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The Squid Game (netflix) was quite good. Going back now and watching Alice in Borderland as that got brought up frequently in series breakdowns.

Played a few rounds as Julianna, and had my game invaded a couple of times as well. I love this dynamic. The cat-and-mouse tension elevates the game significantly.

Been catching up on For All Mankind, and it is really fantastic. Definitely one of my favorite shows, and I should have watched it from the start. It took a few episodes to get going, but after that it just keeps getting better and better, end of S1 had me on the edge of my seat. . I'm cruising through s2, which is even better then S1.

I forgot about an then started using the new Trophy tracker in the new PS5 UI for Kena. It’s very handy and fits right into the activity cards when you hit the PS button! Very nifty little tool and you shouldn’t sleep on it if trophies are a thing for you as they are for me.

Really, really well.:)

Yeah, that snuck up on me too. I got to the last hub, and all of a sudden couldn't go back? I guess that's what the "prepare" warning was after the Ford levels. I did appreciate that there was new post-game dialogue with all the characters, so you had a reason to go back beyond finding the last shiny things. I'd forgotten all about the Napoleon level in the original. What the hell, it's back compatible, so let's see how the X enhancements work

UK Collector's Edition version of Mulholland Drive (from Studio Canal) arrives on Nov 22nd: Once again we're in the dark about who's doing the compression. Fidelity in Motion did the previous UK Blu-ray which was superior to Criterion's Blu, but that's no guarantee that they'll automatically be the ones hired to do the UHD of course.

Netflix is busy…

Yay… Super hyped after that cliffhanger at the end of Season 3.:)

Fuuuuuuuuu…..

Bob chapek after reading that comment.

They've done a nice job with the new Contemporary lobby. Why the hell couldn't the rooms be an extension of that style?

I'm not even sure MK8 should count since it's a port of a Wii U game. It's brilliant. Arguably my favourite Mario Kart since the GBA game, but it's truly like GTA which never had a new entry on PS4. "Why bother when this port is selling so well?" At least in Mario Kart 8's case it got a second life given lacklustre Wii U sales. GTAV really didn't need a second life... and certainly not a third.

Final boss battle on Expert. By this point I was an hour in and started fucking up the simple stuff (platforming):

Only one per console (home circuit doesn’t count). We got our Switch one early (and it was a special edition/rerelease to boot).

I’ll spoiler these. It’s a few of the last boss battles you’ll need to contend with:

#44 is the beautiful but surprisingly hard as fuck, Kena Bridge of Spirits. Very happy to have this one finally released and it turned out very well!

Done. The last two boss battles put a whole lot of Dark Souls bosses to shame on the hardest difficulty. The second to last boss? Well, if you haven’t gotten down the timing for parries by that point - you’re fucked. Proper parry/counters are required or you’re getting your ass handed to you. The last boss is a meat grinder that requires all kinds of dodging and an enemy gauntlet that left me trying the entire battle over and over again for nearly a hour. I see a lot of folks notching the difficulty down on this one, even on normal. I don’t think I have it in me to do this all over again on master difficulty to get the platinum. I unlocked every other trophy in the game but I’m not feeling terribly sadistic any time soon. Maybe when the mood hits me for a replay in a few months….

Every level did have collecting figments, baggage etc, but the levels were certainly not just changing the look. The variety of the levels and how you complete them is a hallmark of the first game. Lungfishopolis is not just a platformer with a different scale. It is a Godzilla themed level where your primary action is smashing buildings and causing destruction, with a first person section thrown in. Milkman is the closest thing to an adventure game Psychonauts has where you pick up items, figure out how to use them, listen to dialog and solve the puzzles to move on. You jump to get around and collect items, but it isn’t in service of simply reaching an end goal. Napoleon put you on a game board to move around gigantic pieces and play a board game, while cleverly incorporating platforming to move around and do this. Black velvetopia has you warping through paintings and while I don’t remember exactly how this one worked, it is certainly not just a “jump your way to the end” platformer, and has a puzzle element to it with “what do I need to do next?” aspects. And there the the theatre level where Ii think your trying to figure out what props or whatever on the stage for each play/act. That one wasn’t so good so my memory of it isn’t the best. Psychonauts 2 absolutely has variety in its levels, but they are, more or less, straight forward platforming with a different style and some different mechanics. Some of the ideas and themes in the levels were very creative and inventive, but I don’t think the variety in design, gameplay and puzzle elements come anywhere near close to the first one. I do agree that I wasn’t expecting the number of levels and hub areas in it. That was a very nice surprise. I wish they hadn’t restricted your ability to explore these areas before finishing the game though. There are secrets in the first hub that you can’t get to until your almost done the game, and at that time you’re not able to go back to do those. This means you have to go back after finishing the story to collect these, which seems odd.

For sure. The show has done a really good job of moving past superficial drama quickly. I trust it to continue.