the_dog_days

I liked the Mass Effect where they had that big robot thing that went, "wwwoommm!" And you played as the "only man for the job" 'cause you're the only man for the job. And then there was the funny part where the funny guy said the funny thing and it was funny. And then there were these bad guys that wanted the thing but then you stop them from getting the thing. Oh, and then you bang a blue chick! That was cool.

I still find it amazing people still say ME3 would've been perfect if not for the final 5 minutes. Apparently I was the only one to see BioWare rip off the plot of a direct to video Steven Seagal movie to cure the genophage.

Best explanation I've seen for the hiatus/cancelation:

Better ending than the trilogy. Better romances, too.

Ya'll have clearly never been alpha reader for a high school creative writing class if those are the worst prose you've read.

Heathen.

The Pats are quite possibly the best coached team in the NFL, but Belichick has always had one great flaw as a GM: projecting talent from the college ranks into the NFL. He's had a handful of good-ish players, Brady, and almost nothing but busts when you look at his drafts. Brady covered that flaw. He could make a below average wide receiver look pretty good. His short passing game can open lanes for your wasted of a first round pick runningback. Now that Brady's gone Belichick's flaw is only more important. The Pats lack talent. Trust me, I remember the beating they put on the Jets a couple of weeks ago, but they are only marginally better talent wise than even the Jets. And most of that is because of the differences in where Jones is to Wilson. This last off season they spent 80+ million in free agency to try to upgrade the roaster. 1) They'll finish with the same or fewer wins on the season: 7. 2) After the season they will have to go into rebuilding mode because it's staticatically proven that spending that much money in a single free agency period will inflate your wins for that season but not the following. I predict that unless they remove Belichick as GM, the Pats are truly over and will be for quite awhile.

Pats are a fart noise. They play games close and they are well coached by they just lack the talent, same as last year.

I actually like our general manager.

<Jets fan. Will always hate the Pats, even when they suck.

Took me way longer than I thought it would (25 hours, which is twice as long as the first game), but I beat the final boss in Huniepop 2. It was unironically the hardest boss encounter in any game I've ever played. One minute I'm cruising through the game and the next they kick the difficulty up to a 12. Devs must've got a lot of feedback about wanting a tougher final boss. Now on to a Pokemon fan game: Xenoverse. While the Pokemon Company has let me down with the last few main series entries, recently there've been a lot of fan games to come out. I've got about six on my to-play list. The game mechanics are similar to 4th gen but Xenoverse has all the later gen pokemon, too. Of all the fan games I looked at Xenoverse definitely looks like it had the biggest budget. There's even an animated intro that must've been a pain to implement in RPG Maker. So far I'm liking Xenoverse more than I did either Sun/Moon or Sword/Shield.

Hope they skip the final 3 books. I can't stand the Sanderson trilogy. Talk about reconning. They were awful.

And with that attitude you'll never know.

Teach me, sensei.

Now playing HuniePop 2. The stamina meter is such a drag. Otherwise it's a good palette cleanser after a giant rpg. Also downloaded Grim Dawn again 'cause someone uploaded a pic (you knew what you were doing).

Just finished The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 4. Man, this a long time in coming. CS4 isn't just the conclusion to the Cold Steel subseries, but also the end of the main story of Trails in the western half of Zemuria (the name of the continent on which the games take place). (While Trails of Reverie is supposed to be the last Trails game on the western side of Zemuria, from what I understand Reverie is a denouement while CS4 is the conclusion to the primary conflict.) I've said about a million times, but the Trails games are the Marvel Cinematic Universe of video game series. Each games ties into the overall story and forwards parts of each of the other plot lines. It's crazy to think that this all began back in 2004 when the first Trails in the Sky game dropped in Japan. Zemuria has changed a lot since then in the game world and in the technology used to create it. It's hard to go into detail about CS4 without diving headfirst into spoilers, so instead here's a list of things it did well and a list of things it didn't do so well. The Good Wrapping Up Minor Plot Threads--There were very minor NPC plot threads that I haven't seen in so long I forgot they even existed that the writers still went out of their way to conclude. Some of them going as far back as Sky 1. Most of these were satisfying and you could tell the devs put a lot of thought into them, including in some lingering questions that fans had long since given up on expecting any real conclusion on. Combat Evolution Over the Series--Trails games have turn based combat but they've always had hidden or semi-hidden mechanics that if you dig into can really break the game. Over time they ditched the hidden mechanics to make combat more transparent and consequently more engaging. If you don't like turn based or if you hate crazy itemization that can break the game, you won't like Trails. I happen to like both of those things. Epic Final Boss--They really build up the final boss in a similar fashion to Final Fantasy games. They managed to capture the hype and drive the emotions up along the way, giving the feelings of a truly enormous stakes are on the line. In fact, if anything they might want to tone it down a bit in the next subseries. Pom! Pom! Party!--Falcom loves their mini-games. They added a PvP (you versus the AI) connect three with some interesting quirks that I sunk more time into than I care to admit. Suffice to say, my play time could've been noticeably shorter if this min-game hadn't hooked me. The Ending Slides--I teared up. Can't go into details. Spoilers. The Bad Bonding Events--I wasn't a fan of the Persona-like elements the CS games adopted in the beginning and if anything CS4 vindicated me. When every interaction with the opposite sex is romantic and you have four games, it brings new meaning to the term, "slow burn romance". Forgetting the fact that some of those romance options weren't appropriate (usually in the age difference), it actually got tiresome going through the female half of Class VII's bonding events. I frequently found myself at the start of a new day playing Pom! Pom! Party! rather than sit through another awkward confession scene. Bonding Events (2)--Some of the bonding events should've been playable companion quests instead of having to passively read through them. In fact there are two off the top of my head that basically were companion quests but rather than me being able to solve the mystery or fight the monster I read through how Rean (the main character) solved the mystery or fought the monster. This was frustrating and even knowing that Falcom is an independent AA studio, it felt cheap. Lack of VO--I'm pretty sure that CS4 had the exact same amount of voiced over lines as CS3, which had the same amount as CS2, however CS4 has far more dialog so keeping the same amount of voiced lines means you hear them less often. And it's noticeable. Lengthy Cutscenes--There were at least three cutscenes that were at least an hour long apiece. That's three hours of game that I sat passively reading dialog with no pause for actual gameplay. Not even a few rounds of Pom! Pom! Party! Given that you can usually tell in what direction each of these huge cutscenes was going, at the halfway point those scenes in particular felt like bloat to pad playtime. Story Pacing--CS4 mirrors CS2 in many ways. Both change so much from act to act it feels less like playing one game rather than playing three or four games duct taped together. The pacing feels all over the place because of it. The Final Plot Twist--While I didn't know what the twist was going into this game, I was aware that it was controversial when the game first launched in Japan. CS4 is to date the only Trails game to receive mixed reviews from fans. Having now played through it, I'm on the side of those who found it disappointing. It doesn't ruin the game or the story but it is still disappointing. Conclusion: CS4 is a very flawed, but very good game. To date I would say I haven't played a bad Trails game but I would rate CS4 right at the bottom of a Trails favorites list because of it's many difficult to overlook flaws. But yeah, I'll probably still new game plus it.

Panthers are the best bad team right now. Dallas is any good this year they should whip up on them.

There actually aren't that many. Falcom (the game studio) have done limited runs on Mishy plushies for for special box editions of their games.

I've been playing Trails of Cold Steel 4. Got a lot of screen shots but 99% of them can't show 'cause of spoilers, so here's a compilation of people dunking on Mishy that has no plot relevance. I even get in on the action, beating the snot out of Mishy in a card game right in front of his fans.

I was hoping to see another 30/30 season. Usually you only get to see one of those once a lifetime but I thought if anyone could do it twice it'd be Winston.

How dare you! Week one told us definitely that the Texans are the best team in the NFL.

Biggest surprise so far: Mac Jones played as nearly perfect as can be expected and the Pats still lost at home to the Dolphins.