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Dr. Alan Grant

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  1. Hell of a cast there*. Christian Slater, Peter Dinklage and Hugh Grant united at last. *Plus Amy Schumer.
  2. I wanted to change my character class to try something different, so I went to the main menu to start a new game. Nope, can’t do that. Can’t delete your save file and start over. I had to access the system settings of my PS5 and delete the save file from there. With this and other issues that I didn’t see raised in the reviews I watched, it does make me question the legitimacy of those reviews. I’m close to tapping out on this game, it’s so frustrating.
  3. Hmm. I’m still very very early into this, but I may end up eating these words. This game needs a lot of polish. Whenever I move the camera, the edges of my character become blurry. Lip syncing during dialogue is some of the worst I’ve ever seen. There’s no lock-on for enemies during combat, which should surely be a standard feature. I should have probably gone back to Elden Ring and spent another 100 hours there instead.
  4. After watching a review, I think my next big game is going to be Dragon’s Dogma II. It seems to have a fair amount in common with Elden Ring in that it doesn’t hold your hand like other action RPGs and expects you to find your own way forward.
  5. Have you seen the Memoria Project? They remade the Alexandria opening as a non playable demo. Looks fantastic. It’s exactly how I’d want a remake to look.
  6. Right! Finished! Some 80 something hours later, here are my garbled thoughts. Having a world map makes such a difference. The linearity of the first part bugged me so much. Narrow corridors aplenty. But now you can explore! You can climb over shit! You can ride various modes of transport! Huzzah. I loved the buggy. I also loved the feeling of arriving at a new location and seeing how it looked in this new expanded remake. Cosmo Canyon and the Temple Of The Ancients was a highlight. I didn’t like Gongaga at all however. I blame the big bouncy mushrooms. The voice acting was pretty good for the most part. Cloud and Sephiroth were a bit bland. Yuffie and Barrett were the standouts. Superb work. I could listen to Yuffie’s singing all day long. The side quests. Fuck me. Too many. Way too many. And I didn’t really enjoy them. It was nice to have some character relationship scenes spruced in, but I found the quests themselves a slog. Dragging a bucket to lure some chickens in one of the most interminable moments in gaming history was worth it though, just to have the chickens eaten at the end. The beachwear scenes at Costa Del Sol were a tad creepy. I can’t fault the music. Combat is still fun and the synergy skills were a pleasant addition. With this and part 1, it’s made me realise how many names I’ve been mispronouncing since 1997. Aerith (not Aeris?!), Nanaki, Yuffie, Sephiroth, Mako, Tseng, Gi Nattak. I’ve been a fool. Protorelic missions. Across the board shit. I thought the cactuar ones would be the worse ones, but oh no, here comes Gears & Gadgets or whatever the hell it was. Dreadful. Chadley. This motherfucker has more dialogue than any other character in the game. And his voice comes blaring out of my controller every 3 minutes. I hate him. I hope Sephiroth guts him in part 3. I found the sound mixing a bit off at times, with the music drowning out the dialogue. Any opportunity to briefly control another character for a section was always fun. Red at Cosmo Canyon in particular. Except Cait Sith as already mentioned. His section was baaaad. Speaking of Mr Sith, boy is he a shit character. Kid G the Protorelic elf is perhaps the worst example of character design in history. I wish they would do something about NPC dialogue. Whenever you’re walking through a populated area and you’re talking to a fellow party member, the NPCs are all chatting away as you go past them. Just a cacophony of noise. The need to bring back every character from part 1 was strange. Does anyone really want to see Leslie again? Or Kyrie? Or the Angel Of The Slums? My date was with Tifa. I wanted Aerith. Boooo. Mini games. So many mini games. Some were fun at first, like Moogle Mischief and 3D Brawler. But I came to hate them all except for playing the piano. Queen’s Blood, Fort Condor and Gears and whateverthefuck are not for me. The individual character trials at the temple were emotionally crippling. Aerith dead again? Come on! I thought we were saving her this time around. I suppose she’s going to be haunting Cloud in the next game. Unless they find a way to bring by her back properly. Please. There’s a lot of criticism here. Reading it back, it sounds like I didn’t enjoy the game at all. But I did. Walking around with your entire party following you never got old. I took a screenshot when all 9 were together for the first time and it made me really happy. The character interactions were delightful. The main story, whilst confusing at times, was pretty epic. I’m a bit of a completionist so I felt compelled to finish every region before I moved on. But I think this hampered my overall enjoyment. A second playthrough, focusing solely on the story, is the way forward. No distractions, no Chadley and definitely no mini games.
  7. I started with a list of 31 and whittled it down to these. Not easy. I prefer solo games to multiplayer, so I’m sorry Goldeneye. 1 point - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - took the massive open world of 3 and added Ray Liotta and the best soundtrack in any game ever made. I still remember getting on my first vehicle (a scooter in the alley) and the first song was Billie Jean. Perfect. 2 points - Marvel’s Spider-Man - as a big superhero nonce, this was right up my alley. The first Spidey game that truly captured the feeling of web-swinging through New York. The sequel pretty much improved on everything, but I’m giving my points to the one that gave me what I had wanted for decades. 3 points - The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time - My mind was blown when you travelled through time and became adult Link. Z-targeting was a game changer. Breath Of The Wild and Tears Of The Kingdom may be incredible games, but neither comes close to this one for me. 4 points - The Last Of Us Part II - Along with Red Dead 2, this is the most emotionally invested I’ve ever been in the story of a game. Abby is one of my favourite video game characters. I hated her at first, but over the course of the game and her relationship with Lev, I was completely on her side. If they do a part III, I hope we see her again. 5 points - Final Fantasy VII - This was my first RPG, my first Final Fantasy and my first massive open world game. Memorable characters, killer soundtrack and a great variety of locations. Cait Sith is shit though. 6 points - Batman: Arkham Asylum - City and Knight had a bigger scope, but the more linear narrative in Asylum captured the essence of Batman. All the Easter eggs of other villains never made it a chore to explore every nook and cranny. The Scarecrow nightmare sequences are some of my favourite gaming moments. Fantastic voice cast too. 7 points - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - I can’t say for sure, but I believe I’ve spent more hours on this game than any other. The amount of hours I’ve spent in my Whiterun house, organising all my belongings into different chests…well, time well spent. The first encounter with a dragon in the wild is suitably epic. 8 points - Red Dead Redemption 2 - Probably my favourite open world to explore. Gathering herbs, hunting for that perfect pelt, wandering into the distance to see what that cloud of smoke is. It never gets old. This has some of the greatest missions and characters I’ve ever encountered. And the only game to ever make me cry. 9 points - Final Fantasy IX - I place it above 7 because I prefer the characters in this, Steiner alone. Wonderful locations again, like the Iifa Tree and Lindblum. Shame about the final boss however. Rally ho! 10 points - Elden Ring - I think I’ve sunk about 300 hours in to this. Prior to Elden Ring, I had played and failed several From games. Usually gave up when I hit my first major roadblock. The roadblock in this one was a fellow by the name of Margit The Fell Omen. Probably took me about 50+ attempts. I came close to quitting. I certainly rage quit the game a few times. But I persevered, explored the region around him, levelled up, got better, figured him out and eventually wiped the floor with him. The prick. Then I went on to beat every single boss in the game, find every weapon, location, item, quest, every thing the game had to offer. For the 3 months after it released, I did nothing else. When I was at work, I was thinking about where I was going to go next and how to beat that tricky boss. I made notes of all the stuff I found and places I had been. I was obsessed. So yeah. Fuck you Margit. Number one with a Moonveil. Honourable mentions to Super Mario Bros 3, Goldeneye, Mario Kart 64, God Of War (PS4), MGS 2, Wind Waker, The Secret Of Monkey Island, Knights Of The Old Republic and Toejam & Earl 2: Panic On Funkatron.
  8. Hell yes. I love a list. Though putting them in order is going to take some tinkering. Skyrim on Xbox 360, Skyrim Special Edition on Xbox One, Skyrim Special Edition on PS4, Skyrim Anniversary Edition on PS4 and Skyrim Anniversary Edition on PS5 takes up half the list. This may require some brutal Skyrim culling.
  9. You may be waiting a while, Rooster. I just started chapter 12, thinking I was maybe off to the Temple Of The Ancients and possibly the end of the game (seems a good place to leave it on a cliffhanger for part 3), but oh no. It’s back to the Saucer, and MORE side quests have opened up all over the map. I’m already 71 hours in. It’ll be 100 by the time I’m done, I’m sure. Curse my need to finish every region before I move on. I’ve been jotting down some thoughts on the game as I go, so prepare yourself for a very unstructured mess of a post. Probably due in 2026.
  10. This is the Mercedes Moné debut, right? I hope they do something other than either “lights go out, she appears in the ring” or “music hits at the end of the women’s match, out she comes.” I wish she actually had some vignettes in the run up. I miss vignettes for new people coming in. I can’t even remember the last time either company had those.
  11. I’m not going to read the posts here until I’ve finished the game, but I just wanted to say that Cosmo Canyon and the temple underneath is beautiful. I love when the game gives you the chance to control a different character for a bit.
  12. Chapter 9 on Final Fantasy Rebirth. Why is picking up a mushroom turned into a mini game? So unnecessary. I’m really tempted to skip all the side stuff and just plough on with the story. There’s far too much filler going on.
  13. I’m rewatching Lost at the moment and he’s just shown up. He’s a fantastic addition.
  14. The texture and shape of the black stuff looks familiar.
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