Ryuukishi

Hands-on preview videos are starting to drop for Hogwarts Legacy, and they’re mostly positive! Combat and the world seem to be great, solid character creation, etc. It’s one of my most anticipated games of 2023, but I’ve been holding off preordering until some reviews/impressions drop. Time to preorder!

Mando Season 3 trailer looks great, even though I’m still annoyed they brought you know who back immediately.

I like NEVER play games on the hardest difficulty, but I beat Dead Space on Impossible just because I loved it that much.

Impossible in the first game was really manageable. In fact, it's a lot easier if you only use the plasma cutter, because all of your upgrades and resources can go into that one weapon instead of spreading them out. You can also sell all the ammo you find for other weapons which makes health not that hard to come by. I think it's a great balance for survival horror since it's so easy to die but not unreasonably difficult.

Compared to the sequel, where the hardest difficulty has literally no save points. I love a challenge and I am a bit of a masochist, but that is fucking ridiculous.

I Agree.

*Proceeds to watch the Irishman on the Netflix app on phone with a busted ass speaker at the DMV*

The way Scorsese intended.

I like NEVER play games on the hardest difficulty, but I beat Dead Space on Impossible just because I loved it that much.

All this Dead Space talk makes me wanna boot it back up again

Random but for those looking to replay Dead Space 1 on Impossible, I just noticed that Game Pass Ultimate Perks added a second Dead Space DLC/upgrade bundle, which includes the Tank Suit that gives you 60% damage resistance.

 

Dammit, this would've been nice to have when I was replaying the game last November. Impossible is actually not too bad but this would've saved me lots of deaths 

These subscription services are nice and all but I am way too slow getting through these games for it to make sense for me. I have a mountain in backlog games and retro games to get through as it is. Starting a game on Gamepass or PS+ extra service with a deadline to finish probably doesn't make sense for people like me since I can eventually just buy these games cheap and complete them at my own pace later. I am genuinely curious what percentage of gamers are like me. I feel like I would need to quit my job and disown my family to be able to keep up with some of you in playing/finishing these games as they come out new.

Trying to "defeat" your backlog is a losing battle. I've taken several weeks off from work and it barely made a dent in my backlog lol. Mathematically speaking, there simply aren't enough hours in a day to play every single game. That's why I always highly suggest to play whatever makes you happy and brings you the most joy at the moment. Why play a 6/10 game just because it's leaving game pass when you could be playing a 10/10 game from your backlog? I won't even start a game that's slated to leave game pass unless I know it's really short.

 

That being said, game pass has been a real blessing. I've discovered so many great games I wouldn't have otherwise. Even without a plethora of 1st party AAA games, a nice 8-10 hour AA or indie game is where it's at for me. A game like Hades, Death's Door, Tunic, A Plague Take, High on Life, etc...
 

Just noticed an interesting side effect of the #MyYearOnXBOX on the True Achievement website. My TA ratio has jumped from 1.6 to 1.62 and my score total by almost 22,000 points. I guess they are getting thousands of people joining to use the feature. Not sure if it is going to bounce back eventually but I like it.  

Just noticed an interesting side effect of the #MyYearOnXBOX on the True Achievement website. My TA ratio has jumped from 1.6 to 1.62 and my score total by almost 22,000 points. I guess they are getting thousands of people joining to use the feature. Not sure if it is going to bounce back eventually but I like it.  

Looks like they've added about 100k accounts since earlier this week.  They posted that there were 20k registrations on Tuesday after they posted about it and another 50k on Wednesday after people like Phil Spencer tweeted about it.  A post in their Discord from early Thursday morning shows they were at 972k then and they're at 997.5k now.

 

The numbers will probably continue climbing over the next week, maybe longer.  They said they have a hard limit on how many games they recalculate ratios for a day (was 1,400, bumped to 2k, with 8,622 tracked on the site) to ensure the process finishes in 24 hours before starting a new batch.  So the games processed after the first big group of registrations will probably cycle through again in a day or two.

 

I've picked up about 5k from the ratio inflation.

What do you mean "even"? Mobile is easily bigger than Nintendo and PlayStation in Japan. It would be a shock if these games weren't available for mobile there.

Oh, it wasn’t a slight on mobile. As I just said mobile actually is a great way to play games like this. The “sad” part was saying how literally almost every way you can play a game will have these….except Xbox.

me...bought it for the black friday sale @ $19 and haven't even played it yet!

Good, we need more sacrifices to the Game Pass gods to help the Activision merger go through!

I've been waiting for Diablo II to hit this low. $13.19 by itself or $19.79 bundled with Diablo III. Went ahead and grabbed the bundle. This is my first time buying II and third time buying III.

I hate the Xbox website. How am I supposed to browse the sale while on break at work with headphones in my ears if the site is going to keep interrupting my audio for no apparent reason?

I think Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft are in the middle of some bet as to which can have the most useless digital game store.

So I’m sure Sony will inevitably complain about this deal with Nintendo and Valve.

I hope MS then responds with “trade you call of duty of god of war”

Also, Gabe Newell comments on the Steam deal were interesting:

"Microsoft offered and even sent us a draft agreement for a long-term Call of Duty commitment but it wasn’t necessary for us because a) we’re not believers in requiring any partner to have an agreement that locks them to shipping games on Steam into the distant future b) Phil and the games team at Microsoft have always followed through on what they told us they would do so we trust their intentions and c) we think Microsoft has all the motivation they need to be on the platforms and devices where Call of Duty customers want to be."

Gabe is definitely operating on a different plane of consciousness than the rest of the industry. But I guess that’s the nature of operating a storefront vs selling hardware.

I don't get all the calls for first party Sony games in exchange for  Call of Duty.  That's like giving them Halo becuase they are afraid of Destiny going exclusive.  If anything, get them to stop the stupid 3rd party deals (which is what I think Sony's major issue with this deal is.)

Final Fantasy 16 is at least 6 months exclusive and Forspoken is at least 2 years.

FF16 I'll believe it when I see it on XBox. Looking at you FF7Remake. Ain't fooling me with this favoritism bullshit, Square Enix.