DeathscytheX

Well I guess since its the hottest meme on the internet right now the big spoiler is pretty much unavoidable at this point. I'll still not mention it. Ep 2 wasn't bad, but it was def more of a set up and build ep. Ep 3 was worth that build. BTW its 8 eps not 6, so wait 2 more weeks than originally I said. The small bit that was awesome though was vibroblades! They made a quick appearance this ep.

Fartspiracy

I would say this would induce a bigger backlash than Diablo Immortal, but I don't think enough people even care about Half-Life anymore to get mad about it.

Let me preface this by saying that I've never played Dark Souls or that style of game. After talking with some friends who have, let me state that if you don't like Dark Souls or that type of game, this game is probably not for you. I didn't know what to expect coming into this. The devs said DS was their inspiration and they've seemed to borrow heavily from the mechanics. When you start the game it asks you to pick a difficulty. There is Story, Normal, Hard, and Jedi Master I believe? Each difficulty has a set of meters to show you what you're getting into. Story being the easiest has the parry timing meter maxed out, and the damage taken really low. So even if you don't like DS games but you want to experience the story, they are accommodating to that. Basically the harder the difficulty the more damage you take and hitting the parry moves are unforgiving if you mistime it. Combat is slow and methodical. You must block, dodge, parry, and choose when you attack. Only the most basic enemies can you slice down without much thought. And there aren't many of those unless they're served as fodder to allow the bigger enemies to try to get a hit in on you while you're distracted. At least at first. As I gain more force abilities I've noticed combat against mobs is getting easier. But to start out you only have an ability to slow a single target. You can block almost everything, but at the cost of a stamina meter. Which I've only ran out of once so far. Each enemy type has an unblockable attack. When this triggers they'll glow red letting you know you must parry. I'd say you can only get 2-3 swings of your saber in at a time before having to evade or parry. The bigger beasts I don't have much problem with, but Storm Troopers with rocket launchers are bullshit. They're always far away on a pearch shooting rockets while you're occupied with smaller enemies. Rockets hurt, and they can't be dodged or deflected. You just have to back roll or run away out of the blast. The only advantage is that they may accidentally shoot their own men and kill them saving you a little bit of time. One other gripe I have is trying to parry on a narrow area. This game doesn't have many if any invisable walls or any kind of mechanic that will assist you from falling off the edge. Sometimes fights take place on narrow structures and when you parry, if you do it just a little wrong you'll fall off the side and die. Also leveling up results in skill points. There are no true levels, but if you get killed by someone/thing in between skill points you lose all that XP. You can go back and hit the enemy that killed you to get all the XP back, but it has a time limit on. Save locations act as your place to spend skill points and "rest". The HP system relies on healing canisters that as far as I can see only replenish when you choose rest at these areas. It will also refill your HP bar. When you do this it will also respawn every enemy you've killed in the area. You'll have to choose wisely on if full HP is helpful too you. For the most part these points are placed well for the pace of the story, but a few are a bit of an asshole. So far every map has had places I can't get into until I get the right force powers. While fighting mechanics can be stressful, I'd say the game is 70% puzzles and exploring and 30% battle. With that you'll find hidden chests with health cannister expansions and cosmetics. The light saber has 5 different customizable parts, and your outfit, BD1, and your ship can all be skinned by things you find in the chest. Its an interesting experience by far for me. I never wanted to play a DS style game but here I am, it will probably be the only one.

Since its only 6 eps it shouldn't be hard to keep the quality up. Honestly it's for the best. With only a series budget rather than a blockbuster film budget they'll be forced to cut corners and be more innovative than just relying on green screens. They'll have to be more traditional in their approach. I can totally look pass some spotty CGI for the really good practicals they had. Oh the quality of the cartoon is absolute ass. I watched the first ep and even with its original aspect ratio... being stretched on a big smart TV it looks rough. You'd basically need to get an old school 20in CRT TV to see it in its best quality.

The first ep was really good. The practical effects are on par with the movies and they need to stick with it for the most part. The CGI was good until they had characters ride on CG creatures and it kind fell apart. Clearly the characters were CGed in these shots causing some slightly jarring effects. Even stationary though it looked like prequel level aged effects. However some one of the biggest CGI pieces near the start looked superb, and all the ship and planet stuff looked movie quality. The story set up was really good, the action sequences were awesome, and there was some old style star wars dry humor which I appreciated. I hope they stick with that and not the forced new age irl slang that just clashes with the SW universe. If you want to wait 6 weeks for the show to be over just to use the free trial and binge it, don't search anything related to the series. The end of the ep was a doozy and the spoiler has exploded with anything related to the show. On a side note D+ has the 90s X-Men and Spiderman cartoons... all of it.

Probably because it has that late 90s early 00's feel. Its drawn me in like Cop Craft did. Its a nice mix of dark and gritty with a splash of humor in the right spots. I'm enjoying it so far and I'm liking these crime/cop style shows that feel a little old school. Yeah I've noticed, I didn't watch MIX last season because I really just don't dig baseball at all, but I also had no interest in Badminton but I watched Hanebado! a few season ago and thought it was just outstanding. Which oddly enough is in this post on page 1. I guess I better add an Old but Gold. I really should go back and watch this.

Wasn't a particularly memoriable anime, but the opening was really good. This is probably one of the most under the radar series going right now. I dunno how a show about playing a Koto can be so damn good, but it really is. The character development is what makes this show what it is along with the music. The opening melody is so beautiful too. Season 2's OP is pretty good, but this one is just magical.

Unfortunately with the addition of PvP I'm concerned about the overthinking of balance. They should just let it be even if something is so broke af that it cant be beaten. There will always be that loud annoying group that claims they only play PvP, and PvE is boring, so PvP should be balanced at the cost of PvE. I also feel that it will contribute to the status quo of limited trees. I'm not asking them to go all Path of Exile on us, but hopefully we get more than D3 was. Did D2 even have talents? I remember 3 skill trees and playing with your attributes. It would be nice to have 3 skill tree sets and talents be another layer to it. Hopefully they avoid the "pick between these 4 things in this one slot". (watching a stream now it I don't know what to make of the skill panel. Its def not 3 trees tho) But Barb can equip 4 weapons at once. I can see Amazon. Maybe I'm overthinking it, but I figured they'd have 2 Melee, 2 Ranged, and a Caster with 5. Right now Barb is physical melee, Druid is magical melee, Sorceress is magic ranged, but I guess she could be considered caster too. Ones def gonna throw spears and have bows.

aesthetics Skill trees are back and so are Rune Words, but they probably wont be as intricate as D2. Its sill very early and they said its not coming out soon or even blizzard soon so its subject to change, but I saw a skill tree with branches on a stone background. Their goal was to bring back the D2 aesthetics. After the opening ceremony I had to rely on streamer's that bought the eticket and wade through their blabber to hear what the panel was saying. There was a bit more gameplay shown there. But to answer your question, the combat will def be similar to D3. A few notes from memory It will be open world with 5 regions, hundreds of legendaries, and 5 classes to start. I can only speculate that Necro is one of the sure fire unannounced classes. Paladin is a classic, but I could see Demon Hunter returning to be the 2nd ranged and the physical ranged at that. I don't think Monk and Witch Doctor will make the cut. Druid can transform on the fly, chaining mutli form attacks. Barbarian is straightfoward bruit force as always, I didn't get to hear the Sorceress part because it was muted as the streamer wanted to talk. 🙄 EDIT: I'm def going Barb. Watching the gameplay trailer again I notice he can swap between 3 different weapons in combat. The first he shows up he opens with staff, swaps to sword, and then to dual axe, holy shit. Hes got a maul on his back in a lot of clips while he fights with other weapons. Rune Words are back and they will shift away from heavily focusing on gear sets, and place a lot more emphasis legendary gear. They don't want to pigeon hole people into builds anymore, and want you to be able to create a build you envision. Sets will still be a part of the game, they just won't be better than everything. PvP will be in the game in public arenas, World events with world bosses will be in public areas as well. They showed 7 people taking on a big monster that is near the end of the gameplay trailer. Mounts are customizable (probably the monetization of the game as leaked). Right now they're just horses, but you can change out their armor, skin, have trophies like demon heads and what not that hang from the back. Each class will have dismount skills. They showed the Sorceress turning into an ice ball and freezing a trash mob while the barbarian followed up with a dismount ground smash turning them into dust. Dungeons will be 100% fully randomized and the story will be non linear. You can go at your own pace, explore the world, do repeatable events and jump back in at any time. Thats all I can remember, but I believe that was most of it. They have another panel tomorrow about the game's systems. EDIT: here is a pic of the skill tree briefly shown.... although now looking at it its a talent tree, the skills are a different tab.

Cinematic Gameplay Impressed they're going to let us carry over all our cosmetics from overwatch 1.

Cinematic Story Trailer Gameplay Trailer SWEET CHRISTMAS ITS DIABLO 2 STYLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HYPE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TL;DR Its a typical Kojima game, heavy on cutscenes, compelling story, and slow methodical gameplay that will enhance as you gain more tools and abilities. The game takes Nier Automata's online connectivity to another level, allowing players to share equipment and items. Vehicles, safe houses, post boxes, and generators others construct/abandoned can be used by other players in their instance in certain areas of the world. Lost packages can be found and delivered as well. Post boxes act as communal points where players can leave items no longer needed for other players to use.

BFV can't redeem itself almost a year after it came out. Its a bit too late with MW out, Outer Worlds, and soon Death Stranding and Fallen Order. This new strategy of releasing half assed games and fixing them 7-9 months is the early access no one asked for. As for the Blizzard/Activision controversy with the china thing... tbh its shitty and wrong, but its also esports, which is the 2nd biggest reason gaming sucks besides greedy companies. No casual cares, and half the people that feel like they care are going to jump ship right onto the Hypeway Express Train when Diablo IV, Diablo 2 Remastered, and Overwatch 2 get announced on Saturday and Sunday. Pretty sound marketing strategy to "leak" all the info 2 weeks ago. Of course they could just foul it up and go with OW Mobile and a Diablo Immortal port to PC.

They buffed dead silence today so now I'm really digging the full steath gameplay. People on reddit are crying that they can't be UAV whores, which for now brings me delight as long as IW doesn't cave. Still plenty of people show up on UAV, so its not like everyone or even a majority of people are using it. Just the people killing those that have their eyes glued to their mini map when snipe camping... pretty much everyone that died in this video basically.... it would be more impressive if I didn't kill myself with my own sentry.

I mean they did pick Lucy's most skimpy outfit though. They probably picked turn based because it was the easiest to program. It looks pretty low budget outside of the character models, and I bet each character has all of 3-4 of the same attack animations. Lucy and Erza probably have more for their more fan servicey armors and star dresses. I'm tempted to get it, but I already know the story, and it feels like it would get redundant after a while.