toxicitizen

For some reason, it completely slipped my mind that Ys IX was coming out on PC today. I kinda feel like an idiot for not saving my Steam credit for it... ? Oh well, at least I was able to get 18% off from Fanatical so I saved almost as much as I would have. Got the Digital Deluxe Edition for the price of the base game. That way I won't miss out on any of the bonuses although I'm really not a fan of them being time limited to launch week. That's super fucking shitty... Feels good to be able to buy a Falcom game day one again, though! I skipped Cold Steel III and IV since I wanted to wait for Crossbell and Ys VIII launched in such a poor state that I had to wait for a sale.

Realized after my last round of purchases that I had enough Steam card drops accumulated to justify running idle master and sell them, so I did and made enough about 27 bucks. I was hesitating between two games so uh... Some armor designs in FFXIV are clearly inspired by XII and it kinda made me want to revisit it in the near future. Probably not anytime soon, though, as FFXIV is going to keep me busy for a while still. There's also the Pixel Remasters coming out at the end of the month that are probably going to be too tempting for me not to get. Plus, retro FF plays differently enough that playing them alongside FFXIV won't feel like too much of the same thing.

If you liked that one, you'll love what I found in the replies: Like, this works so perfectly as a shitpost that I honestly can't be 100% sure he's being serious even though I know he's a fucking idiot.

I've been playing FFXIV obsessively all month and I've been looking forward to the Steam sale solely because I wanted to buy Shadowbringers. It's probably going to be at least another month (possibly two lol) before I reach that content, though. After a solid 3 weeks of playing, I'm only juuust about to reach Heavensward, the first expansion. Which is the point where everyone says the story gets real good so I'm excited to finally see why everyone is calling XIV the best FF in years. I'm enjoying it a lot so far, so if it actually gets even better I can kinda believe it already. Not like there's been a ton of competition in that area over the last two decades lol... As for Forza, I've been wanting a good arcade-style racing game to play on and off and this one seems like the best choice now that it's available on Steam. I really enjoyed the little of it I played while I was subbed to Gamepass.

Been reading some Junji Ito this week and it kinda made me go "Oh, right. Manga's pretty good!" and I just happen to have some extra spending money right now. So instead of buying a bunch of Steam games I'm not going to touch anytime soon, I saw that this was coincidentally back in stock and I just had to treat myself I also got a Dune boxed set despite me already owning them because I'm an idiot. In my defense, the ones I have are these really cheap book club editions that I kinda don't like whereas the boxed set comes with these new minimalist covers that I really love. Also it was on sale and I had some store credit. ? Really looking forward to rereading the first one ahead of the new movie!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! The one good thing about the Epic Game Store is that they are so inept at, well, everything, that we can actually get database leaks again!

Lol. Man, what is it about book 5? That's also where I stopped the first time but it's not like it's bad or anything. It even ends on a pretty good cliffhanger. Not as good as Blaine the Mono but definitely enough to make you hurt for more.

Yeah, I know about those ports but I view them as basically the same as the Joyoland ones. They're more easily accessible due to being on Steam but the lack of a localization means they're not an option for me. I imagine if a loc does happen, NISA will commission their own port (ideally once again by Durante's studio). But licensing can be weird and they won't necessarily have access to that other company's source code.

How far did you get? I love it but it's probably not really worth it if you're not already a King fan. It can totally stand on its own but you just get so much more out of it if you're familiar with his body of work. I haven't read everything that connects to it but I'm familiar enough with most of it that I could recognize the connections when they came up. And while everything is explained sufficiently for you to understand even if you're not familiar with it, it really adds something to the experience if you are.

The Dark Tower So, I actually had a lot of fun watching this but, man, what a dogshit adaptation lmao. Change is to be expected because movies aren't books and you need to, well, adapt the story to the strengths of the medium it's coming to. But this movie tries to incorporate way too many elements from late in the series and condenses them and merges them together to the point of incoherence. I enjoyed seeing all of these things on screen but to someone that hasn't read the books this must've come across as complete fucking nonsense. And, let's be fair, The Dark Tower series is full of nonsense. Stephen King is all about nonsense. This is the guy that wrote about a killer clown and a haunted car. But in a book he can take as much space as he needs to make this shit work while a movie has to be more economical in how it tells the story. And this one was shockingly short (just about an hour and a half) considering all they tried to cram in there. It also just has the wrong vibe in general. It went too hard on the more sci-fi-ish aspects of the story and lost some of the charm along with it. So yeah, I wouldn't recommend it unless you're a fan of the books. And even then only watch it if you can enjoy schlock. Because man, this is some good schlock. ?

So, at the beginning of May I decided it was time for me to finally finish the Dark Tower series. I had read up to book 5 like a decade ago but had never read the last two books. I had reread book 3 last year so I was at book 4 when I picked it back up a month and a half ago, so I read 4 through 7 back-to-back. I don't expect anyone here is going to give a shit or even know what the hell I'm talking about but I have some thoughts and nowhere else to post them so... ? In the interest of keeping this as brief as humanly possible, I'll just say that 3 through 5 are the best ones. Book 3, The Waste Lands, is where the series hits its stride and starts introducing its more interesting elements. Book 4, Wizard & Glass, is one long flashback that fleshes out the main character's backstory and is considered by many to be the best one of the entire series. I don't know if I'd agree with that but I certainly enjoyed it a lot more this time around. I had forgotten so much about this book that it was basically like reading it for the first time. The stuff I thought I DID remember just... wasn't in it lol. Book 5, Wolves of the Calla, is a bit more straightforward but still very good. That brings us to book 6, Song of Susannah, which is about half the length of the others and honestly feels like something is missing in it. It feels like King is just moving pieces on the board to where he needed them to be for the final book. It focuses almost exclusively on wrapping up certain plot threads from previous books without really having a plot of its own. It has its moments but it's definitely the weakest one of the series, as far as I'm concerned. And then there's book 7, The Dark Tower. Oh boy, where do I begin with this one? I'll try to keep it vague but it's going to be hard to discuss without some spoilers. The first half is basically what you'd expect out of a Dark Tower book and is actually pretty solid. But then halfway through it takes a turn. Which isn't to say that it becomes bad, I enjoyed reading it all the way through. If there's one thing you can't fault King for, it's his storytelling ability. I swear he could write a novel about a guy reading the phone book and somehow make it interesting. So this might sound weird but my criticism is aimed at the events within the book but not at the way they're written, if that makes any sense. So, in case you aren't aware, Stephen King's been doing the whole connected universe long before the MCU. And this analogy isn't perfect but Dark Tower is basically his Avengers. So the series ends up connecting to a lot of his novels. And halfway through Dark Tower VII, it's like he went "I can't think of a way to connect this with my novel Misery so instead I will just infuse it with as much misery as I can". I mean, holy fuck. Alright, spoilers for real now. Then there's the actual ending, which I won't spoil but there is something I want to discuss. I knew the ending was controversial and this is something that I didn't have spoiled exactly but I could kind of infer what it was based on something I had heard. But here's the thing. King is infamous for his endings. They're not always bad but he's on the record as not caring for writing them. To him it's about the journey and all that good stuff. And I agree to an extent, but that's no excuse not to have one or to half-ass it. Which I don't think he did here but I bring this up because of how the final chapter starts. The first section is King breaking the fourth wall and basically going "Look, as far as I'm concerned this is over already. Didn't you like that previous chapter? Wasn't that nice? Then do me a favor and pretend that's it. Just put this fucking book down, alright? Neither of us is gonna like what comes next so just fucking don't." Like, what the hell? Lmao. I could just picture him handing in his manuscript and his editor being like "Stephen, what the fuck is this? You can't just end this here. People will lose their shit. Write a proper ending!" And Stephen King just stomping his feet like a toddler having a tantrum and going "BuT i DoN't WaNnaaAaAAaAA!!!" At this point I honestly got annoyed and he immediately lost me. I was fully prepared to hate whatever happened. But honestly? I kinda loved it. It wasn't the most satisfying thing ever but once I saw it was going exactly where I thought it would, I got this huge grin on my face because I thought I knew for sure what the last line HAD to be. So when I got to the final page I quickly covered the text with my hand so I wouldn't accidentally glance at it early. And I was right. And it was perfect. Also, fun fact: I finished the series on the night of June 19th. Which, if you've read it, you know how appropriate (and a little spooky) that is. Once I realized I was on track to finish the book on that date, I knew I had to make it happen. edit: AAAAAAAAAAAA first post of page 19 ? OH AND LAST NIGHT I WATCHED THE MOVIE! [to be continued in the 'Last Bad Movie you watched' thread]

NISA to host a Falcom 40th anniversary stream on June 24. I wonder if this is just re-hosting and translating the Japanese thing or if they'll actually have announcements for new english releases. With Ys IX coming out next month (on PC at least, it might already be out on console?), I think that's the last of their announced Falcom games. So that leaves the Crossbell remasters and Hajimari as potential announcements. Way too early for Kuro, I think. Personally I really hope Crossbell is next. I waited this long to play Cold Steel III-IV, I might as well hold off a little longer at this point. And I'm not touching Hajimari until I've wrapped up the Erebonia arc so...

Yeah, I'm not sure what they were thinking trying to pass this off as a GTA-like sandbox. That's the one area where the game falls flat on its face. When even your police AI is half-baked, you really have no business mentioning your game in the same sentence as GTA. I was hoping for a Deus Ex-like immersive sim but really it's just the same kind of story-driven open-world RPG as Witcher 3. There's really no kind of deep simulation of, well, anything going on anywhere in Night City. Thankfully, like you said, it does offer you more options and tools than Witcher 3. Not that I had an issue with this in Witcher 3 but in Cyberpunk I definitely would have. So is it in a better state on PS4 now or did you play it on PS5? I'm curious because I recently heard that it's coming back to PSN soon and I was kinda shocked because they've been pretty quiet for a while and I haven't heard about any kind of game-changing updates, just plain old bug fixes. I know they released a patch recently but they've been quiet for so long that at this point I'm wondering what the hell they're doing. As far as I'm aware, none of the promised free DLC has come out and they still haven't even announced the paid expansions. It's gotten to the point where I just low-key assumed they've been chipping away on a mega-update and will surprise everyone with a Witcher-style Enhanced Edition in a year or so that turns the game into something closer to what they promised. But given the state the game launched in I feel like it would be pretty naive of me to get my hopes up that high lol... But, I mean, that has to be it, right? Because if not then the pace at which they're fixing this thing is fucking abysmal.

We can only hope. The Junji Ito Collection was... not great. I still enjoyed it a lot but mostly because of how much it made me laugh. I can sympathize, though. Adapting a master like Ito can't be easy when so much of what makes his work so effective comes down to the static art and pacing of a manga page. But even if this ends up sucking, I recently stocked up on his english translations by Viz, so at least I'll have some quality stuff to enjoy. I already owned Uzumaki, Gyo and Tomie from a few years ago; everything else is knew. I'm just about done with the final Dark Tower book, and after reading 4 huge Stephen King bricks back-to-back, I'm gonna want to read something light and breezy, so I'll be digging into these real soon.

I thought it looked kinda meh, tbh. At least the character designs don't look like shit like the Avengers game, I suppose. But it's so weird to make a Guardians game and have it be single-player where you only play as Star-Lord. You'd think having all the Guardians playable and a co-op feature would be a no-brainer. Based on how it looks, I'm going to guess that it has a super low budget and they just couldn't afford something like that.

So most of the big shows were today and now that it's mostly over, there was a shocking lack of anything to get excited about. A lot of games that looked... fine. But nothing that I'm actually hyped about. Closest thing was those Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters and even that seems to be getting Square-Enix'd. Steam and mobile only (at least so far) and basically no details given other than they couldn't be bothered to do a proper collection and will be releasing them individually. People are going through the 30 seconds trailer with a fine tooth comb trying to glean any kind of info lol. Seems like Elden Ring might actually be the only big thing of this entire E3 for me.

Romero is such a great example of the inherently political nature of most media, too. IIRC he's on the record as saying that both the anti-consumerism subtext of Dawn of the End and the ending of Night of the Living Dead weren't deliberate on his part. He only realized what he had done after the fact lol.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA That looks Souls as fuck and it's beautiful. I kept hearing things suggesting it had a troubled development and was still years away so it's pretty fucking awesome to see it's only six months away! edit: Goddamnit, @MetalCaveman!!!

Sure, why ends things on a high note? ? I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts, though, because I'm still not entirely sure if I should bother to give it a shot or not.

Especially since they typically have no idea what the fuck an apolitical game actually looks like. "Political" is usually code for "politics I don't like". It's always funny to see some chud complaining about "PoLiTiCaL mEdIa" only to name drop some of their apolitical favorites and it's like... please, no one tell them. Especially funny when it's horror or sci-fi fans. ?

Wasn't really feeling Horizon so I put it aside for now, and on a whim decided it was time to jump back into FFXIV. And boy, did I pick the worst possible place to stop! I played through the "A Realm Reborn" part of the story (the base game) about two years ago. Back then the free trial went up to level 35 IIRC and at that point I had to activate my free month. Well, it ran out just as I reached the end of the main scenario quest and I ended up not doing the very last dungeon. At the time I didn't feel like committing to another full month of playing the game so I decided to take a break and come back to it later. Well, two years later I'm coming back to this and I don't remember anything about the story or even how to play my character. Thankfully, turns out they added a new game plus mode that allows you to replay the MSQ but you only unlock it once you've cleared that part of the story so... I needed to do that final dungeon and dungeons are these instanced mini-raids that you need to party up with other players for. It went surprisingly well, all things considered. But yeah, I had no idea wtf was happening or who any of the characters were. So the big ending to the story didn't quite land lol. So I've been going through NG+ and they actually updated the MSQ to improve the new player experience and remove some of the filler since I last played, so it's going pretty fast. Especially since my level 50 character one-shots basically everything that isn't an instanced fight (your level scales down for those). Having access to a flying mount from the start (which I unlocked after clearing the final dungeon) also helps to cut down a LOT on travel time. I'm already about halfway through and it's pretty fun! Can't wait to be done with NG+, though, so I can finally see what's so great about Heavensward and beyond. I'm rushing through NG+ but I'll probably slow down a bit after that so I don't get burned out on the game. Ideally I'll keep playing on and off and be caught up in time for Endwalker in November. I only have up to Stormblood though so I'll probably buy Shadowbringers in the Steam summer sale later this month.

Goddamn, that's fucked up. Stay safe, man. ?

I generally agree with the sentiment but I feel video games are a bit of a different beast here. Even in a story-heavy game like ME, gameplay is still the main method of engaging with the material. If the gameplay is good then I feel like you at least got something out of it that the ending can't possibly undo. It's not like, say, Game of Thrones, where the story is the entire point and at the end you're just left wondering why you wasted your time on this shit lol.

Yeah, it's a shit cliffhanger (and I say this as someone that actually loves cliffhangers) but in the context of the MCC it's really no big deal since you can just jump right into Halo 3 if you want and basically treat it like when they do back-to-back sequels with movies. But as a normal game release years apart from both the original and Halo 3? Man, it's fucking terrible lol. And this was from before the era where story DLC became a thing, right? Like, people's only expectations for more was Halo 3 and nothing else?

Halo 2 - Anniversary Edition Yeah, I think I love this series. It's basically more of the same although the original was my idea of what Halo is for so long that the small changes (the HUD, for example) were a little jarring early on. The campaign starts out really strong and at first I thought I would enjoy it even more than the original since the mission design was much more interesting to me. But it ultimately sort of evened out with the first one for a few reasons. While I liked them at first, after a while the Arbiter missions just had me kinda wondering why I was spending so much time not playing as Master Chief. Then at the very end the game decided that from this point on I would be fighting nothing but these huge bullet sponge motherfuckers and that got old real fast. Combine that with a sniper rifle that overheats if you so much as think about firing twice in a row and, yeah... The first one also had a bit of a difficulty spike near the end but this one frustrated me a lot more. There are so many achievements in this fucking thing that I never really believed it would be realistic to get all of them but I still liked the idea of eventually revisiting the campaigns on harder difficulties. But I think Halo 2 just put me off of ever trying Legendary and LASO. Fuck that noise lol. Also, I knew about the infamous cliffhanger ending and it still almost caught me off guard. It just doesn't feel like an ending at all. Not so much because something is missing but rather because something is off about the structure of the last few missions. Like, I'm fighting the final boss as the Arbiter? Really? I could probably jump right into Halo 3 but I think I'll take a bit of a break to play something else. Don't wanna go through the whole thing too quickly and get burned out. Plus I started Horizon Zero Dawn a few days ago and barely touched it so I think I'll focus on that a bit for now.