Greatoneshere

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.

I don't own GTA V at all, in any way, shape, or form.

I am loving this game so far - about 5-6 hours in. The combat opens up a lot as times goes on, and the ninja/ghost aspect isn't janky, as of yet. The targeting can sometimes be wonky when you are surrounded by multiple enemies, but for the most part the combat is fast, fluid, and feels like an approximation of real samurai combat (in terms of weightiness and timing) and it's very easy to get pummeled by loads of enemies if one isn't careful. Fought two major bosses so far, the health bar was intimidating but once you master dodging, parrying, etc. it didn't take too long to take them down. Playing on the hardest difficulty, but it's still early days. The setting and atmosphere alone, along with the graphics and music, make the game feel special regardless of some of the more rote open-world design. I will say that everything being in game (follow foxes, birds, the wind, etc.) is great, it's just a shame that they put "undiscovered location" question marks on your map, which sort of undermines discovering the animals and following them, but whatever makes my life easier I guess. It's not like the game pings items in any area at least, so you still gotta search and explore for supplies and scrolls, etc. Also, I love how samurai and Japanese the game is in its gameplay. Inari shrines, golden birds, fox dens, haikus (there are fucking haiku gameplay sections!), flute playing with different song options, historic scrolls to give us legit background on both the Japanese and Mongol cultures, genuinely wrestling with the samurai code of bushido by becoming more of what samurai considered scum, the ninja, as Jin Sakai has to emply guerrilla tactics to win this war. Don't forget, playing the flute changes the in-game weather as well!

People didn't like Guerrilla Games and their Killzone games but then Horizon Zero Dawn happened, so you never know.

You are right about the user response, but critics overall (barring the strange ones like Vice or Polygon) have unanimously praised the game despite the option they had to cow tow to users. It has one of the highest critical video game ratings on metacritic, so I think at least reviewers understand the depth, etc. of the game that you're pointing out, for the most part. The common, average person? Don't ever expect anything out of them.

I ultimately figured it out - needed to go to "purchased" instead of "games" under library.

It means he has poor taste is all. Obviously he can do what he wants.