toxicitizen

Announcing a Steam release of this instead of P5R is the most Atlus move ever but whatever, I'll take it! It's "only" 30 bucks if you already own Persona 4 so it was a no-brainer. I actually bought this one at launch on PS3 so I think that officially makes it the fighting game I've spent the most money on ever lol.

Probably? They already fucked off from Steam when EGS offered them money bags. None of their latest releases are available on Steam. We now know that the overwhelming majority of EGS exclusives failed to recoup the investment for Epic (so the devs end up making no additional income and often stop promoting the EGS version altogether once the Steam release happens lol) but in Ubisoft's case they still had uPlay to fall back on. So I think it's very likely that of all the companies that got in bed with Epic, Ubisoft are the ones that made out like bandits. I expect them to come crawling back to Steam eventually (EA finally did) but they can stay on the EGS for all I care. AC Valhalla is pretty much the only game I'd probably end up buying if they returned to Steam. And honestly, I've wanted a new Splinter Cell for years now but with everything surrounding Ubisoft over the past couple years I honestly couldn't give less of a shit right now. I don't trust the current Ubisoft to make a decent stealth game.

So, as their tour continues more and more videos of the new Gloryhammer singer pop up online and fuck me, he's really fucking good. Thomas Winkler had this manic energy to him that really can't be matched but at this point I think it's obvious that Sozos Michael is simply more skilled as a vocalist. I can't wait for the fourth album so we can hear him singing new material tailored to his strengths.

It's a pretty standard third-person shooter. It's nothing mind-blowing but it's surprisingly competent coming from a studio that mostly makes RTS games and it's a lot of fun if you like 40K.

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward After taking a break from the game midway through the expansion, the Endwalker launch finally motivated me to go back and finish it. I hadn't stopped because I wasn't enjoying it, far from it, it's just that I had been playing FFXIV for like 2 months straight at that point and this is the kind of game that takes basically all of your time and I wanted to play other games. I was only going to take a short break but that ended up being like 3 months. Woops. Once I got back into it, though, I couldn't stop until I was done. This game has a way of sucking you in and consuming all your time. Looking back through the thread, I don't think I ever made a post for A Realm Reborn, so I guess I'll cover that as well. The ARR part of the story is pretty uneven but it has its moments and, considering the circumstances under which it was made, it's honestly way better of a campaign than it has any right to be. And then there's the 2.x updates, a series of roughly 80 level 50 quests you have to get through to reach Heavensward, which... ooof. Even after they updated it to trim the fat and remove some filler (it used to be over 100 quests), it's still a slog to get through. Here's the thing, though. About halfway through the 2.x quests, the story starts getting really good and the climax in the 2.5 update that leads directly into 3.0/Heavensward is honestly one of the best story moments I've experienced in a game in a looooong time. Whether or not it's worth to slog through 100 hours of quests that vary in quality from "boring filler" all the way to "pretty damn good" just to get to Heavensward will depend on the player but I'm really glad I went through with it because holy shit, Heavensward! This is classic Final Fantasy through and through. People aren't exaggerating when they say it's the best single-player Final fantasy story there's been in like two decades. I love FFX, FFXII, and hell, even FFXIII! But none of them come close to Heavensward. It's just peak Final Fantasy. You've got dragons, dragoons, an evil pope and you fight a God at the end. What more could you possibly want? And apparently Shadowbringers is supposed to be even better so there's no way I'm stopping here! I'm also really glad I've been playing the Pixel Remasters in parallel to this because Yoshi-P's love of classic FF is pretty apparent throughout. There are so many references to FFI-III that would've gone completely over my head had I not played them. It ends up making FFXIV feel like a love letter to classic FF and it kinda rules. I'm honestly getting really excited for Final Fantasy XVI, because if the quality here is indicative of what we'll get then it could be the best single-player FF in quite a while. And this isn't something I ever thought I would say after the absolute mess that was FFXV.

Not to me! I totally should've called it but I had a feeling this might be in the works when the first one suddenly got a remaster out of nowhere a couple months ago. Pretty happy about it, too. I loved the first one back in the day. Gonna have to replay it in anticipation of the sequel.

I'm hopeful it'll have at least some of the DNA of their previous games. Also, I've seen this rumor that they'll announce a sequel to Prey at the Game Awards. Haven't seen it discussed anywhere else, though. Hopefully it's not complete bs... https://bloody-disgusting.com/video-games/3694634/rumour-control-arkane-working-on-sequel-to-prey-will-debut-trailer-at-the-game-awards/

I was gonna wait but... it's already down to like 20 bucks on Humble after the Choice subscriber discount. Feels bad, man. I don't regret waiting but it must have bombed pretty hard. Really hope that Microsoft purchase is providing some security for Arkane... Just keep them making immersive sims forever, Phil, please! Oh right, almost forgot but I also grabbed Endwalker a few days ago. I'm nowhere near reaching that part of the story (haven't played in a couple months...) but I could afford the purchase, had nothing else I really wanted immediately AND I wanted the pre-order earrings for bonus exp when I inevitably get around to leveling other jobs. I've been Dragoon from the start and I love it (and it's the thematically appropriate for Heavensward) but I think I'll switch to Samurai once I get to Stormblood and then to Dark Knight when I reach Shadowbringers. I think those are the "canon" jobs for those and at some point I wanna try something different.

For fuck's sake. Fuck Netflix for sticking their noses where it didn't belong. I'm not subbing to two streaming services for a single show... edit: Just googled it and it seems like it's actually been on there since November 1st. Probably should've done that in the first place lol.

Is Golden Wind available on Netflix or do I need to go to Crunchyroll for that and then Netflix for Stone Ocean?

The new Gloryhammer singer was announced today and he uploaded this to his personal youtube channel. I was skeptical but he seems pretty damn good. Can't wait to hear his rendition of their other tracks! I'll always miss Angus, though...

Yeah, it's not worth it unless you want liquid cooling for your GPU as well and I ain't fucking with that. Way too scary lol.

I'm planning on getting an AIO cooler for my CPU, yeah. Anything more complicated like a custom loop has me worried about ruining the entire PC if I fuck it up. What do you use?

I'll be building a new PC next year and I've decided to slowly start buying my pieces one at a time so I don't overload my credit card. Plus, this way once I'll be ready to get the CPU and motherboard I should have everything else so I'll be able to splurge a little. Anyway, there were some black friday deals I couldn't pass up. The SSD's going in my computer immediately. The case was 60$ off, which I figured was significant enough of a discount to justify getting it a few months earlier than planned. I took the case out of the box to make sure everything was good and holy shit. I thought I was going for a smaller form factor (I was initially going to get the micro-ATX version of that model but got worried about a bigger GPU fitting in it) but it's almost as tall as my current one and way wider.

Hahaha yeah, I noticed that when I posted the pic. I had just done some reorganizing when I took it, it's since been rectified. So you didn't read the prequels at all, uh? See, I bought the Legends of Dune trilogy because I read that it's basically required reading to get the most out of Hunters/Sandworms, which are the two that I was always going to read no matter what since they're the ending to the entire series. Apparently they used a lot of what they introduced in that trilogy when they wrote the finale. You didn't feel that at all?

Since you mention that many books beyond book 5, I take it you've read the Brian Herbert sequels/prequels? If so, give it to me straight, what am I getting myself into here? I originally only had the main books but I pre-ordered some fancy Sandworms bookends and figured "Might as well complete the set!" and fell into an eBay rabbit hole. I have more on the way...

Sure but the thing with that is that in a book you can have as much inner monologue as you want to clearly show her state of mind. What you're describing would work but I don't think it would convey it to quite the right degree. In a movie, you need to externalize a character's internal conflict in one way or another and the whole "being a Bene Gesserit vs being a mother" thing is pretty abstract and subtle to begin with.

That's a fair complaint but tbh how do you even convey an internal conflict like that visually? The movie had to cram so much in its limited runtime that I don't blame him for cutting this particular corner. It could've been toned down I suppose but I was so happy with everything else that it never really bothered me. I especially loved how they represented the voice. That could've been super goofy but the way it was done was low-key creepy. Good to know! Out of curiosity, which ones did you think were the better/weaker ones? I imagine none of them will quite reach the heights of the first one but that still leaves a lot of room for the others to be great in their own right.

I guess we don't have a "Last INCREDIBLE Movie You Saw" thread so this will have to do. Finally went to see Dune yesterday. My god, it was perfect! Well, almost. The movie rushes through some parts that could've used more breathing room and then stretches some things that could've gone faster but I think that mostly came down to where they decided to end it. But overall this was shockingly faithful and every bit as good as I expected/hoped it to be. Can't wait for Part 2! As a side-note, I'm currently halfway through Dune Messiah and I already really hope that Denis Villeneuve will get his way and do a trilogy with Messiah as the third one, if only to see how audiences will react to it lol. Frank Herbert sure had balls to follow-up his hit book with a sequel that basically deconstructs everything he built in the first one. So far it's convinced me to just ignore anyone that recommends reading only the first book and stopping there. I'll read all the Frank Herbert books for sure. Beyond that, we'll see. I usually have an aversion to any kind of "expanded universe" stuff not written by the original author but I know Frank Herbert never finished Dune 7 and the conclusion his son wrote uses elements set up in the prequels he wrote so I'll probably at least read those so I can read the end of the main series. Although I'm already bracing myself for the worst...

I was about to reply with a joke like "Trevor is in this?!?" but after some quick googling it looks like he actually is lol. I really need to catch up on the MCU. I haven't seen any of the movies since Far From Home and only WandaVision for the tv shows. I saw a pic for the new slate of shows they just announced and I legit felt exhausted by the prospect of having to catch up on all of that. I should probably get on it before it all accumulates enough that I lose interest entirely...

Nice, let me know how it is. It's really tempting to get a Switch for this one (I was looking at the OLED model on Amazon just yesterday lol) but it's all but confirmed to be a timed exclusive so I just can't justify it. I'd probably get the Switch anyway if it wasn't for Nintendo being Nintendo and pulling all the 3D Mario remasters from sale. I'm so fucking salty about that lol. Having access to all of them on the Switch would make it really appealing to me and arbitrarily removing them is just such a Nintendo move...

Blasphemous Holy fuck, why did I sleep on this one for so long? This game is incredible! It's a good thing I played Bloodstained first because it would not have compared favorably to this. I can't really think of a single 2D souls-like that I actually loved until now. The only two I can think of off the top of my head are Death's Gambit and Salt and Sanctuary and I bounced off of both of them. I want to get back to them someday though. IIRC I only got distracted from Salt and Sanctuary, and while I found Death's Gambit rough and amateurish, it recently got a massive update+DLC so it might be worth giving another shot. Anyway, my point is Blasphemous is the first one to actually blow me away. What makes it really great is that, while it's clearly inspired by the Souls games, it doesn't just imitate them. It has its own identity in basically every aspect. I also found the whole bible horror angle to be way creepier than anything in the Souls franchise, including Bloodborne. I kinda want to jump right into NG+ and finish getting all the achievements but I think I'll hold off until next month when the final update/free DLC drops and adds what they're calling the true ending. Not that the game I just played felt like it lacked an ending but I'll take whatever they're willing to add!

At this rate it seems unlikely that FFVI will make it out this year but that works for me cause I don't have that much time for gaming lately. I don't even know if I'll dig into FFV right away although I'm really looking forward to this one since I've never actually played it.

What Jack said but also I think the main thing with Avengers wasn't the lack of MCU likeness so much as the character designs being pretty generic and kinda bad/boring. Guardians didn't have a good reveal but I distinctly remember thinking at the time: "well at least the characters don't look like shit in this one lol".