stordoff

Realistically, this could just be shortened to "Persona 3/4 +Spinoffs OSTs", but I'll pick out a few of the stand-out tracks:

• Persona 3 - Kimi no Kioku [Ending theme] - Such a strong way to end the game; Without spoiling it, the ending of the game is a real bittersweat moment, and this song goes perfectly with it.
• Persona 3 Portable - Wiping All Out [FemMC battle theme] - The female route in Persona 3 Portable is my favoured way to play P3 (mainly due to better S. Links). I love the entirety of the song, but the first 20-25s of it are a perfect accompaniment/start to a battle
• Persona ~Trinity Soul~ - Breakin' Through - Cheating a little, as this is from the P3 anime spin-off (which isn't that great), but this is a great track
• Persona 3 The Movie #2 -Midsummer Night's Dream- [Ending theme] - Again cheating a little, as this is from the P3 movie adaptation, but since hearing it for the first time in Persona Super Live 2015, I can never not hear it when I think of (P3 spoilers) Shinji's death.
• Persona 4 - Reach Out to the Truth [Battle theme] - Possibly the most recognisable track from Persona 4, I think it is used better in The Golden, where it only plays if you get player advantage
• Persona 4 - 霧 (Fog) [True Ending battle theme] - On its own, this is a good track, but not great. The way it is used in the game, for the long final battle, is fantastic - it ebbs and flows, and prepares you for the real final battle (after a mid-battle story event) themed by The Genesis. As I'm sure people who watched the Endurance Run will remember, that works amazing well for that battle - sombre beginnings, but just as you are starting to feel all is lost, the guitars kick in with the main melody from Reach Out.... and pulls you through to the victory. Great use of music in a game.
• Persona 4 The Golden - Snowflakes [Winter 'overworld' theme] - I very rarely get emotional whilst playing games, but having watched the Endurance Run a number of times (and so knowing the game was heading to a close), and having some ideas what was going on with Marie, this hit me HARD in my first playthrough of The Golden. Beautiful song, and perfect for the mood of the game at that moment.
• Persona 4 - Never More [Ending theme] - Beautiful song to close the game with. The linked version is from the [Never More -Reincarnation:PERSONA 4] album, which is my prefered version of it.
• P4U2 - Break Out Of... [Opening Theme] - As someone who isn't a big fan of fighting games, the music was one of the best things about Persona 4 The Ultimate and its sequel. This song epitomises what I love about these OSTs - a nice fusion of the P3 and P4 musical styles. The ending theme, Today, is also very good

Being positive and excited about a game is fine. Where it starts to push me away (regardless of the quality of the actual game) is where it becomes obsessive. I can't really think of a way to phrase it, so I'll just give a few examples:

• Excessive quoting/references, especially to a single line/event (prime example: Portal. I love that game, but I was so sick of hearing Still Alive/The Cake is a Lie online)
• Unprompted recommendations beyond a simple "Hey, you should check out X if you liked Y". I've seen way too many forum posts that are essentially "[Unrelated gaming talk] And BTW you should REALLY play UnderTale. It's great. You'll love it"
• Excessive hype. If you make your favourite game out to be the second coming of video games, I'm probably going to be disappointed when I play it and it is "just" a great game
• Infallibility/taking criticism personally - Far too often online, criticism of a game is a seen as a personal attack and/or any criticism of the game is seen as being objectively wrong. No game is perfect, so pitching a game as that is a turn-off
• Taking things such as polls of "Best Game Ever" too seriously (UnderTale (for example))

Before anyone sees this as an attack on UnderTale, I would say I tried it for a couple of hours _before_ hearing much about it online, and found it fairly mediocre. It's only more recently that the elements of its fanbase have really turned my off giving it another shot (which I might have done after the GotYCasts).

This looks like a level I would never want to play, but if your goal is to beat Patrick, dropping you at the start of the level as part of the intended path seems like a really smart/messed-up thing to do. AFAIK, the Dan/GB levels, up to now, have used that to basically say "you messed up; start over", so making it necessary could trick Patrick for a while.

@liquiddragon: I'd largely second what @believer258 said, with the exception that P4G was the first Persona and/or SMT game I had played. My longest playthrough was about 90 hours, which was on Very Hard, maximum all S.Links, using only the starter persona for the entire game, reaching the true ending, from a brand new save. My first playthrough (which was blind except what was in the Endurance Run) on normal difficulty was about 80 hours.

However, I only use a single party for the entire game. If you want to level all characters, it'll take longer (for some context, I think my first playthrough of P3FES took me a little over 90 hours).

Same happens to me at least once a day. Switching from another tab to (un)pause a video will fairly often lead to me clicking on a video category instead of the video player.

The Endurance Run of P4 had a final game time of 99hrs59mins (+a few hours where progress was lost). My own playthroughs of Persona4 Golden have averaged around 75 hours (played four times - not skipping any story content, true ending every time, and usually playing on Hard). The UI is visually similar but much less annoying than P3 (it's one of the reasons I prefer P3Portable to P3FES - the portable version takes some of the UI improvements from P4 and applies them to P3).

Back on topic, Persona 5 without a doubt. The demo for FFXV was interesting, but very few games can compare to P3 and P4 IMO.

Correction from the article:

[UPDATE and CORRECTION] A new translation of the Nikkei article suggests that Hideo Kojima is not in fact in negotiations to form a new Sony studio. Rather, the report appears to claim he's launching a new studio of his own with other former Kojima Productions and is in negotiations with Sony to have their first game debut on PlayStation. No further details about Kojima's next game are available.

I know very little about idol culture beyond incident mentions in stuff like Persona, so can't say how accurate it is, but I got a similar vibe from the story. The two main take-aways from the game, for me, were that:

a) An idol's public persona is a very tightly controlled fabrication, and is likely very different to who they actually are
b) The more seedy/manipulative elements of the culture were presented as exactly that - seedy, manipulative, and kinda not OK. The imagery used is possibly a little on the nose, but I never got the impression that the game was anything other than critical of it.

@edgework said:

Could you clarify what you mean by "script or any kind of app"? My main use case for the download links is opening it in VLC (mainly for always on top video), and downloading using the Synology Download Station app.

Can't wait for the LiS stream - watching the first two streams finally got me to play the game for myself, and it only gets better as time goes on. Continuing in a Playdate seems like a fine idea to me (though as a premium user I may be a little biased :p), as the longer video series (Endurance Run, VinnyVania, Contradiction etc.) are among my favourite content on the site.

Using Choose Our Own Adventure are a proving ground/one shot look at certain games seems like a good idea as well. Treating it similar to an extended UPF segment would be a great way to look at games you've missed or wouldn't really be suited to a longer playthrough. On a more cynical note, the business side of that works out pretty well too - "Want to see us play more of GameX? Well maybe you should subscribe..."