Keyrock

You win some you lose some, we got CD Projekt and lost Bioware. It's the way of the world. A small team full of heart makes a couple exceptional products then gets bought out by a big company which gives them more funding, but aldo eventually sucks all the life out of them. In the case of CDPR, they actually became the big company themselves (they own GOG) so maybe it will be longer before they lose their soul completely, since they have no one over them (except shareholders). Eventually, they will succomb to the soulless ways of big business, but other small companies will step up.

It's too bad Telltale stopped making point & clicks and went 100% into making QTE games with an illusion of choice running on a ridiculously outdated engine for every popular IP under the sun. I would love another Sam & Max game or Monkey Island 6 or even a new Strong Bad game.

I still have my original Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition, I'll stick with that. I doubt whatever particle effects Beamdog added in make the EE version of the game any less fugly.

The vibe I'm getting from the reviews I've read is that this is yet again the exact same game as Far Cry 3 (and 4). However, it's the best iteration of the formula Ubi implemented starting with FC3.

I finally started playing KC:D now that I can pull myself away from Monster Hunter. Very early going, but I'm finding the game quite enjoyable, despite it being kinda rough (as expected). I particularly enjoy hunting with the bow and really like how they implemented the bow in this game. Firing a bow just seems way too easy in most game. I've fired a bow in real life many times, and while the amount of sway I experienced wasn't nearly as pronounced as what's in the game, that's with a modern compound bow with some 80% let off. The bows you fire in this game have no such mechanical advantages, hence the sway seems reasonable, given how much harder it would be to hold a bow without let off drawn. I'm trying to be a good boy in the game; no thievery, no digging up corpses, etc. Plus, I want to talk my way through situations as much as possible. I'll probably use bow and axe as my main weapons. My biggest criticism so far is that you go from dirty impoverished peasant to rubbing elbows with lords rather rapidly. I wish the journey from downtrodden commoner to nobility knowing you by name and treating you with a modicum of respect had taken longer.

There are some really fun kills you can pull off in HITMAN. My favorite to date is manipulating someone else to kill the target for me in Hokkaido.

A game where you try to drink your way out of hell? Okay, color me interested.

While not necessarily the strongest armor, I really like the look of the Vangis gear I can make from Deviljho parts. I'm not swapping out the Dragonking eyepatch for anything, though, that thing is way too badass. Fashion Hunter is like a complete game within Monster Hunter World.

The Deviljho update for MHW released today and it just finished downloading for me. Now, I just have to wait until after work to actually play it and hunt the new monster.

I'm up to HR 34 in MHW now. I just did a quest where I had to hunt 2 Bazelgeuses at the same time. As you can imagine, that was mighty chaotic. Bazelgeuse is a party crasher, his modus operandi is dropping in unannounced while you fight another large monster, and it doesn't make an exception for one of its brethren, so I had to scrap with both at the same time a decent chunk of the time. I managed to use this to my advantage several times by finding a place to stay out of the way and letting them scrap. One of them was clearly stronger than the other and did a good bit of damage to the weaker one on my behalf, which helped me to finish off the weaker one quickly to narrow it down to a one on one fight. The battle with the stronger one was pretty rough and lengthy, but I did get it done with just over 5 minutes left on the timer. I'm looking forward to the next time the Xeno' jiiva quest becomes available again (it pops up periodically). I've killed Xeno 4 times already, but I still need one more tail from its carcass to be able to craft a pretty dang sweet hammer. I already have the highest physical damage hammer in the game, but that doesn't necessarily make it the best (there is no single best weapon for all occasions, it matters what monster(s) you are facing). The hammer I'm trying to craft, Xeno Maph'agarna, has fairly low physical damage for a tier 8 hammer, but it has decent dragon element damage and elder dragon seal (unfortunately low level seal). More importantly, it has 2 tier 3 decoration slots, which will let me boost it quite a bit in the future (once I actually get tier 3 decorations ). As a bonus, it also has 15% affinity (chance to critical) and a really high sharpness gauge. I need to eventually make a really strong hammer for each of the elements. I already have a really strong poison hammer and a really strong blast hammer, plus a decent sleep hammer. I'm kinda lacking in the other elements.

Episode 1 of The Council released a few days ago. This totally seems like my jam. It's like a Telltale game, but with actual gameplay and much better graphics. Also, late 18th century secret society is a tremendous setting and premise. As with any episodic game, though, I'll wait for all the episodes to be released before jumping in. Speaking of which, I still haven't touched Kentucky Route Zero despite it being one of my most anticipated games for some 5 straight years now. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the 5th and final episode releases this year and I can finally play it.

How is it? I've been eyeing it for quite a while but I still haven't even finished Grimrock 2... I'm enjoying it. There are quite a few puzzles and the combat is mostly about outmaneuvering your opponents. I'm not far enough in to give any sort of conclusion, but so far so good.

Speaking of which, I want to play through the entire series on my PS4. I need to start with Zero, then Kiwami, which is a remake of the first Yakuza, before moving on to Kiwami 2 and the inevitable Kiwami 3 and 4, then Yakuza 5 and 6.

Vaporum

Now that I finished the story in MHW, I can finally pull myself away from the game, from time to time (I still play it to grind up to HR 100), so I started playing Vaporum. It's a grid-based first-person dungeon crawler set in a mysterious mechanical tower on an island. To put it in simplest terms, think Legend of Grimrock but steampunk. The game is real time, but you can essentially turn it into turn-based by toggling a switch that pauses time until you act. While I normally prefer turn-based, I haven't bothered toggling into paused time yet as you only play a single character, as opposed to a party, so there isn't really much in the way of micromanaging (which I super suck at in real time).

What the **** is this? My Palico pal Benny wearing a powdered wig and crown, obviously.

It's time. Well, I guess I won't be getting any help from the Admiral or the Seeker in the battle, not that I expected to. Let's do this! I fainted twice, but I got the job done. Now, time to celebrate! Every other cutscene in the game has my current gear, but, for whatever reason, Benny and I reverted to default gear for this cutscene. Beating the story final boss removes the hunter rank cap, which instantly catapulted me from HR 15 to HR 29.

Too late...

After dealing with the triumvirate of new Elder Dragons that popped up in Monster Hunter World after I whooped up Nergigante, I started the next mission. Right off the bat, the game made it abundantly clear that I was about to fight the final boss (of the story) with characters saying stuff like "Are you sure you want to do this mission? Like, really sure?" and "Once you commit to this there's no going back, are you ready? Really ready? Really really ready, with a cherry on top?". So I backed out and am going to grind a bit to get properly geared up for whatever super beast (an Elder Dragon, no doubt) awaits me.

Phew, this place stinks. I wonder if there's anything living here? Just a bunch of Girros? Pfft, no problem! Oh, there's someone else. Still, no problem. Vaal Hazak wound up being by far the easiest of the trifecta of Elder Dragons to defeat. He could cut your health in half (max and current), which sucks, but was otherwise easy to outmaneuver and pump damage into. I fainted once, but that was more from my own overconfidence than anything else. It was a pretty one-sided fight, all in all.

It's like Destiny, but with even more loot boxes.

Mom and dad told me as a child not to play with fire, but what do they know? Bah! Let's just have a looksee inside this volcano. What could possibly go wrong? Next up, Teostra the Infernal. Hey, you wanna roast some marshmallows? Oh, you want to roast me! Dinner is served; Teostra, well done. This allowed me to craft some swank new gear for my best bud, Benny. Look how noble he looks!

Thanks Shady, I'm one of those folks that doesn't venture into the Pillars section (any more), on account of my dislike of Pillars. I do have some mild interest in Deadfire, though. Not enough to go into that section of the forums and follow development, but enough to keep an ear open in case someone says something like "Obsidian put about 95% less filler combat against trash mobs into Deadfire versus the first game, plus the story is more compelling too."

It's not just Far Cry, this is a problem with open world games in general. The vast majority of open world games suffer from what I call Ubisoft Syndrome, that being a giant map littered with a ludicrous amount of icons, which are 90% repetitive busy work. Even the really good open world games suffer from Ubisoft Syndrome, they just manage to be fun despite this problem because they manage to do some things really well to drive the player forward and keep them invested while they continually do what amounts to tedious chores. I'll throw out a few examples of the better (IMHO) AAA open world games of the last half decade or so and what they did to overcome Ubisoft Syndrome. The Witcher 3 manages to dress up the busy work really well, making the tedious chores more palatable. Plus it has a compelling story and good characters to keep you invested. Watch_Dogs 2 has a legitimately likable protagonist and a cast of characters that you give a damn about. Also, the Bay Area is a great setting. Sleeping_Dogs has a terrific setting, in Hong Kong, and some cool characters, even if the game often doesn't spend nearly enough time on them. Mad Max makes traversing the map really fun, which is important, since you will spending the vast majority of the time doing just that. Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, like Mad Max, makes traversing the world really fun, and it drives you to find more sea shanties for the crew to sing. These games are good despite all being afflicted with Ubisoft Syndrome, but the problem is still there. The issue is that developers feel the need to provide hundreds upon hundreds of things for the player to do, to run up the playing time, because there is a perception that playing time = value. It's a lot easier to program half a dozen different activities and just copy paste them across the landscape than it is to make a bunch of unique content. Personally, I'd rather have a game with half as much content where the vast majority of it is unique and crafted from the ground up, but that's not the way of things these days.