Mera'din

Someone is legit going to get shot over this, aren't they?

Got a good deal on the game on Amazon so I picked it up. So far I'm really enjoying it though I'm not very far in. Exploration has been solid, light saber customization is interesting, and there are a bunch of cosmetic things that are all earned through gameplay. Not a microtransaction or looming DLC in sight. Gameplay is pretty is pretty heavily focused on blocking, parrying and dodging attacks and you can get wrecked pretty fast if you don't know what you're doing. Skill points earned from leveling can be put into a skill tree with 3 categories: force powers, light saber, and survivability. Can't see how interesting those get yet though as you can only see the most immediate skills available.

Still really enjoying a few chapters in. I can't even say why. It literally boils down to a fetch quest simulator most of the time but it's fucking facinating. Story and world are really interesting. Also, this:

Yep. It's post Empire. Which is nice, the few books they've done in that time gap have been pretty good. I really enjoyed it overall and look forward to them going deeper into the Mandalorian history. The quick flashbacks they showed in the episode looked WAY more interesting than the stuff dealing with them in Rebels.

Yeah, that part was a little disorienting at first. Took me a few min. to find a way past the mountain-y bit.

They were definitely mostly manageable, especially if you had the right companions with you. There were only a handful of times I saw ones that required 100 in a skill to do and only one of those was in a weirdly early place in the game that I noticed. By the last couple areas there were a number of things that required 100 in hacking to open but that was the most prolific one that I saw. There honestly may have been more though, I think I had the option turned on that hid dialogue options that weren't at least close to your level in that skill.

Just finished up Outer Worlds today and am moving on to Death Stranding. Was a little leery of this one, but most of what I was seeing in reviews made it seem like something I wouldn't mind playing and so far I'm enjoying it. Also wanted to see what Kojima had in him after getting out from under Konami's thumb. The weird shit in the game so far alone was good enough for me. XD

26.) The Outer Worlds I did high intelligence (though I fucked it up by taking a concussion flaw part way through) and there were definitely some interesting options with it. I hear super low intelligence makes for some interesting stuff too (unlocks "dumb speak" speach options). Including a completely different ending if do specific things at the end. Definitely going to play through it again once the influx of new games I want to play dies down (looks like a dry spell for Dec. - Feb. for me at least) and I have time to revisit it. Loved the leveling system in the game and the mechanics they had in place for everything to feel useful. Having social skills affect combat (and some combat skills adding options to social encounters) was really nice. Very light on bugs too. Only a couple things that I saw that stood out and most of those were more visually oriented anyway and they already have a lot of things lined up to fix or requests to add in from the looks of the list on their forum too so that's cool. Easily one of the best games to come out this year.

Played for an hour or so now that I've finished a run through of Outer Worlds. Definitely weird and interesting. Bulk of the game seems like an 'extreme' walking simulator for lack of a better description, but the stealth bits can get really intense and the story is pure, unfiltered Kojima so it's definitely holding my attention. Definitely not for everyone though.

Anyone picked it up yet? I got it, but haven't tried it out. Need to finish Outer Worlds first.

As long as Matt Mercer is doing a voice/voices in it too (only saw mention of the actual PCs from Critical Role in the article I looked up) then I'm game. I love that guy. XD

Not that I disagree with you Shade, but some of that is misleading. The thing with Jayne happened WAY before Blizzcon, back before they had even responded and reduced the casters and Blitzchung's punishment (the tweet was from the day after Blitzchung's protest and was removed the same day it was put up). If they have in fact started to adjust their stance since then, this doesn't really apply as evidence to the contrary. Like I said though, time will tell. Not terribly promising either way with how things have been however. Blizzard's half assed, mostly hollow efforts are at least a step up from what Riot is doing. A few days after the stuff with Blitzchung happened, Riot released a statement effectively warning their casters and players away from making political comments on their broadcasts. This coming shortly after it was noted that the team "Hong Kong Attitude" never had their full team name spoken on air and casters regularly cut themselves off from saying the name and quickly altered it to "HKA" instead (though Riot claims that wasn't intentional or driven by them). It's also important to note that Riot Games is WHOLLY owned by Tencent. >_> On a side note, Blitzchung has been signed to a Hearthstone pro team, so he'll be ready to go when he can compete again at least. The team sighted that they value "character and integrity" as much as skill in the announcement. Back on topic, I'm really liking the systems I'm seeing for D4 so far. Especially how weapons (for Barbarian), and forms (for Druid) can transition with the ability you use. It's a really neat concept. Art direction is really cool too. Watched some of the art presentation where they talked about all the different "families" of monsters they'll have. Hopefully that means a bigger variety overall than we saw in D3.

Think I still have a ways to go. My wife finished it up yesterday but it's my long work week so I haven't had a lot of time for it. Hoping to finish it up next week before Death Stranding comes out.

The apology was fine if they DO actually follow through with 'actions'. Time will tell. D4 looks cool as hell so far though for sure. As long as they don't pull some auction house level fuckery again, we should be good. Also, not once mentioning or acknowledging Diablo: Immortals was probably a good start. We'll see if that sticks.

Or, you know, just... played the game. Like seriously, I have nearly EVERY thing unlocked in the game and have not spent any actual money on it outside of buying the game. And that's even with splitting my time between more than one version of the game. Not that there isn't a better way to do it, but calling it something that "holds the game back" is being extremely melodramatic. The only things holding the game back is their weirdly questionable balancing choices at any given time and their insistence on band-aiding legit problems with the competitive mode instead of finding a real solution. Not cosmetic distribution methods. Questionable practice or not, I'd take that any day over being charged for new maps and/or characters. More to the subject at hand, this is pretty much exactly what I wanted and their decisions to make the PvP linked with the first game to not split their userbase is downright impressive. I was honestly expecting the game to basically be the PvE, but would function as a sort of 'expansion' for the original game for the PvP side and unlock a bunch of new stuff there to avoid those issues (at best). Not just have the two function equally with all the same PvP content. Between how this and Diablo 4 look so far, this feels more like the Blizzard of old than it has in a while. Kind of worried that the other shoe is gonna drop and we're gonna get some twisted stupid shit that seeps out of all of this sooner or later. >_> Side note: Jeff being snarky as fuck about shit getting leaked was fucking hilarious.

Really happy with everything visually that I've seen. Definitely looking forward to Dec. 20th.

Game is wonderful. Also, I love that the nicest characters in the game (so far at least) are effectively the mob leader and the black market trader. Taking my time as well. Been playing quite a bit but just got to Monarch.

Holy shit. They just keep digging themselves deeper with that game. And this is shortly after announcing that NPCs would be delayed until next year.

Looks like production has been delayed for 7 to 9 months. John Cho injured his knee severely during a shoot and it's going to require surgery and what not before they can start up again. https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2019/10/19/john-cho-injured-netflixs-cowboy-bebop/4036613002/

Game has been pushed back. Honestly the right decision and kind of figured this is what would happen after they announced they wouldn't have a playable demo at PDXCON anymore last month. No concrete date just that it will for sure still be in 2020. Probably a good move even if they didn't need the extra time with all the other big stuff coming out in Q1. Here's the statement:

25.) Greedfall REALLY solid game. Action RPG reminiscent of the original Dragon Age made by a smaller studio. It's rough around the edges (lots of little things that would have been nice to see in he game), but it can be forgiven most of that considering the quality everywhere else. I wasn't sure how much I would be into it at first because I'm not generally a fan of the 18th century colonial aesthetic it has but it ended up being really interesting. Combat was fun once you get used to it and you can pick up any skill you want regardless of your starting "class" so you can customize in interesting ways. Story had a lot of interesting twists I wasn't expecting, and choices you make have a number of impacts both small and large throughout the game. Even the companions you take with you on certain quests can make them easier or harder to complete in a satisfactory way depending on what you're trying to do . At one point there is even a companion quest that depending on how it goes (or doesn't go), COMPLETELY changes how a major plot point unfolds around the middle of the game. Was interesting to see the little things that would change for simple choices between my play through and my wife's. There are some key choices that determine the brunt of the ending you get but lots of little things that affect it as well therein. It's not anything groundbreaking, and it's shorter than most RPGs of this nature (think I did everything I could find in the game and finished it in about 60 hours), but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Launched at $50 and was a complete game that I enjoyed playing so I have no regrets. It's also nice to see smaller developers show up the garbage that most AAA studios shove out these days using less people and less money. Think I'll probably go for the platinum on this one if I have time. Interested in seeing the other endings at least. Not sure if I can manage the highest difficulty though. Some of the fights were rough just playing on normal but I'll probably give it a shot.

They added a LOT of stuff too it off the Novella. There was no weird time displacement shit, and the boyfriend was not a factor in the original story at all. They definitely tried to make it more "smart" than it was meant to be and it shows. The acting carried it pretty well imo though. The novella was fairly disturbing in its own right and they had most of the major plot points from that so I enjoyed it. Was weird seeing all the extra stuff but I still enjoyed it. Only really big thing that was missing from the original story that I recall which seemed like it would have been useful for the movie to have was at once point, the brother tries to set the field on fire.

I'm not sure if any of the Hulu stuff is necessarily tied to the MCU. At least not in any way more significant than the Netflix stuff was.Which is to say just loose references and name drops. Can probably more or less just ignore anything that isn't on Disney+ since all the "big" MCU stuff will want to used as a draw for that service.

Didn't they announce that back in May? I think you were even the one that posted about it. >_>