I actually enjoy the Spider-Man games a lot, I am only surprised that Venom is coming first than Wolverine.

However, I doubt that we will see Sunset Overdrive in the near future, the game only made $567 in profit

I was initially expecting to see Wolverine released end of next year / early 2025, was not expecting it to be around end of 2026. I assume it’s easier to create Venom’s game based on the existing Spidey’s engine.

I wonder what exclusive game would Sony announce for next year’s holiday? Maybe Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima 2?

• I’ve finished Eiyuden Chronicles: Rising, as a preparation for Eiyuden Hundred Heroes.

  • It’s not a good game, but it’s not terrible either. I played it while watching TV.
  • The combat is interesting, you have 3 attack buttons, and each of them switches your main character. However it’s really unpolished, you can’t do uppercut or downward attack before upgrading your weapons.
  • The story… is not interesting at all. It’s largely fetch quests for the residents to build / expand stuff.

• I’m halfway thru Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII

  • This is a bad game. The gunplay is okay, but the level design, the enemies become increasingly dull and boring in later chapters. Halfway thru the game, I just find most chapters are way too long, empty, and repetitive.
  • The story / writing is not good at all. All those Deepground characters are boring, cliched, and annoying.

Also, I’m back with my BS, where I play Resident Evil Zero with a guide and skipping all the cutscenes, so that I can get the infinite rocket launcher, before replaying the entire game for the story.

Let’s hope it doesn’t stumble and fall, by properly paving paths that connects people.

Errrm, errrm, I’m gonna turn off my WiFi and BT connection while watching it. Whales.

I played a lot of great games this year, but also many that didn’t click with me.

There’s a huge spikes of games that I played this year, because I decided to start tackling my backlog by streaming them, these include games I’ve bought on sale, and those that are on PS+ Extre.

IIRC, Nemo was bit unsatisfying to play in DMC4, and the issue kinda exacerbated in DMCV. He feels underpowered compared to others.

I also remember being really frustrated by the platforming for the secret stages in 4.

They are still good games though.

I just finished replaying DMC V. After replaying DMC 1 - 4 + DmC in the past 6 months, made me realize that I don’t like playing as Nemo. He feels underpowered at times, and his skillset are kinda boring compared to Dante.

In DMC V, I enjoyed my time playing as Dante and V.

V is a change of pace, being slower and ranged, while Dante has really satisfying moves and weapons. I like Nemo’s robotic arm, but the idea that it’s a consumable and sometimes you might ended up picking up an arm that you are not familiar with, does disrupt the flow. Even his basic swordplay feels kinda lacking.

Brothers Remake, now with 2 more brothers and you need to use your toes to control them!!

I know it’s really weird. I don’t like ammo scarcity in games but really love how the weapons feel in RE games.

I generally don’t play horror games, or watch horror movies. Except for a handful, and mostly it’s not because of the survival or horror part.

2 things

• Resident Evil HD Remaster

  • I followed a guide, and finally got my infinite rocket launcher around 2 hour 41 mins!
  • Skipped all the cutscenes, got the bad ending, I have no idea what’s happening in the game, and somewhat learned some speed running moves (e.g. stair skating and kiting).
  • I’m excited to finally playing the game properly (with rocket launcher) in the future, both Chris and Jill scenarios.
  • There’s quite a lot of work involved, I used the IGN video walkthrough, spliced the video into like 13 parts for 13 saves, then just redo those parts until I feel like I’ve finished the section without losing too much time

• Final Fantasy 7

  • I’m replaying it again, the last time I finished this game must be at least a decade ago.
  • It’s still my favorite mainline FF, I still love the Materia system and how you can chain them together. The combat is still very speedy, especially compared to FF9, the characters and story still hold up. You can definitely see Shinra Corp existing in our society right now.
  • I’m also surprised at the parts I’ve missed. After the temple morphed into the black materia, did Cloud shove Aeris to the ground and punch her repeatedly? I was shocked at that scene, didn’t realize what was happening when I was younger.
  • With knowledge about what’s happening with Crisis Core and FF7 Remake in hand, now I could definitely understand some of those scenes, the voices Cloud is hearing, etc.
  • I’m playing the PS4 remaster / re-release. Liking the QoL features (fast forward, battle assist), but there’s still an unfixed bug where the music would just stop playing.

Ys IX Monstrum Nox

I’m at the final chapter of the game, and here’s my thoughts:

The game has adopted many bad trends from other games that it becomes annoying halfway thru the game, here are some of my complaints:

• The dialogue, a lot of useless fluff dialogues that takes extra 2 seconds for the characters to animate. If there’s 10 people in the scene, then those 10 feel the need to chime in to say something frivolous.

• Just can’t get emotionally invested in the character, maybe it’s the writing, maybe they just follow cookie cutter anime tropes most of the time (thrown in some ‘twist’ later on). I weirdly care more about the side characters from Lacrimosa than this one.

• The constant interruption of the flow. You gained control of your character, moved to main/side quest point, cutscene, walked forward 10 steps, another cutscene. And the problem is, most cutscenes are just insubstantial.

• Side quests that are not side quests anymore, since you need them to remove those artificial barriers. You can farm nox, but it’s way slower. Side quests also suffer from ‘everything needs lengthy writing’ RPG syndrome nowadays. Better writing, not more writing. I had the same issue with Horizon Forbidden West, where most side quests contain way too much dialogue that’s been used to pad the game to 100+ hours, where it could be a 30 hour game.

• The raids / grimwald sections are bit too much. I like how they are mostly optional in Lacrimosa. In this game, you even need to do them to remove the barriers to optional area.

• Third Eye / detective mode is a mechanic that devs should move away from. Just outline the points of interest, don’t make it so it’s hard to see everything else.

• The lock-on in combat is a wild mess for me. I don’t know whether it’s my settings, or the game.

On the other hand, what I like about this game:

• The vertical mobility, that’s to shake up the exploration. The problem is it’s kinda janky, I’d often fall down after grappling to a ledge, because the ledge is too small. Wall run often ends up being blocked, etc. I hope that they will polish the mechanic more in the future. In combat though, I barely use them to fight enemies thanks to the messy lock-on

• I enjoy doing the collectibles (petals, treasures, graffitis) in this game.

Besides that I’ve been slowly progerssing Resident Evil HD Remake, trying to get infinite rocket launcher.

I don’t like remasters, especially those which are usually just re-release with hi-res textures. They are charging like $30 and above for hi-res texture, and some of them has unstable framerates. At certain point of time, using emulator yields better graphics & performance than some of those remasters, especially for PS1/PS2 games.

On the other hand, I actually like remakes way more.

Remake not only exploits that nostalgia, but also tend to make game plays better with added QoL functions, sometimes with new gameplay mechanics. Some of the remakes that I really like:

• Yakuza 1+2 Kiwami
• Crisis Core
• Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
• Resident Evil 1+2 (have not played 3+4 remakes yet)
• Live a Live
• Mass Effect Trilogy (thankfully it’s not just a hi-res port)

Remake is great when there’s a significant technology and time gaps between the games, which is why TLOU remakes drew some ires.

• I finished DmC (again) last week, in my quest to play all DMC games before PS+ pulls that DMC5 Special Edition. To me, it’s better than DMC4 in terms of platforming, and to some extent the combat. The character design is not good, and the writing is good in some parts, but terrible in others. The button configuration sometimes gives me finger cramps.

• Then I’m continuing my quest to get infinite rocket launcher for Resident Evil HD Remake. I’m using the IGN guide, which I split into smaller parts for each save, annotating it with items in my inventory. I’m better at kiting zombies now. I think it’s doable as long as I can remember what to do next. The annoying thing right now is that I’d accidentally open up the map, when I’m trying to open up the inventory.

• I will probably start Ys Monstrum Nox this week, it’s part of my “play all these games before PS+ pulls it from the offerings” theme. It’s gonna be exciting, since I enjoyed Celceta and Lacrimosa a lot.

Normally I’d say it’s a greedy cash grab, but it’s $10 upgrade path for existing owner, instead of reselling it for $50 - $70? Also there’s a new rouge-like / souls-like mode? Maybe branding this release as ‘remaster’ is not doing them any favor, it’d probably better for them to market it as free PS5 upgrade and a survival mode expansion for $10.

Jordan Middler from VGC heard that this might be a project for new hires

Ian Stokes (@IanVanCheese) from Twitter posted that “If I was Sony, I would maybe let my S-tier studio that excels at making new IPs and interesting games actually make new games, instead of forcing them to photocopy their previous A+ report card for eternity”

to which Jordan Middler from VGC (@JordanMiddler) replied “From what I was told from one person, this was more of a project for new hires to get them in the game. Druckmann’s team is full steam ahead on original. One doesn’t takeaway from the other afaik”

I really hope that Naughty Dog would move on to do something more cheerful than TLOU, the mood is just too oppressive and taxing, especially in TLOU2 where the game is very long.

I genuinely like the Sonic movies more than Mario. Ben Schwartz did a good job voicing Sonic, the jokes in the movies made me chuckle.

I think the Mario movie played it a little too safe. It’s not bad, but I barely remember anything about it.

omg, now I need to photoshop Chris Pratt onto Anya’s face

Dave the Diver shouldn’t be categorized as an indie game

Dave the Diver is developed by Mintrocket. Mintrocket is not an indie company, it is not acquired by Nexon, it’s actually a sub-brand / division by Nexon. It is a sub-division of a giant company.

There are many indie devs that rely on being nominated to Indie category awards, for exposure, for the ability to stay afloat in business. What Dave the Diver is doing, is to take over a slot that might be the make / break event for smaller indie companies.

Think about the reason why there are specialized bundles for indie games, why people retweet / share info for indie exposure.

• If Ubisoft were to spin-off a sub division to make Child of Light, would we have labeled Child of Light as indie (not some weird AAA indie game)?
• If ALDI came into United States and spun off smaller mom-and-pop / bodega looking shops to compete with local mom-and-pop stores, do you still consider this spinoff as a local shop that need local support?
• If your government creates a grant to fund small local companies, and a giant MNC spun off its brand to compete for the grant, are we even still in this discussion?

Dave the Diver should be competing in other categories, just not in indies.

Also Nexon is scummy kinda like EA of Korea, shutting down games abruptly, fined for loot box exploitations, they have market cap of $17B.

Excerpt from an interview with the devs: https://www.gameple.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=207557

Q. '데이브 더 다이버’가 순수하게 개발로만 흥행한 것인지에 대해 의문이 있다. 한 인디 개발자들은 넥슨이 인디 시장까지 침범하는 것이 맞는가? 하는 목소리도 있다. 그에 대한 짧은 소감을 부탁한다.

Q. There are questions as to whether ‘Dave the Diver’ was a success purely due to development. One indie developer said, “Is it true that Nexon is invading the indie market?” There are also voices saying: Please give your brief thoughts about it.

황재호: 딱 잘라 말하면 우리 게임은 인디 게임이 아니다. 인디는 우리보다 더 적은 리소스에서 더 힘들게 개발하는 개발자들을 존경한다. 해외에서 GJA 인디게임 후보에 올라간 것이 있다. 해외에서 보는 정의가 조금 다른 것 같다. 넥슨의 압도적인 지원을 받는 것과는 다르게, 우리에게 자율권을 준 것이다.

Jaeho Hwang: To put it simply, our game is not an indie game. Indie respects developers who work harder and with fewer resources than we do. There is a GJA indie game candidate from overseas. It seems that the definition seen overseas is a little different. Unlike receiving overwhelming support from Nexon, they gave us autonomy.

I’m around the last stretch of Live a Live. I bought this game earlier this year during a sale, and it’s a really good game. Every character’s chapter is like an episode of TV show, with varying theme.

The final stretch, especially the trials can be annoying though, from difficulty spikes to long ass dungeon without a map. The other thing that I dislike is that some animation can be bit slow

The game is pretty good so far, and it does look very pretty at times. It makes me excited to play Octopath 2 and Star Ocean 2 Remake

PSA: Please don’t torture yourself with anticipation of Silksong

If it’s coming out, then it’s coming out. If it’s not, there’s still a lot of good games this year.

I’m actually intrigued, not much of GTA player myself, however I want to know:

• fans reaction, since Rockstar kinda bungled the recent remasters / re-releases of RDR and GTA definitive version
• Rockstar’s approach to the new game, since I believed that they made lots more of money from GTA Online
• how the tone / jokes in the game would be. Those satirical jokes about America might not work anymore, since the actual country has become so absurd.