nateandrews

Really surprised by how much I dig that Billie Eilish album. It's so captivating and depressing and exciting in about a dozen different ways. An essential night time listen, kinda like Arctic Monkey's AM albeit with an extremely different tone. Definitely not one for a bright summer day road trip.

Interestingly, my first thought was Resident Evil 2. I didn't love it, but it's really stuck with me. Abby's playthrough was a great way to revisit the game without having to play through it myself a third time.

When I think about it though, Apex Legends is definitely my favorite so far. It feels so fresh and exciting to play, and I can't say I felt the same about PUBG, Fortnite, or Blackout. I've slowed down on it a bit but I can't deny how much of a surprise it's been. I love stealth launches!

Yeah I’m glad I didn’t get the expansion pass. I played the sniping map once and that was enough for me. Not what I come to Hitman for.

Best thing about summer for me is the kayaking, running outside again, cookouts, hiking, and camping.

Worst thing is the heat my PS4 gives off turns my room into an oven.

My PSN is MaximumNate, I’m not super active at the moment but I’d love to join a GB clan

@sloppydetective: I love that his Stim boost doesn't have much of a cooldown, so you can kinda keep popping it so long as you're willing to lose a bit of health. It's rad.

Lots of people down on Odyssey! I'll chirp in to say that it's probably my favorite AC game. It's very appropriately named because the game gives me such a great sense of adventure. Its storytelling is definitely weak, especially in its side quests, but the world is so gorgeous that I have felt compelled to hit every question mark on the map and 100% complete every region even as I cross the 90 hour mark. I still have entire regions that I have yet to visit too.

This is true, but I would offer that the interactivity of games makes it a bit of a different scenario. There are certainly music and film purists who see streaming as the worst way to enjoy an album or a movie, but for the average user it's completely fine, if not totally preferable. With games, any sort of connection/input lag is immediately noticeable and a lot of games become difficult to play and enjoy because of it.

It really depends on how well this stuff works, but it's difficult to envision myself ever engaging in this kind of service the way I use Spotify and Netflix/Hulu/HBO/Amazon Prime/oh god there's too many. Part of that is very much a commitment to owning games (worth mentioning that I still purchase vinyl records and blu-rays for my favorite music/movies). But I'm also with Jeff when he says that there's something off about this that's just impossible to articulate.

I think a lot of the decisions made this generation around online/live games have been terrible for players. The preponderance of loot boxes, microtransactions, and battle passes may be necessary to continue funding support for games but I can't help shake the feeling that everyone's being manipulated in the name of continued player engagement and spending. Because of this I feel inclined to view a completely online gaming platform run by a major corporation with an inherent suspicion. And I haven't even gotten to the truly apocalyptic what-ifs about how this could influence how games are made.

The problem is this is all speculation, and I wouldn't be surprised if my views on it change within the next year. But as it is right now I think this thing is crazy in about ten different ways.

@nodima: The art direction is a bit strange and not terribly exciting. I hope it gets better over time. I played a bit of Octane last night and his abilities seem really great. I used his jump pad to get up to an opponent who fired on us from atop a cliff and I smoked them. Later I was able to use the stim boost to recover two squad banners under fire while taking damage from being outside the zone. It was pretty sweet.

@acura_max: Interesting that you say that! The subreddit has been in a state of meltdown for the last couple of weeks because the battle pass hadn’t come out sooner. I had to unsubscribe from it because it had gotten so bad.

@frodobaggins: The timer said 91 days left yesterday. So it’s about 3 months.