Yaramaki

Personal two highlights for me so far :
Announcement of two new yakuza games and a release in the west of Like a Dragon: Ishin! or Ryu ga Gotoku Ishin! as it was previously called. Microsoft who finally gets it and is starting getting more and more jrpg's and other more japanese titles on their platform, why are you only realising now that western players like their jrpg's, you should have realised that 10 years ago. Here is hoping a lot of these games get physical releases because yeah microsoft, people still buy their games on a disc in 2022.  Overall if anything is to be believed 2023 is shaping up the be one of the best years in gaming, well i'm sure a couple of games are going to be delayed but damn 2023 is going to be so much better then this year.

Man i don't know what to say but this gives me the goosebumps and a warm fuzzy feeling inside and it's totally well deserving, club brugge battering porto at their home ground 0-4 and you know it was well earned too by playing good football they probably should have gotten atleast one more goal. Club brugge has to be the surpise team of the first 2 matches so far. What about you @Justin11 care to leave your thoughts? Think i'm going to save this picture for well maybe forever 😅

Man i don't know what to say but this gives me the goosebumps and a warm fuzzy feeling inside and it's totally well deserving, club brugge battering porto at their home ground 0-4 and you know it was well earned too by playing good football they probably should have gotten atleast one more goal. Club brugge has to be the surpise team of the first 2 matches so far. What about you @Justin11 care to leave your thoughts? Think i'm going to save this picture for well maybe forever 😅

Remember cheat codes? Why can't I just use a cheat code to unlock a car in single player but make those cars unavailable online. If you want to give those cars to people who don't have time to play this game for 500 hours them just give them the cars. Don't make them pay more for shit that's already on the 60 dollar disc they bought.

Yeah i've noticed amazon does not like linking to their site, oh well just google Hardcore Gaming 101 Presents: The Unofficial Guide to Shin Megami Tensei and Persona instead and you'll come across it i'm sure.

I feel like the problem persona 4 had, well apart from steam is that it was always released on platforms that were pretty much dead in the water. It came out on the ps2 in late 2008 in america, even spring 2009 in europe, at a time when pretty much everyone moved on to newer consoles. Same deal with the ps vita, while i won't deny the vita was probably the best platform persona 4 golden could get a release the harsh truth was who the fuck owned a ps vita, the best thing about the psvita was imo the people who had one loved the machine to death and pretty bought anything they could get their hands on, while it does not say much persona 4 golden is one of the best selling titles on the platform considering it sold 2.5 million units on a the vita alone and If vita hardware sales are to be believed around 10 million that is quite impressive for a series to is supposed to be niche. For the general public it's good to see persona 3 and 4 being re-released because these games have become quite collectible over the years.
You know this makes me wonder is Persona the more populair series now as it would be interesting to compare in a few years how many units Shin Megami Tensei V or the recent released soul hackers 2 sold. 
But man i would not call any Atlus or Persona game released overhyped, Atlus has been bringing out exellent games for as far as i can remember, imo their games deserve all the attention because nearly all are their games are worthy of your hard earned cash, the only problem is having the spare time to play them all. 
Anyways maybe i'm not adding anything new to the table but lot's of shin megami tensei and persona talk lately and you know i can dig that. 
Btw if you want to have a good read that covers the entire SMT series and all it's spin offs, i suggest you should check out Hardcore Gaming 101 Presents: The Unofficial Guide to Shin Megami Tensei and Persona, it's avaible on amazon if you are interested.

There's a lot of hype around CD Projekt Red "fixing" Cyberpunk 2077 again, and it did tempt me a little bit to repurchase the game and play it again (I refunded it after one hour on Steam), but after doing some research on the "life path" options, how they barely have any impact on the rest of the story, I'm once again not interested in the game anymore, which is a shame.
However, all these complaints about the life paths does leave me thinking. RPGs like Cyberpunk with their false illusion of choice is the reason why I don't enjoy sandbox games because the outcome of your decisions in sandbox games are as inconsequential as Cyberpunk 2077's life paths. Think about it. Choosing whether to be a Nomad or a Corpo in Cyberpunk only means something in your mind. Whether V is a different person from any other player's version of V is in your mind, because the story's gonna be largely the same for everyone. It's all imaginary, just like sandbox games like The Sims where you imagine the Sims to have more interesting lives than just whatever career paths the base games offer you (I haven't played The Sims games for a long time, but one thing that bothered me was that you couldn't even see what the Sims' workplace was like, making your choice of career path for your Sims feel all the more hollow). It's like playing with Lego blocks and imagining your Lego man to be some superhero when he doesn't even have a costume. It's like spending 100 hours designing a theme park in some super creative fashion - Planet Coaster doesn't give you extra points for creativity as far as I know, it only rewards you for meeting the visitors' needs and making the rides fun. Same with Minecraft. The only "impact," "interaction" and "reward" that exist for these games are in your mind.
In that sense, while that ultimately means that Cyberpunk 2077's inconsequential life paths wouldn't make the game appealing for me, I don't think the game did anything different from other RPGs or even sandbox games in terms of offering players the false illusion of choice. Many modern RPGs' "choices" are aesthetic-based, or more commonly, the choices only affect the gameplay, never the story, so Cyberpunk 2077's "faults" in terms of its life paths are more like the industry standard for modern RPGs. That's because it's hard to cater to the choices of billions of players. It's hard to make a bazillion different outcomes and paths based on player choices, even if CD Projekt Red did promise a game that "would change gaming forever." That's why when a game does create the lightning in a bottle, the rare game where your choices actually lead to multiple outcomes and endings, that's when it's such a gem to me, which is why I held Detroit: Become Human in such high regards because your dialogue choices alone could ultimately lead to so many different variations. Even Fallout: New Vegas did this better, even though its "outcomes" is just a series of slideshows, the same way Mass Effect 3's developers added different "outcomes" in the extended cut of the game through a series of slideshows.
But anyway, it's why I find it a shame that the roleplaying aspect of many role-playing games isn't as immersive as I would like it to be, for a game's story to reflect on your choices the same way a gamemaster would work the plot around your characters' choices and backstory in a tabletop RPG. It's why "roleplaying" is such a joke among a lot of MMO RPGs. I remember how roleplaying is pretty much dead in Star Wars: The Old Republic because it's just a bunch of people imagining their characters going on adventures the base game didn't offer. It's just kinda sad, to be honest.

There is so much lore and history here you could make atleast a couple of openworld games out of the Games of thrones ip and still have something new to tell everytime. The only problem is what company could afford the games of thrones ip, given it's one of the most populair tv shows of the past decade, one would assume securring the rights are going to expensive. 
I'd rather see a new season of the telltale series because the games of thrones one ended with a cliffhanger and more questions then answers imo. It will probably never happen tough but one can always hope.

Finally ready as I've filled the fridge with monster energy cans yesterday. Since @Heatman insisted i should play it so i'm going to start Monster energy supercross 5 : the official videogame, man even typing out the name of the game gives me a dirty feeling.

Videogames have always helped me trough some of my most rough times in my life so far eventough i don't really like to talk about it that much 
When i was playing trough the first State of decay my grandfather was very ill and died a week later after i started playing it so that will always be a game that i consider synonyms with the death of my grandfather. While i enjoyed the game thoroughly i never got around playing the second game maybe that is the reason because i'm scared to.
My best friend died of leukemia when we were both 19 years old, adult life was just about to begin so i'd say pretty much any original xbox game we played together during our teenage years helps me get trough hard times, i still have his old xbox with all his saves files and every once in a while i race against his old ghost files in games like rallysport challenge and project gotham or boot up a game and try to beat his scores in tony hawk or continue where he left off in offcourse without saving, i know it doesn't mean much but it keeps my memory of him alive, he gave me one of his most priced possessions a week before he died eventough i find it ugly as fuck it still has a prominent place in my house i'm sure i posted a picture of it before in a thread somewhere. The good thing is that i'm still friend with his parents and i ended up dating his younger sister for 2 years but it just felt awkward because we came together trough sadness, we left on good terms tough, since i'm godfather of her son. 
Man i would like to mention a few more games but damn i'm getting tears in my eyes so i'll have to end here.

Gelsenkirchen where Schalke's home stadion is located is like a 4-5 hour drive depending on traffic away from where i live so it's not that far by other countries standards, you know uefa cup final 1997 i saw both legs of the final live on tv as an 11 year old, seeing my fellow country man, marc wilmots scoring the final penalty against inter to win schalke the uefa cup, ever since i've been a fan of schalke as it's a club that is always the underdog and you know i always liked the underdog team whenever the odds are against them.
i'd rather stay a neutral supporter when it comes to my own countries football clubs as i don't find the belgian pro league all that exiting to watch to be honest.

I've always liked Chris Davis' videos. His Isometric RPG retrospectives are incredible, delving deep into the history of the development, the problems occurring and the quirky solutions required to overcome them. Noah Caldwell-Gervaise is another great YouTuber who is rivalled by Davis', who also does RPG retrospectives. Lorerunner is also a good pick for someone who does nice videos that appear rambly but are full of sage wisdom when it comes to literature critique and game design. Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw does Extra Punctuation in both written and video format, where he takes a particular topic of interest and breaks it down from his perspective of a reviewer and games designer. He's also willing to critique his own games.
However, my absolute favourite video series and the one that got me through Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin was... "In Defence of Dark Souls 2 - A Measured Response," wherein MauLer tears down another YouTube's defense of a hideously broken game. For about 9 hours. There's merit to the idea that if you require that long to discuss something you're not good at discussion or debate, but there wasn't a word wasted in those 9 hours from the host. It's my favourite piece of media to direct someone to when they want to know about good games critique and discourse.
EDIT: How could I forget Karl Jobst? You know a YouTuber's good when you have no interest in the subject matter unless it's solely this person talking about it. Great analysis and reporting upon speedrunning history and news.

While i don't read many ign reviews or watch their youtube channel, i feel like a lot of reviews in general should be taken with a grain of salt as A lot of reviews have to be rushed out of the door to be published in time, there is no way a reviewer could have played everithing a jrpg has to offer. Over the years i've started seeing reviews as more of a guideline rather then something to solely base your oppinion on wheter to purchase a game or not. There are so many websites out there that review games, so many youtubers that do stellar reviews of games i feel like the truth is always in the middle. Read reviews all you want and judge for yourself i'm your are going to like this game or not. It's probably a no brainer that you know yourself best of all wheter or not you are going to enjoy a certain game or not. You don't need a reviews for that.
I've yet to pick up digimon survive and sould hackers 2 considering they got physical releases on xbox aswell i should make work of that sometime soon because i want to support these releases on getting a physical release on my platform of choice. I'm not even going to bother reading reviews for both games, because you know atlus their games have always been good amongst the very best the jrpg genre has to offer, same counts for the digimon games can't think off a single bad one i played over the years apperently digimon survive has many visual novel elements which is probably a good thing, to distant themselves from the clueless who would call it a pokemon clone. 
To get back to reviews I'd be more interested that companies start doing another review half a year or a year later after the game launched and give it another final score,many games get slammed because they are not finished and rightly so but take a game like no man's sky or final fantasy 15 and review the entire package that is what i'd  interested in how the game performs and if anything is fixed etc etc. I'm usually a year behind when playing videogames so well maybe an idea for ign for people like me to follow up on their supposed shitty reviews lol.

While i don't read many ign reviews or watch their youtube channel, i feel like a lot of reviews in general should be taken with a grain of salt as A lot of reviews have to be rushed out of the door to be published in time, there is no way a reviewer could have played everithing a jrpg has to offer. Over the years i've started seeing reviews as more of a guideline rather then something to solely base your oppinion on wheter to purchase a game or not. There are so many websites out there that review games, so many youtubers that do stellar reviews of games i feel like the truth is always in the middle. Read reviews all you want and judge for yourself i'm your are going to like this game or not. It's probably a no brainer that you know yourself best of all wheter or not you are going to enjoy a certain game or not. You don't need a reviews for that.
I've yet to pick up digimon survive and sould hackers 2 considering they got physical releases on xbox aswell i should make work of that sometime soon because i want to support these releases on getting a physical release on my platform of choice. I'm not even going to bother reading reviews for both games, because you know atlus their games have always been good amongst the very best the jrpg genre has to offer, same counts for the digimon games can't think off a single bad one i played over the years apperently digimon survive has many visual novel elements which is probably a good thing, to distant themselves from the clueless who would call it a pokemon clone. 
To get back to reviews I'd be more interested that companies start doing another review half a year or a year later after the game launched and give it another final score,many games get slammed because they are not finished and rightly so but take a game like no man's sky or final fantasy 15 and review the entire package that is what i'd  interested in how the game performs and if anything is fixed etc etc. I'm usually a year behind when playing videogames so well maybe an idea for ign for people like me to follow up on their supposed shitty reviews lol.

Videogames have always helped me trough some of my most rough times in my life so far eventough i don't really like to talk about it that much 
When i was playing trough the first State of decay my grandfather was very ill and died a week later after i started playing it so that will always be a game that i consider synonyms with the death of my grandfather. While i enjoyed the game thoroughly i never got around playing the second game maybe that is the reason because i'm scared to.
My best friend died of leukemia when we were both 19 years old, adult life was just about to begin so i'd say pretty much any original xbox game we played together during our teenage years helps me get trough hard times, i still have his old xbox with all his saves files and every once in a while i race against his old ghost files in games like rallysport challenge and project gotham or boot up a game and try to beat his scores in tony hawk or continue where he left off in offcourse without saving, i know it doesn't mean much but it keeps my memory of him alive, he gave me one of his most priced possessions a week before he died eventough i find it ugly as fuck it still has a prominent place in my house i'm sure i posted a picture of it before in a thread somewhere. The good thing is that i'm still friend with his parents and i ended up dating his younger sister for 2 years but it just felt awkward because we came together trough sadness, we left on good terms tough, since i'm godfather of her son. 
Man i would like to mention a few more games but damn i'm getting tears in my eyes so i'll have to end here.

@Justin11 instead of opening a thread for each new rumour you hear, please consider making a thread along the lines The global football rumour thread and start posting rumours into one dedicated thread because now the entire sports section is out of control because of the many threads you created for let's say topics that aren't really worthy of their own thread like this thread for instance.
I get it you like Barcelona, messi, ronaldo and neymar but are they really worth bringing up each time into a new topic, again try and keep the psg/barcelona talk into one global topic from now on.

IGN's editor gave Cuphead an 8.8 out of 10, and I'd say that closely matches the text of the review. They've also rated Xenoblade Chronicles 8 out of 10, and both games were reviewed by different people.
If we're going to bash people or projects let's do so with appropriate examples and not use that to tar others with the same brush. The whole "too much water" meme from IGN to give one such example is funny when taken in good humour... which most do not because they didn't read the article.
This isn't exclusive to you nor is it a telling off, it's just a suggestion for improving the discourse seen here. It does not take long for a circlejerk to happen on this forum, and I'd prefer to prevent that than have to divert it afterwards.
Having said all that, the gameplay in that video of it looks fairly decent. Makes me want to get back into JRPGs, which I know I love but just cannot bring myself to play that often. 😣

Speaking of david vs goliath I'd be curious how Club Brugge is going to perform now that they are in a group where they have chance for third place and maybe second place, i'm considering of getting tickets for their home game against atletico madrid if i can my hands on them. 
eventough i doubt they will get very far Ac milan is a team i'm looking forward to see them playing especially now they have an influx of belgian players now that their record signing is the most exiting talent we have in years, Charles De Ketelaere is probably going to be heir to eden hazard. I'm also kinda curious how divock origi is going to do, as he seems to have a nose for scoring important goals.

I subscribed to Xbox live in order so i could watch youtube on my tv, in the early 360 days youtube was a paid app, they later reversed that decision and made it free, nowadays i just keep gold around for the games with gold you get every month other then that i have no real use for it since i don't game online. 
Also I don't really want to have anything to do with gamepass and all the other game services out there because i like my games physical.

I'd say collecting videogames altough nearly everybody who is into videogames seems to do it these days but i still get shit for it every once in a while, like dude why are you still buying all those games or how the heck do yo keep affording it all or why the fuck do you collect japanese region video games or it's time you grow up the fuck up, you know that sort off comments and in most cases even those comments even come from family and friends.

Milestone crapped out 5 supercross games since 2018 so i guess it's pretty much alive. No idea if these are any good i only played milestone their Mxgp and ride series in the past and since it's coming from milestone i'd say it's going to be mediocre at best, their games are not bad but they are not good either like with any games that leans towards a more niche sport if your are a fan of the sport i'm sure there is a lot to love. I don't know how big supercross still is in the Us and since it's pretty much a Usa only afair it keeps suprising me they keep putting this out even physical in europe.
Lol only excuse i can come up is that i'm sucker who can't leave a bargain behind 😅
Believe it or not but i'm actually going to play it, wheter it's worth 22 euros i'm not sure , considering the fact it's so cheap 3 months after it's release doesen't really mean anything it's going to be anything good but i had to think about @Justin11 who was so exited this game came out and judging by his recent posts he still seems to be enjoying it very much.

I agree with animal crossing especially the last game in the series where the npc's seems to be encouraging everithing you do, haven't played too much of New horizons myself as i try to have a social life of some sort.
Pretty much any Harvest moon and or story of seasons games would be a good candidate for this thread they even get more friendlier the further you progress in the game, same with my time at portia most npc's seem to be too nice for your own good especially once you've done a mission for them.
The later dragon quest games are also worth a mention since you can just enter npc's their home and search for loot and ransacking their place as they don't seem to care at all.
I think the fable series is deserves a shoutout too since you can pretty much befriend any npc in the entire game.
You could pretty much start listing any nintendo game here aswell, since i've not seen a rude npc in either pokemon or legend of zelda series as most npc's are there either to give you a hint or tip or they just want to give you a side mission.

Time for a good old fashioned poll! As topic title says What Gaming subscriptions do you have and are you satisfied with them? Why not? Do you pay for any of the more expensive premium services like xbox game pass ultimate or playstation plus premium or just go for the base version?
As for myself I just pay for xbox live, while it's probably just a waste of money as i don't game online, i feel like i still get my money's worth with the free games with gold program.
Edit : if you feel like i left out any major subscription service please let me know so i can add it into the poll.

Those were the days when magazines came with a demo disk, while the magazines were mostly shit like opm you just got these for the demo disk, good times as a kid and a great way to discover new games and kill a few hours in anticipation whenever your parents would give you a new game. Oh man more simpler times that sadly will never come back.
I had a subscription to retrogamer for the longest time but that was until a few years ago because they starting to focus more and more on old mostly british computers then anything else it diden't interest me all that much anymore and since it's coming from the uk it was like 125 euros a year for subscription which was expensive for a magazine that i just tended to flip trough quickly once before throwing on top the pile. 
I still buy a dutch magazine called power unlimited every month but don't have a subscription for it.
 

Those were the days when magazines came with a demo disk, while the magazines were mostly shit like opm you just got these for the demo disk, good times as a kid and a great way to discover new games and kill a few hours in anticipation whenever your parents would give you a new game. Oh man more simpler times that sadly will never come back.
I had a subscription to retrogamer for the longest time but that was until a few years ago because they starting to focus more and more on old mostly british computers then anything else it diden't interest me all that much anymore and since it's coming from the uk it was like 125 euros a year for subscription which was expensive for a magazine that i just tended to flip trough quickly once before throwing on top the pile. 
I still buy a dutch magazine called power unlimited every month but don't have a subscription for it.