Mister Jack

I rented Shadow of War from Redbox. I'm only a few hours in but I can already tell this is better than the last one. The combat feels tighter for one thing. I got a lot of deaths in the first game due to delayed inputs which I don't see here. There is also just more to do and better enemy variety. I'm looking forward to playing more.

If this one sells poorly like the last one, they should really just do a DLC to wrap up the storyline and then quietly let this series die and move on to something else. Unless they decide to finally stop being a bunch of fuckboys and do a Ninja sequel in feudal Japan. That would get me to come back.

Man, there are some PC ports out there that are beginning to require ridiculous amounts of space. My copy of Doom is up to 67 GB after updates. What on earth is making it take up THAT much space? The entirety of Witcher 3 only takes up 49. Putting that aside, Nioh and FFXV both require a staggering 100 GB of space. In this case I feel like 4k textures are probably to blame, which makes me wonder: why aren't they optional downloads? Is there some technical reason that isn't possible? I would be surprised if there is, and I feel like they should be offered as a separate download in order to save space for people who don't need them. There aren't very many people out there yet who even have 4k monitors, let alone the rigs to run high-end 4k games. It's just too expensive right now.

Got the platinum for Fractured But Whole. It actually isn't all that hard, and with one exception there are no missable trophies in this game, unlike in Stick of Truth. The one missable trophy, The Token Experience, requires you to play as a black kid for the whole game on hard mode. This ended up being an interesting experience. I don't know how many of you heard about the minor controversy of the difficulty slider joke in the character creator. Here it is you haven't seen it. Before the game came out, people were concerned that this meant you were forced to play a black kid if you wanted to play the game on hard mode. This isn't true; it's just a gag and the actual difficulty modifier is in a separate menu. If anything, when I tried it the game was easier. I'll explain. On my first playthrough I played with a hispanic skin tone like I usually do with create-a-character games. After beating it, I went back to do the trophy and made a black girl just to see how much was different. The answer? Well, you start off with less money if you're black. However, there is a black character who will give you a piece of equipment that is pretty overpowered for most of the game, but he'll only give it to you if you're black. There is another such item you can get from a girl, but only if you're also a girl. So as a black girl I had two overpowered items that carried at least half of my second playthrough.

I agree with this. I remember Vice City Stories on the PSP having a mechanic where you could actually build your own criminal empire with all kinds of rackets to manage, and I wish something like this would get explored further in the main series, perhaps with underbosses you recruit via a similar system. That would be fantastic.

Man, did that thing ever do a single thing that made it worth having one? Even the PS4 camera at least gets used for their VR headset now.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole This was an interesting sequel. It feels almost completely different from Stick of Truth, probably because it kinda is. The battle system in the old game was completely scrapped and turned into a grid-based tactics system that I think makes for much more interesting combat. I think Stick of Truth is probably funnier, but this one isn't bad. It's also longer than Stick of Truth, although it did stumble a bit near the end in my opinion. Still, gameplay-wise this one is definitely superior in almost every way, minus a few bizarre changes and omissions. As much as I love Stick of Truth, that one felt more like an extra long episode of the show with turn-based combat tacked on as an afterthought because there needs to be gameplay, while this one felt more like it was designed to be a game first and foremost. Whether that's good or bad is a matter of opinion.

Well if you happen to discover anything, let me know. I'm not sure what to try anymore.

I'm having a hell of a time getting my PC to go to sleep. I think it's the same problem I had before, but I'm just realizing now that the problem wasn't that it won't wake up, but that it never actually went to sleep at all. The screen goes black, but it won't sleep! And I still can't wake it up properly either, forcing a hard reset. Dean, you ever figure out what your problem was?

At least they bothered to get a kid who's actually Japanese this time. But I'd still rather have season 2 of the anime.

I also bought a power bank recently (I think the brand is DBpower?) and I don't know how I ever lived without it. It's primarily meant to be used to jumpstart your car in an emergency, and it is very good at doing that, but it also has ports for charging any USB device and also laptops. It also has a compass, a flashlight, and an emergency flare built right in. Technology sure has come a long way.

So not to distract from the outpouring of love for Grape-kun, which is totally justified, but I just discovered a fan project called One Pace. It's a group that takes One Piece episodes and cuts out the filler and padding Dragon Ball Kai style. If you've ever wanted to get into One Piece but were intimidated by just how long the anime has been running, consider googling it. Trust me, you won't be missing anything by skipping the padding. You may now return to your penguin tributes.

We must all pay our respects to the world's ultimate weeb bird. He even chose 2D over 3D.

A Hat in Time. I still have some time pieces to collect but I finished the story. This game was ridiculously charming. Hat kid is an adorable character, the jokes are actually funny, the levels were very well designed, the controls were tight, and the majority of the dialogue is fully voiced by decent and memorable actors. This game delivered what I had hoped to get from Yooka-Laylee but didn't. The best part is that with upcoming co-op and mod support, people can keep making and playing levels for this game for years to come.

Unless you're holding onto them for collector's or nostalgic purposes, there's not much reason to keep those old consoles these days.

Batman vs. Two-Face. This was Adam West's final time portraying Batman, and if I'm not mistaken I think it's the last acting role he ever had. This was a great, fun Batman film, much like the last one. It plays up the corniness of the 60s Batman (Dent gets scarred by Hugo Strange's "evil extraction machine" overloading and exploding when they use it on the rogues' gallery) but at the same time it actually has a strangely compelling interpretation of Two-Face's character that I don't think I've seen before. Everyone does an admirable job with their roles, and William Shatner turned out surprisingly good as Two-Face. It's not quite as silly and goofy as Return of the Caped Crusaders, but it's still quite goofy. The trade-off is getting a more focused plot. I recommend it if any of you ever get the chance to watch it. Thanks for one last batventure, Adam. Rest well, Bright Knight.

The Emoji Movie. I wanted to see just how bad it was. No, I didn't pay for it; fuck that. This felt like it was made by a robot, like someone typed "make a feelgood family comedy about emojis" into the Moviebot 9000. You see every joke coming from a mile away, the plot is beyond vacuous and superficial, and as if that wasn't bad enough the movie about phone emojis shows a laughable lack of understanding about how phones or apps even work. Even if I'm trying to accept this movie's logic, the story just makes no sense at all. It's 90 minutes of advertisements delivered by some truly unlikable characters. Everyone who was involved in the production of this should be ashamed. Yes, even Patrick Stewart.

Just Cause 3. Man, this is quite a mixed bag. I really loved the core of the game. Zipping and parachuting and gliding around is a lot of fun, and just blowing shit up is even better, even if it does get a little repetitive. But what idiot decided that all the upgrades have to be tied to online challenges? Seriously, that's the ONLY way to upgrade your equipment in this game, and doing challenges is such a chore. Even if you put aside the fact that most of them are races and time trials, the most boring part of any open-world game, every time you load one up you have to wait while it connects to the servers, then sit through another loading screen to actually start the challenge. It does this EVERY SINGLE TIME, which means if you want to fully upgrade your character you'll have to sit through a ton of loading. After I got maybe three or four upgrades I didn't even bother doing the challenges for the rest of the game because it was just so tedious. If there is a Just Cause 4, and I'm not sure there will be because if I recall this one underperformed, I hope they cut that shit out.

Every day we don't get a Vento Aureo confirmation a die a little inside. My Hero Academia confirmed season 3 literally at the end of the last episode of season 2. I wish more anime did that. I really like how they're handling this show. As far as I am aware, anime going through seasons like this when covering a shonen manga is a fairly recent thing. Usually they either air continuously without a break and end up having to waste time with a bunch of filler (Dragon Ball, One Piece) or they just flat out end before the manga does (too many to count). This format is just perfect to me. It sucks to have to wait for more episodes, but the extra time means the episodes can be tighter and short on filler scenes. I love it.

Worst as in bad at games.

My Hero Academia season 2 has officially ended, for any of you who were waiting to binge the whole thing.

Keith David has a voice like melting butter.