The two free games we are getting for June 2019 through PS+ is : Sonic Mania and Borderlands : The Handsome Collection. Which is actually the Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 2, along with all of their DLC.
I’m all for a throw back Sonic game and Borderlands looks fun but it is one of those games I would never have bought for myself.
People on both the PS4 and the PlayStationPlus subreddits are super excited about the games. Plus, with E3 coming up, June 11 through 13, and Sony sitting it out, this gives people something positive to talk about Sony. Though Sony has a lot of good will going on right now with rumors of trailers or information regarding The Last of Us 2 and Death Stranding floating around.
Sonic Mania on the PlayStation Store is $19.99 and it has a $4.99 Encore DLC with extra levels and two additional characters.
Borderlands : The Handsome Collection is $60, so that’s super impressive that we are getting this game for free. There is a theme for $1.99 and a free texture pack meant for the PS4 Pro but I downloaded the texture pack. I might be willing to buy the theme if I like the game in the slightest. Apparently the game does go on sale quite often.
Sonic Mania originally came out on August 15, 2017. Originally release to celebrate Sonic turning 25!
I thought it was supposed to be a tie-in to the film but that isn’t coming out until February 14, 2020 – what everyone wants to do on Valentine’s Day is go see a Sonic film. James Marsden being in it helps. Getting classic Jim Carrey also isn’t a bad deal too. I like how he and Will Smith are able to still call forth their 90s charisma almost 20 years later.
Borderlands : The Handsome Collection originally came out on March 24, 2015.
Pretty impressive that it still sells at $60, but Borderlands 3 coming out on September 13, 2019 has probably helped with sales in the past few months.
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Here are my peeps talking about the games as well :
Nathan of PlayStation Access :
Adam of PlayStation Grenade :
Ben of Platinum Chasers :
I just started following Adam through PlayStation and that guy has so many platinums! He also states there will be some free exclusives to check out in the store too. Ben also has a slew of platinums now that I’m following him through the PSN as well.
Ben states Sonic Mania has 3 silver trophies and 15 bronze trophies. Borderlands has 2 platinums, 8 gold, 28 silver, and 96 bronze trophies.
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Referring to platinums, here are the trophy guides to both games :
The game doesn’t have a platinum but like Ms. Pac-Man, I’ll probably just play it for the sheer love of playing and not worry too much about the trophies. Except Ms. Pac-Man does have a platinum but I’m nowhere near good enough to go for it.
I’ll definitely be playing Sonic Mania first and see if Walker Dennis wants to be my buddy at all. Then I’m going to dive into Borderlands and see what all of the fun is about.
Like most people, I adore Girlfriend Reviews and I’m reminded of their video they made for this collection. I’m going to have to rewatch it again to get a better feel for the game.
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I’m still making my way through Lego Avengers, having a great time. I’m just making my way down the trophy list to feel productive and to give myself a direction to go in. Tonight’s plan is to replay Ready, A.I.M., Fire to unlock Aldrich Killian and then try to kill him for the trophy. Then I’m going to get all of the English characters (Captain Britain, Mandarin (Trevor Slattery), Spitfire (who I remember from Facebook’s Avengers Alliance game), and Union Jack. I already have Agent Cater. Then I’ll get the Defenders and some specific red bricks (x4, Stan Lee in Peril, and Quest Detector), then the x6 and x8 multipliers. Finally, just free play all of the other levels that I still would need and then I’m off to the DLC! So I bet I have another two weeks with this game and then I’m off to Lego Marvel Superheroes 2.
I should try to at least complete Episode Three of Batman : The Enemy Within. Walker Dennis wanted to play Fallout 4 as I made a reference to Dogmeat but then it took 30 minutes for the game to reinstall. By the time it was done, he wanted to play Batman : Arkham Knight which now I want to get the Season Pass again for $20. We were doing the math and with $20, we would be getting like $15 worth of bonus content, which I do like a value. I was able to finally download the Scarecrow pack, so that was nice.
I was also doing the math for getting Fallout 4’s Far Harbor and Nuka World DLC and combined, it is like $45 and its Season Pass is $50, so I might as well just spend the extra five dollars and get the other three DLC as well. But I’m probably never going to treat myself to that DLC but I could be gifted it maybe.
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I completed What Remains of Edith Finch, such a good game! During my first playthrough, I completely missed Gus’ story but on the replay screen, we are able to replay ones we missed so that was nice. I didn’t want to replay the entirety of the game just to get to one of the final stories. People talk about how sad Lewis’ story is, and it is but the one that devastated me was Gregory’s story. Being the primary bath giver to Walker, it was always one of my grave parental fears something bad happening to him while in the bath and seeing it play out just crushed me. But I knew the game was coming to a close so I kept at it and 30 minutes later, had completed my first playthrough. Gus’ story is right after Gregory’s so I probably just walked right pass it not giving it a second thought.
During my first attempt at Ms. Pac-Man, I got to the Pretzel portion and that was about it for me. I should go back and practice and get gud at it but it wasn’t bad for a quick gaming session.
I also bought Dear Ester and Walker D. and I took turns playing. He wanted to keep walking way pass the story segments but he got better about pausing and listening to the story. I missed every urn and I attempted the Director Commentary of the first chapter but I’ll go back to it. I do like how for the Director Commentary, they put up orange squares so we know where they are and they turn white if you listened to them, that was pretty handy. Jessica Curry did an amazing job composing the score and she does have a Pandora channel. Every one of her songs was from Everybody’s Has Gone to the Rapture, so I want to play that game at some point. I’ll eventually go back and do that second playthrough. I’ve already committed to the idea that I’m probably not going to be able to find them all as I didn’t come across all of the story segments either but it was enjoyable from what I can only imagine was the bulk of the story. In terms of walking simulators, I’ll probably rank them as :
What Remains of Edith Finch
Drowning
Dear Esther
Drowning is a shorter game but I felt I got more out of it than I did Dear Esther.
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TOKYO – JUNE 11: Pictured L-R: Janelle Pierzina and Britney Haynes on THE AMAZING RACE Wednesday, April 17 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. (Photo by Monty Brinton/CBS via Getty Images)
Last week, poor Britney Haynes and Janelle left Amazing Race. I knew they were not going to make it as they kept coming in sixth or seventh, and once there is only seven teams, they were going to fall short of their goal. They were great together and I’m going to miss them on the show.
I never did find a good Amazing Race photo websites but I found those three pictures above. Britney looked great in that grey jacket.
Classic Britney gif!
I just stumbled across a great Amazing Race Britney gif machine of a page!
It took me far longer than I thought it would but I finally got around to playing the PlayStation Plus Free Games for May 2019, Overcooked and What Remains of Edith Finch.
I earned my 19th Platinum with Lego Marvel Superheroes 1! Walker Dennis was a huge help as was PlayStationTrophies.org’s guide in general but specifically the note about the race that was high up in the sky, that was my missing gold brick. I also thought we had purchased all of the vehicles so I thought my last earned trophy was going to be for obtaining all of the minikits in the game but then the platinum didn’t pop for me. So now I have the platinum shot being for Deadpool’s Scooter.
I then launched right into Lego Avengers and now I really want all of these movies digitally through VUDU as the Marvel films span across all of our physical movie media policies. We started with just DVDs at first (then sold most of them to Hastings), then just BluRay, to BluRay + DVD packs, and finally to BluRay + DVD + Digital Copies. Now I’m at the point where I just wan the digital code as taking a game out of our PS4 and putting a BluRay into it is a real pain of 15 seconds. Or that I lose my place in the game, which is my real issue with it. Most of the films are $15 through VUDU, so I might have to treat myself to one per pay period. I really want Captain America : First Avenger, the first Avengers movie, and I’ll probably make Captain America : Civil War my third movie, just to start with.
I was in the second to last level, during the second part of it with Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye, when Walker Dennis really wanted to play the PS4 Spider-Man game. Which I knew he would only want to play for maybe ten minutes but I decided not to be old dad about it and just save and exited my game and loaded the other game for him. He’s obsessed with Spider-Man 3 right now, so he wanted to play with the Maguire Attire. He was having such a great time.
The other issue I would have had was I wanted to beat the level I was on, but I knew that would like maybe another 15 minutes I didn’t really have at the time, and there were some background trophies I was working on and taking advantage of not turning the game itself off so once I obtained Hogun, of the Warriors Three, I would have earned the Warriors Three trophy as I had already played as Fandral and Volstagg. But it is pretty easy to earn Hogun, play as him, and then just quickly change to the other two characters.
The same is true for playing as every Iron Man variant (which there are 14 of them!), visiting all of the Hub locations in one sitting, and growing Ant-Man, Black Goliath, and Fin Fang Foom all in one sitting. We just earned Fin Fang Foom and it was going to be a while before earning the other two. Like I wrote, it would have been pretty pity of me to deny him some enjoyment just because of the most super silly reasons.
We’re still enjoying these games, Walker Dennis was getting bored with Superheroes 1 as we were done unlocking characters but he got to play the other games but then I would go back to the first game as I was so close to beating it. Now with Avengers, I’m just trying to beat the game story so I can get Vision so I can replay an earlier level to unlock the x2 Red Brick, which always my first real goal in a Lego game. Usually it doesn’t take that long to earn it but I need it as I can’t get the True Avenger status on most of the levels so that will make getting that easier.
I also don’t like how there isn’t a map option for Lego Avengers, besides the mini one as I like to look at it and try to go for all of the character tokens first and earn the gold bricks around the same area while I’m there.
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So, since I had stopped the Lego Avengers game, I also knew this would release me to play Overcooked and What Remains of Edith Finch.
Overcooked is a lot of fun, I have to get my lovely wife and Walker D to play with me. I was able to obtain two stars by myself so I can only imagine having even an extra person would get me the third star. I played up to 1-4 then I unlocked Versus mode and did one of those for the trophy. It felt cheap but I wanted to make up for lost time.
So 30 minutes later, I was loading What Remains of Edith Finch. I just completed Molly’s story and made a few mistakes, trophy wise, along the way. The game looks great and it took me a second to get used to walking and reading the captions on the screen so I tried up the volume just enough to hear it. I didn’t get the first keyhole to the left of the garage, and I also didn’t take the two routes to get to the house. I went down the one path and felt like I hit two road blocks and went up the hill and go to the house just the one way but I must have just gotten lost in all of the greenery. The story is very interesting and I knew the game is only three hours so I should commit to at least finishing it. I’m not sure if I’ll go out of my way to earn all of the trophies but I’ll play the main game and then see which trophies I can clean up at the end.
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Another thing that was stopping me from playing was I suffered through a kidney stone from Mother’s Day Sunday to Tuesday, May 21, which is way too long to suffer a kidney stone. This was my second one, as I had one ten years ago. That one, I went to the hospital, they gave me fluids and I feel like it was gone before that night came around. This one, was 7mm of pain. I was taking so many hot showers and following those up with 20 minutes of sitting under a heating blanket. It was not ideal.
During the heating blanket, I’ll try another level of Lego Avengers but that was all I could do. But it wasn’t like I was enjoying myself as the pain would be intense until around the 20 minute mark, and then I had to go to sleep during that moment of peace. Now I’m feeling like myself but now I need to watch my sodium intake so no more V8s for breakfast and trail mix packs for lunch, as those were the only things I changed in my diet so those are taking the blame. I just have to be more mindful of my sodium intake and I already tried the Low Sodium McCormick Taco Seasoning and it tasted exactly the same so I think I’m going to try some other low sodium variations and see how that works out. The only other food item I recall with the low sodium label would be Campbell soups and those barely cost anything so I should get a few of those next time I’m at the store.
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There is a pretty great digital sale through the PlayStation Store that I’m seriously tempted to get Ms. Pac-Man for $1.99 (down from $3.99) and Dear Esther : Landmark Edition for $2.99 (down from $9.99), as those are pretty great prices and two games for five dollars is pretty good. I have until Monday, May 27 to make up my mind. I just have two full games to still enjoy but I want to take advantage of the sale and I have five dollars to spare but I really do need to get another $20 gift card for times like these as I could get a few more games too. I just talk myself out of buying for myself so often so it is a hard habit to break.
Actually there are two sales going on, the Totally Digital one and the Double Discounts.
Turns out the mobile version of the PlayStation Store got a make over and I’m not sure I’m a huge fan of it as of now. That white block up top doesn’t contrast well with the black portion of the store below.
I was more secure in purchasing Dear Esther when I thought it has been a free PS+ game in the past but turns out, it hasn’t been so I wonder if I should just wait and only get Ms. Pac-Man as that game will never be given away for free.
PSPrices still doesn’t have a place holder for Kindom Come : Deliverance – Royal edition. Amazon is trying to sell the regular edition for $21.99, down from $40, which makes sense as they will want to move as many copies as possible prior to the upcoming edition comes out.
GameStop has Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition for $19.99, down from $50.
If I had the money and wasn’t knew deep into the Lego Marvel Superheroes 1 and with two full games to go, I’ll be super tempted to take advantage of all of these deals!
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I haven’t had a chance to play Overcooked or What Remains of Edith Finch, Walker Dennis keeps wanting to unlock characters in Lego Marvel Superheroes 1 and I’ve been using that as an excuse to keep playing the game not at 11pm at night so that’s been nice. I just got us 150 Gold Bricks so we got Doctor Strange, who he really wanted. He really wants Deadpool so I need to get 175 Gold Bricks to unlock the second to last bonus mission (The Thrill of the Chess) and then 200 Gold Bricks to get the final bonus mission (Bro-tunheim) opened up. Once we have those two bonus missions, we have to get the last two Deadpool Red Bricks unlocked, and then we finally get Deadpool! So that’s going to take some time. I haven’t saved Stan Lee from Peril from the rest of the 14 story missions, I got the first level done at least, nor the mini kits, so that’s 28 Gold Bricks right there, so I can get to 175 easily. Then there are plenty of races and side missions to do, plus multiple Stan Lees to save on the world map, so I should be able to get 200 easily too. There is a total of 250 Gold Bricks, so it is just a matter of time but I’m thankful for the extra 50 gold bricks that, by that time, I would be committed to getting those last 50.
At least I’m getting better at the races, so that’s nice too. Still a few characters to unlock like Psylocke, Polaris, Mysterio, and various alternate costumes, and some Guardians of the Galaxy. So funny that the first game clearly came out prior to the first movie, so they are comic book accurate for the time instead of movie inspired. The first game came out in October 2013 and the first Guardians film came out in August 2014. Which knowing how movies are made, they probably had the costume designs ready way earlier but then again, Lego was probably working on the game up until July 2013 or so, with what we know of how games are made.
The free games for May 2019 are : What Remains of Edith Finch and Overcooked!
I’ve been wanting Edith Finch for so long so I’m thrilled to finally get to play it! I’ve seen PlayStation Access play Overcooked and it looks like a lot of fun too!
Edith Finch is one of the best walking sims out there and Overcooked is a four player coop game where players try to get meals out and not set the kitchen on fire.
PlayStation Access :
PlayStationGrenade :
Platinum Chasers :
I like how Adam and Ben are still commenting on the lack of games as we used to get six games and now we only get two. I’m part of the camp that wishes they added a VR game as a third title.
I’ll be pretty happy if they just found a few more crossbuy titles that used to work with the PS3 or the Vita and give those to us on the PS4.
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Most of the discussions on the two subreddit pages I follow for this type of news are going on about the lack of quantity of games and the two games are being praised but they are both older games and relatively cheap on their own.
What Remains of Edith Finch is $19.99 and Overcooked is $16.99 but has a Gourmet edition for $19.99 that I imagine comes with The Lost Morsel, an add-on for $4.99. THere is a free The Festive Seasoning level that I’ve now downloaded.
So a overall value of $37, when sometimes it can be over $60.
The games are going to be available to download on Tuesday, May 7, and I can’t wait!
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As Ben states in his video, neither game as a platinum trophy, which seems unfortunate to pair the games together. I think that is one of the other annoyances people have, is that both games are indie titles so one game being offered in May and the other in June, would have been nice for some people. Some speculation is being written about how, even though Sony is skipping E3, we might get some stellar games for June. Time will tell.
Since neither game has a platinum, I think neither of them gets a proper playstationtrophies.org page but on the forum, both are represented.
Of the 11 trophies, I’m going to commit to three of them, for sure. Play a versus mode game, extinguish a burning kitchen, and complete the tutorial. It’ll be nice to get the other ones, which the bulk seems to be, get one star in at least one kitchen per five hub worlds.
I’m going to see if my beautiful wife and Walker Dennis will want to play with me, if not, I’m going to have to solo the game but I should be able to at least do those three trophies on my own. I’m going to be attempting this game first.
This is the game I’m going to 100%, for sure. There are seven missable trophies but reading the descriptions, it seems like just knowing which story you are in, check the guide real fast, and make sure you accomplish the goal. It doesn’t seem like any of the trophies’ descriptions spoil the plot. At least, I don’t feel like I have any proper context but time will tell.
Apparently, during a second playthrough, most of the trophies can be obtained except for finding the first peephole which is to the left of the garage on the fence as we approach the house for the first time. We don’t ever get a second opportunity to do that, so if you are trying to get all nine peepholes and 1 telescope. Which, stuff like that, is the reason why I look at trophy guides. Never too closely, as I’m mostly just looking for the word “missable.”
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Walker Dennis and I earned our 18th Platinum!
The first Lego Movie is so good and so many mechanics were used in Lego Dimensions so it just felt comfortable.
I went out the very next day and bought the Lego Marvel Collection! At first, I was going to be an old fuddy duddy and only let Walker Dennis and myself play one game at a time. Then I warmed up to the idea of just completing the story and then allowing us to move on to the second game. Then Walker Dennis’ big brown eyes and hearing myself say it for a fifth time, I agreed to playing the games until we got Spider-Man unlocked. Which it took a long long time before we could access the open world in Lego Avengers. With the game, the Spider-Man DLC is free, but we didn’t have access to the blue terminals that have the option to switch characters, until after the fifth mission, Helicarrier Havoc. We’re four percent done with that game. Lego Marvel Superheroes 2 is pretty quick and it only took two missions and we had Spider-Man, who is freely given.
Going to the individual games’ PlayStation Store pages, we still had the option to buy the DLC, which made me suspect we didn’t get a code for the season passes but once we could open the character page, all of the DLC characters were on the bottom but I checked all three times. It would have been nice, since once you load the disc, we had to individually download each game, so it would have been nice that the prices on the store page changed from the dollar value to the download option. That would have given me some peace of mind.
So I’m cool with whatever game Walker Dennis wants to play, he can play but at night, I’ve been doing one mission of Lego Marvel Superheros 1 and I’m currently just passed the X-Men mission and the Fantastic Four one is next. Which I’m excited about as that means I can defeat 100 enemies using the Thing, as that’s one of the trophies. I’m not sure if I’m going to platinum any of these games as they are massive! I’ll definitely strive to do so but ooof, there are a lot of characters and gold bricks floating about. Plus, those races are pretty hard! I can’t seem to get a feel for webslinging either.
I’m so happy we got Scarlet Spider in Lego Avengers and I know there is a race to unlock him in Lego Marvel Superheroes 2 that once I can, I’ll commit time to unlocking him. Spider-Ham is also an option in 2 so I’ll have to get him there too.
1 has Emma Frost and I made a point to do two missions from Professor X to unlock her, and then I did a third mission to unlock him as well. I sought out Archangel so I now have all of the original X-Men. I’m having a blast!
Playing Lego Avengers makes me want to rewatch the first two Avengers movies. We sold our copy of the first one to upgrade to a digital copy but we haven’t done that so I might have to pull the trigger as that movie was fun to replay. We have Age of Ultron on BluRay but I’m tempted to buy that through VUDU as well. I’m just ready to stop buying physical movies and buy everything through VUDU but then VUDU still doesn’t get all of the special features so here I am buying the combo packs just for the digital copy and a few extra materials.
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My plan is to play one level of Lego Marvel Superheroes 1 and then play Batman The Enemy Within until 11:30pm, and then play until I get to another save point. Which I’ve been able to do for the most part. Last night, I finished the X-Men level, so I went around gathering all of the X-Men I could and unlocking Carnage as I’ve been waiting to get Iceman to unlock Carnage. Walker Dennis turned on the game, and I wanted him to buy Carnage, Superior Spider-Man and a Symbiote Hazmat fellow. Which he did but we went from 1.5 million studs to less than 150,000 studs in a matter of seconds as he started unlocking everybody.
On my list of characters I want in the first game are:
Agent Coulson, for the trophy
The Lizard, Walker got the first Amazing Spider-Man movie for Easter – and Hop – so he’s in a real Lizard mode, he calls him Dr. Connors, which I love)
Howard the Duck, also for the trophy, it is the last one listed and I’m obsessed!
Magneto, he’s needed for so many items in Free Play
Scarlet Spider isn’t an option. I would have held off for Colossus until the very end but he was needed for the Fastball Special trophy so I bought him. I wish they would make a Lego X-Men game, it would be awesome and super cute!
Anyway, this section was supposed to be about Batman : The Enemy Within! I’m in Episode Three and Catwoman showed up! So I want to romance her like crazy as Bruce is going through some stuff. Harley wants to flirt with Bruce but Joker’s man crush on Wayne makes me try to flirt with Harley but keep pushing Joker to keep him happy. I read a great article in GameInformer on how Episode Five is essentially a compilation of our choices so it really depends on everything we’ve done during the four other episodes.
Thanks to finishing the second episode, I’ve finally reached my Gaming Goal of 2019 by reaching Player Level 15, I’m 6% into it, and I have 18 Platinums, 102 Gold Trophies, 355 Silver Trophies, and 1163 Bronze Trophies, for a total of 1638.
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Apparently there is a really great deal going on right now on the PlayStation Store. I saw something about villains spotlight but nothing jumped out at me but PSPrices makes the deal look very worth checking out!
Zero Escape : Zero Time Dilemma is $7.99 for PS+ subscribers, down from $40, and I might actually buy that as that’s my Vita white whale!
Witcher 3 Complete Edition is $14.99, down from $50 (though I rarely ever see it at full price now)
Lego City Undercover is $8.99, down from $30
Batman : Return to Arkham is $7.99, down from $20, if I wasn’t knee deep into three games and a Batman game, I would it now, but I probably would once it is eight dollars again.
Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition is $20 at GameStop, and I love how PSPrices tells us retail sales as well!
Lego DC Super-Villains Deluxe Edition is $44.99, down from $74.99, I wonder if that includes the latest batch of characters like the Phastasm and the Shazam characters?
Kingdom Come : Deliverance is $13.53 on Amazon! Is that right? Looks like it is sold out right now. In fact, there is a Royal Edition coming out on June 11 for $40, so I need to change my version on PSPrices once they have a link for it.
Injustice 2 Legendary Edition is also $30 at Gamestop, down from $60, but this is another game that is usually on sale too.
Batman : Arkham Knight Season Pass continues to be solid at $20, one day it’ll dip to eight dollars, then I shall strike!
I got to add Lego Marvel Collection to my . . . collection so that’s one less game! I’ll be taking off What Remains of Edith Finch in a week, so that’s exciting too!
I’m looking at Zero Escape : Zero Time Dilemma and it is stating it is a cross-buy title?! Was that always the case?! How did I miss it then?! So many questions! I had the Vita version hearted through the store but I’m going to take a chance on buying the PS4 copy and I hope I end up with both! Alright, that means I now only have 49 games on my wishlist!
Shoot, it only registers as the PS4 version and the Vita version is still available to buy, that stinks but at least I can think that I own it too. I wonder if I should reach out to customer support and get the Vita version?
I’m chatting with Joseph of Customer Support right now. He couldn’t make the came crossbuy and now it sort of killed my enthusiasm for ever getting that game or any of the other Vita games I missed out on. Plus, I was never going to get a Vita. Once if that day ever came, I’ll reignite my desire for them. At least I got a refund out of it.
It is the first two chapters of the volume. Sean Wang is the writer and artist.
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TRIGGER WARNING!!!
AVENGERS ENDGAME DESCRIPTIONS AHEAD!!!
I actually got to watch Avengers Endgame! I don’t want to spoil anything as I was able to avoid all spoilers so I don’t want to spoil someone else’s good time but I think I can make some comments without giving away any real plot points but I have some thoughts I need to get out of my head.
So if you don’t want any spoilers or hints of spoilers, this is the final section so there isn’t anything else read, so come back once you have seen the film!
First of all, this movie is amazing! My wife complained almost immediately as we got outside, that she thought he movie was too long, like like 20 minutes, so that killed some of my buzz to talk more about the film. So we talked about how all of the third act needed to stay, but there were parts in the beginning that probably could have been trimmed or even during the quest portion of the second act that could have been parred down. I thought it was amazing, like, every minute of it, so I wouldn’t have wanted to shorten anything but it was a fun thought exercise.
We took Walker as he did pretty well watching Infinity War on Netflix. He ate too much popcorn and had too much of a Coke Icee so I had to leave two times in the beginning of the film so he can attempt to throw up but nothing came of it. I knew his belly would settle if he stopped eating, and after the second attempt, he sat in his seat and enjoyed the film.
He waited so patiently until Spider-Man showed up, which I don’t think anyone expected for him not to show up, or any of the vanished heroes, so I don’t think that’s a real spoiler (in case someone is trying to read these paragraphs until a real big spoiler shows up – I’ve done it that in the past as reader).
I like how, once the portal opens, there is a good beat of time before Spider-Man swings out, and then Walker would not stop talking about Peter Parker. He also started commenting on wanting to buy the movie, which I told him I really want it too. But he was so excited. Then there were non-Spider-Man moments that he just wanted Spider-Man to come back, so that wasn’t great but once he’s on the screen, he’s in the film and the center of focus.
I loved how, with how epic that final battle was, there is always time for a hug and what a great hug at that!
This entire movie was a celebration of 22 films and ten years of Marvel movie magic! Well, Endgame is the 22nd film so a celebration of 21 films!
As soon as Sam said, “On your left” I don’t think I stopped smiling for the next ten minutes.
Then the ladies all had a moment, that I’m sure someone is going to make posters of and screenshots of, once the film has been out for a month. I appropriated so much how the marketing campaign was so nice to avoid spoilers. Heck, even the Lego sets didn’t spoil anything. Captain America never got on a motorcycle and Iron Man never went to a room that housed all of his suits.
The Avengers Compound shows up, and that would be the one I’ll be tempted to buy if it wasn’t a hundred dollars. War Machine never gets a giant Hulkbuster sized suit. Rocket’s ship is shown but never does anyone ever get into a giant white plane, so of the five sets, only one is in the film. Not for long though, once Thanos shows up, but still, it is there.
The fact that all of Infinity War mattered as amazing! I thought for sure, the last five minutes wouldn’t matter but nope, everything happened and everyone has to deal with that.
Okay, now I have to spoil somethings to talk about some things. So final final warning!
I think most people know there is a time cut, and there is. Five years have passed since Infinity War. Earth has not really moved on. There are monuments with names like the Vietnam War memorial in San Francisco that I can only imagine are represented in every major city, if not every city probably did the same. I wonder if those come down post-movie as it would be haunting to see one’s name on a wall for all time. Plus, ever the first anniversary, they served their purpose and are taking up valuable real estate.
Also, high school reunions have be crazy right? Teenagers are back, half of their friends graduated and then you have to be replaced in your grade and now graduating with half the people you don’t even know. Also, half of your friends are five years older than you too. Except it seems all of Peter Parker’s supporting crew are in Spider-Man : Far From Home, so that whole class of recognizable characters vanished. Which is handy for film purposes. I wonder how much of that film is going to handle the ramifications of the world, probably just a few lines of dialogue.
I missed the line about Tony losing oxygen and we got a fun interactions with him and Nebula. For the life of me, I can’t remember what happened in the two minutes we missed the second time. It was during Black Widow’s debriefing scene.
Thanks to the time travel aspects, we got to revisit some favorite scenes. Which was so amazing to see again from a different angle! Also, so fun all of the movie titles being said and how they all got it wrong. The movie sort of handles it like how Marvel comics handles time travel. What happened happen, and if you change something, it just creates a new timeline so the present will always be the present.
I had to look it up and that is Ty Simpkins’ character, Harley Keener, from Iron Man 3, at the end. So nice how they paid homage to the first Iron Man film as this film closes an entire saga. It helps that Jon Favreau is a director and an actor, and super willing to be in these films. It probably also helps that he’s directing Lion King so Disney has his phone number.
I wonder what phase four will bring and what the overall plot focus will be. Perhaps an epic Doctor Doom plot or just Galactus coming? We have to be working towards Fantastic Four and the X-Men being folded in, right?
Heck, this movie gave us a Hail Hydra! So amazing! And America’s Ass! Captain America can do this all day! I must have been grinning so hard during long sections of the film.
We got two amazing parent scenes, with one’s mother and another’s father. Having a child really does put one’s own parents in a different perspective. Might be worst or better but an understanding does occur. There’s a nice balance, as all things should be.
This movie even went as far as to try to make Thor : Dark World matter! Which I would say is by far the worst Marvel movie, even the Earth portions were not great.
Thor : Dark World will be on the top of my ranking of the films. By a lot! But gosh, look at all of those films, all of them are pretty rewatchable! Which is super impressive and the cast of actors we get in this films are astonishing!
I love that if an actor had a free day to film, they got to be in the movie.
We still haven’t seen Captain Marvel but I’m hoping to sneak it in before it leaves theaters.
I was able to text old friend to the blog, and my oldest friend, Greg, some of my thoughts so that was nice to talk to someone about the movie who also loved the film.
He made a comment about the homeless problem probably skyrocketed but I wrote back how with half the population gone, they probably became homefull.
I was on a track about identity fraud and how my chances of being accounted for, even though I vanished, I would still come back five years later to all of my debt still intact, knowing my luck. It would be like 911 times a hundred.
Does Manifest actually get into the minute details of being gone for five years and definitely being declared dead?
Thor was amazing in the film!
They found a way to keep Loki alive that is super clever and the plot to find Gamora is probably going to be the basis of Guardians 3. I love that they got a new team member, the reuniting of Groot and Rocket was super nice too.
Cap back in the 70s, so great! Cap in the finale, was so heartbreaking and beautiful. I love how Agent Carter : Agent of SHIELD mattered with original Jarvis being shown. No hard references to Agents of SHIELD or the Netflix shows, from what I could tell.
There are all of these news reports to a Black Widow movie and I want that to happen too but I’m not sure how. I knew it was going to be her to take the soul stone.
When Thanos’ missiles were firing into the sky, I had forgotten about Captain Marvel and I thought we were about to get a crazy entrance but it was great to see her. Peter Parker introducing himself to her was amazing, as Walker always refers to him as “Peter Parker” so having the name said by both characters made him so happy.
Greg was wondering if the line about earthquakes was a hint to Namor which would have been cool. Otherwise, it was just a line of dialogue for dialogue’s sake.
I imagine besides lines of dialogue, the time jump and real world ramifications are not going to be reference again. Maybe that would be the plot or the backbone to the Disney+ shows.
We knew Hulk was going to be an Avenger as we saw the Pop Vinyl character.
Okay okay, now we’re getting into major major spoilers territory!
oh my! We finally got “Avengers Assemble!” and it was everything I ever wanted! Then we got Captain America holding Mjolnir! I was so happy!
Fun how we got two more Community alums added to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Yvette Nicole Brown (who looks like she lost a lot of weight!) and Ken Jeong.
When they were in the 70s, there is this great song by “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” by Harry James and his Orchestra that I just loved the old timiness of it. Apparently, it is their cover to a 1945 song.
Nice to see Hiroyuki Sanada in the film, he was Shingen Yashida in The Wolverine and Akihiko in the film.
The film has a great balance of comedy and drama, and so many people and characters got a moment to shine. They definitely got their moneys worth from Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans. Both get such wonderful sendoffs.
We even got Gwyneth Paltrow in the Rescue armor! So many things paid off from previous films.
I know it won’t take any awards besides MTV and Teen Awards and a few technical awards but it really does deserve to be acknowledged next year. Not like it matters but it’ll be nice for the box art.
We really need A Time to Die Hard now!
Just overall, I loved the movie and I want to see it again but I won’t until I own it.
Next stop will be Spider-Man : Far From Home but I can’t imagine we’ll watch it July 5 opening weekend.
This world no longer has Dennis Lee Brannman to kick around!
My father-in-law passed away on April 20, 2019, and I just can’t stop thinking about him. He had Alzheimer’s Disease so he wasn’t himself for the past six or so years. Those first years, were not bad, as it seemed like he was a tad slow on the uptake.
The very first time I ever spoke with him, I was standing in Yuma, Arizona, and he was on the phone in Helena, Montana. My late sister-in-law and her then husband had eloped so I had this big plan to make sure we got married and I was going to ask his permission to marry his youngest daughter. Of course, it was a bigger moment in my head and I had it originally planned completely different.
That summer, it must have been 2007, my future wife was going to spend the summer in Helena and I was originally planned to come up with her and drive back with her. I used Greyhound to come back and to go up there by myself. Secretly, I also had the plan to propose to her on her birthday. Dennis was supposed to be Helena at that time, and I was going to meet him and tell him my intentions. Instead, he had to work longer in Miles City so he didn’t come home until the week after I left.
But I had already planned this silly speech in my head and I also needed to make sure her mother was okay with me staying there during that week. I was still calling her Mrs. Brannman at this stage, which I would continue to do so until like a year ago. Now I just don’t address her by name or I call her Leslie and I feel awkward about it. Anyway, that’s my own dumb hangup about the formality of titles.
I knew he was home but I wasn’t prepared to have that chat with him that day so I waited another day while I knew Kristie was going to be working at Power Townsend so I knew she wouldn’t answer the house line. I called and Dennis answered and I had to super awkwardly introduce himself and quickly spurted out that I would like to marry his daughter and I was getting his permission to do so.
He was nice enough to say that he wasn’t sure how she felt and it would be up to her but if I wanted to, I could ask her. Which made me think that maybe asking for one’s daughter’s hand was only a thing in old movies or television series but with that encouragement, I booked tickets to fly to Helena.
We never got a chance to talk about that exchange nor have I really ever heard anyone talk about it so maybe he just hung up the phone and went on with his day and I briefly told the story to Kristie but that was that.
We eventually met and I’m a pretty different guy than he was. Him being a good ol’ Montana man, served in the Navy, was still working on boilers, he hunted and was super Catholic. I was slowly becoming Catholic and only ever really worked in office environments besides a few summer gigs painting houses. I fractured my right elbow in high school so military service was not an option, though I would have liked to have served at least one tour in the Army, to follow in my mother’s boots.
Dennis and I got along pretty well, I mostly let him talk and try to tell some jokes. It was a polite relationship and I’m sure he was thrilled with both son-in-laws that he was given and neither of us were much like him.
. . .
The other memory I cherish was the first time we really hung out on our own. He had some errands to run and invited me to tag along. I dove at the opportunity to try to impress him with my wit. I’m sure the invite was supposed to be a kind gesture that I was supposed to turn down but that’s what happens when you a take a chance on inviting someone. At this time, he was resorting to writing down notes for himself, which was clearly the Alzheimer’s slowly coming on so that taints the memory in hindsight. But I was there, he told me the plan, and then we went out to run the errands. So he’ll say something like “well, that’s that, let’s go home” and then I would have to remind him we had two more stops to make, he’ll thank me, and then we headed to the next place. Then we’ll repeat that conversation and I’ll tell him we had one more stop. Good times and he would retell the story and I was pretty useful that day.
. . .
He was a staunch Republican, and got me to join the Knights of Columbus. Kristie was still pregnant at the time and I only really attended two meetings. Then Walker Dennis came along and I just got busy and never really went back to the Knights. We gave Walker her father’s first name as his middle name. As soon as she told me that’s what she wanted, I was all for it.
On that morning of his death, Walker Dennis woke up at 2:30am and asked to sleep with Kristie. We were there to bury her grandmother, and there was a chance Dennis wasn’t going to hold out for our return. We sincerely hoped he would make it a few more days but with Alzheimer’s, one never knows and it is such a horrible disease that the person is like a shell of who they used to be. So at least he’s in heaven as a complete person again. So Walker woke up, we switched beds. and then thirty minutes later, Kristie’s sister Dawn called. If Walker hadn’t woken up, Kristie probably would have either missed the call or would have been still waking up to hear the news. Instead, she was pretty alert and prepared. We like to think that was Dennis’ way of saying goodbye to his namesake.
Walker and him got along pretty well. Even those last months, Dennis would instinctively call him Curtis, so he at least remembered his middle grandson, which was always nice to hear him make a connection.
You will be missed Dennis! Thank you for continuing to be a great example of being a loving father and supportive husband. I can only hope to continue in your footsteps.
Ms. Marvel (2015 – 2019) # 1
Shang-Chi : Master of Kung Fu (2009) # 1
Marvel 1602 # 1
I’m not sure what these three have in common at all but I’ve at least read 1602. As I type this, I supposed I could actually read these comics and then give a quick sentence review but maybe next time. 1602 was pretty fun, it probably shouldn’t have been promoted as heavily as it was for what the story turned out to be but it is a fun re-imagining of the original Marvel characters worked into the Elizabethan era.
. . .
I have also earned my 17th Platinum with Polygonal Wolf’s Drowning.
The PlayStation Store was having an Easter sale and I had the thought to myself that whenever there is a sale, and I have the funds, I should just treat myself to the cheapest game and that’s how I came across Drowning. I gave it a lot of thought.
It seemed more confusing than straightforward but the game sounded interesting.
I saw WarisacryGameClips’ review :
and I realized I’m doing a lot of work to decide if I was willing to spend two dollars on a relatively short game.
So purchased it and looked forward to playing it once we were back from Hawthorne, Nevada.
Once I got home, I checked rus199410’s platinum run of the game :
Thanks to both of those YouTubers for hosting such great videos.
I couldn’t believe it was that easy of a platinum and it made the guide make sense too. I had a pretty fun time with the game. I understood what “low-poly environment” meant only after experiencing the game. It looks much better on the PS4 than in videos.
The game has some fun collectibles (like five of them) and some silly trophy things like attempting to walk off a bridge a several times. Once I saw in the second video that there was a trophy for merely starting a new game, I was both excited but also wondering if this would be a shameful platinum or even game on my game list but I really had a good time with the game.
The game is about depression, just to finally come out to say it, and now that I’m writing this, realizing I’m not ending on the high fun note I thought I was going to. The story seems very personal but at the same time, pretty vague. There is an alternate ending with people around a campfire that I’m pretty sure I understand but I wouldn’t have minded getting more information about.
The game looks great, tells an interesting story, and you’ll be completely done with it in an hour. Which felt good to play and beat a game, not in just one sitting, but to successfully complete a game. That was a reward all to itself.
Drowning is typically $2.99 so I only saved a dollar. There is also an avatar for only a dollar, but I didn’t purchase it.
This was also my first “walking simulator” game and I enjoyed it so I should look into other walking sims to play.
Slant’s list includes SOMA and Witness, which I’ve played, and Life is Strange and its prequel, which I own. I should move that game up my list and I should finish SOMA. Witness, I really should commit more than 30 minutes to playing. Detroit : Become Human doesn’t seem like that would fit but I’ll give that a playthrough once I finish Beyond : Two Souls. Heavy Rain is also featured on the list. Those games seem more like TellTale story games along with Until Dawn, and I wouldn’t consider those games strictly walking sims like how I believe the next list of games are mostly like.
Firewatch, Journey, Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Abzu, What Remains of Edith Finch, Dear Esther, are all on my wishlist already with Ethan Carter being the most recent addition.
I hadn’t heard of Night in the Woods before, nor Layers of Fear, The Observer, Ether One, or Perception. It makes sense that walking sims and horror games would work together.
. . .
The Bridge was also on sale and I didn’t even remember it being a free PS Plus game back in October 2018. It was a pretty interesting game. I’m only on the third chapter but after needing three YouTube videos for three of the puzzles, I was concern I was just going to watch the videos and burn through the game and that felt cheap so I’m putting the game on the backburner for now.
Thanks to EliteMonkeyGaming for hosting the videos, the short run time made me realized how silly it was to watch a video but I was legit stuck on them.
II – IV, The Pillars
II – V, The Mausoleum
II – V, The Memorial
Watching this videos, reminded me that I also needed help with I – VI, The Nook.
So I ended up needing help with four puzzles which didn’t bode well for me for Chapters 3 and 4 and what I can tell from the trophy list, the Mirror versions of those four chapters.
I’ll come back to this one of these days, probably during the next sale and I see that I have the option to redownload it again.
. . .
I’m currently making my way through Lego Movie’s first game. I just have four of the five manuals in Broadcast News and three of the five in Bricksburg Under Attack, and then I’ll have all of the golden manuals! From there, I’ll let Walker Dennis build the Golden Instruction Builds, he’s already made three of the 15, then once he’s done, we will earn both the Midas Touch trophy, the Everything is Awesome 100% completion trophy, and finally, The Piece of Resistance, the platinum trophy! Feels good to be at least days away from earning it, or whenever he wants to complete it, I suppose. I can patiently wait and it gives him something to do in the game.
What I really want is to buy the Lego Marvel Collection now on Amazon for $40, down from $60! I wished I knew how long this sale is going to last. I imagine it is on sale because of Avengers : Endgame but I know the game is $40 so I can wait until it is at least $40 again.
I haven’t seen the above Lego Spider-Man Far From Home set, which is what I’ve been holding onto my $40 for but it has been burning in my pocket for a few days now. I can’t seem to find a reliable source that states when it is on sale. The game is out July 5th and Amazon says it will be available on April 30, which is a Tuesday and I can see that being accurate. Before, I’ve seen April 26, Friday, as an option, which I can see that being a possibility too, but I can wait a few more days to see what happens on the 30th.
Which reminds me, I still need to get a ten dollar PlayStation card so I can get back up over $20.
After I get myself set up for the Lego Movie plat, I’m fully committing to Batman : The Enemy Within and from there, I have some deciding to do.
The most exciting news for me is that the next Sony console, most likely titled, PlayStation 5 (PS5), is going to be backwards compatible. That’s awesome news! I most likely won’t get a PS5 until the following year it is out. Like, it will come out say Black Friday 2020, and I won’t even be tempted to get it until Black Friday 2021. Well, tempted, isn’t the right word. I’ll be tempted to get it immediately but there won’t be any way I’ll get one until the next year.
I do like how Cerny states PS5 won’t be out this year, which is nice. Next year is PlayStation’s 25th Anniversary, so I’m sure there is some marketing guru who really wants to advertist PS25 and have the 2 fade away and bold the 5 as it slowly moves towards the PS. It practically writes itself!
I also like how Cerny uses Spider-Man as the example game to showcase what the PS4 can do and what the next console can do with load times and fast travel times.
Cerny stating the PS4’s PSVR headset will also work with the PS5, is also amazing news!
There is a lot of comments over at the PS4 subreddit covering a wide range of topics such as price points and what type of specs are going to go into the system.
Redditor, Trav_Hogan, perfectly summarized the article (it is like three pages, if you have the time to read it).
TL;DR
– Not coming in 2019 but developers have been working with the console for some time now.
– 8-Core AMD CPU using 7nm Zen 2 microarcitecture and a variant of Radeon’s Navi family supporting ray tracing. Chipset also includes 3D Audio support. Can produce graphics up to 8K.
– SSD that is specifically designed for the console that potentially makes load times 19x faster. Also has real time in-game benefits such as much smoother streaming in open world games.
– Will have a disc drive.
– Current PSVR headset will be compatible with PS5.
– PS5 will be backwards-compatible with PS4.
– Death Stranding is highly alluded to being a cross-generation title. (Speculation)
– PlayStation will have a cloud-streaming strategy that will become clearer in the future.
I used to be more of a tech guy but the thread has been a learning experience with what the latest SSD cards can do and pretty much everything that exactly is needed to run a console.
People are commenting that it sounds like a real powerhouse of a system, especially if it can run on 8K and most advanced TVs are 4K that the PS4Pro can run on, so it sounds like it could be a pretty penny. We bought ours from Costco on Black Friday 2017 for $299 and that seems pretty reasonable. I’ll be willing to wait until the PS5 is in its midcycle before purchasing it if it means we had to wait for it to come down to $299 from $499. I have never bought a console the first it is out, not even the Wii Plus.
The really nice thing is that, if we keep our PS Plus subscription active (and I hope we do!), we’ll be getting free PS5 games and enjoying some amazing PS4 games, that will be just given away at that point.
People have long memories as I don’t recall the PS3 being priced at $500 when it first came out but we also bought it off a college kid for like $200 and he gave us a slew of games and a complete Guitar Hero set that included drums. But bless those early adopters and their wallets.
Then again, it being backwards compatible, does make me feel like it will be safe to move to the next system relatively quickly too. Which I’m sure is what Sony wants me to think.
I hadn’t heard of Mark Cerny before, so I checked and of course he has a Wikipedia page. He was one of the main architects of the PS4 and the Vita, so it makes sense that he would be so involved with the PS5.
Also, on a fun note, he was the game director and writer of Knack, which I’ve enjoyed and he has a close working relationship with Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games.
. . .
Walker Dennis and I have beaten the first Lego Movie game and he’s been nice enough to give me the green light to try to obtain the rest of the trophies on my own. He’s helped a lot with most of them, the ones I knew he might not want to sit through was trying to obtain the final five trophies. Obtain all the pairs of pants (we just need two more), purchase all red bricks (we’re down to our final four), and collect all of the golden manuals (we only have two levels completely done). He’s helped getting some of these already but now it is just a matter of cleaning up the rest. There is also a trophy for building all 15 items in the Bonus World that we earn by collecting all of the golden manuals (each level has five pieces of one manual) and I figure it would be fun to just let him build all 15 of those and then he would be present for when we earn the Platinum. Since I’ve been so focus on these collectibles, I haven’t played any other games.
I’m getting pretty excited to finally buy the Lego Marvel Collection. It occurred to me that I should trade in our XBox 360 and original Wii to GameStop when they do another one of those double credits events for consoles. I know we won’t get much for them, but even if we earn back a total of ten dollars, we’ll be that much closer to our goal. I can usually save $40 pretty easy but then Walker gives me those big brown eyes of his and I usually end up buying him some Lego set or some other silly item.
So those are some of my standing goals. I’ll get back to Batman : The Enemy Within one of these days.
PlayStation has teamed up with HBO to promote a little known show called, Game of Thrones. There are three events that you can get three sets of avatars and a pretty cool dragon dynamic theme.
The house avatars were nice and I will never use actor avatars but it is nice to get them. They slowly rolled these out with the house avatars being on Friday, then the actor ones on Saturday and the theme with bonus avatars on Sunday. Which makes sense and all I wanted was the theme.
That and I really want that TellTale Game of Thrones game. I couldn’t get my wife interested in it as she didn’t quite recognize the House Forrester or Ironrath.
I’m only at the beginning of Season Two and I have to catch up while our current HBO subscription lasts. My wife doesn’t think she can watch two seasons at the same time, which I get, but I’m not sure if I can watch it on my own. She saw the first episode of Umbrella Academy and wants me to watch it so we can watch it together but I don’t think I can do it as I’m just enjoying my gaming time. I should just make time or do an every other night, either play a game or watch a show, and do that until I’ve seen Legion Season Two, the first Umbrella Academy episode and maybe a few episodes of Game of Thrones but that all seems pretty ambitious. Plus, all of the shows I have saved in my Netflix queue.
. . .
PlayStation Store Deals that I’m aware of thanks to psprices.com :
Burnout Paradise Remastered is 75% off for PS Plus subscribers at $4.99 and 65% off at $6.99 for non-subscribers from $19.99
God of War is 40% off at $29.99 down from $49.99
Fallout 76 Tricentinnial Edition is 35% off at $51.99 down from $79.99
Kingdom Come : Deliverance is 33% at $39.99 down from $59.99 and BestBuy has it at 26% off at $29.99
Squares for the Vita remains at $4.99 and Ms. Pac-Man stays at $3.99, my two cheapest games that if I had a spare nine dollars, I’ll snatch both of them up right now. I really should just buy Burnout Paradise Remastered as $4.99 is as cheap as it has ever been.
Pretty much any game over ten dollars is too rich for my blood but those seem like good prices for those games. I suspect dog companions are never coming to Fallout 76 but one day, it will be a $20 game and I’ll probably get it at that point. By then, all of the bugs should be worked out right? Also, when it becomes a $20 game, is probably when a new batch of characters will be joining so I won’t be the only level 5 guy walking around new to the world.
We watch Survivor, Big Brother, and Amazing Race through the CBS All Access app, so I haven’t been shown any advertising for Amazing Race 31. We also don’t get to see the episodes until the next day but I just learned that Amazing Race aired last night! So hopefully we can watch it tonight.
Britney Haynes, my all time favorite Big Brother House Guest (from seasons 12 and 14!) is teaming up with Janelle who was on Big Brother 6, All Stars (7), and 14.
They are taking on fellow Houseguests, former Survivors, and former Amazing Racers. I can’t believe Britney is only 30! No wonder she looks as great as she does and after three kids too!
From Big Brother is Fruit Loop Dingus, Nicole and her fiance Victor, also from Big Brother.
The Reilly Sisters, Rachel (for a third season of Amazing Race) and Elissa.
The only Survivors I recognize is Rupert and his lovely wife, Laura. I’m sure I recognize the other two groups’ faces but there isn’t any connections there.
Same for the Racers, I recognize their faces and I like the two sets of friends from their previous seasons.
Should be a pretty grand season, no real jerks and I don’t watch the show for any drama, I just want them to compete. Sort of like how I watch Survivor, the camp stuff isn’t the thing I’m most interested in, I stop looking at my phone to watch the competitions and then I stop for the tribal discussion. Everything else is just misdirection and editing, which is misdirection for the most part.
Though I do like to see the teams interacting as there is a huge aspect of Amazing Race’s production that I wished I knew more about. Like, I wouldn’t mind a documentary series that shadows the main series for a season just to see what it really is like to race.
I would love to be on Big Brother and Amazing Race is a close second.
Part One was posted two weeks ago and Part Two was posted a week ago and I only now learned about both! I have to step up my google searches! In fact, I almost didn’t realized there was a Part Two!
Another great developer interviews with Art Director Robert Craig, Audio Designer Hywel Payne, and Animation Director Jamie Galipeau.
A lot of time is being put into making sure the water sounds like water and the boat feels like being on a boat.
The biggest take away is that I haven’t missed a dev diary episode AND THE GAME COMES OUT IN SUMMER 2019!!!
I knew it wasn’t going to be December 2019 but I can’t wait to spend time with the game, probably in July or August, right?
Amazon still has it listed for December 31, 2019 but that makes sense.
Thanks to PlayStation Access for hosting their own video!
I saw the beginning of this seven months ago but I wasn’t addicted to their channel then so I was pretty dismissive. Now I’m all about Rob and Hollie and their is a lot of content in this video to enjoy.
I really like the design of the compass decision making interface, that looks really cool.
I wonder if the plan is to still release two games a year? I know the game isn’t supposed to be Until Dawn’s ten hours, it will be more like five hours, and $30 isn’t that bad for what I’m hoping is a lot of content and plenty of replays.
I can see them releasing one game this year and then maybe two next year, once they know what the demand is for the Dark Picture Anthology. I’ll be buying all four games, that part, I’m sure about. Especially if they stay at the $30 range.
I should look into what actually is required to upload game footage as that would be very fun to make a Let’s Play video of my first playthrough.
It does feels like it is only me talking about this game and WhatCulture Gaming
Who ranks the game on their list of 10 2019 Games that will Change Everything!
I still say Man of Medan is my most anticipated game of 2019. Still surprises me that no one has made a subreddit for the game. Maybe once there is an official release date.
Turns out, someone has made a subreddit for the game!
I was about to do it myself but now I don’t have too. Though there was only two posts in there and I’m trying not to flood it with videos but the first post was from three months ago with one comment and another was from a month ago with zero comments so I’m trying to bring some life to it.
. . .
Well, I finally did it! I completed my Ultimate New Game Plus run of Spider-Man PS4! I thought the Doctor Octopus fight was going to be hard but I kept dodging and web attacking and he went down in a quarter of the time it took me to do the first time. The first time, I just kept trying to throw things at him and kept my distance. This time, I stayed close and kept webbing his arms and launching myself at him.
I was going to share the image getting five 100% of the game but I didn’t get all five lines to show up on the same screen. The Main Game / New Game + / CTNS : The Heist / CTNS : Turf Wars / CTNS : Silver Lining.
I figured out how to take a picture of the PS App on my phone. If you want to know how to take a screenshot of your Android phone, press the power button and the volume down button at the same time. Pretty handy!
. . .
I’ve started the second episode of Batman : The Enemy Within. I’m going to have Wayne tell ties and Batman be honest, if those options pop up this time around. Batman fought Bane, and I had the option to call either Gordon or Waller. I choose Waller as it was my first chance to try to make her happy and she said if I played ball, she will put Gordon back in charge once this is all over. He’ll be upset but he’ll understand the situation.
. . .
Still no word on when Lego Movie 2’s DLC is supposed to come. We were playing some of it last night and it is still a pretty fun game. We even played Lego Dimensions for a bit. I still really want to get the Fantastic Beasts pack, it is affordable and it would be a lot of fun. Plus, we have Green Arrow and Flash’s STAR Labs is a secret location and that’ll be fun to explore that area.
$27 isn’t bad for a new (and our final) gateway and six proper story missions and three additional trophies. One of these days, we will own it.
. . .
I just bought this cute German Shepard using BrickLink. I went with seller, dmahon1983 through his site, Freedom Brick
It took some searching before I could find someone who will sell it to me for five dollars. Some places wanted five dollars just to ship it and i couldn’t justify that.
I bought it as I’m going to use it as Dogmeat from Fallout 4, and I’m crazy into German Shepards, because of Dogmeat. I was at Walmart and couldn’t find any sets that even had dogs so I had to look online. People highly recommend BrickLink and I totally see why now. Such a handy website!
I originally got the idea after reading this subreddit
I beat Cosmic Star Heroine, thus earning my 16th Platinum!
Such a fun game! Turns out, I was playing on Agent difficulty, which is Normal. I was just minding my own business, I beat Prime Evil to complete Psybe’s side quest and I marked off the trophy on my list and realized I never earned the trophy. I looked it up and turns out, some trophies are glitched, and most of them are the boss battles. So I panicked as just three hours earlier, I had earned the Recruit 20 Crew Members gold trophy, which took some time. So I was debating about regathering those folks or not when I realized the PS4 had backed up my save file when I turned it prior to eating dinner. So all I had to do was refight the arcade boss for Dave’s side quest and get back to Prime Evil. I was tempted not to redo the arcade but that’s how we got Dave’s best weapon and that guy is a beast once he gets that weapon.
While reading about the glitches and the advice to hard save before each boss fight, I also received the advice to lower the difficulty to Tourism, the Easy mode. What this does is knock off a quarter of the health of the opponents as well as weakens them so they don’t hit the team for too much damage. So I still played the same, the fights were just faster, which was nice and I had made up that hour of playtime in 20 minutes.
I really really enjoying my team of Alyssa, Lauren, Psybe, and Dave – such a great combination of characters and abilities. I’ll put Chahn in the upper tier as well but we can only have four person teams. I’ll probably rank Sue even higher than Chahn.
Lita the Vampire of the Mines’ trophy also didn’t pop for me, but I was prepared for that one. All of the other trophies popped without a problem.
I still wished we could have beaten the main game boss and then had the post-game option to take on the optional bosses and quests, instead of being forced to do it all beforehand. I get the decision though and it makes sense with where all of the characters end up after the story is over but it would have still been nice to have.
If you have an itch for a Chrono Trigger / Old School SNES RPG game, this should satisfy that scratch.
I did like how the game forces us to play with all of the characters at least once. With 11 playable characters, there is bound to be a clear division of characters.
I’ll rank them as
Alyssa
Lauren
Psybe Dave
Sue, his counter attack is amazing! Chahn
Z’xorv
Arete
Orson Finn
Clarke
Clarke is just the absolute worst but he’s a fun dancer so he’s lighthearted. Z’xorv/Arete/Orson, I would just say are fine as is Finn, maybe there is just a clear worst character and a slew of also rans.
. . .
I’ve decided to get back to Spider-Man PS4 as my next game. I’m going to complete my Ultimate New Game Plus and be completely done with that game. I’m so close, I got drugged by Scorpion and had Miles run away from Rhino, and my next mission is Heavy Hitter. Tuns out, I only have four missions left before the end of the game. Heavy Hitter / Step into My Parlor (the Mary Jane level) / Heart of the Matter / Pax in Bello / Epilogue, which doesn’t really count as it is the ending cutscene, as bitter sweet as it is.
The Electro / Vulture fight was as hard as I remembered, as I just get lost in the night and I can’t track Vulture or his weapon he’s throwing around. So I’m really not looking forward to the Rhino and Scorpion tag team nor the final boss fight. Second to last boss fight, I don’t recall being as hard as the others. I’m not dreading Mary Jane’s level but I do want to just burn through it as quickly as possible.
I figure after that, I’ll finish Batman : The Enemy Within as that’ll be a nice plat to have and I just have to enjoy and play the game, there isn’t any side quests or hidden trophies to worry about.
After that, I’ll complete my first playthrough of Beyond : Two Souls and I’m not sure if I’ll actually beat Knack but I feel like that’s the only other game that I made a load of progress in and stopped. Oh, and SOMA, which I might just do what I did with RiME and just have a YouTube video at the ready to get me pass any obstacles.
There might be a few Uncharted 3 trophies I can clean up just to try to get to Rank 15, my only real video game related goal for 2019. I’m currently at Rank 14 with 70% but it took me so long to go from 13 to 14. From there, I’ll have to look at my games again and see which one I really want to invest in. Mostly just the Kill 30 enemies with the Dragon Sniper, RPG-7, Mag 5, and PAK-80, which is four more trophies and most likely pretty easy to obtain.
I really want to get the Lego Marvel Collection too, as Walker Dennis is way into Spider-Man and Legos and I keep wanting to play those myself too. Which reminds me, we still have the first Lego Movie to complete too but he has been way into playing with his actual Legos than wanting to play that game, I might have to secretly play it on my own. By the time we or I complete it, Lego Marvel Collection will have to be cheaper than full price $60. Even buying it for $55 would be a win.
I’m very much influence by the Trophies subreddit, with what game I want to play. Uncharted 4 keeps showing up, so that might be the next game I tackle. I probably should mentally plan on playing at least another playthrough of Heavy Rain and Beyond : Two Souls so I can get it Detroit Become Human but I’ll probably just jump straight to Detroit and do one playthrough of that and maybe make a fun game of having one playthrough and then marathoning a second playthrough of all three games in rabid succession.
Beating Beyond : Two Souls opens up Detroit and beating Uncharted 4 opens up Lost Legacy. Then I still have the two Life is Strange games to play. I keep being tempted to buy Ms. Pac-Man for four dollars and to get the Season Pass of Batman : Arkham Knight but I have plenty of games to play before buying new games or content.
Hellblade : Senua’s Sacrifice also showed up once or twice and I want to get to that game too, so there easily could be my next three games.
Turtle Soup played Walker and mine voicemail around the 50 minute mark, which felt pretty good. I hadn’t realized my pauses were so long, maybe it only feels that way to me but it is hard to record a voicemail with a five year old but it turned out pretty well.
Thanks to YouTuber 420 Romantic for hosting the video!
Brian McKnight’s Back at One is such a great song!
The April Free PS Plus Games are The Surge and Conan Exiles. Both games are heavily focused on killing you to teach a lesson.
I’ve been enjoying The Surge, pretty much from the start. I like how it auto saves, which would have been nice if Bloodborne did that. I get the comparison that this is a futuristic Bloodborne, but I’m a tad better at The Surge than I am with Bloodborne. I’m sure that will balance out as it gets more difficult. So far, I’m still at the beginning and I’m having a hard time telling which body parts are armored and which parts are okay to attack. Then I came across a guy who was all armored and I realized that some fights are going to be harder than others. I did like how within the first hour, I got four trophies, that feels pretty rewarding. The game looks great and thus far, the mechanics have been working for me.
. . .
It took a good 30 minutes or so before I finally got the hang of Conan Exiles. This was my first survival game and I don’t think I’m really a fan of the genre. Conan Exiles doesn’t really have a tutorial system, nor any hints at what to do next, besides instructing me that I’m hungry and thirsty. I did find a nice grassy area next to a river, there are creatures there as well as a tribe that doesn’t care for me. It took a while for me to figure out I could make twine myself using leaves. I thought I had to come across it. I keep dying like crazy due to the villagers or like the final time, I had finally made my bedroll, just outside of the grassy area, and a sandstorm came and killed me immediately. So I’ll give the game another night, now that I know how to cloth myself.
The game would be more enjoyable if I died and I could find the spot I died at and pick up my resources again. The Surge lets me do that with dropped tech pieces but I can see why Conan Exiles doesn’t permit that. At least I get respawned near the grassy area now. I was just about to build walls but it takes a long time to gather all of the necessary stones.
I’ll probably give each game one more night to play but I’m getting the itch to go back to Cosmic Star Heroine. The last time I played, I recruited new character, Lauren, who is a singer and a great one at that!
Thanks to YouTuber TheHeroofLight for hosting the video!
I also added The Vanishing of Ethan Carter to my wishlist over at psprices.com as it sounds pretty interesting.
I saw they offer a link to my wishlist for sharing purposes and I was like “who will use that?” but since they offer it and I have a pretty decent blog, I will share it. Thanks psprices!
This week, the only discount I’m seeing is Kingdom Come : Deliverance is $40 down from $60. I still don’t understand the icons on the website below the games. What does a trophy, a target, and a number mean? I can’t seem to figure it out from searching the website either. Clicking the game title doesn’t state it either. In fact, those icons are nowhere to be seen on the game’s page.
. . .
In anticipation to The Surge, I did redownload Bloodborne. Such a fun game and it finally clicked with me. I was enjoying myself, even with all of the times I died. I understood the point of the game is to be hard and that with each kill, we are becoming better Hunters. But it was so annoying losing all of that progress with each new sequence. It would be a little different if I was earning experience points with each kill, which we sort of do with the Blood Echos we earn from kills. But we can’t use those until we finally meet up with the Celtic Beast. Which, believe me, I looked up but from what I saw, we had to beat him first before we could level up.
By this point, I had started save scumming and getting pass a spot, and then quitting the game, uploading my file and bouncing back to the game. Luckily, From Software, made the loading screens immediate and not even a minute later, I was back in the game. I felt lousy for doing that, especially with how often I did it, but I couldn’t redo some of those sections again as it was becoming tedious.
On my way to the Celtic Beast, I did mess up and uploaded when I wanted to download, it was right after my initial death to the Celtic Beast and I thought all was lost. Instead, it turns out I earned Insight and was able to talk to the Doll in Hunter’s Dream and gained the ability to level up! So I went through most of the human fools and so many dogs and went from Level 10 to Level 13, I upgraded my axe after speaking to Gehrman. I also made sure I had 10 Molotov cocktails as I noticed Celtic Beast was weak to them. Only five of them seemed to hurt him but it was enough of an advantage that I was able to finally kill him on my sixth attempt. There was a lot of dodging but I finally earned my first trophy in Bloodborne! Which was my main goal with this run, was to earn at least one trophy and then move back to my other active games.
and committed to myself to try to get some of the easier trophies, which now I have eight trophies and that feels pretty good.
I was doing Player vs AI Dominion battles, enough times to get my Lawbringer Knight to level 8 and being frustrated I couldn’t get the Principled Warrior trophy to pop. Then rereading the guide, I had to play on Player vs. Player Dominion, which I was trying to avoid but I did earn that trophy. Such a fun game and I might try to earn Reputation 1 with my Lawbringer but I’ll put that plan on hold for the time being. But that gimmick totally got me to come back to the game and I was having a blast.
There are a series of YouTube videos of lucky folks who got the Lego Avengers Endgame and Lego Spider-Man Far From Home sets early.
Walker Dennis really wants the Hydro Man set as it comes with a Peter Parker that has a hair piece as well as a Spider-Man beanie, which looks super fun. This set is $40 and there is a Moltan Man set for $30 (that I could be convinced to pick up for him) and a jet set for $70.
Lego must have jet pieces to spare as Captain Marvel has a set that involves a jet as does Avengers Endgame, and they are all in the $70 range, so the jets must be pretty big but we don’t need a jet so we will probably pass on those.
At least they are all different types of jets. I do like how Captain Marvel got only one set, as a potential Lego collector, I like the idea of buying one and being done with it. Spider-Man Far From Home only having three is also ideal. Avengers Endgame having five makes sense as it is the bigger movie, has more characters, and more set pieces.
I also like how Captain Marvel’s is only $30 too, so that’s nice on my wallet.
I do like how the Avengers’ sets have them all in a team uniform, something the Avengers haven’t had since the late 90s when everyone had jackets.
I also like how Mysterio is in all three of the Spider-Man sets, as I would hate to buy one and not get the main villain from the film. Though having two of them will be a tad irritating but at least one can be a decoy one or a robot, or possibly a decoy robot. Now that we have four Spider-Mans and five Emmets, I don’t care about doubling up on characters anymore, I lost that battle.
I might as well post the image of the third Spider-Man set as I’ve referred to it enough and posted the other two. He’s a bit of a spoiler but the set looks amazing!
Plus that gray Spider-Man suit that is hinted at in the trailer. I really wished instead of a generic fireman, it was a legit character from the movie. But we also don’t have a Lego Fireman so that’ll be nice to get one.
I’m really hoping we can see Captain Marvel prior to Endgame but I’m not even sure we’ll be able to watch Endgame either. Which is a real bummer but we’ll definitely be watching Spider-Man in the theater. There is just so many movies coming out!
According to them, Conan Exiles is an open world game staring everyone’s second favorite Conan, and The Surge is an action role playing game in the style of Dark Souls (or Bloodborne as that’s the only one in the genre I’ve played).
No other game, I was hoping after the State of Play that came out, we would get a free VR game to continue the VR hype machine but they are really sticking to the only two free games a month status.
From what I can see from the official PlayStation store :
Conan Exiles is a $50 game with four additional DLC packs all for $10 each, and The Surge has an Augmented Edition (that I’m sure the free game is just the base game). The Augmented Edition is $59.99 and includes the five DLC packs and an expansion (not sure why that isn’t also considered DLC?). The base game is also $50, so for only ten more dollars, you can get all of the DLC. Neither game has a theme, so that’s pretty disappointing, or any avatars. The Surge has three DLC that costs money, one for $10, another for $15, and yet another for $3. The Cutting Edge Pack, the Fire & Ice Weapon Pack, the Cobalt Control Rod, and the CREO PS04 Limited Rig DLC are all free and I’m currently in the process of downloading those! I do like free DLC and will download it for any game that I might remotely be interested in.
As I’m in a research sort of mood, here is some more information I’ve found.
Conan Exiles came out just last year on May 8, 2018, so that’s a fast turn around! Conan is a survival game which I haven’t really played one of those, I rather not worry about feeding my character. I attempted a Fallout 4 playthrough on Survival to get ready for Fallout 76 but then I decided I will play the long game wait with Fallout 76 and never really got that far into that playthrough of Fallout 4. Like, I barely got two hours in and wasn’t really loving it.
It reads like we don’t play as Conan which is an interesting idea. We can pick our gender and I usually like to play as a lady, as who doesn’t enjoy a strong female lead? I know I sure do! Plus, maybe my wife would be interested in watching me play but I doubt she’ll take the time.
Hopefully there is a gauge for how much of a survival game I’ll have to deal with or the mechanic for drinking and eating is basic enough to not get in my way of enjoying the game.
I’ve been meaning to get back into Bloodborne, as I just got killed by the wolf and then picked a main weapon and hadn’t left that initial location yet.
I hadn’t heard of Lords of the Fallen, Deck13 Interactive’s first game, either.
Apparently a sequel is supposed to come out this year, so that’s pretty smart to make this one free. The Surge originally came out on May 16, 2017. Found out we’re getting two May games from two different years.
. . .
Here are the videos from my usual peeps :
PlayStation Access –
Nathan brings us his quick review of the games. I like the entire team so much that I started following everybody on Twitter and nearly everybody through the PlayStation Friends app, I couldn’t find Rosie or Dan, so if you know their gamer tags, please let me know so I can follow them. I couldn’t follow Hollie due to her settings which I completely understand.
The games do look great, I’m not sure how much I’ll commit to either of them. Conan has a settlement building mechanic that I’m not sure I’ll be too into as I didn’t quite love it in Fallout 4. I built what I needed and then moved on. There is PVP which also doesn’t interest me but I’ll attempt the single player campaign.
PlayStation Grenade –
Adam provides the review this time and he informs us that there is some free Fortnite and H1Z1 exclusives available now. I didn’t see the H1Z1 item but there are several other exclusives including two themes that I scooped up. H1Z1 might come out on Tuesday.
Platinum Chasers –
Ben gives us his great trophy hunter perspective on the games. He briefly mentions how Conan Exiles’ trophies can be completed within an hour or it can be done upwards of 50 plus hours. The game has 1 Platinum, 7 Gold, 6 Silver, and 12 Bronze trophies. Conan Exiles is a 7 out of 10 difficulty.
Sounds like he’s more interested in The Surge, with its 6 out of 10 difficulty and also 50 hours to complete. It has 1 Platinum, 1 Gold, 13 Silver, and 32 Bronze trophies. Which seems like a more rewarding experience, literally. We shouldn’t expect any videos from him regarding the game in the short term, regarding this game.
. . .
Here is Turbostrider27’s thread from Reddit discussing the games :
Some are saying Surge is a short game, with some problems but overall, a decent game.
Conan is an okay game.
I can see me making more of an attempt at playing Bloodborne during the month of April. Maybe I should reinstall it this week and give myself some proper experience before Surge is available to download.
If you played Ark, you might have a better grasp of Conan, but I’ve never played Ark. I guess Fallout 76 will be the closet I ever get to playing it. Well, until I play Conan, I suppose.
“Average” is being thrown around to describe both games, with some saying the one game is better than the other.
Conan has a multiplayer aspect I’ll never know. Apparently the PC version allows you to go full nude and strangely, Sony didn’t allow that for their version. Strange indeed.
Here is the PlayStationPlus subreddit discussion for the games :
They seem less than impress, and usually they are a more positive bunch over the PS4 subreddit crew. Sony would go a long way with just adding a third game to the list. I keep hoping one day The Impatient would get added then I’ll have both Until Dawn spinoffs available to me once I eventually get VR, which is still a year or two away. I imagine that might happen whenever Man of Medan is available or the month prior.
Once Walker Dennis is of an age where he can safely play VR, I’ll get one, as I’m not going to play with something in front of him that he can’t also play with. That’s just cruel, plus I don’t need VR right now.
But I also get Sony’s idea that sometime next year, they are going to start giving away free PS5 games so it will make up for it but ooof, PS5 is still a future concept that we don’t know when it will eventually get dropped. But for $40 subscription to PS Plus (if you buy during a Black Friday deal), it pays for itself as soon as you get two games you really want. For April, we are getting a $100 value in two games, which I’m fine with it. Plus, I paid $40 back in November, I no longer even think about that purchase. Well, my wife bought it for me, so even better!
I do miss getting the crossbuy Vita games, I wish we were still getting those as I was really enjoying the indie games more times than not.
. . .
Amazingly, playstationtrophies.org doesn’t have a trophy guide for Conan Exiles.
So I’ll be using PSN Profiles’ trophy guide for Conan Exiles.
Which is nice that at least someone made a guide. Apparently there is an Admin Panel tool that makes the game’s platinum something you can achieve in an hour, which I’m not sure how I feel about that. Seems like one isn’t really playing the game the way the developers wanted, but then again, they made it possible to do so. I doubt I’ll use it but that is out there. It might be a 50 – 100 hour platinum the proper way.
Luckily, there is a playstationtrophies.org guide for The Surge:
I just prefer the way the site has an official template that everyone uses. Though lately, I’ve been having a real pain copying and pasting from their site into a Word document but that might just be for me.
This game has some missable trophies which is always disappointing.
. . .
The XBox free games for April are : Technomancer and Outcast, which I’ve heard of Outcast, so maybe PlayStation Plus will get those games sometime soon (that seems to be the route some games take). Actually, I checked PlayStation Access and they did a Let’s Play of Outlast, so I have not heard of Outcast.
Expect a post from me, around mid-April, of my initial opinions of the two games. I’ll probably keep to playing my least interested to more interested schedule and start with The Surge and end with Conan Exiles.
These two games will be available for free starting on Tuesday, April 2.
Shadow and Flame with Magik 