toxicitizen

I obviously bought the new Zachtronics game the instant it came out last week. Haven't touched it yet, though, because I saw they were still selling Limited Edition upgrades on their website so I caved and ordered one. Waiting for it before I dig in. Also, when I ordered it, I figured what the hell and emailed Zach to see if he still had a Shenzhen I/O Limited Edition left that I could buy. He said he still had binders and most of the extras that came with it, so I got one. Once I get some separators and print out the manual, the only thing I'll be missing will be the mystery envelope. Anyway, it came in today and turns out he also stuffed the box with a bunch of cool shit! (edit: don't know why the pic doesn't display, it might be too big? It's clickable, though...) I don't know what I'll do with a physical copy of SpaceChem but I'm kinda glad to have one! Now if only my EXAPUNKS LE would get here already, I wanna play damnit.

Not gonna give you shit about your weapon choice. I switched to dual blades, which is apparently the most noob friendly, and I have no regrets. As for armor spheres, yeah you should probably use them. Especially if monsters start one shotting you. From what I've read, you can get by early on simply by upgrading whichever armor you have. I did a bit of grinding to complete the Pukei set yesterday and I'm just upgrading that for now because everything else looks kind of ugly lol. Seems to give a decent defense boost, at the very least. Barroth is the first one that truly gave me hell. I failed my first attempt and that is what made me change weapon and go back to get the Pukei set. It felt so good to not just beat him but also do an investigation today and actually capture the fucker alive.

Alright, so I put about a dozen hours into it. After the first few hours on the first day, I really wasn't sure if it would be for me. My first proper hunt was equal parts confusing and frustrating. "Wait, where's his health bar??" "Will you quit running away you piece of shit!" "Oh my God, is this asshole going to die before the heat death of the universe?" Then last night I said fuck it, bought some beer and figured I'd give it a proper shot to find out for sure. Before I knew it, 3 hours had passed. Once I switched to a more beginner-friendly weapon, got into the proper mindset and learned to appreciate the flow and pacing of a hunt, everything fell into place and I started having a ton of fun. Taking down one of these huge bastards after tracking it and chasing it for 30mins is some of the most satisfying shit ever! The last one I did was Anjarath and finally taking down that T-Rex motherfucker after him constantly being a threat during previous hunts felt so freaking good! I rewatched ProJared's review last night and some of the stuff he said made me really glad I waited this long to get into the series, though. There is an insane amount of QOL improvements here that seem like basic common sense things to have in such a game. Makes me really not want to bother ever trying to go back to previous games. Especially since even with all those improvements the game still manages to feel a bit like an impenetrable clusterfuck of menus and data overload.

Other than one part near the end where you're temporarily locked in a particular area for story reasons, you're mostly able to backtrack to your heart's content. I don't remember an explicit point of no return but it'll be obvious when things are getting close to the end. And the part in your spoiler tag is super early on, so I wouldn't worry about it for now.

Did you post this in the wrong thread or do you count getting the DS4 to work as "beating" the game? And yeah, I was a little surprised to find out the series still hasn't actually become an open-world game. I have no idea if it'll get bigger or unlock new areas but the initial Kamurocho map is actually pretty small. Little more than a dozen city blocks or so, and really compact ones at that. And I think it's perfect like that. I've seen people asking for a proper open-world with driving and I think those fuckers are out of their goddamned minds. It wouldn't be the same game at all. The current JRPG/brawler formula is too unique and fun to ruin it with tired open-world design.

A friend of mine decided to also grab Monster Hunter World and wants us to play co-op, so we figured we should get some headsets. I considered just getting a desk mic and using the studio headphones I already have but I always get kind of annoyed when I use them with my PC because they have this big coiled cable that always ends up getting in the way of my mouse arm. The temptation to get something wireless was just too great.

Hmm 15 bucks is tempting but I'm still not sure if I'll want to play the fan translation. Plus, I kinda don't want to touch the DRM infested chinese port of Ao, so... Might as well just keep on pretending these don't exist.

Wh..where?

New Zachtronics game coming next month! This one seems to be a spiritual successor to Shenzhen I/O. Between Opus Magnum and this, I'm really digging their approach to doing "sequels". So tempted to finally get one of those physical editions but shipping and USD conversion makes it so pricy...

Yeah, now that you guys mention it I vaguely recall hearing about some kind of crossover a while ago but I guess I forgot. It was for the best because it made for one hell of a WTF moment lol. Funny thing is I actually noticed the Moogle plushie next to the Animus hours earlier but for some reason never registered that it shouldn't have been in a Ubisoft game. As for the special gear thing, my enjoyment of the game actually went up once I activated the Deluxe/Season Pass DLC and received a bunch of legendary gear that I could keep upgrading. The loot system is by far the aspect of the game I enjoyed the least. Just feels out of place and unnecessary. I'm usually not too keen on balance-breaking bonus items but this is one case where I honestly couldn't care less. Especially now that I wrapped up the main story.

So, I tried starting the first DLC expansion for AC Origins yesterday but, despite my best attempts, the required level of the very first mission proved too high for me to have a fighting chance. So I went back into the main map and messed around, did some side-quests and leveled up a bit. That's when I saw it. I'm not sure if it was DLC or what but it was different from other icons, so I checked it out. Triggered a cutscene where something fell out of the sky and crashed nearby. Cool, I guess. Let's check it out. Turns out to be some kind of space rock that just happened to blow open an entrance to a nearby structure. Inside was an inscription on a mural that led me to a nearby sundial puzzle. I solved the puzzle, the mural opened up and I found... something. I approached it, some weird force field opened up and out came, I shit you not, the main villain from Final Fantasy XV. I don't know what the fucking hell just happened or if I had too much to drink tonight or what but he flew away into the sky and I got a sword and shield for my trouble. Video games were a mistake.

Urge to edit rising... I've seen that complaint online a lot but for some reason it wasn't an issue for me. Maybe it's because for most of the game I was doing every side-quest I could find before moving on with the story, so I was almost always either the right level or over-leveled. I was a couple levels under the recommended one for the final main quest but that's the only time it happened and it only took like 3-4 side-quests to catch up. Also, one thing I forgot to mention is how freaking gorgeous the game is. I couldn't hit a solid 60fps, so I locked it to 30 and cranked everything all the way up and that was definitely the right call. I almost never fast-traveled because jumping into a boat and just taking in the scenery while sailing was just so relaxing and fun. I've never been a history nerd and the previous settings of the series have never really done much for me in the past, but there was something about this one that just sucked me in completely.

Assassin's Creed Origins I still have the post-game DLC to play but I wrapped up the main campaign. This game is very good but also very bloated and almost a little too big. It's not as much of a reinvention as I had hoped but it does improve certain areas that seriously needed it, combat being the main one. After not touching the series for like 3 years at this point, it felt really good to be back. At first. The problem is that this game is so big and so long that it almost overstayed its welcome. Just looking at the map feels exhausting, although to be fair, that might be due to my completionist nature. As much as I enjoy the core gameplay loop, the idea of clearing all the camps, doing all the side-quests and so on sounds like it would be way too long and tedious. The story was alright but it did feel like it ended a little abruptly. There's a point that feels like the climax but then you finish that section and the game is like "Nah, check out this other part of the map over here" and it's back to business as usual for a few more hours. At that point I had no idea where the game was going or for how much longer. Also, I've always been in the minority in that I actually enjoyed the sci-fi/present day stuff, so it was a little disappointing to see it toned down so much. Other than a couple of areas with neat visuals, there really wasn't anything like ACII's ending, which I think might still be my favorite moment of the entire series. Ideally, playing this should've convinced me to buy the next one at launch but I think I'm gonna wait for a price drop again. Probably a bit lower than I paid for this one.

Yeah, I'm all for adding RPG mechanics in other genres but that kind of emphasis on loot drops just isn't a good fit for this kind of action game, imho. I feel the same way about Assassin's Creed Origins right now. Constantly having to swap out weapons and gear because I keep finding new ones with slightly higher numbers isn't exactly what I wanna be doing here. Like, it's one thing in Diablo where that's the entire point, but that's not what I play AC for. Once I bought the season pass and was given a bunch of legendary gear, I was happy to just equip that and keep upgrading it for as long as it was feasible.

Might be longer than that if Falcom are being their usual idiotic selves and waiting until the Japanese release before licensing them. Cold Steel 1 and 2 were done as a package deal so they might want to do the same with 3 and 4. Which means we might not hear anything until late 2019, unless whoever ends up with them decides to announce them super early.

New characters reveal for Sen IV. Technically spoiler I guess but, well... just click it @Mal !! The hype is real!

Coming out November 27. Also some new gameplay. Starting to look like a proper Darksiders game. I can't see any of that stiffness from the early videos. Although for some reason I keep forgetting that the game actually exists lol. Gonna have to start thinking about doing that Darksiders 2 replay in the near future.

If you do it now, the GMG rep on r/gamedeals said they should be sending another round of emails before the end of the promo.

Atelier Arland trilogy announced for PS4 and Switch in Japan! This is very likely to come West and I would expect a Steam release as well. Also, @deanb might be nothing but I accidentally clicked on this thread's first page and Chrome went apeshit with a red page warning of a deceptive site (mentioned fishing and Raptr, which IIRC some people used to have in their signature). Thought you might want to know.

I was going to wait but I'm a dumb idiot with no willpower whatsoever. I blame GMG, they know how to tempt me with their damn pre-order discounts and their vouchers that stack on top of those pre-order discounts! Ended up getting the Deluxe Edition for cheaper than the base game costs directly from Steam, even after conversion to CAD. Oh well, at least that should be my last big purchase of the summer. I don't think there's anything else I want other than Ys: Memories of Celceta and I've got card money saved up for that. Oh and I got the fighting pad yesterday. That thing is kind of amazing! I thought having R1 and R2 as face buttons would be the biggest advantage but having L1 and L2 where R1 and R2 would normally be is an equally huge game changer. It basically removes the need to develop muscle memory and allows you to focus entirely on just remembering/executing the inputs. Makes it so much easier to pull off longer combo chains. I'm still on Killer Instinct but now I'm kind of excited to eventually try it with Guilty Gear Xrd.

Sadly gonna have to wait for a sale on this one. Not only am I likely still going to be in the middle of Yakuza 0 at that point, it's also coming months later without any kind of lowered price and sounds like they spent none of that time on PC-specific improvements or optimizations. Graphics will apparently have parity with console and the system requirements mention "30FPS on low" for minimum and "30FPS on high" for recommended. The game does support 60FPS but it seems unlikely I'll be be able to hit that on my current setup. So yeah, while none of that is indicative of a bad port it is enough to get me out of impulse purchase territory. For the best anyway, I don't even know if I'll enjoy the game/series.

Lol, oh yeah now that you mention it, I had a turbo controller just like that for my Genesis.

I'm really enjoying Killer Instinct but the Steam controller, as much as I love it, is so fucking trash for fighting games. I can get kinda rough and button mashy in the heat of the moment and I'm worried I'll break the trackpad they're passing off as a dpad. So I'm using the analog stick instead, but it's been acting up for a while and it just doesn't feel as good as a proper dpad. I've been tempted to get a fight stick or pad for a long time now, so I figured it was now or never. I like fighting games but I feel like my lack of skills has kept me from truly getting into the genre. Hopefully buying this will be the first step towards rectifying that!

Since this has pretty much become the de facto "shit NISA does" thread... So, a full 6 months delay (assuming this beta is roughly 2 weeks before launch as usual, because that's worked out so well for them in the past). I seriously hope we eventually find out what the hell happened here because people that managed to try the initial beta before it was pulled said that it actually ran pretty well. I mean, this kind of delay can't be due to the beta leak thing. If it had been, it would've made more sense to pull the beta and release the game ASAP. I have to imagine they found some kind of really severe issue or something.