Mera'din

Aaaaand my whole company just got (at least) 10% sliced off their pay for (at minimum) the next 3 months, they removed the employer contributions on our 401k, and we're on lockdown from any overtime. Amounts to approx. a $2.25 per hour pay cut for me personally. I now make less than I did when I started this job 3 years ago. Attempting to mitigate the damage by increasing my withholding limit for Fed/State taxes (let them take more than necessary just to be safe normally), bottoming out my own 401k contribution (should add about 5% back on), and reducing my HSA contribution.

Ch. 8 with around 16 hours of play time. Specifically I'm in the Sector 5 slums doing side quests at the moment.

So I knew that they had replaced all the VAs, but hadn't actually looked at WHO was doing the voices. As such, Sephiroth is STILL voiced by someone known for playing Superman. Specifically, it's Tyler Hoechlin who plays Superman in Supergirl and the other DC TV shows on CW.

I believe it's a one year exclusive on Playstation and then it will come out on Xbox. There have also been insinuations of a PC port but nothing specific has been said. Completely forgot to mention the NPC conversations. I'm constantly stopping to listen to them, and they change regularly as you progress through the story. Of particular note to me was the random people you would run into in the slums that were from the plate but stuck down there because of what you did. Especially the Shinra employees. Does an excellent job of showing both sides of the conflict from the "little guy" perspective. Also liked how much more emphasis they put on the fact that Barret's AVALANCE cell wasn't the only on and was actually kicked out of the main organization. If I remember correctly, they only kind of insinuate that in the original (the separate cell part anyway, not sure if they use the rest) and it gets glossed over pretty heavily though they may have elaborated on it in some of the compilation stuff that I'm forgetting.

Game is fantastic so far. They DEFINITELY added a lot of shit onto the original stuff. I'm like 11 hours in and JUST got to Reactor 5. They really fleshed out some of the side characters too, Jessie especially. Some interesting new characters and story elements too and I'm looking forward to seeing how everything plays out. The level design is visually excellent too. Lots of little details and interesting things to look at throughout the areas I've seen. Though the layout is pretty "hallway" like a lot of the time (not faulting it for that since it was pretty much the same in the original while in Midgar), it's laid out organically enough that it doesn't feel stilted and awkward like FFXIII did. Combat gets a bit chaotic sometimes, and it can be hard to follow and properly dodge/block stuff a lot of the time. Each character feels unique to play as though, and switching between them feels rewarding in the right situations. As crazy as some fights can get though it at least isn't visually vomiting glow effects all over your screen every 2 seconds like KH3 tended to do. >_> Really impressed with the other game systems though. Materia works almost exactly like it did in the original, with some specific modifications where needed due to the altered gameplay (only 1 summon materia per character for example, and you can't just use them whenever you feel like it). They put a weapon upgrade system into as well so you're not relying on hunting down a new weapon to increase your damage and other stats. Each level you get unlocks SP for the weapon and you use that to unlock stat nodes on the weapon itself (not unlike a super simplified FFX-style sphere grid type of thing). Any weapons you acquire are have the same SP unlocked as what you currently have. Each weapon also has an ability tied to it that after extended use becomes permanent on your character regardless of weapon. Only other real complaint is I'm not a huge fan of some of the new voice actors. MOST of them are similar enough to the ones they've always used before that it's mostly negligible, but there's a couple that are just different enough to rub me the wrong way. Also not a fan of how Square handled this part of it either. From what I've read previously, most of the old VA's were completely blown off when it came to this (David Hayder style). Like most of the main characters literally didn't know they wouldn't be doing voices in the game until the first trailer came out that had the characters speaking and it wasn't them. I get it for a few who came off as pretty wooden most the time, but there are a couple that I'm really disappointed they don't have for it. Though I haven't seen the Turks in the game yet, I'm of the opinion that not using Quinton Flynn and Cripsin Freeman for Reno and Rude is downright stupid. Out of who I've actually heard so far though, I'm upset about George Newbern. Got really used to Sephiroth sounding like evil Superman over the last 15 years. XD

I never had much issue with battery life in mine initially. However, they did seem to start losing charge life a lot faster than others. All my PS3 controllers are still fine, but I've legitimately had to buy replacement batteries for 2 PS4 controllers at this point and switch them out which would be fine except you can only find cheap 3rd party replacements that don't work worth shit.

From what I've read, even a physical copy is going to be an hours worth of installing shit off the disk. Get your harddrive ready. XD

The only thing I can think of as a reason for the bulkier design is because of all the haptic response vibration shit they're supposed to be doing with it. Which hoenstly, as interesting as that sounds, I don't know that I care enough for them to alter the feel of the controller THAT much for it. Hopefully you can just synch a PS4 controller to the thing as an alternative if it feels too weird.

^ This. It looks like a modified design of what they originally said was going to be the PS3 controller (the weird batarang looking thing). This looks bulkier than I would want it to be, but maybe it'll be okay. Hard to tell how big it actually is without a comparison but it looks more like an XBox controller than a Playstation one as is.

The regional grocery chain here is starting to get a bit more serious. They have plastic guards in front of the cashiers, and direction lines in all the aisles turning everything into 'one way streets' so nobody crosses paths and you're not allowed to put anything on the conveyor at checkout until the person in front of you is done and the cashier has sanitized the whole thing. They also have someone standing at the doors doing nothing but sanitizing carts as they get put back most the times I've gone through there. Everyone that is working there is also getting a 10% pay increase while this is going on as "hazard pay" which is better than a lot of places I've seen.

Part of it is I was never a fan of the direction the MGS games started heading in the first place. The first is by far my favorite, and I've been slowly losing interest since 3. I played 4 for the sheer spectacle of it, and had completely lost interest after playing Portable Ops and seeing Peace Walker and didn't have much interest in Ground Zeroes in the first place. Everything I saw about what they were doing with 5 put me off even before Konami went full retard and catapulted Kojima. Ultimately there's a lot of little things that rubbed me the wrong way for long enough that I eventually became unable to reconcile it and gave up.

I tried playing it a few months ago and after about 30 min. I got mad and deleted the fucking thing. I was having absolutely no fun playing it at all and it just felt too different from what I remember enjoying from an MGS game that I couldn't get into it at all. Have no intention of playing 5 at this point either because of it.

In reference to web's satan one: Also this:

11.) Control: The Foundation First expansion came out for Control and I'm counting it because it had a pretty decent length and good amount of extra content and it did not disappoint. Some interesting hidden things too. Probably the most ridiculous being you can find these 8 hidden lucky cat statues throughout the expansion the require some puzzle solving to hunt down in a few cases, and as you find them they gather around another cat statue and unlock these massive stone slab doors that lead to a room: You get a pair of cat ears as a reward. XD The couple patches they've put out since I stopped playing seem to have really helped the performance too. The only stuttering I get now is coming out of the pause menu. The regular menus and map don't cause it anymore. Still some framerate loss when action gets really heavy, but not near as bad as it was at launch and better than I would expect it to for all the effects the game throws around. This is probably the first game I had played where I actually wish I had a PS4 Pro or an even better PC. Apparently the ray tracing and DLSS 2.0 support make it crazy good looking.

Fucking finally. Been waiting for this for what feels like forever. Will give me a good reason to finally make use of the switch. Kids are going to hate me in May. XD

10.) Baldur's Gate Interesting game. Not entire sure I "liked" it. D&D stuff usually doesn't do much for me. Something about the setting has always managed to put me off a little, but the game had some cool bits to it and in terms of depth there is SO much to it that many other RPGs should have taken note of, both in the past and now. Story eventually got me interested, but I never quite managed to enjoy the game play. One part of the story NEARLY elevated it for me too, but it was more of a psych-out moment that ended up not being nearly as crazy as I thought it was at first. Managed to get nearly 90% of the trophies in one go, but one of the ones I have left is beating it on the absolute highest difficulty and considering how much trouble I had with the game on Easy in places, I'm going to nope the fuck out of that right now.

They've extended our school closure at the very least it looks like. March 30th was originally going to be the last day and they didn't prep any schoolwork for anyone, but now they sent out a plan for 'distance learning' and we have to go pick up a packet tomorrow or Thurs. for my 7 year old. Rumors have been running about various people who work in the energy and agriculture businesses here in MN getting travel vouchers just in case we go into full lockdown. Our cases have been jumping pretty steadily (only like 5 or so nearby and none in our county yet though), but I'm hoping it doesn't hit that point outside of the twin cities.

Pretty much same here. The state isn't in total shutdown, but schools are closed and non-essential businesses have restrictions (bars, gyms, and "public gathering" places/events are closed, restaurants are drive thru/delivery/take out only, etc. ). Even if we do shut down completely though, my job is one of the listed essential ones so I'll be working regardless of how bad it gets unless I get sick.

I don't feel as if my buying is TOO ridiculous (now that I've started avoiding Steam sales at least. XD ). I get a decent amount of build up, but when I hit dead periods like the past 3 months where I don't want anything that is coming out, I'm able to clear through a good number of titles. There's only a couple times in the past few years I felt like there are times when I shouldn't have bothered buying something.

Do you buy as many new (or new-to-you) games as you used to? More? Less? More for sure. More than I honestly need to considering some of my backlog. Do you play games as much as you used to? Roughly equal? I think? Hard to say with kids and work, but because I work overnights, my sleep schedule saves me here a bit vs. some people. On my days off I typically have a 5-6 hour free time after everyone goes to bed that I can use purely for gaming (though I go to the fitness center to work out for about an hour or so a lot of the time) and that's what I typically use it for. I get MAYBE an hour on days I do work if I'm lucky. On rare occasion I'll get 2. Do you now buy more digital compared to in the past when it was more or all physical? Do you stream games? Slightly more digital now. I still buy a lot of games new and can typically find them cheaper physical that way (Amazon will put pre-order games on "sale" randomly and I'll order them then if it's something I know I'll play. Have a number of games set at $50 when they release if I chose to get them). If there's no discount on physical I'll consider digital or if there's a better sale price digitally. It flip flops a lot on what I can get cheaper. If there's no difference one way or the other I've started getting things digital more purely out of convenience. If there's a solid collector's edition I'll make an exception otherwise. No streaming really. Done some in-home from PS4 to computer a few years ago that actually worked pretty well but typically don't need to do that. Stadia is a fucking joke. From what I've heard, Nvidia's option was pretty solid, but now that it's out of beta, some of the publishers are being weird about it.

It was fine for a once through. There were some legitimately cool scenes in the game, and a couple decent story bits. Most of the rest of it was throw away though. I don't regret playing it, but would definitely not play it again. Might be a while on Bioshock Infinite though. The massive quantity of RPG releases this year is about to start, and I made the mistake of starting Baldur's Gate in the dead space I have left.

Probably better that way honestly. All of it happens before the games, and there are a few details (especially from Witcher 3) that would spoil some things.

Yeah, 75% of the time, best case scenario is it becomes so weirdly unobtrusive that it's almost not there and you miss the feel of the original. Worst case it becomes a legitimate distraction (looking at you FFX). I legitimately bought the PS4 version of the FFX/X-2 collection after already having it on PS3 because it had the added feature of being able to switch back to the original music. Some have been good, and not everything I heard in the demo was like that (the opening music was great and the initial battle music was solid) but I think it's going to be a mixed bag. It bothers me most because they've already DONE orchestral releases of the music from the game before that sounded great. Why not use those? Why go overboard and do a NEW orchestral arrangement that ends up being less good? Seems like a waste of time, money and effort.