Mera'din

21.) Erica Saw this came out when I was watching some Gamescom 2019 stuff and remembered being interested in it when I originally saw something about it and saw it was only $10 so decided to grab it. Basically an FMV "interactive story" game, but MUCH higher production quality than you typically see with the genre. First play through took me a couple hours roughly which I was expecting. Ending I got was a bad one I'm pretty sure, but it did leave me wanting to play again to see if I could get to the root of the mystery so that's a plus. Only awkward part was the controls. You have the option to download a phone app and use your phone to control it, otherwise it uses the PS4 touchpad exclusively and feels a little clunky. May try the phone app for the next play through since I feel like that might function more smoothly. Interested to see if the mystery pans out with a better ending, but the experience was pretty solid either way. As long as it doesn't wear itself out before I see everything there is to see I'll be happy.

Binge? It's literally just a single, near-movie length episode. Was hilarious though. Glad they got Jhonen Vasquez to write it. Tied a lot more to the original series than I was expecting too and references stuff from it. Was expecting a random one-off thing that could be from any point during the original, but it continues off of it.

Oh man, I remember when that was first put out a few years ago. Think I watched it a few times in a row.

I just found out about this game a couple weeks ago myself and have been watching stuff on it since. Seems like it's trying to pick up the ball that Bioware keeps dropping and I'm looking forward to seeing if they can manage. It's weird how little attention this is getting for how ambitious it seems to be. There have been a few games like that lately that I've come across. Are you sure it's the same people as Vampyr? I know it's the same publisher, but it was DontNod who made Vampyr (same studio that did Life is Strange), and I don't recall anyone leaving them and going to Spiders (their most recent games were Bound by Flame and The Technomancer I believe). They are both French developers though so it's possible.

They're apparently FINALLY starting to relent on some of that shit. There's a couple things that finally went cross play and PUBG is getting console crossplay soon too. Baby steps I guess? XD

New short trailer. Mostly just serves to show some of the scenery comparisons with the Ray tracing from the Nvidia RTX cards on, but I'll take what I can get. >_>

Well, they made mostly Sony exclusive games anyway, so I'm surprised it took this long. XD

I'm still waiting on that one myself. I tried playing it when it originally came out, but that was about the time I had just started World of Warcraft so I never got more than 10 min. into it and everything from character designs to game systems bothered me a bit but I've always felt bad for not giving it a solid try. Will eventually now that they've re-released it but I have so much else to play I figure I can wait for a super cheap copy. I'm playing mostly the same stuff I was previously (Persona 4, Overwatch), but also finally started Horizon: Zero Dawn. Honestly kept forgetting I had it (bought it for the wife though I was interested in it). Glad she finally reminded me that it existed. This is a really solid game. World seems really big too. Leans a little heavy towards the Ubisoft school of open world games, but the setting is interesting enough that I actually WANT to learn more about it so that helps a lot. XD Beyond that, have been poking around on Anthem again now that the Cataclysm update came out. Game still has some of its core issues that need to be fixed, but this was a much needed update. Lots of interesting hidden things, and the gameplay loop in the new area is actually pretty fun (also frustrating when you get people that don't know what they're doing, but that's everything with multiplayer).

Sometimes. XD Same with me though. I don't know how many topics I've made and/or end up having like 5 replies in a row that are all just me posting new things or updates about whatever it is. >_>

Yeah, I don't really like how she feels now when I tried her on the PTR. Seems to be a lot of support for it, but as someone who played her heavily before, it's like a completely different character now. X_x The Reinhardt thing is a really good move though. Puts him back into being a lot more viable.

XIII-2 is actually pretty good, and makes the series worthy of the FF name IMO. Lightning Returns isn't terrible. Enjoyed it more than the original, but not as much as 2. Definitely use a guide for it though otherwise it would be relatively rage inducing and probably require more play throughs than what it's worth. The flow of the overall story gets more interesting in 2 as well. Some of the plot threads in Lightning Returns feel like a bit of a stretch and it seems like they tried WAY too hard to fit every character they could into it, but ends up being an interesting cap to a storyline that was all over the place between the 3 games.

That would be cool. Also some decent incentive.

Yeah, I'm kind of curious about how they'll handle that. Looking at the site, the answer appears to be a definite nope.

Note that they're not actually going to stop selling said games either. Way to do absolutely nothing and look completely moronic at the same time Walmart.

20.) Destroy All Humans! Not a terrible game. Definitely feels like something from the PS2 era. Light weight GTA clone that loses some of its charm once the story is over and all there is to do is kill the same 10 character models over and over again and what not. Got this and the 2nd one along with a bunch of other stuff in a Humble Bundle deal a while back. Might wait on the 2nd one for a bit though. Trophies were pretty straight forward at least. XD

You could also play Fire Emblem WHILE installing. ? Rewards from challenges for all this stuff is nice to see. Almost everything has emotes or cosmetic stuff tied to it. Nothing in the "seasonaseasonal" that uses the cataclysm currency seems too far fetched for price either. Could get basically anything I want with a couple hours of playing. Not like the regular store where you have to play constantly for like a full week to get anything. Added new legendary events to freeplay as well that are cool. And they have a timer before starting and show up on the map and everything. They're slowly figuring this shit out. XD

Pretty good so far. The new content itself is some story stuff that explains the new area and then going into the new area is something like a high difficulty, open world dungeon that is balancing survival with getting shit done in a time limit. Some really interesting new mechanics. Will take some time to learn the ins and outside and how to do it efficiently. I'd say it's definitely worth checking out if you already have the game. Probably don't buy yet unless you see an excellent sale price. There is still some fixing that needs doing for sure.

The 1.30 (Cataclysm) patch is out. Lots of big changes in addition to the new content. Guilds are in (though functionality outside of some weekly reward stuff seems limited to an app at the moment). Luck has been removed from Gear and what was max luck is now a baseline droprate increase for everyone. Adjustment to enemy health in higher difficulties to make them less spongy. New gear and melee weapon types including (finally)masterwork and legendary quality gear for the support slot. Tons of other tweaks and fixes. I would say some of the underlying issues with the game are still present but this is a massive step in the right direction and hopefully now that the current dev team has this under their belt, their release cycle time will start to improve. Patch notes

I don't even know if that can be considered a LEAK. They flat out published the info on the site. With a link and everything. And then they had the nerve to call it a "website vulnerability". Even beyond that, the majority of the current problem lies in the fact that after they were notified of the issue (before the story was made public), all they did was remove remove the link on the site but DIDN'T FUCKING DELETE THE FILE so people who knew what to look for/how to look for it could still find it and download it. That's when the shit really hit the fan and the data got passed around. The ESA must get their knowledge of how the internet works from Nintendo.

I refused to buy either and got them both free on PS+ so I'm not out anything if I don't actually play it. Don't think I could stand a full game of it being like that though considering I couldn't even make it through the glorified demo. Time to youtube the cutscenes I guess.

19.) Day of the Tentacle Remastered Another old Lucas Arts adventure game I had never played. This one did NOT age well though. It was fine. Some interesting ideas in it, but I didn't find it terribly humorous overall. Later entries like Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island games were FAR better imo both in terms of story and humor (and of course gameplay). Didn't know going into it that this was actually a sequel to their first game, Maniac Mansion, but a short ways into it you can actually play a full version of Maniac Mansion so that was cool. Didn't actually go all the way through it though because it was awkward and clunky as fuck to play with a controller. These games set a lot of standards for what adventure games would be come so I appreciate the historic value of them, but I didn't much care for them otherwise. Before this and Hatoful Boyfriend I actually tried to finally play MGS: Ground Zeroes, but rage quite it after like 20 minutes. Maybe I'm just getting old, but playing it felt like shit compared to the older MGS games. Not having a radar or anything was mostly just obnoxious and I got bored with it really quickly. Does 5 feel like that too? Wondering if I should just delete it now and save myself the trouble. Also, Kiefer Sutherland was a fucking terrible choice for voice actor. Kept forgetting it was supposed to be Snake talking and couldn't get used to it at all even after listening to all the mission tapes.

Anyone heard of this game? I didn't see anything about it (don't think I caught anything during E3 even? May have missed it in the mass of other random shit), but saw a short trailer recently on youtube and it caught my attention. It's made by Remedy Entertainment (Max Payne 1 & 2, Alan Wake and Quantum Break), and looks really interesting. Also found a good preview of it done by IGN that shows off gameplay (because of course the trailer didn't have shit) and that intrigued me even more. Looks and sounds like they took what they were going for with Quantum Break but polished it up and improved the parts that didn't pan out in that game. Looks chaotic and crazy as fuck and is described as being pretty challenging, but a lot of the other stuff in the game piques my interest pretty heavily. Comes out on the 27th of August. Considering getting it. Might wait until I see some more concrete reviews though since I've never played any of their other games and am not sure I'll care for the combat style. Super agro run and gun has never been my preference. Story Trailer: Gameplay preview:

Been working my way through Persona 4: Golden. My first Persona game and am mostly enjoying it so far. Have seen some of 5 when my wife played through it and it seemed decent so my friend let me borrow this one and it gave me a reason to actually use the PSTV that I bought like 3 years ago. XD Also started up Day of the Tentacle Remastered. Not sure how I feel about it so far. This one feels far more dated than some of the other remasters that were done of the old Lucas Arts adventure games. Was cool that they actually put in a way to play through Maniac Mansion itself (the game that this one is technically a sequel to) but I couldn't bring myself to play that one. Was ultra clunky. Also started The Occupation. Interesting so far. Set in the 80s in England amidst the fallout from a (fictional) terrorist attack that has stirred up severe anti-immigrant sentiment. You play as a reporter who is trying to find evidence against a political group that may have set up the attack to push their agenda. The game plays in real time and you have to gather evidence before you need to be at an interview. Some stealth to it and it's open ended as far as WHAT evidence you gather, how you gather it, and what you choose to use from what I understand (haven't gotten that far yet. Just played the opening).

18.) Hatoful Boyfriend Well that was... something. Have had this one sitting in my backlog for quite a while and I've heard good things about it overall. At face value, for those who haven't already heard of it, it's a pretty basic Otome game where the male love interests for the main character are replaced by various birds, while the main character is human. There's a whole subplot you learn as you go through the game about humanity being nearly wiped out by a mutated strain of the avian flu, and a countermeasure causing birds to become sentient and what not to explain this, but the "real" game doesn't actually start until you've gone through it a few times (there are something like 8 or 9 potential love interests, some with 2 endings) and trigger an alternate dialogue near the beginning of the game that turns it from a satirical dating sim into some crazy ass, conspiracy fueled sci-fi/horror murder mystery visual novel thing that feeds of of little hints and clues about the world that you glean from the other playthroughs. I found the whole thing a tad bloated, and a little obtuse at times, and it probably could have used something a little more solid to make it more of a GAME than mostly visual novel, but it held my attention for the most part. Probably an acquired taste, but worth a play if you're looking for something truly bizarre and unique to kill 5 to 10 hours on.

Oof. That name couldn't have done it any favors. Sounds like a cheap party game or something. XD Will look into it sometime though. Apparently the main character of that one is in the newer game made by the people who did the one I just played. It's an interesting genre honestly. Not nearly as cringey as I was expecting based on older examples from the 90s.