Mera'din

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. ??

You do realize he has no part in nominating or voting for anything, right? He just runs it. Nominations are done by outside parties that are part of the industry (various gaming news outlets, "influencers" and things like that) from all around the world and voting is a mix of said jury and public fan voting. He did an AMA about the show a week or so before hand and got asked a ridiculous number of times about stuff like that as well as answering accusations of favoritism along those lines. Death Stranding didn't even win that many awards. They even have a list of the 'jury' that does the nominating/voting on the website: https://thegameawards.com/voting-jury' I wouldn't have touched the show that Spike did with a 10ft. pole, but he's done a good job with this one IMO.

That one definitely stood out. When it first showed her I was like ? Wasn't sure it was actually supposed to be Senua or if it was just a similar style/theme considering the developer until it showed the title though. I want to see more from some of the others before I decide anything though. Godfall could have potential and I'm interested in seeing what New World could be like (though I won't hold my breath on that one). That Fast & Furious game looks so ridiculously dated though. WTF even was that? XD There were some fun parts otherwise during it too. The bit with the Muppets was hilarious and seeing Ikumi Nakamura again was everything I hoped it would be. Feel like the awards themselves were all over the place though. Like some of the eSports shit they didn't even give any correlation for what games the people were even known for so it was like... K. Glad to see Disco Elysium win a bunch of awards though. Definitely deserves it from everything I've seen. Kind of hoped Control had won more but it did get one so I was happy about that. I actually bought a couple of games that I was holding off on or hadn't heard of after seeing stuff about them through the Awards though so I guess they're doing their job. XD

28.) Rise of the Tomb Raider Been slowly going through this for my daughter since she really likes the story and finally beat it yesterday. Was solid entertainment. Action sequences and climbing parts are consistently fun and only sometimes frustrating and I feel like they did a good job of improving upon the kind of stuff that Uncharted was always good at. Story was interesting overall. Nothing terribly groundbreaking in these games but they are pretty solid all around and fun as a one and done sort of series to play. Picked up the newest one on Black Friday for $15 so will probably start that for her next weekend.

He also wrote it, and is the son of the guy who directed and produced the original 2 so that's probably a good sign. This is probably one of the best outcomes we could have hoped for after Harold Ramis died. I'm certainly intrigued.

Pretty much everything you're bitching about has an explanation. Not always a good one, but there is always one, mostly because Kojima felt the need to give a story explanation for basically every single game mechanic that exists in the game. Even the tutorial stuff to a small extent. Sam has been doing freelance work for years, and Deadman didn't know him from a hole in the ground outside of supposed reputation (and the fact that they're clearly using technology that didn't exist when he was with Bridges I 10 years prior). Had to get that job orientation in. One of workers at one of the places you stop treats you like your some brand new jackass too at one point and later apologizes after he learns who you are. Also, most of his games have things (characters or otherwise) with stupid ass names. Usually in an attempt to create some kind of deeper meaning that just comes off as awkward 90% of the time. How is any of this unexpected? Nearly all of them are code names anyway and reasons are given for them during the game. More than likely it's even more ridiculous in this game because this time Kojima's the top dog on all decision making and there was nobody to keep him from venting all the absolute batshit crazy floating around in his head. Is the story some sort of ground breaking art? No. It's a ridiculous, garbled mystery machine just like every one of the Metal Gear Solid games was, but that's exactly what i was expecting and I'm enjoying every second of it. Finally starting to put some of the pieces together at the point I'm at and am interested to see if it will make any kind of sense by the end (though it will probably end up being even more confusing I'm sure).

Yeah, it using force power was a bit annoying, but it saved me from enough tight spots that I'm willing to forgive it. Still would have preferred it as a separate fighting style like how it was with switching between the single and double sided lightsabers. Was at least nice that it adapted the Lightsaber throw so that he just detached the one end and threw that so you could keep blocking though.

So....

27.) Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Very fun game. Frustrating at times, but I'm of a differing opinion from MT. I had the most fun when going against multiple enemies. Especially after you get the ability to split the dual lightsaber ability. the Purger trooper types could be really obnoxious though, and fighting some of the wildlife was really awkward. Took a while to get used to the game because I always felt like the characters movement was slightly off. Like his reach wasn't quite as far as it felt like it should have been. Once you get used to it though it flows really nice. Only fights I truly hated were the ones against Second Sister. For some reason, I could just NOT follow her attacks at all. None of the other boss fights caused me anywhere near the trouble the ones with her did. Was getting really frustrated with it. Exploration was excellent. Each planet was SO much bigger than I first thought (other than the first one), and there were more than I was expecting. Game was longer overall than I was expecting too. Story was pretty decent, and the bit at the end after the final boss was a nice surprise and adequately tense. Definitely want to see more Star Wars games with this kind of effort put into them.

Yeah, that can be annoying. I've been going for any blaster users first. Can usually take them out pretty fast. It's the guys with the rocket launcher that piss me off. The force push ability is a bit awkward for redirecting objects in the middle of a fight.

Yep.

Someone is legit going to get shot over this, aren't they?

Got a good deal on the game on Amazon so I picked it up. So far I'm really enjoying it though I'm not very far in. Exploration has been solid, light saber customization is interesting, and there are a bunch of cosmetic things that are all earned through gameplay. Not a microtransaction or looming DLC in sight. Gameplay is pretty is pretty heavily focused on blocking, parrying and dodging attacks and you can get wrecked pretty fast if you don't know what you're doing. Skill points earned from leveling can be put into a skill tree with 3 categories: force powers, light saber, and survivability. Can't see how interesting those get yet though as you can only see the most immediate skills available.

Still really enjoying a few chapters in. I can't even say why. It literally boils down to a fetch quest simulator most of the time but it's fucking facinating. Story and world are really interesting. Also, this:

Yep. It's post Empire. Which is nice, the few books they've done in that time gap have been pretty good. I really enjoyed it overall and look forward to them going deeper into the Mandalorian history. The quick flashbacks they showed in the episode looked WAY more interesting than the stuff dealing with them in Rebels.

Yeah, that part was a little disorienting at first. Took me a few min. to find a way past the mountain-y bit.

They were definitely mostly manageable, especially if you had the right companions with you. There were only a handful of times I saw ones that required 100 in a skill to do and only one of those was in a weirdly early place in the game that I noticed. By the last couple areas there were a number of things that required 100 in hacking to open but that was the most prolific one that I saw. There honestly may have been more though, I think I had the option turned on that hid dialogue options that weren't at least close to your level in that skill.

Just finished up Outer Worlds today and am moving on to Death Stranding. Was a little leery of this one, but most of what I was seeing in reviews made it seem like something I wouldn't mind playing and so far I'm enjoying it. Also wanted to see what Kojima had in him after getting out from under Konami's thumb. The weird shit in the game so far alone was good enough for me. XD