Mera'din

Still been tearing through content in Destiny 2 that I hadn't played since stopping a couple years ago. Been fun for the most part but I'm starting to finally run out of content that I can do by myself and/or with matchmaking and will have to start finding people for things. I've tried to narrow my focus to just finding all the lore items so I can get filled in on story stuff since that was always my favorite part anyway but there's going to be a decent amount of that out of my reach unless I find groups too from the looks of it. Been getting a lot of great stuff for gear though, and have been tripping over Exotic stuff left and right so that's been satisfying. They still time gate a lot of stuff though which is a bit obnoxious when trying to catch up on things, but with as much as there is for me to do, at least it lets me space things out and let me work on different things over time. Just hard to keep track of everything I need to do, and one set of lore books is basically going to be a 21 week process from what it looks like. Luckily, that's from content that's not being "vaulted" in November so there's no rush with it. Slowly been knocking out things on the planets they're removing as I go also. Don't know that I could keep this up if I had something else I wanted to play right now, but it's a fun distraction while I wait for something else to come out (or I decide I feel like playing one of the many games I haven't even started yet. >_> )

I'm sure it's purely from 20+ years of use at this point, but the Playstation controller for me. The design has remained relatively unchanged over the years and I prefer it over everything else by this point. Even bought an adapter so I can use a PS3/4 controller for my Switch.

Yeah, Detroit had a lot to it. Even after getting the plat there was still stuff on the flow chart I didn't have. As of the last time I played it, there was stuff that nobody had figured out how to unlock yet (a couple of them were likely just bugged). I'm sure everything has been figured out by now, but I thought that was cool. The game has some rough spots (because every David Cage game is a ridiculous, overblown self-masturbatory production), but overall it's easily the best that Quantic Dream has done by far and it felt like it had some REAL choice to it a lot more often than their other games. They did an excellent job with the characters and acting too. I still do a double take anytime I see one of the actors from it in a live action show/movie. XD I've pretty much just been playing Destiny 2 at the moment. Enjoying just finding stuff and doing random quests and stuff that I never did before while I can since they're locking off all the Year 1 stuff (and then some) when the next expansion comes out. I like a lot of what they've done with the game while I stopped playing. Still a lot of messy shit, but it is worlds better than it was at launch (imagine that, a live service game that was trash at launch and got better? ). Mostly just having fun catching up on story stuff I've missed out on since I've always really enjoyed the world building in the series.

I'm in the middle of 'The Old Guard' right now. Pretty cool so far. Watched 'Palm Springs' Saturday Night. Was actually pretty great. It's basically "Groundhog Day by way of The Lonely Island" and it was exactly what I wanted at that point. Not as out and out ridiculous as the previous movies they've done, and had some deeper parts that were kind of nice. All around solid movie overall. Also watched 'Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga'. Went in for a decent but throw away Will Ferrell movie and was not disappointed. Actually had some interesting story elements that they turned on their heads from what I was expecting out of a semi-cliche story so points in that regard. Had some pretty great bits in it. Not bad for a fluff comedy movie to waste some time on.

Oh damn, that's smooth as hell if that's true. I can totally get behind that.

I THINK I might know what he's talking about, but it's hard to say based on a pure time mark because I tend to play games slower than other people. I also don't think I came across anything in particular that pissed me off to ever stop playing (though I did take a couple breaks due to just how overwhelming depressing the tone of the story is 95% of the game) or that I felt changed the scope of the game. The tone of the game is pretty consistent (which isn't a good thing ultimately I think), and it more outstays its welcome than anything IMO. I still consider it a good game, it just needed some better editing at the very least. The game is fundamentally better than the first by pretty solid leaps over the first one imo (though quite a bit easier most the time at least in part due to them making so many improvements), but from a story perspective I think it falls a bit short of the first in tonal quality and focus. Also, mild gameplay spoiler strictly about enemy types: Depending on how you feel about depictions of violence to animals, you may not want to bother. It's not a deal breaker for me, but I know it can be for a lot of people and as soon I saw an enemy with a dog at one point, my first thought was "Well I see where this is going and it already feels unnecessary".

16.) The Last of Us Part 2 Well that was certainly something. Gameplay improved upon in almost every way (except character skill upgrades) over the first, it has the most amazing Accessibility features I've EVER seen in a game, and I can honestly say (ironically enough) if THIS one had an online multiplayer mode, I might actually consider it (assuming they didn't drown half the trophy list in ridiculous BS for it). The story was a bit... much? It was like 5-10 hours too long at least (think my original playthrough of 1 was like 20 hours? This one was 40). Not that I don't love long games, but the story REALLY lost focus by the end and should have ended before the last 'section' of the game (which seems to be the general consensus), and it felt even longer because it was a mostly miserable experience emotionally. The only saving grace were pretty much all of the flashback scenes in that regard. Not to say that I didn't like it, I enjoyed it quite a lot. Visually the game was beautiful, but it was SO hyper violent that there was a lot of tactless and tasteless stuff going on. If I headshot a dude, I REALLY don't need the ability to find his corpse and see exactly where and how big of a hole I made in his head with ridiculous detail (to name the least of it). Considering some of the controversy Naughty Dog has been having to deal with, this level of detail is beyond unnecessary imo. There was a particular fight scene where I can only imagine the expression on my face as I went through it. It went from fun to obnoxiously unpleasant pretty damn quick in places.

Starting Sunday I get my 10% pay back they they took like 3 months ago, so yay for that. And then they're immediately going to start making us clock out for lunches now which is a loss of about 3.5 hours per pay period (and also completely cock blocks a majority of the overtime we get) which more or less amounts to a 5% cut sooooo we get 5% back? >_> Interested to see how this goes considering some of our shifts only have 3 people on them at any given time (used to have 5). Because the second I clock out, my radio is off and I don't care if something starts on fire, they can fuck right off until that 30 min. is done. In the broader scheme of things, we've loosened up a bit. We don't really GO anywhere anyway, but our parents have started visiting again in limited capacity. Minnesota has been... OKAY with everything. We have a decent number of weird jackasses, but nothing as ridiculous as I've seen elsewhere for the most part. No generalized mask requirement yet, but most businesses are having their employees wear them.

Yeah, the game is looking better with everything they show. the 'Braindance' stuff alone has super interested.

Started up The Last of Us 2 yesterday. Game is beautiful and I feel like they've really improved on every aspect of the game so far over the first. Only thing I don't care for is the character upgrade system. In the first one you can upgrade whatever particular thing you wanted and now it forces you through a 'tree' of abilities and you have to upgrade things down the line of stuff instead which I find annoying. I absolutely don't need to be able to craft shit faster, thanks. >:| Also have been playing a little bit of Destiny 2 again. The last expansion was on sale and I haven't played in a year so I figured what the hell. Might as well catch up on some story stuff before the next thing comes out since that's story I've been waiting for since the original game. Waiting a year is apparently the way to go from a game mechanics aspect for the game because everything that drops is an upgrade. Don't have to worry about shit and can just enjoy the story and there is more than enough to do without it turning into a dumb grind-fest. XD

So release date has been pushed back again, from September to November.

15.) Persona 5 Royal Jesus I think that was longer than P4 Golden. 225 hours. Got the platinum in one play through though so that was nice. Not nearly as grindy as Golden was (or the original P5 for that matter from what I've seen of its list). Great game though. Combat mechanics were stellar. Overall, I think I liked it better than 4 though it felt like some of the more intricate story elements got flubbed a little (mostly with the added stuff for Royal). All around enjoyable experience. Also did end up playing through Last of Us: Left Behind. Solid little DLC story. Easier than the main game overall, and it feels like it ended in an awkward place but it was a nice distraction while waiting for Last of Us 2.

Just saw that the Spider-man thing isn't actually a full game. It's a standalone expansion thing like Sony likes to do with their first party devs these days. Not that I have any particular problem with that, but it feels like it takes away from it a bit. At least it'll only be like $30 at that point probably. Also, missed a trailer when I put up the other ones. This is one of the ones I found interesting too (though need to wait for actual game play before I know if I'll even want to play it I guess). Pragmata

I at least like it better than the dev kit thing that was floating around, and we knew what it would be called instead of being disappointed by the code name overshadowing what the console is actually named like Microsoft likes to do. Would definitely prefer it and the controller all black but it could certainly be worse. Supposedly the price listing that popped up on Amazon UK was a "dummy listing". At the very least I'm hoping it was a ploy to get a large price point circulating so it sounds a lot better when they reveal it's actually closer to a $500 price range.

Okay, redoing my original post since when I went to edit the first one it wouldn't let me type anything between the videos so I couldn't edit in spoiler tags. X_x Trailers: Mavel's Spider-man: Miles Morales GTAV/GTA Online moving to PS5 (also something about free game currency every month on PS4 until it releases I guess?) Project Athia (New Square-Enix thing using their fancy engine they never seem to be able to make a game on) Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Stray (Play as cat in world where humans are extinct and robots have replaced them? That's the impression I got anyway) Returnal (looks interesting despite 'Revengence' level of bad naming convention) Destruction Allstars (Destruction Derby meets Overwatch style game? I don't really know how to describe this otherwise) Sackboy: A Big Adventure Oddworld: Soulstorm Kena: Bridge of Spirits (might be neat) Goodbye Volcano High (dinosaur 'furry' drama... game... thing? ) Ghostwire: Tokyo (Been waiting to see gameplay for this. May have potential) Jett: The Far Shore (some kind of space colonization thing? No gameplay so hard to say what it will be) Godfall (Looked interesting when it revealed at the game awards, but seems straight forward and uninteresting in terms of gameplay. Will wait and see on this one) NBA 2K21 Gran Turismo 7 (It definitely appears to be Gran Turismo) Solar Ash (stylized artsy indy game looking thing. might be neat) Demon's Souls (remake I guess? Looks pretty) Resident Evil 8 (this was fun to watch because no idea what it was at first reminded me of when they revealed the 'Biohazard' one set in the house with the fucked up family) Deathloop (remember this from a Bethesda E3 thing. Actually looks like it has potential though also potentially frustrating) Little Devil Inside (might be cool. Not sure. Artsy looking thing but vague trailer confuses me about what its actually about) Hitman III (Hitman gonna hit) Astro's Playroom (This was bound to happen eventually I guess) Bugsnax (What in the actual fuck did I just watch?) Horizon: Forbidden West Hardware Reveal

EDIT: Since I fucked up posting the trailers the first time and didn't want to kill anyones device, I reposted all the trailers properly with spoiler tags on my next post and deleted the ones here.

PS5 event is going right now. Some interesting things to see (NEW SPIDERMAN) but haven't seen the console itself yet. They sure spent a lot of effort making like 2 dozen different ways of animating stylized variations of the PS logo their button logo thing though. XD Edit: Showed system at the end. After like 3 mins of overblown obfuscation. Definitely went for more of a style angle than XBox. Looks fancy. Like some sort of modern art fixture or something. Will be a "digital edition" with no disk drive. No idea how much that will effect the price. If the amazon UK leak thing is to be believed there will be a 1TB and 2TB option with the latter being around $750. No date shown either. I'm sure they'll put all of that in a press release or through interviews before much longer since this was all about hype and not the disappointing reality to follow.

Saw a little bit more about what they're doing and I'm honestly mad. It sounds like EXACTLY what I theorized/hoping was going to be done at the beginning of Destiny 2. IE: Exo-Stranger comes back and is like "U NEED DIS" and boom. New elemental option for each class. Would have made a lot more sense to do this when the core story in 2 was all about "FUCK YOU AND YOUR LIGHT. IT'S MINE NOW". But whatever I guess. Maybe this will be cool. If I find the time to actually play through the like year worth of stuff I haven't even looked at yet, maybe I'll check it out. Not keen on them "vaulting" content though like they're fucking Disney or something though and their excuse for it is paper fucking thin like usual. MMOs exist and don't seem to need to disable content to keep their game stable even after 10+ years of added content. FIgure it out you jackasses.

Honestly, I might be disappointed if it isn't (lovably) bad.

Holy shit. They're actually using the Exo-Stranger again? It only took them 6 fucking years. I wonder if she has time to explain now? >_>

14.) The Last of Us: Remastered Got through it faster than I thought I would so all set for when 2 comes out. Will be able to play through the prequel thing too which I never got to play before. Used a guide this time to make sure I got all the collectibles which definitely boosted my completion for the game vs the PS3 version (had 6% trophies for that and like 30% this time). If I wanted to go through the game again on New Game+ I could probably manage a fair bit more, but not going to bother since I know I'm not going to go for the Platinum anyway. Stupid ass multiplayer bullshit. >:| Game is still fantastic. Held up really well overall. Load time even on PS4 when you're starting up the game is still pretty horrendous though. XD

Yeah, I think I'm sitting at 6% on the PS3 version because I didn't even get all the collectibles and didn't want to play through again after trying the multiplayer and discovering it was absolute trash. I think you had to play something like 60 matches at MINIMUM if it went perfectly for you (fat fucking chance of that happening). Maybe if the multiplayer was actually fun it would have been fine, but the only multiplayer I've played that was worse than that was probably the one on Tomb Raider. I was really hoping they'd change it for the Remaster, but that is clearly not the case. At least I'll be able to play Left Behind now since it comes with that version. For inFamous, I believe I did all 3 of them and they weren't too bad. Just a couple of grindy things here and there. inFamous: First Light had some obnoxious score and/or time based ones if I recall so I noped right off of that one however. XD Was honestly surprised they even gave it at Platinum since it was a short side-game standalone DLC type of thing. Though that's apparently been how they do those this generation. Didn't have it with Left Behind, bu they did it for both inFamous: First Light and Uncharted: Lost Legacy.

Still working my way through Persona 5 Royal (Over 170 hours and counting yet on my first play through. X_x ). Also started up The Last of Us: Remastered to do a refresher on the story before 2 comes out. Not looking forward to getting less than 10% of the trophies in the game again though. Fucking Naughty Dog. XD

13.) Quantum Break I wanted to play this one back when it came out, but between it being XBox (or Windows Store) exclusive, and hearing some iffy things about it, I ended up skipping on it and more or less forgetting it existed. After playing through most of Remedy's other games after loving Control, it went on sale on Steam so I finally bought it. Glad I did. Was really fun, and had a pretty interesting story (though a mildly annoying ending that begs for a sequel, much like Alan Wake). You can REALLY see the evolution of their game engine too going from Alan Wake, to this and then ultimately Control. This gameplay was definitely a stepping stone to what they did in Control overall. Not that means it was bad by any stretch of the imagination. A little clunky at times, but very enjoyable overall. I'm a fan of a lot of the actors they used in it too so that definitely helped. The live action "episodes" in between each act that mostly followed side characters were really engaging too which I was surprised by. Though how you watch them is a bit awkward. It legitimately streams it in-game from their servers which makes the quality vary at times. Really wish their was a download option (though it would apparently be like 40GB of data) just in case they ever close the server they're on down. Though I suppose they're probably on YouTube at this point too.

12.) Final Fantasy VII Remake Completely forgot to post in here when I first beat it since I was actively talking about it in the other topic. Got the Platinum last night and cleaned up the Play Log for full 100% completion earlier today. Think my final time at Plat was around 101.5 hours. Closer to 103 when I finished everything else. Really looking forward to seeing what they do with future entries. Not looking forward to how long it will probably take. XD