petethepanda

I didn't play much as her in the earlier betas but I'm suddenly warming to Mei, very much an "assist" kind of class. Creating temporary bottlenecks, slowing people down, etc. Satisfying to freeze someone just as a teammate strides by and punches their frozen body to death.

Bastion is probably my second favorite, finally clicked once I started being mobile and only going into turret mode for short bursts before repositioning. One of my favorite things in the game is playing Bastion on a Control match, just hanging back from the point and taking out people as they approach.

Starting to play Rocket League on Steam last December after having played for a long while on PS4 made for an amusing couple days of absolute blowouts until the matchmaking kind of caught up. I did kind of feel bad, but there's not really any way around it.

(In Rocket League's case, with cross-platform play, it's kind of frustrating that your profile can't be carried across platforms as well.)

The first one is underwhelming, it feels like a lot of previous encounters just kind of regurgitated, moving back through areas you've already seen. The second starts to expand on some of the more interesting elements of the gameplay, though, and story-wise it's the point at which they effectively wrap up the first game and start building towards the [hopeful] sequel. It's kind of frustrating it's relegated to DLC, honestly; I loved the ending of the base game, but it's also hard to say that you've actually seen the full ending if you haven't played the second DLC episode.

Maybe it's because I watched the first couple Divergent movies recently but I'm definitely getting a strong "dystopian YA" vibe from this, much more than the first game. The writing isn't working too well for me so far, but I like what it's going for. Surprised there haven't been more games trying for this kind of feel lately.

Gets pretty stuttery with lots of fps drops on Ultra (i5 3570k / 970), but it's better if I drop stuff down. Got to try it out on PS4 as well; runs okay, doesn't hold onto 60 very well. But yeah, beta, so hopefully both console and PC see improvements by launch.

Plus friendly NPCs get really annoyed with you when you hit them and it's kind of hilarious

I'm still looking forward to this, but man, catching up on all the P4 spinoffs over the past year really wound up draining a lot of my hype for P5. They have me kind of worried about the franchise going forward, honestly.

(But don't get me wrong, I'll still be glued to the monitor to see whatever this countdown ends with.)

This may well have just been impatience on my part, but I had this happen last night on the Apple TV app, and relinking didn't seem to do the trick until I deleted and reinstalled the app and tried relinking again.

Setting the expectation of "console quality on the go" doomed this thing from the get-go. That FFT-style Bioshock game is the type of thing that the system needed. Franchises you know but experiences tailor-made for the device, not trying to cram PS3 games onto the system (even if it resulted in some great games like Uncharted and Killzone).

It kills me that they haven't at least dropped the memory card prices.

...Huh. I'm not sure I would say I'm excited about this, but I'm fascinated to see how it turns out.

Playing VLR directly after 999 really does make for a weird experience. I played 999 leading up to VLR's release and initially jumped right into it, but the difference in tone was so offputting that I wound up stepping away and coming back months later, which made it a bit easier to adjust to.

I enjoyed VLR, and to an extent I appreciate the level of bonkers it took things to (I'm a sucker for "you, the player" being a direct narrative factor in games), but yeah, it definitely left me wondering if the series would have been better served by beginning and ending with 999. It kind of reminds me of Back to the Future 2, upping the "cool stuff" factor but losing sight of the core that made the original special. 999 was a perfect, self-contained package, setting up all manner of batshit insanity and somehow paying it all off and tying it up in an awesome little bow. VLR piles on crazy shit and it's fun, but it gets to be too sprawling by the end, and I don't think I gave a damn about a single character along the way.

I'm not really getting my hopes up, I don't see how they could realistically end the series in a way that's nearly as satisfying as 999's ending, but I'm really curious to see if they can somehow retroactively justify sequels to 999 with Zero Time Dilemma.

The One sounds like something straight out of 2003, somewhere between Hoobastank and Lostprophets. I hadn't yet realized I've developed a nostalgia for that kind of sound.