TheMightyEthan

We tried! ? And yeah, you're right about the remastered graphics being too busy on the alien architecture (especially the doors in Assault on the Control Room), the later games definitely aren't like that. 343 definitely learned their lesson though, because the remastered graphics in H2A are much closer to the original style. I just realized that H1A was released for the 10th anniversary, and this year is the 10th anniversary of the remaster... Maybe they'll remaster it again with a style more true to the original vision. ?

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition This game is just so wonderful, and it holds up surprisingly well. The changes they've made are (for the most part) subtle enough to still feel like you remember, while fixing some of the jankiness of the original. It's obviously an old game, but it doesn't feel as old as I would have expected, and the story is as great as it ever was. I highly recommend it to anyone who already loves Mass Effect, as well as anyone who's interested but never gotten into it. 5/5

Mass Effect Legendary Edition This game is such comfort food. The changes they've made to the first one are subtle enough that it still feels like you remember it, while not being nearly as clunky. I'm super impressed with how well it holds up. I can't wait to get to 2 and 3.

Yeah, I don't normally go for musou either, but I liked Age of Calamity enough that I got P5S too.

I'm breaking these up by company, but I'm still counting points if I get it right, just not in the right presentation (like P5R coming to Xbox being in a Sega presentation rather than the MS one). Sony PS5 sold so great! We're winning the generation! Horizon Zero Dawn - gameplay reveal; release date announcement; release August/September this year God of War - something in-game, possibly actual gameplay, possibly just an in-engine trailer; release date/window announcement; release November/December this year (or Q4 if they just give a window) At least one new IP announcement/tease from the ~12 or so they said they have in development The Last of Us Part 2 PS5 version detailed Something about PSVR2, even if just a mention Something major getting a PC port Microsoft (I'm rolling Bethesda into here even though they said their presentations will be separate) Series S/X sold so great! We're winning the generation! Halo Infinite - gameplay re-reveal; release date announcement; release November 11 or 12 (Thursday or Friday before the 20th anniversary of Xbox/Halo: CE), possibly Monday November 15 (the actual anniversary) Forza Horizon 5 - announcement; in-game trailer; release this fall Something major from Bethesda that we haven't seen, possibly Starfield in-game trailer Some 3rd party AAA game coming to Gamepass day-one later in the year Some 3rd party AAA game (possibly old-ish) coming to Gamepass "today" (the day of the conference), "so go play it now!" A bunch more games getting FPS boost Persona 5 Royal for Xbox Nintendo Breath of the Wild 2 - gameplay/in-game trailer; release date/window; release this fall More Zelda 35th anniversary stuff - WWHD & TPHD Switch ports; Link to the Past remake a la the Link's Awakening one (this is mostly wishful thinking on my part) Switch Pro - announcement; details; 4k when docked (via DLSS); release date; release this fall SMTIV EA Something new from Respawn, possibly Jedi Fallen Order 2 Dragon Age 4 SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORTS! Ubisoft Far Cry 6 - gameplay; release date Details on that f2p Division game Mario vs. Rabbids 2 (more wishful thinking on my part) ActiBlizzion Blah blah, Call of Duty, blah blah, Hearthstone, blah blah, Call of Duty, blah blah, Call of Duty Sega/Atlus Possibly the P5R and SMTIV announcements here instead of MS/Nintendo New Sonic game (possibly Mania 2 or something in that style) Something Total War More Atlus games coming to PC Squenix Avengers roadmap FF16 Capcom REmake 4 General Lots of next-gen upgrades for existing games

With E3 less than a month away, I'd say now's the time to start with our predictions. I have a feeling, not sure why, that this year is going to be a little disrupted compared to normal, so it'll be harder to predict, which should make this a little more fun.

I was thinking I wasn't going to be able to get the platinums in the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, because they have trophies for beating them on Insanity, which nothankyou.jpg. But, it turns out they put all of those, plus the paramour ones, in the trophy list for the collection as a whole, so you can still get the individual game plats without doing those.

Yeah, Halo (at least all the ones Bungie did) has the best soundtrack I've ever heard in a game by far.

I'm really impressed how well Halo CE holds up, especially considering it's a console shooter. This is the game that basically proved that genre could work and the fact that it's still enjoyable 20 years later, after all the evolution the genre has gone through, is a testament to how well they nailed it.

I was gonna hold off until after I played Persona 5 Strikers, but everyone talking about it just wore down my resolve.

Hell yeah!

Holy crap, that's a really good translation of that picture into comic book style.

Returnal I rolled credits anyway, though the story doesn't feel done (you can continue playing after you beat it, so hopefully that will provide a little more closure, there are more audio logs and stuff to find). It's funny, this game is basically the opposite of Lost Gods, where I absolutely loved it all the way through, but felt like the ending was a little abrupt and unsatisfying. It left me with more questions than answers, but not in a good way. It honestly felt like the ending should have been the end of act 2 in a 3 act story. But again, I'm hoping the "epilogue" provides act 3. Okay, that's enough negativity, overall I love this game. It just feels so good to play. Combat is Bungie-tier. And unlike with Hades, I didn't find the restarts frustrating or disheartening. General consensus is this game is really hard, and I've even seen the word punishing thrown around, and like, I just don't see it, and normally I'm a complete baby about frustrating difficulty. I was on my 15th run when I beat it (really 13th, since I don't count the first one where there's a scripted encounter that's supposed to kill you, or my second run where it crashed), and it took me 21 hours. That's an average of 2 tries per "level", which is really not bad at all. None of that is meant to be a criticism, like I said, I loved it, but for me at least it wasn't nearly as hard as I was led to believe. Checking trophies 11% of players have beat it, which is pretty good for only a week after release. So don't let the perceived difficulty scare you away like it almost did for me, it is very doable. Other than the one crash I was never once frustrated, and even after that I still wanted to dive right back in (and there have been two stability patches so you probably don't need to worry about that). This is easily my favorite game I've played this year, which is saying something given how much I love Hitman. 5/5 *Edit - Yeah, looks like there's more to the story after the credits. (Very minor general plot structure spoilers, no actual plot details.)

Had your joycons broken, or are you just one of those people for whom they're not comfortable?

I've heard 8-12 hours depending on how thorough you are.

I loved that game, and I think it sold really well, I'm surprised we haven't heard about a sequel. *Edit - yep, apparently it's the best selling Switch game that's not published by Nintendo.

Second boss down on my third try. Bring on biome 3!

It hadn't happened to me either, that's why it fucked me up so bad, I was not expecting to suddenly be attacked. ?

Yeah, I was specifically talking only about the Activision part of the business.

I beat the first boss last night, my second try. At the beginning of that run I'd got fucked up real bad by a surprise enemy, and thought the run was ruined, but I actually managed to recover. Made it into the second biome, and got killed in the first room with enemies. ?

Returnal I'm only a few hours in, but holy shit I'm loving this game so far. I was a little nervous I would find it too frustrating based on how hard I've been hearing it is, but that is very much not the case. The combat is fantastic, I honestly can't think of a non-Bungie shooter where I've had this much fun fighting. It might just be because it's a shooter, when most Hard (TM) games are either third person action games like Souls, or side-scrollers. Shooters have always been something I've been good at, even though I'm pretty picky about which ones I like, so I don't play many of them. Back in college I used to play almost all shooters on the hardest difficulty, so I may just be better prepared for this game than others that are known for their difficulty. Also, the difficulty, at least so far, feels very much like "fair" difficulty. I know I'm still barely into it, but at least so far I've never run into a situation where I felt like there was no way I could have survived. It's always felt like I had the tools I needed, and it's just on me to utilize them effectively (pro-tip: dash constantly, you're invulnerable while dashing*). I did have one crash, on my second run (there's a stability patch coming out today so hopefully those crashes stop), but when I loaded back in I still had all the permanent stuff I'd collected on that run, so while it's obviously not good it at least wasn't any worse than if I'd died. So yeah, at least so far this is on track to be a GOTY contender for me. *I've just realized something: my only complaint about the gameplay is that dash is on , which means you have to take your thumb off the right stick to do it, but looking at a control map I see that for some reason the game doesn't use R1 for anything, and it has the option to completely customize the controls, so I think I'm gonna move dash up to R1.

Immortals Fenyx Rising: The Lost Gods Of the base game and three DLCs, this was my least favorite, but I think that's more me than the game itself. For The Lost Gods it changed into a top-down, more old-school action RPG, and that just isn't really my cup of tea. I was always annoyed by my inability to see very far due to the top down angle, and I was annoyed by the fact that everything cost resources (fast travel, saving, everything). But again, I don't think that's the game being bad so much as it is me not liking what it's going for. The only really "objective" negative I have for it is that I didn't feel like the gods were very well developed as characters in this one, and I didn't feel the overall plot terribly compelling. I will say for it though that it really stuck the landing, I really liked the final boss fight and associated story progress, and so I came away at that point feeling fairly positive about it. Overall though I don't think it was enough to overcome the blah-ness of the rest of it. 3/5

I think the mainline games were declining, but then Warzone came out and started printing money. But yeah, eventually CoD will lose its luster, so it's really stupid of Activision to put all their eggs in that basket.

Yeah, the really shitty thing is that Crash 4 actually sold really well, it made them a lot of money, it just wasn't CoD levels of money.