I was initially expecting to see Wolverine released end of next year / early 2025, was not expecting it to be around end of 2026. I assume it’s easier to create Venom’s game based on the existing Spidey’s engine.
I wonder what exclusive game would Sony announce for next year’s holiday? Maybe Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima 2?
I’ve finished Eiyuden Chronicles: Rising, as a preparation for Eiyuden Hundred Heroes.
It’s not a good game, but it’s not terrible either. I played it while watching TV.
The combat is interesting, you have 3 attack buttons, and each of them switches your main character. However it’s really unpolished, you can’t do uppercut or downward attack before upgrading your weapons.
The story… is not interesting at all. It’s largely fetch quests for the residents to build / expand stuff.
I’m halfway thru Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
This is a bad game. The gunplay is okay, but the level design, the enemies become increasingly dull and boring in later chapters. Halfway thru the game, I just find most chapters are way too long, empty, and repetitive.
The story / writing is not good at all. All those Deepground characters are boring, cliched, and annoying.
Also, I’m back with my BS, where I play Resident Evil Zero with a guide and skipping all the cutscenes, so that I can get the infinite rocket launcher, before replaying the entire game for the story.
Musk is a clown that says vile and stupid thing. An useful idiot for others Silicon Valley VCs.
Andreessen and Thiel (and too some small extent Luckey) are in the background trying to push for far right libertarian dystopia.
Andreessen is the guy who kept pushing for web 3.0, trying to dominate it before it becomes big, so that he can monopolize / become a new digital libertarian govt, but of course it got hijacked by scammers, and states like Russia or North Korea, but he doesn’t give a flying fuck.
Thiel of course is far right financier. There’s a reason why they try to hide in the background.
I played a lot of great games this year, but also many that didn’t click with me.
There’s a huge spikes of games that I played this year, because I decided to start tackling my backlog by streaming them, these include games I’ve bought on sale, and those that are on PS+ Extre.
Can't finish because of difficulty spikes- Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown: - Dropped it after that mission where you need to protect a car, while manouvering between buildings in a city, as expected I kept crashing into buildings - Shantae: Risky’s Revenge- It was fun at first, but then there’s some precisioin platforming part, which I just wasn’t in the mood for - Super Mario 64- There’s a level where you’re first introduced to flying mechanic
Dropped it because of technical issues- Assassin’s Creed Origins- The game crashed within the tutorial area - Call of the Sea- I got motion sickness - Kena: Bridge of Spirits- Again, I got motion sickness, supposed to be an okay game. - Tardy- Weirdly because the game has lots of reading, but the fonts are way too small for me - The Ascent- Too much clutter on scene when you reached the first city / settlement. The first section feels okay, but again, some items / objects are just way too small for my failing eyes
Dropped it because it's not clicking- Gnosia- It was supposed to be fun at first, but then the rolls I got was not advancing the storyline - Grime- This feels like the moment I dislike souls-like metroidvania. It might be when I realized that I’ve picked the wrong upgrade path, and there’s limited resources for upgrading your character - Gungrave G.O.R.E- This is not a good game - Horizon Forbidden West- The combat feels worse than the first one. There’s so many more things to do that has way too many writings that I barely care enough. I’d rather have smaller number of sidequests with good writing, than a large number of them where everyone has so many stories to tell. This feels like it’s becoming a ‘forever game’, which might be good, but the combat is just not satisfying at all. - Mafia: Definitive Edition- Dropped after the racing section, was not feeling it. - Mass Effect: Andromeda- Dropped while in the first area. Something about the movement not clicking. - MediEvil (Remake)- Dropped after the 3rd or 4th area. - Moon: Remix RPG Adventure- This is supposed to be great, but I just got tired of the slow pace - NEO: The World Ends with You- I talked about this before, the game keeps on interrupting you. Walk to a new area, fluff dialogues, walk to another area, more inconsequential fluff dialogues. This seems to be a (bad) trend among JRPGs or anime style game. - Oxenfree- Character dialogues just don’t gel with me. Also there’s a time limit when choosing replies. - Root Double: Before Crime * After Days - Xtend Edition- The slice of life part is atrociously slow, most of them are inconsequential ‘look at me, i’m a cute anime girl’ - Sea of Stars- The combat is way too slow, and requires you to do timed button presses. Also for the part I was in, the story feels generic. - Shadow of the Beast- JUst not good - Star Ocean: The Divine Force- Arrived at port town, overtly anime character came in, dropped the game. THe combat was fun, but the character / story are not clicking - Tchia- This is supposed to be good, but I burned myself out for trying to collect everything available before advancing the story - The Adventure of Little Ralph- Feels kinda repetitive - The Wonderful 101: Remastered- I don’t think this game works well without touch screen - TUNIC- Sadly another indie trend that I dislike, difficult combat encounters that don’t feel satisfying. It’s supposed to be a very good game. - Unpacking- Played it on PS5, I dropped it after rotating object for quite a number of times. I think this game is probably better suited for mouse and keyboard - Vernal Edge- I wanted to like it, but the combat is not fun. You have a dedicated ‘Pulse’ button to heal, which throws your sword at the enemy, and you need to press attack + direction to launch an attack that could heal you, which is already a roundabout way of healing (the mechanic is not fun). Then you have enemies that need to be stunned by X number of charge attacks, and the game throws you into small combat area with 4 - 5 enemies that doesn’t get knocked back without 3-4 charge attacks.
Finished it, but it's kinda not good- Root Film- Root Letter was okay (but arguably ruined with the updated version with multiple endings), Root Film is just plain boring, especially the ending. The story was enticing at first, but nope, it became bad by the end of the game. - Shenmue II- Shenmue. - The 3rd Birthday- I like the combat, considering that it was on PSP.
I just finished replaying DMC V. After replaying DMC 1 - 4 + DmC in the past 6 months, made me realize that I don’t like playing as Nemo. He feels underpowered at times, and his skillset are kinda boring compared to Dante.
In DMC V, I enjoyed my time playing as Dante and V.
V is a change of pace, being slower and ranged, while Dante has really satisfying moves and weapons. I like Nemo’s robotic arm, but the idea that it’s a consumable and sometimes you might ended up picking up an arm that you are not familiar with, does disrupt the flow. Even his basic swordplay feels kinda lacking.
I could see people who became deaf-mute using it. Apple has Personal Voice for iOS that allows people who are losing their voice to use it to connect to their loved ones.
For some personal reasons, I finally have access to 2 of my old guitars, a 6 string ESP Alex Skolnick signature, and a 7 string ESP Viper.
The 6 string was full of rust, and I accidentally broke the nut, I managed to replace the rusted screws and the broken nut.
The 7 string was okay, but I accidentally got a part of a string stuck inside the machine head. Went and bought 2 sets of Gotoh machine heads, drilled some extra holes, and replaced them.
Also, either its humidity or because I never properly adjusted it, the strings were buzzing. So I adjusted the truss rod. The adjustment for 7 string went okay, it plays ok, the action is low enough that I can play it smoothly. But for the 6 string, it seems problematic, I need to adjust the truss rod really tight that it starts to squeak (I’m afraid it might break the neck), so that the 3 thickest string won’t touch the first fret. Let’s see whether the guitar would break into two by the end of the week.
Anyway, since I’ve been playing 8 string guitar (horribly) for the past year, my hand is now so used to the wide neck that 7 string really feels small and easier to play than before.
I followed a guide, and finally got my infinite rocket launcher around 2 hour 41 mins!
Skipped all the cutscenes, got the bad ending, I have no idea what’s happening in the game, and somewhat learned some speed running moves (e.g. stair skating and kiting).
I’m excited to finally playing the game properly (with rocket launcher) in the future, both Chris and Jill scenarios.
There’s quite a lot of work involved, I used the IGN video walkthrough, spliced the video into like 13 parts for 13 saves, then just redo those parts until I feel like I’ve finished the section without losing too much time
Final Fantasy 7
I’m replaying it again, the last time I finished this game must be at least a decade ago.
It’s still my favorite mainline FF, I still love the Materia system and how you can chain them together. The combat is still very speedy, especially compared to FF9, the characters and story still hold up. You can definitely see Shinra Corp existing in our society right now.
I’m also surprised at the parts I’ve missed. After the temple morphed into the black materia, did Cloud shove Aeris to the ground and punch her repeatedly? I was shocked at that scene, didn’t realize what was happening when I was younger.
With knowledge about what’s happening with Crisis Core and FF7 Remake in hand, now I could definitely understand some of those scenes, the voices Cloud is hearing, etc.
I’m playing the PS4 remaster / re-release. Liking the QoL features (fast forward, battle assist), but there’s still an unfixed bug where the music would just stop playing.
I remember when Joe Rogan was getting giant paycheck from Spotify promoting antivax stuff, and people talked about moving to Apple Music, but it feels like many just stuck with Spotify.
I came across a post on instagram that says that Al Yankovic’s 80 million stream on playlist only netted him enough money to buy a sandwich.
Also, Spotify underpaying artists, making fake playlists with cover artists to undermine artists, are not new. It feels like the mainstream crowd just doesn’t care, which pushes me further into depression.
I’m at the final chapter of the game, and here’s my thoughts:
The game has adopted many bad trends from other games that it becomes annoying halfway thru the game, here are some of my complaints:
The dialogue, a lot of useless fluff dialogues that takes extra 2 seconds for the characters to animate. If there’s 10 people in the scene, then those 10 feel the need to chime in to say something frivolous.
Just can’t get emotionally invested in the character, maybe it’s the writing, maybe they just follow cookie cutter anime tropes most of the time (thrown in some ‘twist’ later on). I weirdly care more about the side characters from Lacrimosa than this one.
The constant interruption of the flow. You gained control of your character, moved to main/side quest point, cutscene, walked forward 10 steps, another cutscene. And the problem is, most cutscenes are just insubstantial.
Side quests that are not side quests anymore, since you need them to remove those artificial barriers. You can farm nox, but it’s way slower. Side quests also suffer from ‘everything needs lengthy writing’ RPG syndrome nowadays. Better writing, not more writing. I had the same issue with Horizon Forbidden West, where most side quests contain way too much dialogue that’s been used to pad the game to 100+ hours, where it could be a 30 hour game.
The raids / grimwald sections are bit too much. I like how they are mostly optional in Lacrimosa. In this game, you even need to do them to remove the barriers to optional area.
Third Eye / detective mode is a mechanic that devs should move away from. Just outline the points of interest, don’t make it so it’s hard to see everything else.
The lock-on in combat is a wild mess for me. I don’t know whether it’s my settings, or the game.
On the other hand, what I like about this game:
The vertical mobility, that’s to shake up the exploration. The problem is it’s kinda janky, I’d often fall down after grappling to a ledge, because the ledge is too small. Wall run often ends up being blocked, etc. I hope that they will polish the mechanic more in the future. In combat though, I barely use them to fight enemies thanks to the messy lock-on
I enjoy doing the collectibles (petals, treasures, graffitis) in this game.
Besides that I’ve been slowly progerssing Resident Evil HD Remake, trying to get infinite rocket launcher.