Fell off Spiritfarer in the final third, it just isn't helpful enough about where to find certain materials and some of the later characters just felt more and more like caricatures, with a gameplay loop that just got busier and busier but didn't really feel like it NEEDED to. Probably grab some item guides and wrap it up after the first snowfall though.

THPS really hurts my wrists so I don't play it much but it's basically perfect. I just wish online wasn't full of people who've clearly stuck with the series through all its twists and turns, every time I try to get into a fun little match it's just super discouraging to go up against a bunch of normal humans and one dude that's basically the Daigo Umehara of skate combos.

VAMPYR is a new one I've just started today via PS+ and I'm kind of regretting I chose Normal over Story mode, which was added in a later patch after many reviews claimed its Bloodborne for Idiots combat style put a real sour note on an otherwise very engaging, Witcher 3-esque adventure RPG...and I can totally see that after just a couple hours. Playing this game kinda sucks, but it's set in London during the onset of the Spanish Flu as you play a blood transfusion specialist whose recently become a vampire, so...to say the themes of the game are startlingly relevant would be an understatement.

GENSHIN IMPACT is a game I can't really explain the appeal of but I've been thinking about it a lot since it came to PS4. I'm at a point now where the grind is real but I honestly kind of appreciate that, it's the sort of thing I just pop into a couple of times a week and accomplish what I can then mosey on. As someone who never played Breath of the Wild it's also nice to get even 5% of a glimpse of what people liked about that game at no charge (the game is free).

I've gotten back into THE LAST OF US PART II on Hard+ and am really enjoying taking an honest crack at the open ended nature of the combat encounters now that I'm not stressing getting to the end of the game and joining the conversation surrounding it as soon as possible. I think critics really underrated how similar this game is - aside from the lack of science fiction weapons - to Metal Gear Solid V. The combat just feels lived in, and while the story's a pulpy meandering mess the characters, performances, dialogue and settings are all still fantastic. Pretty damn sure this is my Game of the Year easily.

Also giving Ghost of Tsushima Legends a shot and dabbling in and out of that game's NG+ as well...Legends is actually pretty hard, and I beat the game on Hard/Lethal originally! In fact it seems so hard it might be the sort of thing I wind up having to appreciate from afar since I don't really have a gaming friend group and even halfway through the story missions being randomly matched in voice-less sessions seems like it's making things more difficult than they need to be, I can only imagine what the horde mode is like.

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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
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