Haha, same goes for me. Always have been very passionate about games. Unfortunately I don't have the time to play them as much as I'd like, but I still make time for them whevener I can.

Oh I like reading mini-reviews, so I will definitely check it out when you've finished playing a game I'm interested in!

I sure do! That's one of the reasons why I added you, some nice variety you've got going on. Another reason was that I'm very impressed at the amount of games you finish in a year.

Haha yeah, I'm kind of different compared to most users. I just really don't like having a backlog. It makes me rush through games to get to the next, because there's always an urge in me to have it cleared.

Hey Ersatz. All good! I have a pretty strong belief that if I do boot Dead Cells up one day, I am going to feel the same way about it that you do. I have been catching up on some "critically acclaimed" indie games this year, and I hate missing out on one that is highly praised, but I would rather pass on a game in a genre I don't like than pay money for it and be disappointed by it. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it. I really appreciate it!

Hey. I have been meaning to check our Dead Cells since its release, simply because of how much praise it gets, but I have been skeptical to buy it as I am generally not a fan of roguelikes. I'm curious as to what you're thinking of it so far?

Yeah, I hated Majora when it launched. It lacked two essential qualities that interested me in OOT as a young man: the open world and the lighter, almost heaven-like, themes. When the dark side hits in OOT it feels like a crushing, foreign power that inspires the player to take action precisely because that pristine, peaceful world inspires protection.

Majora hits like a bad trip in the first seconds of the game and it feels like the author (probably Takano) was struggling with depression at that time. The fairy change is symbolic, as Navi was a true companion and Tael begins the game as an accomplice in a literal assault agains't you.

Still, it tries something different and I feel I owe it a serious play as an adult. That game actually scared me when I was younger (lol) so perhaps this play will be different.

Yeah, it's definitely been good so far, maybe even slightly overwhelming with all of the different mechanics and whatnot. I liked Shadow of Mordor a lot so it has a lofty bar to live up to.

Hope you're enjoying Arkham Knight! Definite 9/10 game IMO.

I'm on a quest to beat all ps1 and all ps4 games, expect many weird beats lol

Seems very appropriate then, considering Dishonored is basically the spiritual successor to Thief!

And yes, Okami is about 3 times longer than it actually needed to be.

Just pointin' out, the name of Japan is just "Japan" (Nihon) and it's actually a monarchy, not a republic you're right about being a US ally though

That is exactly why I can never get into FTL. You must build to counter the flagship otherwise it will murder you. Of course, you need to get to it in the first place to find out what it can do so you know what would be good against it unless you dumb luck into good stuff. Be glad you are playing after the advanced patch. It made things less RNG in that regard. Never getting a weapon wasn't an uncommon occurrence.

The run that made me put it down for good was when I ran into a ship that killed me on the very first jump. The enemy ship had a missile and beam weapon. Missile took out my shields and their beam took out my weapons. Frantically trying to repair did no good as they constantly took down my weapons and when I decided to just run, my engines were also down. It was just absurd.

EDIT: That sounds about right. Depending on what the flagship hacks, you may have lost right away if you can't jump away or counter the hack. Every flagship victory I had was thanks to cloak avoiding its big attacks. There was one obnoxious time where I was killing everything with no problems because I had all the flak cannons. On the flagship the shots kept on missing the rooms so I died on the first stage.

The design of the game still lets me appreciate it, which is why I'll eventually get around to giving Into the Breach a chance.

Happy belated 10th Backloggiversary!!

EDIT: Glad you liked Doom 2016 as much as I did. The original was a mind-blowing relevation to my younger self, and the new one not only keeps its spirit alive, but enhances it in such a way that feels perfectly natural. I hope Doom Eternal ends up being just as good!

Thanks for the Persona 5 write-up. Congratulations on finishing! I can't remember exactly what I wrote to you before but I was pretty shocked at the localization and how lousy it seemed. It's not the late '90s anymore where they didn't have the care/budget to do so - this is been Atlus's niche for a while and so it was very off-putting. (As a current comparison, Danganronpa's localization seems really good and really gets across Monokuma's nihilistic/DGAF attitude instead of making him the usual mustache-twirling one-dimensional villain.) The overarching goal also seemed very contrived and nebulous compared to the small-town murder mystery of P4. I couldn't get behind either the premise or characters.

Also, when it comes to the gameplay, I ended up probably psyching myself out by setting it to Easy to avoid the whole "main character death = last save point" holdover from ancient times. But that's a one-way decision and it makes everything too easy, so I didn't have that to prop the game up either. In the end, I don't miss it and I'm glad you at least sorta got your (now my ) money's worth out of it.

LTTP: Yes, I use the same name (just with a 78 at the end, hmm what could that mean). I'm curious, who was asking about me? Despite being part of that community for a year now, I still consider myself a relatively anonymous (though fairly competent) weekend warrior. Certainly not a household name that people would recognize. I do have a couple tournament matches on the SpeedGaming Youtube channel though.

Well I stayed up late last night to finish MGS5. I've had some time to collect my thoughts. I found Chapter 2 kind of annoying having to extract all those kids and do random side ops to trigger new yellow options, UNTIL I got to missions 43, 45, and 46. Those were definitely worth. My reaction to mission 43 was "BibleThump 7" which is Twitch emote/shorthand for "crying face, salute".

So a lot of people think this game is incomplete, but if you look and listen carefully, it tells you everything you need. Common complaints include:

1) What happened to Eli? The "timeline credits" confirm he became Liquid Snake. So what was he doing in the interim 20 years? Well, these world domination plans take time, ya know! What happened to Sahel...Sael...Sela....the Metal Gear thing he had? He probably scrapped it/tweaked it to eventually become the one we see in MGS1. I can fill in the blanks.

2) Similarly, what happened to Venom Snake? There's one line in that timeline that Solid Snake would go on to defeat Big Boss' phantom in Metal Gear 1. So there you go, he eventually went and made an Outer Heaven in the jungle in 1995. Why did they abandon their ocean platform? I dunno, a lot can happen in a decade, maybe they wanted to/were forced to. It doesn't matter that much.

3) Unfortunately I knew about the twist that Venom is not Big Boss but just the medic as a body double (an unfortunate side effect of reading too much TVTropes, sometimes you accidentally click a spoiler you didn't mean to :P ). I think a lot of people are pissed at Kojima for not giving them the story "the fans" wanted. But this is the same guy who presented MGS2 in trailers and ITS OWN DEMO as you get to play as Solid Snake again. As we all know, you play as Raiden most of the game. So was I mad? No, I think it's just par for the course for Kojima! I thought the hospital replay was interesting, especially because I didn't actually realize a) the assassin was Quiet and b) Ishmael was the real Big Boss.

So it's not a perfect game, but I still give it 5 stars. I am hard pressed to think of a better, more intense stealth game. I am not interested in doing all the missions/side ops, but I'm glad you enjoyed it enough to do so.

EDIT: I loved this about the Nuclear disarmament video:

Cutscene: "Boss, it looks like someone's developing nukes again."
YT comment: "Such a lust for power! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?????"