radiofloyd

Up to about 19 hours now. Only played it a couple of times since my last post but I’ll try to make some good progress this week. I’ve been ploughing through the Defiance Bay content in my last couple of sessions. It’s probably sitting on an 8/10 for me. It’s good but it doesn’t do anything spectacularly well. And the writing is pretty bad, especially the text dumps.

I watched Toy Story 4 in the cinema yesterday. It was good. I don’t really remember Toy Story 1 or 2, but it definitely wasn’t as good as Toy Story 3, Wall-E or Coco. It was still enjoyable though, and quite poignant. I loved the final lines of the film, if felt like a perfect way to end the Toy Story saga. Also, it was quite touching when the “in memory of Don Rickles” came up at the end. I’ve become a big fan of his from watching videos of him on YouTube.

Delayed to 2020. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-07-11-psychonauts-2-release-date-pushed-to-2020

I’m sure you probably know this but there is also a 3D sequel that was released in May.

This looks lovely. I’m glad to see Small Saga made it.

Character trailer. https://gematsu.com/2019/07/ai-the-somnium-files-character-trailer The game’s release date has been pushed back to September 20th. I’m way behind on my Spike Chunsoft games so I doubt I’ll get this at launch but it looks like another game that’s going to scratch that itch.

Not much of a surprise but confirmed for release in the West. https://www.rpgsite.net/news/8701-yo-kai-watch-4-confirmed-for-western-release

Sekiro by default for me (I still have to unwrap KH3), although I don’t like to pick games I haven’t finished. I have to go back to Sekiro before the year is out.

If you had asked me when I was 15-20 and discovering a lot of music, I would have said the 70s without a doubt. I loved Pink Floyd and prog rock bands like Jethro Tull, Yes and King Crimson, and I loved the singer songwriters of the late 60s/70s era, and of course Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, Brian Eno, Van Morrison, T. Rex...the list goes on and on. You could make a case for every decade but really for the last ten years I’ve been staying in the present. There have been albums every year that I’ve loved. The 2010s have been the soundtrack of my 20s so I’m gonna have to go with that (this decade). Right from the beginning with beautiful albums like Teen Dream from Beach House and The Wild Hunt by The Tallest Man on Earth (not to mention all the great albums that snuck out in 2009), right up to now. There’s been no shortage of brilliant music this decade.

About 15 hours in. I fucking love this game now. I’m already looking forward to playing the sequel. Currently have five party members and combat is a blast. The chanter is a cool character class. I feel already like this is one of the Kickstarter games where they totally delivered on what they promised. The only area where the game lets itself down a little is the writing. As soon as a block of text opens up on the screen I zone out. I didn’t have this with other similar games (Torment, Divinity). In particular the NPCs who have those mini short stories, my eyes glaze over immediately. But the gameplay is on the money. Also, the ability to enchant weapons and armour is a cool feature. And being able to have two weapons sets and change them on the fly.

Unexpected good news. The Langrisser collection is being released in English. https://gematsu.com/2019/07/langrisser-i-ii-coming-west-for-ps4-switch-and-pc-in-early-2020

That’s a cool list. Unavowed is the newest from Wadjet Eye Games (the guys that make the old school looking point and click adventure games like Gemini Rue) and it got really good reviews last year, and Timespinner looks great too. Was only released a month or two ago. Blazing Chrome is a cool looking Contra type game.

First look at some of the characters for The Witcher: https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/1/20677111/the-witcher-images-netflix-henry-cavill-geralt-yennefer-ciri-actress I hadn’t really thought about this but I hope it’s good... First look at some of the characters for The Witcher: https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/1/20677111/the-witcher-images-netflix-henry-cavill-geralt-yennefer-ciri-actress I hadn’t really thought about this but I hope it’s good...

Every single Telltale Walking Dead episode is being released in a complete collection for PS4 and Xbox One. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-07-01-telltales-the-walking-dead-gets-new-collection-featuring-every-single-episode Includes an optional “graphic black” comic book style makeover.

Somehow I forgot to say anything about the one game I actually started and finished in June, Gato Roboto. Ah, and Shenmue too. But at least you quoted me on that, cheers.

Had a good session on this today. With three characters (a fighter, a wizard and a priest) combat is starting to become a lot of fun. Characters who are knocked out being resurrected immediately after combat is a nice touch, I seem to remember in the older games having to reset immediately if a character died during combat. In this game that’s not necessary at all. I feel that the game is very well balanced on Normal difficulty, so far. The spells are cool, some of the enemies designs are nice, the environmental art is really nice. And some of the problems that the older games had like pathfinding don’t seem to be a problem in this game. So far, so good. Completed a lot of side quests today including clearing out the temple below Gilded Vale.

Been listening to Springsteen’s new album “Western Stars” and Bill Callahan’s new album “Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest”. Western Stars is good, the more I listen to it the more I like it. There are some nice musical arrangements and strings feature quite prominently on the album. I haven’t listened to Bill Callahan for a long, long time (probably the last time I listened to an album of his in full was “Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle” from 2009). Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest is lovely. The album consists of 20 relatively short songs that flow into each other fairly indistinguishably. Mostly Callahan singing in his conversational style over fingerpicked or strummed acoustic guitars. Recommended if like me you like to listen to music while you are falling asleep.

I’m about 5 hours into this now. In some areas it’s better than I was expecting, the music has been quite nice and the voice acting too, they’ve gone for a kind of ye-olde fantasy vibe with the voice acting. It’s very similar to Baldur’s Gate (right down to “you must gather your party before venturing forth”) but it hasn’t quite impressed me like those games did, but there’s plenty of time for that, and it seems like it’s going to be a meaty adventure. Probably the biggest difference is having “Endurance” as well as Health in combat. I just picked up my second companion. Actually when I talked to him there was a minor bug where the game skipped the first few words of every line of his spoken dialogue, but I haven’t had that happen with anyone else.

Wiivo has raised the bar.

Picked up 428 Shibuya Scramble and Nostalgic Train. 70% off Shibuya Scramble which is an expensive game. Some decent discounts on other games on my wishlist so I might pick up more before the sale is out.

Yeah Mistwalker made fantastic games on the 360.

My rarest achievements on Steam are “A New Family” from Torment: Tides of Numenera and “Mimiga Hero” from Cave Story, both 2%.

Compared to Dragon Quest, FF has had many changes from one game to the next but I think it’s fair to say that the games have had overwhelming similarities too. Especially if you look at IV-VI on the SNES and VII-IX on the PS1. Although it might not have seemed like it at the time I think FFX was probably the last hurrah for “traditional” Final Fantasy.

It matters more for indie games, where review scores can often be the difference between whether a game goes on my wishlist or not. For indie games I’d say reviews matter a lot. In terms of review writing, I feel like the quality of writing was better in printed magazines than current gaming websites. Eurogamer and RockPaperShotgun for example. And also, I wish gaming websites were more review focused.

It’s a shame that Japanese people love these ridiculous character designs. They have a very strange idea of cool...