Romier S

I legit laughed my ass off at this. If you’ve never watched the videogamedunkey, you’re in for a treat.

I really dug the hell out of “Doctor Sleep”. It might be one of my favorite films this year, in fact. It’s a wonderfully respectful sequel to a film that I didn’t think ever needed one. It’s such a significantly different movie with its own tone and pace with plenty of callbacks and sprinkles to the original Kubrick film. My fear going in was that this would end up going deep on the nostalgia play and zoom right past homage right into Kubrick copycat territory (given I have little knowledge of the book) but Mike Flanagan does an amazing job of setting is own course here. Despite there being plenty of homage to chew on. By the time we end up in the finale and the much stronger ties to the first movie become evident, it feels earned and well executed. The cast is just brilliant, really. Carl Lumbly and Alex Essoe who play Dick Halloran and Wendy Torrance respectively impressed the hell out of me. Both capture the essence of what Scatman Crothers and Shelly Duvall brought to the roles without feeling like imitations/distractions and with very, very limited screen time. Essoe in particular sounds uncannily like Duvall. Rebecca Ferguson is dynamite and downright screen stealing as Rose. It helps that’s she’s a damned knock-out but the range she shows here after some of the her most recent action outings left a mark. Curran as Abra is also fantastic and a standout. Both have great screen chemistry with Ewan as Danny who’s fantastic in his own right with a difficult role. I could go on but seriously, it’s a top notch horror thriller of a film from start to finish. I can’t recommend it enough.

All done. 18 hours total playtime and that includes all of the gens collected and Boos captured. I’ll post some final thoughts tomorrow after a good nights sleep.

Retrobit finally released the 2.4ghz wireless controllers for the Saturn and mine arrived today. The packaging, build quality and feel are just glorious. For $35, this is well worth it.

I have an extra physical copy of the game for $45 shipped if anyone is interested. Just PM me. Thx.

Not a fan of that myself. I couldn't give less of a shit about watching Agents of Shield for instance and if I needed to know anything going on there to get into the movies, I'll read a summary. It's not going to drive me to go watch their content. I mean, I plan to give those shows a chance but there's a METRIC TON of good TV content out there and if the shows are middling at best, I don't plan to waste my time with them long term just to make the movies worthwhile. I want the latest Jim Sterling rant on there now being movie release DLC, apparently.:)

I played through the first two hours. It’s absolutely stunning visually. The art direction, presentation and music are just *chef’s kiss*. The HDR implementation is also very strong. I made sure to calibrate using the PS4’s new HDR calibration tool and enabled the HGIG setting on the C9 and it does bring out some additional detail from the standard HDR game mode. Mechanically it’s an interesting game to say the least. There are systems to control balance, organize encumberance as well as your typical health and stamina meters. Holding both shoulder buttons will force Sam to hold on to the belts for his cargo which helps to balance him out when he’s carrying a heavy load but doing this will slow you down. It will also slow down the rate of stamina burn while in water for example. Don’t hold them and you’ll need to press either shoulder button if Sam loses his balance but otherwise, he moves faster. If you don’t pay attention then Sam will fall damaging the load thus affecting your rating upon delivery. Alternately, you can hold precious cargo in either hand as well....and I do mean hold. You pick up cargo by pressing and holding either shoulder button which represents your hands. Let go and the cargo drops. Press triangle and you move it to your back. Holding cargo in your hand protects it from damage. Even from a fall so there’s some strategy there. Rain or timefall as it’s called in the game is corrosive and basically ages most anything it touches. So if you’re in the rain long, your cargo will get damaged. Rain also brings about the BT’s which are the ghostly other world beings in the trailers. It appears there was some kind of explosion that caused the world if the living and the dead to collide and that’s the core of the world building and narrative early on. Its an interesting if super weird game but I’ve liked what I have played so far. I was surprised by how quickly the game launches you into its gameplay. There are cutscenes interspersed but it didn’t feel Metal Gear Solid 4 tedious. Obviousky early, early days here but I’m intrigued by the setup of the story and the visuals are just slack jaw gorgeous. I’m traveling next week so I won’t be able to dive in but completing Luigi’s Mansion 3 needs to come first anyways. I’ll post more thoughts when I do more of a deep dive in the coming weeks.

Man, Bumblebee in Dolby Vision @65’......

Great review for Doctor Sleep that gets me pretty hyped for it. (Love Double Toasted)

Haven’t tried the VRR support as of yet. It’s next on the list (primarily because I have to hook the X up to the set direct since the receiver won’t pass it). On the subject of uniformity/banding - I’m not one to hook up a slide and look for stuff but I loaded up Pan’s Labyrinth on Blu (Criterion) and loaded up a few sections of the Blair Witch game, Both of which present some challenging near black/low black level scenes where DSE and banding would readily appear and I’m happy to say that this new panel is even better than my 55in B6 which I thought was pretty great (after I had the panel replaced due to banding issues). I picked up the LG UBK90 today on sale for $229. Time to dump the Sony X800 which I’m about sick of seeing freeze up on every damned movie I throw at it. Good riddance. Dolby Vision here I come.

Well I was gonna finish Luigis Mansion tonight but.....

I finished Floor 12 last night and that might have been my favorite boss fight in the game. It's a relatively short level but I loved the theme, music and the finale. I slowed down with work with this week but I'm halfway through Floor 13 and plan to make my final push tonight to finish this up. I've got all Boos captured and Gems collected for the floors I've visited thus far, too.

Sure and it’s obvious Sony is in the middle of a restructure for the next generation and with new leadership taking the helm. I’m not downplaying the departures of guys like Gio in the short term but if your saying having a guy like Yoshida heading up external studio relations and building a team/initiative around that is somehow problematic, I’m a little lost about the point your making? Yoshida’s history at Sony was outreach to third parties handling licensing and bringing on board the likes of a Namco and others in the early days of PlayStation. The guy is extremely passionate about indie development. I literally can’t think of a single person at Sony better suited for the role and to lead such an initiative within the company.

Press on Shu's new role. Just in case you were worried what some of the departures meant for indie game development and support at Sony: