Mera'din

Better to buy the PS4 version. Comes with a free upgrade to the PS5 version (some day when you can buy one without jumping through hoops) and is $10 cheaper than the PS5 version because reasons.

It's Playstation exclusive (for at least a year anyway). >_>

Enjoying it for the most part, but haven't had a lot of time to play (at least partly because Destiny and Elden Ring keep eating a lot of my game time). Also, I think I'm like 15 hours in and I still haven't actually entered the "Forbidden West".

Thanks everyone.

7.) Halo: Infinite Kind of mixed bag here. The story starts off obnoxious as hell, and it feels like 90% of the campaign is just there to fill in the time gap where what felt like what could have just been an entire other game happened. 5% of what's left is the whiney normal soldier guy you're stuck with yelling about how they need to GTFO and the last 5% is listening to Darin DePaul as the main(ish) villain monologuing the rest of the story. It only got super interesting at the end when the other main(ish) villain does some cryptic shit that leaves the game on a cliffhanger (as usual). I spent a good few hours confused about who the bad guys were because I didn't play the RTS games I guess? Gameplay was stellar. Weapons were fun and interesting and the inclusion of the grappling hook ability was excellent, though it made literally every other ability useless and not worth upgrading. As such, the attempted open world side of the game kind of falls flat since there's no need to seek out more cores to upgrade other stuff because you have everything you need in like 3 hours worth of time. Unfortunate because the open world exploration was actually kind of fun to dick around with though it was a bit to "by the numbers" Ubisoft style for me. Attack and capture enemy stronghold > reveal things nearby on the map > get things > repeat. I'm wholly convinced at this point that Halo is just Xbox Kingdom Hearts. New race or faction of enemy what feels like every game. 8 side games/movies/whatever that all end up being important to the main story to varying degrees and you'll be completely lost half the time if you didn't at least read a synopsis on them. Also super annoyed that they never fully resolved stuff with the Flood like 4 games ago only to find out they did. Kind of? In another side game.

Ivan Reitman died last week. 75 so at least not crazy young like some of the recent ones, but not super old either.

I was reading a blow by blow of the trucker convoy protest thing last night on twitter. Seems like that god a little wild. A Porno-Metal Song About Gay Cowboys Is Disrupting the Anti-Vax Trucker Convoy

That is NOT what I was expecting when this was announced, but it does seem like it could be pretty fun and clearly doesn't take itself seriously at all so I'll give it a watch.

They were in MI-13 together for a bit. Other than that, they could easily lean toward vampiric qualities or origins for the Ebony Blade that would encourage a connection for the MCU. It did feel like a pretty weird choice either way, but they've made weirder things work so I'm just going to roll with it at this point. XD

The director confirmed it was Mahershala Ali, and the voice is meant to be Blade.

There's a lot of little interesting bits in this trailer. Definitely looking forward even more to whatever they're going to pull with this one.

I'm pretty sure the guards that were escorting him right before that part were Ultron drones. ? Edit - Went back and caught a screenshot:

I enjoyed it. I didn't mind it losing focus on Boba after they finished filling in the time gap for him, because he was honestly the least interesting part of the show imo. As for the shield thing, I would assume that they would eventually have to wear them down. The shield generator would have to give in eventually, if they could overpower it. Clearly more powerful than they were hoping though. The thing that bothered me is it was specifically said their kinetic weapons weren't working on it because the projectiles were moving too fast. So presumably they work like the Droideka shields and a slow moving object could get through, but when the wookie tried he had to struggle to push in even then he touched the shield slowly. The stuff with the Rancor was fun. Ending was whatever. Not sure why they saved that little scene as a mid-credit thing though. It wasn't THAT big of a deal I thought. XD

I haven't watched any of it, but it had some pretty solid names attached to them so maybe. I hadn't played any of the games until recently and was trying to power through them so didn't worry about any of the extra shit. Couldn't play 5 since it was Xbox exclusive, but watched the cutscenes. I honestly think I wouldn't have minded that one if there had been any damn context going into it. Feels like there was a game missing in between 4 and 5. Infinite suffers from the same thing. The place where 5 ended and where Infinite starts feels like there was an entire games worth of shit missing, and I REALLY don't want to collect 5000 audio logs to fill in the blanks. Though they did a MUCH better job of half ass explaining stuff semi-quickly vs 5 just fucking off and not caring if you knew what was going on or not so there's that at least. These games definitely had a story problem though. Outside of 1 and 2, everything has been confusing as fuck and barely explained half the time. They just keep throwing new enemy factions at you each game and it never stops. Really hoping the show condenses some of that shit and makes it work better.

Yeah, I don't know why they handled the voice the way they did. My understanding is they used Respeecher, which aside from the whole machine learning/AI generated voice thing, can legitimately be used to de-age a voice. Seems like it would have gone better to just have Hamill record the damn lines and use it for that then try to stitch it together from old performances.

They have. More than once. Just not in typical formats/platforms. There was a legit big budget movie planned as well but that sat in development hell for a number of years before rights eventually reverted back to Microsoft, and morphed into a series of shorts directed by Neill Blomkamp (who had been set to direct the movie). Halo: Forward Unto Dawn was a movie length feature that was released on DVD after they showed it in 15-min. segments as a web show initially. Halo: Nightfall was another feature length thing produced by Ridley Scott and split up into a mini-series that was released with the Master Chief Collection and "aired" via an XBox app of some sort (and, as I learned too late, apparently goes a long way to explain why should give a fuck about half the characters in Halo 5). They also did an animated anthology series released straight to DVD/BluRay ala The Animatrix, and an animated series titled "The Fall of Reach" that was included with the special editions of Halo 5. There are also various other live action shorts that have been made.

Might have to get this one. I remember the reveal looking cool, but with no real gameplay showing I was waiting to see more. Looks like it could be pretty fun.

Yeah, I remember that. It looks even better than his did too though. Guess with their powers combined they finally got that shit figured out.

Peacemaker is fantastic. Has some strong Deadpool vibes to it, which really works for it. Definitely feels like they gave James Gunn free reign to basically do whatever the fuck he wanted and it paid off. XD Also, hands down one of the best opening sequences for a show I've ever seen.

CAD BANE. As soon as the silhouette started getting close I was like "HOLY SHIT I KNOW WHO THAT IS!" Both of these last two episodes were fantastic, but yeah it felt like they could have just put them in The Mandalorian honestly. Not going to complain though. It was a nice surprise. Also, holy hell they've already improved the CG face de-aging tech a shitload. Luke looked SO much better here than when they had him in The Mandalorian.

I had to double check too because I know originally when the did the Kickstarter for it, it was just supposed to be a single animated special. It hit the target in less than an hour, and by the end of the first day had passed $4 million and unlocked all of their stretch goals so they expanded it to 4 episodes. Before the Kickstarter finished it had expanded from 4 episodes adapting pre-stream stuff to a full animated series that went from 8 episodes and ultimately settled at 10 and would cover pre-stream and then the first story arc from the stream. Once Amazon picked up the streaming rights for it, they announced that they had commissioned an additional 14 episodes (2 additional episodes for Season 1, and 12 more for a 2nd season) bringing it up to 12. The whole thing must have been a wild ride for everyone involved. XD

I thought the season was supposed to be 12 episodes?

Watched the first episode. It's fantastic. It's also great watching the core people fanboy/girl over their own work so hard. Saw one of them talking about how most of them were rewatching all the episodes in the different languages available and were gushing about the Japanese VAs. XD

Yeah, that was a little weird too, but I don't think she was leading them. There was a shot of the throne/senate/whatever room with the 3 prophets (maybe. Was hard to see since it was pretty zoomed out). The way she talked too, she might not actually be human but that could just be the phrasing. Maybe they have a faction of humans that joined them too in this? Seems like they made Halsey a fair bit younger looking too. Hopefully they don't show Master Chiefs face. They got away with it (mostly) in the Mandalorian, so they can certainly do it here. XD I know this is supposed to be an adaptation and not part of the game canon, so I'm sure there will be a fair number of differences. I don't have any real stock in the game series though so I can probably get over most anything they'd do as long as its good.

5.) Lost Words: Beyond the Page Pretty standard "Indie game with depressing story" sort of thing. Some interesting gameplay, but not really any challenge to it so it was almost a 2D walking simulator with light platforming. Still a nice experience with unique storytelling. Was written by Terry Pratchett's daughter. Glad I grabbed it on a sale though all things considered. Not a lot of replay value to it. 6.) Life is Strange 2 Fuck me this game was extremely emotionally draining. It was good. At least as good as the first one (though in a different way), but way more depressing overall. Even in the more upbeat parts you could just tell something was going to go south eventually and completely fuck everything up. The end of a couple of the episodes left me pretty speechless. Would have sucked playing each one as it came out. Glad they're not doing that anymore. Looking forward to playing the new one eventually. They really know how to get a person right in the feels and I'm sure the next one is no exception.