Video game talk, anyone?

I highly recommend Monster Train if you enjoyed Slay the Spire.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is awesome so far. I just LOVE wandering around in this world. I keep getting impressed by the clothing style random characters are wearing, and the environments are so detailed that I just enjoy looking at stuff.

Welp...

So I said I was giving up...but then I got one of those random PS Direct invite deals. Already picked up FF7 Remake Intergrade thanks to that gift card that Best Buy saddled me with.

I do not care about and have never played WoW, so learning about the game specifically through the window of the problematic content now being removed from it is pretty hilarious.

They've just removed the flirt: "I got what you need *sound of zipper*"

Like lol, that was in the game?

lmao, soon after I type this I get to experience the mass effect 1 elevator loading screen updated for 2k21.

It's so very Square to go "huh, you actually want FF7R to have a turn-based mode? Ohhh, you must mean you want a baby mode for babies. Here you go, babies." Thankfully, Intergrade's "Classic Mode" (which improves upon the PS4 version by not bizarrely locking you into the easy difficulty) is pretty decent, and a nice default for when I'm controlling more characters than just Cloud. I'm currently on chapter 3, and it's been fun so far. The weapon upgrade system stacked on top of the materia system seems kind of needlessly convoluted (again, Square), but otherwise it innovates in interesting ways while still feeling like the original. Also FF7R confirms something I've long suspected: Jessie is hot.

I think the PC vs. NPC divide is somewhat the result of the PS5 / Intergrade enhancements. It's also my understanding that doors look way better now.

Yeah, in my review of the original PS4 release, I described the game's expanded set pieces as being like the director of a live talk show signaling at the host to "stretch it out." Knowing where the story is going has the effect of making me impatient with the expanded dungeons, even when they're objectively good. The new train graveyard, for example, is undeniably cool, but it's an hour+ for what used to be just a few minutes. Likewise the lengthy dungeon-and-a-half that proceeds the second reactor mission. The irony is that if this wasn't a remake, if I wasn't constantly comparing it to the original game, I don't think I'd find these dungeons boring or over-long. I'd appreciate them as they are: really gorgeous, mostly well-put together dungeons that offer an opportunity to grind, find treasures, and explore. Stuff I like doing.

Less defensible are the "open" chapters before kicking off the end game, when you realize that for as many hours as you've put into the game, and for as many side areas and dungeons as there have been, it's basically just two areas. You've got Wall Market and Sector 5 Slums, there are two paths between them, and all the sidequests are just walking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. The game isn't long, it just takes a long time to play. 

Still greatly enjoying Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. One thing I'm going to be finding out fairly soon and will be either amused or pleasantly surprised about:

During my first visit to Prague, I took on a side mission involving stealing some information from the CEO's office at the massive bank in the city.

During my second visit to Prague, I will apparently have the potential to take on another mission, this time a main mission, to break into the bank vaults themselves.

The fun/funny part is, during my first visit to the bank I snuck around and knocked out like 3/4 of the guards, disabled the security systems and made it to SOME of the vaults, but didn't really find anything useful. So I'm really curious if the game is "smart" enough to 1) reset the people and security systems for my next visit, and 2) possibly update terminals and access panels to reflect an increase in security because of my prior visit, or 1a) everyone is still just lying around knocked out in corners with doors open and gates off despite it being at least 12 hours in-game since I was last there. I will observe and report back once I reach this point in the game.

EDIT - Completed the game today, and it was a ton of fun. The final mission / pair of missions has an unstated time limit, so I ended up stealth-running through the last 20-25 guards after beating the "big bad" guy to make sure I stopped a second catastrophe, and apparently missed where I could save my boss' life in the process. I may go back and redo that part, but maybe not.

This game is great. It sounds like there are no current plans for another game in the series, which is sad, because this one ended with a lot of unfinished questions including a mid-credits scene.

I've been back on my Tales of Arise kick. I still adore that game (my first Tales game), though I laughed out loud when, last night, after 27 hours of playtime and beating a pretty significant boss and closing the biggest main story arc, I got a lavishly animated cutscene and...the title screen, again. "You thought you were done, Kara?? HAHAHA, Part II begins now, fool!" (I realize that, for a JRPG, this is actually pretty snappily paced.) I may take a break for a bit, as the characters do, before returning to it.

I think I'm going to use that break to dive fully into Disco Elysium on the Xbox now. I waited patiently for it to come to either of my two primary consoles and decided that the portability of the Switch was not going to win out over the Series X's load times and sheer fidelity, and I feel like I made the right call because that game is gorgeous on the Series X. I can still mess about with it in bed or whatever using remote play via my phone & Backbone controller. (I didn't wanna just buy the PC version because I really wanted to enjoy it on the big TV in the living room, also because my partner is very entertained watching that game as well.)

Also! I've been messing around with my first* Metroid game! *Technically, I tried the original NES Metroid via the Switch's NES emulator a couple of weeks ago and bounced off hard. It's just too much for my soft modern fake gamer girl sensibilities. At some point, though, I decided to load up Metroid: Zero Mission via my RG351v instead, and I'm actually playing and enjoying it! It's just accessible enough that I don't feel my brain grinding to dust and don't feel like I'm being relentlessly punished for trying to play. I've wanted to do this because I've bounced off of a bunch of Metroidvanias before and I really wanna try to get into them.

I plan on getting to it at some point, if it all holds up for me. I've already experimented a bit w/ Gamecube emulation on my Series X and things look very promising.

I think Iffy is getting me a really well made copy of Fragile's jacket from Death Stranding for Christmas. I won't even have to pretend to be surprised, I'll be so excited!

Next up on my list to play: Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor! Totally forgot that I bought this one years ago and actually installed it on this PC a few months back but didn't start it.

This one will be fun. Already killed one captain and chased down Gollum once.

EDIT - Oh man, caragors are bullshit. Only slightly less aggravating than cougars in Red Dead Redemption! That "A to dodge" thing doesn't work very well when they're able to immediately turn around and charge you again after it, so you end up dodging over and over until you inevitably miss and get mauled.

Also, annoying but hilarious when I tried to go after a captain in a Stronghold, which ended up sounding the alarm, which called every single Uruk in range to me, including TWO OTHER CAPTAINS, and when I fled across the entire map, they tracked me, I tried to escape again and was murdered by a random archer, which meant the previous three captains raised in power, two got promoted, and the archer became a captain who replaced the only other one I'd killed before! (That actually was pretty funny. I immediately hunted down the archer and got my revenge, shooting him in the face.)

Cyberpunk 2077 went up on sale on Steam today for 33% off ($40.19) for anyone interested in a potentially fun but also occasionally buggy and problematic game. I picked it up to add to my backlog, but will probably start it sooner than later as I'm on a near-future sci-fi kick lately.