Cheyenne

Metroid Prime Remastered was also a shadow drop, so it didn't get the benefit of a couple months to build up hype and anticipation. There's also the allure of a new 2D Metroid, after nearly twenty years without one, that gave Dread a USP. One million+ is nothing to sniff at.

Had my eye on Lake for a while too. Generally each month gets a nice split of high profile games and interesting indie fare.

Doesn't fit the OP focus on Directors/Actors, but when I first got into cinema as a young teen and was introduced to the American arc of Paul Verhoeven's career (and then by association the golden age of action cinema), my response towards hearing that Basil Poledouris' music was iconic was "what, the Free Willy guy?". Turns out, on revisiting even that score bangs goddamn hard:

Should be noted that 428 was one of the games that left this past month. I usually find third party sites are better for keeping updates on this (I google "Games leaving ps plus [insert month here]").

I really do believe that a (discounted) sub to PS Plus Extra is the best suggestion. Minimal investment and the current catalogue is quite expansive if you've been out of the loop for a couple years. Having been lacking a stable living space from roughly 2017-2021, a lot of my gaming time was limited to handheld or in brief bursts whenever I was visiting parents, but since December my sub has seen me playing catch up and I've had some wonderful experiences. There's a really strong mix of big budget stuff (if you want to keep abreast of the mainstream scene of the past decade) and plentiful smaller, independent titles. For reference, here's what I've played since the tail end of last year: Nioh 2, Inside, The Pedestrian, Ghost of Tsushima, Virginia, I Am Dead, Guardians of the Galaxy, Kona, Last Day of June, Tchia, Minit, The Missing, Ghost of a Tale, Maneater, The Turing Test, The Messenger, Prey, Seasons After Fall, Miles Morales, Wolfenstein The New Order & Old Blood. Currently got Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, Paradise Killer, Spiritfarer, Haven, What Remains of Edith Finch, Concrete Genie, Wolfenstein II, Doom Eternal, Control, Untitled Goose Game and more lined up ready to go. There's a link on the Playstation website to what is currently available, though they do appear to be slow with updating it (a bunch of the games I mentioned I have lined up aren't on there yet). Regular updates each month, plus you'll get access to the PS Plus Essential games of each month too! https://www.playstation.com/en-cz/ps-plus/games/

Adkins interviews have made for excellent watching over the last few years. Has had a diverse range of guests from icons of the genre to real deep cuts for fans. Man knows and loves his field of work, poses good questions yet retains a respectful approach to each guest. Frankly the dude deserves waaaaaaaay more than he's gotten, I know he's well respected and not hurting for work, but he really has earned the chance to be a huge mainstream star.

Leaves behind an outstanding body of work. I'll be rewatching one of my favourites, Tony Takitani, this week. Highly recommend this lockdown concert he released in 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6td9KUZMfw&ab_channel=RyuichiSakamoto

Trivia: The original name for this show in Spain was, I shit you not, Yellow Humour.

Steady slip post Kill Bill Volume 1. I remember watching Inglourious Basterds in the cinema and being completely underwhelmed, and everything since then has had minor moments of greatness but generally a huge disappointment, with Hollywood being an absolute slog to get through. Going back to Jackie Brown makes me miss what could have been with Tarantino, but I accept I'm not in that target audience. My one note of solace is the humour I take in just about every film he's given the "Quentin Tarantino Presents" treatment or raved about post Jackie Brown, all I've seen have been miles better than his own output. He has a very particular niche and style, sadly one I grew tired of many years ago. It does kind of such as the potential is there, and a contemporary like PT Anderson shows how possible it is to evolve a style over the years. I expect feet, overt violence, deeply questionable views towards women with regards to said violence, and at least 45-60 minutes that could be taken off the runtime. Would love to be surprised, doubt it will happen.

The magazine demo disc era occasionally produced some incredible months. At times I went months without a new game as the regular monthly discs could provide hours of content, and as mentioned, perfect vertical slices that sold you on something. I had to do a little research to confirm which one (in my head I blurred two months together) but this one disc from the Official PS2 mag was sensational. Look at this goddamn selection: Playable Burnout 2: Point of Impact Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex Ferrari F355 Challenge Hitman 2: Silent Assassin Micro Machines Ratchet & Clank Red Faction 2 Summoner 2 Superman: Shadow of Apokolips Tekken 4 Say all you like about the final quality of some of those games, but for a sample disc? Sheeeeeeeit. Obvious banger headliner in Burnout 2, but I particularly remember being amazed by Hitman 2 (you were given the second mission of the game) and while Wrath of Cortex was my personal seller alongside Tekken 4, I came away determined to get Ratchet & Clank. Two whole levels of the game (Metropolis and Blackwater City), including the jet boarding minigame, for me may have been my real next-gen moment. It looked so far beyond the PS1 platformer era, I had to have it. The main thing though is that selection. Didn't have a clue about Red Faction or Hitman before that disc, then later went on to really enjoy both of those.

Very much is. The bones of it can be considered beat em up, but the flow is something very different. Very much has lived rent free in my head the past few months. If I was redrafting now it'd probably make it into my Top 20 games.

Oh yeah, I absolutely get that. To my knowledge the dev keeps a low profile and has no public statements to track down. It's more to me about the giving money that does work its way back to the Russian state, and what they will direct their finances towards. I am still doing some research into it, see if there is some definitive answer as to both the dev's stance and whether it's possible to source (legally) without contributing towards the Russian state. Back to Ringo though! There was a demo on the Switch I believe, I do highly recommend people try it out. Feels like forever since I played a beat em up that was trying to push the genre in a different direction.

Tying it in to some discussion from other places, I'm a huge fan of The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa. I may even say it's my favourite of the genre. The melancholy of it gives it tone and atmosphere that nothing in the genre comes close to touching, in my mind it honestly elevates it beyond the cheap (but satisfying) thrills I commonly associate with beat em ups. Sadly, I only recently became aware that the developer (though independent) is Russian and continues to be based there, which has put in a rough position with regards to purchasing his following game, Arrest of a Stone Buddha, as well as his upcoming game, Fading Afternoon. Ultimately they're just games and I can live my life without them, but I am bummed that one of the few developers that has properly interested and excited me in the past few years is tainted by the warmongering actions of his state.

The thing I found with the bosses was that a standard deflect won't stop their full attack string, so my first two deaths on the first boss was generally down to my getting greedy and going for straight counterattacks before they finished up. Would definitely advise some magic too, feels more integral to the experience than Onmyo in both Niohs. Load a status ailment on the boss and keep your distance, utilise the advantage of having a CPU there with you to see if they can take away some of his aggro. The real meat is going to be from deflecting the critical attacks, but Wizardry is very adept at slowly chipping down inbetween those big moments.

So, some more collated thoughts after finishing up. Positives first: - General changes to the UI are very welcome. I especially like having the health, morale and spirit centred on the screen, and how they disappear when out of combat. A long-held annoyance of mine across both Nioh's and then the broader Soulsborne experiences are how they necessitate careful, tense play but then you're regularly asked to divert your gaze into the top corner to check your health and stamina. Died countless times due to an ill-timed glance in the past, so having that information put more into my central focus is appreciated. - In these sample levels, nice (if simplistic) use of elevation/jumping, and merging it into combat. Feels very rewarding to get the drop on enemies that are trying to get the drop on you, something that in Nioh wasn't really possible (if you knew placements you could set traps and/or dodge). I feel like Team Ninja really want you to be more aerial than before, and I was using that liberally. - Mentioned before with regards to stamina, but beyond that I like having the Wizardry spells also connected to Spirit. I enjoyed how it pushed me towards maintaining a closeness to enemies, as inevitably I would hit my limit and if I wanted to use more spells, physical attacks are going to regen that Spirit meter faster, then back to flinging fire. - It took me a while, but I came around to deflect and dodge being on the same button. At first I found it cumbersome, that I would want them separate, but by the first boss I think I see the intent. Really, you should be trying to deflect EVERYTHING, it is unanimously better than dodging (Spirit gain, Spirit loss for enemy, closer proximity for counterattack etc) but if I had moments where I bottled it on the timing I would instinctively panic press deflect again, leading me into the dodge. I don't think it's perfect, but I started to click with it. Negatives: - I'm missing the stances. In this admittedly small slice of the game, weapons feel a lot less malleable and technical than their Nioh counterparts, I can see where this may be where they're trying to incentivise a combination of weaponry with Wizardry and abilities, but Nioh had similar supplementary techniques while having vast depth to its individual weapon types. Maybe the full game will build on this. - While the controls do get simplified due to this, I don't like how hotkeying items has been removed from specific d-pad inputs and instead is on a cycle of L-R and pressing up to use. Seems to hinder what I liked about the reworked UI as now I'm looking into bottom left of the screen to verify my item selection! - It's almost a little too similar to Nioh. The changes that I am enjoying just makes me want them to push further into being its own thing. Worth reminding that I'm on base PS4. Genuinely think it looks worse than Nioh 2 on this hardware.

Having beaten the first boss, looooove what I'm experiencing. While I understand it can make the screen busier with more to take into account, I like the ditching of stamina. Maintaining the idea of fatigue via Spirit but allowing the player to sprint indefinitely is a nice way of encouraging more agile play, and I took advantage of it with that first boss in darting all over the place until I started to feel comfortable with his animation timings. There's more I probably dig further into once I get further, but so far the only real downside I'm feeling is that I'm still just a base PS4 player and christ it feels like it's only there as an obligation.

Out of interest, how necessary did you find it for the Nioh experience? In my playthroughs across both I only ever went to the Blacksmith for trophy purposes, don't think I spent any time actually engaging with the crafting.

There's an arcade museum in Krakow that has a cabinet of Lucky & Wild. It also has a Panic Park cabinet which every person should play at least once in their life with a friend. So if you want to do a weekend getaway with a friend or loved one...

This has tickled me admittedly, thinking of it as some bizarre, hate-based barter system. "I built the damn orphanage, surely I should be forgiven for giving a slap to that one kid that annoys me" "I donated x amount to this charity, do I get a one-time slur pass?"

Yup, username most definitely checks out.

That's a correct point to make, Sterling's tweet was more about the larger companies and outlets as opposed to individuals.

Regarding the success of the game's sales and some being surprised at the sheer strength of the franchise, a factor to consider is that unlike something like Star Wars, the license hasn't been well served in terms of videogames. Outside of film tie-ins, Lego games and some mobile stuff, there has never been a big original title that's tried to capture the idea of 'your Hogwarts journey'. I've been hearing this discussion for decades now, about how much people would love to have that experience (that the theme park has admittedly gone for, but a game can take that fantasy further) so I'm hardly surprised at the massive popularity of a title apparently delivering that. What does bum me out though is that further commercialisation of the franchise serves to dull interest in other material. There's a vast ocean of wonderful fantasy literature out there but the nature of a global franchise under a capitalistic system is to monopolise the audience into only consuming more extended content of its increasingly stretched world. I'd also chuck this criticism at Star Wars, a franchise I have zero fondness towards, but Potter takes special precedence due to Rowling's status in the world currently. For all the fond childhood memories I have of reading those books, they haven't held up to scrutiny as I've aged and in particular I'm not fond of the discussion about how those that are critical are 'reading too much into it', there's some real ugliness in those books that I can only view as Rowling's genuine views and I think on how it even influenced me in my childhood years*. Had this been ten or so years ago, I would be well on board for a game like this. But to people like myself time has not been kind to the Harry Potter franchise and it's increasingly hard, now impossible, to create that separation and only focus on the positive memories. Plausible deniability cannot be invoked when we know what we know about Rowling, and the material itself has more than its fair share of unsavoury elements. Which I think is something that hasn't been honed in on enough in the discussion of allyship; you can purchase what you want and make your decisions, what we (I in particular, but I know people that share this sentiment) want is the acknowledgment and admittance that the clearly documented problems and interpretations of this franchise are not problems to yourselves. I think it was @Unofficial Who that linked to James Stephanie Sterling's tweet about it, but it's going to be distasteful to see the performative support come Pride month when we know that millions upon millions have decided they're okay buffering the pockets and profile of a transphobe if there's a cool game to play. I want to be as understanding and tolerant as possible, but I know that I will be casting some side-eye towards individuals doing this. *Namely, there's quite a lot of fatshaming and general shaming of 'ugly' people. It's not exclusive to those books, growing up in the 90's and early 00's definitely involved being in a cultural sphere that normalised mocking people for their looks, but those were influential books that surreptitiously told me that it was okay to ridicule and shame provided the targets were in some way 'deserving' of said treatment. Edit: With regards to the side-eye comment, I think I should clarify that it revolves around the plausible deniability. I recognise that in many circles the transphobic rhetoric of Rowling is not known to all fans of the franchise, and many do engage with the series and the wider wizarding world stuff without being aware of the original creator. In a sense this has transcended her. But in the context of this forum I would argue that it is impossible to be engaged with Harry Potter and not be aware of Rowling's rhetoric (because, I mean, look at 90% of this thread). As also mentioned there will be LGBT people that play this game and consume HP content, and that is their choice to do so. I'm more talking about when you are made explicitly aware of the hurt and pain caused to marginalised individuals, that future support is going to feel pretty crass and dishonest to me.

She's using a plural, it's charitable to say she's referring specifically to this one case.

No idea. Haven't personally played them, but know that New Order, Old Blood and New Colossus are well regarded. That last one a little less so, but still favourably viewed in an era of increasingly multiplayer focused titles.

So they are! Brain completely blanked on that. Doubtful it will be first person, but a great way for them to continue implementing their core 'fuck up Nazis' approach to game design.