Kpnut

No. It was all about ethics in video games journalism. The "gamergaters" wanted various things disclosed that might affect the review score like if the product was received for free, the reviewer got take on a fancy trip or if the dev was fucking the reviewer. The rest got tacked on because the left are bunch of psychopaths.

All I have to say is I FUCKING KNEW IT! I knew this was going to be a shit disaster of a game and I was right. If you want good Saints Row go play 2 or 3 (or even 4) let Volition and their parent company take the hit they deserve for putting this trash out.

Yep been playing that, would have had a first (or halfway through) impressions but I got engrossed in it and I have no completed the game so this will be my full "review" of it. And since I dislike doing these without some sort of image to accompany them I have again put a selection of my FFXIV screenshots (both SFW and NSFW ones) in the spoiler at the bottom (including the sort of shot I never took with any of the bethesda games) but anyway that comes lately onto the review. Review in the spoiler below, there will also be some spoilers for the game so read at your own risk. Images below

Been doing a lot of gposing in FFXIV lately so thought I'd share a selection of the images I've taken, there's a combination of SFW and NSFW images here as well as a combination of character presets (although with a heavy focus on my midlander and Au Ra) so pick a favourite but one of these is the best FFXIV image I've ever taken (number 10 for those interested, although I quite like 1 and 2 as well.) Thought I'd actually upload something here since I've been neglecting it.

Been sat on this topic for a while now but never got around to posting it until now. I've also started playing Warframe again so decided to attach an image of my Excalibur frame. But anyway the main meat of this entry. As some of you know I took up writing, I even posted the first 4 chapters of what I was writing at the time. I actually really liked the world I created for that story however I ended up hitting a block. That block then caused me to realise a few things and as a result I shelved that story. So what where the few things I realised? Well the first is that I'm not that verbose, I dislike using 100 words to describe or explain something when 50 gets the job done just fine this is somewhat bad for storytelling however as this lack of verbosity results in descriptions not being great or not being there at all. The second thing was that I didn't actually have enough content for the story or ways of linking the stuff I wanted to put in, I posted an excerpt of an event I had planned later on in the story but I then realised I had no way of linking it to the rest but I also didn't want to just cut it. The third and final thing was that I had too much dialogue in the story, every chapter it felt like my characters where sitting and talking or standing and talking or just talking and honestly I was pissing myself off with it especially since I find dialogue heavy stories to be pretty boring (there are exceptions, but I can't think of any right now) so the fact I was creating something like that just annoyed me. I fully plan on revisiting it at some point but I've immersed myself in a new project, a new world if you will. So what's different about this one? Well the main character is nowhere near as powerful for one thing but I've also been creating the world as I write rather than creating the world first and then writing a story set in it. I've also cut the dialogue right back, it's still there but it's minimal. And finally I've been treating each chapter as its own individual story just with a single thread running through them (like it wouldn't make sense to read chapter 4 then read chapter 2) additionally I've been keeping each chapter to around 3000 words, however there's space in each to expand them if I so choose. I've actually been far more enthusiastic about this one than the last one and I think it's because I know what I want to do with it and how I want to do it. I even like the world I've been creating for it. So yeah that's all I wanted to post, I'm actually kinda glad my original story failed as its allowed me to analyse my own weaknesses and try and find ways to compensate for them. I might post a few chapters of the new story as well, if there's any interest for it. But anyway here's a picture of my Excalibur frame from Warframe;

I forgot to mention in the main part of this post (and I can't be arsed editing it in as it's more of an aside) that if Amazon where smart they'd let Smilegate release a patch that undoes all of the censorship and blackwashing done to the Western release or at the very least not ban anyone who swaps in the files from the Korean or Russian version.

Yep gonna be giving my impressions on Lost Ark in this one. This is NOT review, while I have given reviews for MMOs in the past (namely FFXIV) it was mostly individual expansions rather than the game as a whole. But anyway this will be split in two; the good and the bad, I'll also have a shot of my Lost Ark character as well. So the good, or the section of things I like. There's actually quite a bit I like. Most notable is the combat in it, I find the combat to be really enjoyable from the classes I played using the teaser you get after character creation. In fact I've found something I like in all but one of the classes be it the speed and combo ability of one of the assassin classes (I can't remember their names,) or the magic of the sorceress. The story is also a good one, if a bit basic. But after playing through Endwalker a simple magical Macguffin hunt is a nice change of pace. And while I'm not necessarily a fan of ARPGs they are absolutely one of the best ways to do massive set pieces in cutscenes, I've seen two of them both involving sieges and they are amazing cinematics as the devs can cram an absolute shitload of NPCs into these cutscenes. Additionally the way they designed the sidequests cuts down on the back tracking as the quests finish near the next main story NPC so you can do them on your way to each story point. I also like that they have separate EXP sets, one for the character called Combat EXP and one for all your characters called Roster EXP, this I feel actually incentivises alts and as an altoholic I very much approve. It's annoying having to do everything from scratch again, especially if it's something grindy. Now the bad, or things I don't like. I have to address the elephant in the room (and something I dedicated an entire entry to) and that is the censorship and blackwashing. As far as I'm concerned both of these are unacceptable, I consider video games to be art and forcing the creators to change that art to satisfy some self righteous wank stains on twitter is evil. It's like painting over the Mona Lisa because it's some Italian chick in the painting rather than a black one and the most insulting part? This censorship and blackwashing has been done in a half assed manner, the textures used for the now black characters (changes made to "appeal" to the Western audience, when I guarantee you the regular game doesn't give two shits about that and just wants a good game) are garbage and look MORE racist than if you just left the characters as is, same with the censorship. I have no issues if all my characters, male and female, are covered head to toe in awesome looking armour (hell my favourite glamour set in FFXIV is basically a full suit of armour) but all they did was change the female character's skin colour for the bits of armour that would show exposed skin example here (female martial artist:) It's not just the censorship either, the actual localisation is pretty bad too. The voice acting for Armen and Thirain (two of the central characters for the first part of the game) is pretty good but the rest is mediocre to outright terrible. There's a tutorial NPC when you get access to sailing and her VA not only sounds bored but she also sounds like she's been given no direction, there's weird pauses in her sentences and the whole thing sounds pretty stilted. This wouldn't be too much of an issue but this NPC by virtue of being a tutorial NPC has to do A LOT of talking. There's also instances of the spoken dialogue not matching the text as well, not a major thing but when taken in addition to the other issues with the localisation (like the poor lip synching) it's clear to see that this localisation was half assed, it feels like the localisation team was split between actually localising the game (translating from Korean to English and giving the VAs even basic direction) and making pointless changes to appease people who would never play the game in the first place. That's the localisation over and done with so what else don't I like? Well it's the genderlocking of the classes, I do not like genderlocking classes yes I'm one of those people who chooses to play a female character in an MMO but what happens if I want to play as a male assassin? (Which I did in Guild Wars, I loved my assassin in Guild Wars) but I'm stuck without the option to choose to do that. Same with sorceress, what if I wanted to play as a really beardy Gandalf looking dude rather than a cute elf? It's something I don't like in Black Desert and I don't like it here either. I like having choices and luckily I'm not one of those picky players who will ONLY play male or will ONLY play female characters but it still feels like a good chunk of the playerbase is getting locked out of those classes because they are picky. So to wrap up, overall I do actually like the game most of my complaints are about cosmetic stuff and nitpicks. The core gameplay is good, the music is good and the graphics are actually really nice, however the negatives are enough to make me not want to spend money on this free to play game. I also don't see why it had to be an MMO outside of greed (although if it wasn't and with all the changes forced on it by Amazon I wouldn't have bothered, I've still not even farted in the general direction of Persona 5 Royale) as it would be a perfectly good regular ARPG. I honestly don't think Amazon Game Studios are a good publisher, they fucked up New World and they've fucked up Lost Ark. I said in my last entry about this game that Smilegate (the devs) could have gotten just about any publisher in the world to publish this game but it ended up being the fuckups at AGS who didn't learn from their issues with New World so it resulted in the first week or so of the game's Western release being a shitshow of server issues. Amazon is probably the richest company in the world but they should just stick to what they're good at and let actual game companies and publishers publish these games. Anyway sexy assassin lady in the spoiler below.

I am, the game was running just fine when it launched, it was after I had left it alone for, I want to say, 2 months that it stopped working properly when I went back to it.

I'd give it a try if the game actually started for me. Done multiple clean installs and nothing has worked.

Sorry no images on this one either unfortunately. So what I wanted to talk about is the localisation of eastern games. This has been sparked by the release of Lost Ark now server issues aside the game (from what little I've managed to play so far) is pretty solid ARPG although I am terrible at ARPGs, so why am I bringing it up? And why have I included it in the title? Well it's because of the controversy surrounding its English release. I'm not that far into the game but I've already noticed localisation issues, namely the poor lip synching and heavy handed censorship (I stripped the armour from my first character and you could see where they covered up the skin, it was done fairly sloppily) and this got me thinking about what a localisation team SHOULD do and it got me comparing the localisation team from Lost Ark with the one from FFXIV. The FFXIV localisation team works alongside the story team and only have an input in matters relating to the translation (to my knowledge, there are some parts that are a bit tame but that's probably in order for the game to keep its teen rating) so if the dev team wants to add a bit of skimpy armour in the localisation team have no choice but to accept it. As opposed to Lost Ark where Amazon, who where only supposed to localise it (they say they're the publisher but I'm willing to bet that Smilegate could get any publisher they wanted really,) and also promised not to touch anything, decided to censor the game on top of the various other edits they've done (I've seen images of the skin darkening on certain NPCs, it looks fucking terrible) that go well beyond the purview of a localisation. Now yes Amazon are technically the publisher but this also applies to publishers as well, especially if said publisher is pretty much just an intermediary between an Eastern game developer and the West (in the case of Amazon and Lost Ark, Korean) they exist solely to get the game into people's hands, if that means putting pressure on a slacking dev team to pick up the pace or if it just means translating it from Korean to English that is their one and only job. Meddling with a game, especially one that is already complete, to pander to the twelve psychopaths on Twitter and Reeeeeeeeeesetera who won't buy or support the game anyway is just asking for trouble. So yeah short ranty entry for you all.

Yep going to be "reviewing" the new pokemon game and sorry no images in this one I've got some from the game itself but I'm too busy actually playing it to upload them to my PC. Anyway on with the review. I'll start with the negatives and by negatives I mean the major ones that aren't just purely down to personal preference (or are but to a lesser degree.) The biggest of these are the graphics while they're not necessarily bad per se but they could definitely have done with some extra polishing before release additionally the frame rate for some pokemon and characters in the distance ends up being in single digits almost. Additionally the draw distance isn't that great either so you end up with barren looking terrain until you get close enough for the trees, grass and flowers to render. Additionally the fog barriers that denote the edge of the maps are very disorientating, although this is a minor gripe all things considered. Additionally the fact that certain pokemon lines are locked behind space time distortions is another mark against it, I had to look up the entire pokedex to find out what I was missing because these events are random and there's no guarantee that the pokemon you need will spawn inside them. Locking 11 pokemon from the pokedex behind these is an incredibly poor choice in my opinion and they'd have been better off not including these lines at all especially since 2 of them are fossil pokemon lines which are rare spawns within the distortions. Why am I complaining about this? Well it's because you need to have caught or owned at least one of every pokemon in the pokedex to finish the game. So that's the stuff I consider to be objectively bad what about the subjective stuff? Well it's mostly some of the hisuian forms and new evolutions. I already liked Hisuian Zorua and Zoroark, Hisuian Avalugg, Voltorb and Electrode grew on me and I still disliked Hisuian Arcanine but not as much as when I first saw it but it's the final forms of the starters that I really dislike. Samurott is fine it's an edgier version of regular Samurott, Decidueye looks weird but it's with Typhlosion that they really fucked up. Normal Typhlosion (with its flames out) is one of the best looking starters in the franchise but they decided to turn it into a stoned, dopey looking thing and I do not like it. Hell I don't like the fact the starters got regional forms in the first place, yes the gen 1 and 3 starters got mega evolutions but I feel regional forms should be restricted to more common pokemon. Just a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things but I still think it's worth mentioning. That's all the bad, what about the good? Well everything else. The fact that what I consider to be fairly inconsequential (the graphics and new forms) are the two of the worst parts of the game means it's easily one of the best games I've played. The core gameplay loop is actually incredibly solid and this game has had some of the toughest fights in any pokemon I've played. They made catching pokemon, ya know the core aspect of the entire franchise, incredibly satisfying and fun additionally they managed to make wild pokemon an actual threat (at least the aggressive ones) rather than a mild nuisance (although with a team of pokemon in the level 80-90 range they go back to being a nuisance, but that's still pretty good. I need a team of incredibly high level pokemon to not feel threatened by wild ones) and the AI for them also seems a lot smarter for example I was fighting a Crobat and it wiped out my fairly powerful Espeon without giving me a chance to respond through smart use of the new style system where it used a weaker Agile Style move first to weaken Espeon before hitting with a regular move to finish it off. On top of that at night when ghost pokemon start spawning the game gains an almost horror game element as they'll suddenly appear behind you. As for catching them, the catch rates have definitely been tweaked as it's easier to catch pokemon in this game which is understandable as there's really only three pokeball variations in this game and the other two variations modifiers aren't all that spectacular one being essentially a sniper pokeball whilst the other is a high risk high reward one but they have the same base catch rate as their equivalents however the act of exploring and catching pokemon is incredibly satisfying, engaging and fun. Now lets talk about the Alpha pokemon, these are pokemon that are incredibly aggressive and with increased size (they're the biggest specimens of their species) as well as having reduced (supposedly) catch rates. They also have glowing red eyes when in the wild, which varies from looking intimidating (Alpha Garchomp) to unintentionally funny (Alpha Ralts) but these don't have any actual affect on gameplay if you catch one since the only difference between an Alpha and a regular pokemon is that the Alpha will have more EVs (effort values, more on that later) initially but regular pokemon can and will catch up. Really the only reason to use them is for the increased size and the cool symbol next to their gender indicator. As for other gameplay features a big one is the new battle system, it resembles the battle system from the Legends of Heroes series of games where you have a turn order rather than the game being strictly turn based your pokemon's speed dictates whether or not it attacks first but other than that certain moves can alter the turn order as well is which style you select, the agile style makes the move weaker but allows your pokemon to attack again sooner whereas the strong style increases the move's power but makes it move later so utilising these styles properly is the key to victory. I mentioned EVs earlier, these are basically modifiers to a pokemon's stats, in fact the EV/IV system is much simpler in this game, a pokemon's nature only affects which EVs it starts out with having points in but with enough of the EV boosting items this doesn't matter. This is a change I really like as it means a pokemon isn't completely hamstrung by its potentially bad nature so all pokemon of the same species with full 10/10 EVs and the same level will have the same stats which isn't a bad thing and makes battles less frustrating. The other thing natures determine is whether or not certain pokemon are dicks or not (I've been tagged in the back by a Budew only for the fucking thing to run away) which is a nice touch. Actually as an example of stuff like this (and something that endeared Hisuian Voltorb to me) was when I decided to feed some Voltorbs some berries and the little fuckers started following me around it was adorable. As for the story, it's actually an Isekai story with the MC getting transported to Hisui by Arceus in order to avert a disaster and you're found on the beach by the professor after which he helps you join the Galaxy team's survey corps. I won't spoil much more but the story is easily one of the strongest Pokemon story lines. The sidequests also add much more depth to the world where if you hand over a pokemon they stick around the village with their new owners, they even touch on some of the folklore you find in the pokedex in other games. So what's my score? It's a solid 8/10 pushing a 9/10. Obviously it has its issues and annoyances but I can forgive those with how well done the rest of it is. I've had to force myself to stop playing this game in order to go to work or bed, there hasn't been any recently released game that has managed to have that effect on me. As for how I'd improve on some of those annoyances, I'd remove the Porygon, Magnemite and two fossil lines from the pokedex I'd then add in the Phanpy, Wingull, Feebas, Marill and Houndour lines which could be added to various locations that make sense in the world rather than locking 11 pokemon behind the space time distortions. You'll notice that I've left Weavile in but that leads onto my next point; have the space time distortions give the player the regular forms of the Hisuian pokemon (including the starters,) this is already done with the Sneasel line and could easily be done with the Growlithe and Voltorb lines as well.

As has already been said they don't own Bungie. But they are releasing Fable 4 so they are still using one of Lionhead's two franchises. I would like another Black and White game though, they were pretty fun.

Wasn't going to do anymore for this but I'm pretty proud of this fight scene (I've not actually gotten to this point within the story yet but I wanted to get it set down before I forgot about it.) So a bit of background that isn't in the settings entry for this sub category; Prophets are essentially the Gods' angels and are some of the deadliest beings in the setting, capable of killing immortals and keeping them killed usually the only things that can fight a Prophet are other Prophets or people wielding weapons called godslayers (which Zack, the main character, does have) but it's a difficult and gruelling fight. Anyway the scene is in the spoiler below, it's a page and a half (or so) and over 1000 words just for the one scene it's just slightly shorter than the fortress assault earlier on in the story but this is one small fight as opposed to an assault on a fortress. Anyway I hope you enjoy, any critique is more than welcome.

Been meaning to do this entry for a few weeks now but I've been distracted by other things (I caved and installed the Chinese spyware that is Genshin Impact) so I'm only getting round to it now. This "review" will be split into 3 parts, parts 2 and 3 will be in a spoiler as they pertain to the story whereas part 1 is only about the new jobs and changes to a few of my go to jobs. Anyway onto the meat of the entry The Jobs and Job changes So with the release of a new expansion there's a host of changes to the pre-existing jobs as well as two new jobs. First off we'll get into my first impressions of the two new jobs; Sage and Reaper. Sage is to healers what Gunbreaker was to tanks, its mostly focused on DPS and it's most basic healing is done by using your DPS skills additionally it's a shield based healer so it does less overall healing but it grants shields to the group however their shields overwrite Scholar's shields and are also weaker than a Scholar's shield (at least it seems that way to me from what I've read and seen) additionally despite their healing being attached to their DPS skills it seems that they have a much harder time keeping up with the demands of healing in dungeons, especially when the tank decides to do massive pulls. Reaper on the other hand feels like it'll be getting some pretty large nerfs in patch 6.1 (not the wee piddly healing potency nerf it got in 6.05) it does a a shitload of damage with insanely high potencies and some pretty decent party utility, its damage is close to (and can exceed) Samurai and Black Mage, the two greediest jobs in the game, they have no party utility out side of their raw DPS. Additionally its got more manoeuvrability than a lot of the other melee DPS jobs as well, although this can make it easy to jump off any platforms you're fighting on. Really Reaper in addition to being the edgy player's go to choice is probably going to be a go to choice for all the tryhards as well due to its raw damage and ability to reduce the need for healers (not eliminate though.) I've seen so many reapers over the course of levelling my other jobs that I'm already sick of seeing them. I myself found it fairly fun to play but I still prefer Dragoon. Speaking of Dragoon lets get onto its changes, for the most part Dragoon hasn't had any major changes to its pre-existing kit just a few upgraded skills and potency buffs. The major change to the job comes with the removal of its job gauge giving you less to manage, the resources you do have don't have a constantly ticking down timer and can be stored from fight to fight in dungeons or to different transitions in trials and raids. In effect Dragoon got even simpler to play this expansion, due to it's lack of resource management and its core combo loop being the same as it was in SB and ShB (basically a big loop) most of the changes are QoL changes like adding their damage buff to their AoE combo and removing the positional requirements on Raiden Thrust, instead linking it to a new buff. The new skills are flashy enough with a new AoE being linked to the same buff that Raiden Thrust is linked to, although I feel the big level 90 finisher skill should have a higher potency and be linked to a trait that replaces Piercing Talon (since you yeet your spear in the animation) but that's a minor gripe. Overall I still really like Dragoon even if the only other melee DPS it out damages is Ninja. Next up, Paladin the poster job for this expansion. Paladin was pretty fun to play in ShB (I rediscovered my love for it during the 180 raids I needed to do for the ShB relic weapon) but it got even more fun in EW, their core kit didn't change much except to add healing to its short cooldown skill (as well as a damage cut making it BETTER than Dark Knight's The Blackest Night skill) and to its party wide skill (which is still useless imo) other than that it's just more QoL improvements, some potency buffs on the magic skills. Where it gets really impressive is its "finishers" which is effectively just Unlimited Bladeworks from Fate Stay Night. you summon a massive sword, then summon more massive swords before summoning even more massive swords and finishing it with another massive sword that applies a damage over time debuff. They also changed Spirits Within to be less useless when the Paladin is main tank so rather than its damage scaling with your health it's just flat damage, before getting upgraded via a trait to a line AoE, although it now has a really OTT animation. The other jobs I've levelled to max are pretty fun but I mostly did it to experience the role quests. Bard is fun, which is weird because I hated it in ShB but I was loving it in EW. Maybe because I play it almost exclusively in PvP. Red Mage is mostly the same but they expanded its finishers for their melee combos and allowed you to fire them off after the AoE melee combo. White Mage is decent but it now seems to have issues with MP and runs out very quickly. Samurai is still the same, just a few buff name changes, the buffs added to the AoE skills and some new skills, nothing exciting. So that's a brief overview of my first impressions with the jobs, I have yet to play Summoner though and it's looking like it'll be a very fun job. The Story and Role Quests Final thoughts on the Zodiark saga as a whole Sorry for the massive entry with a shitload of text, I've not actually got any good images for an entry like this.

There's "gear" called the Emperor's New X that is effectively just the "nude" body, if you save it to a glamour plate you can have it glam over any gear you have equipped and retain all of its stats. As for having the appearance without obtaining the gear; it should be possible in the tools, just find the tex file and have it replace a different, easier to obtain, piece of gear. Just remember that all of these alterations are client side so to everyone else you'll appear as having just the regular appearance (or a different modded one.)