Mera'din

4.) Alan Wake's American Nightmare This felt like more DLC (not sure if it technically was or not) but it's a standalone release so I'm putting it separate. Saw a lot of bitching about the story in this, but I really enjoyed it. It is a fair departure from the original game tone wise (more pulpy, action-horror/dark comedy instead of isolationist, psychological thriller), and still doesn't exactly "finish" the story, but it provides a theoretical conclusion that gives a nice sense of closure if they never are able to do more with it without "finishing" the story. The villain was a lot of fun too and it gave the actor that plays Alan Wake a chance to really go wild and have fun with the role (the villain, called 'Mr. Scratch' is basically an evil Doppelganger of Alan himself). Thought it was a fun premise as well as the character is actually mentioned in the main game a couple times, but you never see him which means they probably had some sort of plan for this from the beginning. Combat was a lot cleaner but also a LOT easier since there is guns and ammo EVERYWHERE. I imagine it's more meaningful in the 'Arcade' portion of the game, but I have no interest in something like that as I just wanted the story. Overall this is probably a relatively weak title, especially as a standalone experience, but I had a lot of fun with the story and it added some interesting depth to the overall narrative from the original game. Really hope they can do something more with it in the long run. Control had quite a few references to the events from the series and built on some of the story for it so I'm hoping that means they still have plans going forward. Also learned that the song written for this game actually has a reference to Control in it which is some pretty crazy breadcrumb shit. XD

*blows dust off of topic* IS ANYONE WATCHING PICARD!? It's been fucking fantastic so far. Lots of solid nods and cameos to TNG (and eventually other series' ) without going overboard and is all around a solid story so far. 3rd episode came out today and this is probably the most interested I've been in Star Trek since I was like 15. They also very effectively make use of the normal timeline side of the event (Romulan Supernova) that caused the JJ Abrams movie timeline which I thought was a nice touch.

3.) Alan Wake When I originally got it in a Humble Bundle, it was something I had never intended to play and wrote it off. After playing Control though, and enjoying that as much as I did, I decided to take another look at Remedy's other games. I had always wanted to play Quantum Break, but when it first came out I could only get it on the Windows Store (or XBox) and noped right off of that one, but it's on Steam now. However, I already owned the Alan Wake games and those are tied more directly to the story for Control so figured I'd give it a go. Glad I did. Story was really solid, despite an iffy ending. The DLC episodes are where it really shines though IMO. Plan on playing the last part next to see if that resolves the story a little better. Gameplay was fine. Leaned a little more towards survival horror than I care for these days, but it's more of an action game hiding in a horror games shell so it ended up being more enjoyable than I thought it would be. These guys really know their way around a solid experience. Looking forward to playing some of their other stuff and seeing what else they can do going forward.

I love how people are so bitter and disillusioned with Blizzard that not only did they meta-bomb the game, they actually started giving positive reviews to the one game that had a lower score (at the time) than WC3:R to help the process along.

New trailer. There is definitely a lot more going on than in the original game. Looks like they moved up some flashback stuff too. This trailer also features all of the Shinra heads and shows that the Honeybee Inn IS in fact still in the game. I can't wait. XD

Yeah. It full on ignores anything after 2 I knew that going into it (and they make it very clear in the first couple minutes of the movie). The annoying part was more that it felt like they just revamped the main premise of the 3rd movie but in reboot form. Which is to say Judgement Day is inevitable, Terminators gonna terminate, etc.

Watched 'Color Out of Space' and 'Terminator: Dark Fate' over the weekend. Color Out of Space was better than I was hoping for. Lovecraft's work is notoriously difficult to translate to other mediums and this is probably one of the best examples I've seen. They changed what they needed to to modernize it and make it work for a movie, but did a wonderful job of keeping the spirit of the story intact. Some really cool visual effects and cinematography all around. Definitely worth seeing if you're a Lovecraft fan. Terminator: Dark Fate was also better than I was expecting but not what I hoped it would be considering Cameron's involvement. Still can't hold a candle to the original two, but I don't think anyone expected it to. Feel like this movie would have been a LOT more interesting if we didn't have like 4 other Terminator sequels floating around between 2 and this one to muddy the waters so much. There was some good content, but in the end it felt a little too much like concepts retooled from the original T3 into a soft reboot. The opening, which appears to be the thing that set most people against the film overall, was probably the most interesting part to me. Though it did kind of undermine the series as a whole, that was probably the point. As much as I liked what they did, it did ultimately serve to essentially rip the spirit of the series to pieces before the movie had even begun. The de-aging tech used in the movie was the best I've seen to date though by far. It was good enough that at first I thought maybe the scene they used at the beginning might have been an unused alternate ending from T2. XD

In amusingly related news, rumor is that the Avengers game pushed back to September to avoid releasing in the same month as Cyberpunk (was also sandwiched on the other side by Last of Us 2 I believe) and then Cyberpunk moved to September as well so that game is still gonna get fucked.

Yep. Like I said in the other topic, I got some breathing room now. Just need Bloodlines 2 to announce a solid release date nowhere near Cyberpunk and I should be good to go. XD

It also means I'll actually be able to play like 3 other games that come out in the same time frame. XD

Damnit. Not even sure how I put the wrong number. >_>

FFVII Remake has been delayed to April 10th. Reason given was the general "we want a little extra time to put as much polish on this as we can" type of thing. This is putting it dangerously close to the release of Cyberpunk 2066. Early March had been the perfect slot for it honestly, now almost all games I want in the first half of the year are coming out within a few weeks of each other. Here's the their full message:

2.) Gris Really nice game. BEAUTIFUL art style with a great atmosphere and music. Very somber game. I've played a lot of games with pretty much the exact same themes and storytelling style, but the art and atmosphere of it are what really makes it stand out. Starts off with you basically just walking but slowly starts to add platforming and puzzles with new abilities that keep it from getting stale. Not a lot of replay value, but worth a play if you like heavily symbolic games with good atmosphere. A great game to play when trying to chill.

I'm more interested in Morbius for the actors than anything else, but that looked at least not bad so I'm willing to give it a shot. That end bit was intriguing though.

At the very least give him more stuff to be in charge of. Everything he's done has been pretty solid and been almost universally well received. I haven't seen Resistance, but I also haven't seen anyone raging over it either so it must be at least fine. Only thing of his that seemed to get railed at all was the Clone Wars movie and that seemed like it had more to do with general feelings over the direction of Star Wars in general at the time than anything else and doesn't appear to apply anymore (though it's probably still his weakest entry). Far as I know he's got full oversight on all their animated stuff now, but his work on The Mandalorian seems like proof he can handle live action stuff just as well.

Thank god. Someone finally did a good one. This is the 4th "metal cover" I've seen for the song and all the others were not that great. Was hoping Skar Productions would do one finally so there would be a good one floating around, but this will work. Forgot to post again after I finished the season. Overall I was really happy with it. Only part that bothered me that much was the Battle of Sodden Hill. They kind of butchered that whole thing and it was gimped pretty hard. Wondering if it wasn't a budget issue honestly because it was kind of blah compared to what I was expecting after the rest of the series. X_x With the attention the show is receiving though, they'll hopefully have a nicer budget going forward.

I honestly don't think they should. I couldn't care less about the old EU at this point. It's the reason I never got into Star Wars when I was younger. I'm all for them pulling in stuff from it for the new EU, but be realistic. That's not something they're EVER going to change due to the movies, shows, games, comics, and books that they've but a ton of money into and that they have full creative control over that will contradict that every step of the way in some cases.

They can obviously manage. Rogue One was a great movie all around. Overall I don't feel any different about the new trilogy than I did either of the others. They're fine. All 3 trilogies are best for being jumping boards for everything else that gets made. I honestly think that's why the EU (both old and new) has always been better though. Broader scope, less restrictions, more creativity (usually). Getting away from the whole 'Skywalker' scope of things can only help in terms of movies. Also, if you're going to do a trilogy maybe, I don't know, LET ONE PERSON BE IN CHARGE OF ALL OF IT? It was rumored there was GOING to be a trilogy set in the Old Republic era, but the guys that were going to be doing that dropped out because they had too much on their plate. Hopefully someone else will do that though. I agree that Kennedy needs to not be in charge though. Jesus fuck. They have been pulling random bits from the old EU for years. The Hammerhead cruiser, Thrawn, etc. Is she really that fucking oblivious? X_x Maybe give Dave Filoni the reigns for story decisions? He's the best thing that's happened to Star Wars in a long time IMO, and is great at putting long running plots and story arches together. Also seems to be a fan of reviving old EU stuff where he can.

30.) Eventide: Slavic Fable Simple little Hidden Object Puzzle/Adventure game. Don't usually go out of my way to play something like this but wanted something straight forward and quick to do on occasion between big games. Normally the kind of thing I'd play on my phone instead of on my computer, but it was like 1/3 the price on Steam vs. the Play Store. Wound up on my radar because a person I watch on Youtube sometimes for Vampire the Masquerade stuff works for the company as an artist and I was curious. It was fine. Nothing overly challenging, but required a decent amount of thought to get through the puzzles. Was a nice palate cleanser before I jump into something bigger again.

$50 from the in-laws, and my wife got me a new Kindle. Finally. After I've been hinting to her for 2 years now that my (now nearly 7 years) old one is starting to not function the best. After like the third time of her telling me she has no idea what to get me, I was just like: Here. You're getting me this. I've been hinting for 2 years. Her response was "... Oooooohhhhh. That's what you were doing." She is legendarily bad with presents 90% of the time. I can't fault her for it though since I usually just buy most things I really want whenever they come out so I don't leave her many options.

Fekkin' knew it. Also, semi-canonizing some of the EU Sith is good shit. Hope they take that further.

29.) Death Stranding Was an interesting game overall. Story was batshit crazy, but it kept me guessing and there were a lot of interesting elements to it and a whole lot of crazy pseudo-science that was kind of fun to dig through. I wouldn't call it a GREAT game, but it was solid and really managed to shine in a couple places. The gameplay itself is something that, on paper, sounds like it would be absolutely terrible, but ended up being really solid and I never quite grew bored of it. Just as I thought it was going to start getting tedious it would throw something new at me that keep it from stagnating too badly. The semi-online element was really cool and probably the most interesting and dynamic part of the game. Trudging through lonely countryside or dealing with crazy ghost things always seemed a little less daunting when you could see the efforts of other people to traverse the same obstacles and it made for a really cool social experiment kind of thing. Overall I was pretty happy with the game. It's definitely something that not everyone would enjoy but I had a lot of fun with it and look forward to seeing what else Kojima can do when he's let off the leash like this.

That is awesome. I'm 5 episodes in and it is everything I could have wanted from a Witcher series. The casting is damn near PERFECT. You can tell Cavill really enjoys the role and wanted to do it right. Probably my ONLY complaint and it stems less from how I view it and more with how I anticipate others may view it is the haphazard time skipping they're doing. Episodes have subsequent scenes that are set DECADES apart and it's constantly jumping back and forth between present, distant past, and semi-distant past with no indication of it unless you're paying attention which is probably going to annoy and confuse people that don't really know much about what they're watching. For anyone who doesn't know the series well and plans to watch it: Anything with Ciri is essentially "current" time. Assume everything else is the past (more or less) possibly excepting a couple things with Geralt. It was hard enough to tell that at first I thought maybe they just completely squished all the events together instead of stretching them over 80+ years of time like Lord of the Rings did, but then it became clear that was not the case. It's a bit jarring even knowing everything. Other than that it's relatively accurate to the books. Only a few things I noticed that they took liberties with but they clearly care about the source material even then. I'm actually a little surprised they stuck with Jaskier's original name though. Even the English translations of the books renamed him Dandelion and anyone familiar with the games knows him by that name as well. I'm ultimately happy they did the time jumping thing though since it means they could adapt some of my favorite short stories. The fact that they were able to do "A Question of Price" and "The Last Wish" made me unbelievably happy. Seems like they don't plan on rushing this either so they'll have time to really do the story justice if it keeps getting renewed. Should be able to get a solid 4-6 seasons out of it depending on how they do it.

Really enjoyed it. There were a number of rough spots, but I feel like most of those were trying to recover from some of the weird story choices in TLJ, working around Carrie Fisher's death, or both. If they had a consistent script writer/story planner through all 3 movies I feel like it would have gone a LOT better, but I'm happy with what we got all things considered. They were able to do a lot more with Leia than I was expecting since they said they wouldn't CG her into it and would only make use of unused footage from the last two movies.

Some days you make no sense. I still love you though. ??