Don't Revive Your Friends

I am a big fan of Persona. The atmosphere, the music, the social interactions, the weirdness. All of it. The Persona series has always played pretty close to real-life scenarios of gym teachers thinking they rule the school and corrupt people of power poisoning the minds of their peers. Even if you don't have the time to play a 100+ hour campaign like Persona 5 Royal, just a few hours is enough to appreciate the world it has created and the similarities to our own. Metaphor: ReFantazio had a lengthy demo/prologue release and let me tell you. It's all of these things. It has the atmosphere. It has the music (although different than your typical poppy-Persona), the social aspects AND the weirdness. My gosh the weirdness. When I say that this game is strange, I mean it. It's not a bad thing at all since it is what I have come to expect from Atlus. The reality link has been sort of a controversial one involving politics and race and it is gripping and emotional from the start. ...

Over the weekend, Amazon Games let us enjoy the open beta for New World: Aeternum. Over this same weekend, I have discovered that this is exactly the type of MMO I have been looking for on consoles. With already established titles such as Elder Scrolls Online and Black Desert, both of which are great in their own ways, I still felt something was missing. I am not sure why, but New World reminds me much of my first time playing World Of Warcraft way back in 2004. I'm old, okay? So let us jump into some of the good and some of the bad and get an answer on whether or not you should play New World at launch. Beta Blockers I think betas are great. They're great for server load tests, bug fixes, and players get a chance to mess around with the game and decide if they like it. When I first loaded up New World (I have not played on PC previous to this) on my Playstation 5, I did not know what to think. The character creator was alright but I couldn't help but notice the lack of det...

One of my most anticipated games of all time, Eiyuden Chronicle, is getting a spin-off (sort of) game.  In the same way Final Fantasy A King's Tale complimented Final Fantasy XV, Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising, looks to do the same for Eiyuden Chronicle. You get to learn backstory to multiple characters for the upcoming main game. You get town building mechanics as well as fast paced action RPG combat. The art style stays true to games of the past (Suikoden, since it's made by its creators after all) and looks absolutely stunning. Today, 28 minutes of gameplay GOODNESS was dropped on IGN's YouTube channel and I couldn't be more excited. There's a bunch of developer insights as well to explain a lot of what's happening throughout the gam and production! Check it out in all it's glory here:

     It's not a matter of it being creepy, or spooky. It's a matter of me being SO bad at trial and error. I'm one of those people who, in the Dark Souls series, never learn. I will try the same technique over and over until I feel that I am just terrible at the games. Now, I HAVE completed Dark Souls 1 and 2. It may have taken me some years. Some tears. Some expletives. But I did it. Was it the hard way? Yes. Did I learn? No. That's what I am afraid of with Elden Ring. I LOVE these games. I LOVE the idea of them. I feel so accomplished when I beat a boss or get through to the next bonfire. I don't love the middle. The adapting. The trying out giant hammers instead of fast swords. I'm not saying these are bad things, I am just bad at them.  Gosh, does it look awesome though. There are mounts, giant enemies, open world. It's everything I  want. Then I see the videos of people getting dominated out of the skies, surprise ground attacks and misrolls into misfor...

 Da da da duuuuuuhn. Da da da duuuuhhnnn. Halo is back! I had an opportunity to join in on the Halo Infinite flight over the weekend and I want to share my experience. This time around, I have done something I have never done in a Halo game before: I went full Mouse and Keyboard. Oh yes. It was a mess. But was it fun?? To my surprise, yes. Absolutely. Hands down. This game feels so smooth and nothing on the keyboard feels too far apart. Actually, it may become my preferred style of play down the road. I am primarily a console player (I know I know) so mouse and key is almost foreign to me. It's been since the days of Unreal Tournament 2003 and Soldier of Fortune that I had used these consistently. That's a super long time ago. So why did I start now? After so many years of perfecting the craft of controller convenience did I decide to lay my fingers down and learn something new? Well, besides the fact that my son has hijacked my Xbox, I wanted to prove to myself that I was capa...

World War 2 has happened so many times. In video games. You know what? I LOVE heading back to the period for my love of history. Call of Duty may not be exactly known for it's precise historical accuracy, but some of my favorite COD moments have happened in this WW2 era. Whether it was the launch of Call Of Duty 2 on the Xbox 360, or running around in the current gen versions of COD WW2, I've loved it. We have since moved a little bit forward in time, went back to the current years and even dabble in zombies. Vanguard looks to bring us back to when the planet was erupting into chaos for the second time and I will say that I was pretty pumped about it at first. After playing the beta, I have some doubts. This Is No Spawn Trap We're going to start off with what I feel should be the highest of high priorities. You see, Vanguard has a nice and vibrant world. Taking us to different locations that happened to be fought at during World War 2. The problem is, you get no time to tak...

  I don't have a ton of time to play the games I want. It's infuriating. Jobs and responsibilities get in the way. Why does life have to be so dang needy?! I want to be involved and immersed in a fantasy world while fighting giant monsters. Invading castles and taking down the big baddies. Enter: Tales Of Arise. This is the 4067th entry in the series of which I have played 0. Joking aside, I have actually NEVER played a Tales game and there have been 17 games so far. As a first timer, I had no idea what I was in for. 30 some hours in, I can say what I got was a good time.  Out of all the games I currently playing (Scarlet Nexus, Final Fantasy 7, The Yakuza series, etc) Tales of Arise is consistently on my mind.  After the first initial hour or so, I was a tad overwhelmed as the game has a metric ton of dialogue and stoppages. So I felt like I was getting more of a cinematic experience rather than a game. I trudged on and gave it a bit more. It started to flesh out.  ...