toxicitizen

Probably cheaper to get a PS4 copy at this point. Alternatively, have you tried using the FAR mod? It fixes a lot of issues with the port. There might also be something useful here if you haven't checked: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Nier:_Automata

So no one else checked out The Witcher? I finished it last night and it's overall pretty solid. It's no Game of Thrones but once things get going at the end of the first episode it's pretty good until the end. I'm definitely looking forward to season 2. I also really came around on Cavill by the end of it. I don't know if it's him getting more comfortable with the part or just not having much to work with in the early eps but about halfway through I pretty much had accepted him as Geralt. What really sold me on his Geralt was when he started interacting with Dandelion because holy fuck is Dandelion great in this lol. And I say this as someone that hated him in the games. The one thing I feel could've been done better is making the timeline of events clearer because it can get a little confusing at times. There's enough for you to piece it together but it's kinda sneeze and you'll miss it. I've seen a lot of confusion online about this.

I'm 3 episodes into Netflix's The Witcher and it's alright. Not incredible by any means and I've never read the books, so for all I know it might be a terrible adaptation. But I'm enjoying it so far and it's kinda neat to see all these characters way before the games even started. It's actually making me want to finally get around to playing Witcher 3. That being said, I know Geralt is a brooding, stoic kinda guy but I swear Henry Cavill has less personality than polygons lol. Geralt from the games had way more charisma than his portrayal here, at least so far.

So you're saying it's not the GOTY? I think this might actually be the first time this year.

Lol you were faster than me, I came here to post that same Crossbell Kai tweet. And yeah, seems like this is the best shot at getting Crossbell we'll likely ever have. Also, I vaguely remember hearing about another game coming that was still related to Cold Steel, like an epilogue spin-off kinda deal. Any idea if Hajimari is that or a completely new arc? Oh and I guess I never got around to posting it but I heard some rumors re: Falcom ditching XSEED for NISA a little while back. The short version is that the catalyst for Falcom starting to take bids from other companies was XSEED deciding to pass on localizing Tokyo Xanadu. I remember taking a screenshot specifically for posting here. That poster seemed to have spoken to people that would know about this but obviously take it with a grain of salt. Personally, considering how things went down, I think I'm inclined to believe it. At the very least, something must've happened for the partnership between XSEED and Falcom to break down like it has.

Just gonna leave this here...

Dad of Boy God of War Finally finished it last night and uh, this is one of those games that really makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. It's good, very good even. It does a lot of things really well. It looks absolutely fantastic, the world design is great, Kratos has actually grown as a character, there's plenty to love here. But GOTY? Fuck no, it fails way too hard and fundamentally as an action game to even be included in the conversation. This is a game that's way too obsessed with looking Cinematic™, to the detriment of gameplay. And I feel confident that this was a deliberate choice because of the whole one-cut thing. It's a neat presentation trick, I guess? But it really adds nothing of value to the game and you probably wouldn't even notice it unless you knew about it beforehand. The over-the-shoulder camera also looks much cooler than the zoomed out camera in previous games and this is where the game kinda fell apart for me. Having a camera that's a little zoomed out in a third-person melee action game is fairly common sense. When fighting large groups of enemies at once, situational awareness is key and you need to see what you're up against so you can react and do basic crowd control. If that much is obvious to me then there's no doubt in my mind that the developers at Sony Santa Monica knew this as well. Which makes it all the more baffling that they decided to just zoom that camera right the fuck up to Kratos' back for an over-the-shoulder view. And there's definitely a way to make that camera work. Godhand did it years ago and God of War is fine like 80% of the time. It's super fun when against a group of canon fodder enemies or one on one against a big boss. But when you're up against a group of higher level enemies it just turns to fucking shit in a hurry and at times it made me genuinely hate the game. If you're going to so severely inhibit the player's situational awareness, then you need to design your enemies to behave in a way that's compatible with this. For example, Bayonetta's enemies are less aggressive and don't shoot projectiles when they're off-camera because being hit by something you couldn't see coming and had no chance to dodge isn't very fun. In God of War, enemies just don't give a fuck and will surround the shit out of you. Sometimes I'd get stun-locked by enemies standing right behind me that I couldn't see. Other times my attacks with the blades would get interrupted because some asshole with a shield decided to crawl up my ass. And then there's those fucking dark elves that will dodge your attacks by flying straight up and out of the screen completely because who needs to see what's happening? Also, they have an attack that blinds you because fuck you. That Alfheim section made me seriously question whether or not I wanted to keep playing the game and every time those enemies showed up again afterwards made me roll my eyes and groan. I did all the side-quests I ran into but when I realized the last tier of weapon upgrades were locked behind those combat trials gauntlets, I just said fuck it and went to finish the game because at that point I felt like the game's idea of challenge was not to throw interesting curve balls but just to throw obnoxious shit at you. In a way, playing this on Playstation Now was a blessing in disguise because if I had paid full price for this I probably would've felt compelled to do everything and go for the platinum. But now I'm perfectly happy to peace out without having done any of the end game combat challenges or having to hunt down all collectibles. I did enjoy the story a lot, though. The relationship between Kratos and Atreus was handled really well and the game did a good job of making me curious about this new world. This take on Norse mythology is pretty fucking metal and I honestly like it even more than the Greek setting of the previous games. This version of Odin and Thor sound like complete fucking psychopaths and contrasting this incredibly violent and dark take with the shiny and clean MCU version is kind of hilarious. It was a little disappointing that they ended up not playing a part in the story at all but at some point it became kind of obvious that the game was only dropping that backstory to build them up for a potential sequel. I was gonna do Bloodborne next but I don't think there's enough time until my PS Now month expires, so I think maybe I'll wait a little bit. I kinda feel like playing some games with lower production values for now, anyway. Between this and Uncharted 4, I think I've had my fill of CiNeMaTiC gAmEpLaY for a little while...

I wonder if the name may be them going all-in on incremental upgrades. I don't remember if it was a rumor or confirmed, but apparently they'll have both a low spec and high spec SKU right out of the gate and calling it Series tells me they're likely planning to have more along the way. So all their next-gen systems will fall under Series X and once it's time for another jump it'll be another series. So everything going forward could run on future boxes but when there's a gen leap you'll have new games with a base requirement like "runs on Xbox starting at Series XYZ". At least, that's the only way I can rationalize such a weird name. Like, they never had any coherent naming convention but even for them this one seems kinda weird unless this is their intention. Then again, maybe they just wanted to have a system people could call the Xbox SeX. Actually yeah, that's probably it...

That Resistance co-op game being included with it is a nice twist. Means I'll be much more willing to give it a chance, although hopefully its inclusion is not indicative of the campaign being shorter. Also, April 3rd is WAY sooner than I would've expected. They usually do E3 announcements -> January/February release, so usually 6 months or more between reveal and launch. I wonder why they didn't just announce it at E3 as usual.

Someone pushed a button early on PSN. There were too many rumors recently for this to not be in the works, but the timing seems to confirm that it'll be announced at the Game Awards. Can't wait to get a proper look at it! It's pretty obvious development started long before RE2 shipped, so hopefully it didn't go in a different direction. All I want is literally more of the same but with Nemesis.

Durante actually co-founded a porting studio earlier this year (or probably last year, he announced it in back in january). So if the game he's teasing actually is ToCS3 then I think it's safe to assume they were hired for the job. Especially since he's essentially confirming technical details which he wouldn't be able to guarantee if he was just consulting. IIRC some of the small things he implemented in Ys VIII were rolled back by whoever got their hands on the port later on lol. That's good to hear. If it's even only slightly better than the Ys VIII reloc, then I think I should be able to live with it. How much time have you managed to put into ToCS3, btw? Have there been any moments where you felt like not having played Crossbell was a noticeable issue?

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?! The first two aren't even on Switch, for fuck's sake... ? edit: All hope is not lost!

I really don't think that's happening, they discontinued it in favor of an app. Steam Controller has a better chance of getting a revision (and I believe they hinted at it in the past) but the way they just basically gave away the remaining stock makes me wonder if that hasn't been killed as well. I really hope not because I'd be super down to buy another one with a proper dpad and improved the build quality.

I was planning to get it as well but I ended up talking myself out of it. By the time the full collection is out, it'll likely have gone on sale a few times and I'd feel like a dumbass dropping 50 bucks on the full collection right now when I can just play it through Game Pass anyway. All my achievements and progress will transfer to the Steam version, so I'll just get it in a few months once it's cheaper.

Gonna have to agree on Part 4 being the best (although I still haven't watched Part 5). It starts out "only" really good but keeps getting better and better as the pieces slowly fall into place and you start to see how they all fit together. By the halfway point it was already my favorite part and the last few episodes are some of the most tense bullshit I've seen in any anime not called Monster.

Announcement is from last week but I only got around to looking into it just now. New DJMAX game coming to Steam. Didn't pay much attention to it at the time because wtf is that trailer but it's actually a rhythm game. Looks fairly standard but could be fun and god knows Steam is sorely lacking in the rhythm games department. Let's just hope it's not a region locked release because otherwise it'll be back to waiting for Sega to port one of the Hatsune Miku games...

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End Better late than never, I guess. Borrowed a dualshock 4 from a friend so I could play it on PS Now and man, I missed this series. I feel like new Tomb Raider offers a close enough approximation of the gameplay but the characters in Uncharted have such a unique charm to them. I think it may have replaced Uncharted 2 as the best one for me. At least the set pieces certainly topped it. The gunplay was much worse than I remembered, though. I'm sure this is largely due to me not having played a shooter with a controller in ages (what am I, a savage?!) but there's also the bullet sponge enemies that made me rage a bit in the last few chapters. I don't know if I ever argued with you over this @TheMightyEthan or just disagreed silently but holy fuck, I totally get it now. A guy should not be able to shrug off like 3 bursts of automatic gunfire to the upper chest area. At one point I tried punching a dude and the game informed me that I could not do that because he was wearing a helmet. Sure. Whatever. Another time I shot a dude literally right in the face but his magic helmet also made him impervious to that too. Somehow. Thank fuck like 80% of the encounters can be fully stealthed in this one because I think having to shoot my way through the entire game would've soured the experience quite a bit. I remember Uncharted 2 had like this one section in a Tibetan ruin where you started out in hiding and it was clear you were supposed to just roll with it when you got spotted because I stubbornly tried to stealth the entire section and it took me forever to figure out a strategy that actually worked. So I'm really glad they made stealth a viable tactic most of the time in this one because it was way more enjoyable than actually trying to play it as a shooter. Other than that, I really enjoyed it. The story was pretty fun and it was a really satisfying send off for the characters. I probably don't need to spoiler this since it's been years but just in case Also, Playstation Now works surprisingly well. I was expecting latency/input delay to be bad but if there was any I never noticed it. The real issue for me was compression, which made it really hard to appreciate the visuals at times. But it's definitely better than not playing the game at all so I can't really complain. God of War next!

I honestly can't remember the last time I've seen bullshots. And Valve really don't have a history of it, either. It's always been more on the big publisher side of things.

Hints? There's clearly gameplay footage in there. And it looks so fucking gooooood! Also, it's not limited to one particular VR style, you can play standing, sitting, teleport or joystick movement, etc... Some more details about how it came to be and next year Geoff will be doing another Final Hours thing that goes more into what Valve has been doing the past few years.

Yeah, after MGSV there is no doubt in my mind that Kojima's real genius is as a game designer. He has a reputation mainly for his weird stories and being a "director" or whatever but his solid game design has always lowkey been the best part about his games, just not the flashiest. And, I mean, don't get me wrong, I love the hell out of his weird stories and I'm glad that Death Stranding sounds like it has a more prominent one than MGSV. But MGSV really opened my eyes in how it was the storytelling equivalent of someone farting in my face and yet that gameplay alone carried the entire game for me. And every single time I remember that gameplay I feel the urge to reinstall the game. I get why Death Stranding is divisive but I'm really confident that I'll love it and I can't fucking wait for summer 2020!

Lol please, not here too...

Well, I guess since the Valve was leaking pretty heavily they decided to just acknowledge it early. I don't own a VR headset but I'm really excited to see what this looks like. If it's anywhere near as revolutionary as Half-Life 1 and 2 were, then this should be a pretty serious killer app for VR. And this is the culmination of their years of R&D into VR, so if they're calling it a flagship title then I fully expect it to be.

Hahaha oh, well then I have no idea.

The Surge After a month away from it, I caved and bought the DLC so I could finish it already. It's uh... it's actually pretty good? That kinda came as a shock after the aggressively mediocre Lords of the Fallen but this might actually the biggest jump in quality from one game to the next that I've seen a developer make since Naughty Dog with Uncharted 1 -> Uncharted 2. I may be a little biased here, though, since I've wanted a Sci-fi soulslike for almost as long as the genre has existed. It's not perfect by any means but overall I really enjoyed my time with it. The main issue with it was the level design, I think. It's not bad or anything but the layout is all twisty and interconnected like you'd expect from a proper soulslike and the shortcuts usually go through these identical maintenance vents. So combined with the industrial setting and art direction, everything ends up looking super samey and makes it really hard to find your way through certain areas. The second area of the game took me forever to finally be able to navigate from memory, I would keep forgetting which shortcuts led to where. And after about a month long break from the game, having to return to early areas for achievements or collectables was basically a nightmare and I had to do a bit of "how to get to x" googling. It's really more of an annoyance than an actual problem, though, and it probably wouldn't be as big of a deal if you played the game without a break. But compared to the original Dark Souls where just thinking about it I can still make a mental map of almost the entire game, it just makes The Surge's level design stand out in a bad way. Other than that, the bosses are kind of underwhelming but that's pretty much it. The game overall is honestly super fun, the combat is fast but has this really satisfying weight to it and the story and side-quests are interesting enough (and sometimes depressingly dark lol). There's also this really cool system where if you want a specific rig, you need to find enemies that wear it and target/cut their limbs off to get parts to build it. I think the game may have gone overboard with input buffering, though. In Dark Souls it leads to this very deliberate combat where you need to commit to your button presses. But I feel like The Surge maybe buffers more presses than it should because there's been a few times where in the heat of the moment I'd mash like a dumbass and it would suddenly feel unresponsive enough that I'd go "What the FUCK is happening right now?!" Another point it gets over Lords of the Fallen is that the DLC isn't complete trash. Walk in the Park is actually one of the better areas of the entire game and even ties into the main story. The Good, the Bad and the Augmented is more like a set of challenge rooms that's fun but feels like a distraction more than a worthwhile addition to the game. And they both have "craft every single new piece of gear" achievements, so if you're an achievement hunter like me they end up padding the game out a little bit with the grinding for parts. So yeah, I went in with low expectations but I was pleasantly surprised. Sign me up for The Surge 2!