Greatoneshere

I'll wait until both story DLC packs are out to play (similar to Control) but I'll definitely play 'em.

That's because they aren't considered as great, in all honesty. Cronenberg starts getting good with The Brood and Scanners, and then starts getting really good with Videodrome, The Dead Zone, The Fly, Dead Ringers, and Naked Lunch. After that, his good films are M. Butterfly, Existenz, Spider, A History of Violence, and Eastern Promises. He hasn't really made anything good since, unfortunately (A Dangerous Method was fine, Cosmopolis and Maps to the Stars weren't so good).

Pretty much impossible without Itagaki. Let's be glad Nioh 1/2 are as good as they are, and that Team Ninja has somehow kept the reputation intact without him.

Given Nioh is made by Team Ninja (even without Tomonobu Itagaki), you basically got one.

I do when I can, except . . . I can only find them some of the time too, when there's more than enough space for there to be a scripted petting action, I have found. Also, I love how different Nioh 1/2, Sekiro, and Ghost of Tsushima all are from one another. Having played all three now (not Nioh 2 yet), each is very Japanese and very samurai/ninja in their ways, but take very different approaches in style, tone, gameplay, combat, etc. It's been an embarrassment of riches lately for me, a big fan of the setting. I can't wait until Nioh 2 hits PC now. I will say that Ghost of Tsushima's combat is the easiest (though still very satisfying) but it's the most open world, etc. so the tradeoff is worth it. Sekiro is only semi-open world and Nioh 1 wasn't open world at all, you had a world map and picked individual levels that were relatively small. Also nice is that while Sekiro takes place in the late 1500's and Nioh takes place in 1601, Ghost of Tsushima takes place in 1274 which lends some differences as well (300+ years is a big gap). This does cause anachronisms pulled in from Sengoku-era (1500's/1600's) understandings of samurai and ninja and pulls them into 1274 Japan (for instance, ninja didn't exist yet), but it doesn't matter with this more folklore-style take.

That's pretty cool. I have been bombarding enemy encampments usually in stormy rain and knowing this makes it cooler.

Having done a lot of stealth, I will say I have seen more and more rainy weather and storms and was wondering what was up . . . If this is true that's cool as shit.

A lot of white people sympathized so well with Ed Norton's character that they don't see the film as an indictment of hate and hate culture (the film it is) but rather get deeply tribalistic and only reaffirms their casual racism as justified. I agree with you completely, but as people said, Falling Down was pretty overt and people missed the message in that one.

In terms of misinterpreting movies, I think this one is severely underrated and regularly misinterpreted: Bobcat Goldthwaite's God Bless America. Same goes for the aforementioned Fight Club, American History X, American Beauty, Choke, and so forth. People think depiction is endorsement and stop there and embrace (or reject it) outright, and miss the subersive (or not so subversive) satire and indictment underneath. Seems pretty on point now.

I don't know the details myself because I don't want to spoil anything for myself either, but there are only two endings, a good ending and a bad ending, all determined by one important choice made late in the game. So to answer your question, yes, there are multiple endings, but no, being more ninja than samurai will not affect it as I understand it. It's a fair question given the Infamous trilogy did employ a rudimentary morality system.

Same. Just flowed the best. Plus I'm darkening my soul with ninja abilities to win this war, so Kage (Shadow) seemed more appropriate. So very true, I cannot agree with this enough.

I mostly agree with you (in general, and about FF7R's development timetable) but Square Enix is also dealing with a new generation between episodes here, which will affect things. And if episodes take so long it extends to the generation even after this one, that complicates both carrying over saves and timetables as well.

I agree, I think it's more in terms of presentation - to outdo the competition, which entices gamers and they want games pushing things to the max. They arguably don't notice frame rates that much either.

I agree but gamers care about bells and whistles more than 4K/60fps.

I would similarly love a remaster of Digital Devil Saga Vol. 1 + Vol. 2. Emulation is pretty good though.

I mean, as prevalent as 4K has now become, 1080p is still the norm for most average gamers on what they game on. But the only way to forge new standards is to foist them on people, so I'm all for 4K/60fps.

I agree completely that playing closely in front of a monitor makes a game feel much more involving than playing from my couch on a bigger TV. I feel the switch very viscerally when I go from PC gaming on my monitor to PS4 gaming on my TV. I love the much bigger screen, feels much more theatrical, but detail is lost.

I mean, I agree completely, but a man can hope. I'll be primarily gaming on PC anyway, so it's a moot point for me, except where exclusives that never come to PC from PS5 are concerned. In those rare instances, I'll have to suffer accordingly, but I hope 60fps locked becomes an option at least some of the time. Death Stranding being such a good PC port for the most part (except with Kojima's artistic restrictions, not technical ones) is a good sign for the Decima Engine at least.

Yeah, agreed 100%. I think bare minimum should definitely be 4K/60fps. If not 4K, at least 60fps.

I wish 4k/60fps rather than 4k/bells and whistles (but 30fps) was the default - hopefully this is an option with every game going forward.

I agree with you about Ghost's combat - very satisfying. I will say as someone who 100%'ed Horizon, the combat takes awhile to really open up, but once you have a number of weapons and types of ammo for those weapons, combat becomes very slick and satisfying and you feel very powerful though the combat never gets easy. But at first it's very simple. Honestly, same with Tsushima - as more and more opens up I find myself leaning more and more on ninja/ghost abilities, as it's just easier - once you can stealth kill 3 people at once and see via a flashing sign who else will see your triple stealth kill, it becomes my primary mode of combat (though if things go to shit or I get bored, I do go samurai). Also stand offs are great because if you upgrade that enough you can kill three people in one go in a stand off. Between a triple stand off kill and a triple stealth kill I'm slowly finding myself in less and less drawn out battles.

I am absolutely down to replay SMT III: Nocturne. I got to the true final boss but never grinded out the experience to finally beat him all those years ago. This is as good an excuse as any to pick things up 15 years later. Great game, will look gorgeous if done right in HD (as it seems). I wish it were on PC though.

Yeah, except these icons are worth going to.

They now have 13 studios working under them (essentially equal to Sony's 14 studios) so I'm very excited to see what all that talent has been working on. They snapped up some good studios these last few years.

Khotun Khan (cousin of Kublai Khan) is played by Patrick Gallagher, who you've all seen in at least something. He's pretty great in most roles, and I'm enjoying his understated, intellectual turn here (so far, I'll need to see more). https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0302466/?ref_=tt_cl_t4 His likeness is used for the character in game.