toxicitizen

Thank fuck it's not too close to Requiem. Should leave me plenty of time to play through it at least a couple times before it's time to put my Fedex uniform back on.

It's actually happening! MGS4 is getting out of PS3 Jail! I wonder if they'll announce more bonus games, though. Because just 2 main games + Ghost Babel is kind of underwhelming after Vol. 1's lineup. I mean, MGS4 being included at all is huge, so I'm not complaining but they could've thrown in MGSV as well to complete the Solid series. The AC!D games would've also been really cool as bonus titles. Kinda makes me wonder if there's going to be a Vol. 3 down the line.

Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition It feels good to have finally finished this one. I started a playthrough years ago but never finished it. I thought I was close to the end but turns out I was barely halfway through the game. Anyway, it had been so long I needed to start over because I didn't remember anything about the plot. I think this is the first classic-style CRPG I actually manage to finish. The only other one I remember putting significant time into was Planescape: Torment and I ended up hitting a crazy difficulty spike and dropping it, thinking I had messed up my builds. This game is really good. The plot is mostly fine, it has its ups and downs but it's usually interesting enough to keep you going. But the combat is where the game really shines. The way the environment and elements interact with each other is really cool and the game actually expects you to abuse the hell out of it. Most of the time, if a fight is giving you trouble, the solution is to find a choke point and set up some kind of hazard the enemies will have to get through to get to you. A patch of ice means they'll keep falling on their ass while you're free to beat the hell out of them. If there's water on the ground, a lightning attack will stun everyone standing in it. And my favorite: setting up a poison gas cloud and igniting it with a fire arrow when they cross it to get to you. They take poison damage AND they're on fire. Good times. The first time I trivialized a challenging fight by using these systems to my advantage was one of the most satisfying things I've ever done in a game. The one thing I wasn't crazy about is how directionless the game can be at times. I get that it's meant to be open for you to explore and tackle quests in whatever order you like (within reason) but the maps are also balanced for you to be a specific level in certain areas. Maybe I'm just old and too used to quest-markers and other forms of hand-holding but I ended up using some maps someone made that label each zone with the level you should be to get a general sense of where I should be exploring at any given time. Then in the second main area, the quests seemed to want to send me places the maps said I shouldn't go explore yet, so I ended up not knowing where the hell I should be going. I looked at some guides for recommended quest orders and eventually managed to figure out a logical order to do everything but in hindsight I can see why this was the spot where I dropped the game on my first attempt years ago. Anyway, I don't know when I'll have time to get to the sequel but I'm looking forward to it. From what I understand, it's a massive improvement over this one and should have more connections with the new game.

I stopped updating my spreadsheet at some point but I haven't actually beaten that many games in the last few months, so it was pretty easy to fill in the blanks by sorting my Steam library by "last played". Assassin's Creed Origins Yakuza 5 Remastered Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Monster Hunter Wilds The Last of Us Part II Assassin's Creed Shadows Ys X: Nordics Onimusha: Warlods Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury Donkey Kong Country Returns HD Metroid: Zero Mission Super Mario Odyssey Super Mario RPG Donkey Kong Bananza Powerwash Simulator Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater Silent Hill f Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut And I guess I might as well use this post for Ghost of Tsushima while I'm here. I still need to finish the Iki Island DLC but I did beat the main game. I loved it overall but it kinda overstayed its welcome a bit, so I decided to take a break from the DLC. In part because I really wanted to use my extra free time over the holidays to start a new playthrough of Divinity: Original Sin. I never finished it and I'd really like to play both Original Sin games before the new Divinity comes out. Anyway, Ghost of Tsushima. I don't have a ton to say about it. At first I found the combat a little awkward and loose but I got used to it and ended up enjoying it a lot. Playing on hard made the combat satisfyingly lethal early on but by the end of the game you're so overpowered that it barely even matters anymore. The art direction was fantastic and I especially loved how they used the wind to guide you instead of an awkward quest marker. The only real issue I had was how repetitive the open-world stuff was. I think they should've either made the map smaller or had more variety to it. Following a cute little fox to a shrine was fine the first few times but around the 20th shrine it started getting really old. So yeah, I'll definitely play Ghost of Yotei when it comes to PC but I'm in no hurry, they can take their time with the port. Also, my game of the year is uh... Bananza? TLoU Part II is my real top game of the year but it's a late port so I'm giving it to Donkey Kong because it was insanely fun. Which reminds me: buying a Switch 2 was horrible idea! I barely had time to make a dent in my backlog in the first place and now I have so many Switch games to play on top of that!

Starting off the new year with some highly anticipated titles:

I have returned! Ok, so this didn't turn out quite how I had expected. I now have a better grasp of what was going on, what the different character's motivations were, their relationships to each other, etc. All the endings put together really paint an overall picture that explains all of that very clearly. The thing is the endings don't quite work together in a "this is what happened" kinda way. Without getting into spoilers, the first NG+ cycle immediately drops a bomb that was deliberately omitted from the initial playthrough. So basically every conversation in the entire game is recontextualized. It feels kind of artificial but it makes the first playthrough pretty mysterious and mindfucky so I don't really have a problem with it, I guess. But after that, the other endings mostly serve to flesh out everyone's motivations and feelings with ending 4 providing the last pieces that tie everything together. It's hard to talk about this without dropping a huge spoiler so I'll just say that the game never quite explained the parts that I was the most curious about because, ultimately, that wasn't the point of the game. Or maybe there's some stuff I just didn't pick up on... I'll probably watch some youtube videos to see what others have come up with. I'm sure there's a ton left to unpack since the endings have some contradictory elements and even some hints that But yeah, overall I really enjoyed the game. I'm not enough of a Silent Hill superfan to say whether or not it's a valid entry into the series but I loved both the SH2 Remake and this and I'm looking forward to Townfall, whatever that turn out to be.

Yeah I'm guessing it was more of a hard lock-up after dodging because I played for a few hours last night and she still does the little pause. It's annoying because if you dodge while running away from something she just comes to a complete stop for like a solid second, which is often enough for whatever is chasing you to get a good hit in.

I've been waiting for a new Steam Controller ever since my old one broke and the only reason I haven't bought an Index yet was because of all these Deckard leaks over the last couple years. I'm definitely ordering a Steam Frame and Steam Controller once pre-orders are live. The GabeCube is neat and I hope it takes off this time but I personally don't really have a need for it.

Lol I only got that on my first playthrough and I assumed it was a bug caused by the mod I used to remove the 30fps cap and blackbars in cutscenes. For that dodge bug, I'm assuming it's about how you stop for a second or so immediately after a dodge. It's annoying as hell but I assumed that was just how it worked. I guess I'll find out tonight.

Well shit, now i can brag that I finished Silent Hill f on hard before it got nerfed. New patch just came out and : It also adds a new casual difficulty and an option to skip some sections in NG+. Sounds like those might be the more tedious combat sections near the end. But, more importantly... That was a bug?!?!?

Silent Hill f I bought this to play as a spooky October game and ended up dropping it for most of October... Not because of any fault of the game, I just wasn't really in a gaming mood. Spent most of October watching movies, even started buying them physically again, which I had been meaning to do for a while. But I digress. Silent Hill f is pretty good! It's hard not to compare it to the SH2 remake. Overall, I'd say it wasn't quite as good but not too far behind either. It's also nowhere near as scary but, to be fair, in SH2 I was dreading running into Pyramid Head around every corner and there's simply nothing like that in this game. The atmosphere is incredible, though, and the art direction is fantastic. So yeah, that's ending 1 done. I realize the game is meant to be replayed to get the full picture but by itself the ending felt a bit tacked on. Some stuff I had already put together by that point but the very last section reveals something that I couldn't have possibly guessed or predicted based on everything that happened in the game. I'm assuming I'll start to see the bigger picture as I go through the other endings. I've seen people commenting that as early as the beginning of the first NG+ cycle the game is already dropping little things that start recontextualizing things a lot. So I've got that to look forward to. I've seen a lot of people complaining about the combat and I didn't really have any issues with it for most of the game. You can set the difficulty for combat and puzzles independently and I did my playthrough with both on hard. Combat felt really punishing early on but once I had a good grasp on it the balance felt just right. I had a full inventory for most of the game but when things started ramping up I would burn through my resources pretty quickly. The game kinda goes insane with it in the last few chapters, though, and it started being a bit much. It felt like way too much combat all at once and I was ready for the game to end at that point. So yeah, I'll have to do NG+ soon because I need to know more. Which means

Just a couple days ago I was wondering if I should buy this now or wait. And then today a pre-order key from GMG showed up in my inbox. I legitimately forgot I had already bought it...

I... don't think that's allowed? Seriously, though, that's not something I've heard often lol. Especially since you seem to like the games the other games. I don't know what it was about the original that you didn't like but it might still be worth giving the remake a shot at some point. It's really good.

Did you not even consider going from RE3R to RE4R? I know you said you don't like how it's getting more action-y but still, that's one of the best games of all time right there. And it's the first REmake since, well, the first REmake that feels like it actually makes the original obsolete.

Yep, RE3R was alright but very disappointing as a remake. It's really dumb how they upgraded Mr. X into more of a stalker that roams around dynamically but then went on to reduce Nemesis to scripted encounters and boss fights in the very next game. I'm sure that in reality Nemesis was more scripted than he appeared to be in the original but he was still the original stalker that felt like he could show up at any time. That remake was such wasted potential. It could've been something truly special but instead they treated it like a box to check so they could move on to remaking RE4.