TheMightyEthan

Careful that they aren't just faking the emissions results. ? Seriously though, that's awesome.

Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut Hell yeah

Yeah, more games need stuff like that, friendly fire sucks. Update: I am not through my backlog.

Tales of Vesperia - I've wanted to try another Tales game for a while, this one is supposed to be one of the best, and it's on sale for $10 on PSN right now. Ghostrunner - Same PSN sale, now I just need to wait for the PS5 version. Death Squared - Same PSN sale, little puzzle game that looks neat.

Active Neurons 3 The third and final (so far) game in the Active Neurons series, I'd say this was the best, and also the hardest. It's great to play via remote play from a phone screen, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who likes little puzzle games. 5/5

Yeah, I don't remember specifically what it was, I just remember after I finished it I didn't really care what happened next.

The first time I got through book 4, the second time I started from the beginning again since it had been so long, and that time I got through book 5. Of the ones I've read, I definitely thought Wizard & Glass was the best. The only other Stephen King book I've read was Firestarter, but I absolutely love that book.

I have tried and failed to read that series twice.

From what I've heard it's still bad but not too the extent of being broken on base PS4 anymore, and on PS4 Pro it's okay.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to what they can do with a sequel.

Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order This game was pretty good. I must have just been in the wrong mood when I tried to play it before, because I bounced off pretty early, but this time I really enjoyed it. The reason for your galaxy spanning adventure is kind of contrived, but the adventure itself is fun and works well. My biggest complaint is that there's a little bit too much going back to the same places over and over. I get that this is a soulslike, and that's how those are, but when it's different planets it doesn't work as well as when it's like a city or something that you're going through. But really that's a pretty minor complaint, and on the whole I was very much along for the ride. 4/5

This was my most hype announcement.

Yeah, I mean look at this shit: That's at least 4 entirely different levels that you just go through one after the other.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart This game is fantastic, it felt like a Nintendo game in the best way possible. I was a little wary because I wasn't a huge fan of R&C 2016, but the reviews were so good and I wanted a true next-gen game to play. The reviews were warranted, if anything I think it's slightly underrated. I can't exactly put my finger on what about it is so much more fun than 2016, but it just feels better to play overall. There wasn't a single point in the game where I was like "do I really have to do this?", including the minigame segments. That's an achievement. The best way I can praise it is to say that before this game I didn't care about R&C as a franchise, and now I'm definitely an R&C fan. Can't wait for the next one. 5/5 *As an aside, I also think the rift tech is more impressive than people give it credit for. I've seen people say we've had games that do this before, like Titanfall 2's Effect and Cause (still one of the best levels in any shooter ever), or Dishonored 2's A Crack in the Slab, but this game doesn't just change between two different versions of the same level, there are several points throughout where you go at speed through rifts between multiple entirely different levels in rapid succession. Even though you usually are only spending a few seconds in each level when that happens, you can see enough to tell it's actually loaded in the whole level, or at least most of it, then it's on to the next, and then the next. It's insane.

Even with stuff like sports games, there's all kinds of social/political issued tied up in real world sports, so if you're having real or semi-real leagues/teams in your game then you're back to the "tacitly supporting the status quo" thing if you don't comment on it. And then with unrealistic stuff like Knockout City you get into stuff like is it a mixed-gender game or are all the characters male? Either way you're taking a (however watered-down) political position.

I'm not done with it yet, and I don't think it'll unseat Returnal for me as my favorite PS5 exclusive, but it's really really good. And yeah, it's gorgeous. I've been playing in RT Performance mode, and it's amazing, better image quality than some native 4k games I've seen even though in this mode it tops out at 1440p.

I thought that game had the same problem as the Square Avengers game: it just looked like off-brand MCU characters. At least it's not always-online.

Yeah, nothing can be apolitical, when people say they want politics out of [media] they really just mean they want it to not contradict or critique current social norms, which necessarily means (at best) tacitly supporting them, which is itself a political position.

Was this the life-changing thing you were doing this week? ?

FF7R: Episode Intermission That was cool, kinda makes me want to replay the main game. I probably would if I weren't getting Ratchet and Clank tomorrow. It's about 5 hours, and it felt kinda short, not because of the actual length, but because it ends kind of abruptly. I'm sure, like the main game, I would have had a better understanding of what was going on and who these people were if I'd played the original. It wasn't that I felt lost, more like it just felt like characters were coming out of nowhere without really being introduced. For some reason that didn't really bother me though, I came away with an overall pretty positive impression of it. 4/5

It's already on browsers, don't know why that's in the headline, it's not even mentioned in the body of the article. The news is that it's coming to TVs as a native app, and also that the servers are being upgraded to Series X (they're currently One S, not even One X). I hope they make an app for Fire TV Stick. I'm sure there'll be one for Android TV, but my Fire Stick 4k has better performance than the TV itself does.

MELE got me jonesing for more Mass Effect, and a brand new copy of ME:A was $8 on Amazon, so here we are. This game is reviewing super well, and looks fun as shit, and I want something that really takes advantage of my PS5, so R&C Rift Apart here we go. I finished MELE yesterday and needed something to play until Rift Apart gets here tomorrow, and I didn't want to start something I wouldn't have time to finish, but conveniently the PS5 version of FF7R released today (I got the free upgrade, but that doesn't include the Yuffie episode).

I mean, I can see the rationality in claiming your obviously political game isn't political, and that's that most people are completely thoughtless and you'll gain more sales by claiming it's apolitical.

Mass Effect 3 - Legendary Edition Holy shit, this game is so good. Easily the best of the trilogy, even with the (still) slightly lackluster ending. I can say at least now with the updated ending it isn't disappointing per se, it's just okay, but it does have adequate falling action to feel resolved. The rest of the game though is amazing. It's so great how it wraps up all the little threads from the first two games, and everything feeds into something, even if it's just a little interaction on the Citadel. The game as whole really does feel like the culmination of the first two. It's also fantastic how they made every little side mission in this game tie into your overall goal by contributing to galactic readiness in a way that feels at least somewhat natural, so you don't have the "why am I getting this little old lady her groceries when I have a galaxy to save?" problem that a lot of RPGs have. You're doing it because her having enough to eat will help the war effort, and you can see exactly how it helped in the war assets console. I had honestly forgotten how good this whole trilogy is. I think it might be my favorite series of all time. 5/5

The most frustrating thing with crunch is that regardless of morality it's objectively stupid, and private corporations are supposedly rational, so they should never use it. All the research shows that after two weeks of crunching you employees' productivity is actually lower than if they'd never crunched (as in they accomplish less in those 80 hours/week than they normally would in 40), and it requires more than a year of normal work schedule to get back to pre-crunch levels of productivity. So if your crunch is going to last longer than a fortnight you'll actually finish faster if you just don't.