toxicitizen

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".

This just got here! I'm pretty happy to have it because I completely forgot to pre-order it until the last minute and then my bookstore didn't ship it on release day (and removed my shipping estimate). And it was out of stock both there and on Amazon so it really looked like I had missed out on the initial launch stock and would have to wait weeks to get a copy. edit: I guess I should've held off on posting yesterday cause I had other stuff coming in. Lately I've had more disposable income than I've had in a while so it's leading to some slightly... frivolous purchases. Also got this along with it. Art/lore books are quickly becoming a new obsession of mine...

Normally wouldn't pre-order this far ahead of launch but I saw a pretty decent deal so what the hell.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Finally got around to playing this one. I don't have a ton to say about it, to be honest. It's pretty good; not sure I'd call it great. It's certainly no Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night. Hell, it's no Hollow Knight for that matter. But it's still a pretty fun time although I did find some elements kinda frustrating at times. Enemies that can fly through the scenery and disappear out of reach (and often out of the screen entirely) doesn't exactly make for fun combat. There's also a super weird difficulty spike on one of the early bosses. Maybe I was underleveled or something but since the game was never again that challenging afterwards, that one fight kinda stands out as simply poorly balanced. It's also kinda weird playing this immediately after Curse of the Moon as so many of the characters and bosses are recycled between the two. It's clear RotN is the one where they originated but it kinda takes some of the game's thunder away to reach a boss and go "Oh right, this one." The weird thing is that the games don't complement each other in any way. Curse of the Moon is its own separate timeline and is pretty incompatible with Ritual of the Night story-wise. So it probably would've been better if it had its own cast of characters and enemies. On a more positive note, it's by far the nicest looking 2.5D metroidvania I've played. I usually graphics like that super underwhelming visually but I thought this one looked pretty good. The background doesn't feel bland or empty and the characters/enemies don't feel disconnected from it. It's not graphically impressive or aything but I thought it looked pretty good for what it is. Oh and I expected a Symphony of the NIght-style inverted castle kinda deal but there's actually nothing like that in the game, which was a little disappointing. There's a bad ending if you go fight the final boss as soon as you reach him but it literally ends with a game over screen. So unless you're an idiot who doesn't realize that you still have like 40% of the map unexplored, it's pretty obvious you're meant to keep going. There are a few more areas to explore but that's it. It feels less like an hidden true ending and more like the game has an arbitrary point where it expects you to guess that you need to keep going. I'll play the sequel for sure although I do hope they improve things somewhat. This was a 7/10 at best for me and it could've been an easy 9-10. Oh and it has one of these obnoxious "Obtain/craft literally everything in the game lol" achievement as an extra fuck you. That's every weapon, armor, food, material, etc... Basically wasting an extra 5-10 hours of your time for no good reason if you wanna get all the achievements. Which... I will not be playing Curse of the Moon 2 immediately. I've had enough of this series for the time being lmao.

Finally upgraded my setup enough to warrant posting an update! I'm definitely not regretting that second monitor. Such a massive QoL improvement in so many ways. It's also so large that it wouldn't fit under the shelves that used to be on top of my desk, so I had to remove them. Got a Kallax unit from Ikea to make up for the lost storage space and I'm also very pleased with that purchase! Still need to get some proper bookcases soon, though. The two tiny ones I have are still overflowing even after moving all my mangas and art books over to the Kallax... Also, I think I finally need to upgrade to some proper PC speakers. That bookshelf stereo has served me well over the years but they're getting hard to fit into this new configuration. Also, I think the stereo part of the thing might be fucked lol. I was doing some reorganizing and found some of my old CDs and put one in it for the hell of it. The disc tray was somehow covered in dust even though I haven't opened it in years and even after wiping it clean it would only play the first track. When I tried skipping to the second one, it stopped playing and started making some weird noise. I panicked and got the CD out and there was now an inch wide ring of dust on top of it. Now it just won't play at all lol. At the very least the CD player probably needs a deep cleaning...

I'm still pretty gutted about Gloryhammer firing their singer and then all the controversy surrounding Chris Bowes that came out immediately after. But at least Beast in Black is still awesome! I'll also never tire of this song about Guts and Griffith. Any band that makes an entire album about Berserk is a good band, in my book.