#literally only fight I had to switch to easy mode to beat. and even then I came somewhat close to losing.

[holydramon]

*piedmon fight 2*

takuma: think we’re gonna have to kill this guy miyuki

miyuki: damn

[i-maj-ine]

Okay, I'm more calm. So let me just... Kinda open this up to other audiences?? Zenless Zone Zero (ZZZ) is a gatcha hack & slash ish videogame made by Hoyoverse. Same people as Genshin Impact.

ZZZ has a quick, snappy and responsive combat mode that makes you giddy when you pull off ultimates, switch your character to stun or debuff then go back to your attacker to hit a bitch, or defend yourself just in time from a giant boss' desperation move!

However... In my personal opinion, it uses the combat as a crutch for gameplay way too much and way too consistently.

ZZZ was first introduced to me as a puzzle and combat oriented game, which to be fair to the guy, none of us knew for serious at the time until we played it. He loved the combat and I loved the puzzle mode.

The puzzle mode, known as TV mode, is aptly named as it takes place in a grid like manner with TVs to serve as your tiles. They can be extremely fun, or gimmicky but silly, or very plot centric in some cases. The issue is that, unless it's certain cases, most TV mode sessions are constantly littered with Combat grids that are filled with extremely easy to kill enemies even with low level characters (I used my level 10 Anton on a Lv 40 stage and the only one enemy that gave me trouble was the boss.). Some people see this as TV mode being a distraction or boring or a Point A to Point B thing when it's literally... Faulty game design at most when you take two steps before falling upon a forced combat tile.

Insert TV mode gif here

Issue with this is that A) it leads to wrong ideas with what can be *an incredible mode to break up the pace* and B) it seriously over exhausts what should be an incredible gameplay balance between combat and puzzle tile system...

Like very seriously over exhausts it.

I might seem salty or rambly because I didn't really prepare this but it still sticks that at a certain point, you get... Really really tired.

Exhibit A: Story and Agent Events

Combat, Dialogue, Combat, Dialogue, Oooh!! Interactable TV mode that actually has voice acting and characters leaving to do their own thing?? Wow! Combat with trial characters, Story beat, Dialogue, Dialogue in the MCs street before going back to mission, Combat, Dialogue, Boss, Feel good message.

Exhibit B: Side Quests

Mini games!!! Sometimes. Rarely. Sometimes talking in MCs street or somewhere else, some lore, mostly silly. Cute even! Huh, what's this though in my menu that I'm avoiding? Oh yeaahhhh... The 22/7 ratio between Combat Quests (Fetch quests, saving quests, scaring quests, etc) and Exploration Quests (Which... Some don't count!? They're combat oriented anyways!!!!) I can think of TWO Exploration Quests that didn't have a lick of combat and that was AWESOME, thank you for the trouble that surely cost you.

Exhibit C: Upgrade Characters and Materials

Ah yes, let me just expend my limited resources to get items to upgrade my characters via Combat. Also, yes you can pay to replenish that resource sometimes. Depends if we have it in our shop. Ah, you need to upgrade your character's talents? Go join The Hunt. Totally not ominous at alll... (sometimes boring, sometimes not, depends on whether I had to grind thru 4 hours of this game) Oh, out of cash to upgrade your weapons??? Go fight again, you'll figure it out.

Exhibit D: Hollow Zero or Defence

Oh, would you rather choose our TV mode esque rogue like game mode..? I'll scale it really harshly and suddenly because I expect you to have more and more upgraded characters because obviously you wouldn't play this unless you ran out of other content... Or would you rather play our easy little Defense mode style where you fight and you get practically gifted money and items?

Exhibit D: Events

While I do understand events to let you show off your characters so people try to gamble for them... For every event that is not combat related, they feel like they have to add two more things that are combat related. They had 1 rhythm game ONCE and now there are two More Extreme combat modes. New game in arcade mode?? We must add an event where you fight as this new character and only get the Last Thing after 5 matches of the same thing.

It's just... Frustrating. To like a game and what it has to offer but just... Ugh.

I'm an avid listener to the advice of 'Dont Like, Don't Read/Play/Listen' but the Story? Y'know, the main lore draw of the game?? The only thing got me clinging on despite critically low level everything because I don't want to fight more than I have to?? Yeah, I think I might drop after all that...

Oh god,,,, pls don't tell me that they're going to remove TV mode from story now tooooo... Fffuck this noise if it really does happen, I'm gonna go back to Honkai (I uninstalled and forgot it existed for a year and a half. Ratiorine got me questioning that decision and if this happens, I finna dive.)

[lifewithdavefarts]

DaveFarts - Episode 11 “VoiceFarting” [Episode List] Tim and Adam are hanging out on... Liscord, playing some stuff together, waiting for Dave to join them for a game. When Adam unexpectedly has to leave however, Dave decides to do some… microphone testing.

VoiceFarting

“I’m going in as a mage ‘cause you fuckers can’t cast for shit” I heard Adam say right into my ears.

This was one of our usual game nights. We’d voice chat on Liscord on our own server and all that stuff. Adam was being, for the lack of a better term, kind of bitchy, ‘cause he thinks as himself as the most skilled gamer around even though we’re always reviving his ass. In the end it’s all in good fun of course, but we’d all happily mute him during a match if we could.

“Yes, Adam. Have fun with the ‘easy mode’ character.” I said, deliberately baiting him.

“Listen here you little shit” he immediately blurted “I can accept that you’re gay but I’m not going to accept the fact that you’re a scrub.” he said, obviously joking, though he did take skills seriously during a match.

“Yeah yeah but I’m the one using the axe, fighting enemies face-to-face like a man.” I kept teasing him. “How’s going up there? Still casting light arrows from your safe space?” I cackled.

“Excuse me???” his icon lighting up, the audio clipping “Why don’t we check your stats instead? Too afraid of looking like the scrub you are??? I literally made no mistakes last time.”

“Of course you didn’t: the chance of making mistakes is like 0% when you stand still and far from the battle.”

There was a moment of silence, then I heard Adam’s breath into the mic “You know I know where you live, right?”

I laughed but before I could continue this very deep and mature battle of wits, we both heard the sound notifying us that our bud Dave joined the voice chat. Now, whenever Dave joins, we usually hear every sound except for his voice, so we were ready to have our ears busted because of the noi-

“Hey noobs!” Dave greeted us, with a voice that was instead crystal clear.

“What the hell” both me and Adam said, our avatars lighting up at the same time.

“I see you noticed that you can now hear my beautiful voice perfectly.” he bragged, and rightfully so.

Normally we could hear his PC’s fans, what was going on down the street, cars passing by, atoms crashing into each others… farts. But now it was just Dave with his now-soothing voice calling us names.

“Are you finished?” Adam said.

But there was no response from Dave.

“Did he finally die?” Adam continued.

I heard a faint sigh of relief from Dave and then he went “Yeah, now I’m finished.”

I kind of suspected what happened but I didn’t say a word.

“Wait. You didn’t hear a thing?” Dave asked, puzzled.

Both me and Adam shrugged as if he could see us, but then said that no, we didn’t.

My detective skills told me that my gassy straight bud ripped one of his classic loud farts, but the new microphone had that “background noise reduction” feature (which my friend seriously needed) so it didn’t register his ass-blast as the old one usually did, so much so that Dave’s frequent farts would eventually turn into white noise for the rest of us. But now, his new headset was actually worth the price and all we could hear was indeed his voice.

“Can we just get into the game befo-“ Adam blurted, but was cut off mid-sentence by a loud, ear-piercing sound coming from Dave, though that wasn’t him speaking or screaming.

My fartbro really didn’t want us to miss what his ass is capable of, so we were both startled by a powerful, audio-clipping fart that completely overwhelmed our voice begging him to stop. And he did stop, but only after like 12 seconds. The rip was followed by the sound of Dave re-adjusting his microphone and laughing. “Hopefully you heard that now.” he chuckled.

I did hear it. I was very familiar with it. Truth is that Dave farting during our game sessions wasn’t anything new however. Even I was used to it, though that did pitch a tent in my shorts. I started wondering whether Dave was in jeans, shorts or boxers. Probably the latter, and shirtless, given that it was a warm evening. I tried to not to let my usual simp-ness over my bro take over me but apparently it was already too late, as I didn’t even notice Adam begin pissed off about an unwanted phone call.

“I’m sorry guys, I gotta take this one.” he said, annoyed. “Do not wait for me. Cya tomorrow I guess.”

And logged off, another sound notifying us that he went into the terrible real world realm.

“Alone at last, bro.” Dave said, in a flirty tone, just as Adam left.

I laughed and mindlessly switched to a different, this time single-player game as we needed at least 3 guys to play, one of those brutal action games that I suck at but I have to beat.

Dave did the same, with a similar game, and we both started gaming on our own but keeping each other company, like we usually do, occasionally exchanging opinions on what we were playing and so on.

“It’s probably his ex-girlfriend” Dave said.

“Yeah. I figured.” I simply answered.

Adam wasn’t really talkative about his personal stuff like me or even Dave, so neither us really knew what was going on. But if our bud didn’t want us to know, not fully know at least, then we respect this decision.

After a couple of more minutes of silence, I heard some sounds coming from Dave. Not a fart, this time though.

“Did you say something?” I asked.

I heard some muffled noises and then Dave’s voice, lower than usual though “I’m just messing with the settings here. I feel like sometimes the volume gets messed up.” and he was right.

“Yeah the audio is kind of low now.” I warned him.

I heard some more noises (keyboard tapping, mouse clicking, etc.) and then I heard him speak again.

Or, to be more precise, he did make a sound with his mouth, though those weren’t words; a loud belch, actually, right into my ears. Dave was more of a farter, but he wasn’t new to wild, incredible burps. I honestly prefer the more disgusting butt explosion, but I still tip my hat at my bro being a masterful air-bender from both ends.

“Yes, I did hear that.” I said, anticipating his question.

He laughed. “Thank you.” he answered, belching both word with care.

A couples of minutes of silence followed, with just me and Dave occasionally chatting but overall trying to be focused on our respective games. My straight bro was however not done with the “testing”.

“Are you hearing this bro?” he suddenly asked, trying not to laugh.

“No…?” I was puzzled.

“Wait. Let me just…”

I heard Dave removing his headset and as it got farther away from his head, a familiar sound got louder and louder instead, until it became unbearable.

“Are you hearing this now?” he shouted, though I could heard him over that sound.

The sound of yet another loud blast of gas, so loud it was glitching the audio. It was long and proud, dry as some of his best rips, and it just wouldn’t stop. The boss I was fighting somehow felt how distracted I was and one-shotted me with a swipe of his flaming sword but I couldn’t even hear any in-game sound ‘cause my straight gassy bro was basically farting right into my ears, albeit indirectly.

I instinctively reached for the pitched tent between my legs as the fart kept going strong and loud, so loud in fact that I had to lower the volume ‘cause my hears were starting to hurt.

After a grand total of 18 seconds, I once again heard Dave putting his headphones back on his head, wondering whether they were radioactive or melting at this point, due to all that poisonous gas.

“I gotta say… the sound quality is pretty spot-on. What headset are you using?” I joked.

Dave chuckled. “The same as yours actually. Thanks for the advice.”

We kept chatting a bit more as if he wasn’t a gassy teasing bastard but since he *is* a gassy teasing bastard I once again heard him, with no warning nor request from me, removing his headphones again and putting them (I assume) closer to the source of his underwear-clad ass.

Unsurprisingly, yet another manly, loud rip blasted through my own headphones right into my eardrums, renewing the hard-on I had only moments before. It sounded like a motorcycle passing by and I could only imagine how badly the stench was in Dave’s room. Lasting around 11 seconds, this time it got dangerously wet-ish towards the end, which I found hilarious but also made me rightfully worried about my bro maybe going a bit too far even for both of our standards.

“Dude.” I said, laughing a bit “You might want to go easy. That sounded risky.”

Dave, being the chill guy he is, just laughed about it. “Don’t worry, dude. I’m an expert.” and he ripped a short toot that was so loud I could even hear it without the microphone going straight into his butt this time.

We then kept gaming a bit more on our own. Dying over and over to that same boss made me think about how chill Dave was being -as usual- about my kink. I mean don’t get me wrong he always farted a lot while voice chatting but this time it was different, as he was now aware of my fetish. And, as always, I really appreciated that, just as I appreciated yet another thunderous blast, one that actually startled me, making me lose YET AGAIN.

“FUCK!” I blurted.

As the fart kept going, Dave moved the microphone closer to his face (but I still could hear the fart going) just to laugh at my gaming skills, completely aware however that his farts were a huge distraction on its own. He then planted the microphone once again in front of his butt and the blast went loud and proud.

“It’s just too easy.” he then chuckled, after finishing ripping that monstrous fart.

It was. I had to pause the game for a couple of minutes to calm down, the tent between my legs going harder and harder. Was Dave aware of this part as well? Of course he was, but he didn’t care. It was just a game for him, and he was constantly proving me how much of a pro gamer he was.

I hope he never gets nerfed.

End of Episode 11

[kimarisgundam]

Hi I just started following you for your monster hunter art and I noticed you answered another anon saying that you couldn't complete DmC3 and the last Vergil fight made you cry. I am not trying to be condescending but are you aware that the original American DmC3 was harder than the Japanese version? Which version of the game were you playing? If you had the standard American version the game difficulty was skewed. Normal was actually hard. Easy was actually normal et cet. I got into DmC3 because of speedrunning. I was only made aware of the difficulty skew due to watching speedrun tutorials. Most speedrunners won't do a run on the standard edition normal because it's much harder than the special edition normal. You said you refused to switch to easy because of pride but I think you were actually playing on hard. For an eight year old girl that is already impressive. Even if you didn't complete the game you managed to hold out against Vergil for almost the entire game. Vergil would have been proud of you LoL. Consider getting the HD collection or a digital special edition and try that final fight again. The difficulty is finally set to normal so you can have a fair fight with Vergil.

Ok... I said I was temporarily not answering asks cos I was busy with work but... WHAT O_O

LIKE HUH??? WAIT WHAT O_O?? HUH O_O??

Can anyone who plays DMC please tell me if this is true??? Like I didn't know this??? I don't know which frigging version I played cos that was sooo long ago, but I don't remember seeing "Special Edition" written on the cover 😣

So what you're telling me is... because of how stubborn I was, I was essentially playing the game on Hard mode and refusing to switch to Normal mode..? So I basically got my butt kicked in by Vergil because this entire time, it was Hard Mode 🥲..?

He clapped my butt so hard 15+ years ago that I still feel the pain today 🥲. He traumatised me so badly that I feared him in DMC 5 Normal mode even before fighting him 🥲

But fyi!! I didn't cry cos I was scared of him okay?! I cried cos I was frustrated. I kept trying everyday after school for many weeks. I never gave up. The only reason why I stopped was cos the game was confiscated after I cried (parents didn't realise I was playing a "mature" game, and they thought Vergil scared me)

P-proud of me 🥺..? That would be nice 🥺. If he was a real person, I would want him to be proud of me 🥺

Ahh you're seriously tempting me to get the game on Switch 🤣. I actually didn't want to get it cos I didn't want to "ruin" my childhood memory 🤣. He's supposed to be like unbeatable. A perfect prince I want to marry 😂. I can literally beat DMC 5 stylishly on Hard mode, so I know I can definitely beat DMC 3 Vergil now. I kinda don't want to beat him though, I just want to hold on to the memory and the frustration 😂

^ I seriously can't remember which version I had. Buying the Switch version of the game and playing the "Normal" mode would help me find out which version I had though 🤔

But even if I buy the Special edition, beating my dad Vergil on Normal mode is meaningless. I must beat him on the same mode as last time, anything else is just an empty victory 😤. I want to fight Vergil (the AI 😂??) in his prime, I will prove to him (AI 😂) that I am worthy 😤. I'm not an 8 year old cry baby anymore 😤. I will prove myself to dad 😤

[synoxshots]

The Master KOTFE Adventure

My latest project has been playing through KotFE on master mode.

Why ever would you want to do that? you may ask, and I have asked myself the same thing. In short, it was a mix of having a light sided empire toon that I didn't want the autocompletes on, and the fact that he is also the best geared character I've ever had and the discipline I've had most experience playing. And I've run through KotFE quite a few times so, freshening it up I guess? 

So this is how it went. This isn't a guide - more, a record of my experiences as I went through. As ever, some things I found easy others might find hard, and (more likely, lbr) vice versa. 

The gamer:

I play a Rage Jugg, wear Descent of the Fearless set, gear level 306 with a full set of 286 augments. So - very well geared, but not fully optimised stats wise. Experience wise for this - I'd done a few chapters on vet mode before with a Guardian (Focus) and Powertech (Pyrotech) though not always at max gear (probably in the 290s when I first gave it a go), and I like trying to solo group content like vet fps (master for Red Reaper only) because I don't love myself, I guess. A smidge of ops experience. I'm reasonably competent as a player but also prone to stupid, I don't claim to be great by any means.

Chapter I

All went smoothly, died on the last fight against the BD-148 elite skytrooper - but that was just because I forgot about heroic moments existing, given that half the chapter is spent without a companion. Used my enraged defence a few times but never really felt at risk of dying. Apart from the one time when I did, obviously. Marr goes up to 28 influence automatically. Lots of mobs can be skipped as they're already engaged in fights.

Chapter II

Quite a few mobs you can skip around. Valkorion heals you though he's not a companion so no heroic moment. Last monolith did get me close to death sometimes, so there was a bit of running away so I could heal up a bit more, and making good use of defensive abilities. But no deaths on this one!

Chapter III

I died twice on this one, both were easily preventable. The first was against the Ground Assault Walker (massive droid before the bridge) and pretty much because I hadn't raised Lana's influence yet, so I upped it to 20 before starting the fight again and cleared it very quickly. Sidenote: a while back I bought a bunch of Spiced Aric Tongue from the Jawa scrap peddlers as I didn't know what else to do with all that, Lana accepts it so it's a nice quick way to up her level (Koth likes it too, a lot, which is handy). Second death was against like, a handful of skytroopers when I was shutting down the reactor and really it was mostly because I wasn't paying attention properly, though Lana died both times at this point. There's another fight where these prototype skytroopers keep swarming and I was a bit nervous because there were kolto stations there and I couldn't entirely remember how intense it got. The answer was...not intense at all and I definitely didn't need them. The final fight on this one is the two Zakuul knights but they didn't cause me any problems. All in all I'd say the deaths I've had so far have all been my own fault.

Chapter IV

This...did not go as well. And I'm not entirely sure why, just bad play on my part I think mostly, sometimes there are days when I just play like trash *shrug*. Not timing things like enraged defence, heroic moments and so on very well which meant I died a few times to wildlife - twice the larger bosses, twice mobs of normal/strong ones. Yeah... Kept upping my companion influence so all three (Lana, Koth and HK by this point) got up to 27 but I think even higher than that may be needed as they just didn't seem to be healing well. 

Chap V

I was a bit wary heading into this one, as it was one I'd run before on vet mode and remembered having trouble with the skytrooper waves. I was less geared then though, and had less companion influence doing that, having now taken everyone up to about 32. I didn't record any deaths on this though had a near miss - but I had saved my enraged defence/heroic moment and so on and hit them at the right time. Hey, I'm playing smarter! 

Chapter VI

I found this chapter easy when I'd run it on veteran not long before, but that was not the case on master. Died the first time against Oggo, that was my own fault though, although he does have one particular ability that hits very hard. Then came the Scions. Ohhh boy. The first two you face killed me, fair enough I hadn't had a chance to raise Senya's influence yet. The second two, Venat and Berusal, caused me pain. The good thing is that when fighting the pairs and you take one down, if you die the other doesn't respawn. The other good thing is that Venat and Berusal can be pulled separately, the bad news is I found this out after a few attempts. And Berusal still killed me on his own the first time. I was not having a fun time. And then you face Heskal without a companion. It takes a bit of tactics. I tried to damage him whilst he was doing Debris Storm, though still had to avoid the red circles. Turbulence gives a lot of damage, so had to hastily get out the way/interrupt it. He also stuns you which isn't fun. Valky pops up and offers you an out after the first phase, unfortunately I decided to stay true to character and not take it. Bad times were had. I went to lunch. I asked a friend to help. My internet got switched off before that could happen. I found out I was able to summon a companion...I know I'm not supposed to story wise, and I'm not sure if you can normally (there's a lot of times when companion summon buttons are greyed out due to story restrictions) or if this was only because I'd previously logged out...but suddenly the fight became a lot easier. Funny that. Sigh. Moving on...

Chapter VII

Honestly not much to say about this one, nothing that caused me trouble. A lot of it is in the open world so regular difficulty rather than scaled to master. 

Chapter VIII

This one wasn't much trouble either, did die once when stuff was on cooldown, once in the final Arcann fight. Kiting him over and hitting the conduits there is a big help as they stun him, that is probably very obvious but I've literally never bothered with them on story or vet mode. We're halfway there!

Chapter X

This one also gave me a Time. The problem I had was when you come up against Faedral and Zaamsk. My first thought was the difficulty was because I hadn't raised Kaliyo's influence (oops, but you get her on the spot and I didn't have gifts handy...or at least the ones I thought she liked she didn't actually) (this is how I found out that agent!Kaliyo and alliance!Kaliyo have different preferences, apparently this will also apply to other - but not all - returning companions). But I raised her to 28 and still kept dying. It's a bit of a nasty fight honestly, and the guide I looked at said that juggs...aren’t ideal for it. Crowd control and interrupts are very handy. I kept getting really close to getting one of them down and dying just before I could, super annoying because it's another of those where if you take one down and die, you only have to face the other one. I took a break and read the guide more closely, watched some videos, and ultimately just decided to bring someone along to avoid the pain, or maybe share in it. I still died but we got through them. The fight against Tayvor Slen, the boss fight of the chapter, took a couple of tries with two of us - the first time I got stuck in a red circle and pretty much insta-killed. There was a bit of a close call on the second attempt but it was under control really. The achievement then comes through for chapter completion, all you have to do then is get out of the Overwatch, all things rosy right? Oh how wrong they were. A bunch of Zakuul Knights came along and literally just slaughtered us, full on, one-shotting us both - it was hilarious and extremely confusing because why?? how?? Did the bonus mission to get the prisoners to escape (look out for the glowing terminal, it says 'Overwatch Prison Logs' when you hover over it) - they one-shot a few Knights but then disappeared on us too. Who knows. But we got through it.

Chapter XI

A much nicer one though still had a handful of deaths. Where you meet up with Havoc Squad there's ambush of Skytroopers, followed by a couple of walkers - and the walkers beat me. They cast circles that I just couldn't get out of in time to save my health, even with my defensives. I'm not sure if they were the type to follow you or a sort of stamp move (I should have looked at the cast bar, come to think of it) - I suspect though it was the latter and so it wouldn't be an issue on a ranged character. The fight though does continue around you if you die so you don't lose the progress you make, just use the med probe, revive and rejoin. I only took Jorgan to level 7 because that was all the gifts I had, but most of the mobs were just regular trash, typically 3 at a time, which was no worry. When you attack the base the Knights are a bit harder - there's one round the back that does stealth strikes and that's a difficult one to face. I died - the respawn to medbay actually puts you inside the part with the forcefield you're supposed to take down, and then you can't get out of it...I maintain that I did find a way past the forcefield but it doesn't work as a cheesing method. Use your med probe, otherwise it's quick travel out and re-enter your phase. The final battle is a big droid (I forgot the name of it). It spawns a bunch of smaller droids, just ignore those and go for the boss - I didn't the first time and that's why I died - I lost Jorgan, I had two Knights chasing me whilst the droid put up shields, it didn't go well - second time I did it in less than a minute whilst using a heroic moment.

Chapter XII

This one you don't have a companion for, though it's not a big deal - for the most part my main enemy, as tends to be the case on this chapter, was the map. I think the regular mobs are scaled down a bit for playing without a companion. You can pick up an animal to help you as well, which you may as well do as things just die quicker. It runs off in caves. Valkorion does take your health down a fair chunk before he gives you his beat down but it wasn't so bad. Vaylin though took quite a few attempts. You can't interrupt her so you have to be on the ball with your defensives and timing them all, which includes the shield and medpac given in your temporary bar for the chapter. Really the medpac isn't that effective so don't count on it. There's a lot of running around as she casts red circles. Probably easier with a character with more self heals. I got through it after a few efforts, after getting close a few times, though even then I was still low on health by the end.

Chapter XIII

Yeah, this one was no trouble really, and that was with Gault at only level 4 influence. If things get hairy whack a bit more on him, there's no real mechanics to pose problems. As ever, good practice to stay out of circles on the boss fight, you have Vette there as well so a bit of extra damage going and yeah. Nothing to worry about.

Chapter XIV

Another that was nice and simple, I didn't even have any gifts to give Torian so was wandering around with him on level 1. Just a matter of timing defensives and heroic moments in that case. Lots is open world, too. Final boss fight was no problem at all.

Chapter XV

Reading guides for this put the fear of god into me, so I was pleasantly surprised to find it better than expected. The bosses were the toughest parts. The first is the Skytrooper Constructor, that one does spawn adds after a while as well. It killed me a couple of times but really I'm not sure what the best strategy was so I just went for the classic, burn it as fast as I possibly can and making use of heroic moment/defensives as well. The GEMINI droid at the end had me worried. That took 3 attempts (maybe 4, I think it was just 3 though), one of those my heroic moment was still on cooldown and Senya died quickly on it too. It was really just about managing defensives effectively as well, running away when she has the red cone in front of you, using the heroic moment for extra speedy damage. It was a close call in the end but my enraged defence came off cooldown at the perfect moment, thank you Grit Teeth. I wouldn't say this was an easy chapter by any means so quite proud of myself for getting through it on my own! The other thing I would say is watch out for the lasers - they don't do lots of damage on story mode, but on master they one-shot you if you get caught in them! The other various traps I probably got through easier than I have on the lower difficulties which may just be a testament to this being like, my fifth complete kotfe run at this stage haha.

Chapter XVI

The final chapter...and the one I was the most scared of. Took Lana up to lvl 50 in preparation...she duly died early on in the first boss anyway. KJ-931 is the first boss - I say first boss, there's still a high rank enemy immediately before that I died to a few times anyway and needed a heroic moment to beat. First attempt against KJ I actually came really close. Stay out of the aoes - there's a white circle and a yellow cone, as well as a big red laser thing where you have to rush to the corner and if you can - micromanage Lana well enough that she doesn't get caught up in them too. So I learnt that I am not good at micromanaging companions like that. Take the turrets rather than the shields, definitely - apparently the shields also have limited use, the turrets pull aggro as well as giving you damage so they're very handy. Sometimes on this fight I got one-shotted very quickly, others I managed to hold on a bit - but it was the first attempt that was my best run until I actually did it. Honestly I can't say what the trick was to finally getting it right...just a lot of blind panic and luck. Second boss is Dara Nadal - I found it easier to just go for the intense burn on her - put down the turrets, use a heroic moment, set Lana to damage as well and burn. Still took a few attempts on her but each time I was getting very close so I knew I would get there.

And then came Arcann. Ooooh boy. I'd been reading guides and watching videos in preparation but there's still a lot to keep on top of. I decided to use the Marr & Satele Special Saber rather than my usual one - having the benefit of being able to run around quickly was handy, and the other ability reflects damage from his saber attack. This took many attempts - some that went very quickly, some that got him to his final phase. Rather than going into specifics I'm going to link to this video as it probably explains what to do best (it’s handy for all the bosses). You really have to watch for the moment he gets to ~25% and stands in one spot - if you aren't able to do the shield whacky he will kill you straight up. My first time running towards him with the shield in that very last phase I died on the way up. It took me a long time and a lot on repair bills but this is another one I was very proud of for getting through on my own as there were times I didn't think I would.

General stuff:

I would say doing this is not for the light-hearted but it’s certainly possible! Apart from one chapter where I grabbed a friend I got through them all on my own

Some classes fair better in certain chapters than others. I went with my Jugg all the way through, but if you have the characters geared and you know them well enough - and you're doing this for the cheevos rather than going through the storyline - you're likely better off mixing and matching as you go. There were many occasions I wished I had range.

You will die to trash mobs. It is a fact of life. It feels embarrassing in the early chapters, you come to accept this and move on.

Companion influence helps a lot. Koth, Lana, and Senya all like delicacies (especially Koth, that man can eat) - you can grab these from the Jawa vendors in the cartel bazaar on fleet.

Med droids are also a booming industry thanks to the amount I've spent on repairs in the course of this.

There are more mechanics compared to story mode, and some that exist in story mode that you just notice more on master. But apparently the difference between vet and master is just artificial - more health and hitting harder. 

Going Commando is another good resource for their experiences playing through.

[sazorak]

Every Game I Played in 2020, Ranked

2020. Boy, what a garbo year huh? Didn't actually play that many games this year all-in-all. Happens! My backlog is getting pretty big, but I just find it hard to focus on games when I could be working on something. Or put off working on something, as it may happen to be at times.

My arbitrary decision from years ago to only attach a numbered ranking to same-year releases is getting increasingly silly, especially given my propensity to wait on playing games until I’m in the right mood, but whatever. That order matters than the dumb numerical numbering anyway.

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019

Later Alligator – 2019 – Steam – ★★

The style of this game is very cute, and the jokes are funny enough. But… ok, look, I’m not one to be precious about what is or isn’t a game. But this really isn’t a game. It’s a series of disconnected, unrelated challenges clipped from Atari Free Mini Game Collection 100, wrapped in a very non-interactive adventure-game. It’s cute, it’s kind of sweet, but it’s dull. Dull dull dull. There’s a pointless, mandatory sliding block puzzle early on that infuriated me by its mere existence. Them giving the ability to skip it because “wow you’re bad at this huh”, which, while accurate, also just sold the whole point meaningless of the “““interactive experience”””.

Also: when a huge part of your game is WOW WE ANIMATED EVERYONE REALLY GOOD, text boxes that reveal word-by-word, far away from the animations that occur when said characters talk? Kind of stinks!

8. Carrion – 2020 – Steam – ★★

What Carrion does well— the whole “You’re controlling The Thing and just rippin’ people apart!” shtick— is really neat. They made that bootleg The Thing animate real-ass good.

The actual game as a whole though? Kind of garbage. Imagine a Metroidvania with zero actual exploration, where every opportunity you have to venture off the path instead results in immediate railroading with constant, utterly inexplicable one-way pipes. It’s not that it’s linear, it’s that it actively slaps you when you attempt to explore. It’s very frustrating! Add the fact that the tentacle-monster-shtick makes challenging to actually, y’know, move around and control all your bits…  the only reason I finished the game was due to foreknowledge of its extreme brevity.

I think if the game were more open and less obsessed with constantly handing out upgrades, as well as having less of a focus on pure combat, I think I’d have enjoyed it more.

SD Gundam G Generation Cross Rays – 2019 – Steam – ★★

It is well documented at this point that I am both an active Gundam fan, and as well as an on-again-off-again tactical RPG aficionado. A SD Gundam game appearing on Steam with a good English translation and localization is… exciting, to say the least. That said, I have never had much context for this game series beyond the basic facts that the combat tended to be pretty well animated CG, and that it’s vaguely similar to Super Robot Wars. Turns out… it’s really different from SRW? I dunno how the rest of the series fairs, but Cross Rays is weird as hell.

For one, there’s zero tutorialization at all. None. Almost all of what I’m going to explain here is me figuring stuff out by trial and error, or by reading junk online. Gundam is insanely popular, you’d think they’d be interested in explaining how it all works, but… nope. Even Super Robot Wars has multi-level introductory bits for new folks to show them the rope these days.

So: Cross Rays is a tactical RPG where you can playthrough the storyline of various Gundam AUs. You can play through them in any order. These playthroughs are fairly literal translations of the stories. You take control of the lead mecha from those series, fight enemy mobile suits that show up in SRW-like tactical RPG combat, until all reinforcements cease. Pretty straight forward. There are occasionally mission variants like “prevent enemies from reaching X” or “prevent enemies from destroying Y”, but even those can be just reduced to “kill everything very quickly please.”

But here’s the thing: while there is a story progression, the characters in the story itself actually have no character progression. These characters and mecha are actually considered guests, despite it being ostensibly their story. Instead, you are able to field “permanent” mecha and pilots of your own choosing, which do have progressions. There is no plot justification for this or anything like it. The game does not recognize that it’s weird that during Iron-Blooded Orphans intro where nobody knows what a Gundam even is, you can have 25 Gundams show up at once and just fire lasers at everything. That’s because this game is actually about repeatedly grinding the same set of missions over and over.

Pilots are recruited by completing certain in-mission requirements. Mecha are acquired by either by getting enough kills with the progression-less “guest” mecha, combining mecha you already have gashopon-style, completing certain quests, or by leveling up mecha and then “evolving them”. This is the actual core of the game.

SD Gundam G Generation Cross Rays is basically Disgaea, it turns out? You’re grinding story missions at various difficulty levels in order to complete missions, try to recruit specific pilots, equip them with stats and levels to make them stronger, and then hitting mecha together in a sort of quasi-SMT fusion system until you get all the powerful mobile suits you desire.

The combat itself is kind of… bland? There’s a lot of systems, but they mostly seem in service of making an already easy game easier, or burning through tedium. There are four different difficulty modes, because there’s not actually that many different missions you can play through. The expectation is you’ll just work your way through every story beat while ramping the difficulty up over time to where the “guest” mecha would not be able to handle on their own. In fact, letting the story mecha act out the story beats is actually bad after a point, unless you’re still trying to get those lead mobile suits, or if you’re trying to complete some mission requirement in order to recruit Named Wing Grunt Pilot #246.

There is something to the notion of “I want to get N and N and N and N on a team, piloting weird but powerful mobile suits, and just solo every Gundam AU in a row,” but the whole premise seems kind of against purpose. Why bother recreating story beats at all, then? It’s not like the game even acknowledges any of that going on.

If the point is that I’m supposed to be, like in other grind-heavy tactical RPGs, breaking the systems to my own end in order to proceed… why not make the missions you play challenges focused towards that? The story progression literally only exists to facilitate the mission-based unlock conditions, which makes all the energy put into making them JUST LIKE THE ANIME really damn pointless.  

I like tactical RPGs, I like breaking RPG systems so as to beat hard challenges (I beat all the insanely hard extra bosses in FFXII for crying out loud), I looooove Gundam. I should like this. But I don’t really have the “god, I NEED TO FILL THIS LIST” gene that some folks have… except as an excuse to continue to engage in gameplay I enjoy. The gameplay here seems in service of the collection, rather than the way around.

7. Pokemon Sword: The Isle of Armor – 2020 – ★★★

Pokemon’s first foray into actually doing DLC is… a mixed bag. As a positive, they’ve improved the Wild Area concept I liked from the main game, and even brought back buddy Pokemon walking behind you. That’s neat. On the other hand: the actual progression in it is completable in like an hour, it doesn’t scale with you, so you’re bound to be over leveled for it, and all the raid stuff, while still conceptually neat, is just as flawed as in the base game. And so, you’re just left with even more new Pokemon to RNG grind on to continue to catch-them-all. Nah, I’m good.

Astral Chain – 2019 – Switch – ★★★

Platinum knows how to make good character action games. They’ve made a bunch of them. Bayonetta, Nier: Automata, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. They also know how to make some kind of mediocre character action games. Transformers: Devastation, Wonderful 101, their various shovelware character action games like Korra. Astral Chain falls somewhere in the middle, I guess?

Astral Chain has all the production of their good games. It has some stylish, cool action. It has a neat core mechanical idea, in that it’s essentially a two-character action game where you control both characters at once. It has a lot of the old mechanics from some of their best games brought in; witch-time last second dodging from Bayonetta, Nier’s shooting-and-slashing combination, the Zandatsu mechanic from Metal Gear Rising, even Wonderful 101’s multi-unit shenanigans. The setting is different, and there’s some neat world flavor all in all.

But, of all games I’ve played over the past few years, Astral Chain made me more vividly angry than any other. It’s not that it’s too hard— far from it, really, I found its combat incredibly mashy. No, the problem is that it has so many shitty mechanics slathered on that it become a chore to get to the “good bits”.

Why would you put forced stealth sequences in your character action game, especially when your movement controls are not suited for it?

Why the HELL would you put platforming sections in your character action game, constantly, especially when your stupid ghost buddy can accidentally yank you off the edge, your auto-combos can just throw you off the edge, or literally anything can knock you off the edge and make you lose life?

Why would you put so many constant excuses into the world to force me use the digital sensor in the game, that also makes it miserable to walk around while using it?

WHO THE LIVING FUCK THINKS THESE SHITTY BOX BALANCING MINI-GAMES ARE FUN???

These games are supposed to encourage me to perfect everything, right? Why keep putting fucking fights you need to complete in order to get an S rank behind backtracking, or Legions I don’t have yet? That isn’t adding replayability, that’s just wasting my time. There are even in-level missions that have fail conditions that you never even know about. Surprise!!! A lot of them involve chasing after guys and catching them with your chain, which is really obnoxious to do!!!! SURPRISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The story is just Bad Evangelion, straight up. Every story beat from Evangelion is here, executed worse. They also make your character have a twin just so they can have a character who can talk and feel emotions, because your boring-ass protagonist is stuck being an emotionless audience cipher. Cool!!!

Tetris Effect – 2018 – Origin – ★★★

It’s drugs Tetris. I personally don’t use, or have synesthesia for that matter. I imagine this game is better if you do. It’s an enjoyable enough experience but it feels incredibly slight for what I was expecting from it, or even compared to something like Lumines, which has tons of replayability by way of its difficulty. Tetris just isn’t that hard, unless you’re forcing yourself to do weird shit to get points. I WILL NEVER LEARN HOW TO T-SPIN. Never.

Castlevania Anniversary Collection – 2019 – Steam – ★★★

Kind of an unremarkable Castlevania collection. Neat that it has an official translation of Kid Dracula in there, but also… look, I prefer Metroidvania Castlevanias, OK?

6. Spelunky 2 – 2020 – Steam – ★★★

I’m not entirely sure why this doesn’t click for me where Spelunky 1 did. More annoying intro levels? Too many fiddly requirements for different ending-progression? Gameplay additions that just make things more annoying? Spelunky 1 was hard, but there was a kind straight-forwardness to it, even with its weird secrets, that made it much easier to grok and continue banging your head against. I’m just not having as much fun with this. Difficulty should be challenging, not a hassle.

5. Stellaris: Federations – 2020 – Steam – ★★★

This is the year that Stellaris just broke for me.

Federations itself is a good DLC; it adds some really interesting mechanics tied to various types of multi-national unions (the titular federations, as well as the Space UN), as well as the addition of unique “origins” that allow you to further specialize your gameplay. The origins in particular are a great addition that allows more specialization and roleplay.

I’m just tired of the sheer amount of busywork Stellaris forces you to do. Every DLC adds more junk you need to keep an eye on, and the fact that the AI doesn’t even bother with it (compensating with copious economy boosts in order to keep up) makes the whole thing frustrating. It’s like playing fetch with yourself; you just get tired of chasing after your own ball after a point.

I have to wonder if they’re pivoting towards a notional Stellaris 2 at this point? Might not be a bad idea for them, though it is weird with all they talked up adding more origins when Federations came out.  

4. GranBlue Fantasy Versus – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★

This is probably the fighting game I got most into over the past few years. There’s just this nice, almost Street Fighter-esque ease of execution to the controls, and that Arc Systems Works 3D-as-2D style continues to just do work. I don’t give a single shit about GranBlue Fantasy (frankly, I think I’d enjoy this game more if it wasn’t attached to a property) but the characters are fun enough to play and look at.

The big problem here is two things: no crossplay, and no rollback netcode. In the span of a month, this game became a total ghost town on PC, and it doesn’t sound like PS4 faired that much better. 

Ring Fit Adventure – 2019 – Switch – ★★★★

I’ve fallen on-and-off this game all year. At its heart: it works, it’s a fun exercise game. I don’t think it really feels like a “game” (in the sense that I’m not really coming to it for riveting gameplay or anything) as much as just a guided exercise experience, but… that’s fine? The in-game story is kind of flat, but funny in the fact of it existing at all. Buff Nicol Bolas and all.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen – 2017 – Steam – ★★★★

XCOM2: War of the Chosen is a great answer to what XCOM2 struggled with. As I discussed back in 2016 (Jesus Christ), XCOM2 tried to push against player’s worst instincts by incentivizing them to keep being aggressive through a whole bunch of timers— which, kind of just weren’t fun given how much accidentally walking into an ambush could “ruin” dozens of hours of play. War of the Chosen dials that back in some intelligent ways, by instead making the encounter designs themselves, as well as much more grab-and-bail mission types, encourage players to push ahead instead. Smart!

The addition of the Chosen makes the game feel more alive, and they really do make missions harder— particularly early on. But they’ve somehow accidentally fell into the hole, where XCOM just… isn’t that hard? Early on it’s challenging, particularly with the resource restrictions and all. But they keep giving you more and more options (that aren’t especially meaningful choices) that make your team more and more powerful, without increasing the strength of the enemy as time goes on. By the five-hour mark, you basically know if you’re going to steam roll the game or not.

The amount of additional character and variety in the gameplay is great, I just wish it had a more challenging difficulty curve. Maybe make the meta-layer of when enemies show up more targeted to where players are at. If a player is doing well, ramp up the difficulty, if they’re struggling, pull it back a bit. I should always feel like I’m just barely keeping ahead with XCOM, not like I’m bored. And by the end of War of the Chosen, I was kind of getting bored, really. Oh well.

3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 2020 – Switch – ★★★★

This is probably the video game that I spent the most time with hours-wise this year. I’m not entirely sure why? It’s a nice evolution of New Leaf, in that the crafting, environment shaping, and general quality-of-life improvements made are quite nice. There’s clearly been some thought on how people play these games, and ways to make the experience less frustrating.

… and yet, they kept so much tedium in the game. Like yes, the schedule stretching is the point, I get it. As someone who for some reason decided not to play with the clock, I only just recently finished the fish, fossils, and insects for the museum. But there’s just so many weird, little things that just make it hard to keep coming back to it. It’s like… to what end? When I’ve unlocked everything, and basically seen the entirety of the item list at this point, and the holiday events all being the game meaningless collectathons…. Why? I’m not going to try completing the collection; the museum stuff is about my limit, really (and even the paintings I can probably pass on).

I guess even an idealized, digital representation of a quasi-domestic life has the spiritual emptiness of consumerism-for-consumerism sake. Thanks???

Hypnospace Outlaw – 2019 – Steam – ★★★★

I grew up on the internet of the early 00s. I had an AngelFire website, mostly consisting of shitty sprite webcomics and hosted Gundam pics. I remember when Google wasn’t really a thing and you would heavily rely on website compilation sites like the Anime Web Turnpike in order to find anything of value online. It was weird, it was wild. It was exciting!

The internet seemed so different back then. There was a ton of garbage online, but also, like… there was a sense of optimism to it. Folks were shitty, there was plenty of bad stuff online, but it felt so disconnected from the fabric of the physicality of real-life that it was at the same time a perfect escape.

I was young when I first got “online”, something like 12. I remember having this notion that the internet was going to be this great equalizer, that it had infinite potential to change how people behave and interact. Boy, huh.

Hypnospace Outlaw is essentially a splendid alternate universe GeoCities recreation, where you’re a volunteer moderator of a grouping of websites on HypnOS, an internet-analog you access while you are sleep. At the surface level, it’s mostly about poking around the weird alternate-historical version of the internet they created, full of kids feuding, bizarre historical divergences, and plenty of amazing bespoke weirdness. All of this is great; there’s an incredible amount of content that’s just great to poke at, listen to, and explore.

Below the surface, there’s also a rolling plotline about the ethics of this industry-owned platform, those who run it, and the way corporations handle new technology, new platforms, and emerging digital societies. There’s a late game turn that’s pretty damn affecting. And as someone who has moderator his share of internet forums in his time, trying to balance ‘do it for the community’ and what your ostensible ‘bosses’ require of you, it was kind of a weird throwback in more ways than one.

Minecraft – 2011 – PC – ★★★★★

Turns out, Minecraft is really as good still who knew??? Started playing a bunch more of it this year due to Giant Bomb deciding to do so, and yeah: still good!

2. Hades – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★★

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again— Supergiant makes damn good games. I’d been holding off on checking out Hades until its full release due to my tendency to burn out on games easily, and I’m glad I waited. Hades is a fantastic rogue-lite experience. The way it makes narrative progression part of the reiterative, randomized rogue-lite structure is just perfect.

It’s got all the usual Supergiant bullet points. Great characters, voice acting, narration, and music. In terms of gameplay, it’s probably their least ambitious game— playing something like a cousin to their original game, Bastion— but it’s also been polished to a mirror sheen. It just feels really damn good to play, over and over and over.

That being said, the second (final?) ending feels kind of…. Tacked on? It’s fine as a goal to go for while continuing to do the game’s relationship mechanics for additional story bits, but it ends up feeling kind of unfulfilling compared to the payoff of the first one.

1. Crusader Kings III – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★★

I never could get into Crusader Kings II. Despite my interest, the sheer mechanical heft and unintuitive interface made the game a wall that I just couldn’t get over. I’m sure if I’d dedicated myself I probably could have learned it, but… ehhhhhh.

Crusader Kings III, on the other hand, has a good tutorial, a cleaned-up UI, and a very helpful highlight and tooltip system that make it much easier to understand how to actually play the game through resources inside the game itself. And, as it turns out: I rather love this game.

I mean, conceptually it’s an easy sell, isn’t it? Historical politics is something I enjoy broadly. I liked Stellaris but wish it had more narrative, roleplaying elements. They outright say that “winning” isn’t really the point of the game. Instead, it’s more about emergent storytelling and playing with the different systems and seeing what you can do with it.

My current game has had me taking the Haesteinn dynasty from its Viking origins into England, forming a London-seated Northern Sea Empire that encompasses all of Britannia, Iceland, Holland, Norway, and Denmark. I am currently working on hegemonizing Norse religious control over enough Asatru holy sites to finally reform the religion, such that more unified feudalization can occur. To that end, my current ruler’s predecessor invaded West Francia and conquered the whole of its territory, substantially reducing the foothold of Catholicism in mainland Europe… which seems to have kicked the hornet’s nest, given the Crusade I’m going to need to contend with next time I boot up the game.

Of course, a complicating matter is that my current ruler— the Emperor of the North Sea, King of Ireland and the Danelaw, liege of the King of Denmark, was elected from the extended Haesteinn family via Thing, the Scandinavian council of his erstwhile vassals. Where the previous emperor, the one who manufactured the invasion of Francia, was quite religious and beloved for his adherence to the old ways, I discovered as I took over as his successor that he really, really is into just boning down across Europe. We’re talking constantly attempting to seduce neighboring Queens and Princesses. His vassals are not thrilled with this. They also don’t care for his propensity for torturing people to death, constantly.

I had no real say in this; attempting to stay on top of a dynasty is kind of like riding a bucking-bronco, so many things are only tenuously under your control that some weird shit can happen. This is especially true when you use the systems that make it easier to maintain the coherency of your domain. The Norse religion encouraging concubinage results in you having a lot of kids, which means there’s a lot of domain partition going on (someday, primogeniture, someday). Naturally, using Thing election reduces that, but also makes you sometimes end up having to play Emperor Stabbo-Fucko because they thought he was the best candidate at the time. Hell, I thought he was the best candidate at the time until I discovered just how many people he’d be laying with on the low. But you just have to roll with it.

The way the game forces you to play ball with character traits is great. Doing things that match with the character’s traits makes them lose stress. Doing things against their character increases stress. Too much stress can force you to make the character take up vices (which can make them suffer health or opinion maluses, as well as altering their aptitudes), or even die outright. And sometimes those vices and attitudes can be boons, given they open up opportunities for different character interactions.

Emperor Stab-and-Fuck-Kingdom is perhaps the most relaxed person alive, it turns out, because his sadism makes him really enjoy sacrificing infidels, which makes the gods happy. It also freaks the fuck out of all of his vassals, so they’re a good supplicant mix of both appreciative of my religious sentiments and also utterly terrified of my skull piles. Some especially brave vassals occasionally try to assassinate me, but my lovers keep jumping in front of the knife and saving my life mid-coitus. Iiiiiit happens! :D  

The game can be incredibly fun to just watch, as it becomes emergently weird. Georgia right now is incredibly Jewish in game. I’m not sure how that happened; I guess someone made a random Jewish guy into a vassal, who somehow moved up enough in the world to make it a movement? The Byzantine princes elected a Coptic as Emperor, which over the course of the decade resulted in very accelerated balkanization as Byzantium just lost its shit. The Middle East and notional HRE haven’t really unified in a meaningful way, so I’m curious how things are going to go if/when the Mongols unify and roll-on in.

It’s one of those “Just one more thing” games that can completely devour time. I have more than a few times checked the clock mid-game to see that it’s 4AM and that I’ve totally ruined my sleep schedule in the process of play. Oooooops.

I highly recommend checking it out if you’re curious; the introductory, pre-release video series Paradox put out showing off the game does a pretty good job of showing the core gameplay loop and also how weird it can get.

[macgyvertape]

50 or so hours into Cyberpunk 2077

This should be roughly the correct amount of time, ive been leaving the game running as I get up to get food or do stretches. Quests are roughly in order I did them

non spoilers above cut:

 i haven't found a single hat/helmet i like, and since you can't hide them I just am not wearing any. It matters that much.

I posted the other day about bugs, every few hours I play I find new bugs. some require me to go back and reload a save others I honestly can’t tell if it’s a bug or just really poor development

there are several perks that don’t quite do what the description says, like the Anamesis perk. Based on reddit and trying it out it seems to just not do anything.

sometimes in car chase segments the passenger will say “look out” as cars spawn in my path and hit me. Can’t tell if that was deliberate or a pop in issue

Yeah I’ve just totally given up on doing pacifist things unless required by a mission. Given up on doing stealth too unless a mission objective, except for sneaking around to set up a fight.

:readmore:

the delemain car quest is fun. From the shock of the one going "beep beep motherfucker" and doing a hit and run to start it off, to the GLADOS car i see a lot of people talking about. It was fun to explore the city when i might have missed places like the landfill apparently there is follow up on T-bug's death if you go back to the quick hack shop in Kabuki. It's not much but better than nothing I made the pass with Panam of "what if the room just had one bed". I know she won't do a wlw romance, which is fine since I wouldn’t have chosen her.  I enjoy her as a character, don’t get me wrong, my V considers her as a friend, but it seems like theres always drama going on which would be tiring. I would have gone for a fling, i like her leotard-pants combo with all the straps

but also her questline was buggy as hell. Multiple cases of having to reload due to clipping into objects, including her in a driving section, or just insta-dying when collision physics with some rocks broke "your neural network can no longer function independantly of the chip" me slapping my desk: s y m b i o te!!! come on lets have some s y m b i o s i s

in the scene with hellman i really liked how Johnny moved around the room. It made him feel like he was really there. it was hard to follow the convo as I left the room, i would not have understood it without subtitles. But i guess Takemura fucking waterboarded hellman. :|

lol I hope the dialogue is different b/c i refuse to smoke for Johnny

i am level 18 and still can't beat the first opponents in the fist fighting quest. ffs

I looked up the romances options so I went to do the I fought the law quest as soon as i got it. ACAB, but like I literally just met River Ward 2 minutes ago, and I really like him. His earring and cyborg eye, his big fluffy coat. I'm definitely gonna sleep with him Ok i like how when River Ward is dealing with the tiger claws if you interject it leads to a fight. It goes better if you follow his instructions and let him deal with it. Seriously I enjoy that sometimes its good to not pick a dialogue choice.

during the red queen club part, there was no dialogue over the phone. So i reloaded a save and got myself spotted and attacked. Then River showed up to help me <3 and it was more enjoyable having him there. I honestly am not sure if him not going to the club level is bug or not.

then uuuuuugh the worst of irl police "cops are my family" from Detective Han. Again ACAB "FRATERNITY OF CITY COPS RESEMBLES A [Nomad] CLAN NOT AT ALL" ok a few minutes ago i was complaining about bugs, but the character modeling in this game is good (when they're there). You can see body posture, characters jiggle their legs when they are nervous. Like I though character A was just throwing a cigarette on the ground, but then character B flinches back; I realize Char A threw it at B as a fuck you

I'm honestly curious if "I fought the Law" quest will have any impact later on. My choices were that I thought there was more going on than Holt being the only person behind this (based on how complicated the main questline heist is, and keeping an eye on some of the in game news), and told him not to take it to internal affairs, and I loved his response of how he doesn't give a shit what we think, he's doing it anyway.

In the elevator to report in, Johnny said "this muck is deeper than you think, tell them nothing", so i just said that the case was complicated. anyway i love how much of a sarcastic asshole V is

I thought i was being nonlethal with the monk quest, but it seems i accidently killed someone. RIP, but thats kind of the problem with this game. Like when i do the non lethal cyberpychosis quests I equip my non lethal modded gun and hope for the est. I like how a go here kill things quest led to Charles the ripperdoc. He's getting all his parts from scav gang members so I felt obligated to take him out. I got a police bounty for it but w/e.

I merged the Delemain fragments with the whole. Guess he's the meta now. (Side note: some of my favorite rvb fanfic plots are Ai consiousness/memory merging with the humans, so I’m having fun with this game and look foward to introspective fanfic)

Honestly Jonny made some good points, the fragments didn't deserve to die; but also destroying the core and freeing the fragments, they couldn't really function alone.

I was able to rescue Saul fine with stealth. Using cameras and the synapse overload really made it easy.  Can't use the sniper rifle reward b/c I don't have the stats for it, and while it has a silencer the fact that it's a ricochette weapon and not a shoot through walls weapons, makes it not as good imo; and theres a legendary one that is stats free for only 100k.

Lol made a pass again at Panam, and she immediately shut me down. I then did Mitch's quest and I love every time someone tells V they area  good person.

I hacked the operation carpe noctem shard, and wow the corporations are using ai to make people have cyberpsychosis, or something like that. What a shocker /s, I've played Deus Ex HR before

lol driving through the unifinished interstate, past the fight from Panam's first quest I found a "batcave" with a very nice car, and a manifesto written by "muckman'. But here's my complaint about the loot, there is a legendary top, but it had 16 armor. My current top has 84 armor, like why would i switch?? then later i found a bunker with soviet spies in it. Wild

Doing River's second quest, love the timing of as soon as you ask, why are we breaking in, someone shows up to tell you he got kicked off the force. It's funny how Johnny comments how maybe River's into you, and V just doubts Johnny's words. Love how the first kid asks River if I'm his girlfriend. also wow like oof both the second parts of Judy and River's quest are SUPER fucked UP!! oof like i stopped doing first person mode on the braindances for those quests as soon as i could, just made me too uncomfortable seeing that in first person.

DRIVING IN THE GAME IS BAD! nowhere is it more apparent than the sinnerman quest, which took me 3 times to get the driving section done, as cars spawned out of nowhere to hit me. Then when you restart, there is a bunch of dialogue it doesn't let you fast forward through. The rest of the Sinnerman questline is interesting. My V took every option to tell the dude that he was messed up, and what he was doing was wrong. idk, I was surprised how much dialogue there was that let you buy into his whole "forgiveness thing" and how there wasn't any real dialogue to call him the fuck out, that in seeking forgiveness he continues to do harm both emotional to the mother of the man he killed, but also that he got the husband killed via cop. The later follow up quest, I told him that what he is doing is crazy, studio is just going to profit off this vid. Then I refused to join him prayer, and told him fuck no i wasn't going to hammer him to the cross, or even watch. Yes, the man is scared of dying, and the corporation is exploiting him, but he keeps creating burdens for others.  I think the discussion on this quest will be interesting to read, it's definitely my own personal experience with religion coloring my view. Anyway back to a main quest, yeah i don't trust Placide, especially in that scene where he grabs my hand, then jacks in. I ran off to do most of the sidequests here and got some criticism from him. I do love how in the cinema the western movie switches to a mission brief as the netwatch agent talks. its a fun enviromental detail.  I took the netwatch offer, i don't think he's being fully honest with me, but he didn't put a virus in my head. As I told Placide later, I didn't pick a side. I like how you can then talk with the agent, who is a fan of Western movies, b/c they show "a simpler time where all good guys carry badges" :eyeroll:, and then V recommends Unforgiven, which from the wiki summary goes against that theme.

Looks like the Voodoo boys all got killed by Netwatch, but I as revenge for them trying to set me up I'm fine with it. Honestly after speaking with ai!Alt I don’t believe their plan of trying to be on good relations with AI would work. 

doing the johnny flashback 2, and wow Johnny really is an asshole. Like I had gotten so used to him in side missions I forgot how self centered and unlikable he was.You constantly get prompts to drink or do drugs, which I ignored. But i do love the goth/punk love Rogue and others have.

lol i called it, when Hellman said that the engram would seek to override the host, put V on the engram. I really like how as the relic malfunctions, you wind up in the chair with a cigarette, which you can either smoke and say you are turning into Johnny or throw away. My dialogue "your problem is the ends justify the means", which is true!!! He and Rogue detonated a nuke downtown, does anyone know that, and like ask Rogue about it????

(Funny you can ask Rouge about Johnny silverhand, over the phone, then the game bugs out and spawns her npc where you are. She doens't say much about the nuke, but she does say no one trusts you for jobs). The line of no one trusting you for jobs is pretty funny at level 46 street cred where im at “respected” status. really loving the family atmosphere at River's 3rd quest. Also his big strong arms, and the fact he is no longer a cop. I totally let the kids win, and wow the family dinner where they GRILL YOU over the relationship and try to set the two of you up, then the water tower scene!!!!! I don't love the first person sex cutscenes but they do have personality. I'm glad afterwards you got to tell River about the biochip and that you might die. Because he's so far removed from your personal plot. So I took that option to back out of a relationship.

I do love that you wake up with "river's tanktop" that says "fuck the police" It actually has extremely good armor stats, so thats what I'll wear now.

panam 3rd quest, when shes like why did you help me, I'm like "because it's important to you". Basically the closest you can get to "when a friend asks for help you help them", which as an ex-nomad backstory I really choose the nomad options when ever i can Paralezes quest part 2! I love the piano song but I always think of it as ocean's 11 music. It's also fun to see the computer and see Judy recommended you for the first quest. The emails talk about "forgetting" to hire a staffer, on the balocony a strange antennia was scannable, the color of the roses was remembered wrong...  lol guess i was right with those giant wall screens. Its fun environmental details that spell things out before you can notice, and it ties into some other quests where people's behavior is being altered. Actually, this quest "Dream On" I love it! For a while I've been like "wheres the illuminati conspiracy! Here it IS! I chose to follow Elisabeth's wishes and not tell her husband he was being brainwashed. In best case they program him to forget again, in worst case he ends up dead. The gaslighting Elisabeth described is CHILLING, her husband describes a vacation she can't remember and she doesn't know whose memories have been messed with. On your way to the plaza you get a call from someone/something that says the know exactly WHAT you are, any you black out!!! It's such a great feeling of helplessness that you're just one person in a world so big that you can't fight every power. As Johnny said, could be a corporation, could be a rogue ai, either way Jefferson is fucked (and so are you).

[scorpiosanssexy]

Haikyuu Characters doing their Duke of Edinburgh Expedition

I had a lovely chat with the wonderful @criedoverspiltmilkchan​ and we started to talk about what each haikyuu character would be like when doing dofe. Some of these headcanons were simply too good to leave in the messenger so here we are. 

(to all of my non british followers here is a quick explanation as to what dofe is, lots of british kids did this during high school. - https://www.dofe.org/do/sections/   click on the expedition bit) 

Group 1: Ushijima, Tendou, Oikawa, Iwaizumi, Kageyama, Hinata and Sugawara 

Ushijima is in his elememt , he is the leader of the group, you cannot tell me that this farmer boi doesn’t know how to do basic camping task

He is the person in the group that will 100% leave his group oikawa  behind because they are walking too slow 

He also made sure that everyone in his group were up at 5am so that they could watch the sunrise together

Whilst Ushijima is loving life, Oikawa is straight up the opposite 

This boy has never gone camping in his life

“I W A C H A N how do i put up this tent”

The only good thing he contributes to the group was that he snuck his old  I-pod touch and started a  sech on top of a hill

Which only consisted of spice girls whaaat 

He is also the person in the group to catch hypothermia even though Iwaizumi told him to put more clothes on

He just wanted to look cute 

Speaking of Iwaizumi, he is in charge of the route card. 

He was the only person who actually knew where the escape points were

He is the best person to have in your group because he is really good at motivating everyone but also get’s shit done 

He was basically Oikawa personal bodyguard 

Kageyama and Hinata were just fighting with each other constantly

For example it was Hinata’s turn to navigate (this boi cannot read a map to save his life) and he basically got lost 

Kageyama was raging B O K E  H I N A T A  B O K E 

Suga had to break up the fight 

These two idiots were also the people who kept everyone up all night because they were chatting at 2am in their tent. 

They also raced each other up a hill (Hinata is winning 10 to 9)

Kageyama brought milk with him but i began to rot so his tent stinks of old milk

Hinata brought an inflatable volleyball and once they got to the campiste they all played with it until it was dark 

Now Sugawara was made camp chef, why? because he is the best cook 

However no one could have predicted that Suga would cook them the spicy thing none to man (it is canon that he loves spicy food) 

Everyone is literally dying 

Tendou is the only one who actually enjoyed the meal 

the only reason tendou is doing dofe it because ushijima is doing it 

He naruto runs up the hill , and he beats both kageyama and hinata in their race (tendou - 11 kagehina- 0)

He is constanly whistiling whilst he walks oikawa wants to kill him 

Forgot his sleeping mat so hasn’t slept for pretty much the entire expedition 

He is surviving on literally just redbull and suga’s cooking 

As a group they were the second ones to reach the campsite  

Group 2: Kuroo, Kenma, Bokuto, Akaashi, Yaku, Tsukishima and Lev 

There is one and one reason only Kenma signed up for Dofe and that was because Kuroo said he would buy him the latest game animal crossing new horizons

For the majority of the time , he literally sulks because he wasn’t allowed his nintendo switch (which kuroo confiscated) 

He wanted to be in a group with Hinata 

Kuroo, on the other hand loves Dofe 

Him , being the science nerd he is, is literally naming every single planet he see’s on the hike and gives little fun facts about them 

He also encourages Tsukki and Kenma to do “group activities” (this literally consists of Bokuto and Lev rolling down a hill) 

Yaku is the sole voice of reason for the group 

His jobs is to make sure lev nekoma’s toddler  doesn’t run off and get in trouble

He is the only one who can work the trangia, no one knows how he does it he just does 

Again like Iwa chan, he is the only member of the group who actually knows the route card 

Lev

just lev tbh 

Lev 100% was that person in the group who ate the berries to “feel like one with nature”

He is also the dumb person to start dancing infront of a bull 

he was then chased by it 

yaku nearly died because of his short legs 

Lev wasn’t allowed to navigate 

Tbh he wasn’t allowed to do much 

He was banned from being in charge of the route card because he left it in the field, when he was chased by the bull 

Thank god Yaku knew the route 

Bokuto was the head chefs at camp, why? because he binges Hell’s Kitchen relgiously ( 100% qualified) 

They were going to cook a simple pasta dish, easy 

Welp, 20 minutes later the pasta had burnt, the trangia  melted at the bottom, dinner was shit 

cue Bokuto’s emo mode 

However, there was hope 

Akaashi was the group member who managed to sneak his phone 

He doesn’t really give a shit about nature, would rather be in a cafe in the city 

He secretly orders a chinese several yards away from the campsite ( he knew that Bokuto was going to fuck up dinner)

He tells everyone that Bokuto did this, to make him look like the hero 

So Group 2 tucked into Chinese , Oikawa could smell it and then started to complain to Iwa chan that other campers had nicer food 

This was the highlight for Tsukishima 

Tsukishima only signed up to Dofe because he thought Yamaguchi would do it 

Yamaguchi missed the deadline lol 

G O M E N  T S U K K I 

Tsukki for the majority of the hike put’s in his airpods so he doesn’t have to interact with anyone 

Secretly listens to Kuroo’s plant talk 

This is the group who is last to the campsite and then proceeds to tell everyone some wild story as to why they were back so late 

Group 3: Sawamura, Asahi, Tanaka, Nishinoya and Ennoshita 

Daichi is going to go grey 

He is making sure Tanaka and Nishinoya do not get in trouble 

He has to ,multiple times, shout at them both for talking way to loudly in the middle of the night, they were playing truth and dare  

He is in charge of the emergancy phone, he played the snake game and it lost charge whaaat you didn’t hear that from me 

He packs half of his bag with food ,he really is a hungry boi 

Tanaka drew the short straw so had to carry all the tent pegs (you know the heavy stuff)

He made everyone do some really stupid shit, like roll down the hill 

He accidently pushed Daichi down the hill, he has never been so scared in his life 

Not gonna lie, the person most likely to get all their stuff wet would be this boy right here 

Ennoshita had to share clothes with him because they were soaked 

He (ennoshita)  is in charge of the group project so he is basically making a mini documentry on their expedition 

He filmed Daichi being pushed down the hill by Tanaka 

He was forced by Noya to film him doing the rolling thunder in a middle of the field 

Brings toliet paper for the group 

Nishinoya is having a great time 

Susprisely, he has really good camping skills (like he knows how to put up a tent, cook a meal etc.....) 

Doesn’t stopped him from being a crack head tho 

Has cartwheeled on Asahi multiply times 

Proudly owns crocs and a spork 

Asahi is such a big bby 

This boi hates bugs with a passion 

An example of this happen during their lunch break 

Asahi was innocently eating his sandwich and then wasp appears 

Never in their life had they heard the most high pitched scream in their life 

Asahi is literally like bye bitch 

It takes the group 20 minutes to coax Asahi to sit back dwon 

Noya kills the wasp with his croc 

Despite the horrible weather, Asahi hair is literally the most gorgeous thing ever. Like he looks good anything

Please go and give the lovely @criedoverspiltmilkchan​ a follow, they are a fellow haikyuu imagine and matchup blog.

If you have any other headcanons feel free to submit them in my ask box 

Have a lovely rest of the day

Carla 

[captcas]

Worth Fighting For (4/?)

WORTH FIGHTING FOR by capthamm

Killian “Hook” Jones is a dominate up and comer in the UFC while Emma “The Savior” Swan’s career was cut short. When Hook’s manager moves up and the office brings in UFC’s youngest legend to keep him in check, will either of them be able to handle it?

read on ao3 // tumblr: ch 1/ ch 2 / ch 3

[CHAPTER 4/?]

Emma finishes up her work and heads to the subway. She’s doing her best to ignore her obvious frustration with her new client and hopes a quick stop at the gym might clear her mind a bit. She’s grateful that Henry is at Avery’s for some science fair project. She needs this after today. Emma’s got a lot of pent up— something— she needs to work out.  She gets to the gym, gives a tired smile at Belle and heads to the locker room. She changes quickly, grateful they let her keep her locker, and heads towards the treadmills. Emma’s trying to pull up the latest episode of her podcast so she doesn’t pay any mind to who’s using the machine next to her.

That is until he looks her way.

Fuck.

She’s run into Killian here a total of maybe three times before they started “working” together so it only makes total sense that she’d run into him now.  She gives him a forced smile before putting her earbuds in and starting up the treadmill. He seems to get the hint, smiling back and continuing his run.  She’d be lying if she said she didn’t steal a glance or two as she jogged.

Okay, more than a glance.

She can’t help it. Watching his chest breathe in and out in a rhythmic pattern that parallels that of his feet pounding against the treadmill. She can’t help but notice the way his jaw ticks every once in a while, surely pushing himself to the full limit, or the beads of sweat that drip from his forehead and disappear beneath the hem of his shirt.  She hasn’t admired another human being like this in a long time– probably ever.  She doesn’t let her mind wander further than that, knowing anywhere else it would travel would be way less than professional.

She runs.  Mentally and physically.

She can’t think about him this way and he can’t think about her in any way besides as his manager. So she’ll shut it down now, being professional and curt and not allowing either of them to cross the bright red line that she’s almost positive she’s not the only one close to crossing.

It’ll be easier this way.

Killian leaves the treadmill to presumably find a sparring partner and Emma feels like she can breathe freely again. She runs, longer than she ever has, and for a while forgets about anything but the beat of her feet hitting the belt of the treadmill.  When she finishes, Killian is nowhere to be found. She doesn’t allow herself to be disappointed despite the small pang in her gut that tells her she wanted him to wait for her.  She gets back to her locker, showers, and changes. As she walks out of the gym she unlocks her phone to a text from Killian.

I didn’t want to break you out of your runner’s high. See you Thursday, Swan.

She presses the phone to her chest, trying to slow the beat of her heart. The text is innocent, an explanation as to why more pleasantries between co-workers weren’t exchanged.  She won’t let herself think of it as anything else.

She knows it is.

Getting on the subway, Emma finds a seat, not answering the text message despite it burning white hot in her pocket the entire way home.

Henry gets home an hour or so after her. She makes up dinner, he quickly summarizes his day, and smirks as he tells her he did in fact finish the sixth book. She smiles at him and puts in the movie so they can watch as they eat.  It’s really hard to pay attention to a bunch of British kids when a certain British man is taking up the entirety of your mental real estate.  She’s seen the movie at least ten times, but Henry seems to enjoy himself. They both cry when Dumbledore dies and Henry seems newly invigorated to get through the seventh book for their next movie night. The movie finishes way past his bedtime so Emma tucks him in and returns to clean up the kitchen.

As she does the dishes she feels like she’s on auto pilot, her head spinning over the events of the day. When she finally lays down, she stares at the rotation of her bedroom eiling fan for what feels like hours.  Killian Jones has crept his way into her head and she hates it.

She finally falls asleep only to wake the next morning and find he’s also crept his way into her dreams.

She groans into her pillow. Despite her gut telling her this could be good , Emma forces herself to end this now. She’s been given an opportunity and she can’t throw it away for some blue-eyed fighter who can read her like a book.  She can’t and she won’t. Henry comes first, and no one is worth risking his future for.

Emma won’t acknowledge the fact that a lot of this has nothing to do with Henry.  She picks up her phone, and responds to his text:

Yes, Mr. Jones, Thursday, 9AM sharp. I will reserve the conference room. Thank you, E. Swan . . . Killian knew the text was risky, but he didn’t think it’d shut them down completely– like there's a "them" to shut down at all.

He’s going to have to play by her rules– not that he was ever under the illusion that he wouldn’t be– and he’s in this for the long haul.  He bides his time for Thursday, desperately hoping to run into her at the gym or on the T. It’s Wednesday night’s training session where Robin finally says something. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks, mate. You’re no beauty queen yourself.” He shoots his friend (and trainer) a sarcastic smirk but receives only a judgemental stare back. Killian sighs, running his taped hands over his face. “I’m fine, Rob. I promise. Just stressed with the manager switch is all.” “Is there something wrong with Emma? Is she stressing you out? Regina said you two seemed to hit it off but if that’s not the case then I can–”

Killian cuts him off, “No, no, no. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Emma.” He winces at the meaning behind his own words, hoping it’s lost on his friend. When he meets Robin’s eye, he knows it’s not.

“I see then. How about a few quick practice rounds in the ring?” Robin gives him a knowing look as he lifts the rope for Killian to slip under. He nods back at him in thanks, not just for lifting the rope, but for dropping the subject. He doesn’t want a fuss over something that is decidedly and absolutely nothing.

He adjusts the peeling tape on his battered knuckles and slips into training mode. The world blurs around him when he fights; it’s just him and his opponent. He feels the rush of instinct and adrenaline course through his veins as he rolls his shoulders back ready to go one versus one with his trainer.

He takes it easy on Robin.

Obviously.

He wipes the sweat from his brow as he all but chugs from the water bottle Robin threw him after the quick bout. Water pours down his throat like ice, quelling the adrenaline, and calming the innate rage that boils over mid-fight. With a clear mind, his first thought is of green eyes. He punches the padded wall behind him in protest of his own mutinous thoughts, and Robin shakes his head.

“You’ve got it bad, mate.” Robin gives Killian a tight smile and throws him a towel, “Shower up, you did good today.”

The pounding of the water on his shoulders brings further clarity. How he feels about Emma is, at this point, out of his control, but what they become is her decision. He’s known this all along, but would be lying if he said he hadn’t tried to push the hands of fate a little bit.

It was selfish, but Killian doesn’t mind being selfish when it comes to Emma.

He finishes up getting ready and walks out of the locker room while scrolling through ESPN’s predictions for this week’s fights when he quite literally runs into someone.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I–” He looks up. “Oh Belle, I’m sorry, lass. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

Belle smiles brightly, “No problem, Mr. Jones. It happens.” “Killian please, lass.”

Belle nods shyly and smiles before walking towards the storage closet between the two locker rooms. Killian’s eyes subconsciously follow the sweet lass until they catch a flash of blonde leaving the locker room opposite his. Something in his gut tells him to ignore her, that sparking a conversation will only dig him in deeper; yelling out her name only torturing him more.

He stares at the space where her head was only seconds before a bit longer than he should and catches Belle’s knowing glance as he finally shakes himself out of whatever trance Emma put him under.

. . .

She knows going to the gym is risky but Emma needs to let the tension out somehow.  She’s obviously just stressed about her client meeting tomorrow.

It has nothing to do with said client.

And his damn blue eyes.

She walks in and notices Belle isn’t at the desk, but a quick sweep finds her putting towels away in the storage closest between the two locker rooms.

It also finds Killian Jones.

Emma looks down at her phone immediately hoping to avoid any in-person contact. He seems nice enough but she’d like to keep this strictly professional… she thinks.

She flinches before walking into the locker room, sure he’s noticed her by now and will say something that she has no choice to ignore. Emma expects to be pleasantly surprised when she gets into the locker room unscathed but her mind betrays her. Questions of why he didn’t stop her or even so much as cough to get her attention flood her mind for the rest of her work out. The silence and space is unlike the Killian Jones she’s become acquainted with over the past week and starkly different than the ones she’s kept in the peripheral of her mind for the last year.

Yes, a year; she’s not blind.

She audibly groans catching the attention of a man working out on the bench next to her. She recognizes him from somewhere but she can’t place him. Before she can figure it out, he’s walking over and introducing himself.

“Need a hand?” Emma can’t help but roll her eyes, of course he thinks she needs help.

“I got it, the groan had nothing to do with the workout. Thanks anyway, bud.”

“Graham Humbert.” Oh. Oh.

She dials the sass back a bit and throws on a friendly smile, “Emma Sw—“

“The Savior?! I thought that might’ve been you but I didn’t think you still came around. It’s been what 7 years?”

“Ten.” Emma mumbles, now fidgeting with the hair tie on her wrist. She changes the subject, “Rough fight the other weekend, huh?”

Graham seems stunned, but whether it’s at her bringing up his loss or the fact she continued the conversation, she’s not sure. “Yeah,” he laughs awkwardly, “Jones got the best of me. He’s fucking quick, I’ve heard people say that but you can’t prepare for it unless you’ve been in the ring with him.”

Emma mentally facepalms forgetting that this particular subject would divert her train of thought right back to where she didn’t want it to be. “Oh? Huh. You’ll get him next time.” She answers more than vaguely (and dishonestly— Graham winning wouldn’t be good for her now either) and Graham seems to sense the visible shift. She’s pretty sure a trash can could’ve sensed the awkward tension between them

“We’ll see I suppose. If there is a next time.” He pauses, probably waiting for her to answer but continues when she just nods in agreement. “Well it’s an honor to meet you, Emma.” He hesitates and she can practically feel what’s coming next. “If you ever need a spotter, uh, or dinner, let me know.” He slips her a business card with his cell number on it. “I’d be happy to help with either.”

She smiles softly, unable to help the inevitable blush that rises to her cheeks when someone (rather awkwardly) asks her out. “Will do, Graham. Thank you.”

He nods at her with a genuine smile and turns back to his bench. She does the same only to catch the eye of Killian. She’s not sure why she feels like she did anything wrong– for fucks sake they aren’t dating– but if the look on his face is any indication, he heard the entire exchange. Emma just saw him leave so she’s not even sure why he’s here.

Fuck it.

Emma walks towards him as he turns and heads to the door, she jogs a bit before calling out his name– what the fuck has gotten into her? “Jones!”

He turns around at her acknowledgement. “Yes, Swan?”

She realizes she’s not sure why she approached him, an explanation for her conversation with Graham suddenly seeming awfully presumptuous. “Oh, uh, I just wanted to confirm our meeting for tomorrow.” Smooth.

“Yes Swan, I recieved your text.” He mimics her, “9AM sharp. Did you reserve that conference room?”

She’s tempted to be mad at him but can sense the mirth hiding behind his eyes. “I did, but, uh, maybe the coffee shop is better. I think Tina has a meeting with Hatter’s entire team and it seems irresponsible to take up the conference room...” She’s not sure what the fuck she’s doing but the words just seem to be pouring from her mouth without her consent.

She doesn’t really mind– neither does he.

He nods at her and she’s either crazy or there’s a sense of bridled excitement in his next words, “As you wish, Swan.” He smiles softly and turns into the locker room.

Emma is left standing in the middle of the gym extremely confused? Excited? Hopeful? She’s not sure, but all she knows is that Killian Jones has come into her life like a hurricane and she’s pretty sure she's only in the eye of the storm.

. . .

Killian is out the door and halfway to the T when he realizes he forgot his headphones on the elliptical. He’d usually leave them... but tomorrow ishis off day and he needs them for subway rides so no one tries to talk to him.

Bloody hell.

He heads back into the gym, telling Belle he just has to grab something he forgot. Killian walks through the locker room to the machine he was using and stops dead in his tracks when he sees her.

Bloody. Hell.

He forgot she’d be here, which is ridiculous because his mind rarely lets him forget her existence, but he’s more so stopped by who she’s talking to. He’s close enough to hear her conversation with Humbert, and although he has no right to be, his blood boils with envy when he insinuates taking Emma on a date. He can’t help but notice she doesn’t say yes.

She also doesn’t say no.

It’s when that realization hits him that Emma spots him from across the gym. He’d like to say he masked his emotions well, but the way Emma jogs towards him tells him he failed.  He turns to walk away, not wanting to acknowledge the feelings that he’s finding hard to control in her presence, but when she calls his name he can’t help but respond.

Why does she look so worried? “Yes, Swan?” There’s an edge to his voice that he can’t control. One minute she’s short and professional, the next she’s chasing him down at the gym. He doesn’t mean to mock her by repeating the “9 am sharp” from her text, but  he feels as though he’s getting whiplash from this woman.

He doesn’t really mind.

Especially when she agrees to another coffee shop date– meeting– bloody hell.  Killian rides the high of Emma’s growing comfort all the way til their meeting the next morning.

And he is abruptly dropped on his proverbial ass.

Emma’s initial greeting is friendly and warm, as is their elevator ride, and when he offers to buy their drinks again, she flashes a bright smile but assures him she can charge it to the company. The moment they sit down at the table everything shifts. He supposes it’s his fault as he tries desperately to keep things professional. They get stuff done -Emma sees to that- but he finds himself stumbling over words where innuendos would flow easily, making for an entirely awkward conversation. Where the last meeting lasted three hours, this one lasted a mere 45 minutes before Emma assured him she had another meeting to run off to.

He knows she doesn’t. (So he checked her digital calendar, hoping for a second chance at a lunch date -sue him.) Not that he would’ve asked her to lunch, but he’d hoped his good luck in regards to Emma Swan may have continued. He can read her like a book and he knows she feels something but the last thing he wants to do is push– good thing he's a patient man.

This woman will be the death of him.

[aion-rsa]

Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat: The Many Ways the Crossover Almost Happened

https://ift.tt/38sRB2j

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, the game that really kickstarted the fighting game genre, has turned 30 this year. To celebrate, Ryu and Chun-Li are appearing in Fortnite. It’s par for the course for Ryu, who has been in so many crossovers to fight everyone from everywhere. Ryu has crossed over with the cast of Tekken, the guys from King of Fighters, the Marvel superheroes, just about everyone under the Nintendo banner, GI Joe, Power Rangers, and even Family Guy for some odd reason. Ryu and Street Fighter have crossed over with nearly everyone.

Yet for some reason, the number one dream fighting game match-up has never happened. Yes, we’re talking about Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat. These two giants of the fighting game industry have never exchanged blows despite being household names from the very beginning of the fighting game boom of the early 1990s.

That doesn’t mean there haven’t been some close calls or that they haven’t brushed shoulders in the past…

The Beginning of the Rivalry

The first iteration of Street Fighter II came out in February 1991. This was the sequel that made good on the promise of the 1987 original, which had great ideas that it couldn’t really execute. It would be bold to say that Street Fighter II perfected the formula, but it was such an improvement that it’s still incredibly playable to this day. It was a lucky break for Capcom, who would go on to milk the game’s success with several new editions of the title, from 1992’s Champion Edition all the way to 2017’s Ultra Street Fighter II: Final Challengers for the Nintendo Switch.

If you’re a fighting game aficionado, you know the history. The success of Street Fighter II sparked a boom for the fighting game genre. In Japan, SNK released Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting right on the heels of Capcom’s hit, while Alpha Denshi gave us World Heroes in ’92. Meanwhile, in America, Midway Games was planning its own Street Fighter II competitor, which was originally meant to be a tie-in game for the movie Universal Soldier starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. When that project fell through, Midway turned to the much gorier Mortal Kombat, a fighting game that digitized actors instead of sprites, an innovative approach to animation at the time.

Released on October 1992, Mortal Kombat was a major hit, and Midway quickly put out a sequel, Mortal Kombat II, six months later in April 1993. The third game would be out two years later. Mortal Kombat was speeding through its early days with cabinet after cabinet, while Capcom was focused on re-releasing newer versions of Street Fighter II. After making bosses playable, adding new characters, and tossing in other bells and whistles over the course of various upgrades, the studio concluded the game’s original run with 1994’s Super Street Fighter II: Turbo.

That meant that at a time when the internet was in its infancy, these two popular franchises were mainstays of print gaming magazines. Announcements, previews, reviews, secrets, tips, and so on. If your early ’90s magazine didn’t have at least a page dedicated to Street Fighter and/or Mortal Kombat, then get your eyes checked because you weren’t looking hard enough.

In 1992, Electronic Gaming Monthly famously pulled an April Fool’s Day gag on readers where they took the Street Fighter II mistranslation, “You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance,” and insisted it was a reference to a secret boss fight that involved working your ass off in the game in a way that was outright impossible, making your way through the game as Ryu without taking a single hit until your battle with M. Bison (and that was the “easy” part). The joke led to many stressful nights for gamers, who were finally told the truth about the hoax the following December.

But Midway took the idea of a secret boss more literally. Using the Sub-Zero/Scorpion ninja sprites, Midway introduced a green-clad fighter named Reptile, a seriously difficult opponent that you could only fight in arcade mode under some seriously ridiculous circumstances. Reptile was added in the 3.0 version of Mortal Kombat, making him the first secret boss in the genre’s history.

Capcom would eventually catch up with Akuma, a character extremely similar EGM‘s design for Sheng Long, in Super Street Fighter II: Turbo. By then, Midway had thrown in three more secret boss fights for Mortal Kombat II, and even SNK had already introduced Ryo Sakazaki as a secret final boss in Fatal Fury Special.

Brushing Shoulders

The Mortal Kombat series really thrived as a gorier and campier alternative to Street Fighter II‘s more fundamental approach to the genre, but that didn’t stop Midway from taking a couple of jabs at Capcom. In-game, secret characters would occasionally pop up before rounds and say something cryptic for the sake of helping the players figure out how to unlock their fight, a nod to the Sheng Long joke. But there were more direct pokes at the competition. For instance, Jade would occasionally appear for the sake of asking, “CHUN WHO?” and vanishing. Midway also included “RYU” as default initials on Mortal Kombat II‘s high score board. Cute.

Meanwhile, Capcom stoked the fire with a commercial for Street Fighter II: Champion Edition for Sega Genesis. It featured a security guard at a toy store coming across a box for the game. Blanka’s arm would thenreach out and grab the nearby box for Mortal Kombat and crush it into smoldering trash.

But it wasn’t all jabs. The two companies crossed paths in other interesting ways. In 1993, Malibu Comics published a Street Fighter II series for only three issues before having to drop it because Capcom was unhappy with Ken Masters’ grisly fate in the story. Around the same time, Malibu also launched a Mortal Kombat series, and the publisher would actually batch issues of both series together and send them to vendors.

Read more

Games

The Strange History of Street Fighter Comics

By Gavin Jasper

Games

The History of Mortal Kombat Comics

By Gavin Jasper

Hasbro double-dipped when it came to action figures too, releasing sets for both Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, complete with weapons and special vehicles. But while Street Fighter characters were treated like part of the GI Joe line, and were even featured in commercials where they all hang out and beat the crap out of Duke, Mortal Kombat was kept separate from Hasbro’s most popular figures.

Nintendo also used both franchises as major selling points for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The SNES ports for Super Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat II both played big parts in Nintendo’s Play It Loud ad campaign. One such commercial even had a guy getting a massive Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat tattoo on his torso.

But the closest thing we’ve ever gotten to a real crossover between the two games was through their Saturday morning cartoons. Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm were both released as animated follow-ups to their live-action movies, although they were directly inspired by the games themselves. On Nov. 16, 1996, both series, as well as Savage Dragon and Wing Commander Academy, took part in a long-forgotten crossover event based around a hero named the Warrior King and his search through the multiverse for a special orb that controls the weather.

The Warrior King played a major role in his Street Fighter episode as the romantic interest of Chun-Li, while in Mortal Kombat, he merely made a quick cameo as a shadowy figure running through a portal. Regardless, both stories involved the villains (M. Bison and Shang Tsung) wielding the same mystical orb.

No, the crossover ain’t much, but that’s still more than what we got in Wreck-It Ralph. Although the Disney movie featured M. Bison, Zangief, Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, and Cammy, it didn’t bring in any official Mortal Kombat characters to face them. Instead, the movie included “Cyborg,” a blatant Kano knockoff with the same cybernetic eye, goatee, and zest for heart-ripping. Why didn’t Disney just use Kano? Probably because he’s a Warner Bros. property. Still, missed opportunity.

Copying Test Answers

The video game adaptation of Street Fighter: The Movie will always be a fascinating novelty. Released in 1995 in arcades, the game not only copied Mortal Kombat’s digitized actors but it actually featured Jean-Claude Van Damme, the actor Midway had been unable to secure for its own Universal Soldier tie-in years earlier.

Interestingly, whenever Capcom sets out to make a totally new Street Fighter game, the studio usually chooses to go in a new art direction. Street Fighter V is the exception, although Capcom did initially start with a more photorealistic art style before nixing it and going with “Street Fighter IV but extra.” So, when Capcom tapped Incredible Technologies to put together the video game version of Street Fighter: The Movie in 1995, it was at a time when the publisher was also considering using the digitized Mortal Kombat style for Street Fighter III. Thankfully, Capcom decided not to go in this direction.

Midway hilariously dipped its toe in Capcom’s waters a bit more blatantly in 2004. Mortal Kombat: Deception introduced a fighter named Kobra who was supposed to be the latest human POV character, only evil. But Midway initially named him “Ken Masters” due to his physical similarities to the Street Fighter character. The studio included “Ken” in a beta version of the game provided to the press, with the express direction NOT to mention the character.

Guess what happened next. A German publication posted the images of “Ken Masters” anyway, suggesting Mortal Kombat vs. Street Fighter was finally happening. Sadly, no, this was not a teaser for the long-awaited video game crossover. It seemes Midway just hadn’t come up with a proper name for “Ken Masters” yet.

Capcom did throw in a cute reference to Mortal Kombat in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. The game featured Nathan Spencer, the Bionic Commando, whose cybernetic arm could shoot out like a grappling hook and grab opponents from far away. When doing that to yoink an enemy towards him for a haymaker to the face, he’d quote Scorpion’s famous “GET OVER HERE!” Nice.

Not the Right Fit

Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon admitted in 2008 that he’d tried to make Mortal Kombat vs. Street Fighter happen at one point but Capcom wasn’t interested.

“I’ve always wanted to cross MK over since about MK4, or something like that. I’m a big fan of all of the other fighting games, Street Fighter, Tekken. I always thought, wouldn’t it be cool to have MK vs. SF and MK vs. Tekken? We pursued some of those ideas to the extent we could but we always ran into some kind of road block and couldn’t do it.”

A full-on roster vs. roster situation was out back in the ’90s, but these days, guest characters are a normal part of fighting games. Tekken 7 alone includes representatives from Street Fighter, Fatal Fury, Final Fantasy, and The Walking Dead. Mortal Kombat and Injustice have gone all over the map with their DLC choices, including slasher villains, ’80s action heroes, Spawn, Hellboy, and even the Ninja Turtles. When a fighting game announces a new season of DLC, you usually know to expect at least one crossover character to be included in the package.

For 2019’s Mortal Kombat 11, Boon reached out to Capcom once again. Wouldn’t it be neat if a Street Fighter character got in on all the gritty time-traveling action? While we don’t know which character Boon was interested in using, many fans theorize Akuma would have been the perfect fit. But Capcom said no.

Here’s what former Street Fighter producer Yoshinori Ono had to say about it:

“It’s true that a proposal for a Street Fighter character in Mortal Kombat was rejected by Capcom, but it wasn’t me personally! There were many people at the company that felt that it wasn’t a good fit for our characters. I actually met Ed at the Brazil game show and spoke to him personally about it. So it’s true – but I didn’t make the decision!”

So why didn’t it happen? Probably because Mortal Kombat 11 is banned in Japan due to all the gore and extreme violence.

“I understand why people want it,” Ono said at the time, “but it’s easier said than done. Having Chun-Li getting her spine ripped out, or Ryu’s head bouncing off the floor…it doesn’t necessarily match.”

Maybe one day. For now, we’re left waiting for Ryu to finally get over here.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Special thanks to tabmok99 for helping with this article. You can check out his Mortal Kombat know-it-all YouTube channel here.

The post Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat: The Many Ways the Crossover Almost Happened appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/30veXj9

[ziamhaze]

Hi, I hope you're well! I just want to start off by thanking you for all the wonderful fics you have blessed me with!

I just finished Red vs. Black and was hoping you wouldn't mind answering some questions I have. As someone who risks his own life to save others, how does Liam justify being with someone he knows has killed innocent people? It'd be one thing if Zayn had only killed those directly involved with what happened to his family, but he's killed innocent civilians over minor inconveniences (such as the teenagers in the convertible). Does Zayn still think he is justified in doing so? Does he ever feel guilty about it? If not, how would Liam and Zayn be compatible if their moral compasses are so different?

Also, did Zayn's father ever make his way to the UK? Or was that just a lie he told Zayn to comfort him? Does Zayn ever find his family, especially his younger sister?

I know it's a lot, but I'd really love to hear your answers if you want to give them! Again thank you for all of your wonderful works!

So sorry it’s taken me this long to reply, but I didn’t forget!

To start I’d like to thank you for clicking, and finishing, Red vs. Black.  It isn’t the shortest of fics, nor is it the most delicate - to put it lightly.  For the latter alone, thank you.

These are such poignant, important questions.  Ones that are nearly word for word what I asked myself while planning the ending.

                         SPOILERS FOR ALL OF RED VS. BLACK

1)  How does Liam stay with Zayn after learning of all his senseless killings?

Honestly, I questioned this the most when feeling out the concept.  As a fic writer it’s expected of me to write not only a romance, but also a happy ending.  Of course fics exist that do neither, but they’re very rare and not exactly well-loved.  And truthfully, a massive point that I wanted to get across - and which in effect answers this question - is that despite people’s pasts, they cannot overcome them without being given the opportunity.  100%.  No ands, ifs, or buts.  For a prisoner to assimilate back into society and not go back to their old ways, they need to be trusted with a job.  With a salary (no matter how small), they need to trust themselves to be able to not buy anything that may contribute to poor habits: drugs, alcohol, weapons, gambling, a means of transport that will give them the ability to visit bad influences (more of a psychological thing, but still).  A lot of prisoners are never given this opportunity (especially in the United States), and therefore fall back into their old ways, which are more often than not coping mechanisms to deal with the fact that they can’t fit into society as easily as privileged people to begin with; it’s a terrible cycle.  However, there are plenty of success stories of those that truly wish to change and are lucky enough to stumble upon an employer or mentor or sponsor of some sort that hands them an inkling of hope/trust that they use to fight their way back up.  The fic is fantasy, and while Zayn’s story is rooted in real world PTSD, I think the prisoner analogy is easy for us to envision and therefore, understand why Liam acts the way he does.  I also made it a point in the last scene when they’re talking things out to have Liam voice his contingency: if Zayn so much as spits at anyone, he’s done for.  That’s to say, he’s not wiping his slate clean just yet.

2)  Does Zayn still feel his useless killings were justified?

I’m going to answer assuming that you’re referring to the time after the fic ends.

Looking back at his actions is something that would be inevitable when he starts therapy, and this is a perfect example of one of the questions his therapist would ask.  You may not like my answer, but as an author I find it imperative that I speak of my characters realistically and to keep them true, not how I want them to act.  That said, yes, Zayn would still find justification in why he’s done what he’s done.

There are a few instances in the story where this is actually explained.  Take the scene in the bar with fancy mixologists.  Zayn begins to get aggravated over the people in the room simply because they’re ignorant to the feeling of significant pain.  There’s also the scene where he’s back home in Cheshire and Harry straight out tells him, he may be furious at the unfairness of the world, but he needs to learn how to come to terms with it.  It’s not going to change.  This right here is what a therapist would work with him to do, and also why I had Harry be the one to bring this up in the story - he is one.

I know it sounds incredibly foreign to the average person, but trust me when I say that people struggling with anger problems founded in (un)fairness, exist.  I’ve spoken with professionals about it.  Add on crippling childhood PTSD and a villain like Zayn can definitely be born.  It’s why treatment is needed, and why the answer is ‘yes’ in the beginning of Zayn’s journey to peace.  When his answer switches over to ‘no’, that’s when it’ll be outwardly apparent that he’s beating his ailment.  Unfortunately, for many, the inner battle with mental health is lifelong; the answer ‘no’ will never turn solid.

3)  Does Zayn feel guilty about the above?

Again, there are a couple times when I write Zayn to literally mention how he feels zero guilt.  However, if you really really pay attention you’ll notice that these instances aren’t villain related.

For example, meeting Liam’s parents:

After handing his father and Zayn each their tea, Liam looks between them suspiciously. "Leaving the two of you in a room together was a bad idea."

"Don't know what you're on about," Geoff replies innocently. "We were just talking about cars, weren't we Zayn?" Even with all eyes on him, the pressure of lying doesn't get to Zayn. It never does.

"Yeah," he agrees, bringing his drink up to his lips carefully, "cars."

Or, after Zayn walks out from the comedy club:

"It takes a lot of courage to get up there and do something like that, don't you think?"

"Not really."

Liam looks to the side, hoping that he can interpret more from Zayn's answers by seeing the expressions that go with their frankness. "So if I signed you up, you would do it?"

"Why would I want to make a room full of strangers laugh?" Zayn retorts, his right eye scrunching up in distaste, like it's a mannerism of his provoked by moronic questions. "I don't have a superiority complex." Liam thinks he might, but. "I know I'm better than those people, no mediocracy to cover up here."

So we’ve got those, but then we’ve also got this massive character point:

Right as the last of the snake's body emerges, Zayn snaps his fingers, triggering heavy hip-hop music to flow through his headphones and drown out the man's blood curdling cry.

If he could permanently damage people who deserved it, not always because they did something to Zayn, but because he liked to play god and throw them a massive curveball like life had done to him, then why shouldn't he? So long as he pulls his soundproof headphones off the little robot on the inside of his right arm to avoid listening to the pain his choice brutality caused, there's no valid reason he shouldn't take advantage of the gift he was given.

From where he's sitting, he probably won't be able to hear anything, but he fastens the equipment over his ears just in case.

All at once, the atmospheric sounds of central London, mixed with the terrified screams of those in the burning building beneath them, hit Zayn at full force. The sensory overload alone would normally be enough to piss him off, but tack on his protection from audible trauma being taken and being spoken to while in villain mode, and he's seeing red as deep as the pits of hell he knows he's destined for.

I wrote Zayn’s headphone usage as a way to alert that the reader that he does, in fact, feel villain-related guilt.  He can’t act on his anger without them on.  He’ll have his victims screams stuck in his head, and he’d never be able to handle that a.k.a. there’s zero satisfaction from their literal pain.  Think about that and it’ll answer your follow-up question.

4)  What happened to Zayn’s family?

Zayn’s father meant what he said - he’d do whatever he needed to reunite his family.  That wasn’t a falsity at all.  The problem is money.  And politics, but let’s start with the issue of money.  It took Yaser nine years to save up the amount he paid to have Zayn and Waliyha smuggled across the border.  The whole concept of smuggling is that it’s a cheaper option than the legal one.  So if we look at this, you can see how long it would take him to save for three adult visa fees, three adult plane tickets, and enough to stay afloat for a month or so when they get to England.  Now add in the politics of the early 2000s and the Afghanistan/Pakistan region.  We know that Yaser fixed air conditioners for a living.  No person with that average of a background is going to have an easy time immigrating anywhere.  Even so, would it really take him over 18 years?  While it’s plausible, perhaps a man with such determination would find another way.  Or...was that unnecessary because he was fed lies?

Think about it.  After several weeks and no word from his children, don’t you think he’d cause a riot?  He’s the type to drive over to Badar’s house and demand his relatives get in contact with him to find out what’s going on.  But, given the flashback Zayn has, it’s obvious that Badar never planned on accompanying any of the children to the UK, and if that’s the case, he clearly couldn’t return to Quetta.  I imagine a fully rehearsed story was told to all of the children’s parents about how they were killed somewhere along the way.

As for Waliyha, her whereabouts were told to my gang over on Patreon a while ago.  In short, yes, she’s still alive and I plan on pitching the book’s sequel to publishers as a graphic novel series revolved around her location.  Louis’ dark web bot finally found a hint as to where that might be, so Zayn and Liam go on a journey across Europe to find her.  Each issue would (probably) take place in a new city and involve both fighting a single bad guy.

Just a quick reminder to anyone who reads this, Red vs. Black and all involved characters are my intellectual property and cannot be replicated, manipulated, or stolen.

Again, thank you for your question and time!  I know my fics aren’t short and take a huge time commitment to finish.  If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to send them my way!  I’m super busy writing the next story and doing critical work, but I promise I’ll get around to it.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z 228

Last time, Gohan “””fought””” Dabura, until Dabura suddenly took a powder and left.    Vegeta was already pissed about Gohan’s lackluster performance, but now he’s extra furious because he had to watch that turkey of the fight and it didn’t even accomplish anything.  

I know I already complained about Gohan vs. Dabura, but just to recap why the fight sucks:

Dabura made them wait three episodes before showing up to fight.

Everyone complained the entire time the fight was going on.

Nobody won.

So now we’re right back where we were five episodes ago, when Goku killed Yakon.

So tensions are running high in Stage 3 of Babidi’s ship, because they’ve been stuck there this whole time, unable to proceed with the mission.  So Vegeta takes out his frustration on Gohan, because who else is he going to yell at?   The Supreme Kai is God, basically, and Goku will kick his ass and he knows it. 

 Vegeta makes this a Saiyan thing, telling Gohan that he should have gone for the jugular in his fight with Dabura, and let nothing stop him from killing his opponent.  

“You’re right, Vegeta, I should have finished him off as quickly as possible.   Just like you did when you killed Cell.    Oh, wait, you didn’t kill Cell, did you?    You screwed around with him for twenty minutes, and then you let him become perfect because you were bored,” is what Gohan would say in the Sassy Gohan AU that I just made up.

Then Vegeta starts ranting about how dumb it is the way Gohan and the others fight for “justice”.   

Then he goes on about survival of the fittest, which is pretty cliche, even for Vegeta.  It’s almost like he’s auditioning for someone...   “You know, it’s a good thing I’m on your team.   If I was on Babidi’s side, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill you all, and none of you would be able to stop me!     But that would never happen... unless...”

The only point Vegeta makes that really leaves an impression on Gohan is that he was fighting for the lives of Piccolo and Krillin.    Remember, they came here to kill Dabura, becaue that’s the only way to undo the magic that turned them into stone statues.   If Gohan had tried a little harder, if he had trained more diligently over the past seven years, they might be back to normal by now.

Goku sticks up for Gohan, but kind of half-heartedly, like he knows Vegeta has a point, at least to some extent.    But Vegeta won’t have it.   All he cares about is fighting Goku, and all he’s been doing is farting around on this dumbass spaceship because everyone’s too scared to blow it up.   

The Supreme Kai (once again) tells him not to do that, because if they accidentally break Majin Buu’s seal, he could destroy the whole earth, even at partial strength.   Vegeta flat out tells him he doesn’t care about the Earth or anyone on it.   

Finally, Goku steps in and tells him to knock it off, and Vegeta backs off.    I’ve never really understood this scene, but now I think I finally get it.    In the past, Vegeta wouldn’t just talk about blowing up the ship; he would just do it, in spite of anyone’s protestations.    Remember when he wanted to fight 17 and 18?   Everyone told him it was a terrible idea, but he refused to listen, and no one could stop him, so he did it, to hell with the consequences.  

But in the Babidi Saga, he’s repeatedly suggested that Majin Buu probably isn’t that big a deal, and that they could settle this quickly by dispensing with the games and just blowing up the whole ship, and the Supreme Kai tells him not to, and he just backs off.    This is like the third time they’ve had this argument.  Don’t tell me Vegeta defers to the Supreme Kai, because I don’t buy it.   

I think what we’re seeing here is some of the maturity Vegeta has learned since he first started living on Earth.   He still wants to take the direct approach, and to shout down anyone who says otherwise, but deep down, he knows that’s unwise.  It bit him in the ass against Android 18 and Cell, and on some level he knows it could work against him here.    That’s why he threatens to blow up the ship, but he never actually follows through.   He’s waiting for Goku to stop him.

Meanwhile, Dabura has returned to Babidi with the idea of turning Vegeta against the others.   Babidi’s been watching them in his crystal ball, and he likes what he’s seen.    Vegeta’s not like the others, and it’ll be easy to control him, and it’ll save him from having to risk Dabura’s life in battle.  

On Stage 3, the Supreme Kai starts to suspect that this is what the bad guys are up to, but it’s too late.    Babidi casts his spell and Vegeta starts grabbing his head and crying out in pain.    Also he poses like a complete diva, because he’s still Vegeta, after all.

Vegeta turns Super Saiyan for some reason, and the Kai tells him what’s going on.   Babidi’s trying to exploit the wickedness in his heart, so he should empty his mind and not think of anything.    Not even the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?

Now, later, Vegeta will claim to have fallen under Babidi’s spell intentionally, but it seems kind of at odds with this scene, where he appears to be resisting Babidi.  

But Babidi seems confident that he’s already won.    Kind of weird how he says Vegeta is “ours” now.  Who else is he referring to?   Dabura?   The rest of his crew?  They’re all mind-controlled slaves just like Vegeta.   But Babidi seems to be rather cordial toward his henchmen, treating them almost like friends.   I suppose he would enjoy their company, seeing how they wait on him hand and foot and cooperate with him in everything he does.  

Having secured Vegeta’s mind (I guess?), Babidi starts amplifying his power.    Remember, Yamu and Spopovitch were much stronger as Babidi’s minions than they were before, so this is apparently a side effect of the spell.   

But Vegeta was already one of the strongest guys on this whole show.   If Babidi can make him even stronger... hoo-boy.

And when the whole process is finished, Vegeta ends up with an “M” symbol on his forehead.   In the dub, they actually call it an “M”, I think, and Shin explains that it’s Babidi’s symbol.   The Japanese version doesn’t bother with this, probably because by this point we’ve already seen the “M” on all of Babidi’s stuff.   All his henchmen have it, it’s on his belt.   It’s printed on the hull of his spaceship, on all the doors, and on all of his equipment. 

Fans call this incarnation of Vegeta “Majin Vegeta”, although I’m pretty sure that’s not official.   “Majin” is a term for Buu specifically, because he’s an evil djinn.    Evil = “Ma”, “Ma” + “Djinn” = “Majin.”

As far as the symbol goes, I’m pretty sure it’s intended to stand for “Madoshi”, which is Babidi’s title.   But this never gets spelled out in the source material, perhaps because Babidi’s from outer space, and it wouldn’t make much sense for him to use the Latin Alphabet for his monogram.     In-universe, it’s probably just an alien glyph that just happens to look like a stylized “M”.   

The other thing is that you rarely ever see anyone refer to any of the others as “Majin”.   No one talks about “Majin Puipui” for instance.    I did see that once on an ad for a DBZ wall scroll, which featured all of Babidi’s gang.    for some reason, the ad copy listed them all as “Majin Buu, Majin Vegeta, Majin Dabura, Majin Puipu, Majin Yakon, Majin Yamu, and Majin Spopovitch.”   It’s like they were getting paid by the letter.   But that’s about the only time I’ve seen that.  

The Supreme Kai is all upset because he never expected this to happen.    There’s a lot you didn’t expect, Shin.   You kind of blew this whole mission.

Then Babidi teleports them all to the Tenkaichi Budokai stadium.    I’m not sure how he even knew about this place, unless he read Vegeta’s mind or something, but this is convenient, since the show has been switching back and forth between these two sets of characters.   Mr. Satan is in the middle of celebrating his second world championship victory, and the crowd is going nuts.   

Chi-Chi is pleased about this, because she thinks that if Goku beats the shit out of Mr. Satan right now, in front of everyone, then he’ll have a valid claim to the prize money.   Yamcha’s pretty sure it doesn’t work that way, but Chi-Chi’s pretty sure this is C-Z-fuckin’-W.    She wants Goku to drop Mr. Satan through a table covered in light poles.

The World Tournament Announcer is confused, but he sees Goku and just walks past Vegeta while he explains that the tournament’s already over, and that’s what sets Vegeta off.   Okay, so that’s brilliant, because he’s literally standing there, glowing yellow, and all WTA can think about is chatting with Goku.     That’s just Vegeta’s frustration in a nutshell.   

So Vegeta powers up, and his aura is so intense that WTA and Mr. Satan get pushed aside.

Satan crashes into the retaining wall, and I feel like that’s the second or third time this has happened to him today.

So Babidi’s all set to take this dude for a test drive.    First order: Beat up Goku, Gohan, and the Supreme Kai and take their energy for Majin Buu.

Vegeta’s reply: Fuck you sideways, Babidi.   All he wants to do is fight Goku.   Period.  

Babidi’s shocked, because this has never happened before.   Vegeta isn’t entirely under his control, but he figures that he can still work with this.  

Meanwhile, Mr. Satan finally realizes that these are the guys from the Cell Games.    You’d think he would have caught on before now, but Toriyama did a pretty careful job of keeping Mr. Satan away from the other tournament participants until the Z-Fighters left the stadium.    He only knew Goten and Trunks had super powers, but he didn’t realize that his opponents in the adult division tournament were part of the same group.   But with Vegeta in full on Super Saiyan mode, there’s no mistaking it. 

Just so there’s no confusion about Vegeta’s priorities, he points at Goku...

Then fires an energy blast at him.   Maybe this is Big Bang Attack?    I don’t know.    Goku blocks it...

But he can’t stop it from hitting the stands.

And it blows right through the crowd, and through several buildings along the way.  

Fortunately, Goku’s pals are in a different part of the stadium, although Bulma might wish it were otherwise.    She’s so horrified by Vegeta’s actions...

... that she faints.   

So yeah, there’s no room for interpretation here.   It’s about to go down.  

[notajinn]

Top 10 Games I Played in 2019

IMPORTANT NOTE: I am finishing this at nearly 2 AM in the morning, so I did not proofread. Excuse any typos.

With 2019 closing out the decade, I want to make a "Top 10 Games of the Decade" list, but first I have to point out my favourites of the year. I actually played over 10 games this year (which is very unusual), so I chose my top 10. As usual, these are not all games that came out in 2019, but I played them for the first time this year. I'm not ranking carried over mobile games this time, although at this point the only mobile I play is Dragalia Lost.

Let's go.

10. Untitled Goose Game (Switch)

There's a lot to love about this game concept alone even though I ignored it for the longest time pre-release.

Pros

The entire goal of the game is just that you are a goose and also an asshole. I've talked many times about how I think being unique is overblown in place of being high-quality, but this is a unique take that really works.

With a vaguely open-world that you're thrown into with no real purpose, you really capture the feeling of just setting out that day to be a jerk. I appreciate that there is a progression system with a list of mischievous tasks you have to do to reach the next area, but it's still presented in a very free way. You'll do some of them accidentally just trying to be a jerk, and others you'll really have to think about. Eventually there will come a clear end goal, which I was pleasantly surprised by.

Controlling the goose is also perfect in how unwieldy and overconfident you feel. You don't exactly move quickly, and there's no attacking, but you still feel better than the humans around you.

The minimalist art design helps sell the really low-stakes nature of the goose's quest. Sound effects are also pronounced thanks to this, and sound is very important for the goose. I also like the slight stealth gameplay that's not at all punishing, as someone who enjoys but is bad at stealth.

Cons

Even for a budget game, it's quite short to reach the "end goal". It's very much a game you can continue to mess around in, and there's a "New Game+" set of tasks you receive, but as far my "have to reach the end" mindset...I was expecting it to take a little longer. I'd say it was maybe 3 hours max, including lots of goofing around.

I also found that I VERY much don't enjoy being a jerk to children (see screenshot), and very begrudgingly did the minimum mean things to get past the kid. Luckily there is only one kid.

Final Thoughts

Honestly the lower ranking is not so much because of negatives, but because I played so many good things this year combined with this being mostly a fun little novelty. I feel like people who are interested would have already played it (if they have the console). Really you can go with your gut instinct of whether or not being an asshole goose sounds fun for you.

 9. Kingdom Hearts III (PS4)

If you told me Kingdom Hearts III wouldn't even make my top 5 in the year it was released, I'd think you were crazy. But here we are with the long-awaited game.

Pros

So much of this game is fanservice for the series, and I had fortunately caught up on the spinoffs enough to enjoy it. Seeing the 358 crew and the BBS crew, all the Organization members...there's a lot of love here.

KH3 also has some of my favourite worlds in the series in Toy Story and Pirates of the Caribbean. Pirates in particular managed to scratch that Wind Waker sailing itch just enough. Meanwhile Toy Story going for a unique plot really helped pull me in, and there's that now infamous Woody scene that I love. Even other worlds like Monsters Inc get some great scenes (like Vanitas and the doors). Tangled is also one of my favourite Disney movies, so while the world itself was pretty average, I was happy to be in it.

Combat-wise, I appreciate getting so many options like dodge roll and blocking right off the bat regardless of your initial choices; previously I always forced myself to take the Shield so I could start with the super-useful dodge roll.

The music is as stellar as ever, although they loop far too quickly given how much time you'll spend in a single area sometimes (looking at you, Toy Story).  I especially love Don't Think Twice, which had the bonus of being a complete surprise.

 Cons

KH1 was the first Aladdin. KH2 was Return of Jafar. So logically KH3 should have been King of Thieves. Instead we get no Aladdin at all!  Just the Genie as a summon I think?

For all the character fanservice, it still feels like only the main trio, Riku, and Mickey are really useful. I can't believe how poorly Aqua does as a Keyblade Master. I can't believe Kairi and Axel's training basically amounts to nothing. I know it's Sora's game, but it's still so frustrating.

And the final fight with everyone is very much so "good idea, bad execution". It just feels so messy. The entire climax is just not paced very well.

The Frozen world is one of my least favourites in the series. Nearly nothing interesting happens (outside of one good Larxene scene), you don't get Elsa as a boss or a party member, and the progression is just "got to get to Elsa's castle, oh no we fell" repeated three times. Also did they really need to put the full Let It Go song in there? I say this as someone who likes the song. This whole world is just a mess, and I think we'd be better off it was cut. And replaced with ALADDIN 3!

Where is the Wreck-It Ralph world? You know, the Disney movie about video games?

The combat somehow feels less smooth than KH2, possibly because of so many things constantly going off. The Park Attraction skills are fun at first, but later they take so long and often aren't worth bothering with. But I think HP of the enemies assumes you'll use it, because some enemies get really spongy later on.

There was also literally no reason not to end Sora's plot with this game; they had a very easy chance. But they also had an easy chance to end at KH2 and they didn't. I don't know why they're so afraid to use a different protagonist. Even if they don't want to make one, there's so many other potential-protagonists in the game already. Some of whom are also technically Sora!

Also the stupid Toy Story music loop is like 10 seconds long. Stop it.

I was actually originally going to put this at 8, but after typing out these Cons I moved the ranking back.

Final Thoughts

For as many pros and cons as I wrote out, the biggest thing about this game is that it's somehow incredibly forgettable. Kingdom Hearts 3, the game we waited over a decade for, is forgettable. And that really hurts.

The ReMind DLC has some real potential to help with this, but it also costs $40 CAD. If you're on the fence for KH3 as a whole, maybe wait and see what people say about the DLC fixing stuff.

  8. Cadence of Hyrule (Switch)

 It really hurts to put Cadence of Hyrule this low, because there's so much I love about it. And I want to see more third-parties work on Nintendo IPs.

Pros

You can finally play as Zelda in a proper Legend of Zelda game! Yes there's the rhythm mechanic and roguelike nature, but you're ultimately still going around a 2D LoZ overhead map in the same way you would a mainline game. But now you can have Zelda go around and play a little differently. For example, you have no regular shield but you have the Nayru's Love barrier which can work defensively in a different way. I appreciate that the characters all play differently when the developers could easily have easily given you three different sprites with one moveset.

The rhythm mechanic of moving on the beat works very well with the LoZ map style. Being able to see the bar speed at the bottom also helps a lot to learn in the first place. Most importantly, you have the option to completely turn it off to play this like a classic LoZ. Obviously the soundtrack itself is full of great LoZ remixes.

The difficulty is just right without being too rough or too easy with only occasional exceptions, and the game is fairly forgiving about respawing when you do die; it usually doesn't feel like a BIG deal. There's tons of LoZ equipment to use, which I really appreciate after how barebones Breath of the Wild was in that regard.

As with any roguelike, you also have a lot of replayability with the map changes and different characters and equipment to try out.

Incorporating classic bosses with musical instruments is also really fun.

Cons

It's as short as you would expect a budget game to be, but it's more expensive than your average budget game. I'm going to chalk that up to using a first-party Nintendo IP, but the price fools you into thinking the game will be longer.

I also personally don't really care for roguelikes, so the selling point of replayability isn't for me. It's a bit unfair to judge the game for something the genre is supposed to do, but I don't think it's a bad game for being like this. I just think it's a game I like less because of that emphasis.

There's also one boss in particular that was super frustrating, and I think it's because I didn't understand the "trick" to beating it.

Final Thoughts

I do honestly recommend this if you like classic LoZ, but just know what you're getting into; something that emphasizes multiple playthroughs and won't take too long on a single run, but which executes the LoZ formula itself really well.

 7. XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PC)

 I can't believe how long it took me to play XCOM: Enemy Unknown given that Fire Emblem is my favourite series. I also owned it for years on Steam, but it was just this year I finally booted up this strategy RPG.

Pros

You want a challenging SRPG? Here you goddam go. This game is punishing as hell, but as long as you don't play Iron Man mode it's still reasonable to deal with. I don't usually care for games that sell on difficulty, but I've played enough SRPGs that I don't mind more difficulty in the genre that's not cheap. XCOM very closely skirts the line of difficult and cheap, again if you are not playing Iron Man (which prevents you from restarting missions).

There's so much dumb RPG numbers to gloss over and spec, and I love it. Things to research, order to research, facilities to build, equipment to craft, skills per each character to learn. If you like pouring over resources like me but don't like the real time nature of an RTS, this is perfect.

I also like the idea that you start off so overwhelmed against an absurdly powerful alien force, and everything you're doing is basically just trying to survive while looking for a way to hold your ground. There's a real desperation in the gameplay that captures the feeling of war in a way that Fire Emblem struggles with.

 Cons

I haven't seen RNG that hates me this much since Fire Emblem: Sealed Sword. And it seems to be a universal experience that the RNG is more stacked against you than it leads you to believe.

I've also seen many people online suggest Iron Man for a person's first run, but that is AWFUL advice. It's why I almost quit the game twice, but ultimately just made a new file without Iron Man. It sounds fun for a second or later playthrough, but there's so many unknowns happening constantly in your first run that it just feels unfair to go Iron Man.

The aesthetic is sci-fi apocalypse; two designs I generally hate. Everything is so gloomy and blue and tech. It's all very forgettable to look at.

Healing options are so limited, at least in the relatively early sections I'm in (I did not beat this). Actually this is one of the very few games I started but did NOT beat before playing something else, which in itself means there's something that I really disliked. At this point I can't remember what that is.

Final Thoughts

If you like Fire Emblem gameplay but want it to be even more resource management based, and can deal with a drab aesthetic, absolutely grab this. Especially since it gets really cheap on Steam. Just do NOT start on Iron Man mode.

 6. Telltale's Batman: The Enemy Within (PC)

There was a Joker live-action movie this year; an entire movie dedicated to him. And yet Telltale managed a better Joker.

Pros

I am one of those weirdo people who considers Joker one of his favourite comic characters. I'm a sucker for a good villain, and it was probably Joker in Batman: The Animated Series that is responsible for that. So I love seeing a good fresh take on the character, and Telltale delivers. This is season two of Telltale Batman, and we briefly got to see "John Doe" in the first season as a proto-Joker who's definitely a violent jerk, but not necessarily a villain just yet. While there are many plot threads in Enemy Within, the main one is about how John grows among the mess that is Gotham. Depending on how you play, you can actually push him to become a vigilante and ally of Batman instead of the villain. This is itself not only a fun take on the character, but also the most uniquely any Telltale game has branched.

I remember explaining once that Telltale is not so much "choose how the story ends", but more "choose how your character's relationships with others changes". But there, you get a wildly different final chapter depending on whether John is a vigilante or villain. I really appreciate the effort it took, but it's also bittersweet since this was one of the last games the studio worked on before being closed.

Telltale gives us other character portrayals that range from standard to occasionally good. They have Harley play the big mob boss who has John wrapped around her finger this time, and they do a good job selling it.

You'll get some great dialogue options, and it seems almost impossible to please everyone. Being forced to make hard choices that will inevitably make someone mad at you is what this genre is about, and it's often not exactly clear cut what the consequences will be.

 Cons

Like other Telltale games, action sequences are done with QTEs. These are relics in this day and age, so I really didn't care for them. It's a good way to get around a probably costly combat engine, but it's ultimately filler to me to get back to the plot. Since this is a Batman game, it has more action sequences than the average Telltatle game.

Other sequences like searching for clues are less annoying, but still not really fun. I did not grow up on point-and-clicks, but it seems the developers did.

You also can't easily restart sequences if you selected an option by mistake; you have to restart that entire chapter. And a chapter is multiple hours. I get the implication of "you have to live with your choices", but when it's an actual mistake because I'm using a PS3 controller on my PC mapped to Xbox buttons...I get a little annoyed.

Final Thoughts

It's a little weird to start at Enemy Within if you didn't play the first season, and it will retroactively spoil things, but you honestly could. It is more fun than the original (which is also good). Easily the big selling point is being able to shape John the proto-Joker; if that doesn't appeal to you, this may not be for you.

 5. Super Metroid (SNES Classic)

Not only is 2019 the first time I played (and completed) Super Metroid; it's also the first time I completed a Metroid game at all! I had played a decent amount of Fusion and the first Prime before, but fell off both of them. This time, I absolutely saw Samus reach her goal.

Pros

How do you talk about such a beloved game? First of all, the SNES era is still visually my favourite in video games. This has a lot to do with nostalgia since I grew with the SNES, but also because it was the height of sprites before the industry turned to 3D models. And as amazing as N64 and PS1 graphics looked back then, they did not age well. The SNES, however, still holds up so well visually.

For a game with a sci-fi aesthetic that heavily takes place underground, I loved the variety and colours Super Metroid offered outside my expectations. This is definitely up there as one of the most beautiful games of the console.

Where I think the game excels the most is Samus' controls. The level of precision they built into her abilities is nuts. Obviously there are games where characters have larger movesets (such as fighters), but for a platformer I love how well you can maneuver Samus. For example, when you do a moving jump. If you hit the D-Pad and then jump, you do the Spin Jump. If you jump and then hit the D-Pad, you do a more standard jump. It may not seem like much now, but I feel like for the time it's very impressive.

There's so many fun abilities you get, and the majority of them can be used simultaneously for some really fun platforming.

You also learn very quickly even without text based on the way power-ups and obstacles are laid out. Even storytelling is done well simply through gameplay; no cinema scenes or text explanations needed.

The bosses feel stressful but almost never too cheap; you always feel like they're possible to deal with. Occasionally you may need more missiles or energy, but it's usually learning and countering patterns.

Music can effectively be atmospheric or lively depending on where you are, and I retroactively wish we had a few more Metroid tracks in Super Smash Brothers.

Also even though I'm not a 100% completion-ist type of person, I appreciate when I do find some secret missile tank by really examining the area.  

Cons

When you're not used to the controls early on, it can be tricky to handle Samus. Mostly those spin jumps. The wall jump also never really got easier.

Weapon switching is a weird situation. I appreciate you can do it on the fly with the Select button, but the fact it always goes in a certain order means it can often take a while to get to what you want.

Personally I also thought Ridley was a hell of a difficulty spike, and the game actually calmed back down in difficulty afterwards? Maybe I'm just bad at fighting such an aggressive and fast boss.

Phantoon was also a tough boss made tougher by the fact the closest working Save Point was a good 5+ minutes of platforming away for me. I like that the nearest Save Point doesn't work because the electricity is off, and it builds on the haunted ship atmosphere, but boy was that frustrating to jump all the way back nearly four times to fight that boss.

Final Thoughts

If like me you've somehow not played Super Metroid, you really should. It still holds up, and it's relatively short (my time was about 6 hours). It may be a little weird at the start with the limited abilities and getting used to the precise controls, but if you stick with it you're in for a good time.

The reason it's number 5 and not higher is not due to any particular negatives, but simply because the next few games left me with more positives.

 4. Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight (PS4)

The fact that this game exists is incredibly stupid, and I love it.

Pros

Persona 3 is not a happy game in a traditional sense. There are happy moments, but most are bittersweet. It's a game about dealing with and overcoming tragedy, and has a dark visual atmosphere to match.

So the fact we get to see that cast dancing around with bright colours is nuts. But not at all in a bad way. These characters go through so many difficulties; they absolutely deserve to have a fun dance party where they don't have to think about anything else. This isn't the happy kids deciding to dance; this is a bunch of stressed out people who need a break. And as someone who loves Persona 3, it makes me so happy to...well, see them happy.

The majority of the original voice actors were brought back (the main exception being Elizabeth), and they do just as good a job as in the old days.

We get mostly great remixes of the P3 songs, and the original versions of others. Each song has a particular character assigned to it so they can more effectively match their dancing style. The models look amazing.

There's also minor Social Link elements which are used in place of a story, and their personalities are mostly intact. There's certainly some Flanderization, but it's not as bad as Persona Q.

You also get a decent progression system of unlocking songs in batches, and needing to beat them to get the next songs. The Social Link requirements help make repeating the songs fun while giving you something to work towards.

The rhythm game itself is hard to judge since I play very few rhythm games. I found it fun once I got the hang of it on normal difficulty. There's tons of modification options to make it easier or harder depending on your preferences.

 Cons

As with every modern Persona game, the DLC is awful. Tons of Day One DLC, and they even locked Shinji to DLC! Does he not also deserve to have fun without paying extra? There's also a few songs I would have liked, but not at those prices. Otherwise DLC is mostly costumes and accessories which I both don't care about, and which are overpriced.

I also hate that we had an EASY chance to get the FeMC Minako in this fun low-stakes plot game, but didn't. It's not like Atlus forgot about her either; she was in Persona Q2 which came out a little later. If anything, SHE should have been DLC and Shinji should have been in the base game.

The jump in difficulty between Hard and All-Night is absurd. I can beat most songs on Hard with good ratings, but I can't beat the first song on All-Night at all.

Koromaru is not in the game, which inherently prevents it from being perfect. He could have jumped in during Fever Time at least!

Final Thoughts

This game is only for Persona 3 fans, but boy is it some great fanservice for us. If you're a Persona 3 fan that at least slightly enjoys rhythm games, this is for you.

 3. Indivisible (PS4)

 As of writing this, I have not actually beaten Indivisible. If I had to guess, I'm at the 2/3 mark? A big plot thing just happened, but it's clearly not the final plot thing.

Since this game is less known, it's a platformer/fighter/RPG hybrid with a heavy South Asian influence.

Pros

It's a platformer/fighter/RPG hybrid with a heavy South Asian influence.

Look at that sentence! These are all things I love!

I grew up on platformers and RPGs, and I have a lot of fun when I get into a fighter. And as someone who always desperately tries to find even one brown character in most video games, I'm all about a cast that is mostly South Asian!

The combat system is really fun. It utilizes something similar the classic Final Fantasy ATB style system, but at a very quick refresh rate and tons of fighting game elements thrown in. For example, a key is doing combos with your various party members. Each character has 3 standard moves, and knowing when to use what depending on the enemy's position is where the strategy comes in. There's also one party-wide meter that everyone dips into to use Supers. It's a very aggressive and offense-oriented battle system, but they manager to incorporate healers and support units comfortably. But yes, everyone is basically a fighting game character in an RPG battle system.

The platforming starts off very basic, but you get access to so many moves and can use them all fluidly together. There's some really fun platforming segments that really force you to use everything Ajna can do.

The character designs are top-notch, even removed from how ecstatic I am about the diversity. Again, they are designed as fighting game characters who have to be distinct and high-quality. Everyone also feels extremely unique in combat.

I wouldn't say the overall story and writing is amazing, but there's some good moments here and there.  It also follows a somewhat less traditional path for Ajna so far, even though I'm expecting a fairly traditional climax.

 Cons

Okay, so this is in some ways a fighting game. Which means you should have a move list you can look up. While you get a brief explanation of each character's gimmick when you recruit them, there's NO MOVE LIST!

That sucks, but you can go into Training and figure out the moves for yourself, right? Yes, except you don't unlock Training until almost 10 hours into the game! Which means for the early part of the game when you're still learning the mechanics of the system as a whole, you also have more trouble learning what each character can do. Combined with a very high rate of recruiting new characters early on, this can be overwhelming. If they didn't want to make a move list, they should at least have made Training available from the beginning.

Backtracking can be a bit of a pain; there's minimal fast travel points. Ajna doesn't cover as much space as Samus relatively to the game world, so it really takes some time to go around. Enough that it sometimes discourages exploration, which is not good in a platformer.

The sense of progression is also pretty slow once you get past the 1/3 mark. You don't get new characters quite as quickly, and it's not as though your characters learn new moves (they shouldn't, based on how the battle system works). You also only have levels for Ajna, which in my experience don't make a huge difference. And there's no equipment or items give you that sense of growth. What you have are the Ringels; collect enough of them and you can get a major defense upgrade, or add an additional attack slot per turn to every character. They're great upgrades, and fun to explore and find, but it's a long time between upgrades.

I also feel like healers and support are tough to use well in such an aggressive battle system, which is unfortunate because I traditionally love support-type characters.

Final Thoughts

Despite liking it more than most of the games on this list, it's a tough recommend. It's very specific to what it is, and there's nothing to really compare it to. However I really like it, and I especially love the South Asian influence.

 2. Celeste (Switch)

If you showed me a 10-second clip of Celeste gameplay, I'd dismiss it as some easier Super Meat Boy clone.

I'm so glad I didn't.

Pros:

In many ways, Celeste can be called a long series of platforming challenge rooms. Basically once you clear a distinct "screen" and die, you move forward. You die, you restart on the same screen in seconds. There's infinite lives and no timer. You take as long as you need, and you keep pushing forward. It's a compromise of making a classically difficult platformer that removes all elements that make the classics feel cheap. And it's also a great representation of the story Madeline is going through.

Having a young-life crisis, non-mountain-climber Madeline sets out to climb the famously difficult mountain Celeste. There's a few other characters to deal with, but the majority of the game is spent with Madeline and the reflection that represents another side of her. A side of her that's always bringing her down and trying to force her to turn backIt's a short and well-written story, and absolutely worth experiencing. I love the weaving of the "keep trying" gameplay and story, and the fact an Assist Mode to make the gameplay easier is available from the start is important.

The music also nails that Super Metroid feeling of atmospheric or lively depending on what's happening.

Controls are similarly precise but reasonable, and the incredibly low stakes of failure make even the cheaper platforming segments doable. Some of the platforming is legitimately annoying, but being able to try again in literal seconds makes it less frustrating than easier platformers.

Cons

I don't care for the character sprites. They are small and faceless. You understand what they're going for, and I know they have to be small in relation to the area of the game. But it's just not visually appealing.

...I can't really think of any other cons.

Final Thoughts

I feel like Celeste is an important game that will stay with me, far beyond just a good game I played in 2019. It's short, it doesn't cost much, and it's absolutely worth your time if you have any sort of anxiety or self-esteem issues.

 1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Switch)

 My favourite series finally returns to a home console after nearly a decade. And boy does it deliver.

Pros

There's two critical things I look for when judging a Fire Emblem game; the cast, and the core gameplay.

The cast in Three Houses is nearly fully presented to you from the start of the game. You have your three separate houses with their individual students, and you choose one to lead. Fortunately you can recruit most students from other houses with some work, so you don't have to worry too much about mutually exclusive units. You will see a few new faces over the course of the game join your team as well, so there's still some surprises. At first glance, many of the characters can be relegated to anime tropes. Claude is the charismatic schemer, Marianne is the quiet girl who likes animals, Hilda is the lazy high-confidence girl, etc. But as you progress through the story and the Support conversations, you'll find that nearly every character has a lot of writing effort put into them. I do not want to give any examples because it's better to get to them yourself throughout the game, but don't take the characters at face-value. Don't expect a full 180 personality shift, but do expect lots of depth to explain both currently personalities, and being able to see the growth of these characters. There's some very relatable issues some of the characters face.

Honestly, it's not a stretch to say Three Houses has some of my favourite characters in the series. It's a big plus that one of the main Lords is dark-skinned for the first time in series history.

Then we have the gameplay. Off the bat we're into some very non-traditional Fire Emblem stuff with the academy system; you use things like lectures to build the weapon levels of your students. Also Cavalry, Heavy Armor, and Flying have their own weapon levels now? Also you don't buy spells, you learn them with weapon levels? There is a LOT that's different.

But what remains the same is the core formula of the strategy-RPG battles. Your process to build your units may be different in many ways, but you're still using the tactics you would expect in an FE game. There's just a few other things to consider now.

Basically I feel that Three Houses' new systems are a good compliment to the classic system as opposed to being a full replacement. Which is why even as an old FE elitist, I absolutely loves playing out the fights. Also they brought back Fog of War!

I really love the incorporation of visible agro lines. Basically when you move your character within enemy range, you actually see direct lines from the enemies so you see who will attack you. Combined with ability to go back to a previous turn, this helps make bad RNG feel less frustrating.

The story is also hands-down the best of the modern Fire Emblem era (everything from Awakening and beyond). It may start off as anime high-school, but having a cast of characters from entirely different countries attend school together as teenagers and then skipping forward to when they are leading their respective countries to war against each other...it's a lot to take in. And you have four different ways to experience the game, all of which are fairly distinct.

New gameplay elements like the lectures and academy activities are actually pretty fun, and dip into a bit of that Persona itch. You also get a better feel for the cast as you see them going about more normal activities. And it's all done in voice acting. Even every generic NPC dialogue in all four routes. Honestly the level of voice acting is incredible for a first-party Nintendo game. Voices also help the game feel so much more alive.

As always, the music is wonderful. The main theme Edge of Dawn is up there with Kingdom Hearts songs among my favourite video game vocal tracks.

Seriously, listen to it:

The option to freely change class so long as you can pass certification is weird, but feels far less busted than Awakening and Fates due to skills taking longer to learn, and mostly being less overpowered. It's also great aesthetically. Being able to use any weapon with any class was also an interesting change.

Also we have gauntlets as a weapon in Fire Emblem now. Which means you can run up to a goddam Wyvern Rider and punch them in the face. This is amazing.

Another plus is that despite incorporating a time skip, there is no child system. Which means Support is not longer a means to getting a perfect gene child unit, but instead to see how characters grow together while also getting a slight stat boost.

 Cons

I kind of miss the Weapon Triangle. I know it's not even the most important thing in the old game, but I have nostalgia for it? You can sort of get the Weapon Triangle abilities once you raise your respective weapon levels enough.

As for more of a real problem...gender locked classes. It's very frustrating that there is only one class that focuses on Gauntlets, and it's locked to males. Like, have you seen Leonie? She's made to be a puncher! And I made her one, but I had to make her a Warrior.

Similarly, the only Master class that focuses on magic is locked to females. It didn't present a problem for me in the Golden Deer route, but I'm sure at one point during the other 3 routes I'll want to make a male magic user. Oh, the Dark Mage line is also locked to males, but doesn't have a Master class.

Master classes in general are a problem. Nearly all of them are Cavalry or Flying, and it's visually annoying. Also because most of my Advanced classes were infantry, so my characters didn't really learn Cavalry or Flying with certain exceptions.

I wish there were no gender-locked classes, and more infantry Master classes.

Also I know it doesn't make sense story-wise, but I wish I could recruit Claude to Blue Lions or Black Eagles because I really don't want to hurt him when I play those routes.

Final Thoughts

I mean, it's number one on my list. Obviously I love it. But it's important to note this is my favourite Fire Emblem game in a long time. I feel like I need more distance from it (and to play the other routes) to really compare it to my favourites, but for now it's at least my favourite game of 2019, and my favourite Switch game.

[dzamie-oc]

9: Broken

“Alright guys, I’ve just scouted ahead under Stealth (Active). The dragon’s two rooms ahead, so we should be able to rest up and recover here.” The leather-clad man leaned back against a nearby wall, propping his foot against it; as his skill’s Passive kicked in, he faded into a nearby shadow, still visible but harder to see. “You all remember the plan, right?”

“Healing Zone! Yeah, yeah, Stabs, we’ve all got the guide. I won’t have my mana back in full for another five minutes, though, so something tells me you’re gonna insist we go over it anyway.” The pointy-hatted, unrealistically-busty woman left her crooked staff standing on end, emitting green, healing energy to the rest of the party in the room. She took a step back and drew her legs up, sitting criss-crossed in mid-air, floating up and down a few inches at a time. With her eyes closed, the mage was soon surrounded by the rising blue rings of her Meditation skill. “Stabs sneaks in and around the derg’s aggro range, Vinny takes a step forward to pull it, and I throw a Fireball at the big rock thing over its head. That’ll put it into a stagger, cut its attack, cut its defense, cut its health, all sorts of lovely things. Stabs jumps out for backstab city, and the rest of us throw as much DPS as we can at it. Easy-peasy.”

Stabs rolled his barely-visible eyes and shook his head before speaking up from behind his mask, “yep, that’s pretty much your end of the fight. Vinny, Weeb, you two remember its attack patterns? If we can avoid Sultra having to rez any of our asses, this goes over all the easier. Behind the dragon, I’ll have to watch out for its Tail Sweep, keeping a Dodge Roll off cooldown for that, and its Rear Crush attack should be easy enough to see coming.” He pointed at his heavily-armored companion clad in more metal than the average bomb shelter, then at the fourth member of their group, a swordswoman dressed in a high-cut, light purple kimono and dark purple thigh-highs and keeping a fighting-ready stance with her long, curved blade in front of her. “And this one goes for you two as well: its Seismic Wave activates in expanding waves, so back off and come in after the rocks start to disappear. It’ll start to kick in automatically once it’s down to thirty percent health, so eyes open for the red rings around then. Oh, and Sultra, you’ll be out of range for that one, but with the falling rock, it’ll hit half health pretty quick, and that’s when Icicle Rain starts. It’s a slow attack, but it’s constant and can hit anywhere in the room, so-”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Don’t get hit by the freezy bois, they’re just there because you martial suckers got buttmad cuz I could otherwise mash my big spells and not have to even look at the fight!” Her calm, relaxed pose was at odds with the smug, taunting tone of her voice. “Don’t worry, you lot. You’ll all go down way before I even take a hit. Look, this dragon’s a piece of cake when you’ve got Sultra the Enchantress on your side!”

Weeb sheathed her katana, bowed, and drew it again, returning to that same active stance. “Hai, Sultra-chan, we’ll beat this ryuu-kaiju faster than Tsukino Usagi late for school, and th-the... and then...” she stuttered as she shuffled towards the Meditating mage, her sword inches from the magic-user’s face, “and then we’ll be the most sugoi yuri couple around!”

The floating mage’s staff returned to her hand, and she put her legs down, opening her eyes and standing back up, then turning her body to face the other woman; her breasts continued bouncing for a couple seconds after she had stopped moving. “Weeb, I’m a guy. You seem to forget a lot, mostly cuz of these wonderful funbags on my chest, but us together isn’t you-ree.” She brought her free hand to her mouth and laughed a haughty laugh, the motion of which did absolutely nothing for her bouncing boobs. “In fact, it would be the opposite entirely! Now, to get out of this shitty conversation, I’m all topped up. C’mon you meat sponges, let’s get us some loot!”

When Stabs moved, he faded back into focus, no longer a half-visible shadow. The four filed out of the room: Stabs, followed by Vinny, then Weeb and finally Sultra. When they neared the door to the dragon’s lair, Stabs drew two knives, dropped into a low stance, and vanished entirely from view. Vinny pulled out a massive tower shield almost as big as he was, as well as a similarly-large, gleaming broadsword. Weeb simply moved forward in her battle-ready pose, brandishing her long, curved blade at whatever she happened to be looking at at the time. Sultra held her crooked staff upright, rather than down at her side, and all four entered the final room, staying as close to the door as possible until absolutely necessary. What they saw, though, threw them for a loop, and Stabs even turned off Stealth (Active).

The dragon at the opposite end of the room wasn’t snarling as it jealously guarded a veritable mountain of glittering gold, trinkets, and baubles. It wasn’t lashing its tail as it waited for some unprepared bastard to step more than a few feet into its lair. In fact, it wasn’t even standing, toned leg muscles tensed to spring forward at its human prey. Instead, it laid on its belly, resting its head atop its scaly paws and gazing at the party dispassionately. Its wings drooped to the ground, and while its tail moved, it was only small, lethargic taps against the stone floor. “Oh, hello there,” it called to them in an emotionless voice, “are you here for the treasure, or for one of my ribs? I need to know if I should drag myself under that big rock up there.”

“Uh, this isn’t... that’s not what’s supposed to happen.”

“Hm?”

“N-nani?!”

“Lol, dragon’s bugged. Well, gee gee easy, go grab the jewel!”

Stabs smirked at the mage. “What, why not get it yourself? You’ve got a thing for getting first dibs on loot, right?”

Sultra crossed her arms, squishing up her bountiful breasts that probably only stayed in her robe by magic, and harrumphed. “As far as we know, it could go into attack mode once we’re in aggro range! And you need me to stay alive if you want to stay alive!”

The kimono-clad swordswoman nodded. “Sultra-chan is right! What if this is part of dragon-san’s keikaku?” She giggled, then stage whispered to the others, “translator’s note: keikaku means plan!”

The dragon spoke up again. “Send the armored one. He’s got a big enough sword, it should be able to Coup de Grace me alone.”

The party looked at each other, surprise growing into a slight sense of concern. They pushed Vinny forward, and he slowly walked a clanking gait up to the dragon, who did not move. When he was face-to-snout with the dragon, the two of them stared at each other for a minute. Finally, when one of them broke the silence, it was the dragon again. “Well? Let’s get this over with. People don’t challenge this place unless they can win handily, so why should I bother with theatrics?”

Vinny switched his sword to reverse grip, brought his closed hands up by his chest, put his thumbs together, and pushed his hands outward a few times, nodding for emphasis. The dragon was silent for a few seconds, then sighed. “Look, you think you’re the first ones to ever make it this far? Adventurers run this place all the time; there’s a ruby back there worth fifty gold twenty-seven silver by itself.” The great, scaly beast lifted its head to look back behind itself at the massive trove of valuables; when it swiveled back around and laid its head down once more, the armored human took a few, courteous steps back. “Sure, I put up a good fight the first couple hundred times or so, but... well... my victory rate dropped to around literally zero, and the whole process... look, have any of you ever died?”

The rest of the party, who had been slowly creeping forward, shook their heads. “No, death is rather permanent for us. Not the case for you?” Stabs stood next to Vinny, performing an exaggerated shrug to highlight his confusion.

“Ah. Well, I wouldn’t recommend it if you can avoid it. The sensation of your soul departing your body...” it shuddered, wings shuffling along the ground. “It’s utter misery, and you never get used to it. It’s permanent for you? Heh, enviable.”

Sword still out, Weeb shuffled towards the dragon’s side; if he cared about the live steel next to his scales, he didn’t show it. “Momentai, dragon-san. Do the other adventurers ever just go for the gold?”

The dragon shook its head, then cast its eyes around the group. Weeb was by its foreleg, still in that battle stance, while the others stayed a few meters in front of it, Stabs by Vinny’s side and Sultra behind the big, armored tank. “Just about never, aside from the four-Rogues groups who just Stealth behind me. I’m a big chunk of experience, I suppose, just-”

Several things happened at once, all courtesy of the dragon. Its forepaw grabbed the swordswoman, making her Pinned under its scaly digits. It cast Seismic Wave, forcing the other three to step back away from the imminent rock spikes. And it blew a fireball at the very same rock designed to injure it when it moved too far forward. The rock fell, as designed; but instead of falling on the dragon, it fell on the trio instead, crushing them instantly. Batting Weeb between its paws soon sent her sword out of her grip, leaving her Disarmed as well. With renewed life and a smug smirk, the dragon picked her up, dangling her by the leg over his head.

“Th-that wasn’t very sugoi of you, you baka dragon!” she shouted, waving her fists at the large reptile, “and all those attacks at once? How were we supposed to defend against them?!”

“Oh, I know,” the dragon said with a grin, “the mechanic is quite broken, don’t you think?” And with that, he dropped her into his awaiting jaws.

[beyondmistland]

“May your heart be your guiding key” (Full thoughts on Kingdom Hearts III below!)

Graphics:

Ø  The game is bloody gorgeous, which helps mitigate the long and frequent cutscenes

Ø  The lip-syncing rarely fails

Music:

Ø  The new remixes are awesome and the brand-new tracks don't disappoint either

Ø  What does though is the actual audio mixing:

More often than not I struggled to hear the music over the sound effects during gameplay and the voiceovers during cutscenes

Ranking the Worlds:

Ø  #1: Corona: The world is huge, with varied terrain and a kick-ass final boss

Ø  #2 Olympus: The sheer scale and scope of the world took my breath away, plus we (finally!) get to fight all four titans

Ø  #3 The Caribbean: Assassin's Creed IV meets Kingdom Hearts, what's not to like

Ø  #4 Monstropolis: While not as eye-catching as some of the other worlds the way it intersects with the broader KH lore is really neat and the final cutscene was a delight in that it averts the Disney characters being useless when dealing with the original KH villains, on top of which its straightforward design is a nice change of pace, my only complaint is that there are only four types of Unversed

Ø  #5 San Fransokyo: The story is surprisingly short, which means you don't really get the chance to explore the environment, which sucks because the verticality and day/night cycle are awesome, plus there are a number of memorable boss fights

Ø  #6 Twilight Town: If it had been fully recreated based off the KH2 version the world would be much higher on my list but despite how small it is I love the liveliness, not to mention how peaceful it is in comparison to the other worlds, the same can be said for Hundred Acre Wood

Ø  #7 Keyblade Graveyard + Final World + Scala Ad Caelum: Though jaw-dropping in terms of visuals and audio they're not fully realized worlds, the same can be said for Dark World

Ø  #8 Toy Box: I loved the final boss as well as how the story tied into the larger plot of the game and I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy exploring Andy's room while "You have a friend in me" played in the background

Why then is Toy Box so far down on my list, world design

Even with endgame stats (LV40-45) the Gigas are tough to take down and as a result they come off as gimmicky in the worst sense of the word, beyond that the fact that the majority of the world is set in Galaxy Toys made me feel constrained and claustrophobic, which could have been partially alleviated if we'd been allowed to make our way through the parking lot outside, finally, the story kind of got repetitive with the backtracking whenever the characters were about to leave because "someone went missing yet again"

Ø  #9 Arrendelle: Though it has one of the best final bosses in the game along with Corona there is so much wrong with this world that I wonder if it's less Square Enix's fault and more Disney placing an insane amount of red tape on their favorite cash-cow:

1) Elsa does not become a party member even after you beat the world

2) You do not get to explore the city or the ice palace despite the latter being fully rendered on the map

3) Larxene, a lightning-based character, randomly traps you in an ice labyrinth when that would have made a lot more sense both logically and thematically if it had been Elsa

4) Speaking of Larxene, she does practically nothing the whole time you're there unlike Marluxia and Luxord, who are at least semi-active

5) You climb a mountain and get knocked off of it so many times that even Sora gets fed up

6) The bloody minigame where you have to find Olaf's body parts

7) Forcing us to watch the entire "Let it go" sequence and then having "Do you want to build a snowman" play over Anna's voice as she's explaining herself to Sora

8) So much of the story is excised that you have little clue as to what's going on to the point Hans appears for all of five minutes, doesn't say any lines, and isn't even named when it would have been cool, not to mention, just plain better, if he had started off as a guest member of your party

9) As a result of #8 Sora, Donald, and Goofy's presence feels like even more of an afterthought than usual in the sense that them not being there wouldn't have changed anything at all apart from Hans' Heartless then having no one to defeat it which can be seen by the fact that when they leave no one tells them goodbye unlike in every other world

10) The visual design was bland and tiresome after a while

11) The world's gimmick was uninspired to say the least

12) Fighting alongside a giant snowman (AKA Marshmallow) was awesome and in terms of pure gameplay the labyrinth was actually quite fun

Story Pros:

Ø  Master Xehanort's new voice actor is good but after hearing Leonard Nimoy's voice for the past couple of games the change is a bit jarring

Ø  The way previous games are referenced and tied together is a nice way of bringing new players into the fold while also setting up the finale's resolutions

Ø  The game has a better sense of humor than previous installments

Ø  Sora is more like his KH2 self than the bland caricature we saw in 3D and quite a few characters display some degree of genre-savviness

Ø  Master Yen Sid gets out of his chair to lend a hand for once

Ø  Donald Duck is the most powerful mage in Square Enix canon (and I am not making that up)

Gameplay Pros:

Ø  Being able to switch between different save points in the same world is a welcome addition

Ø  The secondary ability of all shotlocks to airstep is ingenious

Ø  You can have more than two party members finally!

Ø  The secret ending isn't too hard to unlock

Ø  You can upgrade your Keyblades, which means older ones aren't automatically relegated to redundancy

Ø  Donald and Goofy are useful again after being nerfed into uselessness in KH2

Ø  Towns and cities are actually populated by fully-voiced NPCs!

Ø  Cutscenes in Theater Mode are unlocked after completing each world rather than after beating the game

Ø  I never tried the Classic Kingdom minigames but the cooking one with Remy was a nice break from the normal gameplay (I suck at the egg-cracking one though)

Ø  The camera doesn't get in the way like it infamously did in KH1

Ø  I like the new main menu design (Feel free to disagree though)

Ø  The Gummi Ship is entirely optional outside of a few mandatory boss battles

Ø  Moogle Tickets are a nice way of giving players a second chance during difficult encounters (I do wish they didn’t activate so quickly though) 

Gameplay Cons:

Ø  The game never once tells you that you can switch between Situation Commands using L2

Ø  The game never once tells you that you keep all your lower-tier magic (Fire, Fira for example) and that your shortcuts don't automatically update to include the higher-tier version of whatever magic you have equipped

Ø  There's no real incentive to switch between Keyblades (That being said, my favorites are Wheel of Fate, Nano Arms, and Happy Gear/Ever After)

Ø  Attractions lose their charm quickly and completely ruin the flow of combat

Ø  Summons aren't too big of a deal since I only ever ended up using them once and even then it was by accident

Ø  Donald still heals you at the wrong time more often than not

Ø  Even on Proud Mode the game is way too easy for the most part (Apparently Critical Mode addresses this but I can't confirm that)

Ø  There is a lack of sidequests and post-game content that contributes to the feeling Square & Disney gave us half a game (For example, there is only one secret boss, said secret boss has a generic design, no ties to the story, and can be defeated at LV40 on your first attempt)

Ø  Hollow Bastion, Mysterious Tower, and Destiny Islands are not playable

Ø  The parkour from 3D has been nerfed too much in terms of distance to actually be useful

Story Cons:

Ø  Nomura fridged Kairi and he worfed almost everyone the first time you arrive at the Keyblade Graveyard!

Ø  The wrapping up of plot points and character arcs from prior entries was a little too nice and neat for me

Ø  The out-of-nowhere introduction of Subject X

Ø  Pete and Maleficent do literally nothing the whole damn game

Ø  The pacing is awful:

Almost all of the game's resolution is held back until after you've beaten the last Disney world

Ø  There are two important cutscenes in the Final World that you can accidentally miss because for some reason they are optional

Ø  We don't get to see what happened to Lingering Will, which also means we don't get any more insight into the third aspect of being (AKA the soul)

Ø  There are no Final Fantasy characters in the game, not even Sephiroth!

Ø  What happened to Demyx?

Ø  Master Eraqus has absolutely nothing to do with Terra’s restoration

Changes I’d make:

Ø  Require us to go through the Disney worlds a second time like in KH2

Ø  Have Aqua and Ven be saved halfway through the game instead of at the end, they could then spend the second half of the game resting or join you on one of the Disney worlds to refresh themselves

Ø  Have Lea and Kairi join you on one of the Disney worlds to get practical experience

Ø  Make the Keyblade Graveyard sequence be a series of one/two/three-on one battles so that members of Organization XIII can use their full arsenal of attacks from previous games

Ø  Let us play the second battle between Lingering Will and Terra-Xehanort

Ø  Speaking of Terra-Xehanort, we should have fought him alongside the Guardian Heartless

Ø  Have us explore Scala Ad Caelum while hunting down the individual replicas before then making us fight all of them in a boss battle

DLC

Ø  The presence of it says a lot about the game and not in a good way

Final Score

Ø  7/10-8/10

[nyxabird]

What I want from Pokemon Sword/Shield

What I hope for in Pokemon Sword/Shield. I thought about making this a video, and I might still, but it’s so long that I thought a list here would be better to start with at least.

I know a lot of people are doing videos like this, where they're saying "this is what I'd love to see or not see in Pokemon Sword/Shield", but I'd honestly like to throw my opinion out there, too. There's so much we're hoping from in these games, and some of the points I think of I haven't seen other people address at all. And of course, I just have my own things that would make the games more fun for me, so. In no real order, here's what I hope for in Pokemon Sword and Shield.

1. No Fire/Fighting Starter.

Don't make Scorbunny fighting. Don't make Scorbunny fighting. For the love of god, DON'T MAKE SCORBUNNY FIGHTING.

Look. I like most of the starters overall, and both Chimchar and Torchic are some I think are really good, personally. But unlike the other two, Fire has just gotten this habit of dropping into fighting as its sub-type, and quite frankly that's just boring at this point. Blaziken, Infernape, and Emboar, all one after another, were just too much. They did REALLY good subverting this with the Fire/Psychic starter of Delphox, and while I don't personally care for it, I like the fact that Incineroar was Fire/Dark, even though its theme could have so easily been dropped into fighting.

Make it anything else. Literally anything else. No one cares what its other type is, or if it'll even have another type, as long as it ISN'T. FIGHTING. The little bandage on its face is making us worried, but with Inceniroar you proved you could have a fighting-styled theme without actually being fighting type. Please, do that again.

I, too, will accept literally any type match but Fire/Fighting. Though if I could personally choose, I'd ask for Fairy or Dark again. It'd be nice to have a Fire/Dark I actually really like.

2. No shiny locking.

Nintendo has picked up this habit of making legendaries, especially the cover Pokemon, impossible to roll as shiny.  Basically, they're hard-coded so that when you encounter them, they cannot be shiny. That needs to stop. Just... yeah. Don't do that. Stop doing that. That's really all there is to it. It's a bad thing you're doing and you need to quit. It's literally MORE work to do for no reason. Just stop it.

3. Keep easier ways to find shinies.

Easy is a bit of a misnomer, because there's no way to easily get a shiny, no matter what anyone says. But there are ways to make it easIER, and I think that needs to be kept. Whether it's chain-catching like in Pokemon Let's Go or something else, give us a way that's actually possible to do to get shinies. Do not bring back that stupid "pick the right shaking grass when all of them are two pixels different" minigame. That's a BAD WAY to do it. Give us a way, and give us a way that actually can work, not make us lose our progress because we don't have eyes like eagles.

4. No motion controls.

Now, I don't think Pokemon Let's Go had a bad catching mechanic... IF the game was in handheld mode. The idea of being able to catch Pokemon without wearing down my team was actually really good, and it was something I liked a lot. I did miss being able to battle wild Pokemon and make them easier to catch, but if the Let's Go catching mechanic comes back I won't mind...

IF it works like it does in handheld mode. Docked mode was AWFUL. There's no ifs, ands, or buts, it was just badly. Programmed. No one liked it. No one enjoyed it. It was never consistent and often times was completely opposite to whatever you wanted to do.

5. Pokemon that follow you.

Like in the Johto remakes or Pokemon Let's Go, let your Pokemon follow you. We know you can do it. You actually DID do it in the Alola games, because there's data of every single Pokemon model with walk and run cycles on the cartritage that you just never actually let us access, so don't try to claim this isn't something you can't do. On top of that, the Switch is way bigger than the 3DS' carts. You have room. You have the skill. Give it to us.

6. New Eeveelutions.

Please, please, PLEASE. Give us new 'eons. It's been way too long without getting new Eevee forms, and you have so many types you can still make it from. Give us SOMETHING. ANYTHING. You're creative, you can come up with various ways to do stuff. What about a Steel-type that evolves when you level it up holding a Metal Coat? Or a Fighting-type that evolves if you get it to a certain level? Just give us SOMETHING.

Me, personally, I'd love to see a Dragon-type, Poison-type, or Ground-type Eeveelution, because I'm always short on those types and I think they'd be awesome.

7. Bring back Mega Evolutions and Z-Moves.

They're cool, they're fun, and they make things more interesting. I've heard people complain about how it ruins competitive battling because it's unpredictable, to which I say "Why is your competitive battling completely predictable? That sounds boring and not actually competitive if you can plug in a formula and have it work." Some people say that it makes the game too easy, to which I say "Then stop using them." It's the same as people complaining there's difficulty levels in games; you think the easy mode is too easy for you, then just don't play on the easy mode. If you think Z-Moves or Mega Evolution make the game too easy for you, then just don't use them. No one's forcing you to, and taking away something other people enjoy because you have no self-control over not using them is just really rude. I mean, no one says the magic system in Dark Souls makes the game too easy, so that needs to be removed!

...actually, there probably are people who say that, depressingly enough.

Anyway. For me, I love that I can make my Pokemon feel super powerful for a moment, or just use Z-Move to skip over a specific trainer or specific Pokemon that I just don't want to deal with. It gives you options on how to handle your own game and lets you balance your own difficulty for it, which is what all the best games do. And let's not forget the core, most basic reason: they're just FUN.

8. Skippable cutscenes.

It's 2019. How do you not have this yet? Some people want to replay the game. Some people don't care about the story. Some people just want to get to a certain part. It doesn't matter. What matters is that every single cutscene in your game that doesn't require a vital decision -- and don't try to be dishonest, nothing but the opening cutscene has any actual decisions, they're all fake ones to make you feel like you're actually having an effect -- should be skippable. Straight out, out of the box. No ifs, ands, or buts.

9. No forced tutorial.

I've played Pokemon since Red and Blue. I know how Pokemon works. I know how to catch Pokemon. You're trying to teach a fish to swim.

I'm not against these tutorials. There are plenty of new people getting into Pokemon games every release, and they need it. No one doubts that. But there is absolutely no reason that these tutorials are MANDATORY. If the new people skip the tutorials, that's their own fault, not yours, and they can't complain about the bed they made for themselves. So please, for the love of god, don't torture the rest of us because some idiot might skip the tutorial and then get mad.

10. The Regional Pokedex is what matters.

Sun and Moon did this fantastically. Basically, this means that for things that require you to complete the Pokedex, like the Shiny Charm? Only the Pokemon that can be caught in the actual region count. You can still catch and register Pokemon that aren't in your Regional Pokedex, but you aren't required to in order to "complete" the Pokedex. That was something that was amazing in Sun/Moon and made the game NOT a painful, daunting slog to actually get things like the Shiny Charm in. Please do that again.

11. No HMs.

I sincerely doubt this'll be a problem, since none of the latest generation games had HMs, but this is still something that bears repeating. HMs are not fun. No one likes HMs. They're just irritating, pointless moves that get in your way and force you to either devote a slot or two in your party to a Pokemon you don't care for or trash the combat ability of the Pokemon you actually have. Whether it's Ride Pokemon or Secret Techniques or whatever... make it happen.

I, and I'm sure many other people, literally do not care if you just put a piece of plastic tape over a plot hole. If it means that we don't have to use HMs, every single one of us will ignore the giant gaping hole in space with nary a single comment.

12. Wild Pokemon that walk in the overworld.

This was, to me, the absolute best part of Pokemon Let's Go. Being able to see the Pokemon in the overworld not only makes it feel far more alive, but it makes actually hunting around a lot more enjoyable, too. This mechanic made caves FUN AGAIN. I literally HAD FUN in Mt. Moon and Rock Tunnel because of this. Those weren't fun when they were first released and every other cave after that has never been fun unless you packed hundreds of repels. Now? Caves are enjoyable because you can fight or dodge however you want, because you can SEE where things are.

13. Human Rivals.

Now I know this is a very controversial opinion, and if you don’t like that’s perfectly fine, but don’t try to insult me over it.

I hate rivals with nasty personalities that treat you like shit.

I want a rival that is actually tolerable and acts like a real person, not some entitled whiny manbaby bitch who's high on his own ego.

I will never understand how people seriously enjoyed people like Blue, who were just complete insufferable pricks. They often made me roll my eyes and ruined the experience because they were just so unrepentantly rude and assholeish, no matter what you did, and they never changed. Some people "love to hate" insufferable, intolerable assholes, I guess, and love to beat them down over and over. And if you do? Awesome! I’m glad to hear it.

But for me, they just detract from a game because they constantly have to go "Oh hey, you're that useless shitwad no one likes, hahaha let me treat you like piss on my shoe". Beating them gives you satisfaction, sure, but no matter what you do or how you win, all your interactions with them are negative. That satisfaction comes from "Hah hah, I beat up the dude who's rude to me", and that's just... to me, that doesn't stay satisfying. Eventually I just start getting angry that this shitheel won’t go away and leave me alone, because them being around isn’t fun anymore.

I don't necessarily want the rival to be your best friend or the nicest person in the world. I really liked people like Silver and Gladion, but that was because while they were assholes at the start, you saw them grow and change and become better and happier people as the game went on. Was Silver ever super chummy with you? Pft, hell no! Not even close! But that was okay, because you still saw him change into a dude who was actually tolerable and not stay as the prick with his head so far up his ass he was tasting breakfast. And that was awesome!

My favorite rivals, honestly? Are ones like Hau, who were your rivals but also your friends, so your interactions with them were positive and fun. My mood always skyrocketing whenever I talked to Hau because he was just so friendly and cute, and that’s what I found far, far more satisfying than some prick who’d come around to call me a worthless shithead.

Pokemon Rivals aren't like the big bad in games like Final Fantasy. You're stuck with them, you can't get away from them, and you're not solving some big super evil by getting rid of them and making yourself feel satisfied. You’re just having this asshole who’s being rude to you for literally no reason stalk you and refuse to let you get away.

That’s insanely creepy and nasty. You're just being BULLIED with rivals like that, and I genuinely cannot understand why people seem to love being bullied in their own game by an insufferable prick who's so drunk on their own ego they think they're Arceus' gift to the world. The satisfaction of beating them feels outweighed by the negative feelings you have of them constantly berating and putting you down.

Maybe it's just because I'm from a home life where I was constantly bullied and ridiculed by all of my cousins, but I just can't find that sort of thing enjoyable. It's part of why I don't replay the Kanto games anywhere near as much as I replay the other ones, despite Kanto being my home region. (I honestly thought PLG was better than the original because Blue wasn’t there to be an insufferable, entitled manbaby egotist)

If it were up to me, honestly, I'd let you pick your rival like you could pick your gender. One rival's the Hau-type, one rival's the Blue-type, and the one you don't pick doesn't show up in game. That way, everyone could have what they want. Barring that, I really, really don't want to see another rival that's completely inhuman because all they are is an entitled prick there to bully you. I don't care if it's like Silver or Gladion, where they're rude at first but become genuinely likeable later, or if it's like Hau where they're always nice. Just... give me an actual rival, not some guy's fragile and inflated ego wrapped in a human suit.

I genuinely have no idea how so many people think having a person who doesn’t treat you like you’re a piece of shit unworthy of life is so bad it can be considered a plague and something that needs rectifying.

14. Side games! But make them optional.

Give us more side stuff to do! Pokemon Contests, Pokeathelon, the Festival Plaza... The Battle Tower. These were all fun things to do. When they were OPTIONAL. I think we need stuff like the casino and Voltorb Flip, or an area like the Festival Plaza we can design, because those are actually fun things to do. But I also think they need to be completely skippable for people who don't want them. Forcing people into doing side-games is a sure-fire way to get that side-game hated, but making it available gives us so much more we can do. It'd sure make the post game more fun.

15. Character Customization.

Hair, eyes, skin. These should all be default customization options, either able to change very early on or able to pick at the start. Alola was pretty good at this. Do it again.

16. CLOTHES.

Clothes, clothes, clothes. For the love of god, give us clothes again. Not your shitty Pokemon Let's Go no-effort recolors your artist did while on his way home from work. Not the "two shirt models, two skirt models, and a pants model with recolors" thing you did Alola. Actual clothing. Dresses, different skirts, different pants. What about that big black coat-dress I got from Kalos? Or the boots? The hose? We know you can make these designs. Actually make them.

17. Pokeball Conversion.

Let us put caught Pokemon in a Pokeball different from what we caught in it. If we want to put our starter in a Luxury Ball, just let us spend one Luxury Ball and bam, do it! Overwrite the ball it's in now. It shouldn't really be that hard since you can outright edit IVs.

18. Secret Bases or the Underground!

Give us Secret Bases back! They were amazing and fun, and being able to make your own base -- especially a base your friend could download so they could fight you on your own time! Being able to buy and decorate, or place it randomly, was also amazing. Failing Secret Bases, give us back the Underground from Sinnoh where we could dig and find items and... well, yeah, make a base down there too.

Just give us some way to make our mark on the game world. Even better if we can set a fly-point there and put our own heal station in. That way, if there's a place we want to grind, well. We can just grind there, or if we needed a break because our Pokemon were getting battered. You don't have the make the furniture easy to get, but give us some way to make our own little spot we can get cozy in, rather than the house we'll never revisit because there's no reason to ever go back there.

19. A final area where the game doesn't cheat.

I breed Pokemon competitively. I breed until a Pokemon has the extact right IVs, the exact right nature, the exact right ability. I breed Egg Moves and everything else that would cover their types. And still, things like the Battle Tree are just an unfun, messy slogy for me. The main issue I have with it is that so many times, it seems like the game outright cheats. I can't tell you how many different teams I went in, only to find that a trainer early on had hard counters for every single member of my team. Once is circumstance, twice is happenstance, but three times is a pattern... and I had no less than ten. Different Pokemon, different team comps, different days, and still, I very regularly got hard-countered.

I don't care that these options are hard. By all means, keep them hard! They're meant to be. But stop cheating and making the AI pick out a hard-counter team to yours just because you're "doing too well". I've seen it in so many post-game Pokemons, and it really needs to stop.