My heart breaks for King Halo

Her mom was a famous Umamusume and her mom calls her saying shit like “Are you ready to stop being delusional and give up? Stop before you disgrace yourself.”

And with my expert training we’ve successfully proven that her mom is… right. She’s lost every race. Her career is ending in shame and embarrassment.

I had to abandon my PSI-only playthrough of System Shock 2 because I am a giant baby and the game is very hard. I was only an hour and a half into it, so it wasn’t a big deal. I respec’d as a Navy boy, like 41% of gamers on Steam, and seem to be going for a gun-focused jack of all trades with no psionic ability at all.

I’m finally past the point that I got to as a teenager, which means I got to Deck 4 and saw the (in retrospect, as an adult, obvious) big reveal. But even with some more careful choices, I am still finding myself getting utterly schooled by this game on normal difficulty. No wonder teenage Brad, who was bad at video games and impatient, bounced off it despite the wonderful everything about the game.

I’m not quite sure what I am going to do. The worms and the flies are pretty brutal and now there are zombies who can throw grenades at me. How the fuck is anyone supposed to survive this? I feel like I should go back and respec again as some sort of mutant melee tank hero, because you’re always lacking for heals and ammo.

Maybe I am just not playing smart enough. It took me a while to figure out I needed to play Prey (2016) as if I was really there, and I’m still not quite there with System Shock 2. I should be noting down which replicators have stuff I need and be doing more backtracking. The maps felt massively huge when I was a teenager, but now they seem quite small and it’s very easy to cover them quickly… so why am I so stubbornly insisting I never leave a floor except to get chemicals for research? I am being a silly goose.

Ah, well, we’ll see what happens…

Nintendo finally sent me an invite to buy a Switch 2, so against my better judgement, I bought one. (Backstory: Nintendo kind of pisses me off, from releasing underpowered hardware, to their terrible online play systems, to never discounting their games, to …)

But, you know what, Mario Kart World is pretty good. I expected to be pretty underwhelmed both by the overall gameplay itself (I wasn’t a big fan of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe) and the graphics.

In actuality, the gameplay is pretty great and appears surprisingly deep (if you want to get crazy into wall riding and rails), the tracks are a lot of fun, and the graphics are pretty good. Could they be better? Sure, but they do the job and the game runs buttery smooth and looks great on my OLED. The new Rainbow Road specifically is a joy to race on and a spectacle to behold.

Is Mario Kart World worth a full $500 asking price to get the console and game together? I mean… no… but that’s the Nintendo tax for you.

I’m 30 hours into Death Stranding 2 and I never want it to end.

The system shock 2 remaster is so fucking good. I just love this game and to see it so vibrant and smooth just feels good. And simply hearing it again, from the ambiance of the ship to the awesome voice acting… love it!

I’m eight hours into Death Stranding 2 and it’s pretty fantastic. There are moments where you’d swear they swapped in actual filmed video because the graphics are so good.

I had a good time last night just completing aid requests and picking up random packages to try to grow my connection level to in the first area. When I played the first game, I stubbornly avoided all the side content, so by the end of the game I hadn’t even unlocked the truck. So I’m trying to avoid making that mistake this time around.

At a little over 50 hours, I saw the end credits for AC Shadows, but feel like I’d probably only completed half the content in it.

Above all else, the game was gorgeous and that made it mostly a joy to play. The story was basic but I’m kind of thankful for that after the bizarre never ending quagmire that was Valhalla. I don’t think I ever fully vibed with the combat unfortunately, there was something that always felt a bit clunky about it, and the moments I had to play as Yasuke, it felt extra clunky.

All in all, it was a good game and I’m glad I played it. I will probably keep playing it a little bit to finish up some side content for fun. We’ll see. I normally drop games quick once I finish them…

I have to reiterate how insanely good looking AC Shadows is on a PS5 Pro and a LG OLED TV. It’s just nuts.

It’s a damn shame that Star Wars Outlaws looks so rough on console, even on ps5 pro, but AC Shadows looks incredible. Outlaws deserves to look a good as Shadows.

Man, Clair Obscur really wallops you one at the end of Act 1. That’s all I have to say about that.