TheMightyEthan

God of War: Ragnarok So, you may have heard, this game is pretty good. I had a good time throughout, I never felt like it dragged, it had the perfect balance of giving me side stuff to do when I wanted and not gating the main story so I could always progress if I wanted that instead. The combat was really fun too, especially the new weapon. You definitely feel the limitations of the different realms, they're open-ish but still feel pretty restricted, in a way that feels more like a PS360 era game than a modern one, but once you get used to it it doesn't detract from the experience. The story is also really compelling for the first 95%. I did think the very end fell a little flat, I was hoping for more spectacle in the last confrontation than what we got, which left me a little down on it when the credits rolled, but the epilogue pulled me back in and the really-actually-the-final-end part was about as perfect as it could have been. Since finishing it I've been wrapping up the remaining content, working towards the plat, and I've cycled from love to hate and back again about three times. Basically there keeps being more to do than what I realized, and I keep getting irritated with it for that, but then I get back in the groove of actually playing, and it just feels so good that I can't stay mad at it. It also keeps dropping little extra lore tidbits that are just amazing, even in the post-game, which definitely helps lessen the feeling of grind. Grade: A

I'm afraid that this DLC is gonna be one of those things where I go back to it and am like "oh no, I have no idea how to play this game anymore..."

I want a new monitor, but I just can't justify it when I spend probably 90% of my PC gaming time on the TV anyway.

With the sequel coming out I've been meaning to replay Outer Worlds and play the expansions, which I've heard good things about, and even though the base game is on Game Pass the full collection was almost as cheap on Steam (through cdkeys) as just the expansion pass was on the MS store, and I don't like buying DLC for games I don't own, so I decided just to buy the whole thing this way.

What resolution are you playing at?

Yeah, I agree, the first one was great, the sequel is a slog, and it's entirely due to the open worlds in between battles.

Ooh, let me know how it is.

I definitely thought so.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever This is one of the better Marvel movies they've put out. Solid A-tier. It does have a little bit of a problem with the antagonists being anti-colonialist again, which is unfortunate, but at least it avoids actually putting Wakanda on the side of the imperialist powers so it avoids the biggest problems that could cause. Definitely recommend if you think there's even a chance you're interested.

There's an especially egregious one in Knights of the Old Republic, on the water planet after you blow up the underwater mining facility, when you return to the surface the guards come to arrest you (understandably). I was playing dark side, and was all ready to fight the guards, cause fuck that, but noooo, my evil Sith lord goes along with the bastards!

The Spectrum Retreat This game was okay. It seemed really promising at first, the setting was intriguing and the puzzles were engaging. As it went on it kind of lost its lustre though. It seems to think very highly about itself, like it has a very Deep and Important story, but it's really just not all that interesting. And the puzzles go from enjoyably difficult to irritatingly obtuse, with many of the later puzzles ending up with you stuck where you cannot possibly progress due to information you can't possibly have known, so you have to just restart them. It makes it less solving a puzzle than just brute-force trial-and-erroring your way through, because you often can't get enough of a picture of the whole setup to be able to plan ahead. I liked it enough to finish it, but there was definitely a little bit of hate-playing there at the end. I wish the whole thing lived up to the start. Grade: C

... what is it?

Alien: Isolation It was the time between save points that killed it for me, combined with the occasional unavoidable death from the xenomorph. It just got too frustrating when I'd have to redo the same 5 minutes multiple times because of things that I didn't feel like were my fault. It sucks, because otherwise the game was really really good.

I already probably wasn't getting one at launch, and now I'm definitely not getting one at launch.

Hey, I also quit after the first puzzle! Crazy how that works... I actually thought the art style was really well done, but it seems like it's completely divorced from what you're actually doing. Like, it could have been replaced by a generic run-down abandoned science facility and everything else could have been exactly the same.

Yeah, I already didn't like Dead Space 2 as much cause it was too Aliens and not enough Alien, so if DS3 is even more that then I don't think it's for me (which is also in line with everything I've heard).

Nope It was described as a horror, but I don't really think it was one. Still great though. Beyond that, I don't have a whole lot to add to what Metal already said, but that last spoiler tag blew my mind. Us Also wasn't what I was expecting, but in a good way. Creepy as absolute shit too.

Do you think the execs will ever realize that they need to build up the individual franchises before they bring them all together for one big team movie?

Scary.

It could be a good game, but nuts weapons that are really fun aren't what I want Dead Space for, I want survival horror.

What's happening?

Hmmm, do you need to play Dead Space 3 before Awakened?

Hell yeah, it's the game I'm legit most excited about for the rest of the year.

$125,000.