Mera'din

20.)  The House in Fata Morgana - A Requiem for Innocence

Decided to grab this one since I enjoyed the original visual novel so much. Most of it is an expansion of the origin story of the witch in the first game. As such, it's a pretty dark and depressing story, but they had some extra "episodes" after you finish the main game that add on to the ending of the original game that were kind of nice and helped balance out the depressing stuff. Was enjoyable overall, and a hell of a lot shorter than the original which was also appreciated. XD

Now I'm looking forward to the rest of God of War even more. It's definitely a fun game so far. Finding it very hard to put down to do other things.

19.) : Vampire: The Masquerade - Sins of the Sires

This is the last of the "interactive novel" games that were put out for VtM, but unfortunately far from the best. Technically speaking, I liked it better than Out for Blood since that was less Vampire and more Hunter feeling than anything, but it was a better "game" regardless. This one felt really rushed and a lot shorter than the others. Very little choice, and what there was did not feel meaningful. You get railroaded through most the story before you even really get a grasp on what's going on, and it ended way faster than expected as well. There was some interesting stuff going on, but it felt very rushed and half assed compared to all the other ones. Unfortunate note to end on with this particular run of games.

These last couple have really hit me in the feels. Both were absolutely massive chunks of my childhood and it feels really weird knowing they're gone. Especially since neither was particularly old.

Finally saw it. Movie pacing felt a bit slow, but appropriately so for what they were trying to convey.
Barring the fact that it just couldn't be what it would have been without Chadwick Boseman, I actually enjoyed it more than the first one I think. Though I didn't really find the whole Killmonger storyline interesting so that's probably a big part of my feelings there. The way they worked with Boseman's death was well done and the movie felt like almost as much of a memorial to him in the trappings of the MCU as it did a movie. Where it wasn't that, it made interesting use of new characters.

- Still not sold on the actress for Riri, but will wait until I see more to judge. Think I would have preferred them keeping her younger.

- Angela Basset really stole the movie. The whole UN scene was absolutely fantastic.

- Really like how they did Namor too. Felt a little iffy from the trailers, but it was well done. Honestly wasn't sure how the winged feet would go, but it worked really well. XD

18.)  Horizon: Forbidden West

Bought this when it came out, but kind of fell by the way side because of Elden Ring. Finally picked it back up so I could finish it before God of War: Ragnarok came out. Didn't quite manage, but got close. XD

Game was pretty good. Great story which was expected. The bland, Ubisoft-style open world shit got a bit tiring about half way through (figured I was in trouble when I was about 10+ hours in before the games title popped up.  ). Main and side quests were all fun and pretty interesting, but the random shit all over the place that it wants you to do got pretty dull pretty fast. Especially when you couldn't even do everything you came across until you had generic special tool to do this specific thing from the main story and had to treck back to everything later to finish it. More than once.  

Despite that, the main game itself was good enough to forgive most of that. They definitely set things up for another game as well, so that might be interesting if they can reign their bullshit in a little bit. Definitely some specific things I'd like to see in the next game too since the world building has great in these games too.

The Platinum trophy was nice and straight forward at least and the game had absolutely fantastic accessibility options. Only better ones I've seen at this point were probably Last of Us Pt. 2

I work the next seven days in a row so have to wait until the 19th to see it. ?

Been looking forward to this. Looks really interesting. May try to make some time for it tonight.

I was wondering if that wasn't what they were going for when the rumors popped up about them getting him for something a week or so ago.

Yeah, a rewind of that scene would have been good. It was a pretty short episode all things considered so I don't think it would have hurt the pacing, but it kind of played in the the "that's too expensive" joke they set up with the scene transition, so I'm not super hung up about it. Everything about that was just fantastic though. I loved almost everything about this series and it's easily one of my favorite MCU entries at this point. Only a couple little things where I was like "...what?" that didn't really matter in the long run.

Wonder if we haven't seen the last of Josh since they kind of left that whole thing hanging. 

It was interesting. Fun little side thing. Glad they stuck Man-Thing in it too. He was probably the best part. XD

Was kind of fun to see her really Hulk out for just a bit. It would be cool if they did a storyline similar to Hulk Vol. 4 at some point. Grey She-Hulk was scary.

Yeah, that was a fun one. I'm almost disappointed we're going to hit the inevitable "oh yeah, this is actually a super hero show" part since I could just keep watching her be a lawyer for dumb ass powered people forever. XD

I think my only complaint past not  being able to even read the subtitles half the time isn't necessarily about the anime itself. Which is: Ifeel like they really squandered Adam Smasher in the game. Between the talking up he gets, and what you see of him in Edge Runners, I've been retroactively let down by the fight with him in the game. XD

Wonder how long it will take before someone manages to lip read what they're saying just to see if they weren't just saying random shit.

17.)  Elden Ring

FINALLY!

This game was amazing, but god damn is it enormous and time consuming too if you play games like me. I know I still didn't manage to do everything still too, not counting quests that I couldn't finish because of choices I made. Really had fun with it despite the frustration at times and the fact that I don't much care for souls games. Might actually try to wrap up the achievements too since all I have left is the ones for finding the different legendary items. The environmental storytelling in this game was beyond compare, even if the actual narrative felt a little too light handed at times. I stayed engaged though, so it couldn't' have done too bad of a job.

They definitely nailed the vibe from the game 100% from the looks of it, and I recognized a number of scenes as well (and almost instantly teared up in a few cases. X_x ). It definitely looks promising so far.

5 hours ago, Anelle said:

My one big gripe is they absolutely butchered the subtitles, used machine translations or something and they were gibberish. I really liked the English cast, I'm just so used to watching with Japanese voices, but the subs were so fucked up I switched to dub.

I'm impressed you could actually read the damn things. I've had to infer what's going on half the time. Whatever genius decided to put pure white subtitles with now outline or anything on them in a show with non-stop high saturation neon lights needs to be slapped. 

Other than that the show is pretty good. I still have a coupe eps. left to get through. Does a 10x better job of introducing you to the world than the game opening ever did.

16.) The House in Fata Morgana

Not that I've played a ton of games in the genre, but this is by far the absolute longest visual novel I have ever played in my life. It just would not fucking end.

45 hours and I finally hit the credits. It was good, if a bit padded feeling at points, but fuck. I was ready to be done with it about 15 hours ago. Still was a really unique story though for what it was. It came highly recommended and I see why. Would have made an interesting anime.

Secret Invasion looking more "spy thriller"y than I would have thought. Might be a fun direction for it.

Also, this is a thing. Was NOT expecting this, but I'm intrigued.  

15.)  Stray

This game was pretty entertaining. Not terribly long or particularly engaging though outside of "lol. Am cat." It being short was to its benefit here though as the game isn't long enough for the charm of it to wear off. Story felt a little forced at times, but was interesting at least. Feels like there were some missed opportunities with the game, but it was still quite enjoyable overall. Might take a stab at the Platinum if the speed run trophy doesn't end up being too bad.

Yeah, that was really good. I kind of hope the whole show is her trying to avoid the super hero shit as much as possible and getting dragged into it against her will because that feels like the right way to go about it. XD

The Sakaar ship was definitely interesting though. Makes me wonder if the show won't end with that coming back into play and Bruce having to leave Earth (Planet Hulk time?? ? ) and convince Jen to be "available" if a Hulk is needed.

Was also kind of hoping her goading and being instantly better at some Hulk things than him was going to open the door for him loosing control again too though. Guess that could still happen.

Not like there's a whole lot to say about the show itself at the moment anyway. XD

Though they did put up a little featurette thing that was kind of interesting so I guess I can put it back on track with that?
It seems that was definitely Titania that we saw.

Yeah, I've seen similar comments from Hiddleston as well. As for GotG I think Bradley Cooper and Dave Bautista said they were completely done for sure. I know most of them didn't want to do more without Gunn otherwise (think he might be done as well? Don't remember if he said for sure).

Don't recall seeing anything one way or the other for the others there.

To be fair, it seems like most of them did to some degree or another (ie: RDJ, Evans, and Johannsson). Some of the GotG people seem pretty much done after Vol. 3. 

There are only a few that seem to enjoy the role itself enough to be cool doing stuff in perpetuity (which seems to be the case with Hemsworth and Hiddleston at the very least).