Errant

Making some serious progress in Tears of the Kingdom and finishing up Final Fantasy XVI.

Trying to get things squared away, Remnant 2 come out soon and I'm excited about that.

Make a backup, but yes. The new DynamicFPS mod from Chucksfeedandseed is a game changer, allows resolution to be scaled natively as opposed to using the Yuzu scaler. Way, way better image quality and fixes issues like the Sky Islands being weird.

Hopefully finishing Final Fantasy XVI. Mixing in some TOTK too, fell off that one a bit because I degen'd my way to 100 in Diablo 4. Getting back into it has been really fun.

I sincerely hope this works as well as this article says it does and Ubi shares the technology with other games. XIM(Cronus stuff even more so honestly someone figure that one out plz) is a plague on a few games I play.

Think a mix of things is ideal. I like the specific stuff for raid weapons. Adds some flavor to the process and makes it feel more special. Can be a pain to find a group willing to do the extra stuff during a run though, so a bit of a tradeoff there but worth what the game gets out of it IMO.

Ornstein and Smough on the 1.0 version of Dark Souls in 2011 when I was very bad at Dark Souls and video games in general. In the DLC Hawkeye Gough has some line about how hunting the dragons teased out his dearest emotions and that's truly how I felt about my O&S experience. They kicked the ever loving shit out of me so many times. I remember finally scoring the kill in spite of the controller nearly falling out of my hands due to sweat at like 4 AM. Reacted a bit too loud, woke up my girlfriend (now wife haha). Just one of those moments that I will always remember.

Besides that, mostly all the Destiny raids haha. The Day 1 raiding experience in Destiny is just such a unique and awesome thing. Nothing quite like problem solving with a group of friends. Deep Stone Crypt is probably the most memorable of such experienced to me, first time the group I play with tried a Day 1 raid and completing it just gave me such a crazy high.

It's quite good. Definitely referential, but it has enough wiggle with some of the thematic stuff that it can get away with it. Will be cool to see where the stuff with "feeling springs reacting" leads to.

Gameplay felt more than serviceable but not quite on the level of a From Software title in the slice we played. More than good enough though. Excited for the full release.

Tons of great ones this year

Resident Evil 4 Remake was a real highlight for me, just a stellar way to revisit what I consider to be one of the best games of all time.

Haven't finished it, but Tears of the Kingdom seems like it's on its way to be a historically significant game and deserves the praise.

Jedi Survivor is a favorite for me. Really good review scores, but it ticks a lot of the right boxes for my personal taste and elevates it even higher. Technical issues aside, thought it was a far better game than Fallen Order.

Diablo 4 is also a lot of fun but I'm undecided as to how I feel about the endgame. As a campaign experience right up there though.

....soo much to play right now haha.

Really vivid memories of going Christmas shopping with my mother and getting Final Fantasy X with the strategy guide as an early gift when I was young. I think it had just released and it was all over the magazines I was subscribed to (shoutout Gamepro haha). Was super engrossed with it during that break. I always interested in RPGs, but I was at just the right age to really start enjoying them a lot more when that game came out. Was a really awesome, memorable winter break.

...on a more duderbo note, my high school friends and I would stay up ungodly hours and drink waaaaay too many Five Hour energy shots playing Halo 3 and later Reach. Undoubtably unhealthy, but very good times.

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1664226228419588098

lot of attrition at Arkane Austin per this thread

They seem entirely content with burning it down and seeing what they're left with after. Not even pretending to play nice anymore.

Yeah even as someone who loves those types of games it's definitely a thing that's beginning to impose itself on the space a bit too much at this point. This looks fresh compared to how most third person RPGs are these days.