Smokey

With the release of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth late last month, I just recently finished the original Remake and currently wrapping up the integrade DLC before jumping into Rebirth and it got me thinking. Have you played or finished the Remake series yet including the newest game Rebirth? What are your thoughts so far on the remake series? Do you like it better than the original Final Fantasy 7 from 1997?

Has anyone tried Rise of the Ronin yet? i'm interested in this game but reviews weren't the greatest so I'm unsure if I want to drop $80 on it or not. What do you think? Have you tried this new game from Team Ninja yet? If so, how far into it are you and are you enjoying the gameplay? Me being so unsure about it, I might end up waiting for a sale, which I'm hoping will be sooner rather than later.

So, much like the original Final Fantasy 7 game you are able to go on a date with a member of your party at a certain point in the game. This is determined by perquisites that you've completed up until the point of the date, and the level of 'companionship' you accomplish with each character of your party. That being said, for those that played Rebirth so far, who did you end up dating? I haven't played it yet but I'm hoping to get either Tifa or Aerith to keep it as close to the original playthroughs of the original game that i've had in the past.

I would love to see a new Playstation handheld like the Vita, but at the same time, I wouldn't trust them to not abandon it like they did with the PS Vita. They just stopped production of the PSVR2 headset after only a year. Sony doesn't know what they're doing or how to market their products that aren't Playstation 5. It's sad to say but I doubt we'll ever see a true PS Vita successor from Sony. If we did, it would be abandoned within a year or two.

Cost effectively? I would just emulate it if you can. It's an okay game. I would definitely like a re-release of it but I don't see that happening to be honest.

I didn't game a lot in 2023 believe it or not. I would say it was probably the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 1. I'm still in need of completing MGS3 out of that collection but I think that is the most gaming I've done in 2023. I've already played more games in 2024 than I did all of 2023.

I'll admit, when I first heard of this, I thought Square-Enix was finally giving us a 3rd game in the Chrono series. Alas, It's not what I was hoping for. Game still looks interesting but I would've definitely used another name for it. 😛 It might be a game I wait for to go on sale and pick it up fairly cheap to give it a try.

For me, my most anticipated game of 2024 would have to be Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. A remake of the original Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, all done in unreal engine 5. It looks beautiful and with new enhancements to gameplay. I'm really excited to see how Konami handles this remake and what other remakes we might see in the future if this one sells well.

If you buy or use gaming laptops, which brands do you prefer? for me, I like Alienware. Asus is a close 2nd choice for me. I always had pretty good luck with most Alienware laptops I've owned in the past. The only issue i've had was with the Alienware M18 R1 that I tried 2 variants of, each had different issues: All-AMD variant - Games just didn't load and would crash constantly, no matter the game. I think this was more of a GPU driver issue so I returned it and tried Alienware M18 R1 w/ RTX 4070 graphics - This one worked fine but it had 2 defective USB-C ports on the back. Now i'm rocking an Alienware M18 R2 with an intel CPU and a RTX 4070 GPU. I'm happy with it thus far and haven't had any issues aside from a botched windows update that was fixed with a re-installation of Windows. Another reason I've stuck with Alienware is because all of my peripherials are Alienware, I got a mouse and headset that's also Alienware. It's easy to just control them all within 1 application instead of needing to run multiple applications (such as iCue for example) What about you? What is your go-to brand?

What would you like to see as an improvement for the Elite series 3 controllers? For me? I'd like the following: Swappable thumbsticks similar to the dualsense edge. I don't mean just the top caps, i mean the entire stick mechanism to be swapped out. This would eliminate the need to buy new ones every time you get stick drift. They could sell replacements for maybe $20 or so Similar to what Sony does. Better back paddles, perhaps offer different design choices for them? Add it to the design lab on day one. More durable. Better Battery Life. I don't think this is too much to ask for, personally and would love to see these changes in the Series 3 elite. What about you? Do you own an Elite or some other pro-controller for your xbox?

Now that Microsoft owns Xbox. Do you think Xbox should have maybe a one-off Xbox-only exclusive Call of Duty game? Something done really well that could potentially push sales for the hardware? Perhaps a remaster of a believed game from the past? Do you think this would work? Not saying the entire franchise should be xbox exclusive but maybe a few exclusive titles here and there?

My current xbox? It's a Series X. I bought it last summer. So i've had it for just over a year. I bought the Series X before my PS5. Xbox in general? I owned a Xbox 360 from 2013-2019. I gave it to my nephew a few years ago. I regret doing so but yeah.

Depending on distance sat from the monitor or TV. Anything higher than 50 is overkill. I would say if you're right in front of a TV or not far from it, 43" and below would be fine depending on your setup. I have a 43" UHD 4K TV and it's right in front of me from where i sit at my desk and it seems to be just fine.

Hard to say personally. I wasn't impressed with CoD's campaign this year. The MP is serviable but could be better, AC Mirage seems to have been a disappointment..... I would probably have to say the Resident Evil 4 Remake.

Worst horror game? Hmmm probably Clock Tower 2: The Struggle Within. I remember going crazy looking for this game not realizing what it was, and when I got it and played it for myself, I was very disappointed. I don't really like point and click adventure games on console. I feel like that's something better suited with a mouse.

This seems like it's mostly for people who need their hand held through a game even on the easiest difficulty. I know someone like this and they will drop $20+ on microtransactions if they included something like unlimited ammo or 'super dumb easy' mode for a game like RE4.

When it comes to your peripherals, what brand do you like to use? For me, since I have an Alienware Gaming Laptop. I try to stick with Alienware products. I was using a corsair headset but it being wireless it started giving me issues and not keeping the right battery percentage and it would often shut off thinking it was 'dead' when it wasn't. I had a jittering issue with my corsair mouse too so I replaced them with a wired Alienware headset & a wired alienware mouse. The mouse is a cheaper one that only cost me about $35. It gets the job done but I miss the buttons on the side I had with my scrimitar for MMO's 😞 The headset fits okay but it can't be adjusted for comfort which I don't really like but it sounds okay, the mic is decent enough and I like how it retracts into the headset & that there's RGB lighting on the side. Although it has to be 'set' each session it would seem......but that could jsut be a small glitch with command center. What PC Peripherals do you like to use?

This past Friday. the acquisition deal between Microsoft & Activision/Blizzard/King has gone through and now Microsoft owns ActiBlizzKing. This is pretty cool because now we'll have parody in games like Call of Duty. No more exclusive content or early betas for Playstation probably starting in 2024. What do you think about the acquisition? I'm excited for it. Call of Duty on Game Pass means it'll save me a lot of money starting next year 🙂 I'm also hoping to see them bring WoW subscriptions into Game Pass Ultimate. Here's the trailer from Xbox: [url=https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/13/23791235/microsoft-activision-blizzard-acquisition-complete-finalized]Source - TheVerge[/url]

It seems like gaming is heading in the direction where physical media is being phased out in favor of subscription services and digital-only games/purchases. Are you comfortable with an all-digital future in gaming? Are you more about physical copies of games? For me, I'm agaisnt it.. I like having something tangible in my hands. Servers don't stay up forever and eventually you'll lose access to those license keys & downloads. At that point, it's really just like an expensive $70 rental with a really lengthy 'return' period. There are also games we'll never be able to get digitally because their source code is lost, games like Panzer Dragoon Saga. I would definitely like to see a happy medium between the two but I don't think that's going to happen as more and more consoles are coming out as "Digital-Only". See: The new Xbox Series X for example. What about you? Are you for or against an all-digital future in gaming?

Like a Dragon: Ishin. I've been so busy i haven't had much time to game the past week or so. 😞

I can't confirm or deny it but I think so. I don't see many gaming magazines out on store shelves anymore, only place I know where to get a GI mag is from Gamestop nowadays too.......it's a shame. I used to love getting the likes of playstation, Dreamcast & Next Generation magazine growing up. I got 3 mags a month, two of which came with demo discs.....

I think so. Gaming has helped me through some serious rough times in my life. A pretty bad time in my life growing up is what sparked my true love for gaming and actually what led me to building my own gaming website at the time.

That was a great game! 🙂 Yeah i'm sure AEW will be out by the Holidays. Sure hope it's better than the WWE game 😄 would be nice to see a good Yukes game again like Here comes the Pain! 🙂

Sometimes, unless they offer any value for trading them in when I get a new one. I found my old iPhone 3GS and the box for it from like 2008/2009. So that was pretty cool I guess. 😛

It kept me from purchasing one until 2013. I bought their "Slim E" model on sale. The Xbox One was about to release or just released and I bought my 360 then. By then the RRoD was a thing of the past and I figured for $200 for a 250GB console + 3 games, i'd take the risk. I bought it mostly to play games with my girlfriend @Shortie, even though we weren't dating at the time 😛