+1 curious. I had a lot of gripes with Hellblade but they were all design/execution issues. I don’t know enough about the mental illness stuff to pass judgment. It seemed like they tried to be sensitive and well informed.

The restrictiveness of the color-coded enemies is way overblown by the community, imo. It’s not THAT frequent, and you still get two weapons per color, which is as many as you’re ever allowed to equip at a time in DMC3 anyway. DmC lets you equip all weapons at once, so usually you have MORE options at your disposal…

That’s a better take. But arguably he wasn’t REALLY Poochy until 3. Before that he was just, I dunno, I guess Neo.

It’s too bad, because while new Dante was presented as “edgy” in a lot of the marketing materials, one of the defining elements of the reboot was their attempt to make Dante a more three-dimensional, layered character. The whole point was that the “Evanescence” Dante you saw in early trailers spends the course of the…

>Nah the combat is total shit compared to DMC3 and DMC4.

It was a bad scene for Capcom to highlight so much, but I wouldn’t say that’s the tone and aesthetic of the game. The point is that Dante is young, unrefined, and immature at the start of the game, and over the course of the story he has actual growth and a character arc, narrative concepts the old games didn’t…

Obligatory reminder that there is still an active, incredible community exploring the seemingly bottomless depth of this game’s combat now, almost entirely in Japan, of course.

This is a really great piece! It looks like you put a lot of time into it—I’d be curious to know how much if you’re willing to say—and it paid off. Great job.

Since when did barrel bombs cause damage to the player in MH? Is that a thing?

Yeah, DMC3 is where they really started to forge a lasting brand identity. Remember that DMC1 was originally going to be Resident Evil 4, and came very early in the PS2's life cycle. DMC3 also had a different director who came from a fighting game background (Power Stone, Plasma Sword, Capcom vs. SNK), so the stylish…

Another way to look at it is, they’re rewarding others who are playing it right now.

Practice makes perfect, and online guides help a lot too. Don’t forget you can switch between melee weapons by clicking the right stick. Might come in handy in that fight.

Huh. I’m using the weapon now and haven’t really spotted anything. It looks like it’s just the axe animations, but I’ll keep investigating....

Wait, his weapon has unique animations?

Trump is just a branding machine, which is a fancy word for a man-baby whose only functions are to loudly name-call and latch onto key words without thinking about the abstract concepts they represent. To him, Slavery™ and Human Trafficking™ are different words/brands, and thus distinct concepts. So yeah he’s dumb.…

Fun fact: The Japanese name for Croagunk is “Greggle,” and when I taught English to little kids in Japan they loved calling me “Greggle-sensei” because my name is Greg and this was a fun opportunity to liken me to a walking fart joke.

I’m trying to imagine a 2018 consumer who 1) is a PS+ subscriber, 2) doesn’t already have Bloodborne, and 3) would still enjoy having Bloodborne. Can’t help but feel not many people will actually benefit from that offering, even though it sounds generous.

Yeah, this. There’s an “Invite a Friend” option buried in one of the menu tabs that lets you invite someone directly to your session by PSN ID. Still kind of unwieldy, but way better than having to text someone a case-sensitive string of letters and numbers and have them manually enter it every time.

Heather once again repping the easily-overlooked small game with interesting mechanics. Thanks for doing that!

Yeah, that’s more of a great game with an undeserved bad rap. Lots of weird vitriol and misplaced criticism surrounding that one, not enough people paying attention to what it actually accomplished. Ironically, the only people really fully exploring the combat system seem to be in Japan and Asia.