TheMightyEthan

Control Ultimate Edition Replayed this game cause I got hyped from the Alan Wake 2 announcement, and it's somehow even better than I remembered. Grade: A+

Live A Live This game is all over the place. It's basically 7 mini JRPGs, each of which is just a couple hours long, some of which I loved and some I hated. They're all so different that it's really hard to give an overall impression of the game. It's really pretty at least, in that nice Square HD2D style. The reason it's shelved instead of finished is because the final sub-game for me, Twilight of Edo Japan, just had a stupid layout that meant I wasn't going to get through it without running around blind for more time than I was willing to, or looking up a step-by-step guide which felt pointless to me, so I just quit. I finished all the others. This is a game where I really really want to like it, and I do like the concept, but the execution wasn't really there for me.

Spider-Man Remastered and Spider-Man: Miles Morales Replayed these games on PC, and I don't have a lot to say about them, other than I still think they're great, and playing them back-to-back reinforced my opinion that Miles Morales is the better of the two. Also, playing on PC it's super nice to be able to have both high quality and high performance, instead of having to pick. Grade: A Yes, Your Grace This is an interesting little RPG where the whole of the gameplay is you as a king making decisions for the realm. There's no combat or anything, literally just people coming to you, explaining a situation, and asking what to/for help/whatever. It's really interesting. I did think the ending fell a little flat, but I can't put my finger on why. Overall though I really enjoyed the experience. Grade: B+

The weirdest thing about it is that it's a change from Breath of the Wild, where you picked up rupees by running over them.

After watching Across the Spider-Verse I wanted to re-watch this, and I didn't want to settle for streaming quality.

Got inspired by Across the Spider-Verse to go back to the Insomniac Spider-Men, so I bought both of them on Steam.

Nope, that DLC thing is not in Totk (or if it is I never found it).

Yeah, instead of the horse whistle they should have made down on the dpad bring up a wheel that lets you activate those powers (and the horse could be on that wheel too).

Superliminal Another neat little indie puzzle game. This one I really enjoyed. It was perfectly calibrated for me, there were several puzzles where I kind of got stuck, but always I was able to figure it out before resorting to a guide. I also really liked the perspective-shifting, non-Euclidian geometry of it. It did have a few long-ish stretches that didn't have enough puzzles in them, were mostly just moving through hallways, but other than that I quite enjoyed it. It's short too, only about 2 hours start to finish for me. Grade: B+

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Holy shit this movie is so good. Here's how much I liked it: It is as close to perfect a movie as I have ever seen. Not one single frame is wasted. The only thing is I wish I'd known part 2 was coming out next March before I went and saw this, because I wasn't expecting it to end on a cliffhanger. I haven't seen a cliffhanger this egregious since Halo 2's launch. Even with that though, and being completely blindsided by it, it's still the best movie I've seen in years. Years. And that includes Everything Everywhere All At Once, which is the only thing that even comes close Grade: S+

Oh definitely, if it wasn't on Game Pass I would have waited till it was sub $10 before trying it.

Redfall I really really really wanted to like this game. Arkane is quite possibly my favorite developer, and this was made by Arkane Austin, who did Prey, one of my all-time favorite games. And I thought I stood a good chance of liking it, since I liked Deathloop more than others seemed to. I just couldn't do it though. It's the world that kills it. It's set in a suburban town, which means lots of detached homes, wide streets, big open parks, etc, which is just not conducive to this kind of immersive sim gameplay. And the most frustrating part is I actually did like the mechanics of play, at least what I experienced of them, but the lack of interesting navigation in the world just ruins any fun. It's just boring. Like, sure, if I'm crossing a park there's a bunch of different paths I could take, but they're not meaningfully different. If you're going to do an open world immersive sim it either needs to be more constrained. like Talos was in Prey, or it needs to be like Deus Ex where the open parts aren't hostile. This big open town with enemies spread throughout just doesn't work for this kind of game.

I don't dislike the system, even in BotW, but I do think the weapons are too brittle, they need like double the durability.

Isn't that the Apple way? Copy what everyone else has been doing but in a way that breaks all the standards, charge 3 times as much, and pretend you invented it.

I've seen lots of reporting recently that Redfall was the result of Bethesda (Zenimax?) management "gently suggesting" that all their devs should work on live service games, and that most of the team actively didn't want to make it, so I'm hoping with Redfall flopping and MS in charge they'll be allowed to go back to what they do best. I'm guessing Deathloop was a (lesser) casualty of the same command. And probably Wolfenstein Youngblood too.

I'm guessing it suffered with reviewers from being an immersive sim, the Arkane games (pre-Redfall) I don't think ever really got the review love they deserve either. Like Prey is only an 81.

I definitely recommend playing some other stuff in between BotW and TotK, I played both almost back to back and I think I enjoyed TotK less because of it. Not because it's not a better game (it is), but just because my familiarity with that version of Hyrule dampened the sense of exploration, even though it is changed somewhat in TotK.

lol, I disagree, that's not a you thing, that's a "the game" thing. They're supposed to put that warning right before the point of no return, not just vaguely warn you that there is a point of no return somewhere in the indeterminate future.

The Talos Principle I'd had this on my list for a long time, but the announcement of the sequel inspired me to finally play it. It's a pretty good first-person indie puzzler, with a very depressing subject matter. The whole thing is a frame to explore the idea of what the point of life even is. So yeah, it's interesting, but you might want to be in a certain state of mind before going into it. Grade: B The Talos Principle: The Road to Gehenna DLC for the The Talos Principle, more of the same, but with less interesting philosophy behind it. I liked it better though because I felt like the puzzles were better-designed. Grade: B+ Planet of Lana This is very much an story-heavy-but-largely-silent indie side-scroller in the vein I'm sure you're very familiar with. Think Inside, though not as dark. It's basically Studio Ghibli's War of the Worlds. As a game it's competent. The platforming can be annoying because your controls aren't very precise, but luckily they don't often ask you to be precise. I enjoyed the puzzle solving, but there's not much of it. Most of the gameplay involves traversal, either in a pure form or while sneaking past enemies. The story is pretty formulaic for this kind of game, but it's well-executed enough. It's pretty as all get out too. Grade: B+

I recently started using programmable macro keys for the first time ever, and I used them for the incredibly exciting function of setting up a hotkey to enable and disable the RTSS overlay and framerate cap! Yay!

Excellent choice! I am also surprised by your playtime though, for me it was "only" about 120 hours.

Huh, nobody's beat anything since May 10, I wonder why that might be... Anyway, I just beat The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Holy shit this game is good. I think it's even better than Breath of the Wild, though its similar enough that it doesn't feel as special as that game did when it launched. I was a little off-put when I first started by how similar it was, because the beginning feels very much like a re-tread of Breath of the Wild, but about 15-20 hours in it really comes into its own. The new powers really give you a lot of freedom about how to approach situations, and even the shrines feel better in this one. I'm still a little disappointed with the state of the dungeons, they're a little better than the divine beasts, but not a ton better, though I did appreciate there being more lead-up to them than there was in Breath of the Wild. I'm sure with how wildly successful this game has been that we'll be getting Zelda games in this basic formula for a long time, but I at least hope they keep moving more towards a classic design for the dungeons themselves. This went a little in that direction, but they need to go more. Overall though, that's really a minor nit-pick, and easily overcome by how great the rest of the game is. Grade: A+

Also me.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom So, my copy of this arrived early. Like way early. Middle of last week. Anyway, I'm about 30 hours in and so far it's really good (surprising no one). I actually think in "objective" terms it might be better than Breath of the Wild, though it's obviously very similar to Breath of the Wild so it lacks the wow factor that game got. Some of the design changes they made I won't go into, but I think for the most part they work really well and improve the experience. I'm not in love with it like I was with Breath of the Wild, but I really really like it.

I heard on a podcast that this Dracula manages to simultaneously be Transylvanian, British, and Nicholas Cage. Can you you confirm?