toxicitizen

007 First Light This turned out to be both less like Hitman and more like James Bond than I expected. Overall, I really enjoyed it. It's definitely the best Bond game so far simply by virtue of not just being a glorified shooter. This adapts the full experience of being Bond including the social stealth aspect and the way you can recover from breaking stealth just by throwing a few punches. Getting spotted in Hitman usually means immediately reloading whereas in this I always just rolled with it since that seemed to be in the spirit of the game. I kinda wish it was more open-ended, though. I don't see a ton of replayability in the main campaign. The levels really aren't as sandboxy as in Hitman. And it remains to be seen how much longevity TacSim will actually add to the game. I guess that's going to largely depend on how much content they plan to add post-launch because right now there doesn't seem to be a ton of content there. Especially considering the amount of cosmetics I've already unlocked from pre-order bonuses, twitch drops and Hitman account linking. So I'm expecting the support to be rather extensive and long-term. I'm a long time Hitman fan, and as much as I'm looking forward to the next Hitman, I wouldn't be mad if IO Interactive alternated between Hitman and this for the next decade. I definitely hope it does well enough for a sequel to happen, at least.

Ditto Shovel Knight was way too good for me not to get this day one. I'll probably play it next once I'm done with First Light.

Dragon Quest XII: The Flames of Fate has restarted development and is now Dragon Quest XII: Beyond Dreams. Coming: not anytime soon lol. At least we actually get some footage of this version, though.

Hitman 2 I decided to replay this to kill some time while I wait for First Light but this turned out to not be a normal playthrough. It started out normal enough, I was going to replay the story and then go for all the achievements so I could transfer my progress into Hitman: World of Assassination and finally play the last set of levels and the end of the story. Well, turns out I waited too long to do this because about halfway through the Hitman 1 levels I found out they killed the Hitman 3 transfer when they added cross-progression to the game. So now I have to once again redo everything in Hitman: WoA. Which isn't a bad problem to have, I'm already looking forward to starting over on a fresh save. But it is a hell of a time sink so idk when I'll get around to do that. Maybe the Steam Frame will be out by then and I'll be able to do it in VR. Anyway, once I found out I couldn't transfer my progress, I changed my approach. Instead of treating it like a story replay, I switched into achievement hunting mode. I started skipping all the story cutscenes so that my next run in WoA would be somewhat fresh and I started being more optimal with my runs. I realized that if I started every level with a Master Difficulty/Suit Only/Silent Assassin/Sniper Assassin run (using a video guide), I would unlock a shit ton of "classics" challenges and would get enough xp to almost max out level mastery immediately (since I was already halfway there on most levels). That made things much more efficient and I started making progress much faster from that point on. It also had the added benefit that I didn't spend hours exploring every nook and cranny of every level. So once again, my next run in WoA should be somewhat fresh when played normally. The only issue was the multiplayer achievements for the Sniper levels but I found someone willing to help on the Steam forum. At this point, the forum is basically nothing but people looking for help with those achievements. I wasn't sure I'd have enough time to finish this before First Light came out but as it turns out now I have another week and a half to kill...

Oh right, yeah, me too.

I don't know if this counts as a trope but I've been replaying Hitman 2 and the game has honest to god functional mirrors. And this was right before ray-tracing became really prevalent, so it doesn't kill the performance and it doesn't look like a blurry mess because of DLSS because the game supports neither of those things. As far as I can tell, they don't use the old trick of rendering the room a second time, either. And by functional I don't just mean clear, visible reflections. If you pull out a gun while standing behind an NPC, they'll spot you in the reflection and react accordingly. It's just one of those things that games stopped bothering with so long ago that I've gotten used to mirrors in games just being some kind of weird-looking blurry surfaces. So when you run into one that actually works it's a nice detail. It's the kind of attention to detail that I've come to only expect from developers like Remedy at this point. I still remember when I found a projector in Control, lifted it with telekinesis and the image it was projecting on the wall reacted accordingly and even spun around with the projector. They're small, superficial details but I always appreciate it when devs actually bother to implement them realistically.

New Zachtronics Coincidence game just shadow-dropped yesterday! At least, I don't think it was announced prior to this. Like Kaizen, it doesn't look like it involves actual coding or have a physical edition, sadly. But that's still an instabuy for me!

I've been anticipating this game because I love Hitman and I trust IO Interactive but my hype has been going into overdrive ever since they released the theme song for the game. I just love a good Bond theme. I thought I'd do a mini Bond marathon in anticipation for the game but less than a week in and I've already rewatched all the Pierce Brosnan movies and 2 of the Daniel Craig ones. At this rate I'll have to go back and watch some of the movies from before my time. Anyway, I was going to wait until closer to launch but the previews coming out today are super positive so far, so I said fuck it.

Isn't it just completing Unknown Signal mode? That's not exactly a big ask. It's basically just a post-game free roam mode with 10 extra challenge rooms to clear. I played a little bit of it yesterday and managed to clear half of them fairly quickly. Some of the chambers require you to fight harder versions of the bosses to unlock (I had already met the requirements to unlock the others), but with my almost fully upgraded gear I found them easier than the original fights...

Pragmata I absolutely loved this game. It feels like a throwback to the PS360 gen in a lot of ways. It reminded me a lot of Vanquish in particular. It made me realize how much I miss the days when most games were a solid 10-12 hours with no fluff, often with a lot of replay value. Nowadays, everything needs to be an open-world with dozens of hours of brainless checklists to complete. And don't get me wrong, I love me a good checklist open-world when that's what I'm in the mood for. Especially when it's a game I love and want to spend as much time as possible with. I just find it exhausting that that's what a lot of AAA games have become. Anyway, yeah, Pragmata is great. The hacking concept is novel enough to make the combat feel pretty unique and with the amount of customization available I'm sure people will come up with insane builds that just tear through Lunatic difficulty. I also loved the art direction, especially in the earlier levels when everything looks like a 3D printer vomited all over the station. This feels like a game I'm going to want to keep revisiting over the years. Kinda like Platinum's games. I'm definitely going to keep playing, at the very least do NG+ and Unknown Signal mode. Maybe Lunatic difficulty if I'm feeling adventurous.

Great decision, it's a fantastic game! It feels right out of the PS360 gen. It plays differently but it's giving me strong Vanquish vibes. I love it. Although I am sad to report that it features AI art.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach It's more Death Stranding. Like, shockingly so. The intro was a huge surprise and the ending was completely bonkers in the best way but the middle 80% of the game basically feels like a rehash of the first game. I don't know what I expected but I figured Kojima would switch things up more than that. And it just overall wasn't as captivating as the first game for me. The first game did such a fantastic job with its world-building that it just doesn't feel weird and mysterious anymore. I can just roll with whatever weirdness the game throws at me. That's not to say I didn't love every second of it, though. Like Mister Jack said, the game is definitely way easier than the first one. The only missions I didn't S-rank with ease were some of the boss fights. I remember struggling with the Mads Mikkelsen sections in the first game but I never had any issues dealing with Solid Snake wannabe in this one. Getting access to vehicles very early on also really trivializes the game. I was playing on brutal difficulty and the only times I was challenged was when I had to deal with those ghost mechs. In hindsight, I probably should've played on that new To The Wilder difficulty but I'm always wary of new "eXtRa DiFfIcUlT fOr PrO pLaYeRs OnLy" modes because more often than not they feel like over-tuned bullshit. It's always a treat to play a new Kojima game but at this point it's starting to feel like he's just remaking the same game since MGSV. Sam controls almost exactly like Venom Snake, he just has a different moveset. They're all set in open-worlds with mission-based story progression and big story moments delivered much more sparingly than in his MGS2-4 era. I kinda hope he'll switch things up a bit more with Physint. I'll be there day one no matter what but I wouldn't mind a different structure in his future games. Anyway, normally I'd keep playing and 5-star all locations and get all the achievements but I started playing Pragmata and it's actually really fucking good. So I'm gonna focus on that for now and probably get back to DS2 later on.

It's been too long since I've played a Metro game. I still haven't gotten around to playing Exodus. I think I'll try to replay the first two games and then do Exodus before 2039 comes out.

I really enjoyed the demo and the reviews and overall buzz surrounding the game are very positive, so I went for it. And it's a new IP for once, so I don't mind showing some support. Besides, if there's a studio that's earned my blind trust at this point it's definitely Capcom. The timing is perfect too since I'm nearing the end of Death Stranding 2.

You bought RAM in this economy? Did you have to mortgage your house?!