TheMightyEthan

Oh definitely. Blacklist was okay, but the originals were definitely better. Though honestly I think my favorite was Double Agent (the PS360 version, I don't remember what the OGXbox/PS2 version was like, except that it was different).

5% of the population, 25% of the cases What do you mean we're doing bad?

Probably they'll go action-infiltration, like Mission Impossible.

I agree the textures are low resolution, but that's not what makes it look like plastic, it's the lighting system. Halo 1 had low resolution textures and it didn't look like everything was made of plastic. For me at least the plasticky look is more of a problem than the textures being low resolution.

Digital Foundry has an analysis of why the graphics look so flat: https://www.eurogamer.net/amp/digitalfoundry-2020-halo-infinite-gameplay-demo-analysis Boils down to a design decision to use real time dynamic lighting, combined with the type of materials they're using.

Yeah, I had a whole fucking network of those built throughout the mountains. They're great.

Okay, so I just watched it again on my 4k TV (wanted to see what it would look like if I was actually playing it), and I'm a little less sour on it than I was before. I still think everything looks too much like it's made of plasticine, but the gameplay looks more like Halo than 4 & 5, so I'm starting to get cautiously optimistic. I'm still not buying it, but I'm looking forward to playing it on PC gamepass.

I agree with you in general, but man Ghost of Tsushima's world is huge and awesome. Sure it's cut & pasted in a lot of places (eg identical farmhouses) but it's fairly well hidden, so it rarely feels cut & pasted.

Yeah, that's pretty ridiculous. Even Halo 3 looked better in a lot of ways:

Dragon Quest XI S and Final Fantasy VII Remake I've been jonesing for something new to play on my Switch, and after playing the Dragon Quest XI demo I thought that was really my jam, so I decided to get it. I had a $20 Gamestop credit (from trading in stuff, I was going to use it on Ghost of Tsushima but then I forgot my card when I went to pick it up...), so I went to order from there, and turns out they're doing a sale where if you buy a new game you get a used game 40% off. The 40% off knocked FF7R down to $32, which was low enough for me to bite. I will never ever ever get my backlog below 4 games...

This game looks cool.

Hmm. Well one benefit is that I was thinking of getting the Switch version (mostly for mobile play, but also the extra content), and under ordinary circumstances this would have made me hesitate but the fact it's just a port of the Switch version means I can still get that one without feeling torn. ?

Yep. The Halo 5 story was stupid, but they needed to resolve it. Either that or they needed to full-on reboot. This soft-reboot nonsense is the worst of both worlds. Also, that "gameplay" was obviously so scripted, everything so perfectly choreographed, that I don't even feel like it indicates what it would be like to actually play. It was more like a first-person cutscene. And the grappling hook is still stupid.

Yeah, I was not impressed with the graphics, other than when the elevator started to rise I was impressed with how much detail was maintained into the distance. But overall yeah it doesn't look any better than current gen PC games to me. And I'm only on a GTX 1080 so it's not even like I have a bleeding-edge card I'm comparing it to.

If they give Chief a grappling hook I know I can officially nope out on this one. There's no way that won't change the way the game plays enough to make it not feel like Halo to me, and since I don't really like non-Halo shooters if it's not Halo there's no reason for me to play it.

Ratchet & Clank I keep thinking about this game ever since seeing the trailer for the next one at the PS5 event, and it was only $15 on Amazon, so now I have a new game for the backlog.

From the article: So while it's not quite so blatant as the other examples, in light of what was going on it looks like that viewpoint is certainly still there. If I had to bet, I'd bet it's like the previous two entries, and the developers wanted it to be a female MC but marketing made them add a male option and then put him front and center.

So apparently all the stuff with Assassin's Creed not having female characters really was/is just straight-up sexism. Which we already knew, but it's nice to see it confirmed. Apparently in Origins originally they were going to have Bayek get killed and his wife be the player character, but Hascoët thought that wouldn't sell. And in Odyssey Kassandra was going to be the only PC until he made them add her brother. Also, lol @ marketing not thinking a female PC would sell. Horizon: Zero Dawn says hi.

I'm guessing those two were pilot projects to test the waters, and I don't know about Catherine but P4G has obviously been a resounding success, so hopefully they'll start bringing more stuff over.

It's really not fast though, it's in line with what they've been doing for a long long time.

Anyone who follows me on Twitter should be very aware that I am playing Ghost of Tsushima.

Apparently it's more popular than they predicted. I've also seen more discussion/screenshots of it on my Twitter feed than any game for a long time (even ignoring my own screenshot spam). I also prefer to get physical copies whenever possible, just because any more I rarely replay games, and so I like being able to trade them in after I finish them.

I'm three hours in and agree with everything you just said.

I love the confusion about which way to put the CPU in. Very relatable.

I've got a $10 PSN card that I would really like to convert to $10 in Nintendo credit, if anyone would like to do that. Probably the easiest way would be to buy a $10 Nintendo code from like Amazon and we can just exchange codes.