toxicitizen

So uh, this happened today. Seems there's no point in backing it because it destroyed its goal in like a couple hours, along with the first set of stretch goals, but yeah, I'll definitely take The Wonderful 101 on Steam day one! Platinum also have 3 more announcements they teased, this one being the first of four. Please let one of them be a port for Bayo 2. I always hoped that SEGA still being the IP holder made it possible but if W101, fully owned by Nintendo AFAIK, is happening then Bayo 2 has to be doable as well.

I'm not getting my hopes up because the last time I did we got NISA. It now looks like that ultimately worked out for the better but things looked pretty damn grim for a while there. As for the change, all I can say is I have no issue with them making small changes or retcons to account for subsequent games. They couldn't possibly plan for every little detail over a decade so if they have the opportunity to go back and update a few things here and there, I don't really see the problem. Especially if it's a completely inconsequential aspect of the game like a random NPC.

I went back to the copyright infringement well for more bullshit. Might try that one tonight. I'll make sure to update as I can tell you're all fascinated by my video games craft beer adventures. Update: It was pretty damn good! Definitely recommended as a beverage while playing Vermintide 2 with friends. I'm usually not a huge stout guy but I really liked this one.

Dark Souls is the no-brainer answer for me because it's one of the very few games I've actually felt like replaying multiple times this decade, more than any other and I'm not even done with it because I still have to play the remaster. It also cemented FROM's spot as one of my favorite game studios ever and anything they make has my interest going forward. It came out in 2011, at the very start of the decade, and I'm still struggling to find another game that even comes close for me. That being said, it's hard to argue against Witcher 3. I seriously missed the boat on this one and somehow managed to not play it until the decade was over but I can't not acknowledge it because holy fuck, it has been consuming my entire existence for the past two weeks. For years now I've thought that there was something about RPGs that just didn't click with me enough to bother with the excessively long ones. At some point I inevitably lose interest and stop playing them. I had to take a 6+ months break in the middle of Dragon Age: Origins years ago and I've had Divinity: Original Sin sitting in my library unfinished since October. Even Trails, which I think might actually be my favorite video game series at this point, can sometimes kinda drag and feel like a chore when you're just trying to get to the next good story beat. But here's Witcher 3 with its absolute metric fuckton of content. I'm just about to cross the 100 hours mark and I'm not even done with the main quest, I still have a bunch of witcher contracts and side-quests in my journal AND there's the two expansions after that. With any other game, I would be overwhelmed and exhausted by the sheer amount of shit I still need to get through. But this fucking game has me sitting here thinking "Is... is this enough content? Is this enough Witchering?", which is a fucking ridiculous question. Hell, it even got me to finally start reading the Witcher books! So yeah, my game of the decade is Dark Souls but also Witcher 3.

As happy as I am that REmake 3 is happening and coming in just a few short months, even that doesn't come remotely close to Cyberpunk 2077 for me. Especially now that I'm finally playing Witcher 3 and finding it to be, somehow, even better than I expected. The closest I can think of would be MGS5 or MGS4 before it. And even Death Stranding I'm having a more measured level of anticipation for now that the mystery of what it actually is has been lifted. I'm super on board for a weird Kojima game and on any other year the PC release would be my most anticipated game. But Cyberpunk, man. It's not even just that it could be a replacement for Deus Ex, which is pretty much confirmed to be dead again. It's that if Cyberpunk fully delivers on its potential then I might not even need Deus Ex to be a thing anymore. Cyberpunk actually looks like it could easily be my favorite game of all time and I genuinely can't remember the last time I've had expectations this high or been this excited for a game. And then, as if that wasn't enough, they went ahead and put fucking Keanu Reeves in it!

Well, I really hope you're right. I gave up hope of playing Crossbell before the end of Cold Steel a while back but I still really want to play them. Honestly, after fixing Ys VIII and seemingly doing a decent job on Cold Steel, if NISA ends up giving us Crossbell as well then they'll have won me over entirely at that point. As for Atelier, I know for a fact that Durante would love a crack at them because he's a huge Atelier fan and he's said as much. That would require KT giving a shit, though. IIRC he tried reaching out to them in the past and nothing ever came of it. The Sophie port was good enough for me, especially once they went back to it and fixed the 2D assets resolution issue. No idea about the rest of them cause there's too many to keep track of at this point. All I know is the remasters that just came out are supposed to be in pretty rough shape.

Hahaha yeah, I've seen people point that out after I posted but I'm not sure he was being coy. It's probably safe to assume he is (or will be) working on CS4 but the Crossbell remasters aren't even out in Japan. So unless Falcom have really changed their ways there's no way Zero is already in the hands of their partners. Unless he's working on the old versions for some reason, which would be weird but not exactly the first time Falcom has screwed over partners by not keeping them in the loop about their plans. Then again, I was going through his AMA yesterday and one of his answers did mention being contacted by companies other than NISA and XSEED and nothing coming from it so far. So who knows. Not sure what XSEED could have hired him for at this point, so he may have multiple projects with NISA.

Yeah, it's pretty dumb to expect that kind of new announcement at a panel about the porting process. Port announcements is all that could realistically be expected here. As for performance improvements being backported to PS4, I really wouldn't hold my breath. If Durante's old blog posts about porting CSI and II are any indication, the performance is likely due to Falcom's shitty code (and to be fair, they are a small studio releasing massive games yearly; corners kinda have to be cut somewhere) and improving the PS4 version would require them not just owning up to it but also ripping it out to replace it with someone else's code. Reeeeeaaally don't see a Japanese company ever doing that. I don't know if it's down to pride, arrogance, laziness or a little bit of everything but just look at the fighting game scene for an example of what I mean. ASW and Capcom insist on either not using GGPO or trying to reinvent the wheel by building their own rollback netcode from scratch and the results are rarely good. Oh and during the AMA, Durante said they have "more than zero and less than four" projects in the works that he can't talk about yet. No reason to get excited just yet but it's good to know the studio seems to be having no trouble finding work.

He makes this look so easy that everyone else kinda looks bad by comparison. It's kind of hilarious, really. Also, I missed it earlier but I guess they also released a free HD texture pack for Ys VIII. I'm honestly almost more hype about the fixed port than I am about CSIII, at this point. The reworked localization looked fine to me, so the state of the port was really the only major issue I had. And it was such a huge bummer to have such a massive step down after all the XSEED ports ranged from solid to incredible.

Goddamnit, Mal! I was typing my post when I got the notif about a reply! But yeah, Steam page is live! And I was taking so long because I was going through the NISA stream VOD cause I needed to double check to make sure I was getting this right but yeah, they also got Durante's studio to fix the Ys VIII port. The mad man even added experimental co-op to the game. This is basically a best case scenario lol. edit: Ys VIII patch notes That's one hell of an update! Basically all the improvements from the Cold Steel ports are now in Ys VIII. Can't wait to replay the game with solid 60fps, shadows on everything, unlimited draw distance and no crashing!

Hahahaha oh no...

What a time to be alive. Really glad I decided to play Witcher 3 instead of Horizon on PS Now because I'll gladly pay to avoid having to play with that insane compression.

I don't mind the delay, what I do mind is them waiting until a week after I bought my goddamn GPU to announce it! I could've waited until summer to see if new GPUs were a better value! ? Can't complain too hard, though. Witcher 3 is so damn good it's been consuming my entire existence since last week-end and running it at 60fps with hairworks on is like a cherry on top. Also I guess that means RE3 has April all to itself now, which is probably for the best. Wouldn't want to feel like I have to rush it because of another game.

Oh my god, he's going to be much more stressful than Mr. X, isn't he?! ?

We went back for more on friday night. Didn't realize I had such a shit angle on it but the first one is called Save Peach. It did not taste like peach at all, to my great disappointment. The other one was alright. They also have a Star Wars themed Imperial Stout (get it?) called "Dark Side of the Stout" but the store only had one as a display (and warm) when I went and it was 10%, so I didn't ask if I could buy it. Didn't feel like being completely trashed that night lol.

Oh good, this thread exists. Cause I had no idea where the hell I was supposed to post this but I felt like you guys needed to see it. My friends and I started going down the craft beer rabbit hole last summer and here's our latest discovery. Some of the small breweries in our area apparently don't give a fuck about copyright infringement. It was so delicious that you could just tell it couldn't possibly be an official Sonic product.

Oh yeah, I didn't think to mention it because it honestly wasn't that much of a problem for me but that's a big issue with the game in general. I only had to farm blood vials twice, once super early on while I was still learning how to fight (I think I ran out because of Blood-Starved Beast) and then again at Ebrietas. For most of the game, I had plenty with just what I found and whatever I could buy with leftover blood echoes after levelling up.

Goddamn, ray-tracing is intense! This is the driver-level version since my card has no RTX cores but still. Had to run even Quake II at 720p just to get a playable framerate lmao. Looks really nice, though. Modern games like Control and Metro: Exodus that use it for global illumination and reflections must look incredible.

Yeah, same. Dark Souls 2 is the worst one but it's still pretty damn good. I still need to play the Scholar of the First Sin remix as well as some of the DLC. I also have the Dark Souls Remaster in my backlog and the DLC for Dark Souls 3 so I have a replay of the entire series planned for the near future. I'll probably slowly work my way through them this year since I have a feeling Elden Ring isn't coming until 2021. Yeah, dealing with frenzy is literally the only time I ever needed to look at my armor stats and see if I needed to change it and even then I just ended up using a rune instead. It was to get past that one enemy in the Nightmare of Mensis, you know the one. And it turned out I was going the wrong way, I didn't even need to run past it where I was trying to lol.

Bloodborne I'm a few years late on this one but it feels good to have finally played all the Soulsborne games. This one was especially painful to not have access to because it seemed to be generally considered the best one and I kinda love cosmic horror. Now I'm kinda confused why it's so highly regarded compared to Dark Souls because it's... really not that different? At least not significantly enough to justify the amount of people that loved it but that claim to not like Dark Souls. The lore is much cooler and the game does some really cool shit with it (so cool that it still had a massive impact on my enjoyment even though the game had long been thoroughly spoiled for me) but that aspect is ultimately pretty subjective. The faster combat is generally cited as being a big factor but honestly to me the gameplay in general felt very similar. I mean, it's not like Dark Souls forces you to turtle up behind a shield and play slowly. There's a ton of build variety and my playstyle has always been more of a high risk "run up in their faces and kill them before they can react" strategy, which is pretty much exactly how Bloodborne wants you to play. The trick weapons are pretty great, though. I picked the threaded cane because it sounded cool and I made my character to be a scholarly/scientist type, so it seemed like a good fit. I liked it enough that I ended up upgrading it all the way to max level and keeping it for the entire game. I tried some of the other weapons but didn't like them as much, although at that point I had already committed to a skill build, so I was limited in what I could realistically switch to. Fighting with a cane sword that turns into a whip was different enough to make the combat feel fresh all over again but I've seen a ton of videos of people playing with large swords exactly like Dark Souls so again, it's not like the combat is inherently different. The one major difference there is to combat is the way armor works. The stats vary so little from one set to another that they might as well be cosmetic only. The weapon choice is also much more limited, which ends up making it feel like more of an action game than a full-on RPG like Dark Souls. It was interesting playing it after Sekiro because to me it really felt like the missing link between Dark Souls and Sekiro. And as far as the gameplay is concerned, I think I enjoyed Sekiro more. The story on the other hand... Like I said, the game had already been pretty much completely spoiled for me. But I still couldn't help but appreciate how it spends the first few hours lulling you into a false sense of security by basically going: "Yeah man, this is a totally normal werewolf game dude. Don't even worry about it!" And as you get deeper into the city, night falls and you start seeing these really creepy statues in the cathedral and the surrounding woods. Then you get deep enough into those woods and suddenly there's a significant increase in how tentacle-y everything is and WAIT, what the FUCK is that?! You kill a certain boss and then the Truth reveals itself to you and it's just such a gigantic HOLY SHIT moment. I can only imagine how fucking awesome it must've been for people that played at launch after going in with no information whatsoever. It's such an incredible way to build up to it that by the time I was in the late game and fairly overpowered, I was still tense as fuck because of how creepy everything was. I honestly can't think of anything else that executed this kind of twist so well. It's so fucking good! It reeeeaaally fucking sucks that this is the game stuck in a console exclusivity deal because holy shit, I wanna play this on PC. I mean, I kinda did through PS Now but it's just not the same. The image quality in general is shit because of the compression that's inevitable when streaming a game. And the game's art direction is so fucking good, I wanna crank the resolution way up and put some anti-aliasing on that shit. Running it at 60fps would also significantly improve the experience. Normally I'd jump into NG+ and go for all the trophies but playing on PS Now kinda makes me not give a shit about that. I went out of my way to do all the optional areas and bosses, got the secret ending and watched the others on youtube. The game doesn't even include the Old Hunters DLC anyway, so I could go for the platinum but I'd still be missing a few trophies. Besides, they just added Uncharted Lost Legacy and Horizon on PS Now (this one actually including the DLC, for some reason) so I kinda need to move on because, unlike Bloodborne, those are only available for a limited time. And my new GPU got here literally as I was typing this up, so there's also some Witcher 3 to play!

I was gonna save up for this but I got some unexpected money for christmas, so I decided to pull the trigger early. It was tempting to wait a few months to see what the RTX 3000 cards are like but if the 2060 is any indication then they'll likely be well outside my price range anyway. This is more of a stopgap that I'm hoping will get me through at least the cross-gen phase of the next console cycle. Beyond that, I'll likely need to upgrade my CPU as well, which means an entirely new build. I may upgrade to a fancy ray-tracing card then but until then, this should let me play things at a respectable framerate again. Plus, I really wanted the upgrade before Cyberpunk comes out, just in case. I have a feeling my GTX 960 just isn't going to cut it... It's gonna be really nice to finally play Monster Hunter World at 60fps (or at least, reasonably close to it) when I jump back in with Iceborne. But I'll be tossing a coin to my Witcher, first. Definitely wanna get Witcher 3 out of the way before Cyberpunk. This card should easily max it out and maintain a locked 60fps but I think I may even be able to leave Hairworks on!

Oh lol, I thought you'd be way further into it by now. Unless it's like CSII's Acts and you're like halfway through? Btw, Durante's mystery JRPG is supposed to be announced this month. There's also an AMA with him scheduled on r/games on January 17th, so I imagine the announcement will be around that time. Less than 3 weeks until we know for sure!

Shit, I really don't know. The year was ridiculously frontloaded with RE2, DMC5 and Sekiro but then I spent the rest of it chipping away at the backlog so uh... one of those? RE2 was everything I wanted it to be and more. Sekiro was just different enough from the usual Souls formula to kick my ass all over again and I actually remember it much more fondly than Dark Souls 2 and 3 because of it. I'll definitely be giving it a replay at some point, possibly closer to Elden Ring's release. That being said, I think the one that pulled my devil trigger the hardest was... (start the video now for full effect!) Just getting DMC5 at all after a decade of anticipation was incredible, especially after that misguided reboot and the years of silence that followed. It wasn't just everything I wanted it to be and more, though. It topped DMC3 as the best of the series, the story was pure fan service injected straight into my veins and the gameplay was the best it's ever been. And it did all of that while having the hypest fucking theme song of all time, one to surpass even Metal Gear (Rising). Honorable mention to my boy Kazuma Kiryu. They were late ports but I played 2 Yakuza games this year and I honestly would've happily played 2 more. I swear to god, SEGA, if you don't release those remasters on PC in 2020 I'm gonna scream!

I feel like pointing to the OT and saying it didn't have a plan either is kind of a disingenuous argument because people criticize the sequels for things that really don't apply to the OT. Like, yeah, A New Hope was originally just one movie that became a surprise hit, so they made sequels. And sure, George was making it up as he went along and he's not a particularly good storyteller either but it was still one person telling a story that moved forward in a coherent way. Empire built upon A New Hope and there was clearly some thought put towards Return of the Jedi with introducing Palpatine, Luke not finishing his training and the cliffhanger with Han. With the sequels you've got Force Awakens setting up the pieces on the board and getting things rolling. Then Last Jedi immediately flips the table and throws most of the pieces away, leaving Rise of Skywalker to clumsily pick some of them back up along with some random trash that just happened to be on the floor. Like, no one is saying the OT was some kind of masterclass in tight storytelling but at least it worked as a trilogy. The movies don't feel like they actively resent their direct prequels...