#and also played a bit of the original game when eden was released

[hoshiszora-archived]

Part of me wanting to get into HSR, but as cool as HSR looks I'm... likely not even gonna bother with it

[veemo4]

2023 Media Thread (Re-do to add a Read More Link)

Spark The Electric Jester 3:

Man I was holding off on spoilers for MONTHS until the holidays when I could get this game, and I only beat it in the beginning of the year and well…HOLY SHIT I didn’t know I needed existentialism in my funny little platformer- Gameplay is INSANELY solid, like honestly some of my favorite platforming controls I have ever used! Music is top notch as well!

Nier Automata: The End of YoRHa Edition:

Holy fuck how did I manage to avoid spoilers for this game for YEARS??? That ending was beautiful~ (Yes I did do all the main endings)

Chrono Trigger: I should preface this by saying I did modify this game a tiiiiny bit to have PS4 button prompts and fixing the Classic filter. Other than that, I can see why it’s a lot of people’s favorite RPG! Short enough in case you wanna replay it, and the foundation of the NG+ system definitely helps incentivize replays! Can’t wait to play Chrono Cross!

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII:

I binged both FFXIII and FFXIII-2 during October and November of last year, but took a short break to avoid burnout. And well, yeah this game was neat! I will admit though that since there’s no way to REWIND time like in Majora’s Mask that I got INSANELY stressed out but that didn’t take away from the sweet release of seeing these characters I love finally get their well-deserved happy ending :)

Mega Man Zero:

I put this one off and on throughout like 2 years because I just wasn’t good at it, but it taught me a VERY good lesson in perseverance! Really excited to play Zero 2!

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion: ZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK ;w; Story was pretty…alright for the most part, but I couldn’t feel attached to any of the original characters :/ Honestly my eyes were on Zack just…being real with what’s going on. I may not feel bad for when people he cares about dies, but I can EASILY emphasize with him because I know that HE knows them. Knows them more than we ever will know. Also the gameplay and music are fucking stellar.

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes:

I should preface all of this by saying I don’t remember what order I beat all of these in lmao. Anyways my route was Golden Wildfire and the story for it is such an improvement over its equivalent in Three Houses!!! I love Shez so much as a protagonist even if his outfit is a tiny bit dumb.

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker

Man I really wanted to like this. And like, music and area wise I loved it! But the story feels…It just doesn’t feel like the finality for all we’ve done so far. I could not care at all for Meteion because they spend approximately like 20 or 30 minutes making us meet them and then throwing us IMMEDIATELY into the angst like, no. This isn’t even a case of “Well I don’t care but I can understand why others do” NO THE GAME MAKES YOUR WOL FEEL BAD AS WELL, MEANING YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO CARE! NO! I DON’T! I was able to at least pretend a little bit to roleplay as needed but man. At least Footfalls and the post-endwalker dungeon themes kick ass though. (Warrior of Light’s name for me is M’bahlon Tia)

Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe

SO CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE I love kirby games sm and this is no exception. REALLY loved how hard the Magolor Epilogue got at certain points though that was great.

Fire Emblem Awakening

I CAN SEE WHY THIS SAVED THE FRANCHISE WHEN IT CAME OUT!! It’s a REALLY good game! I went with the default male Robin settings since that’s what’s in Smash Bros. And man just, everything about this game is AMAZING!!! Sadly cannot see myself replaying it anytime. I could just load my endgame save and grind out support conversations with other characters or do that…new game plus thing I think it was?

Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space: Bound Wills and the Hollow Puppeteer

I did this event initially back when it came out (and in fact is the main reason why I played the game in the first place) But I got horrible units and died super often, and revived every chance I got. But losing my save data and getting a better unit HEAVILY boosted my chances of getting through the event and man, it was a lot of fun! I love seeing tiny mona :3 JUST LOOK AT HOW SMOL HE IS AAAAAAAAA

Mighty Gunvolt Burst:

I had a lot of fun with this one! I used one of the DLC characters (I think they’re the Zero character from Mighty Number 9 but) it’s a great romp!

EDIT: ALSO SHOULD MENTION IT FUCKING OWO’D ME

Final Fantasy XV

“Walk tall…my friends.” I got this game YEARS ago but haven’t truly delved into it recently. And well… That ending got to me. It really did. The gameplay took me so long to get used to (especially since I had been more used to the more refined gameplay of Final Fantasy 7 Remake 3 years prior) Music is amazing, love the characters! I just wish the other episodes were finished and weren’t just put in a novel :/

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

HOLY FUCK THIS GAME WAS SO COOL. I always heard like, right, about how good this game was but I figured it was just nostalgia talking for people. NOPE. As someone who’s first paper mario game was super (never beat it, I was a really stupid child) and then played Sticker Star (Again, very stupid child but also that game is bullshit because everything is so obtuse and it sucks) But this? This was a big breath of fresh air. I am so excited to go back and play 64 and Super!!!

The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Honestly? Way better than I was expecting. You can FEEL nintendo had a strangle-hold on the movie’s production though from how Chris Pratt in the final movie actually fucking voice acts somewhat (it’s a start), there’s no bad Illumination tropes, Peach is a dragoon, Toad and Bowser easily steal the show, and just, ALL THE REFERENCES WOW. EVEN THE NEWER THINGS. I didn’t see any Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi references though which makes me sad. I hope that if there’s a sequel it’s actually better and doesn’t fall into any traps movie sequels usually do, maybe even say if the other kingdoms from Mario Odyssey are in this universe (and maybe Isle Defino) The movie definitely could have used an extra 20 minutes spread throughout to add more to the main group dynamic.

Mega Man Zero 2

OH MY GOD THIS WAS SO MUCH BETTER BALANCE-WISE HOLY SHIT Cyber-elves requirements to be leveled up were MASSIVELY lowered and the enemy AI isn’t as overly aggressive! Loved the music too, especially Departure and the ending theme which was adapted for the song Clover! Can’t wait to do Zero 3!

WARE WA MESSIAH NARI! HAHAHA!

Mega Man Zero 3 was really good, but either I am getting way too good at these games or they are getting easier haha. Loved the music and gameplay though, and how Cyber Elves were handled here is absolutely the best they have ever been! If there’s any game in this series I am gonna replay, it’s Zero 3 without a doubt! On to Mega Man Zero 4, the last of the GBA era.

Mega Man Zero 4

I finally did it. I beat the entire Mega Man Zero series. While I do not agree with how the parts and cyber elf system were handled, It was not a bad experience by any means! It felt nice following Zero’s character arc throughout these games. I’m maybe gonna take a break before I tackle Mega Man ZX, but hey, I feel like that game’s gonna be fun! It’s the only one I actually OWN on its original hardware after all! :D

Sonic and the Black Knight

This was a fun distraction for a few hours! I had a lot of fun with this! Granted the second King Arthur fight took me an hour but besides that it was a quick and good romp! Probably has one of the best final boss themes in a sonic game I’ve ever heard! :D

The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past

Pretty fun game all things considered, but I didn’t like how punishing some of the design philosophies were in the end parts of the game. Music’s great though! Maybe I’ll revisit it one day, but not anytime soon. Still, can’t say I disliked my experience.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Where…do I even begin with this?…It was…genuinely amazing. I was waiting for a sequel to Breath of the Wild for years, and during my high school years I was wondering how they would even follow it up! Doing a sequel to an open-world game is harder than a lot of other genres.      But yet….they did it. They somehow did it. Those 6 years of development time more than paid off. It felt…amazing to run around a changed Hyrule from the last game. The mechanics were amazing, and the character development was really cool! The new rune abilities are dope!!!    BUT THE MUSIC MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM THE MUSIC OH THE MUSIC IS SO GOOD THE ENDING MUSIC MADE ME ACTUALLY CRY AHHHHHHHH PLAY THIS GAME PLAY IT NOW

Kirby and the Forgotten Land

And here we are! Finally got around to this! It was a really dope game! Loved the combat and music! I even did most of the bonus content and the Ultimate Cup Z, but I kept dying at the final phase of the final boss of that so I just gave up lol, it’s purely bonus content anyways lol. But honestly I loved this game! Can’t wait for the next mainline kirby game!

The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD

FINALLY GOT AROUND TO PLAYING THIS ONE! I owned this on real hardware since its release date but never got far. I finally got around to it with the motivation of beating Tears of the Kingdom, and I gotta say, it’s pretty good! Not exactly like, absolutely top tier game that everyone MUST play but, it’s decent! Bosses are a big sour point though. Music was pretty decent, though the final dungeon theme is a bore. Only other current Zelda games I gotta beat are the 2D/Top-Down ones, so maybe I’ll do one of those next! Possibly either Phantom Hourglass or Spirit Tracks.

Pokémon Scarlet

HOLY SHIT THAT ENDING SEQUENCE WAS ACTUALLY COOL AS HELL!!! Like yeah, the game has its decent chunk of technical issues but, holy shit….those last two hours of the main story are phenomenal. TOBY FOX CONTINUES TO BE THE GOAT THE MUSIC HE COMPOSED IS AMAZING! I love how easier it is to capture pokemon compared to Sword and Shield as well. I do like Dynamax raids more as a multiplayer component, but I much prefer the Tera mechanic in terms of PVP. I stlll need to do the post game before the dlc comes out later this year, but all I really got is just the refights against the gym leaders and all that jazz. There’s also the Needle thingies I gotta pull out and the wall things I gotta investigate in order to get the other legendaries, but all I really care about is finishing the core of the main story, I got other games to get to lol. Probably thinking of either Paper Mario or Chrono Cross next haha.

Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Final: Build & Ex-Aid with Legend Riders

Okay so context: my friend @arcadiusdragoneyes​ is showing me and @darkspine576​ Kamen Rider Build since it’s one of his favorites and he wanted to indoctrinate introduce us into Kamen Rider AND IT’S FUCKING WORKING. I only know one part of this crossover, but I think it did a good job of giving across the feel of the other Kamen Rider series very well! Kamen Rider Build is so extra I love it. Can’t wait to finish Kamen Rider Build!

[augurcollective]

Star, the Mousy Musician

Basics:

Name: Aurora Von Brandt

Aliases: Star (preferred), Starr, Aura (also preferred, but conflicts with Sirius)

Race: Mousefolk

Gender: Cisgender female

Pronouns: She/her/hers, (may begin using squeak/squeaks/squeakself in the near future)

System Roles: Host, Motivator

Sign Emote: 🐭🎸 | :mouse::guitar:

System Join Date: 2020 - 01 - 11 (January 11th, 2020)

System Celebration Date: 02 - 05

Background:

Origin: (accidental) tulpamancy; possibly technically an introject

Bio: Originally an original character created by Storm, for their TTRPG project in its more infantile stages, two or so years ago (May 2019). She was accidentally created alongside Sylvie, Maya, and Onyx, where Sylvie was the only intentional creation of the four.

Canon Bio: Canonically, Star’s mother died while she was in middle school (jr. high) in a car crash, and during her late teens, her father went to jail for tax fraud, leaving her alone in their apartment for the foreseeable future until he returns. At the same time, she is going to school— the reason why her father committed tax fraud— for a Bachelor’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a dual minor in both classical art and robotics. She plans to go to grad school to get a Master’s degree, but she is unsure what her financial situation will be by the time she gets her Bachelor’s degree. She currently has a job designing and building factory robots for a living, which she got fairly recently, but only after interning since her first year of college. Additionally, she plays guitar, bass, and violin, and has released three albums, an EP, and five singles to the internet, amassing a small crowd of a couple thousand fans. In her hometown, she plays weekend gigs at bars and clubs, and sometimes holiday gigs at parks, primarily for some extra cash, but also for fun and spreading her name. Finally, canonically, she is afraid of cats.

Canon Abilities: Eye of Space, which allows her to measure distance, mass, sizes, density, etc. all with a glance, down to the atom. Metallokinesis, which allows her to control any metal at will, but the denser, less pure, or more radioactive a metal is, the more difficult it can be to control.

Elaborated Basics:

“Canon” Age: 23

Apparent Age: 19

“Physical” Age: 19 to 21

Mental Age: 19 probably

System Age: 1 year, 8 months (as of post)

Dating:

Romantic Orientation: Sapphic panromantic

Sexual Orientation: Sapphic demisexual

Intra-system partners: (Check call sheet)

Exo-system partners: Eden of FARAWAY Bunch (gf)

Acknowledged Crushes: None

Attracted to: fellow extranths/anthros, herbivorous animals, fellow mice; friendly people; “cuteness” and “prettiness” (rather than “beauty” or “handsomeness”); chess lovers, music lovers, and roleplayers; cheese enthusiasts.

Additional Notes: Polyfidelitous, but not as active as Charlotte; in a strictly monogamous relationship currently.

Boundaries:

DNI: All the system DNIs (they’re mine, after all), but also...

DMs: Ask for Discord, Tumblr OK.

Mentions / Pings: Try not to, but OK.

PDA: No.

Flirting: No, my girlfriend would like for me to stay monogamous externally.

Compliments / Platonic Affection: Always welcome. Love me some head pats.

System Outing: Tumblr OK.

LGBTQ+ Outing: Tumblr and Discord OK.

Venting: Discord DMs only, but try to vent towards Storm please, I’m fragile.

Personality:

Summary: Chirpy and fanatical; loves tinkering, machinery, and robotics, and canonically it’s her job. She’s a bit obsessed with rock music, too. Aurora is someone who likes to make things fun for everyone, and make everyone smile, even at the expense of her own schedule, but she doesn’t mind. She feels that, whatever she can do, can always be done eventually. And when it comes to romance, it’s easy to flirt with her, but hard to convince her of something. Can be a little fragile and sensitive at times, so be kind to her.

Likes: chess, food (cheese primarily), video games, roleplay, writing, rock music, indie music, alternative music, MCR (and I’m proud of it), guitars, Green Day.

Dislikes: tapioca pudding, tomatoes, selfish people, horror.

Extra Notes: She diverges from her canon slightly: she is not afraid of cats anymore, due to the presence of Sirius.

Appearance:

[Attachment IDs:

Art not owned by us, drawn by Pollo-chan on FurAffinity (original OC for the commission is named Esel Caldwell and also not owned by us); an image of a white-furred, feminine-presenting mouse anthro with long, straight blonde hair, against a plain white background. She is wearing a white button-down blouse under a black high-waisted skirt with shoulder straps, brown translucent stockings, and brown hiking boots. Her right hand is up grabbing the teal-green beret on her head, while her left hand is mostly obscured to her left side, behind her.

Picrew by Eefoj; primarily a navy blue background with a large central white square. A blonde-haired, feminine-presenting, white-furred, mouse anthro wearing a black hoodie and black sweatpants. Her feet are bare; she is plantigrade. Her legs are spread; her left leg is arched upwards with her foot planted on the floor, while her right leg is parallel with the floor. Her left hand is placed on the floor behind her, supporting her, while her right hand is idle on the lap of her right leg.

/end IDs]

[carlatsukinamistolemyhamsandwich]

Parallels in Shin and Carla’s Lost Eden Manservant Endings

So I originally wrote this ages ago (before CL’s release I think) while on the train after seeing some posts on Carla’s LE route (very specifically the effect Shin’s death has on him in his manservant ending) and then I never got around to posting it :’) I considering putting it in the eventual Shin and Carla post that I want to write but I think it’s a bit too much of a tangent so I thought I might as well just post it now.

I was thinking about Shin and Carla (because when am I not) and I started to think about the parallels in their LE manservant endings specifically.

Let’s start with Carla’s, as a quick recap for anyone who hasn’t played LE, in Carla’s manservant ending, Kino kills Shin in front of Carla and the ghouls effectively take over Banmaden. Yui is able to escape with Carla and she takes him to Rotigenburg, where his Endzeit is cured but as a result he loses his status as a founder and becomes a ghoul. In the final scene we see Carla as a shell of himself with Yui taking care of him, and even when Yui mentions Shin, the only reaction we get from Carla is that he mutters Shin’s name.

This is the lowest we see Carla (at least up to LE) and I think it’s interesting to understand why. Even at the start of DF, Carla is a man who’s lost a lot. He’s lost his entire race, bar Shin, something we know he feels at least partly responsible for from some of his dialogue (Carla’s LE vampire ending) and Yui represents the only chance he has to resurrect his bloodline. But Carla also knows he’s dying from Endzeit and ultimately, his time is running out.

And then there’s Shin. Shin is the only remaining first blood who isn’t infected by Endzeit and has no encroaching limit on his lifespan. Carla knows this. He knows that while he should be the one to continue their bloodline, in the event that he dies before he’s able to, there is still Shin. That one, final hope. 

Carla’s borderline catatonic state in his LE manservant ending is not just because Shin, as his brother, is dead. That’s certainly part of it, but remember, Carla has killed Shin multiple times over the course of the games and carried on. No, here, the reason why he ends up so thoroughly broken is because now neither he nor Shin can restore the first blood race. It’s gone. Their race is extinct and as king, Carla feels responsible and it breaks him. While he still has Yui, ultimately his purpose is completely gone, as is everything he’s ever known. 

Admittedly, Carla is in seemingly the same position in his vampire end, i.e. Kino stabs Shin in front of him and then Yui and Carla go to Rotigenburg. The difference here is that Carla returns to Bandmaden, as a ghoul with the intent of taking revenge on Kino. I think the reason why he’s able to carry on here is Yui. Not that he doesn’t care about Yui in the manservant ending, but it requires different choices, and thus represents a different version of their relationship and therefore a different outcome.

Now let’s talk about Shin’s route. In Shin’s LE manservant end, he’s led to believe that he isn’t a true first blood and Kino tells Carla this while Carla’s on his deathbed. Carla then tries to kill Shin for attempting to deceive him but Shin struggles and ends up stabbing Carla by accident, killing him. He proceeds to go completely nuts and murders everyone in the room aside from Yui (his laughter here is terrifying). He tells Yui to go back to the vampires and leaves her behind. In the final scene, Yui tells us Shin has locked himself in Banmaden and hasn’t shown himself since, no matter how much she tries to reach him. 

We don’t see exactly what happens to Shin but it’s still a similar situation to Carla in his manservant ending. In this ending, Shin shuts everyone and everything out. And why? For the same reason Carla becomes so broken in his manservant ending. In Shin’s mind, Carla was the only remaining true first blood and Shin killed him. Shin destroyed the race he loved with his own hands and now he’s left with nothing. Again, he still loves Yui in this ending (otherwise he wouldn’t have let her live while he went on his murder spree nor would he have bothered to tell her to go back to the vampires where she would have some semblance of safety) but he doesn’t feel he can be with her because of who he is and what he’s done.

The main thing I wanted to address when writing this, is that given that Carla dies in Shin’s vampire LE ending (yet Shin is still alive Carla’s vampire LE ending) and is shown as borderline catatonic in his manservant ending following Shin’s death, I think it’s easy to misunderstand the brother’s relationship as being more positive on Carla’s side of things (especially if you haven’t played DF prior to picking up LE). But that’s not quite the case, as I’ve already addressed, it’s important to understand that Shin’s death alone is not what’s responsible for the collapse of Carla’s mental state in that manservant ending, nor is the death of Carla as his brother the only reason for Shin going nuts in his. In the case of these endings, while the other’s death is some sort of contributing factor, ultimately it’s the fact that they feel responsible for the end of the first blood race, that leads to them both falling into despair.

[sweetsmellosuccess]

The Best Films of 2020

The 15 Best Films of 2020

Normally, when I assess a full year of cinematic offerings, I consider both sides of that coin  —  the outstanding entities, and the least successful —  but the year of our lord two thousand and twenty provided more than enough misery for all of us, I do believe. Ergo, in my own small way to bring better vibes into the universe, for this year’s round-up, I’m staying solely on the positive tip, highlighting those films whose unfortunate release date during the Year of the Hex shouldn’t preclude them for being fully appreciated. Let’s take a year off from negativity and schadenfreude, shall we, and just stroll amongst the poppies and bright sunshine of some of the best releases of the year.  

15. The Invisible Man

“Leigh Whannell’s film is thoroughly modern in approach and sophistication, but the film it most reminded me of was made back in 1944. George Cukor’s Gaslight starred Charles Boyer as a loathsome husband who attempts to convince his already anxious wife (Ingrid Bergman) that she’s going insane by secretly rearranging things in their house and taking things from her so she thinks she’s always misplacing them. He preys on her emotional vulnerability in order to mask his own pathology and emotional detachment. The effect is absolutely enraging: Onscreen, he’s one of the more hateful villains ever committed to celluloid.”

Full Review

14. The Killing of Two Lovers

“From the opening sequence, with a distraught, estranged husband standing over the bed of his wife and her new boyfriend with malice in his heart, and a gun in hand, the film spirals out into incredibly well structured compositions, taking us inside and outside of David’s recurring psychosis, utilizing a bevy of techniques: The framing shrinks down around him, the sound gets muffled, as if underwater, save for the incredibly unnerving metallic sound of cables being stretched taut, and the sickening kathunk of a heavy car door slamming shut.”

Capsule Review

13. Another Round

“Typically, Vinterberg avoids simple conclusions  —  and God help us all if this film gets picked up by a U.S. studio and remade with, say, Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, and Chris Rock  —  providing more or less equal examples of the delirious fun drinking with your friends can be (the film opens with a group of high schoolers gleefully doing “lake races” whereby teams compete to drink a case of beer while running around the nearby body of water; and closes with the same teen crew, and some of their teachers, whooping it up in celebrating their graduation); and the horrorshow it can become (one teacher ends up peeing the bed, and on his wife in the process, another wakes up bloodied and out of it in front of his neighbor’s house), leading to very real and horrible consequences.”

Capsule Review

12. Soul

“Co-director Pete Docter is the creative force behind many of Pixar's best titles, having a hand in the Toy Story franchise, WALL-E, Up, and also directing Inside Out, a brilliantly moving treatise on the subject of emotional upheaval. This film, which he co-wrote and made along with fellow co-director Kemp Powers, is his first film back at the helm since that high-water mark, and he has again dug into the fertile earth of our mortality and come back with a particularly vibrant crop.”

Full Review

11. The Burnt Orange Heresy

“Based on the novel by Charles Willeford, the film briskly moves through its paces, clouding the waters with the schemes of duplicitous men, who have sold out any love of art for their greater obsession of cash and prestige. A literary thriller in the vein of The Talented Mr. Ripley, it’s become a genre all too rare in the era of blockbuster bravado. This film will remind you what a mistake that is.”

Full Review

10. Lovers Rock

“In the course of the party, the fuses blow while the house DJ is spinning Janet Kay's "Silly Games," a fan favorite at the time. Undaunted, the guests continue dancing away, singing the lyrics a capella in delirious unison, as McQueen's camera swirls around the living room as if nothing happened. Such a heartfelt moment of unbridled togetherness, putting into distinct bas relief the sense of community we've been denied as a species in 2020, feels like a benediction, an epitaph for the year, and a salve for what we've all been so desperately missing.”

Capsule Review

9. Time

“Ostensibly, it’s about the strain of incarceration on even the most grounded of families (an experience naturally disproportionate for POCs); but, on a deeper level, it’s also about the manner of our use of the limited number of revolutions we get to enjoy situated on this earth. It is a profound knock-out.”

Full Review

8. New Order

“Meet the new boss, only in Michel Franco’s damning portrait of a society locked forever in cycles of oppression, revolution, and new oppression, it makes no difference who you are, what your belief system is, or whether or not you subscribe to a moral set of ethics.”

Capsule Review

7. Dick Johnson is Dead

“Utilizing stunt people and special effects, Johnson kills her father off a number of different gruesome ways, as a means of softening the blow of actually losing him as his mind slowly slips away. This eventually culminates in a final gambit, both acutely painful and deeply moving, in which our sense of things gets seriously upended. As Johnson put it during the post-screening Q&A, the film serves as a “doomed experiment trying to keep my father alive forever.” This film won’t make him immortal, alas, but it does make him indelible.”

Capsule Review

6. Martin Eden

“Marcello packs the film with offbeat bits and pieces of other films, including strips of what appear to be vintage home movies, sometimes in juxtaposition to what Martin is feeling  —  a group of kids swinging wildly from the bar of a fence, to a full galley ship taking in water and suddenly sinking like an iron ingot – which adds a more winsome, timeless element to the narrative. It’s clearly set in the past, but avoids being too dependent on that particular sense of place and time. Martin is a young man, at first, just coming into himself, and the actions he takes, what he goes through, the film seems to suggest, would be similar in any age.”

Full Review

5. Minari

“The film is certainly charming, but that’s not to diminish its straightforward approach to its characters’ plight. It doesn’t shy away from their difficulties, and as a result, it doesn’t cheat towards smarmy emotional closure.”

Capsule Review

4. Collective

“The breath of hope in the film, when the inept Minister of Health resigns, leading to the placing of a new, emboldened director who works quickly to clean the quagmire left by his predecessors, is just as quickly expelled after the next round of elections, in which the Social Democrat party  —  the very ones in charge of this catastrophe in the first place  —  gets re-elected with an even greater majority than what they had before. A perfect reflection of what happens when a government is allowed to exist without any meaningful oversight, other than from a bedraggled press and a disenchanted electorate.”

Full Review

3. First Cow

“Reichardt, a naturalist at heart, is not known much as a humorist, but there is a lightness to her screenplay -- co-written by Jonathan Raymond, her frequent collaborator, who wrote the original novel upon which its based -- that keeps it as sweetly airy as one of Cookie's fried confections. The two friends are so out of step with their surroundings -- the party of men Cookie initially travels with are little more than brutish thugs, and the fort upon which they end up is no better -- they almost had to find each other. They are reunited in the local bar of the fort only because literally every other patron runs out to egg on a brawl between two loutish combatants.”

Full Review

2. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

“Hittman’s eye for detail and emotional complexity  —  her characters can rarely articulate anything they’re experiencing  —  is incredibly acute, and she pulls tremendously understated performances out of her two leads.”

Capsule Review

1. Nomadland

“Perhaps no American director since Terrance Malick has made more of the collapsing light of dusk and twilight than Chloe Zhao. Much of her new film, which stars Frances McDormand as a transigent woman (“not homeless, houseless”), who traverses back and forth across the west in her beat up live-in van, doing seasonal work, takes place in that particular kind of vibrant half-darkness that shrouds the desert and its mountains with a magic kind of mystery.”

Capsule Review

Other Worthy Mentions: 7500; Assassins; Bacurau; Beanpole; Beginning; Black Bear; Bloody Nose Empty Pockets; Boys State; Come Play; Emma; Gunda; His House; Horse Girl; I Am Greta; Jacinta; La Llorona; Let Him Go; Limbo; Mangrove; Mayor; MLK/FBI; One Night in Miami…; Palm Springs; Possessor Uncut; Red, White & Blue; Relic; She Dies Tomorrow; Shirley; Shithouse; Shiva Baby; Some Kind of Heaven; Spring Blossom; Swallow; Tenet; The Dissident; The Invisible Man; The Nest; Sound of Metal; The Vast of Night; The Viewing Booth; The Way I See It; Vitalina Varella; Welcome to Chechnya

Inexplicably Underrated: 7500; Shithouse

Biggest Welcome Surprise(s): The Vast of Night; His House; She Dies Tomorrow

The Best Two Films I Saw This Year, Period: Satantango (1994); Harlan County, USA (1976)

[cupidsgamingblog]

My review of Adam's Venture: Origins the game

Hey everyone, I hope you are all doing well. This my very first blog post and it's going to be about the Adam's Venture: Origins game I recently played and finished on my PS4. That being said, this is review is purely my opinion on this game and not hard facts about the game. You may not agree with my review and that's fine. Different opinions are allowed as long as they've not being represented as truth/facts about the game. Also, I'm reading this review just to get my opinion out there, so please be kind.

This game is set in the 1920's where Adam and Evelyn explore ancient ruins, uncover the artifacts within them and uncover long lost secrets. This is a single player adventure game and released as an episodic adventure. The developers, Vertigo Games, are a Dutch indie game studio.

I'm love story driven adventure games especially when they have puzzles to solve to process to the next level. This game has the right amount of puzzles, but there were two puzzles that I did not enjoy at all. One of the puzzles had numbers, which were on some kind of chain/weights system, shapes and a chart with some math equations with no instructions. I'm not going to lie, I looked up the solution because I was streaming my gameplay live on my Twitch.tv channel and didn't want to take 20 minutes trying to figure it out. In truth, if I would have keep at it, I would have probably figured it out. Anyhow, the second puzzle I didn't like much was one with rotating discs. In this puzzle you have to get some water to go through the grooves on each disc at the same time to open the door. I was able to get about 3 or the 4 disc water puzzles done without looking up the solution.

Other than those two puzzles, the only other awkward thing about this game was the dialog between Evelyn and Adam. Evelyn is the assistant to Adam's father, who send them out to look for the Garden of Eden. As I said above, this game is set in the 1920's and originally released back in 2009 which explain that a bit.

All in all, this game was fun to play through and critique. If you are looking for an old fashion adventure-type game you should try it out and see for yourself.

[blissfulalchemist]

4 and 24 for the angst prompts for anyone of your choice? 😘😘😘 BREAK MY HEART LICI!!!

Okay I don’t know how heartbreaking this is but I have done a little Lizette and John that’s canon. So please enjoy.

4. “Do you know what it’s like?” 24. “How much does it hurt knowing you lost me?”

I’m not sure why I ordered soup from this place, they didn’t even have my favorite one today. The spinning of the rice in the vortex from my spoon has my mind occupied as John sits across from me. He’s been picking me up from school more and more lately, ever since mom said he could see me whenever he wanted. It’s mixed feelings in my heart as I spend more time with him. We’re starting to run out of the basics to talk about, and I never thought I would feel this much anger towards him again. I thought knowing John actually loves my mom would help but it hasn’t...and that scares me a bit. I don’t want to end up like him. I’m not him. 

“How are the early applications going? Do you need any help with them?” John hasn’t touched much of his food either, he knows the inevitable is coming. 

“No I got them covered,” I’ve had them done for a month now. Just before he started coming by more often. 

“Liz,” he starts softly, like I’m a child. His child, “what’s wrong?”

I snort, “Nothing. Everything is fine. You just have to remember that I took care of everything on my own.”

He sighs leaning his arms on the table, “I know and I’m sorry,” he’s reaching for my hand before I snatch it away. His blue eyes look hurt, “You shouldn’t have had to do it on your own.”

“I have mom,” she’s all I’ve ever had but that’s starting to change too, “it wasn’t always perfect but she was there for me.”

“I wanted to be, Liz,” I watch as he restrains himself from crossing his arms, “I would have always been there for you had-.”

“Had you not been the leader of a deadly cult,” I cut him off shaking my head, “Yeah I know John.” My words come out shorter than I originally intended, but fuck him! Why did I ever want to get to know him? “I know how shit went down, it was covered in depth, the news outlets did a fine job of that,” drunk me was smarter, trying to protect me like mom did. I should have listened to Val that night, she warned me what would happen. The bowl is pushed from me a few inches, “I’m pretty sure it’s going to be taught in schools at some point.” It’s a straight lie, never could bring myself to admit that it already was. I never told mom how it was covered briefly, a footnote, an example that cults were still around in the twenty first century. Their only other mention was some of the students that chose them, Eden’s Gate, as a subject for their paper, college sociology sucked. Back then it was something that happened so long ago, felt like talking about the Mansons, and I did my paper on some other subject that seemed meaningless now. 

Looking back on that class now, the looks given to me during the presentations of said paper made more sense. They figured out who I was before I ever knew anything about my connection to them. Mom did a good job hiding it all and my brain did a hell of a job tuning out everyone around me. I’m sure the one therapist I had as a child would say it was a learned coping skill.

His jaw clenches and moves slightly to the left, “Well guess it’s good that you’re graduating early.”

“You really think that will stop the stares? The whispers?” I wonder if he’s noticed the looks from some of the older people here that would recognize his face. Or maybe it's from the scene I’ve started to make.

“Look, Liz, I understand that this whole situ-.”

My nails scrape against the plastic table, the small sound hurting my ears, “You understand,” my voice is low as I’m glaring at the table, “Really? That’s what you’re starting with?” I laugh looking him in the eye, “I don’t think you do. Tell me do you know what it’s like, what it’s really like to find out your life has been a lie? How mom’s vacations were because she had anger problems and nightmares about her time in Montana. Living without her for the first few years of life all so she can prevent social services from taking you from her forever. Or how ‘bout because of your sperm donor’s family mom actually resorted to being a murder and torturing people too,” I hiss the last part not wanting people to hear about mom. She could still get in trouble for it I’m pretty sure. The news of that from mom had sent me reeling, I stayed at Val’s for a week before I calmed down enough to come back home.

He looks down to his gloved hands sadly, “I didn’t know that wo-.”

“John do you know what it’s like to know that what the kids at school said to you turned out to be true. How much it hurt to be rejected for something you never thought possible, to think it was all lies because it was just easier to accept you were unlikeable.” I feel the lump in my throat form at those memories, “To have the permanent reminder,” I point to the scar on my upper left lip, “that parents told their children to hurt you because ‘daddy’ was a monster and so she deserves it because she’ll end up just like him.” I feel my arms shaking as my volume increases, “To worry that the only friend you’ve ever had in your life will leave because everyone else did once finding out you were the spawn of the devil,” “You’re just like your father! Nothing more than the devil. Devils produce more, no way around that.” Those words never stopped hurting, she was five when grandma said them as punishment, “How my own family decided I was too much to take care of while mom was sick because they all worried I would turn out like you!” My hand is holding onto something soft, silky as I continue, “The pain you’ve caused me and mom, how could ever possibly know what it’s like or even begin to understand it John!” 

I feel the water run down my face, noticing how I’ve become inches from his face. He’s silent, still, everything I had wanted him to be. Be the cold and calculating man people described him as and not the joke locals made him out to be, seeing his blank look now….i want the loud, over the top, dramatic man. Prove he was just putting on a show for me. Some false idea of him actually being a father. “Say something!” I’m glad that we’re outdoors as I yell in his face, my hand having hit the table. I look to see my other hand gripping his tie and shirt, just have to count to three, then my grip can loosen.

“What do you want me to say?” His voice is calm and unnerving to me. A chill runs up my spine. Is this how mom felt hearing his brother’s voice? His question stuns me as I no longer have an answer. My hand slowly releases him, “You’re right. I don’t know what any of that feels like. That I can’t begin to understand or know the full extent of what I put you and your mother through.” He’s smoothing out his shirt taking deep breaths, I see the anger management is working wonders, “I know there’s nothing I could ever do to make that up to you. But I’m trying Liz. I’m trying to be here for you now.”

I sit back down slowly, “Why not sooner? Why wait for me to find you?”

“I was respecting your mom’s wishes. Giving her space,” I can’t decide how much of what he’s saying true or not anymore. “I hurt her. I lost her,” he averts his eyes, “in more ways than you can ever know. I didn’t want her to leave but she turned into something I didn’t recognize. I just wanted the woman I fell in love with back.”

“Kidnapped,” the word leaves my mouth on instinct and he looks up stunned, “The woman you kidnapped back. The mom I deserved!” Everything is spinning and I don’t know how much of him I want in my life anymore. Is it even right to have him in my life? He’s committed so much wrong and I don’t know what kind of idiot mom was to fall for his tricks but she must have been kinder...softer. The mom I thought I had this whole time, a lie. An act. Someone that was dead and gone in his bunker surely, all by his hand. Everything in my life has been harder because of him, he’s the root of this life. 

I can’t think, everything is tangled and a mess. If my mom ever had a bleeding heart I must have inherited it to have played this game with him this long. I inherited his rage too, his old car was proof of that. There was no straight answer and I can’t live like this. I had a goal, a plan, everything was black and white, but now the colors are becoming muddled. I hate him and that’s all I need to know right this moment. 

My hand reaches for the warm soup bowl, throwing the contents in his face, “I don’t ever want to see you again.” I snatch my things, jerking the table, a glass of water spilling on him also. I regret that the soup wasn’t hotter, “Tell me John,” I tell him looking over my shoulder, “how much does it hurt now knowing you just lost me too?” I don’t wait for an answer, speeding to the nearest bus stop, jumping on the first one at random. People look away pointedly as I cry pulling out my phone calling the one person who’s never lied to me to come and get me.

[radishcard55]

Best Love Tarot Card Cards Analysis Online Free & Accurate

Both a free tarot card analysis and also a psychic reading can provide something distinct and also important. If you're not thrilled with the idea of a in person conversation and also you don't like the task of trying to kind rapidly in an on the internet chat session, the good old telephone is a excellent standby. The tone can be casual or intimate, depending on the psychic you choose after reading their bio. Lots of believe that tarot card reviewing originated from old Egypt. For beginner readers, Howe recommends two standard spreads, a three-card pull as well as the Celtic Cross. The former is where 3 cards are drawn from the deck to stand for the past, present, and future or mind, body, and also spirit of the person reading. Howe says you can even up the ante to a six-card pull, with one card standing for each location. 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It's often a prompt to reflect on your life's broader lessons and also general themes. In the late 16th and also very early 17th centuries, tarot was a simple party game. By checking out our overview as well as viewing the profiles on the sites, you can look for a psychic with considerable experience with tarot card cards and also the particular subject of your concern. Wherever you have a laptop computer, tablet computer, or mobile phone and also some downtime to concentrate on you, you can obtain a tarot card analysis. When looking for in-person tarot card readings, you're limited by your location. Online, you have a vast range of visitors to choose from throughout the USA or all over the world. JOURNAL YOUR TAROT READING Log your tarot readings in your journal. Add your own notes and also inquiries to all of your tarot analyses. I am a large follower of having coaches as well as finding out techniques from others and after that making it my own. Take what offers you and also leave the rest behind-- we all absorb user-friendly details in different means. I would certainly constantly advise that you get tarot readings from a expert as well as discover what their procedure involves. After I have actually jazzed up the deck, I wage the type of instinctive reading that I offer my clients. You don't have to invest a lot of cash to obtain a psychic analysis. Actually, you can get started with free psychic analyses online making use of several various choices. Like a horoscope analysis, an astrology analysis will certainly make use of details regarding your exact birth date, consisting of the moment you were born and the location of your birth, to plot a birth graph. This graph utilizes numerous holy factors to identify their result on your life, including your past, existing, as well as potential future. 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The minor arcana consists of 4 suits, similar to typical playing cards. These tarot cards take care of events of our daily lives, though they're anything yet boring. The circumstances connected with these tarot cards may have memorable impacts. The website uses a range of solutions in addition to checking out tarot. Some decks exist primarily as artwork, and such art decks often include only the 22 significant arcana. A really casual description of guidelines for a tarot-like deck is given in a manuscript by Martiano da Tortona prior to 1425. Obscure descriptions of video game play or video game terms adhere to for the following two centuries till the earliest well-known full description of rules for a French variation in 1637. Tarocchini has survived in Bologna and also there are still others played in Piedmont as well as Sicily, however in Italy the game is generally less preferred than elsewhere. The job of Eden Gray and others in the 1960s caused an surge of appeal in tarot card analysis beginning in 1969. Tarot card analysis rapidly came to be related to New Age believed, indicated partly by the popularity of David Palladini's Rider-Waite-Smith-inspired Aquarian Tarot, initially released in 1968. A psychic reading, on the other hand, will certainly use the psychic's gift of clairvoyance to acquire and connect details.

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

Museum of Mayhem Art Analysis

ahhh it’s finally here and it’s AWESOME. Lots of credit to @ifalnasminiatures for bringing this to my attention! Also credit to Hayder Hype for providing (nat zero six on gearbox forums) sources (Ashley Landry on twitter) in the description of his video because oh man it’s a lot

you can view most of these art pieces on the borderlands instagram as well

lots to talk about especially regarding the calypso twins so let us dive right in

tl;dr: tyreen has a weird red marking on her face in some old designs. i think troy used to be blind and missing his metal plates. more proof for my elpis/chemical sludge/lost legion theory that the twins are using said chemical sludge to give their followers psuedo-siren powers bc a dahl pumping station (hyperion pumping stations on pandora) but dahl had a presence on the moon

one of my favorites, it reminds me a lot of the Mask of Mayhem, but for villains.

Punk Girl is shown again twice, probably further proving she’s tied in with the CoV somehow

we also got some crazy looking villains such as

baby face. which is all kinds of extremely fucked up

this dude who looks like he could be a miniboss with the glasgow smile and the cool goggles

this guy who i legitimately thought was dr zed for a hot second there

could it be

the evilest brother?? pfft nahhh

this girl who seems like she could be a unique character with a baseball cap. wondering if maybe she’s related to Punk Girl in any way. What’s the verdict on the other band members? 🤔

uhh let’s give it a solid maybe and move on

this piece! very interesting to me

so, the very first thing i noticed is zane’s eye patch being on the other eye lol

amara’s tattoos are also gone, however that might’ve been for reasons similar to the japanese cover art of the game. 

most interestingly is a point @ifalnasminiatures made and it’s that the calypso twins are actually palette swapped! you can see Troy is the one with the white hair and Ty is the one with the darker hair. which I think mayyy play into a few things we see later about the twins

we also see a tiny ship in the background. i can’t tell if that’s sanctuary-iii or the blue/yellow ship, it all blends together a lot due to the quality of the pic. but it is next to the calypso twins, which makes me want to believe it’s the blue/yellow ship we see with red markings all over it. you know this one from the mural of mayhem wallpapers

you can see the reddish markings on the back right next to the engines

then we have ummm

this cover art

😬

thanks for not using this one gearbox cuz 

oh my god

she just reminds me of suicide squad, that’s not a good image you wanna dredge up from the deep recesses of your fans’ brains

she might be a unique character given the clothes/hair? cuz you don’t normally see psychos with stilettos on. or yknow, shoes in general. the hair also seems way to clean and neat to be a psycho/cultist

i just feel uncomfortable looking at this, so moving on

a different logo. also not my favorite cover art, but at least im not physically uncomfortable looking at this. that poor girl’s pelvis... anyway

lots of silhouettes

interestingly, i feel like the roses might have been a thing they just put in for the new cover art. haven’t seen hide nor hair of them across any of the pictures i’ve seen.

we got a lot of figures. out of them i most definitely recognized amara, salvador, maya, another salvador?, zer0, moze (maybe?), and axton. i thiiink one of them is maya as well, but im not 100% on that. 

i can guess why they didn’t pick this one: it’s hard to tell who’s who. a lot of these poses make the silhouettes kinda hard to see and the merging together at the bottom makes things even worse. i do think it’s interesting there are some bl2 characters on here as well, but hayder hype mentioned they very well could be placeholders, and given that i can’t make out fl4k or zane, im inclined to believe him.

this art which was used during the promo for this event

rip elpis i guess LMAO

a better look at the psycho himself from the promo released by the borderlands twitter.

there’s a new red planet which hasn’t been shown off before, looks like a gassy planet kinda like jupiter, but interestingly it has this green crack in the side?

very reminiscent of pandora’s eridium scar. i am wondering if this is because this planet had a vault opened, or if it is tied to the Eridians at all. be interesting if it was their homeworld.

also i have no idea what the symbolism is in the homeworld destroying another planet but maybe we shouldn’t think about it too hard e_e

the other planet that’s being destroyed... idk fellas

it doesn’t match up to me but like, this is only one shot

i don’t know 🤔 if you really squint, maybe you can see that hint of purple at the bottom there?

here

tbh, i thought this was elpis the first time i saw it due to the cracks, but i figured elpis doesn’t have like continents across its surface, just craters. and wayyy more cracks.

so it’s probably not pandora and it’s probably not elpis.

huh...

i do think the actual shot is suspended above promethea, you can see the familiar asteroid belt surrounding it

there’s also a planet in the background,

which i imagine isn’t pandora bc no eridian scar

could be elpis or eden-6, or the 5th planet we don’t know about. i kinda get the feeling the 5th planet may be that gaseous red planet tho. which is probably going to be super weird to traverse now that i think about it. they said oz kits weren’t coming back, right? i wonder how that would work. hmmmm

there’s also this redder planet here which i actually DO think is Pandora. if you squint real hard u can see the purple from the eridian scar. plus the color matches up pretty well with the pictures provided above.

there’s also these two bodies over in the corner where the light is coming from. i can’t tell what they’re supposed to be

there are also these little dudes in the top right

i assume they’re maliwan? they remind me a lot of the maliwan drop ship things that fly overhead when you enter promethea

YESSS okay this is the start of some PRETTY WILD twin stuff

troy: missing his tattoos, blind in one eye, has a weird mark above his eyebrow. also, no metal bits!

Tyreen!!! with a red stripe across her left cheek going up to her eye??? no tattoos on her left arm as far as we can see, but that might be for marketing reasons (she’s also covering up part of her bicep). she’s also missing her coat and chains and wearing a different glove.

we also have a bunch of bl2 VHs taking up space. again i think hayder hype is right in that they’re simply placeholders. not much else to say, but 

this trend of Tyreen having red markings on her face and Troy being blind in an eye (or both) actually continues through a fair amount of these posters!!!

more cover art. one of my least favorites again... i just think it looks like the psycho is puking out the VHs. also, seems to be an older version of the psycho mask.

fl4k seems to be less rendered than the rest of the cast? like they have less detail, especially on their coat

also you can see an older looking space shuttle up at the top, which reminds me a lot of the one we use in TFTBL to get to helios. except less caravanny and more rockety

the splatter also reminds me of siren powers, with the purple and the glitter. it’s cool that it’s showing a different shot than what’s behind it. maybe a hint to siren powers because it’s sort of like a portal.

more puke! 

this time troy is blind in both eyes it seems,

tyreen seems to still have a mark on the left side of her face, im wondering if this ties into her scars at all? it doesn’t seem as prominent as the previous red mark.

Zane seems to have an actual eye patch instead of his more high-tech eye patch, which reminds me a lot of the leaked character concepts from like january i wanna say

amara seems to be dual wielding lol i wonder if originally that was going to be one of her 3 skills but then they were like “wait salvador. wait. nisha. FUC-”

also fl4k is being obscured by this weird saturn-like planet. let them be free!

moze is missing, the saturn like planet shows up 2 times total, and that blue/yellow ship is seen again behind troy

as for the purple stuff? you already know my theory that the twins are going to be using the chemical sludge on elpis to empower their followers. it could also just be straight eridium/slag. you know, like the testing from the WEP with bloodwing and even krieg. we’ll have to see. it would be interesting if they tied krieg into the story through there.

i do lowkey think it’s chemical sludge though, because some of it is actually glowing blue in places, you can see it clearly below amara’s feet. maybe some tie in to siren powers cuz they glow the same blueish color. who knoooows not i

big shot of this psycho here, looks like he’s crumbling. 

i really like the 4 VHs standing at the base with the elongated shadows. very dark vibes from this tho, probably not suitable for the series as a whole. i can see why maybe they decided not to do it. 

i wonder if we’ll see this giant psycho statue somewhere on pandora. it would certainly be a sight to behold. 

also i kinda wish we had cloaks like the concept art shows. cloaks are cool

more sketchy art. this one is also kinda strange, i definitely get why they decided not to go thru with it.

possibly tie-in with the ‘mother’ imagery we get on the propaganda signs across pandora.

lmfao the foot

very bl2 like, im glad they didn’t stick with this. i like that they decided to change things up

troy seems to be blind and also missing his metal implants on his face. his jacket also looks a lot different, it looks more like tyreen’s with the spikes and stuff across it. we also can’t see his metal arm at all, tho we do see his sword! which looks a lot different, im glad they decided to revamp it to be more visually interesting lol

tyreen is more interesting to me. it looks like her right arm has like a silver coating over it? unless that is a metal arm as well. she also is wearing a different kind of glove. her tattoos are missing as well, but again, it’s probably because of the cover art. her scars also definitely seem to have reached her left cheek at some point.

zane also looks a lot different, tho amara, moze, and fl4k look about the same.

another shot of the ship, this one is definitely the blue/yellow one. there’s gotta be some significance with that, right? either we’re getting skins for sanc-iii, we’re going to be painting it a new color, or it’s a different ship.

what the HECK

maybe the twins stole sanc-ii and we’re using sanc-iii. idek. this ship is driving me up a wall lol

gun head.

not a lot to say here. i actually like this one lol it’s very mellow and straight to the point. it’s nice that the logo is right in the middle, not at the top like most of them.

game. buy it. okay? cool.

similar to the other background we did, a bit different. again, like @ifalnasminiatures pointed out, the twins are actually palette swapped here. 

Zane also has the old eyepatch on his right eye instead of his left eye, and his jacket is black instead of blue. fuckin’ edgelord.

one of my favorite ones out of all of them. it’s beautiful, i really wish they had kept it. Fl4k is missing but i assume they were meant to go next to Amara? i also think it’s interesting Moze is in the front, as I took Amara to be the leader this time around. Zane is also an older design, with the eyepatch back on his left eye again (starting to think this is an aesthetic thing lol) and a black jacket instead of blue.

We see the twins on the top. Tyreen has that mark on her face again, and Troy is the same as the last few covers.

We also see Maya, Zer0, and for some reason Brick? Which is weird to me considering we have a few other characters who initially feel much for important to the story (cough Lilith cough), but I’m not complaining. 

the purple splatters again make me think this is a tie in to eridium/slag/elpis’s chemical sludge. i also like the logo being worked into the design instead of just thrown on top, i think that’s a nice detail

i couldn’t find a great shot of this poster which is a shame because it’s one of my favorites

a lot of baddies to go around on here. i love the dude up top, he reminds me of the Anchormen from the captain scarlett dlc in bl2!

these dudes

we can see Punk Girl on the left again

and this guy who appears to be in some medieval armor

i have no idea what’s going on there but i am EXCITED

i’ve been thinking and tbh i think the multiple planets thing was just an excuse for gearbox to go absolutely ham on the character designs/settings. 

i mean why should they have to hold back all their medieval armor designs for another dlc like tiny tina’s? all their pirate/sea-fairing designs for a pirate dlc? fuck it! go WILD. i think they did, anywho

there’s also this post which... tbh i can’t make out much at all. again, seems like an older psycho mask design. it looks like there are characters in the splatter on the bottom left, but it’s very hard to tell who’s who, especially at this angle and image quality lol

if we get a better shot later on i may return to this piece and try to figure things out!

we also have this piece which is giving me huge ‘Happy Together’ vibes. very trippy

moze looks like she’s using an untextured atlas gun? dunno what’s going on with that tbh lol

i really like this one too. it’s cool. i get why maybe they wanted to go a little crazier tho, feels too simplistic for the MAYHEM vibe they’re going for.

oof! can we get an F in chat for whatever planet/moon this is

lots of pink floyd vibes going on here as well

we see a different looking blue/yellow ship flying away from the explosion. it seems to missing a lot of the parts that make sanc-iii so recognizable including the engines/wings

i like the destruction vibe they’re going for here, really sells the “universe destroying power” the twins are supposedly going to get. 

anyway, in addition to the cover art pieces, we also got a few concept art pieces as well!

this bit which looks like a gun

you see the aiming mechanism up there? you see how it’s aimed at that planet/moon? yeah i 100% timed this so you’d see the above concept art with this immediately after :P (im kidding i didn’t but hey now you don’t have to scroll)

fuck yeah babey

we also have seen something similar to this in the gameplay trailer!

i didn’t actually think it was a giant fucking GUN tho. can we get an F in chat for Promethea and/or whatever else this thing gets aimed at

yooo

i thought this was opportunity at first cuz of the bridge but it’s more likely promethea

when u go meet zer0 you can see some water surrounding the city so i would guess this is somewhere else on promethea

im mostly interested in the giant fuckin triangle in the middle of that courtyard looking area

oh also the giant trench of destruction on the right there. that’s probably important, too.

more concept art!

i think the bottom of the 4 VHs is actually what was leaked in january.

some art of the twins on the left there, tyreen is so much shorter than troy omfg

and this does indeed looks to be a younger version of angel so credit to @prettypinkdork for mentioning that on my angel post. it is nice to see those tech-y wings in action, definitely does prove it’s her.

we can also see this art of what i think is Punk Girl, which is interesting to me because she looks to be doing something with her right hand. possible siren powers? maybe! 

we also get a much cooler, bigger version of that maliwan ship people were talking about, with what look to be maliwan... eye bots? surrounding it. this is soooo fuckin awesome to me because it reminds me of a sailboat. and airships are fucking COOL

but something interesting is that i don’t think this ship was actually always maliwan

we got an A in the back here... for Atlas? i mean... you know it’s coming... the colors would match up. Yeahhhhhhh...

more interesting is that it actually looks like maliwan covered it up with their flags/tarps. i would not be surprised if this was claimed by maliwan possibly during the takeover.

a cyclone, with a whole fuckin lot of detail. just... holy shit.

not much else to say here though. i like the stuffed animal on the side, though

a better shot of jakobs manor which holy shit looks badass as fuck

big turret/observation thing on the right there? im not sure

pretty sure this is eden-6. also more tropical trees? possibly a water planet? but maybe just ocean on eden-6. also there seems to be like webbing on whatever is on the road, so maybe some spider-like wildlife?

most important to me is this

yeah i would bet that’s eridium/slag/the chemical sludge from elpis

im pretty convinced this is something on elpis mostly because the DAHL logo on the side. which again, they were on pandora yes but they were mining for iridium not eridium. if this was pandoran pumping stations, that would be hyperion.

i do think this is elpis. and i do think the twins are using the chemical sludge that mutated the lost legion into those fake siren things to give their followers superpowers.”holy holy holy” indeed.

this, plus the rakk wings on the psycho in the mask of mayhem are just convincing me more and more

that’s all for now folks. i gotta run

[cheapjerseys28-blog]

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[bethygauw]

[2/2] Online B’s-Log Interview with Satoru Kuwabara

Released 4 June 2018

Original source Part 2 The original article has pictures that complement well so please check it out too.

This is B’s-Log’s new project, “Creator Touch”, an interview series with creators of popular series. The first person they interviewed was Satoru Kuwabara, the music producer of Ensemble Stars!.

In the first half of the interview, they asked about how Kuwabara started to get involved with Enstars unit songs. Kuwabara also talked about the points he focused on in the song series that have been released so far. (~2.8k words)

In the second half, they talked about song numbers that left the biggest impression on Kuwabara, the 3D live concert, the voice actor live concert and Enstage. (~2.2k words)

In their third single, I wanted to show everyone Trickstar who had transformed.

Q: You had created numerous songs for Enstars, but which one left the biggest impression?

K: There are many… but outside of first season songs, I’d say it’s Trickstar’s BREAKTHROUGH!. It was supposed to be the B-side at first. We made DIAMOND SUMMER with the intention of making an A-side because it was a very Trickstar song. But we also wanted to show a different side to Trickstar—a transformed Trickstar—and not just their cheerful and positive side. That’s when we brought up the suggestion to make BREAKTHROUGH! as the A-side song. Both songs were very important, but the first song would be the long-lasting impression after all. That’s exactly why we made BREAKTHROUGH! as the first song.

Q: That’s a good point. As opposed to the other songs that Trickstar have released so far, it’s like they’re fighting in this song.

K: I wanted to show how Trickstar has an enemy that they cannot oppose at their current state through music as well. I thought that if they were to challenge their rivals—Eve, Adam, and Eden—it would make things better if they weren’t the “usual Trickstar”. That’s why I strongly pushed BREAKTHROUGH! for the A-side forward.

Q: Were there any other songs that left an impression on you?

K: It would be 2wink’s TRICK with TREAT!!. One reason is because I was the one who wrote the song, but it was also the first time “Saito-san” and “Soma-san” got to sing with the others so I was happy for him (laugh). Saito-san always looked so lonely all by himself, so it was a long-awaited moment.

Q: TRICK with TREAT!! has UNDEAD singing as the backing vocals and voicing out dialogue lines. Speaking of UNDEAD, I think there were a lot of fans who were waiting for the veteran unit, Dead Man’s.

K: You must mean Dead Man’s Death Game Holic. In that CD, Dead Man’s song took priority and was made first, so making UNDEAD’s songs was a herculean task. UNDEAD’s second season CD was considerably cheerful, so I wanted to show their corrupted side more in the third season, but there was a restriction where they must not feel more corrupted than Dead Man’s. I’m the composer of Gate of the Abyss, and actually it was a song that was chosen through a contest. Happy Elements chose this song in the end.

Q: From a professional’s point of view, what would be your fixation in Enstars unit song series? Specifically, can you tell us if there’s anything like, “Maybe you won’t notice if you don’t listen to it carefully, but actually…”

K: I wanted to deliver the best sound quality as best as I could, so we made it compatible with high resolution sound quality. It’s actually made in a much better sound quality environment compared to generic CDs. Although when you burn it into CDs, it’s not high-res anymore… Also, up until around the second season I took into account the units’ upbringing and position. I made some delineation in my mind, for example how I think I can make some parts more extravagant. I thought to myself that I’d better make those improvements.

Q: …In other words?

K: “We should record a live string performance for fine!” (laugh) Valkyrie is a unit of artists so naturally we would record the instruments’ live performance, ditto with Akatsuki and the traditional Japanese instruments. On the contrary, I try not to include acoustics as much as I can for 2wink. For Ra*bits, they’re also a rookie unit, and although we had skilful musicians perform for us, we didn’t use live recording as much at first.

3D live concert, voice actor live concert, and the secret episode behind Enstage’s production

Q: Enstars’ unit songs have been performed in various types of media such as the 3D Live “DREAM LIVE” (Star Live) and the Starry Stage, a live concert of the voice actors. Can you tell us a bit more about them as well?

K: With the Star Live, I was the one who wanted to have a live band. In 3D Lives, the characters’ movements are pretty much the same for every session, so I think putting on a live band accompaniment would make the audience think that the characters are alive even more. I supervised the band arrangement of the songs and also the casting of the band members. It was only the performance on December 31st where one of the band members couldn’t make it and I had to fill in for them (laugh).

Q: Now that you’ve seen the Star Live, what do you think?

K: I simply thought that wow, we live in an amazing era! Sorry if that sounded like a 5-year-old commentary (laugh). I was blessed with the opportunity to feel the fans’ wish to see this concert first-hand. I was able to take on a new challenge and I felt grateful.

Q: What about Starry Stage?

K: I was involved from the planning stage. I was actually the one who wanted to have a live performance with the voice actors. Our plan got through after right about 2 years, and it was approved with the title "Starry Stage”. I actually don’t know what “SS” is the short for, but when it appeared in the game I thought it was “Starry Stage”. In Starry Stage, I was involved in casting, stage production, and production supervision. I really got to do many different things!

Q: What did you think of it?

K: Goodness, I was just emotionally overwhelmed. One of my strongest feelings would have been, “I finally got to see this scenery!” But more importantly, it brought to surface my powerlessness and what I was lacking (bitter laugh). To bring forth a live performance, we made the fans wait for 3 years, so the Starry Stage also had a concept of getting up close to the fans as much as we can. That’s why I wanted to absolutely have all of them get on the moving cart and also have them go to the smaller stage (at the back). I think we managed to clear that part. Although, among the 13 cast members, to more than half of them it was their first time singing and dancing for an idol series. That’s why it was difficult to ask them to learn difficult choreography so we just did the best we could. Those were some of the challenges we had, so it was a really touching moment for me when I watched the performance.

Q: There’s a second concert for Star Live, but how about Starry Stage?

K: The official title had “1st” in it so, in other words, you know? (Laugh) As for me, I’d like to make it happen!*

*[T/L note] It’s happening! 13 January 2019 at Nippon Budokan.

Q: You guys from Arte Refact are also involved in creating original songs for the stage adaptation, Ensemble Stars! On Stage. Are there any differences in the processes between making a song for a CD release and making a song for a stage play?

K: In Enstage, we basically received the script and then we were asked to make a particular type of song. Enstage played out the main story. Around that time, we kind of already made them into unit songs, so it was difficult. But we took out some specific parts of a scene and looked at them from a different point of view. That’s when we could create. We made them as we thought how this unit was singing this particular type of song, and how this was the kind of music that would fit this kind of scene… So what we did was the same, but we made the song from a different viewpoint.

Q: In Ensemble Stars! Extra Stage ~Judge of Knights~ that used the event Rebellion! The King’s Horseback Ride as its theme, they performed many new songs during the Judgment Live scene.

K: Judgment had a developing battle scene so they asked us to make a medley. At that point, the script was not yet finished so I had no idea how it was going to be. But when I read the finished version I understood what they meant. Although, I asked them what would happen with the dialogue bits in between, since it wouldn’t be called a medley anymore if they had stopped [the music]. Then, they told me that they were going to include something like a dance choreography as well. That’s how I decided to let the music play in the background during those times and let it develop entry points for the singing to come in again.

Q: So you made it based on the fact that it was going to have both acting and singing included.

K: Also, the actors can sometimes change when they choose to take a breath between the phrases. When that happens, the timing feel will change as well. I can’t create with the stance that they have to breathe at some specific point. When they sing, it’s fixed, but other than the singing part I make the music loop (so that they can get back onto it should they be running behind). Since the battle scene was made to accelerate, I and the composers’ side suggested to also increase the bpm (tempo) a little by little. It was subtle so that the audience won’t feel the abrupt change.

Q: You really made these songs based on how it’s going to be sung at a stage play.

K: When there are dialogues within a song, I would read those dialogues out loud to myself and think about the timing of how the character speaks. Then that’s how I figure out how long the phrases should be.

Q: Have you seen Enstage?

K: I’ve seen all of them, of course. All of them and all the characters are truly really good, but personally I really like Eichi Tenshouin’s actor, (Takahisa) Maeyama-san! I was like, “Thanks for giving me a chance to write a song for Eichi-sama! It was the best!” (laugh)

The main point about character songs is that it’s not unnatural.

Q: I’d like to ask something with regards to what we call character songs in general. Is there anything that you feel you must do every time you create character songs or unit songs?

K: It’s difficult to explain it in words, but I myself don’t think of Enstars’ songs as “character songs”. It’s like I’m actually producing idols and real life idol songs. But if I have to answer from the viewpoint that they’re character songs, I guess it would be how I won’t make something that’s unnatural for that character of that world to sing this kind of song. I want to make a song that can let you picture the world and the character. That the world matches the character themself, and that it’s nothing out of place. For example, you don’t feel right hearing digital instruments in an anime with an idyllic setting. But if there’s someone in that anime who likes games, it won’t be strange to insert something digital. I think about how I should set things apart like that.

Q: Do you not approach the way you make [character songs] and songs you make for real world artists differently?

K: There’s no difference. But for me, it’s often the case that I would ask the artists to write the lyrics as a condition when I’m the one producing or providing songs for them. If the situation proves to be difficult, or when they have other tie-up songs to work on as well, then other lyricists may be called in. But as long as that is not the case, I’d like the actual person who will be singing this song to write the lyrics themself. Otherwise it won’t get through to the listeners, is what I think. If they sing words written by someone else, there’s always something about it that doesn’t feel right. I want to make a song that includes the singer’s feelings in it even just a little, so I’d like them to write their own song’s lyrics whenever possible.

Q: Lastly, please leave a message to readers who are looking forward to your next work! What would you like them to hear in the songs that you have produced?

K: I think music is something alive. Even if the melody and the lyrics don’t change, your emotions don’t stay the same when you listen to the song for the first time, the second time, the third time, and so on. I want you to enjoy a song by paying attention to the way the singing is different, or how the accompanying music is different even though the melody is the same. It may make you think how much the world in that song have changed. For Enstars unit songs, you can spot the differences especially if that song has live performance of the backing instruments. Or even though it’s not a live performance, more instruments may be added and the way the melodies play out may also be different. We make that kind of contrasts so I think “spotting the little differences as you listen to it” is another way of enjoying the songs. We are very particular to each and every musical part of the song and not just the melody, so I hope you can pay close attention to that. I’d like you to listen to the karaoke versions that are included in the CDs single as well!

[carlatsukinamistolemyhamsandwich]

Diabolik Lovers Survey 2019 Results

Thank you to everyone who took part and helped to promote the survey. Overall there were 74 responses, which is only 3 less than last year and I was really happy about that. Without further ado, onto the results:

Question 1. Who is your favorite DL character?

1 - Shu Sakamaki (11 votes) (1st in CL poll, joint 5th in 2018 survey) 2 - Reiji Sakamaki (9 votes) (9th in CL poll, 4th in 2018 survey) 3 - Ayato Sakamaki (7 votes) (2nd in CL poll, 7th in 2018 survey) 4 - Subaru Sakamaki (6 votes) (3rd in CL poll, joint 2nd in 2018 survey)    4 - Carla Tsukinami (6 votes) (11th in CL poll, joint 2nd in 2018 survey)    6 - Kanato Sakamaki (5 votes) (6th in CL poll, joint 8th in 2018 survey)   6 - Ruki Mukami (5 votes)  (4th in CL poll, 14th in 2018 survey) 6 - Kou Mukami (5 votes)  (5th in CL poll, joint 8th in 2018 survey) 6 - Yuma Mukami (5 votes)  (10th in CL poll, joint 12th in 2018 survey) 10 - Laito Sakamaki (4 votes)  (8th in CL poll, 1st in 2018 survey) 11 - Shin Tsukinami (3 votes)  (14th in CL poll, joint 5th in 2018 survey) 11 - Kino (3 votes)  (13th in CL poll, joint 12th in 2018 survey) 13 - Azusa Mukami (2 votes)  (12th in CL poll, joint 8th in 2018 survey) Note: 2 people said they didn’t have a favorite character and 1 person skipped the question. None of the other characters received any votes (including Yui, who came 7th in the CL poll, which was a bit of a surprise to me). Rejet didn’t give the exact number of votes for each character in the official CL poll, so I can’t compare the vote percentages, however we can look at them compared to last year’s survey.

I was very surprised to see Laito drop so far down the ranking (although I was not surprised to see Shu take first place).

In terms of why these results are different to last time, while it’s true some people’s favorite character has changed, there have also been some newcomers to the fandom since my last survey.

The rest of the results are under the cut.

Question 2. Who is your least favorite diaboy?

1- Kanato Sakamaki 29 votes (1st in 2018 poll) 2- I do not have a least favorite diaboy 14 votes (2nd option in 2018 poll) 3- Kino 8 votes (5th in 2018 poll) 4- Ayato Sakamaki 5 votes (joint 9th in 2018 poll) 5- Kou Mukami 4 votes (joint 6th in 2018 poll)) 6- Reiji Sakamaki 3 votes (joint 9th in 2018 poll) 6- Ruki Mukami 3 votes (8th in 2018 poll) 6- Shin Tsukinami 3 votes (4th in 2018 poll) 9- Laito Sakamaki 2 votes  (joint 6th in 2018 poll) 10- Yuma Mukami 1 vote (no votes in 2018 poll) 10- Azusa Mukami 1 vote (no votes in 2018 poll) Subaru, Shuu (11th in 2018 survey) and Carla (3rd in 2018 survey) all received no votes and one person skipped this question.

The results for this question weren’t too dissimilar to last time in terms that Kanato, by far, got the largest number of votes. I will admit he’s my least favorite but I do wonder why that’s true for so many people. It was nice to see the Tsukinami brothers receive fewer votes on this question compared to last time but I was a little surprised that Carla got none at all considering some of the things he does in DF.

Question 3. What is your favorite type of DL media?

1- The games 31 votes (1st in 2018 survey) 2- The drama CDs 23 votes (2nd in 2018 survey) 3- The character songs 9 votes (5th in 2018 survey) 4- The merch (e.g. plushies, badges, straps etc) 5 votes (joint 3rd in 2018 survey) 5- The anime 4 votes (joint 3rd in 2018 survey) 6- The manga 2 votes (5th in 2018 survey)

As before, the games proved to be the most popular form of DL media, with the drama CDs taking second place.

Question 4. If you have played and/or read translations for the games, which is your favorite?

1- Dark Fate 19 votes (1st in 2018 survey) 2- Haunted Dark Bridal 17 votes (2nd in 2018 survey) 3- More Blood 13 votes (3rd in 2018 survey) 4- Chaos Lineage 5 votes  5- Lost Eden 4 votes (4th in 2018 survey) 6- Lunatic Parade 3 votes (5th in 2018 survey) 7- Vandead Carnival 1 vote (6th in 2018 survey) 13 people said that they hadn’t played/read translations for the games or didn’t know. I’ve excluded this data when making the pie chart as that’s what I did with the last survey.

HDB and DF remain the most popular games. I was surprised to see CL do better than LE (although it’s possible that this is due to CL being released more recently). I will say from personal experience that although I’ve only just started playing CL (and have been avoiding spoilers for months so I have no idea what the rest of the game is like) that I’ve been having a lot of fun with it and while I enjoyed LE, it’s definitely true that some of the routes were better quality than others.

Question 5. If you have listened to and/or read translations of the drama CDs, which set of CDs includes your favorite?

1- Bloody Bouquet 15 votes (1st in 2018 survey) 2- Para-Selene 9 votes (2nd in 2018 survey) 3- The original do-S vampire CDs 8 votes (joint 9th in 2018 survey) 4- Bonus CDs 6 votes (joint 3rd in 2018 survey) 5- More Blood do-S Vampire CDs 4 votes (joint 3rd in 2018 survey) 5- Versus II 4 votes (joint 3rd in 2018 survey) 5- Zero 4 votes (joint 6th in 2018 survey) 8- Versus III 3 votes (joint 6th in 2018 survey) 8- Lost Eden 3 votes (no votes in 2018 survey) 9- Chaos Lineage 3 votes (13th in 2018 survey) 9- Versus I 1 vote (3.28%)  (joint 9th in 2018 survey) 9- Born to Die 1 vote (3.28%) The Dark Fate, Eternal Blood and Versus IV CDs did not receive any votes. 13 people said that they hadn’t listened to/read translations for the drama CDs or other. Again, I excluded this data when making the pie chart as that’s what I did last time.

I was in no way surprised that the Bloody Bouquet CDs are still the fan favorite, with the Para-Selene CDs (my own personal favorite) coming in second. It seems the fandom still prefers the more emotional CDs. Given this trend, I suspect the Born to Die CDs would have done a lot better if they featured all of the boys.

Question 6. What would you most like to see if Rejet continues making new DL content?

1- Season 3 of the anime 28 votes (1st in 2018 survey) 2- Another game after Chaos Lineage 18 votes (2nd in 2018 survey) 3- More drama CDs 11 votes (joint 3rd in 2018 survey) 3- More character songs 11 votes (joint 3rd in 2018 survey) 5- I am not concerned with any new DL media 3 votes (5th in 2018 survey) 6- Other 2 votes (5th in 2018 survey) Note: 1 person skipped this question.

This result is pretty much the same as before. Personally I’m not convinced we’ll ever get a third season of the anime but I would love to be proven wrong. We already know we’re getting some more drama CDs, with the first More, More Blood CD being released today (technically yesterday in Japan). I do wonder how much more DL media we’re going to get, as I’m not sure any other otome series has quite managed to have the same number of games DL has, but my experience in Japan has shown me that there certainly still seems to be a market for it.

Question 7. How long have you been interested in DL?

1- More than 4 years but less than 6 years 26 votes  2- More than 2 years but less than 4 years 25 votes  3- Over 6 years 11 votes  3- More than 1 year but less than 2 years 4 votes  5- More than 6 months but less than 1 year 3 votes 6- Up to 6 months 3 votes Note: 2 people said they couldn’t remember how long they’d been interested in DL for and no one who took part had been interested in DL for less than 1 month. 

It seems most people have been interested in the series for between 2 - 6 years. I do wonder whether a number of people got into the series around the release of the More Blood anime (which was a little over 4 years ago), Regardless it seems that a lot of us have been in diahell for rather a long time.

Question 8. If you answered the survey I did last year, have any of your choices changed since then?

Note: Multiple options could be selected here and 5 people skipped this question.

- My favorite character has changed: 7 votes - My least favorite diaboy has changed: 9 votes - My favorite DL game has changed: 3 votes - My favorite drama CD has changed: 9 votes 41 people said none of these things had changed within the last year, while 5 people said they got into DL less than 1 year ago.

I mostly asked this question so that if there were any drastic changes between the results of this survey and last year’s, then I’d be able to tell whether it was because people’s opinions had changed or whether there were simply different people answering the questions. As one might expect, it seems to be a combination of the two.

Question 9. Out of the following things released within the last year, which has been your favorite?

1- Chaos Lineage 18 votes 2- The Death Parade merch/illustrations 13 votes 3- The remaining Zero CDs 8 votes 3- The Dark Wonderland merch/illustrations 8 votes 3- The Absolute Zero merch/illustrations 8 votes 6-  The Born to Die drama CDs 6 votes 6- The Blood Affair merch/illustrations 6 votes 8- I’m not interested in DL anymore so I haven’t kept up with new releases 4 votes 8- Other 3 votes

I was very pleased to CL come out on top here given that it was the release Rejet must have invested the most time and money in. I will say I was surprised by just how many people said one the merch sets was their favorite release of the past year over CL or one of the drama CDs where the boys actually interact with you/Yui. 

And that’s all for my Diabolik Lovers 2019 survey. Thank you again to everyone who voted, if you want to check out my post on last year’s results, it can be found here. I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the results of this survey, was there anything that surprised you?

[theheavymetalmama]

Katie Reviews “Far Cry 5″

Doctor Stupidlove

Another day, another Far Cry game. Whether or not that’s a good or bad thing depends on person to person with a laundry list of variables, including but not limited to personal taste and sensibilities, franchise fatigue, whether or not you bought into the glue-huffing guff that this game held a leftist bias pushing an anti-white, anti-American agenda because for the first time in the series the bad guys are an American fanatically religious death cult instead of brown people from imaginary foreign countries, and a myriad of other things I’m probably missing. I’ll say up front that after Primal and a bunch of other bullshit from Ubisoft between now and the infamous ‘women are too hard to animate’ thing I was pretty much done with the series and Ubisoft as a whole. Then the launch trailer for Far Cry 5 dropped and, having grown up in a dead gold mining community chock-full of racist loonies not unlike the one depicted in the fictional Hope County, my interest immediately peaked.

See, the Far Cry games have a strange pattern to them. No game is perfect, but the Far Cry games stand out in that they have one glaring flaw that mars an otherwise damn good game. Far Cry 3 is held aloft as when the series peaked, and for good reason, but the main character was irredeemably unlikable and the main charismatic villain just up and vanishes from the halfway point in the game. Far Cry 4, or Far Cry 3 2 as some call it, fixed the villain problem but the main character was just dull. Primal was...not good, with a boring lead, a boring villain, and an overall boring game. Sure, Blood Dragon was a ton of fun, but part of the charm was that it was completely self-aware of its’ own absurdity and the characters from the hero to the villain weren’t characters so much as they were walking punchlines.

So how does Far Cry 5 compare? Well, when it comes to story, setting, and gameplay, it’s a step up from Far Cry 4 in some ways, blows Primal out of the water, but has its’ own issues and hang-ups that don’t quite make it live up to Far Cry 3. That’s the short version, anyway. The long version?

Let’s start with graphics, location, and aesthetics. Far Cry 5 looks fucking beautiful. 

I’m not kidding, everything from the wild lands, the forests, the mountains, the lakes and rivers, the settlements, everything in Far Cry 5 is absolutely gorgeous. It’s not quite up there with Breath of the Wild or Horizon: Zero Dawn in sheer style and detail, but it’s pretty damn close. More often than not I found myself forgetting about the mission and spending a lot of time exploring, hunting, and trying to take in the sights. More on the ‘trying’ part in a bit. The atmosphere sucks you right in, everything from the chirping birds and buzzing bees making the world feel alive. Exploring the woods and hearing cultist singing and chanting far off in the distance, especially at night, is legitimately terrifying. Wildlife always plays a key role in the Far Cry games and this is no exception, from docile deer to the always pleasant wolverine providing plenty of opportunities for hunting. Just don’t get skunked.

The game takes place in Hope County, a fictional region in rural Montana. Now I’ve never actually been to Montana, but I did grow up in Washington state and I can’t help but notice many similarities. The woods, the rivers, the god damned apple farms, exploring Hope County felt like I was going home again. Sometimes not for the better, but that’s neither here nor there. In any case, Hope County is beautifully detailed, from the farms to forest to the interiors of the (ugh...) Spread Eagle bar to the small hunting cabins out in the woods. Hats off to the artists and environmental designers for Far Cry 5, because they manage to tell more story about the world and characters with just a ransacked pumpkin farm and a dog mourning his dead owners than Square Enix and Konami ever could with a 20 minute cutscene and a dictionary’s worth of dialogue for each character.

Speaking of characters, the Far Cry games are loaded with memorable characters and the locals of Hope County are no exception. Returning character Hurk is back and as redneck-y as ever, and it turns out Hope County is his home. We also meet members of his family, like his pyromaniac cousin Sharky, his promiscuous mother Adelaide and her boyfriend Xander who’s roughly 1/3rd her age, and his racist conspiracy theorist gun-hoarding father Hurk Sr. No wonder he’s so messed up.

But Hurk and his folks aren’t the only people you meet, as the game is packed to the brim with memorable characters that you either love or love to hate, from lovable country boy Nick Rye and half-feral huntress Jess Black to the cartoonishly evil Seed family. More on them in a minute. Oh, and you get a pet bear named Cheeseburger.

Combat and gunplay is as tight as ever, and vehicle control is so smooth it gives Grand Theft Auto a run for its’ money. The soundtrack is pretty damn good, featuring a good mix of licensed and original music and songs. To the surprise of nobody my favorite is the one that plays during the stunt missions.

Leveling and character progress has been streamlined a bit. You upgrade your skills not by gaining experience, but by completing in-game challenges and finding ‘perk magazines’ that, you guessed it, give you points to unlock...well, perks. Some may not like that, but in my opinion it makes sense because if you gained experience just by killing stuff you’d reach level 50 before your first boss fight. Things like bigger ammo bags and extra weapon holsters are no longer unlocked by animal skins but through perks, and said said skins are now exclusively a form of making money.

So that about covers it for the good, and now it’s time for the bad. The streamlining I just brought up both helps and hurts the game. On one hand it does make progressing a lot less tedious, but on the other hand it does take away a lot of what makes Far Cry stand out from other typical shooters. It feels less like they were trimming the fat and more like they were cutting corners. For starters, areas that contain loot only contain ammo, crafting components, and sometimes money. There’s no more animations for skinning animals, harvesting plants, looting corpses, or even your character opening doors. That’s not so bad, but I really miss how dynamic and, as much as I’ve grown to detest this word, cinematic meeting new characters in previous games were. Take a look at this scene in Far Cry 4 when you meet Longinus, easily one of the highlights of the game.

And here’s what happens when you meet Sharky in Far Cry 5. (MINOR SPOILERS)

See the difference? Now one can argue that meeting new characters in real time saves some...well, time and is considerably less pretentious, but it just isn’t as interesting. Far Cry 5 still has plenty of scripted cutscenes, but again, they’ve been stripped down to the bone.

Now remember what I said earlier about trying to take in the sights? This game is packed to the fucking gills with enemy NPCs. Now previous Far Cry games had plenty of enemies as well but this went way overboard to the point that you can’t walk or drive 50 feet before running into a convoy or roadblock or whatever. I speak no hyberbole when I say that by the time you’ve liberated your first region, you’ll have killed more cultists than there are people currently living in real-life Montana as well as hunted and skinned more wolves, cougars, and bears than there are wolves, cougars, and bears currently populating the US west coast. Also, in what universe can a fucking turkey pose a legitimate threat to humans!? Does Far Cry occupy the same universe as fucking South Park?

The story of Far Cry 5 is pretty straight forward, but it definitely feels like there’s some pretty big pieces missing from it. This isn’t just me, critics and players across the board agree that it feels like something was cut from the game at the last minute. This is especially true for the endings, but more on that in a bit. I can’t help but feel that the writers and developers had a lot more to say about racism, gender roles and the enforcement thereof, gun violence and gun culture in America, sexism, religious zealotry, far-right extremism, and of course this tire fire of a presidential administration, because the pieces for all of that are still there. A handful of NPCs mention gender roles for a hot second, several of the guns for hire make disparaging remarks about Trump, the symbol of Eden’s Gate strongly resembles the same symbol the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups use, Hurk’s dad is a caricature of far-right ideals purposefully exaggerated for ridicule and contempt, and there’s even a mission where you meet up with another returning character to find Trump’s pee-tape.

All of the elements are there, but the game says almost nothing about any of it. Why?

When the first trailer for the game dropped it was around the same time Wolfenstein II: the New Colossus was close to release and the same mouth-breathing shitheels who screamed about how killing Nazis in Wolfenstein was pushing an anti-white, anti-conservative agenda did the same thing for Far Cry 5. My guess is that the PR guys at Ubisoft saw the oxygen-thieving wastes of space screaming about how the game was “anti-white SJW propaganda” and then panicked and removed huge chunks of the game so as not to alienate any racist shitheads who may want to buy it. Not only does the game say almost nothing about any of the themes and elements that I mentioned earlier, but the cult of Eden’s Gate is multi-racial and gendered where most of the guys have long hair and hipster beards and all the women barring Faith Seed have short hair and buzz cuts. It’s really jarring and feels like something that was added at the last minute, as the male cultists all sound the same and the female cultists say hardly anything at all.

That brings us to the player character; they’re aren’t a character, they’re an avatar and silent protagonist. Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it feels strange. Especially when you play as a female, which I did. Now the character creation itself is fine, especially with the wide variety of outfits, but the rest is pretty bare bones. More to the point, it’s painfully obvious they designed the game with a male lead in mind and then added a gender-switch as an afterthought. Almost everyone in the game refers to you by male pronouns (which to be fair I call my ladyfriends ‘dude’ all the time) but there are a few scenes where you’re found shirtless in the game. Now call me old-fashioned, but I’d have a bit stronger of a reaction than “Oh, you startled me” if I woke up to some weirdo carving the word ‘wrath’ into my tits! I have a sneaking suspicion that they added a gender switch at the last minute because someone reminded them of the time they looked like lazy idiots for claiming your customizable assassin in Assassin’s Creed: Unity couldn’t be a woman because women were too hard to animated.

And now, let’s finally talk about the Seed Family.

We have the leader Joseph Seed, the trainer and disgraced soldier Jacob, the sadistic second in command John, and the seductress Faith. The Far Cry games are known for their charismatic villains and the seeds are no exception, and especially gripping because the second you meet any single one of them you immediately want them dead. The only problem is that, again, they’re so cartoonishly evil that the more you see them the more you want to shove them crotch-first into the mouth of a hungry grizzly bear. Vaas was always one step ahead of you and constantly in your face and Pagan Min was so suave and charming that you kind of wanted to see where he was going with it all.

Not the case with the seeds. When you see them they immediately piss you off, and the more you see them they just keep pissing you off because they keep hiding behind doors, cronies, hallucinations, or plot devices. And hey, that’s fine. As long as you get to shove the barrel of a shotgun right into their mouth and spatter their brains all over the walls of their church then who cares, right?

....

So, let’s talk about the endings of the game.

Once you’ve liberated all three regions of Hope County by killing John, Jacob, and Faith, you return to the main cult compound to arrest Joseph once again. However, once you get there and cuff him you step outside to find your allies under the brainwashing influence of the drug Bliss and a boss fight ensues. When you knock your allies out and revive them, they snap out of their Bliss-induced stupor and turn on Joseph, and once you’ve freed all of them Joseph drops like a hot rock. When Joseph is down and the day is won...this happens.

....no, really. 

Right the fuck out of nowhere a nuke lands somewhere in the outskirts of Hope County and you scramble to escape, and pretty soon you black out and wake up in a bunker chained to a bed with Joseph hovering over you saying that you’ll be his first new recruit in the cult. All the allies you previously made die as Hope County is wiped off the map and the game ends, not even giving you a continuation like previous games did and rendering every single thing you did up to this point totally and utterly meaningless.

Now some people have defended this, including the developers, saying that there are radio broadcasts in-game talking about how tensions are raising in Russia and North Korea. I spent hours driving around in the game listening to the radio and I heard no such thing, but if they’re indeed there then this only furthers my suspicion that this was a last-minute change because of the backlash from racist shitbirds and wasn’t the ending the writers and developers originally intended. 

For starters, the escalating tensions between Russia, the US, and North Korea aren’t mentioned anywhere else in the game except in the radio broadcasts (which again, I never heard) and despite the Seeds going on and on about “the collapse” we never get any idea of what the collapse is until the end of the game. It’s not even a convincing depiction of a nuke going off! Just some burning trees and a few animals dropping dead as you make your escape with Joseph in tow and neither of you having so much as a sunburn. If this ending was what they planned from the start then they would have went all out, showing in graphic detail the horrors of a nuclear holocaust. How much of a gut-punch would it have been to see Nick Rye hug his wife and newborn daughter just before the skin is blasted off their bones like that scene in Terminator 2 that made me avoid mesh fences for two fucking years? Or Jess run one of her own arrows through her heart to spare herself an agonizing death? Or hell, Hurk, one of the few returning characters in Far Cry, desperately begging the player for help as his face melts off his skull? That would have hit players and hit players hard and people, myself included, wouldn’t be bitching about how out of nowhere and shit the ending is! And that’s to say nothing of the idea of North Korea wasting one of the handful of nukes they have on rural fucking Montana! Jesus H. Tap-dancing Christ, Ubisoft, how fucking stupid do you think we are!?

...okay, fair enough. But still!

Now I know what you’re probably thinking. “Well, damn, that’s grim. Anyway, what’s the good ending like?” 

That IS the good ending.

No, I’m not even kidding. Despite the end scenario being Doctor Strangelove by way of Deliverance (and no, that’s not me being snarky, the game references the movie by playing “We’ll Meet Again” during the final cutscene) that’s the good ending because you, the player, are still alive. The bad ending is that after you arrest Seed and see your friends and allies under the influence of Bliss, you’re given the option to let him go and walk away. You then then your Bliss-induced allies walk with Joseph peacefully into the church and then leave with the same three people, in which they get into a car and leave while chatting about getting the army involved and taking Seed out once and for all. One of them then turns on the radio, the song “Only You” plays, and a red haze takes over the screen just before the credits roll heavily implying that you succumbed to the brainwashing drug (which you’re exposed to several times in the game) and either attacked or killed the people you spent the time in the game trying to save. Either way, each ending renders your actions completely and utterly meaningless.

Why did they do this? Well, partially because the Far Cry writers really love the “There is no objective good or evil, everything and everyone is equally terrible” cliche and they assume everyone else does too, but once again I have no doubt in my mind that the ‘good’ ending wasn’t the original ending and was in fact a last-minute change to appease angry racists in order to not alienate what Ubisoft thinks is their core demographic. What a bucket of cocks.

Final Thoughts

Now despite the endings being complete and utter hot garbage that renders all your actions meaningless, there’s still plenty of fun to be had in Far Cry 5. The combat is satisfying, base jumping and flying around never gets old, the characters are great, and despite chickening out on the themes introduced it’s still a plenty serviceable story. It won’t be winning any awards anytime soon, and if you’re looking for some post-2016 return of the Nazis catharsis then I’d go with Wolfenstein II: the New Colossus instead, but there’s still plenty fun to be had exploring the beautiful wilds of Northwest America while gunning down religious nutjobs, hunting dangerous game, and completing side-quests from uprooting doomsday prepper bunkers to making a bull testicle cook-off to raise morale possible.

B-

A solid B-

[ruakichan]

Echoes of Mana released for global.  So of course I tried it out.  I normally avoid SE mobages cause they tend to have a poor record in either remaining up and/or monetization, but it’s Mana so who I am to say no... 

Anyway, the game’s dev is actually WFS (Wright Flyer Studio), who also did Another Eden, and has a similar albeit more intricate paperdoll graphical style, although the figures aren’t SD and the coloring is reminiscent of Mana’s style of art.  (I’m pretty sure the “2D” is actually 3D from how they’re animated, but the animations themselves have a bit of that paperdoll stiffness while being fluid.  It’s hard to explain; it’s not unattractive or off-putting, though.)

The graphics are really bright and colorful and the environments definitely are modeled after the Mana aesthetic. It’s really pleasing to look at.

Battle system is Mana’s active time style, with the typical auto-semiauto-manual options.  Looks like the game wants you to play two-handed: you swipe to move and there’s an array at the bottom corner of the screen for attack/skills/dodge/specials/summons. There’s a delay before using skills, so spamming skills until you’re out of MP is not a viable strategy (unless there’s something down the line that reduces universal CDs).

You get 3-6 members a party: 3 main with 3 subs attached to the mains, so only 3 on the screen at a time.  The AI controls the ones you don’t (there are AI setups).  You can freely switch between all with a tap or two.  Stages are linear with deviating paths that may hold treasure and ends in a ‘boss.’  They can be short or long depending, but I like this semi exploration aspect (which was one of my favorite bits of Another Eden).

Since it’s Mana, the music has to be good and it delivers. Overall it’s fairly solid fare befitting the Mana style and does use some of the various other Mana themes. 

Protag’s a silent protag who sometimes talks, per the usual for the series.  You can choose a male (Quilto) or female (Quilta) Mana Swordsman—both are pretty cute in design.  Game throws you right into the thick of it with Hawkeye from Trials of Mana to give you a tutorial of the battle system.  Localization seems fine for the most part; my standards are pretty low but there’s attempt at creating distinctive voice and the grammar is fine.  Dialogue voices are in Japanese.

Story has absolute shades of some Tales of games where all the characters of the franchise are thrown together.  The Mana Swordsman must help the Mana Goddess restore lost worlds through getting the Mana Sword (as per usual) and the recollection of memories (ECHOES! we have title drop)—which is basically how the game is gonna get you to gacha gather up previous franchise Mana heroes.  She also gives you a cute mascot sheepy-rabbity thing because this Mana and there’s gotta be a cute mascot.  ... it says “mofu-fu-fu” and I’m just... oh my god. That’s so fucking cute.  (Mofu is basically “fluffy” or a fluffing onomatopoeia and ‘fufufu’ is a laughing onomatopoeia and just ahgl agjlkagjlsjgs.)

Thus the game starts you off going to the various Mana worlds (the first one featuring some of the game’s original characters to start you off).

But first the gacha. It’s both WFS and SE so that means: silly prices and low quantities of free premium currency, especially after you get the first time rewards.  And it’s about the same here too.

The game initially gives you an infinite reroll for a single 3*; you can pick your fave/whoever looks cool/who you find useful here (most people say Charlotte for healing if you’re not aiming for 4* Sumo).

If you’re a min-maxer or reroller, it’s incredibly easy to reroll when you actually get to the 10-pulls for a 4* (max rarity to pull):  you can delete the user data from the main screen, skip the tutorial, and go straight to the pulling process. You can also save any ‘good’ accounts by setting up a password for data transfer, so you don’t have to worry about gambling away a decent roll if you want to try to aim for the stars.

Pre-reg rewards give you 2 10-rolls (2700 gems a pop on the special banner) and a 4* ticket at the start.  You can get another 10 roll if you speed through to chapter 3.

There is a pity, but it’s 200 rolls, and the rates are 1.5% for 4* characters. The rate-up characters aren’t by much more and going by how my many, many rerolls went, it’s basically GBF-levels of “rate up” where it’s fairly nonexistent.

The gacha is mixed with characters and “Memory Gems” which are basically wyrmprints or artifacts and serve a similar purpose. Lower rarities of characters can be raised to higher rarities through some resources as well, but the initial starting rarity is different from their higher rarity counterpart (ie: 3* Sumo is different from 4* Sumo in that their skills/weapon sets differ). 6* is the max stars to raise to for now.

(Goddamn I hope Elazul makes it in at some point and he’s not suck-tier like most of my faves tend to be.)

The game does have co-op.  I can’t play it due to my terrible connection (I don’t want to lag others) but there’s a lot of options and freedoms in how the rooms are setup.

There is a stamina system: two different types, and it goes pretty quick with a 5 minute regen.  There is autobattle and autorepeat on clear. There’s a number of loading screens between menus, but it’s not too bad even on my connection, although my connection does drop a bit (though not as much as Exos LOL).

Overall the game is pretty charming. I’m not a die-hard Mana fan; I played a few of the games and adore the Legend of Mana OST but that’s about it.   The co-op might kill it for me depending how it’s implemented: if it’s like Dragalia Lost, I’m screwed cause man my connection LOL, but if it’s like GBF then it’s doable.  I think that’ll be the make or break deal for me in how far I go in this game.

[vadous]

New Gunvolt game announced!

Today (May 12th, 2018) a new Gunvolt game was announced by Inti Creates at the Bit Summit Vol. 6 held in Kyoto, Japan. This game will be for Nintendo Switch only (only digital release confirmed at this stage)

Titles are: 

Japan: 白き鋼鉄のX（イクス）The Out of Gunvolt -> Shiroki koutetsu no X (ikusu)  The Out of Gunvolt -> White Steel’s iX  The Out of Gunvolt

International: Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX

Official site: 

(JPN): http://gunvolt.com/X/

(EN): http://gunvolt.com/en/X/

It appears to feature Acura / Copen as the main protagonist as well as his robot side-kick RoRo / Lola in a new adventure. 

Takuya Aizu, Inti Creates President, stated during the Bit Summit presentation, that the game will be a Gunvolt series side-story. 

Details are scarce at the moment, Mr. Takuya said that development’s just begun but there’ll soon be further news about the game. 

A playable demo was available on the Bit Summit stage, here’s a gameplay review:

https://twitter.com/Nore139/status/995218166832754688

Translation is as follows:

.There is no Strike Saw / Thousand Shredder available yet.

 . A song plays when you get 1000 kudos, but the song’s title is unknown since there is no name display on-screen.  There are retry markers

. The demo stage’s boss is someone controlling a tank, this boss gets out of the tank’s body as tank itself is damaged. That is when he can be damaged. After he’s damaged enough, he’ll go back inside of the tank. This process repeats until you defeat him.

. Insofar, it’d seem that the demo has no stage dialogue and barely has any voices either (apart from the unnamed new song).

. Also, players who completed the demo got a clear file (a printed poster) of the game as well.

Also, a Gunvolt Perfect works has also been announced: it will be released on June 22 (Friday) in Japan.Price is :3.800 Yen (+taxes).

Source & visual:

https://twitter.com/GunvoltOfficial/status/995143242696900609

Perfect works contents:

. Special CD with new (2018) vocal songs remixes:

1) Beyond Blue 

2) Sakura efflorescence 

3) Tabula rasa 

4) Indigo Destiny 

5) Stratosphere

 6) Parallel world 

7) Reincarnation

. Main illustrations plus special drawings sold in JP stores . 

Character introduction (visuals + character history) . 

In-game terms / special words explanation . 

Character designs (initial & discarded & definitive)

Staff interviews about the origins of Gunvolt series . 

Short stories and 4 komas (4 panels comics) from the Dengeki Nintendo magazine .

THIS POST WILL BE UPDATED WHENEVER NEW INFORMATION IS MADE AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC

Links to previous posts:

Clockwork Daydream & Eden’s Party

 GV1 character profiles

GV2 GV’s OP Stage

GV1 OP Stage