Just beat Like a Dragon: Ishin! on PS5. This one's interesting in that it's actually an older spin-off of the series formerly known as Yakuza and was originally a PS4 launch title in Japan but didn't get a western release until about a year ago. I suppose SEGA originally deemed the historical samurai setting too niche for an international release but changed its mind after the series' popularity skyrocketed internationally in recent years. And it's a good thing they did!

Make no mistake: even though Ishin has an entirely different setting than the mainline Yakuza games it is a typical Yakuza game in every regard. Even though it's set over a century in the past, many (or even most) of the characters are historical figures (including the protagonist) and all of them have the faces, voices and personalities of characters from the earlier Yakuza games. Yes, he may be named Okita now but Majima is here and he's the same lovable psychopath he always was. And as always you will follow a main quest line full of intrigues and emotional moments while also doing utterly ridiculous side quests and side activities.

Even though the melee combat now largely revolves around sword-fighting, it does work pretty much the same way as in any other title (and even though it's quite gory, you still supposedly only incapacitate the enemies, heh). And oddly enough this is the Yakuza game that also comes with the most shooting which, frankly, hasn't been executed well at all. If you like the combat in the mainline Yakuza games you should be happy but if you were counting on a very different combat experience you will be sorely disappointed.

Like all Yakuza games this one also comes with some bigger mini games and some unique progression mechanics but frankly I found most of this stuff pretty mediocre. You get a house where you can farm vegetables and cook but that minigame soon turned out to be so trivial and repetitive (and economically pointless) that I found it more bothersome than anything else. There's also a crafting system similar to the one in Yakuza 0 but it has the stupidest progression system where you basically have to craft and sell a ton of useless nonsense before you unlock the good stuff - since the game is easy enough with the gear you find I didn't really bother with this.

A bigger and more interesting part of the game is that you eventually join the Shinsengumi as a captain. That part of the game allows you to hire, equip and train "troopers" who basically appear in the form of equippable trading cards which then provide passive bonuses and also rechargeable active skills. Again, I didn't engage with the system as much as I could have (there's some "fusing" of troopers that I didn't try even once) but even so, especially the active skills were a welcome addition to the combat. Through the Shinsengumi you can also enter "battle dungeons" which are simple maps where you get to fight dozens of enemies and bosses. They are basic and repetitive but it is a welcome addition to be able to do large-scale encounters outside of story missions and you get to farm a lot of stuff more effectively here. However, the main rewards are crafting components and as I said: the crafting kinda sucks either way.

But how much did I like the game in the end? Well, it is pretty good. Initially I actually thought that it might become my second-favourite Yakuza game after Yakuza 0 but after the novelty of the setting wore off I found this one a tad underwhelming compared to many other titles in the series. I found the new map to be rather uninteresting and also a tad awkward to navigate and I found the new activities mostly rather meh. As a result the game somehow felt even more repetitive to me than most Yakuza games.

However: this is still a goddamn Yakuza game. The combat, while simple and repetitive, is rather fun, the convoluted story is once again pretty darn engaging (and all the references to historical characters and events are a very cool bonus) and a lot of the writing will make you laugh (if not: you're an empty shell of a human being). I'm wasn't blown away by it but I did have a good time - better than with most sandbox games I've played. Yakuza fans should definitely check this one out.

Oh yeah, the word "remake" gets thrown around a bit in the context of this game so to clarify: yeah, they ported the whole game from its original in-house engine to Unreal for this release but it is really a very straight and faithful port. Don't expect mind-blowing graphics or modern movement - the game does frankly and play look like an upscaled PS3 game.

"Hyperstellar law official."

Disco Elysium - Final Cut

I was found murdered one time, then I couldn't pay my hotel bill twice. Finally though I managed to crack the case and solve the mysterious murder in this marvellous RPG. I played this with perma-death for the full *disco* experience. Case closed.

Time: 151hrs
Game Completed No. 112

Magic Pussy: Chapter 2 (Steam)

Once again there no actual cats in this game. Great graphics though. This time there were far more mini games that needed to be completed- I've failed to get sexytime with Jackie because I cannot manage to complete the final stage of her whack-a-mole game. I need to git gud.

Edit: I couldn't stop thinking about my failure with Jackie. So I gitted gudderer and went back in and beat her stupid whack-a-mole game and had sexytime! The secret to the mini game is to not watch for the moles at all, focus on the mouse cursor instead and use peripheral vision to sight for the moles and click like crazy. I could play again to get the rest of the achievements for NOT having sexytime with everyone...but that would be like playing a pacifist run of Doom.

Colossal Cave Adventure. This is precisely what it's advertised to be: the foundational text adventure game faithfully translated into a 3D graphical adventure. It works surprisingly well. You have two basic icons - an eye for looking at stuff, and a hand for picking up or using things, and you can also select items from your inventory and use them in the right places. Simple as can be. I've seen some criticisms that the game has mobile graphics but it looked alright to me. I wasn't expecting anything cutting edge and I'm pretty easygoing about graphics.

I haven't played the original game in years but as I played this one, the old solutions started coming back to me and it's...just as it was in the original game. That means that some puzzles will feel random or operating on moon logic, but then again you have so little options for acting in the game world that it's still pretty easy to figure out/brute force what you need to do. At least there are no chances for stumbling over a primitive text parser. Once you know what to do, the challenge is getting to the end and maximizing your score. I'll admit that I only finished with 349 out of 350 points because I got sick of dealing with Witt's End and I didn't want spend points on getting a battery recharge just to get that one measly point. I guess it helps that this is a remake of such a really old game, but this game reminded me a lot of Roberta Williams's early work, like most of her stuff up until like King's Quest 2, where it's quite simple and the appeal of the game is that you're just dropped into a strange, whimsical place and have to wander around and figure stuff out.

I'm kind of curious about the VR version, but I'm not sure how much it would really add to the immersion.

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Chex Quest. I started randomly playing this in GZ Doom. It's, you know, Doom as cereal tie-in. It's very simple and accessible for kids and easy to run through in a single afternoon. I have a simple sense of humor and found the flemoids' blubbering and bleating noises endlessly funny. My only quibble is that I kept forgetting which ammo went with which weapon.

I burned through Chex Quest 1 and 2 pretty fast and was happy to discover that one of the original creators had made a Chex Quest 3 a while back but unfortunately I had to abandon that one midway through the final level because of a bug that kept me from picking up keys. So no triumphant finale for me right now. Maybe some day I'll finish that last few minutes of the Chex Quest saga.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Like GTA 3 except bigger and more 80s. You get Ray Liotta playing the main guy as an actual character, and you can now acquire property to generate extra income. Otherwise, it's close enough to the previous game that it almost feels like an expansion or total conversion. The controls aren't much different and combat still basically sucks, but the game is still reasonably flexible about how you fulfill mission objectives. Funnily enough, some of the more notorious missions, like the one where you bomb the building with the toy helicopter, are pretty easy for me, while others gave me absolute fits.

I mentioned after playing Scarface that this game captures the Scarface/1980s vibe better than that game, and this new run through confirms it. Scarface feels like a 1980s character dropped into an early 2000s game that's half-assing the setting, while Vice City is trying really hard to get the setting down, to the point that a large chunk of the soundtrack seems chosen for the purpose of just cruising down the street, recreating the "In the Air Tonight" scene from the Miami Vice pilot. My wife also loved the soundtrack and enjoyed singing along from the next room whenever I started playing it. I do think the game is a bit long and there's a point where you can find yourself without any missions to run if you haven't spent wisely on properties that have side missions attached to them, so you're having to raise funds to get those by rampaging around, holding up stores, whatever. But mostly it's good and I would say the series probably peaked with this one.

Bloodstained Ritual of the Night, Mar 20 (Xbox Gamepass)-I wanted to play this for a while and the game was pretty fun and challenging. But about halfway thru, a couple hours after the first bad ending, the difficulty ramped way up and the game become a bit of a slog. I found most of the second half of the game was spent farming for items and gold and doing some minor grinding which wasn't a whole lot of fun. Also, I know its the norm for these types of games but the path to the true ending was at times a little too obscure for me. I think it didn't help that Dominique didn't repeat her clues. Overall fun but a little disappointing.

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Like a Dragon: Ishin! (XSX Game Pass)

Historical Yakuza spinoff where you play as a member of a Ronin group instead of Yakuza. Most of the common characters make appearances as someone else in this game. Because it's a stand-alone spinoff it really makes no difference if you play this one before, during or after the main series.

Technically it is better than the Yakuza 3, 4 and 5 remasters and worse than the total remakes like Kiwami. That pretty much reflects the era of the original and this newer version.

Like usual there are approximately 10 or so "Luke I'm your father" style plot twists. The problem with such plot twists being so common means that they don't actually come as a surprise. It was okay overall, but I thought the side quests and mini games were not as strong as the main series, hence I left most of them and just ploughed on through the story. Well, I'm now fully caught back up with the series with the exception of Infinite Wealth.

Lorelai (Steam)

Finally decided to play the third game in The Devil Came Through Here series. The Cat Lady is still one of the great horror adventure games ever. In my opinion Lorelai does the series proud. The psychological horror aspect is as strong as ever and I like Lorelai as a character. Despite some reviews not liking her, I really like her single-minded courage, focus and tenacity to see through the dismal hand she has been dealt in life- she does what has to be done without holding her hand out and without whining. An actual true strong female character instead of all the artificial ones we have these days. It's easy to see why Zack likes her in the game so much.

The game uses the Unity engine this time, so looks a bit more modern, yet all the characters maintain the same hand drawn sort of art style as Downfall and The Cat Lady. The soundtrack is also excellent once again.

Definitely worth the money and time spent. I better get Burnhouse Lane at some point I suppose.

Fallout. With the upcoming TV show, it seemed like a good excuse to get reacquainted with the original game. I really appreciate that as RPGs go, this is relatively tightly designed, making replays easy to get into, not that I did much different this time around (which is the first time in a good while for me). Just small arms, energy weapons, lockpicking, and speech, mostly. I got very lucky and found the flying saucer/alien blaster pretty early on, which trivializes some of the tougher encounters later.

I wish the inventory/interface was better designed, and that you could do more with the companions. Overall, though, this is one of the best RPGs ever created.

The most important thing, though, is that I got all the way through the game with my dog. Reloaded every time he got killed and made sure to get him through stuff no matter how fiddly and exploitative the solution was. That's the true victory for me.

Beat Void Bastards on PS5 yesterday. I've been aware of the game's existence for years but I always thought that it's just a simple boomer shooter with an original graphics style. Meanwhile it's not a boomer shooter at all but a roguelike immersive sim. It's got a rather light approach to both of these things but still, that is what Void Bastards is and I got a lot more interested in the game when I found out.

Well, I think it's pretty amazing. I'm neither the biggest fan of roguelikes nor immersive sims but this combo is right up my alley as I feel that only a format with high stakes and without the ability to load all the time makes immersive sims truly shine as it forces you to live through difficult situations and improvise, actually using all the interesting options that they give you (and it's for similar reasons that I enjoyed Deathloop much more than Dishonored).

In Void Bastards you assume the role of inmates from a ship stranded in a void. The ship's AI sends these poor souls on errand runs to recover the parts necessary to re-enable FTL travel and escape. So between levels you navigate a map in a turn-based manner, constantly consuming fuel and food and sometimes avoiding other ships or creatures that also move around the map. This aspect of the game is actually quite basic but combined with the survival and crafting economy as well as clever rules for navigating the void (you can only move between connected nodes and only to the right) your decisions on how to navigate the void become actually very meaningful and interesting. As you study the derelict ships that you can go on and their risks (e.g. enemy types and numbers and special conditions like e.g. electrical hazards or allied aliens) and opportunities (supplies and crafting components to find) you should generally plan your route several turns ahead. If you've played e.g. Slay the Spire you get the idea.

The main dish is the aforementioned immersive sim, though. Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty basic one as the levels take the form of simple almost two-dimensional dungeons composed of a relatively limited set of generic parts and you don't get particularly deep systems and interactions to work with but it becomes very engaging thanks to constant pressure. On one hand you've got the strategic pressure to maintain a supply of food and fuel, on the other hand you've got limited health, ammo and even oxygen during each run. You must beat each level in just a couple of minutes and that makes the gameplay pretty exciting and forces you to make big decisions on the fly. And while also this part of the gameplay is mechanically very basic, it does offer some depth and diversity as you gradually unlock new gear and upgrades for it which unlocks new strategies. And even once you've unlocked all the guns and gadgets in the game you're still limited to several slots which you must fill appropriately for the dangers ahead - if not, you will be ill-equipped to deal with certain enemies and will have to choose stealth or just run away in panic when you run into them. On top of all this stuff your current character has several perks which will further affect how you should play the game.

But here's the thing: I did my first playthrough on normal and I only found the game to be exciting in the first couple of hours. Soon enough I was drowning in supplies and utterly overpowered and I actually didn't die a single time throughout the entire campaign (besides the tutorial which forcefully kills you at the end - and that scripted death was why I didn't get a trophy for not dying even once - shit move, devs, shit move). About half-way through I just started breezing through all levels, easily disposing of anything I faced and looting every single ship completely dry with ample time left. That was pretty boring. It doesn't help that you've seen all rooms and enemy types soon enough.

Now I've started a second playthrough (this time with the DLC activated) and I made the choice to play on the hardest difficulty and boy oh boy, the magic I experienced only briefly during my first playthrough immediately came back on steroids. I actually died literally seconds into my first raid and it immediately became a genuine survival experience where I have to regularly resort to stealth, choose alternate routes that will allow me to avoid tougher enemies and prioritize certain types of loot. With easier death and less time and ammo it becomes genuinely deep, varied and exciting. And because you lose all your ammo when you die and it is quite easy to die, you should end up in spots where you have to improvise and make fight or flight decisions also later on in the campaign. It was great that when I got a new character the first thing I had to do was find a ship that would allow me to build up basic ammo supplies again and avoid using up whatever I started with.

So my recommendation: already do your first playthrough at least on hard difficulty if not the hard bastards difficulty. The meta gameplay is so forgiving that you won't ever have to start from scratch but you will definitely get a more interesting experience out of it.

Finally, the game also just looks and feels great. I really like its clean and simple cartoon style (which includes 2D enemies) and the writing has actually made me laugh a few times. For some it may be a tad too silly and it's definitely not a game you play for its story, but I found it perfectly fine for a chaotic survival game.

My only serious complaint about the game is that it fails to introduce new stuff in the later stages of the campaign (I have yet to see if the DLC addresses this issue in some way) but even so I've had a very good time with it and am happily doing a second playthrough now. Recommended.

Doors Paradox, Mar 24 (Epic Games)-Its a series of puzzle boxes (puzzle doors). Some of the puzzles are pretty good but most of them are really easy and some barely count as puzzles (open a locked drawer with the key sitting right next to it). Also the camera and inventory were really fiddly. There's also a bit of a weird story going on in the background that was really unnecessary and completely independent of anything in game. Its not great but it could have been alright with some tweaks.

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Roblox, I like to create my own games this is so exciting. I use synapse x to improve my dev skills at Roblox. It is the ultimate virtual universe that lets me create, share experiences with friends, and be anything I can imagine. The executor provides a wide range of features and tools for gamers. This tool is a must have for every Roblox user.

Dishonored 2 is generally a good game. Since I played original Dishonored many years back, I did not remember, that Outsiders power makes you almost invincible, so I took it. Even when played non-lethal way, game was sometimes extremely easy even on hard difficulty. Always it only needed some time to learn structures in the level and then game was very quick. Next time I would prefer play it without special powers to make it more demanding.

RoboCop:Rogue City

Really enjoyed it, a welcome change of pace for a FPS, no running or dashing but the slow indestructible walk. Perfectly captured the feel of the first 2 movies and a joy to hear Peter Weller revise his role.

Just finished Dragon Age 2 for the first time. Very disappointed. They took a large game like DAO and released an action console game, with generic loot, insanely overused maps, and some of the most unlikeable companions I've ever had to suffer in a game. The story greatly underwhelmed me, the "conflict" was ridiculously heavy handed, every NPC was unlikeable, and the ending had no choice, just an illogical illusion of choice. Don't spend the whole game telling me to pick a side, only for there to be no choice at the end. If I wanted media with no choices I could have watched a movie.

Looked at a few images of DA Inquisition, and all I saw were combat images. Should I name my character xXxhaxxor93xXx while causing thousands in damage with each hit? I have very low hopes going forward. /rant