DragonRift 🎮🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦

To be fair, they grab just about every license out there. I had to blow my points on Mira from K Pop Demon Hunters, so I got something I wanted out of it. 😅

It's just goofy fun. I'm more reminded of my Quake II days than anything recent, so I'd be lying through my teeth if I said I WASN'T having fun with it. 😅

Well.... my first foray into this goofy nonsense, and I'll have to admit, I see the appeal.

My wife strung me along a bit with helpful tips and being my sidekick, but it roped me in linger than I expected. 😅

Level 23 already. I'm so going to regret caving in, I know it.

My wife, begging me to join her in Fortnite vs me... 😐

I had serious thoughts about streaming it as my first game, but the Pro is downstairs... and I really don't want to embarrass myself. 🤣

Also, forcing me to use R2 to dodge/block when the previous three games had it mapped to L1 is not as easy to adjust to as I was expecting.

This is most definitely a Platinum game... and probably the hardest Ninja Gaiden entry I've ever played.

Mad props.

Holy shitballs, I SUUUCK at this!! 🤣

The combat is slick as hell, and I love the style so far, but god damn, I am getting absolutely pulverized at every boss encounter.

I can handle soulsbornes just fine. This? Yeah, normal difficulty doesn't fuck around. 😅

*SIIIIIGGGHHHHH* 😐

48 hours in and she's already level 66... She's officially addicted.

The following 26 states/districts are suing the federal government for freezing November SNAP payments:

California
Connecticut
Colorado
Delaware
DC
Hawai'i
Illinois
Kansas
Kentucky
Maine
Maryland
Michigan
Nevada
NJ
N Mexico
NY
N Carolina
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Vermont
Washington
Wisconsin

Honestly, the series lost its vibe when Itagaki departed. Yeah, the dude was a bit on the creeper side of things at the workplace, but 1 and 2 really, truly made Ryu's return shine.

4 just feels like a straight up Platinum game. Like if Ninja Gaiden and Metal Gear Rising had a baby.

Mattik's live snafu at E3 was hilariously cringey as fuck. "Just buy a 360!" 😂

The model of a living room Steam Box would make sense, as it would just be a remote extension from your PC to giant TV.

MS could have come up with something as simple as that, and just let it grow on its own.

But then they had to go and buy everything else, and .... yeah....

Now onto 4... 🥷

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is definitely a slick remaster. I really hope Team Ninja can eventually do the same treatment to the first one.

They took all the good elements of Sigma 2, junked the fluff, and exaggerated the 360 version's gore without sacrificing any visuals or framerate.

This was a blast!

Microsoft, on the other hand, only TEMPORARILY understood the assignment.

With the original XBOX and 360, they competed with solid games and a robust online service that was easy to enjoy.

Then they went back to being Microsoft... Unlike Sega and Atari, their demise is entirely their own fault.

See, at least Atari and Sega bowed out respectfully. They both tried to keep up with the hardware, but kept getting beaten.

I believe if the Dreamcast had been released in 97 or 98, Sega could have lasted another generation or two.

They knew their IPs were far more important, so hardware was out.

They have their flagship IPs. They have the ability to compete effectively with Sony and Nintendo. They've just refused to do it for the past decade for the sake of the "WE GOTTA BE AN ALL-IN-ONE ENTERTAINMENT CENTER!!" play.

It breaks me, because I ABSOLUTELY LOVED my XBOX 360. I loved the competition.

This is just them desperately throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks after blowing $68.7 billion on Activision, and realizing they aren't the juggernaut they once were two decades ago.

To be fair, my opinion of XBOX took a complete 180° in 2013 with their disastrous reveal of the ONE (well, it started to fade after the Kinect).

I did cave and buy the Elite in 2016 for some hopeful exclusives, but after they either got canceled (Scalebound) or went to PC, it's now a paperweight.

After 24 years, the XBOX brand is officially dead.

Jesus fucking Christ, dude, way to completely miss the whole entire point of the competitive gaming industry.

People don't buy video game consoles just for multimedia fluff. They want GAMES. Everything else is supplemental.

Such a garbage take.

Game design has always had its silly moments, and some have crossed the line of blatant absurdity.

"Sorry, player, but Ryu is too polite and courteous of building protocol to cross over this to get to the merchant. You gotta go find another path."

It was goofy in 2008, and it's even worse now. 😂

Oh, I still like the later machines just fine! The PS3 had a rough first couple years, but it really soared with all the exclusive IPs down the road.

But online connectivity has degraded what we once had with unfinished/buggy releases that have giant patches often during the first month.

But MS definitely stirred the pot with GamePass.

At the beginning, GamePass was an excellent value. It was essentially a digital rental service for folks who didn't want to spend oodles of cash on games.

Now? They expect folks to shell out over $300/year on top of a console without exclusives.

I can understand the paid online to a degree, being that keeping servers up and running for millions of consecutive players isn't easy.

But back then, it was only $10/month for everything... AND it was optional. You could still download games and patches without a subscription.

My brother and I used to play the hell out of that at the pizza parlor when we were kids. That, and the vectrex Star Wars game next to it. 😅

I don't hate modern gaming, but it definitely lacks the soul of what made it so special back then.

The lack of forced online connectivity is a big part of that, and I miss it.

Speaking as someone who used to be a godawful sack of shit, I can attest to this claim. I can blame my Catholic upbringing, as well as being raised in a strict conservative household, but I cannot use that as an excuse.

I chose to learn and change for the better, but I couldn't have done it alone.

Dude, is that Galaga?! 💙

25 years. Holy fucking shit.

Still, this is one of the last GREAT consoles ever released, let alone the last generation where everything was offline, games were released in completely finished states.

This is an era I would return to without hesitation.

I kept buying games, because I do want to play them, but by 2014, my backlog exploded past 100.

I abandoned MMOs completely in 2018, and now im closing in on 250 untouched games across nine platforms, including PC.

So now anything massively multiplayer for me is a deal breaker.