I took a three year break half way through this game, but I finally returned to it this month and saw the game through!

A major turning point for the series for not only changing the cast, but changing the style of combat from action to turn based. While not every aspect of the new turn based system felt fully realized in how the characters respond to the environment and enemies around them as they move, I’d still take this over the floaty input delay mess that was Yakuza 6 and some of the other Dragon Engine games before Gaiden finally cleaned things up.

While I don’t think the main story landed with me, I really was won over by Ichiban Kasuga. The guy is just such a delusional loser, but I couldn’t help but root for him all the way through.

Looking back at my thoughts on the original Death Stranding, I pretty much have the same things to say about this “Director’s Cut” iteration: I like delivering packages and I like the world, but man do I not care about the story and the cast here with the exception of Mad’s Solider Guy and Die-Hard Man.

Playing on the hardest difficulty, I found delivering was weirdly easy to handle but the mandatory war sections felt unbearable without additional planning beforehand.

Despite my hangups, I’m still excited for Death Stranding 2 and hope Kojima Productions leans even harder into the package weight management + daddy day care gameplay experience

Digital Eclipse zooms in on the gaming library of Jeff Minter from Llamasoft, someone in the gaming industry that I've heard of once or twice but didn't realize just how long they've been at it and how many different platforms he's put games out on.

Since Llamasoft still puts out games today, none of the more recent games can be found here (which makes sense food ain't cheap rn). That being said, I feel like the narrative they tried to tell about Jeff felt a bit incomplete. I understand this is also a collab with a documentary team currently in the making of their film about Llamasoft, but I think this didn't hit for me the same way Atari 50 or Karataka did.

Still worthwhile to experience just to see these weird games from older platforms.

Tekken 8 follows the momentum its predecessor and its fighting game counterparts with a fully fleshed experience for casual and hardcore players alike.

Playing this on PC, I do notice some stages can cause the game to freak out a bit even on a Nvidia 3080 with an SSD. Some of the initial launch bugs have been patched so overtime this may become less of an issue.

I don't see myself leaping into the online ring the same way I did with Street Fighter 6, but I def will be playing with friends for quite a while.

After some time away, the Strangereal alt-history world is revisited as drones begin to flood the skies for mass warfare.

While I enjoyed the actual dogfighting action, I will say the campaign in 7 does not reach the same emotional heights the series made with its 4th and 5th numbered entries. It's not boring by any means, but there were story threads that I expected to see followed through that just... weren't addressed again.

I still need to check out the DLC missions (which I'm not sure have separate entries on here). Despite my hangups, this is still a solid entry in the series and hopefully not the last.

[Played via MiSTer FPGA]

Pretty Good follow-up to the original. Adds in three more characters, some wackier enemies and settings, and a final boss sequence that feels like a larger step up than the original.

I'm still not feeling the tank that much, which is why I loved the occasional variants like the jumping robot or the camel.