toxicitizen

Oh man the song is super familiar. Probably an old Naruto OP or something?

Oh shit, I didn't know The Haunted were still going and had new material out! Last I had heard, Peter Dolving had left again and I assumed that was it. Hopefully Marco Aro coming back will mean a return to the One Kil Wonder-era quality. The last few albums really didn't do anything for me, The Dead Eye was the last one I really loved.

Beta applications for Ys VIII are open. Selected entries will get a free Steam copy of the game.

If only Square-Enix had their own assassin IP they could use for a crossover...

And even if that was his original family at the beginning of the series, he did turn the entire world into a Cronenberg nightmare and abandoned everyone but Morty in it. He never actually gave a shit about any of them.

Keep in mind that I only watched all three movies for the first time in the last couple weeks, so I never followed any kind of marketing or saw any interviews with anyone involved. I only had the actual content of the movies and the presence of certain characters (or names) to base my assumptions on! And, based on just those, I still think there's room for a more "grounded" (i.e. sign language and no clothes) version of the original story to happen within the lifetime of these characters but that's obviously irrelevant if the people behind the films have said that's not what they're doing.

Man, people sure love to overthink their cartoons. I'm not trying to shit on you specifically Jack, just to be clear, you're just voicing a sentiment I've been seeing a lot online lately. I don't think Rick was ever intended to be this lovable dick everyone made him out to be. He was always a complete asshole with little to no redeeming traits and I fucking love how this season so far can basically be construed as a giant "Fuck you!" to the fan base that views him as some kind of (anti-?) hero. For me, the humor mainly comes from how awful Rick actually is. I can't help but be reminded of how some people legitimately rooted for Walter White and saw him as a good guy. Like, just no lol. So, to answer your initial question, I'm loving the season so far. I have a feeling I might be in the minority but the Vindicators episode was probably my favorite so far because of everything I said in the previous paragraph. The "Mother... fucker!" when Morty watches the video at the end made me lose my shit so fucking hard. -------------------------- On another note, a friend of mine won't shut the fuck up about Twin Peaks lately and he got me pretty curious about the new season, so I figured I should catch up so I can watch it. I've been marathoning the first two seasons the last few days and goddamn, this is one amazing show. I actually watched season 1 a few years ago but lost interest almost as soon as I started season 2. Not even sure why because I can't get enough of it this time around. I'm about halfway through season 2 now and, given what happened in the episode I just watched, I have a feeling I'm about to hit what's considered the low point of the series. Sucks but I'm looking forward to the new season so much that I probably won't have any problems just powering through it.

Kojima/KojiPro: I'm a huge MGS fan and even with all my issues with MGSV I still thought it was a 10/10 on gameplay alone. Given that Death Stranding is a fresh start with no story baggage, I have no reason to expect anything but greatness from it. PlatinumGames: They've had a few duds in recent years but at their best they still have everyone else beat as far as action games go. Nihon Falcom: They've been around forever and basically invented the action RPG subgenre but I wouldn't have recognized the name just a few years ago. And yet, Trails has pretty much become my favorite game series at this point and seeing their name is enough to instantly put any game on my radar. Zachtronics: The only indie dev I feel strongly enough about to put on this list. They're about as niche as you can get (seriously, if there's a genre more niche than "programming games", I don't know what it is) and I've never even finished any of their games but I'm still there day one whenever they release a new one. I also kinda want to say FromSoftware but I haven't played anything they've made pre-Souls, so I'm really not sure. I'm really curious to see what they've been working on since Dark Souls III and Bloodborne but I don't exactly feel like they could do no wrong. I'm with you on that one. I wouldn't necessarily call them a favorite of mine but I loved both Enslaved and DmC a lot. The amount of hate they get seriously confuses the hell out of me.

Really? Then that makes the inclusion of in War seem kinda pointless. Like, why even bother making that reference if it's not intended to be the same character?

By original I mean the 1968 Heston one, yeah. I agree that that one implied it was thousands of years in the future but that's what I was talking about in an earlier post. This new series is making it all happen on a much shorter timeline, which is why I was initially confused as to whether it was reboot or prequel. If it was on a longer timeline then you're absolutely right, there's plenty of time for them to evolve further and figure out nukes. But, like I said, it looks like we're no more than 15 years away from Charlton Heston showing up. Reason I believe this is that at the end of War we have To me that puts the astronauts' return no more than ~15 years away or so. That means Maurice is likely meant to be Dr. Zaius (I mean, his name is clearly a reference to the actor Maurice Evans) and this is where things start to not quite align with the 1968 movie. The apes here still seem way too "primitive" or ape-like to start wearing clothes and being all civilized in that short of a time span. They seem to be going for a more grounded vibe, so I can see it never getting to the whole "Apes wearing clothes" thing. And yeah, War seems like a good end point but they've already said they started planning the next one.

It's not far flung, though. As of the end of War, we're like maybe another ~15 years away from the original movie tops. I feel like given the state the apes are currently in, figuring out computer systems and launching nukes is a bit beyond them. They're still all about chilling in trees and smashing things with rocks. My guess would be they'll encounter yet more humans in the next movie and that's likely how it'll go down.

See that's the one thing that doesn't quite fit in this new series, imho. It's been a while but IIRC the old one sort of implied that it was the far future while these new ones are explaining how it's actually all happening within a span of ~15-20 years. At this point I'm not sure how they could explain the statue of liberty on the beach thing easily because it feels like we're past the point where a nuclear war would've happened. Then again, my friend felt the same way about the feral state of the humans in the original and the new one explains it pretty easily so you never know. If anything, this series has been surprisingly good so far at taking shortcuts and expediting the entire process without feeling forced or stupid.

Yeah, I just thought that it might be building up to the first one while ignoring everything else. The old movies got kinda stupid starting with the second one. Ignoring everything but the original would probably be the best way to go about doing a non-reboot prequel series. But after some googling, everything I'm finding calls it a reboot so... yeah.

Rise/Dawn/War for the Planet of the Apes. A friend and I caught a marathon of the old movies on TV years ago and really enjoyed them, so we figured it was about time we watched the new ones. We watched the first two last week and went to see the new one tonight. The old ones were fun in a cheesy way but these new ones are shockingly good. Way better than I would've expected them to be. Still not entirely clear on whether they're supposed to be a reboot or an actual prequel, though. They seem to go out of their way to make things fit nicely and explain everything but they feel a lot more grounded with the apes mostly using sign language and not wearing clothes (because why the fuck would they lol). I guess the next one might settle that once and for all given where this one ends. Although I really hope they're not building up to a remake of the original. The perfect way to end this series would be for the very last scene to be the astronauts coming back to earth. Don't need to show anything beyond that.

Never really had any interest in their stuff but I guess the Easy Allies are alright.

The most recent ep was filler? Hmm, maybe I should use that as an excuse to catch up. The wait for the season to end is starting to be painful and at least this way I know I'm not gonna end up on a cliffhanger in the middle of a major arc lol.

I really liked it. If you enjoy Telltale's games and are a Batman fan, then I don't think you can go wrong with it. It's technically original but it's the kind of Batman story you've seen plenty of times before. It does change some details both big and small, though, which helps keep things interesting.

Was hoping for a little earlier but that leaves plenty of time to wrap up Cold Steel, at least.

Yeah, the in media res intro feels a bit... cheap and pointless all things considered. That's all I'll say about it. Just pretend the game starts with Rean on the train for now lol. I kinda see what you mean but I got used to it back on Vita. I wouldn't expect any drastic changes in that area for CSII, though. I only played like 10 hours or so before shelving it but, much like FC and SC, it's essentially the same game as Cold Steel 1 as far as how it plays.

The latest patch for Trails in the Sky the 3rd added a beta DX9 version of the game. Sounds like Sara had been working on it for a while and recently fixed an issue that was preventing her from progressing. The noteworthy thing here is that, because it's now an official feature in Cold steel, she has also added a turbo mode to the game. Similar updates will come to FC and SC as well. Gotta appreciate the dedication and support there. Now if only Durante's positive influence could spread outside of XSEED...

Third and final blog post by Durante. Store page for Ys Seven is live! Says "August" for the release date, so I guess it's coming pretty soon. Then there's Lacrimosa of Dana next month. And that's not even including Zwei and Tokyo Xanadu. This might be too much Falcom for me to handle! Hold me, Mal!

Yeah, this port is a thing of beauty. Can't wait until I reach a certain chapter because that part of the game had me going "Fuck, I wish I was playing this on PC" the entire time, it ran so bad on Vita. Turbo mode is gonna come in handy when it's time for NG+ and achievement hunting. Probably gonna keep it disabled for my first run, though. Probably possible if you rush everything and skip optional side-quests but otherwise lol. And even then you probably won't sleep much. My first playthrough took me like 80 hours and I expect this one to take even longer. I'm doing like I did when I replayed FC on Steam and using a guide to not miss anything. It's uh... yeah it's gonna take a while. Wrapped up chapter 1 last night and the clock is already at 15h.

Because duh. I think the price point is a mistake, though. 30 bucks seems like the reasonable price for this and I think going higher is gonna hurt sales, sadly. I swear, sometimes it almost feels like XSEED wants these games to not sell as well as they could... Then again they can count on idiots like me to buy everything that says Trails on it, I guess. The bundle for all the DLC is 55% off for some reason. I should probably sell my Vita copies to try and offset the cost, though. Never gonna touch them again, so I can sell the games and just hold on to the Collector's Edition stuff.