Games I Beat: Dark Souls III

Dark Souls III
Action RPG Lore 'Em Up
1-3 Players via summons
System: Playstation 4
Developer: From Software
Year of Release: 2016
Beaten: April 29th, 2016

Dark Souls has quickly ascended the ranks and become one of my absolute favorite series, including precursor Demon's Souls and spin-off Bloodborne. There's just something about the world From Soft has managed to craft that speaks to me, even the least liked of the series, II, was an amazing game in my opinion that I played through several times. This is one of the few series where I say "fuck it" and purchase the outrageously expensive collector's editions (glad I skipped that "Estus" Prima guide bullshit though) because of just how much I know I'll connect to these games. Even at their absolute worst they provide an interesting world with fun, engaging combat. Dark Souls III is no different

Pit of Despair: Pokkén Tournament

Pokkén Tournament
Pokémon Fighting Game!!??!!!
1-2 Players
System: Wii U
Developer: Bandai Namco
Year of Release: 2016

Don't be fooled by the title, Pit of Despair doesn't mean these games are horrible, just that they let me down in a big way. And oh, how Pokkén Tournament let me down.

Freemium Perdition: Magic the Gathering Puzzle Quest

Magic the Gathering Puzzle Quest
Match-3 "RPG"
1 Player
System: Android
Developer: D3PA
Year of Release: 2015

I didn't think I would wind up writing another Freemium Perdition, then something comes along and proves me wrong. I think it's telling that instead of keeping me engaged for a few months, and even longer (though in shorter bursts), this one only held my interest for a few weeks. Although I think I'll continue to play sporadically. Magic the Gathering takes two franchises I'm a fairly big fan of. Magic the Gathering is a rich universe that's been around almost as long as I have, I've been playing off an on for sixteen years now (I hate already being able to feel old) and for anyone who's a fan of tabletop games it's well worth checking. I'll never advocate for organized play, but getting a decent collection and playing with customize decks against friends is ideal (for my friends and I at least). Mix that with Puzzle Quest, which made match-3 puzzle games appeal to me on a grander scale (although the series basically died for me personally after the first when none of the sequels seemed to keep up with it's lofty ideas), and you've got a great idea.

DLC I Beat: Automatron

Fallout 4: Automatron
Open World Shooty "RPG"
1 Player
 System: Playstation 4
Developer: Bethesda Softworks
Year of Release: 2016
Beaten: March 22nd, 2016

Where has the time gone? I sincerely apologize for my lack of attention to this blog, but life has gotten the better of me. Rather than lament that, let's just move ever forward shall we? Fallout 4 is a weird game for me, I remember it fondly and had quite a bit of fun with the plethora of hours I dumped into it, but it felt lacking to me overall. This feeling manages to persist in this first bit of DLC, though it honestly surprised me quite a bit.

Freemium Perdition: Pocket Mortys

Pocket Mortys
Morty Collecting RPG
1 Player
System: Android
Developer: adult swim games
Year of Release: 2016

Rick and Morty was one of the many shows I was regrettably late to the party on watching. Luckily this meant that I had two full season to indulge myself with in one massive sitting. It was lovely. Season two didn't quite live up to the first for me (why did Rick stop stuttering so much?) but I'm here to talk about Pocket Mortys, not the show at large. This is a brilliant idea for a game based on this property. Rick travels through dimensions forcing his Morty to fight other Rick's (and various other aliens) going around collecting their own Mortys to fight with. Not only is it heavily inspired by, but it basically just rips off Pokemon wholesale. And it works well.

Moving Forward 2016

I have a lot planned, which usually ends poorly for me, but I'm hoping to set myself up with a lot of opportunities so that even if I miss a few I still land a few others. Firstly, I'll be going back to college almost as soon as the New Year hits, so a lot of my time will be devoured by that. Losing weight, or at least a bigger focus on personal health is another one of my major goals, it's something I've been putting off for far too long now, and I know it'd really improve many aspects of my life. I also have many "projects" I'm working on (a campaign setting for a tabletop game, making a board game, writing a book, some blog related things, starting a youtube channel, that Pokemon rom hack, and a few other possibilities come to mind) and I've decided to make sure to complete at least one of these in 2016, or at least make damn good progress, I'm leaning towards making a board game, but I'm still not totally sure. I want to travel too, not far, just around, which will require me getting my shit together financially in order to pull that off, I'm hoping that will be feasible this year, but that's kind of a toss up. There are some other minor goals, like cook more, continue playing DnD and continue writing for this blog as much as I can of course. Speaking of this blog, here's some plans I have for It Is A Title this year.

2015 End of the Year Wrap Up

As the first full year of the rebooted It Is A Title I wanted to take a moment and look back at the year. I suspect this post could be far too self-fellating for many, so if you skip this one I understand. I'm just going to look at each month, each project, and the few straggling posts that never came to be.

For those who don't want to read this entire thing, this was a good year I think, a step up from last, and a good foundation to do even better. Thank you, anyone who reads this regularly, semi-regularly, randomly, once, or just woke up from a crazy bender to this sentence in particular. I really appreciate it. To another, even better year!

Twelve Days of Christmas 2015

Merry Christmas all (or whatever holiday you partake in)! I hope the season has been treating you well! I don't usually do too much for Christmas, just spending time with family really, but this year my mum and I have been watching Christmas related things to get into the spirit of things. And I'll use anything as an excuse to write more on the old It Is A Title. We switched off picking what to watch each day, leading up to finally watching A Christmas Story on Christmas Day, because what else would you watch? So without further ado, here's our Twelve Days of Christmas for 2015.

Games I Beat: Fallout 4

Fallout 4
Open World Shooty "RPG"
1 Player
 System: Playstation 4
Developer: Bethesda Softworks
Year of Release: 2015
Beaten: November 27th, 2015

Bethesda. Bethesda never changes. Literally. This is pretty much the same engine they used to make Oblivion. Sure, they polished the old girl up, but god damn. It's getting old. There's a trend of apologist behavior surrounding Bethesda games. "Well it is a little better in this way." "They just simplified that to widen the audience." "Well, of course it's going to have bugs, it's a Bethesda game!" At what point do we stop accepting these glaring issues that have plagued almost every Bethesda game? For me, I think I've reached that point. Most of my major complaints about Fallout 4 aren't so much things it does wrong, but things that it just fails to do entirely, ideas that are touched on, but never fully realized. Or even just simple gaming conventions that should be standard for the sort of game Fallout 4 should be. That said, I've spent well over one hundred hours with the game, and will definitely be playing the DLC whenever it comes out. I'm going to be getting very spoiler heavy, as a lot of my gripes revolve around the plot, or at least the plot's structure, so you've been warned.

Road to Justice: Catwoman

Catwoman
Directed by: Pitof
Starring: Hallie Berry, Benjamen Bratt, Sharon Stone, Alex Borstein
Released: 2004
Watched: December 21st, 2015

Thoughts Before: A long time ago I made a vow to never watch Catwoman. It looked awful, I've heard terrible things about it from basically everyone who was unfortunate enough to have witnessed it. Tonight, I broke that vow. I set out on this Road to Justice to celebrate DC comics in all of their cinematic outings. My god. They've failed overall so hard, but this. THIS. If I hadn't decided to idiotically sit through every single DC movie in preparation for Dawn of Justice I would have turned this off. This was probably only the second or third movie where a feeling in my heart of hearts told me to turn it off, but I resisted that urge and saw it through. Granted we did watch it at 1.5 times speed so it was shorter but that only worsened the horribly awkward transitions and made the fight scenes sickening.