toxicitizen

I remember thinking this game was flawed but pretty great the first time around but I think my opinion of it went down a bit after this replay. I still love it but now I kinda wish it was a better game. There were a lot of small things I found annoying throughout but ultimately it was the bloat that soured me on it the most. I did one playthrough on Apocalyptic doing all the side-quests and collectibles and then another on Deathinitive difficulty where I mostly just beelined the main objectives the entire time. I actually enjoyed the second run more than the first one, mostly because it was NG+ and I could ignore most of the following. There are a lot of pointless fetch quests here that don't really add anything of value. The loot system feels tacked on and unnecessary. The combat system is clearly inspired by games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta but it lacks the depth you'd expect from it and the dodge just kept fucking me up because of how chaining multiple ones in a row works. I still like the Prince of Persia platforming, though. It's also one of the buggiest games I've played in a while. I don't know if it was just the PC port but it kept crashing on me at the most random times. Sometimes the game would just shut down after I alt-tabbed out. Sometimes it would freeze for a couple seconds and not actually crash. Then I went to tackle the Crucible (basically an arena where you fight 100 waves of enemies) and it just kinda went apeshit. There's checkpoints every 25 waves and I couldn't even make it to the first one. Turns out the damage indicators actually crash the fucking game if you deal too much damage. Thankfully you can turn them off but holy shit. Ironically enough, after I unlocked the very last achievement and tried to quit the game, it just locked up and refused to shut down. I had to hard reset my PC. This was initially supposed to be a replay in anticipation of Darksiders 3 but it had the opposite effect. I've kind of had enough for now, so I'm gonna wait a while before getting Darksiders III.

Geez, what's so time consuming about it? I never bothered with them on PC because Blizzard's achievement system is weird and there's just too much shit going on with time-limited stuff or whatever.

Yeah, I'm also getting Xanadu vibes here. Would be interesting if it turns out to be a completely new title, though. Last I heard, Kondo said they wanted Tokyo Xanadu to become their third main IP along with Ys and Trails. So with Ys VIII and Sen IV both out, I just kind of assumed Tokyo Xanadu 2 was probably next.

Yeah, the aggregated score is about where I expected it to be. I was hoping it would be higher but this was never exactly a critically-acclaimed series and this one's clearly done on a smaller scale/lower budget. I'm still about halfway through my replay of Darksiders 2, though, so I won't be getting it right away. Hopefully by the time the winter sale rolls around, it'll be discounted a little (or a lot, since this is probably going to bomb).

Sure, gift me a copy on Steam and I'll play with you.

What is wrong with you?

I've kinda given up on mine ever getting that low. A few years ago I went through my Steam library and made a spreadsheet with a lot of titles that I'd at least like to try and I've barely made a dent in it. At this point I'm overdue to not only update the list but also go through it and remove a bunch of "who am I kidding?" titles that I'll probably never get to.

I've been in a bit of a backlog mood lately, so nothing in the current Steam sale is really tempting me all that much. I did end up browsing the Battle.net store and grabbing a couple things, though. The Legendary Edition upgrade for Overwatch (because it was cheap enough that I didn't think twice about it) and the Necromancer add-on for Diablo 3. So, I guess a D3 replay is happening in the near future. I kinda wanted Legacy of the Void but it's been so long that I would probably need to replay the entire trilogy at this point and I'm not ready to jump into that right now. I'm also a little bummed out to have missed out on getting a physical copy. I don't know if they're out of print but I can't find any at a reasonable price anywhere I usually order from. So it can wait, and hopefully get a little cheaper by the time I'm ready to get it.

Hitman 2 There really isn't much to say about this one that hasn't already been said about the first season. This is the second season, for better and for worse. It's the same amazing game as before with some very small improvements here and there, just not the major kind you'd expect of a full-fledged sequel. After they made such a huge deal about the original being this platform for future content (one of the rare instances where it actually worked, imho), it was weird to see them backtrack and do a standalone sequel. I'm assuming the publisher change is the main reason behind this. Either they couldn't keep using the same client because S-E owned it or WB just wanted a new product they could sell for full price. Either way, if you loved season 1 then there's no reason you won't love this too. The one complaint I would make is that it feels one location short due to the first one being a very small map that's pretty much a glorified tutorial, which is a little weird because they also re-use the tutorial from the first game. It's hard to complain though, because the other maps are as great as anything from season 1 (some I'd argue are even better) and when you include the free Legacy DLC then the game ends up being ridiculously packed with content. I only played season 1 after it was complete and missed out on all the time-sensitive content, so I'm really looking forward to trying out some elusive targets this time. I'm also looking forward to the two expansions, which hopefully will be coming sooner rather than later. Keeping the game installed is taking a huge chunk out of my SSD, though...

I mean, that depends on your connection speed. Mine is decent but hardly faster than the decrypting process (and I imagine it's only going to be faster now that I have a SSD, haven't had the chance to test it out yet). I've never seen the decrypting take more than an hour or so but, using Hitman as an example, even if I just download the base game's 60GBs I'm still looking at a ~5h download. If I downloaded the full 105GBs I probably wouldn't be playing until much later in the evening. It's not a huge deal or anything but worst case scenario I'm wasting almost 25% of the early access time downloading the game. Anyway, seems they changed their mind overnight because I see a pre-load option on Hitman 2 now. It's only 13GBs though, so uh we'll see how that works out... edit: OH SHIT! That initial pre-load was only for the very first episode but they actually went ahead and unlocked the whole thing a full day early! Still got another 25GB to download but looks like I'll be playing tonight! Perfect timing since I just finished the Patient Zero campaign. That last mission was a pretty neat twist on the usual formula.

Hitman With Hitman 2 right around the corner, I figured if I was ever going to revisit season 1 and finish getting all the achievements it was now or never. I was kind of hoping to get my fill and reduce the temptation to pre-order Hitman 2 but it just ended up making me want it even more. Also, I was like 90% done when I found out all the achievements from the first game are duplicated in the sequel. I knew all the season 1 locations would be available as DLC but I didn't expect them to just copy paste the achievements list. So I guess I'll have to do it all over again lol. I still need to play the Patient Zero bonus campaign and then I'll be all set for Hitman 2 on friday. Although, it sounds like I'll be spending most of the day downloading it because it's a 105GB download (45GB of that is the season 1 DLC). Apparently it didn't occur to them that not having a pre-load on such a big download is kind of at odds with having 4 days of early access as part of your Gold Edition...

I can think of one that was actually pretty good. I can't think of another one...

I know she stepped in later but those games have never been high sellers. I meant more in the sense that with her gone I'm not sure there's really anyone left in a position to push for these niche projects. Honestly, with her and Tom (a huge Falcom fan in general) gone, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't tackle any more Falcom games. Not that there's much left, I guess. Zwei really seemed like they were scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Damn, wtf. Just yesterday I almost posted an optimistic joke about her work on London Detective Mysteria wrapping up last week. Wonder what (if anything) this means for future Trails localization. It being sudden and her not having something already lined up kinda makes me think she didn't leave voluntarily, though... edit: You know, after thinking about it some more and reading other people's thoughts, I'm more and more convinced this might it for Trails. It was kind of a passion project in the first place and if no one is left to push for it then I could see XSEED not picking up CS3/4 at all. Hell, Hatsuu leaving is actually kind of a good indication that they haven't. ? So that leaves us in the darkest of timelines, where NISA picking it up might actually not be the worst possible outcome.

Nah, the pic was posted on the verified instagram of an actor that's in the movie. To be fair, between Paul W.S. Anderson and the plot synopsis about monsters crossing over from a parallel world into ours or whatever the fuck it was, I knew to expect complete shit. But man, they're not even trying to make it look like they're making an actual Monster Hunter movie lol.

*sigh*

Yeah, in other words the movie gets what makes him scary. Freddy and Jason are complete fantasy nonsense but the scariest thing about Michael Myers is that his killings are completely random, he's just a pure evil dude. Even in this one, Jamie Lee Curtis is obsessed with him but he couldn't give less of a shit about her. Most of his kills are pretty generic by slasher standards and the creepiest stuff happens completely off camera. You never see him do any of it but he goes to such lengths to fuck with people by stashing bodies in the most insane places or ways. It's great lol.

Lol, I'd say now we know what the delay was about but at this point I'm not sure we can assume anything about how deep their incompetence runs. These are such baffling things to remove from a PC port that it's hard to even guess whether there was something causing a genuine problem or if it was just some kind of idiotic decision.

Halloween The new one that just came out, with Jamie Lee Curtis returning as Grandma Laurie Strode. My friend called me asking if I wanted to go see Venom and that looks like a huge pile of shit so I suggested Halloween instead. I've never been much of a Halloween fan (mostly because I haven't seen most of them) but we watched the entire Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th series earlier this year, so I thought moving on to Halloween was kind of a logical move. Plus, you know, it's actually Halloween time. I really enjoyed it. Ditching all the shitty sequel baggage and going back to something more in line with the original was definitely the right move. Also, the score is absolutely fantastic. I actually had chills at times. John Carpenter still got it!

Yeah, the Funimation thing really sucks. I'm still waiting to see the official list but I expect all the older Funimation shows they've added in the past two years will be leaving. There's still a ton of shows I've wanted to watch that I haven't gotten around to yet, so that's really annoying. It's my own fault for waiting so long to watch them, I guess. I think as soon as I finish MHA S3 I'll go at least finish the first season of Code Geass and hopefully by then the list will be out and I'll be able to choose what to prioritize. Apparently the decision was made by Sony, who acquired Funimation last year. They are out of their goddamn minds if they think I'll sub to a completely new service solely for one company's content. If they remove their series from Crunchyroll, I'll just have to watch them through... other means. Although, I guess it shouldn't be surprising that their gaming division isn't the only one that insists on doing what's best for consumers. /s

Yeah, as much as I enjoyed Origins I'm really glad I waited until it dropped to a reasonable price. I don't see any need to get Odyssey until I can get all the content at once for less than the base game costs right now.

Had like 15 bucks of store credits saved up on the Humble store and this was on sale, so I finally grabbed it. I wanted to at least get the edition that comes with the season pass characters but the Ultimate one was only 5 bucks more so I said fuck it and got that one.

@deanb I still wasn't completely sold on MHA after the first season. Season 2, although it feels a little disjointed due to how it's split up, is where it gets really good. And based on the first few eps, it seems S3 is only going to get better. Oh and something I forgot to mention after the JoJo premiere:

I binged the entire season of Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House this week-end. I loved everything made by Mike Flanagan that I've seen and I generally love ghost stories, so it seemed like it would be right up my alley and I wasn't disappointed. It starts out pretty good and only gets better right up until the middle two eps, which were absolutely fantastic. I found the second half of the season to be a little less compelling but not because of any kind of quality drop, it just went in a different direction than I was hoping. I wanted all the spooks and instead the show decided to give me all the feels. The horror is ultimately more of a backdrop for the character drama, which is the real focus of the show. I still strongly recommend it, though. It's the best haunted house story I've seen in quite a while. I can't think of anything else remotely as good other than the Conjuring movies (the two main ones, not those shitty looking spin-offs that I'll never watch).