Harcore Henry.
Awesome and amazing. With this and the John Wick movies having come out in the span of a scant few years, it makes it feel like we're having kind of a small renaissance in the action genre. Original, inventive, and most of all, absolutely fun as all hell. We need more like this. More movies where the stunt men are pretty much entirely in charge.
Oh, and Sharlto Copley is great in this. But that's nothing new; he's always pretty great in anything.

Ex Machina.
Not a bad flick. Covers a lot of the usual bases that other movies about AI tend to cover, but tries to do it a little more "artistically," I suppose. It's totally gripping while you're watching it , but I'd say it kind of fails to pay everything off in the end. There's so much build-up, and so much expectation grows that something really, really clever is going to happen in the story... but then it doesn't. It ends a bit predictably, with kind of a weak "twist" that totally failed to get much of a reaction out of me.
Like I said though, it's not bad. Oscar Isaac is always a great presence to have around, and the girl playing the robot does a great job. The guy playing the main character kind of sucks though. About as uninteresting and awkward as a lead actor can be.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
Better than I thought it'd be, though its value is a bit lopsided.
On the one hand, it's got a really cool sci-fi story, totally reminiscent of the kinds of wacky things that might happen in old 70s deep-space comics. There are a few gags here and there that are really good (usually stuff with Drax and Mantis), and Kurt Russel is great, as always.
But on the other hand, the movie is usually trying waaaaaaay too hard to be funny, and it actually ruins the pacing at a few points. There are entire five-minute scenes dedicated to singular gags that might be fun enough on their own, but break the movie up way too much. Most of the humor falls pretty flat anyway. And there's way too much of Baby Groot (they're blatantly trying to cash in on peoples' retarded love for "cute" things, but it just makes me gag most of the time). And jesus, I've never seen another movie with more "heroes posing for the trailer" shots than this one. You know the type; some of the mains gathered together, looking around intensely as the camera spins around them and tons of CGI shit happens in the background, or just a simple slo-mo walking-toward-the-camera shot. There are so many of those shots in here, I sometimes just felt like I was watching a trailer. Because that kind of shit is made specifically for trailers. Which ultimately makes it feel a bit cheap, since "advertising" always feels like it's front-and-center, even when you're watching the movie itself.
Either way, it's still a generally fun flick. Definitely better than Civil War, especially in hindsight.

Was mentioned in another topic, but this really deserves its own.
I don't think I've ever been this taken aback by a celebrity death before. Kenny mentioned it, I looked it up, and for several minutes I honestly couldn't form any coherent sentences. Just a lot of disbelieving utterances.
It's early, so I'm sure there's still more information that'll come out, but it's so far been ruled a suicide. And that just... I dunno, I find it hard to come to grips with. The guy has consistently been mentioned and lauded as one of the greatest singer/songwriters in the music industry for years now, and it's one of the few instances where I actually agree with the masses about that stuff, fully and wholeheartedly. I've recently been trying really hard to write my own music, and Cornell has always, always been at the fore of my mind when I'd think of inspiring lyricists. The guy was a legitimate poet and artist, and exemplified everything I'd personally like to be able to do in my own efforts. I also followed him on facebook, and he'd quite regularly post happy pictures with his kids backstage or while touring. Over his entire career, he consistently wrote dark lyrics, sure, but he never, ever struck me as the deeply depressed type (if that's even why he did it; you never know with artists).
Just watched a video of his very last performance, maybe hours before he died, and the part at around 6:35-7:55 is haunting as hell now. Those lyrics weren't in the original song. Then he followed it with the original lyrics "every word I said is what I mean."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg7qw31xeXk&t=6m35s

He knew he was going to do it, and practically announced it.
I'm fucking wrecked right now.

http://oi63.tinypic.com/pvuye.jpg http://oi64.tinypic.com/2n7kns.jpg

Turns out Kiwami is getting a regular clamshell release, rather than just the steelbook they previously had listed. Cancelled the steelbook preorder and reordered with the regular version. The cover art kinda sucks though.
And Battle Chasers just looks better every time I look at it. Hauled out the old comics the other day and started dorking out at the prospect of finally getting to see that story continue, as well as finally getting official voices for the characters. Can't wait to hear Calibretto and Knolan.

^^Same. My only experience with steelbooks, the discs are unnecessarily difficult to get out and put back in, and the cases don't seem to close as well as a regular plastic snapcase.

So from what I've heard this game itself isn't quite as hot as some were expecting (what, unsatisfied gamers?! Unheard of!), but this is still some pretty badass artwork for the US cover.

http://oi68.tinypic.com/27zkttz.jpg

Looking forward to playing the second one, I'm going to give it some time before playing the sequel as I want things to feel fresh again

That's definitely a good idea. Gravity Rush is quite possibly my favorite new franchise of the past several years, but I still haven't finished the second game because I strangely burnt myself out playing it, all on it's own. There's so much content that I was trying to tackle in it, I can't even imagine trying to play the first game AND the sequel, back-to-back, while also trying to do everything in them. That's a helluva lot of floating and falling.

Just started playing this game called Shadwen.
I spotted it a while back, but only just now decided to actually buy it, Steam summer sale and all that.
I went in just expecting another standard stealth game, but it seems to have some really interesting features that really, really make it feel a helluva lot different from anything else.
The biggest thing is that if you stop pressing any controls, time stops entirely, giving you the ability to check your surroundings and assess your situation. It feels very strange at first (and will probably screw me up if I try playing anything else immediately after :lol: ), but it really does make it feel unlike anything else I've played, giving it a very big tactical edge along with all of the usual stealth mechanics.
The other big difference is that the main character has a very physics-based grappling hook which, especially when used in conjunction with the time-stopping mechanic, can be used pretty effectively for some really cool bits of platforming. Also, even though it is, as far as I can tell, an indie game all around, it actually looks pretty nice in the visual department. It's got a bit of a Thief style to it, but with a slightly wider color palette. It looks very nice so far. The cutscenes are all made up of still pieces of art unfortunately, which is a shame since the character models in-game actually look very good. But I suppose full-on animated cutscenes just weren't in the budget. It's obviously a slightly lower-budget kind of deal, but they seem to do some really nice things with the game regardless.
http://oi67.tinypic.com/zupmpv.jpg
Only played about an hour so far, but I'm digging it. I do enjoy it when people come up with new ways to keep the stealth genre fresh.

Hugo might be my favorite Martin Scorsese film.

I'll +1 on that. Not a huge Scorsese fan to begin with, but it seems like the stuff I like the most from him is usually somewhere outside of his usual crime or hard drama fare. Hugo of course being the best example, and Shutter Island being another (it's a bit predictable, but it's entertaining and has some great visual elements).

Started playing Dead By Daylight on Steam with my brothers.
This image pretty much sums it up.

http://oi63.tinypic.com/357ofwx.jpg

If you're playing as the survivors, you have to sneak around in a third-person perspective avoiding the killer, helping each other and/or repairing generators so you can power up an exit point and escape.
If you play as the killer, you have to hunt everyone else down from a first-person perspective and put them all on meat hooks so they can be sacrificed to some kind of evil entity.
It's from Starbreeze, so in a weird way it feels like the slasher movie version of Payday. It's a lot of fun, and so far makes for some really good jump scares and tense moments.

Also it has Michael Myers.
And yes, it plays the music when he gets near you.

http://oi66.tinypic.com/2hyl1f.jpg

Steam recently had a sale on pretty much all Batman games, so I went ahead and got Arkham Asylum, City, and Origins. Always thought of them specifically as console games before, so getting them on PC never even entered my mind. But someone also pointed me toward a program recently that lets you use your PS4 controller on PC (essentially emulating a 360 controller), which opened me up to a lot of games I never would have bothered with on PC otherwise.
I was always a bit annoyed that the remasters they came out with for PS4 only covered the Rocksteady-developed games, ignoring Origins (my favorite one) completely, even though it clearly had the most technical issues, and really could have used a port with a little extra care.
But now it's no matter, because I can just max the settings out (or get close to it at least) on PC and have it running even better than the PS3 version ever did. No more cutscene stutter or long load times; what once felt like an only half-QA-tested game now feels every bit as solid as Rocksteady's games.
Not to mention that it looks friggin' phenomenal too. Still has some of the best visual design work in the whole series, and having it all looking as smooth and crisp as it can be is a damn dream come true. I'm pretty happy with this. Plus it's Steam, so I can take screenshots like a goddamn madman.

http://imageshack.com/a/img923/5748/BrVe0Z.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img923/7168/rvoI7T.jpg

Beat the game and completed every Riddler puzzle (for the second time; first was on PS3, and there was at least one more playthrough before that), so then I moved on to Asylum. Origins is the only one I'd previously beaten multiple times, so this was only my second playthrough of the first game. Still great, but going back to it from the more open ones feels like a major regression, and the story is easily the silliest of them all. It's a classic, sure, but immediately going from Origins to Asylum definitely shows just how much they improved things over the years; Asylum almost feels ancient now, like a Batman version of Resident Evil. Still, I enjoyed it anyway, and went out of my way to do every single Riddler challenge, just for some semblance of completion (didn't bother with them much years ago on PS3).
And now I'm on to Arkham City. Same as Asylum, this is only my second playthrough of it, the first having been years ago. But it is pretty crazy immediately seeing again how much they added and improved between the first game and this one. City has got to be one of the most-improved sequels in the history of gaming. I'll likely aim for every Riddler puzzle in this one too. And then -- why the hell not? -- I may as well go play Arkham Knight again as well. Retardedly great game, that one was.
Hitting it all up again, I have to admit... this probably is one of my favorite series in gaming. Some of the stereotypically videogame-y elements aside (the whole "Titan Joker" thing is just goofy, though the after-effects of it do lead to some excellent story beats and elements in later games), I think I can easily consider this particular version of the Batman mythos one of the best outside of the comics, beaten only slightly by the Animated Series. Maybe . The Animated Series has the benefit of nostalgia for me, but the Arkham series just seems to nail a ittle more closely the grand majority of what I generally like to see out of Batman and his villains, and is obviously allowed to go further into "mature" territory than TAS ever could.
Even though Knight caps things off really nicely, I actually do want to see another game set in this universe, even if it is another prequel. I heard a ways back that there might be another game in development by WB Montreal, who did Origins. All just unsubstantiated rumors, but it'd be nice if it turned out to be true. Some of the rumors also suggested that Roger Craig Smith would be back as Batman, Troy Baker would play the Joker again, and that the story would involve the Court of Owls. Might be no truth to any of it, but goddamn, does it all sound great to me anyway. One can hope.
I also wouldn't mind a solo Nightwing game, but that's just me fantasizing like a fanboy. That teensy little DLC episode with him in Knight just whet my appetite for it.

Ugh, if someone tells you to play Sleeping Dogs over just about anything else, go ahead and break their nose. I could barely play more than two or three hours into it because the driving is so goddamn piss-poor.
Even the driving in Yakuza 5 was better than that, and it was little more than a goofy minigame.
But yeah, the sheer Japanese-ness of the Yakuza series is precisely its greatest strength. It's one of the few series from a major publisher that we regularly get localized that clearly isn't made with a worldwide release in mind. Pretty sure I've even read Nagoshi say before that the games are made specifically with a Japanese audience in mind, and the west doesn't even enter the equation during development. Things like that totally show through in the finished product, and I don't ever want them to change the series on account of "the rest of the world."
That being said, I will agree that the series as a whole is feeling a little long in the tooth by this point, but I wouldn't call that out as a reason for them to overhaul anything. It's just a personal mood thing. I haven't played the series in a couple years now, I think, outside of the first hour of Zero. The craving for it will probably hit again, I just have to let it. Til then, I'll still buy them as they come out, just so they're there when I need them.

After playing the first Ken's Rage, I became a total FotNS nut and watched through the entire anime in the span of something like a week and a half, two weeks. Eventually imported the PAL version of Ken's Rage 2 and loved that, whilst most others turn their noses up at it because of low production values or whatever.
I am a fan of Fist of the North Star, so this news is music to my ears.
:) It may indeed fit better in the Yakuza engine then it did in the Dynasty Warrior one: after all, Fist of the North Star is not only about fighting and exploding heads
Well, to be fair, that is mostly what it's about. The real kicker here, to me personally, is that a more Yakuza-esque style of play will more accurately represent the action from the anime and comic; I loved Ken's Rage, but fighting a hundred guys at once, a la Dynasty Warriors, isn't usually what Kenshiro was actually doing in the source material. But fighting smaller groups and actually locking on and focusing on individuals, as in Yakuza, should reflect the original material a bit better. Plus, Sega is probably just prone to higher production values than Koei anyway, so that's appealing in and of itself.

Absolver finally came out the other day, so I've been plugging away at that. Amazing fighting system. At first it seems simple, but once you start piecing together your own "decks" of fighting moves, you start to realize how complex the balancing must have been for it. Most games utilizing combos use a simple system of alternating between attacks using different buttons, but just as important in this case is the direction you're facing in relation to your opponent. Your character does different moves depending on if you're facing diagonal-left-toward, diagonal-right-toward, diagonal-left-away, or diagonal-right-away. Sounds weird on paper, but it makes the process of learning new moves and piecing them together in interesting ways ridiculously addictive, trying to make sure everything flows as quickly as you want.
It also looks kind of like if Fumito Ueda decided to make a hand-to-hand combat game.
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img923/4774/esyTCY.jpg

Also been playing through Arkham Knight, trying to complete my full-series run.
And Yakuza Kiwami just got here in the mail, so I'm starting to feel the urge to go back and finally go through Zero.

It was okay. There was only one truly great action scene in the entire thing (the office fight, when they all finally meet), and I don't think the end result was quite as epic as they were probably aiming for. Honestly I thought the whole show felt weirdly cheap compared to, at the very least, the level of polish that seemed to go into the first two seasons of Daredevil. Makes me a little wary of the future of Marvel's Netflix shows, what with Luke Cage being generally underwhelming, Iron Fist being flat out bad, and Defenders being a bit ho-hum.
Hopefully the Punisher will make up for all this. Jon Bernthal was mesmerizing as hell in DD season 2, so I hope that carries over. Lord knows Daredevil is pretty much a lost cause now, with Matt Murdock and the entire supporting cast having been rendered as whiny pussies now.

^^It sounds to me likes it's not so much about the Kiwami being mediocre, but rather that old fans (the ones no doubt most excited about any entry in the series) have already basically played the game, being that it's a remake. The stuff I'm hearing doesn't seem so much like the game itself is poor, just that it's nothing new or particularly exciting.
But yeah, should be easy to adjust expectations based on that. I've played through the original game... twice, I think? And no, it's not the greatest game in the series, but I still like the story, and finally playing it in Japanese will be nice (much as I like Mark Hamill, hearing him as Majima was never anything but distracting; I did always think Michael Rosenbaum was a surprisingly good Nishiki, though).
If anything, I'll probably find the major changes to be the worst part; the excess of Majima, for example, seems like too much (like Leroy was saying). Majima has always struck me as a bit of a Jack Sparrow type of character; the one who steals the show when he's around, but probably shouldn't be milked too much. And he's definitely being milked by this point. In the original game, his presence was minimal but memorable. And that's really how it should have stayed.

I tend to stay out of the Shenmue areas of the forums for the most part, so excuse me if this gets talked about much.
But random thought: I really hope SIII maintains the replayability of the previous two games. I was thinking about it, and the first two have a very unique style of progression, where being at this place at this time will trigger a unique event, and there's absolutely no hints or indicators signalling exactly where and when they're placed. It all just happens organically, and as you play the game subsequent times you discover new little tidbits here and there, with no reward other than the experience of finding them. And yet, missing these scenes and then hearing about them later from others never makes it feel like you screwed up; it just gives you a little urge to try and see them next time. You're practically guaranteed not to see everything the first time through, and yet no playthrough of either game ever feels "incomplete."
Most games nowadays have absolutely nothing like that. Not that I can think of at least. Games nowadays tend to point you directly toward any additional scenes or events that might happen. And if they don't , then people label the un-marked events as easter eggs. By that logic, Shenmue and Shenmue II were just littered to the brim with "easter eggs," but never acted like they were anything super secret; they were just extensions of how lively the game world was.
I really hope Shenmue III follows through in the exact same way. I don't want any glowing indicators on a world map telling me where everything is; I want to stumble across it all myself, or hear about things on the forum here. I think "modernizing" the game too much with things like that would absolutely kill some of the appeal of subsequent replays.

I wouldn't call it a "problem." I personally prefer the first game's method, if only because it's more authentic, and I'll take authenticity over western accessibility every time with stuff like this. If they said it one way in the Japanese audio, that's how I want to see it in the subs, or hear the English VA saying it. Always bothers the crap out of me playing the Yakuza games, where the Japanese voice actor obviously says "Kiryu Kazuma" but the subs say "Kazuma Kiryu."

Anyway, as for why there's this discord between the two Shenmue games, I'd guess that the localization for the first game was just done really quickly; Ryo's name was "corrected" the way it was because he's the single most present character in the entire game, so westernizing his name was a priority, while ones like Zhu Yuan Da or Tao Li Shao are just mentions in dialogue, and therefore get passed over more quickly in the translation.

You sure about that?

I'm pretty sure no one is sure about anything.
Being that it's all conjecture.

Anyway, you're all assuming that the person in his arms is dead.
What if they just got married? Ryo might just be carrying his bride across the threshold into their new home.
Also it's not Ryo, it's Akira. So a lot may have changed since 1996 regardless.

I have absolutely no doubt that many are probably whining about this, over the fact that it isn't a new mainline, wanzer-commanding strategy game. Shucks to all that; this looks and sounds fucking cool. Love the idea (oddly enough, I've actually fantasized about a stealth game against giant robots before), the visual design is in good hands, and you probably couldn't ask for a better director for something like this. Also very cool that it'll be based in Zaftra for once (one trailer says Novo Slava, but I'm guessing that's the name of the city); unless I'm mistaken, we've never really seen Zaftra before, right? Had them as enemies, but I don't think the series has ever actually gone there .
Takes place five years after FM5, so in a sense it actually is a followup to the main series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NKXaBo3Ld8

Maybe I'm crazy, but I almost got a bit of a Nier vibe off of the music in that trailer. Just the moody, choral style of it.
I think this game just jumped to the top of my "Good god, I want to see more" list.

First of all, I think it would be a mistake to cast all Japanese actors. This thing needs international appeal, and I can't think of any Japanese actors that can really draw a serious crowd.
With that in mind, my casting would go like this:

Ryo Hazuki - Fred Savage
https://image.ibb.co/ixxHEQ/1ryofred.png
For the main character, of course you need to cast the greatest actor who ever lived, Fred Savage. You could probably even recreate the carrots scene by splicing together old footage from The Wonder Years and having him dub over it. His voice is exactly the same as it was back then, so it all works out.

Iwao Hazuki - Danny Glover
https://image.ibb.co/fbkZTk/2iwaodanny.png
Because you need a black guy.

Lan Di - Ninja from Die Antwoord
https://image.ibb.co/jHNsEQ/landininja.png
If we're gonna get Neil Blomkamp to direct this thing -- and let's face it, he's the only choice there can possibly be, what with all the robots that have to be added -- then you need to get an actor that literally only Neil Blomkamp thinks is worthwhile.

Guizhang - Kevin Hart
https://image.ibb.co/jun68k/guizhangkevin.png
Because sometimes you need two black guys.

Ine-san - Amy Schumer
https://image.ibb.co/nwriok/inesanamy.png
It always seemed to me like the developers wanted Ine-san to be like super funny, and she always had this smug attitude about herself like she thought she was hilarious.
But she wasn't. Like, not even a little bit.

Megumi - Leonardo DiCaprio
http://oi68.tinypic.com/2808dbk.jpg
One of the most adventurous actors in Hollywood. I think he'd welcome the chance to really stretch his abilities by playing a little special needs Japanese girl. We could win this thing some goddamn Oscars.

^^To be fair, their funding goes beyond just the money raised in the kickstarter.

Anyway, I'm not impressed, I'm not disappointed.
It just is what it is. And what it is, is a twenty-second look at someone on the dev team moving a couple sliders to make a face move. Even he's kind of making fun of it as he goes.
It's a work it progress, and only barely represents what the final product will be. It's not exactly something we can gauge overall quality on.
I don't understand this need to either be really impressed by it (it's really not impressive at all; I've seen better animation in SFM porn), or to put it down for not being on the level of a friggin' Naughty Dog game.
I'm pretty sure it's okay to be neutral about it.

^^Need to play more of that.

Arkham Origins, grappling with Firefly during a midair freefall over Gotham Bridge. Part of why this is my favorite in the series; I'm not sure any of the others had boss battles quite this grand and bombastic. Not even Arkham Knight.
http://oi68.tinypic.com/64ntat.jpg

Oh shit... it really does look like a Yakuza game.
Not a massive fan of the rendering/graphical style (even on their lower budgets, I think the Ken's Rage games had that stuff down perfectly, so I'm incredibly biased), but actually seeing how populated the world of Hokuto is is really nice, and that battle system is straight out of RGG.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_O5xBjw2Io

Does it really matter? If he's not interested, it's entirely possible that he's just not interested . If he immediately knew what it was (regardless of how ignorant he is to the gameplay), no doubt he knows what its aesthetics are; that of it being steeped in Japanese/Chinese culture and all that. Typically that's the most appealing aspect for the majority of the series' fans. So if that, in itself, isn't enough to get him to play it, then it's probably just not something he's gonna dig.
There are games like that for me too; stuff like Mass Effect or the Witcher come to mind. I already know what they are and know they're never gonna be favorites of mine, so I'd rather no one was setting out on a mission to "change my mind" about them. I'm just not interested. So I'd say, for people like that... just let it be. Not everyone has to like Shenmue.

Tell your friend QTEs are just a mini game and that the game is mainly a 3D beat them up RPG with a strong narrative.

Well... that's not really what it is either, if we look at it honestly.
The beat-em-up elements are only as prominent as the QTE sequences, so you may as well call them a minigame as well. It's no more a beat-em-up than Indigo Prophecy/Farenheit was.
And calling it an "RPG" is, especially in the modern videogame sense of the genre, wholly misleading. It was a branding that the devs put on the game back in the day mainly because RPGs were the top-selling genre in Japan, so just about everything was being advertised as "RPG." The only RPG-esque thing about it is the fact that you can improve your moveset through use, but nowadays everything from Devil May Cry to Call of Duty to Dead By Daylight to Assassin's Creed has that.
It's always been strange to me that the series' fans rarely ever refer to the series with the most obvious genre label available: Adventure.
It's vague, sure, but it's far more accurate than most other labels the series tends to get saddled with. I'd say the series really has more in common, from a pacing and progression standpoint, with old point-n-click adventure games, just with more freedom and variety.

Uh... 1, 2, and 4 are all basically derived from the same model, and have been retouched since they're all parts of promotional art.

Shouldn't the options be more like, I dunno... Dreamcast model, Passport model, Saturn model, Shenmue Online render, SIII prototype model, and SIII final model? Something like that?
Just a thought.

^^I think that's actually the general consensus on it among most fans.
I personally really like it (mainly for the atmosphere of Okinawa), but it easily has the least-compelling story of them all outside of Y5, and little else about the game adds anything new to the series as a whole. If ever there was one that you could call "just another" Yakuza game, it'd be 3.
Still, that Okinawa atmosphere.

Shweet. I'll have to check out and see if the PS4 version has that, and maybe I've just missed it all this time. Messing about in Arkham Knight with that would be amazing. Spent hours doing that in Mad Max.

Another Arkham Origins one. Not exactly posed by me, but the timing of the shot was good.

https://image.ibb.co/eg0QbG/20170815000825_1.jpg

Jesus Christ. :lol:
I don't think I've ever seen anyone make such a big fuss over a logo. And no, not just in this topic, but ever since SIII was announced I've been hearing the same stuff.
The absolute least important thing about the entire game, and people still get uppity about it. Absolute gold. =D>

Game does look cool... but am I the only one that's actually put off by the way they're shoehorning Majima into everything now?
I was saying it not too long ago, but it bears repeating: too much Majima is a bad thing. He was so memorable in the first two games precisely because his presence was minimal. He was the cool, crazy, unpredictable badass, so when he shows up at various few-and-far-between points, those points absolutely stick with you . If he's constantly popping up, his appearances mean less and less. Plus, the atmosphere will take a goddamn nosedive. I haven't played through Kiwami yet, but I can only imagine that the "Majima everywhere" system is going to completely neuter the tension of the battling cages segment when I do. In the original PS2 version, it was tense and dark and compelling because you didn't know what this psycho would do, and even if I've seen the story before, that atmosphere will still remain. But if you have Majima jumping out of trashcans and showing up in goofy costumes for the whole game up to that point, it's just gonna seem like a joke.
So, honestly, I really don't want to play as Majima in Kiwami 2. I wish that kind of thing was just left out.

People bash it because of the cut content, but who cares? Am I seriously the only person wo has EVER played the series that greatly detests the hostesses stuff? I thought cutting all that out and just going on dates was super for the pacing, saved in-game money and just made for a less-detracting experience.

No, you're right, the hostess stuff has never struck me as terribly compelling either. I almost always skip right past it. Only tried delving into it once, in Y2 I think. It doesn't seem like something Kazuma, as a character, would actually bother with, so it's always felt out-of-place and pointless.
But the cut content has nothing at all to do with why I personally place Y3 kind of low when ranking the series. It's not a bad game in the least; in fact, I actually consider the early Okinawa sections to be the closest any game has ever gotten to a genuinely Shenmue-esque atmosphere. Not in terms of literal aesthetics, obviously, but rather in the sort of laid-back, leisurely progression through a small-town story that it has. A lot of people complained that it was too slow in the beginning, but I quite liked that myself.
But, while pretty much every single other title in the series has a narrative that feels grand and affecting to the entire Yakuza franchise, Y3 is the only one that strike me as feeling much smaller and less-important than any of the others. You could remove it from the series entirely, and you wouldn't really be missing anything necessary to the other games. It doesn't even do anything new in regards to gameplay, really, outside of removing the fixed camera during exploration (which Kenzan did previously anyway, right?).
It's a good game regardless but, cut content aside, I still think it makes total sense why it tends to rank a little lower among fans.

Messing around with the photo modes. Every game should have this feature, seriously. I just imagine being able to capture shots like this in something like Armored Core or Assassin's Creed and I get all excited. This kind of thing ought to be standard practice by now.

http://oi68.tinypic.com/4ncys.jpg
http://oi65.tinypic.com/2vcepvm.jpg

^^Posing in an 80s new wave music video?

Developed a bit of an obsession goin round takin pictures when I finished Arkham Knight:

https://i.imgur.com/sZg5E2B.png
https://i.imgur.com/gPmJIX6.png
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That's... pretty fucking rad, actually. Does the PC version of Arkham Knight have some kind of screenshot mode (Mad Max and the PS4 version of The Last of Us had a thing like that)? Or is it the work of some outside program?

Was just trying out Tomb Raider Anniversary yesterday, and ran across a glitch where the enemies refused to attack.
So we became friends.

https://image.ibb.co/mwiQab/20170928224857_1.jpg
Lara Croft: Queen of the Wolves.

Since when does any of this qualify as "sexual assault"?
I don't know shit about NeoGAF. I don't pay attention to or bother with most gaming sites or forums or whatever the hell it is. So I know nothing about the guy or the people surrounding him. I don't care to know.
But just going by the article, two instances are mentioned: he grabbed somebody while in a drunken stupor back in 2012 ("grabbed," mind you; for all we know, it could have been on the shoulder), and he got in a shower naked with someone, then left when told to .
The actions of a dumb douchebag?
Sure. He doesn't sound like anyone I'd want to be friends with.
But calling this "sexual assault" is a disgusting exaggeration. "Sexual assault" is an actionable offense. It's the kind of thing people go to prison for. Hard prison. Like, "fuck you up the ass while an excited Southerner slaps you in the face and tells you to oink like a piggie" prison. Then you get stabbed with a toothbrush shiv.
The guy is clearly a dumbass, but the things he's accused of are just stupid frat boy bullshit. He didn't rape the girl in the shower; he left when she said she wasn't interested. Whether he acted like a jerk later is besides the point. And whatever "grabbing" he did five years ago was done while inebriated, and apparently led to nothing else afterward.
Sure, he sounds like a complete dong, and people can do whatever they want to defame him on the internet. But phrasing it so that he sounds like a dangerous criminal is ridiculous.

@ OL. Your post is very disturbing. You excuse his "grabbing" because he was drunk!?
(No, it wasn't 'maybe just on her shoulder' - OBVIOUSLY!. Even 30 seconds research would have informed you).

When is being wasted ever an excuse? "Yeh, your honor. I mowed down those school kids in my Porsche but, to be fair, I'd had 2 bottles of JD and a line of coke".
Where is the cut-off point when being drunk doesn't qualify as an excuse?
Is it before or after rape?

Then you excuse him getting into the shower naked with a shocked woman because he "left when told to".

Is it acceptable to surprise anyone by showing up naked and hoping it's welcome?

Would you make the same excuses if your mother, wife or daughter were telling you the story? No.
Maybe the definition of sexual assault should be changed:
Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient - unless you're drunk, or misjudge the situation. Then you get a free pass.

Maybe one day a guy will surprises you by getting naked and jumping into a shower with you. Maybe he'll leave when you tell him to. But maybe he''ll just f*ck you up the ass. Maybe you'll like it and you'll both live happily ever after. Who knows.

TBH I suspected you were a creep after your 21st Oct post in the Screenshots thread.
But thanks for the confirmation.

If YOU are an administrator/moderator for the dojo then, as with NeoGAF, I want no part of it. I'm outie.

Fix up.


:lol:
You do realize you just directly compared drunken groping to the mass shooting of school children, right?
Clearly you're the level-headed type.
But if you'd read my post with any ounce of non-bias, you may have picked up the vague hint that I wasn't saying it was excusable behavior, but that it was non-jailable. The guy's not a criminal, he's just a dumb jerk. And the fact that someone's a douchebag isn't an excuse to throw them in jail.
And likewise, my post in the screenshots thread was a sarcastic joke about how unsubtle and bad 3D 90s games looked. But I understand that one with such a sophisticated sense of humor such as yourself might not have recognized that.
We'll miss you! :hello:

No clue if anyone will even post in here, but I have fun with this stuff, so maybe others will too.
Half the fun of playing anything on Steam, for me, is the ability to take screenshots. My finger hovers over the screenshot button during just about any cutscene of any game, and occasionally I go out of my way to set up cool shots during actual gameplay as well.
Sometimes it's all about the beauty of a shot, sometimes it's about how brutal it looks, sometimes it's nostalgic, sometimes it's just something funny.
Whatever the case, I love doing it, and it's always nice to see what other people come up with as well.

So post your shots here. Any game, any reason.

Might end up being a failure of a topic (not a ton of activity here lately), but I'll keep up with it as long as others do.
Can also be PS4 shots (though those are harder to take accurately, since the system tends to be a bit slower).

I'm playing a bit of the first Kane and Lynch earlier, and Lynch knocks someone out during a cutscene. It happens too fast to notice anything when you're actually playing, but her expression cracked me up when I finally saw it while sorting through the shots I'd taken. :lol:
http://oi66.tinypic.com/eg73ti.jpg
"Bitch, you just got Lynched ."

Looking good for the most part, but I will admit: I cringed when the trailer basically started with Peter pining after a normal life.
Facepalm, eye roll.
I used to love Spider-Man as a kid, but I'd say his absolute greatest weakness in terms of appeal is his propensity toward whining about being a fucking superhero . I can really do without that shite.
Still, the game looks ever higher-grade than I was expecting from a production value standpoint. Very pretty. And the little bits I've seen of gameplay really are basically "Arkham meets Spider-Man," so that should be all good.

I do consider it to be one of the greatest games ever, personally, mostly for the fact that it's so simple and elegant in its design, yet still manages to be as exciting and beautiful as it is. Few games before it could pull something like that off so effectively, and most games after it still over-complicate things.
Looking at the remake though, it's actually even prettier than I was expecting. Very nice upgrade. We still have yet to see legitimate gameplay, far as I'm aware, so hopefully that's remained relatively untouched. It's strange with videogames sometimes, where the slightest changes can makes something feel totally different. I know they're aiming to make it basically the exact same thing, but the slightest change in physics could make it feel "weird" to old fans, so hopefully that's not the case.

Ugh. I actually think Fox is on a pretty good path with the X-Men franchise at the moment. Giving it up to Marvel would seriously fuck all that up. Marvel is obsessed with their continuity and accessibility. If Marvel had owned the X-Men a few years ago, we never would have gotten movies like Logan or Deadpool, or tv ventures of the caliber of Legion. They would want it all to fit in with their shite little Avengers universe, and force it all to have the same PG-13 sense of humor and mega-mainstream appeal.
Fuck all that.
Some people blow their loads at the thought of Wolverine and Captain America teaming up, but I've always, ever since I was a kid, thought that the X-Men works much better if treated like it's in its own little universe. Even in the comics, crossovers with the rest of the Marvel universe always felt strangely crowded and ill-fitting to me.
Really hope this doesn't happen.

^^I feel like all this shit is being exaggerated anyway. I'm not some diehard, "he's never wrong" type of supporter of him or anything, I just think it all sounds a bit extreme for a guy who's comedy act is primarily based around taking a level-headed look at how weird and shitty the rest of the world can seem.

Shenmue is just a proven money sink for them. It technically made them next to nothing in profits with the first two games. Businesses typically run based on the numbers, and the numbers don't work out in Shenmue's favor. Even that 800,000 views is paltry compared to the views that more successful games tend to get.
I mean, they're worth way over a billion dollars so the amount required to get Shenmue III fully funded should basically be nothing compared to what they're worth, right?
That's not really how things work. That's like saying "Donald Trump is worth however many billions or hundreds of millions... why doesn't he just give me a million dollars? It's like nothing to him. He can afford it."
70 million has never been "basically nothing" to anyone. It doesn't matter how much Sega is worth, 70 million will always be a lot of money. And if they could put that toward more profitable ventures instead, then there's no way they're going to just throw it out there for a brand that previously didn't even break even.
The success of the Kickstarter likewise means nothing. It only proves that the people who put money into it are interested, not that the public as a whole is. Shenmue still isn't a huge name, no matter how well the Kickstarter did.
In another topic you also once said that 50 million would be nothing to Bill Gates, so we should get him to help fund the game. I get the sneaking suspicion you might be slightly naive about these things.

So Civil War was alright. Always hated the comic event, but this one just kind of took its name rather than the story itself, so it's not so bad. Still, one of the reasons I hated the comic was that there was an obvious "right" side and an obvious "wrong" one to the conflict, and that element is still very much intact. In order to force the story into motion, you have to make some of the characters side on the "wrong" end of things, and that in turn hurts the characters.
The comic story made me hate Iron Man, when previously I fucking loved Iron Man. The movie doesn't quite hit that extreme, necessarily, but it definitely steps in that direction. Tony Stark is a fucking prick, and not even a fun one anymore. Even with all his Robert Downey Jr.-ness and witty witticisms and whatnot, he turns into a total asshat in this movie. The biggest reason being
his total willingness to recruit a child to act as a soldier for him.
Yeah, Spider-Man is fucking fifteen years old , and Tony Stark sees no problem recruiting him to fight another team of superheroes. He doesn't even present the political issue to him and convince him onto his side; he just uses his identity as rich Mr. Stark to friggin' peer pressure Peter Parker into it. The only reason Peter goes with him is to impress him, because "holy shit, celebrity!"
No two ways about it, Tony Stark is exploiting a child. He's Solidus Snake.
Not to mention that blaming the destruction of the previous movies on the Avengers is moronic (well, ignoring the fact that Ultron was Stark's fault anyway), and with so many super-threats to the world out there, the Avengers are the only protection the world has. So regardless of the casualties the world has suffered (which were the fault of the villains, not the heroes), limiting the Avengers is a dumb fucking idea.

So yeah, motivation-wise and all that, I have some issues with the way it damages certain characters. Same problem I had with the comic story.
But regardless, the action is still great, and most of the characters are still fun as hell. Captain America, Spider-Man, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, Falcon; all friggin' gold.
Iron Man, War Machine, Black Widow, Black Panther, and Scarlet Witch however; all either as boring as, or as dumb as a bag of rocks. Dear god, Elizabeth Olsen does quite possibly the worst attempt at an Eastern European accent I've ever heard in a movie.
Waitaminute, that spiraled into negativity faster than I meant for it to...
It's a fun movie with problems. Good popcorn stuff.
But I think Winter Soldier was better.

HOLY SHIT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVTKEc-mu8

Compared to this, that Gotham By Gaslight movie DC is coming out with soon looks like absolute dogshit. Actually, that looked like dogshit even before I had this to compare it to, but this just drives the point home even further.
Can't wait. This looks amazing.