times would make it worse but I just found it too funny to be bothered by it. My only real complaint with the story, aside from that part in the first book where the author forgets Don Quixote himself exists for far too long, is that the ending feels a little bit forced. Still, minor gripes aside, I can see why this is considered the best novel ever written by many authors and professors. I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but I can certainly understand why someone would feel that way.

Return to Monkey Island Another game pass game. This is a sequel by the original series creator, one finally meant to address what the ACTUAL secret of Monkey Island is. The art style will probably be hit or miss with people. I got used to it, but I could see others never coming around to it. The voice acting is pretty good, the jokes got a few laughs out of me, Guybrush moves around at a nice, quick pace, and the puzzles aren't too easy or too hard, but there's an in-game hint system if you need it. I only have one major gripe.

Hi-Fi Rush I got a month of game pass to play this and I am so glad I did because holy shit, this game is an absolute banger. I honestly can't praise it enough. It has the best cel-shaded graphics I've ever seen in any game, the soundtrack is killer, the jokes are funny, the characters are extremely likable, the boss fights are super memorable, and the rhythm based gameplay permeates the world so completely and naturally that I often found myself trying to keep the beat with my movements and jumps even outside of combat. Hell, I even caught myself scrolling through menus to the beat a few times even though there is absolutely no gameplay benefit to doing so. It just sucks you into the music and doesn't let you go. I am no programmer so I can only imagine how hard it must have been to make sure everything that you, your enemies, AND the environment do are always on beat. Given the unpredictable and dynamic nature of playing a game, that is one hell of a feat in my eyes. It blows my mind how Tango went from making a mediocre game in Evil Within to a pretty good game in Evil Within 2 to GOTY material in Hi-Fi Rush. They've grown so much and they are definitely a studio to keep an eye on now. I could probably think of some complaints if I wanted to, but they would feel so miniscule and petty in the face of everything this game does so, so right. If you have any love for action games or rhythm games then this one is an absolute must-play without question.

When it comes to morality systems I hold Witcher 3 as the gold standard that has yet to be surpassed.

Morality system or not, the last thing a game needs these days is a paragon/renegade dichotomy complete with a karma bar. I think we should have outgrown that by now.

It's not just NMS. Every game I try to play malfunctions to some degree. NMS is just the most unplayable. I've been following a thread in the PSVR subreddit about this issue for a while now and this is almost definitely a hardware defect. At this point I'm just going to send it back for a refund. The fact that it's almost been a week now and Sony still hasn't so much as publicly acknowledged the issue, let alone offered a fix or explanation, has left me kind of pissed off. Sure, sometimes hardware launches go like this, but at least admit you fucked up, you cowards.

Got my PSVR2 today. Set it up without any issues, charged up the controllers and all that. Aaaaand the games don't recognize my fucking inputs. I can't even get past the main menu of No Man's Sky. The buttons work fine for navigating the PS5 menus, but once you're actually in the game it just suddenly stops functioning. This seems to be a widespread issue and both me and my friend, who was super excited for this, are affected by it. Shit sucks, man. Sony better come out with a statement about this ASAP.

Does this $70 Zelda thing feel like bullshit to anyone else? I see a lot of folks defending it "because it's Zelda" but I have a veritable laundry list of reasons that falls flat for me. - For starters, I think Breath of the Wild is already overrated, but I accept that is a minority opinion - Same map and a lot of recycled assets. I know the game isn't out but I don't believe for a minute it's going to be comprised of mostly new assets. Otherwise, they would have shown more of that by now. - A $70 Playstation or Xbox game will eventually have a price drop. A $70 Nintendo game will probably take an entire generation to drop in price even a little, and that's if you're lucky. Frankly, a lot of Nintendo games already feel overpriced to me. - The Switch is ancient hardware. They are basically charging 70 for a PS3 game. I hated paying 70 for God of War Ragnarok but you know what? I can at least see where the money went in the production because the game is gorgeous and it ran smooth as butter. A Switch game will often struggle to even hit 30 FPS in 720p, and you want me to pay 70 for that? Fuck outta here. - "But inflation" I hear some people say. Yeah, I have no sympathy. You know why? Because prices kept going up and yet wages still didn't keep pace with it. Even before COVID, the wage increase to inflation ratio was absolutely atrocious. So pardon me if I'm not shedding any tears for Nintendo getting a smaller profit margin. Making up their inflation losses with my already limited and devalued funds is not my responsibility. - You know damn well they're also going to sell an expansion pass for this game. That's another 30 bucks minimum. - Elden Ring is 60 bucks and don't even try to tell me that Zelda is going to be bigger or more ambitious than that game was.

Hogwarts Legacy I wasn't originally planning to play this right away but I got a Scottish friend who insisted and I can see why because I had a great time with this one. It doesn't really do much that you haven't seen some variation of in other games, but it's all wrapped up in a package that's so enjoyable that I really didn't mind at all. My biggest concern going into it was the combat. I worried it would just be spamming pew pew spells the whole time like an over-the-shoulder shooter, but it really isn't. Spells are categorized into different groups, and different kinds of enemies require different kinds of spells to do damage. It starts off pretty simple and basic in the beginning, but once you start unlocking more spells and the enemy types start to increase then you'll be constantly juggling between all your various spells to keep up. As for the flow of combat, I'd call it "Arkham except ranged," which I think is a fair assessment, and I don't mean that in a bad way. The biggest star, however, is the sheer attention to detail. You not only have the entirety of Hogwarts at your disposal, but also Hogsmeade and the surrounding countryside and its various hamlets and labyrinths. Hogwarts itself is definitely the draw here. I loved just walking through the halls and seeing what weird magical stuff was happening. Sometimes students will be having mishaps with their spells, the suits of armor will salute you as you go by, the paintings talk to you, and you'll even see some of the franchise's well-known ghosts roaming the castle and making a nuisance of themselves. No pun intended, but it's all very enchanting and if you have any attachment to the setting then you'll probably find it extremely charming like I did. Of course, if you don't have any attachment to the setting then I'd probably ask why you're even playing it to begin with. I also appreciate that it lets you immerse yourself in ways it really didn't have to. For example, you can ride around on both a broom and a magical beast. There is not really any practical reason to choose one over the other, but they knew there would be people who wanted to ride on beasts so they let you do it. Hogsmeade also lets you visit iconic shops that don't really sell anything that would help you from a gameplay perspective, but you can still look around and interact with stuff. The only way to get more immersed in the setting would be to go to Universal Studios. I don't really have that much to complain about here. The story wasn't mind-blowing, I suppose, but it was presented well enough and I actually got invested in some of the side stories with your classmates. Most of the characters are at least interesting if not always likable. If I have to complain about something I suppose it's the fact that after a while most of the gear you find will be at a lower level than what you're already wearing so it's only good to sell for money. However, this is somewhat alleviated by a feature I love and think absolutely every gear based game should have. As soon as a piece of gear enters your inventory, you can always set its appearance as a cosmetic skin, even after you sell it. Found a cool looking hat but the stats are garbage? You can sell it guilt free and still set your good hat's appearance to match the cool looking one. Why doesn't every game do this? For some reason, there is no Quidditch either. Maybe it's meant for DLC or a sequel or maybe the devs just didn't think they had the time or resources to properly implement it. I dunno, but I hope it shows up in some form in the future. Aside from those two things I feel like any negatives I bring up would be nitpicking. Great game. Can't wait to play through it again as a bastardly dark wizard.

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin Man, this one hurts to put in this thread because for a good while I was digging this game and I was even willing to put in the patience it demands of the player. This is a game that mixes surprisingly complex rice farming with deceptively intricate 2D combat, and I was really willing to give it a chance. As a harvest goddess, your combat strength depends directly on the quality of your rice crops. In fact, it's the only way to level up. In the beginning you have to monotonously perform all your rice cultivating tasks by hand, which is grueling and takes a long time, but if you power through it then as time goes on you unlock farm tools and level up your farm skills, allowing you to do in seconds what used to take up to ten minutes. I know not everyone would be willing to give the game that kind of time, but it feels satisfying to watch Sakuna grow into a master farmer. I was on board. Unfortunately, once you reach about 75% of the way through the game, your combat stats get nerfed to absolute oblivion due to a story event and you are forced to power Sakuna up all over again by doing fetch quests and beating very difficult bosses with your stats reduced by up to half. It is some of the most atrocious padding in recent memory and it takes literal years of in-game time to get Sakuna back up to speed because chances are your stats will be so low that you're forced to stop fighting entirely and just spend several years farming rice to get what precious few stat increases you can each harvest so you can stand a chance at fighting a boss with stats 20 levels above your own nerfed ass. It fucking ruined the game for me and that sucks because up until that part I was having a really good time with it. Maybe I'll go back and finish it someday but I just can't take any more right now.

I was gonna wait but my friend is raving about it so much he talked me into it.

Half-Life: Alyx - Levitation This is a fanmade expansion for the base game, but for something fanmade it's polished enough to pass for official content. It even has voice acting, not by the official actors of course but by very good impersonators. This campaign will take you anywhere from 3 to 5 hours to play through the first time, which is a pretty good length for something completely free, and there's some decent variety in the gameplay. There's even a boss fight at the end! If I have to criticize something, it's probably the uneven difficulty. Unlike the base game, which carefully distributed health and ammo so that you could always go into each new skirmish with enough of both to get by, Levitation is stingier with the pickups. There were a couple times in the campaign when I was constantly dying and reloading due to being stuck with only 1 HP after an especially grueling fight without a chance to heal myself. It's definitely more difficult than the vanilla game, so I guess if you feel like Half-Life: Alyx was too easy then you might enjoy that aspect of Levitation. Either way it's totally worth downloading.

http://beta.character.ai Pick a fictional character or famous figure and have a conversation with them, or even make your own bot. This is easily the most sophisticated chatbot I've ever seen and you can also rate responses and swipe between multiple possible responses to help each bot learn the proper behavior.

I trivialized it by just staying at the top of the stairs and constantly dodging sideways

If any Persona game needs a remake it's 3.

I've been replaying Sekiro recently and I realized that ogre is much, much more manageable if you just avoid the stairs entirely and fight it strictly on the flat ground at the top. The different elevations on the stairs really screw with the hitboxes.

Okay so I know I said I wouldn't buy this at launch and normally I wouldn't but I'm going through a really rough period in my life right now and I just need something to look forward to to keep me going so I said fuck it, I'll forget about bargain hunting just this once and splurge on something fun.

I think one of the most effective parts about Faith that doesn't get much mention because it's overshadowed by the incredible presentation is the fact that for 95% of the game your only means of defense is a crucifix, which makes for a really nice balance. You're almost never completely helpless and thus prone to frustration from what feels like unavoidable deaths when something pops up unexpectedly, but at the same time you almost never have the means to permanently kill any demons you come across and can only drive them off temporarily, which gives you just enough agency without removing the tension. I wish more horror games were designed this way.

Imagine being one of those poor saps who bought the most expensive Hitman 3 bundle back in the day.