toxicitizen

50% off on Gamersgate. A bit pricier than I would've liked but I figured it was now or never. I basically never revisit games solely for DLC and Fallout 4 doesn't seem like a game I'm likely to replay once I'm done with it. I'm less than 10 hours in, I'm only just starting to get into the settlement stuff and I haven't really started the main story yet. So, I might as well have all the content ready to go before I really start digging into it.

It's been a while but I remember on PS2 I basically always had someone to heal or revive and it took me WAY longer than 3 hours. Thankfully its health didn't reset if you left, so I was able to leave and save mid-fight, spreading it out over a few days. I know I grinded every party member to level 99 and ended up with 2 Zodiac Spears by the end of everything but I can't remember whether I did the Yiazmat fight before or after. I want to say after but it's been way too long to be sure. This and dodging 100 lightning bolts in a row in FFX are the two things I'm seriously not looking forward to doing again...

Oh ffs, is that the FFXII boss that has like a billion hp? I was really hoping there wouldn't be an achievement related to it. I don't know if I can make myself go through that shit again...

Well, on the actual night of my 18th birthday I'm pretty sure I was drinking with friends and not playing video games. But that's around the time when I first got a decent PC and discovered torrenting, so I was playing all kinds of PC exclusives I'd never even heard of. It's when I first played games that are still among my favorites, like the original Deus Ex and Thief 1 and 2. Fun times.

Batman: The Telltale Series. Being a huge Batman fan, I went into it with fairly high expectations (well, as high as they could reasonably be for a Telltale game) and I wasn't disappointed. Well, except for how they've made basically zero changes or improvements to their formula. Don't fix what isn't broken, I suppose. Too bad that doesn't extend to their engine... At first I wasn't crazy about the liberties they've taken with the canon but if they're going with an early days storyline then that's probably the best way to keep things interesting. Also, I got curious and did some quick googling and apparently your choices are as inconsequential as ever lol. But yeah, after the Arkham games it felt a little weird to not be more in control of the action but it was pretty fun overall. I think I'm actually looking forward to the second season more than I am for the Wolf Among Us now. I know better than to buy a Telltale game at launch, though. Not just because of the wait but also because of how poor of a state they tend to be in at first. Still need to play Game of Thrones and catch up on The Walking Dead, anyway. Oh and I guess Minecraft too, which I got along with Batman in the current Humble Bundle.

So, this happened. I guess 15 bucks is where I bite. It helps that GMG had a voucher for an extra 15% off that kept it at 15 bucks even after conversion to CAD. Now the question is do I just throw it on the backlog or do I risk getting sucked into it less than a week away from Trails of Cold Steel...

Second part of the blog posts by Durante is up. Covers the launcher and graphical options. Dude really went all out, this is gonna be so good! He's made a video comparison specifically to showcase the improvements to pop-in but man is it just night and day in general. The improvements to resolution, framerate, shadows and everything. It's... it's beautiful.

It seems like worries about port quality for Tokyo Xanadu can be put to rest, Aksys have contracted Ghostlight to work on it. I haven't played any of their ports personally because they mostly do obscure JRPGs I'm not particularly interested in, but as far as I can tell they do solid ports.

Really? It was the opposite for me. I've been at least vaguely aware of who Iron Man was for the longest time but I never heard of Doctor Strange until I developed an interest in comics and started reading up on Marvel, DC and whatnot.

C-tier for Doctor Strange, then? I know Iron Man wasn't huge even in the comics before the first movie but I feel like people would still have at least recognized the name if nothing else. I could be wrong but I can't imagine the same being true for Doctor Strange or Black Panther. I probably have more comics knowledge than the average person (especially 10 years ago) but I'm still a casual fan at best. I've barely read anything that doesn't say "Batman" on the cover and this was my reaction when they first announced Guardians of the Galaxy.

Finally got around to watching Doctor Strange a couple nights ago. Really enjoyed it. I kinda didn't expect a movie about a B-tier character to make me go "That guy is fucking cool!" Between this and how fucking badass Black Panther was in Civil War, I'm getting more optimistic about the future of the MCU and Avengers line-up for when the bigger names start leaving or being too expensive and they lose characters like Iron Man and Caps.

I do not recommend attempting this. The game is alright on a first playthrough but getting all the achievements requires 3 in total and holy fuck, man. NG+ isn't too bad and you can rush through it in like 6 hours but the last few hours of NG++ soured me on the entire thing. When the game gets really hard you start to realize how truly fucked up it actually is mechanically. I used a glitch for the final boss on NG++ and I don't even feel bad about it. Also, the DLC is required for 10 of the achievements and it's pretty bad.

Yeah, the demo for Surge just came out. It's by the same devs as Lords of the Fallen. It's already installed, I'll give it a shot once I'm done getting the last few achievements in Lords. I'm really hoping they learned from their mistakes because they're honestly pretty close to getting it right. But even if they haven't, I've wanted a sci-fi Souls for so long that I'd probably be willing to put up with it anyway... I only played about 10 hours of Dragon's Dogma before dropping it but from what I've seen I really wouldn't describe it as Souls-like. Nioh seems to fit the bill, though. I'm still hoping it'll come to PC eventually because I really want to try it. In my experience, the best Souls-inspired games have been on the indie side of things. Most of them only borrow a few mechanics and apply them to other genres, though. I still need to go back and play more of it but Salt and Sanctuary is basically 2D Dark Souls. And I mean that in the most literal sense possible. It's actually kinda shocking how blatantly identical it is.

Lords of the Fallen. Finally got around to giving this one a shot. It's uh... let's go with uneven. It's a soulslike but for every superficial thing it gets right, it gets a fundamental one wrong. Like someone looked at Dark Souls and went "I could make this" but didn't bother looking too deeply into what makes Dark Souls so damn good. There's little variety in the enemies and bosses, they're all very samey both visually and mechanically. Which might have been deliberate either because of budget or just to minimize the risk of screwing things up but either way the game suffers for it. It's also not as tight mechanically. I'm on NG+ now and I can plow through just about everything with ease, but on the first run through there were some very frustrating issues. A lot of enemies are these big hulking guys with huge tower shields and they aren't a whole lot of fun to fight. If there's an obvious way to open them up, I never figured it out. Even attacking them from the backside results in hitting their shield, which is fucking stupid. They can just turtle up behind their shield and take the hits without staggering. They also have some truly bullshit combos that make it very clear that they do not obey the same rules of stamina as you do. You, on the other hand, can only take a hit or two before your guard breaks. There were moments where it genuinely felt like the devs went "You know, Dark Souls is pretty good but maybe it would be better if it wasn't so fair?" At this point I'm just rushing everyone with my "Fuck you!" greatsword to take them out before they can do anything. The game does get enough things right to make you want to love it, though, and there's a few cool tweaks on the formula here and there so it's definitely worth 10 bucks and a playthrough if you have a Souls itch to scratch. Just keep in mind that it's nowhere near as good. If the Souls series is a 10/10 then this is a 7 at best. Oh and unless you're going for all the trophies/achievements, don't bother getting the Ancient Labyrinth DLC. It is so fucking bad...

New localization blog from Durante about Cold Steel PC! Dude's an absolute beast and we don't deserve him. He was unhappy with the performance so he rewrote the game's entire rendering back-end in DirectX 11. And, well, I think the results speak for themselves... Also, releasing August 2nd! I also updated the first post with the newly announced stuff. Not sure if there's any point but whatever! Might as well have up to date info in it.

Announcement trailer for the PC port of Ys Seven. The announcement came out of nowhere but this is one of my most anticipated games now. Haven't played a new Ys game since Napishtim, which was like 2 years ago.

Well, we both have refined Canadian tastes. It was bound to happen eventually.

That's the advantage of not owning a PS4, I have no choice but to wait for the PC version. Of course, there's always the worry that Square-Enix is gonna Square-Enix... But with mainline Final Fantasy the chances are minimal, at least.

Yeah, it wasn't that I had any problems with Capaldi himself, it's just that for me no one could possibly follow Smith and not feel like a downgrade. Smith was my favorite Doctor by far. His last season was kinda weak but the first two (the cracks and the whole silence thing starting with the impossible astronaut) pretty much turned Doctor Who into one of my favorite shows ever. I also really enjoyed Smith's introduction, I was engaged from the very start. But with Capaldi I was like 5 episodes in and it was some stupid bullshit about robot Robin Hood or whatever and I'm just sitting there the entire time thinking "Fuck this".

Oh damn, they finally did it? I really need to catch up on the show. Haven't watched since Capaldi's first season cause I kinda wasn't feeling it.

Yeah, Joyoland's silent withdrawal from Greenlight raised a lot of questions and XSEED announcing this out of nowhere definitely supports the obvious theory. I wouldn't go so far as to assume anything about Zero and Ao based on this but I'm more optimistic than ever about Celceta and any other Falcom games. Hell, if they're releasing Zwei I wouldn't be surprised if a port of Brandish is also in the works.

Such good timing, too. I was recently starting to think I should just say fuck it and grab it on Vita. And they said it's coming this summer, so we're actually getting both Cold Steel and Ys Seven fairly close to each other!

YS SEVEN COMING TO PC! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! YS SEVEN COMING TO PC! Just announced on XSEED's Zwei stream. Interestingly enough, this isn't the Chinese Joyoland port but a completely new one. Wonder if that means those PC versions aren't an option after all. Doesn't really matter if they can make new ports happen, though. A little surprised they chose this one over Celceta but I'm not complaining since it's actually the only Ys released in english that I haven't played yet. edit: Here's the twitch archive, they streamed the port a little near the end. Starts around 01:22:00. Not really a twitch guy, so I'm not sure how long it'll stay up.