SaysWho?

Glitched - 9/10 "Roguelike at its Finest" Returnal Review – Roguelike at its Finest WWW.GLITCHED.ONLINE Returnal starts off horrifying and brutal but once mastered, it delivers some of the finest roguelike bullet hell gameplay set on a remarkable world of Atropos.

"Returnal is an unrelenting and unforgiving challenge for the ages, but it still captures the magic of what makes Housemarque so special. It has a weirdly unique style and substance, every level is an unpredictable white-knuckle ride and it fully commits to its rogue-like influences. The end result isn’t just a showcase title for what the PS5 is capable of, it’s a thrilling mix of arcade bullet-hell gaming with precision thrill power." 8.5 from Easy Allies

Returnal Review - Live Die Repeat - GameSpot WWW.GAMESPOT.COM Returnal blends elements of shooters, roguelikes, action games, and horror to redefine bullet hell and conjure a mysterious, moody masterpiece. 9/10

"Returnal is a relentless meditation on not giving up" Returnal is a relentless meditation on not giving up WWW.POLYGON.COM Housemarque’s PS5 exclusive elevates the time loop genre "Even after more than 60 runs of Returnal, the enchanting presentation and sense of discovery still remain. I now feel vigorous compared to the creatures that have tried to defend their territory against an unwanted visitor. The last boss only took me one try to beat it, yet I could barely make any progress in finding the right answers. I feel like I’m running in circles. But I’m not giving up. "

Well, some people on this board think third person with trees means it's the same kind of game, so it's easy for them to get caught up in that.

Louisiana state lawmaker suggests that schools should teach the 'good' of slavery WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM "If you're having a discussion on slavery, then you can talk about everything dealing with slavery, the good, the bad, the ugly," said state Rep. Ray Garofalo. Just a reminder that fuck that guy and everyone like him.

Housemarque with a letter to fans: Housemarque's Next Awesome Arcade Action Game Releases Tomorrow! — Housemarque HOUSEMARQUE.COM "At the time it was very hard to see which, if any, of the projects would be moving us forward in the years to come. Our multiplayer PvP prototype seemed at the time as a necessary experiment as the industry seemed to have moved on from single-player games towards multiplayer games. We were thinking that if we don’t have anything to show on that front, we might be out of the business very soon as we wouldn’t be able to sell any projects to publishers anymore. " "Although we managed to release one of the best reviewed new game of 2017 according to metacritic, we were certainly left disappointed with the sales leading me to declare #arcadeisdead and ending our long standing commitment to the arcade genre. Giving up on the genre didn’t mean that we’d be giving up on our deep commitment to fast-twitch action gameplay. Instead, we wanted to take on the challenge to figure out how we could translate our arcade 2D gameplay expertise into a 3rd person action game. On the other hand, it was still very uncertain, if we’d be able to move past the prototype phase and convince Sony to keep on funding a new, unproved concept. The concept was ridiculously ambitious and looking back we as a company really weren’t totally appreciating the challenge ahead of us and how hard it could be to tackle it. In the age when game publishers are taking less and less creative risks, we are truly thankful to our publishing partner Sony, who has given us an opportunity to work on something very risky and has given fantastic support during the whole project. We are forever grateful for having this opportunity."

Federal prosecutors indict three men in death of Ahmaud Arbery - CNN AMP.CNN.COM Three men were indicted on hate crime and attempted kidnapping charges by a federal grand jury in Southern Georgia in connection with the death of Ahmaud Arbery, the...

When much of the nation considered him "America's Mayor," speculated about his presidential ambitions (shit, if Gore was president in 2000, I wonder if Giuliani would have ran in 2004), and he was considered this moderate darling... it's amazing how disliked he is now. @Kal-El814 made an analogy a long time ago -- 2019(!) -- and has stayed with me to this day: "Imagine being America's mayor after 9/11. I bet it's like sitting at a blackjack table with a 20 while the dealer is showing an 8. Imagine deciding to hit to get that ace. Giuliani has been doing that for eighteen fucking years."

I've never heard of Ed Balls until this month and now:

Quite likely the pros are a bigger deal as pros than the cons are as cons.

Returnal survival guide: Housemarque’s gameplay tips for Atropos BLOG.PLAYSTATION.COM Recommended loadouts, combat strategies, and more from the creator of the PS5 sci-fi shooter, launching April 30.

Another leak. This review is more spoilery, so I'm copying the non-spoilers: Returnal Review - In My Restless Dreams, I See That House... WEBCACHE.GOOGLEUSERCONTENT.COM Housemarque has succeeded with their fusion of third-person shooting and roguelike elements in Returnal, one of my favorite PS5 titles so far From that review, the pros: Third person shooting, roguelike loop, and enough combat depth to have the two systems overlap without friction Dozens of artifacts and parasites to give Selene a fighting chance Excellent implementation of all DualSense features Each map is randomly generated but filled with handcrafted maps and combat arenas A good Dreadbound build is my favorite playstyle in all of Returnal Each complete run lasts up to an hour and a half Cons: Being struck by unseen enemies and losing half your life is a common occurrence Half the weapon roster either underpowered or utterly useless for long range encounters Getting your corpse scavenged and taking a negative ailment in an otherwise perfect run isn't cool Many lore pieces relegated to audio logs and alien scripture tucked away across randomly generated stages Occasional dips below 60 FPS during firefights with high explosion counts Malignancy effects are rampant in Act Two with nearly 50% of every item drop covered in negative effects Reviewer loved it. 9.3

If you're worried about roguelikes or it being too hard (that means you @stepee and @best3444), here's this reviewer's impression (no story spoilers or gameplay spoilers or anything like that):

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QWbCg2DeWZkJ:https://fextralife.com/returnal-review-impressions-phenomenal-cosmic-fun/+&cd=1&hl=it&ct=clnk&gl=it&client=firefox-b-d 9.3 SUMMARY: A sleeper hit, Returnal is bound to captivate you from start to finish, no pun intended. If you are a fan of good Sci-fi in the vein of The Expanse, Stranger Things, or Mass Effect, you surely won't want to miss this game. Returnal is the early front runner for Game of the Year 2021, making a compelling case to get a Playstation 5...if you can find one.

For some reason, I thought it was lifting tomorrow. EDIT: Hey, are you sure it lifted? I think it's actually Thursday at 8am ET.

ArmGunar the real MVP. Not even finished reading yet.

"I've been told, by very reliable people that Starfield was 100% an Xbox exclusive. I've even made bets about it, and I don't bet unless I know I'm willing to bet. So I'm really, really confident that Starfield is only releasing on Xbox when it does, and I've been told as well that Microsoft is trying their hardest to get the game out for this holiday. They really want Starfield out this holiday. The game's basically sort of finished - it's in bug squashing mode right now, very much like Halo Infinite, and it would be a big boon for Game Pass and Xbox if both Halo and Starfield could launch this fall."

More info from Zhuge on their mobile revenue and breaking the cyclical profit/loss nature of the console business:

Sony Aims to “Aggressively Invest” in First-Party Studios & Continue to Partner With External Developers TWINFINITE.NET During Sony’s quarterly conference call CFO Hiroki Totoki talked about the forecast for the current fiscal year ending on March 2022.

ArmGunar on Reset does a wonderful job breaking everything down. https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/20q4_sonypre.pdf https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/20q4_supplement.pdf Sony Revenue : ¥8999.4bn / $84.82B (+9.0% YoY from ¥8259.9bn / $75.99B - FY2019) Sony Operating Profit : ¥971.9bn / $9.16B (+15.0% YoY from ¥845.5bn / $7.78B - FY2019) Sony Net Profit : ¥1171.8bn / $11.04B (+101.3% YoY from ¥582.2bn / $5.36B - FY2019) Best Revenue ever for Sony Best Operating Profit ever for Sony Best Net Profit ever for Sony First time, Net Profit crossed ¥1 trillion / $10 billion Major records broken / milestones reached this quarter or fiscal year by PlayStation : PlayStation reached an all-time high of 25.04B Revenue during FY2020 and set a new record for the industry Previous record was Sony FY18 with $20.84B Revenue The second time PlayStation broke the $20B barrier Only PlayStation ever generated more than $18.5B Revenue during a fiscal year, let alone $20B PlayStation reached an all-time high of $6.24B Revenue during Q4, a new record for the industry Previous biggest Q4 Revenue was Sony Q4 FY18 with ¥498.1bn (= $4.52B) A jump by +32.6% from previous biggest Q4 Revenue First time, any platform holder ever reached $5 Billion and $6 Billion Revenue during Jan-March Biggest Revenue ever for PlayStation (and for any platform holder) during a non-Holiday quarter (non-Q3) PlayStation generated $3.23B Profits in FY20, a new record for them (despite the launch of a new hardware) First time, they broke the $3B barrier Previous most profitable year was FY18 with $2.81B Profits PlayStation 5 sold-in 3.3m units (LTD: 7.8m) and is now the most sold console during its first fiscal year Beating PS4's 7.6m units in its launch fiscal year, previous record holder PlayStation 4 is now the console which has sold the most games in video game history, with at least 1.577B games sold Surpassing PS2's 1.537B games sold, previous record holder PlayStation Platforms sold more than 338.9m games in FY20, the highest yearly software sales in PlayStation ecosystem Previous record was FY18 with 287.9m games sold PlayStation Network reached an all-time high of $17.32B Revenue in FY20 (+36.4% YoY) Previous record was $12.88B Revenue in FY18 PlayStation Network reached an all-time high of $4.04B Revenue in Q4 FY20 (Jan-Mar 2021) ; +23.7% YoY Previous Q4 record was $3.27B Revenue in Q4 FY18 (Jan-Mar 2019) PlayStation Software & Services reached an all-time high of $18.62B Revenue in FY20 (+34.9% YoY) Previous record was $14.61B Revenue in FY18 PlayStation Software & Services reached an all-time high of $4.19B Revenue in Q4 FY20 (Jan-Mar) ; +21.0% YoY Previous Q4 record was $3.57B Revenue in Q4 FY18 (Jan-Mar 2019) Hardware : PS5 : 3.3m in Q4 FY20 / LTD: 7.8m Biggest console launch in video game history, surpassing PS4's 4.5m units PS4 : 1.0m in Q4 FY20 / 5.8m in FY20 / LTD: 115.9m Software : PS4/PS5 (FY20) : 338.9m games sold including 58.4m Sony-published games (vs 49.2m - FY19) 17.2% of total games sold this FY20 (vs 17.8% - FY19) PS4/PS5 (Q4 FY20) : 61.4m games sold including 7.9m Sony-published games (vs 9.2m - Q4 FY19) 12.9% of total games sold this FY20 (vs 14.1% - Q4 FY19) Software digital ratio : 79% in Q4

New York Post reporter resigns, saying she was 'ordered' to write 'incorrect' story on Kamala Harris' book at a migrant shelter WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM The Post temporarily deleted Italiano's two stories on Tuesday and republished altered versions hours later with editor's notes.

How was Tintin?

Biden Nominates Harris County, Texas, Sheriff To Be Director Of ICE WWW.NPR.ORG Ed Gonzalez spent 18 years with the Houston Police Department as a civilian and officer, then served three terms on the Houston City Council. He criticized ICE raids during the Trump administration.