I didn't plan on replaying this, but I pushed my first save file to NG+, so I was governmentally mandated to. If nothing else, it made for a vital contrast now that I've moved past my FromSoft honeymoon period and have played games from them I far prefer to this one. In short, I don't know, man! This thing is a real pain in the behind!

Y'know, for an open-world game with a bunch of shortcuts and shit, this game sure doesn't like it much when I try to enjoy the ability to pick what to engage with. I fought tooth and nail to defeat the draconic tree sentinel at level 45, finally did it, and was rewarded with a door telling me I hadn't had enough fun yet and had to go back and kill a boss I'd intentionally skipped. Cool.

I feel exactly as I did last time, just much deeper. A large chunk of this game passively stinks (post-Limgrave -> pre-Crumbling Farum Azula) when you aren't in a balls-to-the-wall action fight, and even some of those are blatantly overclocked. I will never stop getting annoyed when I can tell an enemy is frame-perfect heal punishing. It just looks silly!

I ignored almost all of the worst moments this time (literally any interaction with the open world/duo fights), so the raw time spent with this game's shittiest segments was a lower part of my overall playtime. Only half!

Again, I adore this game's closing handful of boss fights despite how clearly over the top they are. In much the same way a prescription drug addict enjoys higher doses, despite the long-term damages they pose to the brain's neural pathways. Its highs are really high. It is the most drop-dead gorgeous interpretation of an open world ever.

I've heard promising things about this DLC. It could be something special. It could also be 10 hours of modded Malenia fights. Either way, it'll forever be a massive pain in the ass to actually access. Thanks, Michael Zaki.

To nintendoamerica3@hotmail.com

Cc reggiefilsaime@gmail.com +70102 others

Big Fat Fucking Stacks of Cash

Dearest Nintendo,

Just steal this dude's fucking game and sell it for 20 bucks. "Oh, how do I make money? Oh, it's so hard being a mega-corporation worth billions of dollars, waaaa" Just steal his game and put it on the Nintendo Switch. What's he going to do, sue you? It's literally a free 100 million dollars. Why would you not do this?

Yours sincerely,

The only smart person in the history of video games (Henry Vines)

For a particular brand of TF2ber comment section dweller, Gigantic was a golden goose. For years, you'd hear whispered tales of a mythical shooter that was everything the community had ever wanted. A game with an infinite skill ceiling, euphoric movement, a colourful cartoony personality, and a perfect midway between the flashy abilities of Overwatch and the customisability of Paladins with legitimate accessibility for both the competitive and casual scenes. It was the perfect game. But most of us (Heathens) were blinded by humanity's ego and allowed this perfect artefact of humankind to crumble into the aether, destined to exist only in the squalor of secret community LAN matches and seedy dive bar discord servers.

Egads, the Son of man returns! While I am no longer the kind of hero shooter acolyte itching for this game's revival, my younger brother is, and he shattered glass with the screams of excitement when he found out this was coming back. How could I not join in? Immediately, my eyebrows were raised by a few things. Gearbox has somehow got their name on this now. Abstraction Games are 'developing,' probably in the same way they developed Baldur's Gate 3 by helping with the Steam version and then plastering it on their website's front page. The original creators, Motiga, are nowhere to be found. Their name isn't on the game at all. Interviews indicate some of them had a small advisory role in this project. Still, I've found no evidence they'll be receiving compensation for their work in, you know, making the game, so hopefully, this kind of post-mortem revival project doesn't become normal. It is a situation pungent with the scent of an executive getting too excited about social media analytics and the quick buck he believes could be acquired. The continued server issues do not help the case.

But the real story here is none of this. I played this game for the first time yesterday. This shit is a fucking MOBA! How could you guys lie to me like this for years? Gigantic originally shut down in July 2018, and for over half a decade, people told me how exciting of a hero shooter it was and how it revolutionised movement shooters as a genre! It's a fucking MOBA! You sit there in a shitty team fight, and everyone sprays everyone else with multi-coloured goo, and the people who've played the game before run away, and the people who actually want to have fun die. Like every other fucking MOBA! I have been the target of one of the longest and most effective psyops in history and I am distraught!