Junch

If Marathon seasons only last 3 months with wipes to come after that, then I think loot becomes less "valuable" in the traditional sense for an extraction shooter. It's not about hoarding things I guess, and so extraction is only valuable for progression of factions and gear.

This was very good. I am hyped.

Shoutout to Passion Republic for this lovely gift ❤️ I love how green the moss is and the cats are so fascinated by it

If Marathon can fix their optimization issues at minimum, this will be a solid game at launch. My hope is that they add 1-2 more teams per map to increase PVP density. Lastly, find a way to refine the UI to improve loot readability and reduce time spent figuring out things.

Marathon, Reprise I’d been feeling all kinds of uneasy ahead of the currently-ongoing Stress Test for Marathon (2026), in that I had such a potently bad experience last couple...

I wrote about Marathon (2026) again, trying to figure out why it pushed me to tears.

blog.aurahack.ca/marathon-rep...

I love RE9 so much, I basically have an essay within me about to erupt. I will be writing this essay and posting it somewhere soon.

I shall continue posting about cool videogames until morale improves. Both yours and mine.

Because god DAMN the world is a nightmare right now in so many hideously tangible ways.

But - and this bears repeating - videogames are the best they've ever been. Even if the industry making them is broken.

I got to that part in RE9 and thought to myself “yeahhhhh Grace has every right to be the way she is”

I'll have more thoughts soon, but for now, this is a near-perfect game, my first GOTY contender of 2026, and definitely a top 3 RE. I already can't wait to play it again.

This game has it all. Classic survival horror, horrifying moments, but also the action and weirdness of the modern RE games. It has the horror house of 2, 7 and 8, and action setpieces reminiscent of 4, 5, and 6. Capcom left nothing on the table, this is RE at its purest form.

RE9 is Capcom firing on all cylinders. It is the culmination of 30 years of Resident Evil lore, gameplay, survival horror design, survival action design, visual and narrative brilliance, all compacted in a game that gives fans and newcomers to the series EVERYTHING THEY WANT.

First #ResidentEvil9 playthrough done. Took a bit longer than I'd like as I had a bit of trouble pathing in the Rhodes Hill facility early on, and then I backtracked a ton to make sure I picked up as many supplies as I could. Quick thoughts below >

All-in-all, a good start. I can see this carving its own space: it's more sweaty than Arc, which I like, but not as hardcore as Tarkov which is still my gold standard. Now they need to make sure there's a ton of content to grind, loot to chase, and people to kill.

Lastly, I'm lukewarm on questing in Marathon. The test of a good extraction shooter I'll grind forever is the complexity and challenging nature of the quests. I don't want 50 "go here, touch that" quests. Follow Tarkov, make it hard and finding loot must feel rewarding.

Solo or squad play is relatively friction-free, but I am hearing that there is a degree of LBMM (level-based matchmaking). Even if it's not a strict SBMM, I think we should not have any matchmaking and just throw us into a raid with whoever is queued to go. Sink or swim.

The in-raid UI needs work. There's just too much going on, and it's very hard for threat detection and parsing what's important info onscreen. Inventory management is poor because I have to read what everything does because it all looks the same. I need to loot fast and get out.

The game's aesthetics, vibes, world-building and lore is the best part of the game for me. Bungie has outdone themselves, I love a good sci-fi/cyberpunk world that pushes the boundaries of what it feels like, to the point it is almost "alien", and Marathon does that well.

Initial thoughts about #Marathon after a few hours w the game: I like the PVP a lot, the TTK is short and sweet tho I expect casuals to complain. I like the buildcrafting but I don't feel it very much, perhaps its still early game.

oshit your aura too powerful Leon S. Kennedy

Damn

my god, we had Overwatch Season 1 recently and in approx. 14 hours we'll have Marathon's server slam and and in 25 hours, we'll have Resident Evil 9!!!!!

great metatext on an RE9 review

if you're engaging with the discourse surrounding the review space for resident evil 9, i implore that you read this blog. this actually quite accurately puts my own feelings into words.

Digital painting of a faceless head screaming

Sometime I want to be just a mouth that screams. I had friends check in on me asking if I'm okay, and I'm doing just fine. I know this is different than my usual work, but hell, what's the point of having skills if we don't use them? At least I know people are feeling something when they see these

this is what I call a power couple move

they buffed Emre? they really wanted me to get Call of Duty on these Overwatch players I see

The rewards from combat encounters definitely was underwhelming. DD2 vanilla rly feels like it’s all about the vibes rather than the grind IMO, but now there are mods to help w that

As flawed as DDDA was, its world, the quests, the encounters feel fully realized as compared to DD2. The monster variety, the dungeons, items, etc. I love DD2 still a lot, but I always felt like it was a technical showcase that was hoping to get fully fleshed out at some point.

In contrast, DD2 is a lot less friction in the open world, enemy encounters aren't always dangerous and combat feels like you can be a technical GOD or you can win on vibes. I did mod my DD2 with harder, randomized encounters, so it feels a lot closer to DDDA's combat.

Returning to DDDA after a long time, I am instantly back in the coziness of how dark and wild the world is in the game, everything feels and is dangerous and letting your guard down is a recipe for death. Combat is hard as nails technical, and timing/positioning is eveyrthing.