toxicitizen

For once I made it through the Steam sale without buying too much but then I saw some deals on GMG that I couldn't say no to... I've been curious about Powerwash Simulator for a while because it looks super relaxing and I figured since I completed the Divinity set I might as well get the second PoE game as well (especially since the complete edition was super cheap). I should have all the CRPGs I need for the foreseeable future now lol.

I really enjoyed that game. I still need to go back and finish it although now that I was able to grab the season pass on sale I'm thinking I should just start a new playthrough. Don't go in expecting it to be anything like XCOM. It felt more like a puzzle game to me. Like "Okay I've got these cards, what's the best sequence to use them in to take out as many of these chuds as possible so I don't get curb-stomped next turn". As for me, I'm still in Cyberpunk withdrawal and looking for the next big RPG to lose myself into, so I foresee a lot of CRPGs in my future.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty/2.0 Update I think the highest compliment I can pay to this expansion is that it got me to sink another 100+ hours into this game that, as it turned out, I mostly remembered pretty well. Which was kinda surprising because if you were to ask me about plot specifics for any given game 6 months after I played it, I feel like I wouldn't really remember it all that well. I guess Cyberpunk was just really memorable for me. Like, I don't just mean the main quest line. Even random small gigs, I'd go to the map marker, enter whatever area it led me to and go "Oh right, this one!". I can seriously count on one hand the amount of quests I didn't remember and I'm pretty sure those were ones that I just didn't encounter in my first playthrough for some reason. Early on in this playthrough I realized that Cyberpunk might be my new favorite game of all time and over 100 hours later at the end of this run I think I still feel that way. I'm actually looking forward to doing another playthrough at some point in the future to try a melee/Sandevistan build. Anyway, people keep saying that Cyberpunk is good now but as far as I'm concerned it was always good. At least on PC. It's just way more polished now. I'm really glad that the big rework I had been expecting for the past 3 years finally came and ended up solving most of the game's big issues. And that it was accompanied by an incredible expansion was just the cherry on top. I do have some complaints about Phantom Liberty but most of them amount to minor nitpicks. Mostly about how isolated it feels from the rest of the game. The main quest in Phantom Liberty is really good. Arguably even better than the base game's. They did a pretty good job of justifying V going on this long, spy-themed tangent but it still felt detached from the rest of the game in a way that kinda bugged me a little. I guess I was hoping for something that would expand the base game's main quest and correct some of its flaws rather than just attach an extra limb to it. That being said, I never would've thought that an expansion to Cyberpunk would be able to top "Oh also Keanu Reeves is in the game!" but having Idris Elba play Solomon Reed was basically as close as you can get to doing exactly that. He was pretty damn great as Solomon Reed. I did the new ending and man, what a bummer lol. I mean, none of the endings for the base game were particularly happy or satisfying but this one just hit differently. Especially since there's no mission or anything, you just make the call and then it's just a bunch of dialogue until the credits roll. So thanks, Cyberpunk, for starting my 2024 on a downer lol. I'm also definitely bummed out that we'll only be getting a single expansion for the game but I imagine it ended up being bigger than either of the two would've been. I'm really curious to know what the original plan was, though... I'm also really looking forward to finding out more about the sequel. Will it still be set in Night City? Is it going to be a completely new thing or will it still involve V and Johnny somehow? I just need to know! I don't expect we'll hear anything for a long while, though, since I think there's like two Witcher games that have to come out first... Oh yeah and I finally got those damn two achievements I missed out on in my first playthrough! The one for maxing out a skill is kind of annoying since they go up to 60 now but I was already most of the way there with Headhunter. So I just had to grind a little bit. So V turned into a complete psychopath in her last few days in Night City and starting murdering every street gang she ran into and leaving nothing but corpses whenever she took a job to retrieve a laptop or some shit because she needed the experience points.

What Jack said, plus on this you can do something that's physically impossible on a stick: input opposing directions at the same time. This can be very useful with charge characters or when you start using input shortcuts. It'll be months before I can see any of the advantages that come from using this, though. I need to rebuild my entire muscle memory first. I can barely land my bread and butter combos right now or like... jump on reaction lol. I'm shocked that I was actually able to win online matches day one, though. Casual matches against lower ranked players but still! I think some of them may have been super confused, though. I must've seemed shockingly bad for a diamond player.

I had been thinking about this for a few months now and this week I found out I'm getting a pretty nice bonus from work, so I decided to treat myself. I would've liked an actual Hitbox but they're currently out of stock so I wouldn't have gotten it until January at best, and I was worried the currency conversion and custom fees would drive the price up too much. This was the only model I could find on short notice that was directly available in Canada and since it was on Amazon I get 1-day shipping. Which means I'm getting it today and can spend the holidays playing with it. I had sworn off Razer years ago after my Deathadder mouse started going to shit after only like two years but the reception of this one (and some of their previous fight sticks) seem pretty good, so hopefully I have nothing to worry about.

Ethan, you shit mod!!!

Very disappointed that none of you voted for Street Fighter 6, which can only mean that none of you have played it because It's the objective game of the year! Not just the best fighting game of the year, not just arguably the best vanilla version of any fighting game ever, but also one of the most content-packed fighting game ever! Seriously though, here's how much Street Fighter V I played over a period of about 3 and a half year versus how much Street Fighter 6 I played in the ~6 months since it came out. It's so good, you guys! Also, these were my picks: 1. Street Fighter 6 2. Alan Wake II 3. Resident Evil 4 4. The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure 5. System Shock

Haven't played as much of the original as I would've liked, but this one has rollback and crossplay so I'm less hesitant to jump in. I played the free version a little bit the last couple nights and thought it was fun enough to warrant getting the full version.

Just sent in my list. I thought I'd have a hard time coming up with even just five but turns out I played more new releases than I thought. The reason I asked if there were any criterias was because I thought I'd have to give a spot to The Last of Us Part I PC port but I had enough 2023 releases to fill all my spots. Shout out to Talos Principle II. It's very good but it didn't quite make the list. It might have if I had finished it but I haven't touched it in a few weeks because of my number one pick.

Holy shit, you're alive! Is the game Uncharted 3?

So we just send a list of 5 to you? I guess if we wanna write some thoughts we'll do it once you reveal the results? Also, no restrictions other than having come out in 2023?

Yeah, and pretty regularly from the looks of it. According to Google, chapter 364/volume 41 is the last one Miura worked on. They made enough chapters for volume 42, which just came out in Japan, and there's 2 more chapters beyond that according to the wiki.

I just received Berserk Deluxe Vol. 14. It's significantly thinner than the other volumes and like half of it is bonus materials. I wonder if they'll keep making these or if that's as complete as that set is going to get. Either way, it'll be a while before there's enough new chapters out to release another one, I guess...

Yeah, I understand the publisher situation. That's why I opted to pirate the game rather than hold off until the Steam release like I did with Control and every other EGS exclusive. I'm expecting it to never come to Steam but, like Ethan said, I'm hoping that the deal Remedy has with Epic lets them eventually release it on other stores, even if it's years down the line.

Alan Wake II I took my time with it but I finally rolled credits on it last night and I have some thoughts. First off, I loved the game and I'm really happy that we finally got it. A sequel to Alan Wake has been up there as one of my most-wanted games for like a decade, so it was about time. I loved the pivot to full-on horror and the more serious tone but I feel like the survival-horror mechanics were kinda lacking. Inventory management felt tacked on and unnecessary. It felt like they added it because "that's what survival-horror games have" without really considering if their game actually needed it. Like halfway through the game, both characters' shoeboxes were filling up with healing items and various junk because my inventory was constantly so full that I couldn't pick up anything else. I love me some inventory tetris as much as anyone else but that wasn't exactly the fun kind of resource management. It also made it way more cumbersome to switch to an item in the middle of combat if I forgot to setup a quickslot for it whereas something like a weapon wheel would've worked just fine. Also, sometimes my quickslots just didn't work. Now that I think about it, it was mostly when trying to throw one of those propane tanks. I'd switch over to it but the character just wouldn't take it out, so I couldn't throw it. That was fun... I think the switch to a more serious tone resulted in a better game overall but it made for a less compelling narrative. The original Alan Wake is just a fun time and a story that I still genuinely love whereas, other than one particular chapter that's one of my favorite things in any game ever, the story in Alan Wake II never quite reached the same heights as the first game due to not being the same genre. Also, I can't help but feel a little frustrated with the ending. Anyway, this is already long enough so I'll just leave it at that. I loved the game overall but it's not without issues. Oh and I loved all the tie-ins with Control. Especially seeing Ahti pop up all over the place. That was fun. I'm really curious to see how they'll handle the Max Payne remakes now. Also, man I want this game on Steam. I pirated it because I'm not giving money to the EGS but I'd love nothing more than to give Remedy money for this. I'd gladly pay a hundred bucks tomorrow for a copy in my Steam library. I really hope it's gonna come over eventually. Hopefully there's some contractual loophole that allows Remedy to release a "Complete Edition" or whatever down the line.

Playing a lot of Cyberpunk last month already had me thinking about this one a lot but playing Alan Wake II immediately after is only reinforcing how much I love this trope: having music composed for a fictional band within the game world. This music may or may not be done by an actual real-world band. Cyberpunk has Refused standing in for Samurai and Remedy obviously has Poets of the fall for Old Gods of Asgard. And in both cases, I love the fictional band way more than the real one lol. I love that Remedy's connected universe thing is keeping Old Gods going throughout their various games. It's been almost a week since I've played the Herald of Darkness chapter in Alan Wake II and I still can't stop thinking about it lol. And I'm going to be genuinely bummed out if the Cyberpunk sequel doesn't come with new Samurai music. So, I've been wondering if there are other examples of this. I know there's a (pretty good) full album for Star-Lord from the recent Eidos Guardians of the Galaxy game, although I don't think that one has a real-world counterpart. Can't really think of anything else, though.

I absolutely loved the first one and I've been anticipating the sequel for years, so it was a no-brainer. The bundle with the first game brought it down 25%, so I pre-ordered even though I won't play it immediately. I'll probably start it just to check it out but right now my focus is on a certain other highly-anticipated sequel that I'm totally not playing a pirated copy of or anything. I would definitely never do something like that. Why do you ask?! Shut up, Ethan!!!

The Quarry I've been kinda sleeping on spooky games for October (I even forgot to play the Ada DLC for RE4 Remake!) so I decided to play this at the last minute. Finished it last night and overall I really enjoyed it. I was sold from the first trailer I saw but I hadn't really followed anything about it post-launch nor had I played any of the other similar games made by Supermassive (Until Dawn and Dark Pictures Anthology), so I knew roughly what kind of game it was but very little beyond what the trailer suggested. So, it was pretty cool to find out halfway through that it was actually a story. The trailer sold it as a "teenagers stuck at summer camp get hunted down by creepy redneck family" and I was down for that but it was a nice surprise that there was more to it. And, while there were clues about it, it was executed in a way that was unique enough that I didn't actually put it together until the game explicitly stated as much and made me go "Oh shit, right!" It was also really fun how the cast was filled with so many horror icons like Ted Raimi, David Arquette, Lance Henriksen and Laura Palmer's mom. I wonder how different a subsequent playthrough could be with different choices, though. I went with common sense and managed to keep everyone alive fairly easily. The only time a character died, it was because I spaced out and reacted too late to a shooting QTE and the game offered me a do-over, saying I had 3 lives left lol. I can tell from the achievements list that there's a few possible outcomes I didn't get, so I know some characters can end up in different situations than they have in my playthrough but I wonder how much variety there actually is. I'm curious to give it another run and find out. I'll also have to give those Dark Pictures Anthology games a shot. I've been curious about them since the first one came out but something always kept me from pulling the trigger. If they're anything like The Quarry, I'll probably love them just as much. Metal Gear Solid I mean, what is there to say? It's Metal Gear Solid. I would've loved a brand new port that runs at a decent framerate and lets you choose the internal rendering resolution but what we got is an emulated version that runs only kind of OK. But at this point I'm just glad to finally have the game on Steam in any capacity. I've been wanting to replay the series for like almost a decade at this point. I'm especially excited to replay MGS2 and MGS3 in the near future. My playthrough of MGS1 was rough. It's been so long that I was super rusty and kept screwing up. I had to fight every fiber of my being to keep myself from starting over every time I triggered an alert lol. Gonna need some practice before I tackle harder difficulties and go for that Fox/Big Boss emblem achievement. I played the Tanker chapter of MGS2 and that one was much easier to get back into. By comparison, MGS1 felt downright archaic in how limited you are in what you can do. I think the emulation might be a bit buggy, though. I would trigger an alert every time I grabbed an enemy from behind and I'm pretty sure that's not normal. Anyway, after a few false start (and a save corruption bug), I managed to clear the Tanker chapter stealthily enough that I feel satisfied enough to move on to Big Shell soon.

Yeah, it's the first game in like a decade that I'm actually considering pirating. Normally I'd just wait out the exclusivity period but in this case it's likely to be permanent. I don't fault Epic for funding it when no one else would but I'm still not buying it on the fucking EGS lol.

First you don't do the Peralez questline and now you're telling me you haven't even watched Edgerunners?!? What the hell, dude?!? But seriously, though, you should watch it. It's really good lol.

So earlier this week I found out that this came out back in August. Needless to say, I needed a copy and it got here today. No idea if it's supposed to be any good but I'm enjoying the hell out of my new playthrough of the game, so I'm down for anything Cyberpunk right now. I've actually been thinking of giving Edgerunners a rewatch, too. There's also some comic books that I've been considering getting for a while. So I also pre-ordered the collected edition that comes out next month.

Got a Steam release out of nowhere after 3 years, so of course I had to. These games were my shit back in the day. I kinda hope this is indicative of (or at least testing the waters for) a potential TPHS 3+4 because that one getting cancelled because they devs got folded into Blizzard was some idiotic shit.

And just like that my Trails collection is complete again. Except for Daybreak I guess, but there's little point in buying it before the english localization comes out. No idea when I'll actually be able to play it since I have quite a few games to get through first but I figured I'd grab it the next time it went on sale because why not.