Keyrock

I'm honestly surprised other devs haven't tried to swipe Dragon's Dogma's pawns system. It's a pretty ingenious way to do companions IMHO.

Honestly, I'm surprised you managed to get that. Given that fork (verb) is a rather common term in the programming world, especially in the open source space, and given that a rather sizable percentage of the population are people obsessed with cats, there has to be significant overlap in that Venn diagram. I'm shocked some cat loving programmer out there with a penchant for splitting projects off of other projects didn't snatch it up.

I went to AEW Revolution at the Greensboro Coliseum for Sting's retirement match (and the other matches too). What a fantastic show top to bottom and a great sendoff to an all-time legend. Tony Khan did right by Sting, it's hard to imagine a better way to go out. Anyway, good thing I can still type because my throat is all types of hoarse after all the yelling I did.

I disagree, I love that part of Monster Hunter, which is interesting since I don't normally like prolonged boss battles, but I love Monster Hunter's prolonged boss battles precisely because of this. I like having to chase the monster down after they flee when you get them significantly injured. I like the tracking part before the battle too. Dragon's Dogma didn't copy those parts, though, just the actual combat where characters can try to climb onto giant monsters in an effort to stab a vital spot. It's not exactly the same, of course. Either way, hopefully DD2 winds up being as good as it looks, because it looks pretty awesome.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is less than a month away. I've long been puzzled as to why more games don't copy Monster Hunter's combat. Over the last decade or so, everybody and their grandmother have tried to copy Dark Souls combat, and with good reason. Very few games have tried to copy Monster Hunter combat, despite the fact that it is the gold standard for fighting gargantuan beasts IMHO. One of the few games that did copy Monster Hunter was the original Dragon's Dogma, I believe some of them worked on Monster Hunter previously, so it makes sense. Anyway, this game looks ****ing awesome.

Kolaches

The cat looks so baked.

That's Hollywood's motto.

I don't think AAA studios are going to destroy the industry, but I definitely see them destroying themselves. Maybe not all of them, but some of the big AAA publishers and developers will absolutely go under or get taken over. I think Ubisoft will be the first to go, they've already almost been hostile taken over multiple times over the last decade or so.

I went back to Dondoko Island and redesigned the entire island from the ground up. The island is effectively split up into 4 sections that you can build on, 2 large areas and 2 small areas. I sacrificed one of the small areas and put all the unsightly passive resource generating buildings there, stuff like the garbage dump, metal working sheds, a chicken coop, gardens, stuff the guests don't need to see. That stuff is in its own little area off to the side and out of the way. That left me 2 large areas and 1 small area to work with. One of the areas is on the sleazy side but balanced, there's plenty of more wholesome stuff to do. I have another large area that's very family friendly, that's for the more puritanical sorts. The remaining small area is super sleazy. If you're booking a room in that area then you're here to have a really really good time. No worries, we here at Dondoko Island make sure that we don't specify the area of the island you stay at on the billing invoice so you have plausible deniability. What happens on Dondoko Island stays on Dondoko Island. I like that you can invite people you meet during the game to the island, plus there are reoccurring characters from previous games. It's kind of weird, though, because you can invite Kiryu, but it's not current Kiryu, it's young Kiryu. It's neat inviting characters from the series to vacation at my tropical island resort. At this point I have no need for anything on the island, I have everything I planned to build built, so I can mostly hang out with the guests and watch them chill at my resort. You can have a big ol' bonfire on the beach because why the **** not?

I guess SMT V: Vengeance is going to be to SMT V what Apocalypse was to SMT IV. I was a big fan of Apocalypse, I enjoyed it more than the base game. Hopefully this is just as good, and, if nothing else, it will be good to have SMT V outside of just the Switch.

People constantly misspelling Cate Blanchett makes me feel better about my own constant misspelling of Sam Neill.

Can we, down the line, get a Traveling Wilburys movie tied into the BECU (Beatles Extended Cinematic Universe)? It could be a crossover event with the HECU (Heartbreakers Extended Cinematic Universe). The smarter way to go would be to create the TWCU (Traveling Wilburys Cinematic Universe, colloquially known as the Wilburyverse). They could do Beatles movies, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers movies, Electric Light Orchestra movies, Bob Dylan movies, and Roy Orbison movies, all culminating in an Avengers-style Traveling Wilburys team-up movie.

Eli Roth is an interesting choice for this, wouldn't have been my first choice, I would have gone with either James Gunn or Tim Miller. He is a capable director, though, and I think Tim Miller had some involvement in this. Will they be able to ride the line and make the characters funny but endearing rather than obnoxious and insufferable? That is a line that the game series itself has ridden, and crossed at times. This has potential but I can also see it going horribly horribly wrong. I'm hoping for the best; while I don't much care for the game series I do like Cate Blanchett and I'm always happy when she gets to ham it up, as opposed to her usual dramatic roles. I bet Jamie Lee Curtis is in the movie for a grand total of 5 minutes.

Tommy Wiseau is an interesting point of comparison to Neil Breen in that it shines a light on what makes Neil Breen so rare. The Room is one of the most famous awesome terrible movies, even people not specifically into terrible movies have heard of it and some have even seen it. Some years after making The Room Tommy Wiseau caught on to the fact that his movie was terrible but it was a big hit as a cult movie because people has a wonderful time laughing at it. He then changed his tune to "it was a dark comedy all along, it was meant to be funny"; sure it was. Since then, Tommy Wiseau has tried to capitalize on the popularity of The Room by making several more movies and shows and they've all been absolute garbage; not fun garbage, just garbage. The reason is that he has been purposely trying to make awesomely terrible movies and shows and, as I've written before, that virtually never works, it pretty much always comes off as phony and forced and the bad acting and terrible dialogue aren't funny when it's obvious that they are terrible on purpose. Unintentional comedy needs to be, well, unintentional to work. While it is theoretically possible to purposely create comedy that feels like unintentional comedy, that is of an extremely high degree of difficulty to pull off. Neil Breen, on the other hand, has now made 6 movies over nearly 20 years and has somehow seemingly remained pure. That's why I wrote my 3 possibilities before. I didn't write those as a joke. #1 I'm eliminating, I can't fathom the possibility that he hasn't caught on to the fact that his movies are considered terrible, albeit awesomely terrible; not in an age when the internet exists. That leaves #2 and #3, in both cases he's aware of his movies' reputation. In #2 he is delusional enough that he thinks everyone else is wrong and his movies are great or he just needs to tweak a few things and he'll really knock it out of the park the next time and everyone will see his genius. To me this is the most likely scenario making Breen a modern day Ed Wood of sorts. #3 is highly unlikely because it would require what I wrote about above, making unintentional comedy intentionally, and the degree of difficulty of that is extraordinarily high. The point is that Tommy Wiseau made 1 awesomely terrible movie, albeit one of the greatest examples of an awesomely terrible movie, and nothing but trash since. Neil Breen keeps making awesomely terrible movies one after another. It's an impressive feat regardless of why or how he is doing it.

Quoting myself is quite the faux pas, I apologize. Thinking back on all my years of vidya games, orbital laser seems to be a running gag in JRPGs. I mean, I'm sure there have been orbital lasers in American and European games too, but that just seems like such a JRPG thing; orbital lasers. I guess it's the next logical progression after meteor. Waaaay back in the day that used to be the ultimate destroy everything spell in (J)RPGs. I mean, dropping a meteor on somebody is pretty ****ing metal. Where do you go from meteor? Orbital laser. It was a bigger hit 4 years ago when they did it in Y:LaD because back then the superhero bubble hadn't burst yet and those movies almost always have a giant sky laser. The kids were freakin' lovin' sky lasers back then.

It's been said jokingly before, but after having seen Cade: The Tortured Crossing and all of Neil Breen's previous movies, there is a possibility that Neil is a secret genius and this is the greatest long con prank. If so, Andy Kaufman would be proud. There are times where he kinda sorta almost winks at the audience, but then much of the rest of the time it seems like he's playing it straight, or, at least, that's how it feels to me. After 20 years and 6 SELF FUNDED, FEATURE LENGTH, PROFESSIONAL movies, I still honestly don't know if Neil is in on the joke. I mean, by now you'd think he'd HAVE TO be aware... And yet he keeps making gems like this and, as we've seen, it's almost impossible to make a good terrible movie on purpose. The great terrible movies pretty much always come from people genuinely trying to make a good movie and failing spectacularly. The way I see it, there are 3 possibilities: 1) Neil has inexplicably over nearly 20 years not gotten wind of the fact that his movies are terrible and people are poking fun at them. 2) Neil has figured out that people make fun of his movies but he is delusional enough to think that he is making great movies and everyone else is wrong. 3) This has been one extremely long and UTTERLY BRILLIANT prank with Neil playing a Sacha Baron Cohen-esque character. #2 (pun intended) is the most likely scenario, but I'm not eliminating the possibility of #3.

In this latest movie Neil learned the art of using fog or blur effects to mask how ****ty the green screen looks. I mean, it still looks laughably bad, but the fog does help.

Cade: The Tortured Crossing (2022) - Neil Breen's magnum opus. You've not lived until you've seen Neil Breen fight a CGI white tiger. Also, there's a dance interlude because reasons. This movie is entirely green screened and the quality is up to the standards you would expect from Breen. I don't know how he keeps doing it. We're lucky to get 1 awesomely terrible movie out of most people, Neil is 6 for 6.

I finished the Dondoko Island "mini-game" in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. I'm going to go back to it eventually and redesign the entire island now that all sections of it are open and I have access to the vast majority of crafting blueprints. There's nothing story-wise left, but I can play it as effectively a city builder/management type game and it generates money for the main game, not that I need it. The reward for completing Dondoko Island is an Essence skill that's not tied to any job, Ichiban has it no matter what job he's using without having to use up the Essence skill inheritance slot. Also, it an orbital laser. It's more or less the same orbital laser from Y:LaD, just themed for the current game. Needless to say it's LUDICROUSLY powerful, but it costs 100 mana to cast, so it's a good idea to have Ichiban wind up in a high mana job, hence why I'm likely ultimately going Host. Anyway, back to the main game. I'm in chapter 12 and thoroughly overleveled. I'm likely at end-game strength with probably 3 to 5 chapters to go.

You've definitely not alone. For me it's specifically DoW2: Retribution because you can play the campaign as xenos. Playing as orks is the best,even if the campaign is purposely vague so as to be applicable to many different factions.

I'm at the point in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth where I'm starting to get my characters into their final jobs. Compared to the previous game, it's much easier to kit out your characters exactly how you want them because they made the skill inheritance system a lot more open. In Yakuza: Like a Dragon you could inherit skills from jobs you were no longer actively using, as you can with many JRPGs that use the job system. However, in Y:LaD only a few of the skills were eligible to be inherited whereas in LaD:IW you can inherit pretty much any skill with one restriction. You can only inherit one Essence and only once you unlock the 6th and final inheritance slot. Essences are the strongest skills in the game, every job gets 2 of them, one at level 22 or 24 and another at level 30. I have all my characters rotate through a variety of jobs with the intention of getting a good variety of skills to inherit from. I want every character to have at least 1 heal, preferably an area heal, and I want 2 of my characters in each team (you have 2 teams, the Hawaii team and the Japan team, each team can have up to 4 characters at a time) to have a revive skill. Beyond that, I try to have a grapple skill on every character (grapple breaks guard). It's also useful to have a variety of different attack types to get around resistances/exploit weaknesses. The first character I've settled on a final build for is Saeko, who's on the Japan team. She's going to be the pure caster on that team, effectively a druid type of character. With that in mind, I've settled on Geodancer, which is the most druid-esque female job (every character has their own unique job that only they can use, the rest of the jobs are divided into male and female jobs, they more or less cover all the standard archetypes). Geodancer has super high magic power which will serve me well both healing and dishing out magic damage. She will be very much a glass cannon, though. I'm fairly confident I'm going with Host for Ichiban (Hawaii team) as the final job. He'll play a similar role to Saeko, the main healer, but less of a focus on magic damage and more on buffs and debuffs. More of a bard type role, I guess. I'm not 100% locked into that yet, but I think that's the way I'm going to go. The rest of the team is still in flux. My current leanings are: Hawaii Team: Ichiban - Healer/Support, Adachi - Tank, Chitose - DPS, Tomi - Jack of all trades. Japan: Kiryu - Tank, Seonhee - DPS, Nanba - Healer/Support, Saeko - Healer/DPS, Zhao - Benchwarmer, not sure where I'm going with him yet.

Christmas happened in February this year. Soon