toxicitizen

14 bucks on Chrono.gg for the next 24 hours. That's the cheapest it's been yet, as far as I can tell (from legit sellers, at least). Been wanting to grab it since launch but I've never seen it go lower than 20 bucks and I could never bring myself to pull the trigger. This will be the first of the kickstarted CRPGs of recent years that I get around to actually playing, so that should be fun. The XCOM-like combat has me way more interested in this one than in others like Pillars of Eternity or even Torment.

MyNintendo Picross. That's the Twilight Princess-themed one available exclusively as a MyNintendo reward. Was finally able to get it a little while ago after farming coins weekly since the program launched. It's been my go-to pooping game ever since and I finally completed it a couple days ago. Picross is pretty cool, you guys! I had tried Pokémon Picross before and I liked the core gameplay a lot but the F2P elements turned me off of it pretty quickly. This one allowed me to really get into it without any arbitrary limitations. Ended up enjoying it so much that I bought Picross e on the eShop as soon as I finished it. There are a few little things that make me like it not as much but that's to be expected since they're on like Picross e6 by now and the Twilight Princess one is pretty recent, so the formula and extra modes have both been refined a bit at this point. I really miss the Mega Picross mode, specifically. At first I didn't really like it but by the time I was done with all the puzzles I thought it was a really nice twist on the formula. Really forces you to think differently about the hints. Also, having all the puzzles be Zelda-themed was a bit more fun than just generic pictures like a coconut or mouse or whatever.

I'll spoiler this since Ethan hasn't finished the game but Well shit

Attack on Titan. Just finished the story mode. It goes through the story so quickly and skims over so much stuff that I can't imagine it would make much sense to someone that hasn't watched the anime. Don't play this one for the story because it's told pretty poorly. Definitely play it for the gameplay, though, because holy crap it is so much fun! They seriously nailed the feel of omni-directional movement, it just feels so good to swing around between buildings and trees. Almost makes me wish it had been an open-world game in the style of Assassin's Creed. The map traversal is just that good, I could do it aimlessly for hours. The combat is fairly simple and repetitive but it gets the job done and is fun enough for me to want to keep playing. Which is good because the epilogue chapter unlocked a bunch of post-game content. From what I understand, it also continues the story with a mix of stuff both completely original and from the manga (not covered in the anime). So, while the story mode only lasts 10 hours or so, there's still plenty of content to go through. There's also a decent selection of characters that are just different enough to keep things interesting. For example, Levi and Mikasa can both move pretty quickly and kill everything with ease but Armin is basically worthless in direct combat against the larger titans and instead can issue commands and send his teammates to attack instead. Also (huge spoiler if you haven't watched the anime) So, yeah, if you like Attack on Titan and want some simple action gameplay (it demands only slightly more thought than button mashing), then it's definitely worth a look. This is my second Omega Force game (previous one being Dragon Quest Heroes) and while neither were exactly video game masterpieces, I really enjoyed both of them. Looking forward to that Berserk game even more now. I also kinda wanna try a proper Musou game but Dynasty Warriors still looks boring as fuck to me. I'd try One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 but that's apparently one of the worst garbage ports of recent years. Like, we're talking "graphical settings straight up don't work" levels of garbage. The worst part is they never even bothered to patch it. When people say Koei Tecmo's ports are shit, that's the main one they're talking about. It's a shame because I'm fairly certain I'd enjoy it. :/

If you've ever been curious about why I (and many others) think so highly of the world-building in the Trails series, here's a pretty good video that explains it way better than I ever could. It's a pretty good watch and might give you the push you need to give the games a shot!

Put a few hours into Attack On Titan and yeah, really glad I went for it. It's not the most amazing game ever or anything but I'm having a blast with it. They really nailed the feel of the omnidirectional movement, swinging about between buildings and flying all over the place just feels so good. It's your typical Omega Force game, so most missions so far just drop you into a large open map filled with enemies for you to kill. There are objectives to complete as well as optional side-missions but it mostly always boils down to "go there and kill a bunch of titans". That being said, the game does mix things up a bit to keep things interesting. Characters have different abilities and strengths, so you need to adapt your playstyle accordingly. I've also just started doing missions outside the walls. So, now I'm riding on horseback and omnidirectional movement is very limited in these wide open plains. So yeah, definitely a fun game. Makes me optimistic for the upcoming Berserk game. Even if it ends up not being true to the source material (and let's be honest, it likely won't be), if it's this fun to play then I'll be there day one regardless.

Yeah, I was tempted by God Eater as well but ended up picking this over it because it was a bit cheaper. Plus, I have no idea how much I'd actually enjoy God Eater. I definitely wanna give it a shot at some point but my only experience with the genre was a demo for whichever Monster Hunter game was on PSP and it suffered from a pretty severe case of "I have no idea what the hell I'm doing".

I've been on the fence about it all week and only had until tomorrow to benefit from the launch discount. The decision would've been way easier if I could still sell my damn Steam cards but now that you need to use the mobile authenticator (or have your items held for 15 days before they're listed, pretty much guaranteeing your price will no longer be competitive) I'm shit out of luck on that front. Ended up saying fuck it and just going for it anyway. From what I can tell, the port is neither great nor terrible, which seems about on par with Dragon Quest Heroes and I was generally happy with that one. Sounds like this one runs slightly better, though, which is nice since the framerate dips were my only real issue with DQH. Other than that, the game looks fun as hell so hopefully it won't disappoint in that regard.

Well, this is certainly interesting. If this is to be trusted (and considering that Jim mentioned the whole splitting into a trilogy thing months ago, I'm inclined to trust him and his source again), then it sounds like the next Deus Ex has indeed been in development for a little while now. Also, sounds like S-E Europe are a bunch of goddamned fucking idiots.

Didn't catch that one but I did hear this on the radio while I was infiltrating some apartment building. It made me so happy I had to stop and message my friend who's as big a Deus Ex fan as I am.

Yeah, you go to GARM and

As in Also, it sounds like the latest patch fixed that bug that made Jensen run into turrets when you load your game as well as that nasty loading screen crash that prevented people from completing the game.

Oh, nevermind. I did that. Now that you mention it, I thought it was kinda weird that the place was covered in all these mines and shit. But yeah, you fucked up! Best side-mission of the entire game, imho. At least, out of the ones I played. Required some actual detective work but without the game just pointing you straight to it with objective markers.

There was a second boss?! I knew I missed a few side-missions but damn. Weird thing is I didn't really rush or ignore anything. Was that side-mission a bit hidden or something? I know I also missed something with Otar because I don't have an achievement relating to him. But I have no idea why. He never contacted me again after a certain point.

Right, and there's nothing inherently wrong with setting up a trilogy. The problem is that it doesn't feel like the first part of a trilogy, it feels like the first act of a single, smaller story. If they had a story that they were turning into a trilogy, then they should have expanded it and fleshed it out more. Hell, maybe even go back to the drawing boards and come up with a more elaborate trilogy plan. Here, it really feels like they just cut up what they had into three parts, maybe added a little filler and padding here and there and called it a day. If Mankind Divided had had a story that felt complete on its own like Human Revolution while leaving some stuff open for a sequel, that would've been awesome. I wouldn't be complaining about that. Or fuck, even scale it back a little instead. Make it work as a single game. Did you know Montreal was initially supposed to be the third hub in Human Revolution? They had to cut it so instead we just got that little visit to Picus HQ. And while I would've fucking loved a Montreal hub, the game wasn't particularly worse off for the lack of it. There's something to be said for quality over quantity. But as things are now, I kinda hope that they didn't actually take five years to make this. This doesn't really feel like a five years game, so I'm hoping that they had a production pipeline where they worked on future stuff in parallel and the next one is going to have a quicker turnaround time. That's the only way to make up for the shortcomings of the story. Waiting for this after HR was like waiting for the sequel to a movie. 5 years is a bit long but not really unreasonable. Waiting for a sequel to Mankind Divided feels more like waiting for the next season of a TV show or hell, maybe even a mid-season break. If you wait too long it's just not going to work.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. I already posted my thoughts in the Deus Ex thread so I'll keep this brief. Basically, it's tempting to compare it to MGSV. The gameplay is the best the series has ever had (although unlike MGSV it's more iterative and not a complete departure) but the story was a disappointment. That comparison isn't fair to Mankind Divided, though. MGSV's story was an insult wrapped in dog shit whereas Mankind Divided's isn't actually bad. It's just not what I would expect (or want) out of a Deus Ex game. Which is a bit baffling because they had already figured out how to do a Deus Ex story with Human Revolution! It wasn't perfect but it got an A+ for effort and felt like Deus Ex. It's like they took what they had and instead of adding what was missing they removed whatever parts they had gotten right. That's just the main story, though. The side-missions were great and the game was just overall a very solid experience. I don't know if it'll be my GOTY but it's definitely on the short list.

Welp, just finished it. Any worry about length turned out to be unfounded. Ended up taking me 32h to beat, which is comparable to what Human Revolution took me at launch. All things considered, it's a pretty solid game. It's the best Deus Ex has ever played and some of the side-missions were actually more interesting than the main story. But that's the problem, that main story is my biggest issue with the game. (This was initially intended to be more of a brief highlight of my overall thoughts on the game until my longer write-up in the games you've beat thread but I just kept typing and it turned into this long-ass post so... whatever.) I kinda want to say that this is MGSV all over again but that would be completely unfair to Mankind Divided. MGSV's story was borderline nonexistent and what was there was fucking trash. MD's story isn't bad, it's just not really a Deus Ex story. I thought Human Revolution's story was lacking in the conspiracy department but overall it still felt like Deus Ex. Mankind Divided really did not. Honestly, I have a feeling that the whole racism allegory thing was decided upon first and then they came up with a story to carry it, without really giving any consideration to whether or not it was a good fit for the series. As for the ending, uh, yeah. I don't know if I'd call it abrupt so much as... not an ending? I'm now convinced that this is the first act of a story that was stretched to last an entire game. It's the best explanation for how little actually happens. Every single "major" story development feels... small. I mean, a sequel hook should introduce something new. Here, it's mostly just "Look at all these unresolved plot threads!!" And honestly, this could actually explain my previous point about how it didn't feel like a Deus Ex story. Even the original took a little while to really get going and dive into the more interesting stuff that's now synonymous with Deus Ex. It's entirely possible that we simply haven't gotten to that point of the story yet. They do mention and hint at some elements that you would expect to play an important part in a Deus Ex story but they never do. If that's the case, that's kinda shitty but I can look past it IF we get another game within the next 2 years. Any longer than that would be ridiculous. Imagine if Human Revolution had ended right after the first Hengsha visit where you find out that the scientists are still alive and we hadn't gotten the second half of the story until now. That's not a perfect parallel but it's kinda what it feels like. I tried to keep this spoiler free but there is one specific thing I want to address. There's nothing about the main story in there, it's about how they handled the canon ending from HR as well one of the early side-missions. To keep things vague, it's the one that involves Sarif. You've probably all started it by now. On the bright side, looking at the achievements list it looks like I missed a handful of side-quests. So, there's at least that to look forward to whenever I get around to replaying it.

God damn, this game is buggy in the most annoying ways. Like, nothing major or game breaking (at least, not in my case; seems a lot of people have run into an unavoidable crash during loading at a specific point). I'm on the last mission right now and I have an optional objective to take out a number of guards silently. Each time you take one out, counter goes up. Simple stuff. Find a couple of them having a chat in a staircase, so I take my chance: bolt out of cover and do a double takedown. Counter only goes up by one. For fuck's sake... I mean, did they fire all their good programmers in-between games? No doubt their codebase is way more complex than anything I've ever worked with but even I can come up with a way to avoid something like that off the top of my head... I don't do this often but I was planning on doing another playthrough right after this one. But I think I'm gonna scratch that and hold off a little while, give them time to patch it up a bit more. :/

See, you need to be careful about saying shit like this. You know when you get arrested and the cops tell you "Anything you say can and will be used against you"? Yeah, that's the kind of stuff they're talking about. By saying this, you basically give anyone license to invalidate anything you ever say in the future simply by pointing back to it. Because this is one of those rare cases where an opinion can actually be objectively wrong. Let's say next week we get into an argument in some other thread completely unrelated to games. We disagree about something. Then I can just do this: Your opinion is invalid! and instantly win the argument. I mean, think about it. If you were so fucking wrong about Dragon Age 2, then what else are you completely wrong about?!?

Where did you get the uninstall save loss thing from? Because that sounds fucking insane and I can't find anything about it online. You'd think it would create at least some discussion or something. Do you mean this? Because that sounds more like a warning of incompatibility if you rollback to a previous version after an update. There's an easy way to find out. Whichever one of us has the least amount of playtime/progress has to uninstall the game and risk his save for the good of the PXOD community!

Yeah, it won't download the update for me either.

It definitely does. I replayed it not that long ago (last 2-3 years) without any issues. Maybe there's some problems on Windows 10 I'm unaware of but I kinda doubt it. Looking at the last two squares of the bingo card, I'm inclined to think it might actually have been an oversight. Hadn't really thought of that but yeah, I can totally see how it would hold up visually at least. But I meant more in the general sense. It's pretty much Thief meets Deus Ex, and while that's basically my two favorite game series blended into one, I didn't think it managed to beat either at their own thing. Yeah, that game is a weird hybrid. You explore rooms and set up defenses in them so that the incoming waves don't overwhelm you. I really wanted to get into it (because the Endless lore looks pretty interesting) but I never really managed to.

Some pleasantly surprising picks in that list, like Alien: Isolation being so high (16). MGSV at number 6 has to be some kind of sick joke, though. Not sure about Dishonored being higher than both Human Revolution and the original Deus Ex, either. Also, fucking lol Wait, yeah, why isn't Thief II in the list?!?!??!

Well, the body thing was more like 15mins back and having already explored that area it was like 5mins to replay that section. Anyway, I was hoping to get the Foxiest of the Hounds achievement on my first playthrough. Gave up on it after the bullshit from last night, though. Also murdered someone just for shits and giggles, I'll do a stealth and pacifist run at the same time. I kinda regret not playing on Give Me Deus Ex difficulty anyway, so I'll do my perfect stealth run when I replay it on that. I'm gonna want to 100% the game eventually, so I'll need to replay on that difficulty to unlock the I Never Asked For This one anyway.