Monster Hunter Generations X exists for PSP nostalgia and probably did not sell well because World and (later) Rise
Exploring the old maps and taking in the skyboxes in all their splendor was worth the price of admission alone, but stumbling into a fucking elephant on a snow-capped mountain when hunting Popos was the very moment I found myself committed to doing this all over again
i played bloodstained for the first time and wait they gave the first boss a breast reduction? 
Oh yeah, the colossal honkers were only in the alpha/beta/demo or whatever.
They’re still big! But not comically so.
I gotta go back and finish that game…actually probably just play it from scratch, given all the updates and such.
kehehe i haven’t played Bloodstained so i dunno did it come out before or after Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, the (rly extremely good) search action game where one of the bosses hurtbox is her giant cleavage
Apparently had turned off cloud saves at some point for Elden Ring when I played it when it came out so I started a new game when the dlc dropped. Now I’ve finally gotten to the dlc and I’m totally burned out and don’t want to play any more. It’s too much game!!
Also playing Tactical Breach Wizards based on @Felix’s recommendation and I can corroborate that it’s as good as he says.
Bloodstained was after.
This is apparently a known issue they have not fixed.
instead of playing any combination of the three games what came out on the 29th that I acquired with the money I earn somehow, I instead spent 90 minutes of my Labor Day day playing Shrek: Reekin’ Havoc for the Advanced Game Boy, purely on the basis that the Cutting Room Floor page for it described it as a licensed Shrek beat them up made by TOSE
describing it as a “beat them up” is generous and calling it a Shrek game is charitable considering you play as Shrek for only 25% of the game and the rest of the time you’re Fiona, and not even buff ogre Fiona, but regular human Fiona
no it’s not that one cool looking 2D Shrek character action game starring Fiona that either never came out or was only on a plug and play
I don’t want to call it good, but at the same time, I sat down and beat it even though it’s more of a maze game than it is a game about beating enemies up
I wonder what my next terrible life choice will be
partner passed the controller and i asked if i could fly the ship to space in outlaws. the first quest on the space station was really really excellent. i love terrible stormtrooper AI comedy and the writing working together
so now my job is sneaking missions and flying the ship and she’s gonna do everything else. perfect
Sabacc is really good. So there’s at least one actually good mini game in Outlaws. The first DLC is going be based around a Sabacc tournament with Lando Calrissian. Will probably pick that one up.
12+ hours into it now. Went to space for the first time and then back to Toshara where I did a series of Sabacc quests. My opinion of this game continues to improve. Before I was in agreement with the 7/10 reviews but now I’d say this is definitely an 8 in spite of the individual components like the stealth and shooting not really standing up on their own. It really is starting to feel like more than the sum of its parts.
A big part of it is the vibes for sure. These locations are just pitch perfect. And it feels great to be walking into a bar or wherever and there are just lots of people and characters hanging out. That and the visuals are what are selling this as truly next gen to me. All open world games from now on need to have at least as many NPCs as this game.
Speaking of Gran Turismo and depression, I spent most of the afternoon recreating the bumper stickers on an in game version of my car that I probably will never drive in the game:
did you buy nix a snack yet? there’s a whole monster hunter cooking cutscene/david cage QTE sequence. it’s incredible
does the ship ever break and you have to fix it
Yes! I did the one in Mirogana and it unlocked a dish for Nix on my ship. I’m assuming there’s different Nix snacks to be had at all the major locations.
You steal it to escape from the tutorial area and then crash land on the first planet, at which it’s broken and you gradually fix it by moving the main quest along. So far I’ve fixed it enough to take it into orbit and my next main quest is getting the hyperdrive fixed.
Also a thing this game does that I really like is it just has all these spots where you can just sit down somewhere and the camera pulls back some and you can admire the view. Or if you’re indoors somewhere there’s a bar or a railing you can lean on and just chill while everyone else mills about around you. Big Star Wars mood.
the world is very subtly search action gated too, I just got a cave I could only enter by boosting on my speeder, and I had only unlocked that boost move an hour or so before that
you know the batman games everyone liked ten years ago? Arkham City or whatever? I never played them, but from what I remember reading about them at the time, I feel pretty confident in assuming that this is about as well done (and commensurately modern) and its appeal is relatively similar.
I absolutely get why everyone feels duty bound to clarify that this is mid but its scope is so successful
Other stuff that is really good:
The game breaks from the typical Ubisoft mold by not automatically littering the world map with icons for stuff to go do/find. All that stuff is there but you have to find it on your own by either just exploring the world or finding intel, either by purchasing information from a merchant, finding it in a data pad or hacked terminal or, my favorite way, eavesdropping on conversations between NPCs in public. There are just all these organic ways for you to find information that it’s unnecessary for the game to just give it to you outright.
The combat, actually. You have your blaster and you can find ways to upgrade it eventually but it’s overall not that great. But you can get temporary power ups in the form of dropped enemy weapons that are overpowered but run out of ammo quickly, and you can’t always pick up a dropped weapon either. You also have this Red Dead dead eye thing you can do where once you have enough adrenaline you can pause time and mark three enemies and insta kill them.
I’m playing on the hardest difficulty so mostly I try to avoid combat but when it does happen it’s mostly a scramble to end it as quickly as possible and go hide until the enemies give up the search.
The abilities and character progression. You learn new abilities by meeting characters who teach you stuff. Once you meet someone and do a quest for them it unlocks a new ability tree to work towards. Some of these are basic game mechanic stuff like the ability to lockpick or upgrade your bike but some of them add interesting gameplay wrinkles like Fast Talk. With Fast Talk after you’re spotted by an enemy you put your hands up like you’re going to surrender and then you have a moment to hit them with a stun shot from your blaster. And this doesn’t break stealth either (unless someone sees you do it) so you can do it while sneaking around. It’s great. It’s either a quick recovery and back to stealth or a great intro to a combat.
The speeder bike, eventually. You unlock a speed boost and also the ability to do a jump, and you can use them at the same time. So you can speed boost while holding the jump button and launch yourself in the air at the end of a ramp or just over oncoming traffic. You can also do the dead eye move on the bike but that’s the only combat I’ve been able to do so far while driving. I don’t think it ever lets you just shoot from the bike like in GTA, unfortunately.
The structure of the game. It’s built like a typical open world game but the focus is all on going places to meet people or get something for a person or just talking with and interacting with other characters. It really is just a Star Wars adventure but in game form.
The graphics obviously. On console it boots into performance mode from default new game start and for a while I could not really see the difference between the performance and quality modes so I kept it on the higher frame rate for a solid ten hours. But a few hours ago I switched it to quality to check that out for a while and there is a bit of a difference. Mainly in the level of detail and some of the reflective surfaces. There’s just more detail displayed further out in the quality mode and storm trooper armor looks really good with the lighting. I might keep it here from now on since I’ve started reacclimatizing to the lower frame rate (being a pretty solid 30 helps a lot) and the combat doesn’t really require fast reflexes.
Probably other stuff too I’m not thinking about but those are the major points. It’s a pretty good game. As far as how basic the fundamental stuff is, it’s like George Lucas once said, “Star Wars is for 12 year olds.”
Fortunately I was 12 when he released the original trilogy for the 20th anniversary during the hype build up for the prequel trilogy. I don’t know if this would be hitting as well with me as it has otherwise if I didn’t have that experience of it at that formative age. Lots of media is like that, I think. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings kind of missed me because I was too old by the time they found me.
This is a pretty good observation but the Arkham games do have pretty interesting combat once you unlock enough gadgets and other moves. I think it remains to be seen if Outlaws ends up in a similar place by the end of it. Just depends on if they keep expanding the tool kit or just give you more ways to insta kill everything.
I’m kind of sad I don’t care about Star Wars at all, because if I did I’d be all over this game. Someone make me a mid but evocative Animorphs or Hitchhiker’s Guide or Star Trek open world game, I’m there.
Oooohh this format would be perfect for a Star Trek game. A fully explorable Enterprise? Yes, please. A borg quest line? Q? The holodeck? So much potential and we haven’t even got to doing space battles and stuff like that yet.
