Camacho

I found the island to be much less of a slog this time. I think the sections that were trimmed/replaced were good calls overall. Side note, getting the unbreakable knife is making my first replay even more fun than NG+ was in the original. It's a very powerful tool, but not in the game breaking and short lived fun that the usual unlimited ammo RE unlocks generally are.

I'm glad I played it on normal, it drip fed just enough ammo that you could still kill everything without truly running out.

Have you played the original? If so, then not really, as you mostly know what to expect, and you're not as limited as the earlier ones. RE2 remake has been the scariest one for me by a long shot (didn't play 7 in VR, for the record).

Destroying all the wind up Salazar figures unlocks a knife that is unbreakable once permanently upgraded. I haven't been leaning on parries enough, I keep forgetting about them in combat- will definitely make that more of a focus on repeat playthroughs.

RE4 remake is stellar, get it.

Got RE4 on steam, looking forward to tearing into it this weekend. Actually didn't play the demo on account of finishing Returnal along with vacation and work travel over the last couple weeks.

It's really weird that they'd make a KoF without Kim as one of the original characters, it's like omitting Terry or Kyo. Also, I wish they'd put the comet cruncher back in, loved using that move in '98 and CvS2.

Any verdicts here on Wo Long yet? For a point of reference, I had a blast with both Nioh games (biggest knock is the Diablo-like loot system) and I fucking loved Sekiro. I already intend on getting it at some point, just curious what you guys think.

Probably that he posted it an hour earlier.

Have any of you played the re4 demo yet? I'm still working on finishing Returnal before messing with it.

Turn based combat in 8 bit RPGs was more fun than combat in Skyrim.

VGMF:

I changed my mind about getting it. I despise the anime element (saw something about tentacles and a "master of panties" achievement), the voices are super annoying, and lots of people are saying it's really easy. I'm still perplexed that someone at Inti made the decision to mix classic CV with ultra weeb fan service. Maybe I'll give it a shot on sale if they add a patch to turn the voices off.

Platinum seems like one of those companies whose games you can't criticize without getting mobbed by po-sorts of people. W101 looked completely uninteresting to me.

I went ahead and bought Returnal on PC after reading that it's not selling too well. Was getting pretty salty about getting mopped quickly in the middle of a long run, finally got over the hump and cleared the first 3 stages. I still kind of wish they had taken the Dead Rising approach rather than the rouglelike approach to the groundhog day mechanic. Just feels like a playthough is way too long for the type of design they chose. I can't believe they omitted a suspend function on the initial release.

I've played almost all of them (exclusions that come to mind being Vampire Killer on the MSX, Judgement, mobile phone games, the N-Gage SotN), what would you say play worse than Haunted Castle? CV Adventure (and maybe Legends) on the Game Boy are the only ones I found to be nearly as bad. Haunted Castle does have a bitchin soundtrack though.

It's on my list of games to try, will probably buy it when it goes down to around $30.

Can't speak for how it played prior to now, but something I didn't catch right away was how the upgrade/leveling system works. Looking at a quick introduction guide along with the in game explanations (found in the pause menu) helped. I wasn't using the soul eater system at first, which obviously made things a lot tougher, as that's your main leveling (or potion recovery) method. Also, the weapon upgrades you unlock have to be activated at the shops before they actually do anything. You probably already knew that stuff, but I figured it's worth mentioning just in case you missed it like I did.

Bought Getsu Fuma Den: Undying Moon a few months ago and just fired it up yesterday. Beautiful game dripping with atmosphere, getting my ass kicked so far though.

The first Prime game did pretty well (2.84m) despite being on the GC, which didn't do great overall. The unfortunate reality is that Nintendo hasn't been able to shake the kiddie label very effectively over the last 20+ years- the majority of their buyers are more interested in Mario Kart, Mario Party, Nintendogs, Wii Fit, etc. I.E., people buying things for their kids. There are a ton of adult (or teen) gamers who would enjoy Metroid games that don't buy them because the system isn't enticing enough otherwise. I've mentioned several times before that the last few Nintendo systems I bought were almost exclusively for Metroid and Zelda games- how many other people are out there that weren't willing to invest in a system exclusively for a couple games?

I know it will never happen, but I really wish Nintendo would release Metroid titles as a 3rd party publisher. I'm sure it would sell a lot more on PC and other systems. Look at what the average Switch owner is buying en masse- most of those people aren't buying Metroid games.

I played the GG demo. Definitely has a 16 bit CotM feel, but with some changes. You can backtrack in the levels, jumps aren't fixed like classic CV, and a lot of the enemies look like straight 8 to 16 bit sprite upgrades from CotM enemies. The character with a gun has to reload by double tapping down, kind of like the Gunvolt reloads. There was no challenge to the 2 stages in the demo, hopefully Inti didn't make the whole game a total breeze after so many people bitched about the more NES-like difficulty of CotM2. Having watched the previews, I knew I'd want to set the audio to Japanese to make it a little less annoying, but the constant yells and babbling are super irritating nonetheless. Hopefully they add an option toggle the voice volume, or turn it off altogether. As expected, the characters and story, which I admittedly don't give a shit about, were stupid in a way that makes Portrait of Ruin look like deep writing. I'll buy it because Inti really scratched the CV itch perfectly with their last two, but the demo hasn't floored me so far.

The villians are significantly worse in FC6. It doesn't force you into sections like 5 did, but overall it was less fun. Ubisoft also had the balls to make a faux Cuba where the ersatz Castro is an enemy of the communist revolution rather than its dear leader.

Shockingly, I hadn't heard this before. Posting it now because I'm sure I'll forget on VGMF:

Had to back off weight on the bench pressing due to jacking one of my shoulders up pretty bad- now doing reps at 215 on the smith machine. Was close to 250 on reps before that. Also had to stop doing dips, as those seem to re-irritate my shoulder quickly. Current routine is as follows: Bench- 4 sets of 10 (often ends up more like 6-7 by the last set) @215 Triceps extension- 4 sets of 10-12 @177 Chest flys- 4 sets of 10-12 @227 Reverse flys- 4 sets of 10-12 @ 127 Low cable rows- 4 sets of 10 @145 Lat pulldowns- 4 sets of 10 @145 Weighted crunches- 4 sets of 20 @207 Leg press- 4 sets of 12 @327 Leg extensions- 4 sets of 10 @150 Back extensions- 4 sets of 12-15 @200 Preacher curls- 4 sets of 10 @ 115 (new preacher curl machine at the gym has a shitty angle for my body, was doing 150 on the old one) Triceps rope pulldown- 4 sets of 10 @ 75 Face pulls- 4 sets of 10 @75 Neutral grip chin ups- 20 +some resistance band shoulder rehab work