TheMightyEthan

I'm not very familiar with RE4 (haven't played it since the OG Gamecube release and didn't even finish it then), but I agree being able to play enemies off each other is great. One of my favorite parts of Halo 2 is when the Covenant schism happens and you have the Elites and Grunts vs the Brutes and Jackals, and you're just running through High Charity while they blast the shit out of each other.

Pokemon Scarlet So, I actually liked this game, and didn't have nearly the technical issues other people had, but I still kept falling off of it for some reason. I would literally forget to play it for weeks at a time. This is exactly the "full console" version of Pokemon that I've wanted since the Gamecube era, and somehow it ended up being just "fine." It's missing some ineffable spark, and I don't know what it is exactly. It did pick up a little at the end game, I started enjoying it more at that point, but most of the game I had to force myself to play. Not that it was bad, but I just didn't have any desire to do it. I think I might be over Pokemon. Grade: B-

The Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock base game is free on Steam right now, and all the DLC is 50% off. I played the base game on PS4 and loved it, so when I saw this I jumped on it.

Forza Horizon 5: Rally Adventure This is the best rally racing game I've played since Dirt 2. They actually do away with the racing line on the track and have your co-driver calling out turns instead, and do it as separate time trials runs rather than everyone on the track at the same time. It's great. Other than that mechanical change for the races, it's the same Forza Horizon 5 driving as the rest of the game, which is as good as ever, and you can opt to do a more traditional Forza-style race for each event instead of the rally format if you want. It gets knocked a little bit for not feeling like it had as much love put into it as the Hotwheels DLC, which had the characters talking to you about this history of the cars and stuff. This one just has a bunch of events that you do, without really any surrounding pageantry, though you are at least in a new area. Grade: B+

Sifu (Steam) I'd been toying around getting this game on PC anyway, cause I love it so much and imagine it would feel so good at 120 fps, and then I heard the Kinda Funny crew talking about the new Arenas update, which previously I had had no interest in, but apparently it recreates a bunch of fight scenes from martial arts movies, and now it sounds dope. So that pushed me over the edge (along with finding a key for $50% off). Hell yeah. I also hear it runs well on Steam Deck.

Yeah, that would be fuckin awesome. Sadly I think the franchise is dead.

Dino Crisis I'm not sure what came over me but I got the urge to play this, so I got Duckstation and set up a nice CRT filter and it was great. I played Dino Crisis 2 at my friend's back in the day, but I'd never played this one before. I actually really liked it, making allowances for obtuse 90's game design (like having to do things in a hyper-specific order with no indication of what that might be, or why it's not advancing). Honestly though, it's a lot less guide-dang-it than a lot of games from that era were, and I ended up only looking up a couple of things. All in all it was a fun time. Grade: B (graded on a 90's curve)

Glad you liked it. I'm still slowly working my way through Scarlet, I'm at the endgame now and just haven't really be interested in playing it. It's like they finally made the full-console Pokemon game I've wanted since I was a kid, but the end result is just "fine."

Apparently it's just shadows, the least exciting form of raytracing.

I didn't think the combat felt good even when it was new. I bounced off it like 3 times before I finally stuck with it.

In my opinion FFXV starts off fantastically, with that Stand By Me intro, and is downhill from there. I have no idea why I finished it.

Hell yeah, me too.

I wonder if that has anything to do with members of Congress proposing military action against the cartels...

Yeah, and the fact that there's no crease makes it seem less likely to break than the folding ones.

Right, no reaction whatsoever to player actions, except occasionally like one response in the same conversation in which you did the thing. Example: MC to Character A: "We should tell Character B" Character B like 2 minutes later: "I appreciate you saying that he should tell me" That is the most the game ever does. It never has any effect on what anyone does, or how they react to you, or what happens, just the very rare verbal acknowledgment of what you said.

Oh yeah, that's definitely not what I was asking for. Just something to track the kinds of things the player has been doing (doesn't need to be visible to the player) and have people react accordingly.

I agree with that, but it doesn't even change how people react to you. Like there may be one line of dialog that's slightly different depending on whatever the last thing you said was, but beyond that everything just plays out exactly the same. *Edit - To clarify, what I was trying to say originally isn't that every game needs a morality system, it's that a lot of the aspects of this game make it seem like they were going to have one, but it's just missing, and I would include "characters reacting differently" within the category of morality systems for this purpose. It feels like the world and characters should react to your actions, and they just don't.

Hogwarts Legacy This game was pretty great, though I think your mileage will highly vary based on how much you like the Harry Potter world. They do a great job recreating the feel of that universe, so if you're a fan it'll feel absolutely wonderful. However, underneath that IP is a fairly serviceable, but by no means mindblowing, open world game, so for anyone who's not a particular fan of Harry Potter it will probably seem like just an OK game. It does feel like there are some parts missing (like it feels like there should be some kind of morality system, but there just isn't), but what is there is very well polished and feels good. It also doesn't overwhelm you with side content like lots of modern open world games do, and as a result I actually did all the side quests (though not all the collectathon stuff) and didn't feel like it was dragging or overstaying its welcome. The main story revolves around a goblin rebellion, and honestly I wasn't too interested in it, but it was serviceable enough to keep me moving through the game. I did really enjoy the major friend questlines, of which there are basically three, all of which were well-done, and I was much more invested in those than the main quest, to the point where often the only reason I did the next main quest step was to trigger the next steps in the side quests becoming available. Also, to my great surprise, the combat actually feels really good. I wouldn't have thought it would be possible, but they managed to make it fast, fluid, and fun. It feels great to bust into a room full of enemies and just start blasting and dodging and perfect parrying, until you're the only one left standing, like frickin Neo in the lobby scene. So basically, if you are at all a fan of Harry Potter then I would recommend it, you'll likely love it. If not, though, then it's going to feel like a competent but otherwise unspecial open world game. Grade: B+

This thread:

Wow, that's awful. Sucks to be excited for new stuff and then it not work.

This is the only argument against it that I really find convincing. As for the rest of it, I mean, video games have been $60 for like 20 years now, they were going to have to go up eventually, it's just how prices work. You're right that wages haven't kept up with inflation, but they have gone up some in that amount of time, and really it's not a very big increase. If games had kept up with inflation over that time then a $60 from the start of the 360 generation (2005) would be like $90 now, so really they have gotten cheaper in real terms, even with the price increase. Hell, my 64 games cost $70 in the mid 90's, which I know is because cartridges were expensive, but that doesn't really matter to the end consumer. So it's perfectly fair to say it's not worth it to you, but $70 now is the same real value as $60 was in 2018, which means even at $70 the games are still cheaper in real terms than they ever were before then.

Is he a political enemy of the current government? Because otherwise I'm surprised he was actually convicted. *Edit - Oh wait, I didn't realize the trial was in US court.

After finishing Hi-Fi Rush nothing on my backlog was really jumping out at me, so I decided to go ahead and get this.

Hi-Fi Rush Holy shit, this game is just as good as everyone says it is. It's basically Jet Set Bayonetta Hero. I'm usually not one for this sort of character action game, but this one being intrinsically linked to music I think got me over the hurdle of learning the timing on everything. Everything happens on beat, your own attacks, enemy attacks, environmental movement, etc, which makes timing dodges and parries and everything a lot more manageable, and it feels so good to play. That would be enough on its own, but on top of that the art style is gorgeous to look at, the writing is legitimately funny, and the characters are distinct and likeable. This is seriously a GOTY contender. Grade: A+